title: Skins (British TV series)

text: The seventh series, titled "Skins Redux", aired on 1 July 2013. It saw the return of former "Skins" stars Hannah Murray as Cassie, Jack O'Connell as Cook and Kaya Scodelario as Effy in three individual stories. Lily Loveless as Naomi and Kathryn Prescott as Emily also starred in guest roles. The three stories have their own titles: "Skins Fire" (Effy), "Skins Pure" (Cassie) and "Skins Rise" (Cook). The six-part series began filming on 22 October 2012 and concluded at the end of January 2013.


title: Skins (British TV series)

text: Skins Fire depicts Effy as a 21-year-old hedge fund receptionist for a London firm. She lives with Naomi, who is drifting through life with vague ambitions of being a stand-up comedian. Effy is much more serious and driven than in the past, and impresses her bosses enough to win a shot at being a stock trader. In her attempts to succeed in her career, she becomes embroiled in an insider trading scandal, as well as romantically involved with her boss Jake (Kayvan Novak). To spare her lovelorn friend Dom (Craig Roberts) from jail time for his part in the crime, she makes a full confession to the Financial Services Authority of hers and Jake's activities. Meanwhile, Naomi reveals she has cancer, and pleads with Effy not to tell Emily, who is in New York on an internship. Dom and Effy support Naomi until it is clear her condition is terminal; Emily returns to London, hurt and betrayed, and comforts Naomi while Effy is prosecuted.


title: Skins (British TV series)

text: Skins Pure catches up with Cassie at 23, living a solitary existence in London and waitressing after breaking up with an ex-boyfriend in America. The new Cassie no longer does drugs, and has recovered from her eating disorder. After discovering someone has been secretly taking artistic photos of her and uploading them to the Internet, she tracks down her stalker, and discovers it to be the cook at her café, Jakob (Olly Alexander). After realising Jakob's attention gives her confidence, she allows him to continue photographing her on her terms, in an explicitly non-sexual friendship. While trying to support her depressed father and little brother after the death of her mother, her friendship with Jakob slowly comes apart as his jealousy grows irrational, particularly when Cassie models for a professional shoot. Ultimately, Cassie chooses to leave behind her friendship with Jakob and another man who had been pursuing her romantically (Daniel Ben Zenou) to focus on raising her little brother while her father recuperates in Italy.


title: Skins (British TV series)

text: Skins Rise follows Cook at 21, who is on the run and living alone in Manchester. In an introductory voiceover, Cook explains his thoughts and alludes towards a murder he may have committed; it is implied but not outright stated that he is avoiding capture after killing John Foster a few years back. He is now a drug dealer and has a semi-serious relationship with a woman named Emma (Esther Smith), but becomes mesmerised by Charlie (Hannah Britland), the girlfriend of local drug lord Louis (Liam Boyle) after he is asked to watch over her for a few days. After Louis brutally kills a man named Jason (Lucien Laviscount) for having an affair with Charlie, Cook flees Manchester, taking Emma with him. En route, Charlie calls Cook and begs him to take her with them. The three end up at Emma's family's old country home, in a remote part of the country. Not long after though, Louis arrives, explaining that he tracked their car. After Charlie refuses to go with him, the three leave the house and find Emma's parents' car abandoned, indicating they have been killed. The trio are stranded in the woods, where Louis catches up with and murders Emma. Seeing this, Cook decides he is done running, confronting Louis and beating him to a pulp. He declares, "I'm Cook. You thought you could kill me? I'm fucking Cook." He helps Charlie escape and alerts the police to Louis. In a final voiceover, he ponders the significance of life and death and how it gets ‘under your skin’. His fate, like at the end of season 4, remains ambiguous.


title: Skins (British TV series)

text: Tony Stonem (Nicholas Hoult) is an intelligent and popular boy. His manipulative ways often go unnoticed by many, and are a catalyst for the majority of the events in the series. Sid Jenkins (Mike Bailey) is Tony's best friend and has an entirely opposite personality. He lacks confidence, is socially uneasy and struggles with school work. Tony's girlfriend is Michelle Richardson (April Pearson), a girl who can never stay angry at his mischievous behaviour for long. Outwardly, Michelle appears shallow, vain and conceited, but she works hard, has a strong interest in French and Spanish, and is very emotionally mature. She is friends with Cassie Ainsworth (Hannah Murray), an eccentric girl who has an eating disorder. Cassie attempts to hide her own struggles with mental health while her flamboyant parents ignore her in favour of their new baby.


title: Skins (British TV series)

text: Chris Miles (Joe Dempsie) is the party animal of the group. He has a difficult home life; he lost his brother to a hereditary subarachnoid haemorrhage at a young age, and is living alone due to his ambivalent father and absent mother. He has a crush on his psychology teacher Angie (Siwan Morris). Jal Fazer (Larissa Wilson) is a sensible girl with a talent for playing the clarinet. Her runaway mother has left Jal with her famous musician father and aspiring rapper brothers. She is best friends with Michelle. Maxxie Oliver (Mitch Hewer) is openly gay and has a passion for dance. He is portrayed as attractive, seductive and talented, and is well accepted by most of his friends and family, though his fights with his father about his future are depicted.


title: Skins (British TV series)

text: His best friend Anwar Kharral (Dev Patel) has a slightly off-the-wall personality and is known for his silly antics and sense of humour. While he takes a pick-and-choose approach to Islam, and has no qualms about indulging in premarital sex and usage of alcohol and drugs in spite of his religion's policies against them, he has some difficulty fully accepting Maxxie's sexuality. Appearing only in the second series, Lucy, better known as "Sketch" (Aimee-Ffion Edwards), is a quiet and scheming Welsh girl who is polite yet unnerving. Living two buildings over and having a clear view of his room, she develops an obsession for Maxxie and becomes his stalker. Without her father, she is a young carer for her disabled mother Sheila, who suffers from multiple sclerosis.


title: Skins (British TV series)

text: As well as the regular cast, there are several important recurring characters. Effy Stonem (Kaya Scodelario) is Tony's younger sister, and shares many of her brother's qualities. She is mysterious and manipulative, and selectively mute during the first series; she regularly breaks the fourth wall. Effy later becomes a main character in the second generation of "Skins". Abigail Stock (Georgina Moffat) is an upper class school girl with sociopathic tendencies, and one of Tony's many sexual conquests. "Posh" Kenneth (Daniel Kaluuya) goes to the same college as the main cast and often spends time with the boys. Madison "Mad" Twatter (Stephen Walters) features as Sid's emergency drug dealer, Doug (Giles Thomas) is a senior teacher at Roundview College, and British comedian and co-writer Josie Long appears as the college's careers counsellor.


title: Skins (British TV series)

text: The central cast's parents are often played by well-known British comedy actors credited in a guest starring role. Harry Enfield and Morwenna Banks act as Tony and Effy's parents, Jim and Anthea Stonem. Peter Capaldi and Josie Lawrence act as Sid's parents, Mark and Liz Jenkins. Arabella Weir acts as Michelle's mother, Anna Richardson, and Danny Dyer as her stepfather, Malcolm. Neil Morrissey and Naomi Allisstone act as Cassie's parents, Marcus and Margeritte Ainsworth. Mark Monero acts as Jal's father, Ronny Fazer, and Josette Simon as her estranged mother, Elaine. Inder Manocha and Nina Wadia act as Anwar's parents, Istiak and Bibi Kharral. Bill Bailey and Fiona Allen act as Maxxie's parents, Walter and Jackie Oliver. Mark Heap acts as Chris's estranged father, Graham Miles, and Sarah Lancashire as his stepmother, Mary Jane.


title: Skins (British TV series)

text: Effy Stonem (Kaya Scodelario), Tony's younger sister, becomes the principal character in the second generation. Effy is pretty, popular, but also quiet and distant, attempting to keep her own troubles hidden. Pandora Moon (Lisa Backwell) is her friend, having appeared for the first time in a second series episode. She is innocent to the sexual and narcotic world in which Effy indulges, but is ready and willing to explore it. Thomas Tomone (Merveille Lukeba) is an immigrant from the Congo, with a morally upright outlook and good-hearted nature, and his storyline sees him becoming romantically involved with Pandora.


title: Skins (British TV series)

text: James Cook (Jack O'Connell), Freddie McClair (Luke Pasqualino) and JJ Jones (Ollie Barbieri) have been best friends since childhood. Though Cook is charismatic and sociable, he is also boisterous and not afraid of authority. His womanising drives many of the events in the series. By contrast, Freddie is an easy-going skater who likes to smoke weed, and as the more sensible and responsible friend, is often put out by Cook's behaviour. Cook and Freddie are both drawn to Effy, which drives a rift in their friendship. JJ's Asperger syndrome makes it difficult for him to fit in socially, but he has learnt to use magic tricks to make friends. His friends view him kindly but with a degree of amusement and sometimes irritation, but he knows Cook and Freddie will always take care of him. He is the kindest of the three, and by far the least worldly.


title: Skins (British TV series)

text: Katie (Megan Prescott) and Emily Fitch (Kathryn Prescott) are very different identical twin sisters. Katie thinks of herself as something of a WAG and wants to usurp Effy's place as queen bee of the group. Katie's homophobic attitudes cause problems between them, as Emily comes to terms with her homosexuality. The quieter of the two, Emily is used to being in her sister's shadow, and is sulky but perceptive. She tends to not stand out in a crowd due to her insecurities, but later grows out within the show. She is in love with Naomi Campbell (Lily Loveless), a fiery, politically charged and passionate young woman with idealistic views and an abundance of ambition. Emily also develops a good friendship with JJ, becoming close confidantes to one another.


title: Skins (British TV series)

text: Other characters include Klariza Clayton as Karen McClair, Freddie's older sister, who is desperate to become famous, Mackenzie Crook as Johnny White, a psychotic Bristol gangster, with comedians Jordan Long and Justin Edwards as his inept henchmen, and Ardal O'Hanlon as the gang's careless college tutor, Kieran MacFoeinaiugh. Chris Addison appears as Roundview College's new headmaster, David Blood, Will Young as a school counsellor, Pauline Quirke as the detective investigating Sophia's suicide, and Georgia Henshaw as Lara, JJ's new girlfriend.


title: Skins (British TV series)

text: As with the first generation, the central cast's parents are played by established British comedic actors. Harry Enfield and Morwenna Banks return as Effy's parents, Jim and Anthea Stonem, with Banks' real life partner David Baddiel appearing as Jim's colleague whom Anthea has an affair with. Sally Phillips acts as Pandora's mother, Angela Moon. Simon Day acts as Freddie's father, Leo McClair. Olivia Colman acts as Naomi's mother, Gina Campbell. Juliet Cowan and Douglas Hodge act as JJ's parents, Celia and Edward Jones. Ronni Ancona and John Bishop act as Katie and Emily's parents, Jenna and Rob Fitch. Matt King and Tanya Franks act as Cook's estranged parents, Cook Sr., and Ruth Byatt. Maureen Lipman also stars as Pandora's auntie, Elizabeth, and Dudley Sutton as Freddie's grandfather, Norman.


title: Skins (British TV series)

text: Franky Fitzgerald (Dakota Blue Richards) is seen as an outsider, having arrived to her first year at Roundview three weeks late upon moving to Bristol from Oxford. She is intelligent and creative, but is seen by others as strange, and is ostracised largely due to her androgynous dress sense. Alo Creevey (Will Merrick), something of an optimist, loves his dog and his van foremost. He is best friends with Rich Hardbeck (Alexander Arnold), a boy from a very middle-class home who immerses himself in heavy metal subculture. He uses musical elitism as a means to cover up his own shyness when, among other things, interacting with girls.


title: Skins (British TV series)

text: Mini McGuinness (Freya Mavor), Liv Malone (Laya Lewis), and Grace Blood (Jessica Sula) have been best friends since childhood. By the time Franky arrives, image-conscious Mini has already established herself as Roundview's new "queen bee". She obscures her own insecurities (such as her body image, and her virginity), and is cruel to Franky and others. Of her two friends, Liv is the more devoted to Mini, and is more worldly and sexually voracious.


title: Skins (British TV series)

text: By contrast, Grace—sweet, kind, and positive in her outlook—begins to disassociate herself from Mini after seeing Franky's example, and in the first episode establishes a friendship with outsiders Franky, Alo and Rich. Mini's boyfriend is Nick Levan (Sean Teale). His popularity makes him something of a status symbol for Mini, but his feelings for her are shallow and uncomplicated. His brother Matty (Sebastian de Souza) has strained relationships with his family, engages in criminal behaviour, and lives rough following an altercation with their father. In series six, the group befriend Alex Henley (Sam Jackson), who is gay and in particular forms a close friendship with Liv.


title: Skins (British TV series)

text: Giles Thomas returns as Doug, Roundview's deputy headmaster as does comedian Chris Addison for a second and third year as headmaster David Blood. Josie Long returns in series six, once again as guidance counsellor Josie. Gordon Kennedy plays English teacher Alan Precopp, and Alistair McGowan plays Coach Pooter, Nick's South African rugby coach.


title: Skins (British TV series)

text: Co-creator Bryan Elsley recalls his first conversation with his son Jamie Brittain, soon to be co-creator, which led to the creation of the popular and edgy show. Brittain critiqued many of his father's other ideas for a TV series. He started with the idea that being a teenager co-existed with poor behaviour, casual sex, and experimenting with drugs and alcohol. Most shows with teenagers pretended that these things did not happen especially involving consequences, which this show also lays bare. Elsley has been defending his controversial show for years. His philosophy explored how teenagers believe adults act in corrupted ways, which explains why most adults in the show appear to be crooked, in poor relationships, swearing, and overall poor parents.


title: Skins (British TV series)

text: The show's writing team has an average age of 21, and includes several "teenage consultants". Elsley said, "It's all about the writing. [...] We're about letting our audience feel they are not alone. [...] We're always having people miss [writing] meetings because they've got A-levels or even GCSEs".


title: Skins (British TV series)

text: In January 2011, Jamie Brittain announced a writing competition open to the public to help with the developing and writing of Series 6. According to Brittain, the winner will receive "a four-month placement in the "Skins" writers' room, where you'd be invited to attend at least 10 of our top secret meetings, working with [Brittain] and the other "Skins" writers," as well as monetary compensation. The winners of the 2011 competition were Sophie Boyce (18) and Joe Hampson (21). The winner of the 2008 competition, Dan Lovett, went on to become an official member of the "Skins" writing team.


title: Skins (British TV series)

text: The show is filmed almost entirely in Bristol; scenes at Roundview College were shot at Henbury School for series four, having formerly been set at the John Cabot Academy and SGS WISE Campus. and multiple scenes are located around College Green. Special locations for individual episodes have included the Gower Peninsula, Sharpness Docks, the University of Exeter and New York City. The series was shot entirely in High Definition, using Sony HDW-750P cameras for the first two series, and Sony HDW-F900R thereafter, both supplied by Panavision. It was edited by BBC Studios and Post Production in Bristol, using Autodesk Lustre and Autodesk Smoke.


title: Skins (British TV series)

text: "The trip to Russia" episode was actually shot in Lithuania, near the capital Vilnius. This episode was shot in co-operation with Lithuanian Film Studios and professional Lithuanian actors.


title: Skins (British TV series)

text: It was announced in April 2008 that all of the original cast (except Kaya Scodelario and Lisa Backwell) would be replaced for series 3. Elsley said: "There are risks associated with dumping a cast, but we just did it. There was some disquiet at the channel, but then they told us just to go with it." Speaking at Broadcast's television drama conference, he also confirmed the show would stick to its pattern of introducing college-age characters, moving them on in the next series, then letting them go. "The first year is about getting to know the kids, and the second gives us the advantage of being able to explore their psyches a little more," said Elsley. Brittain said that the new cast would be quite different from the original characters, although people may still spot some similarities. Open auditions for the second generation of cast members were held in Bristol, which attracted 1,500 16- to 18-year-olds, followed by a further two days of auditions in London.


title: Skins (British TV series)

text: A variety of videos have been released on the "Skins" website, including character profiles, and "Unseen Skins" mini-episodes that interweave with every aired episode. In addition to character profiles on the official E4 website, accounts for the lead "Skins" characters are maintained on popular social networking website MySpace. Each series is launched on MySpace, with previews of the first episodes a few days before they are aired on television. After every episode, a tracklist of the soundtrack was released onto the E4 website. There is also an official "Skins" Internet bot for Windows Live Messenger, which allows users to receive automated messages throughout the airing of each episode with music credits, trivia, and behind-the-scenes gossip.


title: Skins (British TV series)

text: The first series received positive reviews, although some critics complained that the series depicts teenagers unrealistically and stereotypically. Others criticised the excessive promotion of the show (specifically in the UK) and having relatively mediocre writing in comparison to other similarly themed shows. The use of portrayal of sex, profanity, and explicit drug use in the first few episodes garnered criticism. Actor Nicholas Hoult defended the extreme storylines, saying they would not reflect "everyone's teenage life", adding "it is maybe heightened for entertainment but all of it is believable."


title: Skins (British TV series)

text: Marieke Hardy expressed admiration for the show, and particularly enjoyed the fact that the show was "beautiful and sad and poignant and perfectly hurtful", while also managing to give impression of being drama that is "edgy, funny and rude". However, she did state that she was unsure whether the show was meant for teenagers or not. Rebecca Nicholson in a review for the "Guardian" praised the show's balance in showing "hedonism with consequences, the comedy with tragedy" and criticised those who "Slammed it for being irresponsible" to have "missed the point". Stewart Lee has remarked during an interview on the BBC4 programme "Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe" that he feels lucky for having been a teenager watching TV for teenagers in the 1970s and not the 2000s as "there was something really comforting for nerds and weirdos about programmes like "Children of the Stones" and "The Changes"." He said that watching "Skins" as a teenager today would make him feel lonelier than he already would have been. However, Brooker himself gave the programme a positive review in his "Guardian" column "Screen Burn", and specifically stated that "the series had wrong-footed me", comparing his initial expectation of "Skins" as a shallow show to after he had finished watching the series. Caroline Preece wrote that "The genius of that first season was its disguise."


title: Skins (British TV series)

text: In his book "Doctor Who: The Writer's Tale", Russell T Davies and his co-author, Benjamin Cook, discuss "Skins" at length, with Davies praising the show's innovation in a genre that was fast becoming tired and out of date. They are critical of some elements of the first series, such as the believability of Tony's character, or episode 6 which is described as "Carry On Russia", but give high praise to the second series as a whole, highlighting the death of Sid's dad as a superb moment, and calling the finale "perfect". Davies, creator of the award-winning "Queer as Folk", also praised the handling of the show's homosexuality-related storylines, saying that he knew a boy very like Maxxie in the 1980s. "The Age" called it a "refreshing, entertaining and worthy series" and wrote it was "compulsory viewing for parents of teenagers as much as for teens." Similarly, the "Naomily" storyline of Series 3 and 4 proved popular with lesbian viewers; a poll conducted by American lesbian's' media website AfterEllen.com ranked Naomi and Emily as the top two fictional lesbian and bisexual characters.


title: Skins (British TV series)

text: The pilot episode of "Skins" averaged 1.5 million viewers. The ratings for the second series which launched peaked at 884,000 viewers, which gave it 5.9% audience share and taking 60% of the 16–24 demographic, however this was still more than 500,000 viewers down on its series one premiere. The series finale attracted an audience of 740,000 on E4, equating to a 4.65% share of the audience. The start of the third series drew in 877,000 viewers, proving popular with its key audience demographic of younger people—56.2% of viewers were aged between 16 and 34. Series 4 premiered with 1.5 million viewers across E4 and E4+1, the highest rated episode since series 1.


title: Skins (British TV series)

text: The programme has given rise to the term "Skins party", referring to a debauched night of heavy drinking and recreational drug use. During the 2007 Easter holidays, a girl in County Durham threw a house party; it was advertised on her Myspace profile as "Skins Unofficial Party", referring to the party in the first series' trailer, with the subtitle "Let's trash the average family-sized house disco party." Two hundred people turned up, breaking into the house and causing over £20,000 of seemingly deliberate damage. She claimed that her account was hacked and someone else placed the ad.


title: Skins (British TV series)

text: Similar incidents have taken place in Ireland, with major household damage and theft of personal property being reported in Firhouse, Bray and Drogheda. Although these attacks have not been conclusively linked to the show, news outlets have reported that they are called Skins parties. Club nights marketed as "Skins Secret Parties" have also taken shape in Leicester and Brighton. Following this, a series of parties were run by Company Pictures in spring 2008.


title: Skins (British TV series)

text: In a ten-year retrospective, Rebecca Nicholson, noted that "Skins" transitioned teen dramas from stories of luxury to more frank and gritty depictions of "what young viewers might want and aspire to by actually thinking about and consulting young viewers." Caroline Preece shared a similar sentiment in her retrospective, calling the show's casting and use of online marketing as indicative of it being a "trailblazer". Its dark and realistic portrayal of mental illness influenced shows to depict it similarly.


title: Skins (British TV series)

text: The characters of Cassie and Effy were influential to young audiences, with many young female viewers praising the impact of Cassie representing them and their struggles. She has however been criticised her for being an extreme example, causing some to feel disingenuous in their struggles with anorexia. Both characters have been said to trigger eating disorders in those trying to replicate their look and behaviour. Cassie, who became a poster child for eating disorders, has also been linked to pro-ana media although there was still vocal opposition to pro-ana sentiments from fans of her. Effy had a particular popularity on the blogging site Tumblr where blogs dedicated to the character could be found. Samuel Rosenberg of "The Michigan Daily" criticised this subcommunity for "[reframing] the instability of Effy's [life] into something attractive and exciting through which people can live vicariously." The show as a whole has been embraced by communities dedicated to depression and anxiety on Tumblr. In 2020, it saw a resurgence among Gen Z audiences after popular TikTok users took fashion inspiration from and made videos about Effy.


title: Skins (British TV series)

text: In May 2009, E4 confirmed that Film4 and Company Pictures were in "preliminary talks" about a movie spin-off. In March 2010, Jack Thorne revealed to "The Guardian" that the "Skins" motion picture was in pre-production.


title: Skins (British TV series)

text: On 31 May 2011, after many whisperings about whether the movie would go ahead or not, Kaya Scodelario announced on Twitter "I genuinely don't know anything about that, have no idea if it's even happening." Scodelario continued by saying, "I would still love to do the "Skins" movie" and that she would enjoy working with the cast again.


title: Skins (British TV series)

text: In September 2009, Company Pictures announced that the "Skins" brand has been licensed to Crystal Entertainment. The plan is to help creator Bryan Elsley expand the brand into areas such as film, fashion and music. They described "Skins" as "the most authentic teen brand on TV".


title: Skins (British TV series)

text: In January 2010, Hodder & Stoughton published "Skins: The Novel", a short novel by Ali Cronin that describes events taking place between series 3 and 4. In March 2011, they published "Skins: v. 2: Summer Holiday", a short novel by Jess Brittain which centres around the series 5 cast.


title: Skins (British TV series)

text: Although "Skins" aired in the United States on BBC America (only series 1–3 aired and the rights cleared only for those series for purchase of DVDs or online viewing in the US), albeit in a heavily censored form (strong language bleeped out and some more graphic scenes of violence and sex cut out), MTV announced that they would be adapting the show into an American version set in Baltimore, Maryland. With Bryan Elsley as executive producer, the series began filming in February 2010 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.


title: Skins (British TV series)

text: The first episode of the US series is almost a shot-for-shot copy of the first episode of the UK series, but it deviates from the original plot in following episodes such that there are significant differences between the US and UK versions. Characters are also similar, and some names have been changed; Sid has been renamed Stanley, Cassie renamed Cadie and Jal renamed Daisy. In addition, Tony's younger sister Effy, who becomes a main character in Generation Two of UK Skins, was renamed Eura. However, the biggest change comes in the form of Tea, a lesbian cheerleader who replaces the UK gay character Maxxie who was a professional dancer.


title: Skins (British TV series)

text: The show's cancellation was announced by MTV on 10 June 2011. The Parents Television Council, an advocacy group, criticised the show, calling it one of the worst shows a child could watch. Reasons cited for its cancellation included loss of advertising sponsors and a shrinking audience, with fewer people tuning in for each subsequent episode. Pre-adult teens ("minors" under US law), who are MTV's core demographic audience, were at the centre of the argument for those who disapproved of the program, even with MTV's self-imposed restrictive broadcaster-like standards and practices.


title: Pepe (footballer, born 1983)

text: Kepler Laveran de Lima Ferreira (born 26 February 1983), known as Pepe (; ), is a professional footballer who plays as a centre back for Porto and the Portugal national team. He is regarded as one of the best defenders of all time.


title: Pepe (footballer, born 1983)

text: During his professional career, Pepe played for Marítimo, Porto, Real Madrid, and Beşiktaş, with individual and team success with the middle two clubs. He won three La Liga titles, three UEFA Champions League titles, two Copa del Rey titles and played 334 games for Real Madrid. He has also won four Primeira Liga titles and three Taça de Portugal titles with Porto.


title: Pepe (footballer, born 1983)

text: Born and raised in Brazil, Pepe opted to play for the Portugal national team, and has earned 133 caps since his debut in 2007. He played at four FIFA World Cups and as many UEFA European Championships, and was part of the team that won Euro 2016, also reaching the semi-finals of Euro 2012. Pepe was man of the match in the Euro 2016 final.


title: Pepe (footballer, born 1983)

text: Born in Maceió, Alagoas, Pepe was named Kepler Laveran by his father in honour to scientists Johannes Kepler and Charles Louis Alphonse Laveran. He started playing football with local Corinthians Alagoano. At age 18, alongside teammate Ezequias, he moved to Portugal to sign with Marítimo in Madeira, spending the vast majority of his first season with the B-team.


title: Pepe (footballer, born 1983)

text: After being promoted to the main squad for the 2002–03 season, under Russian manager Anatoliy Byshovets, Pepe rarely missed a match, playing in several positions including defensive midfielder.


title: Pepe (footballer, born 1983)

text: During the 2002–03 pre-season, Pepe was given permission to train with Sporting CP for two weeks, after which a deal could be negotiated for his transfer. However, neither club could agree on financial terms and the negotiations broke down, with the player returning and going on to help Marítimo finish sixth in the following campaign and qualify to the UEFA Cup, having contributed with 1 goal in 30 matches.


title: Pepe (footballer, born 1983)

text: In May 2004, shortly before the club sealed a treble of the league, cup and UEFA Champions League, Pepe signed for Porto.


title: Pepe (footballer, born 1983)

text: In his first season, with Spanish coach Víctor Fernández at the helm, Pepe was mostly used as a backup, playing under veterans Pedro Emanuel, Jorge Costa and utility defender Ricardo Costa. However, in the following year, under the guidance of Co Adriaanse, he had a breakthrough season, establishing himself as one of the best defenders in the domestic competition: the Dutchman often chose a 3–4–3 offensive system, with the player often pitched as the only natural stopper. Porto eventually won back-to-back leagues and the Taça de Portugal.


title: Pepe (footballer, born 1983)

text: On 10 July 2007, Real Madrid signed Pepe to a five-year contract, paying Porto a €30 million transfer fee. On 15 March 2008, Pepe scored the only (own) goal in a 0–1 away loss against Deportivo La Coruña. Eight months later, he was involved in a fight during training with teammate Javier Balboa – the defender was nonetheless called up for Real's next match, whereas the winger was not. As "Los Blancos" were eventually crowned champions of La Liga, he delivered a Man of the match performance in a 1–0 win at the Camp Nou against Barcelona.


title: Pepe (footballer, born 1983)

text: Pepe was constantly hampered by injuries throughout the 2008–09 campaign. On 21 April 2009, he was also involved in an incident with Getafe's Javier Casquero: with the score at 2–2 and only a few minutes to play, he brought down the midfielder in the penalty area, being subsequently sent off. He then kicked Casquero twice, once on his shin and once on his lower back. When being pulled away from Casquero, he also pushed his head into the turf and stamped on him several times. In the ensuing mêlée, he also struck another opposing player, Juan Ángel Albín, in the face and eventually received a ten-match ban, which effectively ended his season.


title: Pepe (footballer, born 1983)

text: In the 2009–10 season, Pepe returned to claim his place back in the starting line-ups. On 4 October 2009, he scored his first goal in the league, against Sevilla at the Ramón Sánchez Pizjuán Stadium, heading home from a Guti free-kick in a 1–2 loss. However, on 12 December, during a match at Mestalla against Valencia (3–2 win), he landed awkwardly following an aerial challenge and was stretchered off the pitch in the dying minutes of the first half. Scans later showed that he ruptured his right knee's anterior cruciate ligament. He went on to miss the rest of the season, jeopardising his 2010 FIFA World Cup chances.


title: Pepe (footballer, born 1983)

text: For 2010–11, Pepe was joined at Real Madrid by countrymen Ricardo Carvalho and manager José Mourinho, pairing up with Carvalho to form one of the most efficient defensive pairings in La Liga. On 2 October 2010, "Diario AS" published an article where the player was reportedly open to leave the club on a Bosman transfer. According to the newspaper, "[W]hen he signed for Real Madrid in 2007, he sacrificed a part of his salary to pay for his huge transfer fee – this made him one of the lowest earners at the club, making €1.8 million a year." Again, he missed several matches due to injury and, after exhausting negotiations, finally signed a new contract, renewing his link to the club until 2015.


title: Pepe (footballer, born 1983)

text: Pepe spent the final stretch of the season appearing as a defensive midfielder as Real Madrid faced Barcelona four times in less than one month. On 27 April 2011, in the UEFA Champions League semi-final first leg, he was sent off for a controversial challenge on Barcelona defender Dani Alves in an eventual 0–2 home loss. However, Alves also came into strong criticism, with Real Madrid claiming the Brazilian fullback had exaggerated the incident. Additionally, sportspersons including Rio Ferdinand, Michael Owen and Rory McIlroy criticised Alves' actions. The next day, UEFA opened disciplinary cases against both clubs for a number of incidents during the match. The verdict was announced eight days later: the red card stood and Pepe therefore received a one-match ban from European competition, which he served by not playing in the 1–1 draw in the second leg at Camp Nou.


title: Pepe (footballer, born 1983)

text: On 12 July 2011, Pepe extended his contract with Real Madrid again, until the end of the 2015–16 season. In a match against Osasuna on 6 November, he scored the team's second goal in an eventual 7–1 home routing. In the first match of the Copa del Rey quarter-final against Barcelona on 18 January 2012, he stamped on the hand of Lionel Messi, who was on the ground after having been fouled. The incident drew strong criticism from the Spanish media, who also noted his coming-together with Cesc Fàbregas earlier in the 1–2 home defeat, but he insisted that the incident, which was not seen by the referee, was "unintentional". On 23 January, the Royal Spanish Football Federation cleared him of any wrongdoing.


title: Pepe (footballer, born 1983)

text: On 21 March 2012, Pepe was involved in another serious incident: after a 1–1 away draw against Villarreal in which he was booked and Real Madrid finished with nine players, he confronted referee José Luis Paradas Romero in the locker room area, saying, "What a ripoff motherfucker." Two days later, he was suspended for two matches.


title: Pepe (footballer, born 1983)

text: In the 2011–12 season, Pepe formed a formidable centre back partnership with Sergio Ramos. That campaign, he went on to make 29 appearances in La Liga and 45 appearances in all competitions as Real Madrid claimed their 32nd league title.


title: Pepe (footballer, born 1983)

text: On 19 August 2012, in the league opener against Valencia, Pepe collided with Real Madrid goalkeeper Iker Casillas in the play that led to the visitors equalising the score 1–1 (the final result). He was subsequently taken to hospital for observation, being released the following day. Amid feuds with Mourinho, Pepe lost his starting place to Raphaël Varane throughout the season and would end up getting into a scuffle with Atlético Madrid manager Diego Simeone from the substitutes' bench in the 2013 Copa del Rey Final.


title: Pepe (footballer, born 1983)

text: In the 2013–14 season, Pepe had a personal career high number of goals scored and appearances made for Real Madrid, making 11 appearances in their "La Decima" winning campaign in the 2013-14 UEFA Champions League. Carlo Ancelotti, the Real Madrid manager at the time, spoke of his importance saying, "We’re more assured with him. He gives us confidence, personality and he helps the other players; he is very important for them." In the 2015–16 season, Pepe made nine appearances in the UEFA Champions League and 31 appearances in all competitions. He started the match when the team won the Champions League final against Atlético Madrid in a penalty shoot-out at San Siro, Milan.


title: Pepe (footballer, born 1983)

text: In his last year playing for Real Madrid, Pepe had an injury-riddled season, in which he made 13 appearances, when Madrid won their 33rd La Liga and the 2016–17 UEFA Champions League, defeating Juventus in the final at Principality Stadium, Cardiff.


title: Pepe (footballer, born 1983)

text: Turkish Süper Lig side Beşiktaş announced the signing of Pepe on a free transfer from Real Madrid, on 4 July 2017. His contract was worth €9.5 million in total over the two-years, plus a €4,000 bonus for each match played. On 13 August, he scored his first goal in a 2–0 home win against Antalyaspor.


title: Pepe (footballer, born 1983)

text: On 19 April 2018, in the second leg of the Turkish Cup against Fenerbahçe, he received his first red card for Beşiktaş after a tackle on Souza. The match was later abandoned, after the Beşiktaş coach was struck by an object thrown from the stands.


title: Pepe (footballer, born 1983)

text: On 8 January 2019, Pepe returned to Porto after over a decade, on a 2-year contract. A week later, he played his first game for Porto since 2007 in the 2018–19 Taça de Portugal quarter-finals, winning 2–1 away to Leixões. While his side ended the 2018–19 season as league runners-up on the final day and lost the cup final on penalties to Sporting, they won both tournaments in 2019–20.


title: Pepe (footballer, born 1983)

text: Following Danilo Pereira's exit to Paris Saint-Germain, Pepe was appointed as club captain on 12 October 2020. The following month, he extended his contract to 2023.


title: Pepe (footballer, born 1983)

text: Pepe never represented his native Brazil in any youth category. However, according to the player's father, in 2006, he was contacted by head coach Dunga about a possible call-up which he declined, stating that once he obtained Portuguese citizenship, he would join its national team. He became naturalised in August 2007 and, on 30 August, was named in the Portuguese squad for the first time in view of a UEFA Euro 2008 qualifier against Poland. An injury while training for his club prevented the debut for his adopted country, which would materialise almost four months later, in Portugal's last match in the tournament against Finland on 21 November, a 0–0 home draw.


title: Pepe (footballer, born 1983)

text: In the tournament's final stages, Pepe played in all of the national side's matches, scoring once in a 2–0 win against Turkey on 7 June 2008. Portugal was eliminated in the quarter-finals by Germany.


title: Pepe (footballer, born 1983)

text: During the 2010 FIFA World Cup qualifying campaign, Pepe was often used as a defensive midfielder by national coach Carlos Queiroz. After his serious knee injury while playing for Real Madrid, he was eventually selected for the squad that participated in the finals in South Africa, appearing against Brazil in the group stage (0–0) and eventual champions Spain in the round of 16 (0–1 loss).


title: Pepe (footballer, born 1983)

text: Again a starter in Euro 2012 under manager Paulo Bento, Pepe opened the score in the second group game against Denmark, heading home after a João Moutinho corner kick in an eventual 3–2 win. He was later chosen by UEFA as man of the match and, in the semi-final, he was one of two Portugal players to score in a 2–4 penalty shootout defeat to eventual winners Spain.


title: Pepe (footballer, born 1983)

text: In the 2014 World Cup, Pepe received a red card in the first half of Portugal's opening match against eventual champions Germany, for headbutting Thomas Müller late into the first half of an eventual 0–4 loss. At the time, Müller was sitting on the ground and Pepe walked back to Müller to headbutt him.


title: Pepe (footballer, born 1983)

text: Pepe was named man of the match in the Euro 2016 final, helping his team to keep a clean-sheet in a 1–0 extra-time victory over hosts France and win his nation's first ever international title. His performance in the final was particularly noted by Sky Sports and "Football Paradise" Juuso Kilpeläinen for being firm and disciplined.


title: Pepe (footballer, born 1983)

text: On 2 July 2017, in the third-place match against Mexico at the 2017 FIFA Confederations Cup, Pepe scored an injury time equaliser to send the match into extra-time. Portugal eventually won the match 2–1 to capture the bronze medal.


title: Pepe (footballer, born 1983)

text: In Portugal's opening match against Spain during the 2018 World Cup, Pepe went down after a collision with Spain forward Diego Costa, who then took the ball into the penalty area before scoring. The goal was checked by the video assistant referee (VAR), who allowed the goal to stand. In Portugal's second match, Pepe went down after he was tapped on the back by Morocco's Medhi Benatia. In the BBC studio, former footballer Rio Ferdinand called Pepe's dive "embarrassing". Former striker Didier Drogba also expressed derision for Pepe, stating "he's been doing this quite a few times". Pepe scored in Portugal's 2–1 defeat against Uruguay in the last 16.


title: Pepe (footballer, born 1983)

text: On 6 September 2018 in a friendly match against Croatia at the Estádio do Algarve, Pepe earned his 100th cap. He captained the side and headed an equaliser from Pizzi's cross to secure a 1–1 draw.


title: Pepe (footballer, born 1983)

text: Due to Zlatan Ibrahimović's injury, 38-year-old Pepe was the oldest outfield player at the delayed UEFA Euro 2020 finals in June 2021. On 11 November that year, he was sent off in a goalless draw away to the Republic of Ireland in 2022 FIFA World Cup qualification.


title: Pepe (footballer, born 1983)

text: In October 2022, he was named in Portugal's preliminary 55-man squad for the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar, being included in the final 26-man squad for the tournament. He scored Portugal's second goal in a thrashing 6–1 win in the round of 16 match against Switzerland; by doing so, at 39 years and 283 days old, he became the second-oldest player to ever score in the tournament, behind Cameroonian striker Roger Milla, who was 42 years and 39 days old when he scored against Russia in the 1994 FIFA World Cup.


title: Pepe (footballer, born 1983)

text: A quick, aggressive, physically strong, and tenacious defender, Pepe is known for his work-rate and hard-tackling style of play; due to his height, he is also an aerial threat on set-pieces. While he usually plays as a centre-back, he has also been used as a defensive midfielder at international level. However, despite his defensive abilities, he has also drawn criticism in the media due to his tendency to pick up cards, as he has often shown violent or unsportsmanlike behaviour, which includes diving, and violent challenges on the pitch.


title: Pepe (footballer, born 1983)

text: Pepe is married to Ana Sofia Moreira, whom he met in Porto in 2007. Together, they have two daughters.


title: Quora

text: Quora () is a social question-and-answer website based in Mountain View, California. It was founded on June 25, 2009, and made available to the public on June 21, 2010. Users can collaborate by editing questions and commenting on answers that have been submitted by other users. As of 2020, the website was visited by 300million users a month.


title: Quora

text: Quora was co-founded by former Facebook employees Adam D'Angelo and Charlie Cheever in June 2009. In an answer to the question "How did Adam D'Angelo and Charlie Cheever come up with the name Quora?" written on Quora in 2011, Charlie Cheever stated, "We spent a few hours brainstorming and writing down all the ideas that we could think of. After consulting with friends and eliminating ones we didn't love, we narrowed it down to 5 or 6 finalists, and eventually settled on Quora." Cheever went on to state, "The closest competition that [the name] Quora had was Quiver."


title: Quora

text: In March 2010, Quora, Inc. was valued at $86million. Quora first became available to the public on June 21, 2010, and was praised for its interface and for the quality of the answers written by its users, many of whom were recognized as experts in their fields. Quora's user base increased quickly, and by late December 2010, the site was seeing spikes of visitors five to ten times its usual load—so much that the website initially had difficulties handling the increased traffic. Until 2018, Quora did not show ads because "...ads can often be negative for user experience. Nobody likes banner ads, ads from shady companies, or ads that are irrelevant to their needs."


title: Quora

text: In June 2011, Quora redesigned the navigation and usability of its website. Co-founder Adam D'Angelo compared the redesigned Quora to Wikipedia, and stated that the changes to the website were made on the basis of what had worked and what had not when the website had experienced unprecedented growth six months earlier. In September 2012, co-founder Charlie Cheever stepped down as co-operator of the company, taking an advisory role. The other co-founder, Adam D'Angelo, continued to maintain a high degree of control over the company.


title: Quora

text: In January 2013, Quora launched a blogging platform allowing users to post non-answer content. Quora launched a full-text search of questions and answers on its website on March 20, 2013, and extended the feature to mobile devices in late May 2013. It also announced in May 2013 that usage metrics had tripled relative to the same time in the prior year. In November 2013, Quora introduced a feature called "Stats" to allow all Quora users to see summary and detailed statistics of how many people had viewed, upvoted, and shared their questions and answers. TechCrunch reported that, although Quora had no immediate plans for monetization, they believed that search ads would likely be their eventual source of revenue.


title: Quora

text: Quora was evolving into "a more organized Yahoo Answers, a classier Reddit, an opinionated Wikipedia", and became popular in tech circles. In April 2014, Quora raised $80million from Tiger Global at a reported $900million valuation. Quora was one of the Summer 2014 Y Combinator companies, although it was described as "the oldest Y-Combinator ever".


title: Quora

text: Users were able to add descriptions to questions. On December 8, 2015, these were limited to 300 characters, and questions themselves to 150, not affecting existing questions. On August 3, 2017, question details were discontinued entirely and replaced with an optional source URL input field to provide context, reportedly to encourage users to phrase questions more descriptively. Existing question details were stored in comments under respective questions.


title: Quora

text: In April 2016, Quora began a limited rollout of advertising on the site. The first ad placement that the company accepted was from Uber. Over the next few years the site began gradually to show more ads, but still maintained efforts to limit the number of ads and to keep the ads it did show relevant to the users seeing them.


title: Quora

text: In October 2016, Quora launched a Spanish version of its website to the public; in early 2017, a beta version of Quora in French was announced. In May 2017, beta versions in German and Italian were introduced. In September 2017 a beta version in Japanese was launched. In April 2018, Beta versions in Hindi, Portuguese, and Indonesian were launched. in September 2018, Quora announced that additional versions in Bengali, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish, and Dutch were planned.


title: Quora

text: On February 9, 2017, Quora announced changes to their anonymity feature, detaching anonymous questions and edits from accounts. When asking or answering anonymously, an anonymous edit link is generated, only through which the question or answer can be edited in the future.


title: Quora

text: Since then, commenting anonymously and toggling one's answer between anonymous and public is no longer possible. These changes went into effect on March 20, 2017. Users were able to request a list of anonymous edit links to their existing anonymous questions and answers until then.


title: Quora

text: In April 2017, Quora claimed to have 190million monthly unique visitors, up from 100million a year earlier. That same month, Quora was reported to have received Series D funding with a valuation of $1.8billion.


title: Quora

text: In September 2018, Quora reported that it was receiving 300million unique visitors every month. Despite its large number of registered users, Quora did not possess the same level of mainstream cultural dominance as sites like Twitter, which, at the time, had roughly 326million registered users. This may have been because a large number of registered users on the site did not use it regularly and many did not even know they had accounts since they had either created them unknowingly through other social media sites linked to Quora or created them years previously and forgotten about them. Quora uses popups and interstitials to force users to login or register before they can see more of the content, similar to a metered paywall.


title: Quora

text: In December 2018, Quora announced that approximately 100million user accounts were affected by a data breach. The hacked information included users' names, email addresses, encrypted passwords, data from social networks like Facebook and Twitter if people had chosen to link them to their Quora accounts, questions they had asked, and answers they had written. Adam D'Angelo stated, "The overwhelming majority of the content accessed was already public on Quora, but the compromise of account and other private information is serious." Compromised information could also allow hackers to log into a Quora user's connected social media accounts, via access tokens. A class action lawsuit, case number 5:18-cv-07597-BLF, was filed in the Northern District of California, on behalf of named plaintiffs in New Jersey and Colorado by Capstone Law and Franklin D. Azar & Associates, P.C.


title: Quora

text: By May 2019, Quora was valued at $2billion as a company and it was finalizing a $60million investment round, which was led by Valor Equity Partners, a private equity firm with ties to Tesla, Inc. and SpaceX. In spite of this, the site still showed very few ads compared to other sites of its kind and the company was still struggling to turn a profit, having made only $20million in revenue in 2018. Several investors passed on the opportunity to invest in Quora, citing the company's "poor track record of actually making money." Schleifer characterized the disparity between Quora's valuation as a company and its actual profits as a result of "the high valuation for virtually everything these days in the tech sector."


title: Quora

text: In December 2019, Quora announced that it would open its first international engineering office in Vancouver, which would deal with machine learning and other engineering functions. That same month, Quora launched its Arabic, Gujarati, Hebrew, Kannada, Malayalam, and Telugu versions.


title: Quora

text: In January 2020, Quora laid off an undisclosed number of employees at its San Francisco Bay Area and New York offices for financial reasons.


title: Quora

text: In June 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Adam D'Angelo announced that Quora would permanently allow for remote work.


title: Quora

text: On 19 April, Quora eliminated the requirement that users use their real names and allowed users to use pseudonyms.


title: Quora

text: On 5 August, Quora began allowing contributors to monetize their content. In addition, the platform launched a subscription service called Quora+ which allows subscribers to pay a $5 monthly fee or a $50 annual subscription to access content that any creator chooses to put behind a paywall.


title: Quora

text: URLs of questions contain only the question title without a numeric identifier as used on Stack Exchange sites (in addition to a URL slug), and codice_1 before the title, if the question is unanswered.


title: Quora

text: With the help of asynchronous JavaScript and XML, some site functionality resembles instant messaging, such as updating follow counts and an indicator showing that a user is typing an answer.


title: Quora

text: Prior to April 19, 2021, Quora required users to register with the complete form of their real names rather than an Internet pseudonym or other screen name; although verification of names was not required, false names could be reported by the community. This was done with the ostensible intent of adding credibility to answers. Users have the option to write their answers anonymously. Visitors unwilling to log in or use cookies have had to resort to workarounds to use the site. Users may also log in with their Google or Facebook accounts by using the OpenID protocol. The Real Name Policy was rescinded on April 19, 2021.


title: Quora

text: As of 2011, the Quora community included answers by some well-known people such as Jimmy Wales, Richard A. Muller, Clayton C. Anderson, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Adrián Lamo, as well as some current and former professional athletic personalities, scientists, and other experts in their fields.


title: Quora

text: Quora allows users to create user profiles with a name and photo, and access to edit count and other site use statistics. In August 2012, blogger Ivan Kirigin pointed out that acquaintances and followers could see his activity, including which questions he had looked at. In response, Quora stopped showing question views in feeds later that month. By default, Quora exposes its users' profiles to search engines. Users can disable this feature.


title: Quora

text: Quora has developed its own proprietary algorithm to rank answers, which works similarly to Google's PageRank. Quora uses Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud technology to host the servers that run its website.


title: Quora

text: Quora supports various features to moderate content posted by users. Quora relies on user reporting, and sometimes human moderators, although many complain that most of the more recent moderation actually comes from AI "bots" looking for specific keywords in order to flag content, without human beings doing as much supervision as was done when the site was newer and the membership was smaller and more manageable. Many members, and former members whose numbers are rapidly growing, complain that in its current state, there is little logic behind moderation decisions, with racism, misogyny, and hate speech routinely allowed, while legitimate content is deleted if it is reported by those who disagree with said content. Many point to large-scale personnel layoffs as the reason that moderation by AI is often random and illogical, with appeals often ignored.


title: Quora

text: In November 2012, Quora introduced the Top Writers Program as a way to recognize individuals who had made especially valuable content contributions to the site and encourage them to continue. About 150 writers were chosen each year. Top writers were invited to occasional exclusive events and received gifts such as branded clothing items and books. The company believed that by cultivating a group of core users who were particularly invested in the site, a positive feedback loop of user engagement would be created.


title: Quora

text: After not selecting any 2019 or 2020 English-language Top Writers, the program was officially retired in April 2021 but will continue in other languages.


title: Quora

text: Quora was reviewed extensively by the media in 2010. Quora was hacked in 2018, leading to loss of information of users to hackers. According to Robert Scoble, Quora succeeded in combining attributes of Twitter and Facebook. Later, in 2011, Scoble criticized Quora for being a "horrid service for blogging" and, although a decent question and answer website, not substantially better than alternatives.


title: Quora

text: Quora was highly criticized for removing question details in August 2017. According to some users, the removal of question details limited the ability to submit personal questions and questions requiring code excerpts, multimedia, or complexity of any sort that could not fit into the length limit for a URL. According to an official product update announcement, the removal of question details was made to emphasize "canonical" questions.


title: Quora

text: The moderation system of Quora, which relies largely on automation, has been frequently criticized as ineffective, inconsistent, and opaque from the perspective of users. The website automatically flags seemingly innocuous actions (such as pasting a web address in order to cite a source) while appearing to ignore answers, posts, and comments that users have reported as false, highly inflammatory, or harassing. Moderation decisions can be appealed by users, but Quora's handling of appeals is criticized as automated and impersonal, leaving many to wonder how little of the website's moderation is performed by human staff.


title: Quora

text: The inconsistency of Quora moderation has been blamed for the proliferation of harmful prejudices on the website. In 2014, in addition to being privately harassed, female users noted a ubiquity of pointed, sexist questions about women with more clearly sexist question details whereas the same kinds of questions rephrased to be about men were quickly taken down. One user was subject of a sexually defamatory post containing a photo of her that was taken down by moderation only after the incident was publicized online. Racism and extreme far right viewpoints have been noted to be ubiquitous on Quora despite its policies.


title: Quora

text: There has also been an increase of anti-Semitism on the website, as exemplified by a community for Holocaust denial.


title: Quora

text: In 2018, the "People's Daily", the official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, reported on successful results from coordinated use of Quora in foreign propaganda campaigns.


title: Boko Haram

text: Boko Haram, officially known as Jamā'at Ahl as-Sunnah lid-Da'wah wa'l-Jihād (), is an Islamic terrorist organization based in northeastern Nigeria, which is also active in Chad, Niger, and northern Cameroon. In 2016, the group split, resulting in the emergence of a hostile faction known as the Islamic State's West Africa Province.


title: Boko Haram

text: Founded by Mohammed Yusuf in 2002, the group was led by Abubakar Shekau from 2009 until his death in 2021, although it splintered into other groups after Yusuf's death and also in 2015. When the group was first formed, their main goal was to "purify" Islam in northern Nigeria, believing jihad should be delayed until the group was strong enough to overthrow the Nigerian government. The group formerly aligned itself with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. The group has been known for its brutality, and since the insurgency started in 2009, Boko Haram has killed tens of thousands of people, in frequent attacks against the police, armed forces and civilians. It has resulted in the deaths of more than 300,000 children, displaced 2.3 million from their homes, and was the world's deadliest terror group during part of the mid-2010s according to the Global Terrorism Index. Boko Haram has contributed to regional food crises and famines.


title: Boko Haram

text: After its founding in 2002, Boko Haram's increasing radicalisation led to the suppression operation by the Nigerian military and the killing of its leader Mohammed Yusuf in July 2009. Its unexpected resurgence, following a mass prison break in September 2010 in Bauchi, was accompanied by increasingly sophisticated attacks, initially against soft targets, but progressing in 2011 to include suicide bombings of police buildings and the United Nations office in Abuja. The government's establishment of a state of emergency at the beginning of 2012, extended in the following year to cover the entire northeast of Nigeria, led to an increase in both security force abuses and militant attacks.


title: Boko Haram

text: Of the 2.3 million people displaced by the conflict since May 2013, at least 250,000 left Nigeria and fled to Cameroon, Chad or Niger. Boko Haram killed over 6,600 people in 2014. The group has carried out massacres including the killing by fire of 59 schoolboys in February 2014 and mass abductions including the kidnapping of 276 schoolgirls in Chibok, Borno State, Nigeria, in April 2014. Corruption in the security services and human rights abuses committed by them have hampered efforts to counter the unrest.


title: Boko Haram

text: In mid-2014, the militants gained control of swaths of territory in and around their home state of Borno, estimated at in January 2015, but did not capture the state capital, Maiduguri, where the group was originally based. On 7 March 2015, Boko Haram's leader Abubakar Shekau pledged allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. According to the BBC, due to internal disputes between the two groups, hundreds of terrorists left Boko Haram and formed their own organization, named "Islamic State's West Africa Province". In September 2015, the Director of Information at the Defence Headquarters of Nigeria announced that all Boko Haram camps had been destroyed but attacks from the group continue. In 2019, the president of Nigeria, Muhammadu Buhari, claimed that Boko Haram was "technically defeated". Shekau was killed and confirmed to be dead in May 2021.


title: Boko Haram

text: The organization's name has always been Group of the People of Sunnah for Dawa and Jihad (). It was also known as the West African Province ("Wilayat Garb Ifrqiya"), and, after pledging allegiance to Islamic State in 2015, was briefly called Islamic State in West Africa (ISWA) or Islamic State's West African Province (ISWAP). The group fractured in 2016, however, and ISWAP and Boko Haram are now separate groups.


title: Boko Haram

text: The name "Boko Haram" is usually translated as "Western education is forbidden". "Haram" is from the Arabic ("ḥarām", "forbidden"; although the word ḥaram means sanctuary); and the Hausa word "boko" (the first vowel is long, the second pronounced in a low tone), meaning "fake", which is used to refer to secular Western education. In a 2009 statement they denounced that translation as the work of the "infidel media", claiming the true translation is "Western Civilization is forbidden", and that they are not "opposed to formal education coming from the West" but "believe in the supremacy of Islamic culture (not education)". Other translations in English include "Western influence is a sin", and "Westernization is sacrilege". Until the death of its founder Mohammed Yusuf, the group was also reportedly known as "Yusifiyya". Northern Nigerians have commonly dismissed Western education as "ilimin boko" ("fake education") and secular schools as "makaranta boko".


title: Boko Haram

text: Some analysts have emphasized economic causes as a factor in Boko Haram's success. Wealth in Nigeria has been concentrated among members of a small political elite, mainly in the Christian south of the country . Nigeria is Africa's biggest economy, but 60% of its population of 173 million (as of 2013) live on less than $1 a day.


title: Boko Haram

text: The sharia law imposed by local authorities, beginning with Zamfara in January 2000 and covering 12 northern states by late 2002, may have promoted links between Boko Haram and political leaders, but was considered by the group to have been corrupted.


title: Boko Haram

text: Academic Atta Barkindo explains the group's "baffling" ability to "maintain momentum" in part by the "accumulated and unaddressed grievances" against colonialism in the region, including the colonial boundaries (of Nigeria, Ghana, etc.) established by Europeans that bear no resemblance to "pre-colonial empires, ethnic or cultural territories", and by the group's use of the "historical narrative" of the Islamic Kanem–Bornu Empire. Mohammad Yusuf preached that, "our land was an Islamic state before it was turned into a land of kafir (infidel), the current system is contrary to true Muslim beliefs".


title: Boko Haram

text: The political interests and bias of the Nigerian elite is believed to play a major role in the thriving of the activities of the organization: the political leadership requires that the press refer to the group as bandits rather than terrorists, which downplays the threat they pose.


title: Boko Haram

text: In a discussion organized by the Woodrow Wilson Center, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, a former president of Nigeria, highlighted the low level of literacy and education in the Northern parts of the country, as contributing to the perpetuation of Boko Haram.


title: Boko Haram

text: According to Obasanjo, illiterate and uneducated children and youths are more likely to be drawn into the ranks of the terrorist organization.


title: Boko Haram

text: The founder of Boko Haram, Muhammad Yusuf, was reportedly inspired by the controversial Islamic preacher Mohammed Marwa (Maitatsine), who condemned the reading of any books other than the Quran. Yusuf, himself, in one 2009 interview, expressed his opposition not only to Western education, but to the theory of evolution, a spherical (not flat) Earth, and to the idea that rain comes from "evaporation caused by the sun" rather than being created and sent down directly by God.


title: Boko Haram

text: Boko Haram opposes the Westernization of Nigerian society, which it blames for "Nigeria's culture of corruption", and demands the establishment of an Islamic state in Nigeria. It developed into a jihadist group in 2009. As Sunni Salafi Jihadis, the group strives to re-establish the Islamic caliphate and bring all peoples under its domain, doing away with modern states and patriotic feeling towards them. After Boko Haram declared its allegiance to the Islamic State, an IS statement proclaimed "It was the rejection of nationalism that drove the "mujahidin" (jihad fighters) in Nigeria to give "bay'ah" (fealty) to the Islamic State and wage war against the Nigerian "murtaddin" (apostates) fighting for the Nigerian "taghut" (idolatrous tyrant)". The movement is diffuse, and fighters who are associated with it follow the Salafi doctrine.


title: Boko Haram

text: Members' beliefs tend to be centered on strict adherence to Wahabism, which is an extremely strict form of Sunni Islam that sees many other forms of Islam as idolatrous.


title: Boko Haram

text: The group has denounced the members of the Sufi and the Shiite sects as infidels, and also mainstream Sunni Muslims who fail to support their jihad. This willingness to takfir – i.e. accuse self-professed Muslims of being apostates from Islam and thus subject to execution – is a departure from mainstream Islam but not Salafi jihadism.


title: Boko Haram

text: An insurgent seeking to overthrow a Muslim government is handicapped by the mainstream Islamic doctrine forbidding the killing or enslaving of other Muslims – such as government authorities, military or mainstream Muslims who fail to embrace the insurgency. Takfiring – declaring apostates those who oppose the jihadis – has the advantage of not only eliminating that prohibition, but making the killing of these Muslims a "religious obligation". In a 18 December 2016 speech to his commanders, Shekau proclaimed that 'even if a woman is praying and fasting, once she engages in democracy I can capture her in a battle'.


title: Boko Haram

text: Before it was colonized and subsequently incorporated into the British Empire as Colonial Nigeria in 1900, the Bornu Empire ruled the territory where Boko Haram is currently active. It was a sovereign sultanate run according to the principles of the Constitution of Medina, with a majority Kanuri Muslim population. In 1903, both the Borno Emirate and Sokoto Caliphate had come under British rule. At this time, Christian missionaries spread the Christian message in the region and converted a large segment of the Nigerian populace. British rule ended when Nigeria was granted independence in 1960.


title: Boko Haram

text: Except for a brief period of civilian rule between 1979 and 1983, Nigeria was governed by a series of military dictatorships from 1966 until the advent of democracy in 1999.


title: Boko Haram

text: According to the Borno Sufi Imam Sheik Fatahi, Yusuf was trained by the Kano Salafi Izala Sheik Ja'afar Mahmud Adamu, who called him the "leader of young people"; the two split some time in 2002–2004. They both preached in Maiduguri's Indimi Mosque, which was attended by the deputy governor of Borno. Many of the group were reportedly inspired by Mohammed Marwa, known as Maitatsine ("He who curses others"), a self-proclaimed prophet ("annabi", a Hausa word usually used only to describe the founder of Islam) born in Northern Cameroon who condemned the reading of books other than the Quran. In a 2009 BBC interview, Yusuf, expressed similarly pre-modern ideas on evolution, a flat earth, and rain sent directly from God rather than evaporation. Followers of Maitatsine "wreaked havoc" in northern cities of Nigeria "off and on" from 1980 to 1985.


title: Boko Haram

text: Ethnic militancy is thought to have been one of the causes of the 1967–1970 civil war; religious violence reached a new height in 1980 in Kano, the largest city in the north of the country, where the Muslim fundamentalist sect Yan Tatsine ("followers of Maitatsine") instigated riots that resulted in four or five thousand deaths.


title: Boko Haram

text: In the ensuing military crackdown, Maitatsine was killed, fuelling a backlash of increased violence that spread across other northern cities over the next twenty years. Social inequality and poverty contributed both to the Maitatsine and Boko Haram uprisings.


title: Boko Haram

text: In the decades since the end of British rule, politicians and academics from the mainly Islamic North have expressed their fundamental opposition to Western education. Political ethno-religious interest groups, whose membership includes influential political, military and religious leaders, have thrived in Nigeria, though they were largely suppressed under military rule. Their paramilitary wings, formed since the country's return to civilian rule, have been implicated in much of the sectarian violence in the years following. The Arewa People's Congress, the militia wing of the Arewa Consultative Forum, the main political group representing the interests of northern Nigeria, is a well-funded group with military and intelligence expertise and is considered capable of engaging in military action, including covert bombing.


title: Boko Haram

text: Mohammed Yusuf founded the sect that became known as Boko Haram in 2002 in Maiduguri, the capital of the north-eastern state of Borno. He established a religious complex and school that attracted poor Muslim families from across Nigeria and neighbouring countries. The center had the political goal of creating an Islamic state, and became a recruiting ground for jihadis. By denouncing the police and state corruption, Yusuf attracted followers from unemployed youth. He is reported to have used the existing infrastructure in Borno of the Izala Society (Jama'at Izalatil Bidiawa Iqamatus Sunnah), a popular conservative Islamic sect, to recruit members, before breaking away to form his own faction. The Izala were originally welcomed into government, along with people sympathetic to Yusuf. Boko Haram conducted its operations more or less peacefully during the first seven years of its existence, withdrawing from society into remote north-eastern areas, believing it was important to develop strength before waging jihad. The government repeatedly ignored warnings about the increasingly militant character of the organization. The Council of Ulama advised the government and the Nigerian Television Authority not to broadcast Yusuf's preaching, but their warnings were ignored. Yusuf's arrest elevated him to hero status. Borno's Deputy Governor Alhaji Dibal has reportedly claimed that al-Qaeda had ties with Boko Haram, but broke them when they decided that Yusuf was an unreliable person. Stephen Davis, a former Anglican clergyman who has negotiated with Boko Haram many times blames local Nigerian politicians who support local bandits like Boko Haram in order for them to make life difficult for their political opponents. In particular Davis has blamed the former governor of Borno State Ali Modu Sheriff, who initially supported Boko Haram, but no longer needed them after the 2007 elections and stopped funding them. Sheriff denies the accusations.


title: Boko Haram

text: Boko Haram and ISIL were initially allies. The two groups however became enemies due to territorial disputes, as ISIL tried to conquer the zones under Boko Haram's control.


title: Boko Haram

text: In July 2014, Shekau released a 16-minute video where he voiced support for ISIL's head Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, al-Qaeda's head Ayman al-Zawahiri and Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Omar. In March 2015, Shekau pledged allegiance to ISIS self-styled caliph Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi and became "West African Province" ("Wilayat Garb Ifriqiyah"), i.e. the West African province of the Islamic State. However, in August 2016, Al-Baghdadi replaced Shekau with Abu Musab al-Barnawi, the son of the Boko Haram's previous leader Muhammad Yusuf, their motivation (at least according to one source) being to trim back Shekau's tendency to apply takfir (accusations of apostasy) to "all mainstream Muslims". Shekau responded to his demotion by breaking off from ISIS under his groups old name of "Jamā'at Ahl as-Sunnah lid-Da'wah wa'l-Jihād" (JAS).


title: Boko Haram

text: Shortly before it pledged allegiance to ISIL, the government launched the 2015 West African offensive during which Boko Haram lost most of the territory it had occupied over time. Following this the group retreated to the Sambisa Forest and commenced guerilla warfare tactics.


title: Boko Haram

text: In August 2016, ISIL attempted to remove Shekau from his leadership role and replace him with Abu Musab al-Barnawi. The reason behind this was that Shekau had disobeyed Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi's order to cease targeting Muslim civilians. Shekau rejected the move, leading to a split between the groups. As of 2017, there were three factions which were all Boko Haram in origin, all rejecting "democracy, secularism and Western influence", and seeking to establish an Islamic state implementing sharia. These were the "West African Province" which is part of ISIL; "Jamā'at Ahl as-Sunnah lid-Da'wah wa'l-Jihād" (Boko Haram), under Sheaku's control; and "Ansaru" which is loyal to al-Qaeda and rejects the caliphate of al-Bagdadi, though it shares his disapproval of the "wide-reaching interpretation of takfir" of Shekau.


title: Boko Haram

text: Since 2018, there has been major spike in attacks by Boko Haram, concentrated in Borno State, in order to be the prevalent terror group in the country. Attacks by Boko Haram resulted in over 1700 fatalities in first half of 2019, including casualties of its own members. The terrorist organization has been able to recruit in large numbers from climate change induced poverty and violence struck Lake Chad basin by offering small loans and promising big rewards. It also continues to kidnap and force young boys to join them. Boko Haram is better equipped with drones, weapons and vehicles captured from and sometimes abandoned by Nigerian military during ambush. To better fortify itself, Nigerian military has concentrated rural population in its garrison towns. This has allowed Boko Haram to rein freely in countryside.


title: Boko Haram

text: For at least four years since the split happened, the two groups were not enemies and sometimes co-operated in some terror attacks. However, Boko Haram and ISWAP later became enemies since 2021 or even a year before. ISWAP gunmen targeted Shekau in an attack carried out on May 20, 2021. Several Boko Haram members were killed in the operation, while Shekau blew himself up, or tried to do so, in order to avoid a capture. It was the first major clash between the two groups. His death was confirmed by his loyalists led by Bakura Sa'alaba in June.


title: Boko Haram

text: Boko Haram's attacks consist of suicide bombings as well as conventional armed assaults on both civilian and military targets. Following the Chibok kidnapping in 2014, the majority of Boko Haram's suicide bombers are female; many are teenagers and the youngest was seven. Boko Haram jihadists rely on stealth, blending into local communities or hiding in the vast countryside. Critics accuse the Nigerian military of not properly equipping its soldiers to fight Boko Haram.


title: Boko Haram

text: In 2009, police began an investigation into the group, code-named Operation Flush. On 26 July, security forces arrested nine Boko Haram members and confiscated weapons and bomb-making equipment. Either this or a clash with police during a funeral procession led to revenge attacks on police and widespread rioting in Bauchi, Maiduguri, Potiskum in Yobe State and Wudil in Kano State. A joint military task force operation was launched in response. By 30 July, more than 700 people had been killed; police stations, prisons, government offices, schools and churches had been destroyed. Yusuf was arrested, and died in custody "while trying to escape". As had been the case decades earlier in the wake of the 1980 Kano riots, the killing of the leader of an extremist group would have unintended consequences. He was succeeded by Abubakar Shekau, formerly his second-in-command. A classified cable apparently sent from the U.S. Embassy in Abuja in November 2009, has been published on WikiLeaks:


title: Boko Haram

text: According to the leaked document, there were reports that Yusuf's deputy had survived, and audio tapes were believed to be in circulation in which Boko Haram threatened future attacks. Nevertheless, many observers did not anticipate imminent bloodshed. Security in Borno was downgraded. Borno government official Alhaji Boguma believed that the state deserved praise from the international community for ending the conflict in such a short time, and that the "wave of fundamentalism" had been "crushed".


title: Boko Haram

text: On 7 September, having regrouped under their new leader, Boko Haram broke 105 of its members out of prison in Bauchi along with over 600 other prisoners. The group went on to intensify their insurgency, launching many attacks in Nigeria, mostly in the north of the country.


title: Boko Haram

text: Under Shekau's leadership, the group continuously improved its operational capabilities. It launched a string of IED attacks against soft targets and its first vehicle-borne IED attack on 16 June 2011, killing six at Abuja's police headquarters. On 26 August, Boko Haram bombed the United Nations (UN) headquarters in Abuja, the first time they had struck a Western target. A spokesman claiming responsibility for the attack, in which 11 UN staff members died as well as 12 others, with more than 100 injured, warned of future planned attacks on U.S. and Nigerian government interests. Speaking soon after the U.S. embassy's announcement of the arrival in the country of the FBI, he went on to announce Boko Haram's terms for negotiation, i.e. the release of all imprisoned members. The increased sophistication of the group led observers to speculate that Boko Haram was affiliated with Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), which was active in Niger.


title: Boko Haram

text: Boko Haram has maintained a steady rate of attacks since 2011, striking a wide range of targets, multiple times per week. They have attacked politicians, religious leaders, security forces and civilian targets. The tactic of suicide bombing, used in the two attacks in the capital – on the police and UN headquarters – was new to Nigeria. In Africa as a whole, it had only been used by al-Shabaab in Somalia and to a lesser extent AQIM.


title: Boko Haram

text: Within hours of Goodluck Jonathan's presidential inauguration on 29 May 2011, Boko Haram carried out a series of bombings in Bauchi, Zaria and Abuja. The most successful of these was the attack on the army barracks in Bauchi. A spokesman for the group told BBC Hausa that the attack had been carried out, as a test of loyalty, by serving members of the military hoping to join the group. This charge was later refuted by an army spokesman who claimed: "This is not a banana republic". However, on 8 January 2012 the president said that Boko Haram had infiltrated both the army and the police, as well as the executive, parliamentary and legislative branches of government. Boko Haram's spokesman also claimed responsibility for the killing outside his home in Maiduguri of the politician Abba Anas Ibn Umar Garbai, the younger brother of the Shehu of Borno, who was the second most prominent Muslim in the country after the Sultan of Sokoto. He added: "We are doing what we are doing to fight injustice, if they stop their satanic ways of doing things and the injustices, we would stop what we are doing".


title: Boko Haram

text: This was one of several political and religious assassinations Boko Haram carried out that year, with the presumed intention of correcting what they say are injustices in the group's home state of Borno. Meanwhile, the trail of massacres continued relentlessly, apparently leading the country towards civil war. By the end of 2011, these conflicting strategies led observers to question the group's cohesion; comparisons were drawn with the diverse motivations of the militant factions of the oil-rich Niger Delta. Adding to the confusion, in November the State Security Service announced that four criminal syndicates were operating under the name Boko Haram.


title: Boko Haram

text: The common theme throughout the northeast was the targeting of police, who were regularly killed at work or in drive-by shootings at their homes, either in revenge for the killing of Yusuf, or as representatives of the state apparatus, or for no particular reason. Five officers were arrested for Yusuf's murder, which had no noticeable effect on the level of unrest. Opportunities for criminal enterprise flourished. Hundreds of police were dead and more than 60 police stations had been attacked by mid-2012. The government's response to this self-reinforcing trend towards insecurity was to invest heavily in security equipment, spending $5.5 billion, 20 percent of their overall budget, on bomb detection units, communications and transport; and $470 million on a Chinese CCTV system for Abuja, which has failed in its purpose of detecting or deterring acts of terror.


title: Boko Haram

text: The election defeat of former military dictator Muhammadu Buhari increased ethno-religious political tensions, as it broke the terms of a tacit agreement that the presidency would alternate after two terms of office between candidates from the Christian south and Muslim north of the country. Sectarian riots engulfed the twelve northern states of the country during the three days following the election, leaving more than 800 dead and 65,000 displaced.


title: Boko Haram

text: The subsequent campaign of violence by Boko Haram culminated in a string of bombings across the country on Christmas Day. In the outskirts of Abuja, 37 died in a church that had its roof blown off. One resident commented, "Cars were in flames and bodies littered everywhere", a phrase commonly repeated in international press reports about the bombings. Similar Christmas events had been reported in previous years. Jonathan declared a state of emergency on New Year's Eve in local government areas of Jos, Borno, Yobe and Niger and closed the international border in the north-east.


title: Boko Haram

text: Three days later they began a series of mostly small-scale attacks on Christians and members of the Igbo ethnic group, causing hundreds to flee. In Kano, on 20 January, they carried out by far their most deadly action yet, an assault on police buildings, killing 190. One of the victims was a TV reporter. The attacks included a combined use of car bombs, suicide bombers and IEDs, supported by uniformed gunmen.


title: Boko Haram

text: Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch published reports in 2012 that were widely quoted by government agencies and the media, based on research conducted over the course of the conflict in the worst affected areas of the country. The NGOs were critical of both security forces and Boko Haram. HRW stated "Boko Haram should immediately cease all attacks, and threats of attacks, that cause loss of life, injury, and destruction of property. The Nigerian government should take urgent measures to address the human rights abuses that have helped fuel the violent militancy". According to the 2012 US Department of State "Country Report on Human Rights Practices":


title: Boko Haram

text: Nigeria's Borno State, where Boko Haram is based, adjoins Lake Chad as do Niger, Cameroon and the country of Chad. The conflict and refugees spilled over the national borders to involve all four countries.


title: Boko Haram

text: In 2013, Boko Haram increased operations in Northern Cameroon, and were involved in skirmishes along the borders of Chad and Niger. They were linked to a number of kidnappings, often reportedly in association with the splinter group Ansaru, drawing towards them a higher level of international attention.


title: Boko Haram

text: The U.S. Bureau of Counterterrorism provides the following summary of Boko Haram's 2013 foreign operations:


title: Boko Haram

text: Boko Haram has often managed to evade the Nigerian Army by retreating into the hills around the border with Cameroon, whose army is apparently unwilling to confront them. Nigeria, Chad and Niger had formed a Multinational Joint Task Force in 1998. In February 2012, Cameroon signed an agreement with Nigeria to establish a Joint Trans-Border Security Committee, which was inaugurated in November 2013, when Cameroon announced plans to conduct "coordinated but separate" border patrols in 2014. It convened again in July 2014 to further improve cooperation between the two countries.


title: Boko Haram

text: In late 2013, Amnesty International received 'credible' information that over 950 inmates had died in custody, mostly in detention centres in Maiduguri and Damaturu, within the first half of the year. Official state corruption was also documented in December 2013 by the UK Home Office:


title: Boko Haram

text: The state of emergency was extended in May 2013 to cover the whole of the three north-eastern states of Borno, Adamawa and Yobe, raising tensions in the region. In the 12 months following the announcement, 250,000 fled the three states, followed by a further 180,000 between May and August 2014. A further 210,000 fled from bordering states, bringing the total displaced by the conflict to 650,000. Many thousands left the country. An August 2014 Amnesty International video showed Army and allied militia executing people, including by slitting their throats, and dumping their corpses in mass graves. According to Human Rights Watch, more than 130 villages and towns were attacked or controlled by the group.


title: Boko Haram

text: On 16 and 17 April, a massacre of dozens of civilians as well as the destruction of hundreds of homes and businesses occurred in Baga, Borno, during a battle between Boko Haram and the Nigerian Army.


title: Boko Haram

text: On 25 February, Boko Haram killed at least 59 males at the Federal Government College in Buni Yadi, Yobe. The school was attended by children aged 11 to 18.


title: Boko Haram

text: Some boys were burned alive in their dormitories while those who managed to escape the fire were shot or knifed to death. Some female students were abducted while others were threatened with death if they did not quit school and get married. All of the school's buildings were burned to the ground.


title: Boko Haram

text: On 14–15 April, Boko Haram kidnapped 276 schoolgirls from Chibok, Borno. Shekau announced his intention of selling them into slavery. More than 50 escaped. The incident brought Boko Haram extended global media attention, much of it focused on the pronouncements of the U.S. Former First Lady Michelle Obama Faced with condemnation for his perceived incompetence, as well as allegations from Amnesty International of state collusion, President Jonathan responded by hiring a Washington PR firm.


title: Boko Haram

text: Parents of the missing girls and those who had escaped were kept waiting until July to meet with the president, which caused them concern. In October, the government announced the girls' imminent release, but the information proved unreliable. The announcement to the media of a peace agreement and the imminent release of all the missing girls was followed days later by a video message in which Shekau stated that no such meeting had taken place and that the girls had been "married off". The announcement to the media, unaccompanied by any evidence of the reality of the agreement, was thought by analysts to have been a political ploy by the president to raise his popularity before his confirmation of his candidacy in the 2015 general election. Earlier in the year, the girls' plight had featured on "#BringBackOurGirls" political campaign posters in the streets of the capital, which the president denied knowledge of and soon took down after news of criticism surfaced. These posters, which were interpreted, to the dismay of campaigners for the girls' recapture, as being designed to benefit from the fame of the kidnapping, had also been part of Jonathan's "pre-presidential campaign". In September, "#BringBackGoodluck2015" campaign posters again drew criticism. The official announcement of the president's candidacy was made before cheering crowds in Abuja on 11 November.


title: Boko Haram

text: In February 2016, the organizations International Alert and UNICEF published a study revealing that girls and women released from Boko Haram captivity often face rejection upon returning to their communities and families, in part due to a culture of stigma around sexual violence.


title: Boko Haram

text: Boko Haram continued to increase its presence in northern Cameroon. On 16 May, ten Chinese workers were abducted in a raid on a construction company camp in Waza, near the Nigerian border. Vehicles and explosives were also taken in the raid, and one Cameroonian soldier was killed. Cameroon's anti-terrorist Rapid Intervention Battalion attempted to intervene but were vastly outnumbered. In July, the deputy prime minister's home village was attacked by around 200 militants; his wife was kidnapped, along with the Sultan of Kolofata and his family. At least 15 people, including soldiers and police, were killed in the raid. The deputy prime minister's wife was subsequently released in October, along with 26 others including the ten Chinese construction workers who had been captured in May; authorities made no comment about any ransom, which the Cameroon government had previously claimed it never pays. In a separate attack, nine bus passengers and a soldier were shot dead and the son of a local chief was kidnapped. Hundreds of local youths are suspected to have been recruited. In August, the remote Nigerian border town of Gwoza was overrun and held by the group. In response to the increased militant activity, the Cameroonian president sacked two senior military officers and sent his army chief with 1000 reinforcements to the northern border region.


title: Boko Haram

text: Between May and July 2014, 8,000 Nigerian refugees arrived in the country, up to 25 percent suffering from acute malnutrition. Cameroon, which ranked 150 out of 186 on the 2012 UNDP HDI, hosted as of August 2014 107,000 refugees fleeing unrest in the CAR, a number that was expected to increase to 180,000 by the end of the year. A further 11,000 Nigerian refugees crossed the border into Cameroon and Chad during August.


title: Boko Haram

text: In the second half of December, the focus of activity switched to the Far North Region of Cameroon, beginning on the morning of 17 December when an army convoy was attacked with an IED and ambushed by hundreds of militants near the border town of Amchide, north of the state capital Maroua. One soldier was confirmed dead, and an estimated 116 militants were killed in the attack, which was followed by another attack overnight with unknown casualties. On 22 December, the Rapid Intervention Battalion followed up with an attack on a Boko Haram training camp near Guirdivig, arresting 45 militants and seizing 84 children aged 7–15 who were undergoing training, according to a statement from Cameroon's Ministry of Defense. The militants fled in pick-up trucks carrying an unknown number of their dead; no information on army casualties was released. On 27–28 December, five villages were simultaneously attacked, and for the first time the Cameroon military launched air attacks when Boko Haram briefly occupied an army camp. Casualty figures were not released. According to Information Minister Issa Tchiroma:


title: Boko Haram

text: The attack on Gwoza signalled a change in strategy for Boko Haram, as the group continued to capture territory in north-eastern and eastern areas of Borno, as well as in Adamawa and Yobe. Attacks across the border were repelled by the Cameroon military. The territorial gains were officially denied by the Nigerian military. In a video obtained by the news agency AFP on 24 August, Shekau announced that Gwoza was now part of an Islamic caliphate. The town of Bama, from the state capital Maiduguri, was reported to have been captured at the beginning of September, resulting in thousands of residents fleeing to Maiduguri, even as residents there were themselves attempting to flee. The military continued to deny Boko Haram's territorial gains, which were, however, confirmed by local vigilantes who had managed to escape. The militants were reportedly killing men and teenage boys in the town of over 250,000 inhabitants. Soldiers refused orders to advance on the occupied town; hundreds fled across the border into Cameroon, but were promptly repatriated. Fifty-four deserters were later sentenced to death by firing squad.


title: Boko Haram

text: On 17 October, the Chief of the Defence Staff announced that a ceasefire had been brokered, stating: "I have accordingly directed the service chiefs to ensure immediate compliance with this development in the field". Despite a lack of confirmation from the militants, the announcement was publicised in newspaper headlines worldwide. However, within 48 hours the same publications were reporting that Boko Haram attacks had continued unabated. It was reported that factionalisation would make such a deal particularly difficult to achieve.


title: Boko Haram

text: On 29 October, Mubi, a town of 200,000 in Adamawa, fell to the militants, further undermining confidence in the peace talks. Thousands fled south to Adamawa's capital city, Yola. Amid media speculation that the ceasefire announcement had been part of President Jonathan's re-election campaign, a video statement released by Boko Haram through the normal communication channels via AFP on 31 October stated that no negotiations had in fact taken place. Mubi was said to have been recaptured by the army on 13 November. On the same day, Boko Haram seized Chibok, but two days later the army recaptured the largely deserted town. As of 16 November it was estimated that more than twenty towns and villages had been taken control of by the militants. There were 27 Boko Haram attacks during the November, killing at least 786.


title: Boko Haram

text: On 3 December, it was reported that several towns in North Adamawa had been recovered by the Nigerian military with the help of local vigilantes and Bala Nggilari, the governor of Adamawa state, said that the military were aiming to recruit 4,000 vigilantes. On 13 December, Boko Haram attacked the village of Gumsuri in Borno, killing over 30 and kidnapping over 100 women and children.


title: Boko Haram

text: On 3 January, Boko Haram attacked Baga, seizing it and the multinational joint task force military base. As the militants advanced the army fled. Some residents managed to escape to Chad. Although the death toll of the massacre was earlier estimated by Western media to be upwards of 2000, the Defence Ministry dismissed these claims as "speculation and conjecture", estimating the figure to be closer to 150. On 25 January, the militants advanced to Monguno, capturing the town and a nearby military base. Their advance on Maiduguri and Konduga, 40 km to the southeast, was repelled. After retaking Monguno, the army expelled the militants from Baga on 21 February.