title: Madoff investment scandal

text: On March 10, 2009, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York filed an 11-count criminal information, or complaint, charging Madoff with 11 federal crimes: securities fraud, investment adviser fraud, mail fraud, wire fraud, three counts of money laundering, false statements, perjury, making false filings with the SEC, and theft from an employee benefit plan. The complaint stated that Madoff had defrauded his clients of almost $65 billion – thus spelling out the largest Ponzi scheme in history, as well as the largest investor fraud committed by a single person.


title: Madoff investment scandal

text: Madoff pleaded guilty to three counts of money laundering. Prosecutors alleged that he used the London Office, Madoff Securities International Ltd.m to launder more than $250 million of client money by transferring client money from the investment-advisory business in New York to London, and then back to the U.S., to support the U.S. trading operation of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC. Madoff gave the appearance that he was trading in Europe for his clients.


title: Madoff investment scandal

text: On March 12, 2009, Madoff appeared in court in a plea proceeding, and pleaded guilty to all charges. There was no plea agreement between the government and Madoff; he simply pleaded guilty and signed a waiver of indictment. The charges carried a maximum sentence of 150 years in prison, as well as mandatory restitution and fines up to twice the gross gain or loss derived from the offenses. If the government's estimate were correct, Madoff would have to pay $7.2 billion in restitution. A month earlier, Madoff settled the SEC's civil suit against him. He accepted a lifetime ban from the securities industry, and also agreed to pay an undisclosed fine.


title: Madoff investment scandal

text: In his pleading allocution, Madoff admitted to running a Ponzi scheme and expressed regret for his "criminal acts". He stated that he had begun his scheme some time in the early 1990s. He wished to satisfy his clients' expectations of high returns he had promised, even though it was during an economic recession. He admitted that he hadn't invested any of his clients' money since the inception of his scheme. Instead, he merely deposited the money into his business account at Chase Manhattan Bank. He admitted to false trading activities masked by foreign transfers and false SEC returns. When clients requested account withdrawals, he paid them from the Chase account, claiming the profits were the result of his own unique "split-strike conversion strategy". He said he had every intention of terminating the scheme, but it proved "difficult, and ultimately impossible" to extricate himself. He eventually reconciled himself to being exposed as a fraud.


title: Madoff investment scandal

text: Only two of at least 25 victims who had requested to be heard at the hearing spoke in open court against accepting Madoff's plea of guilt.


title: Madoff investment scandal

text: Judge Denny Chin accepted his guilty plea and remanded him to incarceration at the Manhattan Metropolitan Correctional Center until sentencing. Chin said that Madoff was now a substantial flight risk given his age, wealth, and the possibility of spending the rest of his life in prison.


title: Madoff investment scandal

text: Madoff's attorney, Ira Sorkin, filed an appeal, to return him back to his "penthouse arrest", await sentencing, and to reinstate his bail conditions, declaring he would be more amenable to cooperate with the government's investigation, and prosecutors filed a notice in opposition. On March 20, 2009, the appellate court denied his request.


title: Madoff investment scandal

text: On June 26, 2009, Chin ordered Madoff to forfeit $170 million in assets. His wife Ruth was to relinquish her claim to $80 million worth of assets, leaving her with $2.5 million in cash. The settlement did not prevent the SEC and Irving Picard from continuing to make claims against Ruth Madoff's funds in the future. Madoff had earlier requested to shield $70 million in assets for Ruth, arguing that it was unconnected to the fraud scheme.


title: Madoff investment scandal

text: Prosecutors recommended a prison sentence of 150 years, the maximum possible under federal sentencing guidelines. They informed Chin that Irving Picard, the trustee overseeing bankruptcy proceedings for the Madoff organization, had indicated that "Mr. Madoff has not provided meaningful cooperation or assistance." The Bureau of US Prisons had recommended 50 years, while defense lawyer Ira Sorkin had recommended 12 years, arguing that Madoff had confessed. The judge granted Madoff permission to wear his personal clothing at sentencing.


title: Madoff investment scandal

text: On June 29, Judge Chin sentenced Madoff to 150 years in prison, as recommended by the prosecution. Chin said he had not received any mitigating letters from friends or family testifying to Madoff's good deeds, saying that "the absence of such support is telling." Commentators noted that this was in contrast to other high-profile white collar trials such as those of Andrew Fastow, Jeffrey Skilling, and Bernard Ebbers who were known for their philanthropy and/or cooperation to help victims; however, Madoff's victims included several charities and foundations, and the only person who pleaded for mercy was his defense lawyer Ira Sorkin.


title: Madoff investment scandal

text: Chin called the fraud "unprecedented" and "staggering", and stated that the sentence would deter others from committing similar frauds. He stated, "Here the message must be sent that Mr. Madoff's crimes were extraordinarily evil." Many victims, some of whom had lost their life savings, applauded the sentence. Chin agreed with prosecutors' contention that the fraud began at some point in the 1980s. He also noted Madoff's crimes were "off the charts" since federal sentencing guidelines for fraud only go up to $400 million in losses; Madoff swindled his investors out of several times that. Prosecutors estimated that, at the very least, Madoff was responsible for a loss of $13 billion, more than 32 times the federal cap; the commonly quoted loss of $65 billion is more than 162 times the cap.


title: Madoff investment scandal

text: Chin said "I have a sense Mr. Madoff has not done all that he could do or told all that he knows," noting that Madoff failed to identify accomplices, making it more difficult for prosecutors to build cases against others. Chin dismissed Sorkin's plea for leniency, stating that Madoff made substantial loans to family members and moved $15 million from the firm to his wife's account shortly before confessing. Picard also said that Madoff's failure to provide substantial assistance complicated efforts to locate assets. A former federal prosecutor suggested Madoff would have had the possibility of a sentence with parole if he fully cooperated with investigators, but Madoff's silence implied that there were other accomplices in the fraud, which led the judge to impose the maximum sentence. Chin also ordered Madoff to pay $17 billion in restitution.


title: Madoff investment scandal

text: Madoff apologized to his victims at the sentencing, saying, "I have left a legacy of shame, as some of my victims have pointed out, to my family and my grandchildren. This is something I will live in for the rest of my life. I'm sorry... I know that doesn't help you."


title: Madoff investment scandal

text: Madoff was incarcerated at Butner Federal Correctional Complex outside Raleigh, North Carolina. His inmate number was #61727-054.


title: Madoff investment scandal

text: On July 28, 2009, he gave his first jailhouse interview to Joseph Cotchett and Nancy Fineman, attorneys from San Francisco, because they threatened to sue his wife, Ruth, on behalf of several investors who lost fortunes. During the 4 hour session, he "answered every one of [the attorneys'] questions", and expressed remorse, according to Cotchett.


title: Madoff investment scandal

text: Madoff's combined assets were worth about $826 million at the time that they were frozen. Madoff provided a confidential list of his and his firm's assets to the SEC on December 31, 2008, which was subsequently disclosed on March 13, 2009, in a court filing. Madoff had no IRAs, no 401(k), no Keogh plan, no other pension plan, and no annuities. He owned less than a combined $200,000 in securities in Lehman Brothers, Morgan Stanley, Fidelity, Bear Stearns, and M&T. No offshore or Swiss bank accounts were listed.


title: Madoff investment scandal

text: On March 17, 2009, a prosecutor filed a document listing more assets, including $2.6 million in jewelry and about 35 sets of watches and cufflinks, more than $30 million in loans owed to the couple by their sons, and Ruth Madoff's interest in real estate funds sponsored by Sterling Equities, whose partners included Fred Wilpon. Ruth Madoff and Peter Madoff invested as "passive limited partners" in real estate funds sponsored by the company, as well as other venture investments. Assets also included the Madoffs' interest in Hoboken Radiology LLC in Hoboken, New Jersey; Delivery Concepts LLC, an online food ordering service in midtown Manhattan that operated as "delivery.com"; an interest in Madoff La Brea LLC; an interest in the restaurant, PJ Clarke's on the Hudson LLC; and Boca Raton, Florida-based Viager II LLC.


title: Madoff investment scandal

text: On March 2, 2009, Judge Louis Stanton modified an existing freeze order to surrender assets Madoff owned: his securities firm, real estate, artwork, and entertainment tickets, and granted a request by prosecutors that the existing freeze remain in place for the Manhattan apartment, and vacation homes in Montauk, New York, and Palm Beach, Florida. He also agreed to surrender his interest in Primex Holdings LLC, a joint venture between Madoff Securities and several large brokerages, designed to replicate the auction process on the New York Stock Exchange. Madoff's April 14, 2009, opening day New York Mets tickets were sold for $7,500 on eBay.


title: Madoff investment scandal

text: On April 13, 2009, a Connecticut judge dissolved the temporary asset freeze from March 30, 2009, and issued an order for Fairfield Greenwich Group executive Walter Noel to post property pledges of $10 million against his Greenwich home and $2 million against Jeffrey Tucker's. Noel agreed to the attachment on his house "with no findings, including no finding of liability or wrongdoing". Andres Piedrahita's assets continued to remain temporarily frozen because he was never served with the complaint. The principals were all involved in a lawsuit filed by the town of Fairfield, Connecticut, pension funds, which lost $42 million. The pension fund case was "Retirement Program for Employees of the Town of Fairfield v. Madoff", FBT-CV-09-5023735-S, Superior Court of Connecticut (Bridgeport). Maxam Capital and other firms that allegedly fed Madoff's fund, which could allow Fairfield to recover up to $75 million, were also part of the dissolution and terms.


title: Madoff investment scandal

text: Professor John Coffee, of Columbia University Law School, said that much of Madoff's money may be in offshore funds. The SEC believed keeping the assets secret would prevent them from being seized by foreign regulators and foreign creditors.


title: Madoff investment scandal

text: The "Montreal Gazette" reported on January 12, 2010, that there were unrecovered Madoff assets in Canada.


title: Madoff investment scandal

text: In December 2010, the widow Barbara Picower and others reached an agreement with Irving Picard to return $7.2 billion from the estate of her deceased husband Jeffrey Picower to other investors in the fraud. It was the largest single forfeiture in American judicial history.


title: Madoff investment scandal

text: In connection with the victim compensation process, on December 14 and 17, 2012, the Government filed motions requesting that the Court find restitution to be impracticable, thereby permitting the Government to distribute to victims the more than $2.35 billion forfeited to date as part of its investigation through the remission process, in accordance with Department of Justice regulations. Richard C. Breeden was retained to serve as Special Master on behalf of the Department of Justice to administer the process of compensating the victims through the Madoff Victim Fund.


title: Madoff investment scandal

text: The Madoff Recovery Initiative reports $14.377 billion in recoveries and settlement agreements as of December 18, 2020.


title: Madoff investment scandal

text: On February 4, 2009, the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan released a 162-page client list with at least 13,500 different accounts, but without listing the amounts invested. Individual investors who invested through Fairfield Greenwich Group, Ascot Partners, and Chais Investments were not included on the list.


title: Madoff investment scandal

text: Clients included banks, hedge funds, charities, universities, and wealthy individuals who had disclosed about $41 billion invested with Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC, according to a "Bloomberg News" tally, which may have included double counting of investors in feeder funds.


title: Madoff investment scandal

text: Although Madoff filed a report with the SEC in 2008 stating that his advisory business had only 11–25 clients and about $17.1 billion in assets, thousands of investors reported losses, and Madoff estimated the fund's assets at $50 billion.


title: Madoff investment scandal

text: Other notable clients included former Salomon Brothers economist Henry Kaufman, Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg, screenwriter Eric Roth, actors Kevin Bacon, Kyra Sedgwick, John Malkovich, Zsa Zsa Gabor, and Rue McClanahan, politician Frank Lautenberg, Mortimer Zuckerman, Baseball Hall of Fame pitcher Sandy Koufax, the Wilpon family (owners of the New York Mets), broadcaster Larry King and World Trade Center developer Larry Silverstein. The Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity lost $15.2 million, and Wiesel and his wife, Marion, lost their life savings.


title: Madoff investment scandal

text: According to "The Wall Street Journal" the investors with the largest potential losses, including feeder funds, were:


title: Madoff investment scandal

text: The feeder fund Thema International Fund as of November 30, 2008, had a then-purported net asset value invested in the fund of $1.1 billion.


title: Madoff investment scandal

text: Twenty-three investors with potential losses of $500,000 to $100 million were also listed, with a total potential loss of $540 million. The grand total potential loss in "The Wall Street Journal" table was $26.9 billion.


title: Madoff investment scandal

text: Some investors amended their initial estimates of losses to include only their original investment, since the profits Madoff reported were most likely fraudulent. Yeshiva University, for instance, said its actual incurred loss was its invested $14.5 million, not the $110 million initially estimated, which included falsified profits reported to the university by Madoff.


title: Madoff investment scandal

text: Although foundations are exempt from federal income taxes, they are subject to an excise tax, for failing to vet Madoff's proposed investments properly, to heed red flags, or to diversify prudently. Penalties may range from 10% of the amount invested during a tax year, to 25% if they fail to try to recover the funds. The foundation's officers, directors, and trustees faced up to a 15% penalty, with up to $20,000 fines for individual managers, per investment.


title: Madoff investment scandal

text: Criminal charges against five directors proceeded against Swiss wealth manager Aurelia Finance, which lost an alleged $800 million of client money. The directors' assets were frozen. In September 2015 they paid “substantial compensation” to settle the criminal complaints.


title: Madoff investment scandal

text: Clients primarily located in South America who invested with Madoff through the Spanish bank Grupo Santander, filed a class action against Santander in Miami. Santander proposed a settlement that would give the clients $2 billion worth of preferred stock in Santander based on each client's original investment. The shares pay a 2% dividend. Seventy percent of the Madoff/Santander investors accepted the offer.


title: Madoff investment scandal

text: On May 8, 2009, a lawsuit against UBP was filed on behalf of New York investor Andrea Barron in the U.S. District Court in Manhattan. Despite being a victim of Bernard Madoff's fraud, the bank offered in March 2009 to compensate eligible investors 50 percent of the money they initially invested with Madoff. In March 2010, the US District Court for the Southern District of New York threw out the class action against Union Bancaire Privée that had been brought under state law, holding that private securities class actions alleging misrepresentations or omissions must be brought under the federal securities laws.


title: Madoff investment scandal

text: On December 6, 2010, Union Bancaire Privée announced it had reached a settlement with Irving Picard, the trustee for Madoff Investment Securities. UBP agreed to pay as much as $500 million to resolve the trustee's claims. UBP was the first bank to settle the Madoff trustee's claim. With the settlement, the trustee agreed to discharge his "clawback" claims against UBP, its affiliates, and clients.


title: Madoff investment scandal

text: Bank Medici is an Austrian bank founded by Sonja Kohn, who met Madoff in 1985 while living in New York. Ninety percent of the bank's income was generated from Madoff investments.


title: Madoff investment scandal

text: In 1992 Kohn introduced Madoff to Mario Benbassat, founder of Genevalor Benbassat & Cie, and his two sons in New York, as a possible source of new funds for Madoff. Genevalor set up five European feeder funds, including $1.1bn Irish fund Thema International Fund set up by Thema Asset Management, a British Virgin Islands-based company 55 per cent owned by Genevalor, and invested almost $2 billion with Madoff. Thema International paid fees of 1.25 per cent ($13.75m a year) to Genevalor Benbasset & Cie.


title: Madoff investment scandal

text: In December 2008, Medici reported that two of its funds—Herald USA Fund and Herald Luxemburg Fund—were exposed to Madoff losses. On January 2, 2009, FMA, the Austria banking regulator, took control of Bank Medici and appointed a supervisor to control the bank. Bank Medici was sued by its customers both in the U.S. and in Austria. The Vienna State Prosecutor launched a criminal investigation of Bank Medici and Kohn, who had invested an estimated $2.1 billion with Madoff. On May 28, 2009, Bank Medici lost its Austrian banking license. Kohn and the bank were under investigation, but she was not accused of criminal wrongdoing.


title: Madoff investment scandal

text: The Innocence Project was partly funded by the JEHT Foundation, a private charity backed by a wealthy couple, Ken and Jeanne Levy-Church, financed with Madoff's mythical money. Jeanne Levy-Church's losses forced her to shut down both her foundation and that of her parents, the Betty and Norman F. Levy Foundation, which lost $244 million. JEH helped the less fortunate, especially ex-convicts. ("See" Participants in the Madoff investment scandal: Norman F. Levy)


title: Madoff investment scandal

text: In April 2010, Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal sued the Westport National Bank and Robert L. Silverman for "effectively aiding and abetting" Madoff's fraud. The suit sought recovery of $16.2 million, including the fees that the bank collected as custodian of customers' holding in Madoff investments. Silverman's 240 clients invested about $10 million with Madoff using the bank as the custodian. The bank denied any wrongdoing.


title: Madoff investment scandal

text: In September 2017 in a case before the Irish High Court, Thema International Fund agreed to pay $687 million to resolve a trustee lawsuit brought on behalf of the fraud victims resulting from Madoff's frauds.


title: Madoff investment scandal

text: The Picower Foundation, created in 2002, was one of the nation's leading philanthropies that supported groups such as the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Human Rights First, the New York Public Library and the Children's Health Fund. It was listed as the 71st-largest in the nation by the Council on Foundations. The foundation reportedly invested $1 billion with Madoff. Jeffry Picower was a friend of Bernard Madoff for 30 years. The Picower Foundation, along with other smaller charities that invested with Madoff, announced in December 2008 that they would be closing.


title: Madoff investment scandal

text: In June 2012, Madoff's brother Peter was "expected to appear in Federal District Court in Manhattan and admit to, among other things, falsifying records, making false statements to securities regulators and obstructing the work of the Internal Revenue Service." In December 2012 he was sentenced to 10 years in prison for his involvement in the Ponzi scheme.


title: Madoff investment scandal

text: On December 23, 2008, one of the founders of Access International Advisors LLC, René-Thierry Magon de la Villehuchet, was found dead in his company office on Madison Avenue in New York City. His left wrist was slit, and de la Villehuchet had taken sleeping pills, in what appeared to be a suicide.


title: Madoff investment scandal

text: He lived in New Rochelle, New York and came from a prominent French family. Although no suicide note was found at the scene, his brother Bertrand in France received a note shortly after his death in which René-Thierry expressed remorse and a feeling of responsibility for the loss of his investors' money. The FBI and SEC did not believe de la Villehuchet was involved in the fraud. Harry Markopolos said he had met with de La Villehuchet several years before, and had warned him that Madoff might be breaking the law. In 2002, Access invested about 45% of its $1.2 billion under management with Madoff. By 2008, Access managed $3 billion and raised its proportion of funds invested with Madoff to about 75%. De la Villehuchet had also invested all of his wealth and 20% of that of his brother, Bertrand, with Madoff. Bertrand said that René-Thierry did not know Madoff, but the connection was through René-Thierry's partner in AIA, French banker Patrick Littaye.


title: Madoff investment scandal

text: On February 10, 2009, highly decorated British soldier William Foxton, OBE, 65, shot himself in a park in Southampton, England, having lost all of his family's savings. He had invested in the Herald USA Fund and Herald Luxembourg Fund, feeder funds for Madoff from Bank Medici in Austria.


title: Madoff investment scandal

text: Madoff's elder son, Mark Madoff, was found dead on December 11, 2010, two years to the day after he turned his father in. He was found hanged with a dog leash inside his New York apartment in an apparent suicide, but authorities said he left no suicide note.


title: Madoff investment scandal

text: Mark had unsuccessfully sought a Wall Street trading job after the scandal broke, and it was reported that he was distraught over the possibility of criminal charges, as federal prosecutors were making criminal tax-fraud probes. Among the many Madoff family members being sued by the court-appointed trustee Irving Picard were Mark's two young children.


title: Madoff investment scandal

text: In his lawsuit, Picard stated that Mark and other Madoff family members improperly earned tens of millions of dollars, through "fictitious and backdated transactions", and falsely documented loans to buy real estate that weren't repaid. Picard also argued that Mark was in a position to recognize the fraud of his father's firm, as Mark was a co-director of trading, was the designated head of the firm in his father's absence, and held several securities licenses—Series 7, 24 and 55 with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. However, he worked in a division of Madoff's company distinct from the one involved with Madoff's fraud, which has not been accused of any wrongdoing.


title: Madoff investment scandal

text: Charles Murphy, a hedge fund executive with Fairfield Greenwich Group that invested more than $7 billion with Madoff, including nearly $50 million of personal wealth, leapt from the 24th floor of the Sofitel New York Hotel in midtown Manhattan on March 27, 2017.


title: Madoff investment scandal

text: Madoff's sister, Sondra Wiener, and her husband, were found dead in their Boynton Beach home on February 17, 2022 from an apparent murder-suicide, according to the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office. The name of Wiener's husband was not revealed because his family chose to invoke a law that guarantees the right to privacy of crime victims. An earlier Facebook post by the sheriff's office, however, named a 90-year-old man named Marvin as being Wiener's husband. Authorities have not provided details of who shot whom in the apparent murder-suicide.


title: Madoff investment scandal

text: In 2009, Sondra's son David said that Madoff had defrauded his mother, and that it was "very painful."


title: Madoff investment scandal

text: Following the exposure of the Madoff investment scandal, the SEC's inspector general conducted an internal investigation into the agency's failures to uncover the scheme despite a series of red flags and tips. In September 2009, the SEC released a 477-page report on how the SEC missed these red flags, and identified repeated opportunities for SEC examiners to find the fraud and revealed how ineffective their efforts were. In response to the recommendations in the report, eight SEC employees were disciplined; none were fired.


title: Madoff investment scandal

text: On January 7, 2014, "Forbes" magazine and other news outlets reported that the bank JPMorgan Chase, "where Madoff kept the bank account at the center of his fraud", would pay a settlement of $1.7 billion. This resolved any potential criminal case against the bank arising from the Madoff scandal. JPMorgan entered into a deferred prosecution agreement with federal prosecutors to resolve two felony charges of violating the Bank Secrecy Act. The bank admitted to failing to file a "Suspicious Activity Report" after red flags about Madoff were raised, which, prosecutors alleged, did not have adequate anti-money laundering compliance procedures in place.


title: Madoff investment scandal

text: Bloomberg Business News reported in 2016 that investors of approximately $2.5 billion of funds had made no effort to claim their lost funds. Analysts suspected that these parties remained silent because their investments were from illegal activities such as drug dealing or tax evasion, or because they had civil liabilities in the United States and did not wish to subject themselves to the jurisdiction of the U.S. courts.


title: Madoff investment scandal

text: Irving Picard and his team have been overseeing the liquidation of Bernard Madoff’s firm in bankruptcy court, and by mid-2019 had recovered over $13 billion—about 76 percent of approved claims—by suing those who profited from the scheme, whether they knew of the scheme or not. Kathy Bazoian Phelps, a lawyer at Diamond McCarthy, said "That kind of recovery is extraordinary and atypical," as clawbacks in such schemes range from 5 percent to 30 percent, and many victims don't get anything. Picard has successfully pursued not only investors, but also spouses and estates of those who profited, such as the wife of Bernard Madoff (Ruth Madoff), the widow and estate of the deceased Stanley Chais, and the widow and estate of the deceased Jeffry Picower, with whom he reached a $7.2 billion settlement (the largest civil forfeiture payment in US history). “You don’t take this job if you’re thin-skinned,” Picard said.


title: Madoff investment scandal

text: In May 2019 Ruth Madoff settled with Picard, agreeing to surrender $250,000 in cash and another $344,000 in trusts for her grandchildren.


title: Lynndie England

text: Lynndie Rana England (born November 8, 1982) is a former United States Army Reserve soldier who was prosecuted for mistreating detainees during the Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse that occurred at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad during the Iraq War. She was one of 11 military personnel from the 372nd Military Police Company who were convicted in 2005 for war crimes. After being sentenced to three years in prison and a dishonorable discharge, England was incarcerated from September 27, 2005, to March 1, 2007, when she was released on parole.


title: Lynndie England

text: Born in Ashland, Kentucky, England moved with her family to Fort Ashby, West Virginia, when she was two years old. She was raised by her mother, Terrie Bowling England, and her father Kenneth R. England Jr., a railroad worker, who worked at a station in Cumberland, Maryland. She aspired to be a storm chaser. As a young child, England was diagnosed with selective mutism, a form of an anxiety disorder.


title: Lynndie England

text: England joined the United States Army Reserve in Cumberland in 1999 while she was a junior at Frankfort High School near Short Gap. England worked as a cashier in an IGA store during her junior year of high school and married a co-worker, James L. Fike, in 2002, but they later divorced. England also wished to earn money for college, so that she could become a storm chaser. She was also a member of the Future Farmers of America. After graduating from Frankfort High School in 2001, she worked a night job in a chicken-processing factory in Moorefield. She was deployed to Iraq in June 2003.


title: Lynndie England

text: England was engaged to fellow reservist and Abu Ghraib prison guard Charles Graner. In 2004, she gave birth to a son fathered by him at Womack Army Medical Center at Fort Bragg.


title: Lynndie England

text: England mobilized with her Army Reserve unit and was stationed in Baghdad at the Abu Ghraib prison in March 2003 to perform guard duties. Along with other soldiers, she was investigated in late 2003 for mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners of war involving the infliction of sexual, physical and psychological abuse after photographs came to light showing prisoners being abused.


title: Lynndie England

text: While formal charges were being prepared for general court-martial, England was transferred to the U.S. military installation at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, on March 18, 2004, because of her pregnancy. Her court-martial was scheduled for September 2005 on charges of conspiracy to maltreat prisoners and assault consummated by battery.


title: Lynndie England

text: On April 30, 2005, England agreed to plead guilty to four counts of maltreating prisoners, two counts of conspiracy, and one count of dereliction of duty. In exchange, prosecutors would have dropped two other charges, committing indecent acts and failure to obey a lawful order. This plea deal would have reduced her maximum sentence from 16 years to 11 years had it been accepted by the military judge. In May 2005, however, Military Judge Colonel James Pohl declared a mistrial on the grounds that he could not accept England's plea of guilty to a charge of conspiring with Graner to maltreat detainees because Graner had testified that he believed that, in placing a tether around a naked detainee's neck and asking England to pose for a photograph with him, he was documenting a legitimate use of force. Graner was convicted on all charges and sentenced to 10 years in prison. At her retrial, England was convicted on September 26, 2005, of one count of conspiracy, four counts of maltreating detainees and one count of committing an indecent act. She was acquitted on a second conspiracy count. The next day, England was sentenced to a three-year prison term and a dishonorable discharge.


title: Lynndie England

text: Members of the United States Senate have reportedly reviewed additional photographs supplied by the Department of Defense that have not been publicly released. There has been considerable speculation as to the contents of these photos. In a March 2008 interview, England stated in response to a question about these unreleased pictures, "You see the dogs biting the prisoners. Or you see bite marks from the dogs. You can see MPs holding down a prisoner so a medic can give him a shot."


title: Lynndie England

text: England was incarcerated at Naval Consolidated Brig, Miramar. She was paroled on March 1, 2007, after serving 521 days, less than 17 months. She remained on parole through September 2008 until her three-year sentence was complete, whereupon she was discharged.


title: Lynndie England

text: In a May 11, 2004, interview with the Denver CBS owned-and-operated television station KCNC-TV, England reportedly said that she had been "instructed by persons in higher ranks" to commit acts of abuse as a form of psychological operations, and that she should keep doing it, because it worked as intended. England noted that she felt "weird" when a commanding officer asked her to do such things as "stand there, give the thumbs up, and smile." However, England felt that she was doing "nothing out of the ordinary."


title: Lynndie England

text: After serving her sentence, England returned to Fort Ashby, West Virginia, and stayed with friends and family.


title: Lynndie England

text: On July 9, 2007, England was appointed to the Keyser, West Virginia volunteer recreation board. In July 2009, England released "Tortured: Lynndie England, Abu Ghraib and the Photographs that Shocked the World", a biography that was set with a book tour that she hoped would rehabilitate her public image. As of 2009, England was on antidepressant medication and also had post-traumatic stress disorder and anxiety. As of 2013, she had found seasonal employment as a secretary.


title: Lynndie England

text: In March 2008, England told the German magazine "Stern" that the media was to blame for the consequences of the Abu Ghraib scandal:


title: Lynndie England

text: If the media hadn't exposed the pictures to that extent, then thousands of lives would have been saved ... Yeah, I took the photos but I didn't make it worldwide.


title: Lynndie England

text: At the time I thought, I love this man [Graner], I trust this man with my life, okay, then he's saying, well, there's seven of them and it's such an enclosed area and it'll keep them together and contained because they have to concentrate on staying up on the pyramid instead of doing something to us.


title: Lynndie England

text: Asked about the picture showing her pointing at a man forced to masturbate, she again referred to her feelings for Graner at the time:


title: Lynndie England

text: Graner and Frederick tried to convince me to get into the picture with this guy. I didn't want to, but they were really persistent about it. At the time I didn't think that it was something that needed to be documented but I followed Graner. I did everything he wanted me to do. I didn't want to lose him.


title: Lynndie England

text: ... that she was goaded into posing for the photographs by her then lover and more senior fellow soldier, Charles Graner. 'They said in the trial that authority figures really intimidate me. I always aim to please.'


title: Lynndie England

text: In 2012, following her release, she stated that she did not regret her actions. "Their (Iraqis') lives are better. They got the better end of the deal," she said. "They weren't innocent. They're trying to kill us, and you want me to apologize to them? It's like saying sorry to the enemy."


title: Gaur

text: The gaur (Bos gaurus; ), also wrongly known as the Indian bison, is a bovine native to South Asia and Southeast Asia, and has been listed as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List since 1986. The global population was estimated at a maximum of 21,000 mature individuals in 2016, with the majority of those existing in India. It has declined by more than 70% during the last three generations, and is extirpated from Sri Lanka and most likely Bangladesh. Populations in well-protected areas are stable and increasing.


title: Gaur

text: It is the largest species among the wild cattle and the Bovidae. The domesticated form of the gaur is called "gayal" ("Bos frontalis") or "mithun".


title: Gaur

text: "Bison gaurus" was the scientific name proposed by Charles Hamilton Smith in 1827. Later authors subordinated the species under either "Bos" or "Bibos".


title: Gaur

text: In 2003, the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature fixed the valid specific name of the wild gaur as the first available name based on the wild population, even though it was antedated by the name for the domestic form. Most authors have adopted the binomial "Bos gaurus" for the wild species as valid for the taxon.


title: Gaur

text: In recognition of phenotypic differences between Indian and Southeast Asian gaur zoological specimens, the trinominals "Bos gaurus gaurus" and "Bos gaurus laosiensis" are provisionally accepted pending further morphometric and genetic study.


title: Gaur

text: The gaur is the largest extant bovid. It is a strong and massively built bovine with a high convex ridge on the forehead between the horns, which protrudes anteriorly, causing a deep hollow in the profile of the upper part of the head. There is a prominent ridge on the back. The ears are very large. In the old bulls, the hair becomes very thin on the back. The adult male is dark brown, approaching black in very old individuals. The upper part of the head, from above the eyes to the nape of the neck, is ashy grey, or occasionally dirty white. The muzzle is pale coloured, and the lower part of the legs are pure white or tan. The cows and young bulls are paler, and in some instances have a rufous tinge, which is most marked in groups inhabiting dry and open areas. The tail is shorter than in the typical oxen, reaching only to the hocks. They have a distinct ridge running from the shoulders to the middle of the back; the shoulders may be as much as higher than the rump. This ridge is caused by the great length of the spinous processes of the vertebrae of the fore-part of the trunk as compared with those of the loins. The hair is short, fine and glossy; the hooves are narrow and pointed.


title: Gaur

text: The gaur does not have a distinct dewlap on the throat and chest. Both sexes have horns, which grow from the sides of the head, curving upwards. Between the horns is a high convex ridge on the forehead. At their bases they present an elliptical cross-section, a characteristic that is more strongly marked in bulls than in cows. The horns are decidedly flattened at the base and regularly curved throughout their length, and are bent inward and slightly backward at their tips. The colour of the horns is some shade of pale green or yellow throughout the greater part of their length, but the tips are black. The horns, of medium size by large bovid standards, grow to a length of .


title: Gaur

text: The cow is considerably lighter in colour than the bull. Her horns are more slender and upright, with more inward curvature, and the frontal ridge is scarcely perceptible. In young animals, the horns are smooth and polished. In old bulls they are rugged and dented at the base.


title: Gaur

text: The gaur has a head-and-body length of with a long tail, and is high at the shoulder, averaging about in females and in males. At the top of its muscular hump just behind its shoulder, an average adult male is just under tall and the male's girth at its midsection (behind its shoulders) averages about . Males are about one-fourth larger and heavier than females. Body mass ranges widely from in adult females and in adult males. In general measurements are derived from gaurs surveyed in India. Indian gaur males averaged about (in a sample of 13) and females weigh a median of approximately . In China, the shoulder height of gaurs ranges from , and bulls weigh up to .


title: Gaur

text: Gaur historically occurred throughout mainland South and Southeast Asia, including Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Peninsular Malaysia, Myanmar, India, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China and Nepal. Today, the range of the species is seriously fragmented, and it is regionally extinct in Sri Lanka.


title: Gaur

text: Gaur are largely confined to evergreen forests or semi-evergreen and moist deciduous forests, but also occur in deciduous forest areas at the periphery of their range. Gaur habitat is characterized by large, relatively undisturbed forest tracts, hilly terrain below an elevation of , availability of water, and an abundance of forage in the form of grasses, bamboo, shrubs, and trees. Their apparent preference for hilly terrain may be partly due to the earlier conversion of most of the plains and other low-lying areas to croplands and pastures. They occur from sea level to an elevation of at least . Low-lying areas seem to comprise optimal habitat.


title: Gaur

text: In Nepal, the gaur population was estimated to be 250–350 in the mid-1990s, with the majority in Chitwan National Park and the adjacent Parsa National Park. These two parks are connected by a chain of forested hills. Population trends appeared to be relatively stable. The Chitwan population has increased from 188 to 368 animals in the years 1997 to 2016. Census conducted in Parsa National Park confirmed the presence of 112 gaur in the same period.


title: Gaur

text: In India, the population was estimated to be 12,000–22,000 in the mid-1990s. The Western Ghats and their outflanking hills in southern India constitute one of the most extensive extant strongholds of gaur, in particular in the Wayanad – Nagarhole – Mudumalai – Bandipur complex. The populations in India, Bhutan and Bangladesh are estimated to comprise 23,000–34,000 individuals. Major populations of about 2,000 individuals have been reported in both Nagarahole and Bandipur National Parks, over 1,000 individuals in Tadoba Andhari Tiger Project, 500–1000 individuals in both Periyar Tiger Reserve and Silent Valley and adjoining forest complexes, and over 800 individuals in Bhadra Wildlife Sanctuary. Trishna Wildlife Sanctuary in southern Tripura is home to a significant number of individuals.


title: Gaur

text: In Bhutan, they apparently persist all over the southern foothill zone, notably in Royal Manas National Park, Phibsoo Wildlife Sanctuary and Khaling Wildlife Sanctuary.


title: Gaur

text: In Bangladesh, a few gaur occur in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, mostly in Banderban district. During a camera trap project, few gaur were recorded indicating that the population is fragmented and probably declining. Gaurs are hunted by local tribal people in Sangu Matamuhari reserve forest although hunting is prohibited in Bangladesh.


title: Gaur

text: In Thailand, gaur were once found throughout the country, but fewer than 1,000 individuals were estimated to have remained in the 1990s. In the mostly semi-evergreen Dong Phayayen – Khao Yai Forest Complex, they were recorded at low density at the turn of the century, with an estimated total of about 150 individuals.


title: Gaur

text: In Vietnam, several areas in Đắk Lắk Province were known to contain gaur in 1997. Several herds persist in Cát Tiên National Park and in adjacent state forest enterprises. The current status of the gaur population is poorly known; they may be in serious decline.


title: Gaur

text: In Cambodia, gaur declined considerably in the period from the late 1960s to the early 1990s. The most substantial population of the country remained in Mondulkiri Province, where up to 1000 individuals may have survived up to 2010 in a forested landscape of over . Results of camera trapping carried out in 2009 suggested a globally significant population of gaur in Sre Pok Wildlife Sanctuary and the contiguous Phnom Prich Wildlife Sanctuary, and line transect distance sampling from Keo Seima Wildlife Sanctuary showed around 500 individuals in 2010. Since then, there has been rapid decline of these populations, and likely all populations across Cambodia. Updated figures for Keo Seima Wildlife Sanctuary show a decline to only 33 individuals in 2020, and 2020 encounter rates in Sre Pok Wildlife Sanctuary and Phnom Prich Wildlife Sanctuary were too low to analyze with distance sampling.


title: Gaur

text: In Laos, up to 200 individuals were estimated to inhabit protected area boundaries in the mid–1990s. They were reported discontinuously distributed in low numbers. Overhunting had reduced the population, and survivors occurred mainly in remote sites. Fewer than six National Biodiversity Conservation Areas held more than 50 individuals. Areas with populations likely to be nationally important included the Nam Theun catchment and the adjoining plateau. Subsequent surveys carried out a decade later using fairly intensive camera trapping did not record any gaur any more, indicating a massive decline of the population.


title: Gaur

text: In China, the gaur was present up to the 34th parallel north during the late Neolithic period about 5,200 years BP. Now it occurs only in heavily fragmented populations in Yunnan and southeastern Tibet. By the 1980s, it was extirpated in Lancang County, and the remaining animals were split into two populations in Xishuangbanna–Simao District and Cangyuan. In the mid-1990s, a population of 600–800 individuals may have lived in Yunnan Province, with the majority occurring in Xishuangbanna National Nature Reserve.


title: Gaur

text: Where gaur have not been disturbed, they are basically diurnal. In other areas, they have become largely nocturnal due to human impact on the forest. In central India, they are most active at night, and are rarely seen in the open after 8 o'clock in the morning. During the dry season, herds congregate and remain in small areas, dispersing into the hills with the arrival of the monsoon. While gaur depend on water for drinking, they do not seem to bathe or wallow.


title: Gaur

text: In January and February, gaur live in small herds of eight to 11 individuals, one of which is a bull. In April or May, more bulls may join the herd for mating, and individual bulls may move from herd to herd, each mating with many cows. In May or June, they leave the herd and may form herds of bulls only or live alone. Herds wander each day. Each herd has a nonexclusive home range, and sometimes herds may join in groups of 50 or more.


title: Gaur

text: Gaur herds are led by an old adult female, the matriarch. Adult males may be solitary. During the peak of the breeding season, unattached males wander widely in search of receptive females. No serious fighting between males has been recorded, with size being the major factor in determining dominance. Males make a mating call of clear, resonant tones which may carry for more than . Gaur have also been known to make a whistling snort as an alarm call, and a low, cow-like moo.


title: Gaur

text: In some regions in India where human disturbance is minor, the gaur is very timid and shy despite their great size and power. When alarmed, gaur crash into the jungle at a surprising speed. However, in Southeast Asia and South India, where they are used to the presence of humans, gaur are said by locals to be very bold and aggressive. They are frequently known to go into fields and graze alongside domestic cattle, sometimes killing them in fights. Gaur bulls may charge without provocation, especially during summer, when the intense heat and parasitic insects make them more short-tempered than usual. To warn other members of its herd of approaching danger, the gaur lets out a high whistle for help.


title: Gaur

text: The gaur grazes and browses mostly the upper portions of plants, such as leaf blades, stems, seeds and flowers of grass species, including kadam "Adina cordifolia".


title: Gaur

text: During a survey in the Bhagwan Mahaveer Sanctuary and Mollem National Park, gaurs were observed to feed on 32 species of plants. They consume herbs, young shoots, flowers, fruits of elephant apple ("Dillenia") with a high preference for leaves. Food preference varies by season. In winter and monsoon, they feed on preferably fine and fresh true grasses and herb species of the legume family, such as tick clover ("Desmodium triflorum"), but also browse on leaves of shrub species such as karvy ("Strobilanthes callosus"), Indian boxwood ("Gardenia latifolia"), mallow-leaved crossberry ("Grewia abutifolia"), East-Indian screw tree ("Helicteres") and the chaste tree ("Vitex negundo"). In summer, they also feed on bark of teak ("Tectona grandis"), on fruit of golden shower tree ("Cassia fistula"), and on the bark and fruit of cashew ("Anacardium occidentale"). Gaur spent most of their daily time feeding. Peak feeding activity was observed between 6:30 and 8:30 in the mornings and between 17:30 and 18:45 in the evenings. During the hottest hours of the day, they rest in the shade of big trees.


title: Gaur

text: They may debark trees due to shortages of preferred food, and of minerals and trace elements needed for their nutrition, or for maintaining an optimum fiber/protein ratio for proper digestion of food and better assimilation of nutrients. They may turn to available browse species and fibrous teak bark in summer as green grass and herbaceous resources dry up. High concentrations of calcium (22400 ppm) and phosphorus (400 ppm) have been reported in teak bark, so consumption of teak bark may help animals to satisfy both mineral and other food needs. Long-term survival and conservation of these herbivores depend on the availability of preferred plant species for food. Hence, protection of the historically preferred habitats used by gaur is a significant factor in conservation biology.


title: Gaur

text: Sexual maturity occurs in the gaur's second or third year. Breeding takes place year-round, but typically peaks between December and June. Females have one calf, rarely two, after a gestation period of about 275 days, a few days less than domestic cattle. Calves are typically weaned after seven to 12 months. The lifespan of a gaur in captivity is up to 30 years.


title: Gaur

text: Due to their size and power, gaur have few natural predators besides humans. Leopards, dhole packs and large mugger crocodiles occasionally attack unguarded calves or unhealthy animals. Only tigers and saltwater crocodiles have been reported to kill adult gaur. However, the habitat and distribution of the gaur and saltwater crocodile seldom overlap in recent times, due to the decreasing range of both species. A crocodile likely would need to be a mature adult male (more than and ) to make a successful attack on healthy adult gaurs.


title: Gaur

text: Tigers hunt young or infirm gaur, but have also been reported to have killed healthy bulls weighing at least . When confronted by a tiger, the adult members of a gaur herd often form a circle surrounding the vulnerable young and calves, shielding them from the big cat. As tigers rely on ambush attacks when taking on prey as large as a gaur, they will almost always abandon a hunt if detected and met in this manner. A herd of gaur in Malaysia encircled a calf killed by a tiger and prevented it from approaching the carcass. Nevertheless, the gaurs are formidable opponents to the tigers, and they are capable of killing tigers in self-defense.


title: Gaur

text: In Laos, the gaur is highly threatened by poaching for trade to supply international markets, but also by opportunistic hunting, and specific hunting for home consumption. In the 1990s, gaurs were particularly sought by Vietnamese poachers for their commercial value.


title: Gaur

text: On 8 January 2001, the first cloned gaur was born at Trans Ova Genetics in Sioux Center, Iowa. The calf was carried and brought successfully to term by a surrogate mother, a domestic cow ("Bos taurus"). While healthy at birth, the calf died within 48 hours of a common dysentery, most likely unrelated to cloning.


title: Gaur

text: The Sanskrit word means 'white, yellowish, reddish'. The Sanskrit word means a kind of water buffalo.


title: Australian Survivor: Blood V Water

text: The ninth season of Network 10's Australian Survivor, also known as Australian Survivor: Blood V Water, is an Australian television series based on the international reality game show franchise "Survivor", which premiered on 31 January 2022. In this season, based on the and and carrying the same sub-title, new and returning players and their loved ones will be competing against each other.


title: Australian Survivor: Blood V Water

text: The season was filmed in Charters Towers, Queensland, and it will be the third season filmed in Australia, second consecutively due to the COVID-19 pandemic's impact of Australian borders which have been closed since March 2020.


title: Australian Survivor: Blood V Water

text: The show concluded on April 4, 2022 with Mark Wales being named Sole Survivor, defeating Shay Lajoie and Chrissy Zaremba, receiving a unanimous jury vote of 10-0-0.


title: Australian Survivor: Blood V Water

text: The cast includes two-time American "Survivor" winner Sandra Diaz-Twine, former NRL player Michael Crocker, former "MasterChef Australia" contestant Khanh Ong and former "Australian Survivor" contestants Andy Meldrum, Mark Wales and Samantha Gash.


title: Australian Survivor: Blood V Water

text: Twelve pairs of loved ones were separated into two tribes, Blood and Water. On the Blood tribe, two-time U.S. Survivor champion Sandra sought to blend into the background and work with the strong men to keep herself safe. On the Water tribe, Sandra’s daughter Nina allied with Mark, Josh and Jordie to keep a comfortable majority. However, after a tribe swap left the two of them on the same tribe, Sandra was voted out as a big threat while Nina injured her ankle in a challenge and was removed from the game.


title: Australian Survivor: Blood V Water

text: Married couple Mark and Sam took control of their respective swapped tribes. After declining to join his wife on the new Water tribe, Mark formed an alliance with the other strong males and found an idol to cement his power position in the tribe. On the new Water tribe, Sam formed a tight bond with Jesse and worked with him to eliminate dangerous threats like Croc and Ben.


title: Australian Survivor: Blood V Water

text: At the merge, the four remaining intact couples formed a new majority alliance against the five single players. However, after Jordie attempted to rally votes against Mark, the alliance targeted his brother Jesse, with Sam conning him into giving her his idol before he was voted out. Jordie vowed revenge and tried to convince the tribe that Sam and Mark were too powerful with two idols. After a Purgatory twist forced Jordie, Shay and KJ to fight their way back into the game, Jordie finally succeeded in voting out Sam.


title: Australian Survivor: Blood V Water

text: The trio of Mark, Josh and Chrissy dictated the majority of the late votes, with the two men surviving through idol plays and immunity wins. They were forced to turn on each other when Shay won the final two immunity challenges, with Josh being voted out just before the final 3. At the final Tribal Council, Mark emphasized his strong strategic play, while Shay highlighted her physical prowess to stay alive and Chrissy argued that her social bonds kept her safe. The jury unanimously voted for Mark in a 10-0-0 vote, awarding him the $500,000 and the title of Sole Survivor.


title: Australian Survivor: Blood V Water

text: Ratings data is from OzTAM and represents the viewership from the 5 largest Australian metropolitan centres (Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide).


title: Australian Survivor: Blood V Water

text: Following the airing of the final episode, runner-up Shayelle Lajoie recounted a notable incident during the Final Tribal Council in which her answers to the Jury questioning were met with constant interrupting from the male members of the Jury, particularly led by the 8th member of the Jury, Jordie Hansen. This "brutal" questioning did not air during the edited program. In addition to this, viewers have criticised and commented on the editing of the final for not showing these moments, as well as criticised the season overall.


title: Peninsula

text: A peninsula (; ) is a landform that extends from a mainland and is surrounded by water on most, but not all of its borders. A peninsula is also sometimes defined as a piece of land bordered by water on three of its sides. Peninsulas exist on all continents. The size of a peninsula can range from tiny to very large. The largest peninsula in the world is the Arabian Peninsula. Peninsulas form due to a variety of causes.


title: Peninsula

text: Peninsula derives , which is translated as 'peninsula'. itself was derived , or together, 'almost an island'. The word entered English in the 16th century.


title: Peninsula

text: A peninsula is usually defined as a piece of land surrounded on most, but not all sides, but is sometimes instead defined as a piece of land bordered by water on three of its sides.


title: Peninsula

text: A peninsula may be bordered by more than one body of water, and the body of water does not have to be an ocean or a sea. A piece of land on a very tight river bend or one between two rivers is sometimes said to form a peninsula, for example in the New Barbadoes Neck in New Jersey, United States. A peninsula may be connected to the mainland via an isthmus, for example, in the isthmus of Corinth which connects to the Peloponnese peninsula.


title: Peninsula

text: Peninsulas can be formed from continental drift, glacial erosion, glacial meltwater, glacial deposition, marine sediment, marine transgressions, volcanoes, divergent boundaries, and/or river sedimentation. More than one factor may play into the formation of a peninsula. For example, in the case of Florida, continental drift, marine sediment, and marine transgressions were all contributing factors to its shape.


title: Peninsula

text: In the case of formation from glaciers, (e.g. the Antarctic Peninsula or Cape Cod) peninsulas can be created due to glacial erosion, meltwater, and/or deposition. If erosion formed the peninsula, softer and harder rocks were present, and since the glacier only erodes softer rock, it formed a basin. This may create peninsulas, and occurred for example in the Keweenaw Peninsula.


title: Peninsula

text: In the case of formation from meltwater, melting glaciers deposit sediment and form moraines, which act as dams for the meltwater. This may create bodies of water that surround the land, forming peninsulas.


title: Peninsula

text: If deposition formed the peninsula, the peninsula was composed of sedimentary rock, which was created from a large deposit of glacial drift. The hill of drift becomes a peninsula if the hill formed near water but was still connected to the mainland, for example during the formation of Cape Cod about 23,000 years ago.


title: Peninsula

text: In the case of formation from volcanoes, when a volcano erupts magma near water, it may form a peninsula (e.g. the Alaskan Peninsula). Peninsulas formed from volcanoes are especially common when the volcano erupts near shallow water. Marine sediment may form peninsulas by the creation of limestone. A rift peninsula may form as a result of a divergent boundary in plate tectonics (e.g. the Arabian Peninsula), while a convergent boundary may also form peninsulas (e.g. Gibraltar or the Indian subcontinent). Peninsulas can also form due to sedimentation in rivers. When a river carrying sediment flows into an ocean, the sediment is deposited, forming a delta peninsula.


title: Peninsula

text: Marine transgressions (changes in sea level) may form peninsulas, but also may affect existing peninsulas. For example, the water level may change, which causes a peninsula to become an island during high water levels. Similarly, wet weather causing higher water levels make peninsulas appear smaller, while dry weather make them appear larger. Sea level rise from global warming will permanently reduce the size of some peninsulas over time.


title: Peninsula

text: Peninsulas are noted for their use as shelter for humans and Neanderthals. The landform is advantageous because it gives hunting access to both land and sea animals. They can also serve as markers of nation's borders.


title: Stefan Zweig

text: Stefan Zweig (; ; 28 November 1881 – 22 February 1942) was an Austrian novelist, playwright, journalist, and biographer. At the height of his literary career, in the 1920s and 1930s, he was one of the most widely translated and popular writers in the world.


title: Stefan Zweig

text: Zweig was raised in Vienna, Austria-Hungary. He wrote historical studies of famous literary figures, such as Honoré de Balzac, Charles Dickens, and Fyodor Dostoevsky in "Drei Meister" (1920; "Three Masters"), and decisive historical events in "Sternstunden der Menschheit" (1928; published in English in 1940 as "The Tide of Fortune: Twelve Historical Miniatures"). He wrote biographies of Joseph Fouché (1929), Mary Stuart (1935) and Marie Antoinette ("", 1932), among others. Zweig's best-known fiction includes "Letter from an Unknown Woman" (1922), "Amok" (1922), "Fear" (1925), "Confusion of Feelings" (1927), "Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of a Woman" (1927), the psychological novel "Ungeduld des Herzens" ("Beware of Pity", 1939), and "The Royal Game" (1941).


title: Stefan Zweig

text: In 1934, as a result of the Nazi Party's rise in Germany, Zweig emigrated to England and then, in 1940, moved briefly to New York and then to Brazil, where he settled. In his final years, he would declare himself in love with the country, writing about it in the book "Brazil, Land of the Future". Nonetheless, as the years passed Zweig became increasingly disillusioned and despairing at the future of Europe, and he and his wife Lotte were found dead of a barbiturate overdose in their house in Petrópolis on 23 February 1942; they had died the previous day. His work has been the basis for several film adaptations. Zweig's memoir, "Die Welt von Gestern" ("The World of Yesterday," 1942), is noted for its description of life during the waning years of the Austro-Hungarian Empire under Franz Joseph I and has been called the most famous book on the Habsburg Empire.


title: Stefan Zweig

text: Zweig was born in Vienna, the son of Ida Brettauer (1854–1938), a daughter of a Jewish banking family, and Moritz Zweig (1845–1926), a wealthy Jewish textile manufacturer. He was related to the Czech writer Egon Hostovský, who described him as "a very distant relative"; some sources describe them as cousins.


title: Stefan Zweig

text: Zweig studied philosophy at the University of Vienna and in 1904 earned a doctoral degree with a thesis on "The Philosophy of Hippolyte Taine". Religion did not play a central role in his education. "My mother and father were Jewish only through accident of birth", Zweig said in an interview. Yet he did not renounce his Jewish faith and wrote repeatedly on Jews and Jewish themes, as in his story "Buchmendel". Zweig had a warm relationship with Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism, whom he met when Herzl was still literary editor of the "Neue Freie Presse", then Vienna's main newspaper; Herzl accepted for publication some of Zweig's early essays. Zweig, a committed cosmopolitan, believed in internationalism and in Europeanism, as "The World of Yesterday", his autobiography, makes clear: "I was sure in my heart from the first of my identity as a citizen of the world." According to Amos Elon, Zweig called Herzl's book "Der Judenstaat" an "obtuse text, [a] piece of nonsense".


title: Stefan Zweig

text: Zweig served in the Archives of the Ministry of War and adopted a pacifist stance like his friend Romain Rolland, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature 1915. Zweig married Friderike Maria von Winternitz (born Burger) in 1920; they divorced in 1938. As Friderike Zweig she published a book on her former husband after his death. She later also published a picture book on Zweig. In the late summer of 1939, Zweig married his secretary Elisabet Charlotte "Lotte" Altmann in Bath, England. Zweig's secretary in Salzburg from November 1919 to March 1938 was Anna Meingast (13 May 1881, Vienna – 17 November 1953, Salzburg).


title: Stefan Zweig

text: As a Jew, Zweig's high profile did not shield him from the threat of persecution. In 1934, following Hitler's rise to power in Germany, Zweig left Austria for England, living first in London, then from 1939 in Bath. Because of the swift advance of Hitler's troops westwards, and the threat of arrest or worse – as part of the preparations for Operation Seelöwe a list of persons to be detained immediately after conquest of the British Isles, the so-called "Black Book", had been assembled and Zweig was on page 231, with his London address fully mentioned – Zweig and his second wife crossed the Atlantic to the United States, settling in 1940 in New York City; they lived for two months as guests of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, then they rented a house in Ossining, New York.


title: Stefan Zweig

text: On 22 August 1940, they moved again to Petrópolis, a German-colonized mountain town 68 kilometres north of Rio de Janeiro. Zweig, feeling increasingly depressed about the situation in Europe and the future for humanity, wrote in a letter to author Jules Romains, "My inner crisis consists in that I am not able to identify myself with the me of passport, the self of exile". On 23 February 1942, the Zweigs were found dead of a barbiturate overdose in their house in the city of Petrópolis, holding hands. He had been despairing at the future of Europe and its culture. "I think it better to conclude in good time and in erect bearing a life in which intellectual labour meant the purest joy and personal freedom the highest good on Earth", he wrote.


title: Stefan Zweig

text: The Zweigs' house in Brazil was later turned into a cultural centre and is now known as Casa Stefan Zweig.


title: Stefan Zweig

text: Zweig was a prominent writer in the 1920s and 1930s, befriending Arthur Schnitzler and Sigmund Freud. He was extremely popular in the United States, South America and Europe, and remains so in continental Europe; however, he was largely ignored by the British public. His fame in America had diminished until the 1990s, when there began an effort on the part of several publishers (notably Pushkin Press, Hesperus Press, and "The New York Review of Books") to get Zweig back into print in English. Plunkett Lake Press has reissued electronic versions of his non-fiction works. Since that time there has been a marked resurgence and a number of Zweig's books are back in print.


title: Stefan Zweig

text: Critical opinion of his oeuvre is strongly divided between those who praise his humanism, simplicity and effective style, and those who criticize his literary style as poor, lightweight and superficial. Michael Hofmann scathingly attacks Zweig's work. Hofmann uses the term "vermicular dither” to refer to a passage attributed to Zweig and quoted in 1972, though the passage does not occur in Zweig's published work. Hofmann adds that in his opinion "Zweig just tastes fake. He's the Pepsi of Austrian writing." Even the author's suicide note, Hofmann suggests, causes one to feel "the irritable rise of boredom halfway through it, and the sense that "he doesn't mean it", his heart isn't in it (not even in his suicide)".


title: Stefan Zweig

text: Zweig is best known for his novellas (notably "The Royal Game", "Amok", and "Letter from an Unknown Woman" – which was filmed in 1948 by Max Ophüls), novels ("Beware of Pity", "Confusion of Feelings", and the posthumously published "The Post Office Girl") and biographies (notably of Erasmus of Rotterdam, Ferdinand Magellan, and Mary, Queen of Scots, and also the posthumously published one on Balzac). At one time his works were published without his consent in English under the pseudonym "Stephen Branch" (a translation of his real name) when anti-German sentiment was running high. His of Queen Marie Antoinette was adapted by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer as a 1938 film starring Norma Shearer.


title: Stefan Zweig

text: Zweig's memoir, "The World of Yesterday", was completed in 1942 one day before he died by suicide. It has been widely discussed as a record of "what it meant to be alive between 1881 and 1942" in central Europe; the book has attracted both critical praise and hostile dismissal.


title: Stefan Zweig

text: Zweig acknowledged his debt to psychoanalysis. In a letter dated 8 September 1926, he wrote to Freud, "Psychology is the great business of my life". He went on explaining that Freud had considerable influence on writers such as Marcel Proust, D.H. Lawrence and James Joyce, giving them a lesson in "courage" and helping them to overcome their inhibitions. "Thanks to you, we "see" many things. – Thanks to you we "say" many things which otherwise we would not have seen nor said." Autobiography, in particular, had become "more clear-sighted and audacious".


title: Stefan Zweig

text: Zweig enjoyed a close association with Richard Strauss and provided the libretto for "Die schweigsame Frau" ("The Silent Woman"). Strauss famously defied the Nazi regime by refusing to sanction the removal of Zweig's name from the programme for the work's première on 24 June 1935 in Dresden. As a result, Goebbels refused to attend as planned, and the opera was banned after three performances. Zweig later collaborated with Joseph Gregor to provide Strauss with the libretto for one other opera, "Daphne", in 1937. At least one other work by Zweig received a musical setting: the pianist and composer Henry Jolles, who like Zweig had fled to Brazil to escape the Nazis, composed a song, "Último poema de Stefan Zweig", based on "Letztes Gedicht", which Zweig wrote on the occasion of his 60th birthday in November 1941. During his stay in Brazil, Zweig wrote "Brasilien, Ein Land der Zukunft" ("Brazil, A Land of the Future") which consisted in a collection of essays on the history and culture of his newly adopted country.


title: Stefan Zweig

text: Zweig was a passionate collector of manuscripts. He corresponded at length with Hungarian musicologist Gisela Selden-Goth, often discussing their mutual interest in collecting original music scores. There are important Zweig collections at the British Library, at the State University of New York at Fredonia and at the National Library of Israel. The British Library's Stefan Zweig Collection was donated to the library by his heirs in May 1986. It specialises in autograph music manuscripts, including works by Bach, Haydn, Wagner, and Mahler. It has been described as "one of the world's greatest collections of autograph manuscripts". One particularly precious item is Mozart's "Verzeichnüß aller meiner Werke" – that is, the composer's own handwritten thematic catalogue of his works.


title: Stefan Zweig

text: Zweig has been credited with being one of the novelists who contributed to the emergence of what would later be called the Habsburg Myth.


title: Stefan Zweig

text: The 2012 Brazilian film "The Invisible Collection", directed by Bernard Attal, is based on Zweig's short story of the same title.


title: Stefan Zweig

text: The 2013 Swiss film "Mary Queen of Scots" directed by Thomas Imbach is based on Zweig's "Maria Stuart".


title: Stefan Zweig

text: The end-credits for Wes Anderson's 2014 film "The Grand Budapest Hotel" say that the film was inspired in part by Zweig's novels. Anderson said that he had "stolen" from Zweig's novels "Beware of Pity" and "The Post-Office Girl" in writing the film, and it features actors Tom Wilkinson as The Author, a character based loosely on Zweig, and Jude Law as his younger, idealised self seen in flashbacks. Anderson also said that the film's protagonist, the concierge Gustave H., played by Ralph Fiennes, was based on Zweig. In the film's opening sequence, a teenage girl visits a shrine for The Author, which includes a bust of him wearing Zweig-like spectacles and celebrated as his country's "National Treasure".


title: Stefan Zweig

text: The 2017 Austrian-German-French film "Vor der Morgenröte" ("") chronicles Stefan Zweig's travels in the North and South Americas, trying to come to terms with his exile from home.


title: Stefan Zweig

text: The 2018 American short film "Crepúsculo" by Clemy Clarke is based on Zweig's short story "A Story Told in Twilight" and relocated to a quinceañera in 1980s New York.


title: Stefan Zweig

text: TV film "La Ruelle au clair de lune" (1988) by Édouard Molinaro is an adaptation of Zweig's short-story "Moonbeam Alley".


title: Soprano

text: A soprano () is a type of classical female singing voice and has the highest vocal range of all voice types. The soprano's vocal range (using scientific pitch notation) is from approximately middle C (C) = 261 Hz to "high A" (A) = 880 Hz in choral music, or to "soprano C" (C, two octaves above middle C) = 1046 Hz or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which often encompasses the melody. The soprano voice type is generally divided into the coloratura, soubrette, lyric, spinto, and dramatic soprano.


title: Soprano

text: The word "soprano" comes from the Italian word "sopra" (above, over, on top of), as the soprano is the highest pitch human voice, often given to the leading female roles in operas. "Soprano" refers mainly to women, but it can also be applied to men; "sopranist" is the term for a male countertenor able to sing in the soprano vocal range, while a castrato is the term for a castrated male singer, typical of the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries, and a treble is a boy soprano who has not reached puberty yet and still able to sing in that range.


title: Soprano

text: The term "soprano" is also based on the Latin word "superius" which, like soprano, referred to the highest pitch vocal range of all human voice types. The word "superius" was especially used in choral and other multi-part vocal music between the 13th and 16th centuries.


title: Soprano

text: The soprano has the highest vocal range of all voice types, with the highest tessitura. A soprano and a mezzo-soprano have a similar range, but their tessituras will lie in different parts of that range.


title: Soprano

text: The low extreme for sopranos is roughly A or B (just below middle C). Within opera, the lowest demanded note for sopranos is F (from Richard Strauss's "Die Frau ohne Schatten"). Often low notes in higher voices will project less, lack timbre, and tend to "count less" in roles (although some Verdi, Strauss and Wagner roles call for stronger singing below the staff). However, rarely is a soprano simply unable to sing a low note in a song within a soprano role. Low notes can be reached with a lowered position of the larynx.


title: Soprano

text: The high extreme, at a minimum, for non-coloratura sopranos is "soprano C" (C two octaves above middle C), and many roles in the standard repertoire call for C or D. A couple of roles have optional Es, as well. In the coloratura repertoire several roles call for E on up to F. In rare cases, some coloratura roles go as high as G or G, such as Mozart's concert aria "Popoli di Tessaglia!", or the title role of Jules Massenet's opera "Esclarmonde". While not necessarily within the tessitura, a good soprano will be able to sing her top notes full-throated, with timbre and dynamic control.


title: Soprano

text: In opera, the tessitura, vocal weight, and timbre of voices, and the roles they sing, are commonly categorized into voice types, often called ( , from German or , "vocal category"). A singer's tessitura is where the voice has the best timbre, easy volume, and most comfort.


title: Soprano

text: In SATB four-part mixed chorus, the soprano is the highest vocal range, above the alto, tenor, and bass. Sopranos commonly sing in the tessitura G4-A5. When the composer calls for divisi, sopranos can be separated into Soprano I (highest part) and Soprano II (lower soprano part).


title: Soprano

text: In contrast to choral singing, in classical solo singing a person is classified through the identification of several vocal traits, including range, vocal timbre, vocal weight, vocal tessitura, vocal resonance, and vocal transition points (lifts or "passaggio") within the singer's voice.


title: Soprano

text: These different traits are used to identify different sub-types within the voice. Within opera, particular roles are written with specific kinds of soprano voices in mind, causing certain roles to be associated with certain kinds of voices.


title: Soprano

text: Within the soprano voice type category are five generally recognized subcategories: coloratura soprano, soubrette, lyric soprano, spinto soprano, and dramatic soprano.


title: Soprano

text: The coloratura soprano may be a lyric coloratura or a dramatic coloratura. The lyric coloratura soprano is a very agile light voice with a high upper extension capable of fast vocal coloratura. Light coloraturas have a range of approximately middle C (C) to "high F" ("in alt") (F) with some coloratura sopranos being able to sing somewhat lower or higher, e.g. an interpolated A in the Doll Aria, "Les oiseaux dans la charmille", from "The Tales of Hoffmann", e.g. by Rachele Gilmore in a 2009 performance, and a written A by Audrey Luna in 2017 in "The Exterminating Angel", both at the Metropolitan Opera in New York.


title: Soprano

text: The dramatic coloratura soprano is a coloratura soprano with great flexibility in high-lying velocity passages, yet with great sustaining power comparable to that of a full spinto or dramatic soprano. Dramatic coloraturas have a range of approximately "low B" (B) to "high F" (F) with some coloratura sopranos being able to sing somewhat higher or lower.


title: Soprano

text: In classical music and opera, a soubrette soprano refers to both a voice type and a particular type of opera role. A soubrette voice is light with a bright, sweet timbre, a tessitura in the mid-range, and with no extensive coloratura. The soubrette voice is not a weak voice, for it must carry over an orchestra without a microphone like all voices in opera. The voice, however, has a lighter vocal weight than other soprano voices with a brighter timbre. Many young singers start out as soubrettes, but, as they grow older and the voice matures more physically, they may be reclassified as another voice type, usually either a light lyric soprano, a lyric coloratura soprano, or a coloratura mezzo-soprano. Rarely does a singer remain a soubrette throughout her entire career. A soubrette's range extends approximately from middle C (C) to "high D" (D). The tessitura of the soubrette tends to lie a bit lower than the lyric soprano and spinto soprano.


title: Soprano

text: The lyric soprano is a warm voice with a bright, full timbre, which can be heard over a big orchestra. It generally has a higher tessitura than a soubrette and usually plays "ingénues" and other sympathetic characters in opera. Lyric sopranos have a range from approximately middle C (C) to "high D" (D).


title: Soprano

text: The lyric soprano may be a light lyric soprano or a full lyric soprano. The light lyric soprano has a bigger voice than a soubrette but still possesses a youthful quality. The full lyric soprano has a more mature sound than a light-lyric soprano and can be heard over a bigger orchestra.


title: Soprano

text: Also lirico-spinto, Italian for "pushed lyric", the spinto soprano has the brightness and height of a lyric soprano, but can be "pushed" to dramatic climaxes without strain, and may have a somewhat darker timbre. Spinto sopranos have a range from approximately B (B) to "high D" (D).


title: Soprano

text: A dramatic soprano (or "soprano robusto") has a powerful, rich, emotive voice that can sing over a full orchestra. Usually (but not always) this voice has a lower tessitura than other sopranos, and a darker timbre. Dramatic sopranos have a range from approximately A (A) to "high C" (C).


title: Soprano

text: Some dramatic sopranos, known as Wagnerian sopranos, have a very big voice that can assert itself over an exceptionally large orchestra (over eighty pieces). These voices are substantial and very powerful and ideally even throughout the registers.


title: Soprano

text: Two other types of soprano are the "Dugazon" and the "Falcon", which are intermediate voice types between the soprano and the mezzo-soprano: a Dugazon is a darker-colored soubrette, a Falcon a darker-colored soprano drammatico.


title: Courtney Eaton

text: Courtney Eaton (born 6 January 1996) is an Australian actress. She is known for her supporting roles as Ava in the 2019 film "Line of Duty", Cheedo the Fragile in the 2015 film "", and as Zaya in the 2016 film "Gods of Egypt".


title: Courtney Eaton

text: Eaton was born on 6 January 1996 in Bunbury, Western Australia. Her father, Stephen Eaton, is of English descent, and her mother is of Chinese, Cook Island and Māori descent. She has a younger brother.


title: Courtney Eaton

text: Eaton was spotted by Christine Fox, head of Vivien's Models, in a fashion graduation at age eleven. Fox signed up Eaton and prepared her to model at age sixteen. Eaton took part in an acting workshop with Myles Pollard as part of her modelling development, and auditioned in Sydney for "" (2015). She landed a part and co-starred in the series as Cheedo the Fragile, one of the five wives of Immortan Joe in the film. Of her part, Eaton said that Fragile is "the youngest of the [five] wives."


title: Courtney Eaton

text: In December 2013, Eaton was cast in the fantasy action film "Gods of Egypt" (2016), as Zaya, a slave girl and love interest of one of the main characters (Brenton Thwaites), appearing alongside Gerard Butler and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, under Alex Proyas' direction.


title: Courtney Eaton

text: In May 2016, it was announced that Eaton would be starring alongside Ross Lynch in the fantasy-comedy film "Status Update". She starred alongside Aaron Eckhart in the action thriller "Line of Duty" which was released in 2019. In December 2019, Eaton was cast in a recurring role as Lottie in the TV series "Yellowjackets". She had originally auditioned for the role of Shauna. For the upcoming second season of the show, Eaton has been made a series regular.


title: Courtney Eaton

text: Eaton lives in Los Angeles. She was in a relationship with Ross Lynch from 2015 to 2017. She is currently in a relationship with Spencer Goodall.


title: Malus

text: Malus ( or ) is a genus of about 30–55 species of small deciduous trees or shrubs in the family Rosaceae, including the domesticated orchard apple, crab apples, wild apples, and rainberries.


title: Malus

text: Apple trees are typically talI at maturity, with a dense, twiggy crown. The leaves are long, alternate, simple, with a serrated margin. The flowers are borne in corymbs, and have five petals, which may be white, pink, or red, and are perfect, with usually red stamens that produce copious pollen, and a half-inferior ovary; flowering occurs in the spring after 50–80 growing degree days (varying greatly according to subspecies and cultivar).


title: Malus

text: Many apples require cross-pollination between individuals by insects (typically bees, which freely visit the flowers for both nectar and pollen); these are called self-sterile, so self-pollination is impossible, making pollinating insects essential.


title: Malus

text: A number of cultivars are self-pollinating, such as 'Granny Smith' and 'Golden Delicious', but are considerably fewer in number compared to their cross-pollination dependent counterparts.


title: Malus

text: The fruit is a globose pome, varying in size from in diameter in most of the wild species, to in "M. sylvestris sieversii", in "M. domestica", and even larger in certain cultivated orchard apples. The centre of the fruit contains five carpels arranged star-like, each containing one or two seeds.


title: Malus

text: About 42 to 55 species and natural hybrids are known, with about 25 from China, of which 15 are endemic. The genus "Malus" is subdivided into eight sections (six, with two added in 2006 and 2008). The genus "Docynia" has been shown to be nested within "Malus" in molecular phylogenies. The oldest fossils of the genus date to the Eocene (Lutetian), which are leaves belonging to the species "Malus collardii" and "Malus kingiensis" from western North America (Idaho) and the Russian Far East (Kamchatka), respectively.


title: Malus

text: Crabapples are popular as compact ornamental trees, providing blossom in spring and colourful fruit in autumn. The fruits often persist throughout winter. Numerous hybrid cultivars have been selected.


title: Malus

text: Some crabapples are used as rootstocks for domestic apples to add beneficial characteristics. For example, the rootstocks of "Malus baccata" varieties are used to give additional cold hardiness to the combined plants for orchards in cold northern areas.


title: Malus

text: They are also used as pollinizers in apple orchards. Varieties of crabapple are selected to bloom contemporaneously with the apple variety in an orchard planting, and the crabs are planted every sixth or seventh tree, or limbs of a crab tree are grafted onto some of the apple trees. In emergencies, a bucket or drum bouquet of crabapple flowering branches is placed near the beehives as orchard pollenizers.


title: Malus

text: Crabapple fruit is not an important crop in most areas, being extremely sour due to malic acid (which like the genus derives from the Latin name "mālum"), and in some species woody, so is rarely eaten raw. In some Southeast Asian cultures, they are valued as a sour condiment, sometimes eaten with salt and chilli or shrimp paste.


title: Malus

text: Some crabapple varieties are an exception to the reputation of being sour, and can be very sweet, such as the 'Chestnut' cultivar.


title: Malus

text: Crabapples are an excellent source of pectin, and their juice can be made into a ruby-coloured preserve with a full, spicy flavour. A small percentage of crabapples in cider makes a more interesting flavour. As Old English "Wergulu", the crab apple is one of the nine plants invoked in the pagan Anglo-Saxon "Nine Herbs Charm", recorded in the 10th century.


title: Malus

text: Applewood gives off a pleasant scent when burned, and smoke from an applewood fire gives an excellent flavour to smoked foods. It is easier to cut when green; dry applewood is exceedingly difficult to carve by hand. It is a good wood for cooking fires because it burns hot and slow, without producing much flame.


title: Irene (singer)

text: Bae Joo-hyun (; born March 29, 1991), known professionally as Irene, is a South Korean singer, rapper, and actress. She is the leader of the South Korean girl group Red Velvet and a member of its sub-unit Red Velvet - Irene & Seulgi.


title: Irene (singer)

text: Irene was born Bae Joo-hyun on March 29, 1991, in Daegu, South Korea. She grew up in Buk-gu. Her family consists of her parents and a younger sister. She attended Haknam High School in Daegu.


title: Irene (singer)

text: During her time as a trainee, in August 2013, she appeared in the music video of her then-labelmate Henry Lau's song "1-4-3".


title: Irene (singer)

text: On December 9, 2013, Irene was one of the second batch of trainees introduced as a member of SM Rookies, a pre-debut team of trainees under SM Entertainment, alongside former trainee Lami and now-NCT member Jaehyun.


title: Irene (singer)

text: During SM Rookies, in January 2014, she alongside Seulgi as well as now-NCT members Johnny and Taeyong appeared in The Celebrity magazine. In February 2014, Irene, Seulgi and Taeyong appeared in the OhBoy! magazine.


title: Irene (singer)

text: Various clips of Irene were released in SM Entertainment's official YouTube channel, "SMTOWN", one of which included her and Seulgi dancing to "Be Natural", a song originally performed by SM Entertainment's group S.E.S., showcasing their dancing on July 17, 2014.


title: Irene (singer)

text: On July 27, 2014, she was announced as a member and the leader of the girl group Red Velvet. They made her official debut with the single "Happiness". Since then, Red Velvet has released eleven EPs and two studio albums as well as two reissue albums. They have become regarded as one of the most popular K-pop groups in South Korea and worldwide. In November 2014, Irene appeared in the music video of Kyuhyun's ballad single "규현 '광화문에서 (At Gwanghwamun)".


title: Irene (singer)

text: From May 2015 to June 2016, Irene hosted the music show "Music Bank" with actor Park Bo-gum. They both gained attention for their chemistry as well as singing and hosting skills. The press called them one of the best partnerships in the show's history.


title: Irene (singer)

text: In July 2016, Irene made her acting debut in the web drama "Women at a Game Company" where she played the female lead. In the same month, Irene was cast in "Hello! Our Language", a sitcom that was set on teaching viewers proper Korean, and she played as detective. On October 14, Irene became a host of OnStyle's fashion show "Laundry Day". The show premiered on October 22, 2016. In the same month, she became a panelist on the KBS show "Trick & True" with bandmate Wendy. In March 2017, Irene partnered with actor Kim Min-jae for the portrayal of two lovers in the MV of Red Velvet's "SM Station ID" "Would U". In July 2019, SM Entertainment announced that Irene would be collaborating with South Korean DJ and producer Raiden on the track "The Only", which was released on August 2.


title: Irene (singer)

text: On April 20, 2020, SM confirmed that Irene, alongside member Seulgi, would form Red Velvet's first sub-unit. Red Velvet - Irene & Seulgi debuted on July 6 with the extended play "Monster". A short solo performance MV of her, titled Episode 2: IRENE, was also released. She and Seulgi also starred in a spin-off version of their reality show "Level Up Project!"


title: Irene (singer)

text: On July 16, 2020, SM confirmed that Irene would be acting in the upcoming film "Double Patty", which was to be released later on that year, but it was later postponed to February 2021. She is to play the role of Lee Hyun-Ji, an aspiring anchor. Irene also released her own OST, titled "A White Night", for the movie.


title: Irene (singer)

text: Irene has been hailed a "CF Queen" due to her huge marketing power and numerous endorsement deals ranging from cosmetics, luxury apparel items, and up to basic commodities. Besides her endorsements with Red Velvet as a group, she also became a model for "Ivy Club" together with labelmates EXO in 2015. In 2016, she became an endorser of coffee brand "Maxwell House". In January 2017, Irene became the new brand model for "Nuovo Shoes". In August 2017, Irene was also chosen to be the promotional model for the "MMORPG Age of Ring (반지)". In the same year, she became the official endorser of "Hyundai Auto Advantage" program.


title: Irene (singer)

text: On February 26, 2018, Irene was selected to be the model of contact lens brand "Cooper Vision". In the same month, she became an exclusive model of the British casual accessory brand "Hazzy's Accessories". On May 3, she became the brand model for famous vitamin brand "LEMONA Vitamin C" and was given the title “human vitamin”. On August 9, she was announced as the new exclusive model for French sports brand "Eider" for fall/winter of 2018 and spring/summer of 2019. In November 2018, Irene, together with Wendy, also became an endorser of "Dongwon Yangban Rice Porridge". In December, she was chosen to be the face for "HiteJinro Chamisul" soju brand.


title: Irene (singer)

text: In February 2019, Irene was announced as the new muse of the Italian luxury jewelry brand "Damiani", becoming the first Asian to represent the brand as a muse. In the same year, she also became the face of fashion brand "Miu Miu". In March 2019, she attended Paris Fashion Week and caused a craze at Miu Miu's AW19 show.


title: Irene (singer)

text: As her global influence continues to rise, Irene became the new ambassador for mid-range beauty brand "Clinique" in Asia Pacific in March 2020. On September 17, 2020, Irene was announced as the new ambassador for "Prada".


title: Irene (singer)

text: In Gallup Korea's Idol Preference poll (before it was discontinued in 2020), Irene was named as one of the topmost loved idol celebrity in South Korea. In 2019, in a separate survey among soldiers doing mandatory military service in South Korea, Irene was ranked as the third most popular female K-pop idol. The popularity of Irene have led her to endorsing several brands, she also topped 'Individual Girl Group Members Brand Power Ranking' published by the Korean Corporate Reputation Research Institute placing within top 3 several times in 2018.


title: Irene (singer)

text: In February 2020, Irene donated 100 million won for the Community Chest of Korea to help support those affected by the COVID-19 pandemic in South Korea.


title: Irene (singer)

text: On October 21, 2020, Irene came under fire for mistreating and lashing out at a fashion editor (according to a now-deleted Instagram post of that fashion editor). Irene took to the social media platform to post an official statement, apologizing for her poor words and actions. SM Entertainment also subsequently released a statement apologizing for causing concern to many people. The heated controversy had caused widespread reaction as it sparked larger conversations about the deep-rooted "gapjil" (갑질) culture in Korean society. Experts and spokespersons of various political movements in South Korea believed that much of the public outrage towards Irene stems from the country's reckoning with "gapjil" (or abusive conduct and bullying by people in positions of power or seniority), an issue that the country has been trying to eradicate and tone down. The perception of the general public in South Korea toward members of idol groups also came to light with regards to the incident, wherein women in particular are held to a higher standard compared to male artists when it comes to controversies.


title: Irene (singer)

text: Following further numerous speculations in regards to the incident, staffers who had previously worked with Irene voiced their opinion to defend the musician. Some stylists, dancers, and make-up artists that worked with her had also posted on their Instagram accounts that they had never experienced such rude actions that are being shared about Irene. The staffs shared that Irene is someone who has a clear understanding of what she wants and has the talent to deliver her opinions clearly; she also knows how to appreciate her staff through giving handwritten cards and gifts to staff members. Ellena Yim, a former SM stylist and visual director, also claimed there are always "two sides to every story" and it's unfortunate that people refused to look at the other side of the story as they only concentrate on what has been revealed and what they want to see.


title: Irene (singer)

text: The involved fashion editor also spoke up about rumors circulating online and asked to stop the speculations. She emphasized that there was no monetary settlement, and only an exchange of "sincere apologies" occurred when they had met again.


title: Knights of Columbus

text: The Knights of Columbus (K of C) is a global Catholic fraternal service order founded by Michael J. McGivney on March 29, 1882. Membership is limited to practicing Catholic men. It is led by Patrick E. Kelly, the order's 14th Supreme Knight.


title: Knights of Columbus

text: The organization was founded in March 1882 as a mutual benefit society for working-class and immigrant Catholics in the United States. In addition to providing an insurance system for its members, its charter states that it endeavors "to promote such social and intellectual intercourse among its members as shall be desirable and proper". It has grown to support refugee relief, Catholic education, local parishes and dioceses, and global Catholic social and political causes. The Knights promote the Catholic view on public policy issues, including opposition to same-sex marriage and abortion.


title: Knights of Columbus

text: The organization also provides certain financial services to the individual and institutional Catholic market. Its wholly owned insurance company, one of the largest in the world, underwrites more than twomillion insurance contracts, totaling more than $100billion of life insurance in force. The order also owns the Knights of Columbus Asset Advisors, a money management firm which invests in accordance with Catholic social teachings.


title: Knights of Columbus

text: As of 2019, there were nearly twomillion members around the world. Women may participate in K of C through the Columbiettes and other female auxiliaries, and boys may join the Columbian Squires. The Order comprises four different "degrees", each one of which exemplifies one of the core principles of the order. There are more than 16,000 local Knights of Columbus councils around the world, including over 300 on college campuses.


title: Knights of Columbus

text: American Catholic priest Michael J. McGivney founded the Knights of Columbus at St. Mary's Church in 1882 as a mutual benefit society for Catholic immigrants in New Haven, Connecticut. As a parish priest in an immigrant community, McGivney saw what could happen to a family when the main income earner died. This was before most government support programs were established. Because of religious and ethnic discrimination, Catholics in the late 19th century were regularly excluded from labor unions, popular fraternal organizations, and other organized groups that provided such social services.


title: Knights of Columbus

text: Although its first councils were all in Connecticut, the Order spread throughout New England and the United States in subsequent years. As the order expanded outside of Connecticut, structural changes in the late 1880s and 1890s were instituted to give the Knights a federalist system with local, state, and national branches of government. This allowed them to coordinate activities across states and localities.


title: Knights of Columbus

text: During World War I, the Knights established soldiers' welfare centers in the U.S. and abroad. After the war, the Knights participated in education, occupational training, and employment programs for veterans.


title: Knights of Columbus

text: The Oregon Compulsory Education Act of 1922 would have disallowed parochial schools, including Catholic schools, in that state. The Knights of Columbus challenged the law in court, and, in a landmark 1925 ruling ("Pierce v. Society of Sisters"), the U.S. Supreme Court struck it down.