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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Udupi_district | Udupi district | Udupi district (also Udipi (IPA: [uɖupi]) in Kannada or Odipu (IPA: [oɖipu]) in Tulu language) is an administrative subdivision in the Karnataka state of India, with the district headquarters in the city of Udupi. It is situated in the Canara old north Malabar coastal region. There are seven taluks, 233 villages and 21 towns in Udupi district. The three northern tehsils of Udupi, Kundapur and Karkala, were partitioned from Dakshina Kannada district (South Canara) to form Udupi district on 25 August 1997. Moodabidri was officially declared as new tehsil (taluk) in 2018.
In February 2018, the district was split to into 3 more taluks, with Byndoor being carved out of Kundapur taluk and the Udupi taluk being split into three parts. Along with the initial Udupi taluk, Kapu, Brahmavar and Hebri were created.
Dinakar Babu and Sheela K Shetty of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) are the current president (Sarpanch) and vice-president of the Udupi Zilla Panchayat, respectively, after the election held at the Zilla Panchayat on 27 April 2016.
== Location ==
Udupi district is surrounded by Uttara Kannada district in north, Dakshina Kannada district in southern direction. Shimoga district borders on north east side and Chikmagalur district on east. The Arabian Sea is west of Udupi district.
== Transportation ==
Udupi district is connected by road and railway line. The National highway 66 (previously NH-17) is the main highway road of Udupi district. National highway 169A connects this district with Thirthahalli in Shivamogga district but it is very narrow at many places and only mini buses and mini lorries are allowed on Agumbe ghat through which this national highway 169A passes. The national highway 169 (previously NH 13) from Mangaluru to Shivamogga passes through Sanoor, Karkala, Bajagoli, Mudar of this district. There are few state highways(SH) built and maintained by Karnataka public works department (P.W.D.). Main District Roads (M.D.R) connect villages and towns of the district.
Konkan Railway connects Udupi with Goa, Maharashtra and Kerala states. Udupi, Byndoor, Kundapura, Barkur, Innanje, and Padubidre are few railway stations on Konkan railway line. There are trains from Udupi to state capital Bangalore, Mangalore, Kasaragod, Margao, Thane and Mumbai.
== Demographics ==
According to the 2011 census Udupi district has a population of 1,177,361. This gives it a ranking of 403rd in India (out of a total of 640). The district has a population density of 304 inhabitants per square kilometre (790/sq mi). Its population growth rate over the decade 2001-2011 was 5.9%.
Udupi district has 253,078 households, population of 1,177,361 of which 562,131 are males and 615,230 are females. The population of children between age 0-6 is 103,160 which is 8.76% of the total population. The sex-ratio of Udupi district is around 1094 compared to 973 which is average of Karnataka state. The literacy rate of Udupi district is 78.69% out of which 82.85% males are literate and 74.89% females are literate. The total area of Udupi is 3,582 km2 (1,383 sq mi) with a population density of 329 km2 (127 sq mi).
Udupi has a sex ratio of 1093 females for every 1000 males, and a literacy rate of 86.29%. 28.37% of the population lives in urban areas. Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes make up 6.41% and 4.49% of the population respectively.
At the 2011 census, 42.70% of the population spoke Kannada, 31.44% Tulu, 12.16% Konkani, 4.61% Urdu, 2.83% Marathi, 2.13% Malayalam and 2.01% Beary as their first language.
== Climate ==
Udupi district has a tropical monsoon climate with hot, humid summers and very heavy monsoon rainfall. The hot pre-monsoon/summer period runs from March to May, when daytime temperatures typically range from about 30–34 °C and humidity rises before the onset of the south-west monsoon. The main rainy season is from June to September, with frequent heavy showers, strong coastal winds and high humidity; October–November are the retreating monsoon months with occasional rainfall, and December–February are comparatively dry and mild.
Udupi is one of Karnataka’s wettest districts. Long-term district averages reported by state/meteorological sources put Udupi’s average annual rainfall in the range of about 4,200–4,500 mm (IMD/state reports give figures such as ~4,535 mm in recent state summaries). This places Udupi among the highest-rainfall districts in Karnataka and India.
The district has recorded exceptionally high totals in some years. For example, Udupi recorded very high annual totals in the mid-2010s (reports note 2016 totals exceeding 5,900 mm in the district), and nearby taluks (Karkala) recorded exceptional localized totals the following year. In June 2025 Udupi received an unusually large monthly total (about 1,140 mm for June) and was reported as the highest-rainfall district in India for that month in IMD/press summaries. These event years are often cited when describing Udupi’s status as one of India’s wettest districts.
Udupi has a tropical climate.
Udupi had record rainfall during September 2020, with mass floods following soon after. The district received 315.3 mm rainfall which is a record in Udupi taluk during the last 40 years.
== Commerce and industry ==
A thermal power plant has been set up at Nandikoor in Udupi district, with installed capacity of 1200 MW and a further 1600 MW proposed.
Suzlon has a manufacturing facility at Padubidre for making blades for wind mills. The project has been mired in controversies, with the company announcing a lock-out in November 2017 that lasted for more than a month. Activities were again suspended in July 2018.
A strategic petroleum reserve is set up at an underground location in the village of Padur (Padoor) in the Udupi district.
At Shivalli Industrial Estate in Manipal a few small scale industries have set up factories. There are few clay roof tiles (Mangalore tiles) industry, Cashew nut processing industry, Coconut oil mills and fish meal industry in Udupi district. There are many small entrepreneurs who make Pickles, Happala (Pappad), Spices powder and other food products in this district. Prior to nationalisation of commercial banks and insurance companies in early 1960s the district had many private banks and insurance companies. Syndicate Bank, Corporation Bank and Canara Bank had genesis in this district (then South Kanara district) before independence of India from British in 1947 A.D.
== Notable people ==
== See also ==
List of villages in Udupi district
Udupi cuisine
Kere Basadi
South Kanara (North) (Lok Sabha constituency)
South Kanara (South) (Lok Sabha constituency)
Kukkikatte
Bankerkatta
Kuthpady
Malpe
Tonse
St. Mary's Islands
Udyavara
Yenagudde
== References ==
== Further reading ==
S. Muhammad Hussain Nainar (1942), Tuhfat-al-Mujahidin: An Historical Work in The Arabic Language, University of Madras, ISBN 9789839154801 {{citation}}: ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)
J. Sturrock (1894), Madras District Manuals - South Canara (Volume-I), Madras Government Press
Harold A. Stuart (1895), Madras District Manuals - South Canara (Volume-II), Madras Government Press
Government of Madras (1905), Madras District Gazetteers: Statistical Appendix for South Canara District, Madras Government Press
Government of Madras (1915), Madras District Gazetteers South Canara (Volume-II), Madras Government Press
Government of Madras (1953), 1951 Census Handbook- South Canara District (PDF), Madras Government Press
J. I. Arputhanathan (1955), South Kanara, The Nilgiris, Malabar and Coimbatore Districts (Village-wise Mother-tongue Data for Bilingual or Multilingual Taluks) (PDF), Madras Government Press
Rajabhushanam, D. S. (1963), Statistical Atlas of the Madras State (1951) (PDF), Madras (Chennai): Director of Statistics, Government of Madras
Studies in Tuluva History and Culture (1975) by P. Gururaja Bhat, Published by Padur Gururaj Bhat Memorial Trust, Udupi, Reprint year 2014.
== External links ==
Official Website of Udupi district |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Classical_Music_Hall_of_Fame_and_Museum#2005 | American Classical Music Hall of Fame and Museum | The American Classical Music Hall of Fame and Museum is a non-profit organization celebrating past and present individuals and institutions that have made significant contributions to classical music—"people who have contributed to American music and music in America", according to Samuel Adler (co-chairman of the organization's first artistic directorate). The project was founded in 1996 by Cincinnati businessman and civic leader David A. Klingshirm and inducted its first honorees in 1998.
The organization's offices and exhibits are housed in the Hamilton County Memorial Building, next door to the Cincinnati Music Hall in the Over-the-Rhine neighborhood of Cincinnati, Ohio. The exhibits are not open to the public but are on view during some events at the School for Creative and Performing Arts in Cincinnati and via a virtual museum. "The Classical Walk of Fame", pavement stones engraved with names of American Classical Music Hall of Fame inductees, was opened in Washington Park outside the steps of the Cincinnati Music Hall in 2012. A mobile app allows park visitors to read biographies of the inductees, listen to samples of their music, and view related pictures. They can also play classical music through a mobile jukebox which activates the park's "dancing fountain".
== Inductees ==
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== See also ==
List of music museums
== References ==
== External links ==
Official website |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syed_Ahmad_Khan | Syed Ahmad Khan | Sir Syed Ahmad Khan (17 October 1817 – 27 March 1898), also spelled Sayyid Ahmad Khan, was an Indian Muslim reformer, philosopher, and educationist in nineteenth-century British India.
Though initially espousing Hindu–Muslim unity, he later became the pioneer of Muslim nationalism in India and is widely credited as the father of the two-nation theory, which formed the basis of the Pakistan movement. Born into a family with strong ties to the Mughal court, Ahmad studied science and the Quran within the court. He was awarded an honorary LLD from the University of Edinburgh in 1889.
In 1838, Syed Ahmad entered the service of East India Company and went on to become a judge at a Small Causes Court in 1867, retiring from this position in 1876. During the Indian Mutiny of 1857, he remained loyal to the British Raj and was noted for his actions in saving European lives. After the rebellion, he penned the booklet The Causes of the Indian Mutiny – a daring critique, at the time, of various British policies that he blamed for causing the revolt. Believing that the future of Muslims was threatened by the rigidity of their orthodox outlook, Sir Ahmad began promoting Western–style scientific education by founding modern schools and journals and organising Islamic entrepreneurs. Victoria School at Ghazipur in 1863, and a scientific society for Muslims in 1864. In 1875, founded the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College, the first Muslim university in Southern Asia. During his career, Syed repeatedly called upon Muslims to loyally serve the British Raj and promoted the adoption of Urdu as the lingua franca of all Indian Muslims. He disagreed with the Indian National Congress over parliamentary democracy, believing it would lack impartiality given the widespread communal tensions and limitations of education in South Asia. He remained committed to secularism and inclusive politics.
Sir Syed maintains a strong legacy in Pakistan and among Indian Muslims. He became a source of inspiration for the Pakistan Movement and its activists, including Allama Iqbal and Muhammad Ali Jinnah. His advocacy of Islam's rationalist tradition, and a broader, radical reinterpretation of the Quran to make it compatible with science and modernity, continues to influence the global Islamic reformation. Many universities and public buildings in Pakistan bear Sir Syed's name. Aligarh Muslim University celebrated Sir Syed's 200th birth centenary with much enthusiasm on 17 October 2017.
== Early life ==
Syed Ahmad Taqvi 'Khan Bahadur' was born on 17 October 1817 to Syed Muhammad Muttaqi and Aziz-un-Nisa in Delhi, which was the capital of the Mughal Empire during the reign of Mughal Emperor Akbar II. Many generations of his family had been highly connected with the Mughal administration. His maternal grandfather Khwaja Fariduddin served as Wazir in the court of Emperor Akbar Shah II. His paternal grandfather Syed Hadi Jawwad bin Imaduddin held a mansab (lit. General) – a high-ranking administrative position - and the honorary name of "Mir Jawwad Ali Khan" in the court of Emperor Alamgir II. Sir Syed's father, Syed Muhammad Muttaqi, was personally close to Emperor Akbar Shah II and served as his personal adviser. However, Syed Ahmad was born at a time when his father was involved in regional insurrections aided and led by the East India Company, which had replaced the power traditionally held by the Mughal state, reducing its monarch to a figurehead.
Syed Ahmad was the youngest of three siblings. With his elder brother Syed Muhammad bin Muttaqi Khan and elder sister Safiyatun Nisa, Sir Syed was raised in the house of his maternal grandfather in a wealthy area of the city. They were raised in strict accordance with Mughal noble traditions and they were exposed to politics. Their mother Aziz-un-Nisa played a formative role in Sir Syed's early life, raising him with rigid discipline and a strong emphasis on modern education.
== Education ==
Sir Syed's education was initiated by Shah Ghulam Ali, his father's spiritual mentor in 1822. He was taught to read and understand the Qur'an by a female tutor Areeba Sehar. He received an education traditional to Muslim nobility in Delhi. He attended a maktab run by a learned scholar, Moulvi Hamiduddin, in a house adjacent to his ancestral home and started learning Persian and Arabic. He read the works of Muslim scholars and writers such as Sahbai, Zauq and Ghalib. Other tutors instructed him in mathematics, astronomy and algebra. He also pursued the study of medicine for several years under Hakim Ghulam Haider Khan. Sir Syed was also adept at swimming, shooting and other sports. He took an active part in the Mughal court's cultural activities and attended parties, festivals and recitations.
Syed Ahmad's elder brother launched a weekly, “Syedul Akhbar”, from Delhi, which was one of the earliest Urdu newspapers in northern India. Until the death of his father in 1838, Sir Syed had lived a life customary for an affluent young Muslim noble. Upon his father's death, he inherited the titles of his grandfather and father and was awarded the title of Arif Jung by the emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar. Financial difficulties put an end to Sir Syed's formal education, although he continued to study in private, using books on a variety of subjects.
== Career ==
Having recognised the steady decline in Mughal political power, Sir Syed decided to enter the service of the East India Company. He could not enter the colonial civil service because it was only in the 1860s that Indians were admitted. His first appointment was as a Serestadar (lit. Clerk) of the Criminal Department in the Sadr Amin's office in Delhi, responsible for record-keeping and managing court affairs. In February 1839, he was transferred to Agra and promoted to the title of Naib Munshi or deputy reader in the office of the Commissioner. In 1841 he was appointed as the Munsif or Sub-Judge of Fatehpur Sikri and later transferred to Delhi in 1846. He remained in Delhi until 1854 except for two short-term postings to Rohtak as officiating Sadr Amin in 1850 and 1853. In 1855 he was promoted to the post of Sadr Amin in Bijnor.
Acquainted with high-ranking British officials, Sir Syed obtained close knowledge about British colonial politics during his service at the courts. At the outbreak of the Indian rebellion, on 10 May 1857, Sir Syed was serving as the chief assessment officer at the court in Bijnor. He stood by the British officers of Bijnor and saved the lives of many officers and their family members from the revolting soldiers. The conflict had left large numbers of civilians dead. Erstwhile centres of Muslim power such as Delhi, Agra, Lucknow and Kanpur were severely affected. He lost several close relatives who died in the violence. Although he succeeded in rescuing his mother from the turmoil, she died in Meerut, owing to the privations she had experienced.
In 1858, he was appointed as Sadarus Sudoor, a high-ranking post at the court in Muradabad, where he began working on his most famous literary work, The Cause of the Indian Revolt. In 1862, he was transferred to Ghazipur, and later to Aligarh in 1864. In 1864 he was sent to Banaras and elevated to the position of a Sub-Judge of Small Causes.
In April 1869, he accompanied his two sons Syed Hamid and Syed Mahmood to England, the latter had obtained a scholarship to study in England.
Sir Syed retired from government service in 1876 and settled in Aligarh. In 1878, he was nominated as an additional member of the Imperial Legislative Council, which he served from July 1878 to July 1880. He also served a second term that lasted until 1883. He served the Legislative Council of the Lieutenant Governor of the North- Western Provinces for two terms from 1887 until 1893.
== Influences ==
Sir Syed's early influences were his mother Aziz-un-Nisa and maternal grandfather Khwaja Fariduddin both of whom took special interest in his education. Apart from serving as a Wazir in the Mughal court, Khwaja Fariduddin was also a teacher, mathematician and astronomer. He was also disposed towards Sufism, which left its impact on Sir Syed since his early childhood. His maternal uncle Khwaja Zainuddin Ahmad, who was an expert in music and mathematics, also influenced him in his early days.
Sir Syed's early theological writings demonstrate the influence of three school of religious thought on his outlook - the Naqshbandi tradition of Shah Ghulam Ali Dahlavi, Shah Waliullah Dehlawi and his teachings, and the Mujahidin movement of Syed Ahmad Barelvi and his earliest disciple Shah Ismail Dehlvi. While Sir Syed shared the desire for religious forms in India with the Mujahidin movement, he was opposed to the Indian Wahhabi movement.
During his formative years in Delhi he came in contact with Ghalib and Zauq whose exquisite style of prose and poetry influenced Sir Syed's style of writing. He would often visit Imam Baksh Sahbai and Sadruddin Khan Azurda Dehlawi in his learning years. Another influence on him was his teacher and friend in Agra, Nur al Hasan of Kandhala, a teacher in Arabic at Agra College in the early 1840s who encouraged and corrected his early works.
He was also influenced by the works of the Tunisian reformer Hayreddin Pasha and adopted his approach of utilising freedom of expression for bringing reforms in the Muslim community.
The western writers who most influenced his political thoughts were the Utilitarians such as John Stuart Mill, whose works he often quoted in his own writings. He was also influenced by the essays of Joseph Addison and Richard Steele and modelled his own journals after their Tatler and Spectator.
== Literary works ==
While continuing to work as a junior clerk, Sir Syed began focusing on writing, from the age of 23 (in 1840), on various subjects (from mechanics to educational issues), mainly in Urdu, where he wrote, at least, 6000 pages. He also wrote a well known book on archaeology called Athar-ul-Sandeed. He also developed interest in literature as he met a few of India's well known writers.
=== Religious works ===
Sir Syed Ahmad Khan's career as an author began when he published a series of treatises in Urdu on religious subjects in 1842. In his early religious writings his religious thoughts were more orthodox; over time, with his increasing contact with the West, his views gradually became more independent. His early works show the influence of Sufism and his upbringing in Delhi. The main themes of these works are popularisation of the practices of the Islamic prophet Muhammad as the one true path and the desire to reform the lives of Indian Muslims from religious innovations, thus endeavoring for the purity of Islamic belief in India.
His later religious writings, such as his commentary on the Torah and Gospel and his essays on Muhammad, were stimulated in response to Christian missionary activities in India and the aggressive view of British historians towards Islam.
==== Early treatises ====
His first treatise published in 1842 was a biographical sketch of Muhammad, called Jila al-Qulub bi Zikr al-Mahbub (Delight of the Hearts in Remembering the Beloved), in line with the reformist ideas of Shah Waliullah. It was prose for recitation on Mawlid written in idiomatic Urdu. He published his second treatise Tuhfa-i Hasan (The Gift to Hasan) in 1844 on the encouragement of his friend Nur al Hasan. It is an Urdu translation of the tenth and twelfth chapter of Shah Abdul Aziz Dehlavi's Tuhfah-i Ithna Ashariyya (A treatise on the 12 Imams), which was a critique of Shia beliefs. The tenth chapter deals and answers the Shia accusations against the Sahabi and Hazrat Aisha and the twelfth deals with the Shia doctrines of tawalli and tabarri.
His third treatise, entitled Kalimat al-Haqq (The True Discourse), was published in 1849. It is a critique of the prevalent Sufi practices around pir–murid relationships. The first part of the work is devoted to the concept of piri. In this part, he argues that Muhammad is the only valid pir. The work's second part is focused on muridi and the notion of bay'ah. He calls for reforms in the pir-murid relationship and the associated practises. Rah i Sunna dar radd i Bid'a (The Sunna and the Rejection of Innovations), his fourth treatise, was published in 1850. In this work, he expressed his opposition to certain religious practices and beliefs of his fellow Muslims, which he felt were mixed with innovation and deviated from the true Sunnah. In 1852 he published Namiqa dar bayan masala tasawwur-i-Shaikh (A Letter Explaining the Teaching of tasawwur i shaikh), in which he defended tasawwur-i-Shaikh, the Sufi practice of visualising within, the image of one's spiritual guide. In 1853 he translated some passages of al-Ghazali's Kimiya al-Sa'ada (The Alchemy of Happiness).
==== Commentary of the Torah and Gospel ====
In 1862 while stationed at Ghazipur, Sir Syed started working on a commentary on the Bible and its teaching, with the aim to explain them in terms of Islam. It was published in Urdu and English in three parts from 1862 to 1865 under the title Tabin al-al-kalam Fi tafsir altawrat Wa ‘I-injil’ala millat al Islam (Elucidation of the World in Commentary of the Torah and Gospel According to the Religion of Islam). While the first part deals with the Islamic approach towards biblical writings, the second and third part contains commentary on the Book of Genesis and the Gospel of Matthew respectively.
==== Essays on the Life of Muhammad ====
In 1869 he wrote Al-Khutbat al-Ahmadiya fi'l Arab wa'I Sirat al-Muhammadiya (A Series of Essays on the Life of Prophet Muhammad and Subjects Subsidiary Therein) as a rejoinder to William Muir's widely known four-part book, The Life of Mahomet published in 1864. He was deeply distressed by Muir's portrayal of Islam and the character of Muhammad. He was concerned that the book might create doubts among the younger generation of Muslims. In order to prepare for the book, he accompanied his son to England, as he wanted to get a first-hand impression of Western civilisation.
He was also a reader of Darwin and, while not agreeing with all of his ideas, he could be described as a sort of theistic evolutionist like his contemporary Asa Gray. Syed Ahmad was one of the first in the Islamic world to adopt this view. His arguments in favour of the idea were based on both findings from his own scientific research and quotes from earlier Islamic scholars like Al-Jahiz, Ibn Khaldun and Shah Waliullah.
==== Tafsir-ul-Quran ====
Sir Syed started working on a tafsir, or commentary on the Quran, in 1877. It was published as Tafsir ul-Quran in seven volumes; the first volume appeared in 1880 and the last volume was published six years after his death in 1904. In this work, he analysed and interpreted 16 paras and 13 surahs of the Quran. In the first volume, he also included a detailed article titled Tahrir fi Usool al-Tafsir (The Notes on the Principles of Commentary), in which he laid down 15 principles on which he based his commentary.
=== Historical works ===
History was Sir Syed's preferred area of study and in 1840, Sir Syed compiled a book of chronological tables about the Timurid rulers of Delhi from Timur to Bahadur Shah Zafar at the behest of Robert N. C. Hamilton, his patron. It was later published under the title Jam-i-Jum (Jamshed's Cup). In Silsilat-ul-Mulk he compiled the biographical data of all the rulers of Delhi in history. During his stay in Bijnor, he wrote a history on the city of Bijnor, but it was destroyed during the 1857 rebellion. He also wrote critical editions of books like Ziauddin Barani's Tarikh-e-Firoz Shahi published in 1862, and Tuzk-e-Jahangiri published in 1864. However, his most important historical works that brought him fame as a scholar were the two editions of Asar-us-Sanadid and that of the Ain-e-Akbari.
==== Asar-us-Sanadid ====
In 1847, he published the book Asar-us-Sanadid (The Remnants of Ancient Heroes) documenting antiquities of Delhi dating from the medieval era. The work is divided into four sections: the first describes the buildings outside the city of Delhi; the second describes the buildings around the Delhi Fort; the third describes the monuments in Shahjahanabad; and the last section presents a brief historical account of the various settlements of Delhi as well as the prominent inhabitants of Delhi, including Sufis (such as Shah Ghulam Ali and Saiyid Ahmad Shahid), physicians, scholars, poets, calligraphers, and musicians. It also contained around 130 illustrations drawn by Faiz Ali Khan and Mirza Shahrukh Beg, which were the first lithographically produced book illustrations in India. Syed Ahmad released the second edition of Ansar-as-Sanadid in 1854. However, the second edition was radically different from the first – the second was abbreviated and more factual. This work brought Sir Syed a wider fame and earned him the reputation of a cultured scholar. In 1861, it was translated into French by Gracin de Tassy in Paris. The book was also presented to the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland in London, which made him an honorary fellow.
==== Ain-e-Akbari ====
In 1855, he finished his scholarly, and illustrated edition of Abul Fazl's A'in-e Akbari. The first and the third volume of the work were both published in 1855. The second volume, sent to the publisher in 1857, was destroyed in the rebellion that took place that year. Having finished the work to his satisfaction, and believing that Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib was a person who would appreciate his labours, Syed Ahmad approached the great Ghalib to write a taqriz (in the convention of the times, a laudatory foreword) for it. Ghalib obliged, but what he did produce was a short Persian poem castigating the A'in-e Akbari, and by implication, the imperial, sumptuous, literate and learned Mughal culture of which it was a product. The least that could be said against it was that the book had little value even as an antique document. Ghalib practically reprimanded Syed Ahmad Khan for wasting his talents and time on dead things. Worse, he praised sky-high the "sahibs of England" who at that time held all the keys to all the a’ins in this world.
Sir Syed Ahmad Khan never again wrote a word in praise of the A'in-e Akbari and in fact gave up taking an active interest in history and archaeology. He did edit another two historical texts over the next few years, but neither of them was anything like the A'in: a vast and triumphalist document on the governance of Akbar.
=== Political works ===
During the uprising of 1857, Sir Syed was posted as a chief assessment officer at the court in Bijnor. He recorded the history of the mutiny in Tarikh i Sarkashi-ye Bijnor (History of the Bijnor Rebellion), which was published in 1858. He was deeply worried about the consequences of the mutiny for his fellow Muslims in particular. He wrote a number of articles and pamphlets such as Asbab-e-Baghawat-e-Hind (The Causes of the Indian Revolt), Loyal Muhammadans of India, and Review on Dr Hunter's Indian Musalmans: Are They Bound in Conscience to Rebel Against the Queen? to defend Muslims and Islam and create a cordial relations between the British authorities and the Muslim community.
==== Causes of the Indian Revolt ====
Sir Syed supported the East India Company during the 1857 uprising, a role which has been criticised by some nationalists such as Jamaluddin Afghani. In 1859 Sir Syed published the booklet Asbab-e-Baghawat-e-Hind (The Causes of the Indian Revolt) in Urdu in which he studied the causes of the Indian revolt. In this, his most famous work, he rejected the common notion that the conspiracy was planned by Muslim elites, who resented the diminishing influence of Muslim monarchs. He blamed the East India Company for its aggressive expansion as well as the ignorance of British politicians regarding Indian culture. Sir Syed advised the British to appoint Muslims to assist in administration, to prevent what he called ‘haramzadgi’ (a vulgar deed) such as the mutiny.
Maulana Altaf Hussain Hali wrote in the biography of Sir Syed that: "As soon as Sir Syed reached Muradabad, he began to write the pamphlet entitled The Causes of the Indian Revolt (Asbab-e-Baghawat-e-Hind), in which he did his best to clear the people of India, and especially the Muslims, of the charge of Mutiny. In spite of the obvious danger, he made a courageous and thorough report of the accusations people were making against the Government and refused theory which the British had invented to explain the causes of the Mutiny."
When the work was finished, without waiting for an English translation, Sir Syed sent the Urdu version to be printed at the Mufassilat Gazette Press in Agra. Within a few weeks, he received 500 copies back from the printers. One of his friends warned him not to send the pamphlet to the British Parliament or to the Government of India. Rae Shankar Das, a great friend of Sir Syed, begged him to burn the books rather than put his life in danger. Sir Syed replied that he was bringing these matters to the attention of the British for the good of his own people, of his country, and of the government itself. He said that if he came to any harm while doing something that would greatly benefit the rulers and the subjects of India alike, he would gladly suffer whatever befell him. When Rae Shankar Das saw that Sir Syed's mind was made up and nothing could be done to change it, he wept and remained silent. After performing a supplementary prayer and asking God's blessing, Sir Syed sent almost all the 500 copies of his pamphlet to England, one to the government, and kept the rest himself.
When the government of India had the book translated and presented before the council, Lord Canning, the governor-general, and Sir Bartle Frere accepted it as a sincere and friendly report. The foreign secretary Cecil Beadon, however, severely attacked it, calling it 'an extremely seditious pamphlet'. He wanted a proper inquiry into the matter and said that the author, unless he could give a satisfactory explanation, should be harshly dealt with. Since no other member of the Council agreed with his opinion, his attack did no harm.
Later, Sir Syed was invited to attend Lord Canning's durbar in Farrukhabad and happened to meet the foreign secretary there. He told Sir Syed that he was displeased with the pamphlet and added that if he had really had the government's interests at heart, he would not have made his opinion known in this way throughout the country; he would have communicated it directly to the government. Sir Syed replied that he had only had 500 copies printed, the majority of which he had sent to England, one had been given to the government of India, and the remaining copies were still in his possession. Furthermore, he had the receipt to prove it. He was aware, he added, that the view of the rulers had been distorted by the stress and anxieties of the times, which made it difficult to put even the most straightforward problem in its right perspective. It was for this reason that he had not communicated his thoughts publicly. He promised that for every copy that could be found circulating in India he would personally pay 1,000 rupees. At first, Beadon was not convinced and asked Sir Syed over and over again if he was sure that no other copy had been distributed in India. Sir Syed reassured him on this matter, and Beadon never mentioned it again. Later he became one of Sir Syed's strongest supporters.
Many official translations were made of the Urdu text of The Causes of the Indian Revolt. The one undertaken by the India Office formed the subject of many discussions and debates. The pamphlet was also translated by the government of India and several members of parliament, but no version was offered to the public. A translation which had been started by Auckland Colvin, a government official was finished by Sir Syed's friend, Colonel G.F.I. Graham, and finally published in 1873.
==== Loyal Muhammadans of India ====
In 1860, Sir Syed wrote a series of bilingual pamphlets called the Risala Khair Khwahan-e Musalmanan-e-Hind (An Account of the Loyal Mohammedans of India) from Meerut containing episodes in the life of those Muslims who stood by the British during the 1857 uprising. It was published in three issues, the first and second issues appeared in 1860, while the third was published in 1861. The first issue highlighted the bravery of those Muslims who stood by the British while the second issue carried an article on jihad in which he makes a clear distinction between jihad and rebellion.
==== Review on Hunter's Indian Musalmans ====
In August 1871 William Wilson Hunter, a Scottish historian and member of the Indian Civil Service published Indian Musalmans: Are They Bound in Conscience to Rebel Against the Queen? in which he discussed the Indian Wahabi movement, its role in the rebellion and argued that the Muslims were a threat to the Empire. Hunter links Wahhabism with rebellion and terms them as self-stylised jihadis. His accusations led to the prosecution of Muslims in India especially in the North Western Provinces and those associated with Wahhabism were severely punished. Many Muslims found his arguments one-sided and this prompted Sir Syed to write a rejoinder of the book. He reviewed the book in The Pioneer in a series of articles which were reprinted in Aligarh Institute Gazette from 24 November 1871, to 23 February 1872. They were later collected and published in a book in England by Hafiz Ahmad Hasan, the Vakil of Tonk. Sir Syed based his arguments upon Muhammad's own conduct during holy wars.
== Muslim reformer ==
Through the 1850s, Syed Ahmad Khan began developing a strong passion for education. While pursuing studies of different subjects including European jurisprudence, Sir Syed began to realise the advantages of Western-style education, which was being offered at newly established colleges across India. Despite being a devout Muslim, Sir Syed criticised the influence of traditional dogma and religious orthodoxy, which had made most Indian Muslims suspicious of British influences. Sir Syed began feeling increasingly concerned for the future of Muslim communities. A scion of Mughal nobility, Sir Syed had been reared in the finest traditions of Muslim elite culture and was aware of the steady decline of Muslim political power across India. The animosity between the British and Muslims before and after the Indian Rebellion of 1857 threatened to marginalise Muslim communities across India for many generations.
=== Scientific Society ===
Sir Syed intensified his work to promote co-operation with British authorities, promoting loyalty to the Empire amongst Indian Muslims. Committed to working for the upliftment of Muslims, Sir Syed founded a modern madrassa in Muradabad in 1859; this was one of the first religious schools to impart scientific education. Sir Syed also worked on social causes, helping to organise relief for the famine-struck people of North-West Province in 1860. While posted in Ghazipur in 1863, he established a madrasa which later became the Victoria High school. He also formed the Scientific Society in Ghazipur to promote educational reforms across the country. He wrote an insightful tract on education titled Iltimas Ba Khidmat-e-Sakinan-e-Hind Dar Bab-e- Taraqqi Taleem in Ahl-e-Hind (Address to the natives of Hindoostan on education).
Upon his transfer to Aligarh in 1864, Sir Syed began working wholeheartedly as an educator. The Scientific Society was transferred from Ghazipur to Aligarh and rechristened as the Scientific Society of Aligarh. Modelling it after the Royal Society and the Royal Asiatic Society, Sir Syed assembled Muslim scholars from different parts of the country. The Society held annual conferences, disbursed funds for educational causes and regularly published a journal on scientific subjects in English and Urdu. Sir Syed felt that the socio-economic future of Muslims was threatened by their orthodox aversions to modern science and technology. He published many writings promoting liberal, rational interpretations of Islamic scriptures, struggling to find rational interpretations for jinn, angels, and miracles of the prophets.
One example was the reaction to his argument – which appeared in his tafsir (exegesis) of the Quran – that riba referred to interest charges when lending money to the poor, but not to the rich, nor to borrowers "in trade or in industry", since this finance supported "trade, national welfare and prosperity". While many jurists declared all interest to be riba, (according to Sir Syed) this was based "on their own authority and deduction" rather than the Quran.
=== Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College ===
On 1 April 1869 he went, along with his sons Syed Mahmood and Syed Hamed, to England, where he was awarded the Order of the Star of India from the British government on 6 August. Travelling across England, he visited its colleges and was inspired by the culture of learning established after the Renaissance. Sir Syed returned to India in the following year determined to build a school modelled on Cambridge and Oxford imparting modern education to Indians. Upon his return, he established the Khwastgaran-i-Taraqqi-i-Talim-i-Musalman (Committee for the Better Diffusion and Advancement of Learning among Muhammadans) on 26 December 1870. By 1872, it was converted into a Fund Committee for the establishment of a school. Sir Syed described his vision of the institution he proposed to establish in an article written sometime in 1872 and re-printed in the Aligarh Institute Gazette of 5 April 1911:
I may appear to be dreaming and talking like Shaikh Chilli, but we aim to turn this MAO College into a University similar to that of Oxford or Cambridge. Like the churches of Oxford and Cambridge, there will be mosques attached to each College... The College will have a dispensary with a Doctor and a compounder, besides a Unani Hakim. It will be mandatory on boys in residence to join the congregational prayers (namaz) at all the five times. Students of other religions will be exempted from this religious observance. Muslim students will have a uniform consisting of a black alpaca, half-sleeved chugha and a red Fez cap... Bad and abusive words which boys generally pick up and get used to, will be strictly prohibited. Even such a word as a "liar" will be treated as an abuse to be prohibited. They will have food either on tables of European style or on chaukis in the manner of the Arabs... Smoking of cigarette or huqqa and the chewing of betels shall be strictly prohibited. No corporal punishment or any such punishment as is likely to injure a student's self-respect will be permissible... It will be strictly enforced that Shia and Sunni boys shall not discuss their religious differences in the College or in the boarding house. At present it is like a day dream. I pray to God that this dream may come true."
He began publishing the journal Tehzeeb-ul-Akhlaq (Social Reformer) on 24 December 1870 to spread awareness and knowledge on modern subjects and promote reforms in Muslim society. Sir Syed worked to promote reinterpretation of Muslim ideology in order to reconcile tradition with Western education. He argued in several books on Islam that the Qur'an rested on an appreciation of reason and natural law, making scientific inquiry important to being a good Muslim.
By 1873, the committee under Sir Syed issued proposals for the construction of a college in Aligarh. Maulvi Samiullah Khan was appointed as the secretary of the sub-committee of the proposed school. Members of the committee toured the country in order to raise funds for the school, which was finally established on 24 May 1875 in Aligarh as the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental Collegiate School. Two years later, in 1877, the school was converted into the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College. He retired from his career as a jurist the following year, concentrating entirely on developing the college and on religious reform. Sir Syed's pioneering work received support from the British. Although intensely criticised by orthodox religious leaders hostile to modern influences, Sir Syed's new institution attracted a large student body, mainly drawn from the Muslim gentry and middle classes. However, MAO College was open to all communities, and had a sizeable number of Hindu students. The first graduate of the college was a Hindu. The curriculum at the college involved scientific and Western subjects, as well as Oriental subjects and religious education. The first chancellor was Sultan Shah Jahan Begum, a prominent Muslim noblewoman, and Sir Syed invited an Englishman, Theodore Beck, to serve as the first college principal. The college was originally affiliated with Calcutta University but was transferred to the Allahabad University in 1885. Near the turn of the 20th century, it began publishing its own magazine and established a law school. In 1920, the college was transformed into Aligarh Muslim University.
=== Muhammadan Educational Conference ===
After founding the Anglo-Oriental College, Sir Syed felt the need of a pan-India organisation to propagate the ideas of his movement. To this cause, he established the All India Muhammadan Educational Congress with its headquarters in Aligarh. The first session of the Congress was held at Aligarh in 1886 under the presidency of Maulvi Samiullah Khan. The main objective of the organisation was to promote educational development among Muslims through conferences throughout India and transform the Anglo-Oriental College to the status of university. The name of the organisation was changed to All India Muhammadan Educational Conference to avoid confusion with the Indian National Congress.
=== Opposition and criticism ===
Sir Syed's Aligarh Movement and his desire to open institutions for Western education was opposed by the orthodox Indian Muslims. Imdad Ali, the then deputy collector of Kanpur condemned the foundation of Anglo-Oriental College. Several periodicals such as Noor-ul-Afaq, Noor-ul-Anwar, and Taed-ul-Islam were started by his opponents in opposition to Tehzeeb-ul-Akhlaq to dissuade Muslims from joining the Aligarh Movement. Many other orthodox Islamic schools condemned him as out of the fold of Islam (i.e. a kafir). According to J.M.S. Baljon his ideas created "a real hurricane of protests and outbursts of wrath" among the local clerics "in every town and village" in Muslim India, who issued fatawa "declaring him to be a kafir" (unbeliever). He was also accused of having converted to Christianity. Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, the founder of the Ahmadiyya movement criticised some of his writings in a polemic titled Barakat al Dua. Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, the Pan-Islamic ideologue, launched a vitriolic attack on him through his periodical calling him a “Naturist”.
Many of his own friends, like Nawab Muhsin-ul-Mulk, expressed their significant reservations at his religious ideas (many of which were expounded in his commentary of Qur'an). Syed Ahmad Khan's controversial views such as his rejection of miracles, denial of the existence of angels, downplaying the status of prophethood, etc. arose disdain also from orthodox adherents of Waliullahi reform trends, such as Ahl-e Hadith and Deobandis. Ahl-i Hadith were particularly severe in their condemnation of Ahmad Khan; with many of its leaders like Muḥammad Ḥusayn Baṭālvī (d. 1920 C.E/ 1338 A.H) declaring Takfir (excommunication) of Sir Syed as an apostate.
Maulana Qasim Nanautawi, the founder of Darul Uloom Deoband, expressed in a letter to an acquaintance of his and Sir Syed's:
"No doubt, I greatly admire, as per what I've heard, Syed (Ahmad) Sahab's courage (Ūlul Azmi) and concern for the Muslims (Dardmandi e Ahl e Islam). For this if I shall express my affection for him, it will be rightful. However, similar to this (or rather more than this), upon hearing about his disturbed (Fāsid) beliefs, I have deep complaints and sorrow for him"
Maulana Qasim Nanautawi wrote directly to Sir Syed as well, explaining him some of his "noteworthy" mistakes. This correspondence was published as "Tasfiyat ul Aqaaid" in 1887 C.E
== Political thoughts and activities ==
Shan Muhammad in his book Sir Syed Ahmad Khan: a political biography notes that Sir Syed was foremost an educationist and reformer and not an academic thinker, and so his political philosophy is related to the circumstances of his times. Important events that shaped his political outlook includes the 1857 Rebellion, the premiership of William Ewart Gladstone in England (which started in 1868) and the viceroyalty of Ripon in India.
Sir Syed was deeply religious. His political views were centered on Islam and an Islamic viewpoint.
In 1878, Sir Syed was nominated to the Viceroy's Legislative Council. He testified before the education commission to promote the establishment of more colleges and schools across India. At the start of his political career, Sir Syed was an advocate of Hindu–Muslim unity and India's composite culture, wanting to empower all Indians. In the same year, Sir Syed founded the Muhammadan Association to promote political co-operation amongst Indian Muslims from different parts of the country. In 1886, he organised the All India Muhammadan Educational Conference in Aligarh, which promoted his vision of modern education and political unity for Muslims. His works made him the most prominent Muslim politician in 19th century India, often influencing the attitude of Muslims on various national issues.
=== Opposition to active politics ===
Sir Syed discouraged the active involvement of Muslims in politics. He regarded the attainment of higher English education, not political pursuits, as the first priority for the upliftmeant of the Muslim community. He declined to lend support to the National Muhammadan Association, a political organisation founded by Syed Ameer Ali in 1887 and refused to participate in the Muhammedan National Conference at Lahore which he regarded as a political agitation.
When the Indian National Congress was established in 1885 he did not express any opinion about it but later he became an active critic of the organisation and expressed his active opposition to the Congress.
Sir Syed's opposition received criticism from Maulvi Sharaf-ul-Haqq who criticised his views about the Congress demands in a risala titled Kalam Mufid-al-Anam. Lala Lajpat Rai wrote a series of open letters expressing grief and surprise at his change in attitude towards Congress.
Sir Syed advocated the use of constitutional machinery, such as participation in administration, for expressing grievances to the British government.
He supported the efforts of Indian political leaders Surendranath Banerjee and Dadabhai Naoroji to obtain representation for Indians in the government and civil services. In 1883, he founded the Muhammadan Civil Service Fund Association to encourage and support the entry of Muslim graduates into the Indian Civil Service (ICS). In 1883, he established the Muhammedan Association to put forward grievances of the Muslims to the Imperial Legislative Council. He was nominated as a member of the Civil Service Commission in 1887 by Lord Dufferin. In 1888, he along with Raja Shiv Prasad of Benaras established the United Patriotic Association at Aligarh to promote political co-operation with the British and Muslim participation in the British government.
=== Hindu–Muslim unity ===
Syed Ahmad Khan advocated for Hindu–Muslim unity in Colonial India. He stated: "India is a beautiful bride and Hindus and Muslims are her two eyes. If one of them is lost, this beautiful bride will become ugly." Being raised in the diverse city of Delhi, Syed Ahmad Khan was exposed to the festivals of both Hindus and Muslims. He collected Hindu scriptures and "had a commitment to the country's composite culture", being close friends with Swami Vivekanand to Debendranath Tagore. In the 19th century, he opposed cow slaughter, even stopping a fellow Muslim from sacrificing one for Eid al-Adha to promote peace between Muslims and Hindus. Addressing a large gathering in Gurdaspur on 27 January 1884, Sir Syed said:
O Hindus and Muslims! Do you belong to a country other than India? Don't you live on the soil and are you not buried under it or cremated on its ghats? If you live and die on this land, then bear in mind that ‘Hindu’ and ‘Muslim’ is but religious word: all the Hindus, Muslims and Christians who live in this country are one nation.
When he founded Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College, he opened its admissions to Indians of all faiths, with its first principal Henry Siddons being a Christian and one of its patrons Mahendra Singh of Patiala being a Sikh. Shafey Kidwai notes that Sir Syed promoted "advocacy of the empowerment of all Indians".
In his book Causes of the Indian Revolt, which was originally published in Urdu in 1858, he referred to Hindus and Muslims as 'two antagonistic races' when highlighting the British folly of bringing them together in a single unit, thereby endangering the British position.
=== Advocacy of Urdu ===
The onset of the Hindi–Urdu controversy of 1867 saw the emergence of Sir Syed as a champion for the cause of the Urdu language. He became a leading Muslim voice opposing the adoption of Hindi as a second official language of the United Provinces (now Uttar Pradesh). Sir Syed perceived Urdu as the lingua franca of the United Provinces which was created as a confluence of Muslim and Hindu contributions in India. Having been developed during the Mughal period, Urdu was used as a secondary language to Persian, the official language of the Mughal court. Since the decline of the Mughal dynasty, Sir Syed promoted the use of Urdu through his own writings. Under Sir Syed, the Scientific Society translated Western works only into Urdu. The schools established by Sir Syed imparted education in the Urdu medium. The demand for Hindi, led largely by Hindus, was to Sir Syed an erosion of the centuries-old Muslim cultural domination of India. Testifying before the British-appointed education commission, Sir Syed controversially exclaimed that "Urdu was the language of gentry and Hindi that of the vulgar." His remarks provoked a hostile response from Hindu leaders, who unified across the nation to demand the recognition of Hindi.
The success of the Hindi movement led Sir Syed to further advocate Urdu as the symbol of Muslim heritage and as the language of all Indian Muslims. His educational and political work grew increasingly centred around and exclusively for Muslim interests. He also sought to persuade the British to give Urdu extensive official use and patronage. His colleagues such as Mohsin-ul-Mulk and Maulvi Abdul Haq developed organisations such as the Urdu Defence Association and the Anjuman Taraqqi-i-Urdu, committed to the perpetuation of Urdu. All these colleagues led efforts that resulted in the adoption of Urdu as the official language of the Hyderabad State and as the medium of instruction in the Osmania University. To Muslims in northern and western India, Urdu had become an integral part of political and cultural identity. However, the division over the use of Hindi or Urdu further provoked communal conflict between Muslims and Hindus in India.
=== Two-nation theory ===
Sir Syed is considered as the first person to theorise the idea of separate nationhood for Muslims in subcontinent. In a speech at Meerut in 1888 he presented on overall scenario of post colonial phase in which he described Muslims and Hindus as two nations. He's regarded as the father of two-nation theory and the pioneer of Muslim nationalism which led to the partition of India.
Urdu-Hindi controversy is seen as the transformation of Sir Syed's views towards Muslim nationhood which he expressed in his speeches during later days. While fearful of the loss of Muslim political power owing to the community's backwardness, Sir Syed was also averse to the prospect of democratic self-government, which would give control of government to the Hindu-majority population.
"At this time our nation is in a bad state in regards education and wealth, but God has given us the light of religion and the Quran is present for our guidance, which has ordained them and us to be friends. Now God has made them rulers over us. Therefore we should cultivate friendship with them, and should adopt that method by which their rule may remain permanent and firm in India, and may not pass into the hands of the Bengalis... If we join the political movement of the Bengalis our nation will reap a loss, for we do not want to become subjects of the Hindus instead of the subjects of the "people of the Book..."
Later in his life he said:
"Suppose that the English community and the army were to leave India, taking with them all their cannons and their splendid weapons and all else, who then would be the rulers of India?...
Is it possible that under these circumstances two nations — the Mohammedans and the Hindus — could sit on the same throne and remain equal in power? Most certainly not. It is necessary that one of them should conquer the other. To hope that both could remain equal is to desire the impossible and the inconceivable. But until one nation has conquered the other and made it obedient, peace cannot reign in the land."
== Personal life ==
In 1836, he married Parsa Begum, alias Mubarak Begum. They had two sons, Syed Hamid and Syed Mahmood, and a daughter, Ameena, who died at a young age.
Sir Syed Ahmad Khan lived the last two decades of his life in Aligarh, regarded widely as the mentor of 19th and 20th century Muslim entrepreneurs. Battling illnesses and old age, Sir Syed died on 27 March 1898. He was buried adjacent to the Sir Syed Masjid in the grounds of the Aligarh Muslim University.
== Legacy and influence ==
Syed Ahmad is widely commemorated across South Asia as a great Muslim social reformer and visionary. His educational model and progressive thinking inspired Muslim elites who supported the All India Muslim League. He founded the All India Muhammadan Educational Conference in 1886 in order to promote Western education, especially science and literature, among India's Muslims. The conference, in addition to generating funds for Ahmad Khan's Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College, motivated Muslim elites to propose expansion of educational uplift elsewhere, known as the Aligarh Movement. In turn, this new awareness of Muslim needs helped stimulate a political consciousness among Muslim elites, who went on to form the AIML, which led Muslims of India towards the formation of Pakistan.
He was an influence on several political leaders, thinkers and writers such as Muhammad Iqbal, Abul Kalam Azad, Sayyid Mumtaz Ali Altaf Hussain Hali, Shibli Nomani, Nawab Mohsin-ul-Mulk, Chiragh Ali, and Nazir Ahmad Dehlvi.
The university he founded remains one of India's most prominent institutions and served as the arsenal of Muslim India. Prominent alumni of Aligarh include Muslim political leaders Maulana Mohammad Ali Jouhar, Abdur Rab Nishtar, Maulana Shaukat Ali and Maulvi Abdul Haq. The first two Prime Ministers of Pakistan, Liaquat Ali Khan and Khawaja Nazimuddin, as well as Indian President Dr. Zakir Husain, are amongst Aligarh's most famous graduates. His birth anniversary is celebrated as Sir Syed Day every year by the university and its alumni.
Several educational institutions in India and Pakistan such as Sir Syed University of Engineering and Technology, Sir Syed CASE Institute of Technology and Sir Syed College, Taliparamba are named after him.
== Honours ==
On 2 June 1869, Syed Ahmad Khan was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Star of India (CSI), for his service as Principal Sadr Amin. He was appointed a fellow of the Calcutta and Allahabad Universities by the Viceroy in the years 1876 and 1887 respectively.
Syed Ahmad was later bestowed with the suffix of 'Khan Bahadur' and was subsequently knighted by the British government in the 1888 New Year Honours as a Knight Commander of the Order of the Star of India (KCSI). for his loyalty to the British crown, through his membership of the Imperial Legislative Council and in the following year he received an LL.D. honoris causa from the Edinburgh University.
India Post issued commemorative postage stamps in his honour in 1973 and 1998.
Pakistan Postal Services also issued a commemorative postage stamp in his honour in 1990 in its 'Pioneers of Freedom' series.
In 1997, Syed Ahmad Khan was commemorated with an English Heritage blue plaque at 21 Mecklenburgh Square in Bloomsbury, where he lived in 1869–70.
On 2017, commemorative Rs. 50 coin featuring Sir Syed Ahmad Khan was issued by State Bank of Pakistan on his 200th birth anniversary.
On 14 August 2022, marking the diamond jubilee celebrations of Pakistan's independence, State Bank of Pakistan issued a commemorative Rs.75 note featuring Syed Ahmed Khan along with other founding fathers signifying their struggle for country's independence.
== In popular culture ==
Sir Syed Ahmad Khan: The Messiah an Indian Urdu-language biographical film based on the life of Khan was released in 2024 and streamed on Apple TV.
== Bibliography ==
=== Legal works ===
Act No. 10 (Stamp Act) 1862.
Act No. 14 (Limitation Act )1859–1864.
Act No. 16 (Regarding registration documents) – Allyson, 1864.
Act No. 18 (Regarding women's rights) 1866.
=== Religious works ===
Jila al- Qulub bi Zikr al-Mahbub (Delight of the Hearts in Remembering the Beloved), Delhi, 1843.
Tuhfa-i Hasan (The Gift to Hasan), 1844.
Tarjama Fawa'id al-Afkar fi Amal al-Farjar, Delhi 1846.
Mazumm ba Nisbat Tanazzul Ulum-i-Diniya wa Arabiya wa Falsafa-i-Yunaniya, Agra, 1857.
Risala Tahqiq Lafzi-i-Nassara, 1860.
Ahkam Tu'am Ahl-Kitab, Kanpur, 1868.
Risala ho wal Mojud, 1880.
Kimiya-i-Sa'dat, 2 fasl, 1883.
Namiqa fi Bayan Mas'ala Tasawwur al-Shaikh, Aligarh, 1883.
Rah-i-Sunnat Dar Rad-i-Bid'at, Aligarh, 1883.
Tarqim fi Qisa Ashab al-Kahf wal-Raqim, Agra, 1889.
Izalat ul-Chain as Zi'al Qarnain, Agra, 1889.
Khulq al-Insan ala ma fi al-Quran, Agra, 1892.
Al-Du'a Wa'l Istajaba, Agra, 1892.
Tahrir fi Usul al-Tafsir, Agra, 1892.
Al-Nazar Fi Ba'z Masa'il Imam Al-Ghazzali, Agra.
Risala Ibtal-i-Ghulami, Agra, 1893.
Tafsir al-Jinn Wa'l Jan ala ma fi al-Qur'an, Rahmani Press, Lahore, 1893, Agra, 1891.
Tabyin-ul-Kalam fi Tafsir-al-Turat-wa'l Injil ala Mullat-al-Islam (The Commentary on the Holy Bible).
Tafsir-ul-Qur'an.
Vol. I Aligarh, 1880,
Vol. II Aligarh, 1882, Agra, 1903.
Vol. III Aligarh, 1885
Vol. IV Aligarh, 1888
Vol. V Aligarh, 1892.
Vol. VI Aligarh, 1895
Vol. VII Agra, 1904.
Tafsir-a-Samawat, Agra.
Tasfiyad al'Aquid (Being the correspondence between Syed Ahmad Khan and Maulana Muhammad Qasim of Deoband).
=== Historical works ===
A'in-e-Akbari (Edition with Illustration), Delhi.
Asrar-us-Sanadid (i) Syed-ul-Akhbar, 1847, (II) Mata-i-Sultani, 1852.
Description des monument de Delhi in 1852, D'a Pre Le Texte Hindostani De Saiyid Ahmad Khan (tr. by M. Garcin De Tassy), Paris, 1861.
Jam-i-Jum, Akbarabad, 1940.
Silsilat-ul-Muluk, Musaraf ul Mataba', Delhi, 1852.
Tarikh-i-Firoz Shahi (Edition), Asiatic Society, Calcutta, 1862.
Tuzuk-i-Jahangiri (edition Aligarh, 1864).
=== Biographical works ===
Al-Khutbat al-Ahmadiya fi'l Arab wa'I Sirat al-Muhammadiya : Aligarh, 1900, English translation, London, 1869–70.
Sirat-i-Faridiya, Agra, 1896.
=== Political works ===
Asbab-i-Baghawat-e-Hind, Urdu 1858 and English edition, Banaras.
Lecture Indian National Congress Madras Par, Kanpur, 1887.
Lectures on the Act XVI of 1864, delivered on 4 December 1864 for the Scientific Society, Allygurh, 1864.
Musalmanon ki qismat ka faisla (Taqarir-e-Syed Ahmad Khan wa Syed Mehdi Ali Khan etc.) Agra, 1894.
On Hunter's: Our Indian Mussulmans' London, 1872.
Present State of Indian Politics (Consisting of lectures and speeches) Allahabad, 1888.
Sarkashi Zilla Binjor, Agra 1858.
=== Lectures ===
Iltimas be Khidmat Sakinan-i-Hindustan dar bad tarraqi ta' lim ahl-i.Hind, Ghazipore, 1863.
Lecture dar bab targhib wa tahris talim itfal-i-Musalmanan, in 1895, Agra 1896.
Lecture Madrasaat ul-Ulum Aligarh Key Tarikhi halat Par, Agra. 1889.
Lecture Ijlas Dahum Muhammadan Educational Conference, Agra, 1896.
Lecture Muta'liq Ijlas Yazdahum Muhammadan Educational Conference, Agra, 1896.
Majmu'a Resolution Haye dah sala (Resolutions passed by the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental Educational Conference from 1886 to 1895) ed. by Sir Syed Ahmad, Agra, 1896.
Report Salana (Annual Report of the Boarding House of Madrasat-ul-Ulum 1879–1880).
Khutbat-e-Ahmadia in the reply to "The Life of Mohamed" by William Muir, was penned in 1870.
=== Collected works ===
Khutut-i-Sir Syed, ed Ross Masud, 1924.
Majuma Lecture Kaye Sir Syed ed. Munshi Sirajuddin, Sadhora 1892.
Maqalat-i-Sir-Syed ed. by 'Abdullah Khvesgri, Aligarh, 1952.
Maqalat-i-Sir Syed, ed. By Muhammad Ismail, Lahore,
Makatib-i-Sir Syed, Mustaq Husain, Delhi, 1960.
Maktubat-i-Sir Syed, Muhammad Ismail Panipati, Lahore, 1959.
Makummal Majumua Lectures wa speeches. ed. Malik Fazaluddin, Lahore, 1900.
Muktubat al-Khullan ed. Mohd. Usman Maqbul, Aligarh 1915.
Tasanif-i-Ahmadiya (Collection of Syed Ahmad Khan's works on religions topics) in 8 parts.
Stress on Holy Quran.
Reformation of Faith.
=== Miscellaneous ===
On the Use of the Sector (Urdu), Syed-ul-Akbar, 1846.
Qaul-i-Matin dar Ibtal-i-Harkat i Zamin, Delhi, 1848.
Tashil fi Jar-a-Saqil, Agra, 1844.
Ik Nadan Khuda Parast aur Dana dunyadar Ki Kahani, Badaon, 1910.
Kalamat-ul-Haqq, Aligarh
=== Journals, reports, and proceedings ===
Tehzeeb-ul-Ikhlaq.
Aligarh Institute Gazette.
Proceedings of the Muhammadens Educational Conference.
An Account of the Loyal Muhammadans of India, Parts I, II, III, Moufussel Press, Meerut, 1860.
Proceedings of the Scientific Society.
By-Laws of the Scientific Society.
Addresses and speeches relating to the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College in Aligarh (1875–1898) ed. Nawab Mohsin-ul-Mulk, Aligarh, 1898.
== See also ==
Aligarh Muslim University
Sir Syed Masjid
Aligarh Movement
All India Muhammadan Educational Conference
Two-nation theory
Muslim nationalism in South Asia
All India Muslim League
Islamic Modernism
== Notes ==
== References ==
== Cited sources ==
== Further reading ==
== External links ==
Comprehensive detail about Aligarh Movement Archived 9 October 2020 at the Wayback Machine
"Sir Seyyed Ahmad, Khan Bahadur, L.L.D, K.C.S.I." By Afzal Usmani
"Sir Syed Ahmad Khan short biography". official website of Aligarh Muslim University. Archived from the original on 1 May 2012.
"Sir Syed Today: A Source of Literary Work of Sir Syed Ahmad Khan".
"Sir Syed Ahmad Khan (1817–1898)". Story of Pakistan. June 2003.
"Sir Syed Ahmad Khan". Pioneers of Freedom. 21 September 2024.
"Sir Syed Ahmed Khan". Sir Syed University of Engineering & Technology. Archived from the original on 30 September 2007.
"Sir Syed Ahmad Khan". Cyber AMU. Archived from the original on 29 September 2007.
Upadhyay, R. "Aligarh Movement". South Asia Analysis Group. Archived from the original on 28 February 2005.
The Rich Legacy of Sir Syed Ahmad Khan (Gulf News)
"Sir Syed Ahmed Khan His Life and Contribution". NewAgeIslam website. Archived from the original on 27 September 2023.
Pioneers of the Nation (Mai Nahi Manta)
Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan's speech at Meerut, 16 March 1888 |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecstasy_of_Saint_Teresa#:~:text=The%20entire%20ensemble%20was%20overseen,Pamphili%20papacy%20of%20Innocent%20X. | Ecstasy of Saint Teresa | The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa (also known as Saint Teresa in Ecstasy; Italian: L'Estasi di Santa Teresa or Santa Teresa in estasi) is a sculptural altarpiece group in white marble set in an elevated aedicule in the Cornaro Chapel of the church of Santa Maria della Vittoria in Rome. It was designed and carved by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, the leading sculptor of his day, who also designed the setting of the chapel in marble, stucco and paint. The commission was completed in 1652.
The ensemble includes at the sides two sets of donor portraits of members of the Cornaro family, who watch the main central group as though in boxes in a theatre. The group is generally considered to be one of the sculptural masterpieces of the High Roman Baroque. The sculpture over the altar shows Saint Teresa of Ávila, a Spanish Carmelite nun (1515–1582), swooning in a state of religious ecstasy, while an angel holding a spear stands over her, following her own account of a vision she had.
== Commission ==
The entire ensemble was overseen and completed by a mature Bernini during the Pamphili papacy of Innocent X. When Innocent acceded to the papal throne, he shunned Bernini's artistic services; the sculptor had been the favourite artist of the previous and profligate Barberini pope, Urban VIII. Without papal patronage, the services of Bernini's studio were therefore available to a patron such as the Venetian Cardinal Federico Cornaro (1579–1653).
Cornaro had chosen the hitherto unremarkable church of the Discalced Carmelites for his burial chapel. The selected site for the chapel was the left transept that had previously held an image of 'St. Paul in Ecstasy', which was replaced by Bernini's dramatization of a religious experience undergone and related by the first Discalced Carmelite saint, who had been canonised not long before, in 1622. It was completed in 1652 for the then princely sum of 12,000 scudi.
A small format terracotta model of about 47 cm (19 in) was created between 1644 and 1647. The sculpture represents the first embodiment of the project, with traces of Bernini's fingerprints still visible. The model belongs to the Hermitage Museum's collection.
== Sculptural group and its setting ==
The two central sculptural figures of the swooning nun and the angel with the spear derive from an episode described by Teresa of Avila, a mystical cloistered Discalced Carmelite reformer and nun, in her autobiography, The Life of Teresa of Jesus. Her experience of religious ecstasy in her encounter with the angel is described as follows:
I saw in his hand a long spear of gold, and at the iron's point there seemed to be a little fire. He appeared to me to be thrusting it at times into my heart, and to pierce my very entrails; when he drew it out, he seemed to draw them out also, and to leave me all on fire with a great love of God. The pain was so great, that it made me moan; and yet so surpassing was the sweetness of this excessive pain, that I could not wish to be rid of it. The soul is satisfied now with nothing less than God. The pain is not bodily, but spiritual; though the body has its share in it. It is a caressing of love so sweet which now takes place between the soul and God, that I pray God of His goodness to make him experience it who may think that I am lying.
The group is illuminated by natural light which filters through a hidden window in the dome of the surrounding aedicule, and underscored by gilded stucco rays. Teresa is shown lying on a cloud indicating that this is intended to be a divine apparition we are witnessing. Other witnesses appear on the side walls; life-size high-relief donor portraits of male members of the Cornaro family, e.g. Cardinal Federico Cornaro and Doge Giovanni I Cornaro, are present and shown discussing the event in boxes as if at the theatre. Although the figures are executed in white marble, the aedicule, wall panels and theatre boxes are made from coloured marbles. Above, the vault of the chapel is frescoed with an illusionistic cherub-filled sky with the descending light of the Holy Ghost allegorized as a dove.
The art historian Rudolf Wittkower wrote:
In spite of the pictorial character of the design as a whole, Bernini differentiated between various degrees of reality, the members of the Cornaro Chapel seem to be alive like ourselves. They belong to our space and our world. The supernatural event of Teresa's vision is raised to a sphere of its own, removed from that of the beholder mainly by virtue of the isolating canopy and the heavenly light.
== Interpretations ==
The effects are theatrical, the Cornaro family seeming to observe the scene from their boxes, and the chapel illustrates a moment where divinity intrudes on an earthly body. Caroline Babcock speaks of Bernini's melding of sensual and spiritual pleasure as both intentional and influential on artists and writers of the day. Irving Lavin said "the transverberation becomes a point of contact between earth and heaven, between matter and spirit". As Bernini biographer Franco Mormando points out, although Bernini's point of departure for his depiction of Teresa's mystical experience was her own description, there were many details about the experience that she never specifies (e.g., the position of her body) and that Bernini simply supplied from his own artistic imagination, all with an aim of increasing the nearly transgressively sensual charge of the episode: "Certainly no other artist, in rendering the scene, before or after Bernini, dared as much in transforming the saint's appearance."
== Criticism ==
Some scholars argue that there are sexual implications of the work. It has been called "decidely (sic) risqué"; "the most astounding peep show in art"; and "the grossest and most offensive example of Baroque art." Some authors have argued that its popularity "has a lot to do with sex." And by placing the sculpture in a theatrical setting, Bernini is accused of turning "a private moment into a very public
spectacle." Victorian art critic Anna Jameson wanted it destroyed: "even those least prudish in matters of art, would here willingly throw the first stone." Regarding arguments against sexual implications, Franco Mormando has said "none of these defenses are completely accurate." and Simon Schama, has argued: "Critics and scholars tie themselves in knots, trying to avoid stating the obvious."
Other scholars argue that there is no sexual content in the statue, saying:
Bernini faithfully followed Teresa's description of the experience.
The Church accepted that mystical union often involved erotic elements.
There is no nudity in the statue.
== Similar works by Bernini ==
See also entry titled Bernini's Cornaro chapel found in the Baroque section.
Death of the Blessed Ludovica Albertoni (1671–1674)—San Francesco a Ripa, Rome.
Martyrdom of Saint Lawrence (1614–15)
Truth Unveiled by Time (1646–1652) – Galleria Borghese, Rome.
== Influencing or influenced works ==
Stefano Maderno's sculpture of St Cecilia in namesake church (1600).
Melchiorre Caffà's Santa Rose of Lima (1665) and his Assumption of St Catherine.
Francisco Aprile and Ercole Ferrata's Sant'Anastasia in her namesake church in Rome.
The most internationally successful Czech underground group the Ecstasy of Saint Theresa named themselves after the sculpture.
Angels & Demons, the novel by Dan Brown which lists the sculpture as the third "Altar of Science" of the fictionalized Illuminati. Brown's book incorrectly states that the sculpture was moved from the Vatican to its current location, and that Pope Urban VIII (who was already deceased when Bernini worked on the sculpture) found the statue too sexually explicit.
The sculpture is the subject of the song "The Lie" from Peter Hammill's album The Silent Corner and the Empty Stage.
In Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace, the sculpture plays a role in the filmography of James O. Incandenza Jr. Wallace also alludes to it in three additional scenes involving Joelle.
Street artist Banksy used the image of Saint Teresa in one of his works, though he removed the angelic figure and added a fast food meal.
The sculpture and its image are frequently referred to in the novel Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese.
In the psychoanalytic theories of Jacques Lacan, the statue plays an important role due to a central reference in his book Seminar XX: Encore. Lacan believes the statue helps convey his theory of the possibility of a female enjoyment that is infinite and unknowable, while masculine enjoyment is defined by finitude and failure. Some book covers of Seminar XX have a picture of the statue on the front.
== See also ==
List of works by Gian Lorenzo Bernini
== References ==
Notes
Citations
Sources
Hibbard, Howard (22 January 1971). Bernini. [Baltimore] Penguin Books.
Robert Harbison (2000). "The Case for Disruption". Reflections on Baroque. The University of Chicago Press. pp. 1–32.
Boucher, Bruce (1998). Thames & Hudson, World of Art (ed.). Italian Baroque Sculpture. pp. 134–143. Archived from the original on 28 December 2005.
Bernini biography (click on Ecstasy of St Teresa)
Cocke, Richard (August 1972). "A Drawing by Bernini for the Cornaro Chapel, S. Maria della Vittoria". The Burlington Magazine. 114 (833). The Burlington Magazine Publications Ltd.: 550–553. JSTOR 877068.
== External links ==
Media related to Ecstasy of Saint Theresa of Avila by Bernini at Wikimedia Commons |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sri_Prakasa#:~:text=Sri%20Prakasa%20served%20as%20the,promising%20to%20grant%20sufficient%20autonomy. | Sri Prakasa | Sri Prakasa (3 August 1890 – 23 June 1971) was an Indian politician, freedom-fighter and administrator. He served as India's first High Commissioner to Pakistan from 1947 to 1949, Governor of Assam from 1949 to 1950, Governor of Madras from 1952 to 1956 and Governor of Bombay from 1956 to 1962.
Sri Prakasa was born in Varanasi in 1890. In his early days, he participated in the Indian independence movement and was jailed. After India's independence, he served as an administrator and cabinet minister. Sri Prakasa died in 1971 at the age of 80.
== Early life ==
Sri Prakasa was born on 3 August 1890 in Varanasi to Bhagwan Das. He had his schooling at Central Hindu Boys' School C.H.B.S. (B.H.U.) Varanasi and graduated from Cambridge.
== Indian independence movement ==
Prakasa was arrested during the Quit India Movement and was in jail from 1942 to 1944.
== High Commissioner to Pakistan ==
In August 1947, Sri Prakasa was appointed India's first High Commissioner to Pakistan and served in the post till 1949. During this time, Pakistan was gripped by communal riots and Sri Prakasa had to deal with the influx of refugees to India and the granting of Indian citizenship to migrants. Sri Prakasa had also to represent India's diplomatic interests during Pakistan's invasion of Kashmir.
== Governor of Assam ==
Sri Prakasa served as the governor of Assam from 16 February 1949 to 27 May 1949. When Prakasa took over as governor, there were serious disturbances in the eastern parts of the province which were inhabited by the Mizo Hill tribes. The Governor pacified the agitators by promising to grant sufficient autonomy. As a result, a Lushai Hills Advisory Council was set up. During his short tenure, he secured the accession of Manipur.
== Governor of Madras ==
Sri Prakasa was elected to Lok Sabha from Prayagraj in 1952 but was quite soon appointed the Governor of Madras. He served as the governor of Madras from 1952 to 1956. While governor, he took the highly criticized decision to invite C. Rajagopalachari to form a Congress government in the state despite the fact that the Indian National Congress did not have a majority and Rajagopalachari was not an elected member of the assembly as he had not participated in the elections. Rajagopalachari requested Prakasa to nominate him to the assembly thereby forgoing the usual process of election by the members of the assembly. However, Rajagopalachari resigned in two years because of strong opposition to his leadership among party ranks. P.C. Alexander, a former Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra governor, viewed the behaviour of the governor and the chief minister of Madras in 1952 as one of the most serious breaches of the democratic process.
== Governor of Bombay ==
Sri Prakasa served as the governor of Bombay.
== Notes == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodlands_House_School#:~:text=Woodlands%20House%20School%20was%20established,that%20of%20Srinagar%20in%20particular. | Woodlands House School | Woodlands House School is a school in Srinagar, the summer capital of Jammu and Kashmir, India. Pupils range from pre-nursery stage to 12th grade. The school consists of a boys' wing and a girls' wing separately.
== History ==
Woodlands House School was established by Mrs Rup SP Singh (founder and principal) in 1966 under the foothills of the Takht-e-Sulaiman/Shankaracharya Temple. The school started with few students but her leadership attracted the people of J&K in general and that of Srinagar in particular. The institution began to progress and enrolment soon increased. Her work was recognized by the then Chief Minister, Bakshi Gulam Mohammad and later on by Sheikh Mohammed Abdullah who encouraged her to start her junior wing at Shivpora, Srinagar which later was converted to the girls' wing. Woodlands House School met a need as there were only a few English-medium schools in the area. The school progressed in academic, co-curricular and infrastructural aspects.
Mrs Singh placed emphasis on inculcating social and moral values. She left her post in 1995 and was succeeded by her son, Mr Riki Singh, the chairman and principal of the school.
== Notable alumni ==
Mir Sarwar
Rohit Bal
== Location ==
The boys' wing is located at Gupkar Road, Sonwar Bagh, Srinagar. The girls' wing is located at Shivpora, Srinagar.
== References == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Nauru | Demographics of Nauru | The demographics of Nauru, an island country in the Pacific Ocean, are known through national censuses, which have been analysed by various statistical bureaus since the 1920s. The Nauru Bureau of Statistics have conducted this task since 1977—the first census since Nauru gained independence in 1968. The most recent census of Nauru was on 30 October 2021, when population had reached 11,680 people. The population density is 554 inhabitants per square kilometre (1,430 inhabitants/sq mi), and the overall life expectancy is 63.9 years. The population rose steadily from the 1960s until 2006 when the Government of Nauru repatriated thousands of Tuvaluan and I-Kiribati workers from the country. Since 1992, Nauru's birth rate has exceeded its death rate; the natural growth rate is positive. In terms of age structure, the population is dominated by the 15–59-year-old segment (57%). The median age of the population is 21.6, and the estimated gender ratio of the population is 101.8 males per 100 females.
Nauru is inhabited mostly by Nauruans (92.1%), while minorities include those from Kiribati (2.4%), Fiji (2.2%), Australia (1.2%) and other (2.1%). The demographic history of Nauru is marked by several migrations: the area was first inhabited by Micronesian people about 3,000 years ago. The first European to find the island was John Fearn in 1798. Then, the country was annexed by Germany in 1888. The next major population change was when Japanese occupied the island during World War II in 1942. During this time, the Japanese deported several thousands of Nauruans to other islands. In the 1960s, the country gained independence, where the percentage of Nauruans started to increase. The most recent demographic switch was in the 2000s, when the government repatriated several groups of non-Nauruans from the country.
The Nauruan language is the official language of Nauru, but English is often used in the country. Nauruan is declared as the primary language of 95.3% of the population. The 2011 census revealed that 66.0% of the population spoke English and 11.9% another language. The main religions of Nauru are Nauru Congregational Church (35.71%) and Roman Catholic (32.96%). The literacy rate in Nauru is 96.5%. The proportion of the country's population aged 15 and over attaining academic degrees is one of the lowest in the world, reaching 7.9% in 2011. An estimated 10.7% of the gross domestic product (GDP) is spent on education. Nauru has a universal health care system, and in 2012, an estimated 7.5% of its GDP was spent on healthcare. Nauru has the highest obesity ranking in the world; 97 per cent of men and 93 per cent of women are obese. In 2006, the average net monthly income was A$2,597 (A$3848 in 2014). The most significant sources of employment are phosphate mining, banking industries, and various coconut products. In 2011, the unemployment rate was 23%. The 2011 census enumerated 1,647 total households, averaging 6.0 persons per house. Average urbanisation rate in Nauru is 100%.
== Population ==
With a population of under twelve thousand in 2021, Nauru ranks around 193rd in the world by population. Its population density is 478 inhabitants per square kilometre (1,240 inhabitants/sq mi). The overall life expectancy in Nauru at birth is 59.7 years. The total fertility rate of 3.70 children per mother is one of the highest in the Oceania. The United Nations projects the population will stay around 10,000 in the 2020s, and the Nauru Bureau of Statistics estimates the population will increase to 20,000 in 2038.
In Nauru's history, there have been six major demographics changes. The island was first inhabited by Micronesian people roughly 3,000 years ago. The first European to find the island was John Fearn in 1798. In 1888, the country was annexed by Germany. The next demographic change came when Japanese occupied the island during World War II in the 1940s. During this time, the Japanese deported several thousands of Nauruans to other islands. The next major demographic change was in the 1960s; the country gained independence, and the percentage of Nauruans started to increase. The last major demographic change was in 2006 when the Government of Nauru repatriated almost all of the remaining Tuvaluan and I-Kiribati workers, following large scale reduction from the Republic of Nauru Phosphate Corporation (RONPhos) and government workers. The census of 2006 stated 9,233 people were in Nauru: down 2.13% per year from the previous census of 2002.
From 2002 to 2011, there has been negative net migration, with an annual 109 net emigrants from 2006 to 2011. In 2009 there were 1,820 arrivals and 1,736 departures, for a positive rate of 84 immigrants. This was the first time since collecting data in 2002, there was a positive rate. Data on arrivals and departures collected by the Nauruan Customs and Immigration Office is not available, so specific immigration data is unavailable. As of the 2011 census, 57% of the population over 15 years old were legally or de facto married, 35% were never married, while 7% were either widowed, separated, or divorced. There are 1,647 households in Nauru, making an average household size of 6.0 persons per household.
Nauru is one of the most Westernized regions of the South Pacific.
=== Structure of the population ===
== Vital statistics ==
For births, deaths, and fertility rates, the Nauru Bureau of Statistics was used. For population, the United States Census Bureau's mid-year estimated were used. If a cell is shaded light green, it indicates the estimate from The World Factbook. In 2013, the number of births (366) and birth rate (38.8) was the second-highest during this period. In 2011, the total fertility rate of 4.2 was the highest since 1992 (4.5). Since 2009, there has been a natural change of at least 200 inhabitants—the first since the reparations of the population in 2006.
2011-2021 data from NAURU 2021 POPULATION AND HOUSING CENSUS - ANALYTICAL REPORT
== Ethnic groups ==
Nauru, as of 2021, is mainly inhabited by Nauruans (92.1%), while the main minority groups include I-Kirabiti (2.4%) Fijians (2.2%), and Australians (1.2%). This shows a major change from the previous major census of 2002, when Nauruans represented 75% of the population. According to the Constitution Nauru does not exclude any ethnic group to become a citizen.
The recent sizable immigration event of Chinese people happened in 1993.
== Languages ==
The Nauruan language is the official language of Nauru. English is widely understood and is used for most government and commercial purposes, and is official. At the 2021 census, 93.7% of those aged 5+ could speak Nauruan. 28.3% could speak another language. According to the 2011 census, 95.3% of the population speaks Nauruan, 66.0% speak English, and 11.9% speak another language. Nauruan is an Austronesian language, however, no adequate written grammar of the language has been compiled, and its relationships to other Micronesian languages are not well understood.
== Religions ==
The main religions in Nauru are Nauru Congregational (35.71%), Roman Catholic (32.96%), Assemblies of God (12.98%), and Nauruan indigenous religion (9.50%). The biggest changes from 2002 to 2011 were an increase from 0 to 1,291 (Assemblies of God) and 1,417 to 282 (Other). Public holidays include New Year's Day (1 January), Independence Day (31 January), Good Friday, Easter Monday, Easter Tuesday, Constitution Day (17 May), National Youth Day (25 September), Christmas Day, and Boxer Day.
The indigenous religion was the predominant religion in Nauru before the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when foreign missionaries introduced Christianity to the island. It is still practised by 9.5% of the population, according to 2011 census. There are a few active Christian missionary organisations, including representatives of Anglicanism, Methodism, and Catholicism. The Constitution provides for freedom of religion; however, the Government restricted this right in some circumstances. The government has restricted the religious practices of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the Jehovah's Witnesses, most of whom are foreign workers employed by RONPhos.
== Education ==
Literacy rate in Nauru, defined as "people who are currently enrolled in school and/or have reached at least grade 5 of primary education", is 96.5%, as of 2011. There are 3,190 students and 104 teachers, as of 2013. The 2011 census stated 4 percent of the population aged 15 years or older have a primary education, 91 percent have a secondary education, and 5 percent have a tertiary education. Education is based on the British system, which requires attendance from 5 to 16 years old. Students spend three years at preschool, six years of primary education, and four years of secondary school. Tertiary school is not required. An estimated 10.7 percent of the GDP was spent on education in 1999. As of 2013, there are five preschools, four primary schools, three secondary schools, and one tertiary school. The lone college, University of South Pacific, opened in the 1970s via distance courses, and in 1987 a campus was built on the island. It offers accounting, management, primary education, and English studies as majors.
The education system had a near-collapse in 2000–2005. During this time, exams were not held, teachers were not paid, and schools did not have enough funding to continue. As a result, over half of the schools closed. In 2009, the Australian Government partnered with the Nauruan Department of Education to help. This agreement resulted in a 5.7% increase in students, teachers with a degree increased from 30% to 93%, and over A$11 million was used to construct a new secondary school.
== Health ==
A universal healthcare system is present in Nauru, which is provided to all citizens of Nauru without charge. There is only one hospital in Nauru, being the Republic of Nauru Hospital in Yaren, which offers basic surgical and medical care. However, patients who would need more advanced care would typically travel to Australian hospitals. In 2012, an estimated 7.5% of its GDP was spent on healthcare. In 2004, 149 physicians and 557 nurses per 100,000 people were present. Nauru has the world's highest obesity rate, with an obesity rate of 71.7%. Nauru's population has a life expectancy of 66 years at birth, ranking it 169th in the world.
== Economic indicators ==
Net monthly income in 2006 averaged A$2,597 (A$3,848 in 2014). In the same year, gross monthly income averaged A$9,554 (A$14,154 in 2014). This was calculated during the mini-census of 2006, which featured 54.4% response rate of the population. The income was calculated using the following factors: first job salary, subsistence, other business income, second job salary, services to other households, benefits, house gifts consumed and received, and other income. Compared to other countries that use the Australian dollar—Kiribati, Australia, and Tuvalu—Nauru ranks number one in terms of income.[{{{2}}}] Since 2013, Nauru does not have a minimum wage.
Nauru's number of employed people has steadily risen and fallen. According to the 2011 census, there are 2,883 employed persons and 908 unemployed persons, making an unemployment rate of 23%. The Nauru Bureau of Statistics predicted the unemployment rate will decrease to 22% in FY2014/15. The gross domestic product of Nauru was A$69.55 million in 2009, an increase of 40% from 2008. The GDP is broken down into three categories: primary (18.7%—agriculture, hunting, forestry, fishing, mining, and quarrying), secondary (36.5%—manufacturing, electric, gas, water, and construction), and tertiary (44.8%—trade, hotel, restaurants, and various services) industries.
A majority of the population are employed in phosphate mining, public administration, education, and transportation. A detention centre was closed in 2008, which caused the unemployment rate to rise to 30%, and approximately ten percent of the population relied on working at the centre. The centre reopened in 2012 and currently serves 1,162 prisoners, as of May 2014. During the 1990s, Nauru was famous for operating offshore banks, helping with money laundering. The United States State Department's International Narcotics Control Strategy Report estimated there were 400 offshore finance centres laundering an estimated $70 billion.
Phosphate mining in Nauru originally made Nauru the richest per capita nation in the world. In 1968, the Nauru Phosphate Royalties Trust (NPRT) was created to invest profits from mining, so Nauru would have money after the mining was exhausted. The owners of the trust purchased a fleet of ships and aircraft, a brewery in the Solomon Islands, hotels around the world, and real estate in Australia, the United States and Britain, which caused the trust to go bankrupt. Phosphate exports peaked in 1973 with 2.3 million tonnes, but has decreased to 0.2 million tonnes in 2001. In 2006, mining of a secondary layer of phosphate began.
== Notes ==
^A For Kiribati, the average annual income was reported as A$8,745, which was divided by 12 months to receive a monthly income. For Australia, the minimum (A$400) and maximum (A$599) average income was taken from the 2006 census and divided by two to receive the average weekly income; this amount was multiplied by 4.33 to receive the monthly income. For Tuvalu, the 2005 monthly income was used with an inflation calculator to provide the 2006 value.
== References ==
== Sources ==
Hughes, Helen (2004). "From Rags to Riches: What are Nauru's Options and how can Australia Help?" (PDF). The Centre for Independent Studies. Archived from the original (PDF) on 29 July 2014. Retrieved 21 July 2014.
Nauru Bureau of Statistics (2002). Demographic Profile of the Republic of Nauru, 1992–2002 (PDF) (Report). Vol. Part 2. Nauru Bureau of Statistics. Retrieved 2 July 2014.
Nauru Bureau of Statistics (2007). Nauru Household Income and Expenditure Survey Report 2006 (PDF) (Report). Nauru Bureau of Statistics. Retrieved 2 July 2014.
Nauru Bureau of Statistics (2011). National Report on Population and Housing: Census 2011 (PDF) (Report). Nauru Bureau of Statistics. Archived from the original (PDF) on 24 September 2015. Retrieved 27 June 2014. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Park_Geun-hye#:~:text=Park%20was%20the%20first%20woman,the%20founding%20of%20South%20Korea. | Park Geun-hye | Park Geun-hye (; Korean: 박근혜 [pak‿k͈ɯn.hje] ; born 2 February 1952) is a South Korean politician who served as the 11th president of South Korea from 2013 until her removal from office in 2017. A member of Saenuri during her presidency and the eldest daughter of Park Chung Hee, she was the first woman in the country and the first in East Asia to be elected as head of state. Park previously served as the first lady of South Korea under her father's presidency from 1974 until her father's assassination in 1979.
Born in Daegu, Park graduated from Sogang University in 1974 with a bachelor's degree in electronic engineering. Before her presidency, Park was leader of the conservative Grand National Party (GNP) from 2004 to 2006 and leader of the Liberty Korea Party from 2011 to 2012. She was also a member of the National Assembly, serving four consecutive parliamentary terms between 1998 and 2012. Park started her fifth term as a representative elected via national list in June 2012. In 2013 and 2014, Park ranked 11th on the Forbes list of the world's 100 most powerful women and the most powerful woman in East Asia. In 2014, she ranked 46th on the Forbes list of the world's most powerful people, the third-highest South Korean on the list, after Lee Kun-hee and Lee Jae-yong.
On 9 December 2016, Park was impeached by the National Assembly on charges related to influence peddling by her top aide, Choi Soon-sil. Then–Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn assumed her powers and duties as acting president as a result. The Constitutional Court upheld the impeachment by a unanimous 8–0 ruling on 10 March 2017, thereby removing Park from office, making her the first Korean president to be so removed. On 6 April 2018, South Korean courts sentenced her to 24 years in prison (later increased to 25 years) for corruption and abuse of power.
In 2018, two separate criminal cases resulted in an increase of seven years in Park's prison sentence. She was found guilty of illegally taking off-the-books funds from the National Intelligence Service (NIS) and given a five-year prison sentence, and also found guilty of illegally interfering in the Saenuri Party primaries in the 2016 South Korean legislative election, for which she was sentenced to two more years in prison. On 24 December 2021, it was announced that she would receive a pardon on compassionate grounds from South Korean President Moon Jae-in. She was released from prison on 31 December and returned home three months later on 24 March 2022.
== Early life and education ==
Park Geun-hye was born on 2 February 1952, in Samdeok-dong of Jung District, Daegu, South Korea as the first child of Park Chung Hee, who came to power with the May 16 military coup d'état of 1961 and was the third president of South Korea from 1963 to 1979; and his wife, First Lady Yuk Young-soo. Both of her parents were assassinated. She has a younger sister, Park Geun-ryeong, and a younger brother, Park Ji-man. She also has an older half-sister, Park Jae-ok. She is unmarried with no children. Pew Research Center described her as an atheist with a Buddhist and Roman Catholic upbringing.
In 1953, Park's family moved to Seoul, where she graduated from Jangchung Elementary School and Sungshim (literal: Sacred Heart) Girls' Middle and High School in 1970, going on to receive a Bachelor of Science degree in electronic engineering from Sogang University in 1974. She briefly studied at Joseph Fourier University in France, but left following the murder of her mother.
Park's mother was killed on 15 August 1974, in the National Theater of Korea; Mun Se-gwang, a Japanese-born ethnic Korean sympathizer of North Korea and member of the Chongryon, was attempting to assassinate her husband, President Park Chung Hee. Park Geun-hye was regarded as First Lady until the assassination of her father by his intelligence chief, Kim Jae-gyu, on 26 October 1979. During this time, activists who were political opponents of Park's father claimed to be subject to arbitrary detention. Further, human rights were considered subordinate to economic development. In 2007, Park expressed regret at the treatment of activists during this period.
Park received honorary doctoral degrees from the Chinese Culture University in Taiwan in 1987, Pukyong National University and KAIST in 2008, Sogang University in 2010, and TU Dresden in 2014.
== Political career ==
=== Early career ===
Park was elected a Grand National Party (GNP; later the Liberty Korea Party, or Saenuri Party) assemblywoman for Dalseong County (Daegu) in the 1998 by-election, and three more times in the same electoral district between 1998 and 2008, being the incumbent assemblywoman until April 2012. In 2012, Park announced she would not run for a constituency representative seat for the 19th election in Dalseong, but for a proportional representative position for the Saenuri Party instead, in order to lead the party's election campaign. She was subsequently elected as a proportional representative in the April 2012 election.
Due to the failed attempt to impeach President Roh Moo-hyun and the bribery scandal of its 2002 presidential candidate, Lee Hoi-chang (revealed in 2004), the GNP was facing a defeat in the 2004 general election. Park was appointed chairwoman of the party and led the election efforts. In the election, the GNP lost its majority position but managed to win 121 seats, which was largely considered a great achievement under such inhospitable circumstances for the party. As the chairwoman of the GNP, Park helped her party make significant gains in local elections and actually obtain a majority in 2006.
During the campaign, on 20 May 2006 in Seoul, Ji Chung-ho, a 50-year-old man with eight criminal convictions, slashed Park's face with a utility knife, causing an 11-centimeter wound that required 60 stitches and several hours of surgery. A famous anecdote from this incident occurred when Park was hospitalized after the attack: the first word that she said to her secretary after her recovery from her wound was, "How is Daejeon?" After this, the GNP candidate in the Daejeon mayoral race won the election despite having trailed by more than 20 percentage points in opinion polls up to the point of the attack. In addition, during Park's term as the GNP chairwoman between 2004 and 2006, the party won all 40 reelections and by-elections held, which was largely credited to her influence and efforts. This feat gave Park the nickname "Queen of Elections".
On 12 February 2007, Park made a much-publicized visit to Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Her visit culminated in an address to a packed audience at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, where she said she wanted to save Korea and advocated a stronger relationship between South Korea and the United States.
Park hoped to emulate her father's success by becoming the presidential nominee of the GNP. She eventually lost to Lee Myung-bak by a narrow margin. Lee had a commanding lead at the beginning of the primary season, but Park was able to narrow the gap through allegations of Lee's corruption. Park won the "party members' bid", but she lost the "national bid", which is a larger percentage of the total presidential bid. After the 2007 presidential election, President Lee Myung-bak formed a government of mostly close supporters. Park's supporters argued that this was a kind of political reprisal and that they should secede from the GNP. Eventually, they formed parties named Pro-Park Coalition and Solidarity for Pro-Park Independents (친박 무소속 연대; Chin Park Musosok Yeondae). After the mass secession, the rebels announced that they would rejoin the GNP after the general election, but the party prohibited it. In the following 2008 general election, the rebels won 26 seats: fourteen from the Pro-Park Coalition and twelve as independents. Together, they played a pivotal role in the GNP's narrow majority. Park continually insisted that the GNP should allow the return of her supporters. As of 2011, most of these rebels had returned to the GNP, resulting in approximately 50 to 60 assembly members who supported Park out of 171 in the GNP.
In 2011, as a response to the dwindling approval rating of the GNP, the party formed an emergency committee and changed its name to the Saenuri Party, or "New Frontier" Party. On 19 December, Park was appointed as the chairwoman of the emergency committee, the de facto leader of the party. In the 2012 general election, the Saenuri Party achieved a surprise win against the opposing Democratic United Party, winning 152 seats and retaining its majority position. Because of the corruption scandals of the Lee administration revealed before the election, the party was widely expected to win no more than 100 seats. During the 13-day campaign period, Park traveled about 7,200 km (4,500 mi) around South Korea, visiting more than 100 constituencies. It is the consensus of Korean news media and political experts that the most important factor leading to Saenuri Party's victory was Park's leadership. For this reason, the 2012 election was often dubbed the "return of the Queen of Election". The party's defeat in the populous Seoul metropolitan area in this election, however, revealed the limitation of Park's political influence.
=== 2012 presidential campaign ===
Park had been the leading candidate for the 2012 presidential election in every national poll in South Korea between 2008, when the Lee administration began, and September 2011, with an approval rating of 25% to 45%, more than twice that of the second candidate. Park's approval rating was highest during the 2008 general election, and lowest in early 2010 as a result of her political stance against the Lee administration in Sejong City issue. Park also benefited from a public image of standing aloofly above the fray of politics.
In September 2011, Ahn Cheol-soo, a former venture IT businessman and the Dean of Graduate School of Convergence Science and Technology at Seoul National University, emerged as a strong independent presidential candidate. In September 2011 national presidential polls, Ahn and Park closely competed for the status of frontrunner, with Park losing the top seat in some polls for the first time since 2008.
On 10 July 2012, Park formally announced her presidential bid at Time Square, Yeongdeungpo District, Seoul. In this event, she emphasized the right to pursue happiness, a democratic economy, and customized welfare services for the Korean people. In a national survey by Mono Research on 30 August Park was the top presidential candidate with an approval rating of 45.5% when competing with all potential candidates, and according to another recent national survey result had a higher approval rating (50.6%) than Ahn (43.9%) in a two-way competition as of 11 September . The opposing Democratic Party of Korea elected Moon Jae-in as its presidential candidate on 17 September, while Ahn announced his presidential bid on 19 September . Although still a leading candidate, Park had a lower approval rating than both Ahn and Moon when engaged in two-way competition, according to a 22 September national survey. Park was elected as president of the Republic of Korea on 19 December 2012, with the approval of 51.6% of Korean voters.
In 2017, the National Intelligence Service (NIS) admitted that it had conducted an illicit campaign to influence the 2012 presidential election, mobilizing teams of experts in psychological warfare to ensure that Park defeated Moon.
=== Positions ===
In a 2012 survey by Korean Research assessing the political stance of twelve potential presidential candidates of South Korea, Park was considered the most conservative candidate. Her conservative, market-oriented political stance was well reflected in her campaign pledge for 2008 presidential bid to cut taxes, reduce regulation, and establish strong law and order. Since 2009, however, Park started to focus more on welfare issues, advocating customized welfare services to the Korean people.
Park was well known for her strict adherence to political promises. In 2010, for example, she successfully stopped the Lee administration's attempt to cancel the plan to establish Sejong City, a new national center of administration, arguing that the plan was a promise made to the people. This conflict between Park and the Lee administration cost her a considerable decrease in her approval rating at the time. In 2012, Park also vowed to construct a new airport in the southeastern region, a 2008 presidential campaign promise made by GNP but cancelled in 2011, despite claims of economic infeasibility of the plan.
The administrative vision of Park's new government was "a new era of hope and happiness". The five Administrative Goals of the government were "a jobs-centered creative economy", "tailored employment and welfare", "creativity-oriented education and cultural enrichment", "a safe and united society" and "strong security measures for sustainable peace on the Korean Peninsula". The Park Geun-hye administration planned to create a trustworthy, clean, and capable government by carrying out these goals, related strategies, and tasks.
Park chose not to vote in the 2017 South Korean presidential election.
== Presidency (2013–17) ==
=== Inauguration ===
Park became the 11th president of South Korea on 25 February 2013. At midnight, she took over all presidential authorities including the prerogative of supreme command of South Korea's armed forces from her predecessor Lee Myung-bak. In her inauguration speech at the National Assembly building, Park spoke of her plan to open a new era of hope through "economic prosperity, people's happiness, and cultural enrichment". She particularly expressed her hope that North Korea would give up its nuclear arms and walk on the path of peace and mutual development, and declared that the foundation for a happy era of unification in which all Korean people will be able to enjoy prosperity and freedom and realize their dreams would be built through the Korean Peninsula Trust-building Process. In her inauguration speech, Park presented four guiding principles to realize her administrative vision: economic prosperity, people's happiness, cultural enrichment, and establishment of a foundation for peaceful unification. Park's inauguration ceremony was the largest one in South Korean history with 70,000 participants. Diplomatic representatives in Korea, as well as high-level delegates specially sent from 24 countries around the world including Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, U.S. National Security Advisor Thomas Donilon, Taiwanese Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng, and former Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda, also participated in the event to congratulate Park.
=== First year (February 2013 – February 2014) ===
The goal of the newly launched Park Geun-hye Administration for governing state affairs was to open "a new era of hope and happiness for all the people". Park avowed that South Korea would break away from its long-pursued development model that centered around the nation, and shift the focus of government administration from the state to individual citizens. The administration's keywords in managing state affairs were "people", "happiness", "trust", "co-prosperity" and "principle". Right after taking office, Park restructured the Blue House and government organization. The Office of National Security at the Blue House, Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning, and Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries were newly launched, and the seat of Deputy Prime Minister for Economic Affairs was revived. The Chief of the National Security Office would act as a "control tower" for diplomatic, security, and national defense issues, and the Deputy Prime Minister for Economic Affairs for economic, social, and welfare issues.
Park announced her plan to build a "Creative Economy" on 5 June 2013, representing her vision for economic revival and job creation. In April, Park said "Timing is very important for our economic policy, jobs and livelihood mainly ordinary people should organize a supplementary budget in a timely manner." She encouraged the gig economy. On 8 April 2014, Park signed the Australia–Korea Free Trade Agreement with Australia's Prime Minister Tony Abbott.
Park proposed the eradication of "Four Major Social Evils" (사 대회악: "sa dae hwe ak") – sexual violence, domestic violence, school violence, and unsafe food. Statistics showed that sexual violence and domestic violence increased during these years. Without referring to statistical data, aggravating school violence or food safety is a public concern in South Korea. She also launched the National Unity Committee on 17 June with the purpose to advise the president in the process of resolving various conflicts in South Korean society and establishing a culture of co-existence and co-prosperity. Former Democratic United Party Advisor Han Kwang -ok was named as the head.
==== Foreign policy ====
After taking office, Park met with Secretary of State John Kerry and U.S. President Barack Obama. Park's trip to the United States in May 2013 was her first foreign trip after taking office. Like many of her predecessors, Park maintained a close relationship with the U.S., which has over 20,000 soldiers stationed in South Korea. During her visit to the U.S., she addressed a joint session of the U.S. Congress, where she called for a united front against any North Korean provocations. Park also called for a strong global relationship between South Korea and the United States.
Park visited the United States on her first overseas trip as president. She traveled to Washington, D.C., New York City, and Los Angeles on 5–9 May 2013. During summit talks at the White House, Presidents Park and Obama adopted a joint declaration for the American-South Korean alliance and discussed ways to further develop the bilateral relations in a future-forward manner. Also, the two leaders discussed ways to promote cooperation in building peace in the Northeast Asian region and strengthen the partnership between Seoul and Washington. The two leaders of South Korea and the United States agreed to adopt a joint statement on comprehensive energy cooperation to build a foundation for a future growth engine, and establish a policy cooperation committee on information and communication technology. In addition, Park urged her U.S. counterpart to expand the annual U.S. visa quota for South Korean professionals in order to promote co-development of both economies.
On 27–30 June 2013, Park visited China with a South Korean delegation, where she met with Xi Jinping, the Chinese president. On 13 November 2013, Park held an extended meeting with President Vladimir Putin, whose visit to South Korea was the first among leaders of four major powers including the United States, China, and Japan. During the meeting, Park and Putin considered combining Korea's Eurasian Initiative and Russia's Asia-Pacific Policy. After the summit, both presidents issued a joint communique and held a joint press conference. Earlier, Park attended the G-20 Summit in September 2013 at St. Petersburg, where she met Putin for a separate dialogue discussing economic cooperation and seeking support on North Korean issues. It marked the first Korea–Russia summit talk since Park's inauguration. When Park met with Russian Minister for the Development of Russian Far East Viktor Ishaev, who headed the Russian delegation to Park's inaugural ceremony, she stated that Russia was one of Korea's key strategic partners.
===== North Korea =====
North Korea had engaged in provocations such as violating a UN Security Council resolution and firing a long-range missile on 12 December 2012, just before 19 December presidential election. After Park was elected, North Korea conducted its third nuclear test 12 February 2013, nullified the non-aggression agreements between the two countries on 8 March and withdrew North Korean workers from the Kaesong Industrial Region on 8 April. Park maintained her stance that South Korea will not succumb to the North's provocations and threats, and will endeavor to elicit policy coordination towards North Korea with major powers such as the United States, China and the UN. Her response to North Korean issues gained the support of many South Koreans and also the United States, China, and Russia, and played a significant role in the unanimous adoption by the UN Security Council of Resolution 2094 regarding North Korea on 7 March 2013. Due to Park's response and the international community's actions, on 6 June North Korea ceased provocations and threats towards the South and suggested holding discussions on reopening the Kaesong Industrial Complex.
Park said that peace and unification on the Korean peninsula is the wish of all 70 million Koreans and that as president she will do her utmost to meet such a goal. As well, "the ultimate objective of reunification efforts is to improve the quality of life of people in both Koreas, to further expand freedom and human rights, and [from there] build a prosperous Korean Peninsula." She later stated, "to open a new era of peace and hope on the peninsula, North Korea needs to accept her administration's trust-building policy initiative".
Park's policy vision and initiative on issues concerning North Korea and unification are reflected in her Korean Peninsula Trust-building Process. The Ministry of Unification announced a new vision statement "realizing a new unified Korea that ensures everyone's happiness". The administrative tasks for this cause include normalizing inter-Korean relations through a trust-building process, embarking on small-scale unification projects that will lead to a complete integration of the two Koreas, and taking practical measures to prepare for unification by strengthening unification capabilities. According to Park, peaceful unification will be achieved in a three-stage unification initiative: starting from securing peace, going through economic integration, and finally reaching political integration. To achieve sustainable peace by the initiative, the new administration will offer humanitarian assistance for the people in North Korea, inter-Korean exchange and cooperation in economic, social, and cultural areas, and will apply 'Vision Korea project' for establishing a single economic community in the Korean Peninsula, conditioned on sufficient mutual trust and progress in denuclearizing North Korea.
=== Second year (February 2014 – February 2015) ===
Park proposed three steps to North Korea to help move toward the reunification of the Korean Peninsula, on 28 March in Dresden, during her state visit to Germany. She stated that "Starting with jointly managing rivers and forests running through the two Koreas, we need to expand joint projects that benefit both sides. In that respect, I hope North Korea will attend the UN Convention on Biological Diversity conference to be held in South Korean city of Pyeongchang in October."
In May 2014, Park warned that a new nuclear test by North Korea could lead to "a nuclear domino effect", that might provide its neighbors with a pretext to arm themselves with nuclear weapons.
On 18 May 2014, Park announced South Korea's "plans to break up its coastguard" after failing to respond well during the MV Sewol ferry disaster. According to Park, "investigation and information roles would be transferred to the South Korea National Police while the rescue and salvage operation and ocean security roles would be transferred to the Department for National Safety, not to be confused with the Korean Ministry of Security and Public Administration, which will be newly established".
On 19 November 2014, the Korea Coast Guard and National Emergency Management Agency ceased control as the Ministry of Public Safety and Security was founded at the same day.
=== Third year (February 2015 – February 2016) ===
On 26 May 2015, Park urged the head of the Asian Development Bank to cooperate with South Korea and the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank after South Korea had officially applied to join the Chinese-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank in late March 2015.
=== Fourth and final year (February 2016 – March 2017) ===
On 1 May 2016, Park became the first South Korean president to visit Iran. She was at the head of a 236-member delegation of businessmen and entrepreneurs during a three-day visit to Tehran to discuss bilateral trade and other matters of mutual interest. She met Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and held talks with Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. The two countries also signed 19 basic agreements to expand mutual cooperation over a variety of areas. Earlier, Iran's President Rouhani emphasized that Iran and South Korea were set to boost their trade volume from the current $6 billion to $18 billion.
==== 2016 general elections ====
Park suffered a serious setback in the 2016 general elections on 13 April 2016, as the Saenuri Party lost both its majority and its status as first party in the National Assembly. Park had been criticized for her involvement in the elections and the party's nomination process, and other Saenuri members blamed the pro-Park faction in the party for the defeat. Park loyalists fared badly in constituency elections. The result was seen to hinder the chances of Park's passing her proposed economic reforms, and in the aftermath of the results the conservative The Chosun Ilbo stated that Park's "lame duck period has started earlier than any other administration in the past".
=== Approval ratings ===
In July 2013, public support for Park's method of governing state affairs reached up to 63 percent, higher than the percentage of the votes she had won in the presidential election, which was 52 percent. The Korean media suggested that such a high level of support came from Park's principled North Korea policy, constructive outcomes from visits to the United States and China, and distancing from internal political disputes.
By January 2015, Park's approval rating had fallen to 30 percent, partly due to the sinking of MV Sewol and disputes with North Korea. By September 2015, Park's approval had increased to 54 percent due to her diplomacy that defused a military standoff with North Korea, but in the aftermath of her party's 2016 election loss, her ratings fell to 31.5 percent, plunging 8.1 percentage points compared to the week before the election.
On 4 November 2016, Park's ratings fell to 4–5% as details of her relationship with Choi Soon-sil were investigated and exposed in what became the 2016 South Korean political scandal.
== Arrest, detention, pardon and post-presidency (2017–present) ==
Park was arrested on 31 March 2017, and held in pre-trial detention at the Seoul Detention Center in Uiwang, Gyeonggi Province. On 17 April 2017, Park was formally charged with abuse of power, bribery, coercion and leaking government secrets. Park denied the charges during five rounds of interrogation while in prison.
Prosecutors sought a 30-year prison term for Park, along with a fine of ₩188.5 billion (US$110,579,397). On 6 April 2018, a three-judge panel of the Central District Court in Seoul sentenced Park to 24 years in prison and a fine of ₩18 billion (US$16,798,683), finding her guilty of 16 out of 18 charges brought before her.
In June 2018, three former NIS directors (Lee Byung-kee, Lee Byung-ho, and Nam Jae-joon) who served in the Park administration were found guilty of bribery, related to the 2016 Park Geun-hye scandals. They illegally transferred money from the NIS budget to Park's presidential office. This illegally obtained money was used by Park and her associates for private use and to pay bribes. On 24 August 2018, Park's sentence was increased to 25 years in prison.
In July 2020, an appellate court reduced Park's prison sentence to 20 years after a retrial, taking into account that she "received little personal benefit" from her offences, and Park was also cleared of charges of alleged extortion from conglomerates paying donations to foundations of Choi Soon-sil. In January 2021, South Korea's top court upheld the 20-year prison sentence, bringing an end to the legal process.
On 24 December 2021, it was announced that Park would receive a pardon from South Korean President Moon Jae-in. In his pardon, President Moon cited Park's deteriorating health and the needs to "overcome unfortunate past history and promote national unity" as reasons for the pardon. On 31 December, she was released from prison, returning home three months later on 24 March 2022. New President Yoon Suk-yeol invited Park to his inauguration ceremony on 10 May 2022.
== Controversies and issues ==
=== Parentage controversy ===
Park had been often criticized for being the "daughter of a dictator" (Park Chung Hee) and by supporters of Lee Myung-bak for not actively supporting the Lee administration. A national-level poll conducted in July 2012 by a conservative newspaper reported that 59% of participants responded they did not believe Park was a "daughter of a dictator" while 36% agreed with the characterization. Park Chung Hee's status as a dictator became a contested topic after the 1997 Asian financial crisis. GNP party elites saw this as their chance to revitalize Park Chung Hee's image, focusing on South Korea's economic growth during his administration, thus steadily changing his public perception.
During a 2012 interview with the Cheongju broadcast station CJB, Park commented regarding her stance that her father's May 16 coup was a "revolution to save the country" by stating, "I don't think it's the place of politicians to be fighting over whether [the events of 1961] were a 'coup d'etat' or a 'revolution'." In a July 2012 survey, 50% of respondents answered that they disagreed with Park's assessment that her father's 1961 coup was "unavoidable, the best possible choice, and an advisable decision", as opposed to 37% that agreed. From another survey conducted in July 2012, 42% of respondents agreed with her opinion that her father's 1961 coup was "unavoidable", while 46% disagreed.
Because Park inherited strong regional and generational support from her father, as well as the legacy of his economic success, Park's opponents used her father as criticism against her.
=== Bu-il foundation accusations ===
Park has faced much scrutiny over an educational foundation, Jeongsoo Scholarship Foundation, formerly known as Buil (in reference to the stock it controls in the newspaper "Busan Ilbo"), which her father, and later she, headed. Its original owners claimed in court they were forced to turn it over to her father.
=== Party criticism ===
Liberty Korea Party assemblyman Nam Kyung-pil criticized the Park-centered nature of the party, regarding its preparation for the 2012 presidential election, and stated, "If we keep seeing the same situation where Park Geun-hye gives a press conference before a general meeting of lawmakers is held, and what she says then gets decided on as the party's position, then the public is going to think democracy has disappeared from the party."
Furthermore, some have said Park's behavior in the lead-up to 2012 presidential election was a mixture of trend-following and corner-cutting—a stark contrast with the vehement insistence on the principle that she showed when she opposed a revision of the plan for a multifunctional administrative city in Sejong City. For instance, Yim Tae-hee, another presidential candidate of the party, pointed to Park's voting down of a motion to arrest Chung Doo-un, a lawmaker implicated with bribery related to saving banks. Another candidate, Ahn Sang-soo, accused Park of "saying one thing yesterday and another today".
=== Spokesman scandal ===
Park fired Yoon Chang-jung, a Blue House spokesman who was alleged by Washington Police to have committed sexual assault against a young woman hired as an intern at the South Korean Embassy in Washington during Park's first visit to the United States.
=== Election-meddling scandal ===
Just a week before the presidential election date, the opposing party alleged that the public servants from National Intelligence Service (NIS) had organized to promote Park's election campaign by way of posting online articles favorable to Park and slanderous to the opposing candidates. This political behavior by public servants is strictly prohibited by the Korean Constitution. To prove their allegation, the opposing Democratic Party, along with the police and Central Election Assistance Commission. From there, the 29-year-old female agent, later known as Ha-Young Kim, who was running an illegal online election campaign operation such as spreading slanderous postings about the opposing candidate had locked herself in. The police could not force to enter the house and the standoff lasted for three days, provoking a tense political standoff. The opposition accused the intelligence service of blocking an investigation. Park and her party accused the opposition of harassing the woman. Park even said the standoff of the self-lock-in was a violation of a female right in the presidential candidate debate that took place three days before the election.
Later that night of the presidential debate, Kim Yong-pan, then the chief of Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency, publicly announced there was no evidence of illegal online postings from the collected laptop of the female agent. This announcement, which took place three days before the election, was believed to have significantly affected the outcome of the presidential election according to the opposing party. After months of probes into the alleged election meddling, the prosecution concluded in mid-June 2013 that Won Sei-hoon, then NIS chief who headed the intelligence agency for around four years under former President Lee Myung-bak, ordered agents to conduct an online smear campaign against opposition presidential candidates. The special investigation drew a conclusion that the agents systemically intervened in domestic politics by writing thousands of postings on politics in cyberspace through hundreds of different user IDs. Kim Yong-pan, then chief of the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency (SMPA), was prosecuted without physical detention on charges of abusing his authority to hamper police investigation into the case. CCTV conversation between the computer analysts who were analyzing the laptop at police revealed that the police already knew there were illegal online postings against the opposing party's candidates, but the chief of SMPA publicly announced otherwise, an announcement that indicates intentional meddling into the presidential election.
The investigation and the trial at court are on-going, and Park faces a political blow. However, the leading Saenuri party along with government leaders has attempted to dodge its political fall-out. Their effort has involved tipping a rumor to a major conservative media, Chosun Ilbo, about an extramarital child of the Chae Dong-wook, former Prosecutor General, who has approved the prosecution of Won Se-hoon and Kim Yong-pan, which eventually led to his resignation. Yoon Suk-ryul, the director of the special investigation team, which was leading the probe into the election meddling, was fired and returned to his original position, head of Yeoju branch Supreme Prosecutors Office. The investigation of his team has further revealed that the NIS is suspected of having posted 55,689 messages on Twitter for three months until the presidential election.
Whether or not the election meddling of the NIS by way of online posts has actually affected the outcome of the presidential election is controversial. However, the false announcement by Kim Yong-pan, then chief of the SMPA, has appeared to do so. Had the police announced honestly, 14% of the electorate who voted for Park said they would have voted for Moon Jae-In, the first runner-up of the election.
=== Lack of communication ===
Park has been criticized for holding press conferences with questions and answers submitted in advance. By 11 January 2015, she had held four press conferences since taking office in February 2013. Among the four press conferences, three of them were public speeches without questions and answers. Even in the remaining press conference, the questions were submitted in advance, and she read prepared answers. Her opponents labeled her as "No communication" (불통; Bultong).
=== November 2015 protests ===
On 15 November 2015, around 80,000 anti-government protesters clashed with government forces on the streets of Seoul, demanding that Park step down, with many of the protesters chanting "Park Geun-hye, step down". The rally was triggered by Park's adopting business-friendly labour policies and a decision to require middle and high schools to use only state-issued history textbooks in classes starting in 2017, combined with plans to make labour markets more flexible by giving employers more leeway in dismissing workers. Security forces fired tear gas and sprayed water cannons into the crowd when protesters attempted to break through police barricades.
=== Censorship ===
In the wake of the April 2014 capsizing of the Sewol ferry, public outcry arose over the government's handling of the situation. In response, the Park administration established a commission to monitor and prosecute social media critics of Park.
Tatsuya Kato, a Japanese journalist who was a Seoul Bureau chief of South Korea at Sankei Shimbun, was indicted on charges of defamation for reporting the relationship between Park and Choi Soon-sil's husband, Chung Yoon-hoi, by the Supreme Prosecutors' Office of the Republic of Korea after the MV Sewol sank.
=== Public Official Election Act ===
On 25 June 2015, Park said that "Betrayal which breaks the trust shouldn't be accepted in politics and this should be punished by election with people's own hands". This mention was aimed to Yu Seungmin who was a member of Saenuri Party. Her statement was criticized by professor Jo Guk and politician Moon Jae-in because it was intended to affect Yu's election, which is forbidden by the Public Official Election Act. However, the National Election Commission decided not to treat Park's mention as a violation of the Act.
=== Comfort Women agreement ===
In 2015, Park reached an agreement with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe regarding the comfort women issue. Japan apologized to former comfort women and provided 1 billion yen ($8.8 million) towards an assistance fund as terms of the agreement. The two governments agreed that the issue would be "irreversibly resolved". However, in 2017, Park's successor, President Moon Jae-in, stated that the deal was seriously flawed and unilaterally terminated it.
=== Choi Soon-sil scandal and impeachment ===
In October 2016, investigations into Park's relationship with Choi Soon-sil, daughter of the late Church of Eternal Life cult leader and Park's mentor Choi Tae-min, began. Several news media including JTBC and the Hankyoreh reported that Choi, who has no official government position, had access to confidential documents and information for the president, and acted as a close confidant for the president. Choi and Park's senior staff including both Ahn Jong-bum and Jeong Ho-sung used their influence to extort ₩77.4 billion (approximately $75 million) from Korean chaebols—family-owned large business conglomerates—and set up two culture and sports-related foundations, Mir and K-sports foundations. Choi was also accused of having influenced Ewha Womans University to change their admission criteria in order for her daughter Chung Yoo-ra to be given a place there. Ahn Jong-bum and Jeong Ho-sung, top presidential aides, were arrested for abuse of power and helping Choi; they denied wrongdoing and claimed that they were simply following President Park's orders. Choi was also alleged to have used a South Korean overseas development assistance project (a convention center in Myanmar) for improper personal benefits.
On 25 October 2016, Park publicly acknowledged her close ties with Choi. On 28 October, Park dismissed key members of her top office staff while her approval ratings fell to 4%. Her approval rating ranged from 1 to 3% for Korean citizens under 60 years of age, while it remained higher, at 13%, for the over-60 age group. It was the worst ever approval rate in Korean history and is worse than the 6% approval rating of former President Kim Young-sam, who was widely blamed for forcing the Korean economy into the 1997 Asian financial crisis. The controversy led to mass protests and rallies in October and November 2016 calling for her resignation. On 12 November, more than 1 million citizens participated in the protests at Gwanghwamun Square close to the presidential residence demanding Park's resignation or impeachment. On 19 November, another 1 million people participated in the national protest after Park refused to help in the investigation.
Park then fired a number of her cabinet members and the prime minister. In particular, the sacking of the prime minister, Hwang Kyo-ahn, resulted in controversy, due to the claim that his firing was carried out via a text message. The Supreme Prosecutors' Office of Korea (SPO), in laying charges against Choi and two former presidential aides, alleged that Park colluded with the three in certain criminal activities. The president would be questioned by prosecutors, the first time this has occurred with a serving South Korean president. Following the scandal, there was a series of massive demonstrations that started in the first week of November 2016. On 29 November 2016, Park offered to resign as president, and invited the National Assembly to arrange a transfer of power. The opposition parties rejected the offer, accusing Park of attempting to avoid the process of impeachment.
The National Assembly instead filed a motion for impeachment, which was put to a vote on 9 December 2016 and passed with 234 supporters. Due to the ratification of her impeachment proposal, her presidential powers and duties were suspended, and Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn assumed those powers and duties as acting president.
Park was finally ousted from office by the Constitutional Court on 10 March 2017. The decision was unanimous, 8–0 in favour of the impeachment, as announced shortly thereafter. On 26 March 2017, South Korean prosecutors announced they were seeking an arrest warrant against Park. This warrant was granted by the Seoul Central District Court on 31 March 2017, and Park was arrested later that day, and was later sentenced to 25 years in prison.
=== Pardon ===
In December 2021, the government of President Moon Jae-in decided to issue Park a pardon. The Justice Ministry said the reason for doing so was to promote reconciliation and consolidate national power to help overcome the national crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Moon also said Park's declining health had played a role in the decision. Park was pardoned under a broad amnesty that benefited 700 other prisoners, whose remaining prison terms would be eradicated or cut in half. She arrived home in March 2022 after having been hospitalized at Samsung Medical Center.
== Honours ==
South Korea:
Recipient of the Grand Order of Mugunghwa
=== Foreign honours ===
Austria:
Grand Star of the Decoration of Honour for Services to the Republic of Austria
Peru
Grand Cross of Order of the Sun of Peru
United Kingdom:
Honorary Dame Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath (GCB, 2013)
== Electoral history ==
=== National Assembly races (1998 to present) ===
==== 1998 ====
==== 2000 ====
==== 2004 ====
==== 2008 ====
==== 2012 ====
=== Presidential (2012) ===
== Publications ==
=== Books ===
—— (July 2007). 절망은 나를 단련시키고 희망은 나를 움직인다 [Despair Trains Me and Hope Moves Me] (in Korean). Wisdom House. ISBN 978-89-6086-033-9.
—— (January 2001). 나의 어머니 육영수 [My mother, Yuk Young-soo] (in Korean). People&People. ISBN 978-89-85541-54-1.
—— (October 1998). 결국 한 줌, 결국 한 점 [In the End Only a Fistful, One Speck] (in Korean). Busan Ilbo Books. ISBN 978-89-87236-25-4.
—— (October 1998). 고난을 벗 삼아 진실을 등대삼아 [Befriending Adversity: Truth as the Guiding Light] (in Korean). Busan Ilbo Books. ISBN 978-89-87236-24-7.
—— (May 1995). 내 마음의 여정 [Journey of My Mind] (in Korean). Hansol Media. ISBN 978-89-85656-50-4.
—— (November 1993). 평범한 가정에 태어났더라면 [If I Were Born in an Ordinary Family] (in Korean). Nam Song. ISBN 9780307455628. OCLC 33010951.
=== Articles ===
"A New Kind of Korea: Building Trust Between Seoul and Pyongyang". Foreign Affairs. September–October 2011. Retrieved 14 August 2012.
== See also ==
Politics of South Korea
== Explanatory footnotes ==
== References ==
== External links ==
Official website Archived 12 November 2018 at the Wayback Machine (in English)
Park Geun-hye addresses "U.S.–Korea Relations in a Changing World" at Stanford University, 6 May 2009
Park Geun-hye's speech at the JFK Jr. Forum, Harvard University, 12 February 2007
"Star Rises for Daughter of South Korea", The Washington Post, 15 March 2005
"All the Queen's men and women", The Straits Times, 20 March 2017
Appearances on C-SPAN |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Andr%C3%A9s_de_Cuerquia | San Andrés de Cuerquia | San Andrés is a town and municipality in Antioquia Department, Colombia. It is part of the sub-region of Northern Antioquia.
== History ==
In the days of its foundation, next to the San Andrés river, this district was inhabited by Nutabes Indians and was governed by the Cacique Guarcama, widely mentioned in the chronicles of the time as a warrior also remembered for his fierceness and business ability.
The conquering adventures of the Spanish captain Andrés de Valdivia had impelled him to subjugate this zone in the north of Antioquia, and he had this territory under the control of his troops in the year 1574. Valdivia entered into combat with the cacique Guarcama and Valdivia lost his life because of it. His head was displayed on logs for a long time, next to the heads of several of his soldiers. In response the then Governor of the Province sent to the region an enormous army that ended up massacring the tribe of Guarcama showing the technological superiority of the Iberians.
Upon the arrival of the Spaniards, these lands were occupied by high-ranking caciques between the Nutabes and Tahamis.
At the time, the region was visited by Captain Don Andrés de Valdivia, the first governor of the province of Antioquia, who organized an expedition to the middle course of the Cauca River. The Spanish captain Don Bartolomé Sánchez Torreblanca indisposed the natives against the Spanish ruler, who was killed by the cacique Quimé in the year of 1576. The place where the events took place is now called La Matanza.
A few years after the death of Valdivia, Don Gaspar de Rodas applied a fierce revenge on the part of the Spanish kingdom, and all the natives, especially those of the Valley of Guarcama, were exterminated without mercy.
The governor of the province of Popayán adjudged these lands to the Spanish officer Don Francisco Lopez de Rúa in the year 1582, who founded a town in the Guarcama Valley where Valdivia was killed, which he named San Andrés de Cauca in honor of the murdered captain and the nearby Cauca river.
On January 25, 1793 there was a fire that had burned the whole town, diminishing the importance it once had being on the obligatory passage to Mompóx and the Atlantic coast. In this place the parish of San Andrés was created, in the year of 1761. In the year of 1822 it was formed into a municipality.
On June 13, 1853, it was transferred from the Guarcama Valley to the current site. At the time of the beginning, it was named Cuerquia, for honoring the name of the "Cuerquías" tribes, natives of the narrow slope of the San Andrés River. However, the story tells that the first name at the time of the transfer was called Calcedonia in honor of the wise Caldas. Then in 1860, Pabón was named in honor of the governor who gave the transfer ordinance. The provincial chamber of Antioquia gave the ordinance 11, November 14, 1854, in which they assigned the name as Pabón and not Cuerquia, but shortly afterwards, in honor of its history, it changed definitively back to San Andrés de Cuerquia.
Baldomero Jaramillo Ruiz and Pedro José Jaramillo Romero, of Rionegro, sponsored by Pbro. Domingo Antonio Angarita Mendoza, were the founders of this new town in the year 1853, changing its name and place. In 1856, it was given the category of Municipality. At the beginning of the last century, San Andrés de Cuerquia had recovered much of its former importance, thanks to the fertility of its hillsides which are very conducive to all types of crops.
== General ==
Foundation: June 13, 1761
Erection in municipality: 1856
Founders: Presbítero Domingo Antonio Angarita and the Lords Baldomero and Pedro José Jaramillo
Appellation: Cofrecito enclosed between mountains.
It has also had the names of Chalcedony, San Andrés del Cauca, Pabón and Cuerquia .
It has temperate climate and is a coffee par excellence, its main attractions are the temple of Santo Cristo and the quebradas, ríos and waterfalls that form beautiful landscapes and that are visited by tourists, because they make possible trips between the nature of the region.
== Demography ==
Total Population: 6,226 inhabitants (2015).
Urban Population: 2 521
Rural Population: 3 705
To the municipality belong the villages of Montañadentro, San Miguel, La Chorrera, Cordillera, El Roble, Aguacatal, Alto Seco, Cañaduzales, El Cántaro, Santa Gertrudis, Travesías, Loma Grande, San Antonio, Las Cruces, Cruces Arriba, La Ciénaga, La Lejía, Atezal, El Vergel, Media Loma, Loma del Indio, El Filo, Montebello, San Julián, Santa Gertrudis and Travesías among others.
According to the corporation Vistas, of Medellín, "it is a municipality with a temperate climate enclosed between the green mountains of the North of Antioquia, coffee maker par excellence, its main attractions are the ravines, rivers and waterfalls that form beautiful landscapes and that are visited by tourists, because they make possible trips between the nature of the region ".
== References ==
== External links ==
Official website
New Official Page
Instagram
Facebook
Twitter
Facebook
Twitter |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dendrobium_pugioniforme | Dendrobium pugioniforme | Dendrobium pugioniforme, commonly known as dagger orchid is a species of orchid endemic to eastern Australia. It is an epiphytic or lithophytic orchid with pendulous, wiry stems, fleshy, sharply pointed leaves and flowering stems with one or two greenish or yellowish flowers with a white labellum. It grows on trees and rocks, mostly in humid forest.
== Description ==
Dendrobium pugioniforme is an epiphytic or lithophytic herb with pendulous wiry, branched stems 0.3–2 m (1–7 ft) long and about 2 mm (0.08 in) wide. The leaves are pendulous, thick, green, egg-shaped, 30–70 mm (1–3 in) long and 15–20 mm (0.59–0.79 in) wide with a sharply pointed tip. The flowering stem emerges from a single leaf base, is 40–70 mm (2–3 in) long and bears one or two pale green to pale brown or yellowish flowers. The flowers are 10–15 mm (0.39–0.59 in) long, 15–20 mm (0.59–0.79 in) wide and have brown striations near their base. The dorsal sepal is 9–12 mm (0.35–0.47 in) long, about 3 mm (0.12 in) wide, the lateral sepals slightly longer and wider and the petals slightly narrower. The labellum is white, 13–18 mm (0.5–0.7 in) long and 6–9 mm (0.2–0.4 in) wide with three main lobes. The side lobes are short and curve upwards and the middle lobe curves upwards and has three wavy ridges. Flowering occurs from September to November.
== Taxonomy and naming ==
Dendrobium pugioniforme was first formally described in 1839 by Allan Cunningham and the description was published in John Lindley's Edwards's Botanical Register. The specific epithet (pugioniforme) is derived from the Latin words pugio meaning "dagger" and forma meaning"shape".
Hybrids with the streaked rock orchid (Dendrobium striolatum) have been recorded.
== Distribution and habitat ==
Dagger orchid grows on trees and rocks in humid forest between the Bunya Mountains in south-east Queensland and Tathra in New South Wales from sea level to altitudes of 1,000 m (3,000 ft).
== Use in horticulture ==
Dendrobium pugioniforme adapts readily to cultivation, and can be grown in baskets in epiphytic orchid mix, or trained to grow on rock or bark slabs. It prefers a part-shaded position and extra moisture.
== References == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolfo_Alsina | Adolfo Alsina | Adolfo Alsina Maza (January 4, 1829 – December 29, 1877) was an Argentine lawyer and Unitarian politician, who was one of the founders of the Autonomist Party and the National Autonomist Party.
== Biography ==
Alsina was born in Buenos Aires, the son of Unitarian politician Valentín Alsina and Antonia Maza (daughter of Manuel Vicente Maza). He moved to Montevideo, Uruguay when Juan Manuel de Rosas became Governor of Buenos Aires Province for the second time, in 1835.
In the neighbouring country Alsina started his law studies.
After the Battle of Caseros in 1852, his family returned to Argentina, and his father was named a Minister by president Vicente López y Planes.
Adolfo finished law school and joined the Unitarian army in the civil war. In 1860, after the Battle of Pavón and the National Union Pact, he took part in the commission responsible for the constitution reform of 1860. He was elected a deputy in 1862.
When the subject of federalisation, supported by Bartolomé Mitre, was considered in the Chamber of Deputies, Alsina provoked a split in the Partido Unitario and founded the Partido Autonomista.
In 1866 he was elected governor of the Buenos Aires Province. Alsina considered running for president, but withdrew when he discovered he did not have the support of most of the province. Domingo Sarmiento was elected president, and named Alsina his vice-president.
When the presidency of Sarmiento finished in 1874, Alsina joined Nicolás Avellaneda to create the Partido Autonomista Nacional, through which Avellaneda reached the presidency and named Alsina Minister of War and Navy.
At the end of 1875, the Native Americans of Patagonia and the Pampas, especially the Mapuche, launched organised resistance against the territorial expansion of the southern border of the emerging nation. The first stage of the "Conquest of the Desert" began with the creation of a two meter deep, three meter wide trench called zanja de Alsina to prevent the free movement of horses and stolen cattle. Alsina also ordered the creation of forts intercommunicated by telegraph.
Trying to understand the native peoples, he decided to study the situation personally; but he fell ill while in the pampas town of Carhué, and died of renal failure, aged 48.
== Notes == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Anatsui#Recognition | El Anatsui | El Anatsui (; born 4 February 1944) is a Ghanaian sculptor active for much of his career in Nigeria. He has drawn particular international attention for his "bottle-top installations". These installations consist of thousands of aluminum pieces sourced from alcohol recycling stations and sewn together with copper wire, which are then transformed into metallic cloth-like wall sculptures. Such materials, while seemingly stiff and sturdy, are actually free and flexible, which often helps with manipulation when installing his sculptures.
Anatsui was included in the 2023 Time 100 list of the world's most influential people. In the article, artist and art historian Okeke-Agulu writes,"The breathtaking combination of experimental rigor and inspired vision turns such unassuming materials as printer’s plates or liquor-bottle caps into the magnificent constructions and compositions displayed around the world.”
== Early life and education ==
El Anatsui was born in Anyako, in the Volta Region of Ghana. The youngest of his father's 32 children, Anatsui lost his mother and was raised by his uncle. His first experience with art was through drawing letters on a chalkboard. His lettering attempts drew the attention of his school's headmaster, who encouraged his effort by providing him with more chalk. Because of his age at the time (just after kindergarten), he regarded the letters more as images than as letters--the forms interested him.
Anatsui received his B.A in 1968 from the College of Art and Built Environment (KNUST) in Kumasi, Ghana. He received his postgraduate diploma in Art Education the following year, in 1969, from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), also in Kumasi.
Some of his early artistic influences include Oku Ampofo, Vincent Akwete Kofi, and Kofi Antubam, all of whom began to reject foreign influences in their practices in favor of indigenous art forms. After graduating in 1969, Anatsui assumed a teaching position at Winneba Specialist Training College (now University of Education), a role that had previously been filled by Kofi.
He began teaching at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka in 1975. He became a senior lecturer for the Fine and Applied Arts department in 1982, and later became head of that department and full professor of sculpture in 1996, a role he occupied until 2011. His presence at the University of Nsukka led to his affiliation with the Nsukka group.It has taken many years to find artists who can occupy a prominent place on the global circuit while choosing to reside outside the metropolitan centres. William Kentridge has made his reputation from Johannesburg, and El Anatsui has conquered the planet while living and working in the Nigerian university town of Nsukka.
== Artwork ==
Anatsui notes that, through school and in university, "everything we were doing was western," especially within the fine arts department of his university; he felt that there was something missing in his education for its lack of focus on his own culture. In order to rectify this, he started visiting the National Cultural Centre of Ghana, also in Kumasi, to engage with the musicians, graphic artists, textile artists, printers, and creative artists of all types. It was there that he encountered Adinkra, a system of signs and symbols, which was his first introduction to abstract art and opened up a new world of artistic possibilities for him.
In the 1970s, Anatsui worked frequently in wood. He was particularly interested in wooden trays, which he often saw used in the markets to display food items and other wares--he would carve them or engrave them with Adinkra symbols and other marks using hot rods. He also began using wood to construct wall panels from strips placed next to each other, the surface decorated with designs imparted on the material through the use of chain saws, gouges, flame, or paint. In the late 70s, he began working in clay: pots, in particular, exploring themes of fragility and dilapidation. He was interested in how, even after a pot breaks and ceases being used in the way we commonly think (for food, water), it takes on a new purpose, even acquires more uses, from the mundane to the spiritual. Most intriguing to him is the use of pot shards for presenting offerings. He said, "It's as if the pot, having broken, is transformed into a dimension which makes it ideal for use by ancestors and deities who are themselves in the spirit dimension."
After his work with the broken pots, Anatsui explored food-adjacent themes in other materials: wood, again, in the form of mortars; equipment used to process cassava, and bottle tops.
Much of Anatsui's work features found materials, or materials that had a life of use prior to being formed into this artworks. His emphasis on the found object, however, is less Duchampian, and more focused on the history of use and the evidence of the human hand in the material. "When something has been used, there is a certain charge, a certain energy, that has to do with the people who have touched it and used it and sometimes abused it. This helps to direct what one is doing, and also to root what one is doing in the environment and the culture."Metal bottle caps are a favorite material of his; like cloth, Anatsui describes, an arrangement of bottle caps is versatile, allowing him to consider his art both sculpturally (through the form of the caps) and in a painterly manner (through the colors of the caps). Further, he appreciates the glimpse that bottle caps give into current and historical political and sociological issues, by virtue of the names and colors of various drink brands that are printed onto the caps."The most important thing for me is the transformation. The fact that these media, each identifying a brand of drink, are no longer going back to serve the same role but are elements that could generate some reflection, some thinking, or just some wonder. This is possible because they are removed from their accustomed, functional context into a new one, and they bring along their histories and identities."A number of themes are present in Anatsui's work: the destruction and subsequent reconstitution of material as a metaphor for life and the changes Africa faced under colonialism and since independence; traditional themes and motifs of West African strip woven cloth and other African textiles; and concern over Western scholarly misinterpretation of African history and the distortions it has caused. His work is also thematically connected to the West African cultural landscape and ideas of consumption and labor.
The idea of Sankofa [translated as "go back and retrieve"] is also present in Anatsui's work. He views it as a way of drawing on the past, the lessons it offers, to chart a mode of moving forward. For him, Sankofa described a need to draw from what was immediately around him; Ghana became independent when he was in high school, and much of his education had been focused on western art and art history, and so he felt called to 'go back and retrieve' aspects of Ghanaian culture that had been suppressed, something he described as a sort of "quest for self-discovery."
== Exhibitions ==
Anatsui's career grew gradually, starting in his home village of Nsukka before branching off to places such as Enugu and Lagos, and eventually internationally. In 1990, Anatsui had his first important group show at the Studio Museum In Harlem, New York. He also was one of three artists singled out in the 1990 exhibition "Contemporary African Artists: Changing Traditions", which was extended for five years.
Anatsui has since exhibited his work around the world, including at the Brooklyn Museum (2013); the Clark Art Institute (2011); the Rice University Art Gallery, Houston (2010); the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2008–09); the National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. (2008); the Fowler Museum at UCLA (2007); the Venice Biennale (1990 and 2007); the Hayward Gallery (2005); the Liverpool Biennial (2002); the National Museum of African Art (2001); the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (2001); the 8th Osaka Sculpture Triennale (1995); the 5th Gwangju Biennale (2004); the Arab Museum of Modern Art in Doha (2019); and the Kunstmuseum Bern (2020).
In 1995, Anatsui held his first solo exhibition outside of Africa in London. He expressed a variety of themes and demonstrated how African art can be shown in a multitude of ways that are not seen as "typical" African. His work utilized conceptual modes used by European and American artists but hardly in African countries. Anatsui showed his work at the de Young Museum in San Francisco in 2005. This was his first time "appear[ing] as part of the permanent collection in a major art museum". Also in 2005, his exhibition at New York's Skoto Gallery, "Danudo," was the first display of his metal sheets in an American city. At this gallery, Skoto Aghahowa presented Anatsui's wood wall panels alongside Sol LeWitt's drawings. This exhibition popularized his bottle-cap works as he gained more recognition in the press.
Anatsui was invited to the Venice Biennale in 2006 and again in 2007 where he was commissioned to make two hanging metal tapestries. During the 2007 edition, he exhibited his works at the Palazzo Fortuny which consisted of newly built walls for him to display three metal hangings entitled Dusasa. Each artwork demonstrated different textures and colors including golds, reds, and blacks. The way the bottle tops draped throughout the hangings created a sense of gentleness that made it stand apart from the other works in the gallery. The art curator of the Biennale, Robert Storr, mentions that the artist's series "reaches back into a whole series of things in the postwar period-it has a kind of exaltation I have not seen before". During this Venetian showing, Anatsui wanted to create a new experience for his viewers conceptually. He believes that "human life is not something which is cut and dried. It is something that is constantly in a state of change." At this point, he began to refer his metalworks as hangings instead of "cloths".
A 2010 retrospective of his work, entitled When I Last Wrote to You About Africa, was organized by the Museum for African Art and opened at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It subsequently toured venues in the United States for three years, concluding at the University of Michigan Museum of Art.
A major exhibition of recent works, entitled Gravity & Grace: Monumental Works by El Anatsui, had its New York premiere at the Brooklyn Museum in 2013. Organized by the Akron Art Museum (exhibition: 2012), the exhibition later traveled to the Des Moines Art Center (2013–14) and the Bass Museum of Art in Miami (2014).
A career-spanning survey of his work, organized by Okwui Enwezor and Chika Okeke-Agulu, entitled Triumphant Scale drew record-breaking crowds when it opened, in March 2019 at Munich's Haus der Kunst. From there, the show travelled to the Arab Museum of Modern Art, in Doha, and later to the Kunstmuseum Bern in 2020.
Anatsui was selected for the 2023 Hyundai Commission at the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern; a vast display space for large-scale sculptural and site-specific artworks. His work, "Behind the Red Moon," is made of thousands of metal bottle tops and fragments, building upon his work with materials linked to the transatlantic slave trade, and will be on view through April 14, 2024.
== Other activities ==
Anatsui was selected to be a member of the International Society for Education through Art (InSEA) world council in 1992 for his work in education. Anatsui was a founding member and fellow of the Forum for African Arts in 2000. That year he also became a member of the International Selection Committee for the Dakar Biennale in Senegal. In 2001 he was a fellow at the Civitella Ranieri Foundation in Italy.
== Recognition ==
=== Awards ===
Anatsui won an honorable mention at the First Ghana National Art Competition as an undergraduate student in 1968. The following year he was awarded the Best Student of the Year at the College of Art in Kumasi, Ghana. In 1983 he won a commission for two large public sculptures made of terrazzo-surfaced cement on the Nsukka campus. He was selected to be one of ten artists invited to the Zweites Symposium Nordesekkuste residency in Cuxhaven, West Germany, in 1984.
In 1990, Anatsui was invited to the 44th annual Venice Biennale show 5 Contemporary African Artists, where he received an honorable mention. That year he was included in the American documentary Nigerian Art-Kindred Spirits.
In 2015, the Venice Biennale awarded Anatsui the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement. In 2017, Anatsui was awarded the Praemium Imperiale, the first Ghanaian to win this international art prize.
Other awards include:
1990 – Public Prize, 7th Annual Triennale der Kleinplastik
1995 – Kansai Telecasting Prize, 6th Osaka Sculpture Triennial
1998 – Bronze Prize, 9th Osaka Sculpture Triennial
2008 – Visionaries! Award, Museum of Arts and Design (MAD)
2009 – Prince Claus Award
2009 – Artist Honoree, 30th Anniversary Celebration, National Museum of African Art
2016 – Honorary doctorate, Harvard University
2017 – Honorary doctorate, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology
2023 – Time 100
2024 – Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts, Bard College
== See also ==
Big 4 (statue)
== Footnotes ==
== Further reading ==
(in French) "EL Anatsui, Tsiatsia", Le Delarge, read online.
"El Anatsui (born 1944), Sculptor", Benezit Dictionary of Artists, read online, ISBN 978-0-19-989991-3.
Anatsui, El and Laura Leffler James, "Convergence: History, Materials, and the Human Hand--An Interview with El Anatsui," Art Journal, Vol. 67, No. 2 (Summer, 2008), pp. 36-53, read online
Binder, Lisa M., "Anatsui, El (born 1944), sculptor", Grove Art Online, read online, ISBN 978-1-884446-05-4.
Binder, Lisa M., "El Anatsui: Transformations," African Arts Vol. 41, No. 2 (Summer, 2008), pp. 24-37, read online
Chilvers, Ian and John Glaves-Smith, "Anatsui, El (1944–)", A Dictionary of Modern and Contemporary Art, read online, ISBN 978-0-19-172675-0.
Enwezor, Okwui and Chika Okeke-Agulu, El Anatsui: The Reinvention of Sculpture, Damiani, 2022 [1] ISBN 9788862087636
Gayer, J. (2008). El Anatsui : Gawu. Espace, (86), 39–40. id.erudit.org/iderudit/9058ac
Jennifer, Anne Hart, "El Anatsui (1944)", Dictionary of African Biography, read online, ISBN 978-0-19-985725-8.
LaGamme, Alisa, "The Essential Art of African Textiles: Design without End," African Arts Vol. 42, No. 1 (Spring, 2009), pp. 88-99, read online
Oguibe, Olu. "El Anatsui: Beyond Death and Nothingness", African Arts, Vol.31, No.1 (1988), pp. 48–55+96, El Anatsui: Beyond Death and Nothingness
Ottenberg, Simon, New Traditions from Nigeria: Seven Artists of the Nsukka group, Smithsonian Institution Press 1997, ISBN 978-1-56098-800-7
Sollins, Marybeth (2012). art:21 vol.6. Art21, Inc. p. 31. ISBN 978-0-615-54566-0.
Vogel, Susan Mullin (2012). El Anatsui. Prestal. ISBN 9783791346502.
== External links ==
El-Anatsui.com
"El Anatsui" at Praemium Imperiale.
QuickTime Virtual Reality Image of "Akua's Surviving Children" at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, by Jonathan Greet
Doug Britt, "El Anatsui lets chance, collaboration into his work" Archived 31 January 2010 at the Wayback Machine, Houston Chronicle, 25 January 2010.
Inception Gallery Contemporary Art Archived 15 October 2013 at archive.today
El Anatsui piece at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art
"El Anatsui", Art21. (n.d.). Retrieved 8 December 2016.
'The Installation of El Anatsui's "Dusasa l" (The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art). Retrieved 17 January 2017. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Rugby_Europe_Championship#Fixtures | 2022 Rugby Europe Championship | The 2022 Rugby Europe Championship was the sixth Rugby Europe Championship, the annual rugby union for the top European national teams outside the Six Nations Championship, and the 52nd edition of the competition (including all its previous incarnations as the FIRA Tournament, Rugby Union European Cup, FIRA Nations Cup, FIRA Trophy and European Nations Cup).
The 2022 Championship was contested by Georgia, The Netherlands, Portugal, Romania, Russia and Spain.
Georgia enter the tournament as defending champions. They topped the table after winning all of their matches in the 2021 tournament, claiming their 13th title and 10th Grand Slam as a result.
As in several other sports, Russia were disqualified after Week 3 due to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.
This year's edition of the Rugby Europe Championship doubles as the second year of the 2023 Rugby World Cup qualifiers for the European region. The winner and runner-up of the two-year cycle automatically qualify for the tournament as Europe 1 and Europe 2 respectively while the team in third place advances to the final qualification tournament as Europe 3.
== Participants ==
== Table ==
== Fixtures ==
=== Week 1 ===
Touch judges:
George Selwood (England)
Mike Woods (England)
Television match official:
Rowan Kitt (England)
Touch judges:
Manuel Bottino (Italy)
Leonardo Masini (Italy)
Television match official:
Emanuele Tomo (Italy)
Touch judges:
Ludovic Cayre (France)
Stéphane Boyer (France)
Television match official:
Denis Grenouillet (France)
=== Week 2 ===
Touch judges:
Federico Vedovelli (Italy)
Filippo Bertelli (Italy)
Television match official:
Stefano Roscini (Italy)
Touch judges:
Cédric Marchat (France)
Stéphane Crapoix (France)
Television match official:
Patrick Pechambert (France)
Touch judges:
Oisin Quinn (Ireland)
Nigel Correll (Ireland)
Television match official:
Leo Colgan (Ireland)
=== Week 3 ===
Touch judges:
Riccardo Angelucci (Italy)
Simone Boaretto (Italy)
Television match official:
Alan Falzone (Italy)
Touch judges:
Graeme Ormiston (Scotland)
Jonny Perriam (Scotland)
Television match official:
Neil Paterson (Scotland)
Georgia awarded 4 points.
=== Week 4 ===
Netherlands awarded 4 points.
Touch judges:
Gareth Newman (Wales)
Mark Butcher (Wales)
Television match official:
Elgan Williams (Wales)
Touch judges:
David Beun (France)
Christophe Bultet (France)
Television match official:
Eric Briquet-Campin (France)
=== Week 5 ===
Touch judges: Ru Campbell (Scotland) Bob Nevins (Scotland) Television match official: Andrew Mac Menemy (Scotland)
Portugal awarded 4 points.
Touch judges: Ben Breakspear (Wales) Ian Davies (Wales) Television match official: Jon Mason (Wales)
== International broadcasters ==
== See also ==
Rugby Europe International Championships
Antim Cup
Kiseleff Cup
== References == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Teng-hui | Lee Teng-hui | Lee Teng-hui (Chinese: 李登輝; pinyin: Lǐ Dēnghuī; 15 January 1923 – 30 July 2020) was a Taiwanese statesman, economist, and agronomist who served as the president of the Republic of China and chairman of the Kuomintang from 1988 to 2000. He was the first president to be born in Taiwan, the last to be indirectly elected, and the first to be directly elected.
Born in Taihoku Prefecture, Lee was raised under Japanese rule. He was educated at Kyoto Imperial University and served in the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II before graduating from National Taiwan University. He then studied agricultural economics in the United States, where he earned his doctorate from Cornell University in 1968, beginning a career as an economics professor. As a member of the Kuomintang (KMT), he was appointed Mayor of Taipei in 1978 and became governor of Taiwan Province in 1981 under President Chiang Ching-kuo. Lee succeeded Chiang as president after Chiang's death in 1988.
During his presidency, Lee oversaw the end of martial law in Taiwan and led reforms to democratize the Republic of China. He was an advocate of the Taiwanese localization movement, sought to establish greater international recognition of the country, and has been credited as the president who completed Taiwan's democratic transition. After leaving office, he remained active in Taiwanese politics as a major influence on the pro-independence Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU), and recruited for the party in the past. After Lee campaigned for TSU candidates in the 2001 Taiwanese legislative election, he was expelled by the KMT. His post-presidency was also marked by efforts to maintain greater relations between Taiwan and Japan.
== Early life ==
Lee was born on January 23, 1923, in the rural farming community of Sanshi Village near the fishing and trading town of Tamsui (now Tamsui District). He was of Hakka Chinese descent, with his ancestral home in Yongding, Tingzhou. His grandfather was a village leader in Sanshi, and his father, Li Chin-lung, was a policeman who graduated from a Japanese police academy, owned land, and oversaw an irrigation service while working for the colonial Japanese government. Lee's mother also came from a local landowning family. He had an older brother, Lee Teng-chin (李登欽), who joined the colony's police academy, volunteered for the Imperial Japanese Navy, and was killed in action in the Philippines; his body is interned at the controversial Yasukuni Shrine in Japan.
When he was three years old, Lee and his brother were sent by their grandfather, Li Tsai-sheng, to a school which taught Chinese and Japanese; they were required to memorize Confucian and Chinese classics, including the Three Character Classic. Because his father, working in Taihoku Prefecture, was often transferred to different police precincts, Lee became a pupil at four different elementary schools in Xizhi (Hsi-chih), Nangang, Sanshi, and Tamsui. In 1929, while attending the Hsi-chih Common School, where most teachers were Japanese, he was selected as the class leader (head boy) and was considered one of the most outstanding students out of 47 pupils. He learned Chinese calligraphy and Japanese history before being transferred eventually to the Tamsui Common School, where he graduated in March 1935, ranked second out of 104 students. He sat the entrance examinations and applied to Taipei's top middle schools, but was rejected twice as the schools prioritized Japanese enrollment. He continued studying for the examinations at a juku and, in 1937, enrolled in the private Kuo-min Middle School (now Datong High School) in Taipei in 1938. A classmate, Lin Kai-pi, recalled: "He was very diligent and rarely played with us. Though he was taciturn, he was congenial and honest. He seemed to be blessed with a retentive memory. Fifteen years after our graduation, I could no longer recognize him, but he still called me by my name".
As a child, Lee learned Zen Buddhism, developed an interest in Western classical music, and read Western philosophy—including transcendentalist works, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe—in Japanese translations. In 1935, the Japanese colonial government reformed educational institutions in accordance with wartime demands of "Shintoism, state (kokutai), and indoctrination". As part of these reforms, Tamsui Middle School established a dojo for Japanese martial arts; Lee trained in calisthenics, judo, kendo, and attended weekly military drills. He performed exceptionally and was chosen to carry the school's hinomaru as the top student of his class. By 1940, the Kōminka movement and increasing pressure to Japanize led Lee's father to give the family Japanese names in place of their Chinese names. Teng-chin took the name Iwasato Takenori (岩里武則) and Teng-hui Iwasato Masao (岩里政男). Lee later recalled that, until he was 22 years old, he "always considered himself a Japanese".
Lee graduated from Tamsui in 1941, completing his courses in four years as opposed to the usual five. He was admitted to continue his studies at the prestigious Taihoku Higher School (now National Taiwan Normal University), a Japanese-dominated higher school established in 1925 to send students for specialized studies at a college or university. Most students were sons of high-ranking Japanese officials or professionals; Taiwanese students that were able to gain admission were considered the best in Taiwan. Lee, one of only four Taiwanese students in his class, decided to study agricultural economics with the intent to work at the Southern Manchuria Railway Company after graduation. It normally took three years for a student to complete all the required courses but accelerated curriculum changes during World War II meant that he completed examinations after only two.Lee was a versatile student who was "an intense, tireless and voracious reader, with wide-ranging interests". Although he wanted to pursue his favorite subject, history, as a history teacher, he chose economics for better career prospects. He studied Japanese culture extensively and read the Kojiki, revered emperor Hirohito, and idolized Japanese historian Motoori Norinaga, author of the Kojiki-den, and colonial apologist Nitobe Inazō, whose 1899 Bushido: The Soul of Japan deeply influenced him. He also read The Pillow Book, The Tale of Genji, and was especially influenced by The Tale of the Heike and shosetsu works by Japanese writer Jirō Abe (1883–1959) and Hyakuzō Kurata. His favorite autobiographical novelist was Natsume Sōseki. In addition, he read Japanese translations of T. E. Lawrence, The Evolution of Physics, and the treatises of Immanuel Kant (translated by Kitaro Nishida). By the time he arrived at Taihoku High School, Lee owned a collection of more than 700 volumes of books published by Iwanami Shoten. He graduated from Taihoku with honors.
=== Education in Japan and World War II ===
With the Pacific War escalating, Lee decided to leave Taiwan to attend college in Japan and took the highly competitive Japanese college entrance exam in the summer of 1943. Despite having to score significantly higher than Japanese students to be considered, Lee was admitted to Kyoto Imperial University and was awarded a scholarship, a great honor for a Taiwanese student. He sailed to Japan and enrolled in the university's Faculty of Agriculture, which was considered the leading department of its field in the country at the time. He was especially interested in Karl Marx, Marxian economics, and admired Marxist economist Hajime Kawakami, whose philosophy influenced much of the faculty at Kyoto, and Thomas Carlyle. He took multiple courses in German (his preferred foreign language) and English, but continued to rely on Japanese translations for reading Carlyle, Goethe, and Faustian literature. He was a student at Kyoto Imperial University for 14 months between 1943 and 1944 before the war and mass mobilization in Japan interrupted his studies.
Lee left Kyoto to volunteer for service in the Imperial Japanese Army as one of 36 Taiwanese volunteers from the Kansai region. In December 1944, he was sent back to Taiwan to be stationed at an anti-aircraft unit in Kaohsiung. He then was ordered to return to Japan in January 1945 to train at an anti-aircraft military academy in Chiba Prefecture. While sailing from Taiwan to Japan, he stayed briefly in Japanese-occupied Qingdao—his first time setting foot in mainland China. Once in Japan, he studied radar operation and trained alongside kamikaze pilots as a member of the academy's eleventh class, graduating in April 1945 with the rank of second lieutenant. He was stationed at Nagoya and witnessed the city's bombing. According to biographer Shih-shan Tsai: "instead of shooting down enemy aircraft, all he could and did do was to bring the wounded to the hospital, help children and the elderly evacuate to the country from Nagoya, drill civilian volunteers in fighting with bamboo spears, and dig pillboxes along Ise Bay to prepare for an American invasion".
When the Surrender of Japan was announced, Lee was discharged from Nagoya and traveled to Tokyo, where he met with other Taiwanese students. Beginning in October 1945, when prominent Japanese Communists Maruyama Masao, Hisao Ōtsuka, and Fukutake Tadashi were released from prison and reformed the Japanese Communist Party, Lee and other Taiwanese students began a renewed interest in Communist literature. Lee read multiple Japanese translations of Marx's Das Kapital and went to Tokyo Station to welcome Communist leader Sanzō Nosaka's return from China and Russia. He enrolled in Kyoto Imperial University again and graduated in 1946.
=== Return to Taiwan ===
In the spring of 1946, Lee left Japan, returning to Taiwan in March on an American liberty ship. With the Retrocession of Taiwan transferring governance of the island to the Republic of China, the mainland Ministry of Education allowed all Taiwanese students previously enrolled in the Imperial Universities to enroll at National Taiwan University (NTU; previously Taihoku Imperial University), which Lee did, joining the university's Department of Agricultural Economics as one of its only two students. He had two professors, one of whom was Hsu Ching-chung, who later served as vice premier. Also at this time, Lee began reading more deeply into Chinese literature, especially the works of Hu Shih, Guo Moruo, and Lu Xun. His worldview was also influenced by reading Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Idiot. He continued an interest in Marxism, joining a Marxist study club at NTU and writing his undergraduate thesis, "A Study of the Problems of Taiwan’s Agricultural Labor," by applying Marxist class struggle and surplus labour theories. He briefly joined the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) twice—once in September 1946 and again in either October or November 1947—but withdrew his membership both times.
Following the recommendation of communist youth leader Wu Ke-tai, Lee joined the New Democracy Association, a secret communist group, in October 1947, but withdrew six months later in June 1948. Members of both the New Democracy Association and the Marxist study club were later arrested in May 1950. Lee's close association with Taiwanese communist groups as a student became the subject of scrutiny later in life. In 1969, he was arrested by KMT secret police but released after a series of investigations and interrogations. Years later, in 2002, Lee recalled the reason for joining communist groups as being "out of a young man's naive vision for his country".
== Economist and professor (1949–1971) ==
When tensions between the government and Taiwanese natives escalated in the 1947 February 28 incident, Lee survived by rooming with friends and opening a bookstore on Zhongshan Road. He overcame an initially poor comprehension of Mandarin Chinese (Guoyu) to graduate from National Taiwan University in the summer of 1949 with a bachelor's degree in agricultural economics. After graduation, he applied for and won a one-year scholarship offered by the United States Department of State to study in the U.S. He chose to attend Iowa State University, completing seven courses there in accounting, economic statistics, and agricultural marketing. He received his Master of Arts in agricultural economics in 1953. Upon returning to Taiwan, he was appointed a lecturer at National Taiwan University and taught undergraduate courses in banking, marketing, finance, and plant pathology as a popular teacher among students. To supplement his salary, he first worked as a technician at the Ministry of Agriculture then, in 1954, as a research fellow at the Taiwan Cooperative Bank.
In 1957, Lee began a career as an economist, senior specialist, and consultant on the Joint Commission on Rural Reconstruction (JCRR), a U.S.-sponsored commission to modernize Taiwan's agricultural system. He was eventually appointed a project head of the JCRR's Division of Rural Economics under economist Hsieh Sam-chung, and began publishing in international academic agriculture journals under the name "T. H. Lee" while continuing to teach at NTU as a professor. He also taught at the Graduate School of East Asian Studies at National Chengchi University. In 1965, the Rockefeller Foundation awarded Lee a scholarship to pursue doctoral studies at Cornell University; he departed Taiwan for the U.S. in September, enrolling in Cornell's New York State College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.
Lee spent his first two years at Cornell studying agricultural finance, econometrics, quantitative analysis, developmental economics, production economics, food distribution, and public policy. He divided his time between the School of Applied Economics and Management, Olin Library, and the Albert R. Mann Library. Economics professor Kenneth L. Robinson described Lee as "very reserved, very able and very conscientious". Bernard F. Stanton, a professor of agricultural economics at Cornell, recalled: "Lee’s great strength was in his intellectual capacity and his ideas. He was very serious, and he came to Cornell with specific ideas on what he wanted to accomplish with his thesis". Another professor, Daniel G. Sisler, recalled: "He wouldn’t be out playing volleyball with other graduate students or down at a bar in Collegetown. He was very quiet, very studious and personally dedicated to his work and to Taiwan. I gave him an A in a course on research methods, and I don’t give out many A’s". John Williams Mellor, who supervised Lee's doctoral dissertation, remembered Lee as "a very mature, thoughtful student with an absolutely first-rate analytical mind".Among the Taiwanese classmates at Cornell Lee became acquainted with was Peter Huang, who attempted to assassinate Chiang Ching-kuo in 1970. Because of his connections to Taiwanese communists, Huang, and a friendship with independence activist Peng Ming-min, Lee was placed on a KMT blacklist. While studying in the U.S., he observed the Vietnam War protests and the civil rights movement, both of which influenced his views on democratizing Taiwan.
In June 1968, Lee graduated from Cornell and earned his Ph.D. in agricultural economics with honors. His dissertation, "Intersectoral Capital Flows in the Economic Development of Taiwan, 1895–1960," won the American Agricultural Economics Association's award for the most outstanding thesis of the year in 1969. With the backing of Professor Mellor and the Rockefeller Foundation, the dissertation was published by Cornell University Press as a 201-page monograph in 1971. The university later established an endowed professorship, the Lee Teng-hui Professorship of World Affairs, in Lee's honor in 1994.
== Rise to power ==
By 1970, Lee had developed a scholarly reputation for agricultural economics expertise among colleagues at the Joint Commission on Rural Reconstruction and National Taiwan University. One of his colleagues and close friends, the high-ranking KMT official Wang Tso-jung, introduced Lee to general Wang Sheng, who in turn arranged a meeting between Lee and Chiang Ching-kuo to address potential methods to improve agriculture in Taiwan. The meeting proved pivotal for Lee, who impressed Chiang; Wang urged him to join the KMT in the summer of 1970 and enter government service. Lee did so in July 1970, being sworn in as a member of the Kuomintang at the KMT Central Committee in Taipei with Wang and his wife as witnesses. When Chiang Ching-kuo succeeded Chiang Kai-shek as premier on June 1, 1972, he appointed Lee as a minister without portfolio in the Executive Yuan responsible for agricultural development on June 2. But, unaware of the appointment, Lee had been preparing to accept a postdoctoral research position at Cornell, which he eventually chose to withdraw. He was sworn in by Chiang as the cabinet's youngest minister at 49 years old.
As a new minor cabinet official, Lee was largely ignored by high-ranking officials but gradually began to exercise greater discretion over agricultural affairs since the country lacked a ministry of agriculture. Among the projects Chiang tasked Lee with was his "Ten Major Development Projects", which aimed to achieve economic success by developing transportation, industrialization, and agricultural productivity. During the 1970s, Lee was responsible for overseeing that agricultural development complimented Chiang's industrial growth projects. He advocated for greater funding for schools, rural running water systems, and published over 100 papers on agricultural development in Taiwan. Lee described his role as "a position to recommend policies designed to secure the livelihood of farmers, who constituted the overwhelming majority of the population, and at the same time ensure the smooth progress of industrialization. My basic approach was a combination of Sun Yat-sen’s idea about ‘distribution of the rights of landownership’ and T. W. Schultz’s warning not to isolate agriculture from the nonagricultural sectors".
The death of Chiang Kai-shek on April 5, 1975, initiated a power vacuum that saw Yen Chia-kan elected president and Ching-kuo made head of the powerful Central Standing Committee of the KMT. Three years later, Ching-kuo succeeded Yen as president and, following Chiang's recommendation, Premier Sun Yun-suan appointed Lee Mayor of Taipei on June 9, 1978. He solved water shortages and improved the city's irrigation problems. In 1981, he became governor of Taiwan Province and made further irrigation improvements.
As a skilled technocrat, Lee soon caught the eye of President Chiang Ching-kuo as a strong candidate to serve as vice president. Chiang sought to move more authority to the benshengren (residents of Taiwan before 1945 and their descendants) instead of continuing to promote waishengren (Chinese immigrants who arrived in Taiwan after 1945 and their descendants) as his father had. President Chiang nominated Lee to become his Vice President. Lee was formally elected by the National Assembly in 1984.
== Presidency (1988–2000) ==
Chiang Ching-kuo died in January 1988, and Lee Teng-hui succeeded him as president. Within the KMT, debates soon emerged over Lee’s succession to the party chairmanship. While Palace Faction figures, notably General Hau Pei-tsun, Premier Yu Kuo-hwa and former first lady Soong Mei-ling, expressed reservations toward Lee’s leadership, while KMT Secretary-General Lee Huan supported Lee's appointment as chairman, viewing it as a necessary move to counter Yu's growing influence. With the help of James Soong—himself a member of the Palace Faction—who quieted the hardliners with the famous plea "Each day of delay is a day of disrespect to Ching-kuo," Lee was allowed to ascend to the chairmanship unobstructed. At the 13th National Congress of Kuomintang in July 1988, Lee named 31 members of the Central Committee, 16 of whom were benshengren: for the first time, benshengren held a majority in what was then a powerful policy-making body. On 20 March, he ordered the release of political prisoner Gen. Sun Li-jen from 33 years of house arrest. In August, he listened to the aboriginal legislator Tsai Chung-han's advocacy in the General Assembly of Legislative Yuan and the journalism reportage of Independence Evening Post on the human rights' concern to release the remaining survivors of the civilian Tanker Tuapse free after 34 years in captivity. Lee Teng-hui also intervened in the selection of the vice president of the Legislative Yuan that year, replacing the hardliner Chao Tzu-chi, who was supported by Legislative Yuan presidential candidate Liu Kuo-tsai, with the more moderate Liang Su-yung. Two years later, Liang succeeded Liu as president of the Legislative Yuan.
While Lee Teng-hui is credited with advancing Taiwan's democratization, his tenure was also marked by controversies surrounding black gold politics and populism. The term "black gold politics" refers to the involvement of organized crime in local politics, leading to corruption and the entanglement of political figures with criminal elements. This phenomenon has been linked to populist policies that, while appealing to the masses, sometimes overlooked institutional integrity and governance standards. Critics argue that these issues not only compromised the political environment but also hindered effective governance during Lee's administration.
As he consolidated power during the early years of his presidency, Lee allowed his rivals within the KMT to occupy positions of influence: when Yu Guo-hwa retired as premier in 1989, he was replaced by Lee Huan, who was succeeded by Hau Pei-tsun in 1990. At the same time, Lee made a major reshuffle of the Executive Yuan, as he had done with the KMT Central Committee, replacing several elderly waishengren with younger benshengren, mostly of technical backgrounds. Fourteen of these new appointees, like Lee, had been educated in the United States. Prominent among the appointments were Lien Chan as foreign minister and Shirley Kuo as finance minister.
On 11 February 1990, the KMT convened an extraordinary Central Committee meeting that formally nominated Lee Teng-hui and Lee Yuan-tsu as the party's candidates for president and Vice President. During the session, Li Huan immediately raised his hand in opposition to the acclamation vote, arguing that the nomination should be decided by secret ballot rather than unanimous applause. Lin Yang-kang subsequently supported Li's proposal, requesting that the chairman suspend the meeting to print ballots and hold a vote in the afternoon to determine whether the decision would be made by standing acclamation or by secret ballot.
Their remarks were widely interpreted as a public break with Lee Teng-hui. However, meeting chairperson Hsieh Tung-min refused to adjourn and promptly proceeded with the acclamation vote. Because Li Huan, Lin Yang-kang, and Hau Pei-tsun had openly advocated a ballot vote, their actions were seen as revealing the intentions of the so-called “non-mainstream faction” to challenge Lee's leadership. The confrontation also led many Central Committee members to refrain from opposing Lee, reportedly out of fear of “unpredictable political consequences.” Of the 180 Central Committee members present, 99 voted in favor of proceeding by acclamation, while 70 supported a ballot vote. This power struggle is known as February Political Struggle
In early March 1990, a group of National Assembly delegates led by Teng Chie attempted to nominate former Judicial Yuan President Lin Yang-kang for the presidency, with General Chiang Wei-kuo, as his running mate. The proposed "Lin–Chiang ticket" represented conservative discontent within the Kuomintang against Lee's leadership. Although a mobilization meeting was held at the Tri-Service Officers’ Club, where anti-Lee pamphlets were circulated accusing him of being sympathetic to communism, both Lin and Chiang declined to actively campaign. Lin later announced his withdrawal on March 9, followed by Chiang's statement of “advancing and retreating together.” The challenge quickly collapsed, consolidating Lee's authority within the party and clearing the path for his election as president.
1990 saw the arrival of the Wild Lily student movement on behalf of full democracy for Taiwan. Thousands of Taiwanese students demonstrated for democratic reforms. The demonstrations culminated in a sit-in demonstration by over 300,000 students at Memorial Square in Taipei. Students called for direct elections of the national president and vice president and for a new election for all legislative seats. On 21 March, Lee welcomed some of the students to the Presidential Building. He expressed his support of their goals and pledged his commitment to full democracy in Taiwan.
In May 1991, Lee spearheaded a drive to eliminate the Temporary Provisions Effective During the Period of Communist Rebellion, laws put in place following the KMT arrival in 1949 that suspended the democratic functions of the government. In December 1991, the original members of the Legislative Yuan, elected to represent Chinese constituencies in 1948, were forced to resign and new elections were held to apportion more seats to the benshengren. The elections forced Hau Pei-tsun from the premiership, a position he was given in exchange for his tacit support of Lee. He was replaced by Lien Chan, then an ally of Lee.
The prospect of the first island-wide democratic election the next year, together with Lee's June 1995 visit to Cornell University, sparked the Third Taiwan Strait Crisis. The United States had not prepared the PRC for Lee receiving a United States visa. While in the United States, Lee stated, "Taiwan is a country with independent sovereignty."
The PRC conducted a series of missile tests in the waters surrounding Taiwan and other military maneuvers off the coast of Fujian in response to what Communist Party leaders described as moves by Lee to "split the motherland". The PRC government launched another set of tests just days before the election, sending missiles over the island to express its dissatisfaction should the Taiwanese people vote for Lee. In 1996, the United States sent two aircraft carrier groups to Taiwan's vicinity and the PRC then de-escalated. The military actions disrupted trade and shipping lines and caused a temporary dip in the Asian stock market.
Lee's overall stance on Taiwanese independence during the election cycle was characterized as "deliberately vague".
The previous eight presidents and vice presidents of the ROC had been elected by the members of the National Assembly. For the first time, the President of the ROC would be elected by majority vote of Taiwan's population. On 23 March 1996, Lee became the first popularly elected ROC president with 54% of the vote. Many people who worked or resided in other countries made special trips back to the island to vote. In addition to the president, the governor of Taiwan Province and the mayors of Taipei and Kaohsiung (as leaders of provincial level divisions they were formerly appointed by the president) became popularly elected.
Lee, in an interview that same year, expressed his view that a special state-to-state relationship existed between Taiwan and the People's Republic of China (PRC) that all negotiations between the two sides of the Strait needed to observe. PRC leadership interpreted this statement to mean that Taiwan would take efforts toward independence and consequently the remark increased Cross-Strait tensions.
As president, he attempted to further reform the government. Controversially, he attempted to remove the provincial level of government and proposed that lower level government officials be appointed, not elected.
Lee, observing constitutional term limits he had helped enact, stepped down from the presidency at the end of his term in 2000. That year, Democratic Progressive Party candidate Chen Shui-bian won the national election with 39% of the vote in a three-way race. Chen's victory marked an end to KMT rule and the first peaceful transfer of power in Taiwan's new democratic system.
Supporters of rival candidates Lien Chan and James Soong accused Lee of setting up the split in the KMT that had enabled Chen to win. Lee had promoted the uncharismatic Lien over the popular Soong as the KMT candidate. Soong had subsequently run as an independent and was expelled from the KMT. The number of votes garnered by both Soong and Lien would have accounted for approximately 60% of the vote while individually the candidates placed behind Chen. Protests were staged in front of the KMT party headquarters in Taipei. Fuelling this anger were the persistent suspicions following Lee throughout his presidency that he secretly supported Taiwan independence and that he was intentionally sabotaging the Kuomintang from above. Lee resigned his chairmanship on 24 March.
During his presidency, Lee supported the Taiwanese localization movement. The Taiwanization movement has its roots in Japanese rule founded during the Japanese era and sought to put emphasis on vernacular Taiwanese culture in Taiwan as the center of people's lives as opposed to Nationalist China. During the Chiang era, China was promoted as the center of an ideology that would build a Chinese national outlook in a people who had once considered themselves Japanese subjects. Taiwan was often relegated to a backwater province of China in the KMT-supported history books. People were discouraged from studying local Taiwanese customs, which were to be replaced by mainstream Chinese customs. Lee sought to turn Taiwan into a center rather than an appendage. In 1997, he presided over the adoption of the Taiwan-centric history textbook Knowing Taiwan.
== South China Sea dispute ==
Under Lee, it was stated that "legally, historically, geographically, or in reality", all of the South China Sea and Spratly islands were the territory of the Republic of China and under ROC sovereignty, and denounced actions undertaken there by Malaysia and the Philippines, in a statement on 13 July 1999 released by the foreign ministry of Taiwan. The claims made by both the PRC and the Republic of China "mirror" each other. During international talks involving the Spratly islands, the PRC and ROC have sometimes made efforts to coordinate their positions with each other since both have the same claims.
== Post-presidency ==
Since resigning the chairmanship of the KMT, Lee stated a number of political positions and ideas which he did not mention while he was president, but which he appeared to have privately maintained. After Lee endorsed the candidates of the newly formed Pan-Green Taiwan Solidarity Union, a party established by a number of his KMT allies, Lee was expelled from the KMT on 21 September 2001.
Lee publicly supported the Name Rectification Campaigns in Taiwan and proposed changing the name of the country from the Republic of China to the Republic of Taiwan. He generally opposed unlimited economic ties with the PRC, placing restrictions on Taiwanese wishing to invest in China.
After Chen Shui-bian succeeded Lee in the 2000 election, the two enjoyed a close relationship despite being from different political parties. Chen regularly asked Lee for advice during his first term in office. In Chen's 2001 book, he called Lee the "Father of Taiwanese Democracy" and also named himself the "Son of Taiwan" with respect to Lee. However, the two's relationship began to worsen when Lee questioned Chen's reform of the fisheries branch of the Council of Agriculture. Though Lee was present in the 228 Hand-in-Hand rally orchestrated by the Pan-Green Coalition before the 2004 election, the two's relationship broke apart after Chen asked James Soong to be the President of the Executive Yuan in 2005, which Lee disagreed with. Lee also publicly criticized Chen in 2006 by calling him incapable and corrupt.
In February 2007, Lee shocked the media when he revealed that he did not support Taiwanese independence, when he was widely seen as the spiritual leader of the pro-independence movement. Lee also said that he supported opening up trade and tourism with China, a position he had opposed before. Lee later explained that Taiwan already enjoys de facto independence and that political maneuvering over details of expressing it is counterproductive. He maintains that "Taiwan should seek 'normalization' by changing its name and amending its constitution."
=== Relations with Japan ===
Lee enjoyed a warm relationship with the people and culture of Japan. Lee spoke fondly of his upbringing and his teachers and was welcomed in visits to Japan since leaving office. Lee admired and enjoyed all things Japanese such as traditional Japanese values. This was the target of criticism from the Pan-Blue Coalition in Taiwan, as well as from China, due to the anti-Japanese sentiment formed during and after World War II. However, this animosity fell in later years, especially in Taiwan.
In 1989, he received the highest distinction of the Scout Association of Japan, the Golden Pheasant Award.
In August 2001, Lee said of Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's controversial visit to Yasukuni Shrine, "It is natural for a premier of a country to commemorate the souls of people who lost their lives for their country." In a May 2007 trip to Japan, Lee visited the shrine himself to pay tribute to his elder brother. Controversy rose because the shrine also enshrines World War II Class A criminals among the other soldiers.
During the 2012 China anti-Japanese demonstrations, on 13 September 2012, Lee remarked, "The Senkaku Islands, no matter whether in the past, for now or in the future, certainly belong to Japan." Ten years previously, he had stated, "The Senkaku Islands are the territory of Japan." In September 2014, Lee expressed support for a Japanese equivalent to the United States' Taiwan Relations Act, which was discussed in the Japanese Diet in February, though the idea was first proposed by Chen Shui-bian in 2006.
In 2014, Lee said in the Japanese magazine SAPIO published by Shogakukan, "China spreads lies such as Nanjing Massacre to the world ... Korea and China use invented history as their activity of propaganda for their country. Comfort women is the most remarkable example." In 2015, Lee said "The issue of Taiwanese comfort women is already solved" in the Japanese magazine Voice (published by PHP Institute). He was strongly criticized by Chen I-hsin, spokesman of the Presidential Office as "not ignorant but cold-blooded". Chen added, "If Lee Teng-hui really thinks the issue of comfort women is solved, go to a theater and see Song of the Reed."
In July 2015, Lee visited Japan, and again stated that Japan has full sovereignty over the Senkaku Islands. This was the first time Lee made remarks of this nature while in Japan. Members of the pan-Blue New Party and Kuomintang accused him of treason. New Party leader Yok Mu-ming filed charges of treason against Lee, while the KMT's Lai Shyh-bao called a caucus meeting to seek revisions to the Act Governing Preferential Treatment for Retired Presidents and Vice Presidents, aimed at denying Lee privileges as a former president.
In 2015, at an interview in Japan, Lee remarked that during the Japanese colonial period, Taiwan and Japan constituted 'one country,' and that he and his brother enlisted because they once regarded Japan as their 'motherland.' These comments drew substantial criticism from both the Pan-Blue Coalition and from authorities in mainland China. Later Lee also remarked that he felt sorrowful that Taiwanese people were "slaves" of the Japanese. In response to media requests for comment, then presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen said that “each generation and ethnic group in Taiwan has lived a different history,” and that people should approach these differing experiences and interpretations with an attitude of understanding that will allow for learning from history, rather than allowing it to be used a tool for manipulating divisions.
Lee published a book, Remaining Life: My Life Journey and the Road of Taiwan's Democracy, in February 2016. In it, he reasserted support for Japanese sovereignty claims over the Senkaku Islands, drawing complaints from the ROC Presidential Office, President-elect Tsai Ing-wen, and Yilan County fishermen.
On 22 June 2018, he visited Japan for the final time in his life.
=== Controversies and indictment ===
On 30 June 2011, Lee, along with former KMT financier Liu Tai-ying were indicted on graft and money-laundering charges and accused of embezzling US$7.79 million in public funds. He was acquitted by the Taipei District Court on 15 November 2013. Prosecutors appealed the ruling, but on 20 August 2014, Lee was cleared of the charges again.
== Controversy and Criticism ==
In 1997, Huang Kuang-kuo, a psychology professor at National Taiwan University, published A Theory of Populism Leading to Taiwan’s Demise (民粹亡臺論), in which he argued that the political climate under Lee Teng-hui was characterized by what he termed populist democracy. Huang described it as a hybrid formation resulting from the fusion of traditional East Asian political culture with Western-style democratic institutions—a political monstrosity, in his words, that operated in the name of democracy but in practice through the violence of majority rule.
Huang used the term “populism” in an unusually broad sense, encompassing what he identified as phenomena such as money politics, local “strongman” rule by criminal factions, and an entrenched bureaucratic patronage culture, which he argued had become deeply rooted in Taiwanese politics during Lee Teng-hui’s presidency. According to Huang, Lee’s brand of populism operated on the premise that “as long as the votes are secured, anything becomes legitimate”: national identity could be redefined, the constitutional structure dismantled, party loyalties traded away, and legal accountability denied. He described Taiwan as entering “a process of collective suicide under populism,” one in which past achievements were repudiated and future development obstructed, producing only “a dictator who manipulates public opinion.” Huang further contended that Taiwan had become vulnerable to waves of collective emotional pressure, leading to distorted outcomes in areas such as education reform, the planning of high-speed rail, and financial-sector restructuring, all of which he attributed to populist politics overriding rational governance.
Criticism of Lee Teng-hui was not limited to the KMT camp. Independence activist Chuang Fang-hua (莊芳華) , in her book Deconstructing Lee Teng-hui (1995), offered a sharp critique of Lee’s political conduct, arguing that he “lacked the courage to appoint principled and capable officials, instead continuing to rely on the servile bureaucrats of the Chiang family regime.” She accused Lee of “recklessly issuing political promises during local elections, misusing state resources to reward local power brokers, and aligning himself with wealthy factions to consolidate his personal influence.” Chuang further contended that Lee’s approach “encouraged the rise of underworld figures and uneducated local strongmen, resulting in a coarse and vulgar political culture within the national legislature.”
In October 2001, veteran journalists Lu Keng and Ma Xiping published Surely You Are Joking, Mr. Teng-hui, a collection of interviews with twelve political and public figures associated with Lee Teng-hui, including James Soong, Lien Chan, Lin Yang-kang, Hau Pei-tsun, Lee Yuan-tseh, and Tsai Ing-wen.
According to Lu, the project was conceived as a response to Lee's own earlier memoir-like volume The Confession of Lee Teng-hui’s Administration (李登輝執政告白實錄), published five months prior, in which Lee openly criticized several of his former political allies. Questioning the accuracy and tone of those accounts, Lu and Ma conducted follow-up interviews with the individuals mentioned to record their recollections and perspectives.
James Soong criticized Lee's policy of “streamlining the Taiwan Provincial Government” (commonly known as 精省), arguing that the measure “reduced administrative efficiency” and had been implemented “without prior consultation” with him, despite his position as the elected Governor of Taiwan Province. Nevertheless, Soong also emphasized, “Mr. Lee truly treated me like a son. The degree of trust and reliance he placed on me is beyond what outsiders can imagine.”
In his interview, former Premier and Chief of the General Staff Hau Pei-tsun challenged Lee Teng-hui's reputation as “Mr. Democracy,” accusing him of undermining institutional procedures and concentrating decision-making within his inner circle. Hau recounted that while he served as both Chief of the General Staff and later as Premier, Lee “often bypassed proper channels in joint decision-making, especially in national security matters, by directly consulting with his confidant, National Security Bureau Director Sung Hsin-lien.” Hau also alleged that Lee frequently made key political appointments — such as selecting Lien Chan as Governor of Taiwan Province and appointing Huang Ta-chou as Mayor of Taipei — without consulting him as Premier, instead simply notifying him after the decisions had been made.
Hau stated: “The resignation of a cabinet must be approved by the Central Standing Committee — that is self-evident. The appointment or removal of senior party officials has always required its consent, let alone something as significant as a cabinet’s resignation. Lee Teng-hui ignored even the Central Standing Committee; his personal dictatorship was beyond doubt.” Hau also remarked that Lee and James Soong's decision to replace secret balloting with applause-based approval during key party meetings represented “the worst example of democracy.”
In reflecting on his tenure, Hau remarked: “Lee Teng-hui said I was a black sheep? When I was Premier, law and order improved, the economy grew, the stock market soared, and black-gold virtually disappeared — these are facts. It was Lee Teng-hui who lost political power, encouraged corruption, and crashed the stock market. Who, then, was the real black sheep?” Hau expressed deep concern that Taiwan's democratization had fostered a culture of political cynicism, observing that “in the process of democratic reform, both ruling and opposition parties have come to see rumor, falsehood, defamation, and slander as normal tools of politics, eroding public trust and leaving society to believe that democracy is merely a struggle for power where moral values and social ethics no longer matter.”
Hau further accused Lee of deliberately shaping public opinion by portraying non-mainstream faction figures such as Lin Yang-kang, Hau Pei-tsun, and Lee Huan as members obstructing his administration. Hau rejected this characterization, stating that he had in fact cooperated closely with Lee, adding, “If we had truly wanted to bring Lee Teng-hui down, he would have been gone long ago.”
The interview with Lin Yang-kang focused on persistent rumors that in 1990, Lee had persuaded Lin and his running mate Chiang Wei-kuo to withdraw from the presidential race, allegedly promising not to seek re-election in 1996. Lin confirmed that Lee had indeed conveyed such an intention through intermediary Tsai Hung-wen but maintained that his withdrawal was primarily due to persuasion by senior party elders, including Huang Shao-ku, Hsieh Tung-min, Yuan Shou-chien, and Tsai Hung-wen, who wished to avoid internal division. Lin also stated that Lee's earlier memoir contained “numerous factual inaccuracies.”
A 2003 master’s thesis by De-Hui Yin of National Chengchi University analyzed Lee Teng-hui’s political discourse through the framework of populism. Yin argues that Lee framed “democracy” and “democratic reform” not only as universal political ideals but also as tools for reshaping public perception and consolidating personal authority. According to the study, Lee repeatedly invoked the discourse of democracy to: (1) justify constitutional changes that expanded presidential power, (2) construct a charismatic moral leadership image to neutralize criticism from both the Chinese Communist Party and domestic rivals, and (3) appeal to a Taiwan-centered collective identity by portraying the PRC as a hostile external threat. Yin concludes that although Lee’s administration did not rely on overt repression, his rhetorical strategies nevertheless facilitated a concentration of power in the presidency, displaying what the thesis characterizes as a “populist mode of governance.”
== Personal life ==
Lee and his wife were Presbyterian Christians. Lee encountered Christianity as a young man and in 1961 was baptised. For most of the rest of his political career, despite holding high office, Lee made a habit of giving sermons at churches around Taiwan, mostly on apolitical themes of service and humility. He was a member of the Presbyterian Church in Taiwan.
Lee's native language was Taiwanese Hokkien but his heritage language was Taiwanese Hakka, for he was fluent in the former but a basic speaker of the latter as he is of Yongding Hakka ancestral descent. He was proficient in both Mandarin and Japanese and was able to speak English well. It has been claimed that he was more proficient in Japanese than Mandarin.
=== Family ===
Lee married Tseng Wen-hui on 9 February 1949, with whom he had three children. Their firstborn son Lee Hsien-wen (c. 1950 – 21 March 1982) died of sinus cancer. Daughters Anna and Annie, were born c. 1952 and c. 1954, respectively.
=== Health ===
Shortly after stepping down from the presidency in 2000, Lee had coronary artery bypass surgery. In late 2011, he underwent surgery to remove stage II colon adenocarcinoma, the most common form of colon cancer. Two years later, he had a stent implanted in his vertebral artery following an occlusion. Lee was sent to Taipei Veterans General Hospital in November 2015 after experiencing numbness in his right hand, and later diagnosed with a minor stroke. On 29 November 2018, he was rushed to Taipei Veterans General Hospital after falling and hitting his head. He was discharged from hospital on 31 January 2019, and President Tsai Ing-wen later visited him at his home. On 8 February 2020, Lee was hospitalised at Taipei Veterans General Hospital after choking while drinking milk and retained in the hospital under observation due to lung infection concerns. Later, he was diagnosed with aspiration pneumonia caused by pulmonary infiltration, and was subsequently intubated.
=== Death ===
Lee died of multiple organ failure and septic shock at Taipei Veterans General Hospital on 7:24 pm, 30 July 2020, at the age of 97. He had suffered from infections and cardiac problems since he was admitted to hospital in February.
A state funeral was announced, while a memorial venue at the Taipei Guest House where people paid respects to Lee was opened to the public from 1 to 16 August 2020, after which Lee's body was cremated and his remains interred at Wuzhi Mountain Military Cemetery. All national flags at government institutions were placed at half-mast for three days.
== Legacy ==
For his efforts to democratise the Taiwanese government, Lee was given the nickname "Mr. Democracy" and referred to as Taiwan's "Father of Democracy".
A November 2020 phone survey of 1,076 Taiwan citizens aged 18 and above which asked the question: "Which president, after Taiwan's democratisation, do you think has the best leadership? Lee Teng-hui, Chen Shui-bian, Ma Ying-jeou, or Tsai Ing-wen?" revealed Lee topped the survey with 43 percent, with incumbent president Tsai on 32 percent, Ma on 18 percent and 6.6 percent for Chen.
The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), a Taiwanese nationalist party, viewed Lee positively and regarded him as "a beacon of hope". The DPP had grown in strength under Lee's rule and he set a precedent by presiding over the first ever peaceful transition of power to an opposition party in 2000. Conversely, Kuomintang figures held Lee responsible for destroying the party-state system and causing the party's fragmentation, and highlight his past membership in the Chinese Communist Party.
Among Chinese nationalists in both mainland China and Taiwan, Lee is a despised figure. His comments glorifying Imperial Japan and denying the Nanjing Massacre were met with sharp criticism in both mainland China and Taiwan. The Taiwan Affairs Office of the People's Republic of China called Lee a hanjian (Chinese traitor), as well as a "sinner of the Chinese race". In 2015, Kuomintang legislators as well as then-incumbent President Ma Ying-jeou accused Lee of treason, branding him as a hanjian. In August 2015, chairwoman Hung Hsiu-chu of the Kuomintang called Lee a "lunatic" for his comments about Taiwan and Japan being one nation. Lin Yu-fang of the Kuomintang further called Lee "the person least qualified to be Taiwanese. He served as a president for 12 years and never said a word for the comfort women, his legacy is stained with blood and tears. You, a running dog of Japan, when have you ever said a word for the poor Taiwanese people?" Legislator Lu Xuechang of the Kuomintang said that "Taiwan does not need traitors who sell out their country". After Lee's death, spokesperson for the Chinese ultranationalist New Party Wang Bingzhong called Lee a "traitor to the Kuomintang and China".
Prime Minister of Singapore Lee Kuan Yew criticised Lee's Taiwan independence statements, commenting that he "underestimated China's desire for reunification".
Lee's comments were also criticised by the liberal opposition within the PRC, with dissident Wang Bingzhang having accused Lee of undermining liberal democracy movements within mainland China.
== Honours ==
Republic of China:
Grand Cordon of the Order of Brilliant Jade
=== Foreign ===
Burkina Faso:
Grand Cross of the Ordre de l'Étalon, formerly National Order of Burkina Faso (July 1994)
Central African Republic:
Grand Cross of the Order of Central African Merit (May 1992)
Chad:
Grand Cross of the National Order of Chad (October 1997)
Dominican Republic:
Grand Cross with Gold Breast Star of the Order of Christopher Columbus (September 1999)
Gambia:
Commander of the Order of the Republic of The Gambia (November 1996)
Guatemala:
Grand Cross of the Order of the Quetzal (September 1985)
Guinea Bissau:
National Order of Merit, Cooperation and Development (October 1990)
Haiti:
Grand Cross of the National Order of Honour and Merit (April 1998)
Honduras:
Grand Cross with Gold Star of the Order of Francisco Morazán
Liberia:
Grand Commander of the Humane Order of African Redemption (November 1997)
Nicaragua:
Grand Cross of the Order of Miguel Larreynaga
Niger:
Grand Cross of the National Order of Niger (June 1994)
Panama:
Collar of the Order of Manuel Amador Guerrero (October 1992)
Paraguay:
Grand Collar of the National Order of Merit (June 1990)
South Africa:
Grand Officer of the Order of Good Hope (November 1991)
Grand Cross of the Order of Good Hope (September 1984)
== Selected publications ==
=== Books ===
Lee, Teng-hui (1971). Intersectoral Capital Flows in the Economic Development of Taiwan, 1895–1960. Cornell University Press. ISBN 978-0-8014-0650-8. OCLC 1086842416.
=== Articles ===
Teng-Hui, Lee (1993). "The Taiwan Experience and China's Future". World Affairs. 155 (3): 132–134. ISSN 0043-8200. JSTOR 20672353.
Teng-Hui, Lee (1993). "Building a Democracy for Unification". World Affairs. 155 (3): 130–131. ISSN 0043-8200. JSTOR 20672352.
Teng-Hui, Lee (1999). "Confucian Democracy: Modernization, Culture, and the State in East Asia". Harvard International Review. 21 (4): 16–18. ISSN 0739-1854. JSTOR 43648967.
Teng-hui, Lee (1999). "Understanding Taiwan: Bridging the Perception Gap". Foreign Affairs. 78 (6): 9–14. doi:10.2307/20049528. ISSN 0015-7120. JSTOR 20049528.
== Footnotes ==
== References ==
=== Other references ===
Tsai, Shih-shan Henry (2005). Lee Teng-hui and Taiwan's Quest for Identity. Palgrave Macmillan. doi:10.1057/9781403977175. ISBN 978-1-349-53217-9.
Hickey, Dennis V. (2006). Foreign Policy Making in Taiwan. Routledge. p. 88. ISBN 9781134003051. Archived from the original on 12 April 2023. Retrieved 18 April 2016.
Kagan, Richard C. (2007). Taiwan's Statesman: Lee Teng-hui and Democracy in Asia. Naval Institute Press. ISBN 978-1-61251-755-1.
Copper, John F. (5 August 2024). Taiwan's Presidents: Profiles of the Majestic Six. Routledge (Taylor & Francis). ISBN 978-1-040-04292-2.
== Further reading ==
Dickson, Bruce; Chao, Chien-Min (16 September 2016). Assessing the Lee Teng-hui Legacy in Taiwan's Politics: Democratic Consolidation and External Relations. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-1-315-29039-3.
Falick, Michael (12 April 2004). "America and Taiwan, 1943–2004". Archived from the original on 20 November 2008. Retrieved 12 November 2008.
Matray, James I., ed. East Asia and the United States: an encyclopedia of relations since 1784. Vol. 1 ( Greenwood, 2002) 1:346–347.
== External links ==
Friends of Lee Teng-Hui Association
"Always in My Heart" Archived 5 March 2016 at the Wayback Machine—1995 lecture delivered at Cornell University Alumni Reunion
NSYSU Lee Teng-hui Center for Governmental Studies
Corpus of Political Speeches, publicly accessible with speeches from United States, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and China, provided by *Hong Kong Baptist University Library |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elliot_Page | Elliot Page | Elliot Page (formerly Ellen Page; born February 21, 1987) is a Canadian actor, producer, and activist. He is known for his leading roles across Canadian and American film and television, and for his outspoken work as an activist for LGBTQ rights and against discrimination. His accolades include nominations for an Academy Award, three BAFTAS, two Emmys, a Golden Globe, and a SAG Award.
Page first came to recognition for his starring role in the television franchise Pit Pony (1997–2000) and his recurring roles in the series Trailer Park Boys (2002) and ReGenesis (2004). His breakthrough came with leading roles in the films Hard Candy (2005) and X-Men: The Last Stand (2006). He received critical acclaim for portraying the title character in the film Juno (2007), becoming the fourth-youngest nominee for the Academy Award for Best Actress at the time. His subsequent film credits include Whip It (2009), Super (2010), Inception (2010), X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014), Tallulah (2016), and Close to You (2023). In addition, he produced and starred in Freeheld (2015), hosted the Viceland documentary series Gaycation (2016–2017), and directed There's Something in the Water (2019). Page also portrayed Jodie Holmes in the video game Beyond: Two Souls (2013) and Vanya/Viktor Hargreeves in the Netflix series The Umbrella Academy (2019–2024).
Describing himself as a pro-choice feminist, Page has spoken out in favor of the Me Too movement, advocated for abortion rights, has called for the end of military dictatorship in Myanmar, and is also vegan. Page publicly came out as a lesbian in 2014, and that same year, was included in The Advocate's annual "40 Under 40" list. In 2015, he received the Human Rights Campaign Vanguard Award. In 2020, he came out as a trans man and took the name Elliot. In March 2021, he became the first openly transgender man to appear on the cover of Time magazine.
== Early life ==
Page was born on February 21, 1987, in Halifax, Nova Scotia, to Martha Philpotts, a teacher, and Dennis Page, a graphic designer. He was assigned female at birth and went by his given name, Ellen, prior to transitioning in 2020. Page attended the Halifax Grammar School until grade 10, and spent some time at Queen Elizabeth High School. After graduating from the Shambhala School in 2005, Page spent two years in Toronto, studying in the Interact Program at Vaughan Road Academy, along with close friend and fellow Canadian actor Mark Rendall.
== Career ==
=== Early work ===
Page first acted on camera in 1997 at the age of ten, starring as Maggie Maclean in the CBC Television movie Pit Pony, which later spun off into a television series of the same name that ran from 1999 to 2000. For the television series role, he was nominated for a Gemini Award and Young Artist Award. In 2002, Page starred as Joanie in the film Marion Bridge, which is noted for being his first feature-film role. In the same year, he was cast in the television series Trailer Park Boys in the recurring role of Treena Lahey, which he played for five episodes.
Page had roles in the films Touch & Go and Love That Boy in the early 2000s, and he also starred in the television films Homeless to Harvard: The Liz Murray Story and Ghost Cat in the same year. For Ghost Cat, he won the Gemini Award for Best Performance in a Children's or Youth Program or Series. In 2004, Page starred in the drama Wilby Wonderful, for which he won an award at the Atlantic Film Festival and was nominated for a Genie Award. Also in 2004, he had a recurring role in season 1 of the series ReGenesis as Lilith Sandström, daughter of the show's protagonist.
=== 2000s: Breakthrough and acclaim ===
In 2005, Page received recognition for his role in the movie Hard Candy, where he portrayed Hayley Stark, a teenage girl who takes a sexual predator hostage. The film was a critical and commercial success, and he received acclaim for his performance, with USA Today praising him for his role, stating that Page "manages to be both cruelly callous and likable" and gives "one of the most complex, disturbing and haunting performances of the year". For the role, he won the Austin Film Critics Association Award for Best Actress in 2006, among other awards and nominations. Also in 2005, he starred in the British film Mouth to Mouth. In 2006, Page appeared in X-Men: The Last Stand (2006) as Kitty Pryde, a girl who can walk through walls. In the previous X-Men movies, the part had been used in brief cameos played by other actors, but never as a main character. The film was a commercial success.
In 2007, he had his widespread breakthrough for his leading role as the title character, a pregnant teenager, in the coming-of-age comedy-drama film Juno. A critical and financial success, the film was widely considered to be one of the best of the 2000s, and Page's performance earned critical acclaim. Film critic A. O. Scott of The New York Times described him as "frighteningly talented ... who is able to seem, in the space of a single scene, mature beyond [his] years and disarmingly childlike", and Roger Ebert said that no other actor had a better performance in 2007 than Page, whose "presence and timing are extraordinary". For his performance, Page was nominated for several awards, including an Academy Award for Best Actress, a BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role, a Critics' Choice Award for Best Actress, a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress — Motion Picture Comedy or Musical, and a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role. He also won a Canadian Comedy Award, an Independent Spirit Award, and a Satellite Award for the role, as well as numerous critics awards, including Detroit Film Critics Society, Austin Film Critics Association and Florida Film Critics Circle. Also in 2007, he appeared in The Stone Angel, and led the films An American Crime and The Tracey Fragments, the latter of which also earned him critical acclaim, with the Boston Herald writing that "It is also a further reminder that Page is the real thing. But we knew that already". He won the Vancouver Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress in a Canadian Film, among other accolades.
In 2008, Page co-starred in the comedy-drama film Smart People, which premiered in January that year at the Sundance Film Festival, and received a mixed response from critics. In the film, he played the overachieving daughter of a college professor. On March 1, 2008, Page hosted Saturday Night Live. On May 3, 2009, he guest starred in "Waverly Hills 9-0-2-1-D'oh", an episode of The Simpsons, as the character Alaska Nebraska, a parody of Hannah Montana. In September 2009, he starred in Drew Barrymore's directorial debut, Whip It, as a member of a roller derby team. The film premiered at the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival and had its wide release on October 2, 2009.
=== 2010s: Rise to prominence ===
In August 2009, Page was cast in the big-budget Christopher Nolan science fiction film Inception, which began filming the same year. The film was released on July 16, 2010, and was a commercial success. It received widespread acclaim from critics, being hailed as one of the best films of the 2010s. Page played Ariadne, an architecture student who is a newcomer to dream espionage. The cast, including Page, earned several accolades, with Page earning nominations from the Saturn Awards and the MTV Awards. He also starred in the 2010 black comedy superhero film Super, which he accepted after seeing the script for the film. The film received mixed reviews, though Page was praised for his performance as a psychopathic teenage sidekick. In January 2010, Page began appearing in a series of advertisements for Cisco Systems, including commercials set in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia. That April, the Michael Lander film Peacock featured Page as Maggie Bailey, a struggling young mother. Page noted the film as "one of the boldest screenplays I've come across in my albeit short career; it's a character and story I can throw myself into and exactly the type of movie I love to be a part of".
In April 2011, it was announced that Page would co-star as Monica in the Woody Allen film To Rome with Love, a film told in four separate vignettes; the film was released in 2012. In June 2012, Quantic Dream announced the video game Beyond: Two Souls, in which Page portrays one of the main player characters, Jodie Holmes, through voice acting and motion-capture acting; it was released on October 8, 2013, in North America. The game polarized critics, but Page earned praise for his performance, with GamesTM calling it "truly breathtaking ... Jodie's character is one we've seen before in many films – a troubled child with a gift, haunted by spirits, struggling with growing up", but Page excelled in giving "gravity and warmth" to the character. He was given various awards and nominations for the role, including the British Academy Games Award for Best Performer. In 2013, another video game, The Last of Us, was released. Page accused the production for using his likeness without permission for the character Ellie; the character's appearance was subsequently redesigned to better reflect the actual performer's personality and make the character younger.
In 2013, Page stated that his directorial debut would be Miss Stevens, and would star Anna Faris and be produced by Gary Gilbert, Jordan Horowitz and Doug Wald; the project eventually moved forward without Page, with scriptwriter Julia Hart replacing Page as the director. Also in 2013, he co-starred in Zal Batmanglij's thriller The East, a film inspired by the experiences and drawing on thrillers from the 1970s, and he also starred in Lynn Shelton's Touchy Feely. In 2014, Page reprised his role as Kitty Pryde in X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014). The film was a major box-office success, and received positive reviews from critics, being noted as one of the best films in the X-Men franchise. Page was praised for his performance and was nominated for the Teen Choice Award for Choice Movie Scene Stealer and the Kids' Choice Award for Female Action Star. In December 2014, Page portrayed Han Solo in a staged reading of Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back.
In 2015, Page starred in and produced the film Freeheld, about Laurel Hester, which was adapted from the 2007 short film of the same name. The film received a mixed response from critics, with review site Rotten Tomatoes writing that "Freeheld certainly means well, but its cardboard characters and by-the-numbers drama undermine its noble intentions". In 2016, Page co-starred in the Netflix film Tallulah as the eponymous character; the film marked his third collaboration with director Sian Heder, and his second collaboration with Allison Janney, both of whom he worked with on Juno. In the film, his character is a young woman who abducts a baby and tries to pass it off as her own. On his acting, The Guardian wrote "...what grounds it are the terrific performances and Heder's rich direction and screenplay". In the same year, he appeared in the film Window Horses and provided the English voice of Rosy in the French film My Life as a Zucchini, the latter of which earned critical acclaim and a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.
On November 9, 2017, it was announced that Page had been cast in the main role of Vanya (later Viktor) Hargreeves in the Netflix superhero series The Umbrella Academy. The show received positive reviews from critics, and Page was acclaimed for his performance, earning a Saturn Award nomination in 2019 and winning the Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actor on Television in 2022. After Page came out as transgender, it was revealed that he would continue his role in the show, with Netflix updating Page's name across the service. In March 2022, it was announced that Page's character would return in the upcoming third season and transition to male; the character briefly comes out to his siblings during "World's Biggest Ball of Twine". Gizmodo reported that the change "was very likely done to reflect Page's own transition".
Page headlined the science-fiction film Flatliners, a remake of the 1990 film of the same title which was released in 2017, emerging as a commercial success. Flatliners was panned by critics, although Page and the ensemble cast were praised, with film critic Matt Zoller Seitz writing that "Luna and Page in particular make much stronger impressions than you might expect, given the repetitious and mostly shallow scenarios they're asked to enact ... But the choppy, cliched visuals and the script's superficial approach to the characters' predicaments ultimately undo any goodwill that the actors can generate." Also in 2017, he produced and starred in the film The Cured.
=== 2020s: Expansion and current work ===
In 2019, Page starred in the Netflix miniseries Tales of the City as Shawna Hopkins, which received positive reviews. Page, along with Ian Daniel, directed and produced the documentary There's Something in the Water, which is about environmental racism; the film premiered at the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival, and was later released on Netflix on March 27, 2020. The film received positive reviews from critics, with The Hollywood Reporter writing that the film, while "made in a standard documentary format that includes a voiceover and a tad too much weepy music", "gets its job done directly enough, underlining a situation that remains dire despite what seems to be a growing level awareness around the country". Page will next have a voice role in the upcoming film Naya Legend of the Golden Dolphin and Robodog.
In August 2021, Page collaborated with Mark Rendall for a music release on Bandcamp. The three-track EP has been described as a "lo-fi bedroom pop adventure" in the press. In August 2021, he signed an overall deal with Universal Content Productions. In September 2021, Page launched a production company, Page Boy Productions, and appointed Matt Jordan Smith to serve as Head of Development and Production. In February 2022, it was announced that Flatiron Books had acquired the publishing rights to Pageboy, a memoir written by Page, for $3 million, with the book set to release in June 2023. The memoir debuted at the top of The New York Times Best Sellers List for Nonfiction.
In October 2022, PageBoy Productions announced the project Backspot with him acting as executive producer. Filming in Toronto on the production wrapped in March 2023. In June 2023, it was reported that he served as a producer, screenwriter and actor on the upcoming drama film Close to You, which had just wrapped filming. Both films premiered at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival. Page was praised for his performance in the latter, winning an award at the 2023 Calgary International Film Festival.
As of June 2022, Page was writing a screenplay with his Mouth to Mouth co-star Beatrice Brown. In January 2025, it was announced that Page would be developing a television adaptation of Beyond: Two Souls after his production company acquired the rights from Quantic Dream. Later that same month, it was announced that Page would reunite with Christopher Nolan for The Odyssey (2026).
Page is a signatory of the Film Workers for Palestine boycott pledge that was published in September 2025.
== Personal life ==
=== Sexuality and gender ===
On February 14, 2014, Page came out as a lesbian during a speech at the Human Rights Campaign's "Time to Thrive" conference in Las Vegas. In November 2017, he claimed to have been outed at age 18 by filmmaker Brett Ratner while on the set of X-Men: The Last Stand. This was corroborated by co-star Anna Paquin, who said that she was present when Ratner made the comment. In a lengthy Facebook post, Page expressed gratitude towards people who spoke out against abuse, and expressed frustration at the pattern of those who continued to remain silent on such matters. In 2014, Page was included in The Advocate's annual "40 Under 40" list.
On December 1, 2020, Page came out on social media as a trans man, specifying his pronouns as he and they, and revealed his new name, Elliot. Page explained that his decision to speak openly about his gender identity was partially prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic, and partially by the anti-transgender rhetoric in politics and the news cycle. GLAAD spokesperson Nick Adams stated that Page "will now be an inspiration to countless trans and non-binary people". Page's former wife, Emma Portner, expressed support for him coming out that same day on her Instagram account, saying she was "so proud" of Page. Netflix tweeted: "So proud of our superhero! We love you Elliot!" Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and various celebrities including Ellen DeGeneres, Miley Cyrus, James Gunn, and Kumail Nanjiani, expressed support for Page after the announcement. That same day, Netflix announced that it would update Page's credits and metadata across all titles to reflect his name. These changes were completed by December 8, 2020.
Page appeared on the cover of the March 29 / April 5, 2021, issue of Time, making him the first openly trans man to do so. He requested that Wynne Neilly photograph him for the cover because he wanted another transgender person to be the photographer. In the featured article, he described himself as queer and non-binary, and revealed that at the time he came out, he had been recovering from undergoing top surgery (subcutaneous mastectomy), a process that he described as "life-saving". Page also revealed that at the age of nine, he first talked about his gender identity: "I felt like a boy ... I wanted to be a boy. I would ask my mom if I could be someday."
=== Relationships and marriage ===
Page had a sexual relationship with Olivia Thirlby during the filming of Juno (2007). He briefly dated Kate Mara, with whom he co-starred in Tiny Detectives (2014) and My Days of Mercy (2017), in 2014.
In 2017, Page and dancer/choreographer Emma Portner revealed that they were in a relationship. In January 2018, Page announced that they were married. They separated in mid-2020, and Page filed for divorce in January 2021; it was finalized in early 2021, though they remain close friends.
In June 2025, Page announced a relationship with actress Julia Shiplett, best known for her role in Overcompensating (2025).
=== Activism and beliefs ===
Page is vegan, and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) named him and Jared Leto the Sexiest Vegetarians of 2014. He is an atheist, and once said that religion "has always been used for beautiful things, and also as a way to justify discrimination". In 2008, Page was a self-described pro-choice feminist on abortion rights. He was one of 30 celebrities who participated in a 2008 online advertisement series for US Campaign for Burma, calling for an end to the military dictatorship in Myanmar.
== Filmography ==
=== Film ===
=== Television ===
=== Video games ===
== Awards and nominations ==
For his performance in Juno (2007), Page received several awards and nominations in Best Breakthrough Performance and Best Actress categories, winning three Teen Choice Awards, a Canadian Comedy Award and a Satellite Award, as well as nominations for two British Academy Film Awards (BAFTAs), an Academy Award (Oscar) and a Golden Globe Award. His roles in the drama films The Tracey Fragments (2007), Freeheld (2015) and Close to You (2023), the sci-fi film Inception (2010), and the superhero works X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) and The Umbrella Academy (2019–present) earned him numerous accolades.
Page hosted the television documentary series Gaycation (2016) alongside Ian Daniel, which earned him two Primetime Emmy Award nominations. He additionally served as a voice and motion capture actor in the video game Beyond: Two Souls in 2013, garnering five award nominations, including a nomination for a British Academy Games Award for Performer in 2014.
== See also ==
List of actors with Academy Award nominations
List of Canadian Academy Award winners and nominees
List of Canadian actors
List of LGBTQ Academy Award winners and nominees
List of oldest and youngest Academy Award winners and nominees – Youngest nominees for Best Actress in a Leading Role
List of transgender film and television directors
== Notes ==
== References ==
== Further reading ==
Arbuthnot, Leaf (June 30, 2019). "A Life in the Day: the Juno and X-Men actress Ellen Page". The Sunday Times.
== External links ==
Elliot Page at IMDb |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adelphi_Charter | Adelphi Charter | The Adelphi Charter on Creativity, Innovation and Intellectual Property is the result of a project commissioned by the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures & Commerce, London, England, and is intended as a positive statement of what good intellectual property policy is. The Charter was issued in 2004.
The Charter has subsequently influenced thinking on Intellectual Property Law, and in particular, heavily influenced a subsequent copyright manifesto Copyright for Creativity - A Declaration for Europe.
== Adelphi Charter on Creativity, Innovation and Intellectual Property ==
The Adelphi Charter reads:
Humanity’s capacity to generate new ideas and knowledge is its greatest asset. It is the source of art, science, innovation and economic development. Without it, individuals and societies stagnate.
This creative imagination requires access to the ideas, learning and culture of others, past and present. And, in the future, others will use what we have done.
Human rights call on us to ensure that everyone can create, access, use and share information and knowledge, enabling individuals, communities and societies to achieve their full potential.
Creativity and investment should be recognised and rewarded. The purpose of intellectual property law (such as copyright and patents) should be, now as it was in the past, to ensure both the sharing of knowledge and the rewarding of innovation.
The expansion in the law’s breadth, scope and term over the last 30 years has resulted in an intellectual property regime which is radically out of line with modern technological, economic and social trends. This disconnect threatens the chain of creativity and innovation on which we and future generations depend.
We therefore call upon governments and the international community to adopt these principles:
1. Laws regulating intellectual property must serve as means of achieving creative, social and economic ends and must not be seen as ends in themselves.
2. These laws and regulations must serve, and never overturn, the basic human rights to health, education, employment and cultural life.
3. The public interest requires a balance between the public domain and private rights. It also requires a balance between the free competition which is essential for economic vitality and the monopoly rights granted by intellectual property laws.
4. Intellectual property protection must not be extended to abstract ideas, facts or data.
5. Patents must not be extended over mathematical models, scientific theories, computer code, methods for teaching, business processes, methods of medical diagnosis, therapy or surgery.
6. Copyright and patents must be limited in time and their terms must not extend beyond what is proportionate and necessary.
7. Government must facilitate a wide range of policies to stimulate access and innovation, including non-proprietary models such as open source software licensing and open access to scientific literature.
8. Intellectual property laws must take account of developing countries’ social and economic circumstances.
9. In making decisions about intellectual property law, governments should adhere to these rules:
• There must be an automatic presumption against creating new areas of intellectual property protection, extending existing privileges or extending the duration of rights.
• The burden of proof in such cases must lie on the advocates of change.
• Change must be allowed only if a rigorous analysis clearly demonstrates that it will promote people’s basic rights and economic well-being.
• Throughout, there should be wide public consultation and a comprehensive, objective and transparent assessment of public detriments and benefits.
RSA, Adelphi, London, 13 October 2005
== Authors of the Charter ==
The Charter was prepared by an International Commission of experts from the arts, creative industries, human rights, law, economics, science, R&D, technology, the public sector and education.
Commission members at the time of publishing included;
Professor James Boyle – William Neal Reynolds Professor of Law, Duke Law School, and Faculty Co-Director, Center for the Study of the Public Domain, Duke University
Lynne Brindley – Chief Executive, British Library
Professor William Cornish – Former Herchel Smith Professor of Intellectual Property University of Cambridge
Carlos Correa – Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies on Industrial Property and Economics University of Buenos Aires;and South Centre Switzerland
Darius Cuplinskas – Director, Information Programme Open Society Institute
Carolyn Deere – Chair, Board of Directors, Intellectual Property Watch; and Research Associate, Global Economic Governance Programme, University of Oxford and University College, Oxford.
Cory Doctorow – Staff Member, Electronic Frontier Foundation; and writer
Peter Drahos – Professor of Law, Director of the Centre for Competition and Regulatory Policy, and Head, RegNet, The Australian National University
Bronac Ferran – Director, Interdisciplinary Arts Arts Council England
Dr Michael Jubb – Director, UK Research Libraries Network
Gilberto Gil – Minister of Culture, Brazil; and musician
Professor Lawrence Lessig – Chair, Creative Commons; Professor of Law and John A. Wilson Distinguished Faculty Scholar Stanford Law School
James Love – Executive Director, Consumer Project on Technology; and Co-Chair, Transatlantic Consumer Dialogue (TACD) Committee on Intellectual Property
Hector MacQueen – Professor of Private Law and Director, AHRB Research Centre on Intellectual Property and Technology Law University of Edinburgh
Professor John Naughton – Professor of the Public Understanding of Technology, Open University; Fellow of Wolfson College, Cambridge University; and columnist, 'The Observer'
Vandana Shiva – physicist, philosopher, environmental activist and writer.
Sir John Sulston – Nobel Laureate; former director, Wellcome Trust, Sanger Institute
Louise Sylvan – Deputy Chair, Australian Competition & Consumer Commission
The Director was John Howkins [1], and the Research Coordinator Dr Jaime Stapleton [2].
== References ==
Boyle, James (14 October 2005). Protecting the public domain. The Guardian.
Unknown (13 October 2005). Free Ideas. The Economist.
Thompson, Bill (17 October 2005). Copyright for the digital age. BBC.
== External links ==
Official
RSA
The Adelphi Charter
[3] Copyright for Creativity – A Declaration for Europe |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._M._Selvaganapathy# | T. M. Selvaganapathy | T. M. Selvaganapathy is an Indian politician. He was a member of Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly, elected from Tiruchengode constituency in 1991. He was also minister of Local Administration in Jayalalitha Government between 1991 and 1996. In 1999-2004 he was elected as Member of Parliament to the 13th Lok Sabha from Salem Constituency. Originally a member of Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam party, he joined Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam in August 2008. He was convicted by a trial court in Pleasant Stay hotel case on 2 February 2000 and later acquitted by the High court on 4 December 2001. He was convicted by a trial court in Colour TV scam on 30 May 2000 and was later acquitted by the High court on 4 December 2001.
In June 2010, he became a member of the Rajya Sabha. In 2014, he was convicted by a court for a financial scam, resulting in his disqualification. He became the first Tamil Nadu politician to be disqualified from the parliament for corruption.
== References ==
"Former minister TM Selvaganapathy walks free in cremation shed scam case". The New Indian Express.
"2024 Lok Sabha polls | DMK fields former Minister T.M.Selvaganapathy in Salem". The Hindu Bureau.
"Madras High Court sets aside conviction and sentence imposed on former Minister Selvaganapathy in 1995 cremation shed scam case". The Hindu Nov 28,2023. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anant_Maral_Shastri | Anant Maral Shastri | Anant Maral Shastri (1912–1999) was an Indian freedom fighter, journalist, literary figure, poet, Sanskrit scholar, linguist and administrator. At a very young age, he left Ambikapur, now in Chhattisgarh, and joined Kashi Vidyapeeth, a nationalist institution of learning in Varanasi, where he found a Guru in Acharya Narendra Dev, a great freedom fighter, scholar and teacher.
His grand father, Pandit Lal Bihari Sharma, was the official tutor of Raja Bahadur Raghunath Saran Singh Deo, Maharaja of Sarguja (1879–1917), who was the great grand father of Madaneswar Saran Singh Deo, who became Chief Secretary of Madhya Pradesh.
Pandit Lal Bihari Sharma had a huge landed property in Ambikapur, Sarguja, which his son Anant Maral, who was the only son and heir to that property, just left it when he joined Kashi Vidyapeeth and the Freedom Movement at a young age. He never returned to claim it after Independence.
== Front-ranking Freedom Fighters ==
At Kashi Vidyapeeth, Acharya Narendra Deva and Acharya JB Kriplani, both renowned freedom fighters, were Anant Maral's teachers. Lal Bahadur Shastri, who rose to become Prime Minister of India after the death of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, and Kamlapati Tripathi, who later became the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, were his contemporaries at Kashi Vidyapeeth.
== Civil Disobedience Movement 1930-32 ==
There was a two-year period between 1930 and 1932 during the Civil Disobedience Movement, when the British had gagged the press. Anant Maral went underground to evade arrest and published the Congress Bulletin and Congress Samachar from Allahabad. He used to write in his own hand and cut stencils to print copies of the Congress bulletin. He used to go on foot from one village to another to distribute it and carry forward the Congress message. He also served as the Youth League secretary in Varanasi.
== Ram Bhakti Shakha ==
After acquiring the Shastri degree, Anant Maral went from Varanasi to Lahore where, after a short stint as a college "Professor", he became Editor of Hindi Milap—a prominent newspaper. By now he was extremely popular in literary circles of Lahore. His well-researched treatise on the Bhakti Movement was published as a book titled "Ram Bhakti Shakha" in Lahore (now in Pakistan) in 1945. It was prescribed as a text book for MA Hindi Literature by the Punjab University during the pre-Independence period. Renowned Hindi scholar, dramatist and former director All India radio, Udayshankar Bhatt wrote the preface of Ram Bhakti Shakha.
== Quit India Movement and Independence ==
Anant Maral was arrested and kept at the Patna Camp jail during the Quit India Movement in 1942. Sitaram Kesri, who later became the Indian National Congress President, was one of his cell mates in the Patna Jail. At the time of Independence, he shifted to Delhi from Lahore and joined the Publications Division in Government of India, as editor of Ajkal—the highest-circulated and the most popular Hindi magazine during those days. This magazine had become a platform for many budding poets and some of them emerged as India's greatest poets during the second half of last century.
== "Bhaiyon aur Behnon" (Brothers and Sisters) ==
At Publications Division, Anant Maral also played the key role in compiling and editing Mahatma Gandhi's Prayer Speeches that were recorded earlier by All India Radio. A collection of these speeches was published as "Bhaiyon aur Behnon" (Brothers and sisters).
== Saluting the Legends ==
In 1949, Anant Maral Shastri came to Madhya Bharat as Director of Information and Publicity, a post which he also held in Madhya Pradesh after the reorganisation of States in 1956. He remained at the helm and managed the culture scene in this state for a long time (1956–71). During his tenure, two important annual events organised by the State—the famous Tansen Samaroh at Gwalior (music festival to commemorate the memory of Miyan Tansen—one of the nine gems in the court of the Moghul Emperor Akbar) and the Kalidas Kalidas Samaroh (festival) at Ujjain to salute Kalidas, the great Classical Sanskrit poet and dramatist had touched the pinnacle of glory. India's first President Dr. Rajendra Prasad had inaugurated the first Akhil Bharatiya Kalidas Samaroh (National Kalidas Festival) in 1958. Prime Minister of India, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru was the chief guest at the second. On this occasion, Nehru was presented with Kalidasa's famous work, Raghuvansh. The epic was especially translated from Sanskrit to Hindi by Anant Maral Shastri for this occasion. It was at the initiative of BV Keskar, the Union Minister for Information and Broadcasting (1952–62) that Tansen Samaroh was turned into a national Music festival and has remained a popular platform for maestros to perform. For close to two decades, Anant Maral also spearheaded Madhya Pradesh Shasan Sahitya Parishad and Kala Parishad (State Councils for Literature and Arts). The Tagore Centenary and Alauddin Khan Centenary celebrations as well as the magnificent event organised during the 1960s at Khandwa to honour Makhanlal Chaturvedi, the legendary Hindi Poet, were a high water mark and shall always add to the pride and glory of Madhya Pradesh.
== References == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rached_Ghannouchi | Rached Ghannouchi | Rached Ghannouchi (Arabic: راشد الغنوشي, romanized: Rāshid al-Ghannūshī; born 22 June 1941), also spelled Rachid al-Ghannouchi or Rached el-Ghannouchi, is a Tunisian politician, the co-founder of the Ennahdha Party and serving as its intellectual leader. He was born Rashad Khriji (راشد الخريجي).
Ghannouchi was named one of Time's 100 Most Influential People in the World in 2012 and Foreign Policy's Top 100 Global Thinkers and was awarded the Chatham House Prize in 2012 (alongside Tunisian President Moncef Marzouki) by Prince Andrew, Duke of York, for "the successful compromises each achieved during Tunisia's democratic transition". In 2016, he received the Jamnalal Bajaj Award for "promoting Gandhian values outside India". On 13 November 2019, Ghannouchi was elected Speaker of the Assembly of the Representatives of the People. Ghannouchi narrowly survived a vote of no confidence after 97 MPs voted against him on 30 July 2020, falling short of 109 needed to oust him as Speaker of the House.
== Early life ==
Ghannouchi was born outside El Hamma, in the governorate of Gabès in southern Tunisia. His village had no electricity or paved roads. His father was a poor farmer with children including Rached. His family worked in the fields every day, and had meat to eat only a few times a year. After the ground season had ended, the family wove baskets from palm leaves to supplement its income. Rached was able to attend a local branch of the traditional Arabic-language Zaytouna school thanks to financial help from an older brother.
He received his certificate of attainment degree, equivalent to the Baccalauréat, in 1962 from the University of Ez-Zitouna (Zaytouna). He entered the school of agriculture at Cairo University in 1964 but, following the expulsion of Tunisians from Egypt, he left for Syria. He studied philosophy at the University of Damascus, graduating in 1968. Ghannouchi also spent some time in his 20s traveling and working in Europe as a grape picker and dish washer.
== Islamic Tendency Movement ==
In April 1981 Ghannouchi founded the Islamic Tendency Movement (Arabic: حركة الاتجاه الإسلامي Ḥarakat al-Ittijāh al-Islāmī). The Movement described itself as specifically rooted in non-violent Islamism, and called for a "reconstruction of economic life on a more equitable basis, the end of single-party politics and the acceptance of political pluralism and democracy." By the end of July, Ghannouchi and his followers were arrested, sentenced to eleven years in prison in Bizerte, and were tortured. Both the religious and secular community, including numerous secular political organizations, rallied in his support.
While in prison he translated a number of works and wrote on topics such as democracy, women's rights, and Palestine. He also wrote his most noted work, Al‐Hurriyat al‐'Ammah (Public Liberties).
He was released in 1984, but returned to prison in 1987 with a life sentence, then was again released in 1988. He moved to the United Kingdom as a political exile, where he lived for 22 years.
He attended The Islamic Committee for Palestine conference in Chicago in 1989. Following the 1990 invasion of Kuwait, Al-Ghannushi denounced King Fahd of Saudi Arabia for the "colossal crime" of inviting the U.S. to deploy forces. He also called for a Muslim boycott of American goods, planes and ships.
He has also been criticized for calling for jihad against Israel.
Ghannouchi continued to criticise Tunisian politics and the regime of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.
== Tunisian Revolution and after ==
Following popular unrest in which Ben Ali was ousted, Ghannouchi returned to Tunisia on 30 January 2011, after spending twenty two years exiled in London, with thousands of people welcoming him.
His party won 37.04% of the vote (more than the next four biggest vote-getting parties combined) in the 2011 Tunisian Constituent Assembly election. Ghannouchi did not take a government position. Ennahdha's secretary-general Hamadi Jebali became Prime Minister.
Ennahda formed a government which led Tunisia through the challenging and tumultuous aftermath of the Jasmine revolution. The government during this period was characterized by greater transparency, lack of corruption, and consensus-building. In March 2012, Ennahda declared it would not support making sharia the main source of legislation in the new constitution, maintaining the secular nature of the state. Ennahda's stance on the issue was criticized by hardline Islamists, who wanted strict sharia, but was welcomed by secular parties. The government was criticized for mediocre economic performance, not stimulating the tourism industry, and poor relations with Tunisia's biggest trading partner France. In particular it was criticized for tolerating efforts at aggressive Islamisation by radical Islamists who were demanding Sharia law and denouncing gender equality and restrictions on polygamy, some of whom were responsible for the September 2012 ransacking and burning of the American embassy and school following the assassination of two leftist politicians Chokri Belaid (in February 2013) and Mohamed Brahmi (in July 2013). During this 2013–14 Tunisian political crisis enraged secularists demanded the government step down or even a Sisi-style coup, while Ennahda militants defiantly opposed early elections, even booing Ghannouchi's calls for sacrifice for national unity.
Nonetheless Ghanouchi worked with secularist leader Beji Caid Essebsi to forge a compromise and on October 5 signed a "road map" whereby Ennahda would step down for a caretaker government after the new constitution was agreed upon and until new elections were held. Both leaders were heavily criticized by their party rank and file and Ghannouchi received agreement from the Ennahda shura council only by threatening to resign.
In January 2014, after the new Tunisian Constitution was approved, Ennahdha peacefully quit government and handed power to a technocratic government led by Mehdi Jomaa. Ennahda placed second in the October 2014 parliamentary election with 27.79% of the popular vote and formed a coalition government with the larger secularist party Nidaa Tounes despite rank-and-file opposition. Ennahda did not put forth a presidential candidate for the November 2014 election. Ghanouchi "hinted broadly" that he personally supported Beji Caid Essebsi (who won with over 55% of the vote).
Ghannouchi argued for these accommodating measures against more purist party members on the grounds that the country was still too fragile, and the economy too much in need of reform, for Ennahda to be in opposition. Ghannouchi also gave his support to a crackdown on jihadi indoctrination at radical mosques (over 60 civilians, mostly tourists, were killed in 2015 by jihadis, devastating Tunisia's tourist industry). Despite his Islamist background, he had always been "reviled" by jihadis, according to Robert Worth, and now appeared near "the top" of the jihadi "wanted list".
=== Retracted allegations ===
On 22 October 2011, The Economist published an apology on their website for previously publishing an article in which they attributed false statements to Ghannouchi. The article claimed that Ghannouchi "opposes the country's liberal code of individual rights, the Code of Personal Status, and its prohibition of polygamy". The article, also, claimed that Ghannouchi "has threatened to hang a prominent Tunisian feminist, Raja bin Salama, in Basij Square in Tunis, because she has called for the country's new laws to be based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights". The apology stated that "we accept that neither of these statements is true: Mr Ghannouchi has expressly said that he accepts the Code of Personal Status; and he never threatened to hang Ms bin Salama. We apologise to him unreservedly."
On 9 October 2012, The Independent published an apology on their website for suggesting in a previous article that the Ennahdha Party has been offered foreign funds. The apology stated: "we wish to make it clear that Mr. Ghannouchi and his party have not accepted any donation from a foreign state in breach of Tunisian party funding laws. We apologise to Mr. Ghannouchi."
On 17 May 2013, the BBC published an apology on their website for previously publishing inaccurate statements about Ghannouchi six months earlier on 21 November 2012. The article had accused Ghannouchi of threatening to order troops on to the streets if the Ennahdha Party did not get the results he expected in the elections in 2011, and suggested he condoned the violent Salafist attack on the United States embassy and the burning of the American School in Tunis in September 2012. Acknowledging that none of these accusations and suggestions were in fact true, the retraction concluded: "The BBC apologises to Mr Ghannouchi for these mistakes and for the distress they caused him."
=== Libel case ===
In 2020, the UK High Court ruled in favour of Ghannouchi in a libel case against Middle East Online (MEO) and its editor Haitham El Zobaidi. Middle East Online and one of its editors had claimed that Ennahda "supported terrorism", a charge Ghannouchi "vigorously denied". According to Ahmed Yusuf, the article was part of a "a systematic campaign" against Ghannouchi from "media backed by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Egypt."
=== Corruption charges ===
On 1 February 2024, Rached Ghannouchi was sentenced along with his son-in-law to three years in prison by the Tunis court, for illicit foreign financing, and ordered to pay a fine of $1.17 million on behalf of his party. On 19 February, he went on a hunger strike in prison in solidarity with other opposition figures imprisoned by Saied's government. On 13 July 2024, his sentence to three years in prison was confirmed by the Criminal Chamber of the Judicial and Financial Unit. On 8 July 2025, he was sentenced to 14 years' imprisonment on terrorism charges.
== Views and background ==
Ghannouchi's willingness to compromise with secularists in Tunisia and his country's unique success in maintaining a democratic system following the Arab Spring has been credited by at least one observer (Robert Worth) to his background. Unlike many Islamists, Ghannouchi "lived abroad for decades, reading widely in three languages", including Western thinkers Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud and Jean-Paul Sartre. He admired the courage of leftists who protested in the streets against the dictatorship, were arrested and tortured in prison, and became willing to work with them. Watching the initial victory of the Algerian Islamists—while exiled in London—collapse into the slaughter, mayhem and defeat of the civil war, left a deep impact. According to Azzam S. Tamimi, he was influenced by Malik Bennabi and his treatise "Islam and Democracy", which laid "the foundations" for Ghannouchi's "masterpiece" Al‐Hurriyat al‐'Ammah (Public Liberties).
In 2002, an unsympathetic Western source (Martin Kramer) described him as differing "from other Islamists" in his insistence "that Islam accepts multi-party democracy."
In 2015, he told French journalist Olivier Ravanello that homosexuality should not be criminalized, though he opposed gay marriage. He has been interviewed by Michael Moore in Where to Invade Next and stated that homosexuality is a "private affair."
== Personal life ==
On 13 July 2021, the official TAP news agency reported that Ghannouchi, already vaccinated, tested positive for COVID-19. On 1 August, he was discharged a few hours after he was readmitted to a hospital.
== Awards ==
One of the first in FP Top 100 Global Thinkers in 2011
The Chatham House Prize from Chatham House for the year 2012 in London (with Moncef Marzouki)
The Ibn Rushd Prize for Freedom of Thought for the year 2014 in Berlin
Lifetime membership of Aligarh Muslim University Students' Union in 2015
International Crisis Group's Founder's Award for pioneers in peace-building, along with Tunisian President Béji Caïd Essebsi
The Jamnalal Bajaj Award for the year 2016 in Mumbai
Honorary Degree from International Islamic University Malaysia in 2017
One of the 100 Most Influential Arabs in the World in Global Influence list 2018
== References ==
== Further reading ==
Tamimi, Azzam (2001). Rachid Ghannouchi: a democrat within Islamism. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-514000-1.
Saeed, Abdullah (1999). "Rethinking citizenship rights of non-Muslims in an Islamic State; Rashid al-Gannushi's contribution to the evolving debate". Islam and Christian Muslim Relations. 10 (3): 307–323 [p. 311]. doi:10.1080/09596419908721189.
alhiwar.net 6 May 2007
Jones, Linda G. (1988). "Portrait of Rashid al-Ghannoushi". Islam and the State. Middle East Report. Vol. 153. New York: Middle East Research and Information Project. pp. 19–22.
al-Ghannoushi, Rashid & Jones, Linda G. (1988). "Deficiencies in the Islamic Movement". Islam and the State. Middle East Report. Vol. 153. New York: Middle East Research and Information Project. pp. 23–24.
== External links ==
Official website
Interview with Rachid Ghannouchi
Al-Hiwar forums and news
Rachid al-Ghannouchi collected news and commentary at Al Jazeera English
Rashid Al-Ghannoushi: Ben Ali's regime aims to destroy Tunisian people's Islamic opposition, identity, Khaled Hamza, Ikhwanweb, 2 November 2006, interview
Rashid al-Ghannushi, A Leader of Pure Islam, Rohama, 27 January 2011
Rachid Ghannouchi, the Islamist Who Believes in Inclusion and Compromise – Fanack Chronicle |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yepishata | Yepishata | Yepishata (Russian: Епишата) is a rural locality (a village) in Klyapovskoye Rural Settlement, Beryozovsky District, Perm Krai, Russia. The population was 33 as of 2010.
== Geography ==
Yepishata is located on the Barda River, 26 km east of Beryozovka (the district's administrative centre) by road. Demidyata is the nearest rural locality.
== References == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Nations_(Medieval_Tournament) | Battle of the Nations (Medieval Tournament) | The Battle of the Nations is an international historical medieval battles world championship, first held in 2009, in Khotyn, Ukraine and held in Europe, in April, every year until the 2020 and 2021 events were cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and in 2022 cancelled due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
It is a full contact competition using metal weapons and a standardized list of rules.
National teams compete in several standard events, with all being full contact - no stage reenactment battles are included.
Teams from up to 60 countries have entered the tournaments.
== Main provisions ==
National teams of different countries compete at “Battle of the Nations”. Under the rules of BN, a national team has to consist of at least 8 and a maximum of 50 fighters. Any representative of any of the historical medieval battles (HMB) clubs, as well as an individual fighter, provided they have gone through a selection process conventional for a country, can become a member of a national team.
Qualifying tournaments are competitions, where battles are held in accordance with the unified international rules for the historical medieval battle. National teams organize qualifying tournaments to find the best HMB fighters of a country. The unified international rules, according to which battles are held, have been written especially for "Battle of the Nations”. Before the unified rules were written, the countries had different HMB rules.
The tradition for this combat/competition has largely come from Russia, where enthusiasts have held previous events where full contact "battles" of large numbers of armoured combatants, are held, often in historical sites. The emphasis is put on the combatants wearing historically accurate equipment and heraldry, and the use of appropriate weapons for the combat.
The heraldry, however, reflects the modern competition teams, rather than necessarily historically correct heraldic device that may have been worn by combatants in the medieval period. The first tournament was held at the Khotyn Fortress in Ukraine in 2010. The combatants depict armoured fighters from the 12th - 15th century. A number of different forms of combat take place, including some involving individuals, 5 a side or 21 on each side. Over 200 armoured men at arms take place in the competition, and in addition to melee/hand-to-hand weapons, archery is also featured.
Team Quebec (also known at Ost du Quebec) was the first non-European team to enter the tournament in Ukraine in 2011. Their captain put a team together of 9 fighters and 3 support staff who traveled from Montreal Quebec to take part in the tournament. They also held the first friendly tournament under the HMB rules in St-Eustache in February 2012 where participants from Ontario and USA took part.
US combatants entered a team for the first time in 2012, with a number of their members coming from the Society for Creative Anachronism. The US team is a cross-group association of historic martial arts organizations.
"Battle of the Nations 2012" gathered participants from 12 countries.
By the following year, that number increased to 22 teams which participated in the "Battle of the Nations 2013", which was held in Aigues-Mortes in southern France. This was the first time the event was held outside east Europe.
"Battle of the Nations 2014" took place on 12 June in Trogir, Croatia. This was the year of the first female official nomination in the fencing "Triathlon". An innovation for the championship.
"Battle of the Nations 2015" was held in Prague, Czech Republic, 7–10 May. The women's buhurt category: all vs all - was promoted to be the innovation for that year's championship.
List of participants (Sorted by first-year participation):
2010 — Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Poland
2011 - Germany, Italy, Quebec
2012 - Austria, United States, Israel, Denmark, The Baltic States- union of Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia
2013 - Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Czech Republic & Slovakia, France, Japan,Luxembourg, New Zealand, Spain, United Kingdom
Fighters from Portugal also attended, and fought with the Luxembourg team.
2014 - Chile, Netherlands, Finland, Switzerland, Mexico.
About 25,000 attend the event annually.
== List of host cities by year ==
2019 Smederevo Fortress, in Smederevo, Serbia
2018 Santa Severa, in Rome, Italy
2017 La Monumental, in Barcelona, Spain
2016 Petrin Hill, in Prague, Czech Republic
2015 Petrin Hill, in Prague, Czech Republic
2014 in Trogir, Croatia
2013 Aigues-Mortes, in Gard, France
2012 in Warsaw, Poland
2011, Khotyn Fortress, in Chernivtsi Oblast, Ukraine
2010, Khotyn Fortress in Chernivtsi Oblast, Ukraine
== Medals ==
=== BoN 2010 in Khotyn Fortress, in Chernivtsi Oblast, Ukraine standings ===
Male category “Triathlon Duel” 1vs1.
1. Sergey Ukolov, Russia
2. Mikhail Babynin, Russia
3. Franck de Gouil, France
Category “Group Battles” 5vs5.
1. Russia 1
2. Ukraine 1
3. France 1
Category “Mass Battles” 21vs21.
1. Russia
2. France
3. Belarus
=== BoN 2011 in Khotyn Fortress, in Chernivtsi Oblast, Ukraine standings ===
Male category “Triathlon Duel” 1vs1.
1. Sergey Ukolov, Russia
2. Ivan Vasilev, Russia
3. Aleksandr Nadezhdin, Russia
Category “Group Battles” 5vs5.
1. Russia 1
2. Russia 2
3. Russia 3
Category “Mass Battles” 21vs21.
1. Russia
2. Ukraine
3. Belarus
=== BoN 2012 in Khotyn Fortress, in Chernivtsi Oblast, Ukraine standings ===
Male category “Triathlon Duel” 1vs1.
1. Sergey Ukolov, Russia
2. Marcin Waszkielis, Poland
3. Alexey Petrik, Russia
Category “Group Battles” 5vs5.
1. Russia 1
2. France
3. Poland
Category “Mass Battles” 21vs21.
1. Russia
2. Ukraine
3. France
=== BoN 2013 in Warsaw, Poland standings ===
Full Standings of 2013
Male category “Duel” 1vs1.
1. Sergei Ukolov, Russia
2. Evgenii Lapik, Russia
3. Krzysztof Szatecki, Poland
Category “Group Battles” 5vs5.
1. Russia 1
2. Russia 2
3. Russia 3
Category “Mass Battles” 21vs21.
1. Russia
2. Ukraine
3. Belarus
=== BoN 2014 in Trogir, Croatia standings ===
Full Standings of 2014
Male category “Duel” 1vs1.
1. Sergey Ukolov, Russia
2. Alexeey Petrik, Russia
3. Evgenij Lapik, Russia
Female category “Duel” 1vs1.
1. Tatiana Guseva, Russia
2. Gulina Kokhvakko, Russia
3. Yana Zabolotnikova, Russia
Category “Group Battles” 5vs5.
1. Russia
2. Russia
3. France
Category “Mass Battles” 21vs21.
1. Russia
2. Ukraine
3. Belarus
=== BoN 2015 in Petrin Hill, in Prague, Czech Republic standings ===
Full Standings of 2015
Male category “Duel” 1vs1.
1. Yevgeny Lapik, Russia 3
2. Sergei Ukolov, Russia 1
3. Alexeey Petrik, 2
Female category “Duel” 1vs1.
1. Galina Kokhvakko, Russia 2
2. Christelle Carbeaud, France
3. Yana Zabolotnikova, Russia 3
Category Polearm “Duel” 1vs1.
1. Aleksei Naiderov, Russia
2. Mikhail Morgulis, Israel
3. Egor Tomassin, France
Category “Group Battles” 5vs5.
1. Russia 1
2. Ukraine 1
3. France 2
Category “Mass Battles” 21vs21.
1. Russia
2. Ukraine
3. France
=== BoN 2016 in Petrin Hill, in Prague, Czech Republic standings ===
Full Standings of 2016
Male category “Duel” 1vs1.
1. Aleksey Petrik, Russia, Fighter 2
2. Sergey Ukolov, Russia, Fighter 1
3. Aleksandr Nadezhdin, Russia, Fighter 3
Female category “Duel” 1vs1.
1. Galina Kohvakko, Russia, Fighter 1
2. Denise Brinkmann, Germany, Fighter 1
3. Marina Golovina, Russia, Fighter 3
Male Category Polearm “Duel” 1vs1.
1. Evgeniy Baranov, Belarus
2. Jeff Galli, USA
3. Aleksey Nayderov, Russia
Female Category Polearm “Duel” 1vs1.
1. Ekaterina Obade, Moldova
2. Olga Grabovskaya, Ukraine
3. Alina Abdullaeva, Russia
Female Category “Group Battles” 3vs3.
1. Ukraine
2. Russia
3. France
Category “Group Battles” 5vs5.
1. Russia 1
2. Ukraine 1
3. Russia 3
Category “Mass Battles” 21vs21.
1. Russia
2. Ukraine
3. Belarus
=== BoN 2017 in La Monumental, in Barcelona, Spain standings ===
Male category “Sword and Shield” 1vs1.
1. Alexey Petrik, Russia
2. Robert Szatecki, Poland
3. Lukas Kowal, UK
Female category “Sword and Shield” 1vs1.
1. Galina Kohvakko, Russia
2. Maya Olchak, Poland
3. Martina Ravarini, Italy
Male Category Polearm "Duel” 1vs1.
1. Evgeny Ageev, Russia
2. Jose Abuedo, Spain
3. Evgeny Baranov, Belarus
Male category “Sword and Buckler” 1vs1.
1. Ilya Ivanov, Russia
2. Krzysztof Szatecki, Poland
3. Konstantin Nataluha, Ukraine
Male category “Triathlon Duel” 1vs1.
1. Alexey Petrik, Russia
2. Sergey Ukolov, Russia
3. Ilya Ivanov, Russia
Female category “Triathlon Duel” 1vs1.
1. Galina Kohvakko, Russia
2 .Maria Davydova, Russia
3. Irina Ilnitskaya, Ukraine
Category “Group Battles” 5vs5.
1. Russia 1
2. Russia 2
3. Russia 3
Category “Mass Battles” 21vs21.
1. Ukraine
2. Russia
3. France
=== BoN 2018 in Santa Severa, in Rome, Italy standings ===
Male category “Sword and Shield” 1vs1.
1. Alexey Petrik, Russia
2. Marcin Waszkielis, Poland
3. Matthieu Bakto, France
Female category “Sword and Shield” 1vs1.
1. Galina Kohvakko, Russia
2. Agnieszka Lasota, Poland
3. Denise Töpfer, Germany
Male Category Polearm "Duel” 1vs1.
1. Evgeny Ageev, Russia
2. Evgeny Baranov, Belarus
3. Sergey Moroz, Ukraine
Female Category Polearm "Duel” 1vs1.
1. Olga Grabovskaya, Ukraine
2. Lisa Galli, USA
3. Alina Abdullaeva, Russia
Male category “Sword and Buckler” 1vs1.
1. Ilya Ivanov, Russia
2. Konstyantyn Natalukha, Ukraine
3. Robert Szatecki, Poland
Female category “Sword and Buckler” 1vs1.
1. Ksenia Vjunova, Russia
2. Irina Ilnitskaya, Ukraine
3. Esther Veldstra, Netherlands
Male category Longsword “Duel” 1vs1.
1. Sergey Ukolov, Russia
2. Krzysztof Szatecki, Poland
3. Alexandr Vasilinich, Ukraine
Female category Longsword “Duel” 1vs1.
1. Coline Marod, France
2. Olga Grabovskaya, Ukraine
3. Malgorzata Zeblinska, Poland
Male category “Triathlon Duel” 1vs1.
1. Alexey Petrik, Russia
2. Henri Depal, France
3. Ilya Ivanov, Russia
Female category “Triathlon Duel” 1vs1.
1. Galina Kokhvakko, Russia
2. Anastasia Mesheriakova, Russia
3. Coline Marod, France
Male category “PROFIGHTS” U75 1vs1.
1. Vyacheslav Levakov, Russia
2. Grigoriy Chaploutskiy, Ukraine
3. Marсin Janiszewski, Poland
Male category "PROFIGHTS” 75-85 1vs1.
1. Lukas Kowal, UK
2. Robert Szatecki, Poland
3 .Maxim Slavchenko, Russia
Male category “PROFIGHTS” 85-95 1vs1.
1. Ilya Dragan, Moldova
2. Franck de Gouil, France
3. Konstyantyn Natalukha, Ukraine
Male category “PROFIGHTS” O95 1vs1.
1. Alexey Petrik, Russia
2. Krzysztof Szatecki, Poland
3. Ivan Tyutyunnik, Ukraine
Male Category “Group Battles” 5vs5.
1. Russia 1
2. Russia 2
3. Russia 3
Female Category “Group Battles” 5vs5.
1. Russia
2. France
3. HMBIA 3
Category “Mass Battles” 21vs21.
1. Russia
2. Ukraine
3. France
=== BoN 2019 in Smederevo Fortress, in Smederevo, Serbia standings ===
Male category “Sword and Shield” 1vs1.
1. Alexey Petrik, Russia
2. Marcin Waszkielis, Poland
3. Lukas Kowal, UK
Female category “Sword and Shield” 1vs1.
1. Alina Lappo, Russia
2. Agnieszka Lasota, Poland
3. Melanie Gras, Germany
Male Category Polearm "Duel” 1vs1.
1. Yaroslav Rusanov, Russia
2. Mihal Bednarski, Poland
3. Kang Lu, China1
Female Category Polearm "Duel” 1vs1.
1. Olga Grabovskaya, Ukraine
2. Alina Abdullaeva, Russia
3. Maja Celińska, Poland
Male category “Sword and Buckler” 1vs1.
1. Ilya Ivanov, Russia
2. Grigoriy Chaploutskiy, Ukraine
3. Bohumil Masnicak, UK
Female category “Sword and Buckler” 1vs1.
1. Maria Davydova, Russia
2. Aleksandra Soloshenko, Kazakhstan
3. Aleksandra Sokolsky, Ukraine
Male category Longsword “Duel” 1vs1.
1. Sergey Ukolov, Russia
2. Alexander Vasilinich, Ukraine
3. Vladimirs Maksimenko, Latvia
Female category Longsword “Duel” 1vs1.
1. Anastasia Mesheriakova, Russia
2. Olga Grabovskaya, Ukraine
3. Sigrid Karlsson, Sweden
Male category “Triathlon Duel” 1vs1.
1. Alexey Petrik, Russia
2. Sergey Ukolov, Russia
3. Ilya Ivanov, Russia
Female category “Triathlon Duel” 1vs1.
1. Alina Lappo, Russia
2. Anastasia Mesheriakova, Russia
3. Maria Davydova, Russia
Male category “PROFIGHTS” U75 1vs1.
1. Vyacheslav Levakov, Russia
2. Mykola Shalimov, Ukraine
3. Anatolii Iushan, Moldova
Male category "PROFIGHTS” 75-85 1vs1.
1. Alexander Nadezhdin, Russia
2. Lukas Kowal, UK
3. Maksim Skorikau, Belarus
Male category “PROFIGHTS” 85-95 1vs1.
1. Ilya Dragan, Moldova
2. Sebastian Coors, Germany
3. Maksim Slavchenko, Russia
Male category “PROFIGHTS” O95 1vs1.
1. Alexey Petrik, Russia
2. Lukasz Wojciechowski, Poland
3. Artem Semenenko, Moldova
Male Category “Group Battles” 5vs5.
1. Russia 1
2. Russia 3
3. France 1
Female Category “Group Battles” 5vs5.
1. Russia
2. Finland
3. Ukraine
Category “Mass Battles” 12vs12.
1. Russia
2. U3. Belarus
Category “Mass Battles” 30vs30.
1. Russia
2. Ukraine
3. UK
== History ==
The first meeting for the organization of the festival and the championship was held in Kharkiv, Ukraine in 2009. Its participants, captains of the first national teams, came to a consensus concerning how to hold the event. Since the rules could vary in different countries and even in different regions of one country, they also agreed of a set of unified international rules for the conduct of battles.
The first "Battle of the Nations" event was held in 2010 in the Khotyn Fortress (Ukraine). It was attended by the national teams of four countries: Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Poland. Russia won most of the first places. The program included three categories: a duel (1 vs 1), group battles (5 vs 5) and mass battles (21 vs 21). For those who were not members of the national teams, but came to support the comrades, there were non-security buhurts.
The second event, in 2011, was also held at the Khotyn Fortress. Seven national teams participated; the previous four and three novice teams: Italy, Germany and Quebec. Two more categories were added to the three classic ones, namely the “professional fight” and “all vs all”. The latter category allows participants who are not members of the national teams to fight for their countries. The first places were won by Russia. The festival was attended by about 30,000 spectators and a documentary about the life of the participants was shot.
The 2012 event, the third held, was in Warsaw, Poland, and included representatives of twelve countries. A feature of the festival were battles of mounted knights, that were included in the program of the traditionally on-foot world championship in HMB for the first time. The top four teams were Russia, Ukraine, Poland, and USA.
The 2013 event, the fourth, was held in Aigues-Mortes, France. Twenty-two teams from Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific Rim took part. With the increase in teams, there were no "pro rules" fights or mounted jousting in the main arena. The top four teams were Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and USA.
In 2014, due to the dissatisfaction of some of its members with the HMBIA, the organisers of the Battle of the Nations, some member states went on to create the International Medieval Combat Federation.
The 2014 event was the fifth held, and was in Trogir, Croatia. Around 30 countries were expected.
The 2015 event was the sixth held, and was held in Prague.
The 2016 even was the seventh held, and was also held in Prague. 35 countries were expected.
The 2017 event was the eighth, and was held in Barcelona, Spain and was the first year that the Chinese, Brazilian and Turkish team joined Battle of the Nations.
The 2018 event was the ninth, and was held in Rome, Italy
The 2019 event was the 10th held, and was held in the Smederevo Fortress, in Smederevo, Serbia.
The 2020 and 2021 events were cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2022 tournament was cancelled due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
== Valid battle categories ==
Valid battle categories of the competitions held among national teams on the HMB and a brief explanation of them:
"Duel Sword and Shield", fights 1 vs 1; Sword and Shield with an arming sword and a shield. The round lasts 90 seconds, with an optional 30 seconds added in case of a draw. The fighter to score the most points by striking the opponent with the sharp edge of the sword, wins the duel. The duellists that place 1st, 2nd or 3rd in this category, are invited to take part in the Triathlon Duel category.
"Duel Sword and Buckler", fights 1 vs 1; Sword and Buckler with an arming sword and a buckler (a small shield, of maximum 35 cm in diameter). The round lasts up to 60 seconds or five points. The first duellist to win two rounds, wins the duel. The duellists that place 1st, 2nd or 3rd in this category, are invited to take part in the Triathlon Duel category.
"Duel Longsword", fights 1 vs 1; Longsword with a two-handed sword. The round lasts 90 seconds, with an optional 30 seconds added in case of a draw. The fighter to score the most points by striking the opponent with the sharp edge of the sword, wins the duel. The duellists that place 1st, 2nd or 3rd in this category, are invited to take part in the Triathlon Duel category.
"Duel Poleaxe", fights 1 vs 1, using a poleaxe, halberd, bardiche or similar pole-mounted weapon. The round lasts 90 seconds, with an optional 30 seconds added in case of a draw. The fighter to score the most points by striking the opponent with the sharp edge of the sword, wins the duel.
"Triathlon Duel", fights 1 vs 1. The category consists of three rounds with the use of different weapons. The first round lasts one and a half minutes, longswords are used, the second round is held with the use of usual swords and buckler shields, three bouts up to three hits, and the third round lasts a minute and a half with the use of the standard shield and sword. Points are awarded for effective (a clear, stout) blow delivered with the weapon edge to the allowed zone. Since 2017, the Triathlon duel category is offered only to the medalists of the three duel categories that make up the triathlon; Sword and shield, Sword and buckler, Longsword.
"Professional fight", fights 1 vs 1. The category consists of three rounds of three minutes each, pre-selected weapons are used. Points are awarded for effective (a clear, stout) blow delivered with a sword, shield edge, fist, leg, knee, and a good throw with the final blow.
"Five vs five" the group battles "5 vs 5" are the most active kind of buhurt combat. A team fights against a team on a hard bordered list field. One five-member unit includes from five to eight fighters (five fighting in the lists, and three reserve fighters). A fighter who falls down (touches the ground with the third point of support) is out of the battle. There are 3 bouts in a battle until a team wins twice.
“Thirty vs thirty”, a mass battle "30 vs 30", when up to thirty fighters representing a country fight on the field at the same time. A fighter who falls down is out of battle. A battle continues until the fighters of only one team remain standing on the lists, so their team wins. This category allows alliances between countries for the formation of teams.
“Twelve vs twelve”, a mass battle "12 vs 12", when up to twelve fighters representing a country fight on the field at the same time. There are nine reserve fighters. A fighter who falls down is out of battle. A battle continues until the fighters of only one team remain standing on the lists, so their team wins.
"All vs all" are the largest mass battles. All fighters (including those not included in a national team) of all participating countries come to the lists. The participants are divided into equal groups, but in such a way that the representatives of one country are in the same group. A fighter is out of battle if he falls down. Since the win can not be accredited to one nation, no points are awarded. In 2019, this category will be offered as a women's category only.
For the 10th anniversary in 2019, the HMBIA announced the 150 vs 150 category, a unique mass-battle event where alliances of teams from the 30vs30 category fight in the largest mass battle category ever offered.
Old categories:
“Royal category”, a mass battle "21 vs 21", when up to twenty-one fighters representing a country fight on the field at the same time. There are six reserve fighters. A fighter who falls down is out of battle. A battle continues until the fighters of only one team remain standing on the lists, so their team wins. This category was last offered in 2018. At the 2018 summit in Serbia it was replaced with both the 12vs12 and the 30vs30 categories.
"Archery tournament" (bow and crossbow). The tournament is held at a specially equipped place and it takes place for about 2 days. Categories and regulations may vary depending on the festival.
Valid non-battle categories
"Contest for the best set of armour and weapons" is held among fighters of the national teams, who can demonstrate only those sets that were used in battles. Assessment is done by knight marshals, the refereeing panel and the organizers of the festival, who take into account the overall level of aesthetics, historicity of a set of armor and weapons, integrity of the individual elements, quality of the items.
"Contest for the best authentic field camp" of a national team. Authenticity, accuracy, functionality, aesthetics and originality, as well as the size of an authentic field camp is assessed by the refereeing panel and the organizers of the festival (it takes place for one day).
"Contest for the best fighting progress" The national team that has shown the most progress in relation to the previous years is awarded this title.
== References ==
== External links ==
Battle of the Nations official site
Official YouTube channel
French national Team site
Australian national Team site
United States national team site
New Zealand national team site
Quebec National team web site Archived 2013-06-15 at the Wayback Machine
Luxembourg National team web site
United Kingdom team web site |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gangabal_Lake | Gangabal Lake | Gangabal Lake (lit. 'place of Ganga'), also called Haramukh Ganga, is an alpine high-altitude oligotrophic lake situated at the foot of Mount Harmukh in Ganderbal district of Jammu and Kashmir, India. The lake has a maximum length of 2.5 kilometres (1.6 mi) and a maximum width of 1 kilometre (0.62 mi). It is fed by precipitation, glaciers, and springs, and is home to many species of fish, including the brown trout. Water from the lake flows into the nearby Nundkol Lake and then into Sind River, of which it is considered the source per tradition, via Wangath Nallah. This lake is considered sacred in Hinduism as one of the abodes of Shiva, is a site of Hindu pilgrimage and used by Kashmiri Hindus to perform ancestral and death rites.
== History ==
Gangabal has been mentioned in several ancient Hindu Sanskrit texts, where it is referred to as Uttaramanasa and Uttara ganga (lit. 'northern Ganga'). It is mentioned in the Mahabharata as a place of pilgrimage, along with the Kalodaka or Nandikunda lake (Nundkol). The Vishnu Smriti mentions the lake as a place of pilgrimage for performing Śrāddha. It is also mentioned as a place of pilgrimage in other Hindu texts, such as the Nilamata Purana, as well as in chronicles such as the Rajatarangini. In 1519, approximately 10,000 Kashmiri Brahmins died, possibly due to landslides and early snowstorms near Mahlish Meadow during their pilgrimage to Gangabal while immersing the ashes of Kashmiri Hindus who were killed by Mir Shams-ud-Din Araqi on the day of Ashura. British authors such as Walter Roper Lawrence, Cecil Tyndale-Biscoe, and Francis Younghusband, who visited Kashmir during British colonial rule in India, also mentioned Gangabal Lake and its association with Hindu rites. In 1943, Vikram Sarabhai, along with a team, measured cosmic rays near the lake.
== Religious significance ==
Gangabal Lake is sacred for Hindus, who consider it a manifestation of Ganga and the region to be an abode of Shiva. Kashmiri Hindus immerse the ashes of their dead after cremation in the lake, and consider it equivalent to the river Ganga and Haridwar for performing ancestral rites. An annual pilgrimage, called Harmukh-Gangabal Yatra, starts from the 8th-century Wangath Temple complex at Naranag. The lake is also invoked during the rituals of Kaw Punim, a Kashmiri Hindu festival. It is considered the traditional source of the Sind River.
== Access ==
Gangbal Lake is approached from Srinagar, 45 kilometers by road via Ganderbal up to Naranag, and then a trek of 15 kilometers upslope leads to the lake, which can be covered by a horse ride or on foot. The Gujjar shepherds can be seen during the trek with their flocks of sheep and goats. Another trek (25 kilometers long) leads to the lake site from Sonamarg via the Vishansar Lake, crossing three mountain passes, Nichnai pass, Gadsar pass, and Zajibal pass of an average elevation of 4100 meters. It can also be accessed through a trek from Bandipore via Arin and from Gurez via Tilel. The trek to the lake Gangabal takes place in an alpine environment, (cut crossing) with meadows, (cut from) and huts of Gujjars with their herds crossing through two passes over 4,000 m to get to the lake Gangabal.
== Gallery ==
== References ==
== Bibliography ==
Ahmed, Rayees; Rawat, Manish; Wani, Gowhar Farooq; Ahmad, Syed Towseef; Jain, Sanjay Kumar; Meraj, Gowhar; Mir, Riyaz Ahmad; Rather, Abid Farooq; Farooq, Majid (24 November 2022). "Glacial Lake Outburst Flood Hazard and Risk Assessment of Gangabal Lake in the Upper Jhelum Basin of Kashmir Himalaya Using Geospatial Technology and Hydrodynamic Modeling". Remote Sensing. 14 (23): 5957. Bibcode:2022RemS...14.5957A. doi:10.3390/rs14235957.
Inden, Ronald (2008), "Kashmir as Paradise on Earth", in Rao, Aparna (ed.), The Valley of Kashmir: The Making and Unmaking of a Composite Culture, Manohar, pp. 523–562, ISBN 978-81-7304-751-0 |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizons_(Epcot) | Horizons (Epcot) | Horizons was a suspended omnimover dark ride attraction at Epcot (then known as EPCOT Center), a theme park at Walt Disney World in Bay Lake, Florida. Located on the eastern side of the Future World (now World Discovery) section of Epcot. The attraction depicted scenes from the then yet to come 21st century showing the possible future of life on land, under the sea, and in outer space. It is believed to be the sequel to Walt Disney's Carousel of Progress, an attraction in Tomorrowland at Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom. Horizons was the only attraction in Future World to showcase all of Epcot's "Future World" elements: communication, energy, transportation, anatomy, along with humankind's relationship with the sea and the land.
The attraction officially opened on October 1, 1983, as part of Phase II of Epcot. Horizons originally closed in December 25, 1994, a little more than a year after General Electric had ended its sponsorship of the attraction. Horizons re-opened on December 24, 1995 due to the closure of two other attractions that were down for refurbishment in Future World, Universe of Energy and World of Motion. The attraction permanently closed on January 9, 1999, after which the attraction was dismantled and its structure demolished to make room for Mission: Space, a motion simulator thrill ride that opened on October 9, 2003.
The attraction, although extinct, still retains a sizable cult following, especially among Disney park aficionados.
== History ==
Horizons, in its concept phase, was named Century 3 (or Century III), to recognize the third century of American existence (1976–2076). The name was changed to Futureprobe to help appeal the attraction toward international guests who wouldn't understand or appreciate Century 3. In the end, the Futureprobe name was scrapped due to the medical connotation of the word "probe". After much debate, GE and Disney officials settled on the name Horizons. Prior to the start of construction, the project's budget was slashed by $10 million (USD). The building size was reduced and the length of the ride was shrunk by 35%, shortening the ride length by 600 feet (180 m).
Horizons opened exactly one year after Epcot opened and was located between World of Motion and the Universe of Energy. The Wonders of Life pavilion became Horizons' new neighbor in 1989, and World of Motion closed in 1996. Horizons remained operational until World of Motion's successor, Test Track, was ready to open to the public in early 1999.
It was proposed that Horizons would be the sequel to the Carousel of Progress (located in Tomorrowland at Magic Kingdom), Disney's ride from the General Electric Pavilion at the 1964 New York World's Fair. As the Carousel of Progress followed the changes in lifestyle that faced a family as they lived through the 20th century, Horizons continued their story, showing how they might live in the 21st century. The Carousel's theme song "There's a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow" was part of the Looking Back at Tomorrow portion of Horizons. The version of "There's a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow" that could be heard in Horizons coming from a television (sung by Larry Cedar) in the Art Deco scene is the exact version that can still be heard on a radio during the first act of the present Carousel of Progress.
The original ride concept came from Reginald Jones (then-CEO of General Electric) and Jack Welch (future CEO of General Electric). The concept was to focus on Thomas Edison and his body of work along with the origin of GE; it was changed to focus on the future of America, a theme that changed yet again to respect that EPCOT Center was to appeal to a global audience. The building which housed Horizons was designed to resemble a spaceship, while accentuating the third dimension and giving the impression of an infinite horizon.
On June 24, 1993, it was announced that GE would not renew sponsorship of Horizons. The sponsorship's expiration occurred on September 30. Following this, all references to the company were removed. Without a sponsor, Horizons would begin to have technical issues as time went on. Several animatronics were deteriorating and the ride would frequently break down. Ideas were tossed around about the pavilion being turned into a space-themed pavilion. The building would have been upgraded and rethemed. The ride system would be changed drastically, in which the guest would be in an individual space harness while viewing space stations and space in general and would control the pitch and yaw of the vehicle. The attraction would close on Christmas Day, 1994, with no reasoning given. The attraction was left dormant for slightly under a year, before its reopening on Christmas Eve, 1995. This was due to World of Motion closing the following month for its conversion into Test Track, and Universe of Energy's refurbishment into Ellen's Energy Adventure, leaving no other attractions outside of Wonders of Life open in the east half of Future World. The attraction would operate until January 9, 1999, when it would close permanently.
No reason was publicly given, but the lack of corporate sponsorship, which happened around the same time of the financial disaster of Euro Disneyland is widely accepted as having played the largest part in the decision. Also widely speculated as a reason for the attraction closing was major structural problems, along with rumored problems with the roof.
The building stood unoccupied for well over a year as Disney decided between either relaunching the attraction (which would have required a new storyline and major building renovation and upgrades) or demolishing the building and creating a new attraction in its place. It was decided to build a new cutting-edge outer space-themed attraction, so the Horizons building was slowly torn down in July of 2000. The demolition of the building marked the first time in Disney history that an entire ride building had to be demolished in preparation for a new attraction. Construction on Mission: SPACE began in late 2000 and the new attraction opened on August 15, 2003.
Various props from Horizons used to be displayed around Walt Disney World and formerly in Walt Disney Studios Park at Disneyland Resort Paris. A display that featured the butler robot animatronic was set up in EPCOT: Creating the World of Tomorrow for Epcot's 25th anniversary. At Disney's Hollywood Studios, a few props were found in the warehouse of The Studio Tour. The mould for the desert hovercraft can be found hanging from the ceiling of a restaurant. At Walt Disney Studios Park, the desert hovercraft prop and sub pod were on display on the Backlot Tour. However, that attraction has since been replaced and the props are now missing. The McCall mural, The Prologue and the Promise, painted on canvas, was removed prior to demolition and its current whereabouts are unknown. Some artifacts from the attraction are in private collections.
== Attraction ==
Horizons began with a section entitled "Looking Back at Tomorrow," showcasing visions of the future as perceived from the era of Jules Verne and Albert Robida through the 1950s. The ride then moved past two immense OMNIMAX screens (groundbreaking technology at the time the ride was built), showing modern technologies and ideas that could be used to build the world of tomorrow.
Afterward came the main part of the ride: visions of futuristic life in a section entitled "Tomorrow's Windows". The grandmother and grandfather live in an apartment in the city of Nova Cite. Their daughter supervises irrigation robots at the desert farm of Mesa Verde (depicting arid-zone agriculture). She then talks with her boyfriend over video chat, who is a marine biologist at the Sea Castle research base (depicting ocean colonization). At the space station Brava Centauri (depicting space colonization), everyone sings "Happy Birthday" to the narrators' grandson through holographic teleconferencing.
The only Disney attraction at the time with multiple endings, Horizons then allowed riders to select which path they wanted to take back to the FuturePort: from Brava Centauri, from Mesa Verde, or from the Sea Castle. As the final part of the ride, guests in their "omnimover" would push a button to select among the three choices and would be presented with a 31-second video sequence. A film would then be displayed to riders in each individual car. The videos showed a simulated flyover of an outdoor scene. To create the effect, scale models were built and a camera swept across the futuristic terrain. The models were some of the largest ever created at the time.
The model for the desert sequence, for example, was 32 by 75 feet (9.8 by 22.9 m) long. The visual effects were filmed in a hangar at the Burbank airport. Produced in 1983 by 30 model makers, it took over a year to build and shoot the three segments. The exit corridor of the ride originally featured the mural The Prologue and the Promise by renowned space artist Robert T. McCall.
== Voice cast ==
Corey Burton – Futureport 'Brava Centauri' Announcer
Henry Corden – Neon City: Screen 1 voice
B. J. Ward – Mesa Verde Announcer, Tommy's Mother, Undersea Classroom teacher and Horizons 1 Boarding Announcer
Dena Dietrich – Grandmother
Tom Fitzgerald – Tom II ('Beach Boy')
Corine Cook – Tom's Girlfriend
Bob Holt – Grandfather
== Tributes in other attractions ==
=== Disneyland ===
Some of the attraction's robots appeared in the entry mural of Innoventions in Tomorrowland.
=== Walt Disney World Resort ===
==== Mission: SPACE ====
A number of tributes to Horizons can be found throughout its successor attraction, Mission: SPACE. The center of the gravity wheel in the queue has the attraction logo, and a stylized version also appears on the front of the checkout counter in the Cargo Bay gift shop at the exit to the attraction. Also, following the 2017 refurbishment, a new mural added to the entrance features the space station Brava Centauri orbiting the Earth.
The concrete planter west of the current attraction is a physical remnant of the previous installation where the main sign for Horizons once stood, and reflects the distinctive shape of the original ride building.
==== Space Mountain ====
Space Mountain includes a number of tributes to Horizons in its post-show:
One of the bags in the post-show for the ride (located on guests' left at the start of the exit walkway) features the words "Mesa Verde" written on it.
The undersea post-show scene after the desert scene is reminiscent of a scene in Horizons. This scene is the only post-show scene to be completely new in refurbishing Space Mountain. The flatscreen display in the new scene describes it as "20,000 Light Years under the Sea," a pun on "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea," which is a reference to the defunct Magic Kingdom attraction 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea: Submarine Voyage.
The robot butler and futuristic city skyline, which is the last post-show diorama, are similar to a scene in Horizons.
==== Walt Disney: One Man's Dream ====
Some of the props used in Horizons were once on display in the exhibition gallery before the short film presented at Disney's Hollywood Studios, including the famous robot butler.
==== Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind ====
During a portion of the queue of Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind, Peter Quill discusses how he visited EPCOT Center as a child and is excited to ride Horizons again (along with other former Epcot attractions), unaware it has closed, as he had not been to Earth since 1987.
=== Tokyo Disneyland ===
==== Star Tours – The Adventures Continue ====
Located at the exit of Star Tours - The Adventures Continue at Tokyo Disneyland is a kiosk featuring video of 3 other Star Tours excursions. Each different "Tour" advertised is the full 31-second sequence from the Horizons finale. The Mesa Verde, Brava Centauri Space Colony, and Sea Castle (said to be located on planet "Praya" for the purposes of tying it into the Star Wars universe) ending sequences are unedited and played in their entirety.
== Timeline ==
1979: early concepts were presented by the show designer George McGinnis
August 5, 1981: site work begins
January 1982: construction of the pavilion begins
October 1, 1983: Horizons opens as part of EPCOT Center's 1st Anniversary celebration.
June 24, 1993: General Electric declines to renew sponsorship.
September 30, 1993: General Electric's sponsorship ends after expiration of 10-year contract.
December 25, 1994: Horizons closes indefinitely. Disney officials give no timetable for reopening.
December 24, 1995: Horizons re-opens while Universe of Energy and World of Motion are being refurbished (both these attractions remained open until January 21 and January 2, 1996 respectively).
December 31, 1998: Disney's internal staff newsletter, Eyes and Ears, announces the permanent closure of Horizons.
January 9, 1999: Horizons closes permanently.
September 23, 1999: all signage for Horizons is removed.
September 30, 1999: Horizons briefly reopens, but only for press groups.
April 26, 2000: demolition of the Horizons building commences.
July 25, 2000: demolition is completed.
== References ==
== External links ==
Horizons at Disney A to Z
Horizons at INTERCOT.com
Horizons Tribute Site
Horizons Fan Blog, Mesa Verde Times (with some behind the scenes photos)
Horizons Resurrected (CGI model of the attraction) |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancy-Dornot | Ancy-Dornot | Ancy-Dornot (French pronunciation: [ɑ̃si dɔʁno]; German: Anzig-Dorningen) is a commune in the Moselle department of northeastern France. The municipality was established on 1 January 2016 and consists of the former communes of Ancy-sur-Moselle and Dornot.
== See also ==
Communes of the Moselle department
== References ==
== External links ==
Media related to Ancy-Dornot at Wikimedia Commons |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Tudor | David Tudor | David Eugene Tudor (January 20, 1926 – August 13, 1996) was an American pianist and composer of experimental music.
== Life and career ==
Tudor was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He studied piano with Irma Wolpe and composition with Stefan Wolpe and became known as one of the leading performers of avant garde piano music. He gave the first American performance of the Piano Sonata No. 2 by Pierre Boulez in 1950, and a European tour in 1954 greatly enhanced his reputation. Karlheinz Stockhausen dedicated his Klavierstück VI (1955) to Tudor. Tudor also gave early performances of works by Morton Feldman, Earle Brown, Christian Wolff and La Monte Young.
The composer with whom Tudor is particularly associated is John Cage; he gave the premiere of Cage's Music of Changes, Concert For Piano and Orchestra and the notorious 4' 33". Cage said that many of his pieces were written either specifically for Tudor to perform or with him in mind, once stating "what you had to do was to make a situation that would interest him. That was the role he played." The two worked closely together on many of Cage's pieces, both works for piano and electronic pieces, including for the Smithsonian Folkways album: Indeterminacy: New Aspect of Form in Instrumental and Electronic Music (1959). Tudor also performs on several recordings of Cage's music, including the Mainstream record of Cartridge Music, the recording on Columbia Records of Variations II, and the two Everest records of Variations IV. Tudor selected the works to be performed for the 25th Anniversary Retrospective Concert of the music of John Cage (May 16, 1958), and performed in the premiere of the Concert For Piano and Orchestra given as the closing work for that concert. Moreover, Tudor received a Foundation for Contemporary Arts John Cage Award (1992).
After a stint teaching at Darmstadt from 1956 to 1961, Tudor began to wind up his activities as a pianist to concentrate on composing. He wrote mostly electronic works, many commissioned by Cage's partner, choreographer Merce Cunningham. His homemade musical circuits are considered landmarks in live electronic music and electrical instrument building as a form of composition. One piece, Reunion (1968), written jointly with Lowell Cross, features a chess game where each move triggers a lighting effect or projection. At the premiere, the game was played between John Cage and Marcel Duchamp. Reunion is erroneously attributed to Cage in James Pritchett's book The Music Of John Cage. Rain Forest is a sound installation created from constructed sculpture and everyday objects such as a metal barrel, a vintage computer disk, and plastic tubing which served as a musical accompaniment. (David Tudor and Composers Inside Electronics Inc.: Rain forest V (variation 1))
In 1969, Tudor set up India's first electronic music studio at the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad.
Upon Cage's death in 1992, Tudor took over as music director of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. Among many works created for the company, Tudor composed Soundings: Ocean Diary (1994), the electronic component of Ocean, which was conceived by John Cage and Merce Cunningham, with choreography by Merce Cunningham, orchestral music by Andrew Culver and design by Marsha Skinner.
Tudor died after a series of strokes in Tomkins Cove, New York at the age of 70.
== Piano realisations ==
From 1951 until the late 1960s, Tudor (mainly as pianist) regularly performed the indeterminate work of John Cage. Throughout this time, "all of the music [Cage] composed", John Holzaepfel contends, "was written with one person in mind", and this person was Tudor. The culmination of this period were works that required a significant imprint of Tudor in performance. Winter Music (1957), for example, comprises a score of twenty pages, that each contain from one to 61 cluster-chords per page, with the performer deciding which of these to play. In his realisations of these scores, Tudor "pin[ned] them down like butterflies", making the indeterminate determined, such that each performance of these works was consistent with the last. He chose to 'fix' his interpretation, such that he never improvised from the score, and rather each performance of Winter Music by Tudor was consistent across time. As Martin Iddon explains: "Tudor's practice was, broadly, to create a single realisation and then to use that version of the piece in all subsequent recordings".
Despite the significant role Tudor had in the creative act, "during his years as a pianist, Tudor never considered himself as a composer, or even a co-composer, of the music he played".
However, Benjamin Piekut argues differently, drawing from the work of Bruno Latour. These fixed realisations are examples of 'distributed authorship' where "the conception, meaning and sound-world of a given composition is shared across multiple subjectivities". The conception and meaning of the work for Cage is always created with Tudor in mind, and thus shared across the subjectivities of these two actors. Similarly, the output 'sound-world' is shared in that Tudor's function in realising the score is decision making based on Cage's stimuli (score), and Cage's stimuli does not present a coherent sound-world on its own. Piekut goes on to align this creative-distribution with Cage's Buddhist anti-ego worldview.
== See also ==
Avant-garde music
Indeterminacy (music)
Joan La Barbara
9 Evenings: Theatre and Engineering
Sea Tails
== References ==
== Further reading ==
Nakai, You (2021). Reminded by the Instruments: David Tudor's Music. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-068676-5.
== External links ==
Tudor Website
Finding Aid for David Tudor papers, Getty Research Institute
The Art of David Tudor: Audio and Video
Lovely Music Biographies: David Tudor
Indeterminacy: New Aspect of Form in Instrumental and Electronic Music Album Details at Smithsonian Folkways
David Tudor interview, April 7, 1986 |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P._W._Botha | P. W. Botha | Pieter Willem Botha, (locally BOOR-tə, Afrikaans pronunciation: [ˈpitər ˈvələm ˈbuəta]; 12 January 1916 – 31 October 2006) was a South African politician who served as the last Prime Minister of South Africa from 1978 to 1984 and as the first executive State President of South Africa from 1984 until his resignation in 1989. Nicknamed 'Die Groot Krokodil' (Afrikaans for 'The Big Crocodile') due to his tough political stance, he was considered the final hardline leader of South Africa during the apartheid era.
Born on a small farm in the Orange Free State in 1916, Botha was raised in a conservative Afrikaner family with strong nationalist beliefs. Botha studied law at Grey University College but left before completing his degree to pursue a career in politics. He became involved in the National Party's youth wing and worked as a political organizer, laying the foundation for his rise within the party. He supported the NPs opposition to South Africa's involvement in World War II on the side of Britain, and actively campaigned for a German victory. In the 1948 general election, he was elected to the House of Assembly as the MP from George, a position he held for over four decades. His influence within the party grew, and in 1958, he was appointed Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs by Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd. In 1961, Botha became Minister of Community Development and Coloured Affairs, overseeing forced removals, including the controversial clearance of District Six. His role expanded in 1966, when he was appointed Minister of Defence by Prime Minister John Vorster. During his tenure, he transformed the South African Defense Forces, increasing military spending, implementing conscription, and launching covert operations against anti-apartheid movements. Botha also played a key role in South Africa's nuclear weapons program and its military interventions in Angola and Namibia during the Cold War.
Botha was elected leader of the National Party and assumed office as Prime Minister on 4 September 1978, following the resignation of John Vorster. His tenure was marked by a focus on maintaining apartheid through military expansion and internal security measures while introducing limited reforms, such as the Tricameral Parliament in 1983, which granted limited political representation to Coloured and Indian South Africans, but excluded Black South Africans. The 1983 referendum on the Tricameral Parliament passed with support from white voters. In 1984, Botha became South Africa's first executive State President, consolidating executive power and continuing apartheid policies. His presidency faced increasing internal unrest, protests, and international sanctions. After suffering a stroke in 1989, he resigned as Leader of the National Party and later State President, and was succeeded by F. W. de Klerk.
After resigning as State President, Botha remained influential in South African politics. He opposed the reforms initiated by his successor, F.W. de Klerk, particularly the negotiations to dismantle apartheid and the unbanning of the ANC, and advocated for a no vote in the 1992 referendum. Botha became a vocal critic of the move toward democracy, maintaining his belief in the necessity of apartheid. In the late 1990s, he faced legal challenges related to his role in the apartheid-era policies, notably during the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings, where he was called to account for his actions but refused to fully cooperate. Botha's health continued to decline, and he died on 31 October 2006, at the age of 90.
== Personal life ==
=== Early life and education ===
Pieter Willem Botha was born on 12 January 1916 on a small farm in the Paul Roux district of the Orange Free State Province (now Free State Province). The son of Afrikaner parents, his father, Pieter Willem Botha Sr., fought as a commando against the British in the Second Boer War. His mother, Hendrina Christina Botha (née de Wet), was interned in a British concentration camp during the war.
Botha's upbringing was heavily influenced by Afrikaner culture and Calvinist religious teachings. His parents emphasized discipline, hard work, and loyalty to the Afrikaner cause. Growing up in the aftermath of the Second Boer War and amid increasing Afrikaner nationalism, he absorbed the prevailing belief that Afrikaners needed to assert political and economic control over South Africa. This environment helped shape his later political ideology and commitment to apartheid policies.
Botha initially attended the Paul Roux School and matriculated from Bethlehem Voortrekker High School. In 1934, he entered the Grey University College (now the University of the Free State) in Bloemfontein to study law, but left early at the age of twenty in order to pursue a career in politics. He began working for the National Party as a political organiser in the neighbouring Cape Province. Botha joined the Ossewabrandwag, an Afrikaner nationalist group which was sympathetic to the German Nazi Party, and helped found its Cape Town branch in 1939. After the German attack on the USSR, Botha condemned the Ossewabrandwag in August 1941, changing his ideological allegiance to Christian nationalism, and was expelled from the organisation soon after.
=== Family ===
In 1943, Botha married Anna Elizabeth Rossouw (Elize). The couple had five children; two sons (Piet and Rossouw) and three daughters (Elsa, Amelia and Rozanne). In the 1980s, Rozanne Botha, emerged as a minor celebrity figure in the country. She released Afrikaans pop songs and appeared on the covers of magazines such as Sarie and Style, where she was dubbed "First Daughter of the Land".
In 1998, he married Barbara Robertson, a legal secretary 25 years his junior, following Elize's death the previous year.
In 2022, two of his daughters died. Amelia Paschke, died in a car crash driving back from Betty's Bay. In the same year, Rozanne also died, of cancer.
== Parliamentary career ==
Botha was elected to parliament in 1948 as an MP for the National Party from the constituency of George. His entry into politics coincided with the National Party's rise to power under Prime Minister D.F. Malan, whos government formally instituted the policy of Apartheid. As a staunch supporter of Afrikaner nationalism, Botha aligned himself with the baasskap faction of the party, advocating for stricter racial policies and the consolidation of white minority rule.
Botha gained a reputation for his tough and uncompromising rhetoric, often warning of the dangers of communism, black liberation movements, and international pressure against apartheid. His speeches in Parliament were marked by aggressive language, emphasizing the need for strong leadership to defend white rule. He displayed authoritarian tendencies, advocating for increased state power to suppress opposition and enforce apartheid policies. His biggest opponents during his career in Parliament were Helen Suzman and Harry Schwarz, whom he often verbally attacked in Parliament.
After retaining his seat in the 1953 and 1958 elections, he was appointed Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs by Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd. In his capacity, he assisted the administration with the enforcement of the Population Registration Act, which classified all South Africans into one of four racial groups.
In 1961, he was appointed Minister of Community Development and Coloured Affairs, a position that gave him direct control over policies related to urban segregation and forced removals. He was responsible for implementing large-scale resettlement programs that forcibly relocated non-white communities from urban centers to designated areas under the Group Areas Act.
In 1966, he was appointed Minister of Defence, a title in which he held for over 15 years. As Defence Minister, he rapidly expanded the state's military capabilities, responding to growing resistance to apartheid and perceived external threats from neighboring African countries and international sanctions. He began South Africa's nuclear weapons program through a doctrine of "strategic deterrence", aiming to deter Soviet-backed forces in Southern Africa from intervening. He was instrumental in establishing the policy of "total onslaught", which framed South Africa's racial policies as a broader Cold War struggle against communism and black liberation movements. Under his 15 years in charge of the ministry, the South African Defence Force (SADF) reached a zenith, at times consuming 20% of the national budget, compared to 1.3% in 1968, and was involved in the South African Border War.
=== Prime Minister (1978–1984) ===
When Prime Minister John Vorster resigned following allegations of his involvement in the Muldergate Scandal in 1978, Botha was elected as his successor by the National Party caucus, besting the electorate's favourite, 45-year-old Foreign Minister Pik Botha. In the final internal ballot, he beat Connie Mulder, the scandal's namesake, in a 78–72 vote. On 5 December 1978, he was absolved in a judicial report of blame in the scandal.
Upon becoming Prime Minister, Botha retained the defence portfolio until October 1980, when he appointed SADF Chief General Magnus Malan, his successor. From his ascension to the cabinet, Botha pursued an ambitious military policy designed to increase South Africa's military capability. He sought to improve relations with the West – especially the United States – but with mixed results. He argued that the preservation of the apartheid government, though unpopular, was crucial to stemming the tide of African Communism, which had made in-roads into neighbouring Angola and Mozambique after these two former Portuguese colonies obtained independence.
In one of his first moves as Prime Minister, he appointed Piet Koornhof as minister responsible for black affairs. Koornhof, who joined the ANC in the post-apartheid era, was regarded as one of the most reform‐minded ministers in the government. Botha had led a campaign to demolish Crossroads, a high-density township in Cape Town in 1978. Amid significant opposition, Botha and Koornhof agreed to "indefinitely delay" the demolitions.
A challenge he faced within his first two months in office was the election of Andries Treurnicht as leader of the Transvaal province. Treurnicht was vocally opposed to apartheid reforms and now had a power base controlling a strong majority of seats in the all-white parliament. The election highlighted differences between Afrikaners in Botha's Cape Province and Treurnicht's. In the former, there was a higher level of tolerance towards racial groups, with attitudes mostly formed by contact with Cape Coloureds. Botha had in 1974 said that the Nico Malan Theatre should be open to patrons of all races. However, he was opposed to blacks becoming a majority in the Western Cape and sought demolitions of unplanned black townships.
In January 1979, he became the first premier to visit Robben Island, known primarily as a prison for mostly black political prisoners. He declined to say whether he had met with any of the prisoners, stating that it was a "routine" visit. In April of the same year, Botha offered military and economic support to Abel Muzorewa's incoming government for Zimbabwe Rhodesia. Botha held high-level talks with Muzorewa in June 1979.
In the weeks leading up to the 1981 South African general election, he was confronted by hard-line Afrikaner hecklers, some of whom were supporters of the Herstigte Nasionale Party, resisting to changes to the status quo of apartheid. On the final night of the campaign trail, Botha vowed that "As long as there is a National Party Government, we won't hand over South-West Africa to the authority of SWAPO." In the election, his party garnered 58% of the all-white vote and 131 seats. This was down from 65% and 134 seats in the 1977 South African general election, with the party losing votes to the Herstigte Nasionale Party.
In April 1981, the passport of Desmond Tutu was seized. Tutu on visits to Europe and the United States, called for economic pressure on South Africa to make Botha's government enter into negotiations with the country's leadership. Botha was angered by these visits and had vowed to seize Tutu's passport. In the same year, he authorised Operation Beanbag, a series of raids by the South African Defence Force against safe houses of uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK), armed wing of the ANC in Mozambique.
In February 1982, he survived a significant challenge to his leadership from Andries Treurnicht. He was able to secure 172 votes versus 36 on a motion of support in his leadership and his route of power-sharing with other racial groups.
On 22 April 1983, Botha announced a special commission to consider repealing the Immorality Act and the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act, 1949. Botha said: "I am personally opposed to immoral practices, but the Government does not see these two laws as guarantees for the survival of South Africa,".
On 19 May 1983, South Africa was the subject of resolutions taken by the International Press Institute condemning the "continued harassment and persecution" of the media in South Africa. The institute appealed to Botha to "to accept press freedom as a prerequisite for a country that regards itself as part of the democratic world." The institute also cited the increasing difficulty for foreign journalists to obtain visas to report and work from South Africa. The resolution also highlighted the forthcoming trials of journalists, Allister Sparks, his wife, Suzanne and Bernard Simon. The charges against all three were dropped in March 1984.
In May 1983 he condemned the Church Street, Pretoria bombing committed by uMkhonto weSizwe, saying that it confirmed "that we are dealing with a Communist-inspired onslaught."
In 1983, Botha proposed a new constitution, which was then put to a vote of the white population on 2 November. The constitution was endorsed by the white electorate.
Though it did not implement a federal system, it implemented what was ostensibly a power-sharing agreement with Coloureds and Indians. The new constitution created two new houses of parliament alongside the existing, white-only House of Assembly—the House of Representatives for Coloureds and the House of Delegates for Indians. The three chambers of the new Tricameral Parliament had sole jurisdiction over matters relating to their respective communities. Legislation affecting "general affairs", such as foreign policy and race relations, had to pass all three chambers after consideration by joint standing committees. At the time, White South Africans outnumbered Coloureds and Indians together, hence preserving white dominance within the framework of a "power-sharing" system.
The plan included no chamber or system of representation for the black majority. Each Black ethno-linguistic group was allocated a 'homeland' which would initially be a semi-autonomous area. However, blacks were legally considered citizens of the Bantustans, not of South Africa, and were expected to exercise their political rights there. Bantustans were expected to gradually move towards a greater state of independence with sovereign nation status being the final goal. During Botha's tenure, Ciskei, Bophutatswana and Venda all achieved nominal sovereignty and nationhood, which were only recognised by each other and by South Africa . These new countries, set up within the borders of South Africa, never gained international recognition, and economically all remained heavily dependent on South Africa. Over half of the Bantustans, most notably KwaZulu led by Mangosuthu Buthelezi, rejected independence due to their leaders' commitment to opposing apartheid from within.
The new constitution also changed the executive branch from the parliamentary system that had been in place in one form or another since 1910, to a presidential system. The prime minister's post was abolished, and its functions were merged with those of the state president, which became an executive post with sweeping powers. In a departure from general presidential systems, however, the president was to be elected not by universal suffrage (or white suffrage) but by an electoral college, whose members were elected by the three chambers of the Parliament. The state president and cabinet had sole jurisdiction over "general affairs". Disputes between the three chambers regarding "general affairs" were resolved by the President's Council, composed of members from the three chambers and members directly appointed by the state president. In practice, the composition of the President's Council and the electoral college made it impossible for the Coloured and Indian chambers to outvote the white chamber on any substantive matter, even if they voted as a bloc. Thus, the real power remained in white hands — and in practice, in the hands of Botha's National Party, which commanded a large majority in the white chamber due to the first past the post voting system. Only with the challenge posed by the Conservative Party, which was against the reforms due to the fears of apartheid breaking up, was the Botha's position put in question.
The new constitution was criticised by the black majority for failing to grant them any formal role in government. The African National Congress and Chief Buthelezi were among its opponents. Their stand was supported by many coloured, white and Indian groups, including the official opposition, the Progressive Federal Party. Although many international commentators such as the Reagan Administration praised it as a "first step" in what was assumed to be a series of reforms.
=== State President (1984–1989) ===
On 14 September 1984, Botha was elected as the first state president under the newly approved constitution.
Implementing the presidential system was seen as a key step in consolidating Botha's personal power. In previous years, he had succeeded in getting a number of strict laws that limited freedom of speech through parliament, and thus suppressed criticism of government decisions. States of emergencies became frequent, including extrajudicial killings either during riots or through special forces, such as the Koevoet.
In many western countries, such as the United States, the United Kingdom (where the Anti-Apartheid Movement was based) and the Commonwealth, there was much debate over the imposition of economic sanctions in order to weaken Botha and undermine the white regime. By the late 1980s – as foreign investment in South Africa declined – disinvestment began to have a serious effect on the nation's economy.
State President Botha's loss of influence can be directly attributed to decisions taken at the Ronald Reagan/Mikhail Gorbachev summit of the leaders of the US and the Soviet Union in Moscow (29 May – 1 June 1988) that paved the way to resolving the problem of Namibia which, according to foreign minister Pik Botha, was destabilising the region and "seriously complicating" the major issue which South Africa itself would shortly have to face. Soviet military aid would cease and Cuban troops be withdrawn from Angola as soon as South Africa complied with UN Security Council Resolution 435 by relinquishing control of Namibia and allowing UN-supervised elections there. The Tripartite Agreement, which gave effect to the Reagan/Gorbachev summit decisions, was signed at UN headquarters in New York on 22 December 1988 by representatives of Angola, Cuba and South Africa.
On 18 January 1989, Botha (then aged 73) suffered a mild stroke which prevented him from attending a meeting with Namibian political leaders on 20 January 1989. Botha's place was taken by acting president J. Christiaan Heunis. On 2 February 1989, Botha resigned as leader of the National Party (NP), anticipating his nominee – finance minister Barend du Plessis – would succeed him. Instead, the NP's parliamentary caucus selected as leader education minister F. W. de Klerk, who moved quickly to consolidate his position within the party as a reformist, while hardliners supported Botha. In March 1989, the NP elected De Klerk as state president but Botha refused to resign, saying in a television address that the constitution entitled him to remain in office until March 1990 and that he was even considering running for another five-year term. Following a series of acrimonious meetings in Cape Town, and five days after UNSCR 435 was implemented in Namibia on 1 April 1989, Botha and De Klerk reached a compromise: Botha would retire after the parliamentary elections in September, allowing de Klerk to take over as state president.
However, Botha abruptly resigned from the state presidency on 14 August 1989, complaining that he had not been consulted by De Klerk over his scheduled visit to see President Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia:
"The ANC is enjoying the protection of president Kaunda and is planning insurgency activities against South Africa from Lusaka", Botha declared on nationwide television. He said he had asked the cabinet what reason he should give the public for abruptly leaving office. "They replied I could use my health as an excuse. To this, I replied that I am not prepared to leave on a lie. It is evident to me that after all these years of my best efforts for the National Party and for the government of this country, as well as the security of our country, I am being ignored by ministers serving in my cabinet."
De Klerk was sworn in as acting state president on 14 August 1989 and the following month was nominated by the electoral college to succeed Botha in a five-year term as state president. De Klerk soon announced the removal of legislation against anti-apartheid groups – including the African National Congress – and the release of Nelson Mandela. De Klerk's term saw the dismantling of the apartheid system and negotiations that eventually led to South Africa's first racially inclusive democratic elections on 27 April 1994.
In a statement on the death of Botha in 2006, De Klerk said:
"Personally, my relationship with P. W. Botha was often strained. I did not like his overbearing leadership style and was opposed to the intrusion of the State Security Council system into virtually every facet of government. After I became leader of the National Party in February 1989, I did my best to ensure that P. W. Botha would be able to end his term as president with full dignity and decorum. Unfortunately, this was not to be."
== Apartheid government ==
Botha undertook some changes to apartheid practices, but these were rejected by many as superficial and inadequate. He legalised interracial marriage and miscegenation, both completely banned since the late 1940s. The constitutional prohibition on multiracial political parties was lifted. He also relaxed the Group Areas Act, which barred non-whites from living in certain areas. In 1988, a new law created "Open Group Areas" or racially mixed neighbourhoods but these neighbourhoods had to receive a Government permit, had to have the support of the local whites immediately concerned, and had to be an upper-class neighbourhood in a major city in order to be awarded a permit. In 1983, the aforementioned constitutional reforms granted limited political rights to "Coloureds" and "Indians". Botha also became the first South African government leader to authorise contacts with Nelson Mandela, the imprisoned leader of the African National Congress (ANC).
Even these meagre reforms went too far for a group of NP hardliners, led by former Education Minister Andries Treurnicht. In 1982, the group broke away to form the Conservative Party. However, they did not even begin to meet the demands of the opposition. In the face of rising discontent and violence, Botha refused to cede political power to blacks and imposed greater security measures against anti-apartheid activists. Botha also refused to negotiate with the ANC.
In 1985, Botha delivered the Rubicon speech, a policy address in which he refused to give in to demands by the black population, including the release of Mandela. Botha's defiance of international opinion further isolated South Africa, leading to economic sanctions and a rapid decline in the value of the rand. The following year, when the United States introduced the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act, Botha declared a nationwide state of emergency. He is famously quoted during this time as saying, "This uprising will bring out the beast in us".
As economic and diplomatic actions against South Africa increased, civil unrest spread amongst the black population, supported by the ANC and neighbouring black-majority governments. On 16 May 1986, Botha publicly warned neighbouring states against engaging in "unsolicited interference" in South Africa's affairs. Four days later, Botha ordered air strikes against selected targets in Lusaka, Harare, and Gaborone, including the offices of exiled ANC activists. Botha charged that these raids were just a "first installment" and showed that "South Africa has the capacity and the will to break the [ANC]."
In spite of the concessions made by Botha, his rule was still very repressive. Thousands were detained without trial during Botha's tenure, while others were tortured and killed. The TRC found Botha responsible for gross violations of human rights. He was also found to have directly authorised "unlawful activity which included killing." Botha declined to apologise for apartheid. In a 2006 interview to mark his 90th birthday, he suggested that he had no regrets about the way he had run the country. Botha denied that he had ever considered black South Africans to be in any way inferior to whites, but conceded that "some" whites did hold that view. He also claimed that the racial segregation laws of apartheid "started in Lord Milner's time" and the National Party merely inherited them; however, Botha conceded that the Afrikaner population had been "happy to perpetuate [apartheid]", as many of them "were, and some of them still are... 'racists at heart'".
== Post-presidency ==
Botha and his wife Elize retired to their home, Die Anker, in the town of Wilderness, 16 kilometres (9.9 mi) from the city of George and located on the Indian Ocean coast of the Western Cape. Elize died in 1997 after a heart attack. He was briefly engaged to Reinette Water Naude, an independently wealthy woman 31 years his junior. However, on 22 June 1998, he married Barbara Robertson, a legal secretary 25 years his junior.
Botha remained largely out of sight of the media and it was widely believed that he remained opposed to many of F. W. de Klerk's reforms. He resigned from the Afrikaner Broederbond.
Then-president Nelson Mandela arranged a dinner with Botha's daughters, Rozanne and Elsa, and their husbands. Mandela had hoped to lobby the family so that they would persuade Botha to testify at the new government's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), set up to expose apartheid-era crimes and chaired by his cultural and political nemesis, Archbishop Desmond Tutu. There was no unanimous agreement between the family, with Rozanne vocally opposed, believing that her father could face prosecution and/or humiliation in the court.
The TRC found that he had ordered the 1988 bombing of the South African Council of Churches headquarters in Johannesburg. In August 1998, he was fined and given a suspended jail sentence for his refusal to testify on human rights violations and violence sanctioned by the State Security Council (SSC) which he, as president until 1989, had directed.
In June 1999, Botha successfully appealed to the High Court against his conviction and sentence. The Court's ruling by Judge Selikowitz (with Judge Foxcroft concurring) found that the notice served on Botha to appear before the TRC was technically invalid.
=== Death and funeral ===
Botha died of natural causes at his home in Wilderness on Tuesday 31 October 2006, aged 90. His death was met with magnanimity by many of his former opponents. Former President Nelson Mandela was reported as saying "while to many Mr. Botha will remain a symbol of apartheid, we also remember him for the steps he took to pave the way towards the eventual peacefully negotiated settlement in our country".
President Thabo Mbeki announced that flags would be flown at half mast to mark the death of a former head of state. The offer of a state funeral was declined by Botha's family, and a private funeral was held on 8 November in the town of George, where Botha's body was buried. Mbeki attended the funeral.
However, the government's decision to honour Botha with official gestures, such as flying the national flag at half-mast and offering a state funeral, was met with public criticism. Organisations including the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) and COSATU expressed strong opposition, arguing that a man widely regarded as a symbol of apartheid oppression should not receive national recognition.
== Honours and awards ==
=== National honours ===
Decoration for Meritorious Services, May 1976
Grand Cross of the Order of the Star of South Africa, November 1979
=== Foreign honours ===
== Notes ==
== References ==
== Further reading ==
Botha's last interview before he died
The Mandela Document, dated prior to Mandela's release
"Fighter and Reformer: Extracts from the Speeches of P. W. Botha", Compiled by J.J.J. Scholtz, Published: Bureau for Information, Pretoria, 1989
The life and times of PW Botha – IOL
PW, Tambo 'partners in peace' – News24
'He was my bread and botha' (By artists) – Mail&Guardian
Zuma on PW: 'He saw the need for change' – Mail&Guardian
Thabo Mbeki on PW – Moneyweb |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portugal | Portugal | Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic, is a country on the Iberian Peninsula in Southwestern Europe. It is an unitary semi-presidential republic composed by continental Portugal and two autonomous regions, with Lisbon as both its capital and largest city. The continental portion borders Spain to the north and east, with Madeira and the Azores in the Atlantic Ocean. It features the westernmost point in continental Europe.
The western Iberian Peninsula has been continuously inhabited since prehistoric times, with the earliest signs of settlement dating to 5500 BC. Celtic and Iberian peoples arrived in the first millennium BC. The region came under Roman control in the second century BC. A succession of Germanic peoples and the Alans ruled from the fifth to eighth centuries AD. Muslims invaded mainland Portugal in the eighth century, but were gradually expelled by the Christian Reconquista, culminating with the capture of the Algarve between 1238 and 1249. Modern Portugal began taking shape during this period, initially as a county of the Christian Kingdom of León in 868, and formally as a sovereign kingdom with the Manifestis Probatum in 1179.
As one of the main participants of the Age of Discovery, Portugal made several seminal advancements in nautical science. The Portuguese subsequently were among the first Europeans to explore and discover new territories and sea routes, establishing a maritime empire of settlements, colonies, and trading posts that extended mostly along the South Atlantic and Indian Ocean coasts. A dynastic crisis in the early 1580s resulted in the Iberian Union (1580–1640), which unified Portugal under Spanish rule, marking its gradual decline as a global power. Portuguese sovereignty was regained in 1640 and was followed by a costly and protracted war lasting until 1688, while the 1755 Lisbon earthquake destroyed the city and further damaged the empire's economy.
The Napoleonic Wars drove the relocation of the court to Brazil in 1807, leading to its elevation from colony to kingdom, which culminated in Brazilian independence in 1822, this resulted in a civil war (1828–1834) between absolutist monarchists and supporters of a constitutional monarchy, with the latter prevailing. The monarchy endured until the 5 October 1910 revolution, which replaced it with the First Republic. Wracked by unrest and civil strife, the republic was replaced by the authoritarian Ditadura Nacional and its successor, the Estado Novo. Democracy was restored in 1974 following the Carnation Revolution, which brought an end to the Portuguese Colonial War and allowed the last of Portugal's African territories to achieve independence.
Portugal's imperial history has left a vast cultural legacy, with around 250 million native Portuguese speakers around the world. The country has a developed and advanced economy relying chiefly upon services, industry, and tourism. Portugal is a member of the United Nations, European Union, Schengen Area, and Council of Europe, and one of the founding members of NATO, the eurozone, the OECD, and the Community of Portuguese Language Countries.
== Etymology ==
The word Portugal ([puɾtuˈɣal] ) derives from the combined Roman-Celtic place name Portus Cale (present-day's conurbation of Porto and Vila Nova de Gaia). Porto stems from the Latin for port, portus; Cale's meaning and origin is unclear. The mainstream explanation is an ethnonym derived from the Callaeci, also known as the Gallaeci peoples, who occupied the north-west of the Iberian Peninsula. One theory proposes Cale is a derivation of the Celtic word for 'port'. Another is that Cala was a Celtic goddess. Some French scholars believe it may have come from Portus Gallus, the port of the Gauls.
Around 200 BC, the Romans took Iberia from the Carthaginians during the Second Punic War. In the process they conquered Cale, renaming it Portus Cale ('Port of Cale') and incorporating it into the province of Gallaecia. During the Middle Ages, the region around Portus Cale became known by the Suebi and Visigoths as Portucale. The name Portucale changed into Portugale during the 7th and 8th centuries, and by the 9th century, it was used to refer to the region between the rivers Douro and Minho. By the 11th and 12th centuries, Portugale, Portugallia, Portvgallo or Portvgalliae were already referred to as Portugal.
With the implementation of the republic in 1910, the word Portugal lost its prior status as the official name for the country, being replaced with the phrase República Portuguesa ([ʁɛˈpuβlikɐ puɾtuˈɣezɐ]). After the current constitution entered into force, in 1976, the Mirandese language received official recognition as a regional language, with the phrase República Pertuesa being the official name of the country in Mirandese.
== History ==
=== Prehistory ===
The region has been inhabited by humans since circa 400,000 years ago, when Homo heidelbergensis entered the area. The oldest human fossil found in Portugal is the 400,000-year-old Aroeira 3 H. Heidelbergensis skull discovered in the Cave of Aroeira in 2014. Later Neanderthals roamed the northern Iberian peninsula and a tooth has been found at Nova da Columbeira cave in Estremadura. Homo sapiens sapiens arrived in Portugal around 35,000 years ago and spread rapidly, with the earliest signs of settlement dating to 5500 BC. Pre-Celtic tribes inhabited Portugal. The Cynetes developed a written language, leaving stelae, which are mainly found in the south.
The Lusitanians were an Indo-European-speaking people living in the far west of the Iberian Peninsula, in present-day central Portugal and regions of Western Spain.
It is uncertain whether the Lusitanians were Celticized Iberians, representatives of the ancient Beaker Culture (with Proto-Lusitanian tribes possibly originating from Gallia Belgica) or Celts, related to the Lusones.
Early in the first millennium BC, several waves of Celts arrived in Portugal from Central Europe and intermarried with the local populations to form several different ethnic groups.
The Celtic presence and heritage is patent in archaeological and linguistic evidence. They dominated most of northern and central Portugal, while the south maintained some of its older character (believed non-Indo-European, likely related to Basque) until the Roman conquest. In southern Portugal, some small, semi-permanent commercial outposts were also founded by Mediterranean peoples namely Phoenicians, Greeks and Carthaginians along the coast.
=== Roman Portugal ===
Romans first invaded the Iberian Peninsula in 219 BC. The Carthaginians, Rome's opponent in the Punic Wars, were expelled from their coastal colonies. During Julius Caesar's rule, almost the entire peninsula was annexed to Rome. The conquest took two hundred years and many died, including those sentenced to work in slave mines or sold as slaves to other parts of the empire. The Roman occupation suffered a setback in 155 BC, when a rebellion began in the north. The Lusitanians and other native tribes, under the leadership of Viriathus, wrested control of all of western Iberia. Rome sent legions to quell the rebellion but were unsuccessful. Roman leaders bribed Viriathus's allies to kill him in 139 BC; he was replaced by Tautalus.
In 29 BC, Lusitania gained the status of Roman province. Later, a northern province was separated from the province of Tarraconensis, under Emperor Diocletian's reforms, known as Gallaecia. There are numerous ruins of castros (hill forts) and remains of the Castro culture, like the Mozinho, Zambujal, Cidadelhe, Conímbriga, Mirobriga, Briteiros archaeological sites.
=== Germanic kingdoms ===
In 409, with the decline of the Roman Empire, the Iberian Peninsula was occupied by Germanic tribes. In 411, with a federation contract with Emperor Honorius, many of these people settled in Hispania. An important group was made up of the Suebi, Buri, Vandals in Gallaecia, who founded a Suebi Kingdom with its capital in Braga. They came to dominate central Portugal, including Aeminium (Coimbra) all the way to the Tagus, while the Visigoths occupied the south.
The Suebi and the Visigoths were the Germanic tribes who had the most lasting presence in the territories corresponding to modern Portugal. As elsewhere in Western Europe, there was a sharp decline in urban life during the Dark Ages.
Roman institutions disappeared in the wake of the Germanic invasions with the exception of ecclesiastical organisations, which were fostered by the Suebi in the fifth century and adopted by the Visigoths afterwards. Although the Suebi and Visigoths were initially followers of Arianism and Priscillianism, they adopted Catholicism from the local inhabitants. St. Martin of Braga was a particularly influential evangelist.
In 429, the Visigoths moved south to expel the Alans and Vandals and founded a kingdom with its capital in Toledo. From 470, conflict between the Suebi and Visigoths increased. In 585, the Visigothic King Liuvigild conquered Braga and annexed Gallaecia; the Iberian Peninsula was unified under a Visigothic Kingdom. A new class emerged, unknown in Roman times: a nobility, which played a key social and political role during the Middle Ages. It was under the Visigoths that the Church began to play an important part within the state. As the Visigoths did not learn Latin from the local people, they had to rely on bishops to continue the Roman system of governance. The laws were made by councils of bishops, and the clergy emerged as a high-ranking class.
=== Islamic period ===
Today's continental Portugal, along with most of modern Spain, was invaded from the South and became part of al-Andalus between 726 and 1249, following the Umayyad Caliphate conquest of the Iberian Peninsula. This rule lasted decades in the North, up to five centuries in the South.
After defeating the Visigoths in a few months, the Umayyad Caliphate started expanding rapidly in the peninsula. Beginning in 726, the land that is now Portugal became part of the vast Umayyad Caliphate's empire of Damascus, until its collapse in 750. That year the west of the empire gained its independence under Abd-ar-Rahman I with the establishment of the Emirate of Córdoba. The Emirate became the Caliphate of Córdoba in 929, until its dissolution in 1031, into 23 small kingdoms, called Taifa kingdoms.
The governors of the taifas proclaimed themselves Emir of their provinces and established diplomatic relations with the Christian kingdoms of the north. Most of present-day Portugal fell into the hands of the Taifa of Badajoz of the Aftasid Dynasty, and in 1022 the Taifa of Seville of the Abbadids poets. The Taifa period ended with the conquest of the Almoravids in 1086, then by the Almohads in 1147.
Al-Andaluz was divided into districts called Kura. Gharb Al-Andalus at its largest consisted of ten kuras, each with a distinct capital and governor. The main cities were in the southern half of the country: Beja, Silves, Alcácer do Sal, Santarém and Lisbon. The Muslim population consisted mainly of native Iberian converts to Islam and Berbers. The Arabs (mainly noblemen from Syria) although a minority, constituted the elite. The Berbers who joined them, were nomads from the Rif Mountains of North Africa.
Invasions from the North also occurred in this period, with Viking incursions raiding the coast between the 9th and 11th centuries, including Lisbon. This resulted in the establishment of small Norse settlements in the coastline between Douro and Minho.
One likely Viking cultural heritage is found in the ancient Marcas Poveiras or Siglas Poveiras. It is generally accepted that the siglas, also known as marcas, are of Scandinavian origin. Based on numerous similarities initially found at the Nationalmuseet in Copenhagen, several objects marked with "home-marks" were also identified in Funen (also known as Fyn), Denmark. Further studies revealed that the complex hereditary marking system of Póvoa de Varzim was also present in Fyn. Given the geographical distance, historical Viking incursions along the Portuguese coast, and pagan rituals practiced by people from this particular fishing region, it is believed that there is a partial Norse ancestry and cultural legacy.
=== Reconquista ===
The Reconquista was a period when Christians reconquered the Iberian Peninsula from Moorish domination. An Asturian Visigothic noble named Pelagius of Asturias was elected leader in 718 by many of the ousted Visigoth nobles. Pelagius called for the remnants of the Christian Visigothic armies to rebel against the Moors and regroup in the unconquered northern Asturian highlands, known today as the Cantabrian Mountains, in north-west Spain. After defeating the Moors in the Battle of Covadonga in 722, Pelagius was proclaimed king, thus founding the Christian Kingdom of Asturias and starting the war of Christian reconquest.
At the end of the 9th century, the region of Portugal between the rivers Minho and Douro was reconquered from the Moors by nobleman and knight Vímara Peres on the orders of King Alfonso III of Asturias. Finding many towns deserted, he decided to repopulate and rebuild them.
Vímara Peres elevated the region to the status of County, naming it the County of Portugal after its major port city – Portus Cale or modern Porto. One of the first cities he founded is Vimaranes, known today as Guimarães – "birthplace of the Portuguese nation" or the "cradle city".
After annexing the County of Portugal into one of the counties that made up the Kingdom of Asturias, King Alfonso III of Asturias knighted Vímara Peres, in 868, as the First Count of Portus Cale (Portugal). The region became known as Portucale, Portugale, and simultaneously Portugália. With the forced abdication of Alfonso III in 910, the Kingdom of Asturias split into three separate kingdoms; they were reunited in 924 under the crown of León.
In 1093 Alfonso VI of León bestowed the county to Henry of Burgundy and married him to his daughter, Teresa of León. Henry thus became Henry, Count of Portugal and based his newly formed county from Bracara Augusta (modern Braga).
=== Independence ===
At the Battle of São Mamede, in the outskirts of Guimarães, in 1128, Afonso Henriques, Count of Portugal, defeated his mother Countess Teresa and her lover Fernão Peres de Trava, establishing himself as sole leader of the county. Afonso continued his father Henry of Burgundy's Reconquista wars. His campaigns were successful and in 1139, he obtained a victory in the Battle of Ourique, so was proclaimed King of Portugal by his soldiers. This is traditionally taken as the occasion when the County of Portugal became the independent Kingdom of Portugal and, in 1129, the capital city was transferred from Guimarães to Coimbra. Afonso was recognised as the first king of Portugal in 1143 by King Alfonso VII of León, and in 1179 by Pope Alexander III as Afonso I of Portugal, with the papal bull Manifestis Probatum.
Afonso Henriques and his successors, aided by military monastic orders, continued pushing southwards against the Moors. In 1217, during the reign of King Afonso II, Portuguese troops, supported by crusaders and others, retook Alcácer do Sal, with further land conquests from the Moors during the reign of Sancho II, mainly the start of the conquest of the Algarve in 1238. After internal tensions, Sancho II was deposed from the throne and his brother, Afonso III, became king in 1248. In 1249, the Reconquista ended with the capture of the Algarve, in the aftermath of the Siege of Faro, and the last Moorish settlements were expelled. With minor readjustments, Portugal's territorial borders have remained the same, making it one of the oldest established countries in Europe.
After a conflict with the kingdom of Castile, Denis of Portugal signed the Treaty of Alcañices in 1297 with Ferdinand IV of Castile. This treaty established the border between the kingdoms of Portugal and Leon. During the reign of Denis, the first university in Portugal opened in Lisbon, on March 1, 1290, being then transferred to Coimbra in 1308. Denis died in 1325 and was succeeded by his son, Afonso IV, who had a strained relationship with his father that nearly ended in war. In 1355, in the aftermath of the assassination of Inês de Castro, Peter's I lover, a civil war broke between the King, Afonso IV, and his son, and heir, Peter, with peace only being achieved in 1357. The reigns of Denis, Afonso IV, and Peter I mostly saw peace with the other kingdoms of Iberia.
In 1348-49 Portugal, as with the rest of Europe, was devastated by the Black Death. In 1373, Portugal, during the reign of Ferdinand I, made an alliance with England, the oldest standing alliance in the world. This alliance was signed during the Fernandine Wars, a series of conflicts between Portugal and Castile over the right to the throne of Castile. This alliance would be reinforced with the signing of the Treaty of Windsor in 1386.
=== Age of Discoveries ===
In 1383 John I of Castile and Beatrice of Portugal, the only surviving legitimate child of Ferdinand I of Portugal, claimed the throne of Portugal. John of Aviz, later John I of Portugal, led a revolt against this claim and defeated the Castilians in the Battle of Aljubarrota, with the House of Aviz becoming the ruling house. The new ruling dynasty led Portugal to the limelight of European politics and culture. They created and sponsored literature, such as a history of Portugal, by Fernão Lopes.
Portugal spearheaded European exploration of the world and the Age of Discovery under the sponsorship of Prince Henry the Navigator, and made several seminal advancements in nautical science. Portugal explored the Atlantic, encountering the Azores, Madeira, and Portuguese Cape Verde, which led to the first colonisation movements. The Portuguese explored the Indian Ocean, established trade routes in most of southern Asia, and sent the first direct European maritime trade and diplomatic missions to China (Jorge Álvares) and Japan (Nanban trade). In 1415, Portugal acquired its first colonies by conquering Ceuta, in North Africa. Throughout the 15th century, Portuguese explorers sailed the coast of Africa, establishing trading posts for commodities, ranging from gold to slavery. Portugal sailed the Portuguese India Armadas to Goa via the Cape of Good Hope.
The Treaty of Tordesillas of 1494 was intended to resolve a dispute created following the return of Christopher Columbus and divided the newly located lands outside Europe between Portugal and Spain along a line west of the Cape Verde islands, off the west coast of Africa. In 1498 Vasco da Gama became the first European to reach India by sea, bringing economic prosperity to Portugal and helping to start the Portuguese Renaissance. In 1500, the Portuguese explorer Gaspar Corte-Real reached what is now Canada and founded the town of Portugal Cove-St. Philip's, one of many Portuguese colonies of the Americas.
In 1500, Pedro Álvares Cabral landed on Brazil and claimed it for Portugal. Ten years later, Afonso de Albuquerque conquered Goa in India, Muscat and Ormuz in the Persian Strait, and Malacca, now in Malaysia. Thus, the Portuguese empire held dominion over commerce in the Indian Ocean and South Atlantic. Portuguese sailors set out to reach Eastern Asia, landing in Taiwan, Japan, Timor, Flores, and the Moluccas. Although it was believed the Dutch were the first Europeans to arrive in Australia, there is evidence the Portuguese may have discovered it in 1521.
Between 1519 and 1522 Ferdinand Magellan organised a Spanish expedition to the East Indies which resulted in the first circumnavigation of the globe. The Treaty of Zaragoza, signed in 1529 between Portugal and Spain, divided the Pacific Ocean between Spain and Portugal.
=== Iberian Union and Restoration ===
Portugal voluntarily entered a dynastic union (1580–1640) because the last two kings of the House of Aviz (Sebastian, King of Portugal, followed by his grand-uncle Henry, King of Portugal) died without heirs, resulting in the Portuguese succession crisis of 1580. Philip II of Spain claimed the throne, under the pretext that his mother was a Portuguese princess, Isabella of Portugal, the second child and first daughter of King Manuel I of Portugal. Philip II of Spain was accepted as Philip I of Portugal. Yet, Portugal did not lose its formal independence. Instead, a union of kingdoms was formed. But the joining of the two crowns deprived Portugal of an independent foreign policy, and led to its involvement in the Eighty Years' War between Spain and the Netherlands.
War led to a deterioration of relations with Portugal's oldest ally, England, and the loss of Hormuz, a strategic trading post located between Iran and Oman. From 1595 to 1663 the Dutch Portuguese War primarily involved Dutch companies invading Portuguese colonies and commercial interests in Brazil, Africa, India and the Far East, resulting in the loss of Portugal's Indian sea trade monopoly.
In 1640 John IV of Portugal spearheaded an uprising backed by disgruntled nobles and was proclaimed king. The Portuguese Restoration War ended the 60-year period of the Iberian Union under the House of Habsburg. This was the beginning of the House of Braganza, which reigned until 1910. John V saw a reign characterised by the influx of gold into the royal treasury, supplied largely by the royal fifth (tax on precious metals) from the Portuguese colonies of Brazil and Maranhão. Most estimates place the number of Portuguese migrants to Colonial Brazil during the gold rush of the 18th century at 600,000. This represented one of the largest movements of European populations to their colonies, during colonial times.
=== Pombaline era and Enlightenment ===
In 1738 Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo, later ennobled as 1st Marquis of Pombal, began a career as the Portuguese Ambassador in London, later in Vienna. King Joseph I was crowned in 1750 and made him his Minister of Foreign Affairs. As the King's confidence in Carvalho e Melo increased, he entrusted him with more control of the state. By 1755, Carvalho e Melo was made prime minister. Impressed by British economic success witnessed as ambassador, he successfully implemented similar economic policies in Portugal.
In 1761, during the reign of King José I, he banned the import of black slaves into mainland Portugal and India, not for humanitarian reasons, but because they were a necessary work force in Brazil. At the same time, he encouraged the trade of black slaves ("the pieces", in the terms of that time) to that colony, and with the support and direct involvement of the Marquis of Pombal, two companies were founded - the Companhia do Grão-Pará e Maranhão and the Companhia Geral de Pernambuco e Paraíba - whose main activity was the trafficking of slaves, mostly Africans, to Brazilian lands.
He reorganised the army and navy and ended legal discrimination against different Christian sects. He created companies and guilds to regulate commercial activity and one of the first appellation systems by demarcating the region for production of Port to ensure the wine's quality. This was the first attempt to control wine quality and production in Europe. He imposed strict law upon all classes of Portuguese society, along with a widespread review of the tax system. These reforms gained him enemies in the upper classes.
Lisbon was struck by a major earthquake on 1 November 1755, magnitude estimated to have been between 7.7 and 9.0, with casualties ranging from 12,000 to 50,000. Following the earthquake, Joseph I gave his prime minister more power, and Carvalho de Melo became an enlightened despot. In 1758 Joseph I was wounded in an attempted assassination. The Marquis of Távora, several members of his family and even servants were tortured and executed in public with extreme brutality (even by the standards of the time), as alleged part of the Távora affair.
The following year, the Jesuits were suppressed and expelled. This crushed opposition by publicly demonstrating even the aristocracy was powerless before Pombal. Further titled "Marquês de Pombal" in 1770, he ruled Portugal until Joseph I's death in 1777. The new ruler, Queen Maria I of Portugal, disliked Pombal because of his excesses, and upon her accession to the throne, withdrew all his political offices. Pombal was banished to his estate at Pombal, where he died in 1782.
Historians argue that Pombal's "enlightenment," while far-reaching, was primarily a mechanism for enhancing autocracy at the expense of individual liberty and especially an apparatus for crushing opposition, suppressing criticism, and furthering colonial exploitation and consolidating personal control, and profit.
=== Crises of the 19th century ===
In 1807 Portugal refused Napoleon's demand to accede to the Continental System of embargo against the United Kingdom; a French invasion under General Junot followed, and Lisbon was captured in 1807. British intervention in the Peninsular War helped maintain Portuguese independence; the last French troops were expelled in 1812. During the Napoleonic invasions, the Portuguese royal family transferred the court to Rio de Janeiro, in Brazil, making it the capital of the Portuguese empire between 1808 and 1821.
In 1820, constitutionalist insurrections took place at Porto and Lisbon, and King John VI and his court were forced to return to mainland Portugal in 1821. Lisbon regained its status as the capital of Portugal when Brazil declared its independence in 1822. The death of King John VI in 1826 led to a crisis of royal succession. His eldest son, Pedro I of Brazil, briefly became Pedro IV of Portugal, but neither the Portuguese nor Brazilians wanted a unified monarchy.
Consequently, Pedro abdicated the Portuguese crown in favour of his 7-year-old daughter, Maria da Glória, on the condition that when she came of age she would marry his brother, Miguel. Dissatisfaction at Pedro's constitutional reforms led the "absolutist" faction of landowners and the church to proclaim Miguel king in February 1828. This led to the Liberal Wars, in which Pedro forced Miguel to abdicate and go into exile in 1834 and place his daughter on the throne as Queen Maria II of Portugal.
After 1815 the Portuguese expanded their trading ports along the African coast, moving inland to take control of Angola and Mozambique. The slave trade was abolished in 1836. In Portuguese India, trade flourished in the colony of Goa, with its subsidiary colonies of Macau, near Hong Kong, and Timor, north of Australia. The Portuguese successfully introduced Catholicism and the Portuguese language into their colonies, while most settlers continued to head to Brazil.
In January 1890, the British government delivered an ultimatum to Portugal, demanding the withdrawal of Portuguese forces from the area between Portugal's colonies of Mozambique and Angola. The area had been claimed by Portugal as part of its colonialist Pink Map project, but Britain disputed these claims, mostly due to Cecil Rhodes' aspirations to create a Cape to Cairo Railway, which was intended to link all British colonies via a single railway. The government of Portugal quietly accepted the ultimatum and withdrew their forces from the disputed area, leading to a widespread backlash among the Portuguese public, who viewed acceptance of the British demands as a humiliation.
=== First Republic and Estado Novo ===
On 1 February 1908, King Carlos I and his son and heir, Luís Filipe, Prince Royal, were assassinated by Republican and Carbonária members. Two years later, on 5 October 1910, a coup d'état overthrew the near 800-year-old Monarchy and the Republic was proclaimed. During World War I, Portugal helped the Allies fight the Central Powers; however the war hurt its weak economy.
Political instability and economic weaknesses were fertile ground for chaos and unrest during the First Portuguese Republic. Several coups occurred during the First Republic, like the failed Monarchy of the North coup, but others had success, like the December 1917 coup d'état, which led to the rise of Sidónio Pais to power. In 1921, the Bloody Night revolt ended in the assassination of the Prime Minister and other high-ranking officials of the Republic.
These conditions led to the 28 May 1926 coup d'état and creation of the National Dictatorship (Ditadura Nacional). This in turn led to the right-wing dictatorship of the Estado Novo (New State), under António de Oliveira Salazar in 1933.
Portugal remained neutral in World War II. From the 1940s to 1960s, Portugal was a founding member of NATO, OECD, the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) and joined the United Nations in 1955. New economic development projects and relocation of mainland Portuguese citizens into the overseas provinces in Africa were initiated, with Angola and Mozambique being the main targets of those initiatives. These actions were used to affirm Portugal's status as a transcontinental nation and not a colonial empire.
Pro-Indian residents of Dadra and Nagar Haveli, separated those territories from Portuguese rule in 1954. In 1961, Fort of São João Baptista de Ajudá's annexation by the Republic of Dahomey was the start of a process that led to the dissolution of the centuries-old Portuguese Empire. Another forcible retreat occurred in 1961 when Portugal refused to relinquish Goa. The Portuguese were involved in armed conflict in Portuguese India against the Indian Armed Forces. The operations resulted in the defeat and loss of the remaining Portuguese territories in the Indian subcontinent. The Portuguese regime refused to recognise Indian sovereignty over the annexed territories, which continued to be represented in the National Assembly until the coup of 1974.
Also in the early 1960s the independence movements in the Portuguese provinces of Portuguese Angola, Portuguese Mozambique, and Portuguese Guinea in Africa, resulted in the Portuguese Colonial War (lasting from 1961 till 1974). The war mobilised around 1.4 million men for military or for civilian support service, and led to large casualties. Throughout the colonial war period Portugal dealt with increasing dissent, arms embargoes and other punitive sanctions imposed by the international community. The authoritarian and conservative Estado Novo regime, tried to preserve the empire.
Salazar governed until 1968, when he suffered a brain hemorrhage, and was replaced by Marcelo Caetano, which raised hopes of a "liberalization" of the Estado Novo regime, called the Marcelist Spring, but those hopes were soon crushed.
=== Carnation Revolution and return to democracy ===
The government and army resisted the decolonization of its overseas territories until April 1974, when a left-wing military coup in Lisbon, the Carnation Revolution, led the way for the independence of territories, as well as the restoration of democracy after two years of a transitional period known as PREC (Processo Revolucionário Em Curso). This period was characterised by power disputes between left- and right-wing political forces. By the summer of 1975, the tensions were so high, that the country was on the verge of civil war. Forces connected to the extreme left-wing launched another coup on 25 November, but a military faction, the Group of Nine, initiated a counter-coup.
The Group of Nine emerged victorious, preventing the establishment of a communist state and ending political instability. The retreat from the overseas territories prompted a mass exodus of Portuguese citizens from its African territories. Up to 600,000 Portuguese refugees fled the former Portuguese provinces, as white settlers were usually not considered part of the former colonies. By 1975, all Portuguese African territories were independent and Portugal held its first democratic elections in 50 years.
Portugal continued to be governed by a several provisional governments until the Portuguese legislative election of 1976. It was won by the Portuguese Socialist Party and Mário Soares, its leader, became prime minister. Soares would be prime minister from 1976 to 1978 and 1983 to 1985. Soares tried to resume the economic growth and development record that had been achieved before the Carnation Revolution. He initiated the process of accession to the European Economic Community (EEC).
After the transition to democracy, Portugal flipped between socialism and adherence to the neoliberal model. Land reform and nationalisations were enforced; the Portuguese Constitution was rewritten to accommodate socialist and communist principles. Until the revisions of 1982 and 1989, the constitution had references to socialism, the rights of workers, and the desirability of a socialist economy. Portugal's economic situation after the revolution obliged the government to pursue International Monetary Fund (IMF)-monitored stabilisation programmes in 1977–78 and 1983–85. In 1986 Portugal alongside Spain, joined the European Economic Community which later became the European Union (EU). Portugal's economy progressed considerably as a result of European Structural and Investment Funds and companies' easier access to foreign markets.
Portugal's last overseas territory, Macau, was peacefully handed over to China in 1999. In 2002, the independence of East Timor (Asia) was formally recognised by Portugal. In 1995, Portugal started to implement Schengen Area rules, eliminating border controls with other Schengen members. Expo '98 took place in Portugal and in 1999 it was one of the founding countries of the euro and eurozone. In 2004 José Manuel Barroso, the then Prime Minister of Portugal, was nominated President of the European Commission.
On 1 December 2009, the Treaty of Lisbon entered into force, enhancing the efficiency and democratic legitimacy of the Union. Economic disruption and an unsustainable growth in government debt during the 2008 financial crisis led the country to negotiate in 2011 with the IMF and the European Union, through the European Financial Stability Mechanism and the European Financial Stability Facility, a loan to help the country stabilise its finances.
== Geography ==
Portugal occupies an area on the Iberian Peninsula (referred to as the continent by most Portuguese) and two archipelagos in the Atlantic Ocean: Madeira and the Azores. It lies between latitudes 30° and 42° N, and longitudes 32° and 6° W.
Continental Portugal is split by its main river, the Tagus, that flows from Spain and disgorges in the Tagus Estuary at Lisbon, before escaping into the Atlantic. The northern landscape is mountainous towards the interior with several plateaus indented by river valleys, whereas the south, including the Algarve and the Alentejo regions, is characterised by rolling plains.
Portugal's highest peak is Mount Pico on Pico Island in the Azores. The archipelagos of Madeira and the Azores are scattered within the Atlantic Ocean: the Azores straddling the Mid-Atlantic Ridge on a tectonic triple junction, and Madeira along a range formed by in-plate hotspot geology. Geologically, these islands were formed by volcanic and seismic events. The last terrestrial volcanic eruption occurred in 1957–58 (Capelinhos) and minor earthquakes occur sporadically.
The exclusive economic zone, a sea zone over which the Portuguese have special rights in exploration and have use of marine resources, covers an area of 1,727,408 km2 (666,956 sq mi). This is the 3rd largest exclusive economic zone of the European Union and the 20th largest in the world.
=== Provinces of Portugal ===
The term "provinces" (Portuguese: províncias) has been used throughout history to identify regions of continental Portugal. Current legal subdivisions of Portugal do not coincide with the provinces, but several provinces, in their 19th- and 20th-century versions, still correspond to culturally relevant, strongly self-identifying categories. They include:
Alentejo (Alto Alentejo, Baixo Alentejo)
Algarve
Beira (Beira Alta, Beira Baixa, Beira Litoral)
Douro Litoral
Estremadura
Minho
Ribatejo
Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro
The islands of Azores and Madeira weren't called "provinces".
=== Climate ===
Portugal is mainly characterised by a Mediterranean climate, temperate maritime climate in high altitude zones of the Azorean islands; a semi-arid climate in parts of the Beja District far south and in Porto Santo Island, a hot desert climate in the Selvagens Islands and a humid subtropical climate in the western Azores, according to the Köppen-Geiger climate classification. It is one of the warmest countries in Europe: the average temperature in mainland Portugal varies from 10–12 °C (50.0–53.6 °F) in the mountainous interior north to 17–19 °C (62.6–66.2 °F) in the south and on the Guadiana river basin. There are variations from the highlands to the lowlands. The Algarve, separated from the Alentejo region by mountains reaching up to 900 metres (3,000 ft) in Alto da Fóia, has a climate similar to that of the southern coastal areas of Spain or Southwest Australia.
Annual average rainfall in the mainland varies from just over 3,200 millimetres (126.0 in) on the Peneda-Gerês National Park to less than 500 millimetres (19.7 in) in southern parts of Alentejo. Mount Pico receives the largest annual rainfall (over 6,250 millimetres (246.1 in) per year), according to Instituto Português do Mar e da Atmosfera. In some areas, such as the Guadiana basin, annual diurnal average temperatures can be as high as 24.5 °C (76.1 °F), and summer's highest temperatures are routinely over 40 °C (104 °F). The record high of 47.4 °C (117.3 °F) was recorded in Amareleja.
Snowfalls occur regularly during winter in the interior North and Centre, particularly in the highlands. In these regions, temperatures can drop below −10.0 °C (14.0 °F), and snow may fall any time from October to May. In the South, snowfalls are rare but can still occur at the highest elevations. While the official absolute minimum by IPMA is −16.0 °C (3.2 °F) in Penhas da Saúde and Miranda do Douro, lower temperatures have been recorded. Continental Portugal receives around 2,300-3,200 hours of sunshine annually, an average of 4–6 hours in winter and 10–12 hours in the summer, with higher values in the south-east, south-west, Algarve coast and lower in the north-west.
Portugal's central west and southwest coasts have an extreme ocean seasonal lag; sea temperatures are warmer in October than in July and are their coldest in March. The average sea surface temperature on the west coast of mainland Portugal varies from 14–16 °C (57.2–60.8 °F) in January−March to 19–21 °C (66.2–69.8 °F) in August−October while on the south coast it ranges from 16 °C (60.8 °F) in January−March and rises in the summer to about 22–23 °C (71.6–73.4 °F), occasionally reaching 26 °C (78.8 °F). In the Azores, around 16 °C (60.8 °F) in February−April to 22–24 °C (71.6–75.2 °F) in July−September, and in Madeira, around 18 °C (64.4 °F) in February−April to 23–24 °C (73.4–75.2 °F) in August−October.
Azores and Madeira have a subtropical climate, although variations between islands exist. The Madeira and Azorean archipelagos have a narrower temperature range, with annual average temperatures exceeding 20 °C (68 °F) in some parts of the coast. Some islands in Azores have drier months in the summer. Consequently, the islands of the Azores have been identified as having a Mediterranean climate, while some islands (such as Flores or Corvo) are classified as Humid subtropical, transitioning into an Oceanic climate at higher altitudes. Porto Santo Island in Madeira has a warm semi-arid climate. The Savage Islands, which are part of the regional territory of Madeira and a nature reserve are unique in being classified as a desert climate with an annual average rainfall of approximately 150 millimetres (5.9 in).
Climate change in Portugal is causing rising temperatures and longer-lasting heat waves, decreases in average rainfall and increases in the number of extremely rainy days (causing droughts and floods), and rising sea levels which will threaten the country's many coastal populations. Wildfires are quite common and a major issue in Portugal, being the country with the highest percentage of burned area, on average, in the entire European Union.
=== Biodiversity ===
Portugal is located on the Mediterranean Basin, the third most diverse hotspot of flora in the world. It is home to six terrestrial ecoregions: Azores temperate mixed forests, Cantabrian mixed forests, Madeira evergreen forests, Iberian sclerophyllous and semi-deciduous forests, Northwest Iberian montane forests, and Southwest Iberian Mediterranean sclerophyllous and mixed forests. Over 22% of its land area is included in the Natura 2000 network. Eucalyptus, cork oak and maritime pine together make up 71% of the total forested area of continental Portugal.
Geographical and climatic conditions facilitate the introduction of exotic species that later turn to be invasive and destructive to the native habitats. Around 20 percent of the total number of extant species in continental Portugal are exotic. Portugal is the second country in Europe with the highest number of threatened animal and plant species. Portugal as a whole is an important stopover for migratory bird species.
The large mammalian species of Portugal (deer, Iberian ibex, wild boar, red fox, Iberian wolf and Iberian lynx) were once widespread throughout the country, but intense hunting, habitat degradation and growing pressure from agriculture and livestock reduced population on a large scale in the 19th and early 20th century, others, such as the Portuguese ibex were even led to extinction. Today, these animals are re-expanding their native range.
The Portuguese west coast is part of the four major Eastern Boundary Upwelling Systems of the ocean. This seasonal upwelling system typically seen during the summer months brings cooler, nutrient rich water up to the sea surface promoting phytoplankton growth, zooplankton development and the subsequent rich diversity in pelagic fish and other marine invertebrates. This makes Portugal one of the largest per capita fish-consumers in the world. 73% of the freshwater fish occurring in the Iberian Peninsula are endemic, the largest out of any region in Europe. Some protected areas of Portugal include: the Serras de Aire e Candeeiros, the Southwest Alentejo and Vicentine Coast Natural Park, and the Montesinho Natural Park which hosts some of the only populations of Iberian wolf and Iberian brown bear.
== Politics ==
Portugal has been a semi-presidential representative democratic republic since the ratification of the Constitution of 1976, with Lisbon, the nation's largest city, as its capital. The Constitution grants the division or separation of powers among four sovereignty bodies: the President of the Republic, the Assembly of the Republic, the Government and the Courts.
The Head of State is the President of the Republic, elected to a five-year term by direct, universal suffrage; the current president is Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa. Although largely a ceremonial post, Presidential powers include the appointment of the Prime Minister and other members of the Government; dismissing the Prime Minister; dissolving the Assembly; vetoing legislation (which may be overridden by the Assembly); and declaring war (only on the advice of the Government and with the authorisation of the Assembly). The President has also supervisory and reserve powers and is the ex officio Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. The President is advised on issues of importance by the Council of State.
According to International IDEA’s Global State of Democracy (GSoD) Indices and Democracy Tracker, Portugal performs in the mid-high range on overall democratic measures, with particular strengths in political representation, including elected government and inclusive suffrage.
=== Government ===
The Assembly of the Republic is a single chamber parliament composed of a maximum of 230 deputies elected for a four-year term. The Government is headed by the Prime Minister and includes Ministers and Secretaries of State, that have full executive powers; the current prime minister is Luís Montenegro. The Council of Ministers – under the Prime Minister (or the President at the latter's request) and the Ministers – acts as the cabinet. The Courts are organised into several levels, among the judicial, administrative and fiscal branches. The Supreme Courts are institutions of last resort/appeal. A thirteen-member Constitutional Court oversees the constitutionality of the laws.
Portugal operates a multi-party system of competitive legislatures/local administrative governments at the national, regional and local levels. The Assembly of the Republic is dominated by three political parties, the Social Democratic Party (PSD), Enough (CH) and the Socialist Party (PS), while in Regional Assemblies and local municipalities and parishes the PSD and PS continue to be the dominant parties. Others parties include the Liberal Initiative, the Left Bloc, the Unitary Democratic Coalition (Portuguese Communist Party and Ecologist Party "The Greens"), LIVRE, the CDS – People's Party and the People Animals Nature.
=== Foreign relations ===
A member state of the United Nations since 1955, Portugal is a founding member of NATO (1949), the OECD (1961) and EFTA (1960); it left the last in 1986 to join the European Economic Community, which became the European Union in 1993. In 1996, Portugal co-founded the Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP), also known as the Lusophone Commonwealth, an international organisation and political association of Lusophone nations where Portuguese is an official language.
Portugal has hosted several international summits and events like the first EU–Brazil summit in July 2007, the second EU–African Union summit in December 2007, the signing of the Treaty of Lisbon also in December 2007, and the NATO summit in November 2010. Portugal was a full member of the Latin Union (1983) and the Organisation of Ibero-American States (1949). It has a friendship alliance and dual citizenship treaty with its former colony, Brazil. Portugal and the United Kingdom share the world's oldest active military accord through their Anglo-Portuguese Alliance (Treaty of Windsor), signed in 1386.
=== Territorial disputes ===
Olivenza: Under Portuguese sovereignty since 1297, the municipality of Olivença was ceded to Spain under the Treaty of Badajoz in 1801, after the War of the Oranges. Portugal claimed it back in 1815 under the Treaty of Vienna. However, since the 19th century, it has been continuously ruled by Spain which considers the territory theirs not only de facto but also de jure.
Savage Islands: A small group of mostly uninhabited islets which fall under Portuguese Madeira's regional autonomous jurisdiction. Found in 1364 by Italian mariners under the service of Prince Henry The Navigator, it was first noted by Portuguese navigator Diogo Gomes de Sintra in 1438. Historically, the islands have belonged to private Portuguese owners from the 16th century on, until 1971 when the government purchased them and established a natural reserve area covering the whole archipelago. The islands have been claimed by Spain since 1911, and the dispute has caused some periods of political tension between the two countries. The main problem for Spain's attempts to claim these small islands, has been not so much their intrinsic value, but the fact that they expand Portugal's exclusive economic zone considerably to the south, in detriment of Spain. The Selvagens Islands have been tentatively added to UNESCO's world heritage list in 2017.
=== Military ===
The armed forces have three branches: Navy, Army and Air Force, commanded by the Portuguese Armed Forces General Staff. They serve primarily as a self-defence force whose mission is to protect the territorial integrity of the country but can also be used in offensive missions in foreign territories. In recent years, the Portuguese Armed Forces have carried out several NATO and European Union military missions in various territories, namely in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Mali, Central African Republic, Somalia, Mozambique and East Timor. As of 2024, the three branches numbered 23,678 military personnel. Portuguese military expenditure in 2023 was more than 4 billion US$, representing 1.48 per cent of GDP.
The Army of 10,969 personnel comprises three brigades and other small units. An Infantry Brigade (mainly equipped with Pandur II APC, M114 howitzer and MIM-72 Chaparral air defence systems), a Mechanized Brigade (mainly equipped with Leopard 2 A6 tanks and M113A2 APC) and a Rapid Reaction Brigade (consisting of Paratroopers, Commandos, Rangers and Artillery Regiment). The Navy (6,739 personnel by 2023, of which 1,030 are marines), the world's oldest surviving naval force, has five frigates, two corvettes, two submarines, and 20 oceanic patrol vessels. The Air Force (5,663 personnel by 2023) has the Lockheed F-16M Fighting Falcon as the main combat aircraft.
In addition to the three branches of the armed forces, there is the National Republican Guard, a security force subject to military law and organisation (gendarmerie) comprising 23,287 personnel by 2023. This force is under the authority of both the Defence and the Interior Ministry. It has provided detachments for participation in international operations in Iraq and East Timor. The United States maintains a military presence with 770 troops in the Lajes Air Base at Terceira Island, in the Azores.
=== Law and justice ===
The Portuguese legal system is part of the civil law legal system. The main laws include the Constitution (1976), the Portuguese Civil Code (1966) and the Penal Code of Portugal (1982), as amended. Other relevant laws are the Commercial Code (1888) and the Civil Procedure Code (1961). Portuguese laws were applied in the former colonies and territories and continue to be influences for those countries. The supreme national courts are the Supreme Court of Justice and the Constitutional Court. The Public Ministry, headed by the Attorney General of the Republic, constitutes the independent body of public prosecutors.
Drug decriminalisation was declared in 2001, making Portugal the first country to allow usage and personal possession of all common drugs. Despite criticism from other European nations, who stated Portugal's drug consumption would tremendously increase, overall drug use has declined along with HIV infection cases, which dropped 50 percent by 2009. Overall drug use among 16- to 18-year-olds declined, however use of marijuana rose slightly.
LGBT rights in Portugal have increased substantially in the 21st century. In 2003, Portugal added an anti-discrimination employment law on the basis of sexual orientation. In 2004, sexual orientation was added to the Constitution as part of the protected from discrimination characteristics. In 2010, Portugal became the sixth country in Europe and eighth in the world to legalise same-sex marriage at the national level.
LGBT adoption has been allowed since 2016 as has female same-sex couple access to medically assisted reproduction. In 2017 the Law of Gender Identity, simplified the legal process of gender and name change for transgender people, making it easier for minors to change their sex marker in legal documents. In 2018, the right to gender identity and gender expression self-determination became protected, intersex minors became protected by law from unnecessary medical procedures "until the minor gender identity manifests" and the right of protection from discrimination on the basis of sex characteristics became protected by the same law.
Over the past 30 years, Euthanasia legalisation has been proposed and approved in several parliamentary reviews, but has been blocked by the Constitutional Court, with the most recent unfavourable decision dating from 2025. In the most recent proposal, national residents over 18 who were terminally ill and in extreme suffering, but who could still decide to, would have the legal right to request for assisted dying. For non-residents or foreigners euthanasia would not be allowed.
=== Law enforcement ===
Portugal's main police organisations are the Guarda Nacional Republicana – GNR (National Republican Guard), a gendarmerie; the Polícia de Segurança Pública – PSP (Public Security Police), a civilian police force who work in urban areas; and the Polícia Judiciária – PJ (Judicial Police), a highly specialised criminal investigation police that is overseen by the Public Ministry.
Portugal has 49 correctional facilities in total run by the Ministry of Justice. They include seventeen central prisons, four special prisons, twenty-seven regional prisons, and one 'Cadeia de Apoio' (Support Detention Centre). As of 1 January 2025, the prison population stood at 12,193 inmates, which comes to about 0.11% of the country's entire population. The incarceration rate had a strong increase after 2010, with the prison population surpassing 14,000 inmates by 2013, but after that same year the incarceration rate began to steadily decline, a trend that has continued in recent years.
=== Administrative divisions ===
Administratively, Portugal is divided into 308 municipalities (municípios or concelhos), which, after a reform in 2013, were subdivided into 3,092 civil parishes (Portuguese: freguesia). The number of parishes grew to 3,259 in 2024, after several merged parishes were separated again. Operationally, the municipality and civil parish, along with the national government, are the only legally local administrative units identified by the government of Portugal (for example, cities, towns or villages have no standing in law, although may be used as catchment for the defining services). Continental Portugal is agglomerated into 18 districts, while the archipelagos of the Azores and Madeira are governed as autonomous regions; the largest units, established since 1976, are either mainland Portugal and the autonomous regions of Portugal (Azores and Madeira).
The 18 districts of mainland Portugal are: Aveiro, Beja, Braga, Bragança, Castelo Branco, Coimbra, Évora, Faro, Guarda, Leiria, Lisbon, Portalegre, Porto, Santarém, Setúbal, Viana do Castelo, Vila Real and Viseu – each district takes the name of the district capital.
Within the European Union NUTS system, Portugal is divided into nine regions: the Azores, Alentejo, Algarve, Centro, Lisboa, Madeira, Norte, Oeste e Vale do Tejo and Península de Setúbal, and with the exception of the Azores and Madeira, NUTS areas are subdivided into 24 subregions.
== Economy ==
Portugal is a developed and high-income country with a GDP per capita of 82% of the EU27 average in 2024, and a HDI of 0.874 (the 42nd highest in the world) in 2022. It holds the 14th largest gold reserve in the world at its national central bank, with the highest gold share of forex reserves in the world, has the 8th largest proven reserves of lithium, and total exports representing 46.6% of its GDP in 2024. Portugal has been a net beneficiary of the European Union budget since it joined the union, then known as EEC, in 1986.
By the end of 2024, GDP (PPP) was $50,617 per capita, according to the World Bank. By the same year, Portugal had the 6th lowest GDP per capita (PPP), ranking 15th, among the 20 members of the eurozone, and ranked only 18th among the 27 member-states of the European Union. In 2022, labour productivity had fallen to the fourth lowest among the 27 member-states of the European Union (EU) and was 35% lower than the EU average.
Portugal was an original member of the eurozone. The national currency, the euro (€) started transitioning from the Portuguese Escudo in 2000 and consolidated in 2002. Portugal's central bank is the Banco de Portugal, an integral part of the European System of Central Banks. Most industries, businesses and financial institutions are concentrated in the Lisbon and Porto metropolitan areas, plus the areas around these two metro areas.
Since the Carnation Revolution of 1974, which culminated in the end of one of Portugal's most notable phases of economic expansion, a significant change has occurred in the nation's annual economic growth. After the turmoil of the 1974 revolution, Portugal tried to adapt to a changing modern global economy, a process that continues. Since the 1990s, Portugal's public consumption-based economic development model has changed to a system focused on exports, private investment and the development of the high-tech sector. Consequently, business services have overtaken more traditional industries such as textiles, clothing, footwear and cork (Portugal is the world's leading cork producer), wood products and beverages.
In the 2010s, the Portuguese economy suffered its most severe recession since the 1970s, which resulted in the country receiving a 78-billion-euro bailout from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund in May 2011. By end of 2023, the share of debt as percentage of GDP fell below 100 percent, to 96.9%, and fell further to 93.6% by the end of 2024.
In 2024, the average gross salary was €1,602 per month, and the minimum wage, which is regulated by law, is €870 per month (paid 14 times per annum) as of 2025. The World Competitiveness Ranking 2025, by Swiss institute IMD, ranked Portugal at 37th. The Numbeo quality of life index placed Portugal 20th in the world in 2023.
Companies listed on Euronext Lisbon stock exchange like EDP, Galp, Jerónimo Martins, Mota-Engil, Novabase, Semapa, Portucel Soporcel, Portugal Telecom and Sonae, are among the largest corporations by number of employees, net income or international market share. The Euronext Lisbon is the major stock exchange and part of the pan-European group of stock exchanges Euronext. The PSI-20 is Portugal's most selective and widely known stock index.
The OECD economic reports since 2018 show recovery. Rents and house prices have skyrocketed in Portugal, particularly Lisbon, where rents jumped 37% in 2022. The 8% inflation rate in the same year exacerbated the problem. According to the IMF, Portugal's economic recovery from the COVID pandemic in 2022 was substantially better than the EU average. Although modest, economic growth continued in 2023 while inflation continued decreasing to 5%. In 2024 the annual inflation continued a downward trend ending at 2.3% and accompanied by a small economic growth. In 2025, the economy is expected to continue growing at 1.9 annually, while inflation is forecast at 2.1% for the fiscal year. These moderately optimistic indicators are supported by increased private consumption, investment, employment growth and unemployment easing.
Agriculture in Portugal is based on small to medium-sized family-owned dispersed units. However, the sector also includes larger scale intensive farming, export-oriented agrobusinesses. The country produces a variety of crops and livestock products, including: tomatoes, citrus, green vegetables, rice, wheat, barley, maize, olives, oilseeds, nuts, cherries, bilberry, table grapes, edible mushrooms, dairy products, poultry and beef. According to FAO, Portugal is the top producer of cork and carob in the world, accounting for about 50% and 30% of world production, respectively. It is the third largest exporter of chestnuts and third largest European producer of pulp. Portugal is among the world's top ten largest olive oil producers and fourth largest exporter. The country is one of the world's largest exporters of wine, reputed for its fine wines. Forestry has played an important economic role among the rural communities and industry. In 2001, the gross agricultural product accounted for 4% of the economy; in 2022 it was 2%.
=== Tourism ===
Travel and tourism is an important part of Portugal's economy. As of 2024, the tourism sector contributed 11.9% to GDP, worth €34 billion, with tourism contributing 0.3% to an annual GDP growth of 1.9%, a decrease compared to 2023, when almost half of the annual GDP growth was due to the tourism sector. It has been necessary for the country to focus upon its niche attractions, such as health, nature and rural tourism, to stay ahead of its competitors.
Portugal is among the top 20 most-visited countries in the world, receiving nearly 29 million foreign tourists by 2024. In 2014, Portugal was elected The Best European Country by USA Today. In 2017, Portugal was elected both Europe's Leading Destination and in 2018 and 2019, World's Leading Destination
Tourist hotspots in Portugal are: Lisbon, Cascais, Algarve, Madeira, Nazaré, Fátima, Óbidos, Porto, Braga, Guimarães and Coimbra. Lisbon attracts many tourists, being the 9th most visited city in Europe, and with 6,7 million tourists occupying the city's hotels by 2024, of which 5,5 million were foreign.
=== Science and technology ===
Scientific and technological research activities are mainly conducted within a network of R&D units belonging to public universities and state-managed autonomous research institutions like the INETI – Instituto Nacional de Engenharia, Tecnologia e Inovação and the INRB – Instituto Nacional dos Recursos Biológicos. Funding and management of this system is conducted under the authority of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education and the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (Foundation for Science and Technology). The largest R&D units of the public universities by volume of research grants and peer-reviewed publications, include biosciences research institutions.
Among the largest non-state-run research institutions are the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência and the Champalimaud Foundation, a neuroscience and oncology research centre. National and multinational high-tech and industrial companies, are responsible for research and development projects. One of the oldest learned societies of Portugal is the Lisbon Academy of Sciences, founded in 1779.
Iberian bilateral state-supported research efforts include the International Iberian Nanotechnology Laboratory and the Ibercivis distributed computing platform. Portugal is a member of pan-European scientific organisations. These include the European Space Agency (ESA), the European Laboratory for Particle Physics (CERN), ITER, and the European Southern Observatory (ESO). Portugal has the largest aquarium in Europe, the Lisbon Oceanarium, and have other notable organisations focused on science-related exhibits and divulgation, like the state agency Ciência Viva, the Science Museum of the University of Coimbra, the National Museum of Natural History at the University of Lisbon, and the Visionarium. The European Innovation Scoreboard 2011, placed Portugal-based innovation 15th, with increase in innovation expenditure and output. Portugal was ranked 31st in the Global Innovation Index in 2025.
=== Transport ===
Portugal has a 68,732 km (42,708 mi) road network, of which 3,065 km (1,905 mi) are part of system of 48 motorways, making it the 8th largest motorway system among 42 European countries. On many highways, a toll needs to be paid (see Via Verde). Vasco da Gama bridge is the longest bridge in the EU (the second longest in Europe) at 12.345 km (7.671 mi).
Continental Portugal's 89,102 km2 (34,402 sq mi) territory is serviced by four international airports located near the principal cities of Lisbon, Porto, Faro and Beja. Lisbon's geographical position makes it a stopover for many foreign airlines at several airports within the country. The primary flag-carrier is TAP Air Portugal, although many other domestic airlines provide services within and without the country.
The most important airports are in Lisbon, Porto, Faro, Funchal (Madeira), and Ponta Delgada (Azores), managed by the national airport authority group ANA – Aeroportos de Portugal. A new airport, to replace the current Lisbon airport, has been planned for more than 50 years, but it has been always postponed by a series of reasons.
A national railway system that extends throughout the country and into Spain, is supported and administered by Comboios de Portugal (CP). Rail transport of passengers and goods is derived using the 2,527 km (1,570 mi) of railway lines currently in service, of which 1,791 km (1,113 mi) are electrified and about 900 km (559 mi) allow train speeds greater than 120 km/h (75 mph). The railway network is managed by Infraestruturas de Portugal while the transport of passengers and goods are the responsibility of CP, both public companies. In 2024, the CP carried 188,300,000 passengers and 8,555,000 tonnes of goods by 2023.
The major seaports are located in Sines, Leixões, Lisbon, Setúbal, Aveiro, Figueira da Foz, and Faro. The two largest metropolitan areas have subway systems: Lisbon Metro and Metro Sul do Tejo light rail system in the Lisbon metropolitan area, and Porto Metro light metro system in the Porto Metropolitan Area. Coimbra is currently developing a Bus rapid transit system, Metro Mondego, as is the Algarve, Algarve Metrobus.
In Portugal, Lisbon tram services have been supplied by the Companhia de Carris de Ferro de Lisboa (Carris), for over a century. In Porto, a tram network, of which only a tourist line on the shores of the Douro remains, began construction on 12 September 1895 (a first for the Iberian Peninsula). All major cities and towns have their own local urban transport network, as well as taxi services.
=== Energy ===
As of 2023, oil made up 44% of Portugal's total energy supply. However the country phased out coal-fired generation in 2021 and has been developing renewable energies such as hydopower and wind power and investing in public transport and electric vehicles.
Portugal has considerable wind and hydropower resources. In 2006, the world's then largest solar power plant, the Moura Photovoltaic Power Station, began operating, while the world's first commercial wave power farm, the Aguçadoura Wave Farm, opened in the Norte region (2008). By 2006, 66% of the country's electrical production was from coal and fuel power plants, while 29% were derived from hydroelectric dams, and 6% by wind energy. In 2008, renewable energy resources were producing 43% of the nation's electricity, even as hydroelectric production decreased with severe droughts. As of 2010, electricity exports had outnumbered imports and 70% of energy came from renewable sources.
Portugal's national energy transmission company, Redes Energéticas Nacionais (REN), uses modelling to predict weather, especially wind patterns. Before the solar/wind revolution, Portugal had generated electricity from hydropower plants on its rivers for decades. New programmes combine wind and water: wind-driven turbines pump water uphill at night; then water flows downhill by day, generating electricity, when consumer demand is highest. Portugal's distribution system is now two-way. It draws electricity small generators, like rooftop solar panels.
In 2023 Portugal emitted around 339 million tonnes of greenhouse gases (about 5 tonnes per person), equivalent to around 1% of global total emissions. As an EU member state, Portugal is part of their joint plan to reduce emissions by a minimum of 55% by 2030, compared to the level of emissions in 1990. Portugal has committed to carbon neutrality and net zero by 2050.
== Demographics ==
As of 31 December 2024, Portugal had a population 10,749,635, of which 52.2% was female and 47.8% male, according to Statistics Portugal. In 2025, the median life expectancy reached 82.95 years, with United Nations projecting a rise of up to 90 years or more by 2100. The population historically has been relatively homogeneous, with most people adhering to Catholicism and speaking Portuguese.
Portugal has had a fertility rate well below the replacement rate of 2.1 since the 1980s. The total fertility rate (TFR) as of 2024 was estimated at 1.36 children born per woman, one of the lowest in the world, and considerably below the high of 5.0 in 1911. Consequently, Portugal's population has been steadily ageing and was the 11th oldest in the world in 2024, with a median age of 46.4 years and the fourth highest number of citizens over 65 years, at 21.8% of the total population. According to projections by the national statistics office, the population will fall to 7.7 million by 2080 and the population will continue to age. As of 2022, 60.2% of births were to unmarried women, and 24.5% of births were to foreign born women.
Portuguese society displays relatively high rates of socioeconomic equality, with the country ranking 24th within the 41 countries of the EU and OECD in the 2019 Social Justice Index. In 2018, Portugal's parliament approved a budget plan for 2019 that included tax breaks for returning emigrants in a bid to attract back those who left during the 2008 financial crisis.
According to a Statistics Portugal study conducted between 2022 and 2023, around 6.4 million people aged between 18 and 74 years old identified themselves as White (84%), more than 262,000 as Mixed-race (3%), nearly 170,000 as Black (2%), 57,000 as Asian (<1%), and 47,500 as Romani (<1%)
=== Urbanisation ===
Based on commuting patterns, OECD and Eurostat define eight metropolitan areas of Portugal. Only two have populations over 1 million, and since the 2013 local government reform, these are the only two which also have administrative legal status of metropolitan areas: Lisbon and Porto, Several smaller metropolitan areas (Algarve, Aveiro, Coimbra, Minho and Viseu) also held this status from 2003 to 2008, when they were converted into intermunicipal communities, whose territories are roughly based on the NUTS III statistical regions.
=== Immigration ===
Historically a country of emigration, Portugal has been a net recipient of immigrants since the early 21st century. As of 2024, legal resident foreigners number 1,543,697, or approximately 14% of the population; these figures do not include more than 340,000 resident foreigners who acquired Portuguese citizenship between 2008 and 2022—and thus constitute around 3.27% of the country's population in 2022. That year, almost 21,000 foreign residents acquired Portuguese citizenship, of which 11,170 were female and 9,674 were male.
Until the late 20th century, immigrants came primarily from former Portuguese territories in India, Africa, and East Asia. Since the 1990s, economic growth, particularly in the construction industry, brought an influx of Ukrainians, Brazilians, and other Africans. Other sizeable groups include Romanians, Moldovans, Kosovo Albanians, Russians, Bulgarians, Chinese, Venezuelans, Pakistanis, Indians, and Bangladeshis. Net immigration persisted even during the COVID-19 pandemic, when the emigration rate increased to 6.9% in 2022 but remained well below the immigration rate of around 11.3%; Among those that had left the country, 56.8% returned within a year.
It is estimated that over 30,000 seasonal, often illegal immigrants work in agriculture, mainly southern cities such as Odemira, where they are often exploited by organised seasonal workers' networks. These migrants, who frequently arrive without due documentation or work contracts, make up over 90% of agricultural workers in southern Portugal. Most are Southeast Asians from India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, and Thailand; in the interior of the Alentejo there are many African workers. Significant numbers also come from Eastern Europe, including Moldova, Ukraine, Romania and Brazil.
A significant number of EU citizens, mostly from Italy, France, Germany, and other northern European countries, have become permanent residents. There is also a large expatriate community made up of Britons, Canadians and Americans. The British community is mostly composed of retired pensioners who live in the Algarve and Madeira.
A National Statistics Institute (INE) study conducted between 2022 and 2023 found out that 1.4 million people (13% of the population) have immigrant background, in which 947,500 are first generation immigrants, concentrated mainly in the Lisbon metropolitan area and the Algarve. As the survey was limited to people living legally in the country for at least one year at the time of the interview, the statistical office suggests that 16.1% of the country's population, or 1,683,829 people, were first generation immigrants.
=== Religion ===
Portugal is a secular state with no official religion. The Catholic Church, which has a long history in the country, was formally separated from government during the First Portuguese Republic; this was reiterated in the 1976 Portuguese Constitution. Religious freedom was also reaffirmed by the 1940 Concordata (later amended in 1971) between Portugal and the Holy See and the 2001 Religious Freedom Act.
According to the 2021 Census, 80.2% of the Portuguese population was Catholic. The country has small Protestant, Latter-day Saint, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, Eastern Orthodox Church, Jehovah's Witnesses, Baháʼí, Buddhist, Jewish and Spiritist communities. Influences from African Traditional Religion and Chinese Traditional Religion are also felt among many people, particularly in fields related with Traditional Chinese Medicine and Traditional African Herbal Medicine. Some 14.1% of the population declared themselves nonreligious.
Many Portuguese holidays, festivals and traditions have a Christian origin or connotation.
=== Languages ===
Portuguese is the official language of Portugal. Mirandese is also recognised as a co-official regional language in some municipalities of North-Eastern Portugal. It is part of the Astur-Leonese group of languages. An estimate of between 6,000 and 7,000 Mirandese speakers has been documented for Portugal. Furthermore, a particular dialect known as Barranquenho, spoken in Barrancos, is also officially recognised and protected in Portugal since 2021. Minderico, a sociolect of the Portuguese language, is spoken by around 500 people in the town of Minde.
According to the International English Proficiency Index, Portugal has a high proficiency level in English, higher than those of other Romance-speaking European countries like France, Italy or Spain.
=== Education ===
The educational system is divided into preschool (for those under age six), basic education (nine years, in three stages, compulsory), secondary education (three years, compulsory since 2010), and higher education (subdivided in university and polytechnic education). Universities are usually organised into faculties. Institutes and schools are also common designations for autonomous subdivisions of Portuguese higher education institutions.
The total adult literacy rate in Portugal was 99.8% in 2021. According to the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2018, Portugal scored around the OECD average in reading, mathematics and science. In reading and mathematics, mean performance in 2018 was close to the level observed in 2009 to 2015; in science, mean performance in 2018 was below that of 2015, and returned close to the level observed in 2009 and 2012, near below average.
About 47.6% of college-age citizens (20 years old) attend one of Portugal's higher education institutions (compared with 50% in the United States and 35% in the OECD on average). In addition to being a destination for international students, Portugal is also among the top places of origin for international students. All higher education students, both domestic and international, totalled 448,235 in 2024.
Portuguese universities have existed since 1290. The oldest Portuguese university was first established in Lisbon before moving to Coimbra. Historically, within the scope of the Portuguese Empire, the Portuguese founded the oldest engineering school of the Americas (the Real Academia de Artilharia, Fortificação e Desenho of Rio de Janeiro) in 1792, as well as the oldest medical college in Asia (the Escola Médico-Cirúrgica of Goa) in 1842. Presently, the largest university in Portugal is the University of Lisbon.
The Bologna process has been adopted by Portuguese universities and poly-technical institutes in 2006. Higher education in state-run educational establishments is provided on a competitive basis, a system of numerus clausus is enforced through a national database on student admissions. However, every higher education institution offers also a number of additional vacant places through other extraordinary admission processes for sportsmen, mature applicants (over 23 years old), international students, foreign students from the Lusosphere, degree owners from other institutions, students from other institutions (academic transfer), former students (readmission), and course change, which are subject to specific standards and regulations set by each institution or course department.
Most student costs are supported with public money. Portugal has entered into cooperation agreements with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and other US institutions to further develop and increase the effectiveness of Portuguese higher education and research.
=== Health ===
In 2025, Portugal ranked as 23rd best healthcare system in the world, which was visibly lower than the previous 12th place in the 2000 World Health Organisation ranking of best public health systems in the world. The health system is characterised by three coexisting systems: the National Health Service (Serviço Nacional de Saúde, SNS), special social health insurance schemes for certain professions (health subsystems) and voluntary private health insurance. The SNS provides universal coverage. In addition, about 55% of the population is covered by the health subsystems, 43% by private insurance schemes and another 12% by mutual funds.The Ministry of Health is responsible for developing health policy as well as managing the SNS. Five regional health administrations are in charge of implementing the national health policy objectives, developing guidelines and protocols and supervising health care delivery. Decentralisation efforts have aimed at shifting financial and management responsibility to the regional level. In practice, the autonomy of regional health administrations over budget setting and spending has been limited to primary care. The SNS is predominantly funded through general taxation. Employer (including the state) and employee contributions represent the main funding sources of the health subsystems. In addition, direct payments by the patient and voluntary health insurance premiums account for a large proportion of funding.
Similarly to other 'Eur-A countries', (Western Europe), most Portuguese die from noncommunicable diseases. Mortality from cardiovascular diseases (CVD) is around 30,000 deaths per year, a third of all annual deaths, but its two main components, ischaemic heart disease and cerebrovascular disease, display inverse trends compared with the Eur-A, with cerebrovascular disease being the single biggest killer in Portugal, with more than 11,000 deaths per year. Oncological diseases represent 22% of all deaths in the country, with lung and breast cancer cases being lower, and cervical and prostate cancer being more frequent. Diabetes mortality rates have been decreasing, from 4.5% in 2010 down to 2.8% in 2021.
Portugal's infant mortality rate (IMR) stood at 2,25 deaths per 1,000 live births as of 2024. A Eurostat opinion-poll in 2023 found that 55.4% of adults rated their health as good or very good, the third lowest rate collected in the European Union. The largest university hospital in the country is Hospital de Santa Maria, Lisbon.
Despite good economic development, the average Portuguese, along with Italians, have been among the shortest in Europe since around 1890 and still are. A driving factor was modest real wage growth, given late industrialisation and economic growth compared to the European core. Another determinant was delayed human capital formation.
== Culture ==
Portugal has developed a specific culture while being influenced by various civilisations that have crossed the European continent and Mediterranean, or were introduced when it played an active role during the Age of Discovery. In the 1990s and 2000s (decade), Portugal modernised its public cultural facilities, in addition to the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation established in 1956 in Lisbon.
These include the Belém Cultural Centre in Lisbon, Serralves Foundation and the Casa da Música, both in Porto, as well as new public cultural facilities like municipal libraries and concert halls that were built or renovated in many municipalities across the country. Portugal is home to 17 UNESCO World Heritage Sites, ranking it 9th in Europe and 18th in the world.
=== Architecture ===
Traditional architecture is distinctive and include the Manueline, also known as Portuguese late Gothic a sumptuous, composite Portuguese style of architectural ornamentation of the first decades of the 16th century, followed by Pombaline style of the 18th century.
A 20th-century interpretation of traditional architecture, Soft Portuguese style, appears extensively in major cities, especially Lisbon. Modern Portugal has given the world renowned architects like Eduardo Souto de Moura, Álvaro Siza Vieira (both Pritzker Prize winners) and Gonçalo Byrne. In Portugal Tomás Taveira is also noteworthy, particularly for stadium design. The azulejo is a mainstream, typical element among Portugal's traditional building materials and construction techniques.
=== Cuisine ===
Portuguese cuisine is diverse, part of the Atlantic diet. A significant ingredient in the Portuguese diet is dry cod (bacalhau in Portuguese). They say that the Portuguese have mastered 365 different ways to prepare codfish, meaning a cod dish for each day of the year, to name a few recipes: bacalhau à Brás, bacalhau à Gomes de Sá, bacalhau com natas, bacalhau à Minhota, bacalhau espiritual, bacalhau à Lagareiro, bacalhau assado, bacalhau à Zé do Pipo, pastéis de bacalhau. Other fish recipes include grilled sardines, mackerel, sea bream, and caldeirada, a tomato-based stew that can be made from several types of fish or shellfish, with a mix of onion, garlic, bay leaf, potatoes, peppers, parsley.
Typical Portuguese meat recipes made out of the customary beef, pork, chicken, goat, lamb or duck meat, include cozido à portuguesa, feijoada, frango de churrasco, leitão (roast suckling pig), chanfana and carne de porco à alentejana. Typical fast food dishes include the Francesinha (Frenchie) from Porto and bifanas (grilled pork) or prego (grilled beef) sandwiches. An egg custard tart pastry, the pastel de nata, typical and popular among the Portuguese, became popular abroad and among foreign tourists visiting the country as well.
Portuguese wines have enjoyed recognition since the Romans, who associated Portugal with their god Bacchus, due to its climate. Some of the most well known Portuguese wines are Vinho Verde, Alvarinho, Vinho do Douro, Vinho do Alentejo, Vinho do Dão, Vinho da Bairrada, Port Wine, Madeira Wine, Moscatel from Setúbal and Favaios.
=== Visual art ===
Portugal has a rich history in painting. The first well-known painters dating back to the 15th century – like Nuno Gonçalves and Vasco Fernandes – were part of the late Gothic painting period. During the Renaissance, Portuguese painting was highly influenced by Northern European painting. In the Baroque period Josefa de Óbidos and Vieira Lusitano were the most prolific painters.
José Malhoa, known for his work Fado, and Columbano Bordalo Pinheiro (who painted the portraits of Teófilo Braga and Antero de Quental) were both references in naturalist painting.
The 20th century saw the arrival of Modernism, and along with it came the most prominent Portuguese painters: Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso, who was heavily influenced by French painters, particularly the Delaunays (Robert and Sonia). Among his best-known works is Canção Popular – a Russa e o Fígaro. Other great modernist painters/writers include Carlos Botelho and Almada Negreiros, friend to the poet Fernando Pessoa, who painted Pessoa's portrait. He was deeply influenced by both Cubist and Futurist trends.
Prominent international figures in visual arts today include painters Vieira da Silva, Júlio Pomar, Joana Vasconcelos, Julião Sarmento and Paula Rego.
=== Literature ===
Portuguese literature, one of the earliest Western literatures, developed through text as well as song. Until 1350, the Portuguese-Galician troubadours spread their literary influence to most of the Iberian Peninsula, like King D. Dinis (1261–1325) who became famous for his poetry. Other kings would write and sponsor works of literature across Portuguese history, like D. Fernando (1367–1383) who supported Pêro Menino in writing o Livro da Falcoaria.
Adventurer and poet Luís de Camões (c. 1524–1580) wrote the epic poem Os Lusíadas (The Lusiads), with Virgil's Aeneid as his main influence. Modern Portuguese poetry is rooted in neoclassic and contemporary styles, as exemplified by Bocage (1765–1805), Antero de Quental (1842–1891) and Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935). Modern Portuguese literature is represented by authors such as Almeida Garrett, Camilo Castelo Branco, Eça de Queirós, Fernando Pessoa, Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen, António Lobo Antunes, Miguel Torga and Agustina Bessa-Luís. Particularly popular and distinguished is José Saramago, recipient of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature.
=== Music ===
The Music of Portugal encompasses a wide variety of genres. The traditional one is the Portuguese folk music which has deep roots in local customs, utilising instruments such as bagpipes (gaita), drums, flutes, tambourines, accordions and ukuleles (cavaquinho). Within Portuguese folk music is the renowned genre of Fado, a melancholic urban music that originated in Lisbon in the 19th century, probably inside bohemian environments, and is usually associated with the Portuguese guitar and saudade, or longing. Coimbra fado, a unique type of "troubadour serenading" fado, is also noteworthy. Internationally notable performers include Amália Rodrigues, Carlos Paredes, José Afonso, Mariza, Carlos do Carmo, António Chainho, Mísia, Dulce Pontes and Madredeus.
In addition to Folk, Fado and Classical music, other genres are present at Portugal like pop and other types of modern music, particularly from North America and the United Kingdom, as well as a wide range of Portuguese, Caribbean, Lusophone African and Brazilian artists and bands. Artists with international recognition include Dulce Pontes, Moonspell, Buraka Som Sistema, Blasted Mechanism, David Carreira and The Gift, with the three latter being nominees for a MTV Europe Music Award.
Portugal has several summer music festivals, such as Festival Sudoeste in Zambujeira do Mar, Festival de Paredes de Coura in Paredes de Coura, Festival Vilar de Mouros near Caminha, Boom Festival in Idanha-a-Nova municipality, NOS Alive, Sumol Summer Fest in Ericeira, Rock in Rio Lisboa and Super Bock Super Rock in Greater Lisbon, plus Primavera Sound Porto and MEO Marés Vivas in the Greater Porto area.
The student festivals of Queima das Fitas, which are major events in a number of cities across Portugal, show every year a selection of well-established, high-profile musicians and bands to the public as well as newer, on the rise, upcoming success artists seeking definite recognition. In 2005, Portugal held the MTV Europe Music Awards, in Pavilhão Atlântico, Lisbon. Furthermore, Portugal won the Eurovision Song Contest 2017 in Kyiv with the song "Amar pelos dois" presented by Salvador Sobral, and subsequently hosted the 2018 contest.
Portuguese classical music constitutes an important chapter of Western music. Over the centuries, names of composers and performers have stood out, such as the troubadours Martim Codax and King Denis I, the polyphonists Duarte Lobo, Filipe de Magalhães, Manuel Cardoso and Pedro de Cristo, the organist Manuel Rodrigues Coelho, the composer and harpsichordist Carlos Seixas, the singer Luísa Todi, symphonist and pianist João Domingos Bomtempo or composer and musicologist Fernando Lopes Graça.
The golden period of Portuguese music coincided, arguably, with the heyday of classical polyphony in the 17th century (Escola de Évora, Santa Cruz de Coimbra). Among the great current references, the names of pianists Artur Pizarro, Maria João Pires and Sequeira Costa, violinist Carlos Damas, composer Emmanuel Nunes, composer and conductor Álvaro Cassuto stand out. The most important symphony orchestras are the Fundação Gulbenkian, the Porto National Orchestra and the Portuguese Symphony Orchestra. When it comes to opera, the Teatro Nacional de São Carlos in Lisbon is the most representative.
=== Sport ===
Football is the most popular sport in Portugal. There are several football competitions ranging from local amateur to world-class professional level. All-time greats Eusébio, Luís Figo and Cristiano Ronaldo are major symbols of Portuguese football history. Portuguese football managers are also noteworthy, with José Mourinho and Abel Ferreira among the most renowned.
The Portugal national football team has won one UEFA European Championship title: the UEFA Euro 2016, with a 1–0 victory in the final over France, the tournament hosts. In addition, Portugal finished first in the 2018–19 and 2024–25 UEFA Nations League, second in the Euro 2004, third in the 1966 FIFA World Cup and fourth in the 2006 FIFA World Cup. At youth level, Portugal have won two FIFA World Youth Championships.
S.L. Benfica, Sporting CP and FC Porto are the largest sports clubs by popularity and number of trophies, often known as "os três grandes" ("the big three"). They have won eight titles in the European UEFA club competitions and present in 21 finals. The Portuguese Football Federation (FPF) – Federação Portuguesa de Futebol – annually hosts the Algarve Cup, a women's football tournament.
Other than football, many Portuguese sports clubs, including the "big three", compete in other sports events with a varying level of success and popularity, these include roller hockey, basketball, futsal, handball, volleyball and athletics. The Portuguese national rugby union team qualified for the 2027 Rugby World Cup and the Portuguese national rugby sevens team has played in the World Rugby Sevens Series.
Road cycling, with Volta a Portugal the most important race, is a popular sports event and includes professional cycling teams such as Sporting CP, Boavista, Clube de Ciclismo de Tavira and União Ciclista da Maia. In motorsport, Portugal is noted for the Rally of Portugal, and the Estoril and Algarve Circuits as well as the revived Porto Street Circuit which held a stage of the WTCC for two years, as well as for a number of internationally noted racers such as Miguel Oliveira, Tiago Monteiro, António Félix da Costa, Filipe Albuquerque, Pedro Lamy, Armindo Araújo and others in a range of varied motorsports.
In water, Portugal has three major sports: swimming, water polo and surfing. Portugal had success in canoeing with several world and European champions, such as olympic medalist Fernando Pimenta. Annually, the country hosts one of the stages of the World Surf League men's and women's Championship Tour, the MEO Rip Curl Pro Portugal at the Supertubos in Peniche. Northern Portugal has its own original martial art, Jogo do Pau, in which fighters use staffs to confront one or several opponents. Other popular sport-related recreational outdoor activities include airsoft, fishing, golf, hiking, hunting and orienteering. Portugal is one of the world's leading golf destinations.
== See also ==
Outline of Portugal
== Notes ==
== References ==
=== Sources ===
== External links ==
Geographic data related to Portugal at OpenStreetMap
National English language newspaper
National Wine Website
News about Portugal from the Portuguese American Journal
Portugal at UCB Libraries GovPubs
Portugal profile from the BBC News
Portugal. The World Factbook. Central Intelligence Agency.
Prestage, Edgar; Jayne, Kingsley Garland (1911). "Portugal" . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 22 (11th ed.). pp. 134–163.
Portuguese Pamphlets Collection from the Rare Book and Special Collections Division at the Library of Congress
Wikimedia Atlas of Portugal
Government
Official Parliament website
Official Portuguese Government website (in English and Portuguese)
Trade
World Bank Summary Trade Statistics Portugal
Travel
Official Portuguese Government Travel/media website
Official Travel and Tourism office website |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Sagar_Sarowar_and_Meherun_Runi#Suspects | Murder of Sagar Sarowar and Meherun Runi | The murder of Sagar Sarowar and Meherun Runi (also known as the Sagar-Runi murder case) is about the unsolved double murder case of two well-known, married Bangladeshi journalists who were stabbed to death in 2012. The case is still open.
Rumors have been circulating for a long time that the Awami League and India were involved in the BDR murders because they had secret information about them.
Leaked call records recently revealed evidence that the Sagar-Runi murders were carried out by MP Shaon's killer squad, under the direct orders of the then Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who is currently ousted and in exile in India.
The couple's murder received high-level political attention and widespread media coverage in Bangladesh, and attracted German interest as Sarowar had lived in Germany and had worked as a journalist for Deutsche Welle. The case was also closely watched by journalists and international press freedom organisations. The couple's murder also unified organisations representing Bangladeshi journalists that had once been separate.
A representative of the family said, "In the past 25 years, this has been the most talked/written about, prioritized case in Bangladesh." A demonstration was called in 2017 for the fifth anniversary of the murder in order to call for the release of the investigation report.
== Biographical and career information ==
Golam Mustofa Sarowar was better known as Sagar Sarowar. His family is from old Dhaka. He was a broadcast news editor for Maasranga Television since December 2011. He had previously worked for Deutsche Welle's Bangla service for three years as part of the German broadcaster's South Asia department in Bonn, Germany. Before Deutsche Welle he worked in print as a columnist and a reporter for Ittefaq (ca. 1997), Jugantor, and Sangbad. He was known as an energy reporter and his work also appeared in the trade magazine Platts Oilgram News. He was a founder and leader of the Forum for Energy Reporters Bangladesh (FERB) and an editor-in-chief for the online magazine Energy Bangla. Sarowar was a director on the nine-member board of FERB, which created a network of energy reporters across the subcontinent. In addition, Sarowar was known as a blogger, and he also wrote for the OhMyNews citizen journalism website for a brief time (c. 2006–2007).
Meherun Nahar Runi was a senior television reporter for ATN Bangla, where she had been working at least since 2001. Before that she worked in broadcast media for Channel i and in print media for Sangbad and Jugantor. She also frequently reported on energy issues in Bangladesh. She was also known as a crime reporter.
The couple had one son, who was five years old at the time of their murder.
They are buried in old Dhaka in the Azimpur graveyard. It is a well-known graveyard for Dhaka citizens who are Muslim.
== Death ==
The married Bangladeshi couple, Sagar and Runi, lived with their five-year-old child on the fourth floor of a five-story building in the West Raja Bazar neighbourhood (mahallah) of Dhaka. Neighbors say that Sarowar and Runi had more than one person in the apartment as guests before they were killed.
Sarowar didn't leave his office at Maasranga until about 1:30 a.m. on the morning of 11 February 2012. From information gathered from a security guard, police believe the couple was killed some time after Sarowar arrived home and before the dawn Fajr prayer, which occurs before sunrise. According to sources, this would place the murder event sometime between 2 and 5 in the morning. Each victim died of multiple stabbing wounds, and sources said Sarowar's limbs were tied and he had the most stab wounds. Their son woke up at around 7 a.m. and discovered his parents dead in a pool of blood and called Runi's mother sometime around 7:30 a.m. by a cell phone. The site became an active crime scene around 11 a.m.
The crime scene showed evidence that it had been searched and the couple's possessions were strewn around the apartment. A kitchen window grill was cut and had an opening of approximately 1.8 feet, which Imam Hossain, deputy commissioner with the Tejgaon police, said would be too small for an adult to pass through.
== Investigations ==
=== Initial investigation ===
Investigators from two different main law enforcement agencies arrived at the crime scene around 11 a.m. on 11 February. The investigation fell under the jurisdiction of Bangladesh Police from Tejgaon Thana, a subdistrict of the Dhaka District, but was also being investigated by the intelligence branch of the Rapid Action Battalion. The RAB was founded in 2004 as a paramilitary arm of the police. Since the couple was well known, the crime scene attracted the attention of those in the upper echelon of Dhaka's law enforcement, as well as politicians. Among the law enforcement officials at the couple's apartment were Hassan Mahmood Khandker, who is the inspector general of the Bangladesh Police, and Benajir Ahmed, commissioner of the Dhaka metropolitan police. The Dhaka Courier reported that 14 teams were sent to the crime scene. Days after the investigation began, journalists from the Crime Reporters Association of Bangladesh reported that the two organisations were working independently from one another.
A number of politicians and other high-placed individuals visited the crime scene. Home Minister Sahara Khatun ordered the Bangladesh Police to arrest the murderers of Sagar and Runi within 48 hours. Later, the police told the family that the traffic through the residence had damaged evidence. The traffic through the crime scene could have also contaminated the DNA samples that were later discovered in the labs. Another Home Minister—Muhiuddin Khan Alamgir, who was appointed in September 2012—said after a year had passed, "Journalists and common people destroyed all the important evidences from the spot before police could reach there."
One of the two security guards was initially detained but was released shortly thereafter, and then he disappeared until his arrest almost one year after the case began.
The autopsies in the case were conducted at Dhaka Medical College. The autopsy revealed that possibly three knives were used during the murder. No viscera test was conducted during the autopsy, which was later criticised. The bodies were later exhumed for further testing.
Nowsher Alam Roman, who is Runi's brother represented both families, and he officially filed the couple's murder case with the police over a day after the murder was discovered. Officer Rabiul Alam was the assigned to be the lead detective in the case and headed the investigation for the next two months.
=== Second investigation ===
After two months and passing of deadlines issued by the Home Minister, justices ruled on a petition by Human Rights and Peace for Bangladesh and said the case had become stalled. The similarities between the stalled investigation in the Sagar-Runi murder case and another high-profile murder of a Saudi Arabian diplomat, Khalaf Al-Ali, on 6 March, along with the political pressure exerted in both cases on investigators, prompted Professor M. Shahiduzzaman from the University of Dhaka to call the latter case "a sequel". By order of the High Court in Bangladesh on 18 April 2012, the Sagar-Runi murder case was reassigned from the Detective Branch to the RAB, both of which are under the Bangladesh Police. The court called for the new investigators to use of advanced criminal investigation technologies. And the court also established a monitoring committee that was to be headed by a member of the police who achieved inspector general rank or higher and would be composed of journalists, lawyers, human rights activists, academicians and non-government organisations and other agencies. Zafar Ullah was appointed the lead investigating officer for the RAB. In late May 2013, Hasanul Haq Inu, information minister, told journalists the government was still analysing the DNA tests against the suspects and the investigation was proceeding according to law.
On 26 April 2012, the RAB with a court order oversaw the exhumation of the corpses at the Azimpur cemetery for a viscera test. The RAB said that the viscera test was for checking whether the couple had been poisoned and for DNA. Nowsher Alam Roman, who represented the families, was also present. The samples were sent to a lab in the United States for analysis. In August 2012, it was announced that two US labs had discovered the DNA of others and the RAB announced it would at a later date test the DNA samples of suspects for a match. After the announcement, the RAB then came under criticism from Bangladesh's National DNA Profiling Laboratory Programme. The RAB had suggested that the analysis could not have been done by a domestic lab when the Programme said it had handled over 1800 cases since 2006 and they would have been able to use the same technologies in Bangladesh.
After one year, 127 people had been interviewed about the case. The RAB also conducted videotaped interviews of the six-year-old son and those images were shown on national television.
Even after a decade, no progress has been made in the investigation. The investigation probe report has been delayed 91 times as of 24 August 2022.
=== Suspects ===
The names of 8 suspects were announced by Home Minister MK Alamgir in October 2012. Alamgir had been appointed the new Home Minister in September. The RAB arrested seven suspects around 9 October for their alleged involvement in the double murder, and the organisation made another related arrest on 9 February 2013. The father of Enamul, the suspect who was arrested in 2013, was reported missing 27 September 2012, shortly before the arrests in the case. Alamgir reported that several of the suspects were also alleged to be suspects in the murder of Dr Narayan Chandra Datta Nitai. At the time of the arrests in 2012, no motive was revealed but police alleged that several of the arrested were professional killers for hire.
Rafique Islam, alleged robber
Bakul Miah, alleged robber
Masum Mintu Peyada, alleged robber
Md Sayeed Sayeed, alleged robber
Tanvir Rahman, Runi's acquaintance
Kamrul Hassan Arun, driver
Palash Rudra Paul, security guard
Humayun alias Enamul, security guard – He was arrested on 9 February 2013.
The families of the victims were sceptical that the announced, alleged suspects were the perpetrators. In late January 2013, the RAB announced that the DNA identified by the labs had failed to match 13 samples, including samples from the suspects. Journalists had also been sceptical that the suspects were the perpetrators.
=== Calls for an international commission ===
After a year-long investigation by the Bangladesh Police, the case was called stalled. One NGO specialising in press freedom and security, Reporters Without Borders, requested an international commission be established. This was also requested by the families.
== Motive ==
Lieutenant Colonel Ziaul Ahsan, then officer in charge from RAB in this investigation said, investigators believed the murder was pre-meditated and committed by someone who knew the victims. Police said at least two people murdered the couple. At first police reported that nothing was stolen, but later reports said Sarowar's laptop computer and cell phones could be missing. Another report, however, claimed that police had retrieved three cell phones as evidence. But in the petition brought to the High Court, it was learned that the couple's computers and laptops had been stolen.
Police announced 26 February 2012 they were "almost certain" about the motive. However, the motive was never made public by investigators. More than a month after the murder, the organisation Human Rights and Peace for Bangladesh appealed to the High Court of Bangladesh on the question of whether the police should reveal the motive and report their progress. In response to the case, the police were obliged to deliver a report to the court for informational purposes. The defendants in the case were the two law enforcement units and the Home Minister. By 18 April, when the High Court reassigned the case to RAB, the police admitted that it had not discovered a motive.
Journalists identified stories that both Sarowar and Runi were working on that could possibly have been a motive for violence. Runi's reporting involved corruption in Bangladesh's energy industry and Sarowar was working on violence and minority rights. The online magazine about free speech Sampsonia Way reported that a rumour in Dhaka about the motive was that the couple had sensitive information about land acquisition by a "powerful corporation". The Committee to Protect Journalists has not verified their murder was related to their reporting.
Mahfuzur Rahman, chairman of ATN Bangla where Runi worked, later publicly asserted that the murder motive involved an extramarital affair and at the same time took a case to court to stop journalists from protesting to push for charges to be filed. While his case included names of 59 journalists active in protests, Rahman did not include the names of his own employees. Journalist organisations responded angrily. Rahman lost his case. After Rahman's statement, the RAB interviewed him at the RAB's Uttara office.
In observing the first anniversary of the murder, the International Federation of Journalists said that law enforcement had failed to "establish a motive". Monjurul Ahsan Bulbul, Boishakhi TV CEO, said to an audience of journalists, "If the government failed to unearth the mystery of Sagar-Runi murder, we can unearth the mystery through investigative reports."
== Context ==
=== Crime ===
According to official Dhaka police records, there were 23 reported murders in February 2012, including the Sagar-Runi murder case, but media reports revealed that more murders were not reported or recorded.
=== Politics ===
Bangladesh's politicians quickly became involved in the high-profile double murder case. Initial statements to the media were given by President Zillur Rahman, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed of the Awami League party and BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia. Shortly after the murder, Home Minister Sahara Khatun delivered a statement that police would apprehend the perpetrator or perpetrators within 48 hours. A case was filed 36 hours after the discovery of the murder, and the document did not list any suspected name. Khatun issued another statement closer to the deadline that suggested imminent progress. She delivered a further promise in April after journalists announced a nationwide action.
The crime scene was visited by a number of high-profile Bangladeshis active in politics:
Sahara Khatun, who was a member of the cabinet as home minister
Mahbubul Haque Shakil, special assistant to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina
Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, Bangladesh Nationalist Party acting secretary general
AAMS Arefin Siddique, vice-chancellor of Dhaka University
Syed Fahim Munaim, Maasranga Television CEO
Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, who is a leader from the opposition BNP told reporters, "We've been saying repeatedly that the country is turning into a slaughter ground gradually. This brutal killing again proves there is no law and order and rule of law in the country." The Dhaka Courier countered that calling the country a "slaughter ground" was made to score political points.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina met two days after the murder with family members representing Sarowar and Runi, along with their son, and she told them that she would see to it that their son would educated and there would be no impunity in the couple's case and justice would be quick. The Prime Minister later criticised journalists for carrying out demonstrations and at other times praised them for raising awareness. In a widely repeated quote in connection with the case, she said the government could not protect everyone by posting a guard outside their bedrooms. She also told party members that more journalists were killed when her political opponents were in power.
=== Press freedom in Bangladesh ===
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, twelve journalists have been confirmed killed for their reporting in Bangladesh since the organisation first started keeping records in 1992, while six others remain unconfirmed. Of the 18 cases, only three led to convictions. The CPJ has ranked Bangladesh eleventh on its Impunity Index for countries with the most unsolved crimes for the murder of journalists from 2001 through 2010. Journalists Jamal Uddin of Gramer Kagoj and Talhad Ahmed Kabid of Dainik Narsingdi Bani were also killed in 2012.
In 2015, Bangladesh was 146th out of 180 countries in the Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Index and it has been on the decline since at least 2011. The organisation expressed concern over impunity in Bangladesh murder cases involving journalists.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who leads the Awami League party, claimed 16 journalists were killed while the coalition of the BNP, Jamaat-e-Islami and other smaller political parties controlled government.
== Impact ==
=== Domestic media coverage ===
Journalists covered the death of one of their own. In Bangladesh, the double murder of the high-profile media couple received significant exposure. Prominent people in politics, education, law enforcement and media visited the crime scene.
The couple's 5-year-old son, who discovered his parents murdered and had to call for help, was frequently mentioned in news stories. Some journalists interviewed the boy about his discovery shortly after the murder. The ethics of those reporters were questioned at the time in light of a 2010 UNESCO report "Ethical Reporting on and for Children". Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina criticised the news media for both interviewing the couple's son and for destroying evidence.
=== Protests by journalists ===
The murder of the two journalists unified reporters across Bangladesh. Bangladesh Federal Union of Journalists and Dhaka Union of Journalists, that had been separate since 1992, began to work together to organise rallies, actions such hunger strikes, panel discussions, and lobbying efforts to pressure politicians and police for action.
The mobilisation of journalists began immediately after their murder and funerals. The Dhaka Union of Journalists rallied as early as 12 February. The Bangladesh Federal Union of Journalists, Dhaka Union of Journalists, National Press Club, Dhaka Reporters Unity, and Crime Association Bangladesh united for a human chain and nationwide rally 22 February.
Journalists held a symbolic hunger strike and work stoppage for one hour on 27 February 2012. Further hunger strikes were held 1 March and 23 December.
The held another grand rally around 18 March 2012 and in different districts and a further sit-in on 8 April.
After the Home Minister Sahara Khatun assured them the police would produce results in the case soon, journalists stood down.
On 5 June 2012, journalists delivered written correspondence for the Speaker in support of laws to protect the safety of journalists.
On 26 June 2012, journalists marched toward the Prime Minister's office.
In addition, the journalists organised panels discussion their professional perspective about the Sagar-Runi case and its handling by the police and government. On the first anniversary a panel of journalists was assembled with participation by Monjurul Ahsan Bulbul, Boishakhi TV CEO; A B M Musa, a columnist for Prothom Alo; Samakal editor Golam Sarowar; Shahed Chowdhury, who is president of Dhaka Reporters Unity; Iqbal Sobhan Chowdhury, editor of The Bangladesh Observer and president of the BFUJ; Ruhul Amin Gazi, a president within the BFUJ organisation; Kamal Uddin Sabuj, president of the Jatiya Press Club; and Syed Abdal Ahmad with the Jatiya Press Club.
Journalists clashed with Home Minister Muhiuddin Khan Alamgir when he made negative remarks at a press conference about the families' lack of co-operation that journalists said were unfounded. Alamgir had prefaced his remarks by going off the record and withdrew his statement when journalists reacted to his assertion.
=== European protests ===
In Germany, Bangladeshi expatriates, Germans and citizens from other European countries met in Frankfurt and Bonn protested the lack of results in the double murder investigation. The protesters were attempting to create publicity to get the attention of the United Nations and EU politicians. A human chain was formed around the UN building in Bonn.
=== Reactions ===
Irina Bokova, director-general of UNESCO, said the murder of the couple was "is an intolerable attack on the profession and on the fundamental human right for freedom of expression."
The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) released the following statement: "Journalists in Bangladesh have waged a long and arduous battle to improve security conditions and the IFJ believes that this terrible double murder threatens to set back gains achieved in recent months and years."
Information Minister Hasanul Haq Inu said, "The killing of all the journalists, including Sagar-Runi, is disgraceful for democracy, and our duty is to remove it."
After one year with no progress in the case, Nowsher Alam Roman, Runi's brother, said, "For the last year, we have been struggling with agony, frustration and fear. Words fail to make any sense of our sufferings. All these days we have been continuously pacified by fake sympathy and promises of capturing the perpetrators and ensuring justice."
The IFJ-Asia Pacific, released another statement at the one-year mark: "We share the anguish of our Bangladeshi colleagues, at the slow pace of investigations and the failure to establish any manner of motive for this brutal double murder."
The Daily Star (Bangladesh) published an editorial summing up sentiment: "... today it is not just the families of Sagar and Runi but also people across the spectrum who remain skeptical about the authorities being able to actually take the matter to a definitive, credible conclusion."
In 2012, in an end-of-the-year, unsigned editorial, the Dhaka Courier wrote, "The gruesome murder of the journalist couple Sagar-Runi still remains unresolved and this will be taken to the coming year by the media with force. The government has failed totally in providing any satisfactory explanation for the murder of the journalists, though from time to time an array of salacious motives were mentioned along with the names of prominent men."
Saleha Manir, who is Sagar Sarowar's mother, addressed journalists at a rally, "The government had declared a 48-hour ultimatum to arrest the murderers. I want to know, how many days more will I have to count to see full 48 hours?"
== Notable quotations/statements ==
The following quotes were widely reported or the source of additional commentary after their expression:
Home Minister Sahara Khatun told law enforcement to arrest the Sagar-Runi murderers within 48 hours.
Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, a BNP leader and opponent of the ruling Awami League party, said, "... the country is turning into a slaughter ground gradually. This brutal killing again proves there is no law and order and rule of law in the country."
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina: "Government can't guard one's bedroom."
== Exhibits ==
Sagar-Runi: Crime Scene, Do Not Cross, an exhibition of photographs, documents and personal possessions about the Sagar-Runi family and their case, 11–13 February 2013, Drik Gallery, Dhanmondi Thana, Dhaka, Bangladesh.
== See also ==
List of journalists killed in Bangladesh
List of unsolved murders (2000–present)
== References == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nematocarcinoidea | Nematocarcinoidea | Nematocarcinoidea is a superfamily of caridean shrimp, comprising four families – Eugonatonotidae, Lipkiidae, Nematocarcinidae, Rhynchocinetidae, and Xiphocarididae. Their shared feature is the presence of strap-like epipods on at least the first three pairs of pereiopods, and a blunt molar process.
== References ==
== External links ==
Data related to Nematocarcinoidea at Wikispecies
Media related to Nematocarcinoidea at Wikimedia Commons |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweet_Briar_College | Sweet Briar College | Sweet Briar College (Sweet Briar, SBC) is a private women's liberal arts college in Sweet Briar, Amherst County, Virginia. It was established in 1901 by Indiana Fletcher Williams in memory of her deceased daughter, Daisy. The college formally opened its doors in 1906 and granted the B.A. degree for the first time in 1910. It nearly closed in 2015 but was saved by donations and legal actions by alumnae.
Sweet Briar is known for its campus with its historic Georgian Revival architecture by Ralph Adams Cram and its 3,250 acres (13.2 km2) of hills, forests, and fields.
== History ==
=== Sweet Briar plantation ===
The college is named after the former plantation of Elijah Fletcher and his descendants. Fletcher was a 19th-century teacher, businessman and mayor of Lynchburg, Virginia. He married Maria Antoinette Crawford in 1813 and purchased the Sweet Briar plantation property from her aunt and uncle where he used slave labor to run the plantation and his household. The plantation was initially known as Locust Ridge; Crawford supposedly renamed it "Sweet Briar" after the roses which grew on the land. Their daughter, Indiana Fletcher, was born in 1828 in Lynchburg.
Indiana attended the Georgetown Visitation Preparatory School, Doane Academy, and later toured Europe with her brother and sister. She met James Henry Williams, a student at Union Theological Seminary in 1858, and after reuniting in Virginia following the American Civil War, they were married in 1865.
Their daughter, Maria Georgiana "Daisy" Williams, was born in 1867. At Elijah Fletcher's death, Indiana inherited the plantation. James Williams gave up his initial career as a clergyman to maintain the property. Daisy Williams died at the age of 16 in 1884. Both James and Indiana Fletcher-Williams were devastated at her death, and James expressed a wish in his own will that a school might be established in honor of Daisy. William died in 1889, leaving his entire estate to his wife, and Indiana's brother Sidney also gave her additional property upon his death in 1898. When Indiana died in 1900, she bequeathed Sweet Briar plantation to become a school for young women.
By his death in 1858, Elijah Fletcher enslaved over 110 people. After the emancipation in 1865, several formerly enslaved people and descendants of enslaved people continued to work for pay and live at Sweet Briar, including Martha Penn Taylor, who worked for three generations of the Fletcher-Williams family, and Signora Hollins (who was Indiana Fletcher's childhood playmate). Some descendants of the people enslaved by the family still work at the college, and others hold family reunions on campus.
=== Indiana Fletcher Williams' bequest and official opening ===
In 1901, with the assistance of then Virginia state senator Carter Glass, the Virginia General Assembly issued a charter to Sweet Briar Institute as indicated in the will of Indiana Fletcher Williams. The will stated that the land of Sweet Briar plantation must be used as a "school or seminary to be known as the "Sweet Briar institute," for the education of white girls and young women. It shall be the general scope and object of the school to impart to its students such education in sound learning, and such physical, moral and religious training as shall, in the judgment of the directors, best fit them to be useful members of society".
In 1906, Sweet Briar College officially opened with 51 students and granted its first AB degrees in 1910. In 1932, Sweet Briar's study abroad exchange program with the University of St. Andrews, Scotland, was established. In 1948, the renowned Junior Year in France (JYF) program was launched, followed by a number of other study abroad programs.
=== Civil Rights era changes ===
Legal action to alter Indiana Fletcher Williams' will was required to admit African-American students, as it had limited the purpose of the college to the education of solely white women. On August 17, 1964, wishing to eliminate "white" from the charter and comply with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Sweet Briar filed a bill of complaint with the Amherst County Circuit Court. The request was initially denied at the state level, with the Commonwealth's Attorney General stating that the will was "plain, unambiguous, conclusive, and binding".
After several years of unsuccessful state litigation, the college filed a complaint with the federal United States District Court for the Western District of Virginia. On April 25, 1966, Judge Thomas J. Michie issued a temporary restraining order that prevented enforcement of the racial restriction. On July 17, 1967, a three-judge Charlottesville court confirmed permanence of the restraining order. The first African-American student, Marshalyn Yeargin-Allsopp, was admitted to the college in September 1966.
=== Distinguishing features and early decades ===
Sweet Briar long held a robust academic reputation. During its first decade, Sweet Briar ran a "sub-college" department to prepare students for college-level work. The original board of trustees appointed in Williams' will maintained that the college would be the academic equivalent of Smith, Wellesley and Mount Holyoke. The difference in Sweet Briar's curriculum was the inclusion of "hands-on" or "practical" courses, as well as physical education, in accordance with Williams' directive that the school produce "useful members of society". This forward-thinking approach evolved into the college's core mission, where students have direct access to their disciplines while gaining real-world and classroom learning experience. During the first few years of the college, this concept quickly gave way to a more traditional liberal arts curriculum.
=== 2015 closure attempt ===
==== Pending closure announced by board ====
On March 3, 2015, the college's board of directors, following a unanimous vote on February 28, 2015, announced the college would close on August 25, 2015, due to "insurmountable financial challenges". They cited declining enrollment and an endowment insufficient to cover potentially large-scale changes needed to boost enrollment, like coeducation. Another possible factor presented by the board was a declining interest in the traditional women's college model. Sweet Briar had explored merging with other stronger institutions including the University of Virginia, but nothing came of it.
The board announced that academic activity was to cease on August 25, 2015, the college's pending closing date. Some professors said they received termination notices stating their last day of work would be May 30, 2015; the last day of employment for most was June 30, 2015.
Between 2011 and March 2015, Sweet Briar's endowment had dropped from $96.2 to $84 million, as the college drew on endowment for operating expenses. Most of the college's endowment is restricted, meaning the money must serve designated purposes, such as scholarships or faculty chairs. According to Standard & Poor's (S&P), which rates the college's bond debt, only $19 million was unrestricted, $18 million temporarily restricted, and $53 million permanently restricted. Sweet Briar is burdened with about $25 million in debt owed primarily to bondholders, and the college faced the possibility of default and an accelerated lump-sum payment of the entire amount.
College Board representatives explained that with insolvency inevitable—even though the college was still technically solvent—the Board felt the responsible course was an advance announcement of the closing. That would let enrolled students transfer at the beginning of a new academic year and prevent an entering first-year class from having to transfer after only one semester. It would also allow the college to honor financial obligations and provide severance to faculty and staff.
==== Efforts to forestall closing ====
A group of Sweet Briar alumnae, students, faculty, and supporters united to save the college from closing through legal action, social media and a fundraising campaign, "Saving Sweet Briar". Saving Sweet Briar, Inc. asserted that the financial decline cited as the reason for closing was overstated or illusory, and sought the resignation of interim President James F. Jones and the board of directors. In a return statement, the President and the Board declined resignation, saying that doing so would "further destabilize an already fragile situation", and that allegations against them were "wrong and unfair".
A majority of Sweet Briar faculty members passed a resolution opposing the Board's decision to close the college and subsequently issued a vote of no confidence in the school's Board and its president. Over 50 tenured and untenured Sweet Briar faculty members later joined a lawsuit against the college, seeking $42 million in damages, reinstatement of employment, and injunctions to prevent the closure of the college and termination of its faculty.
On March 30, 2015, the Amherst County Attorney filed a separate lawsuit, this one on behalf of the Commonwealth of Virginia, seeking an injunction to block the closing of Sweet Briar College and to force the removal and replacement of the president and board of directors. Following an amicus curiae brief released by Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring, who argued that the Amherst County Attorney did not have the standing to seek an injunction, a Bedford County judge ruled that the county attorney had standing to sue under Virginia's charitable solicitation law, but not under its trust law. At a hearing on the Amherst County Attorney's lawsuit on April 15, 2015, the judge granted a 60-day injunction to prevent the college from shifting endowment money solicited for its continued operation to its closing. The judge did not halt the closing, remove the president and board, require the college to continue operations, or appoint a special fiduciary to review college finances. The college's attorney said the college would continue the process of closing, using unrestricted funds.
On April 20, following the decision on the injunction, a group of Sweet Briar students, parents, and alumnae filed a third lawsuit calling the Board decision to close the school a breach of contract. Rather than monetary damages, the suit requested injunctions to prevent the college from taking more steps to shut down or sell assets, and a permanent injunction requiring Sweet Briar to continue operating. The college's spokeswoman contested the allegations. After a hearing on April 29, the same Bedford County judge ruled that the college could not sell any of its assets for six months, although he still did not enjoin the closing.
The college embarked on negotiations to transfer some time-sensitive assets despite the court's injunction. The parties negotiated an agreement to transfer hazardous chemicals, to sell to faculty their personal computers, and to keep Sweet Briar's study abroad program functioning. In adopting the agreed order, the judge declined to allow the transfer of the college's horses. On his own, he added to the injunction for the first time a restriction that the college shall "engage in no such act during the period of this injunction that has as its goals facilitating the closing of the college unless such act is authorized by further order of this court".
On behalf of the Commonwealth, the Amherst County Attorney filed an appeal of the judge's April 15 decision on trust law applicability with the Virginia Supreme Court. Following a hearing on June 4, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Commonwealth on June 9, stating that Virginia trust laws can apply to Sweet Briar, and referred the case back to the Bedford county circuit court judge for consideration of a temporary injunction to halt the closing of the college.
==== Agreement to keep the college open ====
On June 20, 2015, the Virginia Attorney General's office announced a mediation agreement to keep Sweet Briar College open for the 2015–16 academic year. The agreement called for Sweet Briar College president James Jones to resign, as well as at least 13 members of the college's board of directors to allow Saving Sweet Briar to appoint a new majority. Lawyers for Saving Sweet Briar contacted Phillip Stone, the former president of Bridgewater College, to ask him to serve as Sweet Briar's new president. Saving Sweet Briar agreed to contribute $12 million, and the state Attorney General agreed to release restrictions on an additional $16 million of endowment money, to pay for continuing operations. On June 22, 2015, the Bedford County judge approved the agreement, and dismissed the pending lawsuits.
=== Revitalization ===
==== Change of leadership ====
Sweet Briar's board is historically elected annually in the spring, however Saving Sweet Briar and plaintiffs in the litigations appointed an entirely new board in July 2015. In a conference call vote, the new board unanimously installed Phillip Stone as the new president and formally rescinded the previous board's announcement that the school was closing.
Stone announced in newspaper interviews that he did not regard this as an interim or one-year appointment, and that in years to come he intended to increase enrollment beyond Sweet Briar's highest past student count. Stone invited most faculty and staff members to remain in their positions; the settlement included paying six months' severance to any who elected to depart. The settlement required Saving Sweet Briar to deliver $12 million by September 2015 to help cover 2015–16 operating costs. The group met and exceeded its target, providing $12.143 million by September 2 In November 2015 the college finances proved strong enough that the board decided not to draw on the promised $16 million which the court had made available from the endowment, reserving the option to do so later if necessary.
On April 23, 2016, the Board of Directors announced that Stone would be stepping down as the president to allow the Board to appoint a permanent leader. On February 6, 2017, the college announced that Meredith Jung-En Woo would become the 13th president of the college, to be instated on May 15, 2017.
==== Academic re-structuring ====
Under Woo the college announced a radical departure from the traditional academic curriculum at Sweet Briar for the fall 2018 semester, restructuring it to remove historic academic departments and replace them with three "centers": Engineering, Science and Technology in Society; Human and Environmental Sustainability; and Creativity, Design and the Arts. The traditional general education requirements was replaced with a new core curriculum program based around women's leadership.
Semesters changed from a 15-week system to "3-12-12-3"-week semesters, with the three-week terms allowing for focus on opportunities such as intensive classes, study abroad, and research opportunities.
==== Financial status and enrollment ====
In January 2016, the college announced that it had received more than 1000 applications for the 2016–2017 academic year and that it did not plan to touch the $16 million of restricted funds initially planned to be released from the endowment by the attorney general.
In June 2018, the regional accreditor, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges, placed Sweet Briar on "warning" status based on a review of its fiscal-year 2017 finances. The college was required to demonstrate to the accreditor within the subsequent 12 months that its finances were sound and soundly managed, or further action, including revocation of accreditation and loss of federal financial aid, could have followed. In June 2019, the commission lifted the warning status.
==== Admissions policy barring transgender students ====
In August 2024, Sweet Briar's leaders announced that the college would not accept transgender students. The Common Application, which Sweet Briar requires applicants to complete, had recently changed to list four possible genders, something the college's administrators found unacceptable saying that the change "presents a challenge both for students applying for admission and administrators and staff making admissions decisions".
College policy now says students can be admitted "if she confirms that her sex assigned at birth is female and that she consistently lives and identifies as a woman". Before this it just required a birth certificate. Sweet Briar's student government association and other campus groups have used social media to criticize the change. On August 26, 2024, the college's faculty senate approved a resolution in favor of reversing the new policy, writing that transgender students are "precisely the students who benefit from attending an institution that is historically dedicated to gender equity in a world where women were underserved and undervalued". John Gregory Brown, chair of the faculty senate, described the new policy as "morally repugnant".
=== Presidents ===
Mary K. Benedict (1906–1916)
Emilie Watts McVea (1916–1925)
Meta Glass (1925–1946)
Martha B. Lucas (1946–1950)
Anne Gary Pannell (1950–1971)
Harold B. Whiteman Jr. (1971–1983)
Nenah Elinor Fry (1983–1990)
Barbara A. Hill (1990–1996)
Elisabeth Showalter Muhlenfeld (1996–2009)
Jo Ellen Parker (2009–2014)
James F. Jones Jr. (interim president, 2014–2015)
Phillip C. Stone (2015–2017)
Meredith Jung-En Woo (2017–2023)
Mary Pope Maybank Hutson (2023–present)
== Academics ==
The college offers 17 majors, 21 minors, 3 preprofessional programs (pre-law, pre-medicine, and pre-veterinary), 2 certificate programs (arts management and equine studies), teacher licensure in 10 areas, and 1 graduate degree (Master of Arts in Teaching).
Sweet Briar offers the Bachelor of Arts, Bachelor of Fine Arts, and Bachelor of Science degrees for undergraduate students. It is the second women's college to offer an ABET-accredited engineering degree.
Sweet Briar has a student/faculty ratio of 9 to 1 with 84% of classes having fewer than 20 students. For 2023, U.S. News & World Report ranked the college tied for #29 in Most Innovative Schools and tied for #35 in Top Performers on Social Mobility, both out of 210 national liberal arts colleges.
The college offers several study abroad programs, most with a focus on foreign language, such as its Junior Year in France (JYF) program. Other programs include the Japanese Studies Program at Doshisha Women's College of Liberal Arts, Wake Forest/Southern Atlantic States Association for Asian and African Studies (SASASAAS) Program in China-Beijing, Intercollegiate Center of Classical Studies in Rome, the American School of Classical Studies Summer Program at Athens, the National Security Education Program (NSEP) in multiple countries, and other programs in different locations. With approval, students earn credit for international internships.
Sweet Briar offers several academic fellowships and grants for its existing students, including:
Sweet Briar College's Honors Program offers fellowships to students to support independent-research projects under the supervision of faculty mentors. Projects may be interdisciplinary and include multiple mentors.
The Student Research and Creative Endeavors Grants provide up to $500 to offset costs associated with student research or creative projects. Grant applications may be from individual students or teams of students.
Student Travel Grants from the Honors Program supports academic-related travel during the academic year.
Several scholarships are available for academic travel, which may be used to attend conferences.
=== Undergraduate admissions ===
In 2024, Sweet Briar accepted 75.7% of undergraduate applicants, with admission standards considered difficult and with those enrolled having an average 3.54 high school GPA. The college does not require submission of standardized test scores, Sweet Briar being a test optional school. Those enrolled that submitted test scores had an average 1190 SAT score (22% submitting scores) or average 26 ACT score (15% submitting scores).
=== Rankings ===
Sweet Briar is ranked tied for No. 173 out of 211 National Liberal Arts Colleges by U.S. News & World Report, tied for No. 56 in Best Undergraduate Teaching, and tied for No. 78 in Top Performers on Social Mobility.
== Architecture ==
The college's architecture is dominated by the work of Ralph Adams Cram, who also lent his architectural expertise to the campuses of Princeton University and West Point, among others. Although Cram's forte was Gothic Revival, he designed Sweet Briar in the Colonial Revival style, using red brick buildings with white balustrades and arcades.
Twenty-one of the thirty campus buildings were designated as the "Sweet Briar College Historic District" by the National Register of Historic Places. Sweet Briar House, which traditionally houses the college president, is among these buildings.
The campus property includes the Sweet Briar plantation burial ground (known as the slave cemetery), where upwards of 60 slaves are buried.
Archaeologists have uncovered many slave artifacts on campus. A slave cabin from the 1840s, which was also used for early college employees, is behind Sweet Briar House.
Many of the college's faculty and staff live on campus, in homes that they rent or privately own. The land these homes are on belongs to the college.
== Campus life ==
Sweet Briar is a residential campus, and nearly all students live on campus. There are seven standard dormitories and additional independent living options for upperclasswomen in the Green Village and Patterson House. The college has over 50 clubs and organizations.
Like other women's colleges in the United States, Sweet Briar College has many traditions. The most prominent is the annual Founder's Day, when students, faculty and staff walk to Monument Hill to place daisies at Daisy Williams's grave site and memorial.
== Athletics ==
Sweet Briar athletic teams are the Vixens. The college is a member of the Division III level of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), primarily competing in the Old Dominion Athletic Conference (ODAC) since the 1982–83 academic year.
Sweet Briar competes in nine intercollegiate varsity sports: Women's sports include cross country, equestrian, field hockey, golf, lacrosse, soccer, softball, swimming and tennis. Fencing is a Sweet Briar club sport.
Students also participate in recreational sports through the Sweet Briar Outdoor Program (SWEBOP), which organizes a number of trips throughout the year. These include hiking, fly fishing, caving, rock climbing and weekly kayaking and skiing.
=== Riding ===
The college is known for its horseback riding program, which focuses on show and field hunters, hunt seat equitation, and show jumping. The school has seven riding teams. These include a jumper team, a hunter show team, a JV hunter show team, an American National Riding Commission (ANRC) team, a field team and an Intercollegiate Horse Show Association (IHSA) team. As part of its program, students can study for an Equine Studies Certificate with a focus in training or equine management.
Sweet Briar hosted the 23rd Annual ANRC Intercollegiate Equitation Championship judged by Victor Hugo Vidal & Dacia Funkhouser in 2000, and the 37th Annual ANRC Intercollegiate Equitation Championship judged by George H. Morris in 2014.
Sweet Briar's accolades include four ODAC titles (1987, 2012, 2015, 2016), nine ANRC team national championship titles (1978–1980; 1986–1990; 1999), and 10 ANRC team reserve national championships titles (1981–1985; 2000–2002; 2004–2005). Sweet Briar students have been individual national champions nine times, and individual reserve ANRC national champions seven times. In 2006, Sweet Briar's IHSA team won their region (Zone 4, Region 1) and placed second at Zones, qualifying the team for the Nationals Competition. The team placed third overall. In 2008, Sweet Briar's IHSA team again won their region and proceeded to the Nationals, where team members collected individual ribbons.
== Notable people ==
=== Alumnae ===
Irene Beasley, entertainer
Colleen Bell, former United States Ambassador to Hungary
Janet Lee Bouvier, mother of Jacqueline Lee Bouvier Kennedy Onassis
Leah Busque, entrepreneur, founder of TaskRabbit
Kate Campanale, former member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives
Verda Colvin, Justice, Supreme Court of Georgia
Elaine Dundy, author and actress
Katherine Emery, actress
Sally Miller Gearhart, educator and writer
Lendon Gray, Olympic dressage rider
Angelia Lawrance Morrison Harris, First Lady of North Carolina
Molly Haskell, feminist film critic and author
Marie S. Klooz, American lawyer and pacifist
Felisha Leffler, current member of the Vermont House of Representatives
Marguerite McKee Moss, socialite
Diana Muldaur, actor and former president of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences
Anna Chao Pai, American geneticist and professor emerita at Montclair State University
Anne Poulet, art historian
Fleming Rutledge, Episcopal priest, author, and Tolkien scholar
Mary Lee Settle, author, winner of the National Book Award in 1978; founder of the PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction
Ann Taylor, newscaster
Elkanah East Taylor (1888–1945), poet; poetry magazine founder
Teresa Tomlinson, former mayor of Columbus, Georgia and candidate in the 2020 Democratic Primary to contest the Senate seat of David Perdue
Patsy Ticer, politician, former mayor of Alexandria, former member of Virginia senate
Marshalyn Yeargin-Allsopp, first African-American student admitted to Sweet Briar College, director of the Developmental Disabilities Branch of the National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities (NCBDDD) at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Carolyn L. Rose, archaeological conservator for the Smithsonian Institution, one of the first ethnographic conservators in the United States
=== Faculty ===
Carrie Brown – Former Margaret Banister Writer-in-Residence, English professor, novelist
John Gregory Brown – English professor, novelist
=== Previous faculty ===
Adeline Ames – Botany professor
Marion Elizabeth Blake – Classics professor
Lincoln Pierson Brower- Entomology and Ecology Research Professor, advocate and world expert on monarch butterflies over six decades
Seth Clabough – English professor, novelist
Paul D. Cronin – Director of Riding Emeritus, author of Schooling and Riding the Sport Horse
Cornelius Eady – Poet
Connie Myers Guion – Professor of physics, Professor and head of the chemistry department at Sweet Briar College 1908–1913 who later earned an M.D. from Cornell University's Weill Medical College
Mary Harley – campus physician 1906–1935, taught physiology and hygiene classes
Elizabeth Friench Johnson – assistant professor of Modern Languages, 1917 to 1922
Iren Marik – Classical pianist
Constance Merritt – Former Margaret Banister Writer-in-Residence
Eugenie Maria Morenus – taught mathematics and Latin
Elsie Murray – taught psychology from 1919 to 1922
Mary Oliver – Pulitzer Prize-winning poet
Barbara A. Perry – Carter Glass Professor of Government, Author
Eva Matthews Sanford – History professor
Isabelle Stone – Physics professor
== References ==
== External links ==
Official website
Athletics website |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patty_Berg#:~:text=Berg%20won%2015%20women's%20major,at%20the%20U.S.%20Women's%20Open. | Patty Berg | Patricia Jane Berg (February 13, 1918 – September 10, 2006) was an American professional golfer. She was a founding member and the first president of the LPGA. Her 15 major title wins remains the all-time record for most major wins by a female golfer. She is a member of the World Golf Hall of Fame.
In winter times she was also a speed skater.
== Amateur career ==
Berg was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and expressed an interest in football at an early age. At one point, she played quarterback on a local team that included future Oklahoma Sooners head football coach Bud Wilkinson. At the age of 13, Berg took up golf in 1931 at the suggestion of her parents; by 1934, she began her amateur career and won the Minneapolis City Championship. The following year, Berg claimed a state amateur title. She attended the University of Minnesota where she was a member of Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority. She came to national attention by reaching the final of the 1935 U.S. Women's Amateur, losing to Glenna Collett-Vare in Vare's final Amateur victory. Berg won the Titleholders in 1937. In 1938, she won the U.S. Women's Amateur at Westmoreland and the Women's Western Amateur. With a victory in the 1938 Titleholders Championship and a spot on the winning Curtis Cup team as well, Berg was selected as the Associated Press Woman Athlete of the Year, the first of three times she earned the honor. In 1939, Berg won her third consecutive Titleholders, although she was unable to compete in the U.S. Women's Amateur due to an operation on her appendix.
== Professional career ==
After winning 29 amateur titles, she turned professional in 1940. Berg's career had been interrupted by an automobile accident in December 1941; while traveling to a fund-raising event with Helen Dettweiler, a head-on accident shattered Berg's knee.
Subsequently, she recovered and volunteered for the United States Marine Corps and was commissioned a second lieutenant in 1942. She served in the Marine Reserves from 1942 to 1945.
Despite concerns that her golfing career would end, Berg returned to the game in 1943, helped by a locker room fall that broke adhesions which had developed in her leg. Upon her comeback, she won the Women's Western Open. She won the inaugural U.S. Women's Open in 1946. In 1948, she helped establish the forerunner of the LPGA, the Women's Professional Golf Association (WPGA), winning three tournaments that season and in 1949. When the LPGA was officially started in 1950, Berg was one of the 13 founding members and held a leadership position as the association's first president. Berg won a total of 57 events on the LPGA and WPGA circuit, and was runner-up in the 1957 Open at Winged Foot. She was runner-up in the 1956 and 1959 LPGA Championships. In addition, Berg won the 1953, 1957, and 1958 Women's Western Opens, the 1955 and 1957 Titleholders, both considered majors at the time. Her last victory came in 1962. She was voted the Associated Press Woman Athlete of the Year in 1942 and 1955, in addition to her 1938 award. During a four-year stretch from 1953 to 1956, Berg won the Vare Trophy three times for having the lowest scoring average on the LPGA. She was the LPGA Tour's top money winner twice, in 1954 and 1957, and her seven Titleholders wins is an all-time record. Berg won 15 women's major golf championships in her career, including the seven Titleholders victories, seven wins in the Women's Western Open, and the 1946 U.S. Women's Open championship.
In 1959, Berg became the first woman to hit a hole-in-one during a USGA competition, which happened at the U.S. Women's Open.
In 1963, Berg was voted the recipient of the Bob Jones Award, the highest honor given by the United States Golf Association in recognition of distinguished sportsmanship in golf. Berg received the 1986 Old Tom Morris Award from the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America, GCSAA's highest honor. The LPGA established the Patty Berg Award in 1978. In her later years, Berg teamed-up with PGA Tour player and fellow Fort Myers, Florida resident Nolan Henke to establish the Nolan Henke/Patty Berg Junior Masters to promote the development of young players.
Berg was sponsored on the LPGA Tour her entire career by public golf patriarch Joe Jemsek, owner of the famous Cog Hill Golf & Country Club in Lemont, Illinois, site of the PGA Tour's Western Open from 1991 to 2006. Berg represented another of Jemsek's public facilities, St. Andrews Golf & Country Club in West Chicago, Illinois, on the women's circuit for over 60 years.
Berg told Chicagoland Golf magazine she taught over 16,000 clinics in her lifetime – many of which were sponsored by Chicago-based Wilson Sporting Goods and were called "The Patty Berg Hit Parade." In that interview, Berg figured she personally indoctrinated to the game of golf over a half-million new players. She was a member of Wilson's Advisory Staff for 66 years, until her death.
She announced in December 2004 that she had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. She died in Fort Myers from complications of the disease 21 months later at the age of 88.
== Professional wins (63) ==
=== LPGA Tour wins (60) ===
1937 (1) Titleholders Championship (as an amateur)
1938 (1) Titleholders Championship (as an amateur)
1939 (1) Titleholders Championship (as an amateur)
1941 (3) Women's Western Open, North Carolina Open, New York Invitational
1943 (2) Women's Western Open, All American Open
1945 (1) All American Open
1946 (4) Northern California Open, Northern California Medal Tournament, Pebble Beach Open, U.S. Women's Open
1947 (3) Northern California Open, Pebble Beach Open, Northern California Medal Tournament
1948 (3) Titleholders Championship, Women's Western Open, Hardscrabble Open
1949 (3) Tampa Open, Texas PGA Championship, Hardscrabble Open
1950 (3) Eastern Open, Sunset Hills Open, Hardscrabble Women's Invitational
1951 (5) Sandhills Women's Open, Pebble Beach Weathervane, New York Weathervane, 144 Hole Weathervane, Women's Western Open
1952 (3) New Orleans Women's Open, Richmond Open, New York Weathervane
1953 (7) Jacksonville Open, Titleholders Championship, New Orleans Women's Open, Phoenix Weathervane (tied with Louise Suggs), Reno Open, All American Open, World Championship
1954 (3) Triangle Round Robin, World Championship, Ardmore Open
1955 (6) St. Petersburg Open, Titleholders Championship, Women's Western Open, All American Open, World Championship, Clock Open
1956 (2) Dallas Open, Arkansas Open
1957 (5) Havana Open, Titleholders Championship, Women's Western Open, All American Open, World Championship
1958 (2) Women's Western Open, American Women's Open
1960 (1) American Women's Open
1962 (1) Muskogee Civitan Open
LPGA majors are shown in bold.
=== Other wins (3) ===
1944 Pro-Lady Victory National (with Johnny Revolta)
1950 Orlando Two-Ball (with Earl Stewart)
1954 Orlando Two-Ball (with Pete Cooper)
== Major championships ==
=== Wins (15) ===
=== Results timeline ===
NYF = tournament not yet founded
NT = no tournament
CUT = missed the half-way cut
R16, QF, SF = round in which player lost in match play
"T" indicates a tie for a place
=== Summary ===
Starts – 97
Wins – 15
2nd-place finishes – 10
3rd-place finishes – 10
Top 3 finishes – 35
Top 5 finishes – 47
Top 10 finishes – 57
Top 25 finishes – 78
Missed cuts – 12
Most consecutive cuts made – 79
Longest streak of top-10s – 32
== Team appearances ==
Amateur
Curtis Cup (representing the United States): 1936 (tie, Cup retained), 1938 (winners)
== See also ==
List of golfers with most LPGA Tour wins
List of golfers with most LPGA major championship wins
== References ==
== External links ==
Patty Berg at the LPGA Tour official site
Patty Berg Award
Patty Berg at golf.about.com at the Wayback Machine (archived 2008-02-16) |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_8110 | Nokia 8110 | Nokia 8110 is a mobile phone released in 1996. It was announced on 9 September 1996, as the first of Nokia's high-end 8000 series of phones. Its distinctive styling was the first example of a 'slider' form factor. A sliding cover protected the keypad when being carried in the pocket and extended downwards in use, bringing the microphone closer to the mouth. The action of opening the cover also answered an incoming call. The prominent curvature of the case, particularly when open, earned it the nickname "banana phone". It was also the first Nokia phone with monochrome graphic LCD.
The phone was designed for the business market and was one of the smallest and lightest (152 grams) phones on the market, but still had better battery life than its predecessor Nokia 2110. The phone was also the first GSM cellphone to use an ARM processor.
The improved 8110i model, announced in March 1997, was the first phone with the SSMS (Smart SMS) engine. The handsets could be updated OTA (Over The Air) with an intelligent menu structure, which allowed simple information input, input which was sent through a simple structured text message to an MT receiver. This station could interpret information and send a structured text message back to the handset. Ring tone receiving by SMS was also part of the smart messaging protocol, so 8110i was also the first mobile phone to support it. Nokia later stopped marketing Smart messaging and concentrated on the upcoming WAP standard, but has not dropped smart messaging support from later phones.
The 8110 is visually the same as the 8110i, apart from on the earlier model, the Nokia logo appears in white.
8110 and 8110i models were succeeded by Nokia 8810 in 1998, while the 8146 and 8148 models were succeeded by Nokia 7110 in 1999.
== Cultural references ==
An altered version of this phone was famously featured in the science fiction action film The Matrix (1999), for which it was modified featuring a spring-loaded mechanism (this actually appeared on the Nokia 7110).
== Variants ==
The Nokia 8146/8148 for the GSM-1800 band.
The Nokia 3110 shared the same engine.
== See also ==
Nokia 8110 4G
Samsung SPH-N270, the phone from The Matrix Reloaded
== References == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1933_Alabama_Crimson_Tide_football_team#:~:text=Against%20the%20Fighting%20Gobblers%20of,a%20five%2Dyard%20touchdown%20run. | 1933 Alabama Crimson Tide football team | The 1933 Alabama Crimson Tide football team (variously "Alabama", "UA" or "Bama") represented the University of Alabama in the 1933 college football season. It was the Crimson Tide's 40th overall and 1st season as a member of the Southeastern Conference (SEC). The team was led by head coach Frank Thomas, in his third year, and played their home games at Denny Stadium in Tuscaloosa and Legion Field in Birmingham, Alabama. They finished the season with a record of seven wins, one loss and one tie (7–1–1 overall, 5–0–1 in the SEC), and as the first SEC champions.
After opening the season with victory over Oglethorpe, Alabama played Ole Miss to a scoreless tie in their first SEC matchup. One week later, the Crimson Tide defeated Mississippi State for their first SEC victory and followed that with their first SEC road victory with their win over Tennessee at Shields–Watkins Field. From Knoxville, Alabama traveled to New York City where they lost their only game of the season against Fordham in an intersectional matchup. Alabama rebounded with four consecutive victories to close the season as conference champions with wins over Kentucky, VPI (Virginia Tech) on homecoming, Georgia Tech and Vanderbilt.
== Before the season ==
In December 1932, after the conclusion of the 1932 season, Alabama withdrew from the Southern Conference to become a charter member of the SEC. The Crimson Tide was joined by Auburn, Florida, Georgia, Georgia Tech, Kentucky, LSU, Mississippi, Mississippi State, Sewanee, Tennessee, Tulane and Vanderbilt. Effective the start of the 1933 season, the SEC was formed in an effort to create a smaller, geographically closer conference.
== Schedule ==
== Game summaries ==
=== Oglethorpe ===
Although they played most of the game in a heavy rainstorm, Alabama opened the 1933 season with a 34–0 victory over Oglethorpe at Denny Stadium. The Crimson Tide took a 14–0 first quarter lead on a 12-yard Frank Moseley touchdown pass to Dixie Howell and a two-yard James McDanal touchdown run. With the lead, Alabama pulled their starters and played their second string for the second quarter. In the second, they took a 21–0 lead on a 21-yard Howard Chappell touchdown run. In the second half, the Crimson Tide closed the game with a touchdown in each of the final two quarters. McDanal scored first on a short run followed by a 12-yard Chappell run for the 34–0 win. The victory improved Alabama's all-time record against Oglethorpe to 2–0.
=== Ole Miss ===
In what was the first SEC game ever played by the Crimson Tide, Alabama and the rival Ole Miss Rebels battled to a 0–0 tie at Legion Field. Although Alabama outgained the Rebels in total offense 179 to 33 yards, seven fumbles kept the Crimson Tide out of the end zone. The tie brought Alabama's all-time record against Ole Miss 16–2–2.
=== Mississippi State ===
Against their long-time rival, the Mississippi State Maroons, Alabama won their first all-time SEC game 18–0 at Denny Stadium. In the game, Frank Moseley scored on a pair of touchdown runs with Dixie Howell scoring the other in the third quarter on a seven-yard run in the victory. The victory improved Alabama's all-time record against Mississippi State 16–4–2.
=== Tennessee ===
Against rival Tennessee, Alabama defeated the Volunteers, 12–6 at Shields–Watkins Field. After a scoreless first quarter, the Volunteers took a 6–0 lead in the second when Beattie Feathers scored on a touchdown run. Down six at the half, a pair of second half touchdowns gave the Crimson Tide the 12–6 victory. Erskine Walker scored in the third on a 34-yard run and Dixie Howell scored the game-winning touchdown in the fourth on a four-yard run. The loss was the first at home for Tennessee in the Robert Neyland era. The victory improved Alabama's all-time record against Tennessee 10–5–1.
=== Fordham ===
Before 60,000 fans at the Polo Grounds in New York City, Alabama was defeated the Fordham Rams, 2–0. The only points scored in the game came in the first quarter when Amerino Sarno blocked a Dixie Howell punt that Howell recovered in the endzone for a Fordham safety. The loss was Alabama's first intersectional loss since their 15–0 defeat against Wisconsin in 1928, and brought Alabama's all-time record against Fordham 0–1.
=== Kentucky ===
A week after their first loss of the season, Alabama defeated the Kentucky Wildcats 20–0 at Legion Field. After a scoreless first quarter, the Crimson Tide took a 6–0 in the second after Dixie Howell scored on a 55-yard touchdown run. Alabama then closed the game with a five-yard Howell touchdown run in the third and a short Joe Demyanovich touchdown run in the fourth for the 20–0 win. In the first quarter, Howell punted the football 89-yards, which still stands as the Alabama record for longest punt. The victory improved Alabama's all-time record against Kentucky 12–1.
=== VPI ===
Against the Fighting Gobblers of VPI (now known as the Virginia Tech Hokies), Alabama won 27–0 on homecoming at Denny Field. The Crimson Tide took a 6–0 first quarter lead after Riley Smith scored on a five-yard touchdown run. They extended their lead to 18–0 at halftime on touchdown runs of one-yard by Joe Demyanovich and ten-yards by James Angelich in the second quarter. Alabama then closed the game with a 16-yard Dixie Howell touchdown run and a tackle of the Gobblers' Ray Mills for a safety in the third for the 27–0 win. The victory improved Alabama's all-time record against VPI 2–0.
=== Georgia Tech ===
Against the Georgia Tech Golden Tornado, Alabama won 12–9 at Grant Field. The Crimson Tide took a 6–0 lead in the first quarter on a Dixie Howell touchdown run. After a Howell fumble resulted in a safety in the second, Tech took a 9–6 lead in the third quarter when W. A. Davis scored on a one-yard touchdown run. Howell then scored the game-winning touchdown in the fourth quarter on a short run. The victory improved Alabama's all-time record against Georgia Tech to 7–10–2.
=== Vanderbilt ===
In the season finale at Vanderbilt, Alabama defeated the Commodores 7–0 to capture the first SEC championship. The only points of the game came on a short Dixie Howell touchdown run in the second quarter. The victory improved Alabama's all-time record against Vanderbilt to 6–8.
== Personnel ==
== References ==
General
Specific |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathleen_Gemberling_Adkison | Kathleen Gemberling Adkison | Kathleen Gemberling Adkison (née Parks; July 5, 1917 – August 3, 2010) was an American abstract painter.
== Early life ==
Kathleen Gemberling Adkison was born in Beatrice, Nebraska, to parents Rupert Parks and Henrietta Williamson. She attended Hawthorn High School in Kearney, Nebraska for three years, and graduated from Garfield High School in Seattle, Washington. She studied art and painting under Leon Derbyshire at the Cornish Institute between 1938 and 1942.
== Career ==
Adkison was the last surviving artist trained under Mark Tobey, who was Jackson Pollock's inspiration. Her work has been shown in museums as early as 1960 when the Frye Art Museum staged a solo show of her work. She also had a show at the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture, formerly the Cheney Cowles Memorial Museum, in Spokane, Washington, from December 13, 1973 to January 13, 1974.
Adkison was a critically acclaimed artist and highly recognized for her work. She was among only eight women included in Northwest Art Today at the 1962 Seattle World's Fair. Adkison was the feature of a solo retrospective at the Cheney Cowles Museum in Spokane, Washington, from March 27, 1999, to June 27, 1999. It was the first retrospective of her work, at that museum, since 1974.
== Personal life ==
Adkison married Thomas Adkison, an architect, in 1968. They had two children. Adkison enjoyed hiking, and she climbed to the base camp at Mt. Everest twice. Thomas Adkison died in 1986. She died on August 3, 2010, in Spokane, Washington, aged 93.
== References == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Dynamics_F-16_Fighting_Falcon | General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon | The General Dynamics (now Lockheed Martin) F-16 Fighting Falcon is an American single-engine supersonic multirole fighter aircraft under production by Lockheed Martin. Designed as an air superiority day fighter, it evolved into a successful all-weather multirole aircraft with over 4,600 built since 1976. Although no longer purchased by the United States Air Force (USAF), improved versions are being built for export. As of 2025, it is the world's most common fixed-wing aircraft in military service, with 2,084 F-16s operational.
The aircraft was first developed by General Dynamics in 1974. In 1993, General Dynamics sold its aircraft manufacturing business to Lockheed, which became part of Lockheed Martin after a 1995 merger with Martin Marietta.
The F-16's key features include a frameless bubble canopy for enhanced cockpit visibility, a side-stick to ease control while maneuvering, an ejection seat reclined 30 degrees from vertical to reduce the effect of g-forces on the pilot, and the first use of a relaxed static stability/fly-by-wire flight control system that helps to make it an agile aircraft. The fighter has a single turbofan engine, an internal M61 Vulcan cannon and 11 hardpoints. Although officially named "Fighting Falcon", the aircraft is commonly known by the nickname "Viper" among its crews and pilots.
Since its introduction in 1978, the F-16 became a mainstay of the U.S. Air Force's tactical airpower, where it mainly replaced the F-105 Thunderchief, A-7 Corsair II, and F-4 Phantom II. The F-16 primarily performed strike and suppression of enemy air defenses (SEAD) missions, and in the latter role, it replaced the F-4G Wild Weasel by 1996. In addition to active duty in the U.S. Air Force, Air Force Reserve Command, and Air National Guard units, the aircraft is also used by the U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds aerial demonstration team, the US Air Combat Command F-16 Viper Demonstration Team, and as an adversary/aggressor aircraft by the United States Navy. The F-16 has also been procured by the air forces of 25 other nations. F-16s from various US-led coalitions flew combat missions in the Gulf War, Bosnia, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Libya, and Iraq and Syria. F-16s have also seen extensive combat use by Israel, Pakistan, and Ukraine. Since 1982, it has been a Dual Capable Aircraft platform for US nuclear weapons in Europe. Numerous countries have begun replacing the aircraft with the F-35 Lightning II, although the F-16 remains in production and service with many operators.
== Development ==
=== Lightweight Fighter program ===
US Vietnam War experience showed the need for air superiority fighters and better air-to-air training for fighter pilots. Based on his experience in the Korean War and as a fighter tactics instructor in the early 1960s, Colonel John Boyd with mathematician Thomas Christie developed the energy–maneuverability theory to model a fighter aircraft's performance in combat. Boyd's work called for a small, lightweight aircraft that could maneuver with the minimum possible energy loss and which also incorporated an increased thrust-to-weight ratio. In the late 1960s, Boyd gathered a group of like-minded innovators who became known as the Fighter Mafia, and in 1969, they secured Department of Defense funding for General Dynamics and Northrop to study design concepts based on the theory.
Air Force F-X proponents were opposed to the concept because they perceived it as a threat to the F-15 program, but the USAF's leadership understood that its budget would not allow it to purchase enough F-15 aircraft to satisfy all of its missions. The Advanced Day Fighter concept, renamed F-XX, gained civilian political support under the reform-minded Deputy Secretary of Defense David Packard, who favored the idea of competitive prototyping. As a result, in May 1971, the Air Force Prototype Study Group was established, with Boyd a key member, and two of its six proposals would be funded, one being the Lightweight Fighter (LWF). The request for proposals issued on 6 January 1972 called for a 20,000-pound (9,100 kg) class air-to-air day fighter with a good turn rate, acceleration, and range, and optimized for combat at speeds of Mach 0.6–1.6 and altitudes of 30,000–40,000 feet (9,100–12,000 m). This was the region where USAF studies predicted most future air combat would occur. The anticipated average flyaway cost of a production version was $3 million. This production plan was hypothetical as the USAF had no firm plans to procure the winner.
==== Selection of finalists and flyoff ====
Five companies responded, and in 1972, the Air Staff selected General Dynamics' Model 401 and Northrop's P-600 for the follow-on prototype development and testing phase. GD and Northrop were awarded contracts worth $37.9 million and $39.8 million to produce the YF-16 and YF-17, respectively, with the first flights of both prototypes planned for early 1974. To overcome resistance in the Air Force hierarchy, the Fighter Mafia and other LWF proponents successfully advocated the idea of complementary fighters in a high-cost/low-cost force mix. The "high/low mix" would allow the USAF to be able to afford sufficient fighters for its overall fighter force structure requirements. The mix gained broad acceptance by the time of the prototypes' flyoff, defining the relationship between the LWF and the F-15.
The YF-16 was developed by a team of General Dynamics engineers led by Robert H. Widmer. The first YF-16 was rolled out on 13 December 1973. Its 90-minute maiden flight was made at the Air Force Flight Test Center at Edwards AFB, California, on 2 February 1974. Its actual first flight occurred accidentally during a high-speed taxi test on 20 January 1974. While gathering speed, a roll-control oscillation caused a fin of the port-side wingtip-mounted missile and then the starboard stabilator to scrape the ground, and the aircraft then began to veer off the runway. The test pilot, Phil Oestricher, decided to lift off to avoid a potential crash, safely landing six minutes later. The slight damage was quickly repaired and the official first flight occurred on time. The YF-16's first supersonic flight was accomplished on 5 February 1974, and the second YF-16 prototype first flew on 9 May 1974. This was followed by the first flights of Northrop's YF-17 prototypes on 9 June and 21 August 1974, respectively. During the flyoff, the YF-16s completed 330 sorties for a total of 417 flight hours; the YF-17s flew 288 sorties, covering 345 hours.
=== Air Combat Fighter competition ===
Increased interest turned the LWF into a serious acquisition program. NATO allies Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Norway were seeking to replace their F-104G Starfighter fighter-bombers. In early 1974, they reached an agreement with the U.S. that if the USAF ordered the LWF winner, they would consider ordering it as well. The USAF also needed to replace its F-105 Thunderchief and F-4 Phantom II fighter-bombers. The U.S. Congress sought greater commonality in fighter procurements by the Air Force and Navy, and in August 1974 redirected Navy funds to a new Navy Air Combat Fighter program that would be a naval fighter-bomber variant of the LWF. The four NATO allies had formed the Multinational Fighter Program Group (MFPG) and pressed for a U.S. decision by December 1974; thus, the USAF accelerated testing.
To reflect this serious intent to procure a new fighter-bomber, the LWF program was rolled into a new Air Combat Fighter (ACF) competition in an announcement by U.S. Secretary of Defense James R. Schlesinger in April 1974. The ACF would not be a pure fighter, but multirole, and Schlesinger made it clear that any ACF order would be in addition to the F-15, which extinguished opposition to the LWF. ACF also raised the stakes for GD and Northrop because it brought in competitors intent on securing what was touted at the time as "the arms deal of the century". These were Dassault-Breguet's proposed Mirage F1M-53, the Anglo-French SEPECAT Jaguar, and the proposed Saab 37E "Eurofighter". Northrop offered the P-530 Cobra, which was similar to the YF-17. The Jaguar and Cobra were dropped by the MFPG early on, leaving two European and two U.S. candidates. On 11 September 1974, the U.S. Air Force confirmed plans to order the winning ACF design to equip five tactical fighter wings. Though computer modeling predicted a close contest, the YF-16 proved significantly quicker going from one maneuver to the next and was the unanimous choice of those pilots that flew both aircraft.
On 13 January 1975, Secretary of the Air Force John L. McLucas announced the YF-16 as the winner of the ACF competition. The chief reasons given by the secretary were the YF-16's lower operating costs, greater range, and maneuver performance that was "significantly better" than that of the YF-17, especially at supersonic speeds. Another advantage of the YF-16 – unlike the YF-17 – was its use of the Pratt & Whitney F100 turbofan engine, the same powerplant used by the F-15; such commonality would lower the cost of engines for both programs. Secretary McLucas announced that the USAF planned to order at least 650, possibly up to 1,400 production F-16s. In the Navy Air Combat Fighter competition, on 2 May 1975, the Navy selected the YF-17 over the YF-16 (in the form of the Vought Model 1600 proposal) as the basis for what would become the McDonnell Douglas F/A-18 Hornet.
=== Production ===
The U.S. Air Force initially ordered 15 full-scale development (FSD) aircraft (11 single-seat and four two-seat models) for its flight test program which was reduced to eight (six F-16A single-seaters and two F-16B two-seaters). The YF-16 design was altered for the production F-16. The fuselage was lengthened by 10.6 in (0.269 m), a larger nose radome was fitted for the AN/APG-66 radar, wing area was increased from 280 to 300 sq ft (26 to 28 m2), the tailfin height was decreased, the ventral fins were enlarged, two more stores stations were added, and a single door replaced the original nosewheel double doors. The F-16's weight was increased by 25% over the YF-16 by these modifications.
The FSD F-16s were manufactured by General Dynamics in Fort Worth, Texas, at United States Air Force Plant 4 in late 1975; the first F-16A rolled out on 20 October 1976 and first flew on 8 December. The initial two-seat model achieved its first flight on 8 August 1977. The initial production-standard F-16A flew for the first time on 7 August 1978 and its delivery was accepted by the USAF on 6 January 1979. The aircraft entered USAF operational service with the 34th Tactical Fighter Squadron, 388th Tactical Fighter Wing, at Hill AFB in Utah, on 1 October 1980.
The F-16 was given its name of "Fighting Falcon" on 21 July 1980. Its pilots and crews often use the name "Viper" instead, because of a perceived resemblance to a viper snake as well as to the fictional Colonial Viper starfighter from the television program Battlestar Galactica, which aired at the time the F-16 entered service.
On 7 June 1975, the four European partners, now known as the European Participation Group, signed up for 348 aircraft at the Paris Air Show. This was split among the European Participation Air Forces (EPAF) as 116 for Belgium, 58 for Denmark, 102 for the Netherlands, and 72 for Norway. Two European production lines, one in the Netherlands at Fokker's Schiphol-Oost facility and the other at SABCA's Gosselies plant in Belgium, would produce 184 and 164 units respectively. Norway's Kongsberg Vaapenfabrikk and Denmark's Terma A/S also manufactured parts and subassemblies for EPAF aircraft. European co-production was officially launched on 1 July 1977 at the Fokker factory. Beginning in November 1977, Fokker-produced components were sent to Fort Worth for fuselage assembly, then shipped back to Europe for final assembly of EPAF aircraft at the Belgian plant on 15 February 1978; deliveries to the Belgian Air Force began in January 1979. The first Royal Netherlands Air Force aircraft was delivered in June 1979. In 1980, the first aircraft were delivered to the Royal Norwegian Air Force by Fokker and to the Royal Danish Air Force by SABCA.
During the late 1980s and 1990s, Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI) produced 232 Block 30/40/50 F-16s on a production line in Ankara under license for the Turkish Air Force. TAI also produced 46 Block 40s for Egypt in the mid-1990s and 30 Block 50s from 2010 onwards. Korean Aerospace Industries opened a production line for the KF-16 program, producing 140 Block 52s from the mid-1990s to mid-2000s (decade). If India had selected the F-16IN for its Medium Multi-Role Combat Aircraft procurement, a sixth F-16 production line would have been built in India. In May 2013, Lockheed Martin stated there were currently enough orders to keep producing the F-16 until 2017.
=== Improvements and upgrades ===
One change made during production was augmented pitch control to avoid deep stall conditions at high angles of attack. The stall issue had been raised during development but had originally been discounted. Model tests of the YF-16 conducted by the Langley Research Center revealed a potential problem, but no other laboratory was able to duplicate it. YF-16 flight tests were not sufficient to expose the issue; later flight testing on the FSD aircraft demonstrated a real concern. In response, the area of each horizontal stabilizer was increased by 25% on the Block 15 aircraft in 1981 and later retrofitted to earlier aircraft. In addition, a manual override switch to disable the horizontal stabilizer flight limiter was prominently placed on the control console, allowing the pilot to regain control of the horizontal stabilizers (which the flight limiters otherwise lock in place) and recover. Besides reducing the risk of deep stalls, the larger horizontal tail also improved stability and permitted faster takeoff rotation.
In the 1980s, the Multinational Staged Improvement Program (MSIP) was conducted to evolve the F-16's capabilities, mitigate risks during technology development, and ensure the aircraft's worth. The program upgraded the F-16 in three stages. The MSIP process permitted the quick introduction of new capabilities, at lower costs and with reduced risks compared to traditional independent upgrade programs. In 2012, the USAF had allocated $2.8 billion (~$3.77 billion in 2024) to upgrade 350 F-16s while waiting for the F-35 to enter service. One key upgrade has been an auto-GCAS (ground collision avoidance system) to reduce instances of controlled flight into terrain. Onboard power and cooling capacities limit the scope of upgrades, which often involve the addition of more power-hungry avionics.
Lockheed won many contracts to upgrade foreign operators' F-16s. BAE Systems also offers various F-16 upgrades, receiving orders from South Korea, Oman, Turkey, and the US Air National Guard; BAE lost the South Korean contract because of a price breach in November 2014. In 2012, the USAF assigned the total upgrade contract to Lockheed Martin. Upgrades include Raytheon's Center Display Unit, which replaces several analog flight instruments with a single digital display.
In 2013, sequestration budget cuts cast doubt on the USAF's ability to complete the Combat Avionics Programmed Extension Suite (CAPES), a part of secondary programs such as Taiwan's F-16 upgrade. Air Combat Command's General Mike Hostage stated that if he only had money for a service life extension program (SLEP) or CAPES, he would fund SLEP to keep the aircraft flying. Lockheed Martin responded to talk of CAPES cancellation with a fixed-price upgrade package for foreign users. CAPES was not included in the Pentagon's 2015 budget request. The USAF said that the upgrade package will still be offered to Taiwan's Republic of China Air Force, and Lockheed said that some common elements with the F-35 will keep the radar's unit costs down. In 2014, the USAF issued a RFI to SLEP 300 F-16 C/Ds.
=== Production relocation ===
To make more room for assembly of its newer F-35 Lightning II fighter aircraft, Lockheed Martin moved the F-16 production from Fort Worth, Texas to its plant in Greenville, South Carolina. Lockheed delivered the last F-16 from Fort Worth to the Iraqi Air Force on 14 November 2017, ending 40 years of F-16 production there. The company resumed production in 2019, though engineering and modernization work will remain in Fort Worth. A gap in orders made it possible to stop production during the move; after completing orders for the last Iraqi purchase, the company was negotiating an F-16 sale to Bahrain that would be produced in Greenville. This contract was signed in June 2018, and the first planes rolled off the Greenville line in 2023.
Tata Advanced Systems (TASL) and Lockheed Martin signed an agreement to produce F-16 wings in India on 4 September 2018. As of September 2019, the prototype wing from the Indian facility would be delivered by 2020. The wing prototype made in the Hyderabad facility of Tata–Lockheed Martin Aerostructures Limited (TLMAL) was delivered and certified in December 2021, paving way for the facility to be the sole provider of F-16 wings to Lockheed Martin. The wings were described as "a fuel-carrying 9-g, 12,000-hour, interchangeable and replaceable fighter wing". It is the same facility which is also the sole provider of empennages of C-130J at a rate of 24 units per year and produced 85 units by April 2018.
== Design ==
=== Overview ===
The F-16 is a single-engine, highly maneuverable, supersonic, multirole tactical fighter aircraft. It is much smaller and lighter than its predecessors but uses advanced aerodynamics and avionics, including the first use of a relaxed static stability/fly-by-wire (RSS/FBW) flight control system, to achieve enhanced maneuver performance. Highly agile, the F-16 was the first fighter aircraft purpose-built to pull 9-g maneuvers and can reach a maximum speed of over Mach 2. Innovations include a frameless bubble canopy for better visibility, a side-mounted control stick, and a reclined seat to reduce g-force effects on the pilot. It is armed with an internal 20 mm M61 Vulcan cannon in the left wing root and has multiple locations for mounting various missiles, bombs and pods. It has a thrust-to-weight ratio greater than one, providing power to climb and vertical acceleration.
The F-16 was designed to be relatively inexpensive to build and simpler to maintain than earlier-generation fighters. The airframe is built with about 80% aviation-grade aluminum alloys, 8% steel, 3% composites, and 1.5% titanium. The leading-edge flaps, stabilators, and ventral fins make use of bonded aluminum honeycomb structures and graphite epoxy lamination coatings. The number of lubrication points, fuel line connections, and replaceable modules is significantly less than in preceding fighters; 80% of the access panels can be accessed without stands. The air intake was placed so it was rearward of the nose but forward enough to minimize air flow losses and reduce aerodynamic drag.
Although the LWF program called for a structural life of 4,000 flight hours, capable of achieving 7.33-g with 80% internal fuel; GD's engineers decided to design the F-16's airframe life for 8,000 hours and for 9-g maneuvers on full internal fuel. This proved advantageous when the aircraft's mission changed from solely air-to-air combat to multirole operations. Changes in operational use and additional systems have increased weight, necessitating multiple structural strengthening programs.
=== General configuration ===
The F-16 has a cropped-delta wing incorporating wing-fuselage blending and forebody vortex-control strakes; a fixed-geometry, underslung air intake (with splitter plate) to the single turbofan jet engine; a conventional tri-plane empennage arrangement with all-moving horizontal "stabilator" tailplanes; a pair of ventral fins beneath the fuselage aft of the wing's trailing edge; and a tricycle landing gear configuration with the aft-retracting, steerable nose gear deploying a short distance behind the inlet lip. The fixed-geometry pitot-type intake is lighter and simpler than variable-geometry designs, at the expense of pressure recovery performance at higher Mach numbers; the designers considered this a worthwhile tradeoff for an aircraft maneuvering primarily at subsonic and transonic speeds. There is a boom-style aerial refueling receptacle located behind the single-piece "bubble" canopy of the cockpit. Split-flap speedbrakes are located at the aft end of the wing-body fairing, and a tailhook is mounted underneath the fuselage. A fairing beneath the rudder often houses ECM equipment or a drag chute. Later F-16 models feature a long dorsal fairing along the fuselage's "spine", housing additional equipment or fuel.
Aerodynamic studies in the 1960s demonstrated that the "vortex lift" phenomenon could be harnessed by highly swept wing configurations to reach higher angles of attack, using leading edge vortex flow off a slender lifting surface. As the F-16 was being optimized for high combat agility, GD's designers chose a slender cropped-delta wing with a leading-edge sweep of 40° and a straight trailing edge. To improve maneuverability, a variable-camber wing with a NACA 64A-204 airfoil was selected; the camber is adjusted by leading-edge and trailing edge flaperons linked to a digital flight control system regulating the flight envelope. The F-16 has a moderate wing loading, reduced by fuselage lift. The vortex lift effect is increased by leading-edge extensions, known as strakes. Strakes act as additional short-span, triangular wings running from the wing root (the junction with the fuselage) to a point further forward on the fuselage. Blended into the fuselage and along the wing root, the strake generates a high-speed vortex that remains attached to the top of the wing as the angle of attack increases, generating additional lift and allowing greater angles of attack without stalling. Strakes allow a smaller, lower-aspect-ratio wing, which increases roll rates and directional stability while decreasing weight. Deeper wing roots also increase structural strength and internal fuel volume.
=== Armament ===
Early F-16s could be armed with up to six AIM-9 Sidewinder heat-seeking short-range air-to-air missiles (AAM) by employing rail launchers on each wingtip, as well as radar-guided AIM-7 Sparrow medium-range AAMs in a weapons mix. More recent versions support the AIM-120 AMRAAM, and US aircraft often mount that missile on their wingtips to reduce wing flutter. The aircraft can carry various other AAMs, a wide variety of air-to-ground missiles, rockets or bombs; electronic countermeasures (ECM), navigation, targeting or weapons pods; and fuel tanks on 9 hardpoints – six under the wings, two on wingtips, and one under the fuselage. Two other locations under the fuselage are available for sensor or radar pods. The F-16 carries a 20 mm (0.79 in) M61A1 Vulcan cannon, which is mounted inside the fuselage to the left of the cockpit.
=== Relaxed stability and fly-by-wire ===
The F-16 is the first production fighter aircraft intentionally designed to be slightly aerodynamically unstable, also known as relaxed static stability (RSS), to both reduce drag and improve maneuverability. Most aircraft are designed to have positive static stability, which induces the aircraft to return to straight and level flight attitude if the pilot releases the controls. This reduces maneuverability as the inherent stability has to be overcome and increases a form of drag known as trim drag. Aircraft with relaxed stability are designed to be able to augment their stability characteristics while maneuvering to increase lift and reduce drag, thus greatly increasing their maneuverability. At Mach 1, the F-16 gains positive stability because of aerodynamic changes.
To counter the tendency to depart from controlled flight and avoid the need for constant trim inputs by the pilot, the F-16 has a quadruplex (four-channel) fly-by-wire (FBW) flight control system (FLCS). The flight control computer (FLCC) accepts pilot input from the stick and rudder controls and manipulates the control surfaces in such a way as to produce the desired result without inducing control loss. The FLCC conducts thousands of measurements per second on the aircraft's flight attitude to automatically counter deviations from the pilot-set flight path. The FLCC further incorporates limiters governing movement in the three main axes based on attitude, airspeed, and angle of attack (AOA)/g; these prevent control surfaces from inducing instability such as slips or skids, or a high AOA inducing a stall. The limiters also prevent maneuvers that would exert more than a 9-g load.
Flight testing revealed that "assaulting" multiple limiters at high AOA and low speed can result in an AOA far exceeding the 25° limit, colloquially referred to as "departing"; this causes a deep stall; a near-freefall at 50° to 60° AOA, either upright or inverted. While at a very high AOA, the aircraft's attitude is stable but control surfaces are ineffective. The pitch limiter locks the stabilators at an extreme pitch-up or pitch-down attempting to recover. This can be overridden so the pilot can "rock" the nose via pitch control to recover.
Unlike the YF-17, which had hydromechanical controls serving as a backup to the FBW, General Dynamics took the innovative step of eliminating mechanical linkages from the control stick and rudder pedals to the flight control surfaces. The F-16 is entirely reliant on its electrical systems to relay flight commands, instead of traditional mechanically linked controls, leading to the early moniker of "the electric jet" and aphorisms among pilots such as "You don't fly an F-16; it flies you." The quadruplex design permits "graceful degradation" in flight control response in that the loss of one channel renders the FLCS a "triplex" system. The FLCC began as an analog system on the A/B variants but has been supplanted by a digital computer system beginning with the F-16C/D Block 40. The F-16's controls suffered from a sensitivity to static electricity or electrostatic discharge (ESD) and lightning. Up to 70–80% of the C/D models' electronics were vulnerable to ESD.
=== Cockpit and ergonomics ===
A key feature of the F-16's cockpit is the exceptional field of view. The single-piece, bird-proof polycarbonate bubble canopy provides 360° all-round visibility, with a 40° look-down angle over the side of the aircraft, and 15° down over the nose (compared to the common 12–13° of preceding aircraft); the pilot's seat is elevated for this purpose. Additionally, the F-16's canopy omits the forward bow frame found on many fighters, which is an obstruction to a pilot's forward vision. The F-16's ACES II zero/zero ejection seat is reclined at an unusual tilt-back angle of 30°; most fighters have a tilted seat at 13–15°. The tilted seat can accommodate taller pilots and increases g-force tolerance; however, it has been associated with reports of neck aches, possibly caused by incorrect headrest usage. Subsequent U.S. fighters have adopted more modest tilt-back angles of 20°. Because of the seat angle and the canopy's thickness, the ejection seat lacks canopy-breakers for emergency egress; instead the entire canopy is jettisoned prior to the seat's rocket firing.
The pilot flies primarily by means of an armrest-mounted side-stick controller (instead of a traditional center-mounted stick) and an engine throttle; conventional rudder pedals are also employed. To enhance the pilot's degree of control of the aircraft during high-g combat maneuvers, various switches and function controls were moved to centralized hands on throttle-and-stick (HOTAS) controls upon both the controllers and the throttle. Hand pressure on the side-stick controller is transmitted by electrical signals via the FBW system to adjust various flight control surfaces to maneuver the F-16. Originally, the side-stick controller was non-moving, but this proved uncomfortable and difficult for pilots to adjust to, sometimes resulting in a tendency to "over-rotate" during takeoffs, so the control stick was given a small amount of "play". Since the introduction of the F-16, HOTAS controls have become a standard feature on modern fighters.
The F-16 has a head-up display (HUD), which projects visual flight and combat information in front of the pilot without obstructing the view; being able to keep their head "out of the cockpit" improves the pilot's situation awareness. Further flight and systems information are displayed on multi-function displays (MFD). The left-hand MFD is the primary flight display (PFD), typically showing radar and moving maps; the right-hand MFD is the system display (SD), presenting information about the engine, landing gear, slat and flap settings, and fuel and weapons status. Initially, the F-16A/B had monochrome cathode-ray tube (CRT) displays; replaced by color liquid-crystal displays on the Block 50/52. The Mid-Life Update (MLU) introduced compatibility with night-vision goggles (NVG). The Boeing Joint Helmet Mounted Cueing System (JHMCS) is available from Block 40 onwards for targeting based on where the pilot's head faces, unrestricted by the HUD, using high-off-boresight missiles like the AIM-9X. The newer Scorpion Helmet Mounted Display is also available and would later replace the JHMCS in U.S. service.
In November 2024 it was announced that the US Air Force had awarded a $9 million contract to Danish defense company Terma A/S, to supply its 3-D audio system for the aircraft, with a program of upgrades over the following two years. The system will provide high-fidelity digital audio by spatially separating radio signals, aligning audio with threat directions, and integrating active noise reduction.
=== Fire-control radar ===
The F-16A/B was originally equipped with the Westinghouse AN/APG-66 fire-control radar. Its slotted planar array antenna was designed to be compact to fit into the F-16's relatively small nose. In uplook mode, the APG-66 uses a low pulse-repetition frequency (PRF) for medium- and high-altitude target detection in a low-clutter environment, and in look-down/shoot-down employs a medium PRF for heavy clutter environments. It has four operating frequencies within the X band, and provides four air-to-air and seven air-to-ground operating modes for combat, even at night or in bad weather. The Block 15's APG-66(V)2 model added more powerful signal processing, higher output power, improved reliability, and increased range in cluttered or jamming environments. The Mid-Life Update (MLU) program introduced a new model, APG-66(V)2A, which features higher speed and more memory.
The AN/APG-68, an evolution of the APG-66, was introduced with the F-16C/D Block 25. The APG-68 has greater range and resolution, as well as 25 operating modes, including ground-mapping, Doppler beam-sharpening, ground moving target indication, sea target, and track while scan (TWS) for up to 10 targets. The Block 40/42's APG-68(V)1 model added full compatibility with Lockheed Martin Low Altitude Navigation and Targeting Infrared for Night (LANTIRN) pods, and a high-PRF pulse-Doppler track mode to provide Interrupted Continuous Wave guidance for semi-active radar homing (SARH) missiles like the AIM-7 Sparrow. Block 50/52 F-16s initially used the more reliable APG-68(V)5 which has a programmable signal processor employing Very High Speed Integrated Circuit (VHSIC) technology. The Advanced Block 50/52 (or 50+/52+) is equipped with the APG-68(V)9 radar, with a 30% greater air-to-air detection range and a synthetic aperture radar (SAR) mode for high-resolution mapping and target detection-recognition. In August 2004, Northrop Grumman was contracted to upgrade the APG-68 radars of Block 40/42/50/52 aircraft to the (V)10 standard, providing all-weather autonomous detection and targeting for Global Positioning System (GPS)-aided precision weapons, SAR mapping, and terrain-following radar (TF) modes, as well as interleaving of all modes.
The F-16E/F is outfitted with Northrop Grumman's AN/APG-80 active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar. Northrop Grumman developed the latest AESA radar upgrade for the F-16 (selected for USAF and Taiwan's Republic of China Air Force F-16 upgrades), named the AN/APG-83 Scalable Agile Beam Radar (SABR). In July 2007, Raytheon announced that it was developing a Next Generation Radar (RANGR) based on its earlier AN/APG-79 AESA radar as a competitor to Northrop Grumman's AN/APG-68 and AN/APG-80 for the F-16. On 28 February 2020, Northrop Grumman received an order from USAF to extend the service lives of their F-16s to at least 2048 with AN/APG-83 as part of the service-life extension program (SLEP).
=== Propulsion ===
The initial powerplant selected for the single-engined F-16 was the Pratt & Whitney F100-PW-200 afterburning turbofan, a modified version of the F-15's F100-PW-100, rated at 23,830 lbf (106.0 kN) thrust. During testing, the engine was found to be prone to compressor stalls and "rollbacks", wherein the engine's thrust would spontaneously reduce to idle. Until resolved, the Air Force ordered F-16s to be operated within "dead-stick landing" distance of its bases. It was the standard F-16 engine through the Block 25, except for the newly built Block 15s with the Operational Capability Upgrade (OCU). The OCU introduced the 23,770 lbf (105.7 kN) F100-PW-220, later installed on Block 32 and 42 aircraft: the main advance being a Digital Electronic Engine Control (DEEC) unit, which improved reliability and reduced stall occurrence. Beginning production in 1988, the "-220" also supplanted the F-15's "-100", for commonality. Many of the "-220" engines on Block 25 and later aircraft were upgraded from 1997 onwards to the "-220E" standard, which enhanced reliability and maintainability; unscheduled engine removals were reduced by 35%.
The F100-PW-220/220E was the result of the USAF's Alternate Fighter Engine (AFE) program (colloquially known as "the Great Engine War"), which also saw the entry of General Electric as an F-16 engine provider. Its F110-GE-100 turbofan was limited by the original inlet to a thrust of 25,735 lbf (114.47 kN), the Modular Common Inlet Duct allowed the F110 to achieve its maximum thrust of 28,984 lbf (128.93 kN). (To distinguish between aircraft equipped with these two engines and inlets, from the Block 30 series on, blocks ending in "0" (e.g., Block 30) are powered by GE, and blocks ending in "2" (e.g., Block 32) are fitted with Pratt & Whitney engines.)
The Increased Performance Engine (IPE) program led to the 29,588 lbf (131.61 kN) F110-GE-129 on the Block 50 and 29,160 lbf (129.7 kN) F100-PW-229 on the Block 52. F-16s began flying with these IPE engines in the early 1990s. Altogether, of the 1,446 F-16C/Ds ordered by the USAF, 556 were fitted with F100-series engines and 890 with F110s. The United Arab Emirates' Block 60 is powered by the General Electric F110-GE-132 turbofan with a maximum thrust of 32,500 lbf (145 kN), the highest thrust engine developed for the F-16.
== Operational history ==
=== United States ===
The F-16 is being used by the active duty USAF, Air Force Reserve, and Air National Guard units, the USAF aerial demonstration team, the U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds, and as an adversary-aggressor aircraft by the United States Navy at the Naval Strike and Air Warfare Center. Although initially designed to be a highly maneuverable fighter for air combat, the F-16 would primarily be flown by squadrons focused on ground attack that previously flew aircraft such as the F-105 Thunderchief or A-7 Corsair II.
The U.S. Air Force, including the Air Force Reserve and the Air National Guard, flew the F-16 in combat during Operation Desert Storm in 1991 and in the Balkans later in the 1990s. During the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, on 2 May 1999 one F-16 has been shot down over western Serbia by the 250th Air Defence Missile Brigade, piloted by David L. Goldfein, later Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force. F-16s also patrolled the no-fly zones in Iraq during Operations Northern Watch and Southern Watch and served during the War in Afghanistan and the War in Iraq from 2001 and 2003 respectively. In 2011, Air Force F-16s took part in the intervention in Libya.
On 11 September 2001, two unarmed F-16s were launched in an attempt to ram and down United Airlines Flight 93 before it reached Washington D.C. during the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks, but Flight 93 was prematurely brought down by the hijackers after passengers attacked the cockpit, so the F-16s were retasked to patrol the local airspace and later escorted Air Force One back to Washington.
The F-16 had been scheduled to remain in service with the U.S. Air Force until 2025. Its replacement is planned to be the F-35A variant of the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II, which is expected to gradually begin replacing several multirole aircraft among the program's member nations. However, owing to delays in the F-35 program, all USAF F-16s will receive service life extension upgrades. In 2022, it was announced the USAF would continue to operate the F-16 for another two decades.
=== Israel ===
The F-16's first air-to-air combat success was achieved by the Israeli Air Force (IAF) over the Bekaa Valley on 28 April 1981, against a Syrian Mi-8 helicopter, which was downed with cannon fire. On 7 June 1981, eight Israeli F-16s, escorted by six F-15s, executed Operation Opera, their first employment in a significant air-to-ground operation. This raid severely damaged Osirak, an Iraqi nuclear reactor under construction near Baghdad, to prevent the regime of Saddam Hussein from using the reactor for the creation of nuclear weapons.
The following year, during the 1982 Lebanon War Israeli F-16s engaged Syrian aircraft in one of the largest air battles involving jet aircraft, which began on 9 June and continued for two more days. Israeli Air Force F-16s were credited with 44 air-to-air kills during the conflict.
In January 2000, Israel completed a purchase of 102 new F-16I aircraft in a deal totaling $4.5 billion. F-16s were also used in their ground-attack role for strikes against targets in Lebanon. IAF F-16s participated in the 2006 Lebanon War and the 2008–09 Gaza War. During and after the 2006 Lebanon war, IAF F-16s shot down Iranian-made UAVs launched by Hezbollah, using Rafael Python 5 air-to-air missiles.
On 10 February 2018, an Israeli Air Force F-16I was shot down in northern Israel when it was hit by a relatively old model S-200 (NATO name SA-5 Gammon) surface-to-air missile of the Syrian Air Defense Force. The pilot and navigator ejected safely in Israeli territory. The F-16I was part of a bombing mission against Syrian and Iranian targets around Damascus after an Iranian drone entered Israeli airspace and was shot down. An Israel Air Force investigation determined on 27 February 2018 that the loss was due to pilot error since the IAF determined the air crew did not adequately defend themselves.
Following the aftermath of the October 7 attacks, F-16Is have played a major role in Israel's Operation Swords of Iron, executing numerous airstrikes against Hamas targets in Gaza. The IAF has also employed F-16s in operations against Hezbollah in Lebanon and in strikes on Iranian-linked assets in Syria and Iraq, demonstrating the aircraft's versatility and reach.
On 16 July 2024, the last single-seat F-16C Barak-1 ('Lightning' in Hebrew) were retired; the IAF continue to use the F-16D Brakeet and F-16I Sufa two-seat variants. In October 2024, during Operation Days of Repentance F-16Is took part in significant operations against Iranian military infrastructure as the Israeli forces launched coordinated strikes on Iranian air defense systems and missile production facilities, aiming to degrade Iran's military capabilities and deter further aggression.
Israeli F-16s have been instrumental in operations against Houthi targets in Yemen, taking advantage of the F-16's extended operational range and strategic reach, flying a distance of approximately 1,700 kilometers (about 1,056 miles). Notably, on December 26, 2024, as part of Operation Tzelilei HaKerem, the IAF conducted airstrikes targeting Sana'a International Airport and other strategic locations, responding to Houthi missile and drone attacks on Israeli territory.
=== Pakistan ===
During the Soviet–Afghan War, Pakistan Air Force (PAF) F-16As shot down between 20 and 30 Soviet and Afghan warplanes; the political situation however resulted in PAF officially recognizing only 9 kills which were made inside Pakistani airspace. From May 1986 to January 1989, PAF F-16s from the Tail Choppers and Griffin squadrons using mostly AIM-9 Sidewinder missiles, shot down four Afghan Su-22s, two MiG-23s, one Su-25, and one An-26. Most of these kills were by missiles, but at least one, a Su-22, was destroyed by cannon fire. One F-16 was lost in these battles. The downed F-16 was likely hit accidentally by the other F-16.
On 7 June 2002, a PAF F-16B Block 15 (S. No. 82-605) shot down an Indian Air Force unmanned aerial vehicle, an Israeli-made Searcher II, using an AIM-9L Sidewinder missile, during a night interception near Lahore.
The Pakistan Air Force has used its F-16s in various foreign and internal military exercises, such as the "Indus Vipers" exercise in 2008 conducted jointly with Turkey.
Between May 2009 and November 2011, the PAF F-16 fleet flew more than 5,500 sorties in support of the Pakistan Army's operations against the Taliban insurgency in the FATA region of North-West Pakistan. More than 80% of the dropped munitions were laser-guided bombs.
On 27 February 2019, following six Pakistan Air Force airstrikes in Jammu and Kashmir, India, Pakistani officials said that two of its fighter jets shot down one MiG-21 and one Su-30MKI belonging to the Indian Air Force. Indian officials only confirmed the loss of one MiG-21 but denied losing any Su-30MKI in the clash and claimed the Pakistani claims as dubious. Additionally Indian officials also claimed to have shot down one F-16 belonging to the Pakistan Air Force. This was denied by the Pakistani side, considered dubious by neutral sources, and later backed by a report by Foreign Policy magazine, reporting that the US had completed a physical count of Pakistan's F-16s and found none missing. A report by The Washington Post noted that the Pentagon and State Department refused public comment on the matter but did not deny the earlier report.
In October 2025, Indian Air Force Chief of the Air Staff Amar Preet Singh claimed that five "high tech fighters" between F-16 and JF-17 class were downed by Indian air defense systems. Though refraining to provide the evidences, he also reiterated his claim of August 2025 that 4-5 F-16s in the hangers at PAF Base Shahbaz were hit in Indian strikes during the 2025 India–Pakistan conflict. However, the U.S. defense officials had earlier refuted the Indian claims by having told the Reuters that they were not aware of any F-16 being hit inside Pakistan.
=== Turkey ===
The Turkish Air Force acquired its first F-16s in 1987. F-16s were later produced in Turkey under four phases of Peace Onyx programs. In 2015, they were upgraded to Block 50/52+ with CCIP by Turkish Aerospace Industries. Turkish F-16s are being fitted with indigenous AESA radars and EW suite called SPEWS-II.
On 18 June 1992, a Greek Mirage F1 crashed during a dogfight with a Turkish F-16. On 8 February 1995, a Turkish F-16 crashed into the Aegean Sea after being intercepted by Greek Mirage F1 fighters.
Turkish F-16s have participated in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo since 1993 in support of United Nations resolutions.
On 8 October 1996, seven months after the escalation a Greek Mirage 2000 reportedly fired an R.550 Magic II missile and shot down a Turkish F-16D over the Aegean Sea. The Turkish pilot died, while the co-pilot ejected and was rescued by Greek forces. In August 2012, after the downing of an RF-4E on the Syrian coast, Turkish Defence Minister İsmet Yılmaz confirmed that the Turkish F-16D was shot down by a Greek Mirage 2000 with an R.550 Magic II in 1996 near Chios island. Greece denies that the F-16 was shot down. Both Mirage 2000 pilots reported that the F-16 caught fire and they saw one parachute.
On 23 May 2006, two Greek F-16s intercepted a Turkish RF-4 reconnaissance aircraft and two F-16 escorts off the coast of the Greek island of Karpathos, within the Athens FIR. A mock dogfight ensued between the two sides, resulting in a midair collision between a Turkish F-16 and a Greek F-16. The Turkish pilot ejected safely, but the Greek pilot died owing to damage caused by the collision.
Turkey used its F-16s extensively in its conflict with Kurdish insurgents in southeastern parts of Turkey and Iraq. Turkey launched its first cross-border raid on 16 December 2007, a prelude to the 2008 Turkish incursion into northern Iraq, involving 50 fighters before Operation Sun. This was the first time Turkey had mounted a night-bombing operation on a massive scale, and also the largest operation conducted by the Turkish Air Force.
During the Syrian Civil War, Turkish F-16s were tasked with airspace protection on the Syrian border. After the RF-4 downing in June 2012 Turkey changed its rules of engagement against Syrian aircraft, resulting in scrambles and downings of Syrian combat aircraft. On 16 September 2013, a Turkish Air Force F-16 shot down a Syrian Arab Air Force Mil Mi-17 helicopter near the Turkish border. On 23 March 2014, a Turkish Air Force F-16 shot down a Syrian Arab Air Force MiG-23 when it allegedly entered Turkish air space during a ground attack mission against Al Qaeda-linked insurgents. On 16 May 2015, two Turkish Air Force F-16s shot down a Syrian Mohajer 4 UAV firing two AIM-9 missiles after it trespassed into Turkish airspace for 5 minutes. A Turkish Air Force F-16 shot down a Russian Air Force Sukhoi Su-24 on the Turkey-Syria border on 24 November 2015.
On 1 March 2020, two Syrian Sukhoi Su-24s were shot down by Turkish Air Force F-16s using air-to-air missiles over Syria's Idlib Governorate. All four pilots safely ejected. On 3 March 2020, a Syrian Arab Army Air Force L-39 combat trainer was shot down by a Turkish F-16 over Syria's Idlib province. The pilot died.
As a part of Turkish F-16 modernization program new air-to-air missiles are being developed and tested for the aircraft. GÖKTUĞ program led by TUBITAK SAGE has presented two types of air-to-air missiles named as Bozdogan (Merlin) and Gokdogan (Peregrine). While Bozdogan has been categorized as a Within Visual Range Air-to-Air Missile (WVRAAM), Gokdogan is a Beyond Visual Range Air-to-Air Missile (BVRAAM). On 14 April 2021, first live test exercise of Bozdogan have successfully completed and the first batch of missiles are expected to be delivered throughout the same year to the Turkish Air Force.
=== Egypt ===
On 16 February 2015, Egyptian F-16s struck weapons caches and training camps of the Islamic State (ISIS) in Libya in retaliation for the murder of 21 Egyptian Coptic Christian construction workers by masked militants affiliated with ISIS. The airstrikes killed 64 ISIS fighters, including three leaders in Derna and Sirte on the coast.
=== Europe ===
F-16s contribute to the NATO Dual Capable Aircraft program for delivery of US nuclear weapons stored in Europe. F-16 wings for this mission are operated by the Belgian Air Component at Kleine Brogel, the Royal Netherlands Air and Space Force at Volkel, by the USAF at Aviano in Italy, as well as potentially the Turkish Air Force at Incirlik in an emergency scenario. F-16s deployed in Europe have had a nuclear mission since 1982. They are intended to be replaced in this capacity by the Lockheed Martin F-35A Lightning II.
The Royal Netherlands Air Force, Belgian Air Component, Royal Danish Air Force and Royal Norwegian Air Force all fly the F-16. All F-16s in most European air forces are equipped with drag chutes specifically to allow them to operate from automobile highways.
A Yugoslavian MiG-29 was shot down by a Dutch F-16AM during the Kosovo War in 1999. Belgian and Danish F-16s also participated in joint operations over Kosovo during the war. Dutch, Belgian, Danish, and Norwegian F-16s were deployed during the 2011 intervention in Libya and in Afghanistan. In Libya, Norwegian F-16s dropped almost 550 bombs and flew 596 missions, some 17% of the total strike missions including the bombing of Muammar Gaddafi's headquarters.
In late March 2018, Croatia announced its intention to purchase 12 used Israeli F-16C/D "Barak"/"Brakeet" jets, pending U.S. approval. Acquiring these F-16s would allow Croatia to retire its aging MiG-21s. In January 2019, the deal was canceled because U.S. would only allow the resale if Israel stripped the planes of all the modernized electronics, while Croatia insisted on the original deal with all the upgrades installed. At the end of November 2021, Croatia signed with France instead, for 12 Rafales.
On 11 July 2018, Slovakia's government approved the purchase of 14 F-16 Block 70/72 to replace its aging fleet of Soviet-made MiG-29s. A contract was signed on 12 December 2018 in Bratislava.
=== Ukraine ===
In May 2023, an international coalition consisting of the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Belgium and Denmark announced their intention to train Ukrainian Air Force pilots on the F-16 ahead of possible future deliveries to increase the Ukrainian Air Force capabilities in the current Russo-Ukrainian War. The U.S. confirmed that it would approve the re-export from these countries to Ukraine. Denmark has agreed to help train Ukrainians on their usage of the fighter. Denmark's acting Defence Minister Troels Lund Poulsen said that Denmark "will now be able to move forward for a collective contribution to train Ukrainian pilots to fly F-16s". On 6 July 2023, Romania announced that it will host the future training center after the meeting of the Supreme Council of National Defense. During the 2023 Vilnius summit, a coalition was formed consisting of Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, Canada, Luxembourg, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and Ukraine. A number of Ukrainian pilots began training in Denmark and the U.S. The European F-16 Training Center, organized by Romania, the Netherlands, and Lockheed Martin through several subcontractors, officially opened on 13 November 2023. It is located at the Romanian Air Force's 86th Air Base, and Ukrainian pilots began training there in September 2024. On 17 August 2023, the U.S. approved the transfer of F-16s from the Netherlands and Denmark to Ukraine after the Ukrainian pilots have completed their training. The Netherlands and Denmark have announced that together they will donate up to 61 F-16AM/BM Block 15 MLU fighters to Ukraine once pilot training has been completed.
On 13 May 2024, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said that "F-16 from Denmark will be in the air over Ukraine within months." Denmark is sending 19 F-16s in total. By the end of July 2024, the first F-16s were delivered to Ukraine.
On 4 August 2024, President Zelensky announced to the public that the F-16 was now in operational service with Ukraine. Zelensky stated at an opening ceremony that: "F-16s are in Ukraine. We did it. I am proud of our guys who are mastering these jets and have already started using them for our country,".
On 26 August 2024, F-16s were reportedly used to intercept Russian cruise missiles for the first time. Also on 26 August, a Ukrainian F-16 crashed and the pilot, Oleksii Mes, was killed while intercepting Russian aerial targets during the cruise missile strikes. The cause is under investigation.
On 13 December 2024, the Ukrainian Air Force stated that an F-16 shot down six Russian cruise missiles. Two were downed with "medium-range missiles", another two with "short-range missiles", and two were claimed to be downed by 20 mm cannon.
On 12 April 2025, a Ukrainian Air Force F-16AM Block 20 was shot down in Sumy oblast, most likely by the S-400 missile system. The crew of the S-400 system received a reward of 15 million roubles from a Russian private oil extraction company.
As of October 2025, 4 F-16 fighters were lost by Ukrainian Air Force.
==== Combat losses ====
Ukraine has confirmed the loss of four F-16 fighters and three pilots as of June 2025.
The first crash occurred on 26 August 2024. An F-16 of the Ukrainian Air Force crashed in an undisclosed location in Ukraine during a Russian missile and drone attack. The pilot of the aircraft, Oleksii Mes, died in the crash. On 30 August 2024, the Commander of the Ukrainian Air Force, Mykola Oleshchuk, was dismissed by President Zelenskyy and replaced by Lieutenant General Anatolii Kryvonozhko, which was partially attributed to "indications" that the F-16 that crashed on 26 August was shot down in "a friendly fire incident". Ukrainian parliamentarian Maryana Bezuhla and Oleshchuk had previously argued over the cause of the F-16 loss.
The second crash occurred on 12 April 2025. Ukraine stated that pilot Pavlo Ivanov was killed in action flying an F-16. BBC-Ukraine reported that Russian Armed Forces fired three missiles at the F-16, which was probably flying over the Sumy region, either from an S-400 ground-to-air system or R-37 air-to-air missiles.
The third crash occurred on 16 May 2025. The Ukrainian Air Force Command stated that a third F-16 was lost due to an unspecified onboard emergency while carrying out a mission to repel a Russian aerial attack. The pilot was stated to have steered the aircraft from populated areas before ejecting and was rescued in a stable condition.
The fourth crash occurred on 29 June 2025. A Ukrainian F-16 was lost and the pilot killed while repelling a Russian missile and drone attack, the third F-16 Ukraine has lost in such a way. The pilot, Lieutenant Colonel Maksym Ustymenko, "used all of his onboard weapons and shot down seven air targets". The seventh damaged his fighter and forced him to fly away from a residential area before crashing.
=== Others ===
Venezuela Air Force have flown the F-16 on combat missions. During the November 1992 Venezuelan coup attempt, two F-16A belonging to the government loyalist managed to shoot down two OV-10 Bronco and an AT-27 Tucano flown by the rebels and establishing aerial superiority for the government forces.
Two F-16B of the Indonesian Air Force intercepted and engaged several US Navy F/A-18 Hornets over the Java Sea in the 2003 Bawean incident.
The Royal Moroccan Air Force and the Royal Bahraini Air Force each lost a single F-16C, both shot down by Houthi anti-aircraft fire during the Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen, respectively on 11 May 2015 and on 30 December 2015.
On 11 October 2023, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Regional Security Mira Resnick confirmed to Jorge Argüello, Argentinean ambassador to the US, that the State Department has approved the transfer of 38 F-16s from Denmark. On 16 April 2024, it was announced by defense minister Luis Petri that the country went through with the purchase of 24+1 Danish F-16s, that are to be brought up to date before they are sent to Argentina. The 25th plane, an F-16B MLU Block 10, meant for mechanics training, came disassembled in an Argentinian C-130 in late December 2024. The first aircraft, a F-16B, was unveiled in Buenos Aires on 24 February 2025.
In 2019, the US State Department approved the possible sale of 8 F-16 Block 70s to Bulgaria, and the deal was approved by the Bulgarian parliament, and President Rumen Radev. In November 2022, the purchase of a further 8 F-16 Block 70 fighters, spares, weapons and other systems was approved for delivery in 2027. The Bulgarian Air Force expects delivery of the first eight new F-16 Block 70s by 2025 and the second batch of eight F-16 Block 70s is expected in 2027.
F-16s of the Royal Thai Air Force were used to strike several Cambodian military targets during the 2025 Cambodia–Thailand border conflict in July and December 2025.
Two armed F-16s of the Venezuelan Air Force flew over the U.S. Navy destroyer USS Jason Dunham while in international waters, in what the U.S. Department of Defense described as a "show of force" and "highly provocative move". The action happened amidst tension between the U.S. and Venezuela due to ongoing U.S. military campaign against certain Latin American drug cartels.
=== Potential operators ===
==== Philippines ====
In 2021, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency approved the Philippines' purchase of 12 F-16s worth an estimated US$2.43 billion. However, the Philippines has yet to complete this deal due to financial constraints with negotiations ongoing. In April 2025, the possible sale of 20 F-16s were approved, upgrading the previous approval made by DSCA. It was reported in May 2025 that Lockheed Martin was interested in developing a facility similar to the Center for Innovation and Security Solutions in Abu Dhabi, depending on the success of the F-16s being sold.
==== Vietnam ====
In 2025, multiple news channels reported that Vietnam is finalizing an agreement to purchase at least 24 F-16s, possibly the F-16V variant.
=== Civilian operators ===
==== Top Aces ====
In January 2021, Canadian defence contractor Top Aces announced that they had taken delivery of the first civilian owned F-16s to their US HQ in Mesa, Arizona. In an approval process that had taken years, they had purchased a batch of 29 F-16A/B Netz from the Israeli Air Force, including several that had taken part in Operation Opera. A year later, the first of these aircraft had finished the extensive AAMS mission system upgrades including AESA radar, HMCS, ECM, and Tactical Datalink. In late 2022 they began regular operations flying as contracted aggressors for USAF F-22 and F-35 squadrons in Luke AFB and Eglin AFB, as well as supporting exercises in other USAF and USMC bases.
== Variants ==
F-16 models are denoted by increasing block numbers to denote upgrades. The blocks cover both single- and two-seat versions. A variety of software, hardware, systems, weapons compatibility, and structural enhancements have been instituted over the years to gradually upgrade production models and retrofit delivered aircraft.
While many F-16s were produced according to these block designs, there have been many other variants with significant changes, usually because of modification programs. Other changes have resulted in role-specialization, such as the close air support and reconnaissance variants. Several models were also developed to test new technology. The F-16 design also inspired the design of other aircraft, which are considered derivatives. Older F-16s are being converted into QF-16 drone targets.
F-16A/B
The F-16A (single seat) and F-16B (two seat) were initial production variants. These variants include the Block 1, 5, 10, 15, and 20 versions. Block 15 was the first major change to the F-16 with larger horizontal stabilizers. It is the most numerous of all F-16 variants with 983 produced. Around 300 earlier USAF F-16A and B aircraft were upgraded to the Block 15 Mid-Life Update (MLU) standard, getting analogous capability to F-16C/D Block 50/52 aircraft. From 1987 a total of 214 Block 15 aircraft were upgraded to OCU (Operational Capability Upgrade) standard, with engines, structural and electronic improvements, and from 1988 all Block 15 were directly built to OCU specifications. Between 1989 and 1992 a total of 271 Block 15OCU airframes (246 F-16A and 25 F-16B) were converted at the Ogden Air Logistic Center to the ADF (Air Defense Fighter) variant, with improved IFF system, radio and radar, the ability to carry advanced Beyond Visual Range missiles and the addition of a side-mounted 150,000 candlepower spotlight for visual night identification of intruders. Originally intended for Cold-War air defense of the continental U.S. airspace, with the fall of the Berlin Wall the ADF lost a clear mission, and most were mothballed starting from 1994. Some mothballed ADFs were later exported to Jordan (12 -A and 4 -B models) and Thailand (15 -A and 1 -B), while 30 -A and 4 -B models were leased to Italy from 2003 to 2012
F-16C/D
The F-16C (single seat) and F-16D (two seat) variants entered production in 1984. The first C/D version was the Block 25 with improved cockpit avionics and radar which added all-weather capability with beyond-visual-range (BVR) AIM-7 and AIM-120 air-air missiles. Block 30/32, 40/42, and 50/52 were later C/D versions. The F-16C/D had a unit cost of US$18.8 million (1998). Operational cost per flight hour has been estimated at $7,000 to $22,470 or $24,000, depending on the calculation method.
F-16E/F
The F-16E (single seat) and F-16F (two seat) are newer F-16 Block 60 variants based on the F-16C/D Block 50/52. The United Arab Emirates invested heavily in their development. They feature improved AN/APG-80 active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar, infrared search and track (IRST), avionics, conformal fuel tanks (CFTs), and the more powerful General Electric F110-GE-132 engine.
F-16IN
For the Indian MRCA competition for the Indian Air Force, Lockheed Martin offered the F-16IN Super Viper. The F-16IN is based on the F-16E/F Block 60 and features conformal fuel tanks; AN/APG-80 AESA radar, General Electric F110-GE-132A engine with FADEC controls; electronic warfare suite and infrared search and track (IRST) unit; updated glass cockpit; and a helmet-mounted cueing system. As of 2011, the F-16IN is no longer in the competition. In 2016, Lockheed Martin offered the new F-16 Block 70/72 version to India under the Make in India program. In 2016, the Indian government offered to purchase 200 (potentially up to 300) fighters in a deal worth $13–15bn. As of 2017, Lockheed Martin has agreed to manufacture F-16 Block 70 fighters in India with the Indian defense firm Tata Advanced Systems Limited. The new production line could be used to build F-16s for India and for exports.
F-16IQ
In September 2010, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency informed the United States Congress of a possible Foreign Military Sale of 18 F-16IQ aircraft along with the associated equipment and services to the newly reformed Iraqi Air Force. The total value of sale was estimated at US$4.2 billion. The Iraqi Air Force purchased those 18 jets in the second half of 2011, then later exercised an option to purchase 18 more for a total of 36 F-16IQs. As of 2021, the Iraqi had lost two in accidents. By 2023, the US government reported that these jets were Iraq's most capable airborne platforms with a 66 percent mission-capable rate. Their maintenance was being supported by private contractors. At the same time, Iraq's Russian-made systems were suffering from sanctions imposed in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
F-16N
The F-16N was an adversary aircraft operated by the United States Navy. It is based on the standard F-16C/D Block 30, is powered by the General Electric F110-GE-100 engine, and is capable of supercruise. The F-16N has a strengthened wing and is capable of carrying an Air Combat Maneuvering Instrumentation (ACMI) pod on the starboard wingtip. Although the single-seat F-16Ns and twin-seat (T)F-16Ns are based on the early-production small-inlet Block 30 F-16C/D airframe, they retain the APG-66 radar of the F-16A/B. In addition, the aircraft's 20 mm cannon has been removed, as has the airborne self-protection jammer (ASPJ), and they carry no missiles. Their EW fit consists of an ALR-69 radar warning receiver (RWR) and an ALE-40 chaff/flare dispenser. The F-16Ns and (T)F-16Ns have the standard Air Force tailhook and undercarriage and are not aircraft carrier–capable. Production totaled 26 airframes, of which 22 are single-seat F-16Ns and 4 are twin-seat TF-16Ns. The initial batch of aircraft was in service between 1988 and 1998. At that time, hairline cracks were discovered in several bulkheads, and the Navy did not have the resources to replace them, so the aircraft were eventually retired, with one aircraft sent to the collection of the National Naval Aviation Museum at NAS Pensacola, Florida, and the remainder placed in storage at Davis-Monthan AFB. These aircraft were later replaced by embargoed ex-Pakistani F-16s in 2003. The original inventory of F-16Ns was previously operated by adversary squadrons at NAS Oceana, Virginia; NAS Key West, Florida; and the former NAS Miramar, California. The current F-16A/B aircraft are operated by the Naval Strike and Air Warfare Center at NAS Fallon, Nevada.
F-16V
At the 2012 Singapore Air Show, Lockheed Martin unveiled plans for the new F-16V variant with the V suffix for its Viper nickname. It features an AN/APG-83 active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar, a new mission computer and electronic warfare suite, an automated ground collision avoidance system, and various cockpit improvements; this package is an option on current production F-16s and can be retrofitted to most in service F-16s. First flight took place 21 October 2015. Taiwanese media reported that Taiwan and the U.S. both initially invested in the development of the F-16V. Upgrades to Taiwan's F-16 fleet began in January 2017. The first country to confirm the purchase of 16 new F-16 Block 70/72 was Bahrain. Greece announced the upgrade of 84 F-16C/D Block 52+ and Block 52+ Advanced (Block 52M) to the latest V (Block 70/72) variant in October 2017. Slovakia announced on 11 July 2018 that it intends to purchase 14 F-16 Block 70/72 aircraft. Lockheed Martin has redesignated the F-16V Block 70 as the "F-21" in its offering for India's fighter requirement. Taiwan's Republic of China Air Force announced on 19 March 2019 that it formally requested the purchase of an additional 66 F-16V fighters. The Trump administration approved the sale on 20 August 2019. On 14 August 2020, Lockheed Martin was awarded a US$62 billion contract by the US DoD that includes 66 new F-16s at US$8 billion (~$9.53 billion in 2024) for Taiwan.
QF-16
In September 2013, Boeing and the U.S. Air Force tested an unmanned F-16, with two US Air Force pilots controlling the airplane from the ground as it flew from Tyndall AFB over the Gulf of Mexico.
=== Related developments ===
Vought Model 1600
Proposed naval variant
General Dynamics F-16XL
1980s technology demonstrator
General Dynamics NF-16D VISTA
1990s experimental fighter
Mitsubishi F-2
1990s Japanese multirole fighter based on the F-16
== Operators ==
As of 2024, there have been 2,145 F-16s in active service around the world.
=== Former operators ===
Denmark – Royal Danish Air Force sold 24 F-16s to Argentine Air Force in 2024. 19 F-16s donated to Ukrainian Air Force.
Italy – Italian Air Force used up to 30 F-16As and 4 F-16Bs of the Block 15 ADF variant, leased from the United States Air Force, from 2003 to 2012.
Netherlands – Royal Netherlands Air Force originally bought 213 aircraft. Later sold six F-16s to Royal Jordanian Air Force. and 36 F-16s to Chilean Air Force in 2005. Donating the rest of the fleet of 42 aircraft to Ukraine in 2024.
Norway – Royal Norwegian Air Force (RNoAF) on 6 January 2022, Norway announced that all F-16s had been retired and replaced with the F-35. The RNoAF sold 32 of their F-16s to Romanian Air Force, with the remaining operational aircraft being donated to Ukraine.
== Notable accidents and incidents ==
The F-16 has been involved in over 670 hull-loss accidents as of January 2025.
On 8 May 1975, while practicing a 9-g aerial display maneuver with the second YF-16 (tail number 72-1568) at Fort Worth, Texas, prior to being sent to the Paris Air Show, one of the main landing gears jammed. The test pilot, Neil Anderson, had to perform an emergency gear-up landing and chose to do so in the grass, hoping to minimize damage and avoid injuring any observers. The aircraft was only slightly damaged, but because of the mishap, the first prototype was sent to the Paris Air Show in its place.
On 15 November 1982, while on a training flight outside Kunsan Air Base in South Korea, USAF Captain Ted Harduvel died when he crashed inverted into a mountain ridge. In 1985, Harduvel's widow filed a lawsuit against General Dynamics claiming an electrical malfunction, not pilot error, as the cause; a jury awarded the plaintiff $3.4 million in damages. However, in 1989, the U.S. Court of Appeals ruled the contractor had immunity to lawsuits, overturning the previous judgment. The court remanded the case to the trial court "for entry of judgment in favor of General Dynamics". The accident and subsequent trial was the subject of the 1992 film Afterburn.
On 23 March 1994, during a joint Army-Air Force exercise at Pope AFB, North Carolina, F-16D (AF Serial No. 88-0171) of the 23d Fighter Wing / 74th Fighter Squadron was simulating an engine-out approach when it collided with a USAF C-130E. Both F-16 crew members ejected, but their aircraft, on full afterburner, continued on an arc towards Green Ramp and struck a USAF C-141 that was being boarded by US Army paratroopers. This accident resulted in 24 fatalities and at least 100 others injured. It has since been known as the "Green Ramp disaster".
On 15 September 2003, a United States Air Force Thunderbirds F-16C crashed during an air show at Mountain Home AFB, Idaho. Captain Christopher Stricklin attempted a "split S" maneuver based on an incorrect mean-sea-level altitude of the airfield. Climbing to only 1,670 ft (510 m) above ground level instead of 2,500 ft (760 m), Stricklin had insufficient altitude to complete the maneuver, but was able to guide the aircraft away from spectators and ejected less than one second before impact. Stricklin survived with only minor injuries; the aircraft was destroyed. USAF procedure for demonstration "Split-S" maneuvers was changed, requiring both pilots and controllers to use above-ground-level (AGL) altitudes.
On 26 January 2015, a Greek F-16D crashed while performing a NATO training exercise in Albacete, Spain. Both crew members and nine French soldiers on the ground died when it crashed in the flight line, destroying or damaging two Italian AMXs, two French Alpha jets, and one French Mirage 2000. Investigations suggested that the accident was due to an erroneous rudder setting that was caused by loose papers in the cockpit.
On 7 July 2015, an F-16CJ collided with a Cessna 150M over Moncks Corner, South Carolina, U.S. The pilot of the F-16 ejected safely, but both people in the Cessna were killed.
On 11 October 2018, an F-16 MLU from the 2nd Tactical Wing of the Belgian Air Component, on the apron at Florennes Air Station, was hit by a gun burst from a nearby F-16, whose cannon was fired inadvertently during maintenance. The aircraft caught fire and was burned to the ground, while two other F-16s were damaged and two maintenance personnel were treated for aural trauma.
On 11 March 2020, a Pakistani F-16AM (Serial No. 92730) of the No. 9 Squadron (Pakistan Air Force) crashed in the Shakarparian area of Islamabad during rehearsals for the Pakistan Day Parade. The plane crashed when the F-16 was executing an aerobatic loop. As a result, the pilot of the F-16, Wing Commander Noman Akram, who was also the Commanding Officer of the No. 9 Squadron "Griffins", lost his life. A board of inquiry ordered by the Pakistan Air Force later revealed that the pilot had every chance to eject but opted not to and tried his best to save the aircraft and avoid civilian casualties on the ground. Videos taken by locals on the ground show his F-16AM crashing into some woods. He was hailed a hero by Pakistanis while also gaining some attention internationally.
On 6 May 2023, a U.S. Air Force F-16C of the 8th Fighter Wing crashed in a field near Osan Air Base in South Korea during a daytime training sortie. The pilot safely ejected from the aircraft.
On 20 March 2024, an F-16 operated by the Hellenic Air Force crashed into the sea, close to the island of Psathoura in the northern Aegean Sea. The pilot ejected from the aircraft and was later rescued.
On 30 April 2024, an Air Force General Dynamics F-16 crashed outside Holloman Air Force Base, located near Alamogordo in New Mexico. The pilot ejected safely before impact.
On 8 May 2024, an F-16C of the Republic of Singapore Air Force crashed during takeoff within Tengah Air Base. The pilot successfully ejected from the aircraft without major injuries. The cause was later identified to be from the malfunction of two of the three primary pitch rate gyroscopes on the aircraft. This was noted to be a "rare occurrence" by Lockheed Martin due to the concurrent failure of the two independent pitch rate gyroscopes giving similar inputs which caused the digital flight control computer to reject inputs from the correctly functioning pitch rate gyroscope and the backup pitch rate gyroscope when it was activated by the rejection of a primary pitch rate gyroscope.
On 28 August 2025, a Polish Air Force F-16C Block 52+, from the Tiger Demo Team, crashed in Poland, whilst practising for the Radom Airshow. The pilot did not survive the accident.
== Aircraft on display ==
As newer variants have entered service, many examples of older F-16 models have been preserved for display worldwide, particularly in Europe and the United States.
== Specifications (F-16C Block 50 and 52) ==
Data from USAF sheet, International Directory of Military Aircraft, Flight Manual for F-16C/D Block 50/52+General characteristics
Crew: 1
Length: 49 ft 5 in (15.06 m)
Wingspan: 32 ft 8 in (9.96 m)
Height: 16 ft (4.9 m)
Wing area: 300 sq ft (28 m2)
Airfoil: NACA 64A204
Empty weight: 18,900 lb (8,573 kg)
Gross weight: 26,500 lb (12,020 kg)
Max takeoff weight: 42,300 lb (19,187 kg)
Fuel capacity: 7,000 pounds (3,200 kg) internal
Powerplant: 1 × General Electric F110-GE-129 for Block 50 aircraft , 17,155 lbf (76.31 kN) thrust dry, 29,500 lbf (131 kN) with afterburner(1 × Pratt & Whitney F100-PW-229 for Block 52 aircraft, 17,800 lbf (79 kN) thrust dry and 29,160 lbf (129.7 kN) with afterburner.)
Performance
Maximum speed: Mach 2.05, 1,176 kn (1,353 mph; 2,178 km/h) at 40,000 feet, clean
Mach 1.2, 800 kn (921 mph; 1,482 km/h) at sea level
Cruise speed: 504 kn (580 mph, 933 km/h)
Combat range: 295 nmi (339 mi, 546 km) on a hi-lo-hi mission with 4 × 1,000 lb (454 kg) bombs
Ferry range: 2,277 nmi (2,620 mi, 4,217 km) with three drop tanks
Service ceiling: 50,000 ft (15,000 m)
g limits: +9
Roll rate: 324°/s
Wing loading: 88.3 lb/sq ft (431 kg/m2)
Thrust/weight: 1.095 (1.24 with loaded weight & 50% internal fuel)
Armament
Guns: 1 × 20 mm (0.787 in) M61A1 Vulcan 6-barrel rotary cannon, 511 rounds
Hardpoints: 2 × wing-tip air-to-air missile launch rails, 6 × under-wing, and 3 × under-fuselage pylon (2 of 3 for sensors) stations with a capacity of up to 17,000 lb (7,700 kg) of stores
Rockets:
4 × LAU-61/LAU-68 rocket pods (each with 19/7 × Hydra 70 mm/APKWS rockets, respectively)
4 × LAU-5003 rocket pods (each with 19 × CRV7 70 mm rockets)
4 × LAU-10 rocket pods (each with 4 × Zuni 127 mm rockets)
Missiles:
Air-to-air missiles:
6 × AIM-9 Sidewinder
6 × AIM-120 AMRAAM
6 × IRIS-T
6 × Python-4
6 × Python-5
2 × AIM-7 Sparrow and 4 × AIM-9 Sidewinder
Air-to-surface missiles:
6 × AGM-65 Maverick
2 × AGM-88 HARM
AGM-158 JASSM (JASSM)
Anti-ship missiles:
2 × AGM-84 Harpoon
4 × AGM-119 Penguin
Joint Strike Missile (to be integrated)
Bombs:
8 × CBU-87 Combined Effects Munition
8 × CBU-89 Gator mine
8 × CBU-97 Sensor Fuzed Weapon
4 × Mark 84 general-purpose bombs
8 × Mark 83 GP bombs
12 × Mark 82 GP bombs
8 × GBU-39 Small Diameter Bomb (SDB)
4 × GBU-10 Paveway II
6 × GBU-12 Paveway II
4 × GBU-24 Paveway III
4 × GBU-27 Paveway III
4 × Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) series
4 × AGM-154 Joint Standoff Weapon (JSOW)
Wind Corrected Munitions Dispenser (WCMD)
B61 nuclear bomb
B83 nuclear bomb
Others:
ADM-160 MALD
SUU-42A/A flares/infrared decoys dispenser pod and chaff pod or
AN/ALQ-131 & AN/ALQ-184 ECM pods on centerline or
LANTIRN, Lockheed Martin Sniper XR & Litening targeting pods or
AN/ASQ-213 HARM targeting system (HTS) Pod (typically configured on station 5L with Sniper XR pod on station 5R) or
Up to 3 × 300/330/370/600 US gallon (1,135, 1,250, 1,400, 2,270 L) Sargent Fletcher drop tanks for ferry flight/extended range/loitering time or
UTC Aerospace DB-110 long range EO/IR sensor pod on centerline
Avionics
AN/APG-83 / AN/APG-68 radar (depends on aircraft variant). The AN/APG-68 radar is being replaced on many US Air Force F-16C/D Block 40/42 and 50/52 aircraft by the AN/APG-83 AESA radar.
AN/ALR-56M radar warning receiver, being replaced on US Air Force F-16C/D Block 40/42 and 50/52 by AN/ALR-69A(V)
AN/ALQ-213 electronic warfare suite, being replaced on US Air Force F-16C/D Block 40/42 and 50/52 by AN/ALQ-257
MIL-STD-1553 bus
== See also ==
Aircraft in fiction § F-16 Fighting Falcon
Fourth-generation fighter
Green Ramp disaster
David S. Lewis (General Dynamics' CEO during formative period for F-16)
RSAF Black Knights – F-16 Aerobatic Team
Related development
Vought Model 1600
General Dynamics F-16XL
General Dynamics X-62 VISTA
AIDC F-CK-1 Ching-kuo
KAI T-50 Golden Eagle
Mitsubishi F-2
Aircraft of comparable role, configuration, and era
Chengdu J-10
Dassault Mirage 2000
McDonnell Douglas F/A-18 Hornet
Mikoyan MiG-29
HAL Tejas
PAC/CAC JF-17 Thunder
Saab JAS 39 Gripen
Related lists
List of active United States military aircraft
List of fighter aircraft
List of military electronics of the United States
== References ==
=== Notes ===
=== Citations ===
=== Bibliography ===
== Further reading ==
Drendel, Lou. F-16 Fighting Falcon – Walk Around No. 1. Carrollton, Texas: Squadron/Signal Books, 1993. ISBN 0-89747-307-8.
Gunston, Bill. United States Military Aircraft of the 20th century London: Salamander Books Ltd, 1984. ISBN 0-86101-163-5.
Jenkins, Dennis R. McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle, Supreme Heavy-Weight Fighter. Arlington, Texas: Aerofax, 1998. ISBN 1-85780-081-8.
Sweetman, Bill. Supersonic Fighters: The F-16 Fighting Falcons. Mankato, Minnesota: Capstone Press, 2008. ISBN 1-4296-1315-7.
Williams, Anthony G. and Emmanuel Gustin. Flying Guns: The Modern Era. Ramsbury, UK: The Crowood Press, 2004. ISBN 1-86126-655-3.
== External links ==
F-16 USAF fact sheet
F-16 page on LockheedMartin.com and F-16 articles on Code One magazine site
F-16.net Fighting Falcon resource |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erkki_Oja | Erkki Oja | Erkki Oja (born 22 March 1948) is a Finnish computer scientist and Aalto Distinguished Professor in the Department of Information and Computer Science at Aalto University School of Science. He is recognized for developing Oja's rule, which is a model of how neurons in the brain or in artificial neural networks learn over time.
== Early life and education ==
Oja was born in Helsinki and studied at Helsinki University of Technology, where he received his diploma engineer in 1972, licentiate in technology in 1975 and Doctor of Technology in 1977.
== Career ==
Oja was a research associate at the Center for Cognitive Science at Brown University between 1977 and 1978 and a research fellow at the Academy of Finland from 1976 to 1981. Since 1981, he took up a professorship in applied mathematics at Kuopio University (now University of Eastern Finland). He was a visiting research scholar at Tokyo Institute of Technology from 1983 to 1984. From 1987 to 1993, he was a professor in computer science at the Lappeenranta University of Technology. He moved back to the Helsinki University of Technology (now Aalto University) from 1993 as a professor in computer science. He retired in 2015.
== Honors and awards ==
Oja is a Fellow of the International Association for Pattern Recognition and the IEEE, and a member of the Finnish Academy of Sciences. He served as chairman of the European Neural Network Society between 2000 and 2005, and as the chairman of the Academy of Finland’s Research Council for Natural Sciences and Engineering between 2007 and 2012. He was awarded the Frank Rosenblatt Award for his contributions to artificial intelligence research in 2019.
Oja was a member of the Board of Governors for the International Neural Network Society (INNIS) in 2003. He received honorary doctorates from Uppsala University and Lappeenranta University of Technology in 2008.
== Bibliography ==
Oja, Erkki (1983). Subspace methods of pattern recognition. Letchworth, Hertfordshire, England: Research Studies Press. ISBN 0-86380-010-6. OCLC 9827401.
Oja, Erkki; Kaski, Samuel, eds. (1999). Kohonen maps. Amsterdam: Elsevier. ISBN 978-0-444-50270-4. OCLC 162130904.
Hyvärinen, Aapo; Karhunen, Juha; Oja, Erkki (2001). Independent component analysis. New York: J. Wiley. ISBN 0-471-46419-8. OCLC 53228828.
== References == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parastou_Forouhar | Parastou Forouhar | Parastou Forouhar (Persian; پرستو فروهر) (born 1962 in Tehran) is an Iranian installation artist who lives and works out of Frankfurt, Germany. Forouhar's art reflects her criticism of the Iranian government and often plays with the ideas of identity. Her artwork expresses a critical response towards the politics in Iran and Islamic fundamentalism. The loss of her parents, Dariush and Parvaneh, fuels Forouhar's work and challenges viewers to take a stand on war crimes against innocent citizens. Forouhar's work has been exhibited around the world including Iran, Germany, Russia, Turkey, England, and the United States.
== Biography ==
=== Early life and education ===
The daughter of political activist Parvaneh Forouhar (née Eskandari) and politician Dariush Forouhar, Parastou was born in 1962 in Tehran, Iran. Her father critiqued the Iranian government and he founded and led the Hezb-e-Mellat-e Iran (Nation Party of Iran), which was a far-right secular opposition party in Iran. Her parents were stabbed to death in their home on November 22 of 1998 by a secret operation of Iranian Intelligence service, which is widely known as the Chain Murder. This led Parastou Forouhar to dedicate her life to revealing the atrocities of the Iranian state through her expressive art. Despite it now being more than 35 years since the incident, the state intelligence still impedes her from holding a public commemoration for her parents. She has been threatened by the intelligence service several times and was finally sentenced to six years of conditional prison in 2017. Parastou lives in exile in Germany, and her work has been widely displayed inside and outside of Iran. Parastou studied art at the University of Tehran from 1984 until 1990, where she earned her B.A., she then continued to study at the Hochschule für Gestaltung (College for Design) in Offenbach am Main in Germany and went on to earn her M.A. in 1994. Parastou lives with her two children in Frankfurt Germany now.
=== Work ===
Forouhar's work is autobiographical in nature and responds to the politics that have shaped and defined contemporary Iranian citizenship both in Iran and abroad. She works within a range of media including site specific installation, animation, digital drawing, photography, signs and products. Through her work, she processes very real experiences of loss, pain, and state-sanctioned violence through animations, wallpapers, flipbooks, and drawings. Forouhar uses culturally specific motifs found within traditional Iranian arts such as Islamic calligraphy and Persian miniature painting to question the ways these forms can generate a lack of individual agency while adhering to a standardized understanding of beauty and cultural identity.
The underlying meaning of her works are not visible at first. They look poetic, lines are smooth, blank colors are like the illustration of the books. At first glance, they are pleasant images seeming embellished with details of line marks and vivid colors. However, as one takes time with them and pays attention to the details, they find out the reality of what they are implying. One of her pieces Kahrizak Prison literally refers to an incident that happened in 2009 where a few of the protesters of the Iranian Green Movement were brought to the Kahrizak detention center and for a few months were harshly tortured and raped resulting in at least five deaths. This series of Parastou's work was created in 2009 pointing out the cruel moments of the day. The form of butterfly is referring to her mother's name, Parvaneh which means butterfly but it is not just about her; she references her mother as an example or a starting point and further expands it to a larger oppressed population; the work signifies a totality while it is focused on a specific incident. It also reminds of the butterflies installed in a butterfly collection where the butterflies had been murdered and their freedom of existence had been taken just to serve somebody's desire.
In 2002, the Iranian Cultural Ministry censored Forouhar's photo exhibition, Blind Spot, a collection of images depicting a veiled, gender-neutral figure with a bulbous, featureless face. Forouhar chose to exhibit the empty frames on the wall on opening night instead of forgoing the show.
Forouhar and her brother got involved in activism after their parents were murdered and they weren't allowed to publicly speak about the deaths. Her artwork critiques the Iranian government and focuses on examining her identity and culture.
In 2012 she received the Sophie von La Roche Award in recognition for her work that confronts issues concerning displacement, gender and cultural identity.
Solo exhibitions of Forouhar's work have been held at Stavanger Cultural Center, Norway; Golestan Art Gallery, Tehran; Hamburger Bahnhof - Museum fur Gegenwart, Berlin; City Museum, Crailsheim, Germany; and German Cathedral, Berlin.
She has participated in group exhibitions at Framer Framed, Amsterdam, Schim Kunsthalle, Frankfurt; Frauenmuseum Bonn; Museum of Modern Art, Frankfurt; Neue Galerie am Landesmuseum, Joanneum, Graz, Austria; House of World Cultures, Berlin; Deutsches Hygiene-Museum, Dresden; Jewish Museum of Australia, Melbourne; Law Warschaw Gallery at Macalester College, Saint Paul; and Jewish Museum San Francisco.
Her work can be found in the following permanent collections: The Queensland Art Museum, Queensland; Belvedere, Vienna; Badisches Landesmuseum, Karlsruhe; Museum of Modern Art, Frankfurt; and the Deutsche Bank Art Collection.
Forouhar has been featured in several art fairs including the Brodsky Center Fair, at Rutgers University in 2015, and Pi Artworks fair Istanbul/London, in 2016 and 2017 (she was at both locations: in Contemporary Istanbul and London).
== References ==
== External links ==
Omid Memarian, 'Creating Suspension Between Contradictory States: An interview with artist Parastou Forouhar', Global Voices, December 10, 2019.
== External links ==
Art21 video interview with Parvaneh Forouhar
Parastou Forouhar art collection at the Queensland Art Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA) |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_easternmost_point | List of countries by easternmost point | This is a list of countries by easternmost point on land (dependent territories included).
The order does not always reflect how close a country's territory is to the 180th meridian. Russia, Fiji, and Antarctica are notable exceptions because the 180th meridian passes through them. Therefore, they each have both very westernmost and very easternmost points. For countries like Russia, New Zealand, Fiji, the United States, and Kiribati, which have territories on both sides of the 180th meridian, the easternmost point is defined as the easternmost point in the direction of travel. The United States and Kiribati have most of their territory east of the 180th meridian, in the Western Hemisphere, so they are considered to belong to the westernmost countries with their territory stretching as far to the west as beyond the 180th meridian into the Eastern Hemisphere. Conversely, Russia, New Zealand, and Fiji have most of their territory west of the 180th meridian, in the Eastern Hemisphere, so they are considered to belong to the easternmost countries with their territory stretching as far to the east as beyond the 180th meridian into the Western Hemisphere.
== See also == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natasha_C._Merle#:~:text=In%202017%2C%20Merle%20was%20a%20member%20of%20the%20petitioner%20team%20in%20Buck%20v.%20Davis.%5B3%5D%5B7%5D%5B8%5D%5B9%5D | Natasha C. Merle | Natasha Clarise Merle (born 1983) is an American lawyer from New York who serves as a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York.
== Education ==
Merle received her Bachelor of Arts in government and Spanish, with honors, from the University of Texas at Austin in 2005 and she graduated, cum laude, with a Juris Doctor from the New York University School of Law in 2008.
== Career ==
Merle began her legal career as a law clerk for Judge Robert L. Carter of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York from 2008 to 2009. From 2009 to 2011, she was a staff attorney at the Gulf Region Advocacy Center. Merle then became an assistant federal public defender at the Office of the Federal Public Defender. She also served as a law clerk for Judge John Gleeson of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York from 2012 to 2013.
From 2013 to 2015, Merle was a litigation associate and civil rights fellow at Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson in New York City.
From 2016 to 2021, she served as assistant counsel and then senior counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund ("LDF"). From 2021 to 2023, she was the deputy director of litigation at LDF.
From 2019 to 2021, Merle was a adjunct professor of clinical law at the New York University School of Law and from 2020 to 2021, she was a lecturer in law at Columbia Law School.
=== Notable cases ===
In 2017, Merle was a member of the petitioner team in Buck v. Davis.
In 2017, Merle was lead counsel for NAACP LDF v. Trump.
=== Federal judicial service ===
On January 19, 2022, President Joe Biden nominated Merle to serve as a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York. President Biden nominated Merle to a new seat created following the appointment of Roslynn R. Mauskopf as director of the Administrative Office of the United States Courts. On April 27, 2022, a hearing on her nomination was held before the Senate Judiciary Committee. During Merle's confirmation hearing, Republican senators criticized her over comments she made in 2017 in which she said that proposals for voter ID laws and a border wall were based in white supremacy. On May 26, 2022, her nomination was reported out of committee by a 12–10 vote. On January 3, 2023, her nomination was returned to the President under Rule XXXI, Paragraph 6 of the United States Senate; she was renominated later the same day. On February 2, 2023, the committee failed to report her nomination by a 10–10 vote. On February 9, 2023, her nomination was reported out of committee by an 11–10 vote. On June 21, 2023, the Senate invoked cloture on her nomination by a 51–50 vote, with Vice President Kamala Harris voting in the affirmative. Later that day, her nomination was confirmed by a 50–49 vote. Senator Joe Manchin joined all the Senate Republicans in opposing her nomination. Merle was President Biden's 100th district court judge to be confirmed. She received her judicial commission on August 11, 2023.
== See also ==
List of African-American federal judges
List of African-American jurists
Joe Biden judicial appointment controversies
== References ==
== External links ==
Natasha C. Merle at the Biographical Directory of Federal Judges, a publication of the Federal Judicial Center. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Layton | Jack Layton | John Gilbert Layton (July 18, 1950 – August 22, 2011) was a Canadian politician and academic who served as the leader of the New Democratic Party (NDP) from 2003 to 2011 and leader of the Official Opposition in 2011. He previously sat on Toronto City Council, occasionally holding the title of acting mayor or deputy mayor of Toronto during his tenure as city councillor. Layton was the member of Parliament (MP) for Toronto—Danforth from 2004 until his death.
The son of a Progressive Conservative cabinet minister, Layton was raised in Hudson, Quebec. He rose to prominence in Toronto municipal politics, where he was one of the most prominent left-wing voices on the city and Metropolitan Toronto councils, championing many progressive causes. In 1991, he ran for mayor, losing to June Rowlands. Returning to council, he rose to become head of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities. In 2003, he was elected leader of the NDP on the first ballot of the leadership election.
Under his leadership, support for the NDP increased in each election. The party's popular vote almost doubled in the 2004 election, which gave the NDP the balance of power in Paul Martin's minority government. In May 2005, the NDP supported the Liberal budget in exchange for major amendments, in what was promoted as Canada's "first NDP budget". In November of that year, Layton voted with other opposition parties to defeat the Liberal government over the findings of the Gomery Commission. The NDP saw further gains in the 2006 and 2008 elections, in which the party elected 29 and 37 MPs, respectively. His wife, Olivia Chow, was also an MP and has served as the 66th mayor of Toronto since 2023.
In the 2011 election, Layton led the NDP to the most successful result in the party's history, winning 103 seats—making the party the Official Opposition for the first time. Federal support for Layton and the NDP in the election was unprecedented, especially in the province of Quebec, where the party won 59 out of 75 seats.
Layton died on August 22, 2011, after being diagnosed with cancer. Details of the type and spread of the cancer, and the exact cause of death, were not released to the public. Shortly before he died, Layton had nominated Nycole Turmel as interim leader of the NDP and, consequently, of the Official Opposition. Tom Mulcair won the leadership election to succeed him.
== Early life and career ==
John Gilbert Layton was born on July 18, 1950 in Montreal, Quebec, to parents Doris Elizabeth (née Steeves), and Progressive Conservative MP Robert Layton. He was the maternal great-grandnephew of William Steeves, a Father of Confederation, and his grandfather, Gilbert Layton, had served as a minister without portfolio to the government of Quebec's Union Nationale under Premier Maurice Duplessis. Layton was raised in Hudson, a largely Anglophone suburb of Montreal, where he served as the student council president of Hudson High School. He would later credit longtime friend and musician Billy Bryans for having played a role in his student council victory. In his graduating yearbook, Layton wrote as a testament, "I leave to become prime minister."
In 1969, he was appointed as the Quebec Youth Parliament prime minister, holding this position until 1970. That same year, Layton graduated from McGill University with a Bachelor of Arts (BA) with honours in political science and economics, and was a member of the Sigma Chi fraternity. During his time spent at McGill, Layton's view on politics had been greatly influenced by professor, philosopher and mentor Charles Taylor, so much so that he decided to switch his major from science to arts. Moreover, it was on Taylor's advice that he pursued his studies in Toronto, in order to study under the students of political philosopher C. B. Macpherson at York University. Layton followed pacifism and participated in anti-Vietnam War demonstrations.
In a foreword Layton wrote for Canadian Idealism and the Philosophy of Freedom, he explains, "The idealist current holds that human society has the potential to achieve liberty when people work together to form a society in which equality means more than negative liberty, the absolute and protected right to run races against each other to determine winners. Idealists imagine a positive liberty that enables us to build together toward common objectives that fulfil and even surpass our individual goals." Upon reading Canadian Idealism and the Philosophy of Freedom, Layton came to understand himself as part of the intellectual tradition of Canadian idealists.
In 1970, Layton joined the New Democratic Party, and would later cite his influence being from Tommy Douglas voicing opposition to the imposition of the War Measures Act during the 1970 October Crisis. He also moved to Toronto to attend York University, where he received his Master of Arts (MA) in political science in 1972; he would also later receive his Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in political science there in 1983 under the supervision of David Bell. In 1974, Layton began his academic career as an educator at Ryerson Polytechnical Institute (now Toronto Metropolitan University), where he taught political science. He also spent time working at York and, from 1978 to 1994, worked at the University of Toronto as an adjunct professor. He also became a prominent activist for a variety of causes. He wrote several books, including Homelessness: The Making and Unmaking of a Crisis and a book on general public policy, Speaking Out.
== Municipal politics ==
While at York and Ryerson, Layton developed close ties with a number of Toronto political figures including John Sewell and David Crombie. He was first elected to Toronto City Council during the 1982 municipal election, in a surprise upset against incumbent Gordon Chong as an underdog. Layton quickly became one of the council's most outspoken members and a leading figure on the left. He was one of the most vocal opponents of the massive SkyDome project, and an early advocate for rights for AIDS patients. In 1984, Layton was fined for trespassing after distributing leaflets at the Toronto Eaton Centre during a strike by Eaton's employees, but the charge was later dismissed on free speech grounds. He was also one of the few opponents of Toronto's bid to host the 1996 Summer Olympics. In 1985, Layton moved to the Metropolitan Toronto Council, in the first direct elections for members of that body. During the 1988 municipal elections, Layton swapped roles with his ally Dale Martin, with Martin moving to Metro and Layton returning to Toronto City Council. Layton won comfortably against former high school teacher Lois MacMillan-Walker. The election was a major victory for Layton as the reformist coalition of which he was the de facto head gained control of city council, the first time in city history a coalition of New Democrats and independents controlled council.
On July 9, 1988, he married Hong Kong-born Toronto District School Board trustee Olivia Chow in a ceremony on Algonquin Island. Their whitewater rafting honeymoon plans had to be abandoned, however, when days before the wedding Layton collided with a newspaper box while bicycling. Chow later joined Layton on the Toronto City Council. She has been a candidate for the federal New Democrats five times, first winning her seat the third time in a close race against Tony Ianno in the 2006 Canadian election, and re-elected in 2008 and 2011. Chow resigned from federal politics in 2014 to run for mayor of Toronto; she placed third. Chow would later be elected mayor in the 2023 mayoral by-election.
Layton and Chow were also the subject of some dispute when a June 14, 1990, Toronto Star article by Tom Kerr accused them of unfairly living in a housing cooperative subsidized by the federal government, despite their high income. Layton and Chow had both lived in the Hazelburn co-op since 1985, and lived together in an $800 per month three-bedroom apartment after their marriage in 1988. By 1990, their combined annual income was $120,000, and in March of that year they began voluntarily paying an additional $325 per month to offset their share of the co-op's Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation subsidy, the only members of the co-op to do so. In response to the article, the co-op's board argued that having mixed-income tenants was crucial to the success of co-ops, and that the laws deliberately set aside apartments for those willing to pay market rates, such as Layton and Chow. During the late 1980s and early 1990s they maintained approximately 30% of their units as low income units and provided the rest at what they considered market rent. In June 1990, the city solicitor cleared the couple of any wrongdoing, and later that month, Layton and Chow left the co-op and bought a house in Toronto's Chinatown together with Chow's mother, a move they said had been planned for some time. Former Toronto mayor John Sewell later wrote in NOW that rival Toronto city councillor Tom Jakobek had given the story to Tom Kerr.
Originally known for coming to council meetings in blue jeans with unkempt hair, Layton worked to change his image to run for mayor in the 1991 civic election. He also started wearing contact lenses, abandoning his glasses, and traded in his blue jeans for suits. In February 1991, Layton became the first official NDP candidate for the mayoralty, pitting him against centrist incumbent Art Eggleton. In a move that surprised many, Eggleton elected not to run again.
Layton was opposed by three right-of-centre candidates: Susan Fish, June Rowlands, and Betty Disero. Right-wing support soon coalesced around former city councillor Rowlands, preventing the internal divisions Layton needed to win office. Layton was also hurt by the growing unpopularity of the provincial NDP government of Bob Rae, and by his earlier opposition to Toronto's Olympic bid. Bid organizer Paul Henderson accused Layton and his allies of costing Toronto the event. Despite this, October polls showed Layton only four points behind Rowlands, with 36% support. However, on October 17, Fish, a former provincial Progressive Conservative cabinet minister who had only 19% support, pulled out of the race, and many of her supporters moved to Rowlands. Layton lost the November 12 election by a considerable margin. However, in the same election Olivia Chow easily won a seat on city council.
In November 1991, Layton co-founded the White Ribbon Campaign of men working to end male violence against women. Layton returned to academia and also founded the Green Catalyst Group Inc., an environmental consulting business. In 1993, he ran for the House of Commons in the riding of Rosedale for the NDP, but finished fourth in the generally Liberal riding. In 1994, he returned to Metropolitan Toronto Council, succeeding Roger Hollander in the Don River ward, and he resumed his high-profile role in local politics; following the "megacity" merger of Metropolitan Toronto into the current city of Toronto, he was again re-elected to Toronto City Council, serving alongside Pam McConnell in a two-member ward. He remained on Toronto City Council until pursuing the leadership of the federal New Democrats. He also came to national attention as the leader of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities. Federally, he ran again in the 1997 election, this time in the neighbouring riding of Toronto—Danforth, but lost to incumbent Dennis Mills by a wide margin. In June 1999, as chair of Toronto's environmental task force, the Toronto Atmospheric Fund, he was instrumental in the preliminary phases of the WindShare wind power cooperative in Toronto through the Toronto Renewable Energy Co-operative.
== Leader of the New Democratic Party ==
Layton was elected leader of the NDP at the party's leadership convention in Toronto, on January 25, 2003. Layton won on the first ballot with 53.5% of the vote, defeating Bill Blaikie, Lorne Nystrom, Joe Comartin and Pierre Ducasse. His campaign was focused on the need to reinvigorate the party, and was prominently endorsed by former NDP leader Ed Broadbent.
Layton did not seek election to the House of Commons by running in a by-election, as is the tradition among new party leaders without a seat. Instead, he waited until the 2004 federal election to contest the riding of Toronto—Danforth against Liberal Dennis Mills. With no seat in the House of Commons, he appointed the runner-up, longtime Winnipeg-area MP Bill Blaikie, as parliamentary leader. Although he had no parliamentary seat, Layton was noted for drawing considerable attention from the Canadian mass media. Much of his rhetoric involved attacking the policies of then Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin as conservative, and arguing the ideology of the Liberal Party of Canada had shifted in a more right wing direction. Another focus of Layton's leadership was to focus the party's efforts on Quebec, one of the party's weaker provinces. One of his opponents in the leadership race, Pierre Ducasse, was the first Québécois to run for leader of the NDP. After the race, Layton appointed Ducasse as his Quebec lieutenant and party spokesperson.
The result of Layton's efforts was a strong increase in the party's support. By the end of 2003, the party was polling higher than both the Canadian Alliance or the Progressive Conservatives and it was even suggested that the next election could see the NDP in place as Official Opposition.
=== 2004 election ===
During the 2004 Canadian federal election, controversy erupted over Layton's accusation that Liberal Prime Minister Paul Martin was responsible for the deaths of homeless people because he failed to provide funding for affordable housing. While rates of homelessness and homeless deaths increased during the eleven years of Liberal government, the link to Martin's decisions was indirect as affordable housing is a mainly provincial jurisdiction. Layton's charge was defended by some, including the Ottawa Citizen, but most attacked it as inaccurate and negative campaigning. Moreover, the controversy consumed the campaign, overshadowing policy announcements over the next week.
Further controversy followed as Layton suggested the removal of the Clarity Act, considered by some to be vital to keeping Quebec in Canada and by others as undemocratic, and promised to recognize any declaration of independence by Quebec after a referendum. This position was not part of the NDP's official party policy, leading some high-profile party members, such as NDP House Leader Bill Blaikie and former NDP leader Alexa McDonough, to publicly indicate that they did not share Layton's views. His position on the Clarity Act was reversed in the 2006 election to one of support.
Layton also continued his effort to improve his party's standing in Quebec. The NDP ran French-language ads in the province and Layton, who spoke colloquial Québécois French, appeared in them. As early as his leadership campaign, Layton advocated for electoral reform, calling for a referendum to replace the first-past-the-post system with proportional representation. He threatened to use the NDP's clout in the event of a minority government. However, it was dismissed out of hand by the Liberal and Bloc Québécois leaders, as they tend to be favoured by the first-past-the-post system, normally being allocated a greater proportion of seats than the proportion of votes cast for them. Historically, the NDP's popular vote does not translate into a proportional number of seats because of scattered support. This was most opposed by the Bloc Québécois, who usually had the lowest popular vote but nonetheless won many seats because their support was concentrated in Quebec. Despite these problems, Layton led the NDP to a 15% popular vote, its highest in 16 years. However, it only won 19 seats in the House of Commons, two less than the 21 won under Alexa McDonough in 1997, and far short of the 40 that Layton predicted on the eve of the election. However, some potential NDP voters may have voted Liberal to prevent a possible Conservative win. Olivia Chow and several other prominent Toronto NDP candidates lost tight races and Layton won his own seat against incumbent Liberal Dennis Mills by a much narrower margin than early polls indicated.
=== 38th Canadian Parliament ===
With the ruling Liberal Party being reduced to a minority government, revelations of the sponsorship scandal damaging its popularity to the point where both the Conservative Party and the Bloc Québécois were pressing their advantage for a snap election, the prime minister approached the NDP for its support. Layton demanded the cancellation of proposed corporate tax cuts and called for an increase in social spending. The ensuing compromise in the NDP's favour was protested by the other opposition parties who used it as a pretext to force a non-confidence vote. On May 19, two such votes were defeated and Layton's amendments went on to be passed on its final reading vote on June 23. As a result of this political coup and his apparent civil behaviour in a spitefully raucous parliament, many political analysts noted that Layton gained increased credibility as an effective leader of an important party, becoming the major second choice leader in many political polls – for example, polling second in Quebec after Gilles Duceppe, despite the low polls for his party as a whole in the province.
In mid-November 2005, when Liberal support dropped after the Gomery Commission delivered its first report, Layton offered the prime minister several conditions in return for the NDP's continued support, most notably on the issue of privatization of health care in Canada, where Layton wanted strict provisions for controlling public spending on private health care delivery, saying that without "significant action" on the issue, "Mr. Martin can't count on our support." Martin for his part offered no comment on a meeting held to discuss the issue, only saying that it was a "good meeting", while Layton publicly expressed his disappointment at the outcome. Layton announced he would introduce a motion requesting a February election. However, the Martin government refused to allow the election date to be decided by the opposition. A motion of non-confidence followed, moved by Stephen Harper and seconded by Layton, triggering the 2006 federal election. Layton was working with the Liberal government, but determined he would have a better chance of electoral success by voting against the government and having an election.
==== Coalition attempt with the Bloc Québécois and the Conservatives ====
On March 26, 2011, in response to Harper's allegations that a coalition is not a legitimate or principled way to form government, Duceppe stated that Harper had once tried to form a coalition government with the Bloc Québécois and NDP. In 2004 Stephen Harper privately met with Bloc Québécois leader Gilles Duceppe and Layton in a Montreal hotel. The meeting that took place between the three party leaders happened two months before the federal election. On September 9, 2004, the three signed a letter addressed to then-Governor General Adrienne Clarkson, stating,
We respectfully point out that the opposition parties, who together constitute a majority in the House, have been in close consultation. We believe that, should a request for dissolution arise, this should give you cause, as constitutional practice has determined, to consult the opposition leaders and consider all of your options before exercising your constitutional authority.
On the same day the letter was written, the three party leaders held a joint press conference at which they expressed their intent to co-operate on changing parliamentary rules, and to request that the governor general consult with them before deciding to call an election. At the news conference, Harper said "It is the Parliament that's supposed to run the country, not just the largest party and the single leader of that party. That's a criticism I've had and that we've had and that most Canadians have had for a long, long time now so this is an opportunity to start to change that." However, at the time, Harper and the two other opposition leaders denied trying to form a coalition government. Harper said, "This is not a coalition, but this is a co-operative effort."
One month later, on October 4, Mike Duffy, now a Conservative senator (appointed by Harper), said "It is possible that you could change prime minister without having an election", and that some Conservatives wanted Harper as prime minister. The next day Layton walked out on talks with Harper and Duceppe, accusing them of trying to replace Paul Martin with Harper as prime minister. Both Bloc and Conservative officials denied Layton's accusations.
=== 2006 election ===
With a vote scheduled for January 23, 2006, many New Democrats expected Layton to deliver substantially more seats than he did in 2004. They hoped the NDP would hold the balance of power in a new minority Parliament, so that they could carry additional leverage in negotiating with the governing party. Mike Klander, the executive vice-president of the federal Liberals' Ontario wing, resigned after making posts on his blog comparing Chow to a Chow Chow dog and calling Layton an "asshole".
Through the course of the campaign, Layton attempted to cast himself as the sole remaining champion of universal health care. Some opinion polls showed that Canadians found Layton the most appealing and charismatic of the leaders. Layton repeatedly insisted that "Canadians have a third choice", and urged Liberals to "lend us your vote". Some commentators and pundits mocked Layton for over-using these catchphrases instead of explaining the NDP platform.
The NDP strategy had changed in that they were focusing their attacks on the Liberals rather than in 2004, where they criticized both the Liberals and Conservatives in equal measure, prompting some criticism from Paul Martin. Andrew Coyne suggested that the NDP not only wanted to disassociate themselves from the scandal-ridden Liberals, but also because the Liberals were likely to receive credit for legislation achieved under the Liberal-NDP partnership. The NDP had also lost close races in the 2004 election due to the Liberals' strategic voting. Early in the campaign, NDP MP Judy Wasylycia-Leis had asked the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) to launch a criminal investigation into the leaking of the income trust announcement. The criminal probe seriously damaged the Liberal campaign and preventing them from making their key policy announcements, as well as bringing alleged Liberal corruption back into the spotlight.
Layton's campaign direction also caused a break between him and Canadian Auto Workers union head Buzz Hargrove over the issue of strategic voting. Hargrove preferred a Liberal minority government supported by the NDP and he had earlier criticized Layton for participating in the motion of non-confidence that brought down the Liberal government. Hargrove allied with the Liberals and publicly stated that he "did not like the campaign that Jack Layton was running", criticizing Layton for "spending too much time attacking the Liberals". During the final week of the campaign, knowing that last-minute strategic voting had cost the NDP seats in several close ridings during the 2004 election, Hargrove and Martin urged all progressive voters to unite behind the Liberal banner to stop a Conservative government.
Layton intensified his attacks on the Liberal scandals, pledging to use his minority clout to keep the Conservatives in check. Shortly after the election, the Ontario provincial branch of the NDP revoked Hargrove's party membership because he had violated the party's constitution by campaigning for other parties during an election campaign, though Layton disagreed with this. Hargrove retaliated by severing ties with the NDP at the annual CAW convention. The election increased the NDP's total seats to 29 seats, up from 18 before dissolution. Among the new NDP candidates elected was Olivia Chow, making the two only the second husband-and-wife team in Canadian Parliament history (Gurmant Grewal and Nina Grewal were the first husband-and-wife team in Canadian Parliament after the 2004 federal election). In the end, the NDP succeeded in increasing their parliamentary representation to 29 MPs, though they had significantly fewer seats than the Bloc Québécois (51) or the Opposition Liberals (103).
=== 39th Canadian Parliament ===
At the NDP's 22nd Convention, held on September 10, 2006, in Quebec City, Layton received a 92% approval rating in a leadership vote, tying former Reform Party leader Preston Manning's record for this kind of voting. This record was later broken in 2016 by Elizabeth May of the Green Party of Canada. At the same convention, the NDP passed a motion calling for the return of Canadian Forces from Afghanistan. On September 24, 2006, he met with Afghan President Hamid Karzai to discuss the NDP position. After the meeting Layton stated that Canada's role should be focused on traditional peacekeeping and reconstruction rather than in a front line combat role currently taking place.
Layton and his caucus voted to support the new proposed rules for income trusts introduced by the Conservatives October 31, 2006. The short-term result of the tax policy announcement was a loss to Canadian investors of $20 billion, the largest ever loss attributed to a change in government policy.
Layton threatened to move a motion of non-confidence against the government over the "Clean Air Act" unless action was taken to improve the bill and its approach to environmental policy. Prime Minister Harper agreed to put an end to the Parliamentary logjam by sending the bill to a special legislative committee before second reading. He released his proposed changes to the "Clean Air Act" on November 19, 2006.
On June 3, 2008, Layton voted to implement a program which would "allow conscientious objectors ... to a war not sanctioned by the United Nations ... to ... remain in Canada ..." Layton led the NDP to be instrumental in taking action on the peace issue of Canada and Iraq War resisters.
On June 11, 2008, Prime Minister Stephen Harper made it known that he had received private counsel from Layton on the matter of Indian residential schools and the apology to former students of the schools. Before delivering the apology, Harper thanked Layton.
=== 2008 election ===
Layton started off the 2008 federal election campaign with a speech similar to that of US presidential nominee Barack Obama. Layton denied he was trying to draw comparisons with Obama, saying "I mean, I am a lot shorter than he is. He is a brilliant orator. I'm never going to claim to be that. But what I have noticed is that the key issues faced by the American middle class, the working people of the U.S. and their concerns about their families' futures, are awfully similar to the issues that I hear in Canada." Layton said that he has also written to Obama and Hillary Clinton saying that the North American Free Trade Agreement had hurt working people in both countries "and those stories have to be told."
Layton, along with Prime Minister Harper and Bloc Québécois leader Gilles Duceppe, initially opposed the inclusion of Green Party leader Elizabeth May in the leaders' televised debates. Layton initially said that he was following the rules of the broadcast consortium, while NDP spokesman Brad Lavigne confirmed that Layton had refused to attend if May was present, noting that May had endorsed Liberal leader Stéphane Dion for prime minister, and arguing that her inclusion would in effect give the Liberals two representatives at the debate. Rod Love, former chief of staff to Ralph Klein, suggested that the Greens could potentially cut into the NDP's support. Layton's stance drew criticism from the YWCA, Judy Rebick, and members of his own party. Layton dropped his opposition to May's inclusion on September 10, 2008. "This whole issue of debating about the debate has become a distraction to the real debate that needs to happen", Layton said. "I have only one condition for this debate and that is that the prime minister is there."
In October 2008, Layton posted an online video message speaking out in favour of net neutrality, torrent sites, video-sharing sites, and social-networking sites. In a separate interview he said that increasing corporate control "is very, very dangerous and we have put the whole issue of net neutrality right into the heart of our campaign platform", and that the Internet is "a public tool for exchanging ideas and I particularly want to say that if we don't fight to preserve it, we could lose it." In the end, the NDP gained 8 new seats, taking its tally to 37. This result still left the NDP as Canada's fourth party, behind the Bloc Québécois with 50. The NDP managed to retain Outremont, held by Tom Mulcair, its only seat in the province.
=== 40th Canadian Parliament ===
The 40th session of Parliament began on November 27, 2008, with a fiscal update by the Conservatives that outlined their agenda for the upcoming term. This included a temporary suspension of federal employees' right to strike and a removal of monetary subsidies for political parties. All three opposition parties including the NDP stated that they could not support this position. Layton along with Liberal leader Stéphane Dion and Bloc Québécois leader Gilles Duceppe began negotiations to form a coalition that would replace the Conservatives as the government. The three opposition parties planned to table a motion of non-confidence in the House of Commons, and counted on the likelihood that the Governor General Michaëlle Jean, would invite the coalition to govern instead of dissolving parliament and calling an election so soon after the last election.
On December 1, 2008, the three opposition leaders signed an accord that laid down the basis for an agreement on a coalition government. The proposed structure would be a coalition between the Liberals and the NDP, with the New Democrats getting six Cabinet positions. Both parties agreed to continue the coalition until June 30, 2011. The Bloc Québécois would not be formally part of the government but would provide support on confidence motions for 18 months.
Opposition to the proposed coalition developed in all provinces except Quebec. On December 4, 2008, the governor general granted Prime Minister Harper's request to prorogue Parliament until January 26, 2009, at which time Harper had planned to introduce the budget. Dion had since been ousted from the leadership of the Liberals and his successor, Michael Ignatieff, had distanced himself from the coalition.
Layton remained committed to ousting the Harper government, pledging that the NDP would vote against the Conservative budget regardless of what it contained. Layton urged Ignatieff's Liberal Party to topple the Conservatives before the shelf life of the coalition expired; constitutional experts said that four months after the last election, if the government fell, the governor general would likely grant the prime minister's request to dissolve Parliament instead of inviting the coalition.
On January 28, 2009, the Liberals agreed to support the Conservative budget with an amendment, ending the possibility of the coalition, so Layton said "Today we have learned that you can't trust Mr. Ignatieff to oppose Mr. Harper. If you oppose Mr. Harper and you want a new government, I urge you to support the NDP."
In March 2009, the NDP, under Layton's leadership, re-introduced a motion (first passed June 3, 2008) which, if implemented, would allow conscientious objectors to the Iraq War to remain in Canada. The motion again passed March 30, 2009, by 129–125, but it was non-binding. In a leadership review vote held at the NDP's August 2009 federal policy convention, 89.25% of delegates voted against holding a leadership convention to replace Layton. In October 2009, Layton paired up with the Stephen Lewis Foundation to raise money for HIV/AIDS affected families in Africa. As part of the foundation's A Dare to Remember campaign, Layton busked on a busy street corner.
Layton's son, Mike was elected to Toronto City Council in the 2010 city council election.
In early 2011, Layton was featured in an episode of CBC Television's Make the Politician Work.
The Conservative government was defeated in a no-confidence vote on March 25, 2011, with the motion gaining full support of all opposition parties including the New Democrats, after the government was found in contempt of Parliament. It was the first time in Commonwealth history that a government lost the confidence of the House of Commons on the grounds of contempt of Parliament. The no-confidence motion was carried with a vote of 156 in favour of the motion, and 145 against, thus resulting in the prime minister advising a dissolution of Parliament and a federal election.
=== 2011 election and Leader of the Opposition ===
The day after the successful passing of the motion, Layton started the NDP election campaign, first with a speech in Ottawa followed later in the day by an event in Edmonton, Alberta. Questions about Layton's health due to a recent hip surgery were often directed to him during the campaign, with Layton insisting that he was healthy enough to lead. On March 29, 2011, the New Democrats presented their first real campaign promise, a proposal to cap credit card rates to reduce credit card debt.
Unlike the previous election, Layton stated he was in favour of Green Party leader Elizabeth May speaking at the leaders debates, despite the fact that she was once again being discouraged by the Canadian media networks. The NDP also embarked upon the largest advertising campaign in its history, focusing on the Harper government's health care record. He also dedicated the federal election campaign to former Saskatchewan premier Allan Blakeney, who died about halfway through the campaign.
Despite entering the campaign with relatively low poll numbers, the NDP recovered and increased their support significantly after Layton's performance in the leaders debates. In the English-language debate, Layton criticized Michael Ignatieff's poor attendance record in the House of Commons, saying "You know, most Canadians, if they don't show up for work, they don't get a promotion!", to which Ignatieff was unable to respond effectively. The Globe and Mail described Layton's attack as a "knock-out punch" while the Toronto Star stated it was the "pivot in the debate [that] was a turning point in the federal campaign". Layton's New Democrats successfully capitalized on Ignatieff's attendance record in the Toronto area.
On February 4, 2011, Layton attended a rally against usage-based billing in Toronto with MPs Dan McTeague, Olivia Chow, Peggy Nash and others. His attendance at this rally was accompanied by several press releases by the NDP denouncing metered internet usage in Canada.
The NDP surge began in Quebec, with the NDP surprising many observers by surpassing the previously front-running Bloc in Quebec. In Canada overall, the NDP surged past the Liberals to take the second place behind the Conservatives; in Quebec, the NDP took first place. The NDP surge became the dominant narrative of the last week of the campaign, as other parties turned their attacks on the party and Layton.
On April 29, 2011, a retired police officer told the Sun News Network and the Toronto Sun newspaper that in 1996, Layton had been found in a massage parlour when police, looking for underage Asian sex workers, raided the establishment. The police informed Layton of the potentially questionable use of the business and recommended that he avoid it in the future. No charges were filed. The Sun later ran a follow-up piece, in which Toronto city councillor Giorgio Mammoliti criticized Layton. Layton has said there was no wrongdoing in the matter, saying that he simply "went for a massage at a community clinic" and did not return after the police advised him not to. He also referred to the release of the police report as a smear campaign against him. Bloc Québécois leader Gilles Duceppe also dismissed the claim. A columnist for the National Post suggested that it was a Liberal insider that leaked the story, although a Liberal Party spokesman denied that they had anything to do with it.
A subsequent Toronto Star column stated that most contributors to online discussions agreed there was a smear campaign against Layton. As for political damage from this story, that same day's update of the Nanos Leadership Index, which assesses public opinion on the Canadian federal leaders' trustworthiness, competence and vision for Canada, saw Layton rise from a score of 80 to a score of 97, surpassing Harper's 88 and Ignatieff's 39. The polling company speculated this improvement is due to strong sympathy by the public for a political candidate they judged as being unfairly maligned. The Toronto Police Service launched an investigation into how official police notes were leaked to Sun Media. Police notebooks are closely guarded and may contain unfounded and unproven allegations. On May 5, 2011, it was announced that no charges would be laid with regards to the leaked information.
Layton appeared on the Radio-Canada talk show Tout le monde en parle on April 3, an appearance that was credited for improving his party's standing among Francophone voters due to his informal Québécois French. The show is the most popular program in Quebec. He was also perceived to have performed well in the televised French-language party leaders' debate on April 13.
In the May 2, 2011, election, Layton led the NDP to 103 seats, more than double its previous high. This was also enough to make the NDP the Official Opposition for the first time. The NDP gains were partly due to a major surge in Quebec as the party won 59 of the province's 75 seats, dominating Montreal and sweeping Quebec City and the Outaouais, although the NDP also won more seats than any other opposition party in the rest of Canada. The NDP had gone into the election with only one seat in Quebec, that of Thomas Mulcair, and had won but a single seat in the province historically (Phil Edmonston in a 1990 by-election). Many of these gains came at the expense of the Bloc, which was reduced to a four-seat rump without official party status in Parliament.
== Family and personal life ==
Layton came from a political family: his maternal great-granduncle, William Steeves, was a Father of Confederation. His great-grandfather, Philip E. Layton, was a blind piano salesman and activist who, in 1908, founded the Montreal Association for the Blind; in the 1930s, he campaigned for disability pensions. Philip was the senior partner in the family business, Layton Bros. Pianos. Layton Pianos had been made in London, England, since 1837, and Philip had emigrated to Montreal at the age of 19. His business, which was opened on Saint Catherine Street in Montreal, continues to operate as Layton Audio. Philip's 1898 composition Dominion March was played at Layton's lying in state.
Layton's grandfather, Gilbert, served in Quebec's Union Nationale government led by Maurice Duplessis as a cabinet minister, later resigning due to the provincial government's lack of support for Canadian participation in World War II. Layton's father, Robert, was initially a member of the Liberal Party as an activist in the 1960s and 1970s, who later switched to the Progressive Conservatives and served as a federal Cabinet minister in the 1980s under Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, as well as a member of Parliament.
Layton was raised as a member of the United Church of Canada, and was a member of Bloor Street United Church in Toronto. However, he also sometimes attended services at the Metropolitan Community Church of Toronto, whose pastor, Brent Hawkes, was a longtime NDP activist and a personal friend of Layton's.
In 1969, at age 19, Layton married his high school sweetheart Sally Halford, with whom he had two children: Mike, who served as a Toronto city councillor from 2010 to 2022, and Sarah, who works for the Stephen Lewis Foundation. Layton and Halford's marriage ended in divorce in 1983 after 14 years.
Layton first met Olivia Chow in 1985 during an auction at Village by the Grange, in which Jack was the auctioneer and Olivia was the interpreter for the Cantonese language observers. They had been previously acquainted, however they realized that they were both candidates in the upcoming election and decided to have lunch together to talk about the campaign. Three weeks after the auction, they went on their first date. Olivia's mother did not approve of Layton at first, because of his race as well as him not being a lawyer or doctor. Layton was invited to dinner at the home of Olivia's mother, where they also played mahjong. After the dinner, Layton attempted to thank Olivia's mother in Cantonese, however his incorrect tone had him inadvertently saying, "Thank you for the good sex." Layton stated "My faux pas broke the ice completely. We've been good buddies ever since."
Layton was known for playing music and singing songs at party gatherings. Alberta NDP leader Brian Mason remembered during the three-day board meetings when Layton was running for president of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities: "He would gather people together in his hotel room and play the guitar and get everybody singing old folk songs from the 1960s. He just got people involved, just with his personality, not politics."
Layton was a keen Trekkie, having a custom Starfleet uniform made by a tailor. Layton was famously photographed wearing his uniform at a Star Trek convention in 1991.
At the 2005 Parliamentary Press Gallery Dinner (typically a satirical event), Layton sent up himself and his party, playing guitar and singing three songs: "Party for Sale or Rent" (to the tune of "King of the Road"), a re-worked version of "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out" with different humorous lyrics, and "If I Had Another $4.6 Billion".
== Illness and death ==
On February 5, 2010, Layton announced that he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer. He noted that his father Robert Layton had the same type of cancer 17 years before and recovered from it. His wife, Olivia Chow, had thyroid cancer a few years before. He vowed to beat the cancer, and said it would not interrupt his duties as member of Parliament or as leader of the NDP.
Following the 2011 federal election, Layton led the party into the first month of the new session of Parliament, as well as attending the NDP Federal Convention in Vancouver. After Parliament rose for the summer, Layton announced on July 25, 2011, that he would be taking a temporary leave from his post to fight an unspecified, newly diagnosed cancer. He was hoping to return as leader of the NDP upon the resumption of the House of Commons on September 19, 2011. Layton recommended that NDP caucus chair Nycole Turmel serve as interim leader during his leave of absence.
Layton died at 4:45 a.m. ET on August 22, 2011, at his home in Toronto. He was 61 years old.
Upon hearing the news, there was a nationwide outpouring of grief, and Governor General David Johnston, Prime Minister Stephen Harper, NDP deputy leader Libby Davies, and the US ambassador to Canada, David Jacobson issued statements praising Layton and mourning his loss. Layton's family released an open letter, written by Layton two days before his death. In it, he expressed his wishes regarding the NDP's leadership in the event of his death, and addressed various segments of the Canadian population.
Layton was accorded a state funeral, which took place between August 25 and 27, 2011, with the final memorial service at Roy Thomson Hall in Toronto. Layton was the second leader of the Official Opposition to die while in office; the first, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, had been a former prime minister, and had been given a state funeral under the protocol for prime ministers. Layton was the first Official Opposition leader to die for whom a state funeral would not otherwise have been afforded, but Prime Minister Harper made the offer to Layton's widow who accepted. Layton's body was cremated following the funeral. A portion of his ashes was scattered under a jack pine planted on Toronto Island in his honour, with a second portion scattered at the Layton family's plot at Cote St. Charles United Church in Hudson, Quebec. A third portion was scattered under a memorial sculpted by Chow, placed at the Toronto Necropolis Cemetery on the first anniversary of his death.
== In popular culture ==
Layton's life is portrayed in a 2013 television movie entitled Jack, with Rick Roberts portraying Layton and Sook-Yin Lee as Olivia Chow. The cast also includes Wendy Crewson and Erin Karpluk. It was released on March 10, 2013, and aired on CBC Television.
== Electoral history ==
== Legacy and honours ==
The Jack Layton Ferry Terminal in Toronto was renamed in Layton's honour in 2013, on the second anniversary of his death. A bronze statue of Layton riding on a tandem bicycle was installed at the site.
Jack Layton Way in Toronto was named in 2013 (formerly Don Jail Roadway and parking area in front of the old jail). The street was once part of the driveway to the Don Jail and now being transformed as part of the Bridgepoint Health redevelopment in the Toronto neighbourhood of Riverdale; the community is in Layton's former electoral district of Toronto—Danforth. South side of the roadway is Toronto Public Library Riverdale Branch and Hubbard Park (named after William Peyton Hubbard.)
Ryerson University (now Toronto Metropolitan University), where Layton was a professor for many years, honoured him by creating the Jack Layton Chair in the Department of Politics and Public Administration. The endowment sponsors several events including the annual Jack Layton Lecture series, the Jack Layton Book Club held in conjunction with Ryerson Archives and which holds discussions about various books that are part of the archive's Jack Layton Collection. As well, the chair sponsors the annual Jack Layton School for Leadership, an annual program aimed at building the leadership capacity of leaders and activists working towards social change.
The Broadbent Institute awards an annual Jack Layton Progress Prize to "recognize the person or organization that has created and fielded an exceptional and successful campaign for progressive change."
Parc Jack-Layton in Layton's hometown of Hudson, Quebec, was named in 2012. Previously known as Hudson Marina, the park is located by the shore of Lake of Two Mountains. Layton's widow, Olivia Chow, along with family members and MP Tom Mulcair, attended the renaming ceremony.
A plaque commemorating Layton was unveiled in 2013 in Toronto's Withrow Park in front on an oak tree that was planted in his memory.
The educational organization Learning for a Sustainable Future has established the LSF Jack Layton Award for Youth Action in Sustainability to honour schools that have "responded to community challenges with creativity, responsible citizenship and innovative action".
Toronto's Woodgreen Community Services renamed their seniors' housing building at 1070 Queen Street East, Jack Layton Seniors' Housing in honour of Layton.
The national headquarters of the federal NDP was named the "Jack Layton Building" after him.
On 7 January 2017 he was posthumously awarded Meritorious Service Cross (MSC) by the Canadian Government.
== Selected works ==
Layton, Jack (2000). Homelessness: The Making and Unmaking of a Crisis. Toronto: Penguin. ISBN 978-0-14-028888-9. OCLC 45045233.
— (2004). Speaking Out: Ideas that Work For Canadians. Toronto: Key Porter Books. ISBN 978-1-55263-577-3. OCLC 53963558.
— (2006). Speaking Out Louder: Ideas that Work For Canadians. Toronto: Key Porter Books. ISBN 978-1-55263-688-6. OCLC 62346602. (revised and expanded edition of Speaking Out: Ideas that Work For Canadians)
== Notes ==
== References ==
== External links ==
New Democratic Party – NDP official website
Jack Layton – Parliament of Canada biography |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Richardson_(figure_skater)#:~:text=David%20Richardson%20(born%2018%20August,where%20he%20finished%2023rd%20overall. | David Richardson (figure skater) | David Richardson (born 18 August 1987) is a British former competitive figure skater. He is the 2011 British national champion and 2013 Golden Bear of Zagreb champion. He qualified for the free skate at the 2012 World Junior Championships in Ljubljana, Slovenia, where he finished 23rd overall.
Richardson trained at the NIC Nottingham. He last competed in the 2013–14 season.
== Programs ==
== Results ==
JGP: Junior Grand Prix
== References ==
== External links ==
Media related to David Richardson at Wikimedia Commons
David Richardson at the International Skating Union |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlinda_Tolbert | Berlinda Tolbert | Berlinda Tolbert (born November 4, 1949) is an American film and television actress. Tolbert is best known for her role as Jenny Willis Jefferson, the daughter of Tom and Helen Willis on the CBS sitcom The Jeffersons, which originally aired from 1975 until 1985.
== Early life and education ==
Tolbert majored in theater at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts in Winston-Salem. She also studied drama in London.
== Career ==
In a 2013 interview, Tolbert stated, "I've only had one job in my entire life... professional actress." She got her first film part from Martin Scorsese in Mean Streets in 1973, when she was in acting school.
=== The Jeffersons ===
On The Jeffersons, Tolbert played Jenny, the daughter of interracial couple Tom and Helen Willis. Jenny had become engaged to Lionel Jefferson, the son of George and Louise, when they were still characters on Norman Lear's "All In The Family". They married and had a daughter. Tolbert played the role of Jenny for the run of the series, from 1975 to 1985.
=== Later career ===
In 1981, Tolbert competed for the CBS team on Battle of the Network Stars. In 1983, Tolbert starred in the Maya Angelou play On A Southern Journey. Following the cancellation of The Jeffersons in 1985, Tolbert appeared in films including Harlem Nights, Goodfellas, and Patriot Games, and television shows including ER, Six Feet Under, and CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. Tolbert appeared in the 2011 indie film Last Ride on the Midwest Pacific.
== Personal life ==
Tolbert married journalist Bob Reid in 1979.
== Filmography ==
=== Film ===
=== Television ===
== References ==
== External links ==
Berlinda Tolbert at IMDb
Berlinda Tolbert at the Internet Broadway Database |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly_Tarlton%27s_Sea_Life_Aquarium | Kelly Tarlton's Sea Life Aquarium | Kelly Tarlton's Sea Life Aquarium (formerly Kelly Tarlton's Underwater World) is a public aquarium opened in 1985 in Auckland, New Zealand. Located at 23 Tamaki Drive, it was the brainchild of New Zealand marine archaeologist and diver Kelly Tarlton (1937–1985).
Built in disused sewage storage tanks, the aquarium used a new form of acrylic shaping, which allowed curved tunnels rather than viewing areas with flat panels only, as in previous aquariums. The project was also one of the first to use moving walkways for people to travel slowly through the viewing areas.
== History ==
In 1983, Tarlton proposed building an aquarium in unused sewage tanks underground on the Auckland waterfront. Fish would be viewed through a long acrylic tunnel.
The aquarium opened in 1985 after 10 months of construction. Tarlton developed a new method of building an acrylic tunnel by taking large sheets of clear acrylic, cutting them to size and heating them in an oven until they took the shape of the mould. Some of the sheets weighed over one tonne. Because of the refraction caused by light travelling through water, and the acrylic sheets used in the creation of the tunnel, the fish appear to be one third smaller than they are.
A 110-metre (360 ft) tunnel was created in sewage storage tanks that had been unused since the 1960s. The tanks are located below the suburb of Ōrākei, on Tamaki Drive and overlooking the Waitematā Harbour.
Once the tunnels were in place and the tanks filled to test for leaks (none were found) a seascape of caves and reefs was created using concrete before the basins were filled in one section with a careful selection of more than 1,800 marine creatures. Another section was filled with sharks (including bronze whaler, sevengill shark, wobbegong, school shark) and stingrays.
In 1994 the facility was expanded to include a replica of the hut used by Captain Robert Falcon Scott on his tragic expedition to Antarctica, as well as a colony of Antarctic penguins in a climate controlled exhibit.
In December 2004 the aquarium opened Stingray Bay, which features a giant 350,000-litre (92,000 US gal) open topped tank that is 2.6 metres (8 ft 6.4 in) at its deepest point and constructed of crystal clear acrylic for optimum viewing.
In 2008, Village Roadshow purchased the facility, for NZD $13 million. Village Roadshow also owns Sydney Aquarium, Oceanworld Manly, Sea World Gold Coast, and other venues.
In December 2010, Kelly Tarlton's received five new sand tiger sharks from the US.
In 2011, Village Roadshow sold Kelly Tarlton's Underwater World and other Sydney-based attractions to the Merlin Entertainments group.
In March 2012 Merlin Entertainments announced a $5.5 million upgrade introducing new exhibits, a new layout and a more interactive experience, due to open in September 2012. As part of the expansion, the aquarium was rebranded Kelly Tarlton's Sea Life Aquarium, bringing it in line with Merlin Entertainments' global Sea Life Centres brand. The upgrade and rebranding was launched on 29 September 2012.
== Facilities ==
The aquarium's main features are the Antarctic Encounter and the Underwater World, but it also includes several other exhibits and several education rooms.
Antarctic Ice Adventure and Scott Base (formerly Antarctic Encounter) – This exhibit was opened in 1994, and is the first exhibit encountered by visitors. Visitors can view the aquarium's penguins through glass in their temperature controlled habitat. Visitors then pass through a recreation of the hut used by Captain Robert Falcon Scott during his South Pole expedition in 1912. The aquarium has a colony of king penguins and gentoo penguins. A snowcat ride used to go around the area but was changed in 2012 to a walk around exhibit.
NIWA Southern Oceans Discovery (formerly NIWA Interactive Room) – This room is located adjacent to Stingray Bay and aims to educate children about the marine world and Antarctica while entertaining them.
Turtle Bay (formerly Stingray Bay) – Is a 350,000-litre (92,000 US gal) open topped acrylic tank. This tank contains rescue turtles being rehabilitated by Kelly Tarltons. Formerly this area was home to stingrays. This area of the aquarium has a refreshment kiosk.
Pacific Shark Zone and Shipwreck Explorer (formerly Underwater World) – The original part of the aquarium. This 110-metre (360 ft) acrylic tunnel takes visitors through two tanks which can hold up to 2000 animals. The first tank (or predator tank) is filled mainly with shark species, and holds about 3,800,000 litres (1,004,000 US gal), while the second tank has mainly schooling fish such as blue mao mao.
Fish Gallery and Seahorse Kingdom (formerly Sea Creatures) – This area contains smaller aquariums usually filled with single species. Here you can find; two tropical marine tanks, red bellied piranha, an octopus, sea horses, moray eels, crayfish plus stonefish and pufferfish in the Poisonous and Venomous fish tank. Adjacent to this area is the gift shop which also contains the exit.
== References ==
== External links ==
Official website
Media related to Kelly Tarlton's Sea Life Aquarium at Wikimedia Commons |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materials_for_Industry_-_Derek_Birchall_Award#:~:text=The%20award%20was%20established%20in%202008 | Materials for Industry - Derek Birchall Award | The Materials for Industry – Derek Birchall Award is awarded biennially to an individual who has made an exceptional contribution to the application of materials chemistry in industry. The recipient of the award is chosen by an independent committee consisting of experts from both the Materials Chemistry Division (MCD) and industry. The award is given by the Royal Society of Chemistry and the chosen winner is rewarded with a monetary prize of £2000. The award was discontinued in 2020.
== Award History ==
The award was established in 2008, in honour of work carried out by British inventor and materials chemist Derek Birchall (born 1930).
== Awardees ==
Source: RSC
2009 (2009): Patrick McGrail, University of Sheffield
2013 (2013): Professor John W. Goodby, University of York
2015 (2015): Professor Tobin Marks, Northwestern University
2017 (2017): Professor Karl Coleman, Durham University
2019 (2019): Professor Andrew Mills, Queen's University, Belfast
== See also ==
List of chemistry awards
== References == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Alende | Oscar Alende | Oscar Eduardo Alende (6 July 1909 – 22 December 1996) was an Argentine politician who founded the Intransigent Party.
Alende was born in Maipú, Buenos Aires Province. He studied medicine at the University of La Plata, where he led the student union, and completed his medical studies at the University of Buenos Aires in 1933. He became head of gastro-intestinal surgery at Rawson Hospital, and a member of the Argentine Surgical Academy. He was co-founder of the Argentine Committee of Assistance to Republican Spain.
In 1948 Alende became a provincial legislator in Buenos Aires Province for the Radical Civic Union (UCR), heading the UCR block from 1950. In 1952 he became a deputy in the Argentine Chamber of Deputies, serving until its dissolution in 1955.
Alende had joined the breakaway Intransigent Radical Civic Union (UCRI). In 1958 he was elected Governor of Buenos Aires Province and served until 1962. Alende became the leader of the UCRI following the 1962 overthrow of President Arturo Frondizi (who broke with the party), and stood as UCRI candidate for president in the 1963 elections. In 1972 he founded the Intransigent Party, the military having banned the use of the name UCRI. He stood once again for president in 1973 on behalf of the Popular Revolutionary Alliance.
After the return of democracy in 1983, Alende became president of the Intransigent Party and stood again for president. He was re-elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1985, and served in that capacity until his death in 1996.
== External links ==
Biography Archived 2007-03-11 at the Wayback Machine by the Intransigent Party |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teachers_College,_Columbia_University#Notable_alumni | Teachers College, Columbia University | Teachers College, Columbia University (TC) is the graduate school of education affiliated with Columbia University, a private research university in New York City. Founded in 1887, Teachers College has been a part of Columbia University since 1898.
== History ==
=== Founding and early history ===
Teachers College was the first graduate school in the United States whose curriculum focused specifically on teacher education.
In 1880, the Kitchen Education Association (KEA), also known as the Kitchen Garden Association, was founded by philanthropist Grace Hoadley Dodge, the daughter of wealthy businessman William Dodge. The association's focus was to replace miniature kitchen utensils for other toys that were age-appropriate for kindergarten-aged girls. In 1884, the KEA was rebranded to the Industrial Education Association (IEA), in the spirit of widening its mission to boys and parents. Three years later, it moved to the former Union Theological Seminary building on University Place, as well as founded a coeducational private school called the Horace Mann School.
In 1887, William Vanderbilt Jr. offered a substantial financial sum to the IEA. With the support of Dodge, Vanderbilt appointed Nicholas Murray Butler, the future longest-serving president of Columbia University and Nobel Peace Prize recipient, as new president of the IEA. The IEA decided to provide schooling for the teachers of the poor children of New York City. Thus, in 1887–1888, it employed six instructors and enrolled 36 juniors in its inaugural class as well as 86 special students. To reflect the broadening mission of education beyond the original philanthropic intent set forth by Dodge, the IEA changed its name to the New York School for the Training of Teachers, and received its temporary charter from the New York State Board of Regents.
By October 1890, the school's trustees were looking for a new campus, as the University Place campus was considered too small. After discussion with Columbia University president Seth Low, the trustees settled on a site in Morningside Heights, near where Columbia's campus was being built. In 1892, the name of the New York School for the Training of Teachers was again changed to Teachers College. The next year, Teachers College and Columbia University were affiliated with each other, and the trustees acquired land for the new college campus in Morningside Heights. The original buildings for the campus comprising Main Hall and Milbank Memorial Hall were designed by William Appleton Potter. Additional buildings subsequently added were designed by Edgar A. Josselyn and Howells & Stokes (Horace Mann School), Parish & Schroeder (Thompson Hall and Dodge Hall), Bruce Price and J. M. Darragh (Whittier Hall), Allen & Collens (Russell Hall and Dodge Hall Extension), J. Gordon Carr (president's house), and Hugh Stubbins (Building 528). The first structure in the original complex, Main Hall, was completed in late 1894; Milbank Memorial Hall, was finished three years later.
The curriculum combined a humanitarian concern to help others with a scientific approach to human development. The college was affiliated with Columbia University in 1898 as the university's Graduate School of Education. A new building for Horace Mann was erected in 1899, followed by the Frederick Ferris Thompson Memorial Hall in 1902–1904. Additionally, a four-wing dormitory building, called Whittier Hall, was built in 1900–1901. Enrollment increased quickly: the graduating class of 1911 contained 686 students, as opposed to the 26 students in the first graduating class.
=== Expansion of scope ===
The founders early recognized that professional teachers need reliable knowledge about the conditions under which children learn most effectively. As a result, the college's program from the start included such fundamental subjects as educational psychology and educational sociology. The founders also insisted that education must be combined with clear ideas about ethics and the nature of a good society; consequently, programs were developed in the history of education and in comparative education.
As the number of school children increased during the twentieth century, the problems of managing the schools became ever more complex. The college took on the challenge and instituted programs of study in areas of administration, economics, and politics. Other programs developed in such emerging fields as clinical and counseling psychology, organizational psychology, developmental psychology, cognitive psychology, curriculum development, instructional technology, media studies, and school health care.
Teachers College, Columbia University, was also associated with philosopher and public intellectual John Dewey, who served as president of the American Psychological Association and the American Philosophical Association, and was a professor at Teachers College from 1904 until his retirement in 1930.
=== Presidents ===
== Academic programs ==
The school offers Master of Arts (M.A.), Master of Education (Ed.M.), Master of Science (M.S.), Doctor of Education (Ed.D.), and Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degrees in over sixty programs of study. Despite the college's name, less than one-third of students are preparing to become teachers. Graduates pursue careers, for example, in the social sciences, health and health promotion, educational policy, technology, international and comparative education, as well as educational leadership.
According to former Teachers College president Susan Fuhrman, the school provides solutions to the difficult problems of urban education, reaffirming its original mission in providing a new kind of education for those left most in need by society or circumstance. The college continues its collaborative research with urban and suburban school systems that strengthen teaching in such fundamental areas as reading, writing, science, mathematics, and the arts; prepares leaders to develop and administer psychological and health care programs in schools, businesses, hospitals and community agencies; and advances technology for the classroom, developing new teaching software and keeping teachers abreast of new developments.
Teachers College also houses a wide range of applied psychology degrees, including one of the nation's leading programs in organizational psychology. Every year captains from the United States Military Academy at West Point are selected for the Eisenhower Leader Development Program (ELDP) and complete the Organizational Psychology M.A. program to become tactical officers (TAC) at West Point.
The college also houses programs in anthropology. It was foundational in the development of the field of anthropology and education. By the 1930s, Teachers College had begun to offer courses in anthropology as part of the foundations of education. By 1948 Margaret Mead started what would be a long association with Teachers College where she taught until the early 1970s. In 1953 Solon Kimball joined the faculty. In 1954 nine professors (including Mead and Solon Kimball) came together to discuss the topic. In the 1960s, these people formed the Council on Anthropology and Education within the American Anthropological Association, and it is still considered as the leading organization in the field.
The student experience at Teachers College is governed by a student senate, headed by the Senate president, followed by the vice-president, parliamentarian, communications officer, and treasurer. Two senators, a master's candidate, and a PhD candidate are elected each year to represent each academic department at Teachers College to advocate on behalf of current students and alumni. The TC Senate meets bi-weekly to determine what issues need to be investigated.
=== Rankings ===
For 2024, U.S. News & World Report ranked Teachers College, Columbia University #1 among all graduate schools of education in the United States. In 2023, 2008, 2002, 1998, 1997, and 1996 Teachers College, Columbia University was also ranked #1 in the category of graduate schools of education in the United States by U.S. News.
== Relationship with Columbia University ==
Teachers College serves as Columbia University's graduate school of education and psychology, and while Teachers College holds its own corporate status, an independent administrative structure, board of trustees and endowment,
Teachers College graduates are awarded Columbia University degrees according to the statutes of Columbia University.
Although the college houses PhD programs, these degrees are conferred by Columbia University's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in a manner analogous to the PhD programs of the university's other professional schools.
Teachers College's graduating class participates in the Columbia University Commencement ceremony. TC graduates are Columbia University alumni, may attend Columbia Alumni Association events, retain their @columbia.edu email for life, and are eligible for nomination of the alumni medal and membership to the Columbia University Club of New York.
While Teachers College faculty appointments are approved by Teachers College's board of trustees at the discretion of the president of Columbia University, "Columbia University [has] no responsibility for salaries, tenure, or retirement allowances" of officers of Teachers College.
Teachers College shares academic and institutional resources with greater Columbia University including courses of instruction (Teachers College students may take courses at any other Columbia University graduate school and vice versa.), libraries, health service systems, research centers, classrooms, special event facilities and the Dodge Fitness Center.
During COVID-19, the Ivy League allowed Columbia fourth-year senior student-athletes, who lost playing time due to pandemic-related cancellations in their final year of eligibility, to continue playing their varsity sport for the 2021–22 season if they were accepted to and enrolled at Teachers College.
The Columbia University Senate includes faculty and student representatives from Teachers College who serve two-year terms; all senators are accorded full voting privileges regarding matters impacting the entire University. The president of Teachers College is a dean in the university's governance structure.
== Housing ==
The college has three residence halls for single students. They are 517 West 121st, Grant Hall, and Whittier Hall. The college has three residence halls for family housing. They are Bancroft Hall, Grant Hall, and Sarasota Hall. One bedroom apartments are available for childless students and students who have one child. Two and three-bedroom apartments are available for students who have more than one child. Lowell Hall and Seth Low Hall have faculty housing units.
== Publications ==
The Teachers College Record has been published by the college continuously since 1900. In 1997 a group of doctoral students from Teachers College established the journal Current Issues in Comparative Education (CICE), a leading open-access online academic journal.
Teachers College Press, founded in 1904, is the national and international book publishing arm of Teachers College and is dedicated to deepening the understanding and improving the practice of education. Teachers College also publishes The Hechinger Report, a non-profit, non-partisan education news outlet focused on inequality and innovation in education that launched in May 2010.
The Journal of Mathematics Education at Teachers College (JMETC with ISSN 2156-1397, 2156-1400) is affiliated with the Teachers College Program in Mathematics Education. It is a successor to an earlier publication by the Program in Mathematics and Education at Teachers College.
== Notable faculty ==
=== Current faculty ===
John Allegrante, Health and Behavior Studies
Charles Basch, Health Education
George Bonanno, Clinical Psychology
Lucy Calkins, Children's Literature
Peter T. Coleman, Social-Organizational Psychology and Conflict Resolution
Christopher Emdin, Science Education
Edmund W. Gordon, Psychology and Education
Neil R. Grabois, Mathematics Education
Henry Landau, Mathematics Education
Arthur M. Langer, Professor of Professional Practice, Department of Organization and Leadership
Suniya Luthar, Psychology and Education
Elizabeth Midlarsky, Psychology and Education
Lisa Miller, Clinical Psychology
Kimberly G. Noble, Neuroscience and Education
Henry O. Pollak, Mathematics Education
Michael Rebell, Law and Educational Practice
Robert S. Siegler, Psychology and Education
Derald Wing Sue, Counseling Psychology
Barbara Tversky, Psychology and Education
Erica Walker, Mathematics and Education
Barbara C. Wallace, Clinical Psychology
=== Past faculty ===
Eva Allen Alberti (1856–1938), dramatics teacher
Richard Thomas Alexander, founder of New College for the Education of Teachers
Allen E. Bergin, clinical psychologist
John Cage, composer, musician, poet, mycologist
Lambros Comitas, Applied Anthropology
Frank W. Cyr, father of the Yellow School Bus
Morton Deutsch, social psychologist and founding father of the field of conflict resolution
John Dewey, philosopher
Arthur Wesley Dow, arts education
David F. Duncan, health education
Elizabeth E. Farrell, first president of the Council for Exceptional Children
Hamden L. Forkner, founder of Future Business Leaders of America
Elbert K. Fretwell, second Chief Scout Executive
Maxine Greene, philosopher of education
Joan Dye Gussow, Nutrition Education
Linda Darling Hammond, founder of the National Center for Restructuring Education
Virginia Henderson, arguably the most famous nurse of the 20th century
Leta Stetter Hollingworth, psychology and education
Adele T. Katz, Music
William Heard Kilpatrick, philosopher of education
Solon Kimball, anthropologist
Julius B. Maller, educational psychology
Charles J. Martin, arts instructor
Margaret Mead, anthropologist
William Hughes Mearns, educator and poet; head of the College from 1920
Jack Mezirow, sociologist; former professor of adult and continuing education
Harold J. Noah, comparative education
Nel Noddings, philosopher of education
Mary Adelaide Nutting, nursing
Mary Swartz Rose, created nation's first program in nutrition
Harold Rugg, educational reformer
Julius Sachs, Education
Donna Shalala, former US Secretary of Health and Human Services
Douglas Sloan, professor of history of education; educational theorist; author
David Eugene Smith, professor of mathematics & mathematics education
Graeme Sullivan, art education
Edward Thorndike, psychologist
Robert L. Thorndike, psychologist
Ruth Westheimer, Adjunct Professor, International and Transcultural Studies Department.
Clarence Hudson White, founding member of the Photo-Secession movement
Mary Schenck Woolman, pioneer in vocational education, one of the first two women on staff
== Notable alumni ==
Following is a select list of notable alumni.
Muhammad Fadhel al-Jamali (M.A. 1930; Ph.D. 1934), Prime Minister of Iraq
Hafizullah Amin (M.A.), President of Afghanistan
Nahas Gideon Angula (M.A. 1978; Ed.M. 1979), Prime Minister of Namibia
Mary Antin (1902), immigration rights activist; author of The Promised Land
Carolyn Sherwin Bailey (1896), author of Miss Hickory, winner of the 1947 Newbery Medal
William Vincent Campbell Jr. (Ed.M. 1974), CEO for Claris; Intuit Inc. and GO Corporation
Betty Castor (1963), politician and president of the University of South Florida
Shirley Chisholm (M.A. 1952), first African American woman elected to Congress and former US presidential candidate
Katherine M. Cook (M.A. 1912), Chief, Division of Rural Education, Bureau of Education; Chief, Division of Special Problems, Office of Education, HEW
Claire Fagin (M.A.), first woman to serve as president of an Ivy League university
Art Garfunkel (M.A. 1967), singer, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee, poet, and actor
Gordon Gee (Ed.D. 1972), president of Ohio State University
Hazel Johnson-Brown (M.A. 1963), first female African-American general in the United States Army
Jiang Menglin (Ph.D.), president of Peking University; Minister of education for the Republic of China
William Schuman (B.S. 1935; M.A. 1937), former president of the Juilliard School of Music and the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts
Leon Sullivan (M.A. 1947), civil rights leader and social activist; 1991 Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient
Ruth Westheimer (Ed.D. 1970), sex therapist known as "Dr. Ruth" talk show host, author, and professor
== See also ==
History of education in New York City
Institute for Nonprofit News
Japan Campus of Foreign Universities
== References ==
== Further reading ==
Bu, Liping. "International activism and comparative education: Pioneering efforts of the International Institute of Teachers College, Columbia University." Comparative Education Review 41.4 (1997): 413–434. online
Daniel, Walter G. "Negro welfare and Mabel Carney at Teachers College, Columbia University." Journal of Negro Education (1942): 560–562. online
Dolkart, Andrew S. (1998). Morningside Heights: A History of its Architecture and Development. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-231-07850-4. OCLC 37843816.
Jacobson, Willard J. "A History of the Department of Science Education, Teachers College, Columbia University." (1978). online
McMurry, F. M., et al. "Theory and practice at Teachers College, Columbia University." Teachers College Record 5.6 (1904): 43–64, a primary source. online
Takayama, Keita. "Beyond comforting histories: The colonial/imperial entanglements of the international institute, Paul Monroe, and Isaac L. Kandel at Teachers College, Columbia University." Comparative Education Review 62.4 (2018): 459–481. online
TOEPFER, KENNETH HAROLD. "JAMES EARL RUSSELL AND THE RISE OF TEACHERS COLLEGE: 1897-1915" (PhD dissertation, Columbia University; ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 1966. 6700843).
== External links ==
Official website |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_Award | Turing Award | The ACM A. M. Turing Award is an annual prize given by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) for contributions of lasting and major technical importance to computer science. It is generally recognized as the highest distinction in the field of computer science and is often referred to as the "Nobel Prize of Computing". As of 2025, 79 people have been awarded the prize, with the most recent recipients being Andrew Barto and Richard S. Sutton, who won in 2024.
The award is named after Alan Turing, also referred as "Father of Computer Science", who was a British mathematician and reader in mathematics at the University of Manchester. Turing is often credited as being the founder of theoretical computer science and artificial intelligence, and a key contributor to the Allied cryptanalysis of the Enigma cipher during World War II. From 2007 to 2013, the award was accompanied by a prize of US$250,000, with financial support provided by Intel and Google. Since 2014, the award has been accompanied by a prize of US$1 million, with financial support provided by Google.
The first recipient, in 1966, was Alan Perlis. The youngest recipient was Donald Knuth, who won in 1974 at the age of 36, while the oldest recipient was Alfred Aho, who won in 2020 at the age of 79. Only three women have been awarded the prize: Frances Allen (in 2006), Barbara Liskov (in 2008), and Shafi Goldwasser (in 2012).
== Recipients ==
== See also ==
== References ==
== Further reading ==
Akmut, Camille (June 12, 2018). "Social conditions of outstanding contributions to computer science : a prosopography of Turing Award laureates (1966-2016)". hal.science. Retrieved December 12, 2024.
== External links ==
ACM Chronological listing of Turing Laureates
ACM A.M. Turing Award Centenary Celebration
ACM A.M. Turing Award Laureate Interviews
Celebration of 50 Years of the ACM A.M. Turing Award |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Hsu | Kenneth Hsu | Kenneth Jinghwa Hsu (simplified Chinese: 许靖华; traditional Chinese: 許靖華; pinyin: Xǔ Jìnghuá) Ph.D., M.A., born 28 June 1929, is a Chinese scientist, geologist, paleoclimatologist, oceanographer, government advisor, author, inventor and entrepreneur who was born in Nanjing, China.
== Biography ==
Education
Hsu (Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c.) studied at the Chinese National Central University (later renamed Nanjing University in mainland China and reinstated in Taiwan) (B.Sc. 1948), and came to the United States in 1948 where he studied at Ohio State University (M.A., 1950), and at University of California, Los Angeles, where he received his Ph.D. in 1953.
Professional life
Hsu initially worked as a petroleum geologist for the Shell Development Corporation, now called Shell Oil Company, in Houston, Texas, US, between 1954 and 1963. He was associate professor at two universities in the USA between 1963 and 1967, before becoming professor of geology at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zürich) between 1967 and 1994, where he promoted experimental geology and built up 5 leading international laboratories in the fields of rock mechanics (geophysics), mass-spectrometry (isotope geochemistry), Quaternary research (paleoclimatology), sedimentology and tectonics. It was after his retirement from University teaching that Hsu started to work in environmental engineering.
Professorships & lectureships
While Hsu was professor at the Institute of Geology, ETH Zurich between 1967 and 1994, he was invited as lecturer, guest or honorary professor in geology, climatology or oceanography to numerous renowned universities of the world, including Beijing, California (San Diego), Cambridge, Columbia, Florence, Harvard, London, Milan, M.I.T., Moscow, Nanjing, Naples, Ohio, Oxford, Paris, Princeton, Taipei, Tokyo, Toronto, Washington, Woods Hole, Yale etc.
After retirement in 1994, he was guest professor at the National Taiwan University (1994–95), senior fellow at the Berlin Institute of Advanced Studies (1995–96), Keck Professor at Colorado School of Mines, guest professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, university professor at Nanjing University, and university professor at Beijing University of Geosciences.
== Scientific contributions ==
Academic work
Hsu participated in the Earth Science Revolution of the 1960s, consolidating Plate Tectonics Theory, and has throughout his life been active in so-called 'Process Oriented Geology', which is in conversation with the evolutionary biology (symbiogenesis) of Lynn Margulis, the Gaia hypothesis of James Lovelock, and others. Instead of being preoccupied with rocks and mirrors, Hsu treated geological problems as arising from physical, chemical and biological processes, and hence has been a stout promoter of an educational reform in geology, emphasizing the fundamental principles of earth physics, chemistry and biology.
In geology, his work included sedimentation in isostatically driven tectonic basins, the active margins of continental plates, physical chemistry of evaporite and pelagic diagenesis, documentation of granulite formation, catastrophic consequences of meteorite impacts, extinction of life forms and the limnology of Lake Zurich.
Scientific expeditions and explorations
Hsu participated and led 5 deep-sea drilling cruises to the South Atlantic, Mediterranean, and Black Sea. He also led several international expeditions to Tibet, Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, South China, California Coast Ranges and the Swiss Alps, travelling to 80 countries for Earth Science.
Awards
For his contributions to geology, Hsu received several medals and awards.
Wollaston Medal from The Geological Society of London (considered the highest honor in Geology, or an equivalent to the Nobel Prize in Geology) in 1984 (formerly presented to Charles Lyell, Thomas Henry Huxley, Charles Darwin and James Lovelock).
Penrose Medal from The Geological Society of America in 2001 (the highest honor by the Society).
President's Special Award, American Association of Petroleum Geologists (resulting in Hsu being listed in Who's Who in Trade & Industry)
Twenhofel Medal from the Society of Sedimentary Geology in 1984 (the highest award of the Society of Sedimentary Geology).
Bownocker Medal (Orton Award), from the Geological Sciences Department of Ohio State University, 1984.[1]
Honorary positions and achievements
Hsu was elected a Member of the U. S. National Academy of Science in 1986, but in given circumstances, became a Foreign Associate. He was also an Associate of the Third-World Academy of Sciences, a Member of Academia Sinica (1988), the Mediterranean Academy of Sciences and several other academies of science. He was a founder of the European Geophysical Society and a founder of the science of paleoceanography. He convened the First International Conference of Paleoceanography and founded the journal Paleoceanography. Hsu also assisted in the founding of the Asian Association of Marine Geology. He also served for 11 years as President of the International Association of Sedimentologists. Hsu was the convener of the Third Workshop on Marine Geology of IUGS; the First Earth Science Colloquium of the European Science Foundation; several Dahlem Conferences of the Dahlem Foundation; and numerous symposia and workshops for IGP, ILP, IGCP, SCOR and JOIDE.
Leadership positions in scientific organizations
Hsu served in numerous scientific organizations:
President and Past President of the International Association of Sedimentologists (IAS);
General Secretary of the Alpine Mediterranean Working Group of the International Geodynamics Project (IGP);
Chairman of the Paleoceaonography Working Group of the International Lithosphere Project (ILP);
Leader of several projects of UNESCO's International Geological Correlation Project (IGCP);
Chairman of the International Commission of Marine Geology (1980–1989);
Chairman of the Committee on Sedimentology of the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS);
ex officio member of the executive committee of the Scientific Commission on Oceanographic Research (SCOR) (1980–1989);
member of the Swiss Commission on UNESCO (1987–1990);
International Union of the Geological Sciences (IUGS);
Representative of the Geological Sciences at the IGBP/Global Change Program of the International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU) (1989–1992);
ICSU member of the United Nations Expert Panel on Seabed Disposal of Radioactive Waste (1987–1988);
Chairman of the Mediterranean Panel, South Atlantic Panel and Tectonics Panel of the Joint Oceanographic Institutions Deep Earth Study Program (JOIDES),
Member of the Paleoceanography Panel and the JOIDES Planning Committee of the Ocean-Drilling Program.
Editorships
Hsu was Editor and or Associate Editor of numerous journals including:
Sedimentology: Journal of the International Association of Sedimentologists (Founding Editor & Editor-in-Chief 1972–1979). UK: Blackwell Science.
Journal of Sedimentary Petrography.
Bulletin of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists.
Geophysical Research Letters.
Bulletin of the Japanese Geological Society.
Tethys.
Geologie Mediterrane.
Scientific affiliations
Advisor, Chinese Natural Science Foundation.
Alumni of the Century, Nanjing University (Gold Medal, University Centenary Celebration).
Associate fellow, Third World Academy of Sciences.
Chair, International Marine Geology Commission, 1980–89.
Chairman, department of earth sciences, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology.
Distinguished alumnus, Ohio State University.
Emeritus professor, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology.
First distinguished alumni lecturer of geology, UCLA.
Guest professor, National Taiwan University (1994–95).
Guest professor, Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Honorary professor, University College London, April 2008.
International Writer of the Year, International Book Club (Cambridge), 2003.
Keck Professor, Colorado School of Mines.
Member, National Academy of Sciences, Academy Sinica (Taiwan).
Member, Mediterranean Academy of Sciences.
Member and foreign associate, U.S. National Academy of Sciences, 1986.
President, International Association of Sedimentologists, 1978–82.
Senior fellow, Institute of Advanced Studies, Berlin, 1995–96.
University professor, Nanjing University.
University professor, Beijing University of Geosciences.
Advisory work
Hsu was a convener of numerous scientific conferences, founder of several scientific societies, and advisor to the governments of developing countries:
UNDP Advisor to Maltese Government (1973);
UNDP Advisor to Chinese Government (1989);
Advisor to Brazil Government on petroleum geology;
Advisor to Argentina and Taiwan governments on lake research and global change;
Advisor to the Chinese Ministry of Geology (1979–87);
Consultant to the Chinese Ministry of Chemical Industry (1992–1996);
Consultant to the Chinese Ministry of Petroleum Geology (1992–94);
Consultant to the Taiwan Museum of Natural History (1995);
Technical Advisor to the Taiwan National Science Foundation (1996–2000);
External Examiner to the University of Malaysia.
Consultant to the Chinese Ministry of Petroleum;
Consultant to the Chinese Ministry of Geology and Mining;
Consultant to the Chinese Institute of Geotechnical Investigation (Ministry of Construction).
Science politics
His co-organized a consortium of 15 European member states to join the International Ocean Drilling Program.
Contributions to the geology of China
Hsu successfully lobbied for the admission of the Chinese Geological Union to replace the Chinese Geological Society in Taipei as a member of the International Union of Geological Sciences and was a member of the first IUGS delegation to China. He served the Chinese Ministry of Geology and Mining in giving training programs for Sedimentology (1979), Field Geology of Tibet (1980) and Plate Tectonics (1992). From 1983 to 1995, he assisted the Institute of Geology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences with the completion of a project on plate tectonics and to publish a new Geological Atlas of China.
Appreciation
Two Festschrift symposia books, Controversies in Geology, and Paradoxes in Geology, were published by Hsu's colleagues on his 60th and 70th birthdays. In September 2009, his contributions to China and to science were acknowledged at a conference in Beijing, attended by dignitaries from government, industry and academia.
== Entrepreneurial activities ==
Enterprise
After his retirement, Hsu made several inventions in mining, oil, water and energy technology, and founded various companies including Tarim Resource Recycling Limited (UK, 2003); Kenneth Hsu IHC Technology & Development Limited (China, 2005) and Lazarus Energy International Limited (UK, 2007).
Inventions
Hsu was awarded 16 patents in mining, petroleum, water, carbon, energy and environment management, including the Hydro-Transistor and Integrated Hydrologic Circuit (IHC).
Hsu's technologies applied in China [2] included:
3-D Enhanced Oil Recovery of the world's residual oil reserves;
Lithium Production from brine lakes and sea water to empower hybrid vehicles;
Water Availability by waste water recycling and rainwater harvesting to eliminate shortages;
Nitrite-Free Drinking Water scientifically demonstrated to reduce the cancer mortality rate by half;
Nitrite-Free Sewage-Treatment Works to denitritize the drinking water supply;
Lake Rehabilitation by eliminating algal pollution through sequestering of carbon dioxide;
Biofuel Generation by utilizing carbon dioxide emissions to mitigate the burning of fossil fuels;
Capillary Irrigation to conserve water whilst reclaiming land without utilizing surface irrigation;
Land Reclamation and Desert Greening by sequestering atmospheric carbon dioxide;
Hydro-Electricity without building hydro-electric dams.
Endorsements
After extensive research and development, Hsu's water technologies were unanamiously endorsed by an expert panel called by the Chinese State Counsellors' Office (Civilian Chief of Staff) of the Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao; and by Nobel Laureate Samuel Ting, and University of California Chancellor, Henry Yang, who both served on the Chinese Premiere's KHC Advisory Board.[3]
In 2000, Hsu combined the newly developed enhanced oil recovery techniques of hydro-fracturing and horizontal drilling, with water flooding, to invent a totally new process of residual oil recovery (ROR), called 3-dimensional fluid injection, to exploit residual oil. The method utilized water rather than carbon dioxide, although carbon dioxide can also be used in the process. Hsu suggested the technique could increase the recoverable petroleum reserve of the world by a factor of 50% or more. [4]
With the full support of the Chinese Prime Minister, Wen Jiabao, in February 2006, an Expert Panel called by former Petroleum Minister Dr Wang Tao, unanimously agreed Hsu's ROR invention was innovative, and should be tested and applied in China. In April 2006, PetroChina reported a successful test at the Changqing Oil Field (Northwest China), first discovered in 1907. Prior to the test, its annual production was about 10,000 tons. In 2006, this rose to 10 million tons, and in 2007, to 20 million tons.
Ventures
Hsu is active with institutions, organizations and corporations to apply the new technologies in China and internationally.
Consultancy
Hsu is president of the IHC Technology & Development Corporation (China), senior advisor and chief engineer to the Kenneth Hsu Institute for IHC Development (National Institute Of Earth Sciences, Beijing) and director of the Center for Environmental & Health Engineering (Henan University, Kaifeng). His work on the link between nitrite in drinking water and cancer was documented in The Ecologist journal.
== Career timeline ==
1944-48 Bachelor of Science in geology, Nanjing University, China.
1948-50 M.A. degree in geology, Ohio State University, USA.
1950-53 Doctorate in geology and geophysics, University of California at Los Angeles, USA.
1954-63 Research geologist and research associate, Shell Development Corporation, Houston, Texas, USA.
1963-64 Associate professor, State University of New York at Binhamton, USA.
1964-67 Associate professor, University of California at Riverside, USA.
1967-94 Professor, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETHZ), Zurich, Switzerland.
1994 Chief executive, Tarim Associates for Mineral & Oil Exploration AG, Switzerland.
1999 Chief executive, Fengshui Water Technology Limited, Lichtenstein.
2003 Chief executive and chairman of the board, Tarim Resource Recycling Limited, UK.
2005 President, Kenneth Hsu Corporation of Integrated Hydrologic Circuit Technology & Development, Beijing, China.
2007 Chief executive, Lazarus Oil International, UK.
2007 Director, Kenneth Hsu Consulting, UK.
2007 Chief engineer and senior advisor, Institute for IHC Development, National Institute Of Earth Sciences, Beijing, China.
2007 Director, Center for Environmental & Health Engineering, Henan University, Kaifeng, China.
== Notable writings ==
Hsu authored or edited over 20 books, many in multiple languages, and was elected an International Writer of the Year by the International Book Club (Cambridge, UK) in 2003.
The Mediterranean Was A Desert, 1982
The book concerned Hsu's work deciphering the Messinian Salinity Crisis and provided a first-hand account of one of the most significant deep-sea drilling cruises ever launched. The voyage, Leg 13 of the D/V Glomar Challenger, was undertaken in 1970 and led to the hypothesis that 5.5 million years ago, the Mediterranean was a desert. It documented the adventures of the oceanographic expedition and offered portraits of 'big' science and 'big' scientists at work, with human touches, as a memoir for historians of science. The book was selected by Philip Morrison of Scientific American as one of the 100 most significant and influential books of science in the 20th century. A film was also made by PBS, based on the book.
Challenger At Sea, 1983
The book was an overview of the then current state of marine geology and a source book for the history of that science, and was used as a geology textbook for non-majors.
The Great Dying, 1986
The book described the circumstances leading to the discovery that the dinosaur extinction was triggered by a cometary impact. An inquiry into the nature of survival and extinction, it was published in 6 languages, selling over 170,000 copies worldwide, selling 28,000 copies in the United States between 1986 and 1988; 100,000 copies in mainland China in 1989 and 40,000 copies in Taiwan. A popular newspaper in Taipei United Post featured The Great Dying in its weekly list of best-selling books list for more than a year, and it was chosen as a top non-fiction book of the year in August 1992. Originally intended to teach the public, the book was used as a textbook in the United States for its scientific method. A film was also made based on the book by ZDF.
In the book, Hsu marshalled "some of the most gripping and controversial geological discoveries of our time to blast Darwin’s claim and to shake the foundations of his evolutionary theory," showing evidence indicating a meteor collided with the Earth, 66 million years ago, leaving much of it uninhabitable, and warning that a similar event may threaten humanity in the future.
Hsu criticized Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection. According to Hsu "If most extinctions are caused by catastrophes... then chance, not superiority, presides over who shall live and who shall die. Indeed, the whole course of evolution may be governed by chance, and not reflect at all the slow march from inferior to superior forms so beloved by Victorians, and so deeply embedded in Western thought." The book endorses catastrophism and non-Darwinian evolution.
Klima Macht Geschichte, 2000
Klima Macht Geschichte presented a theory of climate and history, looking at future climate changes based on historical, archaeological and helio-biological evidence. It made the prediction of global cooling of the planet in the last decades of the 21st century, and the coming of a little ice age before 2500. The claim forecast was corroborated by scientists Khabibullo Abdusamatov, Yuk Yung, John Cassey, Nigel Calder, Henrik Svensmark, Alexander Chizhevsky and John D. Hamaker [5]. Orell Fussli Verlag [6] Archived 2005-10-01 at the Wayback Machine published the book after an article about Hsu appeared in Bilanz Magazine [7] in 1998. Earlier, in 1992, Hsu wrote in Geographical Magazine, "Perhaps our species was created by Gaia to prevent a catastrophic chill" in reference to his published paper 'Is Gaia Endothermic?, on which the book is also based.
Amadeus & Magdalena, 2002
Published in Chinese, English and German, with a Chinese translation titled "莫扎特的愛與死"., the book presented Hsu's musicological theory about the death of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
== Works ==
A complete list of books by Kenneth Hsu is available at the Kenneth J. Hsu Official Site.
=== Amadeus & Magdalena ===
2002, Amadeus & Magdalena: A Love Story. Distributed through Master Classics (UK). English.
2002, Amadeus & Magdalena: A Love Story. German.
2002, Amadeus & Magdalena: A Love Story. Taipei: Commonwealth Publishers, 218pp. Chinese.
=== Challenger At Sea ===
1982, Ein Schiff revolutioniert die Wissenschaft. Hamburg,: Hoffmann & Campe Verlag, 304 pp. German.
1985, Ein Schiff revolutioniert die Wissenschaft, Beijing: Geology Publishing House, 175 pp. German.
1994, Challenger at Sea: A Ship that Revolutionized Earth Science, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 416 pp. Hardback. English.
1994, Challenger at Sea: A Ship that Revolutionized Earth Science, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 418 pp. Paperback edition. English.
1994, Challenger at Sea: A Ship that Revolutionized Earth Science, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 418 pp. Revised edition. English.
1999, Challenger at Sea: A Ship that Revolutionized Earth Science, Tokyo: Tokai University Press, Tokyo, 483 pp. Japanese.
=== Climate And Peoples ===
2000, Climate And Peoples: A Theory Of Climate Changes & Their Impacts On Hominid Evolution, Language Dispersal & Demographic Migrations. English.
2000, Klima Macht Geschichte: Menschheitsgeschichte als Abbild der Klimaentwicklung, Zurich: Orell Füssli Verlag, 334 pp. ISBN 3-280-02406-4. German. (Climate Makes History: The History Of Mankind As A Reflection Of Climatic Evolution)
2002, Klima nacht Geschichte, Taiwan: Commonwealth Publishers. Chinese.
=== Gaia & The Cambrian Explosion ===
1996, Gaia & The Cambrian Explosion: A Short History for Everyone of Life on Earth. Taichung: Chinese National Museum Of Natural History, Taiwan, 51pp. Chinese.
1996, Gaia & The Cambrian Explosion: A Short History for Everyone of Life on Earth. German.
=== Geologic Atlas Of China ===
1998, Geologic Atlas of China, Amsterdam: Elsevier, 24 plates, 362 pp. English.
1998, Geologic Atlas of China. Chinese.
=== Geology Of Switzerland ===
1991, Geologie der Schweiz, Basel: Birkhouser, 219pp. Hardback. German.
1995, Geology of Switzerland: An Introduction to Tectonic Facies. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 250 pp. English.
=== Tectonic Facies Of China ===
1992, Tectonic Facies of China. China: Marine Geology Research Institute (Qingdao), 96 pp. Chinese.
1996, Tectonic Facies of China. Amsterdam: Elsevier Science. English.
1996, Tectonic Facies of China. German.
=== The Great Dying ===
1986, La Gran Extinción, Barcelona: Antoni Bosch Editorial, 268 pp. Spanish.
1986, The Great Dying: Cosmic Catastrophe, Dinosaurs & The Theory of Evolution, San Diego: Random House, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Hardback, 292pp. English.
1988, The Great Dying. Dutch.
1989, The Great Dying, China edition, Beijing: San-lien Publishers, 317 pp. Chinese.
1990, Die Letzten Jahre Der Dinosaurier, Germany: Birkhäuser, Basel, 270 pp. German.
1991, The Great Dying, Taiwan edition, Taipei: Commonwealth Publishers, 374 pp. Chinese.
1988, The Great Dying: Cosmic Catastrophe, Dinosaurs & The Theory of Evolution, USA: Random House, Ballantine, Pan. Paperback. English.
1993, La Grande Moria Dei Dinosauri, Milan: Adelphi Edizioni S.P.A., 374 pp. Italian.
1994, The Great Dying, Italian Book Club edition. Italian.
=== The Mediterranean Was A Desert ===
1982, The Mediterranean Was a Desert: A Voyage of The Glomar Challenger, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, Hardback. 197pp. English.
1982, The Mediterranean Was a Desert: A Voyage of The Glomar Challenger. German.
1983, The Mediterranean Was a Desert: A Voyage of The Glomar Challenger. Italian.
1986, The Mediterranean Was a Desert: A Voyage of Discovery, Beijing: San-lien Publishers, 215 pp. Chinese.
1987, The Mediterranean Was a Desert: A Voyage of Discovery, China edition, Beijing: Geological Publishing House, 197pp. Chinese.
1987, The Mediterranean Was a Desert: A Voyage of The Glomar Challenger, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, Paperback. English.
1993, The Mediterranean Was a Desert: A Voyage of Discovery, Taiwan, Taipei: Commonwealth Publishers, 260 pp. Chinese.
1996, The Mediterranean Was a Desert: A Voyage of Discovery, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 197 pp. English.
=== The Search ===
1997, The Search: The Younger Years of Kenneth J. Hsu (Aloneness & Search), Taipei: Commonwealth Publishers, 474pp. Chinese.
1997, The Search: The Younger Years of Kenneth J. Hsu (Aloneness & Search). German.
1997, The Search: The Younger Years of Kenneth J. Hsu (Aloneness & Search). Unpublished. English.
=== Physics of sedimentology: textbook and reference ===
== Selected articles ==
Hsu is the author or co-author of more than 400 scientific articles on Archaeology, Cancer, Chronon Physics, Climatology, Cosmology, Cytology, Epistemology, Evolution, Fractal Geometry, Gaia, Geology, Heliobiology, History, Hydro-Physics, Languages, Marine Biology, Mathematics, Marine Biology, Music, Oceanography, Palaeontology, Paleoclimatology, Philosophy, Politics, Religion and Symbiogenesis. A complete list of articles by Kenneth Hsu is available at the Kenneth J. Hsu Official Site [8] Archived 2009-04-06 at the Wayback Machine.
=== Climate articles ===
Climate for the 21st Century and Beyond from a Calibrated Solar-Output Model with Dr. Charles A. Perry (USGS), 2001, in West, G.J., and Buffaloe, L.D., eds., Proceedings of the Seventeenth Annual Pacific Climate Workshop, May 22–25, 2000, Two Harbors, Santa Catalina Island, California: Interagency Ecological Program for the San Francisco Estuary Technical Report 67, p. 120.[9]
Geophysical, Archaeological & Historical Evidence Supports A Solar Model For Climate Change with Dr. Charles A. Perry (United States Geological Survey), Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA), 2000, Volume 97, pages 12433–438, 2000. English. PNAS Short versionPNAS Long versionPub Med ASCII version
The Mortality Of The Planet in Is the World Ending?, Sean Freyne & Nicholas Lash (Editors), SCM Press (London), 1998. English. Available in English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, Dutch and German, from Concilium. [10]
Un Planeta En Peligro De Muerte in Is the World Ending?, Sean Freyne & Nicholas Lash (Editors), SCM Press (London), 1998. English. Spanish translation in Concilium.
"Sun, Climate, Famine & Great Ethnic Migrations", Science In China/Chinese Science Bulletin. 28 (4): 336–384, 1998. [11]
"Could Global Warming Be A Blessing For Mankind?", Terrestrial Atmospheric & Oceanic Sciences/TAUS, Chinese Academy of Science, Taipei, Taiwan, September 1996 [12]
Is Gaia Endothermic?, Geological Magazine, 129 (2), pp. 129–141, XIV, March 1992. English. [13]
Gaia Has A Strange Attractor: Interactions Of Geospheres & Biospheres During 4 Billion Years of Earth History, Unknown
Has Global Warming Been A Blessing To Mankind?, Unknown. Early version of Could Global Warming Be A Blessing For Mankind?.
Gaia & The Cambrian Explosion: A Short History For Everyone Of Life On Earth, Chinese National Museum of Natural History, Taiwan, September 1996.
=== Science articles ===
The Dark Side Of Science, Global View Monthly, Commonwealth Publishers, Taipei, Taiwan, 1998.
In Search Of A Common Language, Transfigural Mathematics, [14], Volume 2, Number 1, 1996, pp41–59
In Search Of A Common Language, Arbeitsberichte, Wissenschaftskolleg, Jahbrbuch 1995–1996, pp87–95
In Search Of A Physical Theory Of Time, PNAS. [15]
Are Chronons the Elementary Particles in Space and Time?, Terrestrial, Atmospheric & Oceanic Sciences, Volume 7, Number 239–255, June 1996. TAO, PO Box 23–59, Taipei, Taiwan, PRC.
Why I Write, Transfigural Mathematics, Volume 1, Number 5, 1996, pp-11-18
Why Isaac Newton Was Not A Chinese, 24 June 1994, Abschiedsvorlesung von Prof. Dr. Kenneth J. Hsu, Auditorium Maximum der ETH Zurich
Fractal Geometry Of A Career in Controversies in Modern Geology: Evolution of Geological Theories in Sedimentology, Earth History & Tectonics, edited by D.W. Müller, J.A. McKenzie, H. Weissert, Academic Press-Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, London, New York, Sydney, 1991.
=== Evolution articles ===
Is Darwinism Science? Taoists, Nazis and Gamblers Offer Different Views Of Evolution, Earthwatch Magazine, March 1989, pp15–17.
Catastrophic Extinctions & The Inevitability Of The Improbable, Referat und Diskussion der 28. Sitzung der Studiengruppe Energieperspektiven Baden, 26. Marz 1987, Doukumentation Nr. 28, Studiengruppe Energieperspektiven.
Evolution, Ideology, Darwinism and Science, Klin Wochenschr (1989), 67:923-928, Klinische Wochen-schrift, Springer-Verlag, 1989
Catastrophic Extinctions & The Inevitability Of The Improbable, Journal of the Geological Society, London, Volume 146, 1989, pp749–754, 5 figs. pp749–754
Darwin's Three Mistakes, Geology, Volume 14, p532-534, June, p532-534, June 1996
=== Geology articles ===
Lost Secrets Of The Mediterranean: 2000 meters beneath the sea, grand canyons, death valleys and the pillars of Atlantis, The Sciences, USA: The New York Academy of Sciences, pp44–51. Undated.
Environmental Changes in Times of Biotic Crisis, Processes in the History Of Life, Raup & Jablonski, Dahlem Conference 1986, Berlin, pp297–312
When The Mediterranean Dried Up: 6 million years ago, the Mediterranean basin was a desert 10,000 feet deep, Unknown, p25-37, 12 pages
Sedimentary Geology & Biologic Evolution - Reply, Journal of Sedimentary Petrology, Volume 57, Number 4, July 1987, Society of Economic Paleontologists & Mineralogists
Mountain-building, Elsevier Science, 1996, pp8–11
Acceptance Speech by K. J. Hsu to the Geological Society of America, on the Occasion of an Award of the Penrose Medal, [16]
=== Music articles ===
Fractal Geometry of Music: From Birdsong To Bach, with Andres Hsu, USA: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 87 (1990), 938–941. [17]
Fractal Geometry Of Music: Physics Of Melody, with Andres Hsu, Proceedings National Academy Of Science, Volume 87, pp938–941, Feb 1990, Physics
== Materials citing Hsu ==
Books
Streit um heiße Luft: Die Kohlendioxid Debatte, Uwe Schulte, Hirzel, Stuttgart, 2003. ISBN 3-7776-1186-7.
Paradoxes in Modern Geology, Editors: Briegel & Xiao, Amsterdam: Elsevier Science, 2001. ISBN 0-444-50560-1
Controversies in Modern Geology: Evolution of Geological Theories in Sedimentology, Earth History & Tectonics, edited by D.W. Müller, J.A. McKenzie, H. Weissert, Academic Press-Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, London, New York, Sydney, 1991.
Articles
An Appreciation of Professor Kenneth Jinghwa Hsu on the Occasion of his 60th Birthday Celebration, Controversies in Modern Geology: Evolution of Geological Theories, in Sedimentology, Earth History & Tectonics, edited by D.W. Müller, J.A. McKenzie, H. Weissert, Academic Press-Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, London, New York, Sydney, 1991.
Physics Chronon Challenge, Transfigural Mathematics (Berlin, Germany), Volume 2, Number 1, 1996. Interview by Lere O. Shakunle pp 67–73.
Je Pense Que Je Suis Un Genie, P. Imper & M. Schlapfer, Bilanz Magazine, Switzerland (French edition), pp 44, 4 pages, 1998.
Ich denke, ich bin ein Genie, Bilanz Magazine, Switzerland (German edition), pp 154, 5 pages, November 1997
Chance in a Collision with Darwinism, Lee Dembart, Los Angeles Times, 1980s
Mediterranean desert, Christopher Wren, and industrial chemistry, Philip Morrison (MIT), Scientific American, 1987
The Mediterranean Was A Desert, International Oceanographic Foundation, 5 September 1987
Below the Bottom, C. Vita-Finzi, Times Literary Supplement, 27 April 1984
Homo sapiens: a temporary warming trend?, Ptolemy, Geographical Magazine, August 1992, pp58
Love that Pleistocene!, Ptolemy, Geographical Magazine, February 1993, pp50
The Mediterranean Was A Desert, Geology, September 1984
Films
The Mediterranean Was A Desert, BBC. Producer: David Attenborough.
The Mediterranean Was A Desert, PBS, 45 minutes. Producer: Madeline Peck. Director: Philip Morisson.
The Mediterranean Was A Desert, ZDF, Producer: Hoimar Von Ditfurth.
The Great Dying, PBS. Producer: Madeline Peck. Director: Philip Morisson.
The Great Dying, ZDF, Producer: Hoimar Von Ditfurth.
Landsliding: The Mountain, BBC Horizon.
Landsliding: The Mountain Slide, BBC Horizon.
Climate And Tibet, BBC Horizon. Producer: Walter Suche.
== Other writings ==
1970 Development of the Northern Apennines Geosyncline, ed. by G. Sestini, Palaoegeography, Palaeoclimatol, Palaeocol., 11, (1972), pp. 72–74, XIV
1973 Atlas of Palaeobiogeography, ed. by Anthony Hallam, Sedimentology (1973), v. 20, Aug. 1973, pp. 453–454, XIII
1974 Marine Evaporites, Origin, Diagenesis and Geochemistry, ed. by D.W. Kirkland, et al. Sedimentology, v. 21, no. 3, Aug. 1974, pp. 486–487, XIII.
1977 International Stratigraphic Guide, ed. by H.D. Hedberg, et al., Sedimentology (1977), v. 24, pp. 597–598, XIII.
1978 Sedimentary Rocks, by F.J. Petitjohn - Sedimentary Petrology, Part II, by H. Füchtbauer - Sediment Petrologie, Teil II, by H. Füchtbauer & G. Müller - Origin of Sedimentary Rocks, by H. Blatt, et al. Sedimentology (1978), 25, pp. 149–152, XIII
1978 The Evolution of North America, by Ph. B. King - Studies in Palaeo-Oceanography, by W.W. Hay - Palaeographic Provinces and Provinciality, by Ch. A. Ross - Tectonics and Sedimentation, by W.R. Dickinson Sedimentology, v. 25, no. 5, Oct. 1978, pp. 732–735, XIII.
1979 Sorby on Geology, ed. by Ch. Summerson, Sedimentology, v. 26, no. 6, Dec. 1979, pp. 873–875, XIII.
1981 The Geological Evolution of the River Nile, by R. Said, Springer 1981, 151 pp. 73 figs., in Die Naturwissenschaften, Heidelberg, Nawi BB577.
1983 Sedimentary Petrology, by H. Blatt, Sedimentology, v. 30, no. 4, Aug. 1983, pp. 586–587, XIII.
1985 Memoirs of an Unrepentant Field Geologist, by P.J. Pettijohn, Sedimentology (1985), 32, pp. 615–616, XIII
1985 Geological Evolution of the Mediterranean Basin, by D.J. Stanley & F.C. Wezel, Springer Verlag, 1985, 589 pp., XIII.
1985 The Caledonide Orogon-Scandinavia and Related Area: ed. D.G. Gee & B.A. Sturt, Chichester, 1985 (John Wiley & Son), XIII
1987 The Ocean of Truth, by H.W. Menard, Geochimica et Cosmochimica, v. 51, pp. 2045–2046, 1987, USA, XIII.
1988 The Geology of China, by Yang Zunyi et al., Geology, Jan. 1988, XIII
1990 The Origin of Species Revisited : The Theories of Evolution and of Abrupt Appearance (2 v.); by W.R. Bird. New York 1989 (Philosophical Library). American Journal of Science, Vol. 290, November 1990, No. 9, p. 1090-1092. XIV
1991 Scientist of Empire, by Robert A. Stafford, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New York, 1989, 293 p. in GSA Today, Vol. 1, No. 2, Feb. 1991, p. 40, 41, 43. XIV
1993 The Tancheng-Lujiang Wrench Fault System, Xu Jiawei, John Wiley & Sons, Chichester, U.K., 1993, XV + 279 pp.
== Notable lectures ==
In Search Of A Common Language: What Does Modern Physics Have In Common With Traditional Chinese Medicine?, The Ashby Lecture, 15 March 2000, Clare Hall College, Cambridge University, UK.
Nitrite Pollution & Cancer, Queen Mary College, University of London, 15 February 2008. In association with CSSA UK.
Residual Oil Exploitation for Stable Economy and Transition, School of Oriental & African Studies, University of London, 23 January 2009. In association with CSSA UK.
The Kenneth J. Hsu Oil & Water Press Conference, Geological Society, 15 October 2008, Geological Society of London, UK. In association with CSSA UK.
== See also ==
List of ETH Zurich people
== References ==
== External links ==
Kenneth J. Hsu Official Site Archived 2009-04-06 at the Wayback Machine
Charles A. Perry - List of online Papers
Perry & Hsu - List of online Papers |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lygia_Pape | Lygia Pape | Lygia Pape (7 April 1927 – 3 May 2004) was a Brazilian visual artist, sculptor, engraver, and filmmaker, who was a key figure in the Concrete movement and a later co-founder of the Neo-Concrete Movement in Brazil during the 1950s and 1960s. Along with Hélio Oiticica and Lygia Clark, she was an important artist in the expansion of contemporary art in Brazil and pushed geometric art to include aspects of interaction and to engage with ethical and political themes.
== Early life and career ==
Lygia Pape was born on 7 April 1927 in Nova Friburgo, Brazil. Pape studied philosophy at the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFTJ). Afterwards, she received an informal training in fine arts, and studied with Fayga Ostrower at the Museum of Modern Art, Rio de Janeiro.
== Concrete art ==
At age 20, Pape joined the concrete art movement. The term "concrete art" was coined by the Dutch artist Theo van Doesburg in 1930.
=== Tecelares Series ===
In the 1950s, Pape created her Tecelares Series. The Tecelares wood prints were originally seen purely as works of Concrete art because of their precise and geometric aesthetic. The woodblock prints are minimalistic; they feature planes of black ink and thin lines that reveal the white rice paper underneath. The production of the series seems straightforward: Pape incised the entire surface of the woodblock with thin lines, adding several non-orthogonal lines to create the appearance of distinct planes and the suggestion of movement and space in a work that would be otherwise flat and static.
In Tecelares, Lygia Pape used "weaving" as a metaphor to evoke handiwork and a connection to Brazil's traditional and indigenous culture. Pape spoke of how indigenous Brazilian cultures had used geometry to express fundamental concepts, like the concept of collective identity. Thus, for Lygia Pape, geometry did not represent industry or mechanization, but rather it expressed a transcendent idiom. Instead of using a gridded and rigid composition, Pape blended natural and organic patterns with incised lines that are intertwined to "warp and weft." Pape used simple materials, crafted minimally by her own hands, to incorporate expression into a work that is not expressionistic.
==== Sem Titulo [Untitled] (1959) ====
This 1959 artwork in the Tecelares series, takes the same woodblock carving technique and is incised by thin parallel lines which are disrupted by the non-orthogonal lines that cut across the print. The two horizontally oriented lines that cut across the print break up the continuity of the parallel lines, creating the illusion of a separate plain and thus, space.
Although Pape used a ruled edge and a compass to create the lines in Sem Título [Untitled] (1959), there are slight variations in the width of the lines, revealing that a hand rather than a machine made the forms. Additionally, the rice paper's delicacy had absorbed the ink, creating imprecise edges. The black ink of the woodprint's background also reveals the natural wood grain of the block print as one can see the porous marks of the wood between the incised lines on the print. So despite the woodprint's originally Concrete identity, Sem Título [Untitled] (1959), is now understood as a transitional piece from the Concrete movement into the Neo-Concrete, as it is infused with non-mechanical and "handmade" qualities that seem more expressive than mechanistic.
Untitled at the Museum of Modern Art, 1959
Untitled at the Museum of Modern Art, 1959
==== Sem Titulo [Untitled] (1960) ====
The 1960s version of Tecelares is even more organic and expressive than the earlier 1959 version. The print shows the grain of the woodblock even more overtly in the bottom portion of the print, while the top portion remains relatively muted. As in the other prints in this series, Sem Título [Untitled] (1960) is cut by diagonal lines that disrupt the continuity of the horizontal wood grain pattern, creating movement and distinct planes in the artwork, though they are considerably more subtle than the 1959 Sem Título [Untitled] print of the same series. Also similar to the 1959 print, the 1960 print has the same imprecise quality created by the feathering of the ink on the rice paper. It also has a very organic quality, which is produced through the patterns and swirls of the wood grain. Because of this organic pattern, this print seems to overtly oppose the mechanic properties associated with Concrete art.
Untitled from the series Weavings (Tecelares) at the Museum of Modern Art, 1960
== Grupo Frente ==
In 1952, at the age of 25, Pape met fellow Brazilian artists Hélio Oiticica, Ivan Serpa, and Aluísio Carvão. Together the quartet formed the Grupo Frente. The Grupo Frente organized a subtle movement that rejected the national painting style of Brazil. Grupo Frente began exploring abstract and concrete art styles that distanced themselves from overly political art. The group was united by their desire to reject modern Brazilian art. Grupo Frente was revolutionary for their studies in line, form, and color. Grupo Frente organized two solo exhibitions. Their first exhibition was at the Ibeu gallery in Rio in 1954, under the artist guidance of Ferreira Gullar. Their second exhibition was in 1955 at the Museum of Modern Art in Rio. Both exhibits highlighted non-traditional use of line, geometric shapes and color.
== Neo-Concrete Movement ==
After her involvement with the Grupo Frente Concrete artists, Pape transitioned into the short wave of Neo-Concrete art.
As scholar Adele Nelson suggested, the Grupo Ruptura artist Waldemar Cordeiro and the Grupo Frente Ferreira Gullar had a debate on each other's “inadequate and overzealous rigor in their respective approaches to geometric abstraction”, which promoted and inspired the former members of Grupo Frente including Lygia Pape to initiate the Neo-Concrete movement in 1959. Neo-Concrete Movement advocates for a more expressive and corporeal viewing experience than the “overly rational” art-making approach embraced by Grupo Ruptura.
In 1959 Pape was a signatory of the Neo-Concrete Manifesto, along with Lygia Clark and Helio Oiticica. In explaining her approach, Lygia Pape said:
My concern is always invention. I always want to invent a new language that's different for me and for others, too... I want to discover new things. Because, to me, art is a way of knowing the world... to see how the world is... of getting to know the world.
Pape specifically during her Neo-Concrete period was interested in the “proposal to ‘live the body.’” This phrase indicates Pape’s interest in how the physical body acts as our mediator for all sensual experiences. Pape sought to explore this idea of the body’s relation in space by creating multi-sensorial experiences in her artwork.
=== Livro da Criação [Book of Creation], (1959) ===
The sculpture/book/poem Livro da Criação [Book of Creation] is emblematic of the early Neo-Concrete works. The work consists of sixteen unbound cardboard "pages". The pages are 12 x 12 inches each and feature abstract images that are supposed to signify a significant moment in the creation of the world, such as the recession of water, the discovery of fire and agriculture, hunting, and navigation. As a Neo-concrete artist, Lygia Pape's Livro da Criação [Book of Creation] synthesizes reason and emotion. The participant is meant to have a phenomenological experience by handling the book. Each reading of the work might be different based on the individual's experiences. As Lygia Pape noted, "It's important to say that there are two plausible readings: for me it is the book of the creation of the world, but for others it can be the book of "creation." Through each person's experiences, there is a process of open structure through which each structure can generate its own reading."
== Later career ==
Later on in the 1960s and 1970s, Pape produced more videos and installations using sarcastic and critical metaphors against the Brazilian dictatorship. From the 1980s onward, these metaphors became more subtle.
Among the videos produced in this period, the seminal film made in 1975 by Pape, Eat Me, has evoked the interest in exploring the attraction and repulsion in gender and sexuality. The sensual movements of a female and a male mouth are presented in slow motion, which is referred to as an implication of a vagina as well as the actions of “sucking and expelling objects”, according to Claudia Calirman. Although Pape persisted that this work should not be viewed as a thesis, the film reveals sexism by “implicating the viewer in the objectification of women”.
Her artwork worked as a vehicle for existential, sensorial, and psychological life experiences, much of it based in geometry and relying on both the intellectual and physical participation of the viewer. A 1967 work, O Ovo, had installation participants crawl inside a cube-shaped structure of wooden boards covered in plastic film, and then push through the film to simulate the act of being born.
From 1972 to 1985, Pape taught semiotics at the School of Architecture at the Universidade Santa Úrsula in Rio de Janeiro, and was appointed professor in the School of Fine Arts of the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro in 1983 as well. In 1980 she received a master's degree in philosophy from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. In her teaching, Pape introduced her mostly middle and upper class students to the informal architecture of Rio de Janeiro's favelas, with particular focus on Maré. In her films, photography, and teaching of the 1970s and 1980s, Pape sought to investigate architectural forms and sociability of urban space in Rio de Janeiro.
In 1981 Pape received a Guggenheim Fellowship.
Pape's first retrospective exhibition was held in 2000, with a close focus on her print practice in chronological delineation. She viewed these works as “a generative source of her fifty-plus years of artistic creation”. When reinterpreting these artworks, Pape also adopted the form of photography with no surprise.
=== The Ttéias series ===
Of all of Pape's works, Ttéias (1979) is perhaps most emblematic of her artistic process. The Ttéias was first conceived in 1979, but it was not until the 1990s that it was produced in full scale. In 1978 Lygia Pape began to experiment arranging and rearranging metallic strings together with her students at the Parque Lage Gardens in Rio de Janeiro. Pape invented the word "Ttéias", which is a pun based on the Portuguese word for "web" ("teia") and for "a person or thing of grace" ("teteia"). This series consists of an immersive staging of semi-transparent prisms, which were created using gold thread. This piece blends realism and imaginary art, allowing the viewer to interpret Ttéias by walking through it.
== Death and legacy ==
Pape died on 3 May 2004 in Rio de Janeiro at age of 77.
Her work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, and the Tate,
Pape's work was included in the 2021 exhibition Women in Abstraction at the Centre Pompidou.
In 2025/2026 Pape was given her first solo exhibition in France, called Weaving Space, at the Pinault Collection, Bourse de Commerce.
== Select exhibitions ==
2000 Artur Barrio, Antonio Manuel, Lygia Pape, Museu Serralves, Porto
2002 Brazil: Body and Soul, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
2003 50. Biennale di Venezia
2009 Making Worlds, 53rd Biennale di Venezia, Venice
2009 Folder Museum of Modern Art, New York
2011 Lygia Pape: Magnetized Space, Serpentine Galleries, London
2011 Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid
2017 Lygia Pape: A Multitude of Forms, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; catalog ISBN 978-1-588-39616-7
2018 Lygia Pape: Ttéia 1, C, Moderna Museet, Stockholm
2022 Lygia Pape. The Skin of ALL, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf
== Art market and estate ==
Pape did not work with a commercial gallery until later in life.
Projeto Lygia Pape, the artist's estate, was founded by the artist before her death in 2004 and is administered by her daughter Paula Pape. In 2017, Paula Pape filed a suit in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York against LG Electronics, several vendors of its mobile phones and Getty Images Korea alleging an infringement of copyright of her mother's 2003 sculpture TtEia 1, C in packaging materials, advertising and promotions for the K20 V mobile phone.
== References ==
== External links ==
Lygia Pape at Venice Biennale 2009 |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Toten_Hosen_discography | Die Toten Hosen discography | This discography provides an overview of the musical works of the German rock band Die Toten Hosen, as well as their pseudonyms such as Die Roten Rosen and Tangobrüder. According to sources, the band has sold more than 18 million records. Based on certified sales alone, they have sold over 14.5 million units in Germany, making them one of the country’s best-selling music acts. Their most successful release is the first compilation album Reich & sexy, which has sold over 1.1 million copies. Both this compilation and their ninth studio album Opium fürs Volk became million-sellers in Germany, ranking among the best-selling albums of the 1990s in the country. In addition, the video album Nur zu Besuch: Unplugged im Wiener Burgtheater, with over 100,000 copies sold, is one of the best-selling video albums in Germany.
By September 2023, the band had released 15 studio albums and eight live albums. In addition, nine compilation albums were issued, three of which were produced for international markets. Among these, Love, Peace & Money and Crash-Landing are collections of the band’s songs featuring newly written English lyrics. Beyond the listed albums, the band has released more than 70 singles and two EPs. The members have also contributed to albums by other artists and appeared on numerous compilations, as well as in radio, television, and film productions as guest musicians or extras. Eight songbooks containing sheet music and lyrics have also been published. By December 2017, the band had released a total of 365 original compositions and over 168 cover versions.
To mark their 30th anniversary, the studio album Ballast der Republik was released in May 2012. It immediately reached number one in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. In May 2017, the band achieved their tenth number-one album in Germany with Laune der Natur; by now, that number has risen to twelve, making them one of the most successful musicians in the German-speaking world. The band’s first charting album was released in 1987 under the pseudonym Die Roten Rosen, titled Never Mind The Hosen – Here’s Die Roten Rosen. In 1990, Auf dem Kreuzzug ins Glück became their first studio album to reach number one in the German charts. With Auswärtsspiel in 2002, the band topped the Austrian charts for the first time as well. Their most commercially successful single until 2012 was Zehn kleine Jägermeister (1996), which reached number one in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland and was certified platinum in Germany for over 500,000 sales. In 2012, the single Tage wie diese reached number one on the German Singles Chart and sold more than 990,000 copies across Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.
Since their formation in 1982, Die Toten Hosen have maintained almost the same lineup: Campino on vocals, Andreas von Holst and Michael Breitkopf on guitars, and Andreas Meurer on bass. There was one drummer change in 1986, when founding member Trini Trimpop was replaced by Wolfgang Rohde. Rohde remained with the band until 1999, alternating with Vom Ritchie on the album Unsterblich, where he appears on only four tracks. Vom Ritchie then took over permanently as the group’s drummer. All albums from 1982 to 2005 were produced by Jon Caffery, except for Never Mind The Hosen – Here’s Die Roten Rosen, which the band produced themselves. Starting with the album In aller Stille in 2008, Vincent Sorg has been responsible for producing their music.
Die Toten Hosen produced their first two singles and debut album Opel-Gang on their own label, Totenkopf. The independent label was managed by Jochen Hülder and Trini Trimpop. Hülder remained the band’s manager until his death in 2015. In 1983, the band signed with EMI, which financed the video for Eisgekühlter Bommerlunder and a concert tour. However, they switched to Virgin Records in 1984 with the release of Unter falscher Flagge, remaining with the label until 1995. Since the expiration of their contract with Virgin and the release of Opium fürs Volk, the band has issued all their releases through their own label, JKP.
== Albums ==
=== Studio albums ===
=== Non-German albums ===
=== Live albums ===
=== Compilation albums ===
=== Video albums ===
== Singles ==
== References == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shokichi_Iyanaga | Shokichi Iyanaga | Shokichi Iyanaga (彌永 昌吉, Iyanaga Shōkichi; April 2, 1906 – June 1, 2006) was a Japanese mathematician.
== Early life ==
Iyanaga was born in Tokyo, Japan on April 2, 1906. He studied at the University of Tokyo from 1926 to 1929. He studied under Teiji Takagi. As an undergraduate, he published two papers in the Japanese Journal of Mathematics and the Proceedings of the Imperial Academy of Tokyo. Both of his papers appeared in print in 1928. After completing his undergraduate degree in 1929, he stayed at Tokyo and worked under Takagi for his doctorate. He completed his Ph.D. in mathematics 1931.
== Years in Europe ==
In 1931, Iyanaga obtained a scholarship from the French government. He also went to Hamburg, Germany where he studied with Austrian mathematician Emil Artin. In 1932, he attended the International Congress of Mathematicians in Zurich. During his time in Europe, he met with top mathematicians such as Claude Chevalley, Henri Cartan, and others.
== Academic career ==
Iyanaga returned to Tokyo in 1934 and was appointed Assistant Professor at the University of Tokyo. From 1935 to 1939, he didn't publish any research papers. According to Iyanaga, it was because of the pressure of teaching and other business to which he was not accustomed. He managed to solve a question of Artin on generalizing the principal ideal theorem and this was published in 1939.
Iyanaga did publish many papers which arose through several courses such as algebraic topology, functional analysis, and geometry, which he taught. He became professor at the University of Tokyo in 1942, during World War II. Towards the end of the war, many Japanese cities were bombarded and he had to find refuge in the countryside. He was busy in editing textbooks from primary and secondary schools and he continued to give courses and organise seminars.
After the end of the war, he joined the Science Council of Japan in 1947. He became a member of the Executive Committee of the International Mathematical Union in 1952. He was responsible for organizing the International Congress of Mathematicians in Amsterdam in 1954, which he attended. He was President of the International Commission on Mathematical Instruction from 1957 to 1978.
Iyanaga spent the year 1961-62 at the University of Chicago. He became Dean of the faculty of Science at the University of Tokyo in 1965, a position he held until his retirement in 1967. After his retirement, he was a visiting professor during 1967-68 at the University of Nancy in France. From 1967 to 1977, he was a professor at Gakushuin University in Tokyo.
== Honors and awards ==
Iyanaga received several honors and awards for his work. He received the Rising Sun from Japan in 1976. He was elected a member of the Japan Academy in 1978. He received the Légion d'honneur in 1980.
== Publications ==
Iyanaga, S. (1935), Sur les Classes d'Idéaux dans les Corps Quadratiques, Actualités Scientifiques et Industrielles, No. 197, Paris: Hermann; pamphlet 13 pp.{{citation}}: CS1 maint: postscript (link)
Iyanaga, Shokichi, ed. (1975), Theory of Numbers, North-Holland mathematical library, North Holland, ISBN 978-0720424584
== See also ==
Iyanaga Prize
== References ==
== External links ==
O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "Shokichi Iyanaga", MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive, University of St Andrews
Shokichi Iyanaga at the Mathematics Genealogy Project |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kwame_Nkrumah | Kwame Nkrumah | Francis Kwame Nkrumah (Nzema: [kwame Nkruma] 21 September 1909 – 27 April 1972) was a Ghanaian politician, political theorist, and revolutionary. He served as Prime Minister of the Gold Coast from 1952 until 1957, when it gained independence from Britain. He was then the first prime minister and then the president of Ghana, from 1957 until 1966. An influential advocate of Pan-Africanism, Nkrumah was a founding member of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) and winner of the Lenin Peace Prize from the Soviet Union in 1962.
After twelve early years abroad pursuing higher education, developing his political philosophy, and organizing with other diasporic pan-Africanists, Nkrumah returned to the Gold Coast to begin his political career as an advocate of national independence. He formed the Convention People's Party, which achieved rapid success through its unprecedented appeal to the common voter. He became Prime Minister in 1952 and retained the position when he led Ghana to independence from Britain in 1957, a first in sub-Saharan Africa at the time. In 1960, Ghanaians approved a new constitution and elected Nkrumah as president.
His administration was primarily socialist as well as nationalist. It funded national industrial and energy projects, developed a strong national education system and promoted a pan-Africanist culture. Under Nkrumah, Ghana played a leading role in African international relations and the pan-africanist movement during Africa's decolonization period, supporting numerous liberation struggles.
After an alleged assassination plot against him, coupled with increasingly difficult local economic conditions, Nkrumah's government became increasingly authoritarian in the 1960s, as he repressed political opposition and conducted elections that were neither free nor fair. In 1964, a constitutional amendment made Ghana a one-party state, with Nkrumah as president for life of both the nation and its party. He fostered a personality cult, forming ideological institutes and adopting the title of 'Osagyefo Dr.' Nkrumah was deposed in 1966 in a coup d'état by the National Liberation Council. Claims of CIA involvement in his overthrow have never been verified. Nkrumah lived the rest of his life in Guinea, where he was named honorary co-president. In 1999, he was voted BBC African of the millennium.
== Early life and education ==
=== Gold Coast ===
Kwame Nkrumah was born on Tuesday, 21 September 1909 in Nkroful, Nzema East, (now Ellembele), Gold Coast (now Ghana). Nkroful was a small village in the Nzema area, in the southwest of the Gold Coast, close to the frontier with the French colony of the Ivory Coast. His father did not live with the family, but worked in Half Assini where he pursued his goldsmith business until his death. Kwame Nkrumah was raised by his mother and his extended family, who lived together traditionally and had more distant relatives often visiting. He lived a carefree childhood, spent in the village, in the bush, and on the nearby sea.
During his years as a student in the United States, he was known as Francis Nwia Kofi Nkrumah, Kofi being the Akan name given to males born on Fridays. He later changed his name to Kwame Nkrumah in 1945 in the UK, preferring the name "Kwame". According to Ebenezer Obiri Addo in his study of the future president, the name "Nkrumah", a name traditionally given to a ninth child, indicates that Kwame probably held that place in the house of his father, who had several wives.
His father, Opanyin Kofi Nwiana Ngolomah, came from Nkroful and belonged to the Asona clan of the Akan Tribe. Sources indicated that Ngolomah stayed at Tarkwa-Nsuaem and dealt in the goldsmith business. Ngolomah was respected for his wise counsel by those who sought his advice on traditional issues and domestic affairs. He died in 1927.
Kwame was his mother's only child. She sent him to the elementary school run by a Catholic mission at Half Assini, where he proved an adept student.
Although his mother, whose name was Elizabeth Nyanibah (1877–1979), later stated his year of birth as 1912, Nkrumah wrote that he was born on 21 September 1909. His mother hailed from Nsuaem and belonged to the Agona family. She was a fishmonger and petty trader when she married his father. Eight days after his birth, his father named him as Francis Nwia-Kofi after a relative but later his parents named him as Francis Kwame Ngolomah.
He progressed through the ten-year elementary programme in eight years. In 1925, he was a student-teacher in the school and was baptized into the Catholic faith. While at the school, he was noticed by the Reverend Alec Garden Fraser, principal of the Government Training College (soon to become Achimota School) in the Gold Coast's capital, Accra. Fraser arranged for Nkrumah to train as a teacher at his school. Here, Columbia-educated deputy headmaster Kwegyir Aggrey exposed him to the ideas of Marcus Garvey and W. E. B. Du Bois. Aggrey, Fraser, and others at Achimota thought that there should be close co-operation between the races in governing the Gold Coast, but Nkrumah, echoing Garvey, soon came to believe that only when the black race governed itself could there be harmony between the races.
After obtaining his teacher's certificate from the Prince of Wales' College at Achimota in 1930, Nkrumah was given a teaching post at the Roman Catholic primary school in Elmina in 1931. During his years at Achimota, Nkrumah was noted for his debating and leadership skills, traits that later shaped his role as a nationalist leader.
After a year there, he was made headmaster of the school at Axim. In Axim, he started to get involved in politics and founded the Nzema Literary Society. In 1933, he was appointed a teacher at the Catholic seminary at Amissano. Although life there was strict, he liked it, and considered becoming a Jesuit. Nkrumah had heard journalist and future Nigerian president Nnamdi Azikiwe speak while a student at Achimota; the two men met and Azikiwe's influence increased Nkrumah's interest in black nationalism. The young teacher decided to further his education. Azikiwe had attended Lincoln University, a historically black college in Chester County, Pennsylvania, west of Philadelphia, and he advised Nkrumah to enroll there.
Nkrumah, who had failed the entrance examination for London University, gained funds for the trip and his education from relatives. He travelled by way of Britain, where he learned, to his outrage, of Italy's invasion of Ethiopia, one of the few independent African nations. He arrived in the United States, in October 1935.
=== United States ===
According to historian John Henrik Clarke in his article on Nkrumah's American sojourn, "the influence of the ten years that he spent in the United States had a lingering effect on the rest of his life." Nkrumah had sought entry to Lincoln University some time before he began his studies there. On Friday, 1 March 1935, he sent the school a letter noting that his application had been pending for more than a year. When he arrived in New York in October 1935, he traveled to Pennsylvania, where he enrolled despite lacking the funds for the full semester. He soon won a scholarship that provided for his tuition at Lincoln University. He remained short of funds through his time in the US. To make ends meet, he did menial jobs on roles such as a wholesaler of fish and poultries, cleaner, dishwasher and others. On Sundays, he visited black Presbyterian churches in Philadelphia and in New York.
Nkrumah completed a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics and sociology in 1939. Lincoln then appointed him an assistant lecturer in philosophy. He began to receive invitations to be a guest preacher in Presbyterian churches in Philadelphia and New York. In 1939, Nkrumah enrolled at Lincoln's seminary and at the Ivy League institution, the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and in 1942, he was initiated into the Mu chapter of Phi Beta Sigma fraternity at Lincoln University. Nkrumah gained a Bachelor of Theology degree from Lincoln in 1942, the top student in the course. He earned from Penn the following year a Master of Arts degree in philosophy and a Master of Science in education. While at Penn, Nkrumah worked with the linguist William Everett Welmers, providing the spoken material that formed the basis of the first descriptive grammar of his native Fante dialect of the Akan language. Nkrumah was also initiated into Prince Hall Freemasonry while living in the United States.
Nkrumah spent his summers in Harlem, a center of black life, thought and culture. He found housing and employment in New York City with difficulty and involved himself in the community. He spent many evenings listening to and arguing with street orators, and according to Clarke, Kwame Nkrumah in his years in America stated;
These evenings were a vital part of Kwame Nkrumah's American education. He was going to a university – the university of the Harlem Streets. This was no ordinary time and these street speakers were no ordinary men ...The streets of Harlem were open forums, presided over [by] master speakers like Arthur Reed and his protege Ira Kemp. The young Carlos Cook [sic], founder of the Garvey oriented African Pioneer Movement was on the scene, also bringing a nightly message to his street followers. Occasionally Suji Abdul Hamid [sic], a champion of Harlem labour, held a night rally and demanded more jobs for blacks in their own community ...This is part of the drama on the Harlem streets as the student Kwame Nkrumah walked and watched.
Nkrumah was an activist student, organizing a group of expatriate African students in Pennsylvania and building it into the African Students Association of America and Canada, becoming its president. Some members felt that the group should aspire for each colony to gain independence on its own; Nkrumah urged a Pan-African strategy. Nkrumah played a major role in the Pan-African conference held in New York in 1944, which urged the United States, at the end of the Second World War, to help ensure Africa became developed and free.
His old teacher Aggrey had died in 1929 in the US, and in 1942, Nkrumah led traditional prayers for Aggrey at the graveside. This led to a break between him and Lincoln, though after he rose to prominence in the Gold Coast, he returned in 1951 to accept an honorary degree. Nevertheless, Nkrumah's doctoral thesis remained uncompleted. He had adopted the forename Francis while at the Amissano seminary; in 1945, he took the name Kwame Nkrumah.
Nkrumah read books about politics and divinity, and tutored students in philosophy. In 1943 Nkrumah met Trinidadian Marxist C. L. R. James, Russian expatriate Raya Dunayevskaya, and Chinese-American Grace Lee Boggs, all of whom were members of an American-based Marxist intellectual cohort. Nkrumah later credited James with teaching him "how an underground movement worked". Federal Bureau of Investigation files on Nkrumah, kept from January to May 1945, identify him as a possible communist. Nkrumah was determined to go to London, wanting to continue his education there now that the Second World War had ended. James, in a 1945 letter introducing Nkrumah to Trinidad-born George Padmore in London, wrote: "This young man is coming to you. He is not very bright, but nevertheless do what you can for him because he's determined to throw Europeans out of Africa."
=== London ===
Nkrumah returned to London in May 1945 and enrolled at the London School of Economics as a PhD candidate in Anthropology. He withdrew after one term and the next year enrolled at University College London, with the intent to write a philosophy dissertation on "Knowledge and Logical Positivism". His supervisor, A. J. Ayer, declined to rate Nkrumah as a "first-class philosopher", saying, "I liked him and enjoyed talking to him but he did not seem to me to have an analytical mind. He wanted answers too quickly. I think part of the trouble may have been that he wasn't concentrating very hard on his thesis. It was a way of marking time until the opportunity came for him to return to Ghana." Finally, Nkrumah enrolled in, but did not complete, a study in law at Gray's Inn.
Nkrumah spent his time on political organizations. He and Padmore were among the principal organizers, and co-treasurers, of the Fifth Pan-African Congress in Manchester (15–19 October 1945). The Congress elaborated a strategy for supplanting colonialism with African socialism. They agreed to pursue a federal United States of Africa, with interlocking regional organizations, governing through separate states of limited sovereignty. They planned to pursue a new African culture without tribalism, democratic within a socialist system, synthesizing traditional aspects with modern thinking, and for this to be achieved by non-violent means if possible. Among those who attended the congress was the venerable W. E. B. Du Bois along with some who later took leading roles in leading their nations to independence, including Hastings Banda of Nyasaland (which became Malawi), Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya and Obafemi Awolowo of Nigeria.
The congress sought to establish ongoing African activism in Britain in conjunction with the West African National Secretariat (WANS) to work towards the decolonisation of Africa. Nkrumah became the secretary of WANS. In addition to seeking to organize Africans to gain their nations' freedom, Nkrumah sought to succour the many West African seamen who had been stranded, destitute, in London at the end of the war, and established a Coloured Workers Association to empower and succour them. The U.S. State Department and MI5 watched Nkrumah and the WANS, focusing on their links with Communism. Nkrumah and Padmore established a group called The Circle to lead the way to West African independence and unity; the group aimed to create a Union of African Socialist Republics. A document from The Circle, setting forth that goal was found on Nkrumah upon his arrest in Accra in 1948, and was used against him by the British authorities.
== Return to the Gold Coast ==
=== United Gold Coast Convention ===
The 1946 Gold Coast constitution gave Africans a majority on the Legislative Council for the first time. Seen as a major step towards self-government, the new arrangement prompted the colony's first true political party, founded in August 1947, the United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC). The UGCC sought self-government as quickly as possible. Since the leading members were all successful professionals, they needed to pay someone to run the party, and their choice fell on Nkrumah at the suggestion of Ako Adjei. Nkrumah hesitated but realized that the UGCC was controlled by conservative interests and noted that the new post could open huge political opportunities for him and accepted. After being questioned by British officials about his communist affiliations, Nkrumah boarded the MV Accra at Liverpool in November 1947 for the voyage home.
After brief stops in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and the Ivory Coast, he arrived in the Gold Coast where he briefly stayed and reunited with his mother in Tarkwa. He began work at the party's headquarters in Saltpond on 29 December 1947 where he worked as a general secretary. Nkrumah quickly submitted plans for branches of the UGCC to be established colony-wide, and for strikes if necessary to gain political ends. This activist stance divided the party's governing committee, which was led by J. B. Danquah. Nkrumah embarked on a tour to gain donations for the UGCC and establish new branches.
Although the Gold Coast was more developed politically than Britain's other West African colonies, there was considerable discontent. Postwar inflation had caused public anger at high prices, leading to a boycott of small businesses run by Arabs which began in January 1948. Local cocoa bean farmers were upset because trees exhibiting cacao swollen-shoot virus, but still capable of yielding a crop, were being destroyed by the colonial authorities. There were about 63,000 World War II veterans in the Gold Coast, many of whom had trouble obtaining employment and felt the colonial government was doing nothing to address their grievances. Nkrumah and Danquah addressed a meeting of the Ex-Service men's Union in Accra on 20 February 1948, which was made in advance of a planned march to present a petition to the governor. When the march took place on 28 February, three veterans were killed by police gunfire, prompting the 1948 Accra riots, which spread throughout the country. According to Nkrumah's biographer, David Birmingham, "West Africa's erstwhile "model colony" witnessed a riot and business premises were looted. The African Revolution had begun."
The colonial government assumed that the UGCC was responsible for the unrest, and arrested six leaders, including Nkrumah and Danquah. The Big Six were incarcerated together in Kumasi, increasing the rift between Nkrumah and the others, who blamed him for the riots and their detention. After the colonial government learned that there were plots to storm the prison, the six were separated, with Nkrumah sent to Lawra; all six were freed in April 1948. Many students and teachers had demonstrated for their release and had been suspended; Nkrumah, using his own funds, began the Ghana National College. This among other activities, led UGCC committee members to accuse him of acting in the party's name without authority. Fearing he would harm them more outside the party than within, they agreed to make him honorary treasurer. Nkrumah's popularity, already large, was increased with his founding of the Accra Evening News, which was not a party organ but was owned by Nkrumah and others. He also founded the Committee on Youth Organization (CYO) as a youth wing for the UGCC. It soon broke away and adopted the motto "Self-Government Now". The CYO united students, ex-servicemen, and market women. Nkrumah recounted in his autobiography that he knew that a break with the UGCC was inevitable, and wanted the masses behind him when the conflict occurred. Nkrumah's appeals for "Free-Dom" appealed to the great numbers of underemployed youths who had come from the farms and villages to the towns. "Old hymn tunes were adapted to new songs of liberation which welcomed traveling orators, and especially Nkrumah himself, to mass rallies across the Gold Coast."
According to a public speech delivered by Aaron Mike Oquaye, a meeting occurred in Saltpond, a town in the Central region, between Nkrumah and the members of UGCC where Nkrumah was said to have rejected a proposal for the promotion of fundamental human rights.
=== Convention People's Party ===
Beginning in April 1949, there was considerable pressure on Nkrumah from his supporters to leave the UGCC and form his own party. On 12 June 1949, he announced the formation of the Convention People's Party (CPP), with the word "convention" chosen, according to Nkrumah, "to carry the masses with us". There were attempts to heal the breach with the UGCC; at one July meeting, it was agreed to reinstate Nkrumah as secretary and disband the CPP. But Nkrumah's supporters would not have it, and persuaded him to refuse the offer and remain at their head.
The CPP adopted the red cockerel as its symbol – a familiar icon for local ethnic groups, and a symbol of leadership, alertness, and masculinity. Party symbols and colours (red, white, and green) appeared on clothing, flags, vehicles and houses. CPP operatives drove red-white-and-green vans across the country, playing music and rallying public support for the party and especially for Nkrumah. These efforts were wildly successful, especially because previous political efforts in the Gold Coast had focused exclusively on the urban intelligentsia.
The British convened a selected commission of middle-class Africans, including all of the Big Six except Nkrumah, to draft a new constitution that would give the Gold Coast more self-government. Nkrumah saw, even before the commission reported, that its recommendations would fall short of full dominion status, and began to organize a Positive Action campaign. Nkrumah demanded a constituent assembly to write a constitution. When the governor, Charles Arden-Clarke, would not commit to this, Nkrumah called for positive action, with the unions beginning a general strike to begin on 8 January 1950. The strike quickly led to violence, and Nkrumah and other CPP leaders were arrested on 22 January, and the Evening News was banned. Nkrumah was sentenced to a total of three years in prison, and he was incarcerated with common criminals in Accra's Fort James.
Nkrumah's assistant, Komla Agbeli Gbedemah, ran the CPP in his absence; the imprisoned leader was able to influence events through smuggled notes written on toilet paper. The British prepared for an election for the Gold Coast under their new constitution, and Nkrumah insisted that the CPP contest all seats. The situation had become calmer once Nkrumah was arrested, and the CPP and the British worked together to prepare electoral rolls. Nkrumah stood, from prison, for a directly elected Accra seat. Gbedemah worked to set up a nationwide campaign organization, using vans with loudspeakers to blare the party's message. The UGCC failed to set up a nationwide structure, and proved unable to take advantage of the fact that many of its opponents were in prison.
In the February 1951 legislative election, the first general election to be held under universal franchise in colonial Africa, the CPP was elected in a landslide. The CPP secured 34 of the 38 seats contested on a party basis, with Nkrumah elected for his Accra constituency. The UGCC won three seats, and one was taken by an independent. Arden-Clarke saw that the only alternative to Nkrumah's freedom was the end of the constitutional experiment. Nkrumah was released from prison on 12 February, receiving a rapturous reception from his followers. The following day, Arden-Clarke sent for him and asked him to form a government.
Nkrumah had stolen Arden-Clarke's secretary Erica Powell after she was dismissed and sent home for getting too close to Nkrumah. Powell returned to Ghana in January 1955 to be Nkrumah's private secretary, a position she held for ten years. Powell was very close to him and during their time together she largely wrote Nkrumah's (auto)biography, although this was not admitted until much later.
=== Leader of Government Business and Prime Minister ===
Nkrumah faced several challenges as he assumed office. He had never served in government, and needed to learn that art. The Gold Coast was composed of four regions, several former colonies amalgamated into one. Nkrumah sought to unite them under one nationality, and bring the country to independence. Key to meeting the challenges was convincing the British that the CPP's programmes were not only practical, but inevitable, and Nkrumah and Arden-Clarke worked closely together. The governor instructed the civil service to give the fledgling government full support, and the three British members of the cabinet took care not to vote against the elected majority.
Prior to the CPP taking office, British officials had prepared a ten-year plan for development. With demands for infrastructure improvements coming in from all over the colony, Nkrumah approved it in general, but halved the time to five years. The colony was in good financial shape, with reserves from years of cocoa profit held in London, and Nkrumah was able to spend freely. Modern trunk roads were built along the coast and within the interior. The rail system was modernized and expanded. Modern water and sewer systems were installed in most towns, where housing schemes were begun. Construction began on a new harbour at Tema, near Accra, and the existing port, at Takoradi, was expanded. An urgent programme to build and expand schools, from primary to teacher and trade training, was begun. From 1951 to 1956, the number of pupils being educated at the colony's schools rose from 200,000 to 500,000. Nevertheless, the number of graduates being produced was insufficient to the burgeoning civil service's needs, and in 1953, Nkrumah announced that though Africans would be given preference, the country would be relying on expatriate European civil servants for several years.
Nkrumah's title was Leader of Government Business in a cabinet chaired by Arden-Clarke. Quick progress was made, and in 1952, the governor withdrew from the cabinet, leaving Nkrumah as his prime minister, with the portfolios that had been reserved for expatriates going to Africans. There were accusations of corruption, and of nepotism, as officials, following African custom, attempted to benefit their extended families and their tribes. The recommendations following the 1948 riots had included elected local government rather than the existing system dominated by the chiefs. This was uncontroversial until it became clear that it would be implemented by the CPP. That party's majority in the Legislative Assembly passed legislation in late 1951 that shifted power from the chiefs to the chairs of the councils, though there was some local rioting as rates were imposed.
Nkrumah's re-titling as prime minister had not given him additional power, and he sought constitutional reform that would lead to independence. In 1952, he consulted with the visiting Colonial Secretary, Oliver Lyttelton, who indicated that Britain would look favorably on further advancement, so long as the chiefs and other stakeholders had the opportunity to express their views. Initially skeptical of Nkrumah's socialist policies, Britain's MI5 had compiled large amounts of intelligence on Nkrumah through several sources, including tapping phones and mail interception under the code name of SWIFT. Beginning in October 1952, Nkrumah sought opinions from councils and from political parties on reform, and consulted widely across the country, including with opposition groups. The result the following year was a White Paper on a new constitution, seen as a final step before independence. Published in June 1953, the constitutional proposals were accepted both by the assembly and by the British, and came into force in April of the following year. The new document provided for an assembly of 104 members, all directly elected, with an all-African cabinet responsible for the internal governing of the colony. In the election on 15 June 1954, the CPP won 71, with the regional Northern People's Party forming the official opposition.
A number of opposition groups formed the National Liberation Movement. Their demands were for a federal, rather than a unitary government for an independent Gold Coast, and for an upper house of parliament where chiefs and other traditional leaders could act as a counter to the CPP majority in the assembly. They drew considerable support in the Northern Territory and among the chiefs in Ashanti, who petitioned the British queen, Elizabeth II, asking for a Royal Commission into what form of government the Gold Coast should have. This was refused by her government, who in 1955 stated that such a commission should only be used if the people of the Gold Coast proved incapable of deciding their own affairs. Amid political violence, the two sides attempted to reconcile their differences, but the NLM refused to participate in any committee with a CPP majority. The traditional leaders were also incensed by a new bill that had just been enacted, which allowed minor chiefs to appeal to the government in Accra, bypassing traditional chiefly authority. The British were unwilling to leave unresolved the fundamental question as to how an independent Gold Coast should be governed, and in June 1956, the Colonial Secretary, Alan Lennox-Boyd announced that there would be another general election in the Gold Coast, and if a "reasonable majority" took the CPP's position, Britain would set a date for independence. The results of the July 1956 election were almost identical to those from four years before, and on 3 August the assembly voted for independence under the name Nkrumah had proposed in April, Ghana. In September, the Colonial Office announced independence day would be 6 March 1957.
The opposition was not satisfied with the plan for independence, and demanded that power be devolved to the regions. Discussions took place through late 1956 and into 1957. Although Nkrumah did not compromise on his insistence on a unitary state, the nation was divided into five regions, with power devolved from Accra, and the chiefs having a role in their governments. On 21 February 1957, the British prime minister, Harold Macmillan, announced that Ghana would be a full member of the Commonwealth of Nations with effect from 6 March.
== Ghanaian independence ==
Ghana became independent on 6 March 1957 as the Dominion of Ghana. As the first of Britain's African colonies to gain majority-rule independence, the celebrations in Accra were the focus of world attention; over 100 reporters and photographers covered the events. United States President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent congratulations and his vice president, Richard Nixon, to represent the U.S. at the event. The Soviet delegation urged Nkrumah to visit Moscow as soon as possible. Political scientist Ralph Bunche, an African American, was there for the United Nations, while the Duchess of Kent represented Queen Elizabeth II. Offers of assistance poured in from across the world. Even without them, the country seemed prosperous, with cocoa prices high and the potential of new resource development.
As the fifth of March turned to the sixth, Nkrumah stood before tens of thousands of supporters and proclaimed, "Ghana will be free forever." He spoke at the first session of the Ghana Parliament that Independence Day, telling his new country's citizens that "we have a duty to prove to the world that Africans can conduct their own affairs with efficiency and tolerance and through the exercise of democracy. We must set an example to all Africa."
As part of the ceremony, Nkrumah gave a speech to instill hope and ooze assurance.
Nkrumah was hailed as the Osagyefo – which means "redeemer" in the Akan language. This independence ceremony included the Duchess of Kent and Governor General Charles Arden-Clarke. With more than 600 reporters in attendance, Ghanaian independence became one of the most internationally reported news events in modern African history.
The flag of Ghana was designed by Theodosia Okoh, inverting Ethiopia's green-yellow-red Lion of Judah flag and replacing the lion with a black star. Red symbolizes bloodshed; green stands for beauty, agriculture, and abundance; yellow represents mineral wealth; and the Black Star represents African freedom. The country's new coat of arms, designed by Amon Kotei, includes eagles, a lion, a St. George's Cross, and a Black Star, with copious gold and gold trim. Philip Gbeho was commissioned to compose the new national anthem, "God Bless Our Homeland Ghana".
As a monument to the new nation, Nkrumah opened Black Star Square near Osu Castle in the coastal district of Osu, Accra. This square would be used for national symbolism and mass patriotic rallies.
Under Nkrumah's leadership, Ghana adopted some social democratic policies and practices. Nkrumah created a welfare system, started various community programs, and established schools.
== Ghana's leader (1957–1966) ==
=== Political developments and presidential election ===
Nkrumah had only a short honeymoon before there was unrest among his country's people. The government deployed troops to Togo-land to quell unrest following a disputed plebiscite on membership in the new country. A serious bus strike in Accra stemmed from resentments among the Ga people, who believed members of other tribes were getting preferential treatment in government promotion, and thus resulted in riots there in August. Nkrumah's response was to repress local movements by the Avoidance of Discrimination Act (6 December 1957), which banned regional or tribal-based political parties. Another strike at tribalism fell in Ashanti, where Nkrumah and the CPP got most local chiefs who were not party supporters destooled. These repressive actions concerned the opposition parties, who came together to form the United Party under Kofi Abrefa Busia.
In 1958, an opposition MP was arrested on charges of attempting to obtain arms abroad for a planned infiltration of the Ghana Army (GA). Nkrumah was convinced there had been an assassination plot against him, and his response was to have the parliament pass the Preventive Detention Act, allowing for incarceration for up to five years without charge or trial, with only Nkrumah empowered to release prisoners early. According to Nkrumah's biographer, David Birmingham, "no single measure did more to bring down Nkrumah's reputation than his adoption of internment without trial for the preservation of security." Nkrumah intended to bypass the British-trained judiciary, which he saw as opposing his plans when they subjected them to constitutional scrutiny.
Another source of irritation was the regional assemblies, which had been organized on an interim basis pending further constitutional discussions. The opposition, which was strong in Ashanti and the north, proposed significant powers for the assemblies; the CPP wanted them to be more or less advisory. In 1959, Nkrumah used his majority in the parliament to push through the Constitutional Amendment Act, which abolished the assemblies and allowed the parliament to amend the constitution with a simple majority.
Queen Elizabeth II remained sovereign over Ghana from 1957 to 1960. William Hare, 5th Earl of Listowel was the Governor-General, and Nkrumah remained Prime Minister. On 6 March 1960, Nkrumah announced plans for a new constitution that would make Ghana a republic, headed by a president with broad executive and legislative powers. The draft included a provision to surrender Ghanaian sovereignty to a Union of African States. On 19, 23, and 27 April 1960 a presidential election and plebiscite on the constitution were held. The constitution was ratified and Nkrumah was elected president over J. B. Danquah, the UP candidate, 1,016,076 to 124,623. Ghana remained a part of the British-led Commonwealth of Nations.
==== Opposition to tribalism ====
Nkrumah also sought to eliminate "tribalism", a source of loyalties held more deeply than those to the nation-state. Thus, as he wrote in Africa Must Unite: "We were engaged in a kind of war, a war against poverty and disease, against ignorance, against tribalism and disunity. We needed to secure the conditions which could allow us to pursue our policy of reconstruction and development." To this end, in 1958, his government passed "An Act to prohibit organizations using or engaging in racial or religious propaganda to the detriment of any other racial or religious community, or securing the election of persons on account of their racial or religious affiliations, or for other purposes in connection therewith." Nkrumah attempted to saturate the country in national flags, and declared a widely disobeyed ban on tribal flags.
Kofi Abrefa Busia of the United Party (Ghana) gained prominence as an opposition leader in the debate over this Act, taking a more classically liberal position and criticizing the ban on tribal politics as repressive. Soon after, he left the country. Nkrumah was also a very flamboyant leader. The New York Times in 1972 wrote: "During his high‐flying days as the leader of Ghana in the 1950s and early 1960s, Kwame Nkrumah was a flamboyant spellbinder. At home, he created a cult of personality and gloried in the title of Osagyefo (Akan for 'Redeemer'). Abroad, he met with the world's leaders as the first man to lead an African colony to independence after World War II."
During his tenure as Prime Minister and then first President, Nkrumah succeeded in reducing the political importance of the local chieftaincy (e.g., the Akan chiefs and the Asantehene). These chiefs had maintained authority during colonial rule through collaboration with the British authorities; in fact, they were sometimes favored over the local intelligentsia, who made trouble for the British with organizations like the Aborigines' Rights Protection Society. The Convention People's Party had a strained relationship with the chiefs when it came to power, and this relationship became more hostile as the CPP incited political opposition chiefs and criticized the institution as undemocratic. Acts passed in 1958 and 1959 gave the government more power to dis-stool chiefs directly, and proclaimed government of stool land – and revenues. These policies alienated the chiefs and led them to looking favorably on the overthrow of Nkrumah and his Party.
==== Increased power of the Convention People's Party ====
In 1962, three younger members of the CPP were brought up on charges of taking part in a plot to blow up Nkrumah's car in a motorcade. The sole evidence against the alleged plotters was that they rode in cars well behind Nkrumah's car. When the defendants were acquitted, Nkrumah sacked the chief judge of the state security court, then got the CPP-dominated parliament to pass a law allowing a new trial. At this second trial, all three men were convicted and sentenced to death, though these sentences were subsequently commuted to life imprisonment. Shortly afterward, the constitution was amended to give the president the power to summarily remove judges at all levels.
In 1964, Nkrumah proposed a constitutional amendment that would make the CPP the only legal party, with Nkrumah as president for life of both nation and party. The amendment passed with 99.91 percent of the vote, an implausibly high total that led observers to condemn the vote as "obviously rigged". Ghana had effectively been a one-party state since independence. The amendment transformed Nkrumah's presidency into a de facto legal dictatorship.
=== Civil service ===
After substantial Africanization of the civil service in 1952–60, the number of expatriates rose again from 1960 to 1965. Many of the new outside workers came not from the United Kingdom but from the Soviet Union, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and Italy.
=== Education ===
In 1951, the CPP created the Accelerated Development Plan for Education. This plan set up a six-year primary course, to be attended as close to universally as possible, with a range of possibilities to follow. All children were to learn arithmetic, as well as gain "a sound foundation for citizenship with permanent literacy in both English and the vernacular." Primary education became compulsory in 1962. The plan also stated that religious schools would no longer receive funding, and that some existing missionary schools would be taken over by government.
In 1961, Nkrumah laid the first stones in the foundation of the Kwame Nkrumah Ideological Institute created to train Ghanaian civil servants as well as promote Pan-Africanism. In 1964, all students entering college in Ghana were required to attend a two-week "ideological orientation" at the institute. Nkrumah remarked that "trainees should be made to realize the party's ideology is religion, and should be practiced faithfully and fervently."
In 1964, Nkrumah brought forth the Seven Year Development Plan for National Reconstruction and Development, which identified education as a key source of development and called for the expansion of secondary technical schools. Secondary education would also include "in-service training programmes". As Nkrumah told Parliament: "Employers, both public and private, will be expected to make a far greater contribution to labour training through individual factory and farm schools, industry-wide training schemes, day release, payment for attendance at short courses and evening classes." This training would be indirectly subsidized with tax credits and import allocations.
In 1952, the Artisan Trading Scheme, arranged with the Colonial Office and UK Ministry of Labour, provided for a few experts in every field to travel to Britain for technical education. Kumasi Technical Institute was founded in 1956. In September 1960, it added the Technical Teacher Training Centre. In 1961, the CPP passed the Apprentice Act, which created a general Apprenticeship Board along with committees for each industry.
=== Culture ===
Nkrumah was an ardent promoter of pan-Africanism, seeing the movement as the "quest for regional integration of the whole of the African continent". The period of Nkrumah's active political involvement has been described as the "golden age of high pan-African ambitions"; the continent had experienced rising nationalist movements and decolonization by most European colonial powers, and historians have noted that "the narrative of rebirth and solidarity had gained momentum within the pan-Africanist movement". Reflecting his African heritage, Nkrumah frequently eschewed Western fashion, donning a fugu (a Northern attire) made with Southern-produced Kente cloth, a symbol of his identity as a representative of the entire country. He oversaw the opening of the Ghana Museum on 5 March 1957; the Arts Council of Ghana, a wing of the Ministry of Education and Culture, in 1958; the Research Library on African Affairs in June 1961; and the Ghana Film Corporation in 1964. In 1962, Nkrumah opened the Institute of African Studies.
A campaign against nudity in the northern part of the country received special attention from Nkrumah, who reportedly deployed Propaganda Secretary Hannah Cudjoe to respond. Cudjoe also formed the Ghana Women's League, which advanced the Party's agenda on nutrition, raising children, and wearing clothing. The League also led a demonstration against the detonation of French nuclear weapons in the Sahara. Cudjoe was eventually demoted with the consolidation of national women's groups, and marginalized within the Party structure.
Laws passed in 1959 and 1960 designated special positions in parliament to be held by women. Some women were promoted to the CPP Central Committee. Women attended more universities, took up more professions including medicine and law, and went on professional trips to Israel, the Soviet Union, and the Eastern Bloc. Women also entered the army and air force. Most women remained in agriculture and trade; some received assistance from the Co-operative Movement.
Nkrumah's image was widely disseminated, for example, on postage stamps and on money, in the style of monarchs – providing fodder for accusations of a Nkrumahist personality cult.
=== Media ===
In 1957, Nkrumah created a well-funded Ghana News Agency to generate domestic news and disseminate it abroad. In ten years time the GNA had 8045 km of domestic telegraph line, and maintained stations in Lagos, Nairobi, London and New York City.
Nkrumah consolidated state control over newspapers, establishing the Ghanaian Times in 1958 and then in 1962 obtaining its competitor, the Daily Graphic, from the Mirror Group of London. As he wrote in Africa Must Unite: "It is part of our revolutionary credo that within the competitive system of capitalism, the press cannot function in accordance with a strict regard for the sacredness of facts, and that the press, therefore, should not remain in private hands." Starting in 1960, he invoked the right of pre-publication censorship of all news.
The Gold Coast Broadcasting Service was established in 1954 and revamped as the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC). Many television broadcasts featured Nkrumah, commenting for example on the problematic "insolence and laziness of boys and girls". Before celebrations of May Day, 1963, Nkrumah went on television to announce the expansion of Ghana's Young Pioneers, the introduction of a National Pledge, the beginning of a National Flag salute in schools, and the creation of a National Training program to inculcate virtue and the spirit of service among Ghanaian youth. Nkrumah outlined his views on the role of Ghanaian television to Parliament on 15 October 1963 saying, "Ghana's television will not cater for cheap entertainment or commercialism; its paramount objective will be education in its broadest and purest sense."
As per the 1965 Instrument of Incorporation of the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation, the Minister of Information and Broadcasting had "powers of direction" over the media, and the President had the power "at any time, if he is satisfied that it is in the national interest to do so, take over the control and management of the affairs or any part of the functions of the Corporation," hiring, firing, reorganizing, and making other commands at will.
Radio programmes, designed in part to reach non-reading members of the public, were a major focus of the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation. In 1961, the GBC formed an external service broadcasting in English, French, Arabic, Swahili, Portuguese and Hausa. Using four 100-kilowatt transmitters and two 250-kilowatt transmitters, the GBC External Service broadcast 110 hours of Pan-Africanist programming to Africa and Europe each week.
He refused advertising in all media, beginning with the Evening News of 1948.
=== Economic policy ===
The Gold Coast had been among the wealthiest and most socially advanced areas in Africa, with schools, railways, hospitals, social security, and an advanced economy.
Nkrumah attempted to rapidly industrialize Ghana's economy. He reasoned that if Ghana escaped the colonial trade system by reducing dependence on foreign capital, technology, and material goods, it could become truly independent.
After the Ten Year Development Plan, Nkrumah brought forth the Second Development Plan in 1959. This plan called for the development of manufacturing: 600 factories producing 100 varieties of product.
The Statutory Corporations Act, passed in November 1959 and revised in 1961 and 1964, created the legal framework for public corporations, which included state enterprises. This law placed the country's major corporations under the direction of government ministers. The State Enterprises Secretariat office was located in Flagstaff House and under the direct control of the president.
After visiting the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and China in 1961, Nkrumah apparently became still more convinced of the need for state control of the economy.
During Nkrumah's time in office, free health care and education were introduced.
A Seven-Year Plan introduced in 1964 focused on further industrialization, emphasizing domestic substitutes for common imports, modernization of the building materials industry, machine making, electrification and electronics.
==== Energy projects ====
Nkrumah's advocacy of industrial development, with help of longtime friend and Minister of Finance, Komla Agbeli Gbedema, led to the Volta River Project: the construction of a hydroelectric power plant, the Akosombo Dam on the Volta River in eastern Ghana. The Volta River Project was the centrepiece of Nkrumah's economic programme. On 20 February 1958, he told the National Assembly: "It is my strong belief that the Volta River Project provides the quickest and most certain method of leading us towards economic independence." Ghana used assistance from the United States, Israel and the World Bank in constructing the dam.
Kaiser Aluminum agreed to build the dam for Nkrumah, but restricted what could be produced using the power generated. Nkrumah borrowed money to build the dam, and placed Ghana in debt. To finance the debt, he raised taxes on the cocoa farmers in the south. This accentuated regional differences and jealousy. The dam was completed and opened by Nkrumah amidst global publicity on 22 January 1966.
Nkrumah initiated the Ghana Nuclear Reactor Project in 1961, created the Ghana Atomic Energy Commission in 1963, and in 1964 laid the first stone in the building of an atomic energy facility.
==== Cocoa ====
In 1954 the world price of cocoa rose from £150 to £450 per ton. Rather than allowing cocoa farmers to keep the windfall, Nkrumah appropriated the increased revenue via central government levies, then invested the capital into various national development projects. This policy alienated one of the major constituencies that helped him come to power.
Prices continued to fluctuate. In 1960 one ton of cocoa sold for £250 in London. By August 1965 this price had dropped to £91, one fifth of its value ten years before. The quick price decline caused the government's reliance on the reserves and forced farmers to take a portion of their earning in bonds.
=== Foreign and military policy ===
Nkrumah actively promoted a policy of Pan-Africanism from the beginning of his presidency. This entailed the creation of a series of new international organizations, which held their inaugural meetings in Accra. These were:
the First Conference of Independent States, in April 1958;
the more inclusive All-African Peoples' Conference, with representatives from 62 nationalist organizations from across the continent, in December 1958;
the All-African Trade Union Federation, meeting in November 1959, to coordinate the African labour movement;
the Positive Action and Security in Africa conference, in April 1960, discussing Algeria, South Africa, and French nuclear weapons testing;
the Conference of African Women, on 18 July 1960.
Meanwhile, Ghana withdrew from colonial organizations including West Africa Airways Corporation, the West African Currency Board, the West African Cocoa Research Institute and the West African Court of Appeal.
In the Year of Africa, 1960, Nkrumah negotiated the creation of a Union of African States, a political alliance between Ghana, Guinea, and Mali. Immediately, they formed a women's group called Women of the Union of African States.
Nkrumah was a leading figure in the short-lived Casablanca Group of African leaders, which sought to achieve pan-African unity and harmony through deep political, economic, and military integration of the continent in the early 1960s prior to the establishment of the Organization of African Unity (OAU). In 1961, he was a participant in the 1st Summit of the Non-Aligned Movement in Belgrade, FPR Yugoslavia making Ghana one of the founding members of the Non-Aligned Movement.
Nkrumah was instrumental in the creation of the OAU in Addis Ababa in 1963. He aspired to create a united military force, the African High Command, which Ghana would substantially lead, and committed to this vision in Article 2 of the 1960 Republican Constitution:"In the confident expectation of an early surrender of sovereignty to a union of African states and territories, the people now confer on Parliament the power to provide for the surrender of the whole or any part of the sovereignty of Ghana."
He was also a proponent of the United Nations, but critical of the Great Powers' ability to control it.
Nkrumah opposed the entry of African states into the Common Market of the European Economic Community, a status given to many former French colonies and considered by Nigeria. Instead, Nkrumah advocated, in a speech given on 7 April 1960,
an African common market, a common currency area and the development of communications of all kinds to allow the free flow of goods and services. International capital can be attracted to such viable economic areas, but it would not be attracted to a divided and balkanized Africa, with each small region engaged in senseless and suicidal economic competition with its neighbours.
Nkrumah sought to exploit the Cold War rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union in order to gain maximum concessions from both sides in their geopolitical attempts to outmanoeuvre one another in West Africa and elsewhere. This was exemplified by the Volta River Dam Project and its back-and-forth oscillation between Soviet and Western financial backing.
==== Armed forces ====
In 1956, the Gold Coast took control of the Royal West African Frontier Force (RWAFF), Gold Coast Regiment, from the British War Office. This force had formerly been deployed to quell internal dissent, and occasionally to fight in wars: most recently, in World War II, against the Japanese in India and Burma. The most senior officers in this force were British, and, although training of African officers began in 1947, only 28 of 212 officers in December 1956 were indigenous Africans. The British officers still received British salaries, which vastly exceeded those allotted to their Ghanaian counterparts. Concerned about a possible military coup, Nkrumah delayed the placement of African officers in top leadership roles.
Nkrumah quickly established the Ghanaian Air Force, acquiring 14 Beaver airplanes from Canada and setting up a flight school with British instructors. Otters, Caribou, and Chipmunks were to follow. Ghana also obtained four Ilyushin-18 aircraft from the Soviet Union. Preparation began in April 1959 with assistance from India and Israel. Nkrumah also established a gliding school led by Hanna Reitsch and J.E.S. de Graft-Hayford.
The Ghanaian Navy received two inshore minesweepers with 40mm and 20mm guns, the Afadzato and the Yogaga, from Britain in December 1959. It subsequently received the Elmina and the Komenda, seaward defence boats with 40-millimetre guns. The Navy's flagship, and training ship, was the Achimota, a British yacht constructed during World War II. In 1961, the Navy ordered two 600-ton corvettes, the Keta and Kromantse, from Vosper & Company and received them in 1967. It also procured four Soviet patrol boats. Naval officers were trained at the Britannia Royal Naval College in Dartmouth. The Ghanaian military budget rose each year, from $9.35 million (US dollars) in 1958 to $47 million in 1965.
The first international deployment of the Ghanaian armed forces was to the Congo (Léopoldville/Kinshasa), where Ghanaian troops were airlifted in 1960 at the beginning of the Congo Crisis. One week after Belgian troops occupied the lucrative mining province of Katanga, Ghana dispatched more than a thousand of its own troops to join a United Nations force. The use of British officers in this context was politically unacceptable, and this event occasioned a hasty transfer of officer positions to Ghanaians. The Congo war was long and difficult. On 19 January 1961 the Third Infantry Battalion mutinied. On 28 April 1961, 43 men were massacred in a surprise attack by the Congolese army.
Ghana also gave military support to rebels fighting against Ian Smith's white-minority government in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), which had unilaterally declared independence from Britain in 1965.
==== Relationship with Communist world ====
In 1961, Nkrumah went on tour through Eastern Europe, proclaiming solidarity with the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China. Nkrumah's clothing changed to the Chinese-supplied Mao suit.
In 1962 Kwame Nkrumah was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize by the Soviet Union.
== 1966 coup d'état ==
In February 1966, while Nkrumah was on a state visit to North Vietnam and China, his government was overthrown in a violent coup d'état led by the national military and police forces, with backing from the civil service. The conspirators, led by Joseph Arthur Ankrah, named themselves the National Liberation Council and ruled as a military government for three years. Nkrumah did not learn of the coup until he arrived in China. After the coup, Nkrumah stayed in Beijing for four days, and Premier Zhou Enlai treated him with courtesy.
Nkrumah alluded to American involvement in the coup in his 1969 memoir, Dark Days in Ghana; he may have based this conclusion on documents shown to him by the KGB. In 1978 John Stockwell, former Chief of the Angola Task Force of the CIA turned critic, wrote that agents at the CIA's Accra station "maintained intimate contact with the plotters as a coup was hatched". Afterward, "inside CIA headquarters the Accra station was given full, if unofficial credit for the eventual coup. ...None of this was adequately reflected in the agency's written records." Later that same year, Seymour Hersh, then at The New York Times, defended Stockwell's account, citing "first hand intelligence sources". He claimed that "many CIA operatives in Africa considered the agency's role in the overthrow of Dr. Nkrumah to have been pivotal." These claims have never been verified.
Following the coup, Ghana realigned itself internationally, cutting its close ties to Guinea and the Eastern Bloc, accepting a new friendship with the Western Bloc, and inviting the International Monetary Fund and World Bank to take a leading role in managing the economy. With this reversal, accentuated by the expulsion of immigrants and a new willingness to negotiate with apartheid South Africa, Ghana lost a good deal of its stature in the eyes of African nationalists.
In assessing Nkrumah's legacy, Edward Luttwak argued that he was undone by the growth of political consciousness and his inability to repress potential opponents:
Nkrumah, in spite of his eccentricities, was largely defeated by his own success: the by-product of the considerable economic development achieved by Ghana was to stimulate and educate the masses and the new elite; their attitude to Nkrumah's regime became more and more critical in the light of the education the regime itself provided. When this happens, more and more repression and propaganda are needed to maintain political stability. In spite of considerable efforts, Nkrumah was unable to build a sufficiently ruthless police system. The cause of his downfall was not, therefore, the mismanagement of the economy—which was considerable—but rather the success of much of the development effort.
== Exile and death ==
Nkrumah died on 27 April 1972, in Bucharest, the capital of Romania, of an unknown but apparently incurable sickness. Since the coup, he had been living in the Guinean capital of Conakry, lying low.
== Tributes and legacy ==
Over his lifetime, Nkrumah was awarded honorary doctorates by many universities including Lincoln University (Pennsylvania), Moscow State University (USSR), Cairo University (Egypt), Jagiellonian University (Poland), and Humboldt University (East Germany).
In 2000, he was voted African Man of the Millennium by listeners to the BBC World Service, being described by the BBC as a "Hero of Independence", and an "International symbol of freedom as the leader of the first black African country to shake off the chains of colonial rule."
According to intelligence documents released by the U.S. Department of State's Office of the Historian, "Nkrumah was doing more to undermine [U.S. government] interests than any other black African."
In September 2009, President John Atta Mills declared 21 September (the 100th anniversary of Kwame Nkrumah's birth) to be Founders' Day, a statutory holiday in Ghana to celebrate the legacy of Kwame Nkrumah. In April 2019, President Akufo-Addo approved the Public Holidays (Amendment) Act 2019 which changed 21 September from Founders' Day to Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Day.
Nkrumah generally took a non-aligned Marxist perspective on economics, and believed capitalism had malignant effects that were going to stay with Africa for a long time. Although he was clear on distancing himself from the African socialism of many of his contemporaries, Nkrumah argued that socialism was the system that would best accommodate the changes that capitalism had brought, while still respecting African values. He specifically addresses these issues and his politics in a 1967 essay entitled "African Socialism Revisited":
We know that the traditional African society was founded on principles of egalitarianism. In its actual workings, however, it had various shortcomings. Its humanist impulse, nevertheless, is something that continues to urge us towards our all-African socialist reconstruction. We postulate each man to be an end in himself, not merely a means; and we accept the necessity of guaranteeing each man equal opportunities for his development. The implications of this for sociopolitical practice have to be worked out scientifically, and the necessary social and economic policies pursued with resolution. Any meaningful humanism must begin from egalitarianism and must lead to objectively chosen policies for safeguarding and sustaining egalitarianism. Hence, socialism. Hence, also, scientific socialism.
Nkrumah was also best-known politically for his strong commitment to and promotion of pan-Africanism. He was inspired by the writings of black intellectuals such as Marcus Garvey, W. E. B. Du Bois, and George Padmore, and his relationships with them. Much of his understanding and relationship to these men was created during his years in America as a student. Some would argue that his greatest inspiration was Marcus Garvey, although he also had a meaningful relationship with C. L. R. James. Nkrumah looked to these men to craft a general solution to the ills of Africa. To follow in these intellectual footsteps Nkrumah had intended to continue his education in London, but found himself involved in direct activism. Then, motivated by advice from Du Bois, Nkrumah decided to focus on creating peace in Africa. He became a passionate advocate of the "African Personality", embodied in the slogan "Africa for the Africans", earlier popularised by Edward Wilmot Blyden, and he viewed political independence as a prerequisite for economic independence. Nkrumah's dedications to pan-Africanism in action attracted these intellectuals to his Ghanaian projects. Many Americans, such as Du Bois and Kwame Ture, moved to Ghana to join him in his efforts. Du Bois and Ture are buried there today. His press officer for six years was the Grenadian anticolonialist Sam Morris. Nkrumah's biggest success in this area was his significant influence in the founding of the Organisation of African Unity.
Nkrumah also became a symbol for black liberation in the United States. When in 1958 the Harlem Lawyers Association had an event in Nkrumah's honour, diplomat Ralph Bunche told him:
We salute you, Kwame Nkrumah, not only because you are Prime Minister of Ghana, although this is cause enough. We salute you because you are a true and living representation of our hopes and ideals, of the determination we have to be accepted fully as equal beings, of the pride we have held and nurtured in our African origin, of the freedom of which we know we are capable, of the freedom in which we believe, of the dignity imperative to our stature as men.
In 1961, Nkrumah delivered a speech called "I Speak Of Freedom". During this speech he talked about how "Africa could become one of the greatest forces for good in the world". He mentions how Africa is a land of "vast riches" with mineral resources from that "range from gold and diamonds to uranium and petroleum". Nkrumah says that the reason Africa is not thriving right now is because the European powers have been taking all the wealth for themselves. If Africa could be independent of European rule, he said, then it could truly flourish and contribute positively to the world. In the ending words of this speech Nkrumah calls his people to action by saying "This is our chance. We must act now. Tomorrow may be too late and the opportunity will have passed, and with it the hope of free Africa's survival". This rallied the nation in a nationalistic movement.
In his honour, an annual event called "Journey to Nkroful" was set up to celebrate his birthday. Mausoleum and Museum at Nkroful, Western Region have been named after him that showcase some of the artifacts he used when alive.
Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Park & Museum, Accra has been there to keep memory of him. Also, University of Science and Technology was changed to Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology to recognise his support building a strong education system in the country.
== Personal life ==
Kwame Nkrumah married Fathia Ritzk, an Egyptian Coptic bank worker and former teacher, on the evening of her arrival in Ghana: New Year's Eve, 1957–1958. Fathia's mother refused to bless their marriage, after another one of her children left with a foreign husband.
As a married couple, Fathia and Nkrumah had three children: Gamal (born 1958), Samia (born 1960) and Sekou (born 1964). Gamal is a newspaper journalist, while Samia and Sekou are politicians. Nkrumah also has another son, Francis, a paediatrician (born 1935).
== Cultural depictions ==
In the 2010 book The Other Wes Moore, Nkrumah, during his time in the United States, is noted to have served as a mentor to the author's grandfather for several months upon the immigration of the author's family into the country.
Nkrumah is played by Danny Sapani in the Netflix television series The Crown (season 2, episode 8 "Dear Mrs Kennedy"). The show's portrayal of the historical significance of the Queen's visit to Ghana and dance with Nkrumah has been described as exaggerated in one source interviewing Nat Nuno-Amarteifio, later mayor of Accra, who was a teenage student at the time.
African's Black Star: The Legacy of Kwame Nkrumah is a 2011 film about the rise and fall of this colonial rebellion leader.
A golden statue of Nkrumah is a centrepiece in Ghanaian rapper Serious Klein's 2021 video "Straight Outta Pandemic".
Even though the state film archive was ordered to be burned after the coup, Nkrumah's personal cameraman Chris Hesse was able to preserve 1300 rolls of film which weren't revealed to the public until he was in his 90s. Hesse's attempts to screen the footage publicly were made into a documentary film, The Eyes of Ghana, that was produced by Barack and Michelle Obama and premiered at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival.
== Honours and awards ==
=== Foreign honours ===
== Works by Kwame Nkrumah ==
"Negro History: European Government in Africa", The Lincolnian, 12 April 1938, p. 2 (Lincoln University, Pennsylvania) – see Special Collections and Archives, Lincoln University Archived 17 August 2009 at the Wayback Machine
"Primitive Education in West Africa," Educational Outlook, January 1941 (University of Pennsylvania). See Archived 3 March 2024 at the Wayback Machine
"Education and Nationalism in Africa," Educational Outlook, November 1943 (University of Pennsylvania). See Archived 3 March 2024 at the Wayback Machine
Ghana: The Autobiography of Kwame Nkrumah (1957). ISBN 0-901787-60-4
Africa Must Unite (1963). ISBN 0-901787-13-2
African Personality (1963)
The essence of neo-colonialism is that the State which is subject to it is, in theory, independent and has all the outward trappings of international sovereignty. In reality its economic system and thus its political policy is directed from outside.
Neo-Colonialism, the Last Stage of Imperialism (1965)
Axioms of Kwame Nkrumah (1967). ISBN 0-901787-54-X
African Socialism Revisited (1967)
Challenge of the Congo Archived 5 April 2023 at the Wayback Machine (1967)
Voice From Conakry (1967). ISBN 90-17-87027-3
Dark Days in Ghana (1968). ISBN 0-7178-0046-6
Handbook of Revolutionary Warfare (1968). ISBN 0-7178-0226-4
The Way Out, "Civilian Rule" Fraud and A Call for Positive Action and Armed Struggle (1970)
Consciencism: Philosophy and Ideology for De-Colonisation (1970). ISBN 0-901787-11-6
Class Struggle in Africa (1970). ISBN 0-901787-12-4
The Struggle Continues (1973). ISBN 0-901787-41-8
I Speak of Freedom (1973). ISBN 0-901787-14-0
Revolutionary Path (1973). ISBN 978-0-901787-22-4
== Festival ==
For details see Kwame Nkrumah Festival
== See also ==
Nkrumah government
== Notes ==
== References ==
== Bibliography ==
Addo, Ebenezer Obiri (1997). Kwame Nkrumah: A Case Study of Religion and Politics in Ghana. University Press of America. ISBN 978-0-7618-0785-8.
Birmingham, David (1998). Kwame Nkrumah: The Father of African Nationalism. Ohio University Press. ISBN 978-0-8214-1242-8.
Bourret, F. M. (1960) [1949]. Ghana—The Road to Independence (Revised ed.). Stanford University Press. OCLC 414362.
Clarke, John Henrik (October 1974). "Kwame Nkrumah: His years in America". The Black Scholar. 6 (2): 9–16. doi:10.1080/00064246.1974.11431459. JSTOR 41065759. S2CID 141785632.
Fuller, Harcourt (2014). Building the Ghanaian Nation-State. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-1-137-44856-9.
Mazrui, Ali (2004). Nkrumah's Legacy and Africa's Triple Heritage Between Globalization and Counter Terrorism. Ghana Universities Press. ISBN 978-9964-3-0296-2.
Owusu-Ansah, David (2014). Biographical Dictionary of Ghana (4th ed.). Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 978-0-8108-7242-4.
Rooney, David (1988). Kwame Nkrumah: The Political Kingdom in the Third World. St. Martin's Press. ISBN 978-0-312-02479-6.
Sherwood, Marika (1996). Kwame Nkrumah: The Years Abroad 1935–1947. Freedom Publications. ISBN 978-9988-7716-0-7.
Thompson, W. Scott (1969). Ghana's Foreign Policy 1957–1966. Princeton University Press. OCLC 2616.
== Further reading ==
== External links ==
Faces of Africa Kwame Nkrumah Archived 5 September 2019 at the Wayback Machine
Kwame Nkrumah Mausoleum and Museum at Nkroful, Western Region
Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Park & Museum, Accra Archived 22 January 2015 at the Wayback Machine
Ghana-pedia Kwame Nkrumah
Ghana-pedia Operation Cold Chop: The Fall Of Kwame Nkrumah Archived 22 February 2025 at the Wayback Machine
Excerpt from Commanding Heights Archived 22 September 2017 at the Wayback Machine by Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw
Timeline of events related to the overthrow of Kwame Nkrumah
The Kwame Nkrumah Lectures at the University of Cape Coast, Ghana, 2007 Archived 27 June 2008 at the Wayback Machine
Kwame Nkrumah Information and Resource Site Archived 16 December 2008 at the Wayback Machine
Ghana re-evaluates Nkrumah Archived 5 March 2016 at the Wayback Machine by The Global Post
Dr Kwame Nkrumah's Midnight Speech on the day of Ghana's independence – 6 March 1957.
Newsreel on First Conference of Independent African States Archived 9 July 2015 at the Wayback Machine
"Father of Ghana's independence Kwame Nkrumah died 50 years ago • FRANCE 24 English" Archived 28 April 2024 at the Wayback Machine |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1994_Shane#:~:text=It%20was%20discovered%20on%204,Brooklyn%2C%20Indiana%2C%20United%20States. | 1994 Shane | 1994 Shane, provisional designation 1961 TE, is a dark Adeonian asteroid from the central region of the asteroid belt, approximately 25 kilometers in diameter.
It was discovered on 4 October 1961, by astronomers of the Indiana Asteroid Program conducted at the Goethe Link Observatory near Brooklyn, Indiana, United States. It was later named after American astronomer C. Donald Shane.
== Orbit and classification ==
Shane is a member of the Adeona family (505), a large family of carbonaceous asteroids.
The asteroid orbits the Sun in the intermediate main belt at a distance of 2.1–3.2 AU once every 4 years and 5 months (1,603 days). Its orbit has an eccentricity of 0.21 and an inclination of 10° with respect to the ecliptic. It was first identified as 1939 RN at Simeiz Observatory in 1939, extending Shane's observation arc by 22 years prior to its official discovery observation at Goethe.
== Lightcurve ==
In October 2009, a rotational lightcurve of Shane was obtained from photometric observations at the Via Capote Observatory (G69) in California. It gave a well-defined rotation period of 8.22 hours with a brightness variation of 0.26 magnitude (U=3), superseding a previously obtained period of 8 hours from 1996 (U=n.a.).
== Diameter and albedo ==
According to observations made by the Infrared Astronomical Satellite IRAS, Shane has an albedo of 0.06, while the survey carried out by the Japanese Akari satellite rendered a higher albedo of 0.13 with a corresponding diameter of 18 kilometers. The Collaborative Asteroid Lightcurve Link derives an even lower albedo of 0.04, yet does not classify it as a carbonaceous but rather as a S-type asteroid, which typically have much higher albedos due to their stony surface composition.
== Naming ==
This minor planet was named after American astronomer Charles Donald Shane (1895–1983), director of Lick Observatory, second president of AURA, and instrumental for the establishment of the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile.
Shane played a major role in the planning and construction of the first telescopes and buildings on Kitt Peak National Observatory as well. The 3-meter C. Donald Shane telescope, located at Lick Observatory, was also named after him. The approved naming citation was published by the Minor Planet Center on 1 March 1981 (M.P.C. 5848).
== References ==
== External links ==
Asteroid Lightcurve Database (LCDB), query form (info Archived 16 December 2017 at the Wayback Machine)
Dictionary of Minor Planet Names, Google books
Asteroids and comets rotation curves, CdR – Observatoire de Genève, Raoul Behrend
Discovery Circumstances: Numbered Minor Planets (1)-(5000) – Minor Planet Center
1994 Shane at AstDyS-2, Asteroids—Dynamic Site
Ephemeris · Observation prediction · Orbital info · Proper elements · Observational info
1994 Shane at the JPL Small-Body Database |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danny_Wells | Danny Wells | Jack Westelman (April 7, 1941 – November 28, 2013), professionally known as Danny Wells, was a Canadian actor and comedian. He was best known for his role as Charlie, the bartender on The Jeffersons, as well as his role as Luigi in the live-action/animated series The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!.
== Early life and career ==
Wells was born as Jack Westelman on April 7, 1941, in Montreal to Eli Westelman (September 13, 1913 – April 4, 1996) and Eunice Trottenberg (November 7, 1917 – September 20, 1987). He was Jewish. His acting career spanned more than four decades, beginning in 1972 on the comedy television show Love, American Style.
In 1975, Wells made his film debut in The Strongest Man in the World. He then went on to appear in a string of successful movies including Private Benjamin (1980) starring Goldie Hawn and Eileen Brennan, The Woman in Red (1984) starring Gene Wilder, Magnolia (1999), and The Last Kiss (2006) where he played the Uncle of Michael Weston's character Izzy.
Over his prolific career, Wells did most of his work in television, starring or making guest appearances in more than 80 television shows and movies, including Sanford and Son, CHiPs, The A-Team, and The Fall Guy. In 1975, he starred in the most notable role of his career: "Charlie the Bartender", on the hit television show The Jeffersons. Wells played Charlie as a recurring role throughout the entire 11 season run until the show was cancelled in 1985.
In the 1970s, he portrayed the store manager in television ads for Kmart department stores.
Wells began doing voice work in 1982 when he voiced the character of Stomper #1 in the Ralph Bakshi film Hey Good Looking. From there he went on to voice numerous characters for film, television and video games, including Descent 3 and Wizardry 8. His first television series was Heathcliff and The Catillac Cats (1984), which lead to the film Heathcliff: The Movie in 1986.
In 2002, Wells starred as film executive Jack L. Warner in the made-for-television movie "Gleason" starring Brad Garrett as Jackie Gleason.
As composer, Wells wrote the music for the 1979 CBS TV movie Never Say Never starring George Kennedy and Anne Schedeen.
=== The Super Mario Bros. Super Show! ===
Wells voiced several other animated series such as Batman: The Animated Series, Grossology and Johnny Bravo, but it was in 1989 that Wells starred in and voiced the animated character that he is perhaps best remembered by younger audiences as Luigi from The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!.
In an interview with "Slam" magazine, Wells recalled the popularity of the show: "We went on the air, three o'clock in the afternoon, with no publicity or P.R. at all. There was no pre-build-up to this show, nothing ... they just threw us out there. In three weeks, we became number one. We beat Disney, we beat everybody, without any publicity, without any help from anybody, this show went to the number one daytime cartoon show. They put us up against Mickey Mouse, it didn't matter, we beat them. It was amazing."
=== The Jeffersons ===
According to his cousin, television reviewer Alan Sepinwall, Wells worked steadily throughout the 1970s and 1980s. In 1975, Wells landed the role of "Charlie the Bartender" on the CBS television show The Jeffersons. His character, Charlie, owned "Charlie's Bar" on the first floor of the Colby East luxury apartment building where the Jeffersons and Willises resided. On the show, Wells' character would offer advice to the residents.
Charlie the Bartender quickly became a recurring role and towards the end of the series, he even had a few central episodes written specifically for him. In season 9, episode 5 ("Charlie's Angels"), Charlie borrows money from Tom Willis (played by Franklin Cover) in hopes of upgrading his bar and increasing business by way of risque dressed waitresses. Louise (played by Isabel Sanford) and Helen (played by Roxie Roker) take offense when they feel that the changes are exploiting the women. At the beginning of the final season, Charlie is facing eviction. George becomes partners with Charlie and buys the bar. In episode 17 of season 11, ("A Secret in the Back Room") it is discovered that Charlie has been sleeping in the back room due to a serious drinking problem that has separated him from his wife. George and Louise help him get his life back together. In another episode, Charlie's bar is just breaking even. Louise plans to put the bar back in the black with a private party for a biker gang ("The Gang’s All Here").
== Death ==
Wells died in Toronto on November 28, 2013, of cancer at the age of 72. He was buried in Mount Sinai Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles, California. For fans of The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!, Wells' death was poignant since it was Nintendo's "Year of Luigi" and the 30th Anniversary celebration of the character (1983). His obituary states that "Danny followed his dreams ... he made them laugh." Wells' headstone inscription reads: "Keep 'em laughing."
== Filmography ==
=== Film ===
=== Television ===
=== Video games ===
== References ==
== External links ==
Danny Wells at IMDb
Celebrities: Danny Wells
List of The Jeffersons Characters
Danny Wells at Find a Grave |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermogenes_of_Xanthos#:~:text=Hermogenes%20specialized%20in,events%20that%20year. | Hermogenes of Xanthos | Hermogenes, son of Apollonios (Ancient Greek: Ἑρμογένης Ἀπολλωνίου) also known as Hermogenes of Xanthos (Ancient Greek: Ἑρμογένης Ξάνθιος), became a Roman citizen under the name Titus Flavius Hermogenes (Ancient Greek: Τίτος Φλάουιος Ἑρμογένης), whose nickname was "the Horse" (ὁ Ἵππος). He was a Greek athlete from the city-state of Xanthos in Lycia, living in the 1st century AD.
A specialist in foot racing, Hermogenes won thirty-one titles at the "periodic" Panhellenic Games, including eight at the Olympic Games. He also excelled in the numerous isolympic competitions that had multiplied by then. He thus triumphed in the race in armor at the Capitoline Games, during their recreation in Rome by Domitian in 86 AD. The emperor is said to have granted him Roman citizenship as a reward. A commemorative monument was dedicated to him, probably as early as 90 AD, at the entrance of the Letoon of Xanthos, in a place of honor.
== Athlete ==
Hermogenes was the son of Apollonios according to the inscription on his commemorative monument in Xanthos, or the son of Demetrios per the inscription on the winners’ list at the Sebasta (the "Augustan Games") of Neapolis. According to Miranda de Martino, who analyzed the latter inscription, this discrepancy in parentage could be due to "Roman" adoption. Hermogenes specialized in foot racing events and excelled in the stadion, a length of one stadium (approximately 192 m); the diaulos, a length of two stadiums (approximately 384 m); and the hoplitodromos, the armed race of two stadiums.
Nicknamed "the Horse" (ὁ Ἵππος), Hermogenes won eight Olympic crowns during the 80s AD. He competed as a "triastes" at the 215th and 217th Olympic Games, in 81 and 89 AD, securing victories in the stadion, diaulos, and hoplitodromos events. Despite not winning the stadion event in 85 AD, he managed to maintain his title in the other two events that year. Luigi Moretti suggests that victories in different events such as the dolichos (long-distance race) or the pentathlon would not be excluded: a stadion runner, therefore a sprinter, could possess the necessary skills for such competitions.
He is credited with five victories at the Pythian Games, nine victories at the Isthmian Games, and nine others at the Nemean Games. He also won the armed race at the Capitoline Games during their recreation (modeled after the Olympic Games) by Domitian in Rome in 86. In other isolympic competitions, he achieved seven victories (called "shields") at the Heraia of Argos, five victories at the games of Pergamon (games of the Asian koinon), five at the Balbillea (Ephesus), four at the Actia (Nicopolis), four at the Sebasta (the "Augustan Games") of Neapolis, four at the games of Smyrna (games of the Asian koinon), four at the games of Syria, Cilicia, and Phoenicia (celebrated in Antioch as part of the imperial cult), three at the Sebasta of Alexandria, as well as in "many other competitions."
Hermogenes won the "armed race from the trophy" at the Eleutheria of Plataea, celebrating the Battle of Plataea in 479 BC. This race, longer than a usual hoplitodromos (two stades), spanned approximately fifteen stades from the battlefield trophy to the city's altar of Zeus Eleutherios ("Zeus the Liberator"). The champion was hailed as the "best among the Greeks."
== Honors ==
Hermogenes, a citizen of Xanthos, was granted Roman citizenship as a reward for his victory at the Capitoline Games by one of the Flavian emperors, likely Domitian. This is indicated by his choice of praenomen (Titus, one of Domitian's names) and gentilicium (Flavius). The inscription on the commemorative monument at the Letoon of Xanthos also reveals that Hermogenes was a citizen of Patara (a neighboring Lycian city closely linked to Xanthos), Alexandria (specifically mentioned as a prestigious city), as well as "in all the most eminent cities of Asia and Greece," likely due to his success in games held in those cities, which often led to the granting of citizenship.
He also held the title of paradoxonikès, "extraordinary victor." This term was originally used for athletes who achieved victory despite all odds being against them. It was specifically given to athletes who won both wrestling and pankration on the same day at the same games, making them successors of Heracles. The title also extended to athletes who won two or three victories at the same games.
A complex monument dedicated to Hermogenes was erected in his honor, possibly around 90 AD, at the entrance of the Letoon of Xanthos. The Letoon was the federal sanctuary of the Lycian Confederation. The monument, measuring 3.60 meters in length and approximately 1 to 1.40 meters in height with a width of just over 90 centimeters, comprised four inscribed pedestals with two bronze statues at each end. The statue nearest to the propylaeum entrance of the sanctuary portrayed a running athlete in a welcoming pose to visitors or pilgrims in a three-quarter view.
After his victories, the emperor appointed him xystarch for life for all the games organized in his native Lycia. This position, named after the xystos, the covered part of the gymnasium where athletes could train in winter, referred in Roman times to the president of an association of athletes and, by extension, the organizer of games. Only the emperor could appoint a xystarch. Typically, the position was limited to a single city, but Hermogenes' responsibilities extended to an entire province, which was very rare and a testament of his great renown.
== Annexes ==
=== Ancient literary sources ===
Eusebius. Chronicle. Vol. I. pp. 70–82.
Pausanias. Description de la Grèce (in French). pp. 6, 13, 3.
=== Bibliography ===
Balland, André; Le Roy, Christian (1984). "Le Monument de Titus Flavius Hermogénès au Létoon de Xanthos". Revue Archéologique (in French). 2: 325–349.
Christesen, Paul (2007). Olympic Victor Lists and Ancient Greek History. New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-86634-7.
Decker, Wolfgang (2014). Antike Spitzensportler : Athletenbiographien aus dem Alten Orient, Ägypten und Griechenland (in German). Hildesheim: Arete Verlag. ISBN 978-3-942468-23-7.
Golden, Mark (2004). Sport in the Ancient World from A to Z. London: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-24881-7.
Harris, Harold Arthur (1964). Greek athletes and athletics. London: Hutchinson.
Miranda de Martino, Elena (2013). "Ritratti di Campioni dai Sebastà di Napoli". Mediterraneo Antico (in Italian). XVI (II): 519–536.
Matz, David (1991). Greek and Roman Sport : A Dictionnary of Athletes and Events from the Eighth Century B. C. to the Third Century A. D. Jefferson and London: McFarland & Company. ISBN 0-89950-558-9.
Moretti, Luigi (1959). Olympionikai, i vincitori negli antichi agoni olimpici (in Italian). Vol. VIII. Atti della Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei. pp. 55–199.
Pleket, H. W; Stroud, R. S (1984). "SEG 34-1314-1317. Xanthos. Monument for the athlete Titus Flavius Hermogenes, ca 90 A.D.". Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum. doi:10.1163/1874-6772_seg_a34_1314_1317.
=== External links ===
Sport resource (in French): Olympedia
== Notes and references ==
=== Notes ===
=== References === |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Gennes_Prize#:~:text=The%20De%20Gennes%20Prize%20(formerly%20known%20as%20the%20Prize%20for%20Materials%20Chemistry)%20was%20established%20in%202008 | De Gennes Prize | The De Gennes Prize (formerly known as the Prize for Materials Chemistry) was established in 2008 and is awarded biennially by the Royal Society of Chemistry for outstanding and exceptional work in the field of materials chemistry. The de Gennes Prize honours the work of Pierre-Gilles de Gennes.
The recipient of the de Gennes Prize receives £5000, a medal and certificate and completes a UK lecture tour.
Pierre-Gilles de Gennes was born in Paris, France, in 1932. After graduating in 1955 from Ecole Normale, de Gennes was a research engineer at the Atomic Energy Centre (Saclay). After a brief time at University of California, Berkeley and 27 months in the French Navy, de Gennes became assistant professor at the University of Paris in Orsay. During his time at Orsay de Gennes worked on superconductors and liquid crystals.
In 1991, Pierre-Gilles de Gennes was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics for studying the boundary lines between order and disorder in materials like liquid crystals.
After receiving the Nobel Prize, de Gennes visited roughly 200 high schools over a two-year period, from 1992 to 1994, in which he delivered talks on science, innovation and common sense to the students. Pierre-Gilles de Gennes died at the age of 74, on 18 May 2007.
== Winners ==
Source: Royal Society of Chemistry
2009 (2009): Matthew Rosseinsky, University of Liverpool.
2011 (2011): Steve Mann, University of Bristol.
2013 (2013): Susumu Kitagawa, Kyoto University.
2015 (2015): Mercouri Kanatzidis, Northwestern University
2017 (2017): Ian Manners, University of Bristol
2019 (2019): Eugenia Kumacheva, University of Toronto
2021 (2021): Chad Mirkin, Northwestern University
2023: Thuc-Quyen Nguyen, University of California Santa Barbara.
2025 (2025): Samson Jenekhe, University of Washington
== See also ==
List of chemistry awards
== References == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pakistan_International_Airlines#:~:text=On%2020%20January%201978%2C%20a,route%20to%20Karachi%20from%20Sukkur. | Pakistan International Airlines | Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) is the flag carrier of Pakistan. With its primary hub at Jinnah International Airport in Karachi, the airline also operates from its secondary hubs at Allama Iqbal International Airport in Lahore and at Islamabad International Airport.
Founded on 29 October 1946 by Mirza Ahmad Ispahani and Adamjee Haji Dawood as Orient Airways, the airline was initially based in Calcutta, British India, before shifting operations to the newly independent state of Pakistan in August 1947. Orient Airways was nationalised to form the Pakistan International Airlines Corporation (PIAC). The new airline commenced international services in 1955 to London, via Cairo and Rome. In 1964, it became the first non-Communist airline to fly to China. The airline assisted in the establishment of Emirates in 1985. In 2004, PIA became the launch customer of the Boeing 777-200LR. On 10 November 2005, PIA used the Boeing 777-200LR to complete the world's longest nonstop flight by a commercial airliner. This flight lasted 22 hours and 22 minutes on the eastbound route between Hong Kong and London.
PIA is Pakistan's largest airline and operates a fleet of 32 aircraft, Mostly various Boeing 777 types, Airbus A320s and ATR aircraft. The airline operates a frequent flyer program, Awards +Plus. It is not part of any airline alliance. The airline operates nearly 50 flights daily, servicing 20 domestic destinations and 28 international destinations across Asia, Europe, the Middle East and North America. It is under the administrative control of the Secretary to the Government of Pakistan for Aviation.
In addition to commercial flight operations, PIA also owns the Sofitel Paris, The Scribe Hotel in Paris, and The Roosevelt Hotel in New York City. The Roosevelt is now used as a homeless shelter.
The Government of Pakistan's report in 2020 emphasised that after Air Marshals Nur Khan and Asghar Khan—whose tenures were regarded in aviation circles as the "Golden Age of PIA"—departed from their leadership roles, the airline began a downward trajectory, suffering billions in losses. Its assets declined, disciplinary issues escalated, and unions indirectly took control of management. Aircraft that were capable of flying were grounded, and repairable equipment was neglected.
On 30 June 2020, PIA was banned from flying in European airspace initially for six months, starting on 1 July 2020, and then indefinitely after EASA determined that the airline was not capable of certifying and overseeing its operators and aircraft in accordance with applicable international standards. This decision was made soon after it was revealed that at least a fourth of all pilots' licences issued in Pakistan were not genuine. By 9 July 2020, the airline was also banned by the United Kingdom and the United States.
On November 29, 2024, the EASA lifted its ban on PIA and other Pakistani carriers, allowing travel between Pakistan and Europe but not the UK. The UK lifted its ban on 16 July 2025.
== Early years ==
Pakistan International Airlines can trace its origins to the days when Pakistan had not gained independence and was still part of the British Raj until 1947. In the early 1930s, Imperial Airways operated its long-haul routes by creating a lot of small airports across Africa and Asia. The Handley Page H.P.42 aircraft was Imperial Airways' first major success, as it was specially designed to handle operations from unprepared ground.
In 1945, the country's founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah recognised the need for a flag carrier for the future nation and sought financial help from wealthy businessmen Mirza Ahmad Ispahani and Adamjee Haji Dawood. As a result, the new airline, Orient Airways, was registered in Kolkata (then known as Calcutta) on 23 October 1946. Orient became the first and only Muslim-owned airline in the British Raj.
In February 1947, the airline bought three Douglas DC-3 aircraft and obtained a licence to fly in May of the same year. The airline started its operations on 30 June 1947, offering services in British India from Calcutta to Sittwe and Rangoon (present-day Yangon).
== Post-independence ==
On 14 August 1947, Pakistan gained independence and Orient Airways started relief operations for the new country. The airline was entrusted with the task of servicing air routes between East and West Pakistan. By 1949, Orient acquired three Convair CV-240s to service the Karachi-Delhi-Kolkata-Dhaka route and became the first Asian airline to operate Convair aircraft.
=== 1950s ===
Orient's traffic continuously declined until 1953 as Great Britain's BOAC had been granted rights to carry passengers between the two wings of Pakistan, while two other local competitors also began serving Orient routes. As a result of losses, the Pakistani government began subsidising Orient's operations through a 1952 contract for the purchase of three Lockheed L-1049 Super Constellations registered to the government's newly established subsidiary, Pakistan International Airlines (PIA), at the cost of 25 million rupees. PIA had been established as a department of Pakistan's Civil Aviation Authority, and was tasked with operation and maintenance of the new Lockheed aircraft.
Pakistan's government established the Pakistan International Airlines Corporation through the merger of Orient Airways with Pakistan International Airlines on 1 October 1953 by an interim joint operating agreement in which the government assumed financial control of the airline, while Orient's operations and ground assets could be complemented by the aircraft of Pakistan International Airlines – although Orient Airways continued to operate under its name for a few more years.
Pakistan's Ministry of Defence took over operations from the Civil Aviation Authority in early 1954, while the chairman of Orient Airways became the CEO of PIA, and foreign staff brought in to help relaunch the airline. On 7 June 1954, Orient Airways began nonstop flight services between East and West Pakistan, with service from Karachi to Dhaka using Pakistan International Airlines' Lockheed aircraft that had been ordered in 1952 and delivered in early 1954. The route was subsidised by the government so that middle-class Pakistanis could afford to fly the route, with rates that may have been the lowest in the world at the time. The airline also introduced two new domestic routes: Karachi–Lahore–Peshawar and Karachi–Quetta–Lahore.
On 11 March 1955, Orient Airways and Pakistan International Airlines were formally merged as part of the Pakistan International Airlines Corporation Ordinance, 1955. Orient Airways ceased operations while the Government of Pakistan took a majority holding in the airline. The new PIA had a fleet of three L-I049C Super Constellations, two Convair CV-240s, and eleven DC-3s.
The newly relaunched airline also inaugurated its first international route, Karachi-London Heathrow Airport via Cairo and Rome, using the newly acquired Lockheed L-1049C Super Constellations. The airline continued using DC-3s on domestic routes in Pakistan. PIA carried 113,165 passengers in 1955 – 50% higher than in 1954.
In May 1956, PIA ordered five Vickers Viscount 815s. The airline also entered into a partnership with PanAm to train PIA's personnel in 1956. In 1957–1958, passenger numbers rose to 208,000, necessitating the purchase of two additional Lockheed Super Constellations. The appointment of Air Marshal Nur Khan as the managing director of PIA in 1959 heralded an era of success for PIA.
=== 1960s ===
In February 1960, PIA wet-leased a Boeing 707 from Pan American Airlines and introduced it onto the Karachi-London route on 7 March 1960 initially using Pan Am pilots, thereby becoming the second Asian airline to induct and commercially operate a jet aircraft in its fleet after Air India. An all-Pakistani crew began operation of the 707 from 20 June 1960 onwards. By the end of 1960, PIA, for the first time, entered financial profitability.
With the newly acquired aircraft, the airline introduced its first trans-Atlantic route Karachi-New York JFK (then known as Idlewild) via London Heathrow on 5 May 1961, which was suspended in February 1963. In 1961, it expanded its fleet by placing orders for 3 Boeing 720s, which were delivered in 1962. On 2 January 1962, a PIA Boeing 720B flown by Captain Abdullah Beg from London to Karachi established a world record for speed over a commercial airline route of 938.78 km/h (582.98 mph), a record which still holds to this day. Fokker F27 Friendships, and Sikorsky helicopters were also ordered and delivered in 1963, with the helicopters used to provide air service to 20 towns in East Pakistan until 1966.
The helicopters were retired in 1966 and a reduced network of eight cities was served by Fokker F27 aircraft. Upon the establishment of ties between Pakistan and the People's Republic of China, PIA started flying the Dhaka-Guangzhou-Shanghai route on 29 April 1964, becoming the first airline of a non-communist country flying to the People's Republic of China. On 10 May 1964, PIA became the first non-Soviet airline offering flights to Europe via Moscow.
At the outbreak of the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965, the Pakistani Armed Forces used PIA's services for logistics and transport purposes. The Viscounts were phased out in 1966 and were replaced by four Hawker Siddeley Tridents.
PIA's route network grew rapidly in the mid to late 1960s: Dhahran was added in 1962, while Cairo services resumed. In 1966, Paris, Istanbul, Baghdad, Kuwait, Jeddah and Nairobi were added to PIA's routes. Bangkok was added in 1967, while Manila, Tokyo, and Damascus were added in 1969.
During a news conference in Karachi on 11 May 1967, Air Marshal Asghar Khan announced that the airline had become the fifth largest profit-making airline in the world, carrying one million passengers annually. At a press conference held at the PIA headquarters in Karachi in July 1967, Asghar Khan announced plans for the construction of a series of small hotels in major cities and resort areas across the country, with a total investment of PKR 44.5 million (approximately $9,345,000). The project included building 64-room hotels in Sylhet, Sargodha, Sukkur, Mohenjo-daro, Chitral, Gilgit, and Kaptai, and 88-room hotels in Khulna, Lyallpur, Multan, and Murree, with an additional 20 cottages attached to the new 644 room Kaptai Hotel. Furthermore, Peshawar and Chittagong will each have hotels with 125 rooms.
These establishments are designed to be European-style motels equipped with modern amenities such as air conditioning, heating, parking facilities, and swimming pools. The cost of rooms would range from twenty to thirty Pakistani rupees, approximately four to five dollars per person, depending on the room type. The hotels were completed in 1970. A new holding company was established to attract domestic investment for this venture, in addition to forming small companies in the cities where the hotels will be located. For the foreign exchange portion, which constitutes 20% of the total cost, successful discussions were conducted with the Export-Import Bank. The entire project relied on private investment, with no financial participation from the Government of Pakistan. Air Marshal Asghar Khan mentioned that the PIA Board of Directors approved an investment of approximately Rs. 10 million for the project. Pakistan Services Ltd., which operated the Intercontinental hotel chain, contributed significantly. Local municipal bodies were approached for investment as well. Bechtel Corp. of New York prepared the design and cost estimates for the proposed motels. To ensure cost-effectiveness and timely execution, it was recommended that a standardised design be used for all the motels, utilising local materials, equipment, and expertise as much as possible.
=== 1970s ===
On 3 December 1971, a French national's attempt to hijack a PIA flight from Paris to Karachi was thwarted by French security forces. Transatlantic flights to New York City were resumed in May 1972 with a stopover in Europe. With the establishment of cordial ties between the Libyan and Pakistani governments in the early 1970s, PIA added Tripoli to its network in 1972. PIA also signed an agreement with Yugoslav airline JAT (today known as Air Serbia) in 1972 to lease two PIA Boeing 707s to JAT.
PIA acquired McDonnell Douglas DC-10s in 1973 to replace its remaining Boeing 707-300s. Nur Khan was appointed as PIA executive for the second term in 1974. In 1974, PIA launched Pakistan International Cargo, offering air freight and cargo services.
The latter half of the decade witnessed a further expansion of PIA's fleet with the introduction of Boeing 747s, with its first two aircraft leased from TAP Air Portugal in 1976. By 1976–7, PIA carried 2.2 million passengers, compared to 698,000 in 1972–3. Revenues in 1976 rose sharply compared to 1975, with the airline revenues of $134 million in the July–December period of 1976. On 20 January 1978, a PIA Fokker 27 was hijacked en route to Karachi from Sukkur.
For the first time since its inauguration, PIA started providing technical and administrative assistance or leased aircraft to foreign airlines including Air China, Air Malta, Choson Minhang (today known as Air Koryo), Philippine Airlines, Somali Airlines, and Yemenia. A subsidiary of PIA also started providing hotel management services in the United Arab Emirates towards the end of the decade. Political upheaval in Pakistan in the late 1970s began to impact PIA's operations negatively.
Tim Clark previously worked at the airline before moving onto found Emirates.
=== 1980s ===
The 1980s saw a continuation of PIA growth. The decade began with the opening of a cargo handling centre at Karachi airport, duty-free shops, the first C and D safety checks on its entire fleet, as well as the introduction of the airline's first Airbus A300B4-200 aircraft. In 1981, PIA had an employee workforce of almost 24,000, which despite being reduced to 20,000 by 1983 still resulted in PIA having the world's highest ratio of employees to aircraft. PIA's operations became increasingly de-centralised during the early 1980s, with responsibilities being split between new departments. Despite de-centralisation, PIA reported its highest ever profits in 1981-82, followed by record profits again in 1983-84.
In 1984, the airline introduced the Night Coach service as a low-cost alternative to day-time domestic flights. In the following years, PIA Planetarium was inaugurated in Karachi which was followed by planetaria in Lahore and Peshawar. These planetariums featured retired PIA aircraft on display for educational and observational purposes. Two more retired Boeing 720B aircraft were donated to the planetaria in Karachi and later on Lahore. PIA profits again rose in 1984–5.
In June 1985, PIA became the first Asian airline to operate the Boeing 737-300 aircraft, after six of the aircraft were delivered. Pakistan International Airlines also played a significant role in establishing UAE's Emirates airline in 1985 by providing technical and administrative assistance to the new carrier as well as leasing a new Boeing 737–300 and an Airbus A300B4-200. In late 1987 and early 1988, services to Malé, Manchester, and Toronto were introduced.
=== 1990s ===
PIA began to sustain operating losses and liquidity problems throughout the 1990s due to frequent pilot strikes, issues with various vendors, over-staffing, and political interference in airline management. In 1990, First Officer Maliha Sami became the first female pilot of PIA when she took off on the Karachi-Panjgur-Turbat-Gwadar route. In June 1991, PIA took delivery of its first of six Airbus A310-300s. With the new aircraft, the airline introduced flights to Tashkent in 1992 and to Zürich in 1993.
In March 1993, AVM Farooq Umar became managing director of the airline. An Open Skies agreement between Karachi to Dubai was agreed upon in 1993, and 12 private airlines were allowed to operate domestically in Pakistan. Both steps came simultaneously and put enormous pressure on PIA's financial performance, though PIA launched six new routes to the Persian Gulf and CIS countries, along with a tourist 'Air Safari' scenic flight over the Karakoram Mountains in 1994. Non-stop flights from Lahore and Islamabad to JFK and Canada were launched, while PIA added Jakarta, Fujairah, Baku, and Al-Ain to its network in 1994. In addition, PIA became a client of three flight reservation systems, namely: SABRE, Galileo, and Amadeus.
A Tupolev Tu-154 aircraft was also leased briefly in 1996 to cope with a surge in passenger traffic during summer 1996. Flights to Beirut were resumed the same year as well before being discontinued a few years later. In 1999, PIA leased five Boeing 747–300 aircraft from Cathay Pacific to replace its Boeing 747-200M fleet. The aircraft were painted with a new livery, a handwork Pashmina tail, on white body and large Pakistan titles on the front fuselage. The livery was adopted in the early 90s but due to some copyright issues, it was dropped. The Boeing 747-300s continued to bear the new livery, but with a plain green tail with PIA titles. The other aircraft in the fleet were repainted in early 1990s livery.
=== 2000s ===
The War in Afghanistan following the attacks on 11 September 2001 negatively impacted PIA's operations as Afghan airspace was closed. However, following the restructuring of the airline under new management in April 2001, the airline again became profitable. Cost per employee dropped 24% between 2000 and 2003, and lower engineering and maintenance costs led to enhanced airline revenue.
In July 2002, PIA purchased six Boeing 747–300 aircraft from Cathay Pacific, five of which were already on lease. The sixth one arrived shortly afterwards and was used mainly on its North American and European routes. In October 2002, after ten years without any new orders, the airline placed an order for eight Boeing 777 aircraft. The order included all three variants of 777, i.e. three 777-200ER (Extended Range), two 777-200LR (Longer Range), and three 777-300ER versions. PIA was the launch customer that revived the Boeing 777-200LR project that, until then, only had three orders.
Boeing delivered the first of three 777-200ER aircraft to PIA in January 2004, and PIA introduced a new livery for the 777-200ERs that was applied to most of its fleet. PIA also leased six more Airbus A310-300 aircraft directly from Airbus. On 3 November 2005, PIA placed an order to purchase seven ATR 42-500 aircraft to replace its ageing fleet of Fokker F27 Friendships. On 10 November 2005, PIA used the 777-200LR to fly the world's longest flight by a commercial airliner, flying over 21,000 kilometres on an eastbound flight from Hong Kong to London for 22 hours and 22 minutes – a record which still stands as of late 2019. On 6 December 2005, PIA acquired another new Boeing 777-200ER on a ten-year lease. The same year, Ayesha Rabia Naveed became the first Pakistani woman to captain a scheduled commercial flight. The following year, she captained a flight with the first all-woman crew. On 23 December 2006, PIA took delivery of its first Boeing 777-300ER. The remaining aircraft were delivered in January 2007.
On 25 February 2006, Boeing delivered its first 777-200LR to PIA. ATR delivered two of the seven ordered ATR 42s to PIA in May and December 2006 respectively, following which the airline ceased using military Lockheed C-130 Hercules for passenger services in northern areas of Pakistan. The military aircraft were being used after the PIA Flight 688 accident.
Under the careful supervision and guidance of Mr. Syed Shah, who was serving as the Station Manager at the time, Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) initiated the induction of long-range 777 aircraft into its fleet. This pivotal move allowed PIA to offer non-stop flights from Toronto to Karachi, Islamabad, and Lahore, beginning on 3 March 2006.
The introduction of the long-range 777 aircraft into PIA's fleet marked a significant milestone in the airline's history.
As a result of this strategic decision, PIA was able to offer a more efficient and seamless travel experience for its passengers, enabling them to travel non-stop to their desired destinations in Pakistan. This move also positioned PIA as a prominent player in the aviation industry, further cementing its reputation as a reliable and customer-centric airline. PIA had also planned non-stop flights to New York City, Chicago, Washington, and Houston but was not permitted by US authorities (unless the airline implemented a European stopover on the flight to American cities) due to security concerns after 9/11.
A PIA flight from Multan crashed in July 2006, killing 45. A government inquiry afterward blamed aging aircraft for the crash. Houston services also ended in 2006. Following the crash, on 5 March 2007, the European Commission banned all but 9 of PIA's 42-strong fleet from flying to Europe, citing safety concerns over its ageing aircraft. The fleet of Boeing 777s was exempted from the ban, but 15 aircraft were over 20 years old by this point. PIA claimed that the ban was discriminatory and unjustifiable.
The ban on some of the aircraft was lifted after four months on 5 July 2007, following an inspection by the European Union Air Safety Administration. Of the eleven aircraft allowed to resume operations to the EU, five were Boeing 747-300s, and the remaining six were Airbus A310-300s. On 29 November 2007, the EU completely removed the ban, and PIA's entire fleet was permitted to fly to Europe.
=== 2010s ===
In 2010, PIA altered its livery. The tail design was replaced with a much larger version of the Pakistan national flag and added the text "Pakistan International" in gold writing underneath the large billboard-style PIA on the fuselage. The green stripe was modified to include gold and was extended to the rear of the fuselage.
By 2011, PIA began to be unprofitable again, requiring government subsidies.
In 2014, PIA leased four Boeing 737-800s. PIA also issued a request for tender for four Boeing 777-300ERs, however, the bids for the 777s were not accepted. The airline did lease Airbus A320 aircraft and inducted two A320-214s in its fleet in 2014. Another wet-leased A320-211s joined PIA on 11 August 2014. In October 2014, the airline again wet-leased three Boeing 737-800s, and it also accepted bids to dry lease five ATR 72–500s for eight years. In 2015, after serving PIA for 16 years, the last of PIA's Boeing 747-300s were phased out.
In early 2016, PIA was fundamentally grounded for an entire week as employees walked out en masse following the deaths of two employees in a demonstration against the airline's privatisation. In August 2016, PIA launched a new "Premier Service" for flights to London, using an Airbus A330-300 wet-leased from SriLankan Airlines. The wet-lease period ended after six months, and as a result, the A330-300 was returned to SriLankan Airlines, and the Premier Service discontinued. By the end of 2016, the airline was saddled with $3 billion in debt.
In January 2017, PIA retired all of the Airbus A310-300s from its fleet. For replacement, PIA leased four Boeing 737-800s from Pegasus Airlines, which were returned later on completion of the lease period. After over 50 years of service, PIA service to New York ended in October 2017 as a result of TSA regulation preventing nonstop flights from Pakistan and the US, leaving Toronto as PIA's only destination in North America – which continues to be served by nonstop flights from Karachi, Lahore, and Islamabad.
In 2017, PIA decided to replace its reservation and ticketing system "Sabre" with a Turkish-origin system called "Hitit". Both PIA & Hitit signed an agreement and in September 2018, the airline successfully switched to the new system. At the end of 2018, the airline was burdened with $3.3 billion in debt, up from $2.97 the year before, and thus requiring government bailouts for continued operation. With the demise of Shaheen Air, PIA launched routes that had previously been served only by Shaheen.
New profitable routes were launched in 2019, while profitable routes such as Karachi-Toronto saw increased frequencies. six unprofitable routes were discontinued in 2019. In April 2019, PIA claimed that its revenues almost matched operating costs. Later that year following a visit of TSA officials to the Islamabad International Airport in July 2019, PIA expressed hope that non-stop flights to the US would be permitted. In August 2019, PIA laid off 1,000 "redundant employees". In September, PIA announced that it would lease additional aircraft to increase the airline's fleet to 37 by 2020, and 45 by 2023. By the end of 2019, PIA reported a 41% increase in year-on-year revenue due to discontinuation of unprofitable routes, reintroduction of grounded aircraft, and a sharp increase in cargo-space utilisation.
=== 2020s ===
For the first time in its history, PIA operated a relief flight from Lahore to Melbourne, Australia, during the COVID-19 pandemic.
On 22 May 2020, a PIA Airbus A320-214 AP-BLD, crashed near Karachi airport with 99 people on board. The flight was en route to Karachi from Lahore. Flight PK8303, carrying 91 passengers and eight crew members on board, crashed while on the descent towards the runway of Jinnah International Airport, killing 97 while two passengers survived. The cause of the crash was due to the aircraft being badly damaged in the first belly landing, with both engines flaming out during the go-around. The final report listed following as the primary reasons: human error, non-adherence to SOPs and disregard of ATC instructions during the event flight, lack of communication between the ATC and the flight crew.
The International Air Transport Association (IATA) communicated concerns over the "serious lapse in licensing and safety oversight by the aviation regulator".
In November 2020, PIA shut down its courier arm, SpeedEx, whose infrastructure was scattered over 74 domestic destinations, and laid off its 320 employees.
In December 2020, PIA announced a plan to lay off half of its employees and transferred its engineering arm, Precision Engineering Complex (PEC), to the Pakistan Air Force.
On 24 June 2020, in the wake of Flight 8303 crash, Pakistani aviation minister Ghulam Sarwar Khan told Parliament that 262 of Pakistan's 860 active, licensed pilots had been found to have suspicious or fake licences. They were suspected of having paid someone else to take their certification examination on their behalf. PIA subsequently grounded 150 of its 434 pilots on suspicion of having a bogus license. Later, the employment of seven pilots was terminated.
Almost a week after the comments made from pakistan's aviation minister, the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) revoked PIA's 'third part authorisation', subsequently banning PIA from flying in European airspace for six months from the following day, following multiple safety failings.
Following EU's decision to ban PIA, the United States banned the airline because of concerns about its certification of pilots on 9 July 2020. By that date, PIA was also banned from flights in the United Kingdom, and Pakistani pilots in Vietnam and Malaysia were grounded on a temporary basis. I addition, on 15 July 2020, the US Federal Aviation Administration downgraded Pakistan's International Aviation Safety Assessment rating to Category 2, preventing Pakistani airlines including PIA from establishing new services in the United States or carrying the code of any US airline.
On 18 July, PIA dismissed seven pilots and one member of cabin crew whose licences had been revoked by the country's Civil Aviation Authority (CAA).
On 28 December, the EU ban was extended for three more months, stating that an official inspection of the CAA would have to be performed first. On 16 March 2021, the ban was extended to July. Less than a month later, the ban was extended indefinitely, following another safety concern regarding the CAA that was made public by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). ICAO has yet to perform safety audit of the CAA. The European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) stated that the ICAO's safety audit would be a sign of improvement.
On 6 November 2021, the first sign of improvement appeared when the CAA received positive feedback from Europe's Safety Audit for Foreign-Origin Aircraft (SAFA).
In late 2023, PIA was forced to cancel numerous flights due to unpaid fuel bills. Resulting cancelations resulted in multiple instances of customer anger creating viral social media content. State-owned Pakistan State Oil suspended fueling of PIA aircraft after PIA's request for additional government funding was denied.
Further improvements were made on 8 March 2023, when PIA completed an online safety audit conducted by EASA.
On 29 November 2024, EASA lifted the EU ban on PIA, citing improvements in the CAA's oversight. PIA subsequentially announced the resumption of flights to Europe, beginning with a flight to Paris that took off on 10 January 2025. However, PIA subsequently apologised after it released an advertisement for the event, which was criticised for using imagery reminiscent of the September 11 attacks and led to Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif announcing an inquiry.
In late December 2023, the Interim government announced a plan to privatise the airline. During a question hour in the Senate, the adviser to Prime Minister on Aviation Air Marshal (Retd) Farhat Hussain Khan that said privatisation of Pakistan International Airlines is being carried out under the government's policy to privatise loss making entities. The Adviser said that initially PIA will be privatised as a flight entity and the decision on its other properties will be decided later.
On 6 January 2025, it was reported that PIA would expand its number of destinations to the Middle East by deploying its fleet of Boeing 777 and Airbus A320 aircraft. From 20 January 2025 onward, PIA started offering two weekly flights between Sialkot and Bahrain. Another two weekly flights are operated between Lahore and Dammam beginning 22 January 2025 while a once-a-week flight commenced on 25 January 2025 between Lahore and Kuwait. Besides, PIA will also introduce weekly flights from Faisalabad to Jeddah starting 20 January 2025 and another weekly service between Sialkot and Doha, Qatar from 21 January 2025.
On 16 July 2025, the UK's Civil Aviation Authority lifted its ban on PIA, also citing safety improvements. PIA announced its intention to resume flights to the UK starting with three weekly flights between Islamabad and Manchester, later reducing the frequency to two weekly. Although the inaugural flight was continuously delayed due to delays in obtaining a Third Country Operator (TCO) certificate, the airline finally got it on 24 September and subsequently launched flights in October 2025.
== Corporate management ==
=== Structure ===
Pakistan International Airlines Corporation Limited (PIACL) is majority-owned by the Government of Pakistan (86%) while the remainder (14%) is owned by private shareholders. The airline is under the administration of Aviation Division and is managed by a president and chief executive officer as well as the board of directors.
The board consists of nine independent non-executive members and has four sub-committees: an Audit Committee, Brand and Advertising Committee, Finance Committee, and Human Resource Committee, each having its charter and chairman. The president and chief executive officer leads the executive management of staff who run the airline. The airline's main headquarters are located at Karachi, while smaller subhead offices are located in several cities within Pakistan.
Seven of PIA's ten departments are in Islamabad, viz, Marketing Department, Procedure Bureau, Central Reservation Control, Revenue Management, HR and Security and Vigilance Department. The remaining three departments are in Karachi, namely finance, engineering and situation room.
=== Privatization ===
In the late 1990s, the Government of Pakistan announced privatization plans due to the persistent losses suffered by the airline, but they were never implemented; however, several steps towards the outsourcing of non-core businesses were initiated. Catering units (starting with Karachi Flight Kitchen), ground handling (starting with ramp services) and engineering, are to gradually leave the airline and operate as independent companies. In 1997, Pakistan called in a team from International Finance (IFC), the consulting arm of the World Bank, to advise on restructuring and privatization of Pakistan International Airlines (PIA). However, no agreement was reached. Despite the government's multiple privatization plans, on 18 February 2009, the carrier was dropped from the privatization list.
In 2013, the Government of Pakistan once again aimed to privatize the airline due to increased losses by selling twenty-six percent of shares and management control to the investor. This plan was dropped due to protests by airline unions and associations after security forces killed two employees approaching the Jinnah International Airport terminal building.
In 2018, the newly elected government aimed to not privatize the entity and instead achieve profitability through the change in its top management.
On 6 February 2024, the Caretaker Cabinet of the interim Government decided to split different functions of Pakistan International Airlines into two entities to make it attractive for investors. These entities were named TopCo and HoldCo. TopCo was allocated basic functions, including engineering, ground handling, and flight kitchen and training. HoldCo was given Precision Engineering Complex, PIA Investment Limited and subordinate departments and properties.
On 4 June 2024, the government pre qualified 6 companies to bid for the privatization of Pakistan International Airlines. these companies were Air Blue, Arif Habib Corporation, Blue World City, Fly Jinnah, Pak Ethanol (Pvt) Consortiums, and YB Holdings Consortiums.
On 30 October 2024, the final bidding process for PIA's privatization attracted only one bid from Blue World City, a real estate development company. The bid offered 10 billion Pakistani rupees (approximately $36 million) for a 60% stake in the airline, which was substantially below the government's minimum price of 85 billion Pakistani rupees.
On 13 November 2024, the Pakistani government officially rejected the bid, emphasizing that the privatization process would adhere to laws and regulations, with final decisions made in the national interest by the cabinet committee.
On July 9, 2025, the Government of Pakistan approved four potential investors to take over Pakistan International Airlines (PIA). These companies are Air Blue, Fauji Fertilizers, Lucky Cement Consortium (Includes Hub Power, Kohat Cement, and Metro Ventures) and Arif Habib Consortium (Fatima Fertilizer, City Schools and Lake City Holdings).
=== Financial and operational performance ===
In 2011, PIA began to be unprofitable, requiring government subsidies. By the end of 2016, the airline was saddled with $3 billion in debt. At the end of 2018, the airline was burdened with $3.3 billion in debt, up from $2.97 the year before, and thus requiring government bailouts for continued operation. In April 2019, PIA claimed that its revenues almost matched operating costs. An audit in September 2019 revealed that PIA had operated 46 empty flights between 2016 and 2017, without any passengers causing a loss of $1.1 million to the airline. Additionally, 36 Hajj flights were flown without any passengers. By the end of 2019, PIA reported a 41% increase in year-on-year revenue due to discontinuation of unprofitable routes, reintroduction of idle aircraft, and a sharp increase in the airline cargo space utilisation.
The airline faces many challenges to its profitability. PIA, along with Etihad, were once considered one of the cheapest airlines in the GCC. Pakistan faces what has been termed "capacity dumping" by Middle East airlines, who operate numerous daily flights to every major city in Pakistan. Pakistan's Open Skies Agreement with the UAE, for example, allows Emirati airlines an unlimited number of seats into Karachi, with Emirates airline alone operating up to seven daily flights to Karachi from Dubai on high-capacity Boeing 777s. PIA also discontinued previously profitable routes to the US, as the TSA forbade nonstop flights from Pakistan to the US, and instead required costly diversions to European airports for immigration clearance – resulting in flight times that were significantly longer than flights on Middle Eastern airlines. New routes such as to Najaf and Bangkok also did not improve the airline's finances given the seasonality of those destinations. Further, staffing levels and overall management issues, including an employee count of 18,014 in 2010 for a fleet of 40 aircraft, present further challenges, although in August 2019, PIA laid off 1,000 "redundant employees".
== Destinations ==
As of November 2019, PIA serves 19 domestic and 28 international destinations in 20 countries across Asia, the Middle East, Europe and North America.
PIA with its Interline agreements and codeshare partner airlines, offers a wider choice of travel in 102 international destinations in 40 countries across the world with different flight connections.
=== Hubs ===
PIA’s hubs are Jinnah International Airport, Allama Iqbal International Airport and Islamabad International Airport. Karachi is PIA’s main hub, while Islamabad and Lahore serve as secondary hubs.
=== Codeshare agreements ===
PIA has codeshare agreements with the following airlines:
=== Interline agreements ===
PIA has interline agreements with the following airlines:
=== Cargo SPA agreements ===
PIA has cargo special pro-rate agreements with the following airlines:
== Fleet ==
=== Current fleet ===
As of November 2025, Pakistan International Airlines operates the following aircraft:
=== Former fleet ===
== Livery ==
In December 2003, PIA introduced a new image that was applied to its first Boeing 777-200ER and on two newly leased Airbus A310s, one of which was in service. The livery was white at the front and beige at the rear separated by a dark green stripe. The tail was painted white with a new typeface PIA acronym written in dark green. The Pakistan title was added to the front fuselage in all raised letters and the engine cowlings were painted in beige. The PIA logo written in calligraphic Urdu was added just behind the cockpit. However, due to criticism, the design was modified before the first Boeing 777 was delivered. The tail logo was replaced by a flowing Pakistan flag on a beige background. The "Pakistan" titles were removed and the PIA acronym was enlarged and moved onto the fuselage. The English and Urdu PIA titles remained the same. The leased A310s and most of the PIA fleet also adopted this livery at a later date.
In early 2006, the airline launched four new tail designs for its fleet. The tails represented the four provinces of Pakistan: Sindh, Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan. The tails promoted the cultures of the four provinces of Pakistan by applying motifs to the tails and adding a city name to the rear of the fuselage corresponding to the province. The "Frontier" tail represented the "Phulkari" (flowering) pattern, which reflected a tradition of embroidery generally done on shawls, shirts, and linen. The "Punjab" tail was loosely related to the tile decoration of the Wazir Khan Mosque in Lahore. The "Balochistan" tail showed the creativity seen in the local kilims, carpets, and rugs woven with wool, goat or camel hair and mixed yarn. The pattern was mostly bold geometric motifs in primary colours dominated by red. The "Sindh" tail was influenced by the Hala tile work with electric blue and white floral patterns. In 2009, management stopped the application of provincial tails, deeming them too costly.
PIA launched its new livery in mid April 2010. An Airbus A310, Boeing 777–200 and Boeing 747–300 were the first aircraft to wear the new look. The livery was unveiled at the PIA headquarters on a Boeing 777 model. The livery consisted of a green and gold strip running around the bottom of the fuselage and continuing right up until the tail cone. The forward/upper portion was white and at the rear, it was an off-white/beige colour. The bottom part of the tail blended into the upper fuselage as it too is white, with the rest of the tail painted with a large wavy Pakistan flag, which takes up the whole tail, in a dark green colour. At the front of the fuselage, 'PIA' was written in a billboard style in dark green and underneath 'Pakistan' was written in golden colour. Just behind the cockpit, there is a stylised Urdu PIA logo as well as on the engines.
In July 2014, on the delivery of the first A320 series aircraft, PIA introduced a "crescent and star" on the aircraft engines' cowlings in place of the Urdu PIA logo. In 2015, after the completion of sixty years service, the 1960s livery was applied to three of the Airbus A320s and on one Boeing 777-200ER.
In April 2018, PIA formally launched a new brand identity and livery and added a portrait of the Markhor in a ceremony held at PIA Offices in Islamabad, presented by the then head of brand of PIA, having Pakistan's national animal represented on its aircraft, including a large one on the tail and two on the engines, describing the resilient nature of PIA Brand surviving under the onslaught of all the negativity associated with the brand.
The symbol of animal was chosen for its universal recognition as the Urdu calligraphy logo of PIA could not be comprehended by non-Pakistani customers. In essence the idea was to make PIA a truly international brand based on the values of resilience, grace and fortitude, something which PIA had lost with increased focus on ethnic traffic. The tail had a forward leaping Markhor having long screw horns, which are the features of 'Kashmiri Markhor' endemic to Pakistan only. According to the initial plan, a euro-white style was chosen and existing green and golden strips were removed from the aircraft fuselage along with off-white/beige colour on the rear fuselage, but later a major rebranding was carried out. The font of the PIA logo was also changed and added to the fuselage. For the first time, legacy PIA colours (Pakistan green and mustard gold) were dropped and a blue texture was added in the "PIA" acronym expanding the colour palette for the brand. Urdu PIA logo colour was also changed from the yellow-green gradient texture. The airline's slogan was also changed to "We Fly at the Right Attitude" from "Great People to Fly With". The first aircraft with the redesigned livery was converted on 12 May 2018 and rolled out of Isphani Hangar by the method of decals to make a debut at the New Islamabad International Airport. The re-branding was halted on Suo Moto Notice taken by Supreme Court of Pakistan on fears of spending millions on the rebranding and not paying the salary of the staff on time. The Supreme Court of Pakistan suo motu notice barred PIA from using the Markhor logo as its brand identity. The Supreme Court later gave orders to retain the flag on the tail and disposed of the case. However, with a management change, the re-branding was abandoned altogether. Currently, the airline is operating a hybrid livery which features a euro-white fuselage and gold Urdu logo in-front of the front exits and engine cowling while the flag tail, English PIA (and Pakistan International in gold) titles in dark green and Pakistan titles in dark green on the belly have been retained from the 2010 livery. The PIA corporate website was also added ahead of the aft exits. Currently, five Boeing 777s and three A320s are sporting this livery.
== Services ==
=== Catering ===
PIA Catering is the main supplier of meals for the airline at Islamabad and Karachi. It can produce 15,000 passenger meals each day. In 2006, the management of the flight kitchens was given to Singapore Air Terminal Services (SATS). This agreement ended in 2011 and PIA is managing the Flight Kitchens in Karachi and Islamabad itself. As of April 2019, an MOU was signed between PIA and McDonald's for the airlines catering. PIA Catering provides special meals to allow for passengers' dietary and religious needs. No alcoholic beverages or pork are served on board due to Islamic dietary laws.
=== PIA Premier service ===
PIA Premier was launched as a luxury air service on 14 August 2016. An Airbus A330 aircraft was initially wet-leased from SriLankan Airlines to operate the service. There were six weekly flights to London, three each from Islamabad and Lahore. However, it was soon diminished due to a loss of 2.1 billion rupees.
=== In-flight entertainment ===
Pakistan International Airlines was the first international airline to introduce entertainment system showing a regularly scheduled film on board in the year 1962.
=== In-flight internet ===
In January 2017, the airline began trials on an on-board internet system to deliver in-flight entertainment on some domestic flights. The system allows passengers to access a selection of in-flight entertainment content using their own mobile devices. PIA offers personal screens on Boeing 777 flights with in-flight movies, music and TV shows. The Boeing 777 IFE also features an inflight map and air show. Selected A320s feature drop-down screens with in-flight map and air-show.
=== Precision Engineering Complex ===
The Precision Engineering Complex (PEC) is a specialized manufacturing and engineering facility that was a subsidiary of the Pakistan International Airlines Holding Company Limited (PIAHCL) before being transferred to an entity owned by the Pakistan Air Force. Established originally as a unit of Pakistan International Airlines (PIA), the PEC is an integrated complex that focuses on producing high-precision components for the aerospace and broader engineering industries. Its capabilities encompass various disciplines, including investment casting, Conventional and CNC (Computer Numerical Control) machining, optics, PCB (Printed Circuit Board) manufacturing, electrical, electronics, and composites. As a key player in the country's engineering sector, the facility has secured international certifications and operates as a supplier to global aerospace giants such as General Electric, Airbus Industries, and Boeing. The transfer of ownership from PIAHCL to Precision Engineering Complex (Private) Limited, a designated company of the Pakistan Air Force, was approved by PIAHCL shareholders in late 2025 as part of the broader government-led restructuring and privatization effort concerning the national flag carrier.
The Precision Engineering Complex (PEC) includes the following facilities:
=== Ground handling ===
PIA provides ground handling services to the following airlines:
== PIA Cargo ==
The PIA Cargo is a cargo airline branch that provides logistics services and delivery system within Pakistan and abroad. The PIA Cargo transports goods across Pakistan as well as to international destinations. These consumer goods include meat packing, vegetables, textiles, paper products, laboratory equipment, and postal mail.
During the early 1970s, PIA operated a service called Air Express that delivered documents and parcels within Pakistan. In 1974, PIA launched a dedicated cargo division within its organisation using two Boeing 707-320C. This division was known as Pakistan International Cargo. The airline operated several cargo flights to the Middle East such as Dubai and Europe, especially London. The operations ended in the late 1990s when both aircraft were phased out. During 2004 to 2007, the airline again operated two Airbus A300 Freighter aircraft chartered through MNG Airlines to Haan. Luton, Amsterdam, Basel and Cologne. However, again the contract ended and PIA discontinued this service.
In 2003, the airline launched PIA Speedex, a courier service initially in Karachi, Lahore, Rawalpindi and Islamabad. This expanded to twelve cities within a year. Today, the airline serves over 70 locations within Pakistan, with shipments collected and delivered from customers homes.
In 2019, the new PIA management experienced a sharp increase in the airline's cargo space utilisation, from 20 percent to almost 80 percent.
PIA currently offers cargo service for these international destinations: Abu Dhabi, Bangkok, Barcelona, Birmingham, China – Beijing, Copenhagen, Doha, Dubai, Jeddah, Kabul, Kuala Lumpur, London, Manchester, Medina, Milan, Muscat, Najaf, Oslo, Paris, Riyadh, Sharjah, Tokyo – Narita and Toronto – Canada.
== Corporate sponsorship ==
The airline has sponsored events, both within Pakistan and in its overseas markets.
In the 1990s, the airline launched the three green stripe livery to represent its support for sports. The airline supports the Pakistan International Airlines first-class cricket team that plays in the Quaid-i-Azam Trophy and Patron's Trophy. PIA sponsors the PIA football club, and the A1 Team Pakistan in the A1 Grand Prix motorsports championship series of open-wheel auto racing series when it was initially launched. The airline also promotes the Shandur Polo Gala, that takes place every year in the Chitral and Gilgit regions of northern Pakistan during the summer period. PIA has had its own sports division since 1958, promoting sports within Pakistan such as cricket, hockey, football, squash, polo, tennis, bridge, chess, table tennis, cycling, and bodybuilding.
PIA has its own Boy Scouts Association (PIA-BSA), working in partnership with Pakistan Boy Scouts Association. After a devastating earthquake in 2005, PIA-BSA worked in partnership with other charity organisations to provide relief help.
PIA was one of the official sponsors of the "Destination Pakistan 2007" festivals. The official logo was added to a select number of aircraft during the year. In 2008, PIA teamed up with mobile phone provider, Ufone to provide air miles to passengers who used the mobile network. Standard Chartered Bank and PIA launched credit cards allowing passengers to earn air miles. In 2009, PIA was the gold sponsor for Logistics Pakistan, an exhibition and conference poised to highlight the emerging opportunities for the Logistics sector in Pakistan. In 2009, PIA and the Pakistan Remittance Initiative (PRI) formed a strategic alliance to promote world money transfers.
PIA has Planetariums in Karachi and Lahore that enable the public to see static aircraft as well as astronomy shows. PIA Horticulture, set up in 1996, provides flowers for display in PIA's offices and events, winning awards and accolades at flower exhibitions across the country. The airline supports non-profit organisations within Pakistan such as Al-Shifa Trust, Zindagi Trust, The Citizens Foundation, and Sindh Institute of Urology and Transplantation. In 2009, PIA teamed up with the fast-food franchise McDonald's, to offer passengers discounts on meals and upgrades. PIA also owns three hotels, the Roosevelt Hotel, the Scribe Hotel and Skyrooms (Private) Limited. The airline also has an agreement with Pearl Continental Hotels for its UAE based passengers.
== Charter and special services ==
=== State officials transportation ===
PIA has been continuously serving government officials of Pakistan and has always transported the President and Prime Minister on overseas visits. During the late 1990s, a PIA Boeing 737–300 was used for official visits by the Bhutto and Sharif governments. The aircraft wore official government colours but was later repainted in the airline official colours at the end of the decade. When the government changed after a military coup in 1999, the Boeing 737–300 was transferred to PIA permanently. The President and Prime Minister then resorted to using two of PIA's Airbus A310-300s for official visits, while rare trips were done on regular commercial flights of the airline. In February 2007 the government of Qatar gifted an Airbus A310 from its VIP fleet to the Pakistani government; this ended the need for the use of PIA aircraft. However, from time to time the government uses one of the airline's Airbus A320s, or occasionally a Boeing 777, for official trips.
=== Charter services ===
PIA operates private charter flights using ATR 42s to Bhit, Kadanwari and Sehwan Sharif in Sindh as well as to other parts of the country for oil and gas companies and other customers. Ad hoc charters for United Nations peacekeeping troops are also carried out to Africa and Eastern Europe, Asia (South Korea, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, East Timor) and many other international destinations; PIA Charter Team provides these services.
=== Hajj and Umrah operations ===
PIA operates a two-month (pre- and post-) Hajj operation each year to and from Saudi Arabia. PIA transported over 100,000 intending pilgrims each year to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia until its fleet shrank to 25 aircraft in 2011–2012. Since then, the airline's Hajj quota was reduced to 60,000 to 70,000 pilgrims by the then government.
== Awards and recognition ==
On 27 September 2024, PIA received Pakistan's first National Tourism Award for Promoting Travel and Tourism. The award was given to PIA in recognition of its outstanding work promoting domestic travel. At Pakistan's First National Tourism Awards, organised by Discover Pakistan, Air Vice Marshal Amir Hayat, CEO of PIA, received the award.
== Accidents and incidents ==
The airline has lost more than 30 aircraft in crashes and other events, including 20 fatal crashes. There have also been at least eight hijacking incidents involving the airline's aircraft between 1971 and 2017.
In October 1952, an Orient Airways flight carrying cargo from Karachi to Dacca crashed. One of three was killed in this crash.
On Monday 3 August 1953, the Douglas DC-3 registered AP-AAD was operating on a hajj flight, carrying pilgrims from Karachi to Jeddah via Sharjah and Bahrain. The leg to Bahrain was to be flown by the first officer from the left-hand seat. Shortly after takeoff the aircraft entered a steep descending turn. The captain took over control but could not recover the aircraft. The Douglas DC-3 struck the ground. One of 25 was killed in this crash. "The accident resulted from the loss of control of the aircraft by the first officer shortly after taking off on a dark night when instrument flying was necessary. This loss of control was due to the inability of the first officer to fly on instruments. The responsibility for the accident is attributed to the captain for failing to supervise the piloting of the aircraft by the first officer."
Pakistan International Airlines experienced its first recorded hull loss in 1956: a Douglas DC-3 flew into a mountain on 25 February while on a cargo flight from Gilgit to Rawalpindi in poor weather, killing the three crew members on board.
On 1 July 1957, a Douglas DC-3 registered AP-AJS, operating a domestic flight from Chittagong to Dhaka in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), crashed on a mudflat in the Bay of Bengal, killing all 20 passengers and four crew members on board.
On 15 May 1958, a Convair CV-240 with the registration AP-AEH, operating as Flight 205 from Delhi to Karachi, crashed and caught fire moments after it took off from Delhi's Palam Airport on a moonless night in dusty conditions. The investigation attributed the crash to the captain experiencing a night somatogravic illusion, resulting in the aircraft descending shortly after it became airborne. Four of the six crew members and 21 of the 38 passengers on board were killed; two people on the ground were also killed.
On 18 May 1959, a four-month-old Vickers Viscount with the registration AP-AJC was damaged beyond economic repair in a landing accident at Rawalpindi. The aircraft ran off the runway into a rainwater channel; there were no fatalities.
Three months after the first Viscount crash, the airline lost another on 14 August 1959. The Viscount (registered AP-AJE) crashed at Karachi International Airport during a pilot training flight, while attempting an overshoot with two engines inoperative. Two of the three people on board were killed.
On 26 March 1965 a Douglas DC-3 registered AP-AAH crashed in mountainous terrain near the Lowari Pass on a domestic flight from Peshawar to Chitral, killing the four crew members and 18 of the 22 passengers on board.
Eight weeks later, on 20 May 1965, a Boeing 720 operating as Flight 705 crashed while descending to land on Runway 34 at Cairo International Airport, resulting in 121 fatalities.
On 8 October 1965 a Fokker F27 Friendship, with less than 500 hours' flying time since it was delivered new to the airline earlier in the year, crashed while on a domestic cargo flight from Rawalpindi to Skardu. The aircraft (registered AP-ATT) hit a ridge near the village of Patian and slid down its side, the remains coming to rest more than 1,000 feet (300 m) below the impact point. The four crew members on board were killed.
On 2 February 1966 Flight 17, operated by a Sikorsky S-61 helicopter, crashed on a scheduled domestic flight in East Pakistan after the main gearbox failed, killing 23 of the 24 passengers and crew on board.
On 6 August 1970, a Fokker F27 Friendship registered AP-ALM, operating a domestic flight from Rawalpindi to Lahore, crashed at high speed a few minutes after taking off from Rawalpindi in stormy weather. All 26 passengers and four crew members on board were killed.
On 3 December 1971, a French national's attempt to hijack a Boeing 720B flight from Paris to Karachi was thwarted by French security forces.
On 12 December 1971, a Fokker F27 Friendship registered AP-ALX, operating an international flight between Karachi and Zahedan crashed in Pakistan near the Iranian border, killing all 4 people on board.
On 8 December 1972, a Fokker F27 Friendship registered AP-AUS, operating a domestic flight between Gilgit and Rawalpindi in rainy weather as Flight 631, crashed in mountainous terrain. There were no survivors among the 22 passengers and four crew members on board.
On 20 January 1978, a PIA Fokker F27 registered AP-ALW at Karachi with 22 passengers on board was hijacked by a gunman who asked to be flown to India. The then chairman of PIA, Air Marshal (Retd) Nur Khan boarded the aircraft to negotiate with the hijacker. He received a gunshot wound while trying to disarm the hijacker but still managed to overpower him.
On 26 November 1979 Flight 740 was a Boeing 707-320C that crashed after takeoff from Jeddah International Airport for a flight to Karachi, resulting in 156 fatalities.
On 2 March 1981 Flight 326 was hijacked by three gunmen and flown to Kabul. For almost two weeks, more than 100 passengers were held captive on the Boeing 720 until Pakistan released 55 prisoners. One passenger, Pakistani diplomat Tariq Rahim, was murdered during the ordeal.
On 4 February 1986, a Boeing 747 registered as AP-AYW made a belly landing at Islamabad Airport around 9:00 am. The aircraft was operating Flight 300 from Karachi with 247 passengers and 17 crew members on board. Everyone survived this accident caused by pilot error.
On 23 October 1986, a Fokker F27 aircraft crashed during approach to Peshawar Airport. Of the 54 passengers and crew on board, 13 were killed in the accident.
On 25 August 1989, a Fokker F27 operating as Flight 404 disappeared shortly after taking off from Gilgit Airport. All 54 passengers and crew on board were presumed killed.
On 28 September 1992 Flight 268, an Airbus A300 B4-200 registration AP-BCP, crashed on approach to Kathmandu's Tribhuvan International Airport. All 167 on board were killed.
On 27 December 1997, a Pakistan Airlines Boeing 747 plane from Karachi to London, crashed when landing at Dubai international airport. It overshot the runway and went through the perimeter wall before coming to rest. No one was killed.
On 25 May 1998 a Fokker F27 Friendship operating as Flight 544 was hijacked. All passengers and crew escaped unhurt.
On 17 October 2001, Pakistan International Airlines Flight 231, an Airbus A300, from Islamabad via Peshawar veered off the side of the runway after the right hand main landing gear collapsed as it touched down. The aircraft skidded and eventually came to rest in sand 50 meters from the runway. The aircraft sustained damage to its right wing structure and right engine, which partly broke off the wing. All 205 crew and passengers (which included high profile American political commentator and talk show host Tucker Carlson and his father Dick Carlson) evacuated safely. However, Tucker Carlson has erroneously claimed that the plane was flying over the Arabian Sea when it had a probable explosion in the cargo hold followed by a wing detachment resulting in its crashing into a sand dune in Dubai.
On 1 March 2004, Pakistan International Airlines Flight 2002, Airbus A300B4-203 registration AP-BBA, burst two tires whilst taking off from King Abdulaziz International Airport. Fragments of the tire were ingested by the engines, which caused the engines to catch fire and an aborted takeoff was performed. Due to the fire, substantial damage to the engine and the left wing caused the aircraft to be written off. All 261 passengers and 12 crew survived.
In March 2005 Pakistan International Airlines experienced several minor accidents. This includes the wrong grease being used for the undercarriages in Pakistan airports leading to small fuselage fires. Poor maintenance in Pakistan had previously led to insufficient fuel in tanks and an engine falling onto the runway at Manchester Airport.
On 10 July 2006 Flight 688, a Fokker F27 operating from Multan to Lahore and then to Islamabad, crashed in a field after bursting into flames a few minutes after takeoff from Multan International Airport. All 41 passengers and four crew members on board were killed.
On 25 September 2010, a PIA Boeing 777-200LR registered AP-BGY, flying from Toronto to Karachi, made an emergency landing at Stockholm Arlanda Airport after a phone call was made claiming a passenger on board was armed with explosives. After the plane landed in Stockholm, it was parked at an emergency stand and the suspected passenger was removed from the plane by Swedish authorities. The rest of the passengers were also removed and the empty aircraft was searched. The plane and passengers were allowed to depart Sweden while the suspect was detained in the country for further investigation, but was later released after no evidence was found of the allegation made against him.
On 31 August 2012, ATR 42–500 registration AP-BHJ, operating Flight 653 from Islamabad to Lahore, was landing at Allama Iqbal International Airport when it undershot the runway and came to rest on a grassy area on the right side of Runway 36R. There were no fatalities among the 42 passengers and four crew members. The aircraft was damaged beyond repair and withdrawn from service.
On 11 February 2013, a Boeing 737 aircraft registered AP-BEH was operating Flight 259 from Islamabad to Muscat via Sialkot when its port side main landing gear collapsed during landing at Muscat International Airport. There were no fatalities among the 107 passengers and seven crew members on board. The aircraft was damaged beyond repair and withdrawn from service.
On 8 June 2014, there was an attack on Jinnah International Airport. Several aircraft were damaged and written off, including a PIA Boeing 747-367, registered as AP-BFV, and a PIA Airbus A310-308, registered as AP-BDZ. In total, there were 36 fatalities, including the 10 attackers.
On 24 June 2014, an Airbus A310-300 registered as AP-BGN was operating Flight 756 from Riyadh to Peshawar with 178 passengers and 12 crew members on board when it was hit by gunfire during its landing approach at Bacha Khan International Airport, Peshawar. The aircraft landed safely, but one passenger was killed and two crew members were injured. The aircraft was damaged but it was later ferried to Karachi for repair.
On 7 December 2016, Flight 661, operated by an ATR 42–500 aircraft registered AP-BHO, crashed in Havelian, Pakistan while en route from Chitral to Islamabad, killing all 47 on board.
On 22 May 2020, Flight 8303, operated by an Airbus A320, AP-BLD crashed while on final approach to Jinnah International Airport, Karachi, arriving from Lahore. According to CAA sources, PIA Airbus A320 from Lahore was about to land in Karachi when it crashed at the Jinnah Garden area near Model Colony in Malir. CAA sources said that its communication with the plane had been cut off one minute prior to the landing. The pilots attempted an unstabilised landing which resulted in a belly landing as the landing gear was not lowered due to high workload in the cockpit. This badly damaged both the engines which suffered from oil leaks due to the heavy scraping on the runway. The pilots then tried to perform a go-around attempting to make a second approach, they requested to turn left for a direct route to the runway as they were losing altitude. The pilots then declared mayday reporting they had lost both engines (both engines had flamed out due to damage). Soon after, the aircraft lost altitude and crashed into flames in the Model Colony residential area at about 14:40 local time. A ground observer reported that the aircraft suddenly became silent in its final seconds of flight. 99 people were on board; two passengers survived while 97 on board, including eight crew members, were killed. Additional casualties on the ground were one fatality and seven injured.
On 18 January 2025, the captain and first officer of flight PK150 from Dammam to Multan was grounded for landing the plane at the wrong runway. The flight was initially diverted to Lahore Airport due to bad weather condition and heavy fog in Multan.
On 13 March 2025, Flight 306, an Airbus A320 flying from Karachi to Lahore, landed at Lahore with one tire missing in its main landing gear. The missing tire was found at Jinnah International Airport where the aircraft departed from.
== See also ==
List of airlines of Pakistan
Transport in Pakistan
== References ==
== Notes ==
== Bibliography ==
== External links ==
Official website |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Invisible_Guardian | The Invisible Guardian | The Invisible Guardian (Spanish: El guardián invisible) is a 2017 Spanish thriller film directed by Fernando González Molina based on the eponymous novel by Dolores Redondo. It was followed by two sequels, The Legacy of the Bones and Offering to the Storm.
== Plot ==
Policía Foral inspector Amaia Salazar, a former FBI agent, lives in Pamplona with her American husband, James, an artist. She returns to her hometown of Baztan, in Navarre, which she hoped never to set foot in again, to investigate the murder of a girl, 13-year-old Ainhoa Elizasu. Ainhoa was found naked and posed in the woods, her face scrubbed clean of makeup and her hair neatly arranged, and a cake placed on her shaved pubis, with her heels taken off. Amaia links this with the death six weeks earlier of Carla Huarte, who was strangled with the same type of rope, and fears a serial killer may be at work. Both bodies were covered with hair from multiple animals, an oddity as none of the bodies show marks from any animals.
Amaia and James move in with her Aunt Engrasi, who raised her for most of her life. She is greeted warmly by her sister Rosaura, who is staying with Engrasi because of a fight with her husband, Freddy. Amaia's relationship is strained with her sister Flora, who, with Rosaura, now runs the family business, a commercial bakery. Flora is divorced from her ex-husband, Victor, and is resentful of Amaia, who is trying to start a family. Flora accuses Amaia of abandoning their mentally ill and abusive mother, Rosario, now in a nursing home, even though she has a pathological hatred for Amaia. James is shocked to learn that Rosario is not dead, as Amaia claimed.
Amaia instructs police officer Jonan Etxaide to look back 20 years for similar crime patterns and other events occurring in Baztan. He connects several murders she believes could have been committed by the same killer. She believes she is looking for a male who was likely sexually repressed in his youth and who would be familiar to the girls, making it likely they would go willingly with him.
The serial killer is dubbed El Basajaún ("Lord of the Woods") by the media after a Basque mythological creature. Engrasi insists that the basajaún is real and a protector of the forest, and that one saved Engrasi's life when she was a little girl by stopping her from falling into a cavern.
Another girl, Anne Arbizu, goes missing. Amaia is convinced she sees Anne outside her window late one night, but the next day her body is discovered in the forest, her body arranged in the same ritualized manner, dead for 24 hours. Amaia discovers Anne was having an affair with a married man — Amaia's brother-in-law, Freddy. Freddy attempts suicide because of his anguish, but after exonerating him, Amaia does not reveal the affair to the police.
The cake placed on the bodies is local txantxigorri cake. Flora states that it is of the highest quality, meaning it could come from only a handful of bakeries. When Amaia requests a sample of the flour for analysis, Flora gives her different flour than the bakery uses. Flora is arrested for obstruction but insists she was merely taking precautions as workers frequently take home flour. The lab also matches the flour from the cakes to the flour in Rosaura's home, which she takes from the bakery, but Amaia does not reveal this either.
Another girl disappears, but Amaia is removed from the case after her captain discovers her secrecy. Detective Montés replaces her, even though Amaia suspects him of having a personal relationship with Flora. Aloisius Dupree, an FBI friend, encourages her to remove herself from the case and look at it in its entirety. Amaia thinks back to her early life, when Rosario, in a psychotic rage, attempted to murder her at the bakery, at which point Amaia was taken to live with Engrasi.
Amaia goes to visit Rosario, who calls Amaia a bitch and attempts to bite her. She learns that Rosario, now restrained, had attacked a nurse and bitten her while calling her Amaia and that her brother-in-law visits Rosario weekly.
Amaia and Jonan drive to Victor's house but Jonan arrives first and finds it empty while Amaia flips her car into a ravine during a thunderstorm on her way to the house. She wakes up on the ground away from her car and sees a large hairy creature in the distance and follows him. The pursuit leads her to an abandoned house, where she is attacked by Victor. When she confronts him about the murders, he admits it was his doing so that he could cleanse the valley of the filth. Amaia stabs him with a pair of scissors and runs to free the missing girl whom he has chained up. Victor follows and just as he is about to kill Amaia, Flora shoots him.
Several weeks later, Flora's book, which she dedicated to her mother, was published, while Amaia and James reveal to Rosaura and Engrasi that they are expecting a child together. From a distance, a large hairy creature looks over the valley before going back into the forest.
== Cast ==
== Production ==
An adaptation of the eponymous novel by Dolores Redondo, the screenplay was penned by Luiso Berdejo. The film was produced by Atresmedia Cine, Nostromo Pictures and El Guardián Invisible AIE alongside Nadcon. It had the participation of Atresmedia.
== Release ==
Distributed by DeAPlaneta, the film was theatrically released in Spain on 3 March 2017.
== See also ==
List of Spanish films of 2017
== References ==
== External links ==
The Invisible Guardian at IMDb |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Aspel | Michael Aspel | Michael Terence Aspel (born 12 January 1933) is an English retired television presenter and newsreader. He hosted programmes such as Crackerjack!, Ask Aspel, Aspel & Company, Give Us a Clue, This Is Your Life, Strange but True? and Antiques Roadshow.
== Early life ==
Aspel was born on 12 January 1933 in Battersea in London. During the Second World War, he was evacuated from the area and spent nearly five years in Chard, Somerset. He attended Emanuel School after passing his eleven-plus in 1944 and served as a conscript during his national service, in the ranks of the King's Royal Rifle Corps, from 1951 to 1953.
== Career ==
Aspel worked as a drainpipe-layer and gardener and sold advertising space for the Western Mail newspaper in Cardiff. He worked as a teaboy at William Collins publishers in London and then entered National Service. He took up a job at the David Morgan department store in Cardiff until 1955, before working as newsreader for the BBC in Cardiff in 1957. He also acted in Cardiff, in a BBC Children's Hour serial Counterspy, produced by BBC Wales and written by and starring John Darran. Aspel played "Rocky" Mountain, a Canadian. By the early sixties, he had become one of four regular newsreaders on BBC national television, along with Richard Baker, Robert Dougall and Corbet Woodall.
At the BBC, Aspel began presenting a number of other programmes such as the series Come Dancing, Crackerjack! and Ask Aspel, as well as the Miss World beauty contest which he covered 14 times. He narrated the BREMA cartoon documentary, The Colour Television Receiver (aka Degaussing or The Colour Receiver Installation Film), which was shown every day (except Sunday) on BBC2 between 14 October 1967 and 8 January 1971. He also provided narration for the BBC nuclear war drama documentary The War Game, which won the Best Documentary Feature Oscar in 1966 but was not shown on British television until 1985.
Aspel was a studio announcer at the BBC on 14 February 1969 during a live broadcast from the Dorchester Hotel of an awards ceremony, when the host, Kenneth Horne, died of a heart attack. Aspel filled in unscripted until the show resumed. He was later quoted as saying: "I got round this in a suitably dignified way. But it was awful as Kenneth Horne was not only a great performer, but such a wonderful man."
In both 1969 and 1976, Aspel hosted the BBC's A Song for Europe contest to choose Britain's Eurovision entry and provided the UK TV commentary twice at the Eurovision Song Contest in the same years, 1969 and 1976, in which year he also presented the contest previews.
Aspel also had a regular joke slot on the Kenny Everett radio show on Capital Radio and guest-starred twice on The Goodies, appearing as himself, including in the episode "Kitten Kong", which won the Silver Rose at the Montreux Light Entertainment Festival.
From 2 September 1974 until 27 July 1984, Aspel also presented a three-hour weekday, mid-morning music and chat programme on Capital Radio in London. He then presented a Sunday show on Capital (which only lasted for a few months, ending on 30 December 1984) before moving to LBC for the remainder of the decade. He also presented weekend shows on BBC Radio 2 in the late 1980s and again in the 1990s.
In 1977, Aspel appeared with a number of other newsreaders and presenters, dressed as sailors, in a song-and-dance routine ("There is Nothing Like a Dame") on The Morecambe and Wise Show. In another episode, Morecambe refers to him as "Michael Aspirin" (a name also used by 'Disc' music magazine when Aspel was at Capital Radio). In the 1970s and 1980s Aspel presented popular ITV programmes such as Give Us a Clue, Child's Play and The 6 O'Clock Show, a live current affairs and entertainment programme shown only in the London Weekend Television region. In 1989, he hosted a televised interactive murder mystery set at a wedding called Murder Weekend, devised and written by Joy Swift, which invited viewers to solve a whodunnit to win a prize.
During the early 1990s, Aspel presented two documentaries on BBC Radio 2 written by Terence Pettigrew, on subjects of which he and Pettigrew had personal knowledge. Caught in the Draft was a nostalgic look back at compulsory national service. Both had served, at different times, in West Germany, Aspel in the Kings Royal Rifle Corps and Pettigrew in the REME. Also taking part in the programme were comedian/compere Bob Monkhouse, Leslie Thomas, author of The Virgin Soldiers, and BBC Radio 2 drivetime host John Dunn. This was followed by Nobody Cried When The Trains Pulled Out, a documentary about the evacuation of children from major British cities during World War 2 that included champion boxer Henry Cooper, actor Derek Nimmo and author Ben Wicks.
Aspel was the host of the chat show Aspel & Company, which ran from 9 June 1984 to 20 June 1993 on ITV. The show was successful in attracting high-profile guests including then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and George Harrison with Ringo Starr. In 1993, Aspel & Company was censured by the Independent Television Commission because of an interview with Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis and Sylvester Stallone who were promoting their joint business venture Planet Hollywood. For a time, Aspel & Company performed well for ITV in the highly competitive Saturday night ratings but after the Planet Hollywood controversy, Aspel vowed never to host a chat show again.
Aspel was featured on This Is Your Life in 1980. When host Eamonn Andrews died in 1987, he became presenter of the programme until its run ended in 2003. In 1993, Aspel began presenting the ITV supernatural programme Strange but True?, a series exploring supernatural phenomena and unexplained mysteries. The programme ran between 1993 and 1997. He presented a new version of the ITV game show Blockbusters for the BBC in 1997; Aspel presented 60 episodes in total. In 1993, Aspel became an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) "for services to broadcasting". He has also been voted TV Times and Variety Club Television Personality of the Year. He was also voted into the Royal Television Society Hall of Fame for outstanding services to television.
Aspel presented BBC's Antiques Roadshow from 2000 until 2008; his last programme (recorded at Kentwell Hall, Suffolk) was shown on 30 March 2008, being a tribute to himself. In 2003, Aspel starred in a BBC Three spoof documentary, Sex, Lies & Michael Aspel, which claimed he had affairs with Pamela Anderson, Valerie Singleton and Angie Best, among others. Aspel guest hosted the topical quiz show Have I Got News for You on two occasions (October 2005 and November 2007).
In 2006, he played the role of the narrator in the UK tour of Richard O'Brien's The Rocky Horror Show. During July and August 2008, Aspel filmed Evacuees Reunited, a five-part documentary series made by Leopard Films for ITV1, which aired from 15 to 19 December 2008. Along with 15 other wartime evacuees, he returned to the locations of his own youth, including his wartime home in Chard, Somerset. He was reunited with his childhood gang of evacuees at Forde Abbey, just outside the town. Later he caught up with his 96-year-old former school teacher, Audrey Guppy.
In 2025, he appeared in an introductory feature for a BBC4 screening of The War Game.
== Personal life ==
Aspel has been married three times and had seven children, including one who died at three days. He married Dian Sessions in 1957. They had two sons; one son died age 29 of cancer. The couple divorced in 1961. Aspel married Anne Reed, a TV scriptwriter, in 1962 and they had twin children, one son and one daughter, before divorcing in 1967. In 1977, Aspel married actress Elizabeth Power, best known for her role as Christine Hewitt in EastEnders. The couple had two sons; a third died at three days old, and a fourth was stillborn.
Aspel left her in 1994 for a production assistant on This Is Your Life, Irene Clarke, and they are still together, as of 2025. They live in Weybridge, Surrey.
As a supporter of the charity Cancer Research UK, Aspel was made a Freeman of the borough of Elmbridge, Surrey, in April 2008.
A 2004 article in The Independent reported that Aspel had a dormant case of non-Hodgkin lymphoma. He gets it checked annually.
== Charity work ==
Aspel is a Vice-President of The Children's Trust, a UK charity for children with brain injury.
He is also a Patron and long time supporter of the Princess Alice Hospice, Esher and The British Evacuees Association.
Aspel is one of nine presidents of Better Planet Education.
== Other works ==
Aspel, Michael (1974). Polly Wants a Zebra: The Memoirs of Michael Aspel. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. ISBN 9780297768357.
== References ==
== External links ==
Michael Aspel at IMDb
Michael Aspel biography at BFI Screenonline
Interview with Liverpool Daily Post |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullard_Mountain#:~:text=Bullard%20Mountain%20is%20named%20for%20Benjamin%20Bullard%20%281848-1933%29%2C,where%20he%20later%20built%20a%20hydroelectric%20power%20plant. | Bullard Mountain | Bullard Mountain is a 4,225-foot (1,288 m) mountain summit located in the Boundary Ranges, in the U.S. state of Alaska. The peak is situated immediately east of the terminus of Mendenhall Glacier, within Tongass National Forest, 9 mi (14 km) north-northwest of Juneau, and 6 mi (10 km) northeast of Juneau International Airport. McGinnis Mountain lies 3.7 mi (6 km) on the opposite side of the glacier, and Heintzleman Ridge lies 2.75 mi (4 km) to the south. Bullard Mountain is often seen and photographed with Mount Wrather, a 5,968-foot (1,819 m) summit 3.9 mi (6 km) to the north because they are together in the background behind Mendenhall Lake, a popular tourist and recreation area. Although modest in elevation, relief is significant since the mountain rises from this nearly sea-level lake in less than two miles. Precipitation runoff from the mountain drains into the lake via Nugget Creek and Nugget Falls. Bullard Mountain is named for Benjamin Bullard (1848-1933), a mining engineer who, in 1907, began mining on Nugget Creek where he later built a hydroelectric power plant.
== Climate ==
Based on the Köppen climate classification, Bullard Mountain is located in a subarctic climate zone with cold, snowy winters, and mild summers. Temperatures can drop below −20 °C with wind chill factors below −30 °C. This climate supports the Mendenhall Glacier to the mountain's west. The month of July offers the most favorable weather for viewing and climbing this peak.
== Gallery ==
== See also ==
List of mountain peaks of Alaska
Geography of Alaska
== References ==
== External links ==
Weather forecast: Bullard Mountain
Bullard Mountain climbing blog with photos
Nugget Towers and Bullard Mountain: Flickr photo |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Bakker#Personal_life | Jim Bakker | James Orsen Bakker (; born January 2, 1940) is an American televangelist and convicted felon. Between 1974 and 1987, Bakker hosted the television program The PTL Club and its cable television platform, the PTL Satellite Network, with his then wife, Tammy Faye. He also developed Heritage USA, a now-defunct Christian theme park in Fort Mill, South Carolina.
Bakker was born in Muskegon, Michigan, and attended North Central University in Minneapolis, where he met Tammy Faye LaValley. The two married in 1961, left college, and became itinerant evangelists, eventually having two children. In the late 1980s, Bakker resigned from the PTL ministry over a cover-up of hush money to church secretary Jessica Hahn for an alleged rape. Subsequent revelations of accounting fraud brought about felony charges, conviction, imprisonment, and divorce. Convicted of fraud and conspiracy in 1989, he served nearly five years in prison before being paroled in 1994. Bakker later remarried and returned to televangelism, founding Morningside Church in Blue Eye, Missouri, and reestablishing the PTL ministry.
After divorcing Tammy Faye in 1992, Bakker married Lori Beth Graham in 1998, and together they adopted five children. Early in his career, Bakker worked at Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network, helping to grow the network and hosting shows including The 700 Club and a children’s program. He later co-founded the Trinity Broadcasting Network with Paul and Jan Crouch, but left after a short partnership due to disagreements, eventually establishing his own ministry, PTL (Praise The Lord), and the PTL Satellite Network.
Returning to televangelism in 2003, Bakker now hosts The Jim Bakker Show with a focus on apocalyptic themes and survivalist products, while distancing himself from his earlier prosperity gospel teachings. His later years have included controversial claims, such as predicting major events and promoting unproven supplements, which drew legal action and criticism during the COVID-19 pandemic. Bakker has written several books, including I Was Wrong and Time Has Come: How to Prepare Now for Epic Events Ahead.
== Early life and education ==
James Orsen Bakker was born in Muskegon, Michigan, the son of Raleigh Bakker and Furnia Lynette "Furn" Irwin. Bakker attended North Central University, a Minneapolis Bible college affiliated with the Assemblies of God, where he met fellow student Tammy Faye LaValley in 1960. Bakker worked at a restaurant in the Young-Quinlan department store in Minneapolis; Tammy Faye worked at the Three Sisters, a nearby boutique. Despite already having a fiancée in Muskegon, Jim began courting Tammy Faye.
The Bakkers married on April 1, 1961, and left college to become itinerant evangelists. They had two children, Tammy Sue "Sissy" Bakker Chapman (born March 2, 1970) and Jamie Charles "Jay" Bakker (born December 18, 1975). The couple divorced on March 13, 1992. On September 4, 1998, Bakker married Lori Beth Graham, a former televangelist, fifty days after they met. In 2002, they adopted five children, siblings whom Lori had befriended in Phoenix.
== Career ==
=== Early career ===
In 1966, Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker began working at Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) in Portsmouth, Virginia, which had an audience in the low thousands at the time. The Bakkers contributed to the network's growth, hosting a children's variety show called Come On Over that employed comic routines with puppets. Due to the success of Come On Over, Robertson made Bakker the host of a new prime-time talk show, The 700 Club, which gradually became CBN's flagship program. The Bakkers left CBN in 1973 and, soon after, joined with Paul and Jan Crouch to help co-found the Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN) in California. However, this partnership lasted only eight months until a falling-out between Jim Bakker and Paul Crouch caused the Bakkers to eventually leave the new network.
=== PTL ===
While under TBN, the Bakkers moved to Charlotte, North Carolina, where in May 1973 they launched an east coast version of Praise The Lord under TBN's umbrella. Less than a year later the Bakkers formed their own non profit organization, registered the PTL trademark, left the umbrella of TBN and the Crouches, and continued their show on 36 WRET Charlotte, 16 WGGS Greenville, South Carolina, and a few other stations. In 1975, they nationally debuted their own late night-style talk show, known as The PTL Club. Bakker founded the PTL Satellite Network in 1974, which aired The PTL Club and other religious television programs through local affiliates across the U.S.
Throughout the 1970s, Bakker built a headquarters for PTL in the Carolinas called Heritage Village. Over time, the Bakkers expanded the ministry to include the Heritage USA theme park in Fort Mill, South Carolina, which became the third most successful theme park in the U.S. at the time. Viewer contributions were estimated to exceed $1 million a week, with proceeds to expand the theme park and The PTL Club's mission. Bakker responded to inquiries about his use of mass media by saying: "I believe that if Jesus were alive today, he would be on TV".
Two scandals brought down PTL in 1987: Bakker was accused of sexual misconduct by church secretary Jessica Hahn, which led to his resignation, and his illegal misuse of ministry funds eventually led to his imprisonment. Bakker was dismissed as an Assemblies of God minister on May 6, 1987. In 1990, the biographic television movie Fall from Grace, starring Kevin Spacey as Bakker, depicted his rise and fall. On January 18, 2019, ABC's 20/20 aired a two-hour special, entitled Unfaithfully Yours, about the PTL scandal.
==== Early investigations ====
In 1979, Bakker and PTL came under investigation by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for allegedly misusing funds raised on the air. The FCC report was finalized in 1982 and found that Bakker had raised $350,000 that he told viewers would go towards funding overseas missions but that was actually used to pay for part of Heritage USA. The report also found that the Bakkers used PTL funds for personal expenses. FCC commissioners voted four to three to drop the investigation, after which they allowed Bakker to sell the only TV station that he owned, therefore bypassing future FCC oversight. The FCC forwarded its report to the U.S. Department of Justice, which declined to press charges, citing insufficient evidence. Bakker used the controversy to raise more funds from his audience, branding the investigation a "witch-hunt" and asking viewers to "give the Devil a black eye".
A confidential 1985 Internal Revenue Service (IRS) report found that $1.3 million in ministry funds was used for the Bakkers' personal benefit from 1980 to 1983. The report recommended that PTL be stripped of its tax-exempt status, but no action was taken until after the Jessica Hahn scandal broke in 1987. Art Harris and Michael Isikoff wrote in The Washington Post that politics may have played a role in the three government agencies taking no action against PTL despite the evidence against them, as members of the Reagan administration were not eager to go after television ministers whose evangelical followers made up their base.
==== Sexual misconduct and resignation ====
A $279,000 payoff for the silence of Jessica Hahn, who alleged that Bakker and former PTL Club co-host John Wesley Fletcher drugged and raped her, was paid with PTL funds through Bakker's associate Roe Messner. Bakker, who made PTL's financial decisions, allegedly kept two sets of books to conceal accounting irregularities. Reporters for The Charlotte Observer, led by Charles Shepard, investigated PTL's finances and published a series of articles.
On March 19, 1987, after the disclosure of a payoff to Hahn, Bakker resigned from PTL. Although he acknowledged that he had a sexual encounter with Hahn at a hotel room in Clearwater, Florida, he denied raping her. Bakker was also the subject of homosexual and bisexual allegations made by Fletcher and PTL director Jay Babcock, which Bakker denied under oath. Rival televangelist John Ankerberg appeared on Larry King Live and made several allegations of moral impropriety against Bakker, which both Bakkers denied.
Bakker was succeeded as PTL head by the Rev. Jerry Falwell of Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Virginia. Bakker chose Falwell as his successor because he feared that fellow televangelist Jimmy Swaggart, who had initiated an Assemblies of God investigation into Bakker's sexual misconduct, was attempting to take over his ministry.
Bakker believed that Falwell would temporarily lead the ministry until the scandal died down, but on April 28, 1987, Falwell barred Bakker from returning to PTL upon hearing of allegations of illicit behavior which went beyond the Hahn allegations. Later that summer, as donations declined sharply in the wake of Bakker's resignation and the end of The PTL Club, Falwell raised $20 million to keep Heritage USA solvent and took a promised water slide ride at the park. Falwell and the remaining members of the PTL board resigned in October 1987, stating that a ruling from a bankruptcy court judge made rebuilding the ministry impossible.
In response to the scandal, Falwell called Bakker a liar, an embezzler, a sexual deviant, and "the greatest scab and cancer on the face of Christianity in 2,000 years of church history". On CNN, Swaggart stated that Bakker was a "cancer in the body of Christ". In February 1988, Swaggart became involved in a sex scandal of his own after being caught visiting prostitutes in New Orleans. The Bakker and Swaggart scandals had a profound effect on the world of televangelism, causing greater media scrutiny of TV ministers and their finances. Falwell said that the scandals had "strengthened broadcast evangelism and made Christianity stronger, more mature and more committed."
==== Fraud conviction and imprisonment ====
The PTL Club's fundraising activities between 1984 and 1987 were reported by The Charlotte Observer, eventually leading to criminal charges against Bakker. Bakker and his PTL associates sold $1,000 "lifetime memberships", entitling buyers to an annual three-night stay at a luxury hotel at Heritage USA during that period. According to the prosecution at Bakker's fraud trial, tens of thousands of memberships were sold but only one 500-room hotel was ever finished. Bakker sold "exclusive partnerships" which exceeded capacity, raising more than twice the money needed to build the hotel. Much of the money paid Heritage USA's operating expenses, and Bakker kept $3.4 million.
After a 16-month federal grand jury probe, Bakker was indicted in 1988 on eight counts of mail fraud, 15 counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy. In 1989, after a five-week trial which began on August 28 in Charlotte, North Carolina, a jury found him guilty on all 24 counts. Judge Robert Daniel Potter sentenced Bakker to 45 years in federal prison and imposed a $500,000 fine. At the Federal Medical Center, Rochester in Rochester, Minnesota, he shared a cell with activist Lyndon LaRouche and skydiver Roger Nelson.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit upheld Bakker's conviction on the fraud and conspiracy charges, voided Bakker's 45-year sentence and $500,000 fine and ordered a new sentencing hearing in February 1991. The court ruled that Potter's sentencing statement about Bakker, that "those of us who do have a religion are sick of being saps for money-grubbing preachers and priests", was evidence that the judge had injected his religious beliefs into Bakker's sentence.
A sentence-reduction hearing was held on November 16, 1992, and Bakker's sentence was reduced to eight years. In August 1993, he was transferred to a minimum-security federal prison in Jesup, Georgia. Bakker was paroled in July 1994, after serving almost five years of his sentence. His son, Jay, spearheaded a letter-writing campaign to the parole board advocating leniency. Celebrity lawyer Alan Dershowitz acted as Bakker's parole attorney, having said that he "would guarantee that Mr. Bakker would never again engage in the blend of religion and commerce that led to his conviction." Bakker was released from Federal Bureau of Prisons custody on December 1, 1994, owing $6 million to the IRS.
=== Return to televangelism ===
In 2003, Bakker began broadcasting The Jim Bakker Show daily at Studio City Café in Branson, Missouri, with his second wife Lori; it has been carried on CTN, Daystar, Folk TV, Grace Network (Canada), Daystar Television Canada, GEB America, Hope TV (Canada), Impact Network, WGN, WHT, TCT Network, The Word Network, UpliftTV, and ZLiving networks. Most of Bakker's audience receives his program on DirecTV and Dish Network.
Bakker condemned the prosperity theology in which he took part earlier in his career, and has embraced apocalypticism. His show has a millennial, survivalist focus and sells buckets of freeze-dried food, such as beans on toast, to his audience in preparation for the end of days. Elspeth Reeve wrote in The Atlantic that Bakker's "doomsday survival gear" is overpriced. A man named Jerry Crawford, who credits Bakker with saving his marriage, invested $25 million in a new ministry for Bakker in Blue Eye, Missouri, named Morningside USA. Production for The Jim Bakker Show moved to Morningside in 2008.
==== Prophecies and statements ====
In 2013, Bakker wrote Time Has Come: How to Prepare Now for Epic Events Ahead about end-time events. Bakker has changed his views on prosperity theology. In his 1980 book Eight Keys to Success, he stated, "God wants you to be happy, God wants you to be rich, God wants you to prosper." In his 1996 book, I Was Wrong, he admitted that the first time he actually read the Bible all the way through was in prison. Bakker also wrote that he realized that he had taken passages out of context and used them as prooftexts to support his prosperity theology.
Bakker's revived show features a number of ministers who bill themselves as "prophets". He now says that "PTL" stands for "Prophets Talking Loud".
In an October 2017 video, Bakker said that "God will punish those" who ridicule him; he has said that Hurricane Harvey was a judgment of God, and he blamed Hurricane Matthew on then-President Barack Obama. Bakker predicted that if then-President Donald Trump was impeached, Christians would begin a Second American Civil War. He compared the 2017 Washington train derailment to the sinking of the RMS Titanic and stated the Amtrak train derailment was a warning from God. He also claimed that he predicted the September 11 attacks of 2001, stating that he "saw 9/11 in 1999 before New Year's Eve" and that there would "be terrorism" and bombings in New York City and Washington, D.C. A few days after the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, he stated that "God came to [him] in a dream... and he was wearing camouflage, a hunting vest and had an AR-15 strapped to his back" and that God supported Trump's plan to arm teachers. Following the death of Billy Graham on February 21, 2018, Bakker attended Graham's funeral and paid his respects, stating that Graham was the greatest preacher since Jesus, and also remarking that Graham had visited him in prison.
On the Stand in the Gap Today radio program, Pennsylvania Pastors Network president Sam Rohrer criticized Bakker's civil-war prediction. Christian Today criticized Bakker's show for preying on "the most vulnerable kinds of people" and claimed that it had "no place on our TV screens."
==== COVID-19 misinformation ====
Bakker sold colloidal silver supplements that he advertised as a panacea. In March 2020, the office of the Attorney General of New York ordered Bakker to cease making false medicinal claims about his supplements' alleged ability to cure the 2019–2020 strains of coronavirus, and the Federal Trade Commission and the Food and Drug Administration also sent a warning letter to Bakker about his claims regarding the supplements and coronavirus.
Missouri attorney general Eric Schmitt and Arkansas attorney general Leslie Rutledge filed lawsuits against Bakker for allegedly pushing the supplements as a treatment for the virus. In the State lawsuit against him, Bakker is represented by former Missouri governor Jay Nixon, who has argued for the suit to be dismissed. Nixon says that the allegations made in the lawsuit are false, stating: "Bakker is being unfairly targeted by those who want to crush his ministry and force his Christian television program off the air."
In April 2020, prohibited from receiving credit card transactions, Bakker disclosed to his viewers that his ministry was on the brink of filing for bankruptcy and urgently petitioned them for donations.
The following month, GEB America and World Harvest Television dropped Bakker's program from their networks after DirecTV owner AT&T asked channels to reconsider airing the show. AT&T made the request of its channels in response to a deplatforming campaign from the liberal Christian group Faithful America.
On May 8, 2020, Lori Bakker announced that Jim Bakker had suffered a stroke that his son Jay described as "minor". Lori stated that he would be taking a sabbatical from the program until he recovers. She blamed the stroke on Bakker's hard work on his show and wrote that he had described the criticism against him as "the most vicious attack that he has ever experienced". Bakker returned to his program for the first time following his stroke on July 8, 2020.
On June 23, 2021, Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt announced the settlement of the state's lawsuit against Bakker. Bakker and Morningside Church would be prohibited from saying silver solution could "diagnose, prevent, mitigate, treat, or cure any disease or illness". Restitution of about $157,000 would also be paid to those who bought silver solution between February 12, 2020, and March 10, 2020.
== Bibliography ==
Move That Mountain (1976), ISBN 978-0-88270-164-6
Eight Keys to Success (1980), ISBN 978-0-89221-071-8
I Was Wrong (1996), ISBN 978-0-7852-7425-4
Prosperity and the Coming Apocalypse (1998), ISBN 978-1-4185-5422-4
The Refuge: The Joy of Christian Community in a Torn-Apart World (2000), ISBN 978-1-4185-5423-1
Time Has Come: How to Prepare Now for Epic Events Ahead (2014), ISBN 978-1-61795-134-3
You Can Make It: God's Faithfulness in Dark Times-Past, Present and Future (2021) ISBN 978-1-63641-047-0
== References ==
== External links ==
Jim Bakker Show |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Morris_(footballer) | Edward Morris (footballer) | Edward Morris (born 1872) was a Welsh international footballer. He was part of the Wales national football team, playing 3 matches. He played his first match on 13 March 1893 against England and his last match on 5 April 1893 against Ireland.
== See also ==
List of Wales international footballers (alphabetical)
List of Wales international footballers born outside Wales
== References == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul-Émile_Pissarro | Paul-Émile Pissarro | Paul-Émile Pissarro, also Paulémile Pissarro or Paul Émile Pissarro (22 August 1884 in Éragny-sur-Epte, France – 20 January 1972 in Clécy in the department of Calvados, France) was a French impressionist and neo-impressionist painter. He came from the Pissarro family of artists.
== Life ==
Paul-Émile Pissarro was the fifth and youngest son of the impressionist painter Camille Pissarro and his wife Julia (née Vellay). His siblings were Lucien, Jeanne, Félix, Georges Henri Manzana, Ludovic Rodolphe and Jeanne (Cocotte).
He grew up in the artistic surroundings of the family household in Paris.
Encouraged by his father, he began to draw at an early age. The White Horse, which he drew at five years of age, was praised by the art critic Octave Mirbeau. Camille was also impressed and kept the drawing for his private collection.
At fifteen Paul-Émile went to the academy in Gisors, but left again after a few months to accompany his father on a painting tour of Le Havre, Dieppe and Rouen.
On his return to Paris he went to a private art academy, unlike his siblings, who were mainly taught by their father.
On his father's death in 1903, Paul-Émile returned to his mother in Éragny.
The painter Claude Monet, who lived in the nearby Giverny, had been one of Camille's closest friends and was Paul-Émiles godfather;
after Camille's death he became a teacher and close friend to Paul-Émile.
Paul-Émile frequently visited Giverny, where Monet taught him painting and gardening, encouraging him to follow in his father's footsteps: "Work! Study! Do as your father did".
Along with his brother Ludovic Rodolphe, Pissarro exhibited for the first time in 1905, showing his impressionist landscape Bords de l'Epte à Éragny in the Salon des Indépendants of the Société des Artistes Indépendants.
While his father had encourage Paul-Émile's artistic efforts, his mother urged him to take up a conventional career.
From 1908 on Pissarro worked first as a car mechanic and then as a designer or laces and cloths.
In his spare time he continued to paint.
His brother Lucien, who lived in London, asked Paul-Émile to send him some watercolours for sale.
Encouraged by British interest and the sale of his works, he left his position in the lace factory with the intention of devoting himself to painting.
With his wife Berthe (née Bennaiché) he moved to Burgundy.
By the outbreak of the First World War he had just seriously started working as an artist.
On account of his health he was freed from military service, which left him free to travel and to paint during the war.
His brother arranged exhibitions for him in the New English Art Club (NEAC), the Baillie Gallery and at the Allied Artists Association in London.
Paul-Émile's work was heavily influenced by the painter Paul Cézanne, whose style his father had urged upon him. Paul-Émile met Cézanne several times in Paris,
and his influence became evident in Pissarro's green-gold classical compositions from around 1918 onward.
Cézanne also inspired his later use of palette knives rather than brushes.
He also experimented with etching and printing, and made various woodcuts, some of which were first displayed in 1919 by Malcolm C. Salaman.
By the 1920s Paul-Émile Pissarro was established as a neo-impressionist painter.
In this period he shared a studio in Paris with the artist Kees van Dongen.
With him and the painters Maurice de Vlaminck, André Dunoyer de Segonzac and Raoul Dufy he travelled and painted in summer, spending winter in Paris.
In 1924 he bought a house in Lyons-la-Forêt, a small village near Éragny, whose garden (designed by Monet) and surroundings offered him subjects for paintings,
in particular the pastures, meadows and hills through which the river Epte peacefully flows.
In the late 1920s and early 1930s Paul-Émile finally found his person style and reached the summit of his artistic development.
In 1930, on the recommendation of Raoul Dufy, he travelled for the first time in the Suisse Normande where the river Orne,
runs through the valley between Clécy and Le Vey.
The blue hills, green meadows and peaceful waters of the river provided Pissarro with a new environment for his artistic work.
He set up a studio in a houseboat – a converted rowing boat in his garden on the banks for the Orne – in which he could concentrate on his favourite subject, reflections in still waters.
In this period he abandoned unmixed colours and deployed a palette with many mixed colours until finally he used brushes less and less and palette knives more and more.
In 1935 Pissarro separated from his wife Berthe.
In 1937, together with his second wife Yvonne Beaupel, he bought the house in Clécy in which he lived for the rest of his life.
He had three children with Yvonne, Hugues Claude, Yvon and Véra; both sons also became artists.
Many of the works that he produced in Clécy were exhibited in the following thirty years in the Salon des Indépendants.
In 1967 Paul-Émile Pissarro had his first solo exhibition in the United States, in the Wally Findlay gallery in New York,
which brought broader recognition for his work and a degree of success as a painter which few other members of the Pissarro family achieved.
After his death in 1972 Paul-Émile Pissarro's works were exhibited internationally several times.
He was buried in the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.
== Work ==
Paul-Émile Pissarro painted portraits and landscapes. He painted small villages in the Midi such as Treignac et Uzerche, the forests of Normandy and the Marais Poitevin.
=== Selected works ===
== Critical reception ==
In New York, the Arts Magazine reported in 1970:
Paulemile (sic!) Pissarro's landscapes have no stylistic connections with those of his famous father. This is particularly true of his color, which does not interpret light and shade in terms of complementary hues. What Paulemile seeks is the solidity that Impressionism dissolved into colored light.
== Literatur ==
Stern Art Dealers: Paulémile Pissarro, 1884–1972, Retrospective Exhibition: Stern Art Dealers, London, 24th November to 20th December 1997. London 1997
Anne Thorold, Kristen Erickson: Camille Pissarro and his family: the Pissarro collection in the Ashmolean Museum. Biografie und Autobiografie. Ashmolean Museum, 1993, p. 74
Adrian M. Darmon (ed.): Around Jewish Art: A Dictionary of Painters, Sculptors, and Photographers Carnot, 2003, ISBN 2-84855-011-2. Entry Paulémile Pissarro, p. 93 → online
(in French) Charles Kunstler: Trente-neuf reproductions de tableaux dont trois portraits par C. Pissarro. Girard & Brunino, Paris 1928
(in German) W. G.: Pissarro, Paul Emile. In: Ulrich Thieme, Felix Becker (editors): Allgemeines Lexikon der Bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart. Band 27, E. A. Seemann, Leipzig 1933, S. 110.
(in German) Hans Vollmer: Pissarro, Paul Emile in Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler des XX. Jahrhunderts Vol 3: 3: K–P, p. 596. E. A. Seemann, Leipzig 1956
== Links ==
Gemälde von Paul Émile Pissarro In: Stern Pissarro Gallery → online
== References == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sora,_Boyac%C3%A1 | Sora, Boyacá | Sora is a town and municipality in the Central Boyacá Province, part of the Colombian Department of Boyacá. Sora borders Motavita and Chíquiza in the north, Cucaita and Samacá in the south, Motavita and department capital Tunja in the east and Sáchica and Chíquiza in the west.
== Etymology ==
The name Sora comes from Chibcha and means "Devil worshipper".
== History ==
In the times before the Spanish conquest, the area of Sora was inhabited by the Muisca, organised in their loose Muisca Confederation. Sora was under the rule of the zaque from nearby Hunza.
Modern Sora was founded on August 12, 1556 by Tomás Gualba Castellanos.
== Born in Sora ==
Mauricio Neiza, professional cyclist
== Gallery ==
== References == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiki_Smith#Recognition | Kiki Smith | Kiki Smith (born January 18, 1954) is a German-born American artist whose work has addressed the themes of sex, birth and regeneration. Her figurative work of the late 1980s and early 1990s confronted subjects such as AIDS, feminism, and gender, while recent works have depicted the human condition in relationship to nature. Smith lives and works on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in New York City, and in the Hudson Valley.
== Early life and education ==
Smith's father was artist Tony Smith and her mother was actress and opera singer Jane Lawrence. Although her work takes a very different form than that of her parents, early exposure to her father's process of making geometric sculptures allowed her to experience Modernism's formal craftsmanship firsthand. Her childhood experience in the Catholic Church, combined with a fascination for the human body, shaped her artwork conceptually.
Smith moved from Germany to South Orange, New Jersey, as an infant in 1955. That same year, her sisters, Seton Smith and Beatrice (Bebe) Smith, were born in Newark, New Jersey. Smith subsequently attended Columbia High School, but left to attend Changes, Inc. Later, she was enrolled at Hartford Art School in Connecticut for eighteen months from 1974 to 1975. She then moved to New York City in 1976 and joined Collaborative Projects (Colab), an artist collective. The influence of this radical group's use of unconventional materials can be seen in her work. For a short time in 1984, she studied to be an emergency medical technician and sculpted body parts. By 1990, she began to craft human figures.
== Work ==
=== Themes ===
Prompted by her father's death in 1980, and the subsequent death of her sister the underground actress Beatrice "Bebe" Smith, due to AIDS in 1988, Smith began an ambitious investigation of mortality and the physicality of the human body. She has gone on to create works that explore a wide range of human organs; including sculptures of hearts, lungs, stomach, liver and spleen. Related to this was her work exploring bodily fluids, which also had social significance as responses to the AIDS crisis (blood) and women's rights (urine, menstrual blood, feces).
=== Film ===
In 1984 Smith finished a definitively unfinished feminist no wave super8 film, begun in 1981, entitled Cave Girls. It was co-directed by Ellen Cooper.
=== Printmaking ===
Smith has experimented with a wide range of printmaking processes. Some of her earliest print works were screen-printed dresses, scarves and shirts, often with images of body parts. In association with Colab, Smith printed an array of posters in the early 1980s containing political statements or announcing Colab events, such as her The Island of Negative Utopia poster done for ABC No Rio in 1983. In 1988 she created All Souls, a fifteen-foot screen-print work featuring repetitive images of a fetus, an image Smith found in a Japanese anatomy book. Smith printed the image in black ink on 36 attached sheets of handmade Thai paper.
MoMA and the Whitney Museum both have extensive collections of Smith's prints. In the Blue Prints series, 1999, Kiki Smith experimented with the aquatint process. The Virgin with Dove was achieved with an airbrushed aquatint, an acid resist that protects the copper plate. When printed, this technique results in a halo around the Virgin Mary and Holy Spirit.
=== Sculpture ===
Mary Magdelene (1994), a sculpture made of silicon bronze and forged steel, is an example of Smith's non-traditional use of the female nude. The figure is without skin everywhere but her face, breasts and the area surrounding her navel. She wears a chain around her ankle; her face is relatively undetailed and is turned upwards. Smith has said that when making Mary Magdalene she was inspired by depictions of Mary Magdalene in Southern German sculpture, where she was depicted as a "wild woman". Smith's sculpture "Standing" (1998), featuring a female figure standing atop the trunk of a Eucalyptus tree, is a part of the Stuart Collection of public art on the campus of the University of California, San Diego. Another sculpture, “Lilith” (1994), a bronze woman with glass eyes, is on display at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Lilith is an arresting figure, hanging upside down on a wall of the gallery.
In 2005, Smith's installation, Homespun Tales won acclaim at the 51st Venice Biennale. Lodestar, Smith's 2010 installation at the Pace Gallery, was an exhibition of free-standing stained glass works painted with life-size figures.
=== Commissions ===
After five years of development, Smith's first permanent outdoor sculpture was installed in 1998 on the campus of the University of California, San Diego.
In 2010, the Museum at Eldridge Street commissioned Smith and architect Deborah Gans to create a new monumental east window for the 1887 Eldridge Street Synagogue, a National Historic Landmark located on New York's Lower East Side. This permanent commission marked the final significant component of the museum's 20-year restoration and was topped off with an exhibition of site-specific sculptures by Smith in a 2018 show entitled Below the Horizon: Kiki Smith at Eldridge.
For the Claire Tow Theater above the Vivian Beaumont Theater, Smith conceived Overture (2012), a little mobile made of cross-hatched planks and cast-bronze birds.
In 2019, Smith conceived Memory, a site specific installation for the DESTE Foundation for Contemporary Art on the Greek island of Hydra.
=== Artist books ===
She has created unique books, including:
Fountainhead (1991); The Vitreous Body (2001); and Untitled (Book of Hours) (1986).
=== Tapestries ===
Since the early 2010s Smith has created twelve 9 x 6 ft. Jacquard tapestries, published by Magnolia Editions. In 2012, Smith showed a series of three of these woven editions at the Neuberger Museum of Art. In early 2019, all twelve were exhibited together as part of "What I saw on the road" at the Palazzo Pitti in Florence, Italy. Smith notes that the tapestries provide an opportunity to work at a larger scale ("I never thought I could make a picture so big") and to work with color, which she does not frequently do otherwise.
=== Mosaics ===
In 2022, Smith to created a series of five giant mosaics for Manhattan train station at Grand Central Madison station, located beneath the Grand Central Terminal. The mosaics are titled River Light, The Water's Way, The Presence, The Spring, and The Sound (all 2022).
== Collaborations ==
Smith was an active member of Collaborative Projects and ABC No Rio; participating in many Potato Wolf broadcasts and the Cardboard Air Band. Smith collaborated with David Wojnarowicz on her first solo exhibition, Life Wants to Live, at The Kitchen. During this period (the early 1980s), Smith collaborated and co-directed with Ellen Cooper on a group collaboration with many young women associated with the Bush Tetras and Colab for her 1984 No Wave underground film Cave Girls. Later she collaborated with poet Mei-mei Berssenbrugge to produce Endocrinology (1997), and Concordance (2006), and with author Lynne Tillman to create Madame Realism (1984). She has worked with poet Anne Waldman on If I Could Say This With My Body, Would I. I Would. Smith also collaborated on a performance featuring choreographer Douglas Dunn and Dancers, musicians Ha-Yang Kim, Daniel Carter, Ambrose Bye, and Devin Brahja Waldman, performed by and set to Anne Waldman's poem Jaguar Harmonics.
== Exhibitions ==
In 1980, Smith participated in the Colab organized exhibition The Times Square Show. In 1982, Smith received her first solo exhibition, Life Wants to Live, at The Kitchen. Since then, her work has been exhibited in nearly 150 solo exhibitions at museums and galleries worldwide and has been featured in hundreds of significant group exhibitions, including the Whitney Biennial, New York (1991, 1993, 2002); La Biennale di Firenze, Florence, Italy (1996-1997; 1998); and the Venice Biennale (1993, 1999, 2005, 2009).
Past solo exhibitions have been held at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and the Modern Art Museum, Fort Worth (1996–97); Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (1996–97); Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (1997–98); Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC (1998); Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh (1998); Center for Curatorial Studies and Art in Contemporary Culture, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson (1999); St. Louis Art Museum (1999-2000); and the International Center for Photography (2001).
In 1996, Smith exhibited in a group show at SITE Santa Fe, along with Kara Walker.
In 2005, "the artist's first full-scale American museum survey" titled Kiki Smith: A Gathering, 1980-2005 debuted at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Then an expansion came to the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis where the show originated. At the Walker, Smith coauthored the catalogue raisonné with curator Siri Engberg.
The exhibition traveled to the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, to the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, and finally to La Coleccion Jumex in Ecatepec de Morelos outside Mexico City. In 2008, Smith gave Selections from Animal Skulls (1995) to the Walker in honor of Engberg.
In 2016, the Walsh Gallery at Seton Hall University, in collaboration with the Lennie Pierro Memorial Arts Foundation, hosted Kiki and Seton Smith: A Sense of Place.
Smith participated in the 2017 Venice Biennale, Viva Arte Viva, from May 13 – November 16, 2017.
In 2018, Smith took part in Frieze Sculpture (part of Frieze Art Fair, where her work Seer (Alice I), Timothy Taylor (gallery), was presented in Regent's Park, London, England, from July 4 – October 7, 2018.
Also in London in 2018, an exhibition of Smith's tapestries, sculpture and works on paper was presented at the Timothy Taylor (gallery) from September 13 – October 27. Woodland was produced in collaboration with Magnolia Editions.
In 2019, the Deste Foundation's Project Space at the Slaughterhouse on Hydra island featured Memory, a site specific exhibition.
In 2019 The 11 Conti – Monnaie de Paris presented the first solo show of Smith by a French public institution.
In 2019 the Österreichische Galerie Belvedere in Vienna, Austria, presented a solo show of Smith entitled "Processions", presenting about sixty works from the last three decades.
== Other activities ==
In 2023, Smith served on the jury that chose Sarah Lucas as first winner of the New Museum's $400,000 Hostetler/Wrigley Sculpture Award.
== Recognition ==
Smith's many accolades also include the Nelson A. Rockefeller Award from Purchase College School of the Arts (2010), Women in the Arts Award from the Brooklyn Museum (2009), the 50th Edward MacDowell Medal (2009), the Medal Award from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (2006), the Athena Award for Excellence in Printmaking from the Rhode Island School of Design (2006), the Skowhegan Medal for Sculpture from the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Maine (2000), and Time Magazine's "Time 100: The People Who Shape Our World" (2006). Smith was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York, in 2005.
In 2012, Smith received the U.S. State Department Medal of Arts from Hillary Clinton. Pieces by Smith adorn consulates in Istanbul and Mumbai. After being chosen speaker for the annual Patsy R. and Raymond D. Nasher Lecture Series in Contemporary Sculpture and Criticism in 2013, Smith became the artist-in-residence for the University of North Texas Institute for the Advancement of the Arts in the 2013–14 academic year.
In 2016, Smith was awarded the International Sculpture Center's Lifetime Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture Award.
== References ==
Adams, Laurie Schneider, Ed. A History of Western Art Third Edition. New York: McGraw-Hill Higher Education, 2001.
Berland, Rosa JH. "Kiki Smith: A Gathering, 1980-2005." C Magazine: International Contemporary Art, 2007.
Engberg, Siri, Linda Nochlin, and Marina Warner, Kiki Smith: A Gathering, 1980–2005 (Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, 2005).
Posner, Helaine, with an interview by Christopher Lyon, Kiki Smith (Monacelli Press, New York), 2005.
Alan W. Moore and Marc Miller, eds., ABC No Rio Dinero: The Story of a Lower East Side Art Gallery (Collaborative Projects (Colab), NY, 1985).
== Footnotes ==
== External links ==
Media related to Kiki Smith at Wikimedia Commons
Kiki Smith talks with Joseph Nechvatal about her Cave Girls film and The ABC No Rio Cardboard Air Band at Hyperallergic
Kiki Smith at Barbara Gross Galerie
Biography, interviews, essays, artwork images and video clips from PBS series Art:21—Art in the Twenty-First Century (2003)
Interview with Kiki Smith
Museum of Biblical Art - Biblical Art in a Secular Century: Selections, 1896-1993 featuring Kiki Smith Processional Crucifix from Saint Peter's Church, New York, NY
'Kiki Smith video interview'
Kiki Smith: Prints, Books and Things at MoMA
Jewel, an excerpt of Smith's 1997 film in the AVI format
Heyoka magazine Interview Archived May 30, 2012, at the Wayback Machine with John Lekay
Kiki Smith: "Life Wants to Live" (1:33) published at Tellus Audio Cassette Magazine
Kiki Smith Galerie Lelong & Co. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonization_of_Mars | Colonization of Mars | The colonization of Mars is the proposed process of establishing permanent human settlements on the planet Mars. Most colonization concepts focus on settling, but colonization is a broader ethical concept, which international space law has limited, and national space programs have avoided, instead focusing on human mission to Mars for exploring the planet. The settlement of Mars would require the migration of humans to the planet, the establishment of a permanent human presence, and the exploitation of local resources.
No crewed missions to Mars have occurred, although there have been successful robotic missions to the planet. Public space agencies (including NASA, ESA, Roscosmos, ISRO, the CNSA, among others) have explored colonization concepts, but have primarily focused on further robotic exploration of Mars and the possibility of crewed landings. Some space advocacy groups, such as the Mars Society and the National Space Society, as well as some private organizations, such as SpaceX, have promoted the idea of colonization. The prospect of settling Mars has been explored extensively in science fiction writing, film, and art.
Challenges to settlement include the intense ionizing radiation that impacts the Martian surface, and the fine, toxic dust that covers the planet. Mars has an atmosphere, but it is unbreathable and thin. Surface temperatures fluctuate widely, between −70 and 0 °C (−94 and 32 °F). While Mars has underground water and other resources, conditions do not favor power production using wind and solar; similarly, the planet has few resources for nuclear power. Mars's orbit is the third closest to Earth's orbit, though far enough from Earth that the distance would present a serious obstacle to the movement of materiel and settlers. Justifications and motivations for colonizing Mars include technological curiosity, the opportunity to conduct in-depth observational research, the possibility that the settlement of other planets could decrease the probability of human extinction, the interest in establishing a colony independent of Earth, and the potential benefits of economic exploitation of the planet's resources.
== Background ==
=== Terminology ===
Colonization of Mars differs from the crewed Mars exploration missions currently pursued by public space agencies, as they aim to land humans for exploration.
The terminology used to refer a potential human presence on Mars has been scrutinized since at least the 2010s, with space colonization in general since 1977, as by Carl Sagan, who preferred to refer to settlements in space as cities instead of colonies because of the implied colonialism; the US State Department had already made clear to avoid the use of the term because of the colonialist meaning. Today, "settlement" is preferred out of similar reasons, trying to avoid the broad sociopolitical connotations of colonization.
Today, the term is most prominently used by Robert Zubrin and the SpaceX Mars colonization program, with the term Occupy Mars also being used, aspiring for an independent Mars colony, despite limiting international space law.
=== Mission concepts ===
Landers and rovers have successfully explored the surface of Mars and delivered information about conditions on the ground. The first successful lander, the Viking 1 lander, touched down on the planet in 1976.
Crewed missions to Mars have been proposed, but no person has attempted to travel to the planet, and there have been no return missions. Most of the human mission concepts as currently conceived by national governmental space programs would not be direct precursors to colonization. Programs such as those being tentatively planned by NASA, Roscosmos, and ESA are intended solely as exploration missions, with the establishment of a permanent base possible but not yet the main goal. Colonization requires the establishment of permanent habitats that have the potential for self-expansion and self-sustenance. Two early proposals for building habitats on Mars are the Mars Direct and the Semi-Direct concepts, advocated by Robert Zubrin, an advocate of the colonization of Mars.
At the February 2017 World Government Summit, the United Arab Emirates announced a plan to establish a settlement on Mars by 2117, led by the Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre.
== Comparisons between Earth and Mars ==
=== Gravity and size ===
The surface gravity of Mars is just 38% that of Earth. Although microgravity is known to cause health problems such as muscle loss and bone demineralization, it is not known if Martian gravity would have a similar effect. The Mars Gravity Biosatellite was a proposed project designed to learn more about what effect Mars's lower surface gravity would have on humans, but it was cancelled due to a lack of funding.
Mars has a surface area that is 28.4% of Earth's, which is only slightly less than the amount of dry land on Earth (which is 29.2% of Earth's surface). Mars has half the radius of Earth and one-tenth the mass. This means that it has a smaller volume (≈15%) and lower average density than Earth.
=== Magnetosphere ===
Due to the lack of a magnetosphere, solar particle events and cosmic rays can easily reach the Martian surface.
=== Atmosphere ===
Atmospheric pressure on Mars is far below the Armstrong limit at which people can survive without pressure suits. Since terraforming cannot be expected as a near-term solution, habitable structures on Mars would need to be constructed with pressure vessels similar to spacecraft, capable of containing a pressure between 30 and 100 kPa. The atmosphere is also toxic as most of it consists of carbon dioxide (95% carbon dioxide, 3% nitrogen, 1.6% argon, and traces totaling less than 0.4% of other gases, including oxygen).
This thin atmosphere does not filter out ultraviolet sunlight, which causes instability in the molecular bonds between atoms. For example, ammonia (NH3) is not stable in the Martian atmosphere and breaks down after a few hours. Also due to the thinness of the atmosphere, the temperature difference between day and night is much larger than on Earth, typically around 70 °C. However, the day/night temperature variation is much lower during dust storms when little light gets through to the surface even during the day, and instead warms the middle atmosphere.
=== Water and climate ===
Water on Mars is scarce, with rovers Spirit and Opportunity finding less than in Earth's driest desert (which is The Atacama Desert in northern Chile).
The climate is much colder than Earth, with mean surface temperatures between 186 and 268 K (−87 and −5 °C) (depending on the season and latitude). The lowest temperature ever recorded on Earth was 184 K (−89.2 °C) in Antarctica.
Because Mars is about 52% farther from the Sun than is the Earth, the amount of solar energy entering its upper atmosphere per unit area (the solar constant) is around 43.3% of what reaches the Earth's upper atmosphere. However, due to the much thinner atmosphere, a higher fraction of the solar energy reaches the surface as radiation. The maximum solar irradiance on Mars is about 590 W/m2 compared to about 1000 W/m2 at the Earth's surface; optimal conditions on the Martian equator can be compared to those on Devon Island in the Canadian Arctic in June. Mars's orbit is more eccentric than Earth's, increasing temperature and solar constant variations over the course of the Martian year. Mars has no rain and virtually no clouds, so although cold, it is permanently sunny (apart from during dust storms). This means solar panels can always operate at maximum efficiency on dust-free days.
Global dust storms are common throughout the year and can cover the entire planet for weeks, blocking sunlight from reaching the surface. This has been observed to cause temperature drops of 4 °C for several months after the storm. In contrast, the only comparable events on Earth are infrequent large volcanic eruptions such as the Krakatoa event which threw large amounts of ash into the atmosphere in 1883, causing a global temperature drop of around 1 °C. These dust storms would affect electricity production from solar panels for long periods, and interfere with communications with Earth.
==== Temperature and seasons ====
Mars has an axial tilt of 25.19°, similar to Earth's 23.44°. As a result, Mars has seasons much like Earth, though on average they last nearly twice as long because the Martian year is about 1.88 Earth years. Mars's temperature regime is more similar to Earth's than to any other planet's in the Solar System. While generally colder than Earth, Mars can have Earth-like temperatures in some areas and at certain times.
=== Soil ===
The Martian soil is toxic due to relatively high concentrations of chlorine and associated compounds, such as perchlorates, which are hazardous to all known forms of life, even though some halotolerant microorganisms might be able to cope with enhanced perchlorate concentrations by drawing on physiological adaptations similar to those observed in the yeast Debaryomyces hansenii exposed in lab experiments to increasing NaClO4 concentrations.
The presence of perchlorates may form a key component of solid rocket propellant, combining with other materials via resonant acoustic mixing.
=== Survivability ===
Plants and animals cannot survive the ambient conditions on the surface of Mars. However, some extremophile organisms that survive in hostile conditions on Earth have endured periods of exposure to environments that approximate some of the conditions found on Mars.
=== Length of day ===
The Martian day (or sol) is close in duration to Earth's. A solar day on Mars is 24 hours, 39 minutes and 35.244 seconds.
== Conditions for human habitation ==
Conditions on the surface of Mars are closer to the conditions on Earth in terms of temperature and sunlight than on any other planet or moon, except for the cloud tops of Venus. However, the surface is not hospitable to humans or most known life forms due to the radiation, greatly reduced air pressure, and an atmosphere with only 0.16% oxygen.
In 2012, it was reported that some lichen and cyanobacteria survived and showed remarkable adaptation capacity for photosynthesis after 34 days in experiments that partially simulated Martian conditions in the Mars Simulation Laboratory maintained by the German Aerospace Center. Some scientists think that cyanobacteria could play a role in the development of self-sustainable crewed outposts on Mars. They propose that cyanobacteria could be used directly for various applications, including the production of food, fuel and oxygen, but also indirectly: products from their culture could support the growth of other organisms, opening the way to a wide range of life-support biological processes based on Martian resources.
Humans have explored parts of Earth that match some conditions on Mars. Based on NASA rover data, temperatures on Mars (at low latitudes) are similar to those in Antarctica. The atmospheric pressure at the highest altitudes reached by piloted balloon ascents (35 km (114,000 feet) in 1961, 38 km in 2012) is similar to that on the surface of Mars. However, the pilots were not exposed to the extremely low pressure, as it would have killed them, but were seated in a pressurized capsule.
Human survival on Mars would require living in artificial Mars habitats with complex life-support systems. One key aspect of this would be water processing systems. Being made mainly of water, a human being would die in a matter of days without it. Even a 5–8% decrease in total body water causes fatigue and dizziness, and with a 10% decrease comes physical and mental impairment (See Dehydration). A person in the UK uses 70–140 litres of water per day on average. Through experience and training, astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) have shown it is possible to use far less, and that around 70% of what is used can be recycled using the ISS water recovery systems. (For instance, half of all water is used during showers.) Similar systems would be needed on Mars but would need to be much more efficient, since regular robotic deliveries of water to Mars would be prohibitively expensive (the ISS is supplied with water four times per year). Potential access to on-site water (frozen or otherwise) via drilling has been investigated by NASA.
=== Effects on human health ===
Mars presents a hostile environment for human habitation. Different technologies have been developed to assist long-term space exploration and may be adapted for habitation on Mars. The existing record for the longest continuous space flight is 438 days by cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov, and the most accrued time in space is 1,111 days by Oleg Kononenko. The longest time spent outside the protection of the Earth's Van Allen radiation belt is about 12 days for the Apollo 17 Moon landing. This is minor in comparison to the 1100-day journey to Mars and back envisioned by NASA for possibly as early as the year 2028. Scientists have also hypothesized that many different biological functions can be negatively affected by the environment of Mars. Due to higher levels of radiation, there are a multitude of physical side-effects that must be mitigated. In addition, Martian soil contains high levels of toxins which are hazardous to human health.
==== Physical effects ====
The difference in gravity may negatively affect human health by weakening bones and muscles. There is also risk of osteoporosis and cardiovascular problems. Current rotations on the International Space Station put astronauts in zero gravity for six months, a comparable length of time to a one-way trip to Mars. This gives researchers the ability to better understand the physical state that astronauts going to Mars would arrive in. Once on Mars, surface gravity is only 38% of that on Earth. Microgravity affects the cardiovascular, musculoskeletal and neurovestibular (central nervous) systems. The cardiovascular effects are complex. On Earth, blood within the body stays 70% below the heart, but in microgravity this is not the case due to nothing pulling the blood down. This can have several negative effects. Once entering into microgravity, the blood pressure in the lower body and legs is significantly reduced. This causes legs to become weak through loss of muscle and bone mass. Astronauts show signs of a puffy face and chicken legs syndrome. After the first day of reentry back to Earth, blood samples showed a 17% loss of blood plasma, which contributed to a decline of erythropoietin secretion. On the skeletal system which is important to support body posture, long space flight and exposure to microgravity cause demineralization and atrophy of muscles. During re-acclimation, astronauts were observed to have a myriad of symptoms including cold sweats, nausea, vomiting and motion sickness. Returning astronauts also felt disoriented. Once on Mars with its lesser surface gravity (38% percent of Earth's), these health effects would be a serious concern. Upon return to Earth, recovery from bone loss and atrophy is a long process and the effects of microgravity may never fully reverse.
==== Radiation ====
Dangerous amounts of radiation reach Mars's surface despite it being much further from the Sun compared to Earth. Mars has lost its inner dynamo giving it a weaker global magnetosphere than Earth. Combined with a thin atmosphere, this permits a significant amount of ionizing radiation to reach the Martian surface. There are two main types of radiation risks to traveling outside the protection of Earth's atmosphere and magnetosphere: galactic cosmic rays (GCR) and solar energetic particles. Earth's magnetosphere protects from charged particles from the Sun, and the atmosphere protects against uncharged and highly energetic GCRs. There are ways to mitigate solar radiation, but without much of an atmosphere, the only solution to the GCR flux is heavy shielding amounting to roughly 15 centimeters of steel, 1 meter of rock, or 3 meters of water, limiting human colonists to living underground most of the time.
The Mars Odyssey spacecraft carries an instrument, the Mars Radiation Environment Experiment (MARIE), to measure the radiation. MARIE found that radiation levels in orbit above Mars are 2.5 times higher than at the International Space Station, or much higher than the combined global fallout of the thousands of nuclear weapons testing on Earth. The average daily dose was about 220 μGy (22 mrad)—equivalent to 0.08 Gy per year. A three-year exposure to such levels would exceed the safety limits currently adopted by NASA, and the risk of developing cancer due to radiation exposure after a Mars mission could be two times greater than what scientists previously thought. Occasional solar proton events produce much higher doses, as observed in September 2017, when NASA reported radiation levels on the surface of Mars were temporarily doubled, and were associated with an aurora 25-times brighter than any observed earlier, due to a massive, and unexpected, solar storm. Building living quarters underground (possibly in Martian lava tubes) would significantly lower the colonists' exposure to radiation.
Much remains to be learned about space radiation. In 2003, NASA's Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center opened the NASA Space Radiation Laboratory, at Brookhaven National Laboratory, that employs particle accelerators to simulate space radiation. The facility studies its effects on living organisms, as well as experimenting with shielding techniques. Initially, there was some evidence that this kind of low level, chronic radiation is not as dangerous as once thought; and that radiation hormesis occurs. However, results from a 2006 study indicated that protons from cosmic radiation may cause twice as much serious damage to DNA as previously estimated, exposing astronauts to greater risk of cancer and other diseases. As a result of the higher radiation in the Martian environment, the summary report of the Review of U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee released in 2009 reported that "Mars is not an easy place to visit with existing technology and without a substantial investment of resources." NASA is exploring a variety of alternative techniques and technologies such as deflector shields of plasma to protect astronauts and spacecraft from radiation.
==== Psychological effects ====
Due to the communication delays, new protocols need to be developed in order to assess crew members' psychological health. Researchers have developed a Martian simulation called HI-SEAS (Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation) that places scientists in a simulated Martian laboratory to study the psychological effects of isolation, repetitive tasks, and living in close-quarters with other scientists for up to a year at a time. Computer programs are being developed to assist crews with personal and interpersonal issues in absence of direct communication with professionals on Earth.
=== Terraforming ===
The terraforming of Mars is the hypothetical set of planetary engineering projects that would modify Mars to allow terrestrial life to survive free of protection or mediation. Proposals for the terraforming of Mars have been put forward, but there is considerable debate about their feasibility and the ethics associated with terraforming.
=== Minimum size of a colony ===
No consensus exists about the minimum viable size of a colony required to ensure that inbreeding would not occur. Through mathematical modelling of the time spent by people on work in a colony, Jean-Marc Salotti concluded that the minimum number for a colony on Mars is 110. This is close to other studies of the genetic problems involved in the longer journey to Proxima Centauri b (6,000+ years). Other studies, focused on interstellar settlement, have concluded that minimum viable populations or a desirable number of colonists range from 198 to as high as 10,000.
To be self-sustaining, a colony would have to be large enough to provide all the necessary living services. These include:
Ecosystem management: producing appropriate gases, controlling air composition pressure and temperature, collecting and producing water, growing food and processing organic wastes.
Energy production: this includes extracting methane for vehicles and, if photovoltaic cells are used to produce energy, this would include the extraction and processing of silicates, to augment or replace any original equipment.
Industry: extracting and processing appropriate ores, manufacturing tools and other objects; producing clothes, medicine, glass, ceramics, and plastics.
Building: even if the base is constructed before arrival, it will need frequent adaptation according to the evolution of the settlement as well as inevitable replacement.
Social activities: this includes raising children and educating them, health care, preparing meals, cleaning, washing, organizing the work and making decisions. Time for sport, culture and entertainment can be minimized but not eliminated.
== Transportation ==
=== Interplanetary spaceflight ===
Mars requires less energy per unit mass (delta V) to reach from Earth than any planet except Venus. Using a Hohmann transfer orbit, a trip to Mars requires approximately nine months in space. Modified transfer trajectories that cut the travel time to four to seven months in space are possible with incrementally higher amounts of energy and fuel compared to a Hohmann transfer orbit, and are in standard use for robotic Mars missions. Shortening the travel time below about six months requires higher delta-v and an increasing amount of fuel, and is difficult with chemical rockets. It could be feasible with advanced spacecraft propulsion technologies, some of which have already been tested to varying levels, such as Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket, and nuclear rockets. In the former case, a trip time of forty days could be attainable, and in the latter, a trip time of about two weeks. In 2016, a University of California, Santa Barbara scientist said it was possible to reduce travel time for a small robotic probe to Mars to "as little as 72 hours" with the use of a laser propelled sail (directed photonic propulsion) system instead of the fuel-based rocket propulsion system.
During the journey, the astronauts would be subject to radiation, which would require a means to protect them. Cosmic radiation and solar wind cause DNA damage, which significantly increases the risk of cancer. The effect of long-term travel in interplanetary space is unknown, but scientists estimate an added risk of between 1% and 19% (one estimate is 3.4%) for males to die of cancer because of the radiation during the journey to Mars and back to Earth. For females the probability is higher due to generally larger glandular tissues.
=== Landing on Mars ===
Mars has a surface gravity 0.38 times that of Earth, and the density of its atmosphere is about 0.6% of that on Earth. The relatively strong gravity and the presence of aerodynamic effects make it difficult to land heavy, crewed spacecraft with thrusters only, as was done with the Apollo Moon landings, yet the atmosphere is too thin for aerodynamic effects to be of much help in aerobraking and landing a large vehicle. Landing piloted missions on Mars would require braking and landing systems different from anything used to land crewed spacecraft on the Moon or robotic missions on Mars.
If one assumes carbon nanotube construction material will be available with a strength of 130 GPa (19,000,000 psi) then a space elevator could be built to land people and material on Mars. A space elevator on Phobos (a Martian moon) has also been proposed.
==== Phobos as a space elevator for Mars ====
Phobos is synchronously orbiting Mars, where the same face stays facing the planet at ~6,028 km above the Martian surface. A space elevator could extend from Phobos to Mars 6,000 km, about 28 kilometers from the surface, and just out of the atmosphere of Mars. A similar space elevator cable could extend out 6,000 km the opposite direction that would counterbalance Phobos. In total the space elevator would extend out over 12,000 km which would be below Areostationary orbit of Mars (17,032 km). A rocket launch would still be needed to get the rocket and cargo to the beginning of the space elevator 28 km above the surface. The surface of Mars is rotating at 0.25 km/s at the equator and the bottom of the space elevator would be rotating around Mars at 0.77 km/s, so only 0.52 km/s of Delta-v would be needed to get to the space elevator. Phobos orbits at 2.15 km/s and the outer most part of the space elevator would rotate around Mars at 3.52 km/s.
== Equipment needed for colonization ==
Colonization of Mars would require a wide variety of equipment—both equipment to directly provide services to humans and production equipment used to produce food, propellant, water, energy and breathable oxygen—in order to support human colonization efforts. Required equipment will include:
Basic utilities (oxygen, power, local communications, waste disposal, sanitation and water recycling)
Habitats
Storage facilities
Workspaces
Airlock, for pressurization and dust management
Resource extraction equipment—initially for water and oxygen, later for a wider cross section of minerals, building materials, etc.
Equipment for energy production and energy storage, some solar and perhaps nuclear as well
Food production spaces and equipment
Propellant production equipment, generally thought to be hydrogen and methane through the Sabatier reaction for fuel—with oxygen oxidizer—for chemical rocket engines
Fuels or other energy source for use with surface transportation; such as Methanol or carbon monoxide/oxygen (CO/O2) engines have been suggested for early surface transportation use as both carbon monoxide and oxygen can be straightforwardly produced by zirconium dioxide electrolysis from the Martian atmosphere without requiring use of any of the Martian water resources to obtain hydrogen
Off-planet communication equipment
Equipment for moving over the surface—Mars suit, crewed rovers and possibly Mars aircraft
=== Basic utilities ===
In order to function, the colony would need the basic utilities to support human civilization. These would need to be designed to handle the harsh Martian environment and would either have to be serviceable while wearing an EVA (extra vehicular activity) suit or housed inside a human habitable environment. For example, if electricity generation systems rely on solar power, large energy storage facilities will also be needed to cover the periods when dust storms block out the sun, and automatic dust removal systems may be needed to avoid human exposure to conditions on the surface. If the colony is to scale beyond a few people, systems will also need to maximize use of local resources to reduce the need for resupply from Earth, for example by recycling water and oxygen and being adapted to use any water found on Mars, whatever its form.
=== Communication with Earth ===
Communications with Earth are relatively straightforward during the half-sol when Earth is above the Martian horizon. NASA and ESA included communications relay equipment in several of the Mars orbiters, so Mars already has communications satellites. While these will eventually wear out, additional orbiters with communication relay capability are likely to be launched before any colonization expeditions are mounted.
The one-way communication delay due to the speed of light ranges from about 3 minutes at closest approach (approximated by perihelion of Mars minus aphelion of Earth) to 22 minutes at the largest possible superior conjunction (approximated by aphelion of Mars plus aphelion of Earth). Real-time communication, such as telephone conversations or Internet Relay Chat, between Earth and Mars would be impractical due to the long time lags involved. NASA has found that direct communication can be blocked for about two weeks every synodic period, around the time of superior conjunction when the Sun is directly between Mars and Earth, although the actual duration of the communications blackout varies from mission to mission depending on various factors—such as the amount of link margin designed into the communications system, and the minimum data rate that is acceptable from a mission standpoint. In reality most missions at Mars have had communications blackout periods of the order of a month.
A satellite at the L4 or L5 Earth–Sun Lagrangian point could serve as a relay during this period to solve the communication blackout problem; even a constellation of communications satellites would be a minor expense in the context of a full colonization program. However, the size and power of the equipment needed for these distances make the L4 and L5 locations unrealistic for relay stations, and the inherent stability of these regions, although beneficial in terms of station-keeping, also attracts dust and asteroids, which could pose a risk. Despite that concern, the STEREO probes passed through the L4 and L5 regions without damage in late 2009.
Recent work by the University of Strathclyde's Advanced Space Concepts Laboratory, in collaboration with the European Space Agency, has suggested an alternative relay architecture based on highly non-Keplerian orbits. These are a special kind of orbit produced when continuous low-thrust propulsion, such as that produced from an ion engine or solar sail, modifies the natural trajectory of a spacecraft. Such an orbit would enable continuous communications during solar conjunction by allowing a relay spacecraft to "hover" above Mars, out of the orbital plane of the two planets. Such a relay avoids the problems of satellites stationed at either L4 or L5 by being significantly closer to the surface of Mars while still maintaining continuous communication between the two planets.
== Robotic precursors ==
The path to a human colony could be prepared by robotic systems such as the Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit, Opportunity, Curiosity and Perseverance. These systems could help locate resources, such as ground water or ice, that would be used by a colony. The lifetimes of these systems would be years and even decades, and as recent developments in commercial spaceflight have shown, it may be that these systems will involve private as well as government ownership. These robotic systems also have a reduced cost compared with early crewed operations, and have less political risk.
Wired systems might lay the groundwork for early crewed landings and bases, by producing various consumables including fuel, oxidizers, water, and construction materials. Establishing power, communications, shelter, heating, and manufacturing basics can begin with robotic systems, if only as a prelude to crewed operations.
Mars Surveyor 2001 Lander MIP (Mars ISPP Precursor) was to demonstrate manufacture of oxygen from the atmosphere of Mars, and test solar cell technologies and methods of mitigating the effect of Martian dust on power systems.
Before any people are transported to Mars on the notional 2020s Mars transportation infrastructure envisioned by SpaceX, a number of robotic cargo missions would be undertaken first in order to transport the requisite equipment, habitats and supplies. Equipment that would be necessary would include "machines to produce fertilizer, methane and oxygen from Mars's atmospheric nitrogen and carbon dioxide and the planet's subsurface water ice" as well as construction materials to build transparent domes for initial agricultural areas.
== Stages ==
In the literature there has been a differentiation of the different stages Mars settlement would encompass:
Pre-settlement: small outpost (near-term future)
In-settlement: permanent settlement (medium-term future)
Post-settlement: self-sufficient society (long-term future)
== Economics ==
=== Economic drivers and prerequisites ===
The rise of reusable launch vehicles in the 2020s has substantially reduced the cost of access to space. With a published price of US$62 million per launch of up to 22,800 kg (50,300 lb) payload to low Earth orbit or 4,020 kg (8,860 lb) to Mars, SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets are already the "cheapest in the industry". SpaceX's reusability includes the Falcon Heavy and future methane-based launch vehicles including the Starship. SpaceX was successful in developing the reusable technology with Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy and as of April 2024, it was rapidly advancing towards reusability of Starship. This is expected to "have a major impact on the cost of access to space", and change the increasingly competitive market in space launch services.
Alternative funding approaches might include the creation of inducement prizes. For example, the 2004 President's Commission on Implementation of United States Space Exploration Policy suggested that an inducement prize contest should be established, perhaps by government, for the achievement of space colonization. One example provided was offering a prize to the first organization to place humans on the Moon and sustain them for a fixed period before they return to Earth.
=== Local resource extraction and trade with Earth ===
No evidence of abundant resources on Mars with value to Earth has been collected. The distance between Mars and Earth would present a considerable challenge to potential trade between the planets.
=== Local trade ===
Some early Mars colonies might specialize in developing local resources for Martian consumption, such as water and/or ice. Local resources can also be used in infrastructure construction. One source of Martian ore currently known to be available is metallic iron in the form of nickel–iron meteorites. Iron in this form is more easily extracted than from the iron oxides that cover the planet.
Another inter-Martian trade good during colonization could be manure, as soil will be very poor for growing plants.
Solar power is a candidate for power for a Martian colony. Solar insolation (the amount of solar radiation that reaches Mars) is about 42% of that on Earth, since Mars is about 52% farther from the Sun and insolation falls off as the square of distance. However, Mars's thin atmosphere would allow almost all of that energy to reach the surface as compared to Earth, where the atmosphere absorbs roughly a quarter of the solar radiation. Sunlight on the surface of Mars would be much like a moderately cloudy day on Earth.
==== Mining the asteroid belts from Mars ====
Since Mars is much closer to the asteroid belt and has less gravity than Earth, it would take less Delta-v to get to the Asteroid belt and return minerals to Mars. One hypothesis is that the Moons of Mars (Phobos and Deimos) are actually asteroid captures from the Asteroid belt.
16 Psyche in the main belt could have over 10,000 quadrillion dollars' worth of minerals. On October 13, 2023, NASA launched the Psyche orbiter, which is set to reach the asteroid by August 2029.
511 Davida could have $27 quadrillion worth of minerals and resources. Using the moon Phobos to launch spacecraft is energetically favorable and a useful location from which to dispatch missions to main belt asteroids.
Mining the asteroid belt from Mars and its moons could help in the colonization of Mars.
== Possible settlement locations ==
=== Poles ===
It has been proposed to set up a first base at a Martian pole, which would allow access to water.
=== Caves ===
Caves would naturally provide a degree of insulation from Martian hazards for humans on the planet. These hazards include radiation, impactor events, and the wide range in temperatures on the surface.
Mars Odyssey found what appear to be natural caves near the volcano Arsia Mons. It has been speculated that settlers could benefit from the shelter that these or similar structures could provide from radiation and micrometeoroids. Geothermal energy is also suspected in the equatorial regions.
A team of researchers which presented at the Geological Society of America Connects 2022 conference identified some 139 caves worth exploring as potential shelters. Each was within 60 miles (100 km) of a location ideal for use as a landing site and had been imaged in high-resolution by HiRISE.
=== Lava tubes ===
Several possible Martian lava tube skylights have been located on the flanks of Arsia Mons. Earth based examples indicate that some should have lengthy passages offering complete protection from radiation and be relatively easy to seal using on-site materials, especially in small subsections.
=== Hellas Planitia ===
Hellas Planitia is the lowest lying plain below the Martian geodetic datum. The atmospheric pressure is relatively higher in this place when compared to the rest of Mars.
== Impact of human presence ==
There has been a lively discussion about how human presence on Mars would relate to possible indigenous life on Mars. More fundamentally even the very understanding of human life and in relation to extraterrestrial life, and their different worth has been discussed.
=== Planetary protection ===
Robotic spacecraft to Mars are required to be sterilized, to have at most 300,000 spores on the exterior of the craft—and more thoroughly sterilized if they contact "special regions" containing water, otherwise there is a risk of contaminating not only the life-detection experiments but possibly the planet itself.
It is impossible to sterilize human missions to this level, as humans are host to typically a hundred trillion microorganisms of thousands of species of the human microbiome, and these cannot be removed while preserving the life of the human. Containment seems the only option, but it is a major challenge in the event of a hard landing (i.e. crash). There have been several planetary workshops on this issue, yet no final guidelines have been produced. Human explorers would also be vulnerable to back contamination to Earth if they become carriers of microorganisms should Mars have life.
== Political and legal context ==
In the 1967 United Nations Outer Space Treaty, it was determined that no country may take claim to space or its inhabitants. Many articles of the Outer Space Treaty prevent the legal colonization of outer space.
NASA has dealt with several cuts in funding. During the presidency of Barack Obama, the objective for NASA to reach Mars was pushed to the background. In 2017, president Donald Trump promised to return humans to the Moon and eventually Mars, and increased the NASA budget by $1.1 billion, to mostly focus on development of the new Space Launch System.
It is unforeseen how the first human landing on Mars will change the current policies regarding the exploration of space and occupancy of celestial bodies. Since the planet Mars offers a challenging environment and dangerous obstacles for humans to overcome, the laws and culture on the planet will most likely be different from those on Earth. With Elon Musk announcing his plans to sponsor travel to Mars, it is uncertain how the dynamic of a private company possibly being the first to put a human on Mars will play out on a national and global scale.
== Ethics ==
It has been argued that settling Mars may divert attention from solving problems on Earth that may also become problems on Mars, with the reasoning that plans about Mars are always about the plans we have for Earth. Jeff Bezos, founder of Blue Origin, a SpaceX competitor in commercial spaceflight, has rejected Mars colonization as a mere "Plan B", suggesting instead to preserve Earth through space development and moving all heavy industrial activity to space.
It has been pointed out that the impact of human settlement on Mars, with regards to planetary protection, a crucial issue in space exploration, has not been comprehensively answered.
It has been argued that there are physical and social consequences that need to be addressed with regards to long-term survival on the surface of Mars. Former President Barack Obama has characterized Mars as more inhospitable than Earth would be "even after a nuclear war", with others pointing out that Earth and underground shelters on Earth could still provide better conditions and protection for more people from apocalyptic scenarios. Mars colonization has been called a 'dangerous delusion' by Lord Martin Rees, a British cosmologist/astrophysicist and the Astronomer Royal of the United Kingdom. Musk has stated that staying on Mars is a life threatening endeavor that needs to be glorious to be worth it. Exploration of Mars has also been argued to be better left to the already successful robotic missions, with crewed missions simply being too expensive, dangerous and boring.
=== Colonialism ===
Space colonization in general has been discussed as a continuation of imperialism and colonialism, especially regarding Mars colonial decision making, reasons for colonial labor and land exploitation have been questioned with postcolonial critique. Seeing the need for inclusive and democratic participation and implementation of any space and Mars exploration, infrastructure, or colonialization, many have called for dramatic sociological reforms and guarantees to prevent racism, sexism, and other forms of prejudice.
The narrative of space exploration as a "New Frontier" has been criticized as an unreflected continuation of settler colonialism and manifest destiny, continuing the narrative of colonial exploration as fundamental to the assumed human nature.
The predominant perspective of territorial colonization in space has been called surfacism, especially comparing advocacy for colonization of Mars opposed to Venus.
=== Dangers during pregnancy ===
One possible ethical challenge that space travelers might face is that of pregnancy during the trip. According to NASA's policies, it is forbidden for members of the crew to engage in sex in space, based on the rationale that crew members should treat each other like coworkers would in a professional environment. A pregnant member on a spacecraft would present additional hazards to herself and all others aboard. The pregnant woman and child would need additional nutrition from the rations aboard, as well as special treatment and care. The pregnancy would impinge on the pregnant crew member's duties and abilities. It is still not fully known how the environment in a spacecraft would affect the development of a child aboard. It is known however that a fetus would be more susceptible to solar radiation in space, which would likely have a negative effect on its cells and genetics. During a long trip to Mars, it is likely that members of a craft may engage in sex due to their stressful and isolated environment.
== Advocacy ==
Mars colonization is advocated by several non-governmental groups for a range of reasons and with varied proposals. One of the oldest groups is the Mars Society that promotes a NASA program to accomplish human exploration of Mars and has set up Mars analog research stations in Canada and the United States. Mars to Stay advocates recycling emergency return vehicles into permanent settlements as soon as initial explorers determine permanent habitation is possible.
Elon Musk founded SpaceX with the long-term goal of developing the technologies that will enable a self-sustaining human colony on Mars. Richard Branson, in his lifetime, is "determined to be a part of starting a population on Mars. I think it is absolutely realistic. It will happen... I think over the next 20 years," [from 2012] "we will take literally hundreds of thousands of people to space and that will give us the financial resources to do even bigger things".
Author Robert Zubrin has been a major advocate for Mars exploration and colonization for many years. He is a member of the Mars society and has authored several fiction and nonfiction books about the subject. In 1996 he wrote The Case for Mars: The Plan to Settle the Red Planet and Why We Must. He continues to advocate for Mars and space exploration with his most recent book being The Case for Space: How the Revolution in Spaceflight Opens Up a Future of Limitless Possibility.
In June 2013, Buzz Aldrin, American engineer and former astronaut, and the second person to walk on the Moon, wrote an opinion, published in The New York Times, supporting a human mission to Mars and viewing the Moon "not as a destination but more a point of departure, one that places humankind on a trajectory to homestead Mars and become a two-planet species". In August 2015, Aldrin, in association with the Florida Institute of Technology, presented a "master plan", for NASA consideration, for astronauts, with a "tour of duty of ten years", to colonize Mars before the year 2040.
There are critics of the project of Mars colonization. American political scientist Daniel Deudney has argued that a fully developed Mars colony represents an existential threat to humans remaining on Earth. His book, Dark Skies: Space Expansionism, Planetary Geopolitics, and the Ends of Humanity, challenges the widespread view among advocates that a Mars colony would be friendly to the interests of humans on Earth. According to Deudney, this is merely an assumption based on the largely unexamined claim that a future Mars colony will be a straightforward extension of civilization on Earth, rather than a new kind of civilization with distinct goals, values, fears and desires.
== In fiction ==
A few instances in fiction provide detailed descriptions of Mars colonization. They include:
== See also ==
== References ==
== Further reading ==
Aldrin, Buzz; David, Leonard (2013). Mission to Mars: My Vision for Space Exploration. National Geographic Books. ISBN 978-1-4262-1017-4. (at BuzzAldrin.com)
Robert Zubrin, The Case for Mars: The Plan to Settle the Red Planet and Why We Must, Simon & Schuster/Touchstone, 1996, ISBN 0-684-83550-9
Frank Crossman and Robert Zubrin, editors, On to Mars: Colonizing a New World. Apogee Books Space Series, 2002, ISBN 1-896522-90-4
Frank Crossman and Robert Zubrin, editors, On to Mars 2: Exploring and Settling a New World. Apogee Books Space Series, 2005, ISBN 978-1-894959-30-8
Resource Utilization Concepts for MoonMars; By Iris Fleischer, Olivia Haider, Morten W. Hansen, Robert Peckyno, Daniel Rosenberg and Robert E. Guinness; 30 September 2003; IAC Bremen, 2003 (29 Sept–03 Oct 2003) and MoonMars Workshop (26–28 September 2003, Bremen). Accessed on 18 January 2010
MARTIAN OUTPOST: The Challenges of Establishing a Human Settlement on Mars. Archived June 3, 2016, at the Wayback Machine; by Erik Seedhouse; Praxis Publishing; 2009; ISBN 978-0-387-98190-1. Also see [1], [2]
Sharon Gaudin, Ice, mineral-rich soil could support human outpost on Mars; 27 June 2008; IDG News Service
Puumala, Mikko M.; Sivula, Oskari; Lehto, Kirsi (2023). "Moving to Mars: The Feasibility and Desirability of Mars Settlements". Space Policy. 66 101590. Bibcode:2023SpPol..6601590P. doi:10.1016/j.spacepol.2023.101590.
Woo, Carlton Yuan Bo (2023). "Review of the technologies and preparations required for Mars colonization". Theoretical and Natural Science. 13: 245–250. doi:10.54254/2753-8818/13/20240854.
Neukart, Florian (2024). "Towards sustainable horizons: A comprehensive blueprint for Mars colonization". Heliyon. 10 (4) e26180. arXiv:2309.16806. Bibcode:2024Heliy..1026180N. doi:10.1016/j.heliyon.2024.e26180. PMC 10884476. PMID 38404830.
== External links ==
Mars Society
The Planetary Society: Mars Millennium Project
4Frontiers Corporation
The Mars Foundation – Archived March 1, 2012, at the Wayback Machine
Making Mars the New Earth – National Geographic
Should we colonize Mars? – Wikidebate in Wikiversity |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._K._Alagiri | M. K. Alagiri | Muthuvel Karunanidhi Alagiri (born 30 January 1951), commonly known as M. K. Alagiri, is an Indian politician from Tamil Nadu and was a Union Cabinet Minister of Chemicals and Fertilizers from 28 May 2009 to 20 March 2013. He is the second son of the former Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, M. Karunanidhi and his second wife Dayalu Ammal and the head of South Zone of Dravida Munnetra Kazagham (up to 2014).
== Early life ==
Alagiri is the second son of former chief minister of Tamil Nadu M. Karunanidhi and his second wife Dayalu Ammal. Karunanidhi named his son after his mentor, Pattukkottai Alagiri. He is believed to have spent his early life under the tutelage of his father and after his marriage on 10 December 1972, settled in Madurai. His wife is Kanthi Alagiri and they have three children, two daughters Kayalvizhi and Anjugaselvi, and a son, Dayanidhi Azhagiri. Alagiri graduated from the Presidency College in Chennai with a B.A. degree.
== Role in Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam ==
Karunanidhi always appeared to prefer his younger son, M. K. Stalin, Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu Alagiri shifted his base to Madurai during 1989 and did not hold any post officially in the party. In spite of holding no posts, he was all in command in the Madurai region and senior leaders in the party were unhappy about the factionalism created within the party. The DMK general secretary, K. Anbazhagan, in 2001, directed the party men not to have any contact with Alagiri. During the period of 2008, Alagiri was instrumental in the party winning three by-elections, the notable of which was Thirumangalam, where the party won with a massive difference. Based on the victory, Alagiri was appointed as the organizing secretary of the party for southern districts. Following the by-poll victories in the state, Alagiri was given the ticket for Madurai Lok Sabha Constituency in 2009 general elections, which he won eventually and later went on to become a cabinet minister.
There were widespread fights between the supporters of Alagiri and Stalin frequently. The succession crisis came out to a peak when party members loyal to Alagiri attacked the Madurai office of Dinakaran and set it to fire, in which three staff were killed. Dinakaran is a part of the Sun TV group owned by Kalanidhi Maran (son of Murasoli Maran), the grand-nephew of Karunanidhi. The newspaper published a higher prominence for Stalin over Azhagiri.
He was removed from the DMK party as member and as Secretary, South Zone on 24 January 2014.
=== Elections contested ===
== Controversies ==
Alagiri's name is associated with various controversies including conspiring in the murder of the former DMK Minister, T. Kiruttinan on 20 May 2003, initiating a cash-for-vote in Tamil Nadu for the Thirumangalam by-elections, attacking the Madurai office of the newspaper Dinakaran, and the Dhaya Cyber Tech Park land grab case. He is seen as the party strong man in Southern districts of Madurai. There have been various clashes in the state between his supporters and the ones of his younger brother M.K.Stalin over the question of succession and leadership of the party. He is also accused to inducing his strongmen in the party, who otherwise have criminal cases against them. Azhagiri is accused of instigating the attacks of popular Tamil newspaper Dinamalar in February 1997 when the daily published a criticism about him. His supporters like Nallamaruthu (brother of Essar Gopi) and Annadurai were convicted in Leelavathi murder, a high-profile political murder case involving murder of Leelavathi, a member of CPI(M) party and elected councilor of Villapuram.
=== T. Kiruttinan case ===
Azhagiri was accused as the main conspirator in the murder of the former Highways Minister, Pasumpon T. Kiruttinan, on 20 May 2003. Kiruttinan was hacked to death by unidentified men while he was out for a morning walk near his residence in KK Nagar, Madurai. The next day Azhagiri was arrested on charges of conspiring the murder due to intra-party conflict, along with other accused, namely P.M. Mannan who later became the Deputy Mayor of Madurai city, Essar Gobi, Madurai Corporation councillor I. Mubaraq Manthiri and V. Sivakumar (also called "Karate" Siva). Azhagiri was held as the main accused and charged with criminal conspiracy, murder and abetment. The case was transferred to Chittoor in Andhra Pradesh after the DMK came to power in the state in 2006, based on an order by Supreme Court of India. He was acquitted by the Principal District and Sessions Court in May 2008. The Madurai Police planned to appeal against the order in the Supreme Court as of July 2013 after a gap of five years from the judgement of the lower court. A leave petition was filed in the Supreme Court by the state, challenging the order of the Chitoor Court in September 2013. The petition was quashed by the Supreme Court counsel, which ruled that the state of Tamil Nadu had no locus standi in the case as it was transferred to Andhra Pradesh and that only the government of Andhra Pradesh can appeal against the lower court judgement.
=== Thirumangalam by-election ===
According to leaked secret diplomatic cables, he gave away ₹5,000 as a bribe to each voter through the morning newspaper in the January 2009 Assembly by-election at Thirumangalam and around ₹500 per voter in the 2009 Parliamentary elections. The by-election is believed to have started the cash-for-vote in Tamil Nadu.
=== Dinakaran attack case ===
In May 2007, Dinakaran, the newspaper run by Kalanidhi Maran, the elder brother of Dayanidhi, ran into a controversy when it published the results of a series of opinion polls which showed M. K. Stalin, the second son of Karunandhi, having more approval (70%) than his elder brother M. K. Azhagiri (2%) as the political heir of Karunanidhi. It also showed others as 20%, possibly indicating Dayanidhi Maran and Kanimozhi. The Madurai office of Dinakaran was fire bombed by supporters of Azhagiri and three employees were killed The Sun TV office in Madurai was also attacked by the perpetrators. A day after the incident, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi came to Chennai for felicitating Karunanidhi for 50 years in legislative assembly. Daynaidhi Maran, who usually accompanies Karunanidhi on every function, discarded the event as a mark of protest. On 13 May, the DMK administrative committee empowered Karunanidhi to remove Dayanidhi from the party. This subsequently led to his resignation from the central ministry. Karunanidhi family started Kalaignar TV to counter Sun TV of the Marans that started focusing on opposition leaders who were vociferous on Azhagiri and also covering the 2G spectrum case on minister A Raja, the DMK minister replacing Dayanidhi in the Union IT ministry. There were several attempts of reconciliation by the Marans, with two public meeting, once during Stalin's birthday in March 2008 and other during May when Karunanidhi was discharged from a Chennai hospital having been treated for neck and back pain. But when the Marans went to greet Karunanidhi on his 85th birthday on 3 June 2008, they were made to wait for an hour before finally denying entry. The family later reconciled with the efforts of Selvi, the eldest daughter of Karunanidhi. While the reason for reconciliation is not known, it was rumoured that the family reconciled to keep the third wife, Rajathi and her daughter Kanimozhi away from the family – that Kanimozhi was missing in the family reunion picture supported this argument.
The management of Dinakaran accused the police of ignoring their formal complaint, which specifically sought action against Azhagiri, and instead choose to act on a suo motu complaint which did not include his name even in the First Information Report.
=== Land grab case ===
In 2011, a series of land grab cases were filed against Azhagiri's close associates and several of them have been arrested. It was alleged that Kanthi Azhagiri, the wife of Azhagiri bought lands worth ₹ 20 crores for ₹85 lakh from a lottery seller named Santiago Martin, who had 50 criminal cases against him. The deal took place soon Azhagiri became a central minister. According to the allegation, the family owned Dhaya Cyber Tech Park was built in a 4 acres (16,000 m2) land out of the 23 acres (93,000 m2) belonging to a temple in Uthangudi near Madurai. Azhagiri family refuted the claims stating that it is a vendetta politics by the opposing AIADMK, which ruled the state when the charges were leveled. The family were cleared off the charges by rural police in September 2011 that ran the investigation. Subsequently, the Corporation of Madurai recovered 8 cents (0.08 acre) of land from Dhaya Cyber Tech Park on 26 February 2013, that were encroached. The concrete wall, trees and lawn in the encroached land were demolished by the Corporation officials amidst tight security.
== Tenure as Minister of Chemicals and Fertilizers ==
Azhagiri was appointed as the Minister of Chemicals and Fertilizers in the Union Cabinet, following UPA victory in the 2009 Indian Parliamentary Elections. He won his elections from the Madurai parliamentary constituency securing 430,688 votes against his next competitor P. Mohan from CPM, who secured 290,157 votes. During his early tenure, he requested the speaker of Lok Sabha to allow him to answer in Tamil, while senior Lok Sabha officials wanted him to answer in English or Hindi following precedents. Jena, the State minister of the ministry, answered all the questions raised in the parliament on behalf of Azhagiri. There were protests by the opposition party members in the Lok sabha during the Budget session in 2010 over the absence of Azhagiri. In January 2013, the Union minister of state for the Chemical and Industry ministry, Srikanth Kumar Jena, accused Azhagiri of inaction as a senior minister, in the alleged misuse of government subsidies by the fertiliser companies. He accused Azhagiri of not responding to any of his five letters he wrote to his senior colleague between March and August 2012. In his letters, he complained that the fertiliser companies, in spite of utilizing one third of the subsidies provided to the farmers, kept raising the prices of the fertilisers. Following the irregularities quoted by Jena, there were allegations by certain section of media of a possible scam to an extent of ₹1,000 crores in the fertiliser ministry. There were also allegations of nexus between the corrupt official in the ministry with the fertiliser companies, who together dictated the government policy on fertilizers.
DMK pulled out of the ruling UPA on 20 March 2013 following widespread protests in Tamil Nadu against the central government for not taking up the concerns of Tamils in Sri Lanka in the UN resolution against the alleged human rights violation against Tamils by Sri Lankan government. Azhagiri resigned from his ministry along with other ministers from DMK. There was a brief controversy when Azhagiri did not accompany the contingency led by T.R. Baalu, the head of MPs from the DMK party, to tender resignation in the Prime minister's office and to hand over the letter of withdrawal to the President on 20 March 2013. It was claimed as a mark of protest against his father Karunanidhi's decision to pull out from the central ministry. Some sources claim he delayed his resignation as he was not kept in the loop while taking the decision. Following his resignation, Srikanth Jena was appointed the minister of Chemical and Fertilizers.
== See also ==
Karunanidhi family
== Notes ==
== References ==
Outlook (15 October 2008). "Outlook". XLVIII (28). Delhi. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
Outlook (22 December 2008). "Outlook". XLVIII (51). Delhi. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
Phandis, Aditi (2009), Business Standard Political Profiles of Cabals and Kings, Delhi: Business Standard, ISBN 978-81-905735-4-2
Vassanthi (2008). Cut-outs, Caste and Cines Stars. Penguin Books India. ISBN 9780143063124.
== External links == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babanrao_Gholap | Babanrao Gholap | Babanrao Shankar Gholap alias Nana is an Indian politician, from Nashik district. He was Member of the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly from Deolali Vidhan Sabha constituency as member of Shiv Sena. He had been elected to Vidhan Sabha for five consecutive terms in 1990-2009. He was Cabinet Minister of Social Welfare in Maharashtra Government.
== Positions held ==
1990: Elected to Maharashtra Legislative Assembly (1st term)
1995: Re-elected to Maharashtra Legislative Assembly (2nd term)
1995-99: Cabinet Minister of Social Welfare of Maharashtra
1999: Re-elected to Maharashtra Legislative Assembly (3rd term)
2004: Re-elected to Maharashtra Legislative Assembly (4th term)
2009: Re-elected to Maharashtra Legislative Assembly (5th term)
2010 Onwards: Deputy Leader, Shiv Sena
== See also ==
Manohar Joshi Ministry
Nashik Lok Sabha constituency
== References ==
== External links ==
Shiv Sena Official website |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_Eastern_music | Middle Eastern music | The various nations of the region include the Arabic-speaking countries of the Middle East, the traditional Persian ritual music, the Jewish music of Israel and the diaspora, Kurdish music, Armenian music. Azeri Music, the varied traditions of Cypriot music, the Turkish music of Turkey, traditional Assyrian music, Coptic ritual music in Egypt as well as other genres of Egyptian music in general. It is widely regarded that some Middle-Eastern musical styles have influenced Central Asia, as well as the Balkans, Southern Italy, and Spain.
Throughout the region, religion has been a common factor in uniting peoples of different languages, cultures and nations.
The predominance of Islam allowed a great deal of Arabic, and Byzantine influence to spread through the region rapidly from the 7th century onward. The Arabic scale is strongly melodic, often Phrygian Dominant and based on various maqamat (sing. maqam) or modes (also known as makam in Turkish music). The early Arabs translated and developed Greek texts and works of music and mastered the musical theory of the music of ancient Greece (i.e. Systema ametabolon, enharmonium, chromatikon, diatonon). This is similar to the dastgah of Persian music. While this originates with classical music, the modal system has filtered down into folk, liturgical and even popular music, with influence from the West. Unlike much western music, Arabic music includes quarter tones halfway between notes, often through the use of stringed instruments (like the oud) or the human voice. Further distinguishing characteristics of Middle Eastern and North African music include very complex rhythmic structures, generally tense vocal tone, and a monophonic texture. Traditional Middle Eastern music does not use chords, or harmony in the Western sense.
Often, more traditional Middle-Eastern music can last from one to three hours in length, building up to anxiously awaited, and much applauded climaxes, or tarab, derived from the Arabic term طرب tarraba.
== Instruments used ==
=== Strings ===
Many instruments originate in the Middle East region. Most popular of the stringed instruments is the oud, a pear-shaped lute that traditionally had four strings, although current instruments have up to six courses consisting of one or two strings each. Legend has it that the oud was invented by Lamech, the sixth grandson of Adam. This is stated by Al-Farabi, and it is part of the Iraqi folklore relating to the instrument. Legend goes on to suggest that the first oud was inspired by the shape of his son's bleached skeleton.
Historically, the oldest pictorial record of the oud dates back to the Uruk period in Southern Mesopotamia over 5000 years ago. It is on a cylinder seal currently housed at the British Museum and acquired by Dr. Dominique Collon, Editor of Iraq at the British Institute for the Study of Iraq.
Used mostly in court music for royals and the rich, the harp also comes from ancient Egypt c. 3500 BC.
The widespread use of the oud led to many variations on the instrument, including the saz, a Turkish long-necked lute that remains very popular in Turkey.
Another popular string instrument is the qanoun, developed by Farabi during the Abbasids era. Legend has it that Farabi played qanoun in court and alternately made people laugh, cry, or fall asleep. The qanoun developed out of string instruments described in inscriptions that date to the Assyrian period. It has about 26 triple-string courses, plucked with a piece of horn. The musician has the freedom to alter the pitch of individual courses from a quarter to a whole step by adjusting metal levers.
Middle Eastern music also makes use of the violin, which is European in origin. The violin was adopted into Middle Eastern music in the 19th century, and it is able to produce non-Western scales that include quarter-tones because it is fretless.
=== Percussion ===
Percussion instruments play a very important role in Middle Eastern music. The complex rhythms of this music are often played on many simple percussion instruments. The riq الرق (a type of tambourine) and finger cymbals add a higher rhythmic line to rhythm laid down with sticks, clappers, and other drums.
An instrument native to Egypt, the darbuka (both "tabla" and "darbuka" are its names in Egyptian Arabic), is a drum made of ceramic clay, with a goatskin head glued to the body. The darbuka is used primarily in Egypt, and it has its roots in ancient Egypt. It is also used in other countries in the Middle East.
=== Winds ===
The Armenian duduk is a very popular double reeded, oboe-like instrument made out of Apricot tree wood. The Moroccan oboe, also called the rhaita, has a double-reed mouthpiece that echoes sound down its long and narrow body. A similar instrument is called the sorna. Equivalent to the mizmar and zurna, it is used more for festivals and loud celebrations. A Turkish influence comes from the mey, which has a large double reed. Bamboo reed pipes are the most common background to belly dancing and music from Egypt. Flutes are also a common woodwind instrument in ensembles. A kaval is a three-part flute that is blown in one end, whereas the ney is a long cane flute, played by blowing across the sharp edge while pursing the lips.
== International music ==
Music pervades Middle Eastern societies. While traditional music remains popular in the Middle East, modern music reconciling Western and traditional Middle Eastern styles, pop, and fusion are rapidly advancing in popularity.
== Common genres ==
=== Geographical varieties of the music in the Arabic-speaking regions of the Middle East ===
== See also ==
Middle Eastern dance
== References ==
== External links ==
Turkish/Egyptian Instrumental Music
Foreigners Discover the Beauty of Middle Eastern Music at ArabNews |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Briana_Scurry | Briana Scurry | Briana Collette Scurry (born September 7, 1971) is an American retired soccer goalkeeper. Scurry was the starting goalkeeper for the United States women's national soccer team at the 1995 World Cup (3rd place), 1996 Summer Olympics (gold medal), 1999 World Cup (champions), 2003 World Cup (3rd place), and the 2004 Summer Olympic Games (gold medal). She played in the semi-final and playoff for third place in the 2007 Women's World Cup (3rd place). She was a founding member of the WUSA, playing three seasons as starting goalkeeper for the Atlanta Beat (2001–2003).
Her career total of 173 international appearances is the second most among female soccer goalkeepers. It is also the fifteenth most of any American female player, and the thirty-second most among all women.
Scurry was elected to the National Soccer Hall of Fame on August 3, 2017. She was the first woman goalkeeper and first black woman to be awarded the honor. She is openly gay, and on June 1, 2018, she married Chryssa Zizos, CEO of Live Wire Strategic Communications, LLC.
In 2022, Scurry released her best-selling memoir, My Greatest Save. Scurry was also the subject of The Only, a CBS feature-length documentary chronicling her life that was released in 2022.
== Early life ==
Scurry was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota to parents, Ernest and Robbie Scurry. She is the youngest of nine children, with three brothers and five sisters.
She played goalie for the Anoka High School Tornadoes for four years and was instrumental in their Minnesota State Championship win in 1989 which ended in a shootout victory. In high school, Scurry ran track and played floor hockey and softball, but basketball was her first and deepest love.
Scurry was named Anoka High School's Athena Award winner as the school's top female athlete. She was also named High School All American and Minnesota's top female athlete.
In 2010, she was inducted into the Minnesota State High School Hall of Fame. In September 2011, Scurry was named to the inaugural class of the Anoka High School Hall of Fame.
== University of Massachusetts ==
Scurry attended the University of Massachusetts Amherst and completed her four-year collegiate career with 37 shutouts in 65 starts and with a career record of 48–13–4 and a 0.56 goals-against-average
She split time in the net in 1992 during her junior season, starting 13 games and earning seven shutouts. Scurry played three games in 1992 as a forward.
In 1993, she helped lead the UMass Minutewomen to a 17–3–3 record, to the semifinals of the NCAA Women's Soccer Championship and the titles of the Atlantic 10 Conference regular season and tournament. In her senior season, she started all 23 games and recorded 15 shutouts and a 0.48 goals-against average, the third best in the nation.
Scurry was named the National Goalkeeper of the Year in 1993 by the Missouri Athletic Club Sports Foundation and was a 1993 second-team All-American, All-Northeast Region and All-New England first-team selection.
== Playing career ==
=== Club ===
Scurry was a founding player for the Atlanta Beat in the Women's United Soccer Association (WUSA), the world's first women's league where the players were paid as professionals. She was the starting goalkeeper for the three seasons (2001–2003) of the league. She helped the Beat to two WUSA Championship Games and was named the league's Goalkeeper of the Year in 2003.
On March 13, 2009, Scurry was named to the preseason roster of the Washington Freedom, in the inaugural season of Women's Professional Soccer (WPS). She suffered a season-ending concussion early in the 2010 season, and announced her retirement later that year on September 8.
=== International ===
Scurry was a goalkeeper for the United States women's national soccer team for most of the years between 1994 and 2008, earning a record 173 caps for the United States. She started 159 of those games and finished her international career with a record of 133–12–14. She also earned 71 shutouts.
Scurry's first appearance for the United States women's national soccer team was March 16, 1994, versus Portugal. Her first shutout was recorded the same day. In her first year with the US, she earned seven shutouts in 12 starts.
She was a member of the Gold Medal-winning US Women's National Team at the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta where she started and played in every minute of the team's five matches conceding only three goals.
Scurry played every minute of the 1999 Women's World Cup allowing only three goals and recording four shutouts. She saved one penalty during the shootout in the final against China and the United States won. Following the World Cup, Scurry announced her intention to play in the WNBA.
She started for the US in the 2003 FIFA Women's World Cup and 2004 Summer Olympic Games. She also played two matches for the US in the 2007 FIFA Women's World Cup and was the alternate goalkeeper on the 2008 Olympic Team.
On June 23, 2008, United States Women's Olympic soccer coach Pia Sundhage announced that Scurry would not be on the Olympic team. Her last match for the United States was on November 5, 2008, against the Korea Republic.
=== Traumatic brain injury and recovery ===
While playing in the Women's Professional Soccer league in 2010, Scurry suffered a traumatic brain injury when a player from the opposing team collided with her knee into Scurry's right temple. The injury left Scurry temporarily totally disabled and she dealt with severe depression. To address her symptoms, Scurry underwent occipital nerve surgery in 2013. Scurry has since rebuilt her life and become an advocate for increased concussion awareness and research, testifying before Congress twice.
== Sports administration ==
Scurry was appointed general manager of the WPS franchise magicJack beginning with the 2011 season.
In February 2021, The Washington Post reported that Chelsea Clinton, Jenna Bush Hager, Dominique Dawes and Scurry were part of an investment group investing in the Washington Spirit.
== Broadcasting ==
Scurry was part of the rotation of studio commentators for ESPN's telecasts of the 2011 FIFA Women's World Cup.
Since 2021, Scurry has served as a broadcast analyst for CBS soccer coverage. In 2022, she served as the lead desk analyst for the 2022 CONCACAF W Championship.
== Coaching ==
On December 6, 2017, Scurry was announced as the First Assistant Coach of the Washington Spirit and would serve as Technical Advisor for the Spirit Academy programs in Maryland and Virginia.
== Honors and awards ==
== Film and television ==
Scurry appeared as a fictionalized version of herself in the 2000 film Air Bud: World Pup. She was also the subject of the 2022 Paramount Plus documentary The Only, which was directed by Anthony J. Cortese and featured interviews with other USWNT players such as Mia Hamm, Brandi Chastain, Kristine Lilly, and Abby Wambach.
== References ==
== External links ==
Briana Scurry – FIFA competition record (archived)
Bio on Soccer Times website
Briana Scurry player profile
Briana Scurry Official Website |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ieperfest | Ieperfest | Ieperfest is a Belgian hardcore music festival held in Ypres (Dutch: Ieper). The summer edition of the festival was first held in September 1992, then annually each August from 1994 to 2018 (no summer event was held in 1993). Since 2019, the summer edition has been held annually each July. In February 2008, a winter edition was introduced, which was held annually in either February or March, until 2015 (no winter event was held in 2009). The winter edition has since been held sporadically, namely in 2018 and 2022. In 2012, during its 20th anniversary, Ieperfest became the longest-running hardcore festival in the world.
From 1992 to 1998, the festival was held inside De Vort'n Vis concert venue in Ypres; but starting with the 1999 edition, outdoor locations have been used to accommodate a growing audience. The 1999 and 2000 editions were held in the open courtyard of the Stedelijke Academie voor Muziek en Woord music school. From 2001 to 2007, the festival was held at the Jeugdstadion Camping Site parking lot (with the exception of 2002 when it was held on the grounds of the CID Lines company). In 2008, Ieperfest moved to its current open air location on Poperingseweg.
The festival was first organized by Edward Verhaeghe, owner of the record label Warehouse Records (now Good Life Recordings), in September 1992. Verhaeghe has had little involvement in the booking of the festival following its first year. Hans Verbeke, owner of Sober Mind Records and an employee at De Vort'n Vis, took over for the 1994 and 1995 editions, until Bruno Vandevyvere, owner of Genet Records and Pyrrhus Records and an owner of De Vort'n Vis, became the main organizer in 1996; a position he continues to hold.
Though Ieperfest has historically focused on metalcore bands, a wide variety of hardcore and metal groups have also performed throughout its span, including emotional hardcore, post-hardcore, punk rock, grindcore, death metal, thrash metal, sludge metal, doom metal and stoner rock. The festival has been singled out as influential to Michal Kočan, who cited it as his motivator to start his own Czech music festival, Fluff Fest.
== History ==
Ieperfest was first conceived in 1992 by Belgian vocalist Edward Verhaeghe, a hardcore musician who had played in such bands as The Midnight Men, Rise Above and Nations on Fire, and was then operating the record label Warehouse Records. Verhaeghe would later establish the noted Belgian hardcore record label Good Life Recordings.
Although Verhaeghe resided in Kortrijk, Belgium, he booked his new festival at De Vort'n Vis, a popular concert venue for hardcore bands located 30 minutes away in Ypres, Belgium. The festival was not booked again in 1993.
In 1994, another noted Kortrijk, Belgium-based musician, Hans Verbeke, took over the booking of the festival. Verbeke worked at De Vort'n Vis, and had played in such bands as Rise Above, Shortsight, Blindfold, Spirit of Youth, Wheel of Progress (and later Liar) and was also operating the hardcore record label Sober Mind Records. Verbeke also booked the 1995 edition.
In 1996, the festival was taken over by Ghent, Belgium-based Bruno Vandevyvere, owner of the record label Genet Records and the record store Pyrrhus Records. Vandevyvere was one of the founders of De Vort'n Vis and had therefore been involved in the first three editions' bookings to some extent. In 1999, Genet Records released the compact disc Various Artists compilation Vort'n Vis Hardcore Festival 1998, which documented most of the bands that had performed at the 1998 edition of the festival.
By 1999, the festival had outgrown the audience capacity of De Vort'n Vis, and for the next two years, it was held in the courtyard of Stedelijke Academie voor Muziek en Woord. In December 2000, Good Life Recordings released the VHS Good Life Recordings Presents: Good Life T.V. Video Sampler #1, which includes live footage of bands performing at the 1999 and 2000 editions of the festival.
In 2001, the festival was moved to the parking lot of the Jeugdstadion campsite, where previous years' attendees setup living accommodations. In 2002, the parking lot was unavailable due to a mountainbicycle event, so local business CID Lines offered their land to host the festival.
In February 2008, a one-day winter edition of the festival was introduced, which was held annually in February or March until 2015 (no winter event was held in 2009). A winter edition was originally planned for February 21, 2009, but was cancelled when the bookers were unable to find headlining acts. The winter edition has since been held sporadically, namely in 2018 and 2022.
In August 2008, Ieperfest moved to a new location, where it continues to be held each year, on a farmland at Poperingseweg 153–161. That year also introduced two stages for bands to perform.
== Ieperfest lineups by year ==
=== September 5–6, 1992: Hardcore '92 Festival ===
Location: De Vort'n Vis, Kiekenmarkt 7, 8900, Ypres, Belgium.
==== Saturday, September 5 ====
==== Sunday, September 6 ====
=== August 19–21, 1994: Hardcore Festival '94 ===
Location: De Vort'n Vis, Kiekenmarkt 7, 8900, Ypres, Belgium.
==== Friday, August 19 ====
==== Saturday, August 20 ====
==== Sunday, August 21 ====
Notes: The following bands were also booked but did not play: Nations on Fire, Neuthrone, Scraps, Strength of the Will, State of Grace, Stormwatch and Voorhees.
=== August 18–20, 1995: Hardcore-Festival '95 ===
Location: De Vort'n Vis, Kiekenmarkt 7, 8900, Ypres, Belgium.
==== Friday, August 18 ====
==== Saturday, August 19 ====
==== Sunday, August 20 ====
Notes: The following bands were also booked but did not play: Regression and Steadfast.
=== August 16–18, 1996: Hardcore, The Next Generation ===
Location: De Vort'n Vis, Kiekenmarkt 7, 8900, Ypres, Belgium.
==== Friday, August 16 ====
==== Saturday, August 17 ====
==== Sunday, August 18 ====
Notes: The following bands were also booked but did not play: Azure, Blindfold, Contention and Refused.
=== August 15–17, 1997: Hardcore: The Next Generation ===
Location: De Vort'n Vis, Kiekenmarkt 7, 8900, Ypres, Belgium.
==== Friday, August 15 ====
==== Saturday, August 16 ====
==== Sunday, August 17 ====
=== August 14–16, 1998: Hardcore: The Next Generation Festival ===
Location: De Vort'n Vis, Kiekenmarkt 7, 8900, Ypres, Belgium.
==== Friday, August 14 ====
==== Saturday, August 15 ====
==== Sunday, August 16 ====
Notes: Most of the bands that played were documented on the Genet Records Various Artists compilation Vort'n Vis Hardcore Festival 1998, released on compact disc in 1999.
=== August 20–22, 1999: Ieper Hardcore Festival ===
Location: Stedelijke Academie voor Muziek en Woord, D'hondtstraat 59, 8900, Ypres, Belgium.
==== Friday, August 20 ====
==== Saturday, August 21 ====
==== Sunday, August 22 ====
Notes: Good Life Recordings released the VHS Good Life Recordings Presents: Good Life T.V. Video Sampler #1 in December 2000 which includes live footage of bands performing at the 1999 and 2000 editions of the festival.
=== August 18–20, 2000: Vort'n Vis Hardcore Festival 2000 ===
Location: Stedelijke Academie voor Muziek en Woord, D'hondtstraat 59, 8900, Ypres, Belgium.
==== Thursday, August 17 ====
Notes: This was a free pre-festival concert held at De Vort'n Vis.
==== Friday, August 18 ====
==== Saturday, August 19 ====
==== Sunday, August 20 ====
Notes: The following bands were also booked but did not play: Chispa, Convinced, Garrison, Out for Blood, Piebald, Shai Hulud and Walls of Jericho. As Friends Rust's set was cut short after only three songs. Good Life Recordings released the VHS Good Life Recordings Presents: Good Life T.V. Video Sampler #1 in December 2000 which includes live footage of bands performing at the 1999 and 2000 editions of the festival.
=== August 17–19, 2001: 2001: A Hardcore Odyssey ===
Location: Jeugdstadion Camping Site Parking Lot, Leopold III - Laan 16, Ypres, Belgium.
==== Thursday, August 16 ====
Notes: This was a free pre-festival party held at De Vort'n Vis.
==== Friday, August 17 ====
==== Saturday, August 18 ====
==== Sunday, August 19 ====
Notes: After-parties were held on Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights at De Vort'n Vis with DJ Jaak. Reveal was booked to play but did not.
=== August 16–18, 2002: Ieperfest 2002 ===
Location: CID Lines Festival Ground, Waterpoortstraat 2, 8900, Ypres, Belgium.
==== Thursday, August 15 ====
===== De Vort'n Vis =====
Notes: This was a free pre-festival concert held at De Vort'n Vis.
===== Jeugdstadion =====
Notes: This was a free pre-festival concert held at the Jeugdstadion campground.
==== Friday, August 16 ====
==== Saturday, August 17 ====
==== Sunday, August 18 ====
Notes: After-parties were held on Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights at De Vort'n Vis with DJ Jaak.
=== August 15–17, 2003: Ieper Hardcore Festival ===
Location: Jeugdstadion Camping Site Parking Lot, Leopold III - Laan 16, Ypres, Belgium.
==== Thursday, August 14 ====
Notes: This was a free pre-festival concert held at the Jeugdstadion campground.
==== Friday, August 15 ====
==== Saturday, August 16 ====
==== Sunday, August 17 ====
Notes: The following bands were also booked but did not play: Last Days of April, The Furious and The Locust.
=== August 27–29, 2004: Ieper Hardcore Fest 2004 ===
Location: Jeugdstadion Camping Site Parking Lot, Leopold III - Laan 16, Ypres, Belgium.
==== Thursday, August 26 ====
Notes: This was a free pre-festival concert held at the Jeugdstadion campground.
==== Friday, August 27 ====
==== Saturday, August 28 ====
==== Sunday, August 29 ====
Notes: The following bands were also booked but did not play: Death by Stereo, Disfear, Over My Dead Body and Rag Men.
=== August 26–28, 2005: Ieper Hardcore Fest ===
Location: Jeugdstadion Camping Site Parking Lot, Leopold III - Laan 16, Ypres, Belgium.
==== Friday, August 26 ====
==== Saturday, August 27 ====
==== Sunday, August 28 ====
Notes: The following bands were also booked but did not play: Donnybrook, Kill Your Idols, Full Circle Broken, Morning Again and Neshamah. Morning Again was supposed to perform a headlining reunion show on August 27, 2005, but cancelled their trip to Europe.
=== August 25–27, 2006: Ieper Hardcore Festival ===
Location: Jeugdstadion Camping Site Parking Lot, Leopold III - Laan 16, Ypres, Belgium.
==== Friday, August 25 ====
==== Saturday, August 26 ====
==== Sunday, August 27 ====
Notes: The following bands were also booked but did not play: A Perfect Murder, Alove for Enemies, Cephalic Carnage, Circle One, Death Before Disco, Inked in Blood, Killing Time, Lords, Monochrome, Nodes of Ranvier, Subzero and Trapdoor Fucking Exit.
=== August 24–26, 2007: Ieper Hardcore Fest ===
Location: Jeugdstadion Camping Site Parking Lot, Leopold III - Laan 16, Ypres, Belgium.
==== Thursday, August 23 ====
Notes: This was a free pre-festival concert held at the J.O.C. in Ieper.
==== Friday, August 24 ====
==== Saturday, August 25 ====
==== Sunday, August 26 ====
Notes: The following bands were also booked but did not play: Age of Ruin, Cephalic Carnage, Cult of Luna, Maroon, Lost Patrol Band, Nueva Ética Ruiner, Showbread and Wisdom in Chains.
=== February 9, 2008: Ieper Hardcore Fest Winter Edition ===
Location: Zaal Fenix, Leopold III - Laan 16, Ypres, Belgium.
==== Saturday, February 9 ====
=== August 22–24, 2008, Ieper Hardcore Festival 2008 ===
Location: Poperingseweg 153–161, 8908, Ypres, Belgium.
==== Thursday, August 21 ====
Notes: This was a free pre-festival concert held on the Marquee Stage at Ieperfest.
==== Friday, August 22 ====
===== Main Stage =====
===== Marquee Stage =====
==== Saturday, August 23 ====
===== Main Stage =====
===== Marquee Stage =====
==== Sunday, August 24 ====
===== Main Stage =====
===== Marquee Stage =====
Notes: The following bands were also booked but did not play: Balzac, Hour of the Wolf, Outbreak, Pound for Pound, Red Tape Parade, Ringworm, Rotten Sound, Shook Ones, Sinking Ships, Soul Control, Sparkle of Hope, SS Decontrol and Warbringer.
=== August 28–30, 2009: Ieper Hardcore Festival 2009 ===
Location: Poperingseweg 153–161, 8908, Ypres, Belgium.
==== Thursday, August 27 ====
Notes: This was a free pre-festival concert held on the Marquee Stage at Ieperfest.
==== Friday, August 28 ====
===== Main Stage =====
===== Marquee Stage =====
==== Saturday, August 29 ====
===== Main Stage =====
===== Marquee Stage =====
==== Sunday, August 30 ====
===== Main Stage =====
===== Marquee Stage =====
Notes: The following bands were also booked but did not play: An Emerald City, As We Fight, Blood Stands Still, For the Fallen Dreams, Impending Doom, Joe Coffee, Lower Class Brats, Misery Index, Psyopus, Rafflesia and Thick as Blood.
=== February 6, 2010: Ieper Hardcore Fest 2010 Winter Edition ===
Location: Zaal Fenix, Leopold III - Laan 16, Ypres, Belgium.
==== Saturday, February 6 ====
=== August 13–15, 2010: Ieper Hardcore Fest ===
Location: Poperingseweg 153–161, 8908, Ypres, Belgium.
==== Friday, August 13, Saturday, August 14 and Sunday, August 15 ====
===== Main Stage and Marquee Stage =====
Notes: An accurate schedule of the performance dates and stages has not been located in archival material, therefore all of the bands from the summer 2010 edition are currently listed together. Should a schedule be found, the sections will be updated. The following bands were also booked but did not play: Campus, City of Ships, Dead Swans, Lewd Acts, Maximum Penalty, Rat City Riot, Slapshot, The Carrier, The Now Denial and The Freeze.
=== February 26, 2011: Ieper Hardcore Fest Winter Edition ===
Location: Zaal Fenix, Leopold III - Laan 16, Ypres, Belgium.
==== Saturday, February 26 ====
Notes: The following bands were also booked but did not play: Let Me Run, Möse, Soul Control and The Gohards.
=== August 12–14, 2011: Ieper Hardcore Fest 2011 ===
Location: Poperingseweg 153–161, 8908, Ypres, Belgium.
==== Thursday, August 11 ====
Notes: This was a charged pre-festival concert held at the JOC 't Perron.
==== Friday, August 12 ====
===== Main Stage =====
===== Marquee Stage =====
==== Saturday, August 13 ====
===== Main Stage =====
===== Marquee Stage =====
==== Sunday, August 14 ====
===== Main Stage =====
===== Marquee Stage =====
Notes: The following bands were also booked but did not play: Broken Teeth, Cro-Mags, Decortica, Harm's Way, Merauder, Pound for Pound, SFA, Wisdom in Chains and Withdrawal.
=== February 18, 2012: Ieper Hardcore Fest Winter Edition ===
Location: JOC 't Perron, Fochlaan 1, 8900, Ypres, Belgium.
==== Saturday, February 18 ====
Notes: The following bands were also booked but did not play: Goodtime Boys and Pianos Become the Teeth.
=== August 10–12, 2012: Ieper Hardcore Fest ===
Location: Poperingseweg 153–161, 8908, Ypres, Belgium.
==== Thursday, August 9 ====
Notes: This was a charged pre-festival concert held at the Marquee Stage at Ieperfer.
==== Friday, August 10 ====
===== Main Stage =====
===== Marquee Stage =====
==== Saturday, August 11 ====
===== Main Stage =====
===== Marquee Stage =====
==== Sunday, August 12 ====
===== Main Stage =====
===== Marquee Stage =====
Notes: The following bands were also booked but did not play: Balance and Composure, Dean Dirg, D.O.A., Here Comes the Kraken, Man VS Humanity, Omega Massif, Shai Hulud, Sydney Ducks, This Is Hell, Wisdom in Chains and Withdrawal.
== References ==
== External links ==
Official website |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therapy_(Anne-Marie_album)#:~:text=16.,KelleherPurcellKohn | Therapy (Anne-Marie album) | Therapy is the second studio album by English singer-songwriter Anne-Marie. It was released on 23 July 2021, through Major Tom's, Asylum Records, and Atlantic Records. The album, a pop record, was produced by TMS, who previously produced her debut studio album, Speak Your Mind (2018), alongside Digital Farm Animals, Mojam, Nathan Dawe, Grades, Sire Noah, Lostboye, Cameron Gower Poole, Oak, Jean-Marie, Rudimental, Elvira Anderfjärd, Blake Slatkin, and Fred Ball. The album features guest appearances from producers Digital Farm Animals, Nathan Dawe, and Rudimental, alongside KSI, Little Mix, Niall Horan (previously of One Direction), and MoStack. Raye also provided backing vocals on the opening track, "x2". Before the album released, four non-album singles preceded the album, included "To Be Young" (featuring Doja Cat).
The album was supported by four singles. The first, "Don't Play" (featuring KSI and Digital Farm Animals), was released on the 15th of January, 2021, and was successful in the United Kingdom, peaking at number 2 on the UK singles chart, Anne-Marie's highest-charting single as a lead artist as of 2025. It also peaked at number 9 on the Irish Singles Chart and was certified Platinum in the UK. The second single, "Way Too Long" (featuring Nathan Dawe and MoStack), was released on the 9th of April, 2021, and was modestly successful, peaking at number 37 in both the UK and Ireland and certifying Silver. The third single, "Our Song" (featuring Niall Horan), was released on the 21st of May, 2021, and was decently successful, peaking at number 13 in the UK and number 7 in Ireland, and certifying Platinum in the UK. The fourth and final single, "Kiss My (Uh-Oh)", was released on the 23rd of July, 2021, and peaked at number 10 on the UK singles chart, where it certified Platinum.
Upon its release, the album was positively received by music critics, who praised the guest appearances and Anne-Marie's vocals, but criticized its lack of a unique sound and confusing direction. Commercially, the album charted higher in the UK than its predecessor, Speak Your Mind, peaking at number 2 on the UK Albums Chart. It also charted at number 4 and number 2 in Ireland and Scotland, and at number 3 on Ultratop's Belgian Albums Chart in Flanders. The album would eventually be certified Gold by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) for equivalent sales of 100,000 units in the country. To promote the album, Anne-Marie went on the Dysfunctional Tour, which featured artists such as Gracey, Billen Ted, and Mimi Webb. A deluxe edition would later be released, featuring the non-album singles "To Be Young" with Doja Cat and "Birthday", alongside a guest appearance from JJ Lin.
== Background ==
Planning for Anne-Marie's second album began in 2019; in an interview with Music Week in March of that year, she provided information on her upcoming second studio album, stating "I love the studio. I was able to get in there and have some sort of therapy with my own brain for a week and that's going towards the next album". She further commented that "the first album was made up of so many songs that people had heard for years and that's amazing. But for me as a creative person, I'm writing something new all the time and all I want to do is put it out straight away. That wasn't the way it happened with [the debut] album so, for this next one, I'm hoping to be more active on writing and put something out straight away that's fresh and no one's heard before." During 2020, Anne-Marie released the standalone singles "Birthday", "Her", "To Be Young" (featuring American singer and rapper Doja Cat) and "Problems", with "Birthday" and "To Be Young" later appearing on the Japanese edition of Therapy.
On 15 January 2021, Anne-Marie released the lead single of Therapy, "Don't Play", in collaboration with British YouTuber and rapper-singer KSI and English DJ and producer Digital Farm Animals. On 9 April 2021, the second single "Way Too Long" was released in collaboration with English producer Nathan Dawe and British rapper MoStack. On 21 May 2021, the third single "Our Song", a collaboration with Niall Horan, was released. On that date, Anne-Marie announced the title, cover art, and release date of Therapy. She later announced that she would embark on the Dysfunctional Tour in 2022, and Therapy: The Live Experience on 7 August 2021 in support of the album.
On 6 July 2021, via Twitter, Anne-Marie created a website that involved her fans/followers to figure out the track-listing for the album, with new ones appearing daily. On 7 July 2021, random followers were sent DMs of one of two snippets of a song along with parts of the title. The track was revealed to be "Kiss My (Uh-Oh)" with British girlband Little Mix on 8 July 2021. The song samples "Never Leave You (Uh Oooh, Uh Oooh)" by Lumidee. The track was announced as the album's fourth single on 9 July 2021 along with its release date being 23 July 2021. A snippet of the song was released on TikTok. The cover was revealed on Anne-Marie's social media on 21 July 2021. On the day of release the song was accompanied by a music video was directed by Hannah Lux Davis. The music video parodies the 2011 comedy film Bridesmaids.
== Composition ==
Therapy was described by music critics as a genre-hopping pop album that draws influence from trance, indie, electronic, trap, UK garage, and pop rock. The opener, "x2", begins as a soulful song before turning into a revenge track. Lead single "Don't Play" was described as a 2-step-influenced UK garage track about heartache. "Kiss My (Uh-Oh)", a collaboration with Little Mix, was described as a calypso-pop number that was compared to the works of Beyoncé. It samples "Never Leave You (Uh Oooh, Uh Oooh)" by Lumidee. "Who I Am" was described as a pop song with lyrics of defiance and self-acceptance. "Unlovable", a collaboration with Rudimental, is a "fist-pumping" dance track. "Beautiful" sees the singer detailing her own insecurities over what NME described as swaying percussion. The tracks "Tell Your Girlfriend" and "Better Not Together" both contain lyrics about turning heartbreak into self-confidence. The title track serves as the closer for the album, being a trop-pop number.
== Promotion ==
=== Dysfunctional Tour ===
On 28 May 2021, Anne-Marie announced the Dysfunctional Tour, scheduled to take place from 3 to 11 May 2022 across cities in United Kingdom and Ireland. Tickets were released to the general public on 4 June at 10 am BST, with the option of pre-sale tickets given to those who pre-ordered Therapy through the singer's official website. The pre-sale tickets were available from 2 to 4 June (for the London and Leeds shows only). North American dates were announced on 30 November 2021. European shows were announced on 7 June 2022, while the Asian leg of the tour was announced on 15 July 2022.
In September 2022, venues announced that both European and North American legs of tour were cancelled due to the singer's scheduling conflict, however Anne-Marie did not issue an official statement. The tour ultimately ran for 2 legs and 11 shows, with Gracey, Billen Ted, and Mimi Webb appearing as supporting acts during the UK & Ireland leg.
==== Tour dates ====
==== Setlist ====
This setlist comes from opening night in Dublin on 3 May 2022, it does not represent the setlist for the remainder of the tour.
"Ciao Adios"
"x2"
"Alarm"
"Tell Your Girlfriend"
"Then"
"Rockabye"
"Therapy"
"Our Song"
"Breathing"
"Beautiful"
"Perfect to Me"
"Better Off"
"2002"
"Kiss My (Uh-Oh)"
"Way Too Long"
"Don't Play"
===== Encore =====
"Friends"
"Birthday"
== Critical reception ==
At Metacritic, which assigns a normalised rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, Therapy has an average score of 65 based on six reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews".
Ali Shutler of NME compared it favourably to her debut album, writing that while her previous effort "spent too much time playing it safe", "its follow-up Therapy doesn't make the same mistake". Referring to the record as "infinitely more confident" sonically, Shutler gave the album four out of five stars. Robin Murray, writing for Clash, was similarly favourable, rating the album seven out of ten. Murray wrote that the album "pushes her story to its next chapter, and while it features some surging highs, it doesn't quite dispel notions that Anne-Marie has yet to nail down a singular sound she can call her own". Ben Devlin of musicOMH gave the album four out of five stars writing, "her newest record is packed to the brim with famous faces on vocals, songwriting and production, but her relatable, unpretentious, sometimes playful delivery holds disparate sounds and moods together with ease."
Lauren Murphy, writing for The Irish Times was slightly more mixed, criticising songs such as "Beautiful" and "Better Not Together", but states "the majority [of the tracks] land with a thud rather than a glance here". Dani Blum of Pitchfork dubbed the album "crisply rendered [and] competently hooky", noting that it "promises a more personal self-portrait, but [the British singer] ends up disappearing into vague songwriting and anodyne dance-pop production." Michael Cragg of The Guardian was more negative, referring to the album as a "missed opportunity", criticising the amount of collaborators on the album for overshadowing the singer, while preferring the "moments when Anne-Marie's brand of plain-spoken yet vulnerable pop shines through". He ultimately rated the album two out of five stars.
== Commercial performance ==
=== Anglosphere ===
In its first charting week, Therapy opened at number two on the UK Albums Chart with sales of 18,260, of which 12,463 were physical copies. By the end of 2021, the album was positioned at number 98 on the chart. The album would eventually be certified Gold by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) for equivalent sales of 100,000 units. In Australia, the album charted at number 60 on the ARIA Charts. In New Zealand, the album charted at number 36 on the New Zealand Albums Chart.
=== Europe ===
In Austria, the album charted at number 15 on the Ö3 Austria Top 40 chart. In Belgium, the album charted at number 50 on the Ultratop chart in Wallonia and number 3 on the same chart in Flanders. In the Netherlands, the album charted at number 19 on the Dutch Album Top 100 chart. In France, the album charted at number 135 on the French Albums Chart. In Germany, the album charted at number 22 on the Offizielle Deutsche Charts. In Hungary, the album charted at number 5 on the Hungarian Albums Chart. In Ireland, the album charted at number 4 on the Irish Albums Chart. In Lithuania, the album charted at number 54 on the Lithuanian Albums chart. In Slovakia, the album charted at number 78 on the Slovak Albums Chart. In Spain, the album charted at number 76 on the Spanish Albums Chart. In Switzerland, the album charted at number 36 on the Schweizer Hitparade chart.
=== Other countries ===
In Japan, the album charted at number 178 on the Japanese Albums Chart and number 66 on the Billboard Japan Hot Albums chart. In Scotland, the album charted at number 2 on the Scottish Albums Chart.
== Track listing ==
=== Notes ===
"Kiss My (Uh-Oh)" samples "Never Leave You (Uh Oooh, Uh Oooh)", written by Lumidee Cedeño, Teddy Mendez, Edwin Perez, Steven "Lenky" Marsden, Steven Marsden, Trevor Smith, and John Jackson, as performed by Lumidee.
^[m] indicates a main and vocal producer
^[a] indicates an additional producer
^[c] indicates a co-producer
^[v] indicates a vocal producer
== Personnel ==
Credits adapted from Tidal.
=== Musicians ===
=== Technical ===
=== Artwork ===
== Charts ==
== Certifications ==
== Release history ==
== References == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premier_League_Manager_of_the_Month | Premier League Manager of the Month | The Premier League Manager of the Month is an association football award that recognises the best adjudged Premier League manager each month of the season. The winner is chosen by a combination of an online public vote, which contributes to 10% of the final tally, and a panel of experts. It has been called the Carling Premiership Manager of the Month (1993–2001) and the Barclaycard Premiership Manager of the Month (2001–2004); it is currently known as the Barclays Manager of the Month.
The Premier League was formed in 1992, when the members of the First Division resigned from the Football League. These clubs set up a new commercially independent league that negotiated its own broadcast and sponsorship agreements. The Premier League introduced new Manager of the Month and Manager of the Season awards for the 1993–94 season, supplementing the existing Football Writers' Association and Professional Footballers' Association Player of the Year awards. The first Manager of the Month was awarded to Manchester United manager Alex Ferguson for his achievements in August 1993. For the 1994–95 season, the Premier League introduced the Player of the Month award, which is presented alongside the Manager of the Month award.
Ferguson has been Manager of the Month the most times with a record 27 awards. Harry Redknapp has had six spells managing Premier League clubs (West Ham United, Portsmouth, Southampton, Portsmouth again, Tottenham Hotspur, and Queens Park Rangers), winning a Manager of the Month award in five of those spells. Sixteen other managers have won an award with two or more clubs: Gordon Strachan with Coventry City and Southampton, Stuart Pearce with Nottingham Forest and Manchester City, Martin O'Neill with Leicester City, Aston Villa, and Sunderland, Roy Hodgson with Blackburn Rovers and Fulham, Rafael Benítez with Liverpool, Chelsea, and Newcastle United, Brendan Rodgers with Swansea City and Liverpool, Alan Pardew with West Ham United and Newcastle United, Sam Allardyce with Bolton Wanderers and West Ham United, Tony Pulis with Crystal Palace and West Bromwich Albion, Mauricio Pochettino with Southampton and Tottenham Hotspur, Claudio Ranieri with Chelsea and Leicester City, Carlo Ancelotti with Chelsea and Everton, José Mourinho with Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur, Nuno Espírito Santo with Wolverhampton Wanderers, Tottenham Hotspur, and Nottingham Forest, Eddie Howe with Bournemouth and Newcastle United, and Sean Dyche with Burnley and Everton.
The award has been won in consecutive months by 17 managers: Joe Kinnear, Kevin Keegan, Roy Evans, Alex Ferguson, Arsène Wenger, David O'Leary, Stuart Pearce, Paul Jewell, Rafael Benítez, Carlo Ancelotti, Manuel Pellegrini, Claudio Ranieri, Antonio Conte, Pep Guardiola, Jürgen Klopp, Mikel Arteta, and Ange Postecoglou. Guardiola is the only manager in Premier League history to have won the award in four successive months. Klopp is the first manager to win the award five times in a season. Postecoglou is the only manager to win the award in each of his first three months in the competition. The award has been shared on one occasion, in March 2002, when Liverpool manager Gérard Houllier was jointly awarded Manager of the Month with caretaker manager Phil Thompson, who had deputised while Houllier was absent for medical reasons.
As of November 2025, the most recent recipient of the award is Chelsea head coach Enzo Maresca.
== Key ==
Managers marked † shared the award with another manager.
== List of winners ==
== Multiple winners ==
The following table lists the number of awards won by managers who have won at least two Manager of the Month awards.
Managers in bold are still active in the Premier League.
As of November 2025 award
== Awards won by nationality ==
As of November 2025 award
== Awards won by club ==
As of November 2025 award
== See also ==
Premier League Manager of the Season
Premier League Player of the Month
Premier League Goal of the Month
Premier League Save of the Month
== Notes ==
== References ==
General
"Premier League Awards". Premier League. Retrieved 17 March 2020. Individual seasons accessed via drop-down list.
Specific |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyndale_Biscoe_School | Tyndale Biscoe School | Tyndale Biscoe School is a school in the Sheikh Bagh neighbourhood, in the Lal Chowk area of Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir. The school was founded in 1880 CE and is one of the oldest schools in Jammu and Kashmir, the oldest being S.P school which was founded in 1874 CE. The school was started by Christian missionaries and was named after Canon Cecil Tyndale-Biscoe (1863–1949). It still has affiliations with the Church Mission Society. The first principal was Reverend J. H. Knowles.
== Departments ==
The school has five departments.
== Activities ==
Tyndale Biscoe School is known for its extra-curricular activities, especially swimming, skiing, mountain climbing, camping and regatta. School placed emphasis on physical activities including mountaineering, trekking, boating, football, cricket, and swimming stimulating sense of courage, masculinity and physical fitness.
When football was introduced in the Valley by Missionary School, there was resistance initially. Students felt the cow leather was holy and touching the ball, made out of it, was blasphemous. Instead they played football with a wooden clog (known as Khraav in Kashmiri) in their feet. Similarly, when boating was introduced in Mission School students did not like boating because, in Kashmiri society, boatmen weren't consider respectable members of the society. But later it was adopted and the Mission School boys became efficient paddlers and rowers.
== History ==
Rev. J.H. Knowles, in 1880, laid the foundation of the C.M.S. (Church Mission Society) School on the hospital premises (Modern Chest Disease Hospital, Drugjan) in Srinagar. The school was started with 5 pupils. In 1883, the number of boys in the school increased to 30.
In 1890, the Government permitted the C.M.S. to shift the school to downtown, and it was moved from the hospital premises (Drugjan) to a large house and compound on the river bank in the middle of the city at Fateh Kadal. As a result of this, the number of students increased to about 200 in 1890.
Canon C.E. Tyndale-Biscoe joined the school in 1891, there were 250 pupils on the school roll. The primary school grew into a middle school and eventually into a high school. The high school was designated the Hadow Memorial School after the name of its honorary treasurer for 40 years. Eventually, five other mission schools were set up, one each in different parts of the capital city and one in Anantnag.
== Notable alumni ==
Farooq Abdullah – (born 1937) politician and former Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir
Aga Syed Ruhullah Mehdi - (born 1976) politician and Member of parliament
Ishfaq Ahmed – (born 1983), a professional footballer and the head coach of I-League club Real Kashmir
Agha Shaukat Ali – (1920–2013) Kashmiri civil servant turned Pakistani politician after partition
Imran Raza Ansari – (born 1972) politician and religious scholar
Dr. Anil Bhan – a cardiologist at Medanta who performed the first successful heart transplant in India. He was awarded the certificate of Honor as "Best All Round Boy" in school
Masarat Alam Bhat – (born 1971), Kashmiri separatist leader, chairman of the Jammu Kashmir Muslim League and also serving as chairman of the Hurriyat Conference
Thupstan Chhewang (born 1947), Indian politician
Durga Prasad Dhar – (1918–1975), Kashmiri politician and an Indian diplomat
P. N. Dhar (1919–2012), economist and the head of Indira Gandhi's secretariat
Khurshid Drabu CBE (1946–2018), English judge, law lecturer and Muslim community leader; first Muslim to be a judge in Britain
Shah Faesal – (born 1983), IAS civil servant, social activist, politician
Bhagwan Gopinath – (1898 – 1968), born Gopinath Bhan, was a mystic saint of early 20th century Kashmir
Eliezer Joldan – (1916-2001), an educationist who was the first trained graduate to profess teaching as a profession in Ladakh
Iqbal Khan – (born 1981) is a Bollywood actor
Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad – (1907–1972), politician and former Prime Minister of Jammu and Kashmir
Mohammad Shafi Qureshi (1929–2016), advocate, Indian politician and statesman from Kashmir, founder of the Congress Party in Jammu and Kashmir
S. L. Sadhu – (1917-2012), a UNESCO award winning Kashmiri writer
Tanvir Sadiq, Chief Spokesperson of Jammu and Kashmir National Conference
Ashfaq Majeed Wani – (1966–1990), first commander-in-chief of Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front
== References ==
== External links == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_of_Warcraft_Classic#:~:text=On%20August%2024%2C%202023%2C%20Blizzard,%2C%20known%20as%20Mak'gora. | World of Warcraft Classic | World of Warcraft Classic is a 2019 massively multiplayer online role-playing game developed and published by Blizzard Entertainment. Running alongside the main version of the game, Classic recreates World of Warcraft in the vanilla state it was in before the release of its first expansion, The Burning Crusade. It was announced at BlizzCon 2017 and was released globally August 26, 2019.
Various additional versions of Classic have since been released, including progression servers that have advanced sequentially through re-releases of the game’s first four expansions, seasonal servers featuring new or altered content distinct from the original game, a "20th Anniversary Edition" re-release of the original Classic and permadeath Hardcore servers.
== Gameplay ==
Classic recreates the game in the state it was in during patch 1.12.1, c. September 2006, before the launch of The Burning Crusade expansion. The maximum level of the player characters is set to 60, all expansion content is absent, and almost all the gameplay mechanics of the original version have been exactly replicated. As the game's multiple expansions have dramatically changed the gameplay over time, Classic allows players to relive the original experience, albeit some modern interface and functional enhancements introduced in later expansions have been integrated, as well as re-patching of bugs and exploits that were present at the original release of patch 1.12. A big part of this version of World of Warcraft is the social factor which many players felt was lacking from more recent iterations of the game.
Players can choose from the eight original races of World of Warcraft: humans, dwarves, gnomes, and night elves for the Alliance, and orcs, trolls, tauren, and the Forsaken for the Horde. The original nine classes are present: druid, hunter, mage, paladin, priest, rogue, shaman, warlock and warrior. As in the original version of the game, only Alliance players can become paladins, and only Horde players can become shamans. Races and classes added in the expansions are not available in the game. The game world is restored to its original, pre-Cataclysm state, and expansion areas such as Outland are not accessible.
To emulate the original game's patch release cycle, content in Classic was released in phases. This means that game content originally released in patches, such as the Blackwing Lair, Ahn'Qiraj, and Naxxramas raids; battlegrounds like Warsong Gulch and Alterac Valley; and certain items and quests; became available after launch according to a six-phase schedule. Unlike the content patches for the original game, these phases did not modify the core game mechanics such as character abilities in any way; the game balance has been set to the 1.12.1 version of the game since release.
== Development ==
The option of Classic servers has been a long-standing request in the World of Warcraft community. Every expansion has removed or replaced old content and introduced controversial or unwanted mechanics, resulting in many players expressing a preference for older versions of the game. For example, the game's first expansion, The Burning Crusade, removed the original level-60 version of Kazzak, and in the process, all of the items that he dropped became forever unobtainable. The Burning Crusade also added flying mounts, which were criticized for their effect on world PvP; raised the level cap to 70, which was criticized for making all level 60 content obsolete; and opened the formerly faction-specific Paladin and Shaman classes to both factions. The second expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, removed the original versions of the Naxxramas and Onyxia raids and all items that could be obtained from them; added a Random Dungeon Finder tool, which many players felt spoiled the "social aspect" of the game; and made certain UI improvements that were criticized for reducing the need to read quest descriptions. Blizzard repeatedly refused to create legacy servers so that players could stay on older versions of the game. One of their oldest refusals was posted on February 21, 2008, by Drysc, who stated "We were at one time internally discussing the possibility fairly seriously, but the long term interest in continued play on them couldn't justify the extremely large amount of development and support resources it would take to implement and maintain them. We'd effectively be developing and supporting two different games."
Versions of World of Warcraft that existed prior to the launch of The Burning Crusade were often referred to as "vanilla" by players, but were referred to by Blizzard as "classic" at least as far back as November 29, 2009, when Vaneras wrote "We occasionally see requests for us to open pre-TBC realms, or classic realms if you prefer. Lately there have also been requests for pre-WotLK realms, and I am sure that once the next expansion pack is released there will be requests for pre-Cataclysm realms as well. We have answered these requests quite a few times now saying that we have no plans to open such realms, and this is still the case today. We have no plans to open classic realms or limited expansion content realms".
Demand for Classic and other legacy realms significantly increased when the Cataclysm expansion revamped the entire original game world, making the majority of the classic or "old world" content forever inaccessible. Blizzard's response at the time, as provided by Tom Chilton, was "Currently, my answer would be probably not. The reason I say that is because any massively multiplayer game that has pretty much ever existed and has ever done any expansions has always gotten the nostalgia of, 'Oh God, wouldn't it be great if we could have classic servers!' and more than anything else that generally proves to be nostalgia. In most cases - in almost all cases - the way it ends up playing out is that the game wasn't as good back then as people remember it being and then when those servers become available, they go play there for a little bit and quickly remember that it wasn't quite as good as what they remembered in their minds and they don't play there anymore and you set up all these servers and you dedicated all this hardware to it and it really doesn't get much use. So, for me, the historical lesson is that it's not a very good idea to do". When the issue was raised at a Q&A panel at BlizzCon 2013, J. Allen Brack famously responded "You think you do, but you don't", a phrase which would become the subject of ridicule years later.
Meanwhile, many private servers were being created by the community. Originally, private servers were mere novelties used for experimenting with alterations to the game rules, such as raising the level cap to 255. These early servers rarely had properly scripted raids, quests, or anything else. However, as expansions progressed and demand for legacy realms grew, private servers reversed focus and were seen as a way to faithfully re-create older versions of the game. Private servers emphasizing fidelity to the official versions of the game were referred to as "Blizzlike" and included Feenix, Molten Core, Emerald Dream, Nostalrius, and Light's Hope. The most popular was Nostalrius, which opened in February 2015 and had 800,000 registered accounts and 150,000 active players when it shut down in response to a cease and desist letter on April 10, 2016. In the wake of Nostalrius's shutdown, a Change.org petition for official Classic servers was created and received over 200,000 signatures, and ex-World of Warcraft team lead Mark Kern personally delivered it to Blizzard's president at the time, Michael Morhaime. Blizzard acknowledged the community's desires, and stated they had been discussing legacy servers internally for years but technical problems prevented them from implementing them. Consequently, the Nostalrius team released their source code to Valkyrie-WoW, another long-standing private Vanilla WoW server, hosted in Russia, and the Nostalrius servers returned on December 17, 2016, under the name of Elysium Project, with the player database as it had been just before the shutdown in April.
On November 3, 2017, at BlizzCon 2017, the then-Executive Producer of World of Warcraft, J. Allen Brack, announced Classic on stage during the WoW panel. Details of the project were further revealed in interviews: it was going to be a faithful recreation of the original version of the game, but running on the modern infrastructure. A developer blog post published on June 15, 2018, further detailed the technical implementation, and a panel was held during BlizzCon 2018 that explained the development process behind the game. To create Classic, Blizzard ported the original 1.12.1 game data and assets to their modern server and client infrastructure. This allows Classic to share much of the source code between the modern version of the game, which removes the development overhead of maintaining two different versions of the game, and also means that Classic will have all the performance and security improvements added to the original game server and client that were absent in the 2006 version.
== Burning Crusade Classic ==
In March 2020 Blizzard sent out a survey to Classic players gauging their interest in a Classic Burning Crusade game. After positive reactions it was verified in February 2021 and in the last week of May it became available for download leading up to its release on June 1.
== Wrath of the Lich King Classic ==
In April 2022, Blizzard announced Wrath of the Lich King Classic, scheduled for release later in the year. On July 25, Blizzard released a trailer with the confirmed release date of September 26.
At the launch of the Wrath of the Lich King Classic, the developers announced a strategy of minimal changes seeking to reproduce the feeling of the game's original state as much as possible. This contrasts with the approach from Classic's launch in 2019, where Blizzard sought to preserve all the interactions and behaviors of World of Warcraft's original release, even ones that seemed irrelevant or unintended.
Traditionally, both unofficial private servers and Blizzard's official Classic servers have used the "end-patch state" for each expansion, meaning that the class balancing and features are based on the final phase of the original games. In Wrath of the Lich King, the end-patch state included a Dungeon Finder tool that allowed players to enter a queue and be automatically matched with other players to complete 5-man content. Blizzard opted to not include the Dungeon Finder, instead offering an improved in-game bulletin board system where players can look for groups for any type of content, in effort to promote social interaction.
In the lead-up to launch, Blizzard implemented one of its first major changes: Joyous Journeys, a limited-time 50% experience buff intended to ease the leveling experience for new and returning players. Joyous Journeys was active during the Wrath of the Lich King pre-patch, and returned again one month before each new content phase was set to launch. Blizzard also made it so that any player could immediately create a Death Knight character on any server. Previously, this required that the player reach level 55 before being able to unlock the Death Knight class. This was later reverted to reduce abuse by bots.
In the first content phase, the health and damage of all mobs in the Naxxramas raid were increased in order to provide players more of a challenge, due to the original release in 2008 being rather undertuned and quickly defeated.
The second content phase included broader changes, including entirely new systems. With the introduction of the Ulduar raid, Blizzard implemented a series of changes and "catch-up mechanics" to make acquiring gear and items from Phase 1 easier and faster. First was changing the loot tables of Phase 1 bosses: in Phase 2, all bosses on 10-player difficulty would instead drop items from their 25-man difficulty. The items from 10-man difficulty were scattered across bosses in Heroic Dungeons, and could be accessed by doing the dungeons on a new "Titan Rune Dungeon" difficulty. Players referred to this new difficulty as "Heroic+", as the feature is reminiscent of Mythic and Mythic+ Dungeons from later World of Warcraft expansions.
Like for Naxxramas, the developers sought to release the main raid of Phase 2, Ulduar, with a higher difficulty. All bosses were released in their most "pre-nerf" state, giving players the hardest possible version of each boss from 2009. To give players greater incentive to continue running Ulduar in later phases, gear on all difficulty modes was given higher stats and higher item levels. During this phase, Blizzard also introduced the first significant changes to PvE class balancing, by changing abilities to increase performance or eliminate newfound play styles that were detrimental to group content.
Several cosmetic changes also came in Wrath of the Lich King Classic. When the in-game barbershop was originally added in 2008, players were able to pay in-game currency to subtly alter their characters appearance, such as changing their hairstyle and certain accessories. Blizzard later added a paid Character Recustomization service, which allowed players to fully recreate their character, changing gender, skin color, and more. For the Classic version, these recustomization options were made baseline, and any player could use in-game gold to completely recreate their character's appearance, including gender (now called Body Type). Wrath of the Lich King's original release also included paid Race Change and Faction Change features, which were both added in Phase 2 of Wrath of the Lich King Classic.
The "WoW Token" became available for Wrath of the Lich King Classic players on May 23, 2023. Originally launched during the Warlords of Draenor expansion, this item allows players to exchange real money for the token, which can then be exchanged for in-game gold or a 1-month WoW subscription.
Phase 3 for Wrath Classic launched on June 20, 2023, adding the Argent Tournament area and daily quests, Trial of the Champion dungeon, Trial of the Crusader and Grand Crusader raids, Onyxia's Lair raid, Trial of the Champion dungeon, as well as Defense Protocol: Beta, a new difficulty level for existing endgame dungeons. This phase saw the introduction of "Heroic" difficulty for raiding content, which was immediately available without requiring players to first complete the "Normal" difficulty mode. Unlike the original release of Patch 3.2, the heroic and normal difficulty of raids in this tier shared a lockout, and could instead be toggled on a boss-by-boss basis.
Wrath Classic's 4th Phase was released on October 10, 2023, adding the Icecrown Citadel raid, three Frozen Halls dungeons, Defense Protocol: Gamma difficulty for existing dungeons, and several new features. Among these was the introduction of Random Dungeon Finder, a tool that allows players to join a queue and be automatically grouped with others for the specific or randomized content. Additionally, the Pets and Collections systems were added, allowing players to access mounts, pets, heirlooms and toy items from characters across their account.
Phase 5 was released on January 11, 2024, adding the Ruby Sanctum raid.
== Cataclysm Classic ==
At BlizzCon 2023, Blizzard officially announced that Wrath of the Lich King Classic would continue into Cataclysm content, coming some time in the first half of 2024. The announcement noted that gameplay changes would be coming to the Classic version, such as continuing the "Titan Rune Dungeon" system, as well as faster leveling speeds and a faster content release schedule.
The 4.0 Cataclysm pre-patch launched on April 30, 2024, adding the new races of Worgen and Goblin, unlocking different race/class combinations, as well as the revamped 0-60 zones and quests. On May 20, 2024, the expansion officially launched, unlocking the new level 80-85 zones and dungeons.
The Rise of the Zandalari patch was introduced on July 30, 2024, adding reimagined versions of the Zul'Gurub and Zul'Aman raids as 5-player dungeons for max level characters.
Content in the Rage of the Firelands patch became available on October 29, 2024, bringing the Firelands raid as well as "Elemental Rune Protocol: Inferno" dungeons, which allowed players to complete heroic dungeons at a higher difficulty level in order to earn tokens and purchase select items from tier 11 raids. The release of the Firelands raid was delayed, opening on November 6, 2024.
The Hour of Twilight patch was released on February 18, 2025, adding the Dragon Soul raid, Hour of Twilight Dungeons and "Elemental Rune Protocol: Twilight" difficulty for existing dungeons. Looking For Raid (LFR) was excluded from the patch, despite it being launched with this patch in the original 2011 release of Cataclysm. Players could instead acquire LFR gear from running Protocol: Twilight dungeons.
== Mists of Pandaria Classic ==
In November 2024, during a 30th Anniversary livestream for the Warcraft series, Blizzard officially announced that the Mists of Pandaria would be coming to World of Warcraft Classic some time in summer 2025. In April 2025, Blizzard allowed users to begin signing up to beta test Mists of Pandaria Classic.
Mists of Pandaria Classic launched on July 21, 2025. In addition to the original 85-90 quests, zones, dungeons and raids, Blizzard introduced "Celestial Dungeons", following the format of the "Elemental Rune" and "Titan Rune" dungeon modes from Cataclysm Classic and Wrath of the Lich King Classic. Celestial Dungeons were intended to be a replacement for the Raid Finder difficult mode, as Blizzard opted not to implement any version of Raid Finder in Mists of Pandaria Classic. The first raid tier featured a staggered rollout of the three raid instances, followed by the inclusion of each raid's loot table into the Celestial Dungeon system.
In September 2025, Blizzard opened free character transfers to consolidate players onto "Mega Realms" in each region, citing the benefits of higher player concentration that were observed after executing previous transfers for Season of Discovery and Classic Era realms.
On December 9, 2025, Phase 3 "The Thunder King" of Mists of Pandaria Classic launched, adding the Isle of Thunder and Isle of Giants zones, as well as the Throne of Thunder raid and new story content based around the Shado-Pan Assault faction and continuation of the legendary questline. The Throne of Thunder raid opened two days later on December 11, 2025. This is the second to last raid in the Mists of Pandaria Expansion.
== 20th Anniversary Edition ==
During Warcraft Direct 2024, Blizzard announced a re-release of the 2004 version of World of Warcraft, which launched shortly after on November 21, 2024. Named the "20th Anniversary Edition", this version of Classic retains most of the features from the 2019 release of World of Warcraft: Classic, but also includes certain quality-of-life updates, such as the Chronoboon Displacer, updated Honor System, removal of the Buff and Debuff Limits, as well as a native LFG tool and the ability to enable a more modern guild panel UI. Blizzard stated on its announcement that the 20th Anniversary Edition would be continuing into The Burning Crusade some time in late 2025 or early 2026.
=== 20th Anniversary Edition: Hardcore ===
Blizzard also released Hardcore-only servers with the launch of the 20th Anniversary Edition, which feature previous permadeath mechanics and an optional "Self-Found Mode". Blizzard has stated that the Hardcore servers will not be progressing to The Burning Crusade, and characters on them will be given the option to transfer to Normal realms to continue playing in The Burning Crusade Classic.
== Classic Era and Seasonal Servers ==
=== Classic Era ===
Before the launch of Burning Crusade Classic, Blizzard created separate copies of each server, known as Classic Era servers, while the original realms all were set to automatically progress with content from Burning Crusade. Players were able to pay to create copies of their existing characters on the Classic Era servers, which would stay in a 1.12.1 state, with all content phases unlocked. Similarly, players could freely create new characters on Classic Era servers to replay content from the game in that state.
=== Season of Mastery ===
Reinvented versions of World of Warcraft Classic have launched as separate servers intended to give players a fresh experience with the game. Blizzard began creating seasonal Classic servers in November 2021 with the launch of Season of Mastery, which introduced changes to the game's mechanics that made it more challenging. Season of Mastery also included an "ironman" mode, by which players could attempt to progress without letting their characters die. Season of Mastery officially concluded on February 14, 2023.
=== Classic Hardcore ===
On August 24, 2023, Blizzard launched official Hardcore Classic servers that feature permadeath and the ability for characters to "duel to the death", known as Mak'gora. This game mode was inspired by a community of players on Classic Era realms who used addons to create an unofficial permadeath experience, with other rules such as restricting access to the auction house or trading with other characters. Characters that die on official Hardcore servers are not able to log back in to the character or resurrect, but are able to transfer the character to existing Classic Era realms.
==== Self-Found Mode ====
On February 29, 2024, a Self-Found Mode was added to Hardcore servers, allowing players to formally apply an extra set of restrictions to their character. In addition to the normal Hardcore ruleset, Self-Found Mode prevents players using the auction house, and sending or receiving mail. Self-Found Mode is only available for new characters, as an option during character creation. Players are able to turn off Self-Found Mode, but are unable to turn it back on once disabled.
=== Season of Discovery ===
On November 30, 2023, Season of Discovery was launched as a seasonal server type. Discovery introduced new content to the base "Vanilla" world for the first time, including a new system of class abilities called runes, allowing certain classes to perform new roles, and additions to existing systems such as professions. Discovery launched with gated leveling, where players can only progress to level 25 in the first phase and subsequent phases will increase the level cap incrementally.
Additionally, Season of Discovery features forced faction balance upon launch which would lock players from creating a new character of the dominant faction. Each phase also featured reworked PvE and PvP content, such as 10-player Blackfathom Deeps raid and a world PvP event in Ashenvale. Blizzard tested new methods to combat Real-money Trading (RMT) within Season of Discovery, including restricting new accounts ability to trade, send mail, or use the auction house within their first 30 days.
Phase 2 of Discovery raised the level cap to 40 and converted the dungeon Gnomeregan into a 10-player raid, added a PvP event in Stranglethorn Vale called The Blood Moon, and introduced restrictions to players participating in so-called "GDKP" runs, where players bid on items that drop from raid bosses with gold.
Phase 3 of Discovery raised the level cap to 50 and converted the Temple of Atal'Hakkar ("Sunken Temple") dungeon into a 20-player raid. Persistent world events called Nightmare Incursions were also introduced, allowing players to complete specific quests and missions to gain reputation with a new faction and purchase rewards.
Phase 4 of Discovery increased the level cap to the max level of 60, added a new 5-player dungeon, Demon Fall Canyon, and unlocked and a reworked version of Molten Core as a 20-player raid, as well as a reworked 40-man version of Onyxia's Lair.
Phase 5 of Discovery introduced updated versions of the Zul'Gurub and Blackwing Lair raids, as well as the new raid Crystal Vale. A new boss was also added to the Demon Fall Canyon dungeon from Phase 4.
Phase 6 of Discovery added the "48-Hour War" event leading to the opening of the Ruins of Ahn'Qiraj and Temple of Ahn'Qiraj raids. Ruins was retuned for 10+ players, while Temple changed to 20+ players. The emerald dragons of Emeriss, Ysondre, Lethon and Taerar were moved into a special "Nightmare Grove" raid instance, rather than being open-world bosses.
Phase 7 of Discovery introduced the Naxxramas raid, along with the Scourge Invasion event. The Karazhan Crypts, an unfinished area in Deadwind Pass, was introduced as a new 5-player dungeon featuring new quests and items. This was originally planned as the final full patch of the seasonal server, but more content was released following community feedback.
Phase 8 of Discovery introduced the first all-new raid: the Scarlet Enclave. This phase also added New Avalon, the first new zone added to the Classic world, along with new quests and supporting content. The developer team confirmed that this would be the final content added to Season of Discovery.
== Reception ==
PC Gamer scored Classic an 80 out of 100 and wrote, "WoW Classic is more than just a new version of an iconic game, it feels like a window to a time where interacting with people online still felt novel and exciting." Polygon praised the difficulty of Classic and its overall design to nurture "social connections" in comparison to its modern counterpart, calling it a "faithful snapshot of a moment in time".
Since launch, Blizzard has faced some criticism from players for their use of layering technology for the Classic servers. In addition to splitting the communities within each unique realm, players were found to be using the "layers" to exploit the in-game economy. However, as of October 10, 2019, most realms are down to a single layer, with only the highest population servers still utilizing additional layers.
The game won the award for "PC Game of the Year" at the 2019 Golden Joystick Awards, and was nominated for "Game, Classic Revival" at the NAVGTR Awards.
== References ==
== External links ==
Official website |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bust_of_Thomas_Baker#:~:text=It%20is%20currently%20held%20in,1921%20for%201480%20English%20guineas. | Bust of Thomas Baker | The bust of Thomas Baker is a 1638 marble portrait sculpture created by the Italian artist Gian Lorenzo Bernini, with much of the bust undertaken by a pupil of Bernini, probably Andrea Bolgi. It is currently held in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, who purchased the bust in 1921 for 1480 English guineas.
== Subject ==
Baker (1606–58) was High Sheriff of Suffolk in 1657 and connected to the court of Charles I. He may have been indirectly involved in another Bernini bust, carrying the triple portrait of Charles I by Van Dyck to Rome; it was from this portrait that Bernini carved the now-destroyed bust of King Charles.
== See also ==
List of works by Gian Lorenzo Bernini
== References ==
== External links ==
Media related to Bust of Thomas Baker (Victoria & Albert Museum) at Wikimedia Commons |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiraitu_Murungi#:~:text=7%20External%20links-,Education,proceeding%20to%20Alliance%20High%20School. | Kiraitu Murungi | Kìraitū Mūrungi (born 1 January 1952) is a Kenyan politician, lawyer, and civil rights advocate. He is the Chairman of the National Oil Corporation of Kenya. He has previously held roles including Governor of Meru County, Senator for Meru, and was a long-serving Member of Parliament for South Imenti Constituency. Over his extensive political career, he has also served as a Cabinet Minister and been instrumental in advocating for social justice and democratic reforms in Kenya.
== Early life ==
Kìraitū Mūrungi was born on 1 January 1952 in Kionyo Village, Meru District. He attended Kionyo Primary School, then Chuka High School, and Alliance High School. Murungi earned a Bachelor of Laws from the University of Nairobi in 1977 and later an LLM from the same university in 1982. In 1991, he completed a second LLM at Harvard Law School, where he studied during his exile in the United States.
== Career ==
=== Legal and advocacy work ===
Before entering politics, Mūrungi was a partner in a law firm he co-founded with Gibson Kamau Kuria and Aaron Ringera. The firm handled significant cases, notably representing political prisoners detained during Daniel arap Moi's presidency. Murungi became well known for his work in human rights and social justice, including representing Wanyiri Kihoro against the Kenyan government. His commitment to democratic reform continued during his time in exile, where he supported efforts for multi-party democracy in Kenya.
=== Political career ===
Mūrungi entered politics in the early 1990s, joining the Forum for the Restoration of Democracy (FORD) and later the Democratic Party (DP) as he advocated for multi-party democracy. He was elected as a Member of Parliament for South Imenti in 1992 and held this seat until 2013, aligning himself with reformist leaders and later joining the National Rainbow Coalition (NARC) in 2002. He held various cabinet roles, including Minister of Justice and Constitutional Affairs and later Minister of Energy.
In 2013, Mūrungi became the Senator for Meru County, representing the county in the Kenyan Senate. In 2017, he successfully ran for Governor of Meru County under the Jubilee Party and served a five-year term.
After his term as governor, Mūrungi was appointed Chairman of the National Oil Corporation of Kenya in 2023, where he has been tasked with overseeing the strategic direction of Kenya’s national petroleum interests.
== Controversies ==
Mūrungi's political career has been marked by some controversies. In 2005, he faced criticism for a remark perceived as trivializing both corruption and gender violence, for which he later apologized. Mūrungi was also implicated in the Anglo Leasing Scandal, an infamous corruption case in Kenya. In 2006, John Githongo, former Governance and Ethics Permanent Secretary, released recordings alleging that Mūrungi attempted to obstruct investigations. Although he denied the accusations, he resigned from his cabinet post to allow further investigation, later returning to his position as Minister of Energy.
== Legacy and personal life ==
Mūrungi has been described as a visionary leader and social organizer who has significantly contributed to the development of South Imenti Constituency. He is married to Priscilla Mūrungi, and they have four children. Known for his resilience, Mūrungi has had a profound influence on Kenyan politics and governance, particularly in his advocacy for democratic reforms.
== See also ==
Corruption in Kenya
John Githongo
== References ==
== External links ==
Archived profile on Parliament of Kenya website
Meru County profile |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Serve_and_Protect | To Serve and Protect | To Serve and Protect, also known as Under Arrest on streaming services, is a Canadian reality crime television series that shadows city police in Edmonton, Alberta, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Vancouver, Penticton, New Westminster, Summerland, and Surrey, British Columbia. A few episodes venture to Las Vegas, and Memphis. The program premiered on KVOS-TV in 1993 using footage shot in 1991 and 1992. It is based on the American television series Cops.
== History ==
The program was created by Dwayne Mitchell and Dan Forrer for KF Media Inc., debuting in 1993 on KVOS-TV in Bellingham, Washington. Most viewers of the hour-long program were located in the Vancouver, British Columbia region. Mitchell filmed five hundred "ride alongs" with the police in the program's first two years. KVOS aired the program on Sunday nights in the 1990s and weeknights at midnight in the early 2000s. Among those featured on the program were future Edmonton Police whistleblower Derek Huff. With a new audience on Netflix, the program is today considered something of a camp classic for its dramatic characters and 1990s aesthetic. As of 2023, 26 episodes are available for streaming on Peacock.
After the first season, the Vancouver Police Department refused to allow the production company on ride alongs after they refused to blur the faces of suspects. Vancouver police constable Anne Drenan said Forrer's "negative attitude after police requested the show black out faces led to the police board deciding ... not to participate further." Drennan said police wanted to protect the identities of people who were arrested but not charged. The provincial government ruled that broadcasting a suspect's face without their consent was illegal.
The original version of To Serve and Protect was cancelled in 1995. Executive producer Dan Forrer blamed "senior officers in the Vancouver police department and RCMP." The final episode featured footage that, according to Forrer, "Vancouver police Chief Ray Canuel did want the public to see." He claimed the police chief wanted to "kill the show's access to ride alongs with officers in patrol cars because the original approval had been given by the previous police chief, Bill Marshall." Several instances of excessive force and illegal maneuvers were captured on film and aired as if routine. The new police chief was mortified to see the program showcase some of the brutal tactics routinely employed by his force, potentially casting them in a negative light.
Forrer and Mitchell secured access to other police departments and a new round of episodes were made starting in 1997. The RCMP of Surrey, British Columbia, was featured prominently. Located thirty minutes east of Vancouver, the suburb was famous for mullets, mustaches, and alcohol-related incidents. People have compared the area to Heavy Metal Parking Lot and the Trailer Park Boys. Some of the program's most memorable moments occur during Surrey episodes, something that led to the Surrey City Council revoking permission to film within the city. The city council also contacted KVOS to pull all Surrey-based episodes from its rerun package. "They are broadcasting the same incidents over and over, so people are getting the impression that this is still happening," said councillor Judy Villeneuve. She felt that the program unfairly portrayed Surrey as "crime-ridden." Forrer was outraged. "We are not going to acquiesce to the suggestion that we not show something – that's ludicrous. If they are putting the screws to the police on To Serve and Protect, then what else are they telling them to do?" However, the Surrey RCMP themselves were "troubled about the show for months, and suspended participation last November [1997]." The department didn't cite specific concerns but said the program "doesn't present a balanced view of police work, but instead is skewed toward the more sensational incidents."
Forrer said the show was unrehearsed, but conceded that the program was formatted for maximum television impact. "We just get in a police car and go wherever they are dispatched. I'm not saying that what we show is 100 per cent of reality but neither is what you see on BCTV News. There are people on the show two or three times, and they're people who are always getting in trouble and causing us all a lot of grief. My sympathy for these people? There isn't any ... It comes down to bleeding hearts and political correctness. They don't like the fact that we embarrass or put some heat on some of these crooks that are on the show."
== Alternate Versions ==
Dwayne Mitchell sold a syndicated, half-hour version of the program to American markets in 1997 under the title Mounties: True Stories of the Royal Canadian Police. It reportedly aired in eighty regional markets including Elko, Nevada, St. Joseph, Missouri, Salina, Kansas, Tucson, Arizona, West Palm Beach, Florida, and Agana, Guam. It generally aired around two in the morning. Forrer referred to his show as "filler" for the American market.
This show is available on the video-on-demand streaming services Netflix, Peacock, The Roku Channel, Pluto TV, Crackle, Tubi and Amazon Freevee (the version on the latter six services provided by FilmRise) under the title Under Arrest with episodes condensed from their original hour length to eight "Best of" seasons with each episode running 20 minutes.
=== Episodes on Netflix ===
== See also ==
Law enforcement in Canada
Crime in Canada
COPS
Live PD
== References == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Muharrem_%C4%B0nce_presidential_campaign | 2018 Muharrem İnce presidential campaign | Muharrem İnce, a member of parliament for Yalova, was announced as the presidential candidate of the Republican People's Party (CHP) on 3 May 2018. The following day, on 4 May, party leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu formally proclaimed the CHP's support for İnce. Shortly thereafter, the CHP began preparations for the campaign season, launching the production of campaign material and merchandise. It was revealed in early May that İnce's campaign would adopt the slogan “Türkiye’ye güvence Muharrem İnce”, roughly translating to "Muharrem İnce, an assurance to Turkey." The campaign began with an election rally in his home city of Yalova on 5 May.
== Program ==
Defending “No” for the 2017 Turkish constitutional referendum
18 proposed amendments to the Constitution of Turkey(Full details)
Turkey should use and protect Kemalist ideas
The support of Turkish membership of the European Union
=== Economic policy ===
In a 26 May interview on his campaign trail, İnce, when asked about the ongoing Turkish currency and debt crisis, said on economic policy that "the central bank can only halt the lira’s slide temporarily by raising interest rates, because it’s not the case that depreciation fundamentally stems from interest rates being too high or too low. So, the central bank will intervene, but the things that really need to be done are in the political and legal areas. Turkey needs to immediately be extricated from a political situation that breeds economic uncertainty, and its economy must be handled by independent and autonomous institutions. My economic team is ready, and we have been working together for a long time."
=== Kurdish issue ===
In his campaign rallies, İnce pledged to allow education in the Kurdish language and to solve the Kurdish issue through dialogue rather than violence.
=== Foreign policy ===
On European Union–Turkey relations, İnce is committed to Turkey’s bid to join the EU, the roots of which he traces back to the 1830s, during the Ottoman Empire’s Tanzimat period. He cites broad support among Turkey’s youth for a future with better employment opportunities as the main reason for Turkey to embrace further European integration in higher education and promises to give back dignity to the Foreign Ministry’s professional diplomats who are ridiculed by Islamist government trolls.
On Syria Turkey relations, he has proposed to end Turkey’s longstanding opposition to Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad, saying cooperation with the regime would facilitate the return of some of the 3.5 million Syrian refugees living in Turkish camps.
“When I become president, we will have an ambassador to Syria,” Mr. Ince told supporters during a recent rally.
Turkey broke diplomatic relations with Syria in 2012.
== Campaigning ==
As of 31 May, media suggested that "even die-hard CHP critics would concede" that İnce was "performing far better than expected", crisscrossing the country with a focus on promises to restore democracy and rule of law, and to offer better pay and education. With respect to president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, he displayed a mix of contempt and near pity. Over the last week of May, İnce saw a 74 percent increase in social media popularity, bringing him close to Erdoğan who maintained the top spot on social media, with mentions and tags pertaining to him hitting the 1.3 million mark, with İnce at just over 1 million, while competitors Meral Akşener had 280,852, Selahattin Demirtaş 201,922 and Temel Karamollaoğlu 181,703.
== Election result ==
== Party representation ==
== References ==
== External links ==
Jasper Mortimer (5 June 2018). "Turkey's Ince galvanizes opposition hopes in presidential race". Al-Monitor. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Bradley_(politician)#:~:text=Marc%20Julian%20Bradley%20(born%20February,politician%20from%20Milwaukee%20County%2C%20Wisconsin. | Julian Bradley (politician) | Marc Julian Bradley (born February 11, 1981) is an American businessman and Republican politician from Milwaukee County, Wisconsin. He is a member of the Wisconsin Senate, representing the 28th Senate district since 2021. He is the first black Republican to serve in the Wisconsin Senate and only the second black Republican to serve in the Wisconsin Legislature.
== Early life and career ==
Julian Bradley was born in Baltimore, Maryland, and moved with his mother to La Crosse, Wisconsin, in 1992, when he was 11 years old. He was interested in politics from an early age. Upon graduating from La Crosse Central High School in 1999, with his mother in failing health and finding himself unable to afford college, he leaned on his other childhood passion—for professional wrestling—and enrolled in "wrestling school" in Philadelphia, intending to earn money to support his family. He made his professional wrestling debut August 28, 1999, under the pseudonym Kris Krude.
After several years living in Philadelphia he entered Temple University, but only remained in school for one year. In 2007 he left professional wrestling behind and returned to Wisconsin to complete his bachelor's degree at the University of Wisconsin–La Crosse. While attending UW–La Crosse, he began working as an area repair supervisor for telecommunications company CenturyLink. He graduated with a degree in political science and economics in 2014 and worked his way up to manager at CenturyLink by 2017. In 2019 he was hired as a manager at Northwestern Mutual, requiring him to relocate to Franklin, Wisconsin, in Milwaukee County.
== Political career ==
In 2002, after a conversation with his mother over the subject of abortion, Bradley came to the conclusion that he was a Republican. His campaign website and press releases acknowledged this as a pivotal moment in his life.
He made his first attempt at elected office in 2010 when he ran for Wisconsin State Assembly in the 95th assembly district, but was defeated in the Republican primary. Despite his primary defeat, he continued working as an organizer and volunteer with the Republican Party of Wisconsin through the general election and became acquainted with Bill Feehan. Feehan planned to seek election as chairman of the La Crosse County Republican Party in 2011 and asked Bradley to join his ticket as vice chair. Bradley agreed and they were elected together. Less than a year later, Feehan stepped down to run for State Senate and Bradley was chosen as his successor. Bradley was chairman of the La Crosse County Republican Party from 2011 through 2014, when he stepped down to make another attempt at elected office. In 2013, he was elected vice chair of the state Republican Party for the 3rd congressional district and was ex officio a member of the state party's executive committee. Also in 2013, he was named Charlie Sykes's Right Wisconsin grassroots activist of the year.
In 2014 he made another run for elected office when he launched a challenge against 32-year incumbent Wisconsin Secretary of State Doug La Follette. This time he prevailed in the Republican primary, but he fell 86,000 votes short of Doug La Follette in the general election in a year when Republicans won every other statewide office.
Following his move to Franklin in 2019, Bradley resumed his political activities and, in 2020, he announced he would be a candidate to replace State Senator Dave Craig, who was not seeking re-election. Four other candidates ultimately also joined the Republican primary contest for the safely-Republican senate seat, but Bradley distinguished himself with strong endorsements from established Republicans in the state party, including two of the three assemblymembers whose districts were contained within the boundaries of the 28th senate district—Ken Skowronski and Chuck Wichgers—as well as former Republican governor Scott Walker. Bradley prevailed with 40% of the vote in the crowded five-person Republican primary. He went on to defeat Democrat Adam Murphy in the general election, taking nearly 60% of the vote.
The 2024 redistricting act drew Bradley out of the 28th Senate district, but Bradley has signaled that he intends to relocate in order to maintain residency and run for re-election in 2024.
== Controversies ==
In July 2020, while running in the Republican primary for Wisconsin State Senate, the conservative opinion newspaper RightWisconsin alleged that Bradley and his campaign lied when he said that the online publication refused to publish an op-ed that he had submitted. Rather, the newspaper stated, they had suggested corrections to the Bradley op-ed, as they do with every op-ed that they publish. The original Bradley article made claims and assertions such as:
"It's no coincidence that Planned Parenthood surgical clinics continue to be located primarily in overwhelmingly black neighborhoods."
"Sincere black lives matter allies should eliminate the Sanger shrine to racism embodied in every Planned Parenthood today."
When RightWisconsin offered corrections and substitutions for these largely speculative and unfounded claims and assertions, the Bradley campaign rejected the newspaper's suggestions, later falsely claiming that RightWisconsin rejected the op-ed outright.
== Personal life and family ==
Julian Bradley is the youngest of three children. He lives in New Berlin, Wisconsin.
== Electoral history ==
=== Wisconsin Assembly (2010) ===
=== Wisconsin Secretary of State (2014) ===
=== Wisconsin Senate (2020, 2024) ===
== References ==
== External links ==
Profile at Vote Smart
Julian Bradley at Ballotpedia
Campaign website
28th Senate District (2011–2021)
Kris Krude at Cagematch Internet Wrestling Database |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Lewis_Prize | Lord Lewis Prize | The Lord Lewis Prize is awarded by the Royal Society of Chemistry for distinctive and distinguished chemical or scientific achievements together with significant contributions to the development of science policy. The recipient receives a medal, a certificate and a prize of £5,000.
The Lord Lewis Prize is awarded every two years to mark the substantial contributions that Professor Lord Lewis made to chemistry and science policy. The inaugural Lord Lewis Prize was awarded to Lord May of Oxford, former president of the Royal Society and chief scientific advisor to the UK Government, in 2008.
== Recipients ==
Source: Royal Society of Chemistry
2008 – Lord Robert May
2010 – Sir John Cadogan
2012 – Sir David King
2014 – Sir John Holman
2016 – Sir Martyn Poliakoff
2018 – Luis Oro University of Zaragoza, CSIC
2020 – Vernon C. Gibson
2022 – Alastair Charles Lewis
== See also ==
List of chemistry awards
== References == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilles_de_Rais | Gilles de Rais | Gilles de Rais, Baron de Rais (French: [ʒil də ʁɛ]; also spelled "Retz"; c. 1405 – 26 October 1440) was a French knight and lord from Brittany, Anjou and Poitou, a leader in the French army during the Hundred Years' War, and a companion-in-arms of Joan of Arc. He remains chiefly known for his conviction on charges of the rape and murder of several children.
An important lord as heir to some great noble lineages of western France, he rallied to the cause of King Charles VII of France and waged war against the English. In 1429, he formed an alliance with his cousin Georges de La Trémoille, the prominent Grand Chamberlain of France, and was appointed Marshal of France the same year, after the successful military campaigns alongside Joan of Arc. Little is known about his relationship with her, unlike the privileged association between the two comrades in arms portrayed by various fictions. He gradually withdrew from the war during the 1430s. His family accused him of squandering his patrimony by selling off his lands to the highest bidder to offset his lavish expenses, a profligacy that led to his being placed under interdict by Charles VII in July 1435. He assaulted a high-ranking cleric in the church of Saint-Étienne-de-Mer-Morte before seizing the local castle in May 1440, thereby violating ecclesiastical immunities and undermining the majesty of his suzerain, John V, Duke of Brittany. Arrested on 15 September 1440 at his castle in Machecoul, he was brought to the Duchy of Brittany, an independent principality where he was tried in October 1440 by an ecclesiastical court assisted by the Inquisition for heresy, sodomy and the murder of "one hundred and forty or more children." At the same time, he was tried and condemned by the secular judges of the ducal court of justice to be hanged and burned at the stake for his act of force at Saint-Étienne-de-Mer-Morte, as well as for crimes committed against "several small children." On 26 October 1440, he was sent to the scaffold with two of his servants convicted of murder.
A popular confusion between the mythical Bluebeard and the historical Baron de Rais has been documented since the early 19th century, regardless of the uncertain hypothesis that Gilles de Rais served as an inspiration for Charles Perrault's "Bluebeard" literary fairy tale (1697). Furthermore, in the aftermath of the late 19th century reconceptualization of the phenomenon of serial sexual crime, the case of Gilles de Rais has often been interpreted within the criminological framework of the serial killer, although such a categorization is at times regarded as anachronistic.
The vast majority of historians believe he was guilty, but some advise caution when reviewing historical trial proceedings. Medievalists Jacques Chiffoleau and Claude Gauvard note the need to study the inquisitorial procedure employed by questioning the defendants' confessions in the light of the judges' expectations and conceptions, while also examining the role of rumor in the development of Gilles de Rais's fama publica (renown), without disregarding detailed testimonies concerning the disappearance of children, or confessions describing murderous rituals unparalleled in the judicial archives of the time.
== House of Retz ==
=== Early life ===
Gilles de Rais (or "Retz"), the eldest son of Marie de Craon and Guy de Laval-Rais, descended from a number of great feudal houses. Through his mother, he was linked to the House of Craon, a wealthy western family, and through his father to the Laval family, one of the two most important Breton lineages in the 15th century. The Laval family's ancestors included, by marriage, the Barons of Retz (known as the "oldest barons of the Duchy of Brittany") as well as the prestigious House of Montmorency, albeit temporarily weakened at the time.
He was born "in a room called the Black Tower" at Champtocé castle, at an unknown date. His birth has been variably dated between 1396 and 1406, and more frequently towards the end of 1404. However, he was probably born not before 1405 given the delays caused by the legal procedures before the Parlement of Paris that conditioned his parents' marriage, according to archivist-paleographer Matei Cazacu. Furthermore, an archival document indicates Gilles's age ("14 to 15 years old") in February 1422.
Gilles's younger brother René was probably born in 1414. He obtained the seigneury of La Suze when his elder brother assigned him his share of the inheritance on 25 January 1434, before the ducal court in Nantes. From then on, René was known as René de La Suze, thus raising the name borne by the youngest branch of the Craon family.
Gilles and René's mother Marie de Craon died at an unknown date, while her husband Guy de Laval-Rais expired thereafter, at the end of October 1415 in Machecoul, "suffering from a serious bodily infirmity" according to the terms of his will and testament. The cause of Guy de Laval-Rais's death remains unknown, although several authors have mistakenly assumed that he was disembowelled by a wild boar during a hunting accident, a fictional scene initially depicted in a French novel published in 1928.
The two orphan brothers Gilles and René were raised by their maternal grandfather, Jean de Craon, lord of La Suze and Champtocé. Jean de Craon's son Amaury died at the Battle of Agincourt in October 1415, a confrontation in which several members of his household perished in addition to his sole male successor. This prompted him to take charge of and manage the property of Gilles and René, who had become his sole heirs. In this way, Jean de Craon broke the will and testament of Guy de Laval-Rais, which appointed Jean II Tournemine de la Hunaudaye as "guardian, tutor, protector, defender and legitimate administrator" of the two orphans.
=== Matrimonial projects ===
On 4 January 1417, Jean de Craon betrothed his grandson Gilles de Rais to a wealthy Norman heiress, Jeanne Paynel, daughter of Foulques VI Paynel, lord of Hambye and Bricquebec. However, the Parlement of Paris forbade the marriage until Jeanne Paynel came of age. This marriage project never materialized but not because of Jeanne Paynel's presumed death, as some authors have argued, since she certainly became an abbess of Lisieux's Benedictine convent.
Jean de Craon then betrothed Gilles de Rais to a niece of John V, Duke of Brittany: Béatrice of Rohan, daughter of Alain IX of Rohan and Marguerite of Brittany. The contract, dated Vannes 28 November 1418, was not followed up for some unknown reason (maybe Beatrice's death).
Gilles de Rais eventually became engaged to his third cousin Catherine de Thouars, daughter of Miles II de Thouars and Béatrice de Montjean. In addition to the obstacle posed by the consanguinity of Gilles de Rais and Catherine de Thouars, who were 4th-degree relatives, disputes arose between the House of Craon and Miles II de Thouars, lord of Pouzauges and Tiffauges. Ignoring these constraints and without waiting for an ecclesiastical dispensation, Gilles de Rais abducted Catherine de Thouars and married her in a chapel outside his parish church, without publishing banns of marriage. Despite a marriage contract drawn up on 30 November 1420, the two young people had their union annulled and declared incestuous by the Church.
After the death of Miles II de Thouars, matrimonial alliances brought the houses of Craon and Thouars closer together, helping to regularize the situation of the couple. On 24 April 1422, the papal legate approached Hardouin de Bueil, bishop of Angers, asking him to pronounce a sentence of separation against Gilles de Rais and Catherine de Thouars, and to impose a penance before absolving them of the crime of incest and allowing them to marry in due form. After conducting an investigation, Hardouin de Bueil celebrated their marriage with great pomp and ceremony on 26 June 1422, at Chalonnes-sur-Loire castle. This union strengthened Gilles de Rais's position in Poitou by "linking him to the house of the Viscounts of Thouars, who dominated the Bas-Poitou region as far as the Atlantic."
Gilles de Rais and Catherine de Thouars's only child, Marie, was born in 1433 or 1434.
=== Family disputes ===
In accordance with the clauses of Catherine de Thouars's marriage contract, her mother Béatrice de Montjean retained in dower a number of possessions of the late Miles II de Thouars, including Tiffauges and Pouzauges castles. Jean de Craon and Gilles de Rais hoped to recover the inheritance of all Beatrice's Poitevin castles at a later date. However, Béatrice de Montjean remarried Jacques Meschin de la Roche-Aireault, former squire to the late Miles II de Thouars and chamberlain to King Charles VII of France. This union compromised the plans of the lord of La Suze and his grandson. As a result, the two men commissioned their acolyte Jean de la Noe, captain of Tiffauges, to kidnap Beatrice. Jean de la Noe also seized Jacques Meschin's younger sister. Béatrice de Montjean was imprisoned at Le Loroux-Bottereau, then at Champtocé. Her son-in-law Gilles de Rais and Jean de Craon threatened to sew her up in sackcloth and throw her into a river if she did not relinquish her dower.
To free his wife and his sister, chamberlain Jacques Meschin de la Roche-Aireault had Jean de Craon and Gilles de Rais summoned several times before the Parlement of Paris, to no avail. Jacques Meschin dispatched a bailiff to Champtocé before sending his own brother, Gilles Meschin, to head the envoys. Jean de Craon jailed all the bearers of the summons, including Gilles Meschin. Jean de Craon nevertheless agreed to release Beatrice de Montjean at the request of his wife Anne de Sillé, who was also Beatrice's own mother. The other hostages were eventually released on ransom, but Gilles Meschin died a few days later, probably exhausted by the conditions of his detention in Champtocé. Jacques Meschin's younger sister, sent to Brittany, was forced to marry Girard de la Noe, the son of the captain of Tiffauges.
Jacques Meschin took legal action again before the Parlement of Paris, so Jean de Craon and his grandson compromised with their adversary. In a transaction ratified by the Parliament, the chamberlain chose to keep Pouzauges, while Gilles de Rais retained Tiffauges. Jean de Craon and Gilles de Rais nonetheless extorted Pouzauges from Jacques Meschin on the pretext that Catherine de Thouars, Gilles de Rais's wife, "bears the name [of Pouzauges] in the world". On his way to Pouzauges to supervise the execution of the transaction, Adam de Cambrai, First President of the Parlement of Paris, was molested and robbed by men in the pay of the two accomplices. The many subsequent sentences handed down to Jean de Craon and Gilles de Rais went unheeded.
=== Titles, estates and wealth ===
Holder of the barony of Retz, traditionally reputed to be one of the six oldest baronies of the Duchy of Brittany, Gilles de Rais was one of the most important lords of western France, thanks in particular to his numerous estates spread across Brittany, Anjou, Poitou, Maine and Angoumois. Medievalist Philippe Contamine points out that Gilles de Rais was "Breton, Poitevin and Angevin all at once, due to his fiefs". Moreover, historian Georges Peyronnet specifies that Gilles de Rais's "network of family and feudal relatives" (including the houses of Laval and Craon) covered a large part of the western marchlands, border regions that were difficult to access because of the damp oceanic climate characterizing these bocage lands and the Marais breton ("Breton Marsh"). Hence the importance "as more open transport routes, of the valleys of the Loire and Sèvre Nantaise, (...) controlled by enormous fortresses." The crossroads position occupied by the barony covering the Pays de Retz "was an undeniable asset for trade, and enabled the Sires de Retz to control flows on the major axis of the Loire for the Breton economy and that of western France more generally", asserts historian Brice Rabot.
At the "southernmost point of the Duchy of Brittany", the barony of Retz comprised a "vast group of some forty parishes stretching between the Loire and the common borders of Poitou and Brittany". Gilles de Rais held Machecoul (the "head of the barony") as well as the castellanies of Coutumier, Bourgneuf, Prigny and half of the Isle of Bouin, domains bordering the Bay of Bourgneuf. In the Bay, salt marshes probably provide him with a not inconsiderable share of revenue. In addition, he held an annuity on the Paimpont forest and owned the townhouse named "Hôtel de La Suze" in Nantes plus the lordship of La Bénate "encompassing 26 parishes in the marchlands (13 in Brittany and 13 in Poitou)", among others.
In the Duchy of Anjou, he inherited the prominent lordships of Champtocé and Ingrandes, a source of significant income from the Loire "traffic" (merchandise trade), as well as the lordships of Blaison and Chemellier, the barony of Briollay, and the lordships of Fontaine-Milon, Grez and Grattecuisse. In Poitou, he held the lordships of Cheneché, de la Voûte, Sigon, Cloué, Chabanais and the land of Breuil-Mingot, in addition to acquiring by marriage and extortion the barony of Pouzauges and the lordship of Tiffauges. In Maine, he owned the lordships of La Suze, Ambrières and Saint-Aubin-Fosse-Louvain, as well as the land of Précigné. In Angoumois, the lordships of Confolens, Loubert and Château Morant.
However, this census only shows Gilles de Rais at the peak of his domanial prosperity, after his marriage to Catherine de Thouars (1422) and following the death of his grandfather Jean de Craon (1432). In addition to the more or less substantial disposals Gilles de Rais made, gradually reducing his estate, some lands belonged to his wife, others were only bequeathed to him on the death of Jean de Craon, not to mention those he ceded to his brother René de Rais by assigning him his share of the inheritance in 1434.
What's more, his estates were not always of good value, since the income from them could be encumbered in various ways, such as irrevocable alienations granted by previous Barons of Retz in favor of vassals or the Church; widows enjoying a dower in accordance with customary law; presumed beginnings of the saltworks' commercial decline in the Bay of Bourgneuf; annexations or ravages caused by war, whose constant threat necessitated maintaining defensive devices and paying men-at-arms... Therefore, several factors must be taken into account to explain Gilles de Rais's serious financial difficulties, in addition to mismanagement of resources.
In any case, it's not easy to accurately estimate his assets due to fragmentary or imprecise records, and in particular the yield of his estates despite their size. This is a matter of disagreement between historians Jacques Heers and Matei Cazacu. Jacques Heers minimises Gilles de Rais's wealth and social status, and denies him the qualifier of "great lord", arguing that to present him as "one of the richest lords of France is merely a figure of speech." On the other hand, Matei Cazacu disputes this interpretation and reaffirms Gilles de Rais's status as a great, powerful and sumptuous lord, with particular reference to a brief drawn up by the latter's heirs around 1461–1462. This legal document attributed to Gilles de Rais an annual income of 50,000 livres tournois, of which around 30,000 came from his estates and almost 20,000 from his office as Marshal of France. This amount is well below the incomes of contemporary princes (such as the Dukes of Orleans, Burgundy and Berry), but it nevertheless places Gilles de Rais in a high bracket, inaccessible to the vast majority of 15th-century Breton lords. Whatever the estimate, his fortune proved insufficient to support his opulent lifestyle in the space of just a few years.
== Military career ==
=== First hypothetical feats of arms ===
In the decades following the Breton War of Succession (1341–1364), the defeated faction refused to relinquish his claim to rule over the Duchy of Brittany and continued to plot against the Dukes of the House of Montfort. In February 1420, the House of Penthièvre led by Marguerite de Clisson and her two sons, Olivier and John, took Duke John V prisoner in violation of the Treaty of Guérande (1365). The conspirators enjoyed the temporary support of Charles, Dauphin of France and the future King.
Civil war once again engulfed the Duchy of Brittany. At the call of Duchess Joan, wife of John V, the Breton nobility rallied around the House of Montfort, including former supporters of the House of Penthièvre, such as Jean de Craon. On 17 February 1420, the latter went to his suzerain Joan to swear, along with the other lords present, to protect her and deliver John V. In retaliation, armed Penthièvre bands attacked the strongholds of Jean de Craon and his grandson Gilles de Rais, notably destroying the castle of La Mothe-Achard.
After John V's release, Jean de Craon and Gilles de Rais were rewarded for their "good and notable services" with generous land grants that were converted to monetary gifts. Perhaps young Gilles's first feat of arms was to take part in the last remaining major conflict of the Breton War of Succession, but it remains a matter of historical debate since various authors stress that there is no documentary evidence of any personal military engagement. It is also possible that Jean de Craon and Gilles de Rais then entered the patronage of Arthur de Richemont, John V's younger brother recently released from English captivity.
Meanwhile, plagued by both the Armagnac–Burgundian Civil War, and the foreign warfare against the Lancastrian monarchy, the Kingdom of France suffered a succession of political and military disasters during this phase of the Hundred Years' War. King Henry V of England succeeded in establishing himself as son-in-law and heir to King Charles VI of France, thanks to the ratification of the Treaty of Troyes in May 1420. For his part, having learned of the Dauphin Charles's compromises with his Penthièvre captors, John V nonetheless wavered between the Armagnac faction and the House of Lancaster to preserve the independence of his duchy. However, this seesaw policy did not prevent the Duke of Brittany from finally adhering to the Treaty of Troyes in June 1422.
Once the Dauphin Charles became King of France in October 1422, he continued the war against the English in order to recover his crown lands. During this dynastic turmoil, Jean de Craon and Gilles de Rais may have taken part in the victory at La Gravelle on 26 September 1423, and the Battle of Verneuil on 17 August 1424, but this is just a supposition. In any case, the bloody defeat of the Franco-Scottish troops at Verneuil changed the political landscape, completing the military disaster of Agincourt almost ten years earlier.
=== Franco-Breton alliance through the House of Valois-Anjou ===
King Charles VII of France was forced to seek new allies following the Battle of Verneuil. He turned then to his mother-in-law Yolande of Aragon, head of the House of Valois-Anjou, a younger branch of the ruling dynasty of France. She had been working since 1423 to bring the Kingdom of France and the Duchy of Brittany closer together diplomatically, with the help of her vassal Jean de Craon, Gilles de Rais's grandfather. Although Jean de Craon was an important and wealthy Angevin lord, with numerous estates in Maine, Anjou and Brittany, his influence at the ducal court of Anjou seems to have begun only in 1423–1424. Prior to this, he had spent more time in Brittany, and had even had legal disputes with the Dukes of Anjou over the county of Brienne and the lands of the counts of Roucy.
Angevins' politics finally promoted Arthur de Richemont, the Duke of Brittany's brother, to the rank of Constable of France in March 1425. During the meetings and festivities sealing the alliance between the Kingdom of France and the Duchy of Brittany in Saumur in October 1425, Gilles de Rais appeared in the entourage of King Charles VII, but he might have been introduced to the royal court before this date. As a matter of fact, in the same month, Charles VII defended Gilles de Rais's interests by asking Arthur de Richemont to return some Breton lands to the young baron, specifically former estates of the late Miles de Thouars, father of Gilles de Rais's wife.
After the Maine conquest (1424–1425), the House of Lancaster threatened the borders of the Duchy of Anjou. These two French provinces were personally claimed by John, Duke of Bedford. The estates of the houses of Laval and Craon, Gilles de Rais's relatives, were directly exposed to English raids. The war went wrong for France, with Arthur de Richemont suffering a crushing defeat at the battle of St. James in 1426. Although mentioned by some researchers, Gilles de Rais's presence at this battle is not corroborated by any source. In the same vein, it's doubtful that Gilles de Rais and his future judge, Jean de Malestroit, would have hated each other since this military event.
Georges de La Trémoille, lord of Sully, became Grand Chamberlain of France in June 1427. He soon gained the upper hand in the Royal Council while a bitter rivalry arose between him and Arthur de Richemont. On 19 June 1427, Yolande of Aragon appointed her advisor Jean de Craon lieutenant general in Anjou and Maine; his nomination coincided almost exactly with the rise of La Trémoille. The latter also came from the house of Craon and, as such, was a distant cousin of Gilles de Rais. Probably back then, Jean de Craon endowed his grandson Gilles de Rais with a military mentor: Guillaume de la Jumellière, lord of Martigné-Briant, also Yolande of Aragon's advisor at the ducal court of Anjou. The influence of his family seems to have consolidated Gilles de Rais's commitment to the war against the English garrisons on the edges of Maine, leading to his appointment as captain of Sablé on behalf of Duke Louis III of Anjou.
As for John V of Brittany, himself under attack from the English, he negotiated in July 1427 with John of Lancaster, Duke of Bedford, English regent of the French realm. Consequently, on 8 September 1427, the Duke of Brittany decided again to shift the alliance to the House of Lancaster, once more recognizing the Treaty of Troyes and ordering his vassals to stop fighting the English troops. Along with Viscount Alain de Rohan, Bishop Guillaume de Montfort and his own Laval relatives, Gilles de Rais was one of the most notable Breton lords to disobey his suzerain by remaining loyal to the King of France.
Weakened by his various military and political failures, especially his brother's defection, Arthur de Richemont fell into disgrace due to the lack of results from the French–Breton alliance. Estranged from Charles VII, he retained the office of Constable, but left the French court and entered into armed conflict with La Trémoille, without allying himself with the English.
=== Guerilla warfare against English garrisons on the borders of Maine ===
From the second half of 1427, chronicles began to mention Gilles de Rais's name, along with those of other French captains. He leads a guerrilla warfare on the borders of the county of Maine, together with Ambroise de Loré and his own relative Jacques de Dinan, lord of Beaumanoir. This harassment tactic against the English troops enabled the French captains to storm the Ramefort fortress at Gennes. As soon as they had taken control of the stronghold, Gilles de Rais and the other captains kept their promise to spare the English garrison, but had the "French-speaking" men they found there hanged. It may be a sign of "strong national feeling" against fighters regarded as "disowned French" or "false French" (in other words, French in favour of the dual monarchy of England and France).
In another assault, the lords of Rais, Loré and Beaumanoir retook the castle of Malicorne from the English. The captains had the French-speaking besieged executed, as with the capture of Ramefort. Moreover, at the battle for the Château du Lude, Gilles de Rais killed or took prisoner the English captain Blackburn, according to conflicting sources. The confused chronology of medieval chronicles makes it impossible to date these feats of arms precisely. At the time, fortresses can be successively stormed, lost and recaptured, due to the weakness of their garrisons or "the endless reversals of local lords, who often belonged to competing networks", notes medievalist Boris Bove.
In the spring of 1428, Gilles de Rais contributed a thousand gold écus to the payment of the enormous ransom for his cousin André de Lohéac, captured by the English on 16 March 1428, during the siege of Laval. The House of Laval (namely Guy XIV, Anne and Jeanne de Laval-Tinténiac, the young captive's brother, mother and grandmother respectively) undertook to reimburse the "very dear and beloved cousins and great friends" who had helped free André de Lohéac.
New English troops landed in the French realm in June 1428, then laid siege to Orléans from October onwards.
=== Companion in arms with Joan of Arc ===
In February 1429, Joan of Arc arrived in Chinon from Vaucouleurs to speak with the King. Gilles de Rais was then present at the Château de Chinon, as were the other captains in Charles VII's entourage during the war. A month later, in a letter dated 8 April 1429, signed by himself and sealed with his seal, Gilles de Rais formed an alliance with his cousin, Grand Chamberlain Georges de La Trémoille. The latter thus pursued his strategy of bilateral alliances with members of the French nobility to consolidate his position with the King and to protect himself against the plots fomented by Constable Arthur de Richemont and his allies.
Gilles de Rais sat on the Royal Council from 1429 to 1434, but only occasionally, held back by his military obligations or for other reasons. His title of King's Counselor may be purely honorary. He's also referred to as Charles VII's chamberlain.
As part of a Franco-Breton diplomatic rapprochement, probably supported by La Trémoille, Gilles de Rais wrote to John V, Duke of Brittany in April 1429, urging him to reinforce the army being assembled in Blois to help the city of Orléans besieged by the English. At the same time, after being interrogated by French doctors of theology in Chinon and Poitiers, Joan of Arc received authorization to accompany the relief army to Orléans. On 25 April 1429, the Maid arrived in Blois to find a convoy of food, arms and ammunition ready, as well as an escort of several dozen men-at-arms and archers, commanded by Gilles de Rais and Jean de Brosse, marshal of Boussac. The escort included a company of Angevins and Manceaux soldiers paid by Gilles de Rais, who "appears to be at the heart of this otherwise ... modest operation", affirms medievalist Philippe Contamine.
Gilles de Rais contributed to the lifting of the siege of Orléans, notably by taking part in the storming of the Saint-Loup bastille on 6 May. He then took part with Joan of Arc in the Loire Campaign (1429), aimed at recapturing the towns occupied by English garrisons in the region. Gilles de Rais participated in the Battle of Jargeau on 12 June 1429, and the Battle of Patay on 18 June 1429. On the way to Reims, Gilles de Rais and Jean de Brosse, marshal of Boussac, both commanded the vanguard of the French army.
On 17 July 1429, during the coronation of the French monarch, Gilles de Rais and three other lords were charged with carrying the Holy Ampulla from the Basilica of Saint-Remi in Reims to the Metropolitan Church. On the same day, Gilles de Rais was elevated to the rank of Marshal of France, in recognition of his war record or thanks to the political support of Grand Chamberlain La Trémoille.
On Monday 15 August 1429, Charles VII entrusted the wings of his army to his two marshals, Jean de Boussac and Gilles de Rais, when royal and Anglo-Burgundian troops faced each other at Montépilloy. On 8 September 1429, during the siege of Paris, Joan of Arc wanted Gilles de Rais and Raoul de Gaucourt by her side during the assault on the Porte Saint-Honoré. Gilles de Rais stood by Joan's side all day, among numerous men-at-arms, trying in vain to reach and cross the Parisian wall from a rear ditch. At nightfall, Joan was wounded in the leg by a crossbow bolt. The siege of Paris was quickly lifted, and the "coronation army" withdrew to the Loire before being dismissed at Gien on 21 September 1429. That same month, Charles VII again honoured Gilles de Rais for his "commendable services" by confirming his title of Marshal and granting him the privilege of adding to his coat of arms a border bearing the fleur-de-lis, a royal favour shared only with the Maid.
On an unspecified date, a French military expedition led by Xaintrailles and La Hire left Beauvais and settled in Louviers, a town seven leagues (around 28 kilometres) from Rouen, where Joan of Arc was being held prisoner since 23 December 1430, after her capture at the siege of Compiegne. Medievalist Olivier Bouzy states that "important figures took part in the Louviers expedition or made an appearance in the town", like the "Bastard of Orléans" and Gilles de Rais, whose presence is attested on 26 December 1430. These troop movements were interpreted by some historians as an attempt to free Joan of Arc but this hypothesis is not proven. Besides, no such delivery attempt appears to have actually taken place.
=== Civil wars between La Trémoille and Richemont's allies ===
In parallel with his fight against the Anglo-Burgundians, Grand Chamberlain Georges de La Trémoille continued his "private war" against Constable Arthur de Richemont, himself supported by the House of Valois-Anjou. In this conflict, Gilles de Rais supported La Trémoille, his cousin and ally.
Despite the similar policies pursued towards the Duchy of Brittany and the Burgundian State by the House of Valois-Anjou on the one hand and La Trémoille on the other, the latter ended up serving gradually as a "repellent" by "federating against him the various components" of Charles VII's court, "paradoxically facilitating (...) the strengthening of the Angevins at the French court", says medievalist Laurent Vissière. The young Charles of Anjou, the future strongman of the Royal Council, had been a member of this governing body since 30 March 1430, thanks to his mother Yolande of Aragon. On 26 October 1430, as the king's lieutenant general in Anjou and Maine, Charles of Anjou appointed Jean de Bueil captain of the men-at-arms and archers garrisoning the castle and town of Sablé, a place previously commanded by captain Gilles de Rais and royal governor Jacques de Dinan, lord of Beaumanoir.
Civil war broke out again in September 1431 when La Trémoille launched Captain Rodrigo de Villandrando into the duchy of Anjou. In 1432, Jean de Bueil succeeded in defeating the Spanish mercenary; in return, the latter ravaged Bueil's Touraine lands. Eager to seize Château-l'Hermitage, Gilles de Rais imprisoned Bueil in Sablé, according to Le Jouvencel's romanticized account (which mentions Sablé under the fictitious name of "Crathor"). Still in accordance with this semi-autobiographical story, Bueil succeeded in freeing himself and taking Sablé, but Gilles de Rais recaptured the town in a night attack. In addition, on an unknown date, the garrison of Champtocé castle attacked Yolande of Aragon on her way to Brittany. Gilles de Rais and Jean de Craon's men-at-arms stripped her convoy of numerous horses and baggage.
=== Lifting of the siege of Lagny ===
The war against English forces continued around Paris. In August 1432, Gilles de Rais helped lift the siege of Lagny, undoubtedly one of his most famous feats of arms along with the lifting of the siege of Orléans. Assisted by the mercenary captain Rodrigo de Villandrando, he crossed the Marne "upstream, before La Ferté-sous-Jouarre", while other French troops led by Raoul de Gaucourt and the "Bastard of Orléans" managed to enter Lagny through a poorly-guarded point. Medievalist Françoise Michaud-Fréjaville notes that, thanks to this "double movement of troops", the town "was delivered practically without a battle. (...) Faced with the threat, the English abandoned the bastilles and bridge they held downstream from Lagny, leaving much of their equipment behind." On this military episode, Michaud-Fréjaville refers to the "not always very reliable account" of the chronicler Jean Chartier.
In addition, Jean Chartier's chronicle mentions the presence of Gilles de Sillé, cousin of Gilles de Rais, among the French troops engaged in skirmishes the day after the siege of Lagny was lifted. According to Chartier, Gilles de Sillé was taken prisoner on this occasion, unless the chronicler is confusing him with Michel de Sillé, another member of this old house related to Gilles de Rais. Eight years later, during the latter's trial, the testimony of the families of the missing children, as well as the confessions of the accused, cast a shadow over Gilles de Sillé, who was on the run at the time. What's more, according to certain witnesses at the trial, a rumour was spread by Michel de Sillé's servants in an attempt to explain the children's disappearances: the English had supposedly demanded twenty-four young hostages as part of the ransom "of the said sire Michel", a pretext deemed "absurd" and "implausible" by medievalists Noël Valois and Olivier Bouzy, in accordance with the customs governing prisoners of war at the time.
=== Reduction of military commitments ===
Jean de Craon, Gilles's grandfather, died in November 1432. Gilles de Rais inherited the numerous estates and castles of his grandfather, to which were added the Hôtel de La Suze in Nantes and Belle-Poigne in Angers. He likely devoted the year 1433 to organizing this vast patrimony and fully assuming his role as the new head of the House of Rais. During this time spent on his lands, alongside his wife Catherine de Thouars, their daughter was born, named Marie after the child's paternal grandmother.
At the end of June 1433, in Chinon, an umpteenth plot was hatched against Georges de la Trémoille, who was eventually removed from power. At the Estates General held in Tours in September 1433, Charles VII ratified the fall of his former Grand Chamberlain. The House of Valois-Anjou regained all its influence at court, the young Charles of Anjou became the key man in the Royal Council, and the accomplices in La Trémoille's kidnapping (including Jean de Bueil, Gilles de Rais's enemy) acquired "great government and authority" with the sovereign. Gilbert Motier de La Fayette regained his title of Marshal after losing it to Gilles de Rais in 1429, a dismissal probably intended by La Trémoille at the time.
In February 1434, the English threatened the Maine town of Sillé, which was the fiefdom of Anne de Sillé, widow of Jean de Craon. In response, the heads of the House of Laval (brothers Guy XIV de Laval and André de Lohéac) along with their cousin Gilles de Rais took part in a military expedition commanded by Constable Arthur de Richemont. The vanguard of the army was under the command of Marshals Pierre de Rieux and Gilles de Rais. The latter, despite his lavish troop contingent, appeared isolated among the lords present (the Constable first and foremost, along with Prigent VII de Coëtivy, Jean de Bueil, Charles of Anjou and John II, Duke of Alençon), most of whom belonged to the coalition of La Trémoille's enemies. The company arrived in front of Sillé, and faced the English, but the two armies separated without fighting.
By mid-1434, despite his forced absence from the court, La Trémoille was still urging Gilles de Rais to continue the war against Burgundians. But, probably already ruined by his expenses, Gilles de Rais made little attempt to prevent Philip the Good's troops from seizing Grancey. After the fall of this city in August 1434, King Charles VII summoned Gilles de Rais and threatened to strip him of his office of marshal. Gilles de Rais "was probably replaced by André de Laval-Lohéac", assumes Philippe Contamine.
On 2 July 1435, Charles VII proclaimed Gilles de Rais to be under interdict, following complaints from his family, namely his brother René de La Suze and the House of Laval.
== Squandering of heritage ==
Most of the information relating to the squandering of Gilles de Rais's assets comes from a 70-folio brief, written around 1461–1462 by his heirs. This document is an expanded version of an earlier brief that led to Gilles de Rais being placed under interdict in 1435. Not all medievalists agree on the reliability of this source. Jacques Heers downplays its significance, deeming the document too incriminating, since its purpose is to annul past sales of Gilles de Rais's landed property on the grounds of the latter's insane prodigality. Both "tendentious and instructive" according to Philippe Contamine, the brief has nonetheless been critically exploited by historians. In addition to the trial proceedings, Matei Cazacu considers this text to be "the most important document known to date on Gilles de Rais ... a formidable effort to reconstitute the discrepancies of a life and a personality".
Besides, the accounting documents relating to Gilles de Rais's expenses and estate management are very incomplete. These gaps in the documentation complicate any comparative study that would enable us to accurately verify the accusations of prodigality made by the heirs. For instance, a precise analysis of Gilles de Rais's expenditures during his stay in Orléans from September 1434 to August 1435 should be based on the 1430s-minute register of notary Jean de Recouin, an Orléanais cleric, but the state of preservation of the first and last pages makes it impossible to read the corresponding deeds. What's more, some pages (almost all relating to Gilles de Rais) have been cut out or have been missing since the 19th century.
In their brief, the heirs incriminated Gilles de Rais for the "insane expenses" he incurred as soon as he reached the age of 20, even before the death of his grandfather Jean de Craon. The brief also mentioned the upkeep of a troop of two hundred mounted men as one of the late marshal's profligacies, but did not insist on this point. This terseness could be explained by the prudence of the heirs, anxious not to offend Charles VII by voicing too much criticism of Gilles de Rais's military spending, a token of his participation in the war waged against the Anglo-Burgundians. Given that the royal treasury was low on funds at the time, the King of France was all the more inclined then to accept the commitment of Gilles de Rais, a lord capable of bearing the costs of maintaining his own troops, notably in April 1429 when he formed the escort for the convoy of arms and supplies destined for besieged Orléans.
The first sales of Gilles de Rais's estates coincided with his first military campaigns. After a few negligible sales, the baron sold Blaison for 5,000 écus to his martial advisor Guillaume de la Jumellière, lord of Martigné-Briant. The transaction was concluded in 1429, a year of heavy expenditure caused by war expeditions following the lifting of the siege of Orléans. The loss of Blaison, Gilles's father's patrimonial land, aroused the anger of Jean de Craon.
== Criminal life ==
During the years 1434–1435, disgraced by King Charles VII, Gilles de Rais gradually withdrew from military and public life to pursue his own interests.
=== Occult involvement ===
According to testimony at his trial by the priest Eustache Blanchet and the Tuscan cleric François Prelati, Gilles de Rais sent out Blanchet to seek individuals who knew alchemy. Blanchet is said to have recruited Prelati in 1438, during a trip to Florence.
In addition to this search for the philosopher's stone, Prelati claimed to have attempted to summon a demon named "Barron" at the castle at Tiffauges, in the presence of Gilles de Rais. The cleric also claimed to have interrogated Barron in a meadow near Josselin, not far from the castle where Duke John V of Brittany met Gilles de Rais on July 1440.
Gilles de Rais provided a contract with the demon for riches that Prelati was to give to the demon later. As no demon manifested after three tries, Gilles de Rais grew frustrated with the lack of results. Prelati said Barron was angry and required the offering of parts of a child. Gilles de Rais provided these remnants in a glass vessel at a later evocation, but to no avail, and the occult experiments left him bitter and his wealth severely depleted.
=== Child murders ===
In his confession, Gilles de Rais said he committed his first assaults on children between spring 1432 and spring 1433.
=== Act of force in Saint-Étienne-de-Mer-Morte ===
After entrusting the castellany of Saint-Étienne-de-Mer-Morte to René de La Suze in 1434, Gilles de Rais changed his mind and reclaimed it in an act of force, managing to keep his property by reaching a subsequent agreement with his younger brother in Nantes on 15 January 1439. But Gilles de Rais again alienated Saint-Étienne-de-Mer-Morte following a transaction with Geoffroy Le Ferron, treasurer and trusted servant of John V, Duke of Brittany. This ducal officer then entrusted the administration of the castellany to his brother Jean Le Ferron, a high-ranking tonsured cleric. Gilles de Rais tried once more to reclaim the castle, this time to sell it to his cousin, the Sire de Vieillevigne, but Jean Le Ferron resisted.
In retaliation, on Pentecost or the day after, 15 or 16 May 1440, Gilles de Rais ambushed a troop of fifty to sixty men in a wood near Saint-Étienne-de-Mer-Morte. He entered the parish church armed and interrupted the mass of the religious officiant Jean Le Ferron, insulting the latter and threatening to kill him with a guisarme if he did not leave the sanctuary. Frightened, the cleric followed in the footsteps of Marquis Lenano de Ceva, a Piemontese captain in Gilles de Rais's service. After opening the gates of the Saint-Étienne-de-Mer-Morte castle to his assailants, Jean Le Ferron was imprisoned there. Gilles de Rais also had other ducal agents, such as Jean Rousseau, sergeant-general of the duchy of Brittany, roughed up or arrested.
In this way, Gilles de Rais simultaneously undermined divine and ducal majesties. On the one hand, he committed sacrilege by violating ecclesiastical immunities; on the other, he laid hands on ducal servants, all this in the very diocese of the Bishop of Nantes, Jean de Malestroit, the influential chancellor of Brittany ("the man actually responsible for the duchy's political direction", states historian Joël Cornette).
John V condemned his vassal to return the stronghold to Jean Le Ferron, under penalty of a fine of 50,000 gold écus. Gilles de Rais then had his prisoners taken to Tiffauges, a fortress outside Brittany's jurisdiction, as it fell within Poitou. In July 1440, he went to Josselin to meet his suzerain John V, but the content of their discussions remains unknown. According to François Prelati's later confession, Gilles de Rais wished then to guarantee his own freedom before risking an interview with the Duke of Brittany. Gilles would have asked his Italian invoker to repeatedly summon the "devil named Barron" in a meadow near Josselin, to question the evil spirit about John V's intentions.
=== Ecclesiastical and secular investigations ===
Probably shortly after the act of force in Saint-Étienne-de-Mer-Morte, a secret investigation (inquisitio infamiae) was opened by the ecclesiastical justice system. The inquisitorial system proceedings usually began with an information phase aimed at gathering testimony on a person's fama, in other words, on his reputation established by rumour within a legal framework. As a result, the Bishop Jean de Malestroit made a pastoral visit to his diocese of Nantes, starting with the parish of Notre-Dame, home to the Hôtel de la Suze, Gilles de Rais's residence. The Bishop wanted to find out more about the infamous rumours of missing children in the vicinity of the baron's residences. The results of the ecclesiastical investigation were published on 29 July 1440 in the form of letters patent by Malestroit: Gilles de Rais was accused by public rumour of raping and murdering numerous children, as well as of demonic invocations and pacts. At the same time, the secular justice system proceeded to hear the same witnesses as part of the investigation conducted by the cleric Jean de Touscheronde on behalf of Pierre de L'Hôpital, universal Judge of Brittany.
On 24 August 1440, Duke John V held talks in Vannes with his brother Arthur de Richemont, Constable of France. Compromised in the Praguerie against King Charles VII in the spring of 1440, the Duke of Brittany wanted to obtain a promise of mutual assistance from Richemont, a great royal officer. To this end, John V granted his brother the land of Bourgneuf-en-Retz, owned by Gilles de Rais. Richemont then returned to the crown lands of France and seized Tiffauges, freeing the hostage Jean Le Ferron.
Gilles de Rais was summoned to appear before the ecclesiastical court of Nantes, on charges of "murdering children, sodomy, invoking demons, offending the Divine Majesty and heresy". Two days later, on 15 September 1440, he was arrested at his Machecoul castle by Jean Labbé, a captain in arms in the service of the Duke of Brittany. Among the accused were cleric François Prelati, priest Eustache Blanchet, servants Henriet Griart and Étienne Corillaut, known as "Poitou", as well as Tiphaine Branchu and Perrine Martin, known as "la Meffraye", two women accused of being child providers. Probably already on the run, Gilles de Sillé and Roger de Briqueville were not apprehended. Gilles de Rais was imprisoned in the Château des ducs de Bretagne in the city of Nantes.
=== Trial and execution ===
Gilles de Rais was prosecuted in both secular and ecclesiastical courts on charges that included murder, sodomy, and heresy.
The extensive witness testimony convinced the judges that there were adequate grounds to establish the guilt of the accused. After Gilles de Rais admitted to the charges on 21 October, the court cancelled a plan to torture him into confessing. Peasants of neighbouring villages had earlier begun to make accusations that their children had entered Gilles de Rais's castle begging for food and were never seen again.
On 23 October 1440, the secular court heard the confessions of Poitou and Henriet and condemned them both to death, followed by Gilles de Rais's death sentence on 25 October. The sentence of the ecclesiastical court imputes to him the murders of "one hundred and forty children, or more" while the sentence of the secular court did not give an exact number of victims, mentioning the murders of "several small children." Gilles de Rais was allowed to make a confession, and his request to be buried in the church of the monastery of Notre-Dame des Carmes in Nantes was granted.
Execution by hanging and burning was set for Wednesday 26 October. At nine o‘clock, Gilles de Rais and his two accomplices proceeded to the place of execution on the Ile de Biesse. Gilles de Rais is said to have addressed the crowd with contrite piety and exhorted Henriet and Poitou to die bravely and think only of salvation. His request to be the first to die had been granted the day before. At eleven o'clock, the brush at the platform was set afire and Gilles de Rais was hanged. His body was cut down before being consumed by the flames and claimed by "four ladies of high rank" for burial. Henriet and Poitou were executed in similar fashion but their bodies were reduced to ashes in the flames and then scattered.
== Question of guilt ==
=== Doubts about the verdict in the Age of Enlightenment tradition ===
In his Essai sur les mœurs et l'esprit des nations (1756), Voltaire referred laconically to Gilles de Rais as a supplicant who had been "accused of magic, and of having slit the throats of children to use their blood for alleged enchantments." Although he expressed reservations about Gilles de Rais's guilt, Voltaire avoided taking a definitive position on the matter. His brief mention of the trial of October 1440, among other medieval trials for heresy and witchcraft, essentially allowed the French philosophe to vilify "fanaticism composed of superstition and ignorance", a flaw he considered to be of all times, but which particularly characterized his conception of obscurantist Middle Ages as opposed to the Age of Enlightenment.
In a short passage from their work L'art de vérifier les dates des faits historiques, des chartes, des chroniques et autres anciens monuments, depuis la naissance de Notre-Seigneur... (1784), Benedictines from the Congregation of Saint Maur seemed to concur with Voltaire's opinion, also proposing superstition as a plausible cause of Gilles de Rais's execution. These monks initially asserted that Gilles de Rais "disgraced himself in Brittany by infamous deeds that aroused the public's cries against him." But then, abandoning the affirmative tone, they used terms similar to Voltairean prose when they evoked the procession of "alleged soothsayers and magicians" possibly responsible for the "horrors" imputed to Gilles de Rais, "horrors of which he was perhaps not guilty."
Between 1902 and 1912, Gilles de Rais's innocence was proclaimed by Salomon Reinach, a French archaeologist and historian of religion. His thesis was developed "in a particular context, where debates on the religious question, the memory of the Dreyfus Affair, and the reassurance of the scientific spirit are pushing for a 'rehabilitation' in line with the zeitgeist," explained historian Pierre Savy. Back then, Reinach's assertions were "sternly criticized" by historian Noël Valois in 1912.
In the Voltairean tradition, French poet and writer Fernand Fleuret followed in Reinach's footsteps with the same anti-clerical interpretation to defend Gilles de Rais's innocence in 1921. For the occasion, Fleuret adopted the pseudonym "Dr. Ludovico Hernandez" to give his essay scientific credence.
=== Occultist interpretations ===
In the 20th century, anthropologist Margaret Murray and occultist Aleister Crowley questioned the involvement of the ecclesiastic and secular authorities in the case. During a conference (known as the "Forbidden Conference") held in Oxford in 1930, Crowley argued for the innocence of Gilles de Rais, whom he portrayed as a victim of the Catholic Church. The occultist described him as "in almost every respect ... the male equivalent of Joan of Arc", whose main crime was "the pursuit of knowledge".
Murray, who propagated the witch-cult hypothesis, speculated in her book The Witch-Cult in Western Europe that Gilles de Rais was really a witch and an adherent of a fertility cult centred on the pagan goddess Diana.
Most historians reject Murray's theory. Norman Cohn argues that it is inconsistent with what is known of Gilles de Rais's crimes and trial. Historians do not regard Gilles de Rais as a martyr to a pre-Christian religion; other scholars tend to view him as a lapsed Catholic who descended into crime and depravity, and whose real crimes were coincidental to the land forfeitures.
=== Georges Bataille's interpretations ===
In 1959, French philosopher and intellectual Georges Bataille co-edited with Pierre Klossowski a modern French translation of the 1440 trial proceedings. The book included as well an introduction and a lengthy appendix in which Bataille retraced Gilles de Rais's life.
Bataille argued that Gilles de Rais's sexual crimes are "indubitable" because "15th-century judges could not have devised a plot so complex and exact in its perversity", sums up French historian Yves-Marie Bercé.
For Bataille, understanding such criminal behaviour, and thus being able to affabulate it, remained impossible in medieval times without the later assistance of Marquis de Sade and Sigmund Freud, whose works "explore these abysses" and "force humanity to recognize their existence, to designate, to name these virtualities", adds Bercé. The latter concludes that Bataille's historical approach was probably coupled with a "personal exorcism" linked to his own obsession with transgression and horror. This would explain Bataille's need to believe in Gilles de Rais's guilt, in order "to cope with the vertigo that the twentieth century gave him", says medievalist Jacques Chiffoleau.
=== 1992 mock re-trial ===
In 1992, French poet and novelist Gilbert Prouteau published a book imagining a modern re-trial of Gilles de Rais, juxtaposition of narrative texts, excerpts from minutes, romanticized letters and a fictitious diary kept by Gilles de Rais, presented as an alchemical scholar, alcoholic and aesthete apologist for pedophilia. Prouteau then arranged several publicity events. In November 1992, he organized an unofficial mock trial of Gilles de Rais in the Clemenceau Hall, a hall set up to host commissions, colloquia and conferences at the Luxembourg Palace, to re-examine the source material and evidence available at the medieval trial. Prouteau led an informal "Court of Arbitration" consisting of lawyers, writers, former French ministers, parliament members, a biologist and a medical doctor before Judge Henri Juramy, who found Gilles de Rais not guilty. Commenters noted several inaccuracies, as none of the participants sought professional advice from qualified medievalists.
Medievalist Michel Balard criticized the promoters of the rehabilitation attempt, who sought "the sensational, the pathetic, the sulphurous" to the detriment of scientific history, "less spectacular ... but more respectful of documents and more aware of the possibilities and limits of historical inquiry." According to medievalist Jean Kerhervé, Prouteau has not appeared to research primary source material, and his knowledge of the history of religion, law, and medieval institutions, particularly in relation to the Duchy of Brittany, is regularly challenged. Medievalist Olivier Bouzy also points out several other errors and rough approximations, even biased inventions deliberately forged for the purposes of rehabilitation. For the archivist-paleographer Matei Cazacu, the syllogism brandished to exonerate Gilles de Rais ("The Inquisition persecuted the innocent. One of Gilles de Rais's judges was an inquisitor. So Gilles de Rais was the innocent victim of the Inquisition") is reminiscent of the logician character in Eugène Ionesco's play Rhinoceros. The journalist Gilbert Philippe of Ouest-France subsequently declared Prouteau "facetious and provocative", claiming further that Prouteau himself thought the retrial was "a monumental farce" pulled off with some "high-ranking buddies", according to the Vendée writer Jean de Raigniac.
=== Contemporary academic views ===
The "vast majority" of historians "believed in the truth of Gilles de Rais's crimes", notes medievalist Jacques Chiffoleau. In particular, medievalists Olivier Bouzy and Jacques Heers, like Matei Cazacu, are convinced of Gilles de Rais's guilt. Likewise, for medievalist Valérie Toureille, the numerous testimonies of the parents make it impossible to "bank on the innocence of Gilles de Rais" despite the material interests of John V, Duke of Brittany, and his chancellor Jean de Malestroit, Bishop of Nantes. Medievalist Claude Gauvard also emphasizes that "the historian ... is not a judge. He can only point out certain contradictions in the trial, transformations between the initial depositions of the witnesses and the charges developed by the judges, but he must also affirm that facts are stubborn things. Given the initial witness accounts on which the investigation was based, the abduction of male children is no mere rumour" in spite of the exaggerated number of victims. She adds that historians don't "subscribe to the conspiracy theory that these two trials were a plot" orchestrated by Malestroit and the Duke of Brittany.
Notwithstanding the realistic and detailed nature of the confessions of Gilles de Rais and his servants, these texts are not accurate shorthand accounts, says Jacques Chiffoleau, but after-the-fact reconstructions written according to the medieval inquisitorial system of "highly regulated interrogations, composed of questions worked out in advance, [transcribing oral depositions in accordance] with the classificatory and scholastic writing of notaries and judges, the eventual use of torture to get to a confession that is most often no more than a homologation of what the prosecution proposes."
With these clarifications made, Jacques Chiffoleau insists that he is not trying to prove Gilles de Rais's innocence or guilt, but rather to explain "the weight of the proceedings" and the judges' "strong views" on lese-majesty offence. In the Breton magistrates' eyes, the criminal charges against John V's treacherous vassal constituted "a very old triptych that closely entwined" rebellion against the established order (which stemmed from the divine order), deal with the Devil and "unnatural relations" such as sodomy.
Similarly, Claude Gauvard stresses that confessions were shaped by the expectations of judges, whose imagination was imbued with the "fear of a demonological epidemic" contemporary with the beginnings of the witch hunts in the Late Middle Ages. Gauvard, therefore, considers it "difficult, if not impossible" to "distinguish between what is fantasy" in these confessions, since "the description of the facts is insidiously rooted in reality."
However, Jacques Chiffoleau admits to being puzzled by certain vivid passages from Étienne Corrillaut's confession of 17 October 1440, in which this Gilles de Rais's servant detailed some assassination methods. These descriptions of bloody and orgasmic rituals have no equivalent in every inquisitorial interrogation studied by Chiffoleau, because in this case the trial documents record murders and sadistic pleasures that had never been put down on paper before Marquis de Sade's literary work in the 18th century.
== Hypothetical portraits ==
No description or portrait of Gilles de Rais has survived from his lifetime. All the illuminations, engravings and paintings depicting him are posthumous and imaginary. According to Georges Bataille and Pierre Klossowski's French translation of the "confession in judgment" included in the Latin acts of the trials, Gilles de Rais declared that he had "always been of a delicate nature" during his youth. French writer Michel Hérubel thinks this means physical complexion, but historian Matei Cazacu points out that Bataille and Klossowski's translation was somewhat hasty, as the adjective delicatus can also mean "cute, sought-after, luxurious, effeminate, gallant, licentious".
The first description of Gilles de Rais ("a man of good understanding, good looks and good manners") appeared late, in a book titled Histoire de Bretaigne (1582) by the Breton jurist Bertrand d'Argentré. Essayist Michel Meurger notes that "the judicial Gilles de Rais, a man without a face, elusive to historical psychology, acquires a body and a mind" for the first time in this work, the starting point for the interplay of filiations from one century to the next.
In 1841, Jules Michelet devoted four famous pages to Gilles de Rais in the fifth volume of his Histoire de France (History of France). He quoted in full the apocryphal description composed by Bertrand d'Argentré, but without mentioning the latter by name, referring instead to some imprecise tradition. In this way, Michelet popularized the image of Gilles de Rais as an intelligent lord of noble bearing, with handsome features: "He was, it is said, a lord 'of good understanding, good looks and good manners'". In 1863, French archivist and historian Auguste Vallet de Viriville added new, imaginary details to Gilles de Rais's description: "He was a handsome young man, graceful, petulant, with a lively, playful spirit, but weak and frivolous."
Afterwards, 19th-century medical science participated in "the reification of the ultra-romantic legend" of Gilles de Rais as an alleged "superior degenerate" and out of the ordinary character, magnified by French writer Joris-Karl Huysmans in his novel Là-bas (1891) as a Faustian scholar, artist, flamboyant mystic and "great sadist".
In contrast, he was later profiled by Georges Bataille as a "sacred monster" whom "war has accustomed to the voluptuousness of blood,” an archaic, infantile and stupid feudal lord without moral restraint or limits of power, driven by a "monstrous Herostratus complex.”
=== Psychopathological interpretations ===
==== Fin de siècle portrayals ====
Between 1870 and around 1900, sexual psychopathology underwent considerable development in Europe, with a proliferation of studies endeavouring to classify clinically all forms (benign or criminal) of "sexual perversions". Medievalist Zrinka Stahuljak observes that "preoccupations with criminality, criminal responsibility and penal law brought to the surface the links between madness and crime"." The most famous study of the period remains the work of German-Austrian psychiatrist Richard von Krafft-Ebing, Psychopathia Sexualis (1886), whose chapter on sexual sadism disorder invokes Gilles de Rais. This text exerted a great influence on the publications dedicated to the latter.
Towards the end of the 19th century, the above-mentioned inventories of cruelties, manic obsessions and perversions contributed to a renewed perception of recidivism and, beyond that, to the creation of a new criminal category that heralded the expression "serial killer". In 1899, French criminologist Alexandre Lacassagne already distinguished various categories of sadists in his book Vacher l'éventreur et les crimes sadiques, in particular the "great sadists" who commit "repeated crimes", naming Gilles de Rais, Jack the Ripper and Joseph Vacher. From this point onward, the silhouette of the fifteenth-century heretic and rebel fades, giving way to the figure of the sadistic criminal, consistent with the concept shaped by the scientific and journalistic literature of this pivotal moment in anthropological criminology. The murderous and sodomitic lord of Tiffauges thus joins the ranks of the "monsters" portrayed in the judicial chronicles of Le Petit Journal and La Gazette des tribunaux.
By means of famous historical cases, physicians and historians of health endeavoured to establish medicine as a fundamental component of history. Gilles de Rais was construed as a clinical case of a "criminal degenerate", framed as symptomatic of the alleged decadence of the French medieval nobility—a social class purportedly corrupted by "vice" imported during the Norman incursions and the Crusades—within the obsolete medico-moral frameworks of the late nineteenth century. Such a categorization can be explained insofar as the French medico-legal school of the time advocated the possibility of a "physical and moral regeneration" of the human species through public hygiene and eugenics. The Baron Gilles de Rais and the peasant Joan of Arc were retrospectively diagnosed as the respective hallucinatory figures of depraved noble crime and revitalizing popular genius. This pathological contrast was meant to illustrate the theory of degeneration, which claimed to confine the French people within a temporal cycle of social degeneration and regeneration of the nation—a reflection of fin de siècle anxieties about decline and the fall of civilizations.
Historian Angus McLaren notes that the aforementioned medical literature was often scientifically unworthy. For example, Gilles de Rais and the cannibal Antoine Léger were regularly found side by side with other sadists and sexual murderers in fetishistic compilations of clinical cases summarized in short, moralistic biographies.
==== Confusions between Literature, History, and Medicine ====
The original records of the 1440 judicial proceedings remained largely inaccessible for a long time, as they were published only gradually and in fragments, out of fear of scandal. Consequently, the medical community of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries drew without hindsight on Paul Lacroix's Curiosités de l'histoire de France (1858), a pseudo-historical treatise incorporating a fictionalized account of the 1440 trials. This book was perceived at the time as a reliable historical source by various physicians who believed, for example, that they had found "the determining cause that had triggered Gilles's sadism" in his engaging readings of Tacitus and Suetonius, which describe the orgiastic excesses of decadent Roman emperors It is, however, a literary construct devised by Paul Lacroix, as no source attests to the presence of these Latin authors in Gilles de Rais's library. "Fiction therefore facilitated Gilles' passage from historical to medical discourse", points out Zrinka Stahuljak, adding that Paul Lacroix's dramatic narrative conveniently provided these physicians with a "scientific explanation of [Gilles de Rais's] conduct".
Three medical dissertations devoted to Gilles de Rais appeared between 1910 and 1934. "Thin and disappointing", according to medievalist Jacques Chiffoleau, these studies remained heavily influenced by the literary works of Paul Lacroix and Joris-Karl Huysmans. In 1910, Dr. Augustin Cabanès adopted the pseudonym "Rondelet" to sign an article in which he discoursed on Gilles de Rais's facial tics and bluish beard—details born of the fertile imagination of Paul Lacroix. In 1921, poet and writer Fernand Fleuret, in turn, posed as a certain "Dr. Ludovico Hernandez" on the occasion of publishing an essay on Gilles de Rais. Jacques Chiffoleau observes that "this limited erudition and, above all, the frequent use of pseudonyms ... betray in all these physicians (or essayists claiming to be physicians) aims that are less clearly scientific and perhaps a less forthright desire to appeal to collectors of "curiosa" filled with sex and blood under the guise of medical analysis".
More recently, psychiatrist Marie-Laure Susini, clinical psychologist Nicolas Brémaud, and James Penney, a Canadian professor of cultural studies, have examined the case of Gilles de Rais, drawing on psychoanalysis in their approach to perversion. Jacques Chiffoleau considers that their attempts may offer interesting analytical perspectives, but their "overly literal reading" of the trial records fails to take into account the fundamental role of inquisitorial procedure in the conditions under which these judicial documents were produced. Moreover, they still rely "on the most fictionalized parts of the narratives of Eugène Bossard, Georges Bataille, or even at times Paul Lacroix, without being wary of what these authors themselves projected into them."
==== Classification as a serial killer ====
The connection between the criminal category of serial killers and the case of Gilles de Rais was occasionally used to refute the thesis of the latter's innocence, thanks to the mention of supposedly comparable murderers like Fritz Haarmann. In contemporary discourse, Gilles de Rais is sometimes viewed as an archetype of a modern media figure of dangerousness, described by historian Anne-Claude Ambroise-Rendu as that of "the pedophile conflated with the rapist-murderer — a reimagined Gilles de Rais, embodying both the predator and the madman."
Medievalist Didier Lett, a specialist in the history of childhood and author of a study on pedophilia and child sexual abuse in medieval Bologna, unequivocally defines Gilles de Rais as a "sadistic child sex offender, sodomite, and serial murderer." Likewise, archivist-paleographer Matei Cazacu identifies in Gilles de Rais certain traits characteristic of modern serial killers:
average age of the criminal at the start of the murders (around 27–31 years);
predilection for the same type of victims (in this case, mainly young boys);
"illicit acts" perpetrated during his childhood and adolescence;
aggressiveness and propensity for violence against adults;
ritualization of the crime through staged scenes and recurrent tortures (committed personally by Gilles de Rais or his servants) on people reduced to the status of objects: brief hanging of his victim before unhooking him by adopting a falsely reassuring attitude; breaking necks with a stick; cutting throats or other parts of the body; dismemberment or decapitation with a sword "commonly known as a braquemart"; post-mortem abuse or antemortem rape of dying children; enjoyment of the sight of internal organs after disembowelling; contemplation of severed heads.
In attempting to draw up a detailed profile of Gilles de Rais as a psychopathic killer, Matei Cazacu also applies the "reading grid used by FBI profilers" in a 1990 report, as well as the classification proposed by Dr. Michel Bénézech, psychiatrist and professor of forensic medicine at the University of Bordeaux. Matei Cazacu assumes the anachronism in the following way: "Modern techniques, when they exist and make it possible to contribute something, must not be neglected." He acknowledges that his approach has been contested, but he claims not to confuse medieval and contemporary mentalities, admitting, moreover, that "the abysses of the human psyche remain unfathomable and ... Gilles de Rais has definitely taken his secret to the grave". Furthermore, Claude Gauvard states that "the historian is not ... a psychoanalyst, even if the teachings of psychoanalysis can help him to understand the content of confessions and their share of psychotic delirium."
On the other hand, medievalist Jacques Chiffoleau believes that "the psychology of Gilles de Rais is forever ... closed to us. From the meagre traces we have, we will never know whether he was in a position to be or not to be a serial killer". Jacques Chiffoleau also points out that "the description of an almost timeless perverse structure'" is only "distantly related to the medieval triple accusation of rebellion, pact with the Devil and unnatural relations." Although Gilles de Rais's confessions seem to "bear witness to the mixture of psychosis and Narcissistic Perversion that is characteristic of our contemporary serial killers", his story, rich in insights into "15th-century political justice and institutional constructs", would tell us little about pedophilia and serial murder during the Late Middle Ages.
Sociologist and criminologist Aurélien Dyjak similarly contends that anachronistically projecting the modern category of the "serial killer" onto historical criminals responsible for multiple successive murders risks effacing the specificities of their historical context, trajectories, and motives, forcing them into a reductive and inadequate analytical framework. Such a methodology fosters the illusion of a historical continuity of the phenomenon, with the figure of the serial killer becoming "a kind of criminological catch-all", even though this category is, at least in part, a product of twentieth-century social and historical constructions. Thus, "by designating Gilles de Rais as a serial killer, we are likely rewriting his history and reinforcing the notion that his crimes were a timeless manifestation of a universal human behavior."
== Gilles de Rais and the Bluebeard myth ==
Gilles de Rais's story may have been one of the influences on Charles Perrault's "Bluebeard" literary fairy tale, included in Stories or Tales from Past Times, with Morals (1697), but this hypothesis is disputed as being too fragile.
In any case, long after the publication of Mother Goose Tales, Bluebeard's mythical character is frequently amalgamated with Gilles de Rais's historical legend from the 19th century onwards. Travel reports, local oral literature and tourist activities all point to a popular confusion between Gilles de Rais and the fictitious wife-murderer, despite the profound differences between the two figures.
According to Matei Cazacu, collective memory has gradually shifted in this direction, due to the difficulty of transmitting the memory of child sexual abuse. Bluebeard is at times entwined with the memory of castle ruins scattered across western France—often the erstwhile estates of Gilles de Rais—which, as Matei Cazacu suggests, "have, by their very presence, helped anchor these tales in a tangible setting, a true memory space."
== Relationship with Joan of Arc ==
The duality between Joan of Arc and Gilles de Rais is a theme popular in fiction, but the 15th-century archives do not seem to fully establish a special relationship between the two comrades-in-arms. Joan of Arc's feelings towards Gilles de Rais escape the historical record completely. Likewise, no source corroborates the popular narrative that he was so devastated after her burning at the stake at Rouen that he withdrew to his western lands to nurture her memory while simultaneously sinking into depression and murderous madness. Assuming as a hypothesis that her death represented a rupture in his life, the shock could just as well be "narcissistic", rather than "sentimental", for the heroine's disappearance would mark the end of an epic capable of fulfilling his aspirations to glory.
The correlation between the Louviers expedition and a potential liberation attempt of the Maid is plausible but not established with certainty. Furthermore, in 1439, the city of Orléans acquired a banner that belonged to Gilles de Rais to stage a theatrical celebration of the English siege's lifting. However, it's not established that he specifically supported the Mystery of the Siege of Orléans, a probably unperformed mystery play singing Joan of Arc's praises. Lastly, in the same year, Gilles de Rais employed Jean de Siquenville, a squire from Gascony, as a commander of men-at-arms to take the English-held town of Le Mans. This troop had been previously commanded by Jeanne des Armoises, a Joan of Arc impersonator, but her relationship with Gilles de Rais remains "poorly documented and difficult to interpret", according to medievalist Jacques Chiffoleau.
== See also ==
Cultural depictions of Gilles de Rais
François Prelati
== References ==
=== Notes ===
=== Footnotes ===
=== Bibliography ===
==== Historical studies and literary scholarship ====
==== Essays ====
Benedetti, Jean (1971), Gilles de Rais, New York: Stein and Day, ISBN 978-0-8128-1450-7.
Jost, Alain (1995), Gilles de Rais, Histoire et mystères (in French), Alleur / Paris: Marabout, ISBN 978-2-501-02230-9.
== Further reading ==
Bouzy, Olivier (January 1997). "Le Procès de Gilles de Rais. Preuve juridique et "exemplum"". Connaissance de Jeanne d'Arc (in French) (26): 40–45. ISSN 1151-1400.
Cazacu, Matei (January 2021). "La Barbe Bleue, histoire d'un conte". Revue 303 (in French) (164): 6–13. ISBN 979-10-93572-49-9. ISSN 0762-3291.
Chiffoleau, Jacques (January 2021). "Traces, reliques". Revue 303 (in French) (164): 14–19. ISBN 979-10-93572-49-9. ISSN 0762-3291.
Chiffoleau, Jacques (January 2021). "Plasticité du monstre". Revue 303 (in French) (164): 26–31. ISBN 979-10-93572-49-9. ISSN 0762-3291.
== External links ==
Media related to Gilles de Rais at Wikimedia Commons
"About: Gilles de Rais, Éditions Tallandier (2005), by Matei Cazacu", France Culture discussion with Jacques Le Goff, Matei Cazacu & Jacques Berlioz (History Mondays series, 23 January 2006).
Debate with Jacques Chiffoleau on Matei Cazacu's book Gilles de Rais ("The École Nationale des Chartes' Tuesdays" series, 9 April 2013).
"L'affaire Gilles de Rais", Claude Gauvard's presentation given at the "Justice between memory and oblivion" symposium (French Court of Cassation, 8 March 2021). |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_L._Brody | Aaron L. Brody | Aaron Leo Brody (August 23, 1930 – July 26, 2021) was an American food scientist, who developed new technologies in food processing and packaging. He created the first frozen fish sticks in the 1950s. While working for Mars, Incorporated, he was also responsible for introducing Starburst to the United States. Later, Brody served as an adjunct professor at the University of Georgia.
== Biography ==
=== Early years ===
Aaron Leo Brody was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the elder of two children to Nathan Brozozek and Lillian Gorman, Jewish immigrants from Poland. Upon entry into America through Ellis Island, his father's name was Americanized to Brody. Aaron attended Solomon-Lewenburgh Junior High School and then Boston English School in 1947.
Brody entered Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1947, and earned a B.S. in Food Technology in 1951. He became an illustrator with contributions to the school newspaper where most of his work was pen on paper of sports figures. He was drafted into the Korean War and served from 1952 to 1954. He was based at Fort Pickett in Blackstone, Virginia where he was a newspaper correspondent reporting on the personal stories of wounded soldiers returning from the War.
After completing his military commitment, he entered the graduate program of the Food Packaging Department at MIT where he earned a Ph.D. in 1957. Brody studied under Bernard E. Proctor, an American food scientist involved in early research of food irradiation, and the MIT Food Technology Department Chair. Brody's "Masticatory Properties of Foods by the Strain Gage Denture Tenderometer", was one of the many contributions he made to the world of food technology. The invention was featured in Life (magazine) on October 29, 1956, and included a full page of pictures of the machine which was shown chewing a piece of mozzarella cheese. The device is on display at the MIT Museum. The mechanism allowed food manufacturers to control qualities in process and design future food products with specific properties. He later earned an M.B.A. from Northeastern University in 1970.
=== Career ===
Brody started his career, while in school, in food technology with the Birdseye Fisheries Lab Division of General Foods in 1951 as a team member in the development of the first frozen precooked foods including fish sticks. While a graduate student, he worked part-time for Raytheon Manufacturing Company where he was a member of a team that developed the first microwave oven, leading to microwave cooking, heating, and browning of foods. After he earned his graduate degree, Brody worked for the Whirlpool Corporation in Benton Harbor, Michigan. He led the development of modified atmosphere packaging (MAP), invented an odor control system for refrigerators, a thermoelectric refrigerator/freezer, the Total Environmental Control “Tectrol” controlled atmosphere process for food preservation, a progenitor of MAP fresh-cut vegetables, and radiation pasteurization of foods. While at Whirlpool, he invented and patented an apparatus and method of storing perishable animal and plant materials, as well as non-food materials.
He developed commercial confectionery products including Starburst and Pop Rocks while employed at M&M Candies Division of Mars, Inc. Brody’s team formulated adapted the British fruit flavored candy Opal Fruits and adapted it to M&M Fruit Chewies before deciding to rename them Starburst due to the connotation of M&M’s to chocolate. At Mead Packaging, he invented the Crosscheck Aseptic Packaging System for high acid fluid food products used commercially for juices and sauces, receiving patents US4,152,464, US4,391,080, US4,409,775. At Container Corporation of America, he led the development of the Versaform insert injection molding system, and he was Marketing Development Manager, which was his last position in corporate America.
By the mid 1980s, Brody transitioned into an independent consultant and college professor. He has taught undergraduate and graduate food packaging and food product development and marketing courses at The University of Georgia, MBA strategic marketing and product development courses at Saint Joseph's University, and packaging courses at Michigan State University. Brody authored numerous articles and ten textbooks in food packaging and food technology, marketing, and packaging. He authored The Encyclopedia of Packaging Technology that covers technologies used to package consumer and industrial products across industries from food to automobiles, soft drinks to pharmaceuticals. He also authored Modified Atmosphere Packaging for Fresh-Cut Fruits and Vegetables that covers modern MAP technologies for fresh-cut fruits.
=== Family ===
Aaron Brody married Carolyn Goldstein on April 11, 1953, and stayed married until her death in April 2021. They had three children. He died on July 26, 2021, of Congestive Heart Failure.
== Honors ==
In 1964, Brody was awarded the Industrial Achievement Award by the Institute of Food Technologists and the Leadership Award by the Packaging Institute. He was named Packaging Man of the Year in 1985 by the National Association of Packaging, Handling, and Logistics Engineers. The Institute of Food Technologists' Food Packaging Division gave Brody the highest industry award, the Riester-Davis Award for Lifetime Achievement in Food Packaging, in 1988. He was the first recipient of the Institute of Food Technologists' Industrial Scientist Award in 1994 for scientists who made technical contributions to advancing the food industry.
In 1995, Brody was inducted into the Packaging Hall of Fame. In 2000, he was awarded the Nicholas Appert Award by the Institute of Food Technologists in recognition of his lifetime contributions.
The Michigan State School of Packaging established the Annual Aaron Brody Distinguished Lecture In Food Packaging in perpetuity. This is an endowment that was created by family and friends of Aaron L. Brody and Carolyn Brody in recognition of Aaron's lifelong achievements in Food Packaging. The Food Packaging Division of the Institute of Food Technologist renamed the Riester-Davis Award to include Aaron Brody's name in 2015 and now called the Riester-Davis-Brody Award.
He has been quoted in The New York Times, and featured on National Public Radio and CNN news. One of his NPR interviews was titled, The Weird, Underappreciated World Of Plastic Packaging where he explains that plastic packaging has become an ingrained part of the food system. On CNN, he described how new plastics may keep soft drinks from falling flat.
== Books ==
Developing New Food Products for a Changing Marketplace, Second Edition (2000, with John B. Lord). Boca Raton, FL. ISBN 9781566767781 : CRC Press.
Modified Atmosphere Packaging for Fresh-Cut Fruits and Vegetables (2011, with Hong Zhuang and Jung H. Han). Oxford, UK. ISBN 978-0-8138-1274-8 : Wiley & Sons.
The Wiley Encyclopedia of Packaging Technology (1997, with Kenneth S. Marsh). New York. ISBN 0-471-06397-5 : Wiley & Sons.
Active Packaging for Food Applications (2002, with Eugene R. Strupinsky and Lauri R. Kline). Boca Raton. ISBN 978-1-58716-045-5 : CRC Press.
Principles of Package Development (1993, with Roger C. Griffin, Jr. and Stanley Sacharow). Malababar, FL. ISBN 978-8-94464-811-3 : Krieger Publishing Company.
== References == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_Award#:~:text=Only%20three%20women%20have%20been,Shafi%20Goldwasser%20(in%202012). | Turing Award | The ACM A. M. Turing Award is an annual prize given by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) for contributions of lasting and major technical importance to computer science. It is generally recognized as the highest distinction in the field of computer science and is often referred to as the "Nobel Prize of Computing". As of 2025, 79 people have been awarded the prize, with the most recent recipients being Andrew Barto and Richard S. Sutton, who won in 2024.
The award is named after Alan Turing, also referred as "Father of Computer Science", who was a British mathematician and reader in mathematics at the University of Manchester. Turing is often credited as being the founder of theoretical computer science and artificial intelligence, and a key contributor to the Allied cryptanalysis of the Enigma cipher during World War II. From 2007 to 2013, the award was accompanied by a prize of US$250,000, with financial support provided by Intel and Google. Since 2014, the award has been accompanied by a prize of US$1 million, with financial support provided by Google.
The first recipient, in 1966, was Alan Perlis. The youngest recipient was Donald Knuth, who won in 1974 at the age of 36, while the oldest recipient was Alfred Aho, who won in 2020 at the age of 79. Only three women have been awarded the prize: Frances Allen (in 2006), Barbara Liskov (in 2008), and Shafi Goldwasser (in 2012).
== Recipients ==
== See also ==
== References ==
== Further reading ==
Akmut, Camille (June 12, 2018). "Social conditions of outstanding contributions to computer science : a prosopography of Turing Award laureates (1966-2016)". hal.science. Retrieved December 12, 2024.
== External links ==
ACM Chronological listing of Turing Laureates
ACM A.M. Turing Award Centenary Celebration
ACM A.M. Turing Award Laureate Interviews
Celebration of 50 Years of the ACM A.M. Turing Award |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernie_Sanders#:~:text=Concerned%20by%20high%20breast%20cancer,Senate%20on%20October%202%2C%201992. | Bernie Sanders | Bernard Sanders (born September 8, 1941) is an American politician and activist serving as the senior United States senator from Vermont, a seat he has held since 2007. He is the longest-serving independent in U.S. congressional history, but maintains a close relationship with the Democratic Party, having caucused with House and Senate Democrats for most of his congressional career and sought the party's presidential nomination in 2016 and 2020. Ideologically a democratic socialist, Sanders is regarded as one of the main leaders of the modern American progressive movement.
Born into a working-class Jewish family and raised in New York, Sanders attended Brooklyn College before graduating from the University of Chicago in 1964. While a student, he was a protest organizer for the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) during the civil rights movement. After settling in Vermont in 1968, he ran unsuccessful third-party political campaigns in the 1970s. He was elected mayor of Burlington in 1981 as an independent and was reelected three times.
Sanders was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1990, representing Vermont's at-large congressional district. In 1991, he and five other House members co-founded the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Sanders was a U.S. representative for 16 years before being elected to the U.S. Senate in 2006, becoming the first non-Republican elected to Vermont's Class 1 seat since Solomon Foot, a Whig, in 1850. Sanders was reelected in 2012, 2018, and 2024. He chaired the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee from 2013 to 2015, the Senate Budget Committee from 2021 to 2023, and the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee from 2023 to 2025. He is the senior senator and dean of the Vermont congressional delegation.
Sanders was a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016 and 2020, finishing second both times. His 2016 campaign generated significant grassroots enthusiasm and funding from small-dollar donors, helping him win 23 primaries and caucuses. In 2020, his strong showing in early primaries and caucuses made him the front-runner in a large field of Democratic candidates. He became a close ally of Joe Biden after the 2020 primaries. Since Donald Trump's reelection as president in 2024, Sanders has vocally opposed Trump's administration and perceived corruption as what he calls a right-wing oligarchy, rallying an organization tour against Trump and his allies, especially Elon Musk, in an effort to reshape the Democratic Party.
Sanders is credited with influencing a leftward shift in the Democratic Party after his 2016 campaign. An advocate of progressive policies, he opposes neoliberalism and supports workers' self-management. He supports universal and single-payer healthcare, paid parental leave, tuition-free tertiary education, a Green New Deal, and worker control of production through cooperatives, unions, and democratic public enterprises. On foreign policy, he supports reducing military spending, more diplomacy and international cooperation, and greater emphasis on labor rights and environmental concerns in negotiating international trade agreements. Sanders supports workplace democracy and has praised elements of the Nordic model.
== Early life ==
Bernard Sanders was born on September 8, 1941, in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. His father, Elias Ben Yehuda Sanders, a Polish-Jewish immigrant, was born in Słopnice, a town in Austrian Galicia that was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and is now in Poland. Elias Sanders immigrated to the United States in 1921 and became a paint salesman. Bernie's mother, Dorothy Sanders (née Glassberg), was born in New York City. He is the younger brother of Larry Sanders.
Sanders says he became interested in politics at an early age due to his family background. In the 1940s, many of his relatives in German-occupied Poland were murdered in the Holocaust.
Sanders lived in Midwood, Brooklyn. He attended elementary school at P.S. 197, where he won a borough championship on the basketball team. He attended Hebrew school in the afternoons and celebrated his bar mitzvah in 1954. His older brother Larry said that during their childhood, the family never lacked food or clothing, but major purchases, "like curtains or a rug", were not affordable.
Sanders attended James Madison High School, where he was captain of the track team and took third place in the New York City indoor one-mile race. In high school, he lost his first election, finishing last of three candidates for the student body presidency with a campaign that focused on aiding Korean War orphans. Despite the loss, he became active in his school's fundraising activities for Korean orphans, including organizing a charity basketball game. Sanders attended high school with economist Walter Block. When he was 19, his mother died at age 47. His father died two years later, in 1962, at age 57.
Sanders studied at Brooklyn College for a year in 1959–1960 before transferring to the University of Chicago and graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science in 1964. In later interviews, Sanders described himself as a mediocre college student because the classroom was "boring and irrelevant" and said he viewed community activism as more important to his education.
== Early career ==
=== Political activism ===
Sanders later described his time in Chicago as "the major period of intellectual ferment in my life." While there, he joined the Young People's Socialist League (the youth affiliate of the Socialist Party of America) and was active in the civil rights movement as a student for the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Under his chairmanship, the university chapter of CORE merged with the university chapter of the SNCC. In January 1962, he went to a rally at the University of Chicago administration building to protest university president George Wells Beadle's segregated campus housing policy. At the protest, Sanders said, "We feel it is an intolerable situation when Negro and white students of the university cannot live together in university-owned apartments." He and 32 other students then entered the building and camped outside the president's office. After weeks of sit-ins, Beadle and the university formed a commission to investigate discrimination. After further protests, the University of Chicago ended racial segregation in private university housing in the summer of 1963.
Joan Mahoney, a member of the University of Chicago CORE chapter at the time and a fellow participant in the sit-ins, described Sanders in a 2016 interview as "a swell guy, a nice Jewish boy from Brooklyn, but he wasn't terribly charismatic. One of his strengths, though, was his ability to work with a wide group of people, even those he didn't agree with." Sanders once spent a day putting up fliers protesting police brutality, only to notice later that Chicago police had shadowed him and taken them all down. He attended the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, where Martin Luther King Jr. gave the "I Have a Dream" speech. That summer, Sanders was fined $25 (equivalent to $257 in 2024) for resisting arrest during a demonstration in Englewood against segregation in Chicago's public schools.
In addition to his civil rights activism during the 1960s and 1970s, Sanders was active in several peace and antiwar movements while attending the University of Chicago, becoming a member of the Student Peace Union. He applied for conscientious objector status during the Vietnam War; his application was eventually turned down, by which point he was too old to be drafted. Although he opposed the war, Sanders never criticized those who fought in it and has strongly supported veterans' benefits throughout his political career. He was briefly an organizer with the United Packinghouse Workers of America while in Chicago. He also worked on the reelection campaign of Leon Despres, a prominent Chicago alderman who opposed then-mayor Richard J. Daley's Democratic Party machine. Sanders said that he spent much of his student years reading history, sociology, psychology, and the works of political authors, from Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, John Dewey, Karl Marx, and Erich Fromm—"reading everything except what I was supposed to read for class the next day."
=== Professional history and early years in Vermont ===
After graduating from college, Sanders returned to New York City, where he worked various jobs, including Head Start teacher, psychiatric aide, and carpenter. In 1968, he moved to Stannard, Vermont, a town small in both area and population (88 residents at the 1970 census) within Vermont's rural Northeast Kingdom region, because he had been "captivated by rural life". While there, he worked as a carpenter, filmmaker, and writer who created and sold "radical film strips" and other educational materials to schools. He also wrote several articles for the alternative publication The Vermont Freeman. He lived in the area for several years before moving to the more populous Chittenden County in the mid-1970s. During his 2018 reelection campaign, he returned to the town to hold an event with voters and other candidates.
=== Liberty Union campaigns ===
From 1969 to 1971, Sanders resided in Montpelier. After moving to Burlington, he began his electoral political career as a member of the Liberty Union Party, a national umbrella party for various socialist-oriented state parties, originating in the anti-war movement and the People's Party. He ran as the Liberty Union candidate for governor of Vermont in 1972 and 1976 and as a candidate in the special election for US senator in 1972 and in the general election in 1974. In the 1974 senatorial race, he finished third (5,901 votes; 4%), behind 34-year-old Chittenden County state's attorney Patrick Leahy (D; 70,629 votes; 49%) and two-term incumbent US Representative Dick Mallary (R; 66,223 votes; 46%).
In 1971, while researching an article for Liberty Union's newspaper Movement, Sanders stayed at Myrtle Hill Farm, a Vermont back to the land commune. He was asked to leave after three days for failing to contribute physical labor expected of all members. Some residents complained that Sanders spent his time engaging others in political discussions, distracting them from their work, with one member claiming the only way "any work was going to get accomplished" was if people were pulled out of Sanders's orbit.
The 1976 campaign was the zenith of the Liberty Union's influence, with Sanders collecting 11,317 votes for governor and the party. His strong performance forced the down-ballot races for lieutenant governor and secretary of state to be decided by the state legislature when its vote total prevented either the Republican or Democratic candidate for those offices from garnering a majority of votes. But the campaign drained the Liberty Union's finances and energy, and in October 1977, Sanders and the Liberty Union candidate for attorney general, Nancy Kaufman, announced their retirement from the party. During the 1980 presidential election, Sanders was one of three electors for the Socialist Workers Party in Vermont.
After resigning from the Liberty Union Party in 1977, Sanders worked as a writer and as the director of the nonprofit American People's Historical Society (APHS). While with the APHS, he produced a 30-minute documentary about American labor leader Eugene V. Debs, who ran for president five times as the Socialist Party candidate. On October 25, 2025, the Eugene V. Debs Foundation gave Sanders its namesake award, first given to John L. Lewis in 1965.
== Mayor of Burlington, Vermont (1981–1989) ==
=== Campaigns ===
On November 8, 1980, Sanders announced his candidacy for mayor. He formally announced his campaign on December 16 at a City Hall press conference. Sanders selected Linda Niedweske as his campaign manager. The Citizens Party attempted to nominate Greg Guma for mayor, but Guma declined, saying it would be "difficult to run against another progressive candidate". Sanders had been convinced to run for the mayoralty by his close friend Richard Sugarman, an Orthodox Jewish professor of religious studies at the University of Vermont, who had shown him a ward-by-ward breakdown of the 1976 Vermont gubernatorial election, in which Sanders had run, that showed him receiving 12% of the vote in Burlington despite only getting 6% statewide.
Sanders initially won the mayoral election by 22 votes against incumbent mayor Gordon Paquette, Richard Bove, and Joseph McGrath, but the margin was later reduced to 10 votes. Paquette did not contest the results of the recount.
Paquette's loss was attributed to his own shortcomings, as he did not campaign or promote his candidacy since neither Sanders nor Bove was seen as a serious challenger. Sanders had not previously won an election. Paquette was also considered to have lost because he proposed an unpopular $0.65 per $100 raise in taxes that Sanders opposed. Sanders spent around $4,000 on his campaign.
Sanders castigated the pro-development incumbent as an ally of prominent shopping center developer Antonio Pomerleau, while Paquette warned of ruin for Burlington if Sanders were elected. The Sanders campaign was bolstered by a wave of optimistic volunteers as well as a series of endorsements from university professors, social welfare agencies, and the police union. The result shocked the local political establishment.
Sanders formed a coalition between independents and the Citizens Party. On December 3, 1982, he announced that he would seek reelection. On January 22, 1983, the Citizens Party voted unanimously to endorse Sanders, although Sanders ran as an independent. He was reelected, defeating Judy Stephany and James Gilson.
Sanders initially considered not seeking a third term but announced on December 5, 1984, that he would run. He formally launched his campaign on December 7 and was reelected. On December 1, 1986, Sanders, who had finished third in the 1986 Vermont gubernatorial election, announced that he would seek reelection to a fourth term as mayor of Burlington, despite close associates saying that he was tired of being mayor. Sanders defeated Democratic nominee Paul Lafayette in the election. He said he would not seek another mayoral term after the 1987 election: "eight years is enough and I think it is time for new leadership, which does exist within the coalition, to come up".
Sanders did not run for a fifth term as mayor. He went on to lecture in political science at Harvard Kennedy School that year and at Hamilton College in 1991.
=== Administration ===
During his mayoralty, Sanders called himself a socialist and was described as such in the press. During his first term, his supporters, including the first Citizens Party city councilor Terry Bouricius, formed the Progressive Coalition, the forerunner of the Vermont Progressive Party. The Progressives never held more than six seats on the 13-member city council, but they had enough to keep the council from overriding Sanders's vetoes. Under his leadership, Burlington balanced its city budget; attracted a minor league baseball team, the Vermont Reds, then the Double-A affiliate of the Cincinnati Reds; became the first US city to fund community-trust housing; and successfully sued the local cable television franchise, thereby winning reduced rates for customers.
As mayor, Sanders also led extensive downtown revitalization projects. One of his primary achievements was improving Burlington's Lake Champlain waterfront. In 1981, he campaigned against the unpopular plans by Burlington developer Tony Pomerleau to convert the then-industrial waterfront property owned by the Central Vermont Railway into expensive condominiums, hotels, and offices. He ran under the slogan "Burlington is not for sale" and successfully supported a plan that redeveloped the waterfront area into a mixed-use district featuring housing, parks, and public spaces.
Sanders was a consistent critic of US foreign policy in Latin America throughout the 1980s. In 1985, Burlington City Hall hosted a foreign policy speech by Noam Chomsky. In his introduction, he praised Chomsky as "a very vocal and important voice in the wilderness of intellectual life in America" and said that he was "delighted to welcome a person who I think we're all very proud of".
Sanders hosted and produced a public-access television program, Bernie Speaks with the Community, from 1986 to 1988. He collaborated with 30 Vermont musicians to record a folk album, We Shall Overcome, in 1987. That same year, US News & World Report ranked Sanders one of America's best mayors. As of 2013, Burlington was regarded as one of the most livable cities in the United States.
During a trip to the Soviet Union in 1988, Sanders interviewed the mayor of Burlington's sister city Yaroslavl about housing and health care issues in the two cities.
When Sanders left office in 1989, Bouricius, a member of the Burlington city council, said that Sanders had "changed the entire nature of politics in Burlington and also in the state of Vermont".
== U.S. House of Representatives (1991–2007) ==
=== Elections ===
In 1988, incumbent Republican congressman Jim Jeffords decided to run for the U.S. Senate, vacating the House seat representing Vermont's at-large congressional district. Former lieutenant governor Peter P. Smith won the House election with a plurality, securing 41% of the vote. Sanders, who ran as an independent, placed second with 38% of the vote, while Democratic state representative Paul N. Poirier placed third with 19%. Two years later, he ran for the seat again and defeated Smith by a margin of 56% to 39%.
Sanders was the first independent elected to the US House of Representatives since Frazier Reams of Ohio won his second term in 1952, as well as the first socialist elected to the House since Vito Marcantonio, from the American Labor Party, who won his last term in 1948. Sanders was a representative from 1991 until he became a senator in 2007, winning reelection by large margins except during the 1994 Republican Revolution, when he won by 3%, with 50% of the vote.
=== Legislation ===
During his first year in the House, Sanders often alienated allies and colleagues with his criticism of both political parties as working primarily on behalf of the wealthy. In 1991, he co-founded the Congressional Progressive Caucus, a group of mostly liberal Democrats that he chaired for its first eight years, while still refusing to join the Democratic Party or caucus.
In 2005, Rolling Stone called Sanders the "amendment king" for his ability to get more roll call amendments passed than any other congressman during the period since 1995, when Congress was entirely under Republican control. Being an independent allowed him to form coalitions across party lines.
==== Banking reform ====
In 1999, Sanders voted and advocated against rolling back the Glass–Steagall legislation provisions that kept investment banks and commercial banks separate entities. He was a vocal critic of Federal Reserve chair Alan Greenspan; in June 2003, during a question-and-answer discussion, Sanders told him he was concerned that he was "way out of touch" and "that you see your major function in your position as the need to represent the wealthy and large corporations."
==== Cancer registries ====
Concerned by high breast cancer rates in Vermont, on February 7, 1992, Sanders sponsored the Cancer Registries Amendment Act to establish cancer registries to collect data on cancer. Senator Patrick Leahy introduced a companion bill in the Senate on October 2, 1992. The Senate bill was passed by the House on October 6 and signed into law by President George H. W. Bush on October 24, 1992.
==== Firearms and criminal justice ====
In 1993, Sanders voted against the Brady Bill, which mandated federal background checks when buying guns and imposed a waiting period on firearm purchasers in the United States; the bill passed by a vote of 238–187. He voted against the bill four more times in the 1990s, explaining that his Vermont constituents saw waiting-period mandates as more appropriately a state rather than a federal matter.
Sanders did vote for other gun-control measures. For example, in 1994, he voted for the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act "because it included the Violence Against Women Act and the ban on certain assault weapons." He was nevertheless critical of the other parts of the bill. Although he acknowledged that "clearly, there are some people in our society who are horribly violent, who are deeply sick and sociopathic, and clearly these people must be put behind bars in order to protect society from them", he maintained that governmental policies played a large part in "dooming tens of millions of young people to a future of bitterness, misery, hopelessness, drugs, crime, and violence" and argued that the repressive policies introduced by the bill were not addressing the causes of violence, saying, "we can create meaningful jobs, rebuilding our society, or we can build more jails."
Sanders has at times favored stronger law enforcement and sentencing. In 1996, he voted against a bill that would have prohibited police from purchasing tanks and armored carriers. In 1998, he voted for a bill that would have increased minimum sentencing for possessing a gun while committing a federal crime to ten years in prison, including nonviolent crimes such as marijuana possession.
In 2005, Sanders voted for the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act. The purpose of the act was to prevent firearms manufacturers and dealers from being held liable for negligence when crimes have been committed with their products. As of 2016, he said that he has since changed his position and would vote for legislation to defeat this bill.
==== Opposition to the Patriot Act ====
Sanders was a consistent critic of the Patriot Act. As a member of Congress, he voted against the original Patriot Act legislation. After its 357–66 passage in the House, he sponsored and voted for several subsequent amendments and acts attempting to curtail its effects and voted against each reauthorization. In June 2005, he proposed an amendment to limit Patriot Act provisions that allow the government to obtain individuals' library and book-buying records. The amendment passed the House by a bipartisan majority but was removed on November 4 of that year in House–Senate negotiations and never became law.
==== Opposition to the War in Iraq ====
Sanders voted against the resolutions authorizing the use of force against Iraq in 1991 and 2002, and he opposed the 2003 invasion of Iraq. He voted for the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists that has been cited as the legal justification for controversial military actions since the September 11 attacks. He especially opposed the Bush administration's decision to start a war unilaterally.
==== Trade policy ====
In February 2005, Sanders introduced a bill that would have withdrawn the permanent normal trade relations (PNTR) status that had been extended to China in October 2000. He said to the House, "Anyone who takes an objective look at our trade policy with China must conclude that it is an absolute failure and needs to be fundamentally overhauled", citing the American jobs being lost to overseas competitors. His bill received 71 co-sponsors but was not sent to the floor for a vote.
== U.S. Senate (2007–present) ==
=== Elections ===
==== 2006 ====
Sanders entered the race for the U.S. Senate on April 21, 2005, after Senator Jim Jeffords announced that he would not seek a fourth term. Chuck Schumer, chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and fellow James Madison High School alumnus, endorsed Sanders. This was a critical move because it meant no Democrat running against him could expect financial help from the party. He was also endorsed by Senate minority leader Harry Reid and Democratic National Committee chair and former Vermont governor Howard Dean. Dean said in May 2005 that he considered Sanders an ally who "votes with the Democrats 98% of the time". Then-Senator Barack Obama also campaigned for him in Vermont in March 2006. Sanders entered into an agreement with the Democratic Party, much as he had as a congressman, to be listed in their primary but to decline the nomination should he win, which he did.
In the most expensive political campaign in Vermont's history, Sanders defeated businessman Rich Tarrant by an almost 2-to-1 margin. Many national media outlets projected him as the winner just after the polls closed, before any returns came in.
==== 2012 ====
Sanders was reelected in 2012 with 71% of the vote, defeating Republican nominee John MacGovern.
==== 2018 ====
Sanders was reelected in 2018 with 67% of the vote, defeating real estate broker and Republican nominee Lawrence Zupan.
==== 2024 ====
On May 6, 2024, Sanders announced his candidacy for a fourth Senate term. A poll just a few weeks earlier found that more than half of respondents wanted him to seek reelection. Sanders faced Republican nominee Gerald Malloy, who ran against Senator Peter Welch in 2022. Sanders was reelected and has said this term will likely be his last.
=== Legislation ===
While a member of Congress, Sanders sponsored 15 concurrent resolutions and 15 Senate resolutions. Of those he co-sponsored, 218 became law. While he has consistently advocated for progressive causes, Politico wrote that he has "rarely forged actual legislation or left a significant imprint on it". According to The New York Times, "Big legislation largely eludes Mr. Sanders because his ideas are usually far to the left of the majority of the Senate ... Mr. Sanders has largely found ways to press his agenda through appending small provisions to the larger bills of others." During his time in the Senate, he had lower legislative effectiveness than the average senator, as measured by the number of sponsored bills that passed and successful amendments made. Nevertheless, he has sponsored over 500 amendments to bills, many of which became law. The results of these amendments include a ban on imported goods made by child labor; $100 million in funding for community health centers; $10 million for an outreach program for servicemembers who have post-traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injury, depression, panic attacks, and other mental disorders; a public database of senior Department of Defense officials seeking employment with defense contractors; and including autism treatment under the military healthcare program Tricare.
In August 2022, Sanders voted for the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. He was not satisfied with the bill, calling it only a small step forward. Sanders joined with Democrats to pass the Inflation Reduction Act, which capped the cost of insulin for seniors on Medicare to $35 a month and allowed Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices.
==== Finance and monetary policy ====
In 2008 and 2009, Sanders voted against the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), a program to purchase toxic banking assets and provide loans to banks that were in free-fall. On February 4, 2009, he sponsored an amendment to ensure that TARP funds would not displace US workers. The amendment passed and was added to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Among his proposed financial reforms is auditing the Federal Reserve, which would reduce its independence in monetary policy deliberations; Federal Reserve officials say that "Audit the Fed" legislation would expose the Federal Reserve to undue political pressure from lawmakers who do not like its decisions.
On December 10, 2010, Sanders delivered an 8-hour and 34-minute speech against the Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010, which proposed extending the Bush-era tax rates. He argued that the legislation would favor the wealthiest Americans. "Enough is enough! ... How many homes can you own?" he asked. Nevertheless, the bill passed the Senate with a strong majority and was signed into law a week later. In February 2011, Nation Books published the speech as The Speech: A Historic Filibuster on Corporate Greed and the Decline of Our Middle Class, with authorial proceeds going to Vermont nonprofit charitable organizations.
In 2016, Sanders voted for the Federal Reserve Transparency Act, which included proposals for a reformed audit of the Federal Reserve System.
==== Foreign policy ====
On June 12, 2017, U.S. senators agreed to legislation imposing new sanctions on Russia and Iran. The bill was opposed only by Sanders and Republican Rand Paul. He supported the sanctions on Russia, but voted against the bill because he believed the sanctions could endanger the Iran nuclear deal.
In 2018, Sanders sponsored a bill and was joined by senators Chris Murphy (D–CT) and Mike Lee (R–UT) to invoke the 1973 War Powers Resolution to end US support for the Saudi-led military intervention in Yemen, which has resulted in hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties and "millions more suffering from starvation and disease". After the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi in October 2018 (which was ordered by Saudi Arabian crown prince Mohammad bin Salman, according to multiple intelligence agencies), his bill attracted bipartisan co-sponsors and support, and the Senate passed it by a vote of 56–41. The bill passed the House in February 2019 by a 247–175 vote and President Trump vetoed it in March, saying: "This resolution is an unnecessary, dangerous attempt to weaken my constitutional authorities, endangering the lives of American citizens and brave service members, both today and in the future."
During the Gaza war, Sanders introduced several Joint Resolutions of Disapproval to block arms to Israel. All failed, but some Democrats voted for them. In November 2024, one such resolution garnered support from 18 senators. In April 2025, 15 senators supported another. In July 2025, 27 senators supported a resolution, a majority of Senate Democrats.
==== Health care ====
In mid-December 2009, Sanders successfully added a provision to the Affordable Care Act to fund $11 billion to community health centers, especially those in rural areas. The provision brought together Democrats on the left with Democrats from conservative, rural areas, helping to secure the 60 votes needed for passage. On May 4, 2017, in response to the House vote to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, he predicted "thousands of Americans would die" from no longer having access to health care. PolitiFact rated his statement "mostly true".
In September 2017, Sanders along with 15 Senate co-sponsors submitted the Medicare for All bill, a single-payer healthcare plan. The bill covers vision and dental care, unlike Medicare. Some Republicans have called the bill "Berniecare" and "the latest Democratic push for socialized medicine and higher taxes." He responded that the Republican Party has no credibility on the issue of health care after voting for legislation that would take health insurance away from 32 million Americans under the Affordable Care Act.
As chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Primary Health and Aging, Sanders introduced legislation in 2013 to reauthorize and strengthen the Older Americans Act, which supports Meals on Wheels and other programs for seniors.
==== Immigration policy ====
In 2007, Sanders helped kill a bill introducing comprehensive immigration reform, arguing that its guest-worker program would depress wages for American workers. In 2010, he supported the DREAM Act, which would have provided a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants who had been brought to the United States as minors. In 2013, he supported the Gang of Eight's comprehensive immigration reform bill after securing a $1.5 billion youth jobs program provision, which he argued would offset the harm of labor market competition with immigrants. In a March 2025 interview, Sanders said that Biden failed to properly curb illegal immigration and commended Trump for strengthening border immigration policies, adding, "nobody thinks illegal immigration is appropriate", while also criticizing mass deportations and calling for comprehensive immigration reform.
==== Income and wealth distribution ====
In April 2017, Sanders introduced a bill that would raise the minimum wage for federal contract workers to $15 an hour, an increase over an earlier Democratic $12 an hour proposal. On May 9, 2018, he introduced the Workplace Democracy Act, a bill that would expand labor rights by making it easier for workers to join a union, ban right-to-work laws and some anti-union provisions of the Taft–Hartley Act, and outlaw some union-busting tactics. Announcing the legislation, he said, "If we are serious about reducing income and wealth inequality and rebuilding the middle class, we have got to substantially increase the number of union jobs in this country."
Sanders opposed the 2018 United States federal budget proposed by the Trump administration, calling it "a budget for the billionaire class, for Wall Street, for corporate CEOs, and for the wealthiest people in this country ... nothing less than a massive transfer of wealth from working families, the elderly, children, the sick and the poor to the top 1%."
After the November 2017 revelations from the Paradise Papers and a recent report from the Institute for Policy Studies which says just three people (Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffett) own more wealth than the bottom half of the US population, Sanders stated that "we must end global oligarchy" and that "we need, in the United States and throughout the world, a tax system which is fair, progressive and transparent."
On September 5, 2018, Sanders partnered with Ro Khanna to introduce the Stop Bad Employers by Zeroing Out Subsidies (Stop BEZOS) Act, which would require large corporations to pay for the food stamps and Medicaid benefits that their employees receive, relieving the burden on taxpayers.
==== Veterans affairs ====
On June 9, 2014, Sanders sponsored the Veterans' Access to Care through Choice, Accountability, and Transparency Act of 2014 to reform the Department of Veterans Affairs in the wake of the Veterans Health Administration scandal of 2014. He worked with Senator John McCain, who co-sponsored the bill. His bill was incorporated into the House version of the bill, which passed both chambers on July 31, 2014, and was signed into law by President Obama on August 7, 2014.
=== Supreme Court nominees ===
On March 17, 2016, Sanders said he would support Merrick Garland's nomination to the Supreme Court, though he added, "there are some more progressive judges out there." He opposed Neil Gorsuch's nomination to the court, saying that Gorsuch had "refused to answer legitimate questions". He also objected to Senate Republicans' use of the nuclear option to "choke off debate and ram [Gorsuch's] nomination through the Senate". He voted against Gorsuch's confirmation as an associate justice and against Trump's nominees Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. In 2022, Sanders voted to confirm Joe Biden's nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court.
=== Committee assignments ===
As an independent, Sanders maintains an agreement with the Senate Democratic leadership where he votes with the Democrats on all procedural matters unless the Democratic whip, Dick Durbin, agrees that he need not (a request rarely made or granted). In return he was allowed to keep his seniority and received the committee seats that would have been available to him as a Democrat; in 2013–14 he was chairman of the United States Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs (during the Veterans Health Administration scandal).
Sanders became the ranking minority member on the Senate Budget Committee in 2015 and the chair in 2021; he previously chaired the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee for two years. Since 2017, he has been chair of the Senate Democratic Outreach Committee. He appointed economics professor Stephanie Kelton, a modern monetary theory scholar, as the chief economic adviser for the committee's Democratic minority and presented a report about helping "rebuild the disappearing middle class" that included proposals to raise the minimum wage, boost infrastructure spending, and increase Social Security payments.
=== 119th United States Congress Committee Assignments ===
Source:
Committee on the Budget
Committee on Environment and Public Works
Committee on Finance
Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (ranking member)
Committee on Veterans' Affairs
=== Caucus memberships ===
Sanders was only the third senator from Vermont to caucus with the Democrats, after Jeffords and Leahy. His caucusing with the Democrats gave them a 51–49 majority in the Senate during the 110th Congress in 2007–08. The Democrats needed 51 seats to control the Senate because Vice President Dick Cheney would likely have broken potential ties in favor of the Republicans. He is a member of the following caucuses:
Congressional Progressive Caucus
Democratic Caucus of the United States Senate
United States Senate Afterschool Caucus
=== Approval ratings ===
Polling conducted in August 2011 by Public Policy Polling found that Sanders's approval rating was 67% and his disapproval rating 28%, making him then the third-most popular US senator. Both the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) and the NHLA (National Hispanic Leadership Agenda) have given him 100% voting scores during his tenure in the Senate. In 2015, he was named one of the Top 5 of The Forward 50. In a November 2015 Morning Consult poll, he reached an 83% approval rating among his constituents, making him the most popular US senator. Fox News found him to have the highest net favorability at +28 points of any prominent politician included in its March 2017 poll. He ranked third in 2014 and first in both 2015 and 2016.
In April 2017, a nationwide Harvard-Harris Poll found that Sanders had the highest favorability rating among all the political figures included in the poll, a standing confirmed by subsequent polling.
== 2016 presidential campaign ==
During the 2012 Democratic presidential primaries, Sanders—dissatisfied with President Obama's "attempts to trade Social Security cuts for tax hikes"—reportedly considered running against him in the primaries. Sanders had previously suggested in 2011 that it was "a good idea" for someone to challenge Obama and "got so close to running a primary challenge ... that Senator Harry Reid had to intervene to stop him." In November 2013, Sanders suggested that Senator Elizabeth Warren could be president and that she might earn his backing if she ran. He added that if no progressive candidate ran, he might feel compelled to do so himself. In December 2014, Warren said she was not running.
Sanders announced his intention to seek the Democratic Party's nomination for president on April 30, 2015. His campaign was officially launched on May 26 in Burlington. In his announcement, Sanders said, "I don't believe that the men and women who defended American democracy fought to create a situation where billionaires own the political process" and made this a central idea throughout his campaign.
Warren welcomed Sanders's entry into the race, saying, "I'm glad to see him get out there and give his version of what leadership in this country should be", but never endorsed him.
Initially considered a long shot, Sanders won 23 primaries and caucuses and around 46% of pledged delegates to Hillary Clinton's 54%. His campaign was noted for its supporters' enthusiasm, as well as for rejecting large donations from corporations, the financial industry, and any associated Super PAC. Some of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails leaked to the public in June and July 2016 showed that the committee leadership had favored Clinton over him and had worked to help Clinton win the nomination.
On July 12, 2016, Sanders formally endorsed Clinton in her unsuccessful general election campaign against Republican Donald Trump, while urging his supporters to continue the "political revolution" his campaign had begun. Following his endorsement, Sanders spent weeks campaigning for Clinton, holding 39 rallies in 13 states during the final three months before the 2016 election.
=== Campaign methods ===
Unlike the other major candidates, Sanders did not pursue funding through a Super PAC or from wealthy donors, instead focusing on small-dollar donations. His presidential campaign raised $1.5 million within 24 hours of his official announcement. At the end of the year, the campaign had raised a total of $73 million from more than one million people, making 2.5 million donations, with an average donation of $27.16. The campaign reached 3.25 million donations by the end of January 2016, raising $20 million in that month alone.
Sanders used social media to help his campaign gain momentum, posting content to online platforms such as Twitter and Facebook and answering questions on Reddit. He gained a large grassroots organizational following online. A July 29, 2015, meetup organized online brought 100,000 supporters to more than 3,500 simultaneous events nationwide.
To his surprise, Sanders's June 2015 campaign events drew overflow crowds across the country. When Clinton and Sanders made public appearances within days of each other in Des Moines, Iowa, he drew larger crowds, even though he had already made many stops around the state and Clinton's visit was her first in 2015. On July 1, 2015, his campaign stop in Madison, Wisconsin, drew the largest crowd of any 2016 presidential candidate to that date, with an estimated turnout of 10,000. Over the following weeks, he drew even larger crowds: 11,000 in Phoenix; 15,000 in Seattle; and 28,000 in Portland, Oregon.
=== Presidential debates ===
The Democratic National Committee (DNC) announced in May 2015 that there would be six debates. Critics alleged that the small number of debates and the schedule, with half of the debates on Saturday or Sunday nights, were part of the DNC's deliberate attempt to protect Clinton, who was perceived as the front-runner. In February 2016, both the Clinton and Sanders campaigns agreed in principle to holding four more debates for a total of ten. Clinton dropped out of the tenth debate, scheduled to take place just before the California primary, citing a need to devote her time to making direct contact with California voters and preparing for the general election. Sanders expressed disappointment that Clinton canceled the debate before what he believed would be "the largest and most important primary in the presidential nominating process."
=== Polls and news coverage ===
Some Sanders supporters raised concerns that publications such as The New York Times minimized coverage of the Sanders campaign in favor of other candidates, especially Trump and Clinton. The Times' ombudsman reviewed her paper's coverage of the Sanders campaign and found that as of September 2015 the Times "hasn't always taken it very seriously. The tone of some stories is regrettably dismissive, even mocking at times. Some of that is focused on the candidate's age, appearance and style, rather than what he has to say." She also found that the Times's coverage of Sanders's campaign was much scanter than its coverage of Trump's, though Trump's was also initially considered a long shot at that time, with 63 articles covering the Trump campaign and 14 covering Sanders's. A December 2015 report found that the three major networks—CBS, NBC, and ABC—had spent 234 minutes reporting on Trump and 10 minutes on Sanders, despite their similar polling results. The report noted that ABC World News Tonight had spent 81 minutes on Trump and less than one minute on Sanders during 2015.
A study of media coverage in the 2016 election concluded that while Sanders received less coverage than his rival Hillary Clinton, the amount of coverage of Sanders during the election was largely consistent with his polling performance, except during 2015 when Sanders received coverage that far exceeded his standing in the polls. Studies concluded that the tone of media coverage of Sanders was more favorable than that of any other candidate, whereas his main opponent in the Democratic primary, Hillary Clinton, received the most negative coverage of any candidate. All 2016 candidates received vastly less media coverage than Donald Trump, and the Democratic primary received substantially less coverage than the Republican primary.
Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! noted that on March 15, Super Tuesday III, the speeches of Trump, Clinton, Marco Rubio, and Ted Cruz were broadcast in full. Sanders was in Phoenix, Arizona, on that date, speaking to a rally larger than any of the others, yet his speech was not mentioned, let alone broadcast. However, political scientist Rachel Bitecofer wrote in her 2018 book about the 2016 election that the Democratic primary was effectively over in terms of delegate count by mid-March 2016, but that the media promoted the narrative that the contest between Sanders and Clinton was "heating up" at that time.
An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll conducted in May 2016 found Clinton and Trump (by then the presumptive Republican nominee) in a "dead heat", but the same poll found that if Sanders were the Democratic nominee, 53% of voters would support him to 39% for Trump. Clinton and Trump were the least popular likely candidates ever polled, while Sanders received a 43% positive, 36% negative rating. Polls showed that Democratic voters older than 50 preferred Clinton by a large margin but that those under 50 overwhelmingly favored Sanders. A 2017 analysis in Newsweek found that 12% of those who voted for Sanders in the Democratic primary voted for Trump in the general election, a lower proportion than that of Clinton supporters in 2008 who voted for John McCain.
=== DNC email leak ===
In July 2016, a leak of the Democratic National Committee's emails appeared to show DNC officials favoring Clinton over Sanders. Staff repeatedly discussed making his irreligious tendencies a potential campaign issue in southern states and questioned his party loyalty. DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz called his campaign manager "an ass" and "a damn liar". Speaking with Jake Tapper on CNN, Sanders responded to the leak, saying, "it is an outrage and sad that you would have people in important positions in the DNC trying to undermine my campaign. It goes without saying: the function of the DNC is to represent all of the candidates—to be fair and even-minded. But again, we discussed this many, many months ago, on this show, so what is revealed now is not a shock to me."
=== Endorsement of Hillary Clinton ===
After the final primary election, Clinton became the presumptive Democratic nominee. On July 12, Sanders formally endorsed Clinton. He said he would continue to work with the Democratic National Convention organizers to implement progressive positions. Sanders refused to formally concede before the convention. He spoke at the 2016 Democratic National Convention on July 25, during which he gave Clinton his full support. Some of his supporters attempted to protest Clinton's nomination and booed when Sanders called for party unity. He responded, "Our job is to do two things: to defeat Donald Trump and to elect Hillary Clinton ... It is easy to boo, but it is harder to look your kids in the face if we are living under a Trump presidency."
On November 8, in the general election, Sanders received almost 6% of the vote in Vermont, even though he was no longer a candidate. This was the highest share of a statewide presidential vote for a write-in draft campaign in American history. He also received more votes in Vermont than Gary Johnson, the Libertarian candidate, and Jill Stein, the Green candidate, combined. It was possible to vote for Sanders as a write-in candidate in 12 states, and exact totals of write-in votes for him were published in three of them: California, New Hampshire, and Vermont. In those three states, he received 111,850 write-in votes, about 15% of the write-in votes nationwide, and less than 1% of total nationwide vote.
=== Post-election activities ===
In November 2016, Sanders's book Our Revolution: A Future to Believe In was released; upon its release, it was number three on The New York Times Best Seller list. The audiobook later received a Grammy nomination for Best Spoken Word Album. In February 2017, he began webcasting The Bernie Sanders Show on Facebook live streaming. As of April 2, 2017, guests had included William Barber, Josh Fox, Jane Mayer, and Bill Nye. Polls taken in 2017 found him to be the most popular politician in the United States.
In February 2018, Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 US elections concluded that Russians had communicated false information during the primary campaigns to help Sanders and Stein and harm Clinton. Sanders rejected the investigation's conclusion, saying that he had seen no evidence that Russians had helped his campaign. Furthermore, he questioned the Clinton campaign's lack of action to prevent Russian interference. He later said that his campaign had taken action to prevent Russian meddling in the election and that a campaign staffer had alerted the Clinton campaign. Politico noted that a Sanders campaign volunteer contacted a political action committee (PAC) that supported the Clinton campaign to report suspicious activities but that the Sanders campaign did not contact the Clinton campaign as such.
In November 2018, the Sanders Institute and Yanis Varoufakis, co-founder of DiEM25, launched Progressive International, an international organization uniting progressive activists and organizations "to mobilize people around the world to transform the global order and the institutions that shape it."
=== Influence on the Democratic Party ===
Analysts have suggested that Sanders's campaign shifted both the Clinton campaign and the Democratic Party politically leftward. A new political organization, Brand New Congress, was formed in April 2016 by former campaign staffers. It works to elect congressional representatives with platforms in line with Sanders. In August 2016, he formed Our Revolution, a political organization dedicated to educating voters about issues, getting people involved in the political process, and electing progressive candidates for local, state, and national office. Speaking on the PBS Newshour about the upcoming 2018 elections and discussing the main principles of the two major parties, Susan Page described the Republican Party as "Trump's party" and the Democratic Party as "Bernie Sanders's party", saying that "Sanders and his more progressive stance has really taken hold." Noting the increasing acceptance of his national single-payer health-care program, his $15-an-hour minimum wage stance, free college tuition, and many of the other campaign platform issues he introduced, an April 2018 opinion article in The Week suggested, "Quietly but steadily, the Democratic Party is admitting that Sanders was right." In July 2016, a Slate article called the Democratic platform draft "a monument to his campaign", noting not only his call for a $15 minimum wage but other campaign issues, such as Social Security expansion, a carbon tax, Wall Street reform, opposition to the death penalty, and a "reasoned pathway for future legalization" of marijuana.
Sanders's presidential campaigns led to a resurgence of interest in social democracy and democratic socialism among millennials.
== 2020 presidential campaign ==
On February 19, 2019, Sanders announced that he would seek the Democratic Party's 2020 nomination for president. He had declined the Vermont Democratic Party nomination for U.S. Senate in 2006, 2012, and 2018, which caused an unsuccessful legal challenge to his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016. Along with his 2019 campaign announcement, he said he would abide by a new Democratic Party rule for presidential candidates and that he would affirm his membership in that party. On March 5, 2019, he signed a formal statement, known as a "loyalty pledge", that he is a member of the Democratic Party and will serve as a Democrat if elected. News reports noted that the day before, he had signed paperwork to run as an independent for reelection to his Senate seat in 2024.
Sanders's campaign manager was Faiz Shakir. The campaign's national co-chairs were Ben & Jerry's co-founder Ben Cohen, Representative Ro Khanna, Our Revolution president Nina Turner, and San Juan mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz.
=== Campaign methods ===
Given the high national profile that Sanders maintained since his 2016 campaign, NPR described him as "no longer an underdog" when he announced his 2020 campaign. Using the large email list it built during the 2016 campaign, the 2020 campaign recruited more than one million volunteers within weeks of its launch. It enlisted several former NowThis News employees to produce professional videos for wide social media distribution, live-streamed various forums to its millions of social media followers, and launched a podcast and smartphone app for grassroots organizing.
=== Fundraising ===
Sanders's 2020 campaign employed many of the same methods as its 2016 counterpart, eschewing a Super PAC and relying predominantly on small-dollar contributions. According to Federal Election Commission filings, the Sanders campaign had raised the most money in the 2020 Democratic field as of June 2019, including money left over from his 2018 Senate and 2016 presidential races. In September 2019, the Sanders campaign became the fastest in US history to reach one million donors. On October 1, 2019, the campaign announced it had raised $25.3 million in the year's third quarter, with an average donation of $18. It was the largest quarterly sum raised by any Democratic candidate. The campaign raised $34.5 million during the fourth quarter of 2019.
=== Polls and news coverage ===
Sanders steadily polled between 15% and 20% on most national surveys between May and September 2019, according to the RealClearPolitics average. This placed him in a decisive second-place behind Joe Biden until Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris caught up in July. From mid-February 2020 to the start of March, Sanders polled in first place in the Democratic primary ahead of Joe Biden and was described by the press as the party's presidential front-runner.
According to a RealClearPolitics analysis, Sanders received the third-most mentions on CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC between January and August 2019, trailing only Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Biden, however, received twice as many mentions as Sanders and Harris. Mentions of Sanders on ABC World News Tonight found him in second place, though also trailing Biden by a large margin. Online mentions "reflect a slightly more balanced picture", with both Sanders and Elizabeth Warren running "neck-and-neck" with Biden.
=== Forums and other appearances ===
On April 6, 2019, Sanders participated in a Fox News town hall that attracted more than 2.55 million viewers. His decision to appear on Fox was controversial, given the Democratic National Committee's decision not to allow Fox to host any of its debates. His appearance saw an increase of Fox News viewers by 24% overall and 40% in the 25-to-54-year-old demographic, surpassing the ratings of all other Democratic presidential candidate town halls that year. As of September 2019, the town hall had received more than 1.5 million views on YouTube.
On August 6, 2019, Sanders appeared on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast. Some praised Rogan for "hosting a pragmatic discussion" while others "seemed rather stunned by Sanders's decision to appear on the show at all". After the podcast, Rogan became a top-trending Twitter topic. After interviewing him, Rogan said, "I am not right-wing ... I've interviewed right-wing people. I am 100% left-wing ... Bernie Sanders made a ton of sense to me and I would 100% vote for him." As of October 2019, the podcast had received more than ten million views on YouTube.
=== Presidential debates ===
In December 2018, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) announced the preliminary schedule for 12 official DNC-sanctioned debates, set to begin in June 2019, with six in 2019 and the remaining six during the first four months of 2020. During the July and September debates, commentators described Sanders and Elizabeth Warren as having a "non-aggression pact", staking out similar progressive positions in contrast to the more conservative candidates. In the October 15 debate, his first appearance since his heart attack, debate coach Todd Graham gave Sanders's performance an A, his highest rating of all the candidates.
CNN hosted the first 2020 debate in January with six candidates remaining. Co-moderator Abby Phillip questioned Sanders and Warren about an allegation Warren had made that he had privately told her that a woman could not defeat Donald Trump. Phillip asked Sanders, "Senator Sanders, CNN reported yesterday, and Senator Warren confirmed in a statement, that in 2018 you told her that you did not believe that a woman could win the election. Why did you say that?" Ignoring Sanders's strong denial, Phillip asked Warren, "What did you think when Bernie Sanders told you that a woman couldn't become president?" In an interview after the debate, Sanders called it ludicrous to believe that he would doubt a woman's ability to win the presidency and noted that a woman already had won the national popular vote, saying, "After all, Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump by 3 million votes in 2016."
=== Suspension of campaign ===
Sanders announced that he was suspending his campaign on April 8, 2020. He stated that he would remain on the ballot in the remaining states and continue to accumulate delegates with the goal of influencing the Democratic Party's platform. On April 14, Sanders endorsed Biden. Biden responded, "I think that your endorsement means a great deal. It means a great deal to me. I think people are going to be surprised that we are apart on some issues but we're awfully close on a whole bunch of others. I'm going to need you—not just to win the campaign, but to govern."
== Political positions ==
A self-described democratic socialist, Sanders is a progressive and left-wing populist who admires social democratic programs in Europe and supports workplace democracy via union democracy, worker cooperatives, and workers' management of public enterprises. He is a strong critic of contemporary neoliberal capitalism, which he calls "uber-capitalism", blaming it for such societal ills as declining life expectancy and rising diseases of despair. He advocates universal, single-payer healthcare, paid parental leave, and tuition-free tertiary education. He supports lowering the cost of drugs by reforming patent laws to allow cheaper generic versions to be sold in the US. He supported the Affordable Care Act, though he said it did not go far enough. In November 2015, he gave a speech at Georgetown University about his view of democratic socialism, including its place in the policies of presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson. Defining what "democratic socialism" means to him, Sanders said: "I don't believe government should take over the grocery store down the street or own the means of production, but I do believe that the middle class and the working families who produce the wealth of America deserve a decent standard of living and that their incomes should go up, not down. I do believe in private companies that thrive and invest and grow in America, companies that create jobs here, rather than companies that are shutting down in America and increasing their profits by exploiting low-wage labor abroad.."
Based on his positions and votes throughout his career, many commentators consider his political platform primarily focused on tax-funded social benefits inspired by the Nordic model and not on social ownership of the means of production. Some socialists and major socialist organizations have described Sanders as a democratic socialist, market socialist, or reformist socialist, while others have called him a reformist social democrat.
Bhaskar Sunkara has characterized Sanders's politics as "class struggle social democracy", arguing that while postwar social democracy operated as a compromise that instituted tripartite arrangements between business, labor, and government to dampen class conflict, Sanders sees social democratic demands as a means to sharpening class confrontation and raising class consciousness. His views have been echoed by George Eaton, arguing that Sunkara's phrase "captures the nuances of Sanders' politics in a way that a socialist / social democrat binary does not" and asserting that if he was elected president it would represent "the triumph of a politics that is neither wholly socialist, nor social democratic, but a new fusion of both".
=== Climate change ===
Sanders views global warming as a serious problem, and advocates bold action to reverse its effects. He calls for substantial investment in infrastructure, with energy efficiency, sustainability, and job creation as prominent goals. He considers climate change the greatest threat to national security. He said that family planning can help fight climate change. He opposed the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline on the grounds that, like the Keystone XL Pipeline, it "will have a significant impact on our climate." In 2019, he announced his support for Green New Deal legislation and joined representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Earl Blumenauer in proposing legislation that would declare climate change a national and international emergency.
=== Economic issues ===
Sanders focuses on economic issues such as income and wealth inequality, poverty, raising the minimum wage, universal healthcare, canceling all student debt, making public colleges and universities tuition-free by taxing financial transactions, establishing a 32-hour work week, and expanding Social Security benefits by eliminating the cap on the payroll tax on incomes above $250,000. He has become a prominent supporter of laws requiring companies to give their workers parental leave, sick leave, and vacation time, noting that nearly all other developed countries have such laws. He also supports legislation that would make it easier for workers to join or form a trade union. He opposed the Troubled Asset Relief Program and has called for comprehensive financial reforms, such as breaking up "too big to fail" financial institutions, restoring Glass–Steagall legislation, reforming the Federal Reserve Bank, and allowing the Post Office to offer basic financial services in economically marginalized communities.
Believing greater emphasis is needed on labor rights and environmental concerns when negotiating international trade agreements, Sanders voted against and has long spoken against NAFTA, CAFTA, and PNTR with China. He has called them a "disaster for the American worker", saying that they have resulted in American corporations moving abroad. He also opposes the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which he says was "written by corporate America and the pharmaceutical industry and Wall Street." On May 1, 2019, he tweeted: "Since the China trade deal I voted against, America has lost over three million manufacturing jobs. It's wrong to pretend that China isn't one of our major economic competitors."
Sanders also strongly opposes outsourcing American jobs. During discussions of the United States Innovation and Competition Act, which was to be used to fund the manufacture of semiconductors amid a shortage, he proposed a measure to ensure the companies the bill funded could not outsource their jobs. The proposed measure would also block the companies from forbidding their employees to unionize. Sanders's proposal was voted down by most Democrats and all Republicans in the Senate. Ahead of the 2022 midterms, Sanders said he wants the Democratic Party to focus more on supporting unionization: "I think we should move to a system where, if 50% of the workers in a bargaining unit plus one vote to form a union, they have a union. End of discussion."
Sanders supports establishing worker-owned cooperatives and introduced legislation numerous times from the 1990s to the 2020s that would aid workers who want to "form their own businesses or to set up worker-owned cooperatives." As early as 1976, Sanders proposed workplace democracy, saying, "I believe that, in the long run, major industries in this state and nation should be publicly owned and controlled by the workers themselves." Likewise, he supports empowering and expanding labor unions to advance union democracy. In 1987, Sanders defined democracy as public ownership and workers' self-management in the workplace, saying: "Democracy means public ownership of the major means of production, it means decentralization, it means involving people in their work. Rather than having bosses and workers it means having democratic control over the factories and shops to as great a degree as you can." In his 2020 run for president, he proposed that 20% of stocks in corporations with over $100 million in annual revenue be owned by the corporation's workers and that 45% of the board of directors of corporations with over $100 million in annual revenue be elected by the workers of that corporation.
=== Foreign policy ===
Sanders supports reducing military spending while pursuing more diplomacy and international cooperation. He opposed funding the Nicaraguan rebels known as the contras in the CIA's covert war against Nicaragua's leftist government. He opposed the US invasion of Iraq and has criticized a number of policies instituted during the war on terror, particularly that of mass surveillance and the USA Patriot Act. He criticized Israel's actions during the 2014 Gaza war and US involvement in the Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen. On November 15, 2015, in response to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL)'s attacks in Paris, he cautioned against Islamophobia and said, "We gotta be tough, not stupid" in the war against ISIL, adding that the US should continue to welcome Syrian refugees. He criticized the January 2020 drone assassination of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani, calling it a dangerous escalation of tensions that could lead to an expensive war.
Sanders supports Palestinian rights and has often criticized Israel, while consistently supporting Israel's right to exist. In 2020, he called the American Israel Public Affairs Committee a platform for bigotry and said he would not attend its conference. He condemned Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital, saying, "It would dramatically undermine the prospects for an Israeli–Palestinian peace agreement, and severely, perhaps irreparably, damage the United States' ability to broker that peace." During the Gaza war, he criticized Hamas for the October 7 attacks and Israel for its bombing of Gaza. He first called for only a pause in fighting, saying that he "doesn't know if a ceasefire is possible with an organization like Hamas", but later called for a humanitarian ceasefire and urged Biden to withhold military aid to Israel. Sanders accused Israel of mass starvation, ethnic cleansing, and extermination. Sanders initially said that allegations of genocide had to be adjudicated by the International Court of Justice, but in September 2025 he said: "The intent is clear. The conclusion is inescapable: Israel is committing genocide in Gaza."
Addressing Westminster College in a September 2017 speech, Sanders laid out a foreign policy plan for greater international collaboration, adherence to US-led international agreements such as the Paris Agreement and the Iran nuclear deal framework and promoting human rights and democratic ideals. He emphasized the consequences associated with global economic inequality and climate change and urged reining in the use of US military power, saying it "must always be a last resort". He also criticized US support for "murderous regimes" during the Cold War, such as those in Iran, Chile and El Salvador and said that those actions continue to make the US less safe. He also spoke critically of Russian interference in the 2016 US elections and the way President Trump has handled the crisis. He does not consider Turkey a US ally and condemned the Turkish military offensive against US-aligned Kurdish forces in northeastern Syria.
=== Gun laws ===
Sanders supports closing the "gun show loophole", banning assault weapons, and passing and enforcing universal federal background checks for gun purchases. In 1990, his bid to become a US Representative benefitted from the National Rifle Association of America opposing the competing campaign of Peter Smith, who had reversed his stance on firearm restrictions, and waiting periods for handgun purchases. In 1993, while a US representative, he voted against the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act (which established background checks and wait periods), and in 2005 voted for legislation that gave gun manufacturers legal immunity against claims of negligence, but as of 2016 he has since said that he would support repealing that law. In 1996, he voted against additional funding to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for research on issues related to firearms, but in 2016, he called for an increase in CDC funding for the study of gun violence.
=== Social issues ===
On social issues, Sanders has long taken progressive stances. He considers himself a feminist, is pro-choice on abortion, and opposes defunding Planned Parenthood. He has long advocated for LGBT rights; in 2009, he supported legalizing same-sex marriage in Vermont. Sanders has denounced institutional racism and called for criminal justice reform to reduce the number of people in prison, advocates a crackdown on police brutality, and supports abolishing private, for-profit prisons and the death penalty. He supports Black Lives Matter. He also supports legalizing marijuana at the federal level. He has advocated for greater democratic participation by citizens, campaign finance reform, and a constitutional amendment or judicial decision that would overturn Citizens United v. FEC.
=== First Trump administration ===
Sanders criticized President Trump for appointing multiple billionaires to his cabinet. He criticized Trump's rolling back President Obama's Clean Power Plan, noting the scientifically reported effect on climate change of human activity and citing Trump's calling those reports a hoax. He called for caution on the Syrian Civil War, saying, "It's easier to get into a war than out of one." In 2017, he promised to defeat "Trump and Trumpism and the Republican right-wing ideology".
Sanders gave an online reply to Trump's January 2018 State of the Union address in which he called Trump "compulsively dishonest" and criticized him for initiating "a looming immigration crisis" by ending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. He voiced concern about Trump's failure to mention the finding that Russia had interfered in the 2016 election and "will likely interfere in the 2018 midterms we will be holding ... Unless you have a very special relationship with Mr. Putin".
On January 6, 2021, Trump supporters attacked the United States Capitol. Sanders commented: "[Trump] has made it clear that he will do anything to remain in power – including insurrection and inciting violence [and he] will go down in history as the worst and most dangerous president in history."
Sanders voted to convict Trump on both articles of his first impeachment trial in 2020 (for pressuring a foreign leader to investigate Joe Biden), and again on the sole article of his second impeachment trial in 2021 (for inciting the Capitol attack).
=== Biden administration ===
Sanders influenced the environmental policy goals of the Biden administration as described before Biden's nomination. Biden's policy team adopted certain details from the Biden–Sanders Unity Task Forces' climate recommendations.
After Biden was elected president, Sanders became the subject of speculation over a potential appointment as Labor Secretary, which was supported by several progressive groups, such as the Sunrise Movement. For his part, Sanders said that he would accept Biden's nomination if it was offered, but Boston mayor Marty Walsh was chosen for the position instead. When announcing Walsh's nomination, Biden confirmed that he had discussed the position with Sanders, but the two agreed that Sanders's resignation from the Senate and the ensuing special election would have put the Democrats' slim Senate majority at risk.
On February 23, 2021, Sanders became the first senator in the Democratic caucus to oppose one of Biden's cabinet picks when he voted against Tom Vilsack's confirmation as Agriculture Secretary, citing concerns about Vilsack's past work as a lobbyist and ties to large corporations. In 2022, Sanders signed letters to Vilsack and Solicitor General of the United States Elizabeth Prelogar asking them to support the California farm animal welfare law Proposition 12 against a challenge to the law the National Pork Producers Council filed before the Supreme Court.
Sanders strongly supported Senate Democrats' decision to use budget reconciliation, a procedure used to avoid filibusters, to pass the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, despite having criticized Republicans' use of reconciliation to pass the 2017 tax cuts. The bill passed the Senate by a 50–49 vote and was signed into law by Biden on March 11, 2021.
Sanders has continued to have a strong influence on the Biden administration. When it was noted that he had become a key voice in Biden's administration, he replied, "As somebody who wrote a book called Outsider in the House, yes, it is a strange experience to be having that kind of influence that we have now." Their relationship has lasted over 30 years and Sanders has said it is based on respect and trust: "We have had a good relationship. He wants to be a champion of working families, and I admire that and respect that."
Before the 2022 midterm election, Sanders said he regarded it as deciding the fate of democracy, abortion, and climate change, calling it "the most consequential midterm election" of modern US history. He expressed a fear that the Democratic Party had "not done a good enough job" of getting its message out "to young people and working-class people".
Sanders was the only independent or Democratic senator to oppose the CHIPS and Science Act, joining 17 Republican senators. He called the bill "crony capitalism" and set several conditions for acceptance of the bill: "Companies must agree to issue warrants or equity stakes to the federal government; they must commit to not buying back their own stock, outsourcing American jobs overseas or repealing existing collective bargaining agreements; and they must remain neutral in any union organizing efforts".
In April 2023, Sanders endorsed Biden in the 2024 United States presidential election, and after Biden withdrew from the race, Sanders endorsed Harris for president at the Democratic National Convention. Sanders attempted to appeal to pro-Palestinian critics of Harris by saying, "I promise you, after Kamala wins, we will together do everything that we can to change US policy toward Netanyahu", and emphasizing Donald Trump's policies on climate change, minimum wage, and tax cuts for the wealthy.
=== Second Trump administration ===
Trump's reelection in 2024 was met with consternation by Democrats. The three richest men in America attended Trump's second inauguration, and Elon Musk's formation of DOGE, as well as the enactment of Project 2025, were seen as myopic and unconstitutional, featuring policies such as reducing taxes on corporations and capital gains, instituting a flat income tax on individuals, cutting Medicare and Medicaid, reversing President Joe Biden's policies, and reducing environmental protections. After Trump won the election, Sanders released a statement blaming the Democratic Party's abandonment of "working-class people" for its defeat. In February 2025, Sanders began the "Fighting Oligarchy Tour", in which he and Ocasio-Cortez held rallies criticizing Trump's policies and economic inequality. In April 2025, Sanders criticized the administration, saying that its moving "rapidly toward oligarchy", he also called US a "pseudo-democracy".
At one rally held in June 2025, Sanders reacted to news of Trump's bombing of Iranian nuclear sites by saying: "The American people are being lied to again today. We cannot allow history to repeat itself". Also in June, Sanders endorsed progressive politician and DSA member Zohran Mamdani for the 2025 New York City Democratic mayoral primary, calling him "best choice" for mayor. In September 2025, Sanders criticized Democratic Party officials for their perceived refusal to support Mamdani after his victory in the New York City mayoral primary. In the same month, Sanders gave an interview to Mamdani in which they discussed Sanders's political beginnings and his achievements as a mayor and senator. On September 15, 2025, Sanders said that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, becoming the first US senator to make such comment.
== Party affiliations ==
Born into a Democratic-voting family, Sanders was first introduced to political activism when his brother Larry joined the Young Democrats of America and campaigned for Adlai Stevenson II in 1956. Sanders joined Vermont's Liberty Union Party in 1971 and was a candidate for several offices, never coming close to winning election. He became party chairman, but quit in 1977 to become an independent. In 1980, he served as an elector for the Socialist Workers Party. In 1981, Sanders ran as an independent for mayor of Burlington, Vermont, and defeated the Democratic incumbent; he was reelected three times. Although an independent, he endorsed Democratic presidential candidates Walter Mondale in 1984 and Jesse Jackson in 1988. His endorsement of Mondale was lukewarm (telling reporters that "if you go around saying that Mondale would be a great president, you would be a liar and a hypocrite"), but he supported Jackson enthusiastically. The Washington Post reported that the Jackson campaign helped inspire Sanders to work more closely with the Democratic Party.Sanders attended the 1983 conference of the Socialist Party USA where he gave a speech.
Sanders first ran for the US House of Representatives in 1988 and for the US Senate in 2006, often adopting a strategy of winning the Democratic Party primary, thereby eliminating Democratic challengers, and then running as an independent in the general election. He continued this strategy through his reelection in the 2018 United States Senate election in Vermont. Throughout his tenure in Congress, he has been listed as an independent. He caucused with Democrats in the House while refusing to join the party, and continues to caucus with Democrats in the Senate. Some conservative southern House Democrats initially barred him from the caucus as they believed that allowing a self-described socialist to join would harm their electoral prospects. He soon came to work constructively with Democrats, voting with the party over 90% of the time during his tenure in Congress.
Starting with his 2016 presidential campaign, Sanders's announcements suggested that not only was he running as a Democrat, but that he would run as a Democrat in future elections. When challenged by Clinton about his party commitment, he said, "Of course I am a Democrat and running for the Democratic nomination." Since he remained a senator elected as an independent, his US Senate website and press materials continued to refer to him as an independent during the campaign and upon his return to the Senate. In October 2017, Sanders said he would run for reelection as an independent in 2018 despite pressure to run as a Democrat. His party status became ambiguous again in March 2019 when he signed a formal "loyalty pledge" to the Democratic Party stating that he was a member of the party and would serve as a Democrat if elected president. He signed the pledge the day after he signed paperwork to run as an independent for reelection to the Senate in 2024.
After Trump's victory in the 2016 elections, Sanders suggested the Democratic Party undergo a series of reforms and that it "break loose from its corporate establishment ties and, once again, become a grass-roots party of working people, the elderly and the poor." He drew parallels between his campaign and that of the Labour Party in the 2017 UK general election. He wrote in The New York Times that "the British elections should be a lesson for the Democratic Party" and urged the Democrats to stop holding on to an "overly cautious, centrist ideology", arguing that "momentum shifted to Labour after it released a very progressive manifesto that generated much enthusiasm among young people and workers." He had earlier praised Jeremy Corbyn's stance on class issues. Sanders is one of two independents in the Senate, along with Angus King, both of whom caucus with the Democrats.
== Personal life ==
In 1963, Sanders and Deborah Shiling Messing, whom he met in college, volunteered for several months on the Israeli kibbutz Sha'ar HaAmakim. They married in 1964 and bought a summer home in Vermont; they had no children and divorced in 1966. His son (and only biological child), Levi Sanders, was born in 1969 to then-girlfriend Susan Campbell Mott.
On May 28, 1988, Sanders married Jane O'Meara Driscoll (née Mary Jane O'Meara), who later became president of Burlington College, in Burlington, Vermont. The day after their wedding, the couple visited the Soviet Union as part of an official delegation in his capacity as mayor. They own a row house in Capitol Hill, a house in Burlington's New North End neighborhood, and a lakefront summer home in North Hero. He considers Jane's three children—Dave Driscoll (born 1975), Carina Driscoll (born 1974), and Heather Titus (née Driscoll; 1971)—to be his own.
Sanders's elder brother, Larry, lives in England; he was a Green Party county councillor, representing the East Oxford division on Oxfordshire County Council, until he retired from the council in 2013. Larry ran as a Green Party candidate for Oxford West and Abingdon in the 2015 British general election and came in fifth. Bernie Sanders told CNN, "I owe my brother an enormous amount. It was my brother who actually introduced me to a lot of my ideas."
=== Health ===
On October 1, 2019, Sanders was hospitalized after experiencing chest pains at a campaign event in Las Vegas. His campaign announced the next day that a blockage had been found in one coronary artery and two stents inserted. Scheduled campaign events and appearances were canceled until further notice. Two days later his campaign released a statement that he had been diagnosed with a heart attack. He was released from the hospital the same day. The statement included the following from Sanders's doctors:
After presenting to an outside facility with chest pain, Sen. Sanders was diagnosed with a myocardial infarction. He was immediately transferred to Desert Springs Hospital Medical Center. The senator was stable upon arrival and taken immediately to the cardiac catheterization laboratory, at which time two stents were placed in a blocked coronary artery in a timely fashion. All other arteries were normal. His hospital course was uneventful with good expected progress. He was discharged with instructions to follow up with his personal physician.
A few days after returning home, Sanders addressed media outside his home and said he had experienced fatigue and chest discomfort for a month or two before the incident; he expressed regret for not seeking medical assessment sooner: "I was dumb."
Sanders made his first national appearance after his heart attack on October 15 at the Democratic debate, at which he said, "I'm healthy, I'm feeling great." When asked how he would reassure voters about his health and ability to take on the duties of the presidency, he said, "We are going to be mounting a vigorous campaign all over this country. That is how I think I can reassure the American people." It was noted that he was "lively and sharp at the debate."
In December 2019, three months after the heart attack, Sanders released letters from three physicians, Attending Physician of Congress Brian P. Monahan and two cardiologists, who declared Sanders healthy and recovered from his heart condition.
=== Honors and awards ===
On December 4, 2015, Sanders won Time's 2015 Person of the Year readers' poll with 10.2% of the vote but did not receive the editorial board's award. On March 20, 2016, he was given an honorary Lushootseed name, dxʷshudičup, by Deborah Parker in Seattle to honor his focus on Native American issues during his presidential campaign.
On May 30, 2017, Sanders received an honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters from Brooklyn College.
=== Religion, heritage, and values ===
As Sanders described his upbringing as an American Jew in a 2016 speech: his father generally attended synagogue only on Yom Kippur; he attended public schools while his mother "chafed" at his yeshiva Sunday schooling at a Hebrew school; and their religious observances were mostly limited to Passover seders with their neighbors. Larry Sanders said of their parents, "They were very pleased to be Jews, but didn't have a strong belief in God." Bernie had a bar mitzvah at the historic Kingsway Jewish Center in Midwood, Brooklyn, where he grew up.
In 1963, in cooperation with the Labor Zionist youth movement Hashomer Hatzair, Sanders and his first wife volunteered at Sha'ar HaAmakim, a kibbutz in northern Israel. His motivation for the trip was as much socialistic as it was Zionistic.
As mayor of Burlington, Sanders allowed a Chabad public menorah to be placed at city hall, an action the ACLU contested. He publicly inaugurated the Hanukkah menorah and performed the Jewish religious ritual of blessing Hanukkah candles. His early and strong support played a significant role in the now widespread public menorah celebrations around the globe. When asked about his Jewish heritage, Sanders has said that he is "proud to be Jewish."
Sanders rarely speaks about religion. He describes himself as "not particularly religious" and "not actively involved" with organized religion. A press package issued by his office states his religion as Jewish. He has said he believes in God, but not necessarily in a traditional way: "I think everyone believes in God in their own ways", he said. "To me, it means that all of us are connected, all of life is connected, and that we are all tied together." In October 2015, on the late-night talk show Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Kimmel asked him, "You say you are culturally Jewish and you don't feel religious; do you believe in God and do you think that's important to the people of the United States?" Sanders replied:
I am who I am, and what I believe in and what my spirituality is about is that we're all in this together. That I think it is not a good thing to believe as human beings we can turn our backs on the suffering of other people ... and this is not Judaism, this is what Pope Francis is talking about, that we can't just worship billionaires and the making of more and more money. Life is more than that.
In 2016, he disclosed that he had "very strong religious and spiritual feelings", adding, "My spirituality is that we are all in this together and that when children go hungry, when veterans sleep out on the street, it impacts me."
Sanders does not regularly attend synagogue, and he does not refrain from working on Rosh Hashanah, as observant Jews do. He has attended yahrzeit observances in memory of the deceased, for the father of a friend, and in 2015 attended a Tashlikh, an atonement ceremony, with the mayor of Lynchburg on the afternoon of Rosh Hashanah. According to Richard Sugarman, his Jewish identity is "certainly more ethnic and cultural than religious." His wife is Roman Catholic, and he has often expressed admiration for Pope Francis, saying that "the leader of the Catholic Church is raising profound issues. It is important that we listen to what he has said." He has said he feels very close to Francis's economic teachings, describing him as "incredibly smart and brave". In April 2016, he accepted an invitation from Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo, an aide close to Francis, to speak at a Vatican conference on economic and environmental issues. While at the Vatican, he met briefly with Francis.
== In popular culture ==
In December 1987, during his tenure as mayor of Burlington, Sanders recorded a folk album, We Shall Overcome, with 30 Vermont musicians. As he was not a skilled singer, he performed his vocals in a talking blues style.
=== Internet culture ===
Owing to his two high-profile campaigns in the 2016 and 2020 Democratic primaries, Sanders and his campaigns have generated many Internet memes and other online content. The Facebook group Bernie Sanders' Dank Meme Stash, where users can submit memes focused around Sanders, received significant attention in the 2016 primary season due to the at-the-time unique idea of a meme community focused entirely on a politician. During the 2020 primary season, a still from a fundraising video in which Sanders tells the viewers "I am once again asking for your financial support" went viral online, with numerous edits made of the frame. The day before Super Tuesday 2020, a video of the Twitch streamer Neekolul wearing a Bernie 2020 shirt and lip-syncing the song "Oki Doki Boomer" also went viral. In 2021, a frame from the inauguration of Joe Biden showing Sanders seated in a folding chair wearing patterned mittens and a jacket reminiscent of the one in the "I am once again asking" meme went viral, with the image captioned or edited into other images, most commonly popular movie scenes.
=== In film and television ===
Sanders appeared in a cameo role in the 1988 comedy-drama film Sweet Hearts Dance, playing a man who distributes candy to young trick-or-treaters. In 1999, he acted in the film My X-Girlfriend's Wedding Reception, playing Rabbi Manny Shevitz. In this role, he mourned the Brooklyn Dodgers' move to Los Angeles, reflecting Sanders's own upbringing in Brooklyn. On February 6, 2016, he was a guest star alongside Larry David (who is a sixth cousin once removed of Sanders) on Saturday Night Live, playing a Polish immigrant on a steamship that was sinking near the Statue of Liberty.
In the DC Extended Universe film Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn), one of the reasons Roman Sionis wants Harley Quinn dead is that she "voted for Bernie".
== Publications ==
=== Books ===
With Huck Gutman, Outsider in the White House. London: Verso Books. 2015 [1997]. ISBN 978-1-78478-418-8. OCLC 918986570.
In Robert McChesney; Russell Newman; Ben Scott, eds. (2005). "Why Americans Should Take Back the Media". The Future of Media: Resistance and Reform in the 21st Century. Seven Stories Press. ISBN 978-1-58322-679-7. OCLC 57574152.
The Speech: A Historic Filibuster on Corporate Greed and the Decline of Our Middle Class. New York: Bold Type Books. 2015 [2011]. ISBN 978-1-56858-554-3. LCCN 2011920256. OCLC 927456901. OL 25090387M.
Our Revolution: A Future to Believe In. Thomas Dunne Books. 2016. ISBN 978-1-250-13292-5. OCLC 1026148801.
Bernie Sanders Guide to Political Revolution. Henry Holt and Company. 2017. ISBN 978-1-250-13890-3. OCLC 999379791.
Where We Go from Here: Two Years in the Resistance. Gale. 2018. ISBN 978-1-432-86916-8. OCLC 1126540640.
It's OK to Be Angry About Capitalism. Crown Books. 2023. ISBN 978-0593238714.
Fight Oligarchy, Crown Books, Oct. 2025. ISBN 979-8217089161
=== Articles ===
"Ending America's Endless War." Foreign Affairs, June 24, 2019
"Washington's Dangerous New Consensus on China." Foreign Affairs, June 17, 2021
"A Revolution in American Foreign Policy." Foreign Affairs, March 18, 2024
"Democrats must choose: The elites or the working class." The Boston Globe, November 10, 2024
"Bernie Sanders: Kennedy Must Resign." The New York Times, August 30, 2025
== See also ==
== Explanatory notes ==
== References ==
== Further reading ==
"Bernie Sanders Explains... Why Americans Are Furious at the Democrats: The Nation Interview [by John Nichols]", The Nation, vol. 321, no. 4 (November 2025), pp. 30–34. "[T]he [Democratic] party is saying, '[W]e can't support [Zohran Mamdani, running for New York City mayor] because he is saying what 75 percent of Democrats say about Israel: No more money for Netanyahu.' [p. 32.] [T]he money people decide who the candidates are... [p. 33.] A few years ago ... a poll [showed that] [a]lmost 60 percent of the people said [they] were better off 50 years ago. [p. 34.]"
Rall, Ted (2016). Bernie. New York: Hollowbrook Publishing. ISBN 978-1-60980-698-9.
Rice, Tom W. (1985). "Who Votes for a Socialist Mayor?: The Case of Burlington, Vermont". Polity. 17 (4): 795–806. doi:10.2307/3234575. ISSN 0032-3497. JSTOR 3234575. OCLC 5546248357. S2CID 153889856.
Rosenfeld, Steven (1992). Making History in Vermont: The Election of a Socialist to Congress. Wakefield, NH: Hollowbrook Publishing. ISBN 978-0-89341-698-0. LCCN 91034055. OCLC 24468446. OL 1553980M.
Soifer, Steven (1991). The Socialist Mayor: Bernard Sanders in Burlington, Vermont. Westport, CN: Praeger. ISBN 978-0-89789-219-3. LCCN 90048954. OCLC 22491683. OL 1887682M.
== External links ==
Senator Bernie Sanders official US Senate website
Campaign website
Appearances on C-SPAN
Biography at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
Financial information (federal office) at the Federal Election Commission
Legislation sponsored at the Library of Congress
Profile at Vote Smart |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Flanders#Personal_life | Ralph Flanders | Ralph Edward Flanders (September 28, 1880 – February 19, 1970) was an American mechanical engineer, industrialist and politician who served as a Republican U.S. Senator from the state of Vermont. He grew up on subsistence farms in Vermont and Rhode Island and was an apprentice machinist and draftsman before training as a mechanical engineer. He spent five years in New York City as an editor for a machine tool magazine. After moving back to Vermont, he managed and then became president of a successful machine tool company. Flanders used his experience as an industrialist to advise state and national commissions in Vermont, New England and Washington, D.C., on industrial and economic policy. He was president of the Boston Federal Reserve Bank for two years before being elected U.S. Senator from Vermont.
Flanders was noted for introducing a 1954 motion in the Senate to censure Senator Joseph McCarthy. McCarthy had made sensational claims that there were large numbers of Communists and Soviet spies and sympathizers inside the federal government and elsewhere. He used his Senate committee as a nationally televised forum for attacks on individuals whom he accused. Flanders felt that McCarthy's attacks distracted the nation from a much greater threat of Communist successes elsewhere in the world and that they created division and confusion within the United States, to the advantage of its enemies. Ultimately, McCarthy's tactics and his inability to substantiate his claims led to his being discredited and censured by the United States Senate.
== Early life and education ==
Flanders was born in Barnet, Vermont, on September 28, 1880, the oldest of the nine children of Albert W. Flanders and Mary (Gilfillan) Flanders. When Flanders was six, his family moved to Lincoln, Rhode Island, where his father farmed while overseeing the manufacture and sales in Pawtucket of a bookrack he designed. Flanders attended school in Providence and Central Falls, and was an 1896 graduate of Central Falls High School.
== Career ==
In his first years as a machinist and draftsman, he spent his vacations traveling by bicycle over country roads between Rhode Island and Vermont and New Hampshire. Later, he lived for a time in New York City where he edited a machine tool magazine, but after five years decided to move back to Vermont.
Flanders's career began with an apprenticeship, progressed into engineering, journalism, management, policy consulting, banking, finance, and finally politics when he was elected U.S. Senator from Vermont.
=== Apprenticeship and continued education ===
During his education in Rhode Island, Flanders received a solid grounding in mathematics, literature, Latin and Classical Greek. In addition, he acquired a working knowledge of German and French. According to Senator John Sparkman, when Flanders was in the Senate, Sparkman and he used to converse in Latin during committee meetings.
Unable to afford college tuition after his high school graduation, in 1896 Flanders's father bought him a two-year apprenticeship at the Brown & Sharpe Manufacturing Company, a leading machine tool builder. In addition to learning machining and drafting during his apprenticeship, Flanders also supplemented his training through courses at the International Correspondence Schools and the Rhode Island School of Design. Following his apprenticeship, he worked for various machine tool companies in New England. Despite his lack of a formal university education, he was a self-taught scholar, who read extensively in the literatures of science, engineering and the liberal arts.
=== Technical journalism ===
Flanders began writing early in his career, and his published articles on machine tool technology led to a job as an editor of Machine magazine in New York City. This job, which he held between 1905 and 1910, required him to cover developments in the machine tool industry. He traveled widely to visit the companies that he wrote about, which provided him many valuable contacts with leaders in the industry. As editor, he wrote articles on gear tooth systems, gear cutting machinery, hobs, and the manufacture of cans and automobiles, including Machine's reference series on the subject.
In 1909, while working long hours on his definitive book on gear cutting machinery, his energy gave out and he suffered a "nervous breakdown". He took time off to recover, and in 1910 he accepted an offer to work at a machine tool company in Vermont. He continued to write on technical and other matters throughout his life and developed a broad philosophy of the role of industry in society. In 1938, he received a Worcester Reed Warner Medal in recognition of his technical writing.
=== Engineering ===
Flanders's first major experience in machine design came when he helped an entrepreneur in Nashua, New Hampshire, develop a box-folding machine. After that, he worked as a draftsman for General Electric in Lynn, Massachusetts until 1905, when he moved to New York City to work for Machine.
In 1910, he moved to Springfield, Vermont to work as a mechanical engineer for the Fellows Gear Shaper Company. He was already friendly with James Hartness, the president of the Jones & Lamson Machine Company (J&L), another company in town. In 1911, Flanders married Hartness' daughter, Helen. Shortly afterwards, Hartness hired Flanders as a manager of the department at J&L that built the Fay automatic lathe. Flanders redesigned that lathe to achieve higher productivity and accuracy. He became a director in 1912 and president of the company in 1933 after Hartness retired. As president of J&L, Flanders implemented a continuous production line to manufacture the Hartness Turret Lathe instead of building each machine individually, attempting to bring some of the efficiencies of mass production to machine tool building. By 1923, he had acquired and assigned more than twenty patents to J&L.
Flanders and his brother, Ernest, were instrumental in developing screw thread grinding machines. These incorporated advances in thread technology (furthered by the Hartness optical comparator) and Flanders's engineering calculations for gear-cutting machinery. In 1942, the two brothers received the Edward Longstreth Medal of the Franklin Institute as recognition of this accomplishment, which improved the accurate manufacture of die-cut screws in soft metal and solved the problem of thread-grinding on hardened work. The award also recognized their development of a precision grinding machine that enabled rapid production of turbine blades at the start of jet aircraft age, which made it possible for companies including General Electric to manufacture jet engines far more quickly than they could previously.
=== Professional societies ===
Flanders became president of the National Machine-Tool Builders Association in 1923. He served as president of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) from 1934 to 1936. He was vice president of the American Engineering Council in 1937. Throughout the 1930s, Flanders served as chairman of the Screw-Thread Committee of the American Standards Association. In 1944 the ASME awarded him the Hoover Medal for his "public service in the field of social, civic and humanitarian effort[s]". The British Institution of Mechanical Engineers made him an honorary member.
=== Public life ===
In 1917, Flanders served in the Machine-Tool Section of the War Industries Board.
During the Great Depression Flanders began to write about social policy. His major concern was human development in a technological era. He addressed employing spiritual guidance with a "program of human values" to achieve a good life. Nevertheless, his underlying goal was to achieve "full employment". So, he kept himself grounded in economic principles, as understood and debated during that era.
In 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt's Secretary of Commerce, Daniel Roper, appointed Flanders to the Business Advisory Council, which was created to provide input to the administration on matters affecting business. The Council then made Flanders chairman of the Committee on Unemployment. This committee recommended addressing the problem both geographically and by industry. Flanders reported, however, that when the committee made its recommendations President Roosevelt was preoccupied with augmenting the Supreme Court and ultimately chose the undistributed profits tax instead—a choice that Flanders felt discouraged capital investment.
In 1933, the National Industrial Recovery Act created the National Recovery Administration (NRA). The NRA allowed industries to create "codes of fair competition," intended to reduce destructive competition and to help workers by setting minimum wages and maximum weekly hours. Flanders was appointed to the industrial advisory board of the NRA. In a speech before a 1934 conference of the code authority members, attended by President Roosevelt, Flanders opposed a proposal by the Roosevelt administration to require that businesses cut worker hours by 10 percent and raise wages by 10 percent in order to spread employment more widely. Ultimately, economic policy moved away from the codes system.
In 1937, Vermont Governor George Aiken appointed Flanders to two commissions: first, the Special Milk Investigative Committee to study ways to modernize dairying in Vermont; and second, the Flood Control Commission, which chose Flanders as its chairman. This commission was to negotiate with other New England states a means of sharing costs in a system of flood-control dams as part of recovering from the massive floods of 1927 and attempting to prevent a reoccurrence.
In 1940, the New England Council elected Flanders president. The governors of the New England states had established this council to study industry and commerce in their states. Flanders's role increased his awareness of the labor and business assets in New England. He also tried to alert his peers to the prospect of U.S. involvement in the expanding Second World War.
In 1942, Flanders became involved in the Committee for Economic Development (CED), an offshoot of the Business Advisory Council, whose purpose was to help re-align the nation to a peacetime economy after the war. Flanders reported helping to shape the CED's recommendations to Congress on roles for the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.
=== Banking and investment ===
Starting in the 1930s, Flanders held positions on the board of directors of the Shawmut Bank (1938–41), Federal Reserve Bank of Boston (1941–44)
Boston and Maine Railroad, National Life Insurance Company, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Norwich University.
In 1944, he was elected to a two-year term as president of the Federal Reserve Bank in Boston. During this period, the bank helped establish the Boston Port Authority to revitalize New England's capacity for sending and receiving goods by cargo ship.
In 1946, Georges Doriot, Flanders, Karl Compton and others organized American Research & Development (AR&D). This was the first venture capital company to invest—according to a set of investment rules and goals—in a pool of fledgling companies. Flanders served as a director of AR&D.
== Politics ==
In 1940, Ralph Flanders ran an unsuccessful campaign for the United States Senate. His Republican primary opponent was George Aiken, the popular two-term Governor of Vermont. Although Flanders admired and liked Aiken, he felt that Aiken's "liberal" ideas would not help the nation's economic recovery. In 1990, one of Vermont's major newspapers, The Rutland Herald described the 1940 Republican primary campaign as dirty and mean. Aiken's side accused Flanders of selling arms to the Nazis, and Flanders's side suggested that "Aiken was unduly influenced by his administrative assistant, a pretty 24-year-old with a fondness for power". In retrospect, Flanders felt that he had allowed his campaign advisers to make too many of the decisions. For example, a campaign brochure showed the candidate wearing a three-piece suit and holding a piglet in his arms. Although he had grown up on a subsistence farm and had an active interest in Vermont agriculture—especially in the type of hog shown in the picture—this made him appear to be a phony. The Rutland Herald observed that, "In Vermont in 1940, pigs were common to many households. But so was common sense. There were many people, most in fact, who did not want as their representative someone who would wear his best clothes if he intended to be handling pigs." Aiken won by 7,000 votes, having spent $3,219.50 to Flanders's $18,698.45. This campaign taught Flanders that "I had to be myself."
In August 1946, incumbent Senator Warren Austin resigned to accept U.S. President Harry S. Truman's appointment as Ambassador to the United Nations. The contest for the Republican nomination in the ensuing special election was between Flanders and Sterry R. Waterman. Flanders won the August 13 primary, which was then tantamount to election in Vermont. On November 1, Governor Mortimer R. Proctor appointed Flanders to complete the remainder of Austin's term. With Flanders certain to win the November 5 election for the term that started in January 1947, his appointment to complete the two months left in Austin's term gave him seniority over the freshman Senators who were elected on the same day. Vermont had not elected a Democrat to any statewide office since the founding of the Republican Party in 1854, and as expected, Flanders easily won his contest, receiving 75 percent to Democratic nominee Charles P. McDevitt's 25. Flanders was overwhelmingly reelected in 1952, taking 72 percent to Democratic nominee Allan R. Johnston's 28. He declined to seek a third term in 1958.
=== Senate record and committee assignments ===
Flanders's voting record in the Senate was more conservative than his senior colleague, George Aiken, and reflected Flanders's business orientation. In his second term, a Republican majority allowed Flanders to obtain seats on the Joint Economic Committee—this committee acted in an investigatory and advisory capacity to both Houses of the Congress—the Finance Committee and the Committee on Armed Services.
=== Political philosophy ===
Flanders, although himself a conservative, espoused a constructive competition between conservatism and liberalism. He felt that liberalism represented the welfare of individual people, as opposed to organizations—governments, businesses, etc.—preserving freedom of thought and action. For him, conservatism was concerned with preserving institutions that serve the interests of people, collectively. Conservatives, according to Flanders, could find themselves offering "reasoned objections to foolish proposals" by emotionally motivated liberals. He observed that, "Even in the established democracies, ... the voters are easily seduced into leaving politics to skillful politicians who are themselves without a sense of general, social responsibility."
==== On moral law in policy formulation ====
Flanders had a strict Congregationalist religious beginning, which evolved with his experience into a belief in "moral law". He felt that "recognition of moral law is as much a necessary requirement of social achievement as physical law is of material advancement." In Flanders's view, moral law required honesty, compassion, responsibility, cooperation, humility, and wisdom—values that all cultures hold in common. For him it was an absolute standard. He spoke of a "Presence" or "daimon" that "renewed his courage" and "indicated direction" in everything he did.
Flanders referred to the Marshall Plan as an important application of moral law to public policy. He said that the plan's true purpose was to fend off Communism through the economic restoration of Europe—not to provide relief to Europe (something beyond the powers of the U.S.), nor to enhance gratitude towards the U.S., its prestige or power.
==== On labor and business ====
In testifying on the Employment Act (of 1946) before the Banking and Currency Committee of the Senate in 1945, Flanders defined the "right to a job," as implying a responsibility shared among individuals, organized labor, businesses, and governments, as follows:
Each individual should be "productive, self-reliant and energetically in search of employment, when out of a job."
Organized Labor should avoid wage demands that upset costs of production in a manner that decreases the total volume of employment.
Business should operate efficiently to allow for expansion of production and employment.
State and local governments can help preserve human rights and property rights that foster investment, while the Federal Government should "encourage business to expand and investors to undertake new ventures."
Flanders felt that, to quell inflation, wage increases should be tied to productivity increases, rather than the cost of living. He recommended splitting gains in productivity three ways: to the worker for higher wages, to the company for higher profits and to the consumer for lower prices. He felt that with this approach everyone would benefit at the company level and in the national economy. Such an approach would require mutual respect and understanding between labor and management.
Flanders's relations with organized labor were amicable. He welcomed the United Electrical Workers Union into Jones & Lamson Machine Company. J&L became the first company in Springfield, Vermont to be unionized.
==== On Franklin D. Roosevelt ====
Flanders met with President Roosevelt on several occasions. He felt that Roosevelt and his advisors did not heed Secretary of the Navy, Frank Knox's warning that it was "easily possible that hostilities would be initiated by a surprise attack upon the fleet or the Naval Base at Pearl Harbor." He further faulted the president for failing to recognize the growing threat of Communism in China. In Flanders's opinion, he sold out on Mongolia, Nationalist China and Central Europe to Communist powers at the 1943 Tehran Conference. Flanders recognized the president's political genius and leadership skills, but deplored his advocacy of raising taxes. He characterized the Roosevelt philosophy as one where re-employment "must come from Government—not private—action." Flanders felt that large social programs were an ineffective approach to solve national problems.
==== On social policy ====
In his autobiography, Flanders reported exploring opportunities for government funding of public housing and higher education.
He voted in favor of the Civil Rights Act of 1957.
=== Cold War policies ===
National policy relating to the Cold War interested Flanders greatly. He was concerned about the worldwide encroachment of Communism even without force of arms. He felt that President Truman was generally a good president, but was hampered by the Roosevelt legacy of appeasing the Soviets. He also felt that Truman's commitment to bringing the Nationalist and Communist Chinese factions together into an alliance was mistaken. He endorsed the Marshall Plan as a way to avoid Communist influence in Western Europe. However, he was critical of John Foster Dulles, Secretary of State, for mishandling opportunities to create friendly alignment with Egypt and India, countries which instead sided with the Soviet Union.
Flanders felt that spending 62% of federal income on defense was irrational, when the Soviet government claimed it wished to avoid nuclear conflict. He advocated that the development of "A[tomic]- and H[ydrogen]-bombs be paralleled with equally intense negotiations towards disarmament." For him, "gaining the co-operation of the Soviet government on an effective armament control," was most important.
=== The censure of Joseph McCarthy ===
Flanders was an early and strong critic of fellow Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy's "misdirection of our efforts at fighting communism" and his role in "the loss of respect for us in the world at large". He felt that rather than looking inward for communists within U.S. borders, the nation should look outward at the "alarming world-wide advance of Communist power" that would leave the United States and Canada as "the last remnants of the free world". On March 9, 1954 he addressed Senator McCarthy on the Senate floor, expressing these concerns. (McCarthy had been advised of the speech, but was absent at the time.) Apart from a brief note of encouragement after this speech, Flanders was grateful that President Eisenhower stayed out of the McCarthy controversy. Members of President Eisenhower's cabinet passed along the message that Flanders should "lay off."
The Barre Montpelier Times Argus reported:
The speech was a sensation, and the next day Vonda Bergman reported to the Herald that Flanders was unable to appear on the Senate floor because of the flood of telephone calls and telegrams, said to run 6-1 in his support. One message called his speech 'a fine example of Vermont courage, humor and decency,' while another told him, 'Your remarks brought a breath of fresh clean air from the Green Mountains.'
Two Senate colleagues, John Sherman Cooper, R-Kentucky, and Herbert Lehman, D-New York, were among those who heaped praise on the Vermont senator. The editor of a national publication said: 'It was one of the few recent indications that the Republican Party on Capitol Hill is not wholly devoid of courageous moral leadership.' And an editorial in the Rutland Herald stated, 'The effect of the speech was to hearten that vast majority of Americans who hate communism but who also revere the Constitution.'
Other reactions were not so favorable. People who wrote the Rutland Herald "hinted at retribution for McCarthy's foes" and called McCarthy "a demigod above the law of the U.S.A. ... If you disagree, you are RED." William Loeb, owner of the Burlington Daily News, wrote, "It would take somebody as stupid as Senator Flanders to finally swallow the Democratic bait on the subject of Senator McCarthy."
In a speech that Flanders did not mention in his autobiography, the Times Argus article reported that on June 1, 1954 Flanders
... addressed the Senate on 'the colossal innocence of the junior Senator from Wisconsin.' Comparing McCarthy to 'Dennis the Menace' of cartoon fame, the Vermonter delivered a scathing address in which he lambasted the Wisconsin man for dividing the nation. 'In every country in which communism has taken over,' he reminded the Senate, 'the beginning has been a successful campaign of division and confusion.' He marveled at the way the Soviet Union was winning military successes in Asia without risking its own resources or men, and said this nation was witnessing 'another example of economy of effort ... in the conquest of this country for communism.' He added, 'One of the characteristic elements of communist and fascist tyranny is at hand as citizens are set to spy upon each other.' 'Were the junior Senator from Wisconsin in the pay of the communists, he could not have done a better job for them.' 'This is a colossal innocence, indeed.'
On June 11, 1954, Flanders introduced a resolution charging McCarthy "with unbecoming conduct and calling for his removal from his committee membership." Upon the advice of Senators Cooper and Fulbright and legal assistance from the Committee for a More Effective Congress he modified his resolution to "bring it in line with previous actions of censure." The text of the resolution of censure condemns the senator for "obstructing the constitutional processes of the Senate" when he "failed to cooperate with the Subcommittee on Privileges and Elections of the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration and acting "contrary to senatorial ethics" when he described the Select Committee to Study Censure Charges and its chairman in slanderous terms. Time reported that a "group of 23 top businessmen, labor leaders and educators ... wired every U.S. Senator (except McCarthy himself) urging a favorable vote 'to curb the flagrant abuse of power by Senator McCarthy.'" The Senate censured McCarthy on December 2, 1954 by a vote of 65 to 22. The Senate Republicans were split 22 to 22. For a further treatment of this episode, refer to Joseph McCarthy – Censure and the Watkins Committee.
A 1990 article in the Rutland Herald characterized the reaction in Vermont to Flanders's role in the McCarthy censure as "sour". It concludes that Flanders's convictions did not necessarily reflect the priorities of his constituency, which regarded the issue as "not our problem".
== Personal life ==
In 1911, Flanders married Helen Edith Hartness, the daughter of inventor and industrialist James Hartness. They made their home in Springfield, Vermont, when Flanders became president of Jones & Lamson. Flanders and his wife had three children: Elizabeth (born 1912), Anna (also known as Nancy—born 1918), and James (born 1923).
== Legacy ==
Flanders was the author or coauthor of eight books, including his autobiography, Senator from Vermont. He wrote about many issues: the problems of unemployment, inflation, ways for achieving a cooperative relationship between management and labor, and his belief that "moral law is natural law" and should be an integral part of everyone's education. His papers are located at the Special Collections Research Center at Syracuse University Library and at the Special Collections of the University of Vermont's Bailey-Howe Library.
During his lifetime, Flanders received more than sixteen honorary degrees from institutions that included Stevens Institute of Technology (M.E.), Dartmouth College (M.S., LL.D.), Harvard University (LL.D.), Middlebury College (D. Sc.) and the University of Vermont (D. Eng.).
His wife, Helen Hartness Flanders, was a folk song collector and author of several books on New England ballads.
Flanders died in Springfield on February 19, 1970. He was buried at Summer Hill Cemetery in Springfield alongside his wife and members of the Hartness family.
=== Vermont politics ===
Flanders's Senate legacy has continued to inspire Vermont politicians. In his May 24, 2001 speech announcing his departure from the Republican Party, Vermont Senator Jim Jeffords cited Flanders three times and spoke of him as one of five Vermont politicians who, "spoke their minds, often to the dismay of their party leaders, and did their best to guide the party in the direction of those fundamental principles they believed in." In speeches to Georgetown University Law Center and Johnson State College, Senator Patrick Leahy cited Flanders as one of three Vermont politicians who showed, "the importance of standing firm in your beliefs," "that conflict need not be hostile or adversarial" and who "rose up against abuses, against infringements upon Americans' rights when doing that was not popular." In 2016 Vermont Congressman, Peter Welch, cited Flanders as someone to emulate when resisting those policies of the Donald Trump Administration with which he disagreed, saying of Flanders, "He stood up and said no, this has got to end."
== Notes ==
== See also ==
Margaret Chase Smith, senator from Maine who spoke against McCarthy in 1950.
== References ==
== Bibliography ==
=== Flanders ===
Flanders, Ralph E. (February 1909a), "Interchangeable Involute Gear Tooth Systems", Journal of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (2410 F).
Flanders, Ralph E. (February 1909b), "Recent developments in gear-cutting machinery", Machinery (2242 C).
Flanders, Ralph E. (January 1909c), "How many gashes should a hob have?", Machinery (1550 C).
Flanders, Ralph E. (1909d), "Making solderless cans for food products", Machinery (7500 C).
Flanders, Ralph E. (October 1909e), "The design and manufacture of a high-grade motor car – Illustrated detailed description of the factory, methods and products of the Stevens-Duryea Co.", Machinery (8279 C).
Flanders, Ralph E. (1909f), Gear-cutting machinery, comprising a complete review of contemporary American and European practice, together with a logical classification and explanation of the principles involved, New York: J. Wiley & Sons.
Flanders, Ralph E. (1910), Construction and Manufacture of Automobiles, Machinery's Reference Series. No. 60, New York: The Industrial Press
Flanders, Ralph E. (1911). Locomotive Building: The Construction of a Steam Engine for Railway Use. The Industrial Press. ISBN 978-1-935327-55-4. {{cite book}}: ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)
Flanders, Ralph E. (1925), Design manufacture and production control of a standard machine, vol. 46, New York: ASME Transactions.
Flanders, Ralph E. (1930), "The new age and the new man", in Beard, Charles A. (ed.), Toward Civilization, New York: Longmans, Green & Co..
Flanders, Ralph E. (1931), Taming Our Machines; The Attainment of Human Values in a Mechanized Society, New York: R.R. Smith, Inc.
Flanders, Ralph E. (1932), "Limitations and possibilities of economic planning", Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, vol. 162, no. 16z (published July 1932), p. 27, doi:10.1177/000271623216200106, S2CID 143644084.
Flanders, Ralph E. (1935), New pioneers on a new frontier, vol. 46, New York: ASME Transactions, pp. R1–77.
Flanders, Ralph E. (1936a), "New pioneers on a new frontier", Mechanical Engineering Magazine, p. 3.
Flanders, Ralph E. (1936b), Platform for America, New York: Whittlesy House, McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc.
Dennison, Henry S.; Filene, L.; Flanders, R.; Leeds, M. (1938), Toward full employment, New York: McGraw-Hill Book.
Flanders, Ralph E. (1949a), The Function of Management in American Life, Palo Alto, California: Graduate School of Business, Stanford University.
Flanders, Ralph E. (1949b), Limitations of national policy: speech of Hon. Ralph E. Flanders of Vermont in the Senate of the United States August 11, 1949, Special Collections, University of Vermont Library.
Flanders, Ralph E. (1954), "Activities of Senator Mcarthy – The World Crisis", Congressional Record – Proceedings and Debates of the 83rd Congress, Second Session, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office (published March 9, 1954).
Flanders, Ralph E. (1956), Letter to a generation, Boston: Beacon Press.
Flanders, Ralph E. (1961), Senator from Vermont, Boston: Little, Brown.
Flanders, Ralph E. (1963), A Search for Meaning, Springfield, Vermont: Hurd's Offset Printing.
=== Others ===
ASME (1921), A.S.M.E. mechanical catalog and directory, Volume 11, American Society of Mechanical Engineers.
ASME (1944), Hoover Medal awardees, Asme.org, retrieved 2013-05-04
Crozier, Barney (September 29, 1979), "Vermont Senator's Speech Heralded McCarthy's End", Times-Argus (Randolph, Vermont).
"Scientific Notes and News", Science, 95 (2468): 403–406, 1942, Bibcode:1942Sci....95..403., doi:10.1126/science.95.2468.403, JSTOR 1668339.
"In our opinion—Sen. Flanders of Vermont", Burlington Free Press, p. 18, February 21, 1970.
"Leahy takes lead on Judiciary Committee", Burlington Free Press, December 17, 2006, archived from the original on March 4, 2007, retrieved January 4, 2010.
Fortune (August 1945), "Flanders of New England", Fortune Magazine, vol. 32, no. 2.
Herman, Arthur (2012), Freedom's Forge: How American Business Produced Victory in World War II, New York, NY: Random House, ISBN 978-1-4000-6964-4.
Hill, Tom (December 3, 1989), "Vt.'s Senator Ralph Flanders took on McCarthy, and won", Sunday Rutland Herald and Sunday Times Argus (Vermont), pp. E1, E4.
Jeffords, James (May 24, 2001), Transcript: Jeffords statement, CNN InsidePolitics, archived from the original on February 19, 2008, retrieved January 4, 2010.
Johnson, Mark (November 27, 2016), "Digger Dialogue: Welch weighs role with Trump, GOP in charge", VTDigger, retrieved 2018-05-25.
Klingaman, William (1996), The Encyclopedia of the McCarthy Era, Facts on File, ISBN 0-8160-3097-9.
Leahy, Patrick (May 17, 2008), Senator Patrick Leahy Delivers 2008 Commencement Address, Johnson State College, archived from the original on August 4, 2008, retrieved January 4, 2010.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (March 6, 1970), "Ralph Edward Flanders 1880-1970", Resolutions of the Corporation of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on the Death of Ralph Edward Flanders Life Member Emeritus.
Porter, Bill; Terry, Stephen C. (September 9, 1990), "Down & Dirty—The Aiken-Flanders Primary of 1940", Vermont Sunday Magazine, Rutland Herald and Barre-Montpelier Times Argus.
Roe, Joseph Wickham (1937), James Hartness: A Representative of the Machine Age at Its Best, New York: American Society of Mechanical Engineers, LCCN 37016470, OCLC 3456642. link from HathiTrust.
Senate Historical Office (1995), United States Senate Historical Office: "The Censure Case of Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin (1954)", Senate.gov, retrieved 2013-05-04.
"Ralph E. Flanders | Federal Reserve History", www.federalreservehistory.org, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, 2018, retrieved 2018-05-26.
Strickland, Ron (1998), Vermonters: Oral Histories from Down Country to the Northeast Kingdom, Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, ISBN 9780874518672.
"Sen. Flanders to Discuss Welfare" (PDF), The Tech (MIT Newspaper): 4, November 15, 1949, archived from the original (PDF) on October 28, 2008, retrieved January 8, 2009.
"The Dispensable Man", Time Magazine, August 2, 1954, archived from the original on July 14, 2007.
Duffy, John J.; Hand, Samuel B.; Orth, Ralph H., eds. (2003), "Flanders, Ralph E.", The Vermont Encyclopedia, Lebanon, New Hampshire: University Press of New England, ISBN 1-58465-086-9.
WGBH, Public Broadcasting Service (2004-06-30), Who made America – George Doriot, Pbs.org, retrieved 2013-05-04.
"Republicans Nominate Flanders for US Senator". Burlington Free Press. Burlington, VT. Associated Press. August 14, 1946 – via Newspapers.com.
"Ralph E. Flanders of Springfield, Vt. was appointed US Senator". Poughkeepsie Journal. Poughkeepsie, NY. November 1, 1946 – via Newspapers.com.
"Gibson Leads State Ticket". Burlington Free Press. Burlington, VT. Associated Press. November 6, 1946 – via Newspapers.com.
"Tech Professor Wins Medal for Aeronautics Research". The Boston Globe. April 16, 1942. p. 16.
== External links ==
Works by or about Ralph Flanders at the Internet Archive
United States Congress Biography
Times-Argus Article on the Flanders's Censure of McCarthy.
Vermont Public Radio commentary commemorating the 50th anniversary of Flanders's senate speech on McCarthy.
A collection of works by Ralph Flanders
== Further reading ==
Margolis, Jon (July 11, 2004), "A mighty fall—How an obscure Vermont senator brought down Joseph McCarthy 50 years ago.", Sunday Rutland Herald & Sunday Times-Argus, pp. 8–11
Meltzer, Allan H. (2003). A History of the Federal Reserve – Volume 1: 1913–1951. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. pp. 685–694. ISBN 978-0226520001.
Shannon, William V. (March 14, 1954), "An old-timer says a mouthful", New York Post, pp. 2M |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/After_the_Deluge_(painting) | After the Deluge (painting) | After the Deluge, also known as The Forty-First Day, is a Symbolist oil painting by English artist George Frederic Watts, first exhibited as The Sun in an incomplete form in 1886, and completed in 1891. It shows a scene from the story of Noah's Flood, in which after 40 days of rain Noah opens the window of his Ark to see that the rain has stopped. Watts felt that modern society was in decline owing to a lack of moral values, and he often painted works on the topic of the Flood and its cleansing of the unworthy from the world. The painting takes the form of a stylized seascape, dominated by a bright sunburst breaking through clouds. Although this was a theme Watts had depicted previously in The Genius of Greek Poetry in 1878, After the Deluge took a radically different approach. With this painting he intended to evoke God in the act of creation, but avoid depicting the Creator directly.
The unfinished painting was exhibited at a church in Whitechapel in 1886, under the intentionally simplified title of The Sun. Watts worked on the painting for a further five years, and the completed version was exhibited for the first time at the New Gallery in 1891. Between 1902 and 1906 the painting was exhibited around the United Kingdom, and it is now in the collection of the Watts Gallery in Compton, Surrey. As Watts did not include After the Deluge in his gift to the nation of what he considered his most significant works, it is not among his better-known paintings. However, it was greatly admired by many of Watts's fellow artists, and has been cited as an influence on numerous other painters who worked in the two decades following its initial exhibition.
== Background ==
George Frederic Watts was born in 1817, the son of a London musical instrument manufacturer. His two brothers died in 1823, and his mother in 1826, giving Watts an obsession with death that lasted throughout his life. Watts was apprenticed as a sculptor at the age of 10, and by his mid-teens was proficient enough as an artist to be earning a living as a portrait painter. At the age of 18 he gained admission to the Royal Academy of Arts, although he disliked their methods and his attendance was intermittent. From 1837, Watts was successful enough to devote himself full-time to painting.
In 1843 Watts travelled to Italy where he remained for four years. On his return to London he suffered from melancholia, and painted many notably gloomy works. His skills were widely celebrated, and in 1856 he decided to devote himself to portrait painting. His portraits were highly regarded, and in 1867 he was elected to the Royal Academy, at the time the highest honour available to an artist, although he rapidly became disillusioned with its culture. From 1870 onwards he became widely renowned as a painter of allegorical and mythical subjects; by this time, he was one of the most highly regarded artists in the world. In 1881 he added a glass-roofed gallery to his home at Little Holland House, which was open to the public at weekends, further increasing his fame.
== Subject ==
After the Deluge depicts a scene from the story of Noah's Flood, in which Noah opens the window of the Ark to see that after forty days the rain has ended but the floodwaters have not yet subsided. Although his father's strict evangelical Christianity had instilled in Watts a strong dislike of organised religion, he had a deep knowledge of the Bible, and Noah and the Flood were both themes he regularly depicted throughout his career.
Watts had a strong belief in the idea that modern society was prioritising wealth over social values, and that this attitude, which he described as "the hypocritical veiling of the daily sacrifice made to this deity", was leading to the decline of society. Hilary Underwood of the University of Surrey writes that Watts likely painted so many works on the theme of Noah as he saw modern parallels with the notion of the cleaning of a degenerate society while preserving those who still adhered to moral standards. Watts chose to depict the moment at which the sunlight became visible for the first time, after 40 days obscured by clouds.
And the waters decreased continually until the tenth month: in the tenth month, on the first day of the month, were the tops of the mountains seen. And it came to pass at the end of forty days, that Noah opened the window of the ark which he had made.
== Composition ==
Watts illustrated the scene with a highly stylised seascape. Above the sea is a bright sunburst, with the light of the sun illuminating the surrounding clouds and bright rays projecting beyond the edges of the canvas. Watts's composition echoes J. M. W. Turner's 1843 treatment of the same topic, Light and Colour (Goethe's Theory) – The Morning after the Deluge – Moses Writing the Book of Genesis, in primarily depicting a circle of bright light. However, Turner's painting depicts recognisable human figures, and no work by Turner ever came as close to pure abstract art as Watts's composition.
In this stage of his career Watts regularly painted images linking awe-inspiring natural events and the will of God. His focus on the Sun reflects his longstanding interest in it as a divine symbol; The Sacrifice of Noah, painted c. 1865, showed Noah sacrificing to the sun in thanks for his family's salvation. This interest in the Sun possibly came from Watts's acquaintance Max Müller, who had written extensively on solar theories of mythology (the belief that the religions of Europe, the Middle East and southern Asia were all ultimately derived from Proto-Indo-European worship of the Sun). Writing after Watts's death, his widow Mary Seton Watts wrote that:
A visitor looking at After the Deluge remarked that into such a scheme of colour he felt it would not have been impossible to introduce the figure of the Creator. 'Ah no,' Mr Watts replied. 'But that is exactly what I could wish to make those who look at the picture conceive for themselves. The hand of the Creator moving by light and by heat to re-create. I have not tried to paint a portrait of the sun—such a thing is unpaintable—but I wanted to impress you with the idea of its enormous power.'
Watts had previously depicted an orange sun above a flat sea in his 1878 work The Genius of Greek Poetry, but the theme and composition of After the Deluge was radically different. The Genius of Greek Poetry was intended to evoke pantheism, with figures representing the forces of nature in human form working and playing, while being watched by the large central figure of the Genius. After the Deluge was explicitly intended as a monotheistic image, evoking both the magnificence and the redemptive mercy of a single all-powerful God engaging in the act of creation.
After the Deluge was exhibited in unfinished form in 1886 as The Sun at St Jude's Church, Whitechapel; Samuel Barnett, vicar of St Jude's, organised annual art exhibitions in east London in an effort to bring beauty into the lives of the poor; he had a close relationship with Watts, and regularly borrowed his works to display them to local residents. Following this exhibition Watts continued to work on the painting for a further five years.
== After completion ==
The completed version of After the Deluge was exhibited at the New Gallery in 1891. On the occasion of its 1891 exhibition and at a later exhibition in 1897, also at the New Gallery, it was accompanied by an explanatory note (thought to have been written by Watts) explaining the image:
A transcendent power of light and heat bursts forth to re-create; darkness is chased away; the waters, obedient to the higher law, already disperse into vapoury mists and pass from the face of the earth.
Between 1902 and 1906 it was exhibited around the country, being shown in Cork, Edinburgh, Manchester and Dublin, as well as at Watts's own gallery at Little Holland House. In 1904 it was transferred to the newly-opened Watts Gallery in Compton, Surrey, shortly before Watts's death later that year. Two years prior to this, Watts had returned to the theme of creation with The Sower of the Systems, which for the first time in one of his works directly depicted God, and which he described as representing "a great gesture into which everything that exists is woven".
Although Watts painted landscapes throughout his life, he did not consider such paintings to be major works, and when between 1886 and 1902 he donated what he felt to be his 23 most significant non-portrait works to the nation for public display, no landscape paintings were included. As a consequence of its omission from these gifts to the nation, After the Deluge is not among his better-known works, although it was greatly admired by many of Watts's fellow artists. Walter Bayes wrote in 1907 that After the Deluge was "the sort of landscape that we connect with the name of Mr Watts, a landscape from which all that is coarse and material has been eliminated, and which offers a residuum that is a kind of sublimation of all the most poetic elements in nature". It has been cited as an influence on many works painted in the two decades following its completion, including paintings of the sun by Maurice Chabas, Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo and Edvard Munch. After the Deluge remains in the collection of the Watts Gallery.
== Notes ==
== References ==
=== Bibliography ===
Bayes, Walter (1907). The Landscapes of George Frederic Watts. London: George Newnes Ltd. OCLC 1862135.
Bills, Mark (2011). Painting for the Nation: G. F. Watts at the Tate. Compton, Surrey: Watts Gallery. ISBN 978-0-9561022-5-6.
Bills, Mark; Bryant, Barbara (2008). G. F. Watts: Victorian Visionary. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-15294-4.
Robinson, Leonard (2007). William Etty: The Life and Art. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company. ISBN 978-0-7864-2531-0. OCLC 751047871.
Staley, Allen; Underwood, Hilary (2006). Painting the Cosmos: Landscapes by G. F. Watts. Compton, Surrey: Watts Gallery. ISBN 0-9548230-5-2.
Tromans, Nicholas (2011). Hope: The Life and Times of a Victorian Icon. Compton, Surrey: Watts Gallery. ISBN 978-0-9561022-7-0.
Warner, Malcolm (1996). The Victorians: British Painting 1837–1901. Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art. ISBN 978-0-8109-6342-9. OCLC 59600277. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icon_(character)#:~:text=An%20original%20character%20from%20Milestone,place%20in%20a%20different%20continuity. | Icon (character) | Icon (Arnus; alias Augustus Freeman) is a fictional superhero appearing in comic books published by DC Comics, one of the headline characters introduced by Milestone Media in the 1990s. A being from another planet, he has taken on the form of an African-American man, and has abilities such as flight, super-strength, and invulnerability. He uses these in partnership with Rocket, a human teenager using his alien technology, to protect the people of the fictional city of Dakota.
== Publication history ==
An original character from Milestone Comics, he was created by Dwayne McDuffie and M. D. Bright and first appeared in Icon #1 (May 1993). Although published and distributed by DC Comics, the Milestone titles took place in a different continuity. In addition to guest appearances in other titles, the character appeared monthly in his own series, until the Milestone imprint was discontinued in 1997. In 1994, the character was involved in Worlds Collide, a month-long crossover between Milestone and DC Comics' Superman titles.
In the late 2000s, the Milestone Universe and characters were revived and merged into the DC Universe, as part of an agreement between DC Comics and Milestone Media. The merger treated the characters as new to the universe, ignoring the previous crossover. Icon, along with Shadow Cabinet, appeared in Justice League of America (vol. 2) #27, written by McDuffie.
== Fictional character biography ==
In 1839, an alien starliner malfunctioned and exploded, jettisoning a life-pod in the middle of a cotton field in the American South. The pod automatically alters the appearance of its passenger, Arnus, to mimic an enslaved black woman named Miriam, who witnesses the pod land on Earth and adopts Arnus as her son.
Arnus possesses longevity that makes him appear to be middle-aged despite being centuries old. As a result, he periodically assumes the identity of his own son. By the late 20th century, he is posing as Augustus Freeman IV, the great-grandson of his original human identity, and becomes a superhero alongside his protége Rocket.
=== DC Universe ===
During the Final Crisis event, Orion kills his father Darkseid, which destabilizes the space-time continuum and threatens the existence of both the Dakotaverse and the mainstream DC universe. Dharma uses energies harnessed from the entity Rift to merge the two universes, creating an entirely new continuity and altering history so that the residents of the Dakotaverse have always existed in the DC universe. Only Dharma, Icon, and Superman are aware that Dakota and its inhabitants ever existed in a parallel universe.
== Supporting characters ==
Raquel Ervin/Rocket: Raquel saw Augustus Freeman use his powers when his home was being robbed, and convinced him to become a super hero, as well as take her on as sidekick. All of Rocket's superhuman powers derive from her inertia belt, based on tech from Icon's ship.
Darnice/Rocket II: Raquel's best friend, Darnice took on the role of Rocket while Raquel was on maternity leave (one insisted upon by both Icon and her close friends).
Amistad Augustus Ervin is Raquel's infant son, named for the Spanish slave ship and for her partner, Icon.
Rufus T. Wild/"Buck Wild, Mercenary Man" is a superhero who possesses superhuman strength and durability, and is a parody of Marvel Comics character Luke Cage. He is recruited to replace Icon when he returns to his home planet before being killed in battle with Oblivion.
== Powers and abilities ==
Icon's lifepod altered his DNA so he would resemble a human, thus enabling him to blend among Earth's natives. A side effect of this process was the maximization of his hybrid genetic structure. Thus, Icon possesses a variety of superhuman abilities that are unusual even for a Terminan. Icon possesses immense strength, durability, speed, and senses, and is able to project radiant energy. Icon can project low-energy bolts that can render human beings unconscious and overload electronic devices.
Icon ages at a much slower rate than human beings, making him appear middle-aged despite him being several centuries old. Icon's lifespan is typical for a Terminan and the only power that is not the result of his genetic maximization.
=== Skills and equipment ===
Icon is an experienced lawyer with decades of experience in the field. Icon is also a formidable combatant, whose fighting skills are close to those of Superman. Icon is well trained in unarmed and armed combat, having fought in major conflicts ranging from the Civil War to World War II.
For interstellar journeys, Icon employs his personal starship, which possesses a faster-than-light drive that allows it to shift into the realm called hyperspace. Gravity compensators provide artificial gravity that can be adjusted.
Icon's starship is linked to the Info Tool, a computerized database of knowledge that scan an item (organic or inorganic) and store its molecular structure within files called "software". Apart from storing and retrieving data, the Info Tool can link to and control any computer-operated device or system.
The Maker is a molecular factory that can construct any physical item, molecule by molecule, from structural data files stored within the Info Tool. These data files are called "software", while objects created by the Maker are known as "hardware".
Icon's ship is equipped with cloaking technology that can render the vessel invisible to both the human eye and electronic surveillance. Though not typical for a civilian vessel, the cloak was installed in Icon's ship so he could use it on Earth without attracting attention.
== Collected editions ==
=== Trade paperbacks ===
== In other media ==
Icon appears in Young Justice, voiced by Tony Todd. This version is an associate, later member, of the Justice League.
== Politics ==
Icon is a conservative Republican who holds conservative views on economic and social issues, which often put him in conflict with more liberal Milestone Comics superheroes, including his sidekick. Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas was an avowed fan of Icon, to the extent that he quoted the character on multiple occasions; upon learning of this, author Dwayne McDuffie, who in the blog post he wrote on the matter described himself as liberal, suffered writer's block out of fears that dialogue he wrote would be used in the service of conservatism.
== Awards ==
Icon was nominated for three Eisner Awards and is a three-time winner of Parents' Choice Award honors.
== References ==
== External links ==
Official DC Comics profile
World of black heroes: Icon Biography
International Heroes: Icon
Icon at the DC Database Project |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carla_Bruni_discography | Carla Bruni discography | Italian-French singer Carla Bruni has released six studio albums, five singles, six promotional singles and five music videos. In 2003, her debut album Quelqu'un m'a dit, produced by Louis Bertignac, was released in Europe with success in Francophone countries. Three songs from the album appear in Hans Canosa's 2005 American film Conversations with Other Women, the song Le Plus Beau du quartier was used in H&M's Christmas 2006 commercial, and the title track was featured in the 2003 movie Le Divorce and in the 2009 movie (500) Days of Summer. In January 2010, her song "L'amoureuse" was featured in an episode of NBC's Chuck, "Chuck vs. First Class".
Her second album, No Promises containing poems by William Butler Yeats, Emily Dickinson, W. H. Auden, Dorothy Parker, Walter de la Mare and Christina Rossetti, set to music, was released in January 2007. She released her third album Comme si de rien n'était on 11 July 2008. The songs were self-penned except for one rendition of "You Belong to Me" and another song featuring Michel Houellebecq's poem La Possibilité d'une île set to music. Royalties from the album were planned to be donated to unidentified charitable and humanitarian causes.
== Albums ==
=== Studio albums ===
=== Live albums ===
== Singles ==
=== As main artist ===
=== Promotional singles ===
=== As featured artist ===
== Other charted songs ==
== Music videos ==
== Notes ==
== References == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._C._Leyendecker#:~:text=Leyendecker's%20last%20cover%20for%20the,in%20the%201930s%20and%201940s. | J. C. Leyendecker | Joseph Christian Leyendecker (March 23, 1874 – July 25, 1951) was one of the most prominent and financially successful freelance commercial artists in the United States. He was active between 1895 and 1951 producing drawings and paintings for hundreds of posters, books, advertisements, and magazine covers and stories. He is best known for his 80 covers for Collier's Weekly, 322 covers for The Saturday Evening Post, and advertising illustrations for B. Kuppenheimer men's clothing and Arrow brand shirts and detachable collars. He was one of the few known reportedly gay artists working in the early-twentieth century United States.
== Early life ==
Leyendecker (also known as 'J. C.' or 'Joe') was born on March 23, 1874, in Montabaur, Germany, to Peter Leyendecker (1838–1916) and Elizabeth Ortseifen Leyendecker (1845–1905). His brother and fellow illustrator Francis Xavier (aka "Frank") was born two years later. In 1882, the entire Leyendecker family immigrated to Chicago, Illinois, where Elizabeth's brother Adam Ortseifen was vice-president of the McAvoy Brewing Company. A sister, Augusta Mary, arrived after the family immigrated to America. Leyendecker was of Sephardic Jewish ancestry through his father.
As a teenager, around 1890, J. C. Leyendecker apprenticed at the Chicago printing and engraving company J. Manz & Company, eventually working his way up to the position of staff artist. At the same time he took night classes at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
After studying drawing and anatomy under John Vanderpoel at the Art Institute, J. C. and Frank enrolled in the Académie Julian in Paris from October 1895 through June 1897. Upon their return to Chicago, the Leyendecker brothers took an apartment in Hyde Park. They also shared a studio in Chicago's Fine Arts Building at 410 South Michigan Ave.
== Career ==
J. C. Leyendecker had a long career that extended from the mid-1890s until his death in 1951. During that time he worked for a wide range of commercial, editorial and government clients.
=== Before 1902: Chicago and Paris ===
As a staff artist at J. Manz & Company J. C. Leyendecker produced 60 Bible illustrations for the Powers Brothers Company, cover and interior illustrations for The Interior magazine, and frontispiece art for The Inland Printer. He also produced artwork for posters and book covers for the Chicago publisher E. A. Weeks. He also provided artwork for a range of marketing materials for the Chicago men's clothier Hart, Schaffner & Marx.
While in Paris, J. C. Leyendecker continued providing art to Hart, Schaffner & Marx, produced artwork for 12 covers of The Inland Printer, and won a contest (out of 700 entries) for the poster and cover of the midsummer 1896 issue of The Century Magazine, which garnered national newspaper and magazine coverage.
Upon his return from Paris in June 1897, Leyendecker illustrated for a range of mostly local clients including Hart, Schaffner & Marx, the Chicago department store Carson, Pirie & Scott, the Eastern Illinois Railroad, the Northern Pacific Railroad, Woman's Home Companion magazine, the stone cutter's trade journal Stone, Carter's monthly, the bird hobbyist magazine The Osprey, and books including Conan Doyle's Micah Clarke and Octave Thanet's A Book of True Lovers. He also painted 132 scenes of America for L. W. Yaggy's laptop panorama of Biblical scenes titled Royal Scroll published by Powers, Fowler & Lewis (Chicago).
On May 20, 1899, Leyendecker received his first commission for a cover for The Saturday Evening Post launching a forty-four-year association with the magazine. Eventually, his work would appear on 322 covers of the magazine, introducing many iconic visual images and traditions including the New Year's Baby, the pudgy red-garbed rendition of Santa Claus, flowers for Mother's Day, and firecrackers on the 4th of July.
During the 1890s, Leyendecker was active in Chicago's arts community. He exhibited with and attended social events by the Palette and Chisel Club, the Art Students League, and the Chicago Society of Artists. In December 1895, some of his posters were exhibited at the Siegel, Cooper & Company department store in Chicago. In January 1898 his posters for covers of The Inland Printer were exhibited at the Kimball Cafetier (Chicago).
During his 1895–97 time studying in Paris, J. C. Leyendecker's work won four awards at the Académie Julian and one of his paintings titled "Portrait of My Brother" was exhibited in the Paris salon in 1897. One of his posters for Hart, Schaffner & Marx titled "The Horse Show" was exhibited as part of the award-winning display of American manufacturers' posters at the Exposition Universelle (1900) in Paris.
=== After 1902: New York City and New Rochelle ===
After relocating to New York City in 1902, Leyendecker continued illustrating books, magazine covers and interiors, posters, and advertisements for a wide range increasingly prominent clients.
His illustrations for men's product advertising, pulp magazines, and college posters earned him a reputation as specialist in illustrations of men. Major clients included the Philadelphia suitmaker A. B. Kirschbaum, Wick Fancy Hat Bands, Gillette Safety Razors, E. Howard & Co. watches, Ivory Soap, Williams Shaving Cream, Karo Corn Syrup, Kingsford's Corn Starch, Interwoven socks, B. Kuppenheimer & Co., Cooper Underwear, and Cluett Peabody & Company, maker of Arrow brand shirts and detachable shirt collars and cuffs.
The male models who appeared in Leyendecker's 1907–30 illustrations for Arrow shirt and collar ads were often referred to as "the" Arrow Collar Man. But a number of different men served as models, and some developed successful careers in theater, film, and television. Among the models were Brian Donlevy, Fredric March, Jack Mulhall, Neil Hamilton, Ralph Forbes, and Reed Howes.
Among the men who modeled most frequently for Leyendecker was the Canadian-born Charles A. Beach (1881–1954). In 1903 Beach went to the artist's New York studio looking for modeling work. Beach subsequently appeared in many of Leyendecker's illustrations. The two enjoyed a nearly 50-year professional and personal relationship. Many Leyendecker biographers have described that relationship as having a romantic and sexual dimension.
Another important Leyendecker client was Kellogg's cereals. As part of a major advertising campaign, he painted a series of twenty different images of children eating Kellogg's Corn Flakes.
During the First and Second World Wars, Leyendecker painted military recruitment posters and war bonds posters for the U.S. government.
=== Decline of career ===
After 1930, Leyendecker's career began to slow, perhaps in reaction to the popularity of his work in the previous decade or as a result of the economic downturn following the Wall Street Crash of 1929.
Around 1930–31, Cluett Peabody & Company ceased using Leyendecker's illustrations in its advertisements for Arrow collars and shirts. In 1936, George Horace Lorimer, the famous editor at the Saturday Evening Post, retired and was replaced by Wesley Winans Stout (1937–1942) and then Ben Hibbs (1942–1962), both of whom rarely commissioned Leyendecker to illustrate covers. Leyendecker's last cover for the Saturday Evening Post was of a New Year Baby for the January 2, 1943, issue.
New commissions were fewer in the 1930s and 1940s. These included posters for the United States Department of War, in which Leyendecker depicted commanding officers of the armed forces encouraging the purchases of bonds to support the nation's efforts in World War II.
== Personal life ==
=== Sexuality ===
No statements (in Leyendecker's own words) survive concerning his sexual desires, behavior, or identity. But historians assess elements of his personal life as fitting the pattern they have identified for many gay men who lived during his time.
Leyendecker never married, and he lived with another man, model Charles A. Beach, for most of his adult life (1903–1951). Beach was Leyendecker's studio manager and frequent model, and many biographers describe Beach as Leyendecker's romantic, sexual, or life partner, for reasons stated before. They also describe Leyendecker as "gay" or "homosexual."
Some historians have attributed the homoeroticism in some of Leyendecker's work to his sexuality, while others have pointed to the collaborative nature of commercial art making, which suggests the content of Leyendecker's work was more expressive of the times in which it was created than the artist's sexuality.
=== Residences ===
In 1915, J. C., his brother Frank and sister Augusta Mary relocated from New York City to a newly built home and art studio in New Rochelle, New York, an art colony and suburb of New York City. Sometime after 1918, Charles Beach also moved into the New Rochelle home.
Leyendecker and Beach reportedly hosted large galas attended by people of consequence from all sectors. The parties they hosted at their New Rochelle home/studio were important social and celebrity making events.
While Beach often organized the famous gala-like social gatherings that Leyendecker was known for in the 1920s, he reportedly (by Norman Rockwell) also contributed largely to Leyendecker's social isolation in his later years. Beach reportedly forbade outside contact with the artist in the last months of his life.
Due to his professional success, Leyendecker enjoyed a luxurious lifestyle with large home, domestic servants, and chauffeured car. However, when commissions began to wane during the Great Depression, he was forced to curtail spending considerably. By the time of his death, Leyendecker had let all of the household staff at his New Rochelle estate go. He and Beach tried to maintain their home themselves.
=== Death, burial, disposition of estate ===
Leyendecker died on July 25, 1951, of an acute coronary occlusion at his home in New Rochelle. He was buried alongside his parents and brother Frank at Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx, New York City.
Leyendecker's will directed his estate—house, furnishings, paintings, etc.—be divided equally between his sister Augusta Mary and Charles Beach. Though Leyendecker directed Beach to burn his drawings upon his death, Beach instead sold many of his drawings and paintings at a lawn sale.
Other Leyendecker works were sold through New York's Society of Illustrators or given to the New York Public Library and Metropolitan Museum of Art. Sister Augusta Mary Leyendecker retained many of J. C. Leyendecker's paintings for Kellogg's cereals, and donated them along with other family ephemera upon her death to the Haggin Museum.
== Body of work ==
=== Notable clients ===
=== Museum holdings ===
Examples of Leyendecker's original artwork can be found in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York City), Norman Rockwell Museum (Stockbridge, MA), Haggin Museum (Stockton, CA), National Museum of American Illustration (Newport, RI), Lucas Museum of Narrative Art (Los Angeles, CA), and Pritzker Military Museum & Library in Chicago, IL. Significant collections of his work as reproduced can be found in many major archives and library collections including the Hagley Museum and Library (Wilmington, DE), Winterthur Museum, Garden and Library (Wilmington, DE), New York Public Library (New York, NY), and the D. B. Dowd Modern Graphic History Library Archives at Washington University in St. Louis (St. Louis, MO).
== Legacy ==
As the premier cover illustrator for the enormously popular Saturday Evening Post for much of the first half of the 20th century, Leyendecker's work both reflected and helped mold many of the visual aspects of the era's culture in America. The mainstream image of Santa Claus as a jolly fat man in a red fur-trimmed coat was popularized by Leyendecker, as was the image of the New Year Baby. The tradition of giving flowers as a gift on Mother's Day was started by Leyendecker's May 30, 1914 Saturday Evening Post cover depicting a young bellhop carrying hyacinths. It was created as a commemoration of President Woodrow Wilson's declaration of Mother's Day as an official holiday that year.
Leyendecker was a chief influence upon, and friend of, Norman Rockwell, who was a pallbearer at Leyendecker's funeral. In particular, the early work of Norman Rockwell for the Saturday Evening Post bears a strong superficial resemblance to that of Leyendecker. While today it is generally accepted that Norman Rockwell established the best-known visual images of Americana, in many cases they are derivative of Leyendecker's work, or reinterpretations of visual themes established by Rockwell's idol.
The visual style of Leyendecker's art inspired the graphics in The Dagger of Amon Ra, a video game, as well as designs in Team Fortress 2, a first-person shooter for the PC, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3.
Leyendecker's work inspired George Lucas and will be part of the collection of the anticipated Lucas Museum of Narrative Art.
Leyendecker's Beat-up Boy, Football Hero, which appeared on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post on November 21, 1914, sold for $4.12 million on May 7, 2021. The previous world record for a J. C. Leyendecker original was set in December 2020, when Sotheby's sold his 1930 work Carousel Ride for $516,100.
Costume designer Carol Cutshall used Leyendecker's illustrations as inspiration for the costumes created for Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire on AMC, a 2022 television series adaptation of the 1976 novel by American author Anne Rice. Of the clothing designed specifically for the male characters Louis de Pointe du Lac and Lestat de Lioncourt, Cutshall said, in part, "And the whole first two episodes, their style sense in many ways is a love letter to Leyendecker. Some things are just perfectly pulled from – like their formalwear, their tuxedos that they wear to the opera in 1917, and the black pinstripe suit with the green tie and the white boutonniere that Lestat wears to the du Lac family home for dinner – those are from a Leyendecker illustration." Cutshall also referenced Louis and Lestat's clothing being created from Leyendecker's illustrations as a way to draw a parallel between Louis and Lestat, who were shown in the series as having to keep their romantic relationship hidden from the public in the 1910s and 1920s, and Leyendecker and his life partner, Charles Beach.
=== Films and plays ===
In Love with the Arrow Collar Man, a play written by Lance Ringel and directed by Chuck Muckle at Theatre 80 St. Marks from November to December 2017, dramatizes the life of Leyendecker and his life partner Charles Beach.
Coded, a 2021 film documentary, tells the story of Leyendecker and premiered at the TriBeCa Film Festival in 2021.
== Gallery ==
== See also ==
Frank Xavier Leyendecker
== References ==
== Further reading ==
Carter, Alice A., Judy Francis Zankel, and Terry Brown. Americans Abroad: J. C. Leyendecker and the European Academic Influence on American Illustration. New York: Society of Illustrators, 2008. ISBN 1-60530-843-9 OCLC 237005126
Cutler, Judy Goffman, and Laurence S. Cutler. Norman Rockwell and His Mentor, J. C. Leyendecker. Newport, R.I. : National Museum of American Illustration, 2010. OCLC 769953338
Cutler, Judy Goffman, and Laurence S. Cutler. J. C. Leyendecker: American Imagist. New York: Abrams, 2008. ISBN 0-8109-9521-2 OCLC 222664794
Ermoyan, Arpi. Famous American Illustrators. [Crans, Switzerland]: Published for the Society of Illustrators by Rotovision, 1997. ISBN 2-88046-316-5 OCLC 38530600
Leyendecker, J. C. An Exhibition of Original Poster Designs ... Under the Auspices of "The Inland Printer"... January 11 to 31, 1898. 1898. OCLC 62871338
Leyendecker, J. C. The Saturday Evening Post: An Illustrated Weekly Magazine ... December 29, 1906 ... New Year's. Philadelphia: s.n, 1906. OCLC 565522034
Meyer, Susan E. America's Great Illustrators. New York : H. N. Abrams, 1978. ISBN 0-8109-0663-5 OCLC 3275418
Moroney, Lindsay Anne. High Art Joins Popular Culture: The Life and Cover Art of J.C. Leyendecker. Thesis (Honors), College of William and Mary, 2004. OCLC 56995122
Saunders, David. The Art of J. C. Leyendecker. Decatur, IL: The Illustrated Press, 2021.
Schau, Michael. J. C. Leyendecker. New York: Watson-Guptill Publications, 1974. ISBN 0-8230-2757-0 OCLC 874308
Steine, Kent and Fred Taraba. The J. C. Leyendecker Collection: American Illustrators Poster Book. Portland, Ore. : Collectors Press, 1996. ISBN 0-9635202-8-8 OCLC 35297768
The J. C. Leyendecker Poster Book. New York: Watson-Guptill Publications, 1975. ISBN 0-8230-2758-9 OCLC 1583713
== External links ==
Leyendecker Collection at The National Museum of American Illustration
Leyendecker biography, with illustrations from JVJ Publishing
J.C. Leyendecker at Open Letters
Leyendecker Collection at The Haggin Museum
UNCG American Publishers' Trade Bindings: J.C. Leyendecker
J. C. Leyendecker at Library of Congress, with 34 library catalog records |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esonica_Veira#Miss_Supranational_2013 | Esonica Veira | Esonica Veira (born June 8, 1990) is a US Virgin Islander model and beauty queen who won the title of Miss Universe US Virgin Islands 2017 and represented the US Virgin Islands at the Miss Universe 2017 pageant on November 26, 2017 in Las Vegas. Esonica was the territory's representative for Miss Earth 2014. Previously, Esonica represented her country in the Miss World 2011 pageant held in London, UK. After her Miss World participation, she was once again selected to compete in Miss Supranational 2013 in Minsk, Belarus.
Along with her stints in pageantry, Esonica is a makeup artist and model coach, providing support to young women who aspire to possess poise, finesse, and beauty.
== Biography ==
=== Early life and career beginnings ===
Esonica has been a top model in St. Thomas since the age of 9, beginning with the Roses and Champagne Agency. She has participated in many other fashion events including the Face of Shabeau in Barbados, winning the coveted cover model spot, and the Caribbean Fashion Week Catwalk held annually in the Virgin Islands.
Her big break was in 2007 when she joined America's Next Top Model. She made the first cut during the casting call auditions in Montgomery, Alabama.
She was also a finalist in the singing competition V.I. Idol in 2008.
== Pageantry ==
Esonica's successes on the local and international level includes winning the titles of Ms. Hal Jackson's Virgin Islands Talented Teen 2005, Ms. Hal Jackson's International Talented Teen 2005, Ms. America's Outstanding Teen Talent Winner 2006, and Virgin Islands Carnival Queen 2007.
Esonica was selected as one of "The 50 Most Beautiful Women in the World” by a panel of judges for Global Beauties. A panel of international judges made their selection based on the top international pageants held worldwide in 2011.
=== Miss World 2011 ===
By achieving the first runner up, Esonica became the country's representative for the 2011 edition of Miss World. She finished as part of the Top 15 semifinalists.
During the fast track events, Esonica placed as part of the Top 36 for Beach Beauty round, second place for the talent round, and part of the Top 20 for the Beauty with Purpose segment.
The pageant was won by Ivian Sarcos of Venezuela.
=== Miss Supranational 2013 ===
In May, 2013, Esonica was crowned Miss US Paradise Supranational, and traveled to Minsk, Belarus, where she represented the US Virgin Islands in the Miss Supranational Pageant.
Esonica was awarded second runner Up in the Talent Finals, and placed fourth Runner Up in the Grand Finale, making her the first representative from the US Virgin Islands to place in the Top 5 of an International Pageant.
The pageant was won by Mutya Johanna Datul of the Philippines.
=== Miss Earth 2014 ===
Esonica flew to the Philippines in November 2014 to compete with almost 100 other candidates to be Alyz Henrich's successor as Miss Earth. She did not place in the competition but was awarded as Best Teacher and Best in Talent.
=== Miss Universe 2017 ===
Veira represented the U.S. Virgin Islands at Miss Universe 2017 in Las Vegas, Nevada, but did not place. She did however place in the Top 20 in the National Costume competition.
== Reality Television ==
Esonica appeared on Season 2 of Temptation Island (TV series), an American reality television program broadcast on USA Network in which Esonica, along with her boyfriend, was one of several couples who agreed to live with a group of singles of the opposite sex, in order to test the strength of her relationship.
== References ==
== External links ==
Miss Earth official website
Esonica at Caribbean Posh |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Saturday_Evening_Post | The Saturday Evening Post | The Saturday Evening Post is an American magazine published six times a year. It was published weekly from 1897 until 1963, and then every other week until 1969. From the 1920s to the 1960s, it was one of the most widely circulated and influential magazines among the American middle class, with fiction, nonfiction, cartoons, and features that reached two million homes every week.
In the 1960s, the magazine's readership began to decline. In 1969, The Saturday Evening Post folded for two years before being revived as a quarterly publication with an emphasis on medical articles in 1971.
As of the late 2000s, The Saturday Evening Post is published six times a year by the Saturday Evening Post Society, which purchased the magazine in 1982. The magazine was redesigned in 2013.
== History ==
=== 19th century ===
The Saturday Evening Post was first published in 1821 in the same printing shop at 53 Market Street in Philadelphia, where the Benjamin Franklin-founded Pennsylvania Gazette was published in the 18th century. While the Gazette ceased publication in 1800, ten years after Franklin's death, the Post links its history to the original magazine.
Cyrus H. K. Curtis, publisher of the Ladies' Home Journal, bought the Post for $1,000 in 1897. Under the ownership of the Curtis Publishing Company, the Post grew to become the most widely circulated weekly magazine in the United States. The magazine gained prominent status under the leadership of its longtime editor George Horace Lorimer (1899–1937).
The Saturday Evening Post published current event articles, editorials, human interest pieces, humor, illustrations, a letter column, poetry with contributions submitted by readers, single-panel gag cartoons, including Hazel by Ted Key, and stories by leading writers of the time. It was known for commissioning lavish illustrations and original works of fiction. Illustrations were featured on the cover and embedded in stories and advertising. Some Post illustrations continue to be reproduced as posters or prints, especially those by Norman Rockwell.
=== 20th century ===
In 1929, at the beginning of the Mexican Repatriation, The Saturday Evening Post ran a series on the racial inferiority of Mexicans.
In 1954, it published its first articles on the role of the U.S. in deposing Mohammad Mosaddegh, Prime Minister of Iran, in 1953. The article was based on materials leaked by CIA director Allen Dulles.
The Post readership began to decline in the late 1950s and 1960s. In general, the decline of general interest magazines was blamed on television, which competed for advertisers and readers' attention. The Post had problems retaining readers: the public's taste in fiction was changing, and the Post's conservative politics and values appealed to a declining number of people. Content by popular writers became harder to obtain. Prominent authors drifted away to newer magazines offering more money and status. As a result, the Post published more articles on current events and cut costs by replacing illustrations with photographs for covers and advertisements.
In 1967, the magazine's publisher, Curtis Publishing Company, lost a landmark defamation suit, Curtis Publishing Co. v. Butts, 388 U.S. 130 (1967), resulting from an article, and was ordered to pay $3,060,000 in damages to the plaintiff. The Post article implied that football coaches Paul "Bear" Bryant and Wally Butts conspired to fix a game between the University of Alabama and the University of Georgia. Both coaches sued Curtis Publishing Co. for defamation, each initially asking for $10 million. Bryant eventually settled for $300,000 while Butts' case went to the Supreme Court, which held that libel damages may be recoverable (in this instance against a news organization) when the injured party is a non-public official, if the plaintiff can prove that the defendant was guilty of a reckless lack of professional standards when examining allegations for reasonable credibility. (Butts was eventually awarded $460,000.)
William Emerson was promoted to editor-in-chief in 1965 and remained in the position until the magazine's demise in 1969.
In 1968, Martin Ackerman, a specialist in troubled firms, became president of Curtis after lending it $5M. With the magazine still in dire financial straits, Ackerman announced that Curtis would reduce printing costs by cancelling the subscriptions of roughly half of its readers. Those who lost their subscriptions were offered a free transfer to a subscription to Life magazine; Life publisher Time Inc. paid Curtis $5M for the exchange, easing the company's mounting debts. The move was also widely seen as an opportunity for Curtis to abandon older and more rural readers, who were less valuable to the Post's advertisers. Columnist Art Buchwald lampooned the decision, suggesting that "if the Saturday Evening Post considered you a deadbeat, you didn't have much choice but to either pretend you were still getting the magazine and live a lie, or move out of the neighborhood before anyone found out."
These last-ditch efforts failed to save the magazine, and Curtis announced in January 1969 that the February 8 issue would be the magazine's last. Ackerman stated that the magazine had lost $5M in 1968 and would lose a projected $3M in 1969. In a meeting with employees after the magazine's closure had been announced, Emerson thanked the staff for their professional work and promised "to stay here and see that everyone finds a job".
At a March 1969 post-mortem on the magazine's closing, Emerson stated that The Post "was a damn good vehicle for advertising" with competitive renewal rates and readership reports and expressed what The New York Times called "understandable bitterness" in wishing "that all the one-eyed critics will lose their other eye". Otto Friedrich, the magazine's last managing editor, blamed the death of The Post on Curtis. In his Decline and Fall (Harper & Row, 1970), an account of the magazine's final years (1962–69), he argued that corporate management was unimaginative and incompetent. Friedrich acknowledges that The Post faced challenges while the tastes of American readers changed over the course of the 1960s, but he insisted that the magazine maintained a standard of good quality and was appreciated by readers.
In 1970, control of the debilitated Curtis Publishing Company was acquired from the estate of Cyrus Curtis by Indianapolis industrialist Beurt SerVaas. SerVaas relaunched the Post the following year on a quarterly basis as a kind of nostalgia magazine.
In early 1982, ownership of the Post was transferred to the Benjamin Franklin Literary and Medical Society, founded in 1976 by the Post's then-editor, Corena "Cory" SerVaas (wife of Beurt SerVaas). The magazine's core focus was now health and medicine; indeed, the magazine's website originally noted that the "credibility of The Saturday Evening Post has made it a valuable asset for reaching medical consumers and for helping medical researchers obtain family histories. In the magazine, national health surveys are taken to further current research on topics such as cancer, diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, ulcerative colitis, spina bifida, and bipolar disorder." Ownership of the magazine was later transferred to the Saturday Evening Post Society; SerVaas headed both organizations. The range of topics covered in the magazine's articles is now wide, suitable for a general readership.
By 1991, Curtis Publishing Company had been renamed Curtis International, a subsidiary of SerVaas Inc., and had become an importer of audiovisual equipment. Today the Post is published six times a year by the Saturday Evening Post Society, which claims 501(c)(3) non-profit organization status.
=== 21st century ===
With the January/February 2013 issue, the Post launched a major makeover of the publication, including a new cover design and efforts to increase the magazine's profile, in response to a general public misbelief that it was no longer in existence. The magazine's new logo is an update of a logo it had used beginning in 1942. As of October 2018, the complete archive of the magazine is available online.
== Legacy ==
=== Illustrations ===
In 1916, Saturday Evening Post editor George Horace Lorimer discovered Norman Rockwell, then an unknown 22-year-old New York City artist. Lorimer promptly purchased two illustrations from Rockwell, using them as covers, and commissioned three more drawings. Rockwell's illustrations of the American family and rural life of a bygone era became icons. During his 50-year career with the Post, Rockwell painted more than 300 covers.
The Post also employed Nebraska artist John Philip Falter, who became known as "a painter of Americana with an accent of the Middle West," who "brought out some of the homeliness and humor of Middle Western town life and home life." He produced 120 covers for the Post between 1943 and 1968, ceasing only when the magazine began displaying photographs on its covers.
Another prominent artist was Charles R. Chickering, a freelance illustrator who went on to design numerous postage stamps for the U.S. Post Office. Other popular cover illustrators include artists George Hughes, Constantin Alajalov,
John Clymer, Alonzo Kimball, W. H. D. Koerner, J. C. Leyendecker, Mead Schaeffer, Charles Archibald MacLellan, John E. Sheridan, Emmett Watson, Douglass Crockwell, Jacob Bates Abbott, and N. C. Wyeth.
Cartoonists have included: Irwin Caplan, Clyde Lamb, Jerry Marcus, Frank O'Neal, Charles M. Schulz, and Bill Yates. The magazine ran Ted Key's cartoon panel series Hazel from 1943 to 1969.
=== Literature ===
Each issue featured several original short stories and often included an installment of a serial appearing in successive issues. Most of the fiction was written for mainstream tastes by popular writers, but some literary writers were featured. The opening pages of stories featured paintings by the leading magazine illustrators.
The Post published stories and essays by H. E. Bates, Ray Bradbury, Kay Boyle, Agatha Christie, Brian Cleeve, Eleanor Franklin Egan, William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, C. S. Forester, Ernest Haycox, Robert A. Heinlein, Kurt Vonnegut, Paul Gallico, Normand Poirier, Hammond Innes, Louis L'Amour, Sinclair Lewis, Joseph C. Lincoln, John P. Marquand, Edgar Allan Poe, Mary Roberts Rinehart, Sax Rohmer, William Saroyan, John Steinbeck, Rex Stout, Rob Wagner, Edith Wharton, and P.G. Wodehouse.
Poetry published came from poets including: Carl Sandburg, Ogden Nash, Dorothy Parker, and Hannah Kahn.
Jack London's best-known novel The Call of the Wild was first published, in serialized form, in the Saturday Evening Post in 1903.
Emblematic of the Post's fiction was author Clarence Budington Kelland, who first appeared in 1916–17 with stories of homespun heroes, "Efficiency Edgar" and "Scattergood Baines". Kelland was a steady presence from 1922 until 1961.
For many years William Hazlett Upson contributed a very popular series of short stories about the escapades of Earthworm Tractors salesman Alexander Botts.
Publication in the Post launched careers and helped established artists and writers stay afloat. P. G. Wodehouse said "the wolf was always at the door" until the Post gave him his "first break" in 1915 by serializing Something New.
== Politics ==
After the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Post columnist Garet Garrett became a vocal critic of the New Deal. Garrett accused the Roosevelt administration of initiating socialist strategies.
After Lorimer died, Garrett became editorial writer-in-chief and criticized the Roosevelt administration's support of the United Kingdom and efforts to prepare to enter World War II, and allegedly showed some support for Adolf Hitler in some of his editorials. Garrett's positions aroused controversy and may have cost the Post readers and advertisers in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor.
== Editors ==
(Listed from the purchase by Curtis, 1898)
== Other notable staff ==
Jane Nickerson
Joan Didion
== Cover gallery ==
== See also ==
Constantin Alajalov
Cyrus Curtis
John Philip Falter
Anton Otto Fischer
Garet Garrett
Ladies' Home Journal
J. C. Leyendecker
Norman Rockwell
John E. Sheridan (illustrator)
Harry Simmons
Frank Glasgow Tinker
Edmund Ward
=== Similar magazines ===
Collier's
Harper's Weekly
Liberty
Life
Look
Reader's Digest (still in publication)
== References ==
== Further reading ==
Cohn, Jan. Creating America: George Horace Lorimer and the Saturday Evening Post (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1990)
Damon-Moore, Helen. Magazines for the millions: Gender and commerce in the Ladies' Home Journal and the Saturday Evening Post, 1880–1910 (SUNY Press, 1994)
Hall, Roger I. "A system pathology of an organization: the rise and fall of the old Saturday Evening Post." Administrative science quarterly (1976): 185–211. in JSTOR
Tebbel, John William. George Horace Lorimer and the Saturday Evening Post (1948)
== External links ==
Official website
Curtis Publishing (archived September 2017)
"More Irrelevant Than Irreverent", Pete Hamill, The Village Voice, January 16, 1969 (archived August 2020) |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fleabag | Fleabag | Fleabag is a British comedy-drama television series created and written by Phoebe Waller-Bridge, based on her one-woman show first performed in 2013 at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. The series was produced by Two Brothers Pictures for digital channel BBC Three, in a co-production agreement with Amazon Studios. Waller-Bridge stars as the title character, a free-spirited but angry and confused young woman living in London. Sian Clifford co-stars as Fleabag's sister Claire, with Andrew Scott joining in the second season; most of the show's main characters are never named, including Waller-Bridge's and Scott's. The protagonist frequently breaks the fourth wall, providing exposition, internal monologues, and running commentary to the audience.
The show premiered on 21 July 2016 and concluded its second and final series on 8 April 2019. It received widespread acclaim from critics, particularly for its writing, acting, and the uniqueness and personality of the title character. Many critics and viewers have called it one of the greatest comedy series of all time as well as one of the greatest television series of all time. Waller-Bridge won the British Academy Television Award for Best Female Comedy Performance for the first series, with the second series earning her Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Comedy Series, Outstanding Lead Actress, and Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series; additional nominations include acting categories received by Clifford, Olivia Colman, and guest stars Fiona Shaw and Kristin Scott Thomas. The series received the Golden Globe Awards for Best Television Series and Best Actress for Waller-Bridge, and a nomination for Scott.
== Background ==
The show is adapted from Waller-Bridge's 2013 Edinburgh Festival Fringe one-woman play of the same name which won a Fringe First Award. The initial idea of the character of Fleabag came from a challenge by a friend, where Waller-Bridge was given the task of creating a sketch for a 10-minute section in a stand-up storytelling night.
== Cast and characters ==
=== Main ===
Phoebe Waller-Bridge as "Fleabag"
Sian Clifford as Claire, Fleabag's sister with whom she shares an uneasy relationship
Andrew Scott as the priest (series 2), with whom Fleabag falls in love
=== Supporting ===
Ben Aldridge as Arsehole Guy (series 1; guest series 2), one of Fleabag's love interests, so named for his taste for anal sex
Hugh Skinner as Harry, Fleabag's on-off boyfriend then eventual ex
Hugh Dennis as Bank Manager (series 1; guest series 2), approached by Fleabag for a loan
Jenny Rainsford as Boo, Fleabag's deceased best friend and business partner
Bill Paterson as Fleabag and Claire's father
Olivia Colman as Fleabag and Claire's godmother, who began a relationship with their father not long after their mother's death and eventually becomes their stepmother
Brett Gelman as Martin, Claire's aggressive alcoholic husband
=== Guest ===
Jamie Demetriou as Bus Rodent (series 1), one of Fleabag's love interests
Fiona Shaw as Fleabag's counsellor (series 2)
Jo Martin as Pam (series 2), who works at the priest's church
Ray Fearon as Hot Misogynist (series 2), who serves as Fleabag's lawyer and one of her love interests
Angus Imrie as Jake (series 2), Martin's teenage son and Claire's stepson
Kristin Scott Thomas as Belinda (series 2), a successful businesswoman who meets Fleabag at an awards ceremony presented by Claire
Jenny Robbins as Lesley (series 2), Claire's co-worker
Christian Hillborg as Klare (series 2), Claire's Finnish business partner and love interest
== Episodes ==
=== Series 1 (2016) ===
=== Series 2 (2019) ===
== Distribution and broadcast ==
BBC Three was the original broadcast channel for the show with a repeat run broadcast on BBC Two between 21 August and 25 September 2016. The second series was broadcast on BBC One at the same time as being released on BBC Three, by this time only available online.
It was picked up by the on-demand Amazon Prime Video (formerly Amazon Video) service and premiered in the United States on 16 September 2016. Series 2 was released in the US on 17 May 2019. Fleabag is also available on IFC in the US. In the Netherlands, it was picked up by Net5.
The show has been remade for French television by Jeanne Herry. Titled Mouche (French for 'fly', the insect), it started airing on 3 June 2019 on pay channel Canal+. Mouche is a close remake, though set in Paris with Camille Cottin in the starring role.
== Production ==
=== Filming ===
Filming took place in and around London, mostly North West and Central with the primary location being Dartmouth Park, North West London. Street scenes were filmed on five main roads in the area, including Southampton Road, Laurier Road, Croftdown Road, Highgate Road, and York Rise. Other locations include Twickenham, Hampton Hill, Highgate, Tufnell Park, Belsize Park, Maida Vale, Kentish Town, Parliament Hill Fields in Hampstead Heath, Southwark, Bloomsbury, Soho, Stanmore, Lincoln's Inn Fields and Finsbury Square.
Bold Café & Restaurant in Dartmouth Park was used for Fleabag's Guinea Pig Café. Dad and Godmother's house was on Cambridge Park Road in Twickenham. The feminist lecture was at the British Museum's Lecture Theatre in Russell Square. The graveyard that Fleabag jogged through daily was at Kensal Green Cemetery. The silent retreat that Fleabag and Claire attended on Mother's Day was filmed at Hedsor House, an Italianate-style mansion used as a wedding venue in Maidenhead, Berkshire.
The second and final series premiered with a family dinner party filmed at the American steakhouse, Smith & Wollensky in Covent Garden. Hot Priest's church was the Romanian Orthodox and former Anglican church St. Andrew's in Kingsbury. Godmother's sexhibition was held at the Tate Modern in Bankside. Claire's penthouse office was filmed from Heron Tower in Bishopsgate. The funeral was filmed at St Dunstan and All Saints Church in Stepney. The hair salon was 137 – Taylor and Taylor in Shoreditch.
Filming for the first series started in late April 2016, and was released from 21 July to 25 August 2016. Filming for the second and final series started in late August 2018 and was released from 4 March to 8 April 2019.
=== Music ===
Waller-Bridge's sister, Isobel Waller-Bridge, composed the music for both series.
== Reception ==
=== Critical response ===
Both series of Fleabag received widespread acclaim from television critics. At review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, both series received approval ratings of 100%. The first series received an average rating of 8.5/10, based on 42 reviews, with the site's critical consensus reading: "Clever and viciously funny, Fleabag is a touching, wildly inventive comedy about a complicated young woman navigating the aftermath of trauma." The second series received an average rating of 9.3/10, based on 99 reviews, with the critical consensus stating: "Fleabag jumps back into the fray with a bracing second season that upholds its predecessor's frenzied wit and delicate heart, replete with Phoebe Waller-Bridge's indefatigable charisma". At Metacritic, the first series received a weighted average score of 88 out of 100, based on 19 critics, while the second series received a score of 96, based on 21 critics, both signifying "universal acclaim".
Emily Nussbaum of The New Yorker described the first series as "a precision black-humour mechanism, a warped and affecting fable about one single woman's existence." Maureen Ryan at Variety called it "scathingly funny", concluding that "long after it's pulled you in with its irreverence and jokes about sex, and beguiled you with its cutting wit and messily human characters, it reveals that it's actually a tragedy". Hank Stuever of The Washington Post characterised it as a "funny, highly profane but surprisingly poignant dramedy". Mike Hale in The New York Times praised the show for its "restless, almost feral energy and its slap-in-the-face attitude." Mary McNamara of the Los Angeles Times commended its unpredictability, acting, and "clear eye for truth that often becomes, like all good comedy, quite devastating".
The second series received unanimous acclaim and was considered a cultural phenomenon. Serena Davies of The Daily Telegraph lauded the second series as "a near-perfect work of art". Mary Elizabeth Williams of Salon praised its "brilliant swan song", finding the series's conclusion satisfying and "well-earned". For Rolling Stone, Alan Sepinwall wrote that the "tragicomic masterpiece reaches new heights in its second outing". James Poniewozik of The New York Times wrote that "the new season feels immediately confident, if inevitably less groundbreaking. Yet it continues to push its form". Hannah Jane Parkinson of The Guardian described the conclusion as "the most electrifying, devastating TV in years," writing of the second series that "it seems as though many who either did not watch the first series, or who didn't think it lived up to the hype, have been converted".
According to Metacritic's aggregate of decade-end lists, Fleabag was the second-highest ranked show of the 2010s. It has since been considered by multiple publications to be one of the greatest television series of all time.
Former United States President Barack Obama named the second season of Fleabag among his favourite films and television series of 2019. In his annual list, which he released on Twitter on 29 December 2019, he added a small addendum with the title, "and a quick list of TV shows that I considered as powerful as movies: Fleabag: Season 2, Unbelievable, and Watchmen."
=== Accolades ===
== Home media ==
== References ==
== External links ==
Fleabag at BBC Online
Fleabag at IMDb |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albertina_Sisulu#:~:text=before%20she%20retired%20from%20politics%20in%201999 | Albertina Sisulu | Albertina Sisulu OMSG (née Nontsikelelo Thethiwe; 21 October 1918 – 2 June 2011) was a South African anti-apartheid activist. A member of the African National Congress (ANC), she was the founding co-president of the United Democratic Front. In South Africa, where she was affectionately known as Ma Sisulu, she is often called a mother of the nation.
Born in rural Transkei, Sisulu moved to Johannesburg in 1940 and was a nurse by profession. She entered politics through her marriage to Walter Sisulu and became increasingly engaged in activism after his imprisonment in the Rivonia Trial. In the 1980s she emerged as a community leader in her hometown of Soweto, assuming a prominent role in the establishment of the UDF and the revival of the Federation of South African Women.
Between 1964 and 1989, she was subject to a near-continuous string of banning orders. In addition to intermittent detention without trial, she was subject to criminal charges on three occasions: she was acquitted of violating pass laws in 1958, convicted of violating the Suppression of Communism Act in 1984, and acquitted of violating the Internal Security Act in the 1985 Pietermaritzburg Treason Trial.
After the end of apartheid, Sisulu represented the ANC in the first democratic Parliament before she retired from politics in 1999. She was also the deputy president of the ANC Women's League from 1991 to 1993 and a member of the ANC National Executive Committee from 1991 to 1994.
== Early life and education ==
Sisulu was born on 21 October 1918 in the Camama, a village in the Tsomo region of the Transkei. She was the second of five siblings in a Xhosa (Mfengu) family. Her father, Bonilizwe Thetiwe, was a migrant worker who spent long stints working in the gold mines of the Transvaal, and her mother, Monica Thetiwe (née Mnyila), was disabled by the bout of Spanish flu that she had suffered while pregnant with Sisulu. Sisulu and her siblings spent most of their childhood with their maternal grandparents in the village of Xolobe, where Sisulu began school at a Presbyterian mission. Though her family called her "Ntsiki" throughout her life, she assumed the name Albertina at school, choosing it from a list of European Christian names provided by her missionary schoolteachers.
In 1929, while Sisulu's mother was pregnant with her fifth and final child, Sisulu's father died of occupational lung disease in Camama. Her mother remained in ill health until her death in 1941, so Sisulu – both the eldest sister and the eldest female cousin – became a primary caregiver to her younger siblings and cousins, with frequent interruptions to her education as a result. Nonetheless, in 1936, she received a scholarship for secondary schooling at Mariazell College, a Catholic boarding school in Matatiele. She covered her living expenses by ploughing fields and working in the laundry room during school holidays. Newly converted to Catholicism, she intended to become a nun or school principal, but her headmaster, Father Bernard Huss, convinced her to pursue training as a nurse after she finished school in 1939.
== Anti-apartheid activism ==
In January 1940, Sisulu moved to Johannesburg, where she began her long nursing career as a trainee in the non-European section of the Johannesburg General Hospital. She qualified as a nurse in 1944 and later qualified as a midwife too. Her interest in politics grew through her association with Walter Sisulu, a real estate agent and activist in the African National Congress (ANC), who courted and then married her. She began attending ANC meetings not as a member but as his companion. In her own description, "I had no political ideas. I was devout until I met Walter." Ellen Kuzwayo, another of the few women present at such meetings, later remembered her as "a kind hostess who served the committee members of the congress with tea after long and intense meetings". In this capacity, as Walter's fiancée, she was the only woman present at the inaugural meeting of the ANC Youth League in 1944.
According to Pippa Green, she joined the ANC Women's League in 1946. In addition, the Sisulus' home in Orlando West, a suburb of Soweto outside Johannesburg, was long-established as a meeting place for ANC leaders. However, her husband's political activities made Sisulu the family's main breadwinner, and she did not actively participate in ANC activities until the 1950s, by which time the National Party had introduced its programme of institutionalised apartheid. She abstained from the 1952 Defiance Campaign, during which Walter was arrested and convicted of communism; in her paraphrase of the ANC's policies, "if one of the members of the family was already defying, we couldn't all go, because there were children to be looked after".
=== 1948–1963: Pre-Rivonia Trial ===
Opposition to apartheid accelerated in 1954 and 1955, and Sisulu was involved in several related campaigns. She was elected to the inaugural national executive committee of the Federation of South African Women (FEDSAW) when it was founded in 1954. In 1955, she participated in the Freedom Charter leafleting campaign ahead of the Congress of the People, and at the same time participated in a boycott of public schools in protest of the Bantu Education Act; the Sisulus' home housed one of the so-called alternative schools set up as part of the protest. She was present at the August 1956 Women's March in Pretoria, and in October 1958 she was arrested for the first time and charged for participating in another women's march against pass laws. On the latter occasion, she was detained for three weeks on charges of violating the pass laws, but she was ultimately acquitted, with her husband's close friend Nelson Mandela as her lawyer. In the early 1960s, she was involved in an ANC scheme to recruit nurses as volunteers to relocate to newly independent Tanganyika, a personal favour from Oliver Tambo to Julius Nyerere.
Meanwhile, Sisulu's husband was a defendant in the 1956–1961 Treason Trial, and their home became a target for Security Branch attention and raids. After the 1960 Sharpeville uprising, the apartheid government banned the ANC and several associated organisations; shortly afterwards, the ANC announced the inauguration of armed struggle. Her husband, a founder of Umkhonto we Sizwe, went into hiding underground in 1963. On 19 June of that year, Sisulu became the first woman to be detained under the so-called 90-Day Detention Law: the recently enacted General Laws Amendment Act, 1963 allowed police to detain activists incommunicado indefinitely and without charging them. She was held in solitary confinement and interrogated at length about Walter's whereabouts. She was released after her husband and his comrades were apprehended at Rivonia in July 1963. The ensuing Rivonia Trial concluded in June 1964 with Walter being sentenced to life imprisonment. During the trial, Sisulu redoubled her engagement with the ANC Women's League.
=== 1964–1989: Post-Rivonia Trial ===
In August 1964, in the aftermath of the Rivonia convictions, Sisulu was served with the first in a series of banning orders. She was banned continuously for the next 17 years, prohibited from political activity and for several years confined to effective house arrest. The Minister of Law and Order allowed her fourth ban to lapse in August 1981, and she celebrated by making an address – her first political speech since the early 1960s – at a local church's commemoration of the Women's March. The respite lasted less than a year before she was arrested and served with another banning order, her fifth, in June 1982; that order was part of a more general crackdown effected in Soweto during commemorations of the 1976 Soweto uprising.
Nonetheless, throughout this period, Sisulu remained a prominent figure in the resistance movement, notable for her focus on civic organising on a national rather than local scale. She was particularly influential in the preparations for the establishment of the United Democratic Front (UDF), a popular front against apartheid that was launched in 1983, and in a protracted campaign to revive FEDSAW. From the 1970s, she was active in the political mentorship of younger women activists such as Jessie Duarte and Susan Shabangu; Duarte later said that Sisulu's protégés considered themselves "MaSisulu's girls", and she was instrumental in the foundation of a Soweto-based underground ANC cell for women, named Thusang Basadi ("wake up women").
==== Communism trial and UDF launch ====
Sisulu's June 1982 banning order was allowed to lapse after only a year, and in July 1983 she attended meetings of the national steering committee that was preparing for the national launch of the UDF. However, on 5 August, she was arrested again at her workplace and charged with a violation of the Suppression of Communism Act. She and her co-accused, activist Thami Mali, were accused of having conspired to further the aims of the banned ANC in connection with their role in planning the funeral of Rose Mbele, an ANC Women's League Stalwart. The funeral had taken place months earlier – on 16 January 1983 in a church in Soweto – and the charges were widely viewed as a justification to detain Sisulu ahead of the UDF's launch.
Later in August, while Sisulu was awaiting trial in solitary confinement in Diepkloof, the UDF was launched. She was elected in absentia as the regional president of the UDF's Transvaal branch, and then, at the front's national launch in Mitchell's Plain on 20 August, as one of the three national co-presidents of the UDF, the others being Oscar Mpetha and Archie Gumede. Her trial began in Krugersdorp shortly afterwards, with George Bizos as her defence counsel. On 24 February 1984, in a ruling condemned by the United Nations Special Committee against Apartheid, she was convicted and sentenced to four years' imprisonment, with two years of the sentence suspended for five years. However, she was also released on bail pending an appeal, allowing her to resume her political activities; she said that, after several consecutive months in solitary confinement, "I came out speaking to the walls". The appeal against her sentence was ultimately upheld in 1987.
==== Abu Baker Asvat and Mandela United ====
In 1983, Sisulu retired from public nursing, having reached retirement age and received her pension. The following year, in the aftermath of her criminal trial, she began work as receptionist and nursing assistant in Rockville, Soweto in the private surgery of Abu Baker Asvat, a doctor who was renowned for his humanitarianism. Although Asvat was a leading member of the Azanian People's Organisation, a rival of the UDF, the pair worked closely together; she later said that they were like mother and son, and he did not object to Sisulu's political activities, which continued in earnest.
This period was also marked by increasing tension between Sisulu and Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, Nelson Mandela's wife, whose Mandela United Football Club engaged in gangsterism and intimidation in Soweto from around 1986 onward. Because of the friendship between their husbands, Sisulu and Madikizela-Mandela had been close during their youth; arrested together in 1958, Sisulu had nursed Mandela through the near-miscarriage of her first child in a jail cell. However, in the 1980s, their relationship grew tense as Sisulu attempted to curb Mandela United's excesses. Sisulu later said that, "As a woman, I tried to pull her out of that... Winnie and I were never enemies, I tried to help her." According to historian Jonny Steinberg, other members of the community delegated Sisulu to report their concerns about Madikizela-Mandela's behaviour to the exiled ANC leadership in Lusaka, Zambia. In later years, because of their husbands' stature, the press often contrasted Madikizela-Mandela and Sisulu as opposing models of female activism, comparing Sisulu's cool-headed maturity with Madikizela-Mandela's "rage and charm".
Meanwhile, Asvat was an unpopular figure both with the state and with conservative residents of Soweto; in 1987, Sisulu was with him when he narrowly escaped a knife attack, and in December 1988, they worked without water or electricity after the supply to their surgery was cut off. On the afternoon of 27 January 1989, Asvat was fatally shot at his surgery while Sisulu was in the dispensary at the rear of the clinic; he died shortly afterwards in Sisulu's presence. She had admitted the gunmen to an appointment with Asvat earlier that day. Madikizela-Mandela and her Football Club long faced rumours of having arranged Asvat's assassination, and Sisulu was publicly drawn into those accusations in 1997 (see below).
==== Pietermaritzburg Treason Trial ====
In 1984, while Sisulu was working at Asvat's surgery and awaiting the appeal of her criminal conviction, the UDF vastly expanded its national presence through an intensive campaign of opposition to President P. W. Botha's constitutional reforms, including the Black Authorities Act, 1982 and the 1983 Constitution. The first elections to the Tricameral Parliament in August 1984 were marred by a successful UDF boycott, followed by widespread township uprisings. In a subsequent crackdown by Botha's government, Sisulu was arrested on 19 February 1985. She and 15 others were charged under the Internal Security Act with treason and incitement to overthrow the government. As the only woman accused, she was held in detention alone.
On 3 May 1985, Sisulu and her co-accused were released on bail with stringent conditions. The ensuing Pietermaritzburg Treason Trial opened on 21 October in the Natal Supreme Court with the defendants' not-guilty plea, but the charges against Sisulu and 11 others were dropped on 9 December. Sisulu told press it was "a crushing victory for us". Popular uprisings continued, and Sisulu was banned again in 1986 and in early 1988.
=== 1989–1994: Negotiations ===
In 1989, as the negotiations to end apartheid quickened, Sisulu embraced her public-facing role in the anti-apartheid movement. In June that year, she was granted her first South African passport – an abrupt reversal, given that her latest banning order had been renewed only days earlier. Later that month, she led a UDF delegation on an international tour, which included a meeting with British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. While in London, she met with Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock and addressed a major rally of the British Anti-Apartheid Movement. On 30 June 1989, she met with American President George H. W. Bush in the White House. The delegation also travelled to Sweden; to France, on the invitation of Danielle Mitterrand; and to the ANC's headquarters in exile in Lusaka, where Sisulu provided exiled leaders with a report on conditions inside South Africa.
The last of the restrictions against Sisulu were lifted by the South African government on 14 October 1989. Meanwhile, President F. W. de Klerk's government unbanned the ANC in 1990, permitting the party to resume overt organising inside South Africa. Sisulu became involved in the campaign to re-establish the ANC Women's League, though she declined a nomination to stand for the league's presidency. Instead, at the league's first national conference in Kimberley in April 1991, she threw her support behind Gertrude Shope, who defeated Madikizela-Mandela to become the league's president. At the same conference, Sisulu was elected to deputise Shope as the league's deputy president. Over the next two years, she worked at the league's downtown headquarters in Shell House. However, she held the deputy presidency for only one term, ceding the office to Thandi Modise at the league's next national conference in December 1993.
The mainstream ANC held its own reunion in July 1991 at the 48th National Conference in Durban, where Sisulu was elected to serve as a member of the party's National Executive Committee. She only served one three-year term in the committee; at the 49th National Conference in December 1994, both she and her husband declined to stand for re-election to the party's leadership.
During the struggle, she also found refuge at the Albert Street Methodist Church, Johannesburg, which played a key role in sheltering activists.
== Post-apartheid political career ==
=== National Assembly ===
Sisulu later said that, as a member of the ANC National Executive, she had been highly doubtful of Mandela's proposal to reconcile with National Party supporters in the interests of national unity. As she told a reporter, "The first meeting of the [ANC] national executives, when Mandela introduced this to us, we all stood up and said, 'He's now mad.' We thought he was mad, to say we must reconcile. Shooo!". Nonetheless, ahead of the first post-apartheid democratic elections, she accepted nomination to stand as an ANC candidate for election to the new multi-racial Parliament of South Africa, and she was comfortably elected to a seat in the lower house, the National Assembly.
When the Houses of Parliament opened on 10 May 1994, it was Sisulu who formally nominated Mandela to serve as the first post-apartheid President of South Africa. Her biographer said it was "one of the proudest moments of her life" to be selected to offer the nomination on the ANC's behalf. She served one term in Parliament, retiring at the June 1999 general election.
=== Truth and Reconciliation Commission ===
During this period, her most prominent engagement was that with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in 1997. She was expected to provide important testimony in the TRC's investigation into the activities of the Mandela United Football Club, in particular through her account of the day of Asvat's murder and of the relationship between Asvat and Madikizela-Mandela. Moreover, earlier that year, a videotaped interview with Sisulu had been included in Katiza's Journey, a BBC documentary in which journalist Fred Bridgland claimed to uncover evidence that Madikizela-Mandela had conspired to kidnap Stompie Seipei as well as to murder Asvat. In that interview, Sisulu had confirmed the authenticity of a patient record card from Asvat's surgery which undermined Madikizela-Mandela's alibi on the day of Seipei's death; she said that she recognised her own handwriting on the card. She later said that she had made this identification in error.
Sisulu's appearance before the TRC on 1 December received international attention. However, after giving an emotional account of Asvat's shooting, she provided what were described as "evasive" responses to questions about Madikizela-Mandela's involvement in Asvat and Seipei's deaths; she denied having signed the crucial patient record card, denied any knowledge of a row between Madikizela-Mandela and Asvat, and said, "I wouldn't think that Mrs. Mandela could kill Asvat because I thought they were friendly". She said that she did not recall having seen Madikizela-Mandela or her colleagues at the surgery during the period of Seipei's kidnapping.
During intensive cross-examination, TRC commissioner Dumisa Ntsebeza told Sisulu that she appeared to be "trying your very best to say as little as possible, anything that can implicate Mrs. Mandela" and asked whether this was because of "struggle morality" – because "she is your comrade and the Mandela and Sisulus go back a very long way". Sisulu responded with indignant weeping, recounting her years of involvement in activism and saying, "Even if I am shielding her, I am not here to tell lies." Commissioner Alex Boraine also expressed dissatisfaction with apparent inconsistencies in Sisulu's testimony.
The day after her testimony, Sisulu and her husband met with Desmond Tutu, the chairman of the TRC, to discuss her unhappiness at having been accused of dishonesty. On 4 December, the TRC heard further evidence which confirmed Sisulu's account that it was not her signature on the disputed record card. Sisulu briefly re-appeared on the witness stand, at her own request, and Ntsebeza told her that she had been "vindicated" and restored as "an icon of moral rectitude".
== Personal and family life ==
Sisulu met her husband, Walter, in 1941, and their families agreed on lobola the following year; they married on 15 July 1944 in a civil ceremony in Cofimvaba. Walter's best man was Nelson Mandela, and one of Albertina's bridesmaids was Mandela's first wife, Evelyn Mase; Mase was Walter's maternal cousin and had met Mandela at the Sisulus' home. During reception speeches by A. B. Xuma and Anton Lembede, Lembede warned Albertina that, "You are marrying a man who is already married to the nation". Walter later recalled, "I told her it was useless buying new furniture. I was going to be in jail." They did not have a honeymoon until November 1990, when they travelled together to the Crimean resort of Yalta on ANC business.
The Sisulus' four-room home in Orlando West accommodated a rotation of young relatives, including Sisulu's younger siblings and five children of their own born between August 1945 and October 1957, and Sisulu raised them alone while Walter was on Robben Island from 1964 to 1989. In the early years of Walter's imprisonment, she spent her spare time sewing, knitting, and reselling eggs to raise money to cover her children's school tuition, determined that they should attend boarding school in neighbouring Swaziland rather than join the South African Bantu Education system.
From their young adulthood onwards, the children were also periodically detained and banned by the apartheid police between stints in exile with the ANC. While Sisulu and her son were both banned in the 1980s, they received special police authorisation to be allowed to speak to each other, in exception to provisions that criminalised gatherings between banned individuals; since they lived in the same Soweto home, Sisulu dismissed the rule as "nonsense", joking, ''What was I supposed to do? Not ask him what he wanted for breakfast?'' This notwithstanding, she later said that above all else it was her children's detentions that made her feel "that the Boers were breaking me at the knees."
Sisulu was rarely able to travel to Cape Town to visit her husband on Robben Island, but Ruth First said of their marriage in 1982 that, "His capacity to lead and her political strength are... the product of a good marriage, a good political marriage, but a good marriage, one that is based on genuine equality and on shared commitment." Sisulu herself famously said, "We loved each other very much. We were like two chickens. One always walking behind the other." On another occasion, she reflected:[Y]ou know, of all the people around here, he’s the only one – perhaps there are one or two – who are progressive. I was emancipated the day I got married. There was no question of 'Go and make tea' or 'Polish my shoes.' He used to wash his children and put them to bed. You know, I never felt I was a woman in the house.On 10 October 1989, Sisulu was visiting Mandela at Victor Verster Prison when she learned of her husband's impending release through an SABC broadcast. His health had deteriorated in prison and when Sisulu was nominated to stand for Parliament in 1994, Mandela suggested that she might decline the nomination in order to care for Walter. Her children were so incensed by the suggestion that Mandela called to apologise to them and rescind his advice. The couple lived in Orlando until after her retirement, when they moved to the Johannesburg suburb of Linden. Walter died at home on 5 May 2003 in Sisulu's presence. At his funeral, one of their granddaughters read a poem written by Sisulu, entitled, "Walter, what do I do without you?".
The Sisulus' children also went on to hold positions of influence in post-apartheid South Africa. Their biological children were Max (born August 1945), Mlungisi (born November 1948; died October 2015), Zwelakhe (born December 1950, during an ANC national conference; died October 2012), Lindiwe (born May 1954), and Nonkululeko (born October 1957). Max's wife, Elinor Sisulu, published a biography of her parents-in-law in 2002 entitled Walter and Albertina Sisulu: In Our Lifetime. The Sisulus also adopted Walter's sister's two children, Gerald and Beryl Lockman (born in December 1944 and March 1949 respectively), and raised the son of Walter's cousin, Jongumzi Sisulu (born 1958). At the time of her death, Sisulu had 26 grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. Despite her former Catholicism, she raised her children in the Anglican Church at the wishes of Walter's mother; by 1992, however, when asked whether she and Walter were still practising Christians, she replied, "There’s no time, my dear".
== Death and funeral ==
Sisulu died unexpectedly at her home in Linden on 2 June 2011, aged 92. She was watching television with two of her grandchildren when she had a coughing fit and lost consciousness; paramedics were not able to revive her. She was buried on 11 June next to her husband's grave in Croesus Cemetery in Newclare, Johannesburg.
Obituaries and tributes to Sisulu celebrated her as the mother of the nation. In his own statement, President Jacob Zuma said that, "Mama Sisulu has, over the decades, been a pillar of strength not only for the Sisulu family but also the entire liberation movement, as she reared, counselled, nursed and educated most of the leaders and founders of the democratic South Africa". He also announced that Sisulu would receive a state funeral, and that the national flag would be flown at half-mast from 4 June until the day of her burial on 11 June.
Memorial services were held throughout the week, followed on 11 June by the official funeral at Soweto's Orlando Stadium. President Zuma delivered a eulogy, after leading the crowd in verses of struggle song Thina Sizwe, and Graça Machel read a message from former President Mandela which heralded Sisulu as his "beloved sister" and as the "mother of all our people".
== Honours ==
The city of Reggio Emilia, Italy granted Sisulu honorary citizenship of the city in 1987, and the following year, the Sisulu family was jointly awarded the Carter Center's Carter-Menil Human Rights Award, though neither Sisulu nor her husband – banned and imprisoned respectively – could travel to Georgia to accept the prize. In 1993 she was elected as president of the World Peace Council.
After the end of apartheid, she was awarded honorary doctorates by the University of the Witwatersrand in 1999, the University of Cape Town in 2005, and the University of Johannesburg in 2007. On her 85th birthday in 2003, she was present at the unveiling of the Albertina Sisulu Centre, a community centre built by the City of Johannesburg in Orlando West to serve children and adults with special needs. In 2004 she was ranked 57th in SABC3's controversial Great South Africans poll, and in 2007 she received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the annual Community Builder of the Year Awards, hosted by SABC, Old Mutual, and the Sowetan. She also received the Order for Meritorious Service.
In 2007, the Gauteng Provincial Government announced that it would rename the R21 highway between Pretoria and the O. R. Tambo International Airport as the Albertina Sisulu Freeway. In line with this decision, the Johannesburg Metropolitan Council resolved in 2008 to rename 18 municipal roads after Sisulu, thereby preserving the name change in the non-freeway sections of the R24 that pass through Johannesburg and Roodepoort, with the name change taking place in 2013. Just before the 2010 FIFA World Cup, the freeway section of the R24 was also named the Albertina Sisulu Freeway. Outside of South Africa, the Albertina Sisulu Bridge, which crosses the Scheldt, was given its name by the City of Ghent, Belgium in 2014.
In 2018, the centenary of Sisulu's birth, the South African government held a number of further initiatives to honour Sisulu. As part of this programme, the South African Post Office launched a commemorative stamp, and a rare species of orchid, brachycorythis conica subsp. transvaalensis, was renamed the Albertina Sisulu Orchid during a ceremony at the Walter Sisulu Botanical Garden. The national government hosted the Albertina Sisulu Women's Dialogue in Johannesburg, and UNICEF co-hosted another Albertina Sisulu Dialogue in Durban during that year's National Women's Month. In 2021, the Ministry of Higher Education, Science and Innovation launched the Albertina Nontsikelelo Sisulu Science Centre, a green technology science centre in Cofimvaba, Eastern Cape.
== See also ==
History of the African National Congress
== References ==
== External links ==
Albertina Nontsikelelo Sisulu at South African History Project
Albertina Sisulu Timeline: 1918–2011 at South African History Project
Video of Mandela's presidential nomination at Nelson Mandela Foundation
Hearings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission on 4 December 1997
A Life of Fire and Hope: Albertina Sisulu at Apartheid Museum |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lillicoa | Lillicoa | Lillicoa is a genus of fungi in the family Stictidaceae. It has four species. The genus was circumscribed by mycologist Martha Sherwood in 1977, with Lillicoa palicoureae assigned as the type species.
== Species ==
Lillicoa bicolor (Pat.) Sherwood (1978)
Lillicoa palicoureae (Seaver & Whetzel) Sherwood (1977)
Lillicoa speciosa Sherwood (1978)
Lillicoa thaxteri Sherwood (1978)
== References == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa_Bloch | Rosa Bloch | Rosa Bloch-Bollag (1880 – 13 July 1922) was a Swiss politician and activist who, as a member of the Swiss Socialist Party, led a women's demonstration against increases in food prices in 1918. In 1920, she was one of the founding members of the Swiss Communist Party.
== Biography ==
Born on 30 June 1880 in Zürich, Switzerland, Rosa Bloch was the daughter of the grain merchant Berthold Bloch and Julie Guggenheim. Brought up in a family of a poor Jewish merchant, Rosa once she gained her gained her independence worked as a representative of a jewellery shop. Initially an anarchist, she joined the socialist party in 1912 but later became a Marxist. She proved to be a competent editor of the women workers' journal Die Vorkämperin, contributing articles which not only were politically engaging but were remarkably well drafted.
She married Siegfried Bollag, director of the Swiss Social Archives.
Highly intelligent and a talented orator, in early 1918 she joined the left wing of the Olten Action Committee and became actively involved in the women's socialist movement. That June, she organized an effective women's demonstration against rising food prices, presenting her claims to the Cantonal Council.
Also in 1918, she became the first president of the Socialist Party's Women's Committee. In 1921, after the Socialist Party had broken up, together with the other left-wingers she became a founding member of the Communist Party.
Rosa Bloch-Bollag died on 13 July 1922 in Zürich, after undergoing a goitre operation.
== References == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Netanyahu#:~:text=He%20is%20chair%20of%20the,total%20of%20over%2016%20years. | Benjamin Netanyahu | Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu (born 21 October 1949) is an Israeli politician and diplomat who has served as Prime Minister of Israel since 2022. Having previously held office from 1996 to 1999 and from 2009 to 2021, Netanyahu is Israel's longest-serving prime minister.
Born in Tel Aviv, Netanyahu was raised in West Jerusalem and the United States. He returned to Israel in 1967 to join the Israel Defense Forces and served in the Sayeret Matkal special forces. In 1972, he returned to the US, and after graduating from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Netanyahu worked for the Boston Consulting Group. He moved back to Israel in 1978 and founded the Yonatan Netanyahu Anti-Terror Institute. Between 1984 and 1988 Netanyahu was Israel's ambassador to the United Nations. Netanyahu rose to prominence after his election as chair of Likud in 1993, becoming leader of the opposition. In the 1996 general election, Netanyahu became the first Israeli prime minister elected directly by popular vote. Netanyahu was defeated in the 1999 election and entered the private sector. He served as minister of foreign affairs and finance, initiating economic reforms, before resigning over the Gaza disengagement plan.
Netanyahu returned to lead Likud in 2005, leading the opposition between 2006 and 2009. After the 2009 legislative election, Netanyahu formed a coalition and became prime minister again. Netanyahu made his closeness to Donald Trump central to his appeal from 2016. During Trump's first presidency, the US recognized Jerusalem as capital of Israel, Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, and brokered the Abraham Accords between Israel and the Arab world. Netanyahu received criticism over expanding Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, deemed illegal under international law. In 2019, Netanyahu was indicted on charges of breach of trust, bribery and fraud, and relinquished all ministerial posts except prime minister. The 2018–2022 Israeli political crisis resulted in a rotation agreement between Netanyahu and Benny Gantz. This collapsed in 2020, leading to a 2021 election. In June 2021, Netanyahu was removed from the premiership, before returning after the 2022 election.
Netanyahu's premierships have been criticized for perceived democratic backsliding and an alleged shift towards authoritarianism. Netanyahu's coalition pursued judicial reform, which was met with large-scale protests in early 2023. The October 7 attacks by Hamas-led Palestinian groups in the same year triggered the Gaza war, with Netanyahu facing nationwide protests for the security lapse and failure to secure the return of Israeli hostages. In October 2024, he survived an assassination attempt and ordered an invasion of Lebanon with the stated goal of destroying the military capabilities of Hezbollah, a key ally of Hamas. After the fall of the Assad regime in December 2024, Netanyahu directed an invasion of Syria. He also presided over the 2025 Israeli strikes on Iran, which escalated into the Iran–Israel war.
Netanyahu's government has been accused of orchestrating the genocide in Gaza, culminating in the South Africa v. Israel case before the International Court of Justice in December 2023. The International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant in November 2024 for Netanyahu for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity as part of the ICC investigation in Palestine.
== Early life, education, and military career ==
Netanyahu was born in 1949 in Tel Aviv. His mother, Tzila Segal, was born in Petah Tikva in the Mutasarrifate of Jerusalem—her family had migrated from Minneapolis in 1911, having relocated there from Lithuania in the 1870s—and studied law at Gray's Inn, London. His father, Warsaw-born Benzion Netanyahu (né Mileikowsky), was a historian specializing in the Jewish Golden Age of Spain. His paternal grandfather, Nathan Mileikowsky, was a rabbi and Zionist writer. When Netanyahu's father immigrated to Mandatory Palestine, he adopted a Hebrew surname of "Netanyahu", meaning "God has given." While his family is predominantly Ashkenazi, he has said that a DNA test revealed some Sephardic ancestry. He claims descent from the Vilna Gaon.
Netanyahu was the second of three children. He was initially raised in Jerusalem, where he attended Henrietta Szold Elementary School. A copy of his evaluation from his 6th grade teacher Ruth Rubenstein indicated that Netanyahu was courteous, polite, and helpful; that he was "responsible and punctual"; and that he was friendly, disciplined, cheerful, brave, active, and obedient.
Between 1956 and 1958, and from 1963 to 1967, his family lived in the United States in Cheltenham Township, Pennsylvania, while father Benzion Netanyahu taught at Dropsie College.
Benjamin graduated from Cheltenham High School and was active in the debate club, chess club, and soccer. He and his brother Yonatan grew dissatisfied with what they saw as the superficial way of life they encountered in the area, including the prevalent youth counterculture movement and the liberal sensibilities of the Reform synagogue, Temple Judea of Philadelphia, that the family attended.
After graduating from high school in 1967, Netanyahu returned to Israel to enlist in the Israel Defense Forces. He trained as a combat soldier and served for five years in a special forces unit of the IDF, Sayeret Matkal. He took part in numerous cross-border raids during the 1967–70 War of Attrition, including the March 1968 Battle of Karameh, when the IDF attacked Jordan to capture PLO leader Yasser Arafat but were repulsed with heavy casualties. He became a team-leader in the unit. He was wounded in combat on multiple occasions. He was involved in many other missions, including the 1968 Israeli raid on Lebanon and the rescue of the hijacked Sabena Flight 571 in May 1972, in which he was shot in the shoulder. He was discharged from active service in 1972 but remained in the Sayeret Matkal reserves. Following his discharge, he left to study in the United States but returned in October 1973 to serve in the Yom Kippur War.
=== Higher education ===
Netanyahu returned to the United States in late 1972 to study architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). After returning to Israel to fight in the Yom Kippur War, he returned to the United States and, under the name Ben Nitay, completed a bachelor's degree in architecture in February 1975 and earned a master's degree from the MIT Sloan School of Management in 1976. Concurrently, he was studying towards a doctorate in political science. His studies were broken off by the death of his brother Yonatan who was leading the Entebbe raid.
At MIT, Netanyahu studied a double-load while taking courses at Harvard University, completing his bachelor's degree in architecture in two and a half years, despite taking a break to fight in the Yom Kippur War. Professor Leon B. Groisser at MIT recalled: "He did superbly. He was very bright. Organized. Strong. Powerful. He knew what he wanted to do and how to get it done."
At that time he changed his name to Benjamin "Ben" Nitai (Nitai, a reference to both Mount Nitai and to the eponymous Jewish sage Nittai of Arbela, was a pen name often used by his father for articles). Years later, in an interview with the media, Netanyahu clarified that he decided to do so to make it easier for Americans to pronounce his name. This fact has been used by his political rivals to accuse him indirectly of a lack of Israeli national identity and loyalty.
== Early career ==
Netanyahu worked as an economic consultant for the Boston Consulting Group in Boston, Massachusetts, working at the company between 1976 and 1978. At the Boston Consulting Group, he was a colleague of Mitt Romney, with whom he formed a lasting friendship. Romney described Netanyahu at the time as "a strong personality with a distinct point of view". Netanyahu said that their "easy communication" was a result of "B.C.G.'s intellectually rigorous boot camp".
In 1978, Netanyahu appeared on Boston local television, under the name "Ben Nitay", where he argued: "The real core of the conflict is the unfortunate Arab refusal to accept the State of Israel ... For 20 years the Arabs had both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and if self-determination, as they now say, is the core of the conflict, they could have easily established a Palestinian state."
In 1978, Netanyahu returned to Israel. Between 1978 and 1980, he ran the Jonathan Netanyahu Anti-Terror Institute, a non-governmental organization devoted to the study of terrorism. From 1980 to 1982, he was director of marketing for Rim Industries in Jerusalem.
Moshe Arens appointed him as his Deputy Chief of Mission at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C., while Arens was ambassador to the United States, a position he held from 1982 until 1984. During the 1982 Lebanon War, he was called up for reserve duty in Sayeret Matkal and requested to be released from service, preferring to remain in the US and serve as a spokesperson for Israel in the wake of harsh international criticism of the war. He presented Israel's case to the media during the war and established a highly efficient public relations system in the Israeli embassy. Between 1984 and 1988, Netanyahu served as the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations. Netanyahu was influenced by Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, with whom he formed a relationship during the 1980s. He referred to Schneerson as "the most influential man of our time". Also during the 1980s, Netanyahu became friends with Fred Trump, the father of future U.S. president Donald Trump.
== Leader of the Opposition (1993–1996) ==
Prior to the 1988 Israeli legislative election, Netanyahu returned to Israel and joined the Likud party. In the Likud's internal elections, Netanyahu was placed fifth on the party list. Later on he was elected as a Knesset member of the 12th Knesset, and was appointed as a deputy of the foreign minister Moshe Arens, and later on David Levy. Netanyahu and Levy did not cooperate and the rivalry between the two only intensified afterwards. During the Gulf War in early 1991, the English-fluent Netanyahu emerged as the principal spokesman for Israel in media interviews on CNN and other news outlets. During the Madrid Conference of 1991 Netanyahu was a member of the Israeli delegation headed by Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir. After the Madrid Conference Netanyahu was appointed as Deputy Minister in the Israeli Prime Minister's Office.
Following the defeat of the Likud party in the 1992 Israeli legislative elections the Likud party held a party leadership election in 1993, and Netanyahu was victorious, defeating Benny Begin, son of the late prime minister Menachem Begin, and veteran politician David Levy (Sharon initially sought Likud party leadership as well, but quickly withdrew when it was evident that he was attracting minimal support). Shamir retired from politics shortly after the Likud's defeat in the 1992 elections.
Following the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin at the end of a rally in support of the Oslo Accords, Rabin's temporary successor Shimon Peres decided to call early elections in order to give the government a mandate to advance the peace process. Netanyahu was the Likud's candidate for prime minister in the 1996 Israeli legislative election which took place on 29 May 1996 and were the first Israeli elections in which Israelis elected their prime minister directly. Netanyahu hired American political operative Arthur Finkelstein to run his campaign. Netanyahu won the 1996 election, becoming the youngest person in the history of the position and the first Israeli prime minister to be born in the State of Israel (Yitzhak Rabin was born in Jerusalem, under the British Mandate of Palestine, prior to the 1948 founding of the Israeli state).
Netanyahu's victory over the pre-election favorite Shimon Peres surprised many. The main catalyst in the downfall of the latter was a wave of suicide bombings shortly before the elections; on 3 and 4 March 1996, Palestinians carried out two suicide bombings, killing 32 Israelis, with Peres seemingly unable to stop the attacks. During the campaign, Netanyahu stressed that progress in the peace process would be based on the Palestinian National Authority fulfilling its obligations – mainly fighting terrorism – and the Likud campaign slogan was, "Netanyahu – making a safe peace". Although Netanyahu won the election for prime minister, Peres's Israeli Labor Party received more seats in the Knesset elections. Netanyahu had to rely on a coalition with the ultra-Orthodox parties, Shas and UTJ in order to form a government.
== Prime Minister (1996–1999) ==
=== First term ===
The months leading up to the 1996 Israeli election were marred by a series of Hamas terrorist attacks in Israel. After the Shin Bet assassinated Hamas military leader Yahya Ayyash on 5 January 1996, Mohammed Deif, now commander of the Qassam Brigades, organized a bombing campaign inside Israel as retaliation, including the Dizengoff Center suicide bombing and Jaffa Road bus bombings. It has been alleged that Syria and Iran had helped in their planning and financing. According to a report, Syrian Defense Minister Mustafa Tlass instructed Ghazi Kanaan to establish links between Hezbollah and Hamas fighters, who were then trained both in Lebanon and Iran and participated in the retaliatory operations for the murder of Ayyash. According to Mike Kelly, Hamas operative Hassan Salameh, who planned three of the attacks, was trained in Iran.
According to Ronen Bergman, Deif's bombing campaign and the Israeli intelligence services failure to prevent it, was a factor that led to the defeat of Prime Minister Shimon Peres and the Israeli Labor Party in the 1996 Israeli general election and the victory of the Likud party of Netanyahu, who opposed the Oslo Accords. Bergman writes that "after the election, the attacks stopped for almost a year. Some said this was because of Arafat's campaign against Hamas, and the arrest of many members of its military wing. Others believed that Hamas no longer had any reason to carry out suicide attacks, because Netanyahu had already almost completely stopped the peace process, which was the short-term goal of the attacks anyway."
Netanyahu first met Palestinian president Arafat on 4 September 1996. Prior to the meeting, the two leaders spoke by telephone. The meetings would continue through Autumn 1996. On their first meeting, Netanyahu said: "I would like to emphasize that we have to take into account the needs and the requirements of both sides on the basis of reciprocity and the assurance of the security and well-being of both Israelis and Palestinian alike." Arafat said: "We are determined to work with Mr. Netanyahu and with his government." The talks culminated on 14 January 1997, in the signing of the Hebron Protocol.
In 1996, Netanyahu and Jerusalem's mayor Ehud Olmert decided to open an exit in the Arab Quarter for the Western Wall Tunnel, which prior prime minister Shimon Peres had instructed to be put on hold for the sake of peace. This sparked three days of rioting by Palestinians, resulting in dozens of both Israelis and Palestinians being killed.
Eventually, the lack of progress of the peace process led to new negotiations which produced the Wye River Memorandum in 1998 which detailed the steps to be taken by the Israeli government and Palestinian Authority to implement the earlier Interim Agreement of 1995. It was signed by Netanyahu and PLO chairman Arafat, and on 17 November 1998, Israel's 120 member parliament, the Knesset, approved the Wye River Memorandum by a vote of 75–19. In a nod to the 1967 Khartoum conference, Netanyahu emphasized a policy of "three no(s)": no withdrawal from the Golan Heights, no discussion of the case of Jerusalem, no negotiations under any preconditions.
In 1997 Ali Fallahian, the Iranian Intelligence Minister, authorized a new Hamas bombing campaign to further disrupt the peace process, and Hamas leader Khaled Meshal, then living in Amman, Jordan, picked Mahmoud Abu Hanoud, an expert bomb-maker in the West Bank, to construct the bombs, and sent five suicide bombers to detonate them simultaneously in Jerusalem in the 30 July Mahane Yehuda market bombings and 4 September Ben Yehuda street bombings, killing 21 Israelis. In 1997, Netanyahu authorized a Mossad operation to assassinate Hamas leader Khaled Mashal in Jordan, just three years after the two countries had signed a peace treaty. The Mossad team, covering as five Canadian tourists, entered Jordan on 27 September 1997 and injected poison into Mashal's ears in a street in Amman. The plot was exposed and two agents were arrested by the Jordanian police while three others hid in the Israeli embassy which was then surrounded by troops. An angry King Hussein demanded Israel to give out the antidote and threatened to annul the peace treaty. Netanyahu relented to the demands after pressure by US President Bill Clinton and ordered the release of 61 Jordanian and Palestinian prisoners including Sheikh Ahmad Yassin. The incident sent the nascent Israeli-Jordanian relations plummeting.
According to Bergman based on internal IDF sources, Mashal's antidote only secured the release of the two Mossad Kidon agents that were carrying out the assassination attempt. At least six other Mossad agents involved in the operations were holed up in the Israeli embassy. King Hussein would only release them if Israel released Ahmed Yassin and a large number of other Palestinian prisoners. Hussein needed the demands to be "enough to enable the king to be able to publicly defend the release of the hit team."
On the same day that Hamas bombed Ben Yehuda street, Hezbollah executed the Ansariya ambush on the IDF's naval special forces Shayetet 13, killing 12 Israeli commandos. On 25 May 1998, the remains and body parts of at least three soldiers who died in the Ansariya ambush were exchanged for 65 Lebanese prisoners and the bodies of 40 Hizbullah fighters and Lebanese soldiers captured by Israel. Netanyahu called it "one of the worst tragedies that has ever occurred to us".
During his term, Netanyahu also began a process of economic liberalization, taking steps towards a free-market economy. Under his watch, the government began selling its shares in banks and major state-run companies. Netanyahu also greatly eased Israel's strict foreign exchange controls, enabling Israelis to take an unrestricted amount of money out of the country, open foreign bank accounts, hold foreign currency, and invest freely in other countries.
Throughout his term, Netanyahu was opposed by the political left wing in Israel and lost support from the right because of his concessions to the Palestinians in Hebron and elsewhere, and due to his negotiations with Arafat generally. Netanyahu lost favor with the Israeli public after a long chain of scandals involving his marriage and corruption charges. In 1997, police recommended that Netanyahu be indicted on corruption charges for influence-peddling. He was accused of appointing an attorney general who would reduce the charges but prosecutors ruled that there was insufficient evidence to go to trial. In 1999, Netanyahu faced another scandal when the Israel Police recommended that he be tried for corruption for $100,000 in free services from a government contractor; Israel's attorney general did not prosecute, citing difficulties with evidence. The major Israeli failures against Hamas and Hezbollah under Netanyahu's first premiership and their results in the subsequent releases of imprisoned Palestinian and Lebanese leaders from Israeli jails are thought to have dealt a blow to Netanyahu's rhetoric of a "tough stance" towards enemies of Israel, and to have played a role in his defeat in the 1999 Israeli general election.
== Political hiatus (1999–2003) ==
After being defeated by Ehud Barak in the 1999 Israeli prime ministerial election, Netanyahu temporarily retired from politics. He subsequently served as a senior consultant with Israeli communications equipment manufacturer BATM Advanced Communications for two years.
With the fall of the Barak government in late 2000, Netanyahu expressed his desire to return to politics. By law, Barak's resignation was supposed to lead to elections for the prime minister position only. Netanyahu insisted that general elections should be held, claiming that otherwise it would be impossible to have a stable government. Netanyahu decided eventually not to run for the prime minister position, a move which facilitated the rise to power of Ariel Sharon, who at the time was considered less popular than Netanyahu. In 2002, after the Israeli Labor Party left the coalition and vacated the position of foreign minister, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon appointed Netanyahu as foreign minister. Netanyahu challenged Sharon for the leadership of the Likud party in the 2002 Likud leadership election, but failed to oust him.
On 9 September 2002, a scheduled speech by Netanyahu at Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada was canceled after hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters overwhelmed security and smashed through a window. Netanyahu was not present at the protest, having remained at his hotel throughout the duration. He later accused the activists of supporting terrorism and "mad zealotry". Weeks later in October around 200 protesters met Netanyahu outside his Heinz Hall appearance in Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh Police, Israeli security and a Pittsburgh SWAT unit allowed his speeches to continue downtown at the hall and the Duquesne Club as well as suburban Robert Morris University.
On 12 September 2002, Netanyahu lobbied for the invasion of Iraq, testifying under oath as a private citizen before the U.S. House of Representatives Government Reform Committee regarding the alleged nuclear threat posed by the Iraqi régime: "There is no question whatsoever that Saddam is seeking and is working and is advancing towards the development of nuclear weapons…" He also testified, "If you take out Saddam, Saddam's regime, I guarantee you that it will have enormous positive reverberations on the region."
== Minister of Finance (2003–2005) ==
After the 2003 Israeli legislative election, in what many observers regarded as a surprise move, Sharon offered the Foreign Ministry to Silvan Shalom and offered Netanyahu the Finance Ministry. Some pundits speculated that Sharon made the move because he deemed Netanyahu a political threat given his demonstrated effectiveness as foreign minister, and that by placing him in the Finance Ministry during a time of economic uncertainty, he could diminish Netanyahu's popularity. Netanyahu accepted the new appointment. Sharon and Netanyahu came to an agreement that Netanyahu would have complete freedom as finance minister and have Sharon back all of his reforms, in exchange for Netanyahu's silence over Sharon's management of Israel's military and foreign affairs.
As finance minister, Netanyahu undertook an economic plan in order to restore Israel's economy from its low point during the Second Intifada. Netanyahu claimed that a bloated public sector and excessive regulations were largely responsible for stifling economic growth. His plan involved a move toward more liberalized markets, although it was not without its critics. He instituted a program to end welfare dependency by requiring people to apply for jobs or training, reduced the size of the public sector, froze government spending for three years, and capped the budget deficit at 1%. The taxation system was streamlined and taxes were cut, with the top individual tax rate reduced from 64% to 44% and the corporate tax rate from 36% to 18%. A host of state assets worth billions of dollars were privatized, including banks, oil refineries, the El Al national airline, and Zim Integrated Shipping Services. The retirement ages for both men and women were raised, and currency exchange laws were further liberalized. Commercial banks were forced to spin off their long-term savings. In addition, Netanyahu attacked monopolies and cartels to increase competition. As the Israeli economy started booming and unemployment fell significantly, Netanyahu was widely credited by commentators as having performed an 'economic miracle' by the end of his tenure.
However, opponents in the Labor party (and even a few within his own Likud) viewed Netanyahu's policies as "Thatcherite" attacks on the venerated Israeli social safety net. Ultimately, unemployment declined while economic growth soared, the debt-to-GDP ratio dropped to one of the lowest in the world, and foreign investment reached record highs.
Netanyahu threatened to resign from office in 2004 unless the Gaza pullout plan was put to a referendum. He later modified the ultimatum and voted for the program in the Knesset, indicating immediately thereafter that he would resign unless a referendum was held within 14 days. He submitted his resignation letter on 7 August 2005, shortly before the Israeli cabinet voted 17 to 5 to approve the initial phase of withdrawal from Gaza.
== Leader of the Opposition (2006–2009) ==
Following the withdrawal of Sharon from the Likud, Netanyahu was one of several candidates who vied for the Likud leadership. His most recent attempt prior to this was in September 2005 when he had tried to hold early primaries for the position of the head of the Likud party, while the party held the office of prime minister – thus effectively pushing Ariel Sharon out of office. The party rejected this initiative. Netanyahu retook the leadership on 20 December 2005, with 47% of the primary vote, to 32% for Silvan Shalom and 15% for Moshe Feiglin. In the March 2006 Knesset elections, Likud took the third place behind Kadima and Labor and Netanyahu served as Leader of the Opposition. On 14 August 2007, Netanyahu was reelected as chairman of the Likud and its candidate for the post of prime minister with 73% of the vote, against far-right candidate Moshe Feiglin and World Likud chairman Danny Danon. He opposed the 2008 Israel–Hamas ceasefire, like others in the Knesset opposition. Specifically, Netanyahu said: "This is not a relaxation, it's an Israeli agreement to the rearming of Hamas ... What are we getting for this?"
Following Tzipi Livni's election to head Kadima and Olmert's resignation from the post of prime minister, Netanyahu declined to join the coalition Livni was trying to form and supported new elections, which were held in February 2009. Netanyahu was the Likud's candidate for prime minister in the 2009 Israeli legislative election which took place on 10 February 2009, as Livni, the previous designated acting prime minister under the Olmert government, had been unable to form a viable governing coalition. Opinion polls showed Likud in the lead, but with as many as a third of Israeli voters undecided.
In the election itself, Likud won the second highest number of seats, Livni's party having outnumbered the Likud by one seat. A possible explanation for Likud's relatively poor showing is that some Likud supporters defected to Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu party. Netanyahu, however, claimed victory on the basis that right-wing parties won the majority of the vote, and on 20 February 2009, Netanyahu was designated by Israeli President Shimon Peres to succeed Ehud Olmert as prime minister, and began his negotiations to form a coalition government.
Despite right wing parties winning a majority of 65 seats in the Knesset, Netanyahu preferred a broader centrist coalition and turned to his Kadima rivals, chaired by Tzipi Livni, to join his government. This time it was Livni's turn to decline to join, with a difference of opinion on how to pursue the peace process being the stumbling block. Netanyahu did manage to entice a smaller rival, the Labor Party, chaired by Ehud Barak, to join his government, giving him a certain amount of centrist tone. Netanyahu presented his cabinet for a Knesset "Vote of Confidence" on 31 March 2009. The 32nd Government was approved that day by a majority of 69 lawmakers to 45 (with five abstaining) and the members were sworn in.
== Prime Minister (2009–2021) ==
=== Second term ===
In 2009, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton voiced support for the establishment of a Palestinian state – a solution not endorsed by prime minister-designate Netanyahu, with whom she had earlier pledged the United States' cooperation. Upon the arrival of President Obama administration's special envoy, George Mitchell, Netanyahu said that any furtherance of negotiations with the Palestinians would be conditioned on the Palestinians recognizing Israel as a Jewish state.
During President Obama's Cairo speech on 4 June 2009 in which Obama addressed the Muslim world, Obama stated, among other things, "The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements." Following Obama's Cairo speech Netanyahu immediately called a special government meeting. On 14 June, ten days after Obama's Cairo speech, Netanyahu gave a speech at Bar-Ilan University in which he endorsed a "Demilitarized Palestinian State". Netanyahu stated that he would accept a Palestinian state if Jerusalem were to remain the united capital of Israel, the Palestinians would have no army, and the Palestinians would give up their demand for a right of return. He also argued the right for a "natural growth" in the existing Jewish settlements in the West Bank while their permanent status is up to further negotiation. The speech was broadcast live in Israel and across parts of the Arab world. He endorsed for the first time the notion of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. He stated that he would be willing to meet with any "Arab leader" for negotiations without preconditions, specifically mentioning Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Lebanon. The address represented a new position for Netanyahu's government on the peace process.
Right-wing members of Netanyahu's governing coalition criticized his remarks for the creation of a Palestinian State, believing all of the land should come under Israeli sovereignty. Likud MK Danny Danon said Netanyahu went "against the Likud platform", MK Uri Orbach of Habayit Hayehudi said it had "dangerous implications". Opposition party Kadima leader Tzipi Livni opined that Netanyahu did not really believe in the two-state solution and that his speech was a response to international pressure.
Netanyahu's speech provoked mixed reaction internationally. The Palestinian National Authority rejected the conditions on a Palestinian State. Senior Palestinian official Saeb Erekat said that the speech had "closed the door to permanent status negotiations" due to Netanyahu's declarations on Jerusalem, refugees and settlements. Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said it was "racist" and called on Arab nations to "form stronger opposition". The Arab League dismissed the speech, declaring that "Arabs would not make concessions regarding issues of Jerusalem and refugees". The Czech Republic Foreign Minister Jan Kohout, whose country held the EU's presidency at the time, said "...this is a step in the right direction. The acceptance of a Palestinian state was present there". President Obama's press secretary, Robert Gibbs, said the speech was an "important step forward". Obama said "this solution can and must ensure both Israel's security and the Palestinians' legitimate aspirations for a viable state". France praised the speech and called on Israel to cease building settlements in the West Bank.
Three months after starting his term, Netanyahu remarked that his cabinet already had achieved several successes, such as the establishment of a working national unity government, and a broad consensus for a "two-state solution". A July 2009 survey by Ha'aretz found that most Israelis supported the Netanyahu government, giving him a personal approval rating of about 49 percent. Netanyahu has lifted checkpoints in the West Bank in order to allow freedom of movement and a flow of imports; a step that resulted in an economic boost in the West Bank. In 2009, Netanyahu welcomed the Arab Peace initiative (also known as the "Saudi Peace Initiative") and lauded a call by Bahrain's Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa to normalize relations with Israel.
On 9 August 2009, speaking at the opening of a government meeting, Netanyahu said: "We want an agreement with two factors, the first of which is the recognition of Israel as the national state of the Jewish people and (the second of which is) a security settlement". In August 2009, Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas declared that he would be willing to meet with Netanyahu at the UN General Assembly, where Netanyahu had accepted president Obama's invitation for a "triple summit", although he said it would not necessarily lead to negotiations. Netanyahu was reported to be in a pivotal moment over these understandings, that were reported to include a compromise over permission on continuing the already approved construction in the West Bank in exchange for freezing all settlements thereafter, as well as continuing building in East Jerusalem, and at the same time stopping the demolition of houses of Arab inhabitants there. On 4 September 2009, it was reported that Netanyahu was to agree to settlers' political demands to approve more settlement constructions before a temporary settlement freeze agreement took place. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs expressed "regret" over the move; however, one U.S. official said the move will not "derail [the] train".
On 7 September 2009, Netanyahu left his office without reporting his destination. The prime minister's military secretary later reported Netanyahu had visited a security facility in Israel. Various news agencies reported different stories about his whereabouts. On 9 September 2009, Yedioth Ahronoth reported that the Israeli leader had made a secret flight to Moscow to try to persuade Russian officials not to sell S-300 anti-aircraft missile systems to Iran. Headlines branded Netanyahu a "liar" and dubbed the affair a "fiasco". The PM's military secretary was later reportedly dismissed due to the affair. The Sunday Times reported that the trip was made to share the names of Russian scientists that Israel believes are abetting the alleged Iranian nuclear weapons program.
On 24 September 2009, in an address to the UN General Assembly in New York, Netanyahu said Iran poses a threat to the peace of the world and that it is incumbent on the world body to prevent the Islamic Republic from obtaining nuclear weapons. Waving the blueprints for Auschwitz and invoking the memory of his own family members murdered by the Nazis, Netanyahu delivered a passionate and public riposte to Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's questioning of the Holocaust, asking: "Have you no shame?"
In response to pressure from the Obama administration urging the resumption of peace talks, on 25 November 2009 Netanyahu announced a partial 10-month settlement construction freeze plan. The announced partial freeze had no significant effect on actual settlement construction, according to an analysis by Haaretz. U.S. special envoy George Mitchell said, "while the United States shares Arab concerns about the limitations of Israel's gesture, it is more than any Israeli government has ever done". In his announcement Netanyahu called the move "a painful step that will encourage the peace process" and urged the Palestinians to respond. The Palestinians rejected the call, stating the gesture was "insignificant" in that thousands of recently approved settlement buildings in the West Bank would continue to be built and there would be no freeze of settlement activity in East Jerusalem.
In March 2010, Israel's government approved construction of an additional 1,600 apartments in a large Jewish housing development in northern East Jerusalem called Ramat Shlomo despite the position of the current U.S. Government that acts such as this thwart the peace talks. The Israeli government's announcement occurred during a visit by U.S. Vice-president Joe Biden and the U.S. government issued a strongly worded condemnation of the plan. Netanyahu issued a statement that all previous Israeli governments had continuously permitted construction in the neighborhood, and that certain neighborhoods such as Ramat Shlomo and Gilo have always been included as part of Israel in any final agreement plan that has been proposed by either side to date. Netanyahu regretted the timing of the announcement but asserted that "our policy on Jerusalem is the same policy followed by all Israeli governments for the 42 years, and it has not changed."
In September 2010, Netanyahu agreed to enter direct talks, mediated by the Obama administration, with the Palestinians. The ultimate aim of these direct talks is to forge the framework of an official "final status settlement" to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict by forming a two-state solution for the Jewish people and the Palestinian people. On 27 September, the 10-month settlement freeze ended, and the Israeli government approved new construction in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. On retiring from office in July 2011, former U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said that Netanyahu was ungrateful to the United States and endangering Israel. Responding, the Likud party defended Netanyahu by saying that most Israelis supported the prime minister and that he had broad support in the United States.
Netanyahu unsuccessfully called for the early release of Jonathan Pollard, an American serving a life sentence for passing secret U.S. documents to Israel in 1987. He has raised the issue at the Wye River Summit in 1998, where he claimed that U.S. president Bill Clinton had privately agreed to release Pollard. In 2002, Netanyahu visited Pollard at his North Carolina prison. The Israeli prime minister maintained contact with Pollard's wife, and was active in pressing the Obama administration to release Pollard.
In 2011, social justice protests broke out across Israel. Hundreds of thousands of people protested Israel's high cost of living throughout the country. In response, Netanyahu appointed the Trajtenberg Committee, headed by professor Manuel Trajtenberg, to examine the problems and propose solutions. The committee submitted recommendations to lower the high cost of living in September 2011. Although Netanyahu promised to push the proposed reforms through the cabinet in one piece, differences inside his coalition resulted in the reforms being gradually adopted.
Netanyahu's cabinet also approved a plan to build a fiber-optic cable network across the country to bring cheap, high-speed fiber-optic Internet access to every home.
In 2012, Netanyahu initially planned to call early elections, but subsequently oversaw the creation of a government of national unity to see Israel through until the national elections of 2013. In May 2012, Netanyahu officially recognized for the first time the right for Palestinians to have their own state in an official document, a letter to Mahmoud Abbas, though as before he declared it would have to be demilitarized. On 25 October 2012, Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman announced that their respective political parties, Likud and Yisrael Beiteinu, had merged and would run together on a single ballot in Israel's 22 January 2013 general elections.
=== Third term ===
The 2013 election returned Netanyahu's Likud Beiteinu coalition with 11 fewer seats than the combined Likud and Yisrael Beiteinu parties had going into the vote. Israeli president Shimon Peres charged Netanyahu with the task of forming the Thirty-third government of Israel. During Netanyahu's third term, he continued his policy of economic liberalization. In December 2013, the Knesset approved the Business Concentration Law, which intended to open Israel's highly concentrated economy to competition to lower consumer prices, reduce income inequality, and increase economic growth. Netanyahu had formed the Concentration Committee in 2010, and the bill, which was pushed forward by his government, implemented its recommendations. The new law banned multi-tiered corporate holding structures, in which a CEO's family members or other affiliated individuals held public companies which in turn owned other public companies, and who were thus able to engage in price gouging. Under the law, corporations were banned from owning more than two tiers of publicly listed companies and from holding both financial and non-financial enterprises. All conglomerates were given four to six years to sell excess holdings. Netanyahu also began a campaign of port privatization to break what he viewed as the monopoly held by workers of the Israel Port Authority, so as to lower consumer prices and increase exports. In July 2013, he issued tenders for the construction of private ports in Haifa and Ashdod. Netanyahu has also pledged to curb excess bureaucracy and regulations to ease the burden on industry.
In April and June 2014, Netanyahu spoke of his deep concerns when Hamas and the Palestinian Authority agreed and then formed a unity government, and was severely critical of both the United States and European governments' decision to work with the Palestinian coalition government. He blamed Hamas for the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers in June 2014, and launched a massive search and arrest operation on the West Bank, targeting members of Hamas in particular, and over the following weeks hit 60 targets in Gaza. Missile and rocket exchanges between Gaza militants and the IDF escalated after the bodies of the teenagers, who had been killed almost immediately as the government had good reasons to suspect, were discovered on 30 June 2014. After several Hamas operatives were killed, Hamas officially declared it would launch rockets from Gaza into Israel, and Israel started Operation Protective Edge in the Gaza Strip, formally ending the November 2012 ceasefire agreement. The prime minister did a round of television shows in the United States and described Hamas as "genocidal terrorists" in an interview on CNN. When asked if Gazan casualties from the operation might spark "a third intifada", Netanyahu replied that Hamas was working towards that goal.
In October 2014, Netanyahu's government approved a privatization plan to reduce corruption and politicization in government companies, and strengthen Israel's capital market. Under the plan, minority stakes of up to 49% in state-owned companies, including arms manufacturers, energy, postal, water, and railway companies, as well as the ports of Haifa and Ashdod. That same month, Netanyahu called criticism of settlements "against the American values", which earned him rebuke from the White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest, who said that American values had resulted in Israel receiving consistent funding and protective technology such as Iron Dome. Netanyahu explained that he does not accept residency restrictions for Jews, and said that Jerusalem's Arabs and Jews should be able to buy homes wherever they want. He said he was "baffled" by the American condemnation. "It's against the American values. And it doesn't bode well for peace. The idea that we'd have this ethnic purification as a condition for peace, I think it's anti-peace." Later, Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic reported that the relationship between Netanyahu and the White House had reached a new low, with the U.S. administration angry over Israel's settlement policies, and Netanyahu expressing contempt for the American administration's grasp of the Middle East.
On 2 December 2014, Netanyahu fired ministers Yair Lapid, head of Yesh Atid, and Tzipi Livni, head of Hatnua. The changes led to the dissolution of the government, with new elections on 17 March 2015.
Benjamin Netanyahu's 2015 address to the United States Congress marked Netanyahu's third speech to a joint session of Congress. The day before announcing he would address Congress, Time reported that he tried to derail a meeting between U.S. lawmakers and the head of Mossad, Tamir Pardo, who intended warning them against imposing further sanctions against Iran, a move that might derail nuclear talks. Leading up to the speech, Israeli consuls general in the United States "expect[ed] fierce negative reaction from U.S. Jewish communities and Israel's allies". Objections included the arrangement of the speech without the support and engagement of the Obama administration and the timing of the speech before Israel's March 2015 election. Seven American Jewish lawmakers met with Ron Dermer, Israel's ambassador to the U.S. and recommended that Netanyahu instead meet with lawmakers privately to discuss Iran. In making the speech, Netanyahu claimed to speak for all Jews worldwide, a claim disputed by others in the Jewish community.
As election day approached in what was perceived to be a close race in the 2015 Israeli elections, Netanyahu answered 'indeed' when asked whether a Palestinian state would not be established in his term. He said that support of a Palestinian state is tantamount to yielding territory for radical Islamic terrorists to attack Israel. However, Netanyahu reiterated "I don't want a one-state solution. I want a peaceful, sustainable two-state solution. I have not changed my policy."
=== Fourth term ===
In the 2015 election, Netanyahu returned with his party Likud leading the elections with 30 mandates, making it the single highest number of seats for the Knesset. President Rivlin granted Netanyahu an extension until 6 May 2015 to build a coalition when one had not been finalized in the first four weeks of negotiations. He formed a coalition government within two hours of the midnight 6 May deadline. His Likud party formed the coalition with Jewish Home, United Torah Judaism, Kulanu, and Shas.
In August 2015, Netanyahu's government approved a two-year budget that would see agricultural reforms and lowering of import duties to reduce food prices, deregulation of the approval process in construction to lower housing costs and speed up infrastructure building, and reforms in the financial sector to boost competition and lower fees for financial services. In the end, the government was forced to compromise by removing some key agricultural reforms.
In October 2015, Netanyahu caused commotion for saying the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini gave Adolf Hitler the idea of exterminating Jews rather than expelling them during the Second World War. This claim is dismissed by most historians, who say that al-Husseini's meeting with Hitler took place approximately five months after the mass murder of Jews began. Some of the strongest criticism came from Israeli academics: Yehuda Bauer said Netanyahu's claim was "completely idiotic". Moshe Zimmermann stated that "any attempt to deflect the burden from Hitler to others is a form of Holocaust denial."
In March 2016, Netanyahu's coalition faced a potential crisis as ultra-Orthodox members threatened to withdraw over the government's proposed steps to create non-Orthodox prayer space at the Western Wall. They have stated they will leave the coalition if the government offers any further official state recognition of Conservative and Reform Judaism.
On 23 December 2016, the United States, under the Obama Administration, abstained from United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334, effectively allowing it to pass. On 28 December, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry strongly criticized Israel and its settlement policies in a speech. Netanyahu strongly criticized both the UN Resolution and Kerry's speech in response. On 6 January 2017, the Israeli government withdrew its annual dues from the organization, which totaled $6 million in United States dollars.
In February 2017, Netanyahu became the first serving prime minister of Israel to visit Australia. He was accompanied by his wife, Sara. The three-day official visit included a delegation of business representatives, and Netanyahu and Prime Minister of Australia Malcolm Turnbull were scheduled to sign several bilateral agreements. Netanyahu recalled that it was the Australian Light Horse regiments that liberated Beersheba during World War I, and this began what has been a relationship of 100 years between the countries.
In October 2017, shortly after the US announced the same action, Netanyahu's government announced it was leaving UNESCO due to what it saw as anti-Israel actions by the agency, and it made that decision official in December 2017. The Israeli government officially notified UNESCO of the withdrawal in late December 2017.
In April 2018, Netanyahu accused Iran of not holding up its end of the Iran nuclear deal after presenting a cache of over 100,000 documents detailing the extent of Iran's nuclear program. Iran denounced Netanyahu's presentation as "propaganda".
Netanyahu praised the 2018 North Korea–United States Singapore Summit. He said in a statement, "I commend US President Donald Trump on the historic summit in Singapore. This is an important step in the effort to rid the Korean peninsula of nuclear weapons."
In July 2018, the Knesset passed the Nation-State Bill, a Basic Law supported by Netanyahu's coalition government. Analysts saw the bill as a sign of Netanyahu's coalition advancing a right-wing agenda.
Prior to the April 2019 Israeli legislative election, Netanyahu helped broker a deal that united the Jewish Home party with the far-right Otzma Yehudit party, in order to form the Union of the Right-Wing Parties. The motivation of the deal was to overcome the electoral threshold for smaller parties. The deal was criticized in the media, as Otzma is widely characterized as racist and traces its origins to the extremist Kahanist movement.
==== Criminal investigations and indictment ====
Since January 2017, Netanyahu has been investigated by Israeli police in two connected cases, "Case 1000" and "Case 2000". In Case 1000, Netanyahu is suspected of having obtained inappropriate favors from businessmen, including James Packer and Hollywood producer Arnon Milchan. Case 2000 involves alleged attempts to strike a deal with the publisher of the Yedioth Ahronot newspaper group, Arnon Mozes, to promote legislation to weaken Yedioth's main competitor in exchange for more favorable political coverage.
In August 2017, Israeli police confirmed that Netanyahu was suspected of crimes involving fraud, breach of trust, and bribes in the two cases. The next day, it was reported that the prime minister's former chief of staff, Ari Harow, had signed a deal with prosecutors to testify against Netanyahu.
In February 2018, Israeli police recommended that Netanyahu be charged with corruption. According to a police statement, sufficient evidence exists to indict the prime minister on charges of bribery, fraud, and breach of trust in the two cases. Netanyahu responded that the allegations were baseless and that he would continue as prime minister. In November 2018, it was reported that Economic Crimes Division Director Liat Ben-Ari recommended indictment for both cases.
In 2018 Netanyahu was also investigated in "Case 4000", where he was suspected of giving regulatory favors to Shaul Elovitch, owner of Bezeq telecommunication company, in exchange for positive publications in news website Walla!.
In February 2019, the Israeli attorney general announced his intent to file indictments against Netanyahu on bribe and fraud charges in the three cases. Netanyahu was formally indicted on 21 November 2019. If convicted, he could face up to 10 years in prison for bribery and a maximum of three years for fraud and breach of trust. He is the first sitting prime minister in Israel's history to be charged with a crime. On 23 November 2019, it was announced that Netanyahu, in compliance with legal precedent set by the Israeli Supreme Court in 1993, would relinquish his agriculture, health, social affairs and diaspora affairs portfolios. The matter of forcing a prime minister to resign due to an indictment has yet to be tested in court. He was officially charged on 28 January 2020.
Netanyahu's criminal trial was set to begin on 24 May 2020, having been initially scheduled for March of that year but delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As of April 2023, the criminal trial was still ongoing.
On 30 November 2025, Netanyahu formally asked for a pardon from president Isaac Herzog.
=== Fifth term ===
On 17 May 2020, Netanyahu was sworn in for a fifth term as prime minister in a coalition with Benny Gantz. Against a background of the COVID-19 pandemic in Israel and Netanyahu's criminal trial, protests broke out against him in front of the prime minister's residence. Following this, Netanyahu ordered to disperse the demonstrations using COVID-19 special regulations, limiting them to 20 people and at a distance of 1,000 meters from their homes. However, the exact opposite was achieved; the demonstrations were enlarged and dispersed to over 1,000 centers. By March 2021, Israel became the country with the highest vaccinated population per capita in the world against COVID-19.
After tensions escalated in Jerusalem in May 2021, Hamas fired rockets on Israel from Gaza, which prompted Netanyahu to initiate Operation Guardian of the Walls, lasting eleven days. After the operation, Israeli politician and leader of the Yamina alliance Naftali Bennett announced that he had agreed to a deal with Leader of the Opposition Yair Lapid to form a rotation government that would oust Netanyahu from his position as prime minister. On 13 June 2021, Bennett and Lapid formed a coalition government, and Netanyahu was ousted as prime minister, ending his 12-year tenure.
== Leader of the Opposition (2021–2022) ==
After the end of his second premiership, Netanyahu began his third stint as the leader of the opposition. Likud remained the largest party in the twenty-fourth Knesset.
He led the opposition into the 2022 Israeli legislative election.
== Prime Minister (2022–present) ==
=== Sixth term ===
After the 2022 election, Netanyahu was sworn in as prime minister again as the leader of a hardline coalition. He officially started his sixth term on 29 December 2022.
The first months of Netanyahu's sixth term were centered around a proposed reform package in the judicial branch. Critics highlighted the negative effects it would have on the separation of powers, the office of the Attorney General, the economy, public health, women and minorities, workers' rights, scientific research, the overall strength of Israel's democracy and its foreign relations. After weeks of public protests on Israel's streets, joined by a growing number of military reservists, Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant spoke against the reform on 25 March, calling for a halt of the legislative process "for the sake of Israel's security". Netanyahu announced his intention to remove Gallant from his post the following day, sparking further protests across Israel and leading to Netanyahu agreeing to delay the legislation for a month.
In February 2023, the new government under Netanyahu approved the legalization of nine settler outposts in the occupied West Bank. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich took charge of most of the Civil Administration, obtaining broad authority over civilian issues in the West Bank. Israeli peace groups condemned the move as de jure annexation of the occupied territories. In March 2023, Netanyahu's government repealed a 2005 law whereby four Israeli settlements, Homesh, Sa-Nur, Ganim and Kadim, were dismantled as part of the Israeli disengagement from Gaza. In June 2023, Netanyahu's coalition shortened the procedure of approving settlement construction and gave Finance Minister Smotrich the authority to approve one of the stages, changing the system operating for the last 27 years. In its first six months, construction of 13,000 housing units in settlements, almost triple the amount advanced in the whole of 2022.
Israel refused to send lethal weapons to Ukraine. In June 2023, Netanyahu said that Israel is concerned "with the possibility that systems that we would give to Ukraine would fall into Iranian hands and could be reverse engineered, and we would find ourselves facing Israeli systems used against Israel."
On 7 October 2023, after Palestinian militants from Gaza launched a major surprise attack, Netanyahu announced that Israel would enter in a state of war against Hamas. He threatened to "turn all the places where Hamas is organized and hiding into cities of ruins", called Gaza "the city of evil", and urged its residents to "leave now". He later proposed that opposition parties Yesh Atid and National Unity enter an emergency unity government amid the conflict, after Leader of the Opposition Lapid urged Netanyahu put "aside our differences and form an emergency, narrow, professional government."
Netanyahu was criticized for presiding over Israel's biggest intelligence failure in 50 years, and has faced protests calling for his removal. The outbreak of war led to increased opposition to Netanyahu and the government from Israeli citizens due to a perceived failure to anticipate the Hamas-led attack, with increased calls for Netanyahu's resignation. A poll in 2023 showed that 56% of Israelis believed that Netanyahu must resign after the war, with 86% of respondents holding the country's leadership responsible for the security failings that led to the attack. On 28 October 2023, Netanyahu was accused of using "dangerous rhetoric" when comparing Hamas to Amalek, stating: "You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible. And we do remember." On 29 October, Netanyahu blamed Israel's security chiefs for Hamas's attack in a post on X (formerly Twitter); this was later deleted following criticism. A subsequent investigation carried out by Shin Bet acknowledged the agency's failures but also found that Shin Bet warned the prime minister that Hamas was not deterred and objected to the divide-and-rule policy vis-a-vis Hamas and the Palestinian Authority.
In November 2023, he rejected calls for a ceasefire in the war and warned that Israel will "stand firm against the world if necessary." He said the Israel Defense Forces would remain in Gaza "as long as necessary" and Israel would prevent the Palestinian Authority from returning to Gaza. Netanyahu called allegations that Israel is breaking international law "hogwash" and described Palestinian civilian casualties as "collateral damage." In December 2023, he faced criticism during a meeting with released Israeli hostages. One of the hostages accused him of putting politics "above the return of the kidnapped." In December 2023, Netanyahu said that Israel should support the "voluntary migration" of Palestinians from Gaza. Israel under Netanyahu has been accused of committing genocide in Gaza in the South Africa v. Israel case before the International Court of Justice in December 2023.
In May 2024, Karim Khan, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, announced his intention to apply for an arrest warrant for Netanyahu on several counts of alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.
In July 2024, Netanyahu addressed another joint session of the United States Congress, amidst widespread protest, to solicit support for the Gaza war. He called protesters "useful idiots" and pledged a "total victory" in Gaza. He met with 2024 Republican nominee for president Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago residence where he criticized presumptive Democratic nominee for President Kamala Harris for vowing that she "will not be silent" about atrocities in Gaza.
In October 2024, a drone attack believed to have originated from Lebanon was made on Netanyahu's residence in Caesarea. Netanyahu was not in the residence at the time, and no casualties were reported. Netanyahu accused Hezbollah of trying to assassinate him in the attack.
On 5 November 2024, Netanyahu fired defense minister Gallant, who had advocated for a short-term diplomatic deal. The firing triggered protests throughout Israel. On 21 November 2024, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu, Gallant and Hamas military commander Mohammed Deif for alleged war crimes committed during the Gaza war. Netanyahu described the ruling as "absurd and false lies" and said the decision is "antisemitic".
On the night of 18 March 2025, Israel launched a surprise attack on the Gaza Strip, effectively ending the January 2025 Gaza war ceasefire. Netanyahu was scheduled on 18 March to testify in his corruption trial, but as a result of the attacks, the legal proceedings were postponed. In March 2025, Netanyahu fired Ronen Bar, chief of Shin Bet, citing a loss of confidence. Bar accused the government of firing him for investigating Qatar's involvement and influence in the Prime Minister's Office, in a case known as the Qatari connection affair.
In May 2025, Netanyahu stated that the destruction of homes in Gaza would lead to the forced emigration of Palestinians.
On 13 June, Netanyahu authorized airstrikes against Iran, marking the beginning of the Iran–Israel war. Within a week, Netanyahu publicly commented on the effects of the war: "Each of us bears a personal cost, and my family has not been exempt", as he cited that it was "the second time that my son Avner has cancelled a wedding due to missile threats." In July, Netanyahu was criticized for deciding to increase Gaza aid distribution by some members of his cabinet who rejected the U.S. ceasefire proposal.
In August 2025, Netanyahu said in an interview with i24NEWS that he was on a "historic and spiritual mission" and that he is "very" attached to the vision of Greater Israel, which includes the Palestinian territories. On 21 September 2025, Netanyahu rejected the existence of a Palestinian state west of the Jordan River, saying, "For years, I have prevented the establishment of this terrorist state facing tremendous pressures at home and abroad."
In Netanyahu's address to the United Nations General Assembly in New York, he opposed international recognition of a Palestinian state. As Netanyahu commenced his speech, dozens of individuals in New York exited the hall in protest.
On 7 November 2025, the Chief Public Prosecutor's Office in Turkey issued international arrest warrants for Netanyahu and 36 other Israeli officials, accusing them of genocide and crimes against humanity in Gaza. The charges were based on Israel's attacks on Palestinian civilians, hospitals, infrastructure and the Global Sumud Flotilla, which was intercepted by the Israeli navy while delivering aid to Gaza.
== Political positions ==
=== Authoritarianism ===
In the years under Netanyahu's rule, Israel experienced authoritarianism, democratic backsliding, corruption, and expansionism. The Israeli Military Censor had long been recorded to have censored thousands of news articles annually. During the Gaza war, Israel had intensified protest and news media censorship, including with reports about the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Netanyahu's repeated attempts to revamp judicial systems have been accused of being efforts to elevate authoritarianism and protect the prime minister from corruption charges; he in turn accused the "leftist Deep state" of attempting to weaponize the justice system against him and the people of Israel. He additionally has spoken populist statements regarding anti-Arab racism involving narratives of conflict with Jews, in particular of anti-Palestinianism. Netanyahu's administration in recent years has been tailored towards far-right politics and has been described as the most far-right government in Israeli history. He has also allied his nation with other illiberal, authoritarian leaders from Hungary, Russia, and the United States.
=== Israeli–Palestinian conflict ===
Netanyahu opposed the Oslo Accords from their inception. In 1993, he dedicated a chapter, entitled "Trojan Horse", of his book A Place Among the Nations to argue against the Oslo peace process. He asserted that Amin al-Husseini had been one of the masterminds of the Holocaust, and that Yasser Arafat was heir to the former's "alleged exterminationist Nazism". During his term as prime minister in the late 1990s, Netanyahu consistently reneged on commitments made by previous Israeli governments as part of the Oslo peace process, leading American peace envoy Dennis Ross to note that "neither President Clinton nor Secretary [of State Madeleine] Albright believed that Bibi had any real interest in pursuing peace." In a 2001 video, Netanyahu, reportedly unaware he was being recorded, said:
They asked me before the election if I'd honor [the Oslo Accords] […] I said I would, but ... I'm going to interpret the accords in such a way that would allow me to put an end to this galloping forward to the '67 borders. How did we do it? Nobody said what defined military zones were. Defined military zones are security zones; as far as I'm concerned, the entire Jordan Valley is a defined military zone. Go argue.
On 9 August 2009, speaking at the opening of his weekly cabinet meeting, Netanyahu promised not to repeat the "mistake" of the Gaza pullout, adding that "the unilateral evacuation brought neither peace nor security. On the contrary". He also said, "Should we achieve a turn toward peace with the more moderate partners, we will insist on the recognition of the State of Israel and the demilitarization of the future Palestinian state". In 2014, Netanyahu said:
We don't just hand over territory, close our eyes and hope for the best. We did that in Lebanon and we got thousands of rockets. We did that in Gaza, we got Hamas and 15,000 rockets. So we're not gonna just replicate that. We want to see genuine recognition of the Jewish state and rock solid security arrangements on the ground. That's the position I've held, and it's only become firmer.
Netanyahu had previously called U.S.-backed peace talks a waste of time and refused to commit to the same two-state solution as had other Israeli leaders until a speech in June 2009. He repeatedly made public statements which advocated an "economic peace" approach, meaning an approach based on economic cooperation and joint effort rather than continuous contention over political and diplomatic issues. This is in line with many significant ideas from the Peace Valley plan. He raised these ideas during discussions with former U.S. secretary of state Condoleezza Rice. Netanyahu continued to advocate these ideas as the Israeli elections approached. Netanyahu has said:
Right now, the peace talks are based on only one thing, only on peace talks. It makes no sense at this point to talk about the most contractible issue. It's Jerusalem or bust, or right of return or bust. That has led to failure and is likely to lead to failure again ... We must weave an economic peace alongside a political process. That means that we have to strengthen the moderate parts of the Palestinian economy by handing rapid growth in those areas, rapid economic growth that gives a stake for peace for the ordinary Palestinians."
In January 2009, Netanyahu informed Middle East envoy Tony Blair that he would continue the policy of the Israeli governments of Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert by expanding West Bank settlements, in contravention of the Road Map, but not building new ones.
In 2013, Netanyahu denied reports that his government would agree to peace talks on the basis of the green line. In 2014 he agreed to the American framework based on the green line and said that Jewish settlers must be allowed the option of staying in their settlements under Palestinian rule.
In 2014, Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat criticized Netanyahu, calling him "ideologically corrupt" and a war criminal.
For years, Netanyahu backed Qatari transfers of hundreds of millions of dollars to Gaza, in the hope that it would pacify Gaza, turn Hamas into an effective counterweight to the Palestinian Authority and prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state. In 2019, Netanyahu said at a private Likud party meeting, "Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas. This is part of our strategy – to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank." Often, cash was delivered in suitcases by a Qatari official who was escorted by Israeli intelligence officers. According to the New York Times, Netanyahu continued backing the payments in response to Qatari questions as late as September 2023. In 2025, Shin Beth started an investigation into the alleged ties between Netanyahu's advisors and Qatar.
In January 2020, Netanyahu publicly supported Trump's Israeli-Palestinian peace plan. After the peace proposal failed, Trump said Netanyahu "never wanted peace" with the Palestinians.
Former United States Secretary of State Rex Tillerson stated that on 22 May 2017, Netanyahu showed Trump a fake and altered video of Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas calling for the killing of children. This was at a time when Trump was considering if Israel was the obstacle to peace. Netanyahu had showed Trump the fake video to change his position in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The U.S.-brokered Abraham Accords agreed to the full normalization of relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates (the Israel–United Arab Emirates normalization agreement) and Bahrain, respectively (the Bahrain–Israel normalization agreement). This was the first time any Arab country had normalized relations with Israel since Jordan in 1994. The accords were signed by Bahrain's foreign minister, UAE's foreign minister and Netanyahu on 15 September 2020 at the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, D.C.
On 23 October 2020, U.S. president Trump announced that Sudan will start to normalize ties with Israel, making it the third Arab state to do so as part of the Trump administration-brokered Abraham Accords. Sudan fought in wars against Israel in 1948 and 1967. Netanyahu thanked "President Trump and his team above all", saying that "together with him we are changing history ... despite all the experts and commentators who said it was impossible. Israel was completely isolated and they told us we were heading into a political tsunami. What's happening is the absolute opposite." This was followed by Morocco establishing relations with Israel in December. In July 2024, Pakistan officially designated him a "terrorist", calling him responsible for the atrocities in Gaza.
=== Economic views ===
By 1998, Netanyahu had acquired a reputation as "the advocate of the free-market" and in 1999 told the Jerusalem Post: "Peace is an end of itself [...] peace, without free markets, will not produce growth. But free markets without peace do produce growth." As prime minister in his first term, he significantly reformed the banking sector, removing barriers to investment abroad, mandatory purchases of government securities and direct credit. As minister of finance (2003–2005), Netanyahu introduced a major overhaul of the Israeli economy. He introduced a welfare to work program, he led a program of privatization, reduced the size of the public sector, reformed and streamlined the taxation system and passed laws against monopolies and cartels with the aim of increasing competition. Netanyahu extended capital gains taxes from companies to individuals, which allowed him to enlarge the tax base while reducing taxes on incomes. As the Israeli economy started booming and unemployment fell significantly, Netanyahu was widely credited by commentators as having performed an 'economic miracle' by the end of his tenure. Direct investment in the Israeli economy had increased by an annualized 380%. On the other hand, his critics have labelled his economic views as Margaret Thatcher-inspired "popular capitalism".
Netanyahu defines capitalism as "the ability to have individual initiative and competition to produce goods and services with profit, but not to shut out somebody else from trying to do the same". He says that his views developed while he was working as an economic consult for Boston Consulting Group: "It was the first time that the Boston Consulting Group looked at governments and worked for governments. They wanted to do a strategic plan for the government of Sweden. I was on that case and looked at other governments. So I went around to other governments in Europe in 1976 and I was looking at Britain. I was looking at France. I was looking at other countries, and I could see that they were stymied by concentrations of power that prevented competition. And I thought, hmm, as bad as they are, ours was worse because we had very little room for private sector competition to the extent that we had government-controlled or union-controlled companies, and so you really didn't get the competition or the growth ... And I said, well, if I ever have a chance, I'll change that."
=== Views on counter-terrorism ===
Netanyahu has said his own "hard line against all terrorists" came as a result of his brother's death. Yoni Netanyahu had been killed while leading the hostage-rescue mission at Operation Entebbe.
In addition to having taken part in counter-terrorist operations during his service in the military, Netanyahu has published three books on the subject of fighting terrorism. He identifies terrorism as a form of totalitarianism, writing: The more far removed the target of the attack from any connection to the grievance enunciated by the terrorists, the greater the terror ... Yet for terrorism to have any impact, it is precisely the lack of connection, the lack of any possible involvement or "complicity" of the chosen victims in the cause the terrorists seek to attack, that produces the desired fear. For terrorism's underlying message is that every member of society is "guilty", that anyone can be a victim, and that therefore no one is safe... In fact, the methods reveal the totalitarian strain that runs through all terrorist groups... It is not only that the ends of the terrorists do not succeed in justifying the means they choose; their choice of means indicate what their true ends are. Far from being fighters for freedom, terrorists are the forerunners of tyranny. Terrorists use the techniques of violent coercion in order to achieve a regime of violent coercion.Netanyahu cautions that:The trouble with active anti-terror activities... is that they do constitute a substantial intrusion on the lives of those being monitored.He believes there is a balance between civil liberties and security, which should depend on the level of sustained terrorist attacks in a country. During periods of sustained attack, there should be shift towards security, due to "the monstrous violation of personal rights which is the lot of the victims of terror and their families". But this should be regularly reviewed, with an emphasis on guarding civil liberties and individual privacy wherever and whenever security considerations allow: "The concern of civil libertarians over possible infringements of the rights of innocent citizens is well placed, and all additional powers granted the security services should require annual renewal by the legislature, this in addition to judicial oversight of actions as they are taken in the field."
He advises tighter immigration laws as an essential tool to preemptively combat terrorism: "This era of immigration free-for-all should be brought to an end. An important aspect of taking control of the immigration situation is stricter background checks of potential immigrants, coupled with the real possibility of deportation."
He also cautions that it is essential that governments do not conflate terrorists with those legitimate political groups that may or may not hold extremist views, but which advance their positions by means of debate and argument. Ronald Reagan was an admirer of Netanyahu's work on counter-terrorism, and Reagan recommended Netanyahu's book Terrorism: How the West Can Win to all senior figures in his administration.
=== Death penalty ===
In 2017, Netanyahu called for the death penalty to be imposed on the perpetrator of the 2017 Halamish stabbing attack. Representatives in his government introduced a bill which would allow the death penalty for terrorism to the Knesset. In a preliminary vote in January 2018, 52 of 120 members of the Israeli parliament voted in favor while 49 opposed, to make it easier for judges to hand down the death penalty. The amendment to the penal code would still require three more readings if it is to become law.
=== LGBT rights ===
Netanyahu supports equal rights for LGBT persons. He said: "The struggle for every person to be recognized as equal before the law is a long struggle, and there is still a long way to go ... I am proud that Israel is among the most open countries in the world in relation to the LGBT community discourse." During an event held for the annual community rights day at the Knesset, Netanyahu said that he was "asked to come here in the middle of my busy schedule to say one thing to the male and female members of the LGBT community: We must be guided by the conviction that every person is created in the image of God." However, some of his coalition government's party members opposed same-sex marriage.
=== Ethiopian Jewish integration ===
In 2015, after Ethiopian Jewish protests against police brutality, Netanyahu said: "We will bring a comprehensive plan to the government to assist you in every way. There is no room for racism and discrimination in our society, none ... We will turn racism into something contemptible and despicable."
=== African Hebrew Israelites of Jerusalem ===
Netanyahu supports the integration of the African Hebrew Israelites of Jerusalem into Israeli society, and takes part in celebrations in honor of this community's "exodus" from America to Israel, which occurred in 1967. In 2012, Netanyahu expressed appreciation towards "the cooperative society that is working towards the inclusion of the Hebrew Israelite community in Israeli society at large," and declared that the experience of the community in the land of Israel is "an integral part of the Israeli experience."
=== Iran ===
In a March 2007 CNN interview, Netanyahu said that "there is only one difference between Nazi Germany and the Islamic Republic of Iran, namely that the first entered a worldwide conflict and then sought atomic weapons, while the latter is first seeking atomic weapons and, once it has them, will then start a world war." Netanyahu repeated these remarks at a news conference in April 2008. This was similar to earlier remarks that "it's 1938, and Iran is Germany, and Iran is racing to arm itself with atomic bombs".
In February 2009, after being asked to be the prime minister of Israel, Netanyahu described Iran as the greatest threat that Israel has ever faced: "Iran is seeking to obtain a nuclear weapon and constitutes the gravest threat to our existence since the war of independence." Speaking before the UN General Assembly in New York on 24 September 2009, Netanyahu expressed a different opinion than Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's speech at the forum, saying those who believe Tehran is a threat only to Israel are wrong. "The Iranian regime", he said, "is motivated by fanaticism ... They want to see us go back to medieval times. The struggle against Iran pits civilization against barbarism. This Iranian regime is fueled by extreme fundamentalism." "By focusing solely on Iran", columnist Yossi Melman speculated that Netanyahu's foreign policy, "... took the Palestinian issue off the world agenda." After four days of shelling from the Iranian-funded Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Melman asked, "Is it worth initiating a crisis with Iran? Will the Israeli public be able to cope with Iran's response?"
According to Uzi Eilam, Netanyahu is using the threat of atomic Iran as a means of reaching his own goals. He said: "Netanyahu is using the Iranian threat to achieve a variety of political objectives." He also said: "These declarations are unnecessarily scaring Israel's citizens, given Israel is not party to the negotiations to determine whether Iran will or will not dismantle its nuclear program."
By 2012, Netanyahu is reported to have formed a close, confidential relationship with Defense Minister Ehud Barak as the two men considered possible Israeli military action against Iran's nuclear facilities, following Israel's established Begin Doctrine. The pair were accused of acting on "messianic" impulses by Yuval Diskin, former head of the Shin Bet, who added that their warmongering rhetoric appealed to "the idiots within the Israeli public". Diskin's remarks were supported by former Mossad chief Meir Dagan, who himself had previously said that an attack on Iran was "the stupidest thing I have ever heard". A few weeks later, the RAND Corporation also openly disagreed with Netanyahu's belligerent stance.
Early in 2012, he used the opening ceremony for Israel's Holocaust Remembrance Day to warn against the dangers of an Iranian nuclear bomb, saying he was following the example of Jewish leaders during World War II who struggled to raise the alarm about the Nazis' genocidal intentions. Israeli academic Avner Cohen accused Netanyahu of showing "contempt" for the Holocaust by putting it to "political use", and former Israeli foreign minister Shlomo Ben-Ami similarly condemned Netanyahu's "vulgar manipulation of the memory of the Holocaust". Immediately after the 2012 Burgas bus bombing, Netanyahu confirmed that the attack had been undertaken in coordination with Iran.
Netanyahu opined during a July meeting that "all the sanctions and diplomacy so far have not set back the Iranian programme by one iota". In August he stated that the United States only might respond to a massive attack against Israel. On 28 September 2012, Netanyahu gave a speech to the UN General Assembly in which he set forward a "red line" of 90% uranium enrichment, stating that if Iran were to reach this level, it would become an intolerable risk for Israel. Netanyahu used a cartoon graphic of a bomb to illustrate his point, indicating three stages of uranium enrichment, saying that Iran had already completed the first stage, and stating that "By next spring, at most by next summer at current enrichment rates, [Iran] will have finished the medium enrichment and move on to the final stage. From there, it's only a few months, possibly a few weeks before they get enough enriched uranium for the first bomb." At the time, according to cables leaked in 2015, Mossad's assessment was that Iran did not appear ready to enrich uranium to levels required for a nuclear bomb.
In an October 2013 interview with BBC Persian Service, Netanyahu praised the history of Persia and said: "If the Iranian regime has nuclear weapons, the Iranian people will never be free of dictatorship and will live in eternal servitude."
The U.S. military's 2020 Baghdad International Airport airstrike, which killed the high-level Iranian General Qasem Soleimani, brought strong reactions from around the world. Netanyahu praised the air strike, saying that Trump had acted "swiftly, forcefully and decisively".
On 13 June 2025, Netanyahu authorized airstrikes against Iran, marking the beginning of the Iran–Israel war. Netanyahu stated the goal of the operation was to dismantle Iran's nuclear capabilities, which he described as a "clear and present danger to Israel's very survival.". He additionally framed the campaign as an opportunity for regime change, aligning with exiled Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi’s call for a national uprising.
=== Bank of China terror financing case ===
In 2013, Netanyahu found himself caught between conflicting commitments made to the family of American terror victim Daniel Wultz and the Chinese government. Although Netanyahu was reported to have previously promised U.S. Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen that Israel would fully cooperate in the terror-financing case against Bank of China in U.S. District Court, the prime minister reportedly made a conflicting promise to the Government of China prior to a state visit to China in May 2013. Attorney David Boies, lead counsel for the Wultz family, told The Wall Street Journal, "While we are respectful of China's interests, and of the diplomatic pressure to which Israel has been subjected, those interests and that pressure cannot be permitted to obstruct the ability of American courts to hear critical evidence."
In August 2013, Ros-Lehtinen, chair of the House Middle East and South Asia subcommittee, told the Miami Herald she raised the issue while leading a congressional delegation to Israel, stressing to Israeli officials the importance of them providing the Wultz family what they need for their lawsuit. "I am hopeful that we can bring this case to a conclusion that is satisfactory to the family, but we need community support to not waver at this critical time," Ros-Lehtinen said.
U.S. Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, chair of the Democratic National Committee, also spoke out on the issue with the Miami Herald: "In South Florida, we all know too well of the tragic circumstances surrounding the cowardly terrorist attack that took Daniel Wultz's innocent life. I have been working, hand in hand with the Wultz family and the state of Israel to ensure any and all of those involved in this terrorist activity, including the Bank of China, pay for their crimes so that justice can be served."
=== Defense and security ===
In 2011, Netanyahu arranged for 1000 Hamas and Fatah prisoners to be swapped for Gilad Shalit, including terrorists with "blood on their hands". Israeli officials estimate that 60% of those who are released "resume terrorism attacks".
In 2011, Israeli General Staff concluded that the armed forces cannot maintain their battle readiness under Netanyahu's proposed cuts. Netanyahu decided to cut social programs instead and promised to increase the defense budget by about six percent. The Israeli military still fell NIS 3.7 million short from its projected budget, which could damage their war capabilities. According to a U.S. State Department representative in November 2011, under the leadership of Netanyahu and Obama, Israel and the United States have enjoyed unprecedented security cooperation.
Under Netanyahu's leadership, the Israeli National Security Council has seen an expanded role in foreign policy planning and decision-making.
During the Gaza war he called for Israel to assume "overall security responsibility" over the Gaza Strip, saying "we've seen what happens when we don't have it [...] what we have is the eruption of Hamas terror on a scale that we couldn't imagine".
=== Illegal immigration ===
In his 1995 book Fighting Terrorism: How Democracies Can Defeat Domestic and International Terrorism, Netanyahu strongly argued that tightening immigration laws in the West is the most effective method to combat terrorism. "This era of immigration free-for-all should be brought to an end", he wrote in 1995.
In 2012, the Netanyahu government passed the "Prevention of Infiltration Law", which mandated automatic detention of all people, including asylum-seekers, who enter Israel without permission. Amnesty International called it "an affront to international law". Between 2009 and 2013, approximately 60,000 people crossed into Israel from various African countries. Netanyahu said that "this phenomenon is very grave and threatens the social fabric of society, our national security and our national identity." Many of these migrants are held in detention camps in the Negev desert. When the Supreme Court of Israel declared the "Prevention of Infiltration Law" illegal for permitting immediate and indefinite detention of asylum seekers from Africa, Netanyahu requested new legislation to work around the Supreme Court ruling.
Netanyahu is critical of what he sees as the overly open immigration policy of EU nations. Netanyahu has urged the leaders of Hungary, Slovakia, Czech Republic and Poland to close their borders to illegal immigration.
== Relations with foreign leaders ==
Serving as prime minister in three nonconsecutive periods since the 1990s, he developed close relationships with foreign leaders. Netanyahu has a close relationship with Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán, their having known each other for decades due to the privileged relationship between the Likud Party and the EPP, the European People's Party. Orban particularly admired Netanyahu while he was working as finance minister, and received advice from him while Netanyahu was Finance Minister of Israel.
Netanyahu has been noted for his close and friendly relationship with former-late Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi. Netanyahu has said of Berlusconi: "We are lucky that there is a leader such as yourself." Netanyahu has described Berlusconi as "one of the greatest friends".
Netanyahu and Indian prime minister Narendra Modi developed a close relationship and ties between India and Israel increased during their rule.
Netanyahu had a warm relationship and "personal friendship" with Russian president Vladimir Putin. In his 2022 book, Netanyahu wrote positively about Putin and describes him as "smart, sophisticated and focused on one goal – returning Russia to its historical greatness". Their relationship has been strained since the start of the Gaza war.
In early 2018, the Polish parliament adopted a new Polish law criminalizing suggestions that Poles were collectively complicit in Holocaust-related or other war crimes that had been committed during World War II by the Axis powers. Later that year at the Munich Security Conference, Polish prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki said "it is not going to be seen as criminal to say that there were Polish perpetrators, as there were Jewish perpetrators ... not only German perpetrators" implicated in the Jewish Holocaust. Netanyahu called his Polish counterpart's comment "outrageous" for saying that Jews had been among the Holocaust's perpetrators. The resulting crisis in Israel–Poland relations was resolved in late June that year when the two prime ministers issued a joint communiqué endorsing research into the Jewish Holocaust and condemning the misnomer "Polish concentration camps".
According to Efraim Zuroff of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, during the visit of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in Jerusalem, Netanyahu failed to publicly address Ukraine's official policy of rehabilitating local Nazi collaborators like UPA leader Roman Shukhevych, who had participated in the murder of Jews.
Netanyahu has developed a close relationship with Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro following Bolsonaro's 2018 election. Netanyahu has also developed a good relationship with Argentinian president Javier Milei, having called him a "great friend of the Jewish State", shortly after Milei started his presidential tenure.
Since 2023, Netanyahu and Chinese president Xi Jinping have been engaged in diplomacy, arising due to strained ties between the US and Israel. The diplomatic situation has been made complicated due to the Gaza war, where China has remained neutral.
Netanyahu and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan have tense relations. In March 2019, after being denounced by Turkey as a racist for saying that Israel was the nation-state of the Jewish people only, Netanyahu called Erdoğan a dictator and mocked him for imprisoning journalists in a tweet. In response, Erdoğan called Netanyahu as "the thief who heads Israel", referencing the ongoing corruption scandals against Netanyahu. In the same speech, Erdoğan further escalated the spat by addressing to Netanyahu directly, saying, "you are a tyrant. You are a tyrant who slaughters 7-year-old Palestinian kids", and further in April 2018, calling Israel "terror state" and Netanyahu "terrorist". Netanyahu tweeted that "Erdoğan is among Hamas's biggest supporters and there is no doubt that he well understands terrorism and slaughter." Netanyahu condemned the 2019 Turkish offensive into north-eastern Syria and warned against ethnic cleansing of Kurds by Turkey and its proxies.
=== US leaders ===
Netanyahu has close ties with the congressional leadership of the U.S. Republican Party and with its 2012 presidential candidate, Mitt Romney. He and Romney first became acquainted when both worked at the Boston Consulting Group in the mid-1970s.
During the 2011 G-20 Cannes summit, then-French president Nicolas Sarkozy was overheard saying to then-U.S. president Barack Obama, "I cannot bear Netanyahu, he's a liar", and Obama reportedly responded, "You're fed up with him, but I have to deal with him every day."
In October 2014, author Jeffrey Goldberg related a conversation in which Goldberg said that a senior official of the Obama administration called Netanyahu a "chickenshit" after Netanyahu accused U.S. president Barack Obama of "acting contrary to American values". Goldberg went on to say that Netanyahu and his cabinet were largely to blame for the tensions between the Netanyahu and Obama governments. Secretary of State John Kerry phoned Netanyahu to clarify that "such statements are disgraceful, unacceptable and damaging" and "do not reflect the position of the United States". Netanyahu responded by saying "I'm being attacked because of my determination to defend Israel's interests. The safety of Israel is not important to those who attack me anonymously and personally." Because of evident rifts between Netanyahu and members of the Obama administration, observers have characterized the relationship as having reached a crisis level by October 2014. The relationship between Netanyahu and the Obama administration had become problematic enough that Goldberg reported that his conversations with Netanyahu and other Israeli officials indicated that Israel would wait until after the 2016 presidential election before attempting to repair the relationship with the White House. According to Alon Pinkas, "Netanyahu's self-righteousness that this resolution is going to be changed or reversed by Trump is totally unfounded."
On 23 December 2016, the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution calling for an end to Israeli settlements. In a departure from longstanding American policy, the U.S., under the Obama administration, abstained from the vote and did not exercise its veto power. At the behest of the Netanyahu government, President-elect Trump attempted to intercede by publicly advocating for the resolution to be vetoed, as well as successfully persuading Egypt's Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to temporarily withdraw it from consideration. The resolution was then "proposed again by Malaysia, New Zealand, Senegal and Venezuela" – and passed 14 to 0. Netanyahu's office alleged that "the Obama administration not only failed to protect Israel against this gang-up at the UN, it colluded with it behind the scenes", adding: "Israel looks forward to working with President-elect Trump and with all our friends in Congress, Republicans and Democrats alike, to negate the harmful effects of this absurd resolution."
Netanyahu and U.S. president Donald Trump have known each other for many years. Netanyahu had been a friend of Donald Trump's father, Fred, when Netanyahu lived in New York during the 1980s, serving as UN ambassador. In 2013, Trump made a video endorsing Netanyahu during the Israeli elections saying, "vote for Benjamin – terrific guy, terrific leader, great for Israel". In June 2019, Netanyahu officially renamed a settlement in the disputed Golan Heights after Donald Trump. However, Trump aide Jared Kushner has claimed that in January 2020, Trump became frustrated with Netanyahu's rhetoric regarding annexation of the Jordan Valley, and considered endorsing his political opponent, Benny Gantz. Following Netanyahu's congratulations for Joe Biden after the 2020 U.S. presidential election, the relationship deteriorated, with Trump accusing him of disloyalty and stating Netanyahu had "made a terrible mistake".
U.S. president Joe Biden, a Democrat, has been friendly with Netanyahu for many years. In November 2011 and in the 2012 U.S. vice presidential debate, Biden stated that the relationship has lasted for 39 years. In March 2010, Netanyahu remarked during a joint statement with Biden during his visit Israel that their friendship had started almost three decades prior. During Spring 2024, the relationship between the two leaders had become strained over Israel's Rafah offensive.
== Personal life ==
=== Family tree ===
=== Marriages and relationships ===
Netanyahu has been married three times and has been involved in multiple extramarital affairs. Netanyahu's first marriage was to Miriam Weizmann, whom he met in Israel. Weizmann lived near Yonatan Netanyahu's apartment in Jerusalem, where Netanyahu was based during his military service. By the time Netanyahu's service was finished, Weizmann had completed her own military service as well as a degree in chemistry from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 1972, they both left to study in the United States, where she enrolled in Brandeis University, while Netanyahu studied at MIT. They married soon afterward. The couple had one daughter, Noa (born 29 April 1978).
In 1978, while Weizmann was pregnant, Netanyahu met a non-Jewish British student named Fleur Cates at the university library, and began an affair. His marriage ended in divorce soon after Miriam discovered the affair. In 1981, Netanyahu married Cates, and she converted to Judaism. After moving with Netanyahu to Israel, Cates sued for divorce in 1988.
His third wife, Sara Ben-Artzi, was working as a flight attendant on an El Al flight from New York to Israel when they met. She was in the process of completing a master's degree in psychology. The couple married in 1991. They have two sons: Yair (born 26 July 1991), a former soldier in the IDF Spokesperson's Unit, and Avner (born 10 October 1994), a national Bible champion, winner of the National Bible Quiz for Youth in Kiryat Shmona, and former soldier in the IDF Combat Intelligence Collection Corps.
In 1993, Netanyahu confessed on live television to having an affair with Ruth Bar, his public relations adviser. He said that a political rival had planted a secret video camera that had recorded him in a sexually compromising position with Bar, and that he had been threatened with the release of the tape to the press unless he quit the Likud leadership race. Netanyahu and Sara repaired their marriage, and he was elected to the leadership of Likud. In 1996, the media reported that he had a 20-year friendship with Katherine Price-Mondadori, an Italian-American woman.
=== Health ===
Netanyahu has been suffering from right bundle branch block (RBBB) since around 2003. In the first half of 2008, doctors removed a small colon polyp that proved to be benign. On 22 July 2023, a pacemaker was implanted in his body. A hernia was discovered on him in March 2024. In December 2024, his prostate was removed following a urinary tract infection caused by an enlargement.
His personal physician and close friend is the Romanian-born pediatrist Herman Berkovits.
== Authored books ==
—, ed. (1981). International Terrorism: Challenge and Response. Transaction Publishers. ISBN 978-0-87855-894-0.
— (1987). Terrorism: How the West Can Win. Avon. ISBN 978-0-380-70321-0.
— (1995). Fighting Terrorism: How Democracies Can Defeat Domestic and International Terrorism. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 978-0-374-15492-9.
— (1999) [1993]. A Durable Peace: Israel and Its Place Among the Nations. Grand Central Publishing. ISBN 978-0-446-52306-6.
— (2022). Bibi: My Story. Simon and Schuster. ISBN 978-1-6680-0844-7.
== See also ==
Forbes list of The World's Most Powerful People – Ranking published by Forbes magazinePages displaying short descriptions of redirect targets
List of current heads of state and government
List of heads of the executive by approval rating
List of international prime ministerial trips made by Benjamin Netanyahu
List of Israeli politicians
Trial of Benjamin Netanyahu – 2020–present corruption trial of Israeli Prime Minister
== Notes ==
== References ==
== Further reading ==
Caspit, Ben. The Netanyahu Years (2017) excerpt
Medzini, Meron. "Rabin and Hussein: From Enemies at War to Partners in Peace." in The Palgrave Handbook of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019) pp. 435–446.
Anshel Pfeffer (2018). Bibi: The Turbulent Life and Times of Benjamin Netanyahu, Basic Books. ISBN 978-0-465-09782-1
Jonathan Freedland, "Trump's Chaver in Jerusalem" (review of Anshel Pfeffer, Bibi: The Turbulent Life and Times of Benjamin Netanyahu, Basic Books, 2018), New York Review of Books, vol. LXV, no 13 (16 August 2018), pp. 32–34.
Adam Shatz, "The sea is the same sea" (review of Anshel Pfeffer, Bibi: The Turbulent Life and Times of Benjamin Netanyahu, Hurst, May 2018, ISBN 978-1-84904-988-7), London Review of Books, vol. 40, no. 16 (30 August 2018), pp. 24, 26–28.
Remnick, David, "Hostages: As Benjamin Netanyahu clings to power, his country pays a price", The New Yorker, 22 January 2024, pp. 26–39. "[Netanyahu's] highest priority... appeared [to be] to shake free of a series of criminal corruption indictments; he had been charged with everything from accepting illegal gifts... to making a shady deal with a media baron to win favorable coverage.... Netanyahu reclaimed the one position that provided refuge from prosecution... At the end of 2022, he forged a hard-right coalition that allowed him to return as Prime Minister. He brought into the fold... reactionaries [who] endorse the full annexation of the West Bank and have recently called for the expulsion of Gaza's [Palestinian] population. Netanyahu also pushed a wildly contentious 'judiical reform' law [which] perhaps more than half the country... feared... would undermine the Supreme Court, the balance of powers, and democracy itself." (pp. 32–33.)
== External links ==
Official website
Benjamin Netanyahu on the Knesset website
Benjamin Netanyahu at the Encyclopædia Britannica
Benjamin Netanyahu at IMDb
Appearances on C-SPAN
Benjamin Netanyahu collected news and commentary at The Jerusalem Post
Benjamin Netanyahu collected news and commentary at Haaretz
"Shattered Dreams of Peace: The Road From Oslo". Frontline. Season 20. Episode 16. 27 June 2002. PBS. WGBH. Retrieved 13 March 2025.
"Netanyahu at War". Frontline. Season 34. Episode 1. 5 January 2016. PBS. WGBH. Retrieved 14 March 2025.
"Netanyahu, America & the Road to Gaza". Frontline. Season 41. Episode 22. 19 December 2023. PBS. WGBH. Retrieved 13 March 2025.
"Remaking the Middle East: Israel vs. Iran". Frontline. Season 43. Episode 21. 29 July 2025. PBS. WGBH. Retrieved 30 July 2025. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eritrea#Government_and_politics | Eritrea | Eritrea, officially the State of Eritrea, is a country in the Horn of Africa region of East Africa. Its capital and largest city is Asmara. The country is bordered by Ethiopia to the south, Sudan to the west, and Djibouti to the southeast. The northeastern and eastern parts of Eritrea have an extensive coastline along the Red Sea. The country has a total area of approximately 117,600 km2 (45,406 sq mi), and includes the Dahlak Archipelago and several of the Hanish Islands.
Hominid remains found in Eritrea have been dated to 1 million years old and anthropological research indicates that the area may contain significant records related to human evolution. The Kingdom of Aksum, covering much of modern-day Eritrea and northern Ethiopia, was established during the first or second century AD. It adopted Christianity around the middle of the fourth century. Beginning in the 12th century, the Ethiopian Zagwe and Solomonid dynasties held fluctuating control over the entire plateau and the Red Sea coast. Eritrea's central highlands, known as Mereb Melash ("Beyond the Mereb"), were the northern frontier region of the Ethiopian kingdoms and were ruled by a governor titled the Bahr Negus ("King of the Sea").
In the 16th century, the Ottomans conquered the Eritrean coastline. In May 1865, much of the coastal lowlands came under the rule of the Khedivate of Egypt, until it was transferred to Italy in February 1885. Beginning in 1885–1890, Italian troops systematically spread out from Massawa toward the highlands, eventually resulting in the formation of the colony of Italian Eritrea in 1889, establishing the present-day boundaries of the country. Italian rule continued until 1942, when Eritrea was placed under British Military Administration during World War II; following a UN General Assembly decision in 1952, Eritrea would govern itself with a local Eritrean parliament, but for foreign affairs and defense, it would enter into federal status with Ethiopia for ten years. However, in 1962, the government of Ethiopia annulled the Eritrean parliament and formally annexed Eritrea. The Eritrean secessionist movement organized the Eritrean Liberation Front in 1961 and fought the Eritrean War of Independence until Eritrea gained de facto independence in 1991. Eritrea gained de jure independence in 1993 after an independence referendum.
Contemporary Eritrea is a multi-ethnic country with nine recognized ethnic groups, each of which has a distinct language. The most widely spoken language is Tigrinya. The others are Tigre, Saho, Kunama, Nara, Afar, Beja, Bilen and Arabic. Tigrinya, Arabic and English serve as the three working languages. Most residents speak languages from the Afroasiatic family, either from the Ethiopian Semitic languages or Cushitic branches. In Eritrea, ethnic Tigrinyas make up about 50% of the population, with the Tigre people constituting around 30% of inhabitants. In addition, there are several Nilo-Saharan-speaking Nilotic ethnic groups. Most people in the country adhere to Christianity or Islam, with a small minority adhering to traditional faiths.
Eritrea is one of the world's least developed countries. It is a unitary one-party presidential republic and a de facto totalitarian dictatorship, in which national legislative and presidential elections have never been held. Isaias Afwerki has served as president since its official independence in 1993. The country's human rights record is among the worst in the world. The Eritrean government has dismissed these allegations as politically motivated. Eritrea is a member of the African Union, the United Nations, and is an observer state in the Arab League alongside Brazil and Venezuela. It was part of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development until withdrawing in December 2025, "accusing the organisation of 'becoming a tool against' countries like itself."
Asmara was designated a World Heritage Site in 2017 for its well-preserved modernist architecture, which reflects the influence of Italian colonial urban planning and design.
== Etymology ==
The name Eritrea is derived from the ancient (originally Greek) name for the Red Sea, the Erythraean Sea (Ἐρυθρὰ Θάλασσα Erythra Thalassa, based on the adjective ἐρυθρός erythros "red"). It was first formally adopted in 1890, with the formation of Italian Eritrea (Colonia Eritrea). The name persisted throughout subsequent British and Ethiopian occupation, and was reaffirmed by the 1993 independence referendum and 1997 constitution.
== History ==
=== Prehistory ===
Madam Buya, a fossil found at an Eritrean archaeological site by Italian anthropologists, has been identified as among the oldest hominid fossils found to date. This fossil has been said to reveal significant stages in human evolution and to represent a possible link between the earlier Homo erectus and an archaic Homo sapiens. Her remains have been dated to 1 million years old, making her the oldest skeletal find of her kind. It is believed that the Danakil Depression in Eritrea was a major site of human evolution and may contain other archaeological links between Homo erectus hominids and anatomically modern humans.
During the last interglacial period (roughly 130,000 to 115,000 years ago), the Red Sea coast of Eritrea was occupied by early anatomically modern humans. It is believed that the area was on the route out of Africa that some scholars suggest was used by early humans to colonize the rest of the Old World. In 1999, the Eritrean Research Project Team (which was composed of Eritrean, Canadian, American, Dutch, and French scientists) discovered a Paleolithic site with stone and obsidian tools dated to more than 125,000 years old, near the Gulf of Zula, south of Massawa, along the Red Sea littoral. The tools are believed to have been used by early humans to harvest marine resources such as clams and oysters.
=== Antiquity ===
Tools found in the Barka Valley, dating from 8,000 BC, appear to offer the first concrete evidence of human settlement in the area. Research also shows that many of the ethnic groups of Eritrea were the first to inhabit these areas.
Excavations in and near Agordat, in central Eritrea, yielded the remains of an ancient pre-Aksumite civilization known as the Gash Group. This included ceramics dated to between 2,500 and 1,500 BC.
Around 2,000 BC, parts of Eritrea were likely part of the Land of Punt, a kingdom first mentioned in the twenty-fifth century BC. It was known for producing and exporting gold, aromatic resins, blackwood, ebony, ivory, and wild animals. The region is known from ancient Egyptian records of trade expeditions, especially a well-documented expedition to Punt in approximately 1,469 BC, during the reestablishment of disrupted trade routes by Hatshepsut and shortly after the beginning of her rule as the pharaoh of ancient Egypt.
Excavations at Sembel found evidence of an ancient, pre-Aksumite civilization in greater Asmara. This culture is believed to have been among the oldest pastoral and agricultural communities in East Africa. Artifacts at the site have been dated to between 800 BC and 400 BC, contemporaneous with other pre-Aksumite settlements in the Eritrean and Ethiopian highlands during the mid-first millennium BC.
==== D'mt ====
Dʿmt was a kingdom that existed from the tenth to fifth centuries BC in what is now Eritrea and northern Ethiopia. Evidence of a massive temple complex at Yeha suggests that it was most likely Dʿmt's capital. Qohaito, often identified as the town of Koloe in the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, and Matara were important Dʿmt cities located in southern Eritrea.
The realm developed irrigation schemes, used plows, grew millet, and made iron tools and weapons. After Dʿmt fell in the fifth century BC, the plateau was dominated by smaller successor kingdoms. This lasted until the first century, when one of these polities, the Kingdom of Aksum, was able to reunite the area.
==== Kingdom of Aksum ====
The Kingdom of Aksum (or Axum) was a trading empire centered in Eritrea and northern Ethiopia. It existed from approximately 100–940 AD, growing from the proto-Aksumite Iron Age period around the fourth century BC and achieving prominence by the first century AD.
According to the medieval Liber Axumae (Book of Aksum), Aksum's first capital, Mazaber, was built by Itiyopis, son of Cush. The capital was later moved to Axum in northern Ethiopia. The kingdom used the name "Ethiopia" as early as the fourth century.
The Aksumites erected a number of large stelae, which served a religious purpose in pre-Christian times. One of these granite columns, the Obelisk of Aksum, is the largest such structure in the world, standing at 90 feet (27 metres). Under Ezana (fl. 320–360), Aksum later adopted Christianity.
Christianity was the first world religion adopted in modern Eritrea. The oldest monastery, Debre Sina, dates back to the fourth century, and Debre Libanos was built in the late fifth or early sixth century. Originally located in the village of Ham, it was moved to an inaccessible location on the edge of a cliff below the Ham plateau. Its church contains the Golden Gospel, a metal-covered bible dating to the thirteenth century, during which Debre Libanos was a seat of religious power.
In the seventh century AD, early Muslims from Mecca, at least companions of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, sought refuge from Qurayshi persecution by travelling to the kingdom, a journey known in Islamic history as the First Hijrah. They reportedly built the first African mosque: the Mosque of the Companions in Massawa.
The kingdom is mentioned in the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea as an important market place for ivory, which was exported throughout the ancient world. At the time, Aksum was ruled by Zoskales, who also governed the port of Adulis. The Aksumite rulers facilitated trade by minting their own Aksumite currency.
=== Early Modern Period ===
Pre-colonial Eritrea had four distinct regions, divided by geography and in limited contact with each other. The Abyssinian, Tigrinya-speaking Christians controlled the highlands, the nomadic Tigre and Beni Amer clans the western lowlands, the Arabic Muslims the regions Massawa and Dahlak, and the pastoralist Afars the Dankalia region.
After the decline of Aksum, the Eritrean highlands fell under the domain of the Christian Zagwe dynasty, and later the influence of the Ethiopian Empire. The area was first known as Ma'ikele Bahri ("between the seas/rivers", i.e. the land between the Red Sea and the Mereb river), and later renamed the Medri Bahri ("Sea land" in Tigrinya). The region, ruled by a local governor called the Bahr Negash, was first documented in an obscure land grant of the 11th-century Zagwe king Tatadim. He considered the unnamed Bahr Negash one of his seyyuman or "appointed ones". Ethiopian Emperor Zara Yaqob strengthened imperial presence in the area by increasing the power of the Bahr Negash and placing him above other local chiefs, establishing a military colony of settlers from Shewa, and forcing the Muslims on the coast to pay tribute.
The first Westerner to document a visit to Eritrea was Portuguese explorer Francisco Álvares in 1520. He recounted his journey through the principality ruled by the Bahr Negash, highlighting three key cities, with Debarwa as the capital. He then detailed the border demarcation at the Mereb River with the province of Tigray and recounted the difficulties in transporting certain goods across the border. His books have the first description of the local powers of Tigray and the Bahr Negash.
The contemporary coast of Eritrea formed a route to the region of Tigray, where the Portuguese had a small colony, and to the interior Ethiopian allies of the Portuguese. Massawa was also the stage for the 1541 landing of troops by Cristóvão da Gama in the military campaign that eventually defeated the Adal Sultanate in the battle of Wayna Daga in 1543.
By 1557, the Ottomans had succeeded in occupying all of northeastern present-day Eritrea for the following two decades, an area that stretched from Massawa to Swakin in Sudan. The territory became an Ottoman governorate, known as the Habesh Eyalet, with a capital at Massawa. When the city became of secondary economic importance, the administrative capital moved across the Red Sea to Jeddah.
The Turks tried to occupy the highlands of Eritrea in 1559, but withdrew after they encountered resistance, pushed back by the Bahri Negash and highland forces. In 1578 they tried to expand into the highlands with the help of Bahri Negash Yisehaq, who had switched alliances due to a power struggle. Ethiopian Emperor Sarsa Dengel made a punitive expedition against the Turks in 1588 in response to their raids in the northern provinces, and apparently, by 1589, they were once again compelled to withdraw to the coast. The Ottomans were eventually driven out in the last quarter of the sixteenth century. However, they retained control over the seaboard until the establishment of Italian Eritrea in the late 1800s.
In 1734, the Afar leader Kedafu established the Mudaito Dynasty in Ethiopia, which later also came to include the southern Denkel lowlands of Eritrea, thus incorporating the southern Denkel lowlands into the Sultanate of Aussa. The northern coastline of Denkel was dominated by a number of smaller Afar sultanates, such as the Sultanate of Rahayta, the Sultanate of Beylul and the Sultanate of Bidu.
=== Italian Eritrea ===
The boundaries of present-day Eritrea were established during the Scramble for Africa. On 15 November 1869, the ruling local chief sold lands surrounding the Bay of Assab to the Italian missionary Giuseppe Sapeto, on behalf of the Rubattino Shipping Company. The area served as a coaling station along the shipping lanes introduced by the recently completed Suez Canal. In 1882, the Italian government formally took possession of the Assab colony from its commercial owners and expanded their control to include Massawa (and most of the Eritrean coastal lowlands) after the Egyptians withdrew from Eritrea in February 1885.
In the power vacuum that followed the 1889 death of Emperor Yohannes IV, Gen. Oreste Baratieri occupied the highlands along the Eritrean coast and Italy proclaimed the establishment of Italian Eritrea, a colony of the Kingdom of Italy. In the Treaty of Wuchale (It. Uccialli) signed the same year, Menelik II of Shewa, a southern Ethiopian kingdom, recognized the Italian occupation of his rivals' lands of Bogos, Hamasien, Akkele Guzay, and Serae in exchange for guarantees of financial assistance and continuing access to European arms and ammunition. His subsequent victory over rival kings and enthronement as Emperor Menelik II (r. 1889–1913) made the treaty formally binding upon the entire territory.
In 1888, the Italian administration launched its first development projects in the new colony. The Eritrean Railway was completed to Saati in 1888, and reached Asmara in the highlands in 1911. The Asmara–Massawa Cableway was the longest line in the world during its time but was later dismantled by the British in World War II. Besides major infrastructural projects, the colonial authorities invested significantly in the agricultural sector. They also oversaw the provision of urban amenities in Asmara and Massawa, and employed many Eritreans in public service, particularly in the police and public works departments. Thousands of Eritreans were concurrently enlisted in the Italian army, serving during the Italo-Turkish War in Libya as well as the First and Second Italo-Abyssinian Wars.
Additionally, the Italian Eritrea administration opened many new factories that produced buttons, cooking oil, pasta, construction materials, packing meat, tobacco, hide, and other household commodities. In 1939, there were approximately 2,198 factories and most of the employees were Eritrean citizens. The establishment of industry also increased the populations of Italians and Eritreans residing in cities. The number of Italians in the territory increased from 4,600 to 75,000 in five years; and with the involvement of Eritreans in the industry, trade and fruit plantations were expanded across the nation. Some plantations were owned by Eritreans.
In 1922, Benito Mussolini's rise to power in Italy brought profound changes to the colonial government in Italian Eritrea. After il Duce declared the birth of the Italian Empire in May 1936, Italian Eritrea (enlarged with northern Ethiopia's regions) and Italian Somaliland were merged with the just-conquered Ethiopia into the new Italian East Africa (Africa Orientale Italiana). This Fascist period was characterized by imperial expansion in the name of a "new Roman Empire". Eritrea was chosen by the Italian government to be the industrial center of Italian East Africa.
After 1935, art deco architecture was widely employed in Asmara. The Italians designed more than 400 buildings in a construction boom that only halted with Italy's involvement in World War II. These included the Fiat Tagliero Building and Cinema Impero. In 2017, the city was declared a World Heritage Site, described by UNESCO as featuring eclectic and rationalist built forms, well-defined open spaces, and public and private buildings, including cinemas, shops, banks, religious structures, public and private offices, industrial facilities, and residences.)
=== British administration ===
Through the 1941 Battle of Keren, the British expelled the Italians and took over the administration of the country. The decade of British administration saw significant restructuring of the Eritrean economy. Until 1945, the British and Americans relied on Italian equipment and skilled labor for wartime needs and Allied support in the Middle East. This economic boom, fueled by substantial Italian involvement, lasted until the end of the war, when the Eritrean economy faced a combination of recession and depression. War factories that had employed thousands shut down, and Italians began to be repatriated. Additionally, many small manufacturing plants established between 1936 and 1945 were forced to close due to intense competition from factories in Europe and the Middle East.
The British placed Eritrea under British military administration until Allied forces could decide its fate. In the absence of agreement amongst the Allies concerning Eritrea's status, the British administration continued until 1950. During the immediate postwar years, the British proposed that Eritrea be divided along religious community lines and annexed partly to the British colony of Sudan and partly to Ethiopia. After the peace treaty with Italy was signed in 1947, the United Nations sent a Commission of Enquiry to decide the fate of the colony.
=== Annexation by Ethiopia ===
In the 1950s, the Ethiopian feudal administration under Emperor Haile Selassie sought to annex Eritrea and Italian Somaliland. Selassie laid claim to both territories in a letter to Franklin D. Roosevelt at the Paris Peace Conference and the First Session of the United Nations. In the United Nations, the debate over the former Italian colonies continued. The British and Americans preferred to cede all of Eritrea except the Western province to the Ethiopians, as a reward for their support during World War II. The Independence Bloc of Eritrean parties consistently requested for the United Nations General Assembly to hold an immediate referendum to settle the question of Eritrean sovereignty.
The United Nations Commission of Enquiry arrived in Eritrea in early 1950, and after about six weeks, returned to New York to submit its report. Two reports were presented. The minority report, presented by Pakistan and Guatemala, proposed that Eritrea be independent after a period of trusteeship. The majority report, presented by Burma, Norway, and the Union of South Africa, called for Eritrea to be incorporated into Ethiopia.
Following the adoption of U.N. Resolution 390A(V) in December 1950, Eritrea was federated with Ethiopia under the prompting of the United States. The resolution called for Eritrea and Ethiopia to be linked through a loose federal structure under the sovereignty of the emperor. Eritrea was to have its own administrative and judicial structure, its own new flag, and control over its domestic affairs, including police, local administration, and taxation. The federal government, which for all practical purposes was the existing imperial government, was to control foreign affairs (including commerce), defense, finance, and transportation. The resolution ignored the wishes of Eritreans for independence, but did guarantee the population democratic rights and a measure of autonomy.
=== Independence ===
In 1958, a group of Eritreans founded the Eritrean Liberation Movement (ELM). The organization mainly consisted of Eritrean students, professionals, and intellectuals. It engaged in clandestine political activities intended to cultivate resistance to the centralizing policies of the imperial Ethiopian state. On 1 September 1961, the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF), under the leadership of Hamid Idris Awate, waged an armed struggle for independence. In 1962, Emperor Haile Selassie unilaterally dissolved the Eritrean parliament and annexed the territory. The ensuing Eritrean War of Independence went on for 30 years against successive Ethiopian governments until 1991, when the Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF), a successor of the ELF, defeated the Ethiopian forces in Eritrea and helped a coalition of Ethiopian rebel forces take control of the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa.
In the 1980s, a non-government organization called the Eritrea Inter-Agency Consortium (EIAC) aided in the development projects for the Eritrean Liberation movement.
Following a referendum in Eritrea supervised by the United Nations (dubbed UNOVER) in which the Eritrean people overwhelmingly voted for independence, Eritrea declared its independence and gained international recognition in 1993. The EPLF seized power, established a one-party state along nationalist lines and banned further political activity. As of 2024, there have been no elections. On May 28, 1993, Eritrea was admitted into the United Nations as the 182nd member state.
== Geography ==
Eritrea is located in East Africa. It is bordered to the northeast and east by the Red Sea, Sudan to the west, Ethiopia to the south, and Djibouti to the southeast. Eritrea lies between latitudes 12° and 18°N, and longitudes 36° and 44°E.
The country is virtually bisected by a branch of the East African Rift. Eritrea, at the southern end of the Red Sea, holds the fork in the rift. The Dahlak Archipelago and its fishing grounds are situated off the sandy, arid coastline.
Eritrea is split into three ecoregions. Extending along the coast, a hot, arid plain is narrow in the west and widens towards the east. These coastal lowlands are part of the Djibouti xeric shrublands ecoregion. The cooler, more fertile highlands reach up to 3,000 m (9,800 ft) and are a northern extension of the Ethiopian Highlands, home to montane grasslands and woodlands. Habitats here vary, from the sub-tropical rainforest at Filfil Solomona to the precipitous cliffs and canyons of the southern highlands. Filfil receives over 1,100 mm of rainfall annually. There is a steep escarpment along the eastern side of the highlands, which is the western wall of the East African Rift. The western slope of the highlands is more gradual, descending to interior lowlands. Southwestern Eritrea is drained by the Atbara River, which flows northwestwards to join the Nile. The northwestern slope of the highlands is drained by the Barka River, which flows northwards into Sudan to empty into the Red Sea. Western Eritrea is part of the Sahelian Acacia savanna, which extends across Africa south of the Sahara from Eritrea to Senegal.
The Afar Triangle or Danakil Depression of Eritrea is the probable location of a triple junction where three tectonic plates are pulling away from one another. The highest point of the country, Emba Soira, is located in the center of Eritrea, at 3,018 m (9,902 ft) above sea level. Eritrea has volcanic activity in the southeastern parts of the country. In 2011, Nabro Volcano erupted.
Eritrea's major urban areas include its capital city Asmara, the port town of Asseb in the southeast, the towns of Massawa to the east, the town of Keren to the north, and the central town Mendefera.
Local variability in rainfall patterns and reduced precipitation are known to occur, which may precipitate soil erosion, floods, droughts, land degradation, and desertification.
Eritrea is part of a 14-nation constituency within the Global Environment Facility, which partners with international institutions, civil society organizations, and the private sector to address global environmental issues while supporting national sustainable development initiatives.
In 2006, Eritrea announced that it would become the world's first country to make its entire coast an environmentally protected zone. The 1,347 km (837 mi) coastline, along with another 1,946 km (1,209 mi) of coast around its hundreds of islands, will come under governmental protection.
=== Climate ===
Eritrea can be broadly divided into three major climate zones: the temperate zone, subtropical climate zone, and tropical climate zone.
The climate of Eritrea is shaped by its diverse topographical features and its location within the tropics. The variation of landscape and topography across the highlands and lowlands of Eritrea creates a diversity of climate. The highlands have a temperate climate throughout the year. The climate of most lowland zones is arid and semi-arid. Distribution of rainfall and vegetation types varies markedly throughout the country. Eritrean climate also varies based on seasonal and altitudinal differences.
Due to its physical diversity, Eritrea is one of the few countries where one can experience "four seasons in a day". In the highlands (up to 3000m above sea level), the hottest month is usually May, with temperatures reaching 30 C, whereas winter occurs during December to February when temperatures can be as low as 10 C at night. The capital, Asmara, is temperate year-round.
In the lowlands and the coastal areas, summer occurs from June to September, when temperatures can reach 40 C. Winter in the lowlands occurs from February to April, when temperatures are between 21 and 35 C.
A 2022 analysis found that the expected costs for Eritrea to adapt to and avert the environmental consequences of climate change are high.
=== Biodiversity ===
Eritrea has a rich avifauna of 560 species of birds and is home to a large number of mammals; 126 species of mammals, 90 species of reptiles, and 19 species of amphibians have been recorded. Enforced regulations have helped in steadily increasing wildlife numbers throughout Eritrea. Mammals commonly seen today include the Abyssinian hare, African wild cat, Black-backed jackal, African golden wolf, Genet, Ground squirrel, pale fox, Soemmerring's gazelle, and warthog. Dorcas gazelle are common on the coastal plains and in Gash-Barka.
Lions are said to inhabit the mountains of the Gash-Barka region. Dik-diks may be found in many areas. The endangered African wild ass may be seen in Denakalia Region. Other local wildlife include bushbuck, duikers, greater kudu, Klipspringer, African leopards, oryx, and crocodiles. The spotted hyena is widespread and fairly common.
Historically, a small population of African bush elephants roamed some parts of the country. Between 1955 and 2001, there were no reported sightings of elephant herds, however, and they were thought to have fallen victim to the War of Independence. In December 2001, a herd of approximately 30 elephants, including 10 juveniles, was observed near the Gash River. The elephants seemed to have formed a symbiotic relationship with olive baboons: the baboons use water holes dug by the elephants, and the elephants use baboon vocalizations from the tree tops as an early warning system. It is estimated that there are approximately 100 African bush elephants left in Eritrea.
The endangered African wild dog (Lycaon pictus) was previously found in Eritrea but is now deemed extirpated from the entire country. In Gash-Barka, snakes such as the saw-scaled viper are common. Puff adders and red spitting cobras are widespread and may be found in the highlands. In coastal areas, common marine species include dolphins, dugongs, whale sharks, turtles, marlin, swordfish, and manta rays. 500 fish species, 5 marine turtles, and at least 8 cetaceans have been recorded in the country.
Eritrea also harbours many endemic species, including insects, amphibians, mammals, reptiles, and plants.
Over 700 plants have been recorded in Eritrea, including marine plants and seagrass. 26% of Eritrea is arable land. Eritrea has many diverse habitats, including tropical and subtropical grasslands, savannas, shrublands, xeric shrublands, deserts, tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forests and mangrove forests.
All of Eritrea's national parks are protected, which include Dahlak Marine National Park, Nakfa Wildlife Reserve, Gash-Setit Wildlife Refuge, Semenawi Bahri National Park, and Yob Wildlife Reserve.
== Government and politics ==
The People's Front for Democracy and Justice (PFDJ) is the only legal party in Eritrea. Other political groups are not allowed to organize, though the unimplemented Constitution of 1997 provides for the existence of multi-party politics. The National Assembly has 150 seats. National elections have been periodically scheduled and cancelled; as of 2025, none have ever been held in the country. President Isaias Afwerki has been in office since independence in 1993.
In May 2001, a group of senior government officials and prominent members of the ruling party (PFDJ), known as the G-15, wrote an open letter to President Isaias Afwerki. This letter called the president to implement the ratified constitution, enact democratic reforms, and establish the rule of law. In September 2001, the Eritrean government arrested 11 of the signatories and subjected them to incommunicado detention. The crackdown also targeted independent media outlets and multiple independent journalists, including Dawit Isaac. To this day, they remain imprisoned without charge or trial.
In 1993, 75 representatives were elected to the National Assembly; the rest were appointed. As the report by the United Nations Human Rights Council explained: "No national elections have taken place since that time, and no presidential elections have ever taken place. Local or regional elections have not been held since 2003–2004. The National Assembly elected independent Eritrea's first president, Isaias Afwerki, in 1993. Following his election, Afwerki consolidated his control of the Eritrean government." President Isaias Afwerki has regularly expressed his disdain for what he refers to as "Western-style" democracy. In a 2008 interview with Al Jazeera, for example, the president stated that "Eritrea will wait three or four decades, maybe more, before it holds elections. Who knows?" According to 2023 V-Dem Democracy indices, Eritrea is 2nd lowest ranked worldwide and the lowest ranked electoral democracy in Africa.
=== National, regional, and local elections ===
Given that the full implementation of the Joint Declaration of Peace and Friendship between Eritrea and Ethiopia is still incomplete, the Eritrean authorities still do not consider that the peace agreement is formally implemented. However, local elections were held for a time in Eritrea. The most recent round of local government elections were in 2010 and 2011.
=== Administrative divisions ===
Eritrea is divided into six administrative regions. These areas are further divided into 58 districts.
The regions of Eritrea are the primary geographical divisions through which the country is administered. At the time of independence in 1993, Eritrea was arranged into ten provinces. These provinces were similar to the nine provinces during the colonial period. In 1996, these were consolidated into six regions (zobas). The boundaries of these new regions are based on water catchment basins.
=== Foreign relations ===
Eritrea is a member of the United Nations and the African Union. It is an observing member of the Arab League, alongside Brazil and Venezuela. The nation holds a seat on the United Nations Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions (ACABQ). Eritrea also holds memberships in the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, International Finance Corporation, International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL), Non-Aligned Movement, Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, Permanent Court of Arbitration, Port Management Association of Eastern and Southern Africa, and the World Customs Organization.
The Eritrean government previously withdrew its representative to the African Union to protest the AU's alleged lack of leadership in facilitating the implementation of a binding decision demarcating the border between Eritrea and Ethiopia. Since January 2011, the Eritrean government has appointed an envoy, Tesfa-Alem Tekle, to the AU.
Its relations with Djibouti and Yemen are tense, due to territorial disputes over the Doumeira Islands and Hanish Islands respectively.
On 28 May 2019, the United States removed Eritrea from the "Counterterror Non-Cooperation List" which also includes Iran, North Korea, Syria, and Venezuela. Moreover, Eritrea was visited two months earlier by a U.S. congressional delegation for the first time in 14 years.
Along with Belarus, Syria, and North Korea, Eritrea was one of only four countries not including Russia to vote against a United Nations General Assembly resolution condemning Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
==== Relations with Ethiopia ====
After the 30-year war for Eritrean independence, Eritrea and Ethiopia entered a relationship of cautious mutual tolerance which lasted until May 1998. The Eritrean–Ethiopian War lasted from 1998 to 2000, claimed approximately 70,000 lives from both sides and cost hundreds of millions of dollars. The impetus involved a major border conflict, notably around Badme and Zalambessa, and was not resolved until 2018.
Disagreements following the war have resulted in stalemates punctuated by periods of elevated tension and renewed threats of war. The stalemate led the president of Eritrea to urge the UN to take action on Ethiopia, with the Eleven Letters penned by the president to the United Nations Security Council. The situation has been further escalated by Eritrean and Ethiopian leaders' continued support to the opposition in each other's countries. In 2011, The United Nations released a report which stated that Eritrean agents planted bombs at an African Union summit in Addis Ababa. Eritrea denied the claims.
A peace treaty between both nations was signed on 9 July 2018. The next day, they signed a joint declaration that formally ended the Eritrean–Ethiopian border conflict.
In 2020, Eritrean troops intervened in the Tigray War on the side of the Ethiopian government. In April 2021, Eritrea confirmed its troops were fighting in Ethiopia.
=== Military ===
The Eritrean Defence Forces are the official armed forces of the State of Eritrea, which are one of the largest in Africa.
Compulsory military service was instituted in 1995. Officially, conscripts, male and female, must serve for 18 months minimum, which includes six months of military training and 12 months during the regular school year to complete their last year of high school. Since the 2000s, national service has been open-ended, and the practice has received significant international criticism.
The National Service Proclamation of 1995 does not recognize the right to conscientious objection to military service. According to the 1957 Ethiopian penal code Eritrea adopted during independence, failure to enlist in the military or refusal to perform military service are punishable with imprisonment terms of six months to five years and up to ten years, respectively. National service enlistment times may be extended during times of "national crisis"; since 1998, everyone under the age of 50 is enlisted in national service for an indefinite period until released, which may depend on the arbitrary decision of a commander. In a study of 200 escaped conscripts, the average service was 6.5 years, and some had served more than 12 years.
=== Legal profession ===
According to the NYU School of Law, the Legal Committee of the Ministry of Justice oversees the admission and requirements to practice law in Eritrea. Although the establishment of an independent bar association is not proscribed under Proclamation 88/96, among other domestic laws, there is no bar association. The community electorate in the local jurisdiction of the Community Court chooses the court judges. The Community Court's standing on women in the legal profession is unclear, but elected women judges have reserved seats.
=== Human rights ===
Eritrea is a one-party state in which national legislative elections have been repeatedly postponed. According to Human Rights Watch, the government's human rights record is considered among the worst in the world. Most countries have accused the Eritrean authorities of arbitrary arrest and detentions, and of detaining an unknown number of people without charge for their political activism. Both male and female same-sex sexual activity are illegal in Eritrea.
The nation's human rights record has been criticized by the United Nations. Human rights violations are allegedly often committed by the government or on behalf of the government. Freedom of speech, press, assembly, and association are limited. Those who practice "unregistered" religions, try to flee the nation, or escape military duty are arrested and put into prison. By 2009, the number of political prisoners was in the range of 10,000–30,000, there was widespread and systematic torture and extrajudicial killings, with "anyone" for "any or no reason", including children of eight years old, people more than 80 years old, and ill people, and Eritrea was "one of the world's most totalitarian and human rights-abusing regimes". During the Eritrean independence struggle and 1998 Eritrean-Ethiopian War, many atrocities were committed by the Ethiopian authorities against unarmed Eritrean civilians.
In June 2016, a 500-page United Nations Human Rights Council report accused the Eritrean government of extrajudicial executions, torture, indefinitely prolonged national service (6.5 years on average), and forced labour, and it indicated that among state officials, sexual harassment, rape, and sexual servitude practices are widespread. Barbara Lochbihler of the European Parliament Subcommittee on Human Rights said the report detailed 'very serious human rights violations', and asserted that EU funding for development would not continue as at present without change in Eritrea. The Eritrean Foreign Ministry responded by describing the commission's report as being "wild allegations" that were "totally unfounded and devoid of all merit". Representatives of the United States and China disputed the report's language and accuracy.
All Eritreans between 18 and 40 years of age must complete mandatory national service, which includes military service. This requirement was implemented after Eritrea gained independence from Ethiopia, as a means to protect Eritrea's sovereignty, to instill national pride, and to create a disciplined populace. Eritrea's national service requires long, indefinite conscription (6.5 years on average), which some Eritreans leave the country to avoid.
In an attempt at reform, Eritrean government officials and NGO representatives in 2006 participated in many public meetings and dialogues. In these sessions, they answered questions as fundamental as, "What are human rights?", "Who determines what are human rights?", and "What should take precedence, human or communal rights?".
In 2007, the Eritrean government banned female genital mutilation. In Regional Assemblies and religious circles, Eritreans speak out continuously against the use of female circumcision, citing health concerns and individual freedom as primary concerns. Furthermore, they implore rural peoples to cast away this ancient cultural practice.
In 2009, a movement called Citizens for Democratic Rights in Eritrea was formed to create dialogue between the government and political opposition. The group consists of ordinary citizens and some people close to the government. Since the movement's creation, no significant effort has been made by the Eritrean government to improve its record on human rights.
In July 2019, UN ambassadors of 37 countries, including Eritrea, signed a joint letter to the UNHRC defending China's treatment of Uyghurs and other Muslim minority groups in the Xinjiang region. Eritrea continued this support in 2020.
Eritrea claims Western media stories of the country are decontextualized, sometimes fabricated, and usually deployed to build a regime change narrative.
It claims it's being targeted for not conforming to the West's agenda for African countries, for instance by refusing to accept humanitarian foreign aid. Eritrea aspires to be self-reliant and, since 2005, has rejected foreign aid because it sees aid as a hindrance to true economic development. In 2006 alone, Eritrea walked away from US$200 million in foreign aid and refused a US$100 million loan from the World Bank. Besides accusing the West of demonization through smear campaigns, it also sees itself as targeted by sanctions and Western-supported war against Eritrea through the Ethiopian TPLF. It also accuses the West of luring Eritreans abroad by granting many Eritreans political asylum.
=== Media freedom ===
Eritrea lacks media freedom, as all independent media has been banned since September 2001. No foreign or national media are authorised to operate in the country. All media outlets in Eritrea are from the government's Ministry of Information. The state-owned news agency censors news about external events. In 2025, Press Freedom Index and Reporters Without Borders rated Eritrea's press freedom the lowest out of 180 countries. Eritrea also received the last place in 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2021, 2024, and 2025. According to the BBC, "Eritrea is the only African country to have no privately owned news media", and Reporters Without Borders said of the public media, "[They] do nothing but relay the regime's belligerent and ultra-nationalist discourse... Not a single [foreign correspondent] now lives in Asmara." In December 2024, the Committee to Protect Journalists found to Eritrea to be the worst jailer of journalists in Sub-Africa, keeping 16 journalists in prison without trial.
The 2024 Edelstam Prize was awarded to journalist Dawit Isaak, whom Eritrean authorities have imprisoned since 2001 without legal process.
== Economy ==
In 2020, the IMF estimated Eritrea's GDP at $2.1 billion, or $6.4 billion on a PPP basis.
Between 2016 and 2019, Eritrea had a GDP growth between 7.6% and 10.2%, down from the peak at 30.9% in 2014. In 2023, the GDP growth is expected to be 2.8%, a decrease due to factors such as the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the effects of COVID-19 on value chains. However, the country's economy is expecting a steady growth in coming years.
In 2021, mining and agriculture accounted for 20% of the GDP. As of 2020, remittances from abroad were estimated to account for 12% of GDP.
=== Mining ===
In 2021, mining accounted for about 20% of GDP. In 2013, the pickup in growth had been attributed to the commencement of full operations in the gold and silver Bisha Mine by Canadian Nevsun Resources (now Chinese Zijin Mining), the production of cement from the cement factory in Massawa, and investment in Eritrea's copper, zinc, and Colluli potash mining operations by Australian and Chinese mining companies.
=== Agriculture ===
Since independence, Eritrea has constructed 187 dams, each with a capacity of over 50,000 m3 and the biggest ones with a capacity of 350 million m3 in size. These have been built to combat drought and for agriculture, fishing, and energy purposes. In addition, 600 micro-dams have been built.
=== Energy ===
Annual consumption of petroleum in 2001 was estimated at 370,000 tons. Eritrea has no domestic petroleum production; the Eritrean Petroleum Corporation conducts purchases through international competitive tender. According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, opportunities exist for both on- and offshore oil and natural gas exploration; however, these prospects have yet to come to fruition. The use of wind energy, solar power, and hydropower has slightly increased, due to the growth of solar power manufacturing companies in the country. The Eritrean government has expressed interest in developing alternative energy sources, including geothermal, solar, and wind power.
=== Tourism ===
Tourism made up 2% of Eritrea's economy up to 1997. After 1998, revenue from the industry fell to one-quarter of 1997 levels. In 2006, it made up less than 1% of the country's GDP.
Eritrea is a member of World Tourism Organization which calculated that the country's international tourism receipts in 2002 were US$73 million. Sources from 2015 state that most tourists are members of the Eritrean diaspora. Overall visitors have steadily increased in recent years and annual visitors were 142,000 as of 2016.
Tourism in Eritrea has seen increased attention in later years. For instance, in 2019, the country was added to National Geographic's Cool List. Highlighted areas included the capital, Asmara, known for its art deco architecture; the Dahlak Islands; and the country's wilderness areas. Lonely Planet also lists the capital Asmara, the Dahlak Islands, the city of Massawa and archeological sites as top attractions.
The nation's flagship carrier, Eritrean Airlines, had no scheduled service as of July 2023. International visitors rely on alternatives such as Ethiopian Airlines and Turkish Airlines to get to the country.
The government has started a twenty-year tourism development plan entitled "the 2020 Eritrea Tourism Development Plan" to develop the country's tourist industry, aiming to enhance the rich cultural and natural resources of the country. The country participates in many trade fairs to promote its tourist industry.
=== Transportation ===
Transport in Eritrea includes highways, airports, railways, and seaports, in addition to various forms of public and private vehicular, maritime, and aerial transportation.
The Eritrean highway system is named according to the road classification. The three levels of classification are primary (P), secondary (S), and tertiary (T). The lowest road level is tertiary, which serves local interests. Typically, tertiary roads are improved earth roads that are occasionally paved. During the wet seasons, these roads typically become impassable. The middle road level is secondary. These are typically single-layered asphalt roads that connect district capitals and regional capitals. Primary roads are paved with asphalt throughout their entire length and carry traffic between major cities and towns in Eritrea.
As of 1999, there is a total of 317 kilometres of 950 mm (3 ft 1+3⁄8 in) (narrow gauge) rail line in Eritrea. The Eritrean Railway was built between 1887 and 1932. Badly damaged during World War II and in later fighting, it was closed section by section, with the final section closed in 1978. After independence, rebuilding efforts commenced, and the first section was reopened in 2003. As of 2009, the section from Massawa to Asmara was fully rebuilt and available for service.
Rehabilitation of the remainder and rolling stock has occurred in recent years. Current service is very limited due to the extreme age of most of the railway equipment and its limited availability. Further rebuilding is planned. The railway linking Agordat and Asmara with the port of Massawa has been inoperative since 1978, except for an approximately 5-kilometre stretch in Massawa reopened in 1994. A railway formerly ran from Massawa to Bishia via Asmara and is under reconstruction.
During the war, Eritrea continued to develop its transportation infrastructure by asphalting new roads, improving its ports, and repairing war-damaged roads and bridges as a part of the Wefri Warsay Yika'alo program. The most significant of these projects were the construction of a coastal highway of more than 500 km connecting Massawa with Asseb and the rehabilitation of the Eritrean Railway. The rail line has been restored between the port of Massawa and the capital Asmara, although services are sporadic. Steam locomotives are sometimes used for groups of enthusiasts.
== Demographics ==
Sources disagree as to the current population of Eritrea, with some proposing numbers as low as 3.5 million and others as high as 6.4 million. Eritrea has never conducted an official government census, and the 1984 Ethiopian census, the last census conducted in Ethiopia before Eritrea's independence in 1993, recorded a population of 2,621,566. In 2020, the proportion of children below the age of 15 was 41.1%, 54.3% were between 15 and 65 years of age, while 4.5% were 65 or older.
In 2015, there was a major outflow of emigrants from Eritrea. The Guardian attributed the emigration to Eritrea being "a totalitarian state where most citizens fear arrest at any moment and dare not speak to their neighbours, gather in groups or linger long outside their homes", with a major factor being the conditions and long durations of conscription in the Eritrean Army. At the end of 2018, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimated that about 507,300 Eritreans were refugees who had fled Eritrea.
=== Urbanization ===
=== Ethnic composition ===
There are nine recognized ethnic groups according to the government of Eritrea. No independent census has been conducted, but the Tigrinya people make up approximately 55% and Tigre people make up approximately 30% of the population. A majority of the remaining ethnic groups belong to Afroasiatic-speaking communities of the Cushitic branch, such as the Saho, Hedareb, Afar, and Bilen. There are also several Nilotic ethnic groups, some of which are represented in Eritrea by the Kunama and Nara. Each ethnicity speaks a different native tongue, and many minorities speak more than one language.
The Arabic Rashaida people represent approximately 2% of Eritrea's population. They reside in the northern coastal lowlands of Eritrea as well as the eastern coasts of Sudan. The Rashaida first came to Eritrea in the nineteenth century, from the Hejaz region.
In addition, there exist Italian Eritrean (concentrated in Asmara) and Ethiopian Tigrayan communities. Neither is generally given citizenship except through marriage or, more rarely, by having it conferred upon them by the state. According to 1931 Italian census, of the 600,573 inhabitants in Eritrea, 4,188 were Italians, making up about 0.7% of the population. In 1941, Eritrea had approximately 760,000 inhabitants, including 70,000 Italians. Most Italians left after Eritrea became independent from Italy. It is estimated that as many as 100,000 Eritreans are of Italian descent.
=== Languages ===
Eritrea is a multilingual country. The nation has no official language, as the Constitution establishes the "equality of all Eritrean languages". Eritrea has nine national languages which are Tigrinya, Tigre, Afar, Beja, Bilen, Kunama, Nara, and Saho. Tigrinya, Arabic, and English serve as de facto working languages, with English used in university education and many technical fields. While Italian, the former colonial language, holds no government-recognised status in Eritrea, it is spoken by a few monolinguals and in commerce at times, and Asmara had the Scuola Italiana di Asmara, an Italian government-operated school that was shut down in 2020. Some native Eritreans also assimilated the language of the Italian Eritreans and spoke an Italian-Tigrinya pidgin: Eritrean Italian.
Most of the languages spoken in Eritrea belong to the Ethiopian Semitic branch of the Afroasiatic family. Other Afroasiatic languages in the Cushitic branch are also widely spoken in the country. The latter include Afar, Beja, Blin, and Saho. In addition, Nilo-Saharan languages (Kunama and Nara) are natively spoken by the Nilotic Kunama and Nara ethnic groups that live in the western and northwestern part of the country.
Smaller groups speak other Afroasiatic languages, such as the newly recognized Dahlik and Arabic (the Hejazi and Hadhrami dialects spoken by the Rashaida and Hadhrami, respectively).
=== Religion ===
The two main religions followed in Eritrea are Christianity and Islam. However, the number of adherents of each faith is subject to debate. According to the Pew Research Center, as of 2020, 62.9% of the population of Eritrea adhered to Christianity, 36.6% followed Islam, and 0.4% practiced traditional African religions. The remainder observed Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, other faiths (<0.1% each), or were religiously unaffiliated (0.1%). The U.S. Department of State estimated that as of 2019, 49% of the population of Eritrea adhered to Christianity, 49% followed Islam, and 2% observed other religions, including traditional faiths and animism. The World Religion Database reports that in 2020, 47% of the population were Christian and 51% were Muslim. Christianity is the oldest world religion practiced in the country, and the first Christian monastery Debre Sina was built during the fourth century.
Since May 2002, the government of Eritrea has officially recognized the Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church (Oriental Orthodox), Sunni Islam, the Eritrean Catholic Church (a Metropolitanate sui juris), and the Evangelical Lutheran church. All other faiths and denominations are required to undergo a registration process. Among other things, the government registration system requires religious groups to submit personal information on their membership to be allowed to worship.
The Eritrean government is against what it deems as "reformed" or "radical" versions of its established religions. Therefore, alleged radical forms of Islam and Christianity, Jehovah's Witnesses, and numerous other Protestant Evangelical denominations are not registered and cannot worship freely. Three named Jehovah's Witnesses are known to have been imprisoned since 1994 along with 51 others. The government treats Jehovah's Witnesses especially harshly, denying them ration cards and work permits. Jehovah's Witnesses were stripped of their citizenship and basic civil rights by presidential decree in October 1994.
In its 2017 religious freedom report, the U.S. State Department named Eritrea a Country of Particular Concern (CPC).
=== Health ===
Eritrea has achieved significant improvements in health care and is one of the few countries to be on target to meet its Millennium Development Goals (MDG) for health, in particular child health. Life expectancy at birth increased from 39.1 years in 1960 to 66.44 years in 2020; maternal and child mortality rates dropped dramatically and the health infrastructure expanded.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) in 2008 found average life expectancy to be slightly less than 63 years, a number that has increased to 66.44 in 2020. Immunisation and child nutrition have been tackled by working closely with schools in a multi-sectoral approach; the number of children vaccinated against measles almost doubled in seven years, from 40.7% to 78.5% and the prevalence of underweight children decreased by 12% from 1995 to 2002 (severe underweight prevalence by 28%). The National Malaria Protection Unit of the Ministry of Health registered reductions in malarial mortality by as much as 85% and in the number of cases by 92% between 1998 and 2006. The Eritrean government has banned female genital mutilation (FGM), saying the practice was painful and put women at risk of life-threatening health problems.
However, Eritrea still faces many challenges. Although the number of physicians increased from only 0.2 in 1993 to 0.5 in 2004 per 1000 people, this is still very low. Malaria and tuberculosis are common. HIV prevalence for ages 15 to 49 years exceeds 2%. The fertility rate is about 4.1 births per woman. Maternal mortality dropped by more than half from 1995 to 2002 but is still high. Similarly, the number of births attended by skilled health personnel doubled from 1995 to 2002 but still is only 28.3%. Severe infection is a major cause of death in newborns. Per-capita expenditure on health is low.
=== Education ===
There are five levels of education in Eritrea: pre-primary, primary, middle, secondary, and post-secondary. There are nearly 1,270,000 students in the primary, middle, and secondary levels of education. There are approximately 824 schools, two universities, (the University of Asmara and the Eritrea Institute of Technology), and several smaller colleges and technical schools.
The Eritrea Institute of Technology (EIT) is a technological institute located near the town of Himbrti, Mai Nefhi outside Asmara. The institute has three colleges: Science, Engineering and Technology, and Education. The institute began with approximately 5,500 students during the 2003–2004 academic year. The EIT was opened after the University of Asmara was reorganized. According to the Ministry of Education, the institution was established, as one of many efforts to achieve equal distribution of higher learning in areas outside the capital city, Asmara. Accordingly, several similar colleges have also been established in other parts of the country. The Eritrea Institute of Technology is the main local institute of higher studies in science, engineering, and education. The University of Asmara is the oldest in the country and was opened in 1958. It is not currently operating.
As of 2018, the overall adult literacy rate in Eritrea is 76.6% (84.4% for men and 68.9% for women). For youth 15–24, the overall literacy rate is 93.3% (93.8% for men and 92.7% for women).
Education in Eritrea is officially compulsory for children aged 6 to 13 years.
Statistics vary at the elementary level, suggesting that 70% to 90% of school-aged children attend primary school; approximately 61% attend secondary school. Student-teacher ratios are high: 45:1 at the elementary level and 54:1 at the secondary level. Class sizes average 63 and 97 students per classroom at the elementary and secondary school levels, respectively.
Barriers to education in Eritrea include traditional taboos, school fees (for registration and materials), and the opportunity costs of low-income households.
== Culture ==
Eritrean culture encompasses the collective cultural heritage of the various populations native to Eritrea and the rich culture inherited through its long history. Modern-day Eritrea is also defined by the struggle for independence. The nation has a rich oral and literary tradition, which ranges across all nine ethnic groups and includes poetry and proverbs, songs and chants, folk tales, histories, and legends. It also has a rich history in theatre and painting, often colourful and depicting a reflection of the Eritrean people's history.
One of the most recognizable parts of Eritrean culture is the coffee ceremony. Coffee (Ge'ez ቡን būn) is offered when visiting friends, during festivities, or as a staple of daily life. The coffee is served in three brews or rounds: the first is called awel in Tigrinya (meaning "first"), the second is called kalaay (meaning "second"), and the third round is called bereka (meaning "to be blessed").
Traditional Eritrean attire is highly varied among its ethnic groups. In larger cities, most people dress in Western casual dress such as jeans and shirts. In offices, both men and women often dress in suits. A common traditional clothing for Christian Tigrinya highlanders consists of bright white gowns (called zurias) for women and a white shirt and pants for men. In Muslim communities in the Eritrean lowlands, women traditionally dress in brightly colored clothes. Besides convergent culinary tastes, Eritreans share an appreciation for similar music, jewelry, fragrances, and fabrics, as many other populations in the region.
=== World Heritage Site and Italian architecture ===
On 8 July 2017, the entire capital city of Asmara was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, with the inscription taking place during the 41st World Heritage Committee Session.
The city has thousands of Art Deco, futurist, modernist, and rationalist buildings, constructed during the period of Italian Eritrea. Asmara, a small town in the nineteenth century, began a period of rapid growth in1889. The city also became a place "to experiment with radical new designs", mainly futuristic and Art Deco inspired. Though city planners, architects, and engineers were largely European and members of the indigenous population were largely used as construction workers, Asmarinos still identify with their city's legacy.
The city includes examples of most early twentieth-century architectural styles. Some buildings are neo-Romanesque, such as the Church of Our Lady of the Rosary. Art Deco influences are found throughout the city. Cubist influences show on the Africa Pension Building and on a small collection of buildings. The Fiat Tagliero Building shows the peak of Futurism, just as it became fashionable in Italy. In recent times, some more functional buildings have been built in Asmara.
Many buildings such as opera houses, hotels, and cinemas were built during this period. Some notable buildings include the Art Deco Cinema Impero (opened in 1937 and considered a leading example of Art Deco architecture), Cubist Africa Pension, eclectic Eritrean Orthodox Enda Mariam Cathedral and Asmara Opera, the futurist Fiat Tagliero Building, the neoclassical Asmara city hall.
A statement from UNESCO read:
It is an exceptional example of early modernist urbanism at the beginning of the 20th century and its application in an African context.
=== Music ===
Eritrea's ethnic groups each have distinct styles of music and accompanying dances. The best-known Tigrinya traditional musical genre is the guaila. Traditional instruments of Eritrean folk music include the strung krar, kebero, begena, masenqo, and the wata. Tigrinya singer Helen Meles is noted for her powerful voice and wide singing range. Other prominent local musicians include the Kunama singer Dehab Faytinga, Ruth Abraha, Bereket Mengisteab, the late Yemane Ghebremichael and the late Abraham Afewerki.
Dancing plays an important role in Eritrean society. The nine ethnic groups have many exuberant dances. Styles differ among the ethnic groups; for instance, the Bilen and Tigre styles involve shaking their shoulders, while standing and rotating in a circle towards the end of the dance. This differs from the Tigrinya style, which involves first dancing rotating anti-clockwise and later speeding up the pace of the dance and ceasing the circular rotation. The Kunama ethnic group has dances with ritual significance, including "tuka (rites of passage); indoda (prayers for rain); sangga-nena (peaceful mediation); and shatta (showcases of endurance and courage)". They are often fast-paced and are accompanied by drum beats.
=== Cuisine ===
A typical traditional Eritrean dish consists of injera accompanied by a spicy stew, which frequently includes beef, chicken, lamb, or fish. Overall, Eritrean cuisine strongly resembles that of neighboring Ethiopia, though Eritrean cooking tends to feature more seafood than Ethiopian cuisine on account of their coastal location. Eritrean dishes are also frequently "lighter" in texture than Ethiopian meals, using less seasoned butter and spices and more tomatoes, as in the tsebhi dorho delicacy.
Additionally, due to its colonial history, Eritrean cuisine features more Italian influences than Ethiopian cooking, including more pasta and use of curry powders and cumin. Italian Eritrean cuisine originated in the colonial Kingdom of Italy, when a large number of Italians moved to Eritrea. They brought pasta to Italian Eritrea, which is now one of the main foods eaten in Asmara. Common dishes are "pasta al sugo e berbere" (pasta with tomato sauce and berbere spice), lasagna, and "cotoletta alla Milanese" (veal Milanese).
In addition to coffee, local alcoholic beverages are enjoyed. These include sowa, a bitter drink made from fermented barley, and mies, a fermented honey wine.
=== Sport ===
Football and cycling are the most popular sports in Eritrea.
Cycling has a long tradition in Eritrea and was first introduced during the colonial period. The Tour of Eritrea, a multi-stage cycling event, was first held in 1946 and most recently held in 2017.
Eritrea's national cycling teams are ranked first on the African continent, with the men's team ranked 16th globally as of February 2023.
The Eritrean national cycling team has won the African Continental cycling championship several years in a row. In 2013, the women's team won the gold medal in the African Continental Cycling Championships for the first time, and again in 2015 and 2019. The men's team has won gold in the African Continental cycling championships eight times between 2010 and 2022.
Eritrea has more than 500 elite cyclists of both genders. More than 20 Eritrean riders have signed professional contracts to international cycling teams. In 2015, Daniel Teklehaimanot and Merhawi Kudus became the first cyclists from Africa to compete in the Tour de France. In 2022, Biniam Girmay was the first African rider to win both Gent-Wevelgem and a stage in one of the Grand Tours during Giro d'Italia. Three-time African female champion Mossana Debesay became the first African female cyclist to compete in the Olympics, representing Eritrea in the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics
Eritrean athletes in other sports have also seen some success in the international arena. Eritrean athlete Zersenay Tadese formerly held the world record in the half marathon. In 2015, marathon runner Ghirmay Ghebreslassie became the first Eritrean to win gold at a World Championships in Athletics for his country. Eritrea made its Winter Olympic debut in Pyeongchang, South Korea, 2018. Eritrea's team was represented by their flagbearer, Shannon-Ogbnai Abeda, who competed in alpine ski.
Neither the Eritrean national men or women's national football team currently have a world ranking, despite being a member association of global governing body FIFA.
== See also ==
Outline of Eritrea
== References ==
Christine, Owen. "Navigating difference between Tigrigna and Tigrinya". Navigating Differences: Tigrigna vs Tigrinya 16 December 2010
Hailemariam, Chefena; Kroon, Sjaak; Walters, Joel (1999). "Multilingualism and Nation Building: Language and Education in Eritrea" (PDF). Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development. 20 (6): 474–493. doi:10.1080/01434639908666385. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2015-09-23. Retrieved 2012-04-04.
== Further reading ==
== External links ==
=== Government ===
Ministry of Information of Eritrea Archived 22 June 2018 at the Wayback Machine (official government website).
EriTV News, Music, Movie and Comedy from Eritrea Television
Eritrea. The World Factbook. Central Intelligence Agency.
Eritrea web resources provided by GovPubs at the University of Colorado Boulder Libraries
Wikimedia Atlas of Eritrea
=== Others ===
Eritrea profile from BBC News.
Report of the Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in Eritrea, United Nations Human Rights Council Report, 8 June 2015
HRCE – Human Rights Concern – Eritrea
Documentary on Women's liberation in Eritrea
Tigrinya online learning with numbers, alphabet and history (Eritrea and north Ethiopia (Tigray-Province)).
Ferrovia Eritrea Eritrean Railway (in Italian)
Atlas of Eritrea Archived 15 October 2012 at the Wayback Machine
About Eritrea (in Italian)
Key Development Forecasts for Eritrea from International Futures.
=== Magazines ===
Special section about Eritrea from Espresso online magazine Archived 15 August 2022 at the Wayback Machine (in Italian)
History of Eritrea: First recordings – Munzinger – exploitation by colonialism and fight against colonialism (Italy, England, Ethiopia, Soviet Union, USA, Israel) – independence Archived 12 October 2007 at the Wayback Machine |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghulam_Nabi_Azad#:~:text=9%20External%20links-,Early%20life,local%20school%20in%20his%20village. | Ghulam Nabi Azad | Ghulam Nabi Azad (born 7 March 1949) is an Indian politician who served as Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha between 2014 and 2021. He also served as the Chief Minister of erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir from 2005 to 2008. On 26 September 2022, Azad announced his own political party as Democratic Progressive Azad Party. He is the chief patron cum founder of Democratic Progressive Azad Party.
Azad served as Minister of Health and Family Welfare. He has served as the Minister of Parliamentary Affairs in the Manmohan Singh government until 27 October 2005, when he was appointed the Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir. On 26 August 2022, Azad resigned from Indian National Congress and mulled creating a new party at the national level.
He also led the party successfully in the 2002 Assembly election in Jammu and Kashmir. He was bestowed with the Padma Bhushan, India's third highest civilian award, in 2022 by the Indian Government in the field of Public Affairs.
He was a member of Committee constituted by the Government of India in September 2023 to suggest changes to the constitution for simultaneous polls in the country.
== Early life ==
Ghulam Nabi Azad was born in a village named Soti of Gandoh tehsil (Bhalessa) in the formerly princely state of Jammu and Kashmir's Doda district. His parents were Rahamatullah Batt and Basa Begum. He attended the local school in his village. Later for higher studies he moved to Jammu and received his Bachelor's of Science degree from G.G.M. Science College. Furthermore, he also received a Master's in Zoology degree from the University of Kashmir, Srinagar in 1972.
== Political career ==
Azad started his career soon after working as the secretary for the Block Congress Committee in Bhalessa in 1973. Two years later, he was nominated as the President of the Jammu and Kashmir Pradesh Youth Congress. In 1980, he was appointed the President of the All-India Youth Congress.
After being elected to the Seventh Lok Sabha from Maharashtra's Washim (Lok Sabha constituency) in 1980, Azad entered into the Central government as Deputy Minister in charge of Law, Justice and Company Affairs Ministry in 1982.
Subsequently, he was elected to the Eighth Lok Sabha in 1984 and was a member (1990 - 1996) from Maharashtra in Rajya Sabha. During Rao's government, Azad took charge of Parliamentary Affairs and Civil Aviation ministries. He was subsequently elected to Rajya Sabha from Jammu and Kashmir during the term of 30 November 1996 to 29 November 2002 and 30 November 2002 to 29 November 2008, but resigned on 29 April 2006 as he became Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir on 2 November 2005.
The People's Democratic Party, a coalition partner of the Indian National Congress in Jammu and Kashmir, withdrew its support for Azad's government, and rather than attempt to sustain his government by requesting a vote of confidence, Azad resigned on 7 July 2008, and later left office on 11 July 2008.
=== Union government ===
In the second United Progressive Alliance Government, led by Manmohan Singh, Azad was sworn in as the Health Minister of India. He was elected to Rajya Sabha for the fourth and fifth terms from Jammu and Kashmir during the term of 30 November 1996 to 29 November 2002. He vowed to expand the National Rural Health Mission, which has mobilized half a million health workers, all across India, and later his ministry also launched a National Urban Health Mission, to serve the slum dwelling urban poor.
He has suggested a late marriage age of between 25 and 30 for population control, and has said that lack of electricity & thereby absence of TV entertainment in rural areas will cause people to produce more children.
=== Leader of Opposition ===
In June 2014, after the National Democratic Alliance won a majority in the Lok Sabha and formed the Union government, Azad was appointed the leader of opposition in the Rajya Sabha, where Congress still held the majority.
In 2015, Azad got re-elected to the Rajya Sabha from Jammu and Kashmir, despite the PDP-BJP alliance holding a majority of seats in the Legislative Assembly.
=== Resignation from INC ===
In August 2022, Azad resigned from the post of chairman of the Jammu and Kashmir Congress campaign committee hours after his appointment. Sonia Gandhi accepted the resignation from Azad. On 26 August 2022, he resigned from all positions including primary membership of the party. In his resignation letter, he cited destruction of consultative process by Rahul Gandhi as a reason.
== Democratic Progressive Azad Party ==
On 4 September 2022, Azad announced the formation of a new political party after resigning from Indian National Congress. He said the people of Jammu and Kashmir will decide the name and the flag for the new party.
On 26 September 2022, Azad announced the name of his new party as Democratic Progressive Azad Party. The flag of the Democratic Azad Party has three colours: mustard, white, and blue.
== Personal life ==
Azad married Shameema Dev Azad, a well known Kashmiri singer, in 1980, and they have a son Saddam Nabi Azad and a daughter Sofiya Nabi Azad.
== Positions held ==
== Awards ==
In March 2022, Ghulam Nabi Azad received Padma Bhushan from President Ram Nath Kovind.
Outstanding Parliamentarian Award 2015, at Parliament House, New Delhi on 1 August 2018
== References ==
== Further reading ==
Slippery slope, India Today, 14 November 2005.
Ghulam Nabi Azad, India Today, 21 May 2009.
== External links ==
Media related to Ghulam Nabi Azad at Wikimedia Commons |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madie_Hall_Xuma#:~:text=Soon%20after%20her%20arrival%2C%20she%20produced%20a%20popular%20musical%20about%20the%20advancement%20of%20African%20American%20life%20to%20South%20African%20people%20and%20proposed%20a%20follow%2Dup%20play%20entitled%20The%20Green%20Pastures | Madie Hall Xuma | Madie Hall Xuma (3 June 1894 – 10 September 1982) was an African American educator and social activist who emigrated to South Africa. She was called a 'mother of the nation'. Her husband, A. B. Xuma, was a president of the African National Congress (ANC) from 1940 to 1949.
== Early life and education ==
Xuma was born Madie Beatrice Hall in Winston-Salem, North Carolina in 1894. Xuma was one of four children of H. H. Hall, the only African-American medical doctor in the Winston-Salem at the time, and his wife Ginny Cowan Hall who was a real estate entrepreneur. At first, she intended to become a medical doctor like her father and her brother. She was admitted in Howard University College of Medicine after finishing normal school training at Shaw University. This admittance was rejected by her father because of sexual assault incident which happened to black female doctor. Then, she taught at Winston-Salem Public School and Mary Mcleod Bethune Daytona-Cookman College. She obtained a Bachelor of Science in education from Teachers' College in Winston-Salem in 1937 and a Master of Arts degree in education from Teachers College, Columbia University in 1938. She was also an executive secretary for the Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA) in North Carolina and Virginia
== Life after meeting A. B. Xuma ==
She was still studying towards a master's degree in education at Columbia University when she met the widowed Alfred Bitini Xuma who was visiting United States in 1937–1938. Despite her aching interest to depart to South Africa, her scheduled embarkation on 5 October 1939 was delayed indefinitely because of the war. Because of a suggestion from her husband, Xuma went on to study social work at Atlanta University to wait for the embarkation. She and A. B. Xuma married in Cape Town on 18 May 1940, a day after her arrival there.
Soon after her arrival, she produced a popular musical about the advancement of African American life to South African people and proposed a follow-up play entitled The Green Pastures about black liberation. During the 1940s, she often gave speeches about the history of slavery and the use of brainwashing to make black people believe that they are inferior and accept their servant status. These talks were usually given to groups, such as the Bantu Nurses Association and Daughters of Africa. She also created a play to gather funds for the ANC entitled American Negro Review: The Progress of a Race which based on a play in Winston-Salem, North Carolina with a cast that included Marion Anderson. This play was popular and raised over £200 for the ANC.
She was the first president of the African National Congress Women's League, serving from 1943 to 1949. She successfully advocated full membership and voting rights for women in the ANC. She assisted in the foundation of the Zenzele self-help movement clubs for women's enrichment, whose design she took from her experience with American clubs for black women. In 1951, she affiliated the Zenzele with the world YWCA, though with objection from the South African YWCA, which denied black women membership and the South African Government. She was elected as president of the national council of the South African Young Women's Christian Association on 1955.
In February 1963, a year after her husband's death in 1962, she returned to Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and lived there until her death on 10 September 1982.
== References == |
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