title: 2003–04 Birmingham City F.C. season

text: Home wins against Middlesbrough, League Cup winners just three days before, in which recent signing Martin Taylor scored his first goal when Forssell's shot struck his shoulder, and League Cup losers Bolton Wanderers, in which Bryan Hughes's first goal of the season and Forssell's fourth in four games took Birmingham fifth in the table. Leicester City prepared for their visit to Birmingham with a "bonding" break in Spain during which nine players were arrested, three of whom were jailed; thanks to Les Ferdinand's goal and their hosts' poor finishing, they put an end to Birmingham's eight-match unbeaten run. The away match with Middlesbrough, played in a howling gale, was described by the Independent as "an eight-goal thriller in which a keeper (Middlesbrough's Mark Schwarzer) was the star and managed to keep the scoring within reasonable bounds" and by the Guardian as "a snatch of comic relief, a red-face day out of the blue"; Birmingham lost 5–3, and the last goal was scored by Szilard Nemeth after Matthew Upson tried to head the ball back to his goalkeeper but could not reach it until he was almost flat on the floor. Birmingham conceded early at home to Leeds United but had a 3–1 lead when a penalty was awarded. Although Forssell was the designated penalty-taker, Hughes had two goals already and wanted to complete his hat-trick; Bruce intervened in favour of Forssell, who duly scored his 18th goal of the season.


title: 2003–04 Birmingham City F.C. season

text: Two weeks after Maik Taylor's loan from Fulham was made permanent, his goalkeeping was instrumental in Birmingham's goalless draw with his former club; the result left them in sixth place. Martin Grainger, who had replaced the injured Lazaridis after 14 minutes, opened the scoring against Manchester United after 39 with a free kick. He was himself substituted at half-time because of a patellar tendon torn before he took the free kick, and he never played again. Cristiano Ronaldo and Louis Saha gave United a 2–1 win. Just before half-time at Portsmouth, Yakubu Aiyegbeni gave the hosts the lead. Referee Barry Knight disallowed the goal, sent off Maik Taylor for handling the ball outside his area, and awarded a free kick, from which Dejan Stefanović scored. Portsmouth doubled their lead, and then Stern John made the score 2–1. Knight then awarded a penalty, converted by Yakubu, and disallowed John's second for offside – harshly, according to BBC Sport. Morrison gave Birmingham the lead at Charlton, who promptly equalised; Hughes miskicked in front of an open goal in stoppage time. Away to Wolverhampton Wanderers, Forssell scored his 19th and last goal of the season and played a through ball from which Morrison gave Birmingham a 2–1 lead, but Taylor parried the ball to Carl Cort's feet for the equaliser.


title: Windsor School (Queens)

text: During the 1990s Windsor topped the NYS Math League, tying Stuyvesant and Christ the King. They also have had the highest average ACT scores. The founder, Martin A Cohen taught at Queens College and authored the plastic "Study Guides" that covered mathematics. Both Cohen (mathematics) and Co-founder Phillip A Stewart (social studies) were department heads at Bayside High School when student AND teacher turmoil drove them to go on their own. The Free Synagogue of Flushing underwent turmoil of its own and split off to form Young Israel of Fresh Meadows, whereby their newly built school building was vacant during the day, giving Windsor an inexpensive new building to rent at a very low rate. Early on, Windsor School faced issues with labor organizers and so would only hire teachers for one year at a time. Windsor's founders were closely aligned with the school discipline movement of Howard Hurwitz and Genevieve Sanchez-Klein, the latter having worked for Cohen and run for Assembly in Bayside. . Windsor also donated heavily to the Flushing Boys Club and so was allowed to use the facilities for gym classes two afternoons a week. Cohen would love to preach his teaching methods, even to students and strangers. He often confided he could afford to pay competitive salaries but not benefits. So, he developed a superb teacher training method and was bursting with pride about his former teachers becoming department head and principals elsewhere - as they, too were his students. A former student who went on to study for the MBA in the Ivy Leagues remarked that everything Tom Peters wrote in "In Search of Excellence", was practiced by Windsor.


title: Antonino Gandolfo

text: Antonino Gandolfo was born in Catania on 28 October 1841. He was Giovanni Verga's cousin and would become a friend of Mario Rapisardi, Luigi Capuana and Federico De Roberto. Together with the engraver Francesco Di Bartolo and the painters Natale Attanasio, Calcedonio Reina and Giuseppe Sciuti, he would contribute to the development of art in Catania in the second half of 19th century. The young Antonino came from a family that already had some prominent personalities. His uncle Giuseppe Gandolfo, in the first half of the century, was the most important portrait painter of Eastern Sicily and served to inspire new artists. Another uncle, Francesco, had studied medicine in Florence and Paris and was a friend of the historian Carlo Giuseppe Guglielmo Botta and the dramatist Giovanni Battista Niccolini. His cousin Antonino Gandolfo Brancaleone was a well known and esteemed composer in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, and was the author of several successful music dramas. Antonino spent his childhood among the olive trees and prickly pears of his father's countryside and the paintbrushes of his uncle Giuseppe who influenced his artistic nature and who was his first teacher.


title: Antonino Gandolfo

text: This style of painting was certainly not originated by Gandolfo, as romantic and realist painters like Corot and Courbet, also had an eye for painting humble workers and peasants. Gandolfo was also influenced by the novels of Victor Hugo and Eugène Sue. It is very possible that the new Verist literature, using local themes, events of common life and stories of the everyday misery of the most humble classes, had offered to the painter new unexplored themes. Thus, while Gandolfo was painting The expelled woman (L'Espulsa), The last coin (L'Ultima moneta), The woman usurer (L'Usuraia), Forced Music (Musica Forzata), Proletarians (I proletari), On the way (Per Via) and The blind woman (La cieca), the literary world produced Rapisardi's Job (Giobbe), Verga's The House by the Medlar Tree (I Malavoglia) and Capuana's Giacinta. His friendship with Rapisardi was rich in meetings and conversations, that took place in the house of the latter, at Etnea street, where literature and artistic projects were discussed, as well as many other topics.


title: Priest hole

text: "Priest hunters" had already been tasked with collecting information and locating any priests, and executions of seminary priests, starting with Cuthbert Mayne in 1577, were becoming routine. Hides had already been built before then: the first reference to one is in 1574 at a search of the Vavasours' house in York,: 120 and Edmund Campion was captured in one at Lyford Grange in 1581,: 5 but they did not become widespread until well into the 1580s, and there are reports of priests hiding in barns, haystacks and hollow trees. The 1584 Act changed everything, making it too dangerous for a priest to stay in any one place for more than a day or two, as their arrest would make their hosts liable to execution. In response to this, and following a conference and prayer meeting of the Jesuits and other seminaries held at Harleyford in July 1586: 3 : 72 (at which the music was directed by William Byrd: 71 ), a new strategy was adopted under which priests would be stationed long-term in a single country house (previously they had been largely itinerant, but this involved staying at inns, and many were arrested on their journeys), and such houses would be systematically equipped with hides.: 6–8 Simultaneously, an 'underground railroad' was set up to smuggle priests into the country and move them to holding centres (called 'receptacles') until a long term posting became available.


title: Priest hole

text: An English country house "was more than simply a family home. It combined some of the functions of a museum, a local government office, a farm and a hotel." "If it was a recusant house, it was also a church, a presbytery and something of a thieves' Alsatia.": 1 The conflict between the public nature of some of these functions and the need for security, meant that priest holes and recusant chapels are almost always found on the upper floors of houses, well away from the majority of the easily-bribed estate workers and affording an extra few minutes to reach a hide when search parties arrived. Houses with thick stone walls offered many options for excavating hides, but in brick or timber-framed houses, hides are usually located in or around chimneystacks or staircases. Hides large enough to hold a person were known as 'conveyances', but there are also many examples of small hidden spaces to accommodate vestments, sacred vessels, and altar furniture, which were known as 'secret corners'.: 1–8 The need for the hides to be close at hand was dramatically demonstrated on Maundy Thursday (17 April) 1606 when the Lord Mayor of London led a search of John Gerard's house in London. The searchers found the congregation and the smoke of the extinguished candles, but the priest, Thomas Everard (Jesuit) made it safely into one of the three hides in the house and was not found.: 207


title: Priest hole

text: Searches had mixed success: Edmund Campion was found in a hide during a search in 1581 because the searchers saw light shining through between two planks.: 76 Gerard survived a four day search in 1594: 58 in an identifiable Owen hide (which still exists) and a nine day search in 1605 at Harrowden : 197 (which does not) and a somewhat perfunctory search which was almost certainly at Baddesley Clinton although none of the three eyewitness accounts of the search mention the name of the house.: 37 Henry Garnet and Edward Oldcorne were found in an Owen hide at Hindlip Hall on the eighth day of a search : 154 following the Gunpowder Plot. Nicholas Owen himself and Ralph Ashley were also arrested during the same search, having been forced by lack of food to attempt to escape from their hide after four days. Edward Oldcorne had previously survived a three day search at Hindlip in 1598.: 14 By and large the hides seem to have done their job: there are very few records of cases of searchers actually finding an occupied hide without help from an informant.


title: Brian Charrington

text: However, later notified by Dutch police, customs stopped a second shipment which contained 907 kg of cocaine and had Charrington, Warren and twenty-six others placed under arrest in early 1992. Despite Charrington's status as an informant for the North-East Regional Crime Squad, customs officials went forward with their prosecution despite protests from his "handlers" Harry Knaggs and Ian Weedon. Eventually, through Tory MP Tim Devlin, a meeting was arranged in which Customs was ordered to drop charges against Charrington on 28 January 1993 (several months later, Knaggs was allegedly noticed by customs officials driving a £70,000 BMW registered to Charrington) . Although British authorities were unable to bring him to trial in Manchester on his involvement in the smuggling of cocaine worth an estimated £150 million, Britain's security forces - who admitted he was their "supergrass" on Colombian cartels - re-homed him in Australia where his visa was revoked shortly after his arrival. Traveling to Spain, he resided at the Costa Blanca resort in Calpe and later, from a fortified villa, laundered millions of pounds which he used to bring hashish from Morocco across the border which he continued to sell.


title: Bull-Leaping Fresco

text: The Bull-Leaping Fresco is the most completely restored of several stucco panels originally sited on the upper-story portion of the east wall of the Minoan palace at Knossos in Crete. It shows a bull-leaping scene. Although they were frescos, they were painted on stucco relief scenes. They were difficult to produce. The artist had to manage not only the altitude of the panel but also the simultaneous molding and painting of fresh stucco. The panels, therefore, do not represent the formative stages of the technique. In Minoan chronology, their polychrome hues – white, pale red, dark red, blue, black – exclude them from the Early Minoan (EM) and early Middle Minoan (MM) Periods. They are, in other words, instances of the "mature art" created no earlier than MM III. The flakes of the destroyed panels fell to the ground from the upper story during the destruction of the palace, probably by earthquake, in Late Minoan (LM) II. By that time the east stairwell, near which they fell, was disused, being partly ruinous.


title: Bull-Leaping Fresco

text: One problem with the Taureador Fresco as a taurokathapsia is its logical sequence. Depicted are three individuals, two women (one at the front, one at the back), and a male youth shown balancing on the bull. Their genders are identified according to the accepted Minoan art convention of painting women with pale skin and men with dark skin. The status of the participants is identified by their clothes and jewelry. The bull evidences the Mycenaean Flying Leap, which means he is intended to be at full gallop. The artist has shown the bull's body in an elongated form with extended legs to indicate movement. His horns, however, are being firmly held by the woman in front - possibly either in preparation to leap over the bull, or while stationary. However, if the woman is holding the bull, it cannot be galloping. The boy could be interpreted as being shown in a balancing, not a tumbling, position. He holds the flanks of the bull with both hands. If he were tumbling, and if he had used the horns to get a purchase, the woman would not be now holding them. It may not show a compressed chronological sequence, as the individuals are all different. Instead, icons that are disconnected in real time and space may have been superimposed to give an overall impression of a scene familiar to the artists and their viewers, but not to today's public.


title: Rick O'Connell

text: Rick O'Connell served as a captain in the French Foreign Legion in 1923 before becoming an adventurer and treasure hunter after the massacre of the men he served with at Hamunaptra, with the exception of Beni, a former friend and soldier who left him to die. In 1926, Evelyn and her brother Jonathan discover him in a Cairo prison, awaiting to be executed. Before being taken away to be hanged, he kisses her and demands to be released, in return to help them find Hamunaptra, as he is one of the few men who returned alive. Evelyn succeeds in negotiating his release at the last second and they board a ship to begin their journey on the Nile, with the two beginning to show mutual attraction to one another. Rick runs into Beni and throws him out overboad as payback for leaving him to die. After the ship is attacked and destroyed by warriors known as the Medjai, who wish to prevent the resurrection of the "creature", O'Connell leads them by camel across the desert to Hamunaptra where they unearth the rotting corpse of Imhotep, the creature that the Medjai fear. Later that evening after fending off another attack by the Medjai, he watches as Evelyn accidentally awakens Imhotep through reading from the Book of the Dead. After a small scuffle with the plagues that come with unleashing Imhotep and running into the Mummy himself, he flees with the remaining survivors back to Cairo. Beni is left behind and encounters Imhotep, becoming his henchmen to spare his life. Unfortunately, the Mummy follows them to Cairo and enslaves the population of Cairo to be his zombie-like army, ordering them find and to kill them, with the exception of Evelyn. After being cornered, he is forced to give up Evelyn and flee with Jonathan and a Medjai named Ardeth. He enlists the help of Winston, a retired airforce pilot, to charter himself, Jonathan and Ardeth back to Hamunaptra. After Winston dies getting them there, he battles Imhotep and saves Evelyn but struggles to defeat him due to being invincible. Only with the timely help of Jonathan and Evelyn reading from the Book of the Living is Imhotep made mortal once again and allowed to be killed by Rick. With his defeat, Hamunaptra begins to collapse and sinks into the sand, due to the handiwork of Beni, who activates a self-destruct trap while trying to get treasure out from the underground city. Once escaping, they find Ardeth alive, having believed he had died during the battle, who wishes them farewell as he leaves, satisfied that the 'creature' is gone now. Having fallen in love, Evelyn and Rick share a kiss while riding off into the sunset with Jonathan in tow on camels, unaware that the saddle bags are filled with looted treasure that Beni manage to get out of Hamunaptra before it sank into the sand.


title: Rick O'Connell

text: By 1933, Rick and Evelyn are married with an 8-year-old son named Alex and live in an elaborate Baroque estate outside London, having become wealthy due to the treasure from the end of the first film. Both he and Evelyn begin to investigate the legend of the Scorpion King, bringing along their son on their expeditions, while Jonathan remains in Britain. When his son is kidnapped by sand bandits, O'Connell must race to save him and face the return of an even more powerful Imhotep. Through conversations with loyal friend Ardeth Bay, it is revealed that O'Connell is a descendant of the Medjai, the race of ancients tasked with upholding the truce between the undead and the living. Ardeth Bay uses Rick's wrist tattoo as evidence of his 'fate'. O'Connell struggles with the notion of his destiny to eternally battle mummies from all corners of the earth, while also being a good husband and father. In the end, O'Connell accepts his fate and is guided to the Oasis Pyramid, where Imhotep is planning on to gain control of the Scorpion King's evil army. O'Connell rages his way through a three-way battle that pits him between two ghastly foes and succeeds in destroying both of them, while also saving his son. The conclusion of the battle and the death of the Scorpion King destroys the oasis, though O'Connell and his family escape in a hot-air balloon navigated by his long-time friend, Izzy.


title: Vertrue

text: The lawsuit against Vertrue, Inc. reached the Iowa Supreme Court in 2013. The lawsuit was upheld in a 6-0 ruling. Chief Justice Mark Cady wrote that the company's practices were confusing for all consumers and a state survey showed that two-thirds of Iowans were unaware they had signed up or authorized any charges by Vertrue, Inc. The Iowa Supreme Court ruled that Vertrue's financial, privacy and health programs also violated the buying club law and added $10 million to the previous judgment for restitution, fines, and legal fees handed down by District Judge Robert Hutchison in 2010. An additional penalty of $180,000 was included after it was determined that Vertrue's fraud targeted the elderly citizens of Iowa. Assistant Attorney General Steven St. Clair states that the ruling against Vertrue, Inc. should allow some customers to receive refunds while also deterring future fraudulent companies from operating in Iowa. The Assistant Attorney General also stated that Vertrue is still collecting monthly fees from those who haven't cancelled their memberships.


title: Vertrue

text: The tactics remain the same as consumers are tricked into joining membership into a savings club. The suit asserts that the other defendants are vital to the improper billing scheme. First, Vertrue transmits a consumer's credit card data to the related credit card network, which the complaint alleges was Mastercard. Mastercard verifies the consumer's identity and, the lawsuit states, analyzes the transaction to determine whether it is fraudulent. Mastercard transmits the relevant data to the cardholder's issuing bank which, if it authorizes the charge, sends a verification message to Mastercard, which then informs the issuing bank that the charge has been authorized, according to the suit. The suit claims that the issuing bank then informs Vertrue of the authorization, at which point the purchase is completed and the issuing bank and Mastercard subsequently "clear" and "settle" all of Vertrue's charges for that day, at which point the illicitly obtained funds are sent to Vertrue. The suit contends that all the Defendants are well aware of the illegal scheme, but they nonetheless participate in order to obtain substantial transaction fees.


title: 2015 Northern Cypriot presidential election

text: The results of the first round were described as a "surprise" upset of power by the mainstream newspaper Kıbrıs. The candidates that emerged "joyful" from the first round were, according to the newspaper, Akıncı and Özersay. Özersay's high share of votes was especially pointed out as a surprise, given his lack of political history. It was commented that the discontented supporters of the National Unity Party (UBP) and Democratic Party (DP) had supported Özersay. The ruling Republican Turkish Party (CTP) was reported to be "in shock" over the failure of their candidate to progress to the second round. The newspaper reported claims that Siber had been the victim of an internal struggle within the party, and that many CTP voters had supported Akıncı. As Eroğlu's votes had seen a great decline from 2010, the results reportedly caused great turmoil and controversy within the UBP and the DP, as well as the CTP, which are the largest parties represented in the parliament. On 26 April, while voting, Prime Minister Yorgancıoğlu announced that the CTP congress to determine the leader of the party, scheduled to take place in October or November, could be rescheduled a few months earlier, and that he would not be a candidate in the congress.


title: Elizabeth Fry

text: Fry returned to her project in 1816, and was eventually able to fund a prison school for the children who were imprisoned with their mothers. Rather than attempt to impose discipline on the women, she suggested rules and then asked the prisoners to vote on them. In 1817, she helped found the Association for the Reformation of the Female Prisoners in Newgate. This association provided materials for women so that they could learn to sew patchwork, which was calming for the women and also helped them develop skills such as needlework and knitting; this opened up a prospect, when in future they were released from prison, of them entering employment and earning money for themselves. This approach was copied elsewhere and led to the eventual creation of the British Ladies' Society for Promoting the Reformation of Female Prisoners in 1821. She also promoted the idea of rehabilitation instead of harsh punishment which was taken on by the city authorities in London as well as many other authorities and prisons.


title: Elizabeth Fry

text: The passing of the Gaols Act in 1823 had a limited effect on prison conditions. It was largely ineffective, as it contained no mechanism to ensure its provisions were followed; some institutions, such as town gaols and debtors' prisons, were not regulated by the Act. The one change widely and successfully adopted was the separation of male from female inmates. Fry, whose ideas and representations had been influential in the drafting and passage of the Act, was well aware of the shortcomings in its implementation. She gave evidence to a Select Committee of the House of Lords in 1835, saying of prisons in England and Wales, that, despite the Gaols Act, "in many instances their condition is melancholy...they may truly be called schools for crime" and that some still had "no instruction, no employment, no classification ...and they get into a most low and deplorable state of morals...I would not say that all are in that condition, but I fear many are". Only with the passing of the Prisons Act 1835 were prison inspectors appointed, and all gaols and prisons brought under central control.: 139–144


title: Elizabeth Fry

text: Fry campaigned for the rights and welfare of prisoners who were being transported. Women from Newgate Prison on their way to the ships were being taken through the streets of London in open carts, often in chains, huddled together with their few possessions. They were pelted with rotten food and filth by the people of the city. Fear of what was about to happen was often enough to cause riots among the women condemned to transportation, on the evening before they were to go. Fry persuaded the governor of the prison to send the women in closed carriages and spare them this last indignity before transportation, with Fry and the other women of the Ladies' Society accompanying those transports to the docks. She visited prison ships and persuaded captains to implement systems to ensure each woman and child would at least get a share of food and water on the long journey. Later she arranged for each woman to be given packages of material and sewing tools so that they could use the long journey to make quilts and have something to sell, as well as useful skills, when they reached their destination. She also included a bible, and useful items such as string and knives and forks, in this vital care package. Fry also lobbied for better conditions for the women who had already been transported to the colonies of New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land, including aspects of the factories that they worked in.


title: War Revenue Act of 1898

text: The Finance Committee bill met with opposition on the Senate floor. The House bill sought to raise $150 million in taxes, and to borrow another $150 million (if necessary). But the Finance Committee bill raised $200 million in taxes and another $100 million via the issuance of United States Notes and silver certificates. Another Finance Committee change taxed all corporations at the same rate, without giving an exemption to small corporations. The issuance of Notes was stripped from the bill on the floor, but the issuance of certificates remained. An effort was made to exempt small businesses from the corporate tax, but this effort also failed. A wide range of amendments were offered on the Senate floor, including an antitrust law, an income tax, repeal of the United States Treasury's ability to issue bonds, and a number of restrictions on the issuance of bonds. All these failed. However, a limitation on the amount of silver coin which could be issued by the Treasury was adopted, the estate tax was lowered to 0.75 percent, and an excise tax on imported tea were all adopted. The Senate began debating the amended bill on May 16, and approved it on June 4.


title: The Big Fresno Fair

text: The Fresno Fairgrounds was the site of one of several temporary detention camps located throughout the West that represented the first phase of the mass incarceration of 97,785 Californians of Japanese ancestry during World War II. Pursuant to Executive Order 9066, thirteen makeshift detention facilities were constructed at various California racetracks, fairgrounds, and labor camps. These facilities were intended to confine Japanese Americans until more permanent internment camps could be built in isolated areas of the country, such as Manzanar and Tule Lake in California. Beginning on March 30, 1942, all native-born Americans and long-time legal residents of Japanese ancestry living in California were ordered to surrender themselves for detention. 5,344 Japanese Americans from Fresno and the surrounding area passed through the Fresno Assembly Center before being transferred to the Jerome War Relocation Center in Arkansas and Gila River, Arizona. California Historical Landmark #934 is a memorial dedicated to the more than 5,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry who were confined at the fairgrounds from May to October 1942. The marker is part of an expanded Fresno Assembly Center Memorial that lists in bronze the names of all who were incarcerated there with photos and personal commentaries by former Valley internees and their families. Banners highlighting photos from the era also educate visitors about the historical significance of the site.


title: Wakefield (UK Parliament constituency)

text: Electors of the area, since five years before the Model Parliament of 1295 until 1826 had entitlement to vote for the two representatives for Yorkshire, the largest county in the country. Parliament legislated for, from an unusual disfranchisement in 1826 of a Cornish rotten borough, two additional MPs. From April 1784 until September 1812, one of the two members elected was William Wilberforce, internationally recognised as a leading figure in abolitionism (the anti-slavery movement). The large county was given far greater representation by the Reform Act 1832: Belle Vue's electors until 1885, alongside other Forty Shilling Freeholders non-resident in the Parliamentary Borough of Wakefield itself but owning such property in any part of the county division could elect the two members for that division: this became the West Riding of Yorkshire from 1832 until 1865 (which had its polling place in this city), after which, the relevant county subdivision became the Southern West Riding until 1885.


title: Wakefield (UK Parliament constituency)

text: Rt Hon Arthur Greenwood was succeeded by Clement Attlee as leader of the Opposition in 1945, a few months before the party's landslide election victory. He had been from 1929 to 1931 the Minister of Health in the Second MacDonald ministry. In this role he successfully steered the Housing Act 1930 through both Houses of Parliament under the minority government, which expended more significant subsidies for slum clearance, allowing more affordable, spacious housing to be built for residents of slums. When the wartime coalition government was formed, Winston Churchill appointed him to the British War Cabinet as Minister without Portfolio in 1940. He was generally seen in such a role as of little wartime legislative effect, but in May 1940 he emerged as Churchill's strongest and most vocal supporter in the lengthy War Cabinet debates on whether to accept or reject a peace offer from Germany. Without the vote in favour of fighting on by Greenwood and Clement Attlee, Churchill would not have had the slim majority he needed to do so.


title: Leslie Cheung

text: Cheung was born in Kowloon, British Hong Kong, the youngest of 10 children in a middle-class Hakka family. His father, Cheung Wut-hoi, was a well-known tailor specialised in suits whose customers included Western celebrities such as film director Alfred Hitchcock and actors Marlon Brando and Cary Grant. Despite his father's reputation in the fashion industry, Cheung was uninspired by the profession. Cheung told many interviewers that he had an unhappy childhood, feeling emotionally estranged from his father and siblings, and frequently witnessing arguments and fights in the household. He felt "depressed sometimes" and longed for affection from his parents who were absent most of the time in his childhood. His father's abusive treatment of his mother had a lasting effect on Cheung's perspectives on marriage. When Cheung's father married another woman, his emotional life further deteriorated. He was brought up by his grandmother, whom he was very close to. Cheung summed up his upbringing as a "silent resentment" with "nothing worth remembering", except for the death of his grandmother when he was in primary school, which was the "one thing that I do remember about my childhood."


title: Leslie Cheung

text: Cheung signed with Capital Artists, a record label closely associated with the then-dominant television network TVB, in 1982. His first hit single, "The Wind Blows On" (風繼續吹), is a cover version of Momoe Yamaguchi's Japanese single "The Other Side of Goodbye" (さよならの向こう側). The song was successful on charts, revitalising Cheung's image as a Cantopop singer. The titular album was Cheung's first to be certified gold by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) Hong Kong. His second album with Capital, Craziness (一片痴), is a compilation of songs he recorded for TVB dramas. The album was also a success, receiving a gold certification from the IFPI Hong Kong. He continued his movie crossover with roles mostly in teenage films, and earned his first major recognition for starring in Nomad . While Cheung had already been a well-known actor with likeable personae in TVB productions, his role as a disillusioned teenager in Nomad foresaw his future reputation as an icon of rebel. The role garnered Cheung a nomination for Best Actor at the 1983 Hong Kong Film Awards.


title: Leslie Cheung

text: The year 1984 was when Cheung achieved mass stardom. He released the hit single "Monica", a cover of the single by Japanese singer Kōji Kikkawa. The song topped charts in Hong Kong and was one of the 10 gold-certified songs honoured at TVB's 1984 Jade Solid Gold Best Ten Music Awards and the 1984 RTHK Top 10 Gold Songs Awards. The song's upbeat dance production introduced a new musical trend to Cantopop, in addition to the traditional sentimental ballads that had dominated the scene. Cheung's 1984 self-titled album, which included "Monica", was his first to be certified platinum by the IFPI Hong Kong and sold over 200,000 copies. He starred in the TVB drama Once Upon an Ordinary Girl and the film Behind the Yellow Line . In the latter, he co-starred with actress Maggie Cheung and singer-actress Anita Mui. Both productions were commercially successful and put Cheung into the limelight as a prominent entertainer. As Cheung's fame expanded, the media began to pit him against fellow singer-actor Alan Tam, as the two were the most successful male Cantopop singers at the moment. The publicised so-called rivalry contributed to Cantopop's booming sales and lasted until the end of the 1980s.


title: Leslie Cheung

text: Cheung's next albums with Capital were met with similar success. For Your Heart Only yielded the hit single "Wild Wind" (不羈的風), which was among the 10 gold-certified songs honoured at both TVB's Jade Solid Gold and RTHK Top 10 awards. The album also included songs Cheung recorded for TVB dramas, propelling his image as a romantic male lead. His 1986 single "Who Feels the Same?" (有誰共鳴) won the Gold Song Gold Award, the distinction for the most popular song of the year, at TVB's Jade Solid Gold Awards. With this achievement, Cheung became an arguably undisputed royalty of Cantopop. After the release of "Who Feels the Same?", he left Capital and joined Cinepoly Records, under which his first album was Summer Romance . The album was the best-selling Cantopop release of the year, earning seven times platinum certification from the IFPI Hong Kong and sold over 350,000 copies. Its lead single, "Sleepless Night" (無心睡眠), won the Gold Song Gold Award at the 1987 Jade Solid Gold Awards. The next two albums, Virgin Snow and Hot Summer, both were released in 1988 and sold well, receiving gold and platinum certifications from the IFPI Hong Kong.


title: Leslie Cheung

text: Cheung embarked on a 23-date tour at the Hong Kong Coliseum in mid-1988, sponsored by Pepsi. The tour was a sold-out and accumulated over 250,000 spectators. He also held several shows catering to the Chinese community in North America, visiting Atlantic City, Calgary, Toronto, and Vancouver. In light of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and the upcoming handover of Hong Kong, many Hong Kongers emigrated to Western countries. Following suit, Cheung announced his "retirement" from singing and emigrated to Vancouver, Canada, in 1989. Prior to his retirement, Cheung released three further albums under Cinepoly—Leslie '89, Salute, Final Encounter—all of which received platinum certifications from the IFPI Hong Kong. He won Most Popular Male Artist twice, at the 1988 and 1989 Jade Solid Gold Best Ten Music Awards. His "farewell concert tour", in support of the album Final Encounter, ran for 33 consecutive sold-out shows at the Hong Kong Coliseum. Cheung donated profits of his 1989 album Salute to the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts, which was named the Leslie Cheung Memorial Scholarship after his death.


title: Leslie Cheung

text: Cheung was consecutively nominated for Best Actor at Cannes for Chen Kaige's Temptress Moon and Wong Kar-wai's Happy Together . In 1998, he was a member of the jury at the 48th Berlin International Film Festival. Cheung's last concert tour, Passion Tour, took place in Hong Kong and overseas from 2000 to 2001. He collaborated with fashion designer Jean Paul Gaultier, who transformed Cheung "From Angel to Devil" in four costumes: the Angel, the Pretty Boy, the Latin Lover, and the Devil – denoting cross-cultural drag and focusing on Cheung's androgyny and bisexuality. The Passion Tour broke attendance records throughout Asia, including a record for the first foreign artist to hold 16 concerts in Japan. Although the concert was acclaimed in Japan, Korea, and Canada, it was panned in Hong Kong mainly for his gender-crossing. Both Cheung and his agent Florence Chen attributed his later depression to the hostile reception from the Hong Kong media about the tour. In 2011, CCTV-15 commented that the Passion Tour represented the highest standard of Chinese concerts in performance, art concept, costume props and audience response, and had never been surpassed.


title: Leslie Cheung

text: Cheung was a supporter of several charities concerning children's welfare. He was a patron of the Children's Cancer Foundation, a charity that cares for young children with cancer and their families. Cheung donated HK$1 million (US$128,000) in 1996 and launched five sets of RED cards to help raise funds for the Children's Cancer Foundation. He was the first Cantopop star to launch a charity fundraising at a concert. In 1996, although he rarely sang in public at that time, he sang three theme songs from his films to raise money for the elderly. For his 1997 concert at the HK Coliseum, Cheung set up a collection booth for the RED Card charity. Donations of HK$100 or above could obtain a set of cards. Cheung said, "I will lead the way, so I donated HK$1,000,000 to Hong Kong children's cancer fund in my own name." The concert raised more than HK$800,000, to which Cheung and his friends added more than HK$100,000, and made up a million Hong Kong dollars to donate to the cancer fund. He was also a patron of the End Child Sexual Abuse Foundation (ECSAF) (護苗基金), founded by veteran actress Josephine Siao (蕭芳芳).


title: Leslie Cheung

text: In 1999, at a party to raise relief funds in the aftermath of the Taiwan earthquake, Cheung participated in a fried rice tasting event. He donated HK$250,000 for a bowl of rice; this was matched by fan donations, bringing the total to HK$500,000. In 2000, Sun Entertainment opened the "Star Second-hand Shop", where second-hand goods donated by celebrities were auctioned to raise money for the "Sun Love Fund". Leslie Cheung was known for his very good fashion sense and he was the first to donate three well-loved, carefully selected pieces to the auction. Leslie also donated his beloved badminton racket to IDclub Taiwan, to be auctioned to raise money for the children's cancer fund. In 1999 and 2000, he appeared in TVB charity shows to help raise funds for ECSAF, in which he was appointed a goodwill ambassador in 2002. In 2003, Cheung donated HK$100,000 to the Seedling protection fund, who were holding a large-scale charity night on 12 March. He told his party guests to give him cash instead of presents, then he donated all of the money that he received to the fund.


title: Cuban Criollo horse

text: The Cubano de Paso horse originated from Spanish horses. Its most known characteristic is the elegant and comfortable pace. It is a strong but elegant horse used for transportation in Cuba. The head is proporcional to its body with a straight profile which at times can be slightly convex or concave. The forehead is wide, the ears medium-sized and mobile. This breed has a strong neck and high, oblique muscular croup and a straight and strong back. The tendons and joints are well defined. The legs are strong and structured. Its average height lies between 1.45 and 1.50 m. The most frequent color is brown although every color is allowed. The Cubano de Paso's temperament is docile and active. This breed is mostly used for transportation since they can cover large distances in a short time with its really easygoing pace. Most Cubano de Paso are bred in the ranch La Loma in the Cuban province, Granma. This breed is in need of new blood and is therefore refined with Spanish horses or Continental Criollos and other Pasos, brought from America, since they present similar characteristics. The American author Samuel Hazard was fascinated by this breed; as he wrote in 1870, during a visit in Cuba in his book Cuba a pluma y lapiz.


title: Lee Kuan Yew

text: With overwhelming parliamentary control at every general election, Lee oversaw Singapore's transformation into a developed country with a high-income economy within his premiership. In the process, he forged a highly effective, anti-corrupt government and civil service. Lee eschewed populist policies in favour of long-term social and economic planning, championing civic nationalism through meritocracy and multiracialism as governing principles, making English the lingua franca to integrate its immigrant society and to facilitate trade with the world, whilst mandating bilingualism in schools to preserve the students' mother tongue and ethnic identity. Lee stepped down as prime minister in 1990, but remained in the Cabinet under his successors, holding the appointments of Senior Minister until 2004, then Minister Mentor until 2011. He died of pneumonia on 23 March 2015, at the age of 91. In a week of national mourning, about 1.7 million residents and world leaders paid tribute to him at his lying-in-state at Parliament House and community tribute sites.


title: Lee Kuan Yew

text: By 1956, Lee believed that the PAP "had been captured by the communists" and privately endorsed the Labour Front government purge of suspected "leftists" in the aftermath of the 1956 Chinese middle schools riots. The arrestees included his rival Lim and several other PAP members. When other leftist members captured six seats in the PAP central executive committee (CEC) elections on 4 August 1957, Lee refused to allow his allies to assume their appointments and said that his faction had "lost their moral right" to enforce the party's founding philosophy. Overtures were made by fellow CEC member T. T. Rajah to remain in his post, to which he declined. The government arrested the leftist leaders on 22 August and Lee was restored as secretary-general on 20 October. He later blamed the attempted takeover on lax admission rules to the party and permanently distrusted the leftists thereafter. On 23 November 1958, the party constitution was amended to implement a cadre system. The right to vote in party elections and run for office were revoked from ordinary party members, whom now had to seek approval from the CEC to be a cadre and regain these privileges. Lee credited the Vatican system where the pope pre-selects its cardinals for the idea.


title: Lee Kuan Yew

text: Lee's first speech as prime minister to a 50,000-strong audience at the Padang sought to dampen his supporters' euphoria of the PAP's electoral win. In the first month of Lee taking power, Singapore experienced an economic slump as foreign capital fell and Western businesses and expatriates left for Kuala Lumpur in Malaya, fearing the new government's anti-colonial zeal. As part of an 'anti-yellow culture' drive, Lee banned jukeboxes and pinball machines, while the police under Home Affairs Minister Ong Pang Boon raided pubs and pornography publications. The government cracked down on secret societies, prostitution and other illegal activities, with TIME magazine later reporting that a full week passed without "kidnapping, extortion or gangland rumble(s)" for the first time. Lee also spearheaded several 'mobilisation campaigns' to clean the city, introduced air-conditioning to government offices, and slashed the salaries of civil servants. The last act provoked anger from the sector, which Lee justified as necessary to balance the budget.


title: Lee Kuan Yew

text: In August 1961, Lee and Tunku agreed that Singapore's defence, foreign affairs and internal security would be transferred to the federal government, while education and labour policy remained with the state government. Lim Chin Siong and his supporters saw Lee's ceding control of internal security—then controlled by the Internal Security Council with British, Malayan, Singaporean representatives—to the federal government as a threat as Tunku was convinced they were communists. In a meeting with British Commissioner General Lord Selkirk, Selkirk reaffirmed that the British would not suspend Singapore's constitution should Lee be voted out. Lee saw the meeting as a British endorsement of Lim and accused it as a plot against his government. On 13 August, Lim founded the Barisan Sosialis and became its secretary-general, with 35 of 51 branches of the PAP defecting. Lee anticipated a Barisan win in the next election and saw 'independence through merger' as the only means for the PAP to retain power.


title: Lee Kuan Yew

text: Beginning on 13 September 1961, Lee gave twelve multilingual radio speeches outlining the benefits of merger in what he called the 'Battle for Merger'. The speeches proved to be a massive success for Lee's campaign, while Barisan's demands for equal airtime were rejected. Lee employed full use of state resources to suppress his opponents by revoking the Barisan's printing permits, banning or relocating its rallies, and purging its supporters from the government, while the judiciary and police engaged to "obstruct, provoke and isolate" the party. The Barisan lambasted Lee for securing only 15 seats in the Malaysian parliament for Singapore in contrast to North Borneo (16) and Sarawak (24), despite both having a combined population well below Singapore's 1.7 million. Singapore citizens would also be categorised as "nationals" and not be granted Malaysian citizenship. On 6 December, the legislative assembly voted 33–0 in favour of the agreements struck by Lee and Tunku, which the Barisan boycotted.


title: Lee Kuan Yew

text: A referendum for merger was scheduled for 1 September 1962. Lee ensured that the ballot lacked a "no" option, with all three options having varying terms for admission into Malaysia. The ballot was crafted by Lee and Goh Keng Swee to capitalise on a mistake which the Barisan had made the previous year. The Barisan had inadvertently endorsed merger under terms "like Penang" (a state of Malaya) with full citizenship rights, not realising that Malayan law entitled only a native-born to qualify for automatic citizenship, which would disenfranchise nearly one third of those eligible to vote; it issued a clarification but never recovered from the mistake. Lee placed the flag of Singapore alongside option A with the terms of Singapore retaining control of education and labour policy, while portraying the Barisan's choice as option B favouring entry into the federation with no special rights, next to the flag of Penang. When Lim called for his supporters to submit blank votes, Lee countered that blank votes would count as a vote for the majority choice. 71% eventually voted for option A, while 26% cast blank votes. In November, Lee embarked on a ten-month visit to all fifty-one constituencies, prioritising those with the highest count of blank votes.


title: Lee Kuan Yew

text: Relations between the PAP and Malaysia's ruling Alliance Party quickly deteriorated as Lee began espousing his policies to the rest of the country. The United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) was also shocked by the loss of three Malay-majority seats to the PAP in the recent 1963 Singapore election. Ultra-nationalists within UMNO alleged that Lee sought to overthrow the Malay monarchies and infringe on rural life. Lee's attempts to reconcile the PAP with UMNO were rebuffed as the latter remained committed to the Malaysian Chinese Association. Further hostility ensued when the PAP decided to contest in the 1964 Malaysian general election in contravention of a gentlemen's agreement that it would disavow itself from peninsula politics. Lee's speeches in Malaysia attracted large crowds and he expected the PAP to win at least seven parliamentary seats. The party ultimately won only one seat in Bangsar, Selangor under Devan Nair. Lee and other party insiders later conceded that UMNO's portrayal of the PAP as a "Chinese party" and its lack of grassroots in the peninsula had undermined its support from the Malay majority.


title: Lee Kuan Yew

text: Ethnic tensions had risen prior to the April election when UMNO secretary-general Syed Jaafar Albar utilised the Utusan Melayu to accuse Lee of evicting Malays from their homes in March 1964. Lee explained personally to the affected neighbourhoods that the scheme was part of an urban renewal plan and that eviction notices had been sent to everyone irrespective of race. Albar responded by warning Lee to not "treat the sons of the soil as step-children" and led calls for the deaths of Lee and Social Affairs Minister Othman bin Wok on 12 July. On 21 July, the 1964 race riots in Singapore erupted during a celebration of Prophet Muhammad's birthday, lasting four days, killing 22 and injuring 461. Further riots occurred in late-August and early-September resulting in communities self-segregating from each other, which Lee characterised as "terribly disheartening" and against "everything we had believed in and worked for". Lee never forgot the Malay PAP leaders who stood against UMNO during the turmoil and as late as 1998, paid tribute to them for Singapore's survival.


title: Lee Kuan Yew

text: Lee's perceptions that merger was becoming infeasible was also due to the federal government's obstruction of his industrialisation program and its imposition of new taxes on Singapore in November 1964. He authorised Goh Keng Swee to renegotiate with Deputy Prime Minister Abdul Razak Hussein on Singapore's place in the federation in early 1965. Seeking to provide an alternative to the Alliance Party government, Lee and his colleagues formed the Malaysian Solidarity Convention (MSC) with the Malayan and Sarawakian opposition on 9 May, with its goals for a Malaysian Malaysia and race-blind society. The MSC was seen by UMNO as a threat to the Malay monopoly of power and special rights granted to Malays under Article 153. UMNO supreme council member and future prime minister Mahathir Mohamad called the PAP "pro-Chinese, communist-oriented and positively anti-Malay", while others called for Lee's arrest under the Internal Security Act for trying to split the federation. Mathathir in his speech stated the huaren (ethnic Chinese) of Singapore were of "the insular, selfish and arrogant type of which Mr. Lee is a good example...They are in fact Chinese first, seeing China as the center of the world and Malaysia as a very poor second".


title: Lee Kuan Yew

text: Such fears were sincerely felt by the UMNO leaders as one UMNO politician who was friendly with Lee privately told him: "You Chinese are too energetic and clever for us...we cannot stand the pressure". Many UMNO politicians felt threatened by Lee, a politician who sought to appeal to both ethnic Chinese and Malay voters. Albar warned in a speech that the Malay voters of Singapore must have been "misled" into voting for the PAP, and the UNMO would not allow this to happen in the next election. Lee later wrote of Tunku that was "a nice man", but "he was a prince who understood power and knew how to use it. He did not carry a big stick, but he had many hatchet-bearers who would do the job for him while he looked the other way and appeared as benign as ever". Tunku was a Malay aristocrat who spent his undergraduate years at Cambridge by his own admission on "fast women" rather than studying and whom Lee contemptuously noted had been awarded a degree at Cambridge that he did not deserve solely because he was an aristocrat. Tunku in turn felt threatened by Lee, a man who had worked his way up via his intelligence and self-discipline, which made him very different from the people in his world.


title: Lee Kuan Yew

text: On 26 May, Lee addressed the Malaysian parliament for the final time, delivering his speech entirely in the Malay language. He challenged the Alliance Party to commit itself to a Malaysian Malaysia and denounce its extremists, and also argued that the PAP could better uplift the livelihood of the Malays. Then-social affairs minister Othman Wok later recounted: "I noticed that while he was speaking, the Alliance leaders sitting in front of us, they sank lower and lower because they were embarrassed this man (Lee) could speak Malay better than them". Then-national development minister Lim Kim San also noted: "That was the turning point. They perceived as a dangerous man who could one day be the prime minister of Malaya. This was the speech that changed history." Prime Minister Tunku labelled the speech as the final straw which contributed to his decision on 29 June that Singapore's secession was necessary. The more extreme UMNO politicians such as Albar were pressing to have Lee arrested and martial law proclaimed, but Tunku chose to accept Singapore's secession instead. The British Prime Minister Harold Wilson also quietly pressured Tunku to accept Singapore's secession and warned him against a declaration of martial law. As Britain was defending Malaysia from Indonesian attempts to annex the country, Britain was in a strong position to apply pressure on Malaysia. Lee in his memoirs stated that Singapore owed Wilson a major debt for his role in pressuring Tunku for a peaceful resolution of the crisis.


title: Lee Kuan Yew

text: The vulnerability of Singapore was deeply felt, with threats from multiple sources including the communists and Indonesia with its confrontational stance. Adding to this vulnerability was the impending withdrawal of British forces from East of Suez. As Singapore gained admission to the United Nations, Lee quickly sought international recognition of Singapore's independence. He appointed Goh Keng Swee as Minister for the Interior and Defence to build up the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) and requested help from other countries, particularly Israel and Taiwan, for advice, training and facilities. In 1967, Lee introduced conscription for all able-bodied male Singaporean citizens 18 years of age to serve National Service (NS) either in the SAF, Singapore Police Force or the Singapore Civil Defence Force. By 1971, Singapore had 17 national service battalions (16,000 men) with 14 battalions (11,000 men) in the reserves. In 1975, Lee and Republic of China premier Chiang Ching-kuo signed an agreement permitting Singaporean troops to train in Taiwan, under the codename "Project Starlight".


title: Lee Kuan Yew

text: In his book "The Singapore Story: Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew", Lee detailed an incident where in 1960, the CIA allegedly attempted to bribe certain members of his party, the PAP, in an attempt to create division and weaken his leadership, however the official had reported the bribery attempt instead of accepting the money. According to Lee, this was part of a broader strategy by the United States to influence the political landscape in Southeast Asia during the Cold War. He mentioned that he confronted the CIA's representative in Singapore and demanded an explanation and compensation for this interference. After having two CIA agents arrested, Lee requested 3.5 million dollars in economic aid in exchange for the covert release of the two agents. The Americans rejected this offer and presented a counter-offer of 3.3 million dollars to be given directly to Lee and the People's Action Party, but the men were later released without any financial exchange. However instead of taking a passive approach, Lee negotiated with the CIA and eventually the US government agreed to pay a sum of 3.3 million dollars in formal economic aid to Singapore, which Lee claimed was to ensure that the U.S. would not interfere in Singapore's internal affairs. Lee revealed this incident in 1965, which led to the Americans to deny it ever occurred; however, Lee later made public a letter of apology from the US Secretary of State Dean Rusk over the incident.


title: Lee Kuan Yew

text: In May 1988, E. Mason "Hank" Hendrickson was serving as the First Secretary of the United States Embassy when he was expelled by the Singapore government. The Singapore government alleged that Hendrickson attempted to interfere in Singapore's internal affairs by cultivating opposition figures in a "Marxist conspiracy". Then-First Deputy Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong claimed that Hendrickson's alleged conspiracy could have resulted in the election of 20 or 30 opposition politicians to Parliament, which in his words could lead to "horrendous" effects, possibly even the paralysis and fall of the Singapore government. In the aftermath of Hendrickson's expulsion, the U.S. State Department praised Hendrickson's performance in Singapore and denied any impropriety in his actions. The State Department also expelled Robert Chua, a senior-level Singaporean diplomat equal in rank to Hendrickson, from Washington, D.C., in response. The State Department's refusal to reprimand Hendrickson, along with its expulsion of the Singaporean diplomat, sparked a rare protest in Singapore by the National Trades Union Congress; they drove buses around the U.S. embassy, held a rally attended by four thousand workers, and issued a statement deriding the U.S. as "sneaky, arrogant, and untrustworthy".


title: Lee Kuan Yew

text: As prime minister from 1959 to 1990, Lee presided over many of Singapore's advancements. He oversaw Singapore's transformation from an island nation with a high illiteracy rate and no natural resources into a developed country with a high-income economy within a single generation, commonly termed (from his autobiography) as 'From the third world to the first world'. Singapore's gross national product per capita (GNP) rose from $1,240 in 1959 to $18,437 in 1990. The unemployment rate in Singapore dropped from 13.5% in 1959 to 1.7% in 1990. External trade increased from $7.3 billion in 1959 to $205 billion in 1990. In other areas, the life expectancy at birth for Singaporeans rose from 65 years in 1960 to 74 years in 1990. The population of Singapore increased from 1.6 million in 1959 to 3 million in 1990. The number of public flats in Singapore rose from 22,975 in 1959 (then under the Singapore Improvement Trust) to 667,575 in 1990. The Singaporean literacy rate increased from 52% in 1957 to 90% in 1990. Telephone lines per 100 Singaporeans increased from 3 in 1960 to 38 in 1990. Visitor arrivals to Singapore rose from 100,000 in 1960 to 5.3 million in 1990.


title: Lee Kuan Yew

text: Notably, these economic accomplishments were achieved in large part due to Lee's stewardship of public administration through relevant and targeted public policy; Lee introduced measures to jumpstart manufacturing of finished goods for export (export-oriented industrialisation) and sought to create a conducive business environment in the trading nation to attract foreign direct investment (through the establishment of the Economic Development Board, EDB). Lee also forged a symbiotic and mutually dependent relationship between the People's Action Party with the National Trades Union Congress, whereby the governing political party received certain input from the labour grassroots, whilst the national trade union centre is led by prominent PAP party politicians who usually have ministerial portfolios within the Government. The Government's tight control over trade union activities and industrial relations, ensured near-total industrial peace, that was assessed to be a prerequisite for rapid economic development.


title: Lee Kuan Yew

text: Lee was a staunch promoter of economic globalisation and a vocal opponent of protectionism. Lee said that Singapore's only natural resources are its people and their strong work ethic. In addition, Lee was focused on social policies such as improving and mandating higher public standards for education, sanitation and hygiene, whilst concurrently improving public health by expanding modern health care and greatly increasing the quantity and quality of high-rise affordable housing (through the establishment of the Housing and Development Board, HDB) for working- and middle-class families. Various world leaders had also praised Lee. Former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger once wrote of Lee: "One of the asymmetries of history is the lack of correspondence between the abilities of some leaders and the power of their countries." Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher praised "his way of penetrating the fog of propaganda and expressing with unique clarity the issues of our time and the way to tackle them". Former President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev stated in his memoirs that after the independence of Kazakhstan from the Soviet Union in 1991, he met Lee and stated Lee's "observations and advice became for us guidelines in the development of long-term state strategies."


title: Lee Kuan Yew

text: In 2010 Lee, together with his son Lee Hsien Loong, and Goh Chok Tong, threatened legal action against The New York Times Company, which owns the International Herald Tribune, regarding an op-ed piece titled "All in the Family" of 15 February 2010 by Philip Bowring, a freelance columnist and former editor of the Far Eastern Economic Review. The International Herald Tribune apologised in March that readers of the article may "infer that the younger Lee did not achieve his position through merit". The New York Times Company and Bowring also agreed to pay S$60,000 to Lee Hsien Loong, S$50,000 to Lee and S$50,000 to Goh (totalling about US$114,000 at the time), in addition to legal costs. The case stemmed from a 1994 settlement between the three Singaporean leaders and the paper about an article, also by Bowring, that referred to "dynastic politics" in East Asian countries, including Singapore. In that settlement, Bowring agreed not to say or imply that the younger Lee had attained his position through nepotism by his father Lee Kuan Yew. In response, media-rights watchdog Reporters Without Borders wrote an open letter to urge Lee and other top officials of the Singapore government to stop taking "libel actions" against journalists.


title: Lee Kuan Yew

text: In Lee Kuan Yew: Hard Truths to Keep Singapore Going, Lee stated that Singaporean Muslims faced difficulties in integrating because of their religion and urged them to "be less strict on Islamic observances". His remarks drew fire from Malay/Muslim leaders and MPs in Singapore, prompting a strong reaction from his son Lee Hsien Loong, the Prime Minister at that time, who said "My views on Muslims' integration in Singapore differed from the Minister Mentor's. Muslims are a valued and respected community, who have done a good deal to strengthen our harmony and social cohesion." Lee Kuan Yew then told the media "I made this one comment on the Muslims integrating with other communities probably two or three years ago. Ministers and MPs, both Malay and non-Malay, have since told me that Singapore Malays have indeed made special efforts to integrate with the other communities, especially since 9/11, and that my call is out of date." Subsequently, he added: "I stand corrected. I hope that this trend will continue in the future."


title: Lee Kuan Yew

text: In 2014, Bruneian painter Huifong Ng landed an exhibition after painting a portrait of Lee. In May of that year, illustrator Patrick Yee produced the children's picture book A Boy Named Harry: The Childhood of Lee Kuan Yew, published by Epigram Books. The series was later translated into Mandarin. Chinese artist Ren Zhenyu also created expressionist portraits of Lee in electric hues as part of his Pop and Politics series. Vietnamese artist Mai Huy Dung has crafted a series of oil painting portraits of Lee. Ukrainian artist Oleg Lazarenko also depicted Lee as part of his painting Lion of Singapore. In October 2014, cartoonist Morgan Chua released LKY: Political Cartoons, an anthology of cartoons about Lee published by Epigram Books, featuring a 1971 Singapore Herald cartoon of Lee on a tank threatening to crush a baby representing press freedoms. The Madame Tussauds Singapore museum also unveiled a wax figure of Lee and his late wife, Madam Kwa Geok Choo seated and smiling together against a backdrop of red flowers formed in the shape of two hearts. The statues were created based on a photograph that was taken by Madam Kwa's niece, Ms Kwa Kim Li, of the pair on Valentine's Day in 2008 at Sentosa. Another wax figure of Lee Kuan Yew resides at Madame Tussauds Hong Kong.


title: Lee Kuan Yew

text: In February 2015, weeks before Lee's death, Helmi Yusof of The Business Times reported on how "In the last few years, artworks featuring Lee Kuan Yew have turned into a flourishing cottage industry". Artworks included Jeffrey Koh's seven LKY Pez candy-dispenser sculptures, paintings of Lee in the manner of Van Gogh, and Korean sculptor Park Seung Mo's three-dimensional image of Lee made using stainless steel wires. In the same month, illustrator Patrick Yee launched the second title in his picture book series about Lee, called Harry Grows Up: The Early Years of Lee Kuan Yew, at an exhibition at the National Library, Singapore. On 24 March 2015, the National Parks Board named a Singapore Botanic Gardens orchid hybrid called the "Aranda Lee Kuan Yew" in honour of Lee's efforts work in conservation and environmentalism. In March 2015, a portrait of Lee by Ong Yi Teck, comprising Lee's name written about 18,000 times, went viral on social media. The portrait was made in tribute to Lee, who was then critically ill.


title: Xu Xu

text: Xu Xu, aka Hsu Yu (徐訏), was the pen name of Xu Boxu , an important figure in modern Chinese literature. Born in Cixi in the coastal province of Zhejiang, Xu Xu attended Peking University between 1927 and 1932 where he studied philosophy and psychology. In 1932, he moved to Shanghai where he became an associate of Lin Yutang, a liberal and polyglot intellectual who ran a number of successful literary journals. In 1950, Xu Xu left the newly founded People's Republic of China for Hong Kong where he stayed for the rest of his life. Best known as the author of the modern gothic tale Ghost Love or his wartime spy-epic The Rustling Wind , Xu Xu was also a prolific poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic, journal editor, and professor of literature. Many of his popular novels were turned into movies or TV series in post-war Hong Kong and Taiwan. As a writer, editor, and educator, Xu Xu has had a formative impact on a younger generation of post-war writers emerging in Hong Kong and Taiwan. In much of his fiction, and especially in his later works from Hong Kong, Xu Xu explored reality-defying experiences and displayed neo-romantic tendencies, such as aesthetic escapism and mysticism, which place him in the proximity of other modern artists associated with the global revival of romanticism in the 20th-century. He was nominated for the 1973 Nobel Prize in Literature.


title: Xu Xu

text: In the 1930s, Xu Xu worked as an editor for several of Lin Yutang's journal ventures in Shanghai, such as the bi-monthlies The Analects (論語) and This Human World (人間世), two journals that published predominantly prose essays (小品文). In 1936, Xu Xu went to Paris to study Philosophy at the Sorbonne. In early 1937, while still abroad, his novella Ghost Love in which a modern urbanite falls in love with a woman who claims to be a ghost appeared in the Shanghai bi-monthly Celestial Winds (宇宙風) to great acclaim. Later that year, Xu Xu hastily returned to China following the outbreak of war with Japan. From the relative safety of the Shanghai International Settlement, Xu Xu continued to publish largely apolitical fiction and travel essays that were characterized by lyrical exoticism and a distinctly cosmopolitan outlook. When all of Shanghai was occupied by Japanese forces in the wake of the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, Xu Xu left Shanghai for Chongqing, the wartime capital of the Chinese Nationalist government. Here, Xu Xu's wartime novel The Rustling Wind was serialized in the wartime newspaper Enemy Annihilation (掃蕩報) in 1943. An epic about espionage and romance in occupied Shanghai, The Rustling Wind made Xu Xu one of the most widely read authors of the war years.


title: Xu Xu

text: Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, Xu Xu's fiction had frequently been criticized by leftist critics as escapist and detrimental to their revolutionary agenda. As a result, Xu Xu decided to leave the newly founded People's Republic of China in 1950 for Hong Kong. In Hong Kong, Xu Xu continued his writing career and throughout the 1950s published dozens of short stories and novellas, most of which appeared in the literary supplements of the Hong Kong newspapers Sing Tao Daily or Sing Tao Evening News. In many of these works, Xu Xu engaged with the themes of exile and alienation and frequently explored fantastic or sublime experiences, as is the case in the novellas Bird Talk or The Other Shore . Between 1956 and 1961, Xu Xu published his magnum opus, the bildungsroman River of Fury (江湖行) that, in 1972, was turned into a martial arts movie under the same name by Shaw Brothers Studio. In Hong Kong, Xu Xu also wrote copious amounts of literary criticism, edited a number of literary journals, and taught Chinese literature, eventually chairing the Chinese Department of Hong Kong Baptist University. According to Leung Ping-kwan, Xu Xu had a formative impact on a younger generation of Hong Kong writers and intellectuals. In 2018, an operatic version of Xu Xu's novella Ghost Love opened in Hong Kong.


title: Nikki Nield

text: Nield played Australian rules football since the age of 11, first at McLaren and then joined Christies Beach She captained Christies Beach under-14 boys' team in 2014 and in 2016 joined their senior South Australian Women's Football League (SAWFL) side, helping them claim the Adelaide Footy League Division 2 premiership in 2017. In 2018, Nield joined SANFL Women's League (SANFLW) club South Adelaide. She had a very successful first season, averaging 19.5 disposals over eight games, as well as collecting 21 disposals and laying eight tackles in the Grand Final victory over Norwood. In round 4, after collecting 20 disposals, she was nominated for the Breakthrough Player Award, winning the award at the end of the season. Furthermore, she was selected for the 2018 SANFLW Team of the Year and won South Adelaide's best and fairest award. Nield represented South Australia at the 2018 AFL Women's Under 18 Championships and was selected for the initial squad of the All-Australian team. In 2019, Gore averaged 18 disposals over seven games, laying 48 tackles during the SANFLW season, helping South Adelaide claim back-to-back premierships. Gore also played two games for NT Thunder during the 2018 VFL Women's (VFLW) season.


title: Florida State Road 54

text: SR 54 is a six-lane divided highway from its western terminus at US 19. In between County Roads 77 and 1 in Seven Springs, the road moves southeast along the Mitchell Bypass, which crosses over the Anclote River the moment it moves away from Old CR 54. The segment between Trinity Boulevard and Gunn Highway in Odessa was rebuilt and relocated along a former Atlantic Coast Line Railroad right-of-way that ran from Pinellas County where much of the Pinellas Trail exists today into Trilby. Pasco County created a gap in this route between the western terminus of State Road 56 and the northern terminus of State Road 581 by exchanging maintenance responsibilities with FDOT for those caused by the newly created SR 56. This western segment of SR 54 became CR 54. This western CR 54 segment has been widened to six lanes from just west of Interstate 75 to the resumption of State Road 54 at State Road 581, and the six lane highway continues eastward as State Road 54 from that point to a point east of Curley Road, where the highway currently ends. A West Zephyrhills Bypass has been proposed between a location east of the intersection with CR 577 (Curley Road) and the north end of the merger of CR 579 and the eastern segment of CR 54, also known as Eiland Boulevard, near Zephyrhills. In the meantime, State Road 54 remains a two-lane undivided highway from the end of the newer highway to SR 54's eastern terminus at US 301 in downtown Zephyrhills.


title: Florida State Road 54

text: East of US 301 the road runs towards the northeastern outskirts of Zephyrhills. Before this it encounters an intersection with 12th Street and Wire Road, which is where a former segment of SR 54 used to turn north from 12th Street then east to the present CR 54 until that route was relocated to the hidden route along US 301. Once CR 54 leaves the city north of Zephyrhills Municipal Airport it has an intersection with the western terminus of County Road 54 Alternate (see below) on the northwest corner of an at-grade crossing with the CSX Yeoman Subdivision, and east of that crossing encounters a major county road known as CR 535 (Zephyrhills Bypass). From there, the road takes a slight turn to the northeast as it crosses another CSX railroad line known as the Vitis Subdivision, and then runs along the northern border of the Upper Hillsborough Wildlife Management Area. Shifting back straight east and west again, it approaches the southern terminus of Alternate CR 35 in Lumberton, although ALT CR 35 may have overlapped CR 54 east of here at one time. Beyond this point it passes through the aforementioned wildlife management area where it approaches a narrow bridge over the Hillsborough River, thus running along the Pasco-Polk County line, both side of which consist of private property once again until it finally reaches US 98 in Branchborough.


title: mittageisen (band)

text: "one of the earliest Darkwave/electro Goth bands. These tracks were mostly recorded from '82 to '85 (seven of them in '82 when Depeche Mode still couldn't get enough), mixing the emerging Gothic sounds of the Banshees, Bauhaus and The Cure with the sparse electro of Kraftwerk. In general, it's slow, dark and morose with droning guitars and vocals, under-pinned by a sharp electro beat. In other ones, they are one of the archetypal darkwave bands who were releasing albums when the Sisters (of Mercy) were only working on their early EPs. There is, however, a very simple and obvious reason why this band do not occupy the same privileged position as the classic Goth bands - they didn't sing in English. Most of the tracks are in German, with one, 'persistance de la mémoire', in French. It's the kind of music you hear as the soundtrack for oppressive, dark German sci-fi films. The sound does not stay the same all the way through, 'automaten', which is here in two versions, is a fairly upbeat, electro piece. Others are more sound-scapey; droning pieces that evoke factory work. This CD is more than an historical oddity, it is a must for fans of early Sisters stuff, or the Cure's dark period which culminated in the oppressive 'Pornography'".


title: 2018 NCAA Division I Outdoor Track and Field Championships

text: With last year's champion Marc Scott having graduated, the University of Alabama's Vincent Kiprop, a Kenyan transfer from the NCAA Division II school Missouri Southern State University, was considered the favorite. He was helped in the final by fellow Kenyans and Alabama transfers Gilbert Kigen and Alfred Chelanga, who ran together at a quick pace of 4:22 for the first 1600 m. In the next two miles, the pace substantially slowed as Northern Arizona University runners Tyler Day and Matthew Baxter caught up and alternated the lead. The field remained tightly packed, with the top eight athletes less than two seconds apart at 8000 m which Kiprop first passed in 22:59. With two laps remaining, the top six of Kiprop, Day, Baxter, the University of Michigan's Ben Flanagan, Thomson, and Dillon Maggard began to separate. Kiprop attempted to lengthen his lead with one lap to go, but Flanagan remained in tow and passed Kiprop in the final 50 meters. Directly at the conclusion of the race, he told ESPN cameras, "Where's my mom?" Flanagan's final time of 28:34 was a thirty-nine second improvement over his previous best of 29:13. Flanagan credited staying "as patient as possible" in part for his win. His victory was the first by a Canadian in this event at the NCAA championships since 2012, when Cam Levins won the title.


text: The men's 400 m hurdles took place on May 8. The University of Southern California's Rai Benjamin attracted attention during the prelims by stepping twelve times (as compared to the standard thirteen or more) between each hurdle, a feat that only world record holder Kevin Young had notably achieved before. During the final, which took place soon after Southern California teammate Michael Norman set the collegiate record in the flat 400 m, Benjamin stuttered at one of the early hurdles but ultimately pulled away from the field late to run a time of 47.02 seconds. The time was not only a personal best by nearly a full second, but it was also a championship record, Hayward Field facility record, national record for Antigua and Barbuda, an NCAA collegiate record, and the equal number-two performance of all time, behind only Kevin Young's 46-second performance and equal to Edwin Moses' 1983 former World Record. The time came as a surprise to many who thought that the wet conditions and puddles on the track were not conducive to running fast times.


text: There was no clear favorite in the men's 3000 m steeplechase, as the collegiate yearly leader did not qualify and no scoring athletes returned from last year's final. Most expected the race to be tactical due to wet conditions, but the University of Houston's Brian Barraza gapped the field early, taking the race out at an 8:20 pace for the first few laps—a time that was over ten seconds faster than any of the athletes' personal bests. The frontrunning strategy seemed to have been working as Barazza still held a considerable lead going in to the last lap, but a fall on one of the last barriers allowed the University of Minnesota's Obsa Ali to pass and win the race in a personal-best time of 8:32 minutes. Barraza had trouble getting up after his fall, and ultimately finished tenth. As Houston was considered by some to be a contender for the team title, Barazza's bold race strategy was considered foolish by some but brave by others. After the race, Barraza's coach Steve Magness said that Barraza felt dazed after the race, and that he was considering being checked for a concussion. The fall was later featured on ESPN's SportsCenter.


text: The women's 10,000 m was held on June 7. Defending outdoor 5000 m and 2016 cross country champion Karissa Schweizer of the University of Missouri was favored by some to take the title in her first attempt at the distance at the championships, but she also faced the previous year's 10,000 m champion Charlotte Taylor from the University of San Francisco. A brisk pace set in part by Taylor put the athletes in reach of the NCAA meet record, and soon Schweizer, Taylor, Notre Dame's Anna Rohrer, University of Kansas junior Sharon Lokedi from Kenya, and former NCAA 3000m steeplechase runner-up Alice Wright, from the University of New Mexico, led the race at times alternating the lead. In the end, Lokedi pulled strongly away from the field in the final lap to win in a new championship record time of 32:09.20, followed by University of Louisville freshman Dorcas Wasike, who moved up the field in the final stages to take second. Lokedi had qualified for six NCAA track championship events before and never finished worse than sixth, but had never won an individual NCAA title before the race. Thanks to the fast pace, all of the first six athletes broke the old NCAA meet record, which had been set by Sylvia Mosqueda in 1988.


title: Steven Rose

text: Following a Fellowship at New College, Oxford, and a Medical Research Council research post, he was appointed to the professorship of biology at the newly instituted Open University in 1969. At the time he was Britain's youngest full professor and chair of the department. At the Open University he established the Brain Research Group, within which he and his colleagues investigated the biological processes involved in memory formation and treatments for Alzheimer's disease on which he has published some 300 research papers and reviews. He has written several popular science books and regularly writes for The Guardian newspaper and the London Review of Books. From 1999 to 2002, he gave public lectures as a Professor of Physick (Genetics and Society) with his wife, the feminist sociologist Hilary Rose at Gresham College, London. His work has won him numerous medals and prizes including the Biochemical Society medal for communication in science and the prestigious Edinburgh Medal in 2004. His book The Making of Memory won the Rhone-Poulenc Science Book Prize in 1993. In 2012 the British Neuroscience Association gave him a lifetime award for "Outstanding contributions to neuroscience."


title: Steven Rose

text: With Richard Lewontin and Leon Kamin, Rose championed the "radical science movement". The three criticized sociobiology, evolutionary psychology, and adaptationism, most prominently in the book Not in Our Genes , laying out their opposition to Sociobiology , The Selfish Gene , and other works promoting an evolutionary explanation for human social behaviour. Not in Our Genes described Dawkins as "the most reductionist of sociobiologists". In retort, Dawkins wrote that the book practices a straw man fallacy by distorting arguments in terms of genetics to "an idiotic travesty (that the properties of a complex whole are simply the sum of those same properties in the parts)", and accused the authors of giving "ideology priority over truth". Rose replied in the second edition of his book Lifelines. Rose wrote further works in this area: in 2000 he jointly edited with the sociologist Hilary Rose, a critique of evolutionary psychology entitled Alas, Poor Darwin: Arguments Against Evolutionary Psychology. In 2006 he wrote a paper dismissing classical heritability estimates as useful scientific measures in respect of human populations especially in the context of IQ.


title: Ambush at Drumnakilly

text: The IRA team drove in a hijacked car to the scene of the planned attack along the Omagh to Carrickmore road near Drumnakilly, looking for the delivery lorry with its distinctive commercial livery travelling along its usual route at that time, wearing boiler suits, balaclavas and armed with two AK-47 rifles and an old MK British Webley revolver. They found the lorry pulled up along the road's 10 miles length, with a man they took to be their target, who appeared to be replacing a flat tyre. As they drove towards him they were suddenly attacked by a British Army detachment of soldiers from the Special Air Service Regiment, which opened automatic fire upon their vehicle from concealed positions about the roadside, killing all three IRA men. Local residents reported hearing several bursts of sustained gun fire during the incident, followed by single shots. Sixteen bullets were subsequently found to have been fired from the IRA weapons in the engagement, with 220 fired from the British Army's weapons. A subsequent coroner's inquest in 1993 failed to establish with certainty which side had opened fire first.


title: Joshua Ryne Goldberg

text: After his arrest, it emerged that Goldberg had previously been diagnosed with schizophrenia and anxiety disorder. On December 14, 2015, after an examination by prison psychologist Lisa Feldman at Federal Detention Center, Miami, US Magistrate Judge James Klindt ruled Goldberg mentally incompetent to stand trial and Goldberg was ordered to undergo psychiatric treatment for four months at the Federal Medical Center, Butner. Goldberg again appeared before Klindt on June 15, 2016, and was described by prison psychiatrists as "improving", and that there was a "good chance" of him being returned to competency to stand trial. Another status update was scheduled by Klindt for October 15, 2016. Goldberg's lawyer, Paul Shorstein, later said that Goldberg had Asperger's Syndrome and had been diagnosed with clinical depression. Goldberg's defense subsequently claimed that Goldberg had autism, wanted to be a journalist, and had made "impressive" journalistic progress in his trolling activities. Goldberg has claimed that he was the target of abuse by prison staff because of his autism.


title: Employment Relations Act 2000

text: What the new employee needs to know is that, if there is a probationary period, then it must be written in the contract of employment – it cannot be done verbally. Also in the agreement – or in some other document linked to it – has to be what the employer will do if the new person doesn't work out in the new job... the whole process has to be transparent, upfront and documented so the employee knows exactly where they stand. ew starters need to demonstrate they can do the job they have been hired for. Or there could be grounds for dismissal. If someone is having trouble in their new job then they have to tell their employer or manager as soon as possible. People should not be frightened of revealing that they are having difficulty. And the reason for this is that the employer has a legal obligation to do their best for their employee. ... Employers meet their new employee at the end of the first week in the new job and, if there are any issues, then they should be raised as soon as possible – not on the day the employer decides they want to dismiss them. Issues have to be addressed as they become apparent. All staff are entitled to warnings, performance counselling and to have access to advice.


title: Sonia Bompastor

text: Bompastor began her football career joining US Mer in 1988. In 1992, she joined US Thoury. In the same year, Bompastor earned selection to nationally recognized Clairefontaine academy joining alongside a select group a female players. After her stint at Clairefontaine, she joined Tours EC, now the women's section of professional club Tours FC. In 2000, she joined Division 1 Féminine club ESOF Vendée La Roche-sur-Yon and performed well enough to earn a move to Montpellier. At Montpellier, Bompastor earned domestic and individual honors, which resulted in a move to champions Lyon. In 2008, she joined the new United States-based women's soccer league, Women's Professional Soccer, after her American playing rights were chosen by Washington Freedom in the 2008 WPS International Draft. After helping the Freedom reached the playoffs, Bompastor returned to France where she played for Paris Saint-Germain on loan. In 2010, she announced that she would be returned to Lyon for the 2010–11 season and, subsequently, was a part of the team that won the 2010–11 UEFA Women's Champions League.


title: Survivor (Destiny's Child album)

text: In July 1999, Destiny's Child released their second studio album The Writing's on the Wall. Their breakthrough record, it debuted at number six on the US Billboard 200 with first-week sales of 133,000 units. In December, LeToya Luckett and LaTavia Roberson tried to split with Destiny's Child's manager Mathew Knowles, claiming that he was keeping too much of the group's profits and that he favored his daughter Beyoncé Knowles and Kelly Rowland. When the accompanying music video for "Say My Name" premiered in February 2000, Roberson and Luckett found out that they were being replaced with Michelle Williams, a former backing vocalist for Monica, and Farrah Franklin, an aspiring singer-actress. On March 15, Roberson and Luckett filed a lawsuit against Mathew Knowles and their former bandmates for breach of partnership and fiduciary duties. Following the lawsuit, both sides were disparaging towards each other in the media. However, the group's prominence and commercial success burgeoned, aided by "Say My Name", which peaked atop the US Billboard Hot 100. The Writing's on the Wall subsequently registered a significant rise in sales, ascending towards a new peak at number five on the Billboard 200.


title: Survivor (Destiny's Child album)

text: In July 2000, it was announced that Franklin had departed Destiny's Child mere five months after joining. According to the group, Franklin missed a handful of promotional appearances and concerts and was asked to leave the group. However, Franklin stated that she quit because of negative energy within the group and her inability to assert any control in decision-making. The group had already begun recording material for their third studio album, with Franklin performing backing vocals on several tracks. Among those was "Independent Women Part I", which was recorded for the accompanying soundtrack for the 2000 film Charlie's Angels. The song was released as a single on August 29. A global commercial success, it became the group's third US Billboard Hot 100 and first UK Singles Chart number-one single. It was nominated for Best Song Written for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media at the 43rd Annual Grammy Awards. Towards the end of 2000, Roberson and Luckett dropped the portion of their lawsuit aimed at Beyoncé and Rowland in exchange for a settlement, though they continued the action against Mathew Knowles. As part of the agreement, both sides were prohibited from speaking about each other publicly.


title: Survivor (Destiny's Child album)

text: The recording sessions for Survivor commenced in May 2000 at the SugarHill Recording Studios in Houston, where most of the album was recorded. "Gospel Medley", which Destiny's Child had previewed during several public appearances throughout 2000, was also recorded there; the group decided to record it due to their longtime affinity for gospel. As on the group's previous records, their manager Mathew Knowles served as the executive producer. Initial tracks recorded for the album were in the vein of "Jumpin', Jumpin'", which was released as the fourth and final single from The Writing's on the Wall within that period, to tremendous commercial success. However, as the recording progressed, the group gradually added more depth to their work as there were "so many people copping sound, it was necessary to change things up a bit." After emerging as the focal point of Destiny's Child, Knowles assumed more control by taking a greater hand in songwriting and even producing some of the album herself. Knowles' intention was not to monopolize the spotlight; however, she did co-write 17 and produce all of the album's 18 tracks. She explained: "I only wanted to do like three songs... The label kept saying "Do another song, do another song, do another song". It wasn't planned. It wasn't like I said, OK, I'm going to take charge." However, Kelly Rowland and Michelle Williams co-wrote only one track–"Outro (DC-3) Thank You". On July 20, Farrah Franklin departed from Destiny's Child, having already recorded backing vocals for several tracks, including "Independent Women Part I". The group embarked on Christina Aguilera's tour Christina Aguilera in Concert as an opening act on July 31, touring until October and simultaneously recording the album. Six songs, including both parts to "Independent Women", "Nasty Girl" and the unreleased "I Tried", had been recorded by September.


title: Survivor (Destiny's Child album)

text: Originally, the Keybeats-produced "Independent Women Part II" was recorded first as the song's album version, while the track which would become "Independent Women Part I" served as a remix. However, their roles were reversed as the group was offered to record material for the accompanying soundtrack to Charlie's Angels , a film adaption of the 1976–1981 television series of the same title. They re-recorded "Independent Women" and enlisted first-time collaborators Trackmasters to produce the track, altering the original's lyrics to suit the Charlie's Angels theme. Cory Rooney, who co-wrote and produced the re-recording, said it took only 15 minutes for him and the Trackmasters to create the instrumental track. Aside from the SugarHill Recording Studios, part one was recorded at the Lobo Studios in Deer Park, New York and the TK Studios in Honolulu, while part two was recorded at the Chung King Studios in New York City and the 24/7 Studios in Houston. The Anthony Dent-produced title track was inspired by a pun a radio station had made about the fact that three members had already left Destiny's Child, comparing the group to the reality competition television series Survivor. Knowles felt inspired to use the negative comment and turn its context positive by writing a song out of it. According to Williams, the song was recorded from September to November. It was recorded at the Chase Studios in Atlanta–where fellow Dent production was also recorded–and, alongside numerous other tracks, at the Enterprise Studios in Burbank, California.


title: Survivor (Destiny's Child album)

text: Beyoncé claimed to have written "Bootylicious" on a plane flight to London while listening to the song "Edge of Seventeen" by Stevie Nicks, when the word "bootylicious" popped into her head. Rob Fusari disputed the claim in 2010, stating he himself had the idea for the song and had wanted to use a guitar riff from Survivor's 1982 song "Eye of the Tiger" but, after not being able to find it, used a similar riff from "Edge of Seventeen". However, in 2016, he revealed that after the "Edge of Seventeen" sample was approved, he conceived the song with Beyoncé over the phone, adding: "She was out of the country at that point, but she had the 'Bootylicious' concept in her head. That was totally her. She knew what she wanted to say. It was very urban pop angle that they were taking on the record." Once the group decided to record "Bootylicious", Fusari wanted to remove the sample, explaining: "I figured I'd put the guitar loop on there temporarily, and later go into the studio with a guitar and replay it, because I'd learned, after sampling Stevie Wonder's "I Wish" for Will Smith's "Wild Wild West," that I didn't want to lose 50% of the publishing. I vividly remember telling Mathew Knowles, "Mathew, you got to book me into your studio and let me replay that riff." It was Guitar 101! One note!"; however, Knowles refused. Dan Workman, who engineered several tracks from Survivor, commented on the recording sessions: "Beyoncé would be driving over to the studio listening to all these tracks that had been sent to her, and she would pick out her favorite. When she got here, she would immediately start writing lyrics for the song and finish it right there in front of me. For the song "Bootylicious" she wrote all the lyrics for it right in Studio A. Then she taught the song to Kelly and Michelle, and all three of them worked on the vocals together."


title: Survivor (Destiny's Child album)

text: D'wayne Wiggins, who wrote "Fancy" with Beyoncé and J. R. Rotem, said Destiny's Child would carefully select lyrics for the songs, adjusting them to suit the group. According to Wiggins, they would "just take a song and dissect it and put it back together again. For "Fancy," it took about 30 or 45 minutes to change the hook." Rotem reflected on the song's simple instrumentation, revealing he created beats solely using a keyboard and a drum machine. The song was recorded at the Digital Services in Houston, with additional recording at the House of Music in Oakland, California. Mark J. Feist, who produced "Emotion", changed the arrangement and production of Samantha Sang's disco-soul 1977 original version into a contemporary ballad. Beyoncé would re-record "Dangerously in Love" with a modified arrangement for her 2003 debut solo studio album of the same title. Both versions were recorded at the SugarHill Recording Studios, and were written and produced by Beyoncé and Errol McCalla Jr. As Survivor neared its completion in December 2000, Destiny's Child referred to their hectic schedule while recording the album, revealing they took time off recording solely on Christmas Day. While they intended to complete the album soon afterwards, the recording continued into early 2001, causing the album's release date to be postponed and its lead single "Survivor" to be delayed from January to March. During the album's production, Rowland recorded her debut solo recording "Angel". Produced by Beyoncé, Fusari and Falonte Moore–who wrote and produced "Bootylicious", "Apple Pie à la Mode" and "Happy Face"–the track appeared on the accompanying soundtrack for the 2001 film Down to Earth. Previous collaborator Rodney Jerkins, whose production "Say My Name" became one of Destiny's Child's biggest hits, had also returned to work on Survivor. He produced two tracks, including the "street-edgy", up-tempo "Girl Like Me", but neither made the final track listing.


title: Survivor (Destiny's Child album)

text: Survivor is predominantly an R&B and pop record exploring genres such as hip hop, funk and dance. Its lyrical themes include dynamics between women, self-esteem, independence and romantic relationships. The album opens with the uptempo club track "Independent Women Part I", which encourages female empowerment and financial independence. As it was recorded for the accompanying soundtrack for Charlie's Angels , it makes numerous lyrical references to the film. The album's title track features looped strings built around an "abrasive" hip hop instrumental. Lyrically, it's considered a "prolonged and rather vindictive attack" on the former members of Destiny's Child–LeToya Luckett, LaTavia Roberson and Farrah Franklin. The "blinding Prince-like R&B-jazz odyssey" "Bootylicious" features a lyrical response to those who had criticized Beyoncé's weight gain, against a prominent guitar riff sample from Stevie Nicks' 1981 song "Edge of Seventeen". "Nasty Girl" features the group "hurling insults at a hip-hop harlot", while dismissing "classless" women altogether. It features an uncredited interpolation of Salt-N-Pepa's 1986 song "Push It". Pizzicato string-driven "Fancy" is seen as another diss track directed towards the group's former members.