title: Match

text: The first successful friction match was invented in 1826 by John Walker, an English chemist and druggist from Stockton-on-Tees, County Durham. He developed a keen interest in trying to find a means of obtaining fire easily. Several chemical mixtures were already known which would ignite by a sudden explosion, but it had not been found possible to transmit the flame to a slow-burning substance like wood. While Walker was preparing a lighting mixture on one occasion, a match which had been dipped in it took fire by an accidental friction upon the hearth. He at once appreciated the practical value of the discovery, and started making friction matches. They consisted of wooden splints or sticks of cardboard coated with sulfur and tipped with a mixture of sulfide of antimony, chlorate of potash, and gum. The treatment with sulfur helped the splints to catch fire, and the odor was improved by the addition of camphor. The price of a box of 50 matches was one shilling. With each box was supplied a piece of sandpaper, folded double, through which the match had to be drawn to ignite it. Walker did not name the matches ""Congreves"" in honour of the inventor and rocket pioneer Sir William Congreve, as it is sometimes stated. The "congreves" were the invention of Charles Sauria, a French chemistry student at the time. Walker did not divulge the exact composition of his matches. Between 1827 and 1829, Walker made about 168 sales of his matches. It was however dangerous and flaming balls sometimes fell to the floor burning carpets and dresses, leading to their ban in France and Germany. Walker either refused or neglected to patent his invention.


title: Match

text: In 1829, Scots inventor Sir Isaac Holden invented an improved version of Walker's match and demonstrated it to his class at Castle Academy in Reading, Berkshire. Holden did not patent his invention and claimed that one of his pupils wrote to his father Samuel Jones, a chemist in London who commercialised his process. A version of Holden's match was patented by Samuel Jones, and these were sold as "lucifer matches". These early matches had a number of problems an initial violent reaction, an unsteady flame, and unpleasant odor and fumes. Lucifers could ignite explosively, sometimes throwing sparks a considerable distance. Lucifers were manufactured in the United States by Ezekial Byam. The term "lucifer" persisted as slang in the 20th century (for example in the First World War song "Pack Up Your Troubles") and matches are still called "lucifers" in Dutch.


title: Match

text: Lucifers were quickly replaced after 1830 by matches made according to the process devised by Frenchman Charles Sauria, who substituted white phosphorus for the antimony sulfide. These new phosphorus matches had to be kept in airtight metal boxes but became popular and went by the name of "loco foco" in the United States, from which was derived the name of a political party. The earliest American patent for the phosphorus friction match was granted in 1836 to Alonzo Dwight Phillips of Springfield, Massachusetts.


title: Match

text: From 1830 to 1890, the composition of these matches remained largely unchanged, although some improvements were made. In 1843 William Ashgard replaced the sulfur with beeswax, reducing the pungency of the fumes. This was replaced by paraffin in 1862 by Charles W. Smith, resulting in what were called "parlor matches". From 1870 the end of the splint was fireproofed by impregnation with fire-retardant chemicals such as alum, sodium silicate, and other salts resulting in what was commonly called a "drunkard's match" that prevented the accidental burning of the user's fingers. Other advances were made for the mass manufacture of matches. Early matches were made from blocks of woods with cuts separating the splints but leaving their bases attached. Later versions were made in the form of thin combs. The splints would be broken away from the comb when required.


title: Match

text: A noiseless match was invented in 1836 by the Hungarian János Irinyi, who was a student of chemistry. An unsuccessful experiment by his professor, Meissner, gave Irinyi the idea to replace potassium chlorate with lead dioxide in the head of the phosphorus match. He liquefied phosphorus in warm water and shook it in a glass vial, until the two liquids emulsified. He mixed the phosphorus with lead dioxide and gum arabic, poured the paste-like mass into a jar, and dipped the pine sticks into the mixture and let them dry. When he tried them that evening, all of them lit evenly. He sold the invention and production rights for these "noiseless matches" to István Rómer, a Hungarian pharmacist living in Vienna, for 60 florins (about 22.5 oz t of silver). As a match manufacturer, Rómer became rich, and Irinyi went on to publish articles and a textbook on chemistry, and founded several match factories.


title: Match

text: Those involved in the manufacture of the new phosphorus matches were afflicted with "phossy jaw" and other bone disorders, and there was enough white phosphorus in one pack to kill a person. Deaths and suicides from eating the heads of matches became frequent. The earliest report of phosphorus necrosis was made in 1845 by Lorinser in Vienna, and a New York surgeon published a pamphlet with notes on nine cases.


title: Match

text: The conditions of working-class women at the Bryant & May factories led to the London matchgirls strike of 1888. The strike was focused on the severe health complications of working with white phosphorus, such as phossy jaw. Social activist Annie Besant published an article in her halfpenny weekly paper "The Link" on 23 June 1888. A strike fund was set up and some newspapers collected donations from readers. The women and girls also solicited contributions. Members of the Fabian Society, including George Bernard Shaw, Sidney Webb, and Graham Wallas, were involved in the distribution of the cash collected. The strike and negative publicity led to changes being made to limit the health effects of the inhalation of white phosphorus.


title: Match

text: Attempts were made to reduce the ill-effects on workers through the introduction of inspections and regulations. Anton Schrötter von Kristelli discovered in 1850 that heating white phosphorus at 250 °C in an inert atmosphere produced a red allotropic form, which did not fume in contact with air. It was suggested that this would make a suitable substitute in match manufacture although it was slightly more expensive. Two French chemists, Henri Savene and Emile David Cahen, proved in 1898 that the addition of phosphorus sesquisulfide meant that the substance was not poisonous, that it could be used in a "strike-anywhere" match, and that the match heads were not explosive.


title: Match

text: British company Albright and Wilson was the first company to produce phosphorus sesquisulfide matches commercially. The company developed a safe means of making commercial quantities of phosphorus sesquisulfide in 1899 and started selling it to match manufacturers. However, white phosphorus continued to be used, and its serious effects led many countries to ban its use. Finland prohibited the use of white phosphorus in 1872, followed by Denmark in 1874, France in 1897, Switzerland in 1898, and the Netherlands in 1901. An agreement, the "Berne Convention," was reached at Bern, Switzerland, in September 1906, which banned the use of white phosphorus in matches. This required each country to pass laws prohibiting the use of white phosphorus in matches. The United Kingdom passed a law in 1908 prohibiting its use in matches after 31 December 1910. The United States did not pass a law, but instead placed a "punitive tax" in 1913 on white phosphorus–based matches, one so high as to render their manufacture financially impractical, and Canada banned them in 1914. India and Japan banned them in 1919; China followed, banning them in 1925.


title: Match

text: In 1901 Albright and Wilson started making phosphorus sesquisulfide at their Niagara Falls, New York plant for the US market, but American manufacturers continued to use white phosphorus matches. The Niagara Falls plant made them until 1910, when the United States Congress forbade the shipment of white phosphorus matches in interstate commerce.


title: Match

text: The dangers of white phosphorus in the manufacture of matches led to the development of the "hygienic" or "safety match". The major innovation in its development was the use of red phosphorus, not on the head of the match but instead on a specially designed striking surface.


title: Match

text: Arthur Albright developed the industrial process for large-scale manufacture of red phosphorus after Schrötter's discoveries became known. By 1851, his company was producing the substance by heating white phosphorus in a sealed pot at a specific temperature. He exhibited his red phosphorus in 1851, at The Great Exhibition held at The Crystal Palace in London.


title: Match

text: The idea of creating a specially designed striking surface was developed in 1844 by the Swede Gustaf Erik Pasch. Pasch patented the use of red phosphorus in the striking surface. He found that this could ignite heads that did not need to contain white phosphorus. Johan Edvard Lundström and his younger brother Carl Frans Lundström (1823–1917) started a large-scale match industry in Jönköping, Sweden around 1847, but the improved safety match was not introduced until around 1850–55. The Lundström brothers had obtained a sample of red phosphorus matches from Arthur Albright at The Great Exhibition, but had misplaced it and therefore they did not try the matches until just before the Paris Exhibition of 1855 when they found that the matches were still usable. In 1858 their company produced around 12 million matchboxes.


title: Match

text: The safety of "true" "safety matches" is derived from the separation of the reactive ingredients between a match head on the end of a paraffin-impregnated splint and the special striking surface (in addition to the safety aspect of replacing the white phosphorus with red phosphorus). The idea for separating the chemicals had been introduced in 1859 in the form of two-headed matches known in France as "Allumettes Androgynes". These were sticks with one end made of potassium chlorate and the other of red phosphorus. They had to be broken and the heads rubbed together. There was however a risk of the heads rubbing each other accidentally in their box. Such dangers were removed when the striking surface was moved to the outside of the box. The development of a specialized matchbook with both matches and a striking surface occurred in the 1890s with the American Joshua Pusey, who sold his patent to the Diamond Match Company.


title: Match

text: The striking surface on modern matchboxes is typically composed of 25% powdered glass or other abrasive material, 50% red phosphorus, 5% neutralizer, 4% carbon black, and 16% binder; and the match head is typically composed of 45–55% potassium chlorate, with a little sulfur and starch, a neutralizer (ZnO or ), 20–40% of siliceous filler, diatomite, and glue. Safety matches ignite due to the extreme reactivity of phosphorus with the potassium chlorate in the match head. When the match is struck the phosphorus and chlorate mix in a small amount forming something akin to the explosive Armstrong's mixture which ignites due to the friction.


title: Match

text: The Swedes long held a virtual worldwide monopoly on safety matches, with the industry mainly situated in Jönköping, by 1903 called "Jönköpings & Vulcans Tändsticksfabriks AB." In France, they sold the rights to their safety match patent to Coigent Père & Fils of Lyon, but Coigent contested the payment in the French courts, on the basis that the invention was known in Vienna before the Lundström brothers patented it. The British match manufacturer Bryant and May visited Jönköping in 1858 to try to obtain a supply of safety matches, but it was unsuccessful. In 1862 it established its own factory and bought the rights for the British safety match patent from the Lundström brothers.


title: Match

text: Friction matches made with white phosphorus as well as those made from phosphorus sesquisulfide can be struck on any suitable surface. They have remained particularly popular in the United States, even when safety matches had become common in Europe, and are still widely used today around the world, including in many developing countries, for such uses as camping, outdoor activities, emergency/survival situations, and stocking homemade survival kits. However, strike-anywhere matches are banned on all kinds of aircraft under the "dangerous goods" classification "U.N. 1331, Matches, strike-anywhere".


title: Match

text: Safety matches are classified as dangerous goods, "U.N. 1944, Matches, safety". They are not universally forbidden on aircraft; however, they must be declared as dangerous goods and individual airlines or countries may impose tighter restrictions.


title: Match

text: Storm matches, also known as lifeboat matches or flare matches, are often included in survival kits. They have a strikeable tip similar to a normal match, but the combustible compound – including an oxidiser – continues down the length of the stick, coating half or more of the entire matchstick. The match also has a waterproof coating (which often makes the match more difficult to light), and often storm matches are longer than standard matches. As a result of the combustible coating, storm matches burn strongly even in strong winds, and can even spontaneously re-ignite after being briefly immersed under water. The pyrotechnics compound burns self-sustained.


title: Match

text: The hobby of collecting match-related items, such as matchcovers and matchbox labels, is known as "phillumeny".


title: Fireman Sam

text: Fireman Sam (Welsh: "") is a Welsh animated children's television series about a fireman named Sam, his fellow firefighters, and other residents in the fictional Welsh rural village of Pontypandy (a portmanteau of two real towns, Pontypridd and Tonypandy). The original idea for the show came from two ex-firemen from London, England, who took their idea to artist and writer Rob Lee who developed the concept, and the show was commissioned.


title: Fireman Sam

text: "Fireman Sam" first appeared on S4C on 1 November 1987, and a few weeks later on BBC 1 on 17 November. The original series finished in 1994, and a new series that expanded the character cast commenced in 2003. The series was also shown as "" in Scottish Gaelic in Scotland. The series was sold to over 40 countries and has been used across the United Kingdom to promote fire safety.


title: Fireman Sam

text: The theme song was performed by Mal Pope in a classic rock style from 1987 to 1994, then by a different singer, Cameron Stewart, in a 2000s alternative rock style since the 2003 new episode broadcasts.


title: Fireman Sam

text: The original idea came about from two ex-firemen from London, England – Dave Gingell and David Jones after purchasing a stop motion animation book by artist Anthony Miller. They approached Mike Young, creator of "SuperTed", in Barry, Wales, and asked him to further develop their concept. The idea was then brought to S4C's Director of Animation, Chris Grace, who had previously commissioned "SuperTed", saw potential in the idea and commissioned the series. The characters and the storylines were created by Rob Lee, an illustrator from Cardiff, and the programme was made using stop motion. It could take up to four days to produce one minute of this form of puppet animation. "Fireman Sam" has to this day been translated into over 25 different languages including Mandarin.


title: Fireman Sam

text: In the original series, all the character voices were performed by John Alderton. The later series used several actors' voices.


title: Fireman Sam

text: In 1996, there was a stage show which was later released on video, titled "Fireman Sam in Action". It was interspersed with scenes of children learning about fire safety with Gary Lewis, the actor playing Fireman Sam in the stage show.


title: Fireman Sam

text: In 2009, "Fireman Sam" appeared with other animated children's TV characters in a "Children in Need" single. The single was put together by Peter Kay.


title: Fireman Sam

text: In 2014, Amazon Prime redubbed "Fireman Sam" using American voices instead of British voices for children in the US. However, the characters of Tom Thomas, Moose Roberts and Bella Lasagna have their regular, respective Australian, Canadian and Italian voices (instead of their being dubbed them with a US voice actor) due to their accents. This cast includes the voices of Andrew Hodwitz, Jonah Ain, Chris D'Silva, Margaret Brock, Lily Cassano, Dave Pender Crichton, Jacob James, Scott Lancastle, Ashley Magwood, Michael Pongracz, Becky E. Shrimpton, Sarah Lynn Strange, Carter Treneer, Mark Ricci, Joe Marth (later replaced by Dave MacRae), Adam Turgeon and Christa Clahane. Starting from season 12, the US dub has been possibly discontinued.


title: Fireman Sam

text: The ABC website said of the series, "All the characters blend together into an appealing mixture of fun and entertainment for children everywhere."


title: Fireman Sam

text: Common Sense Media recommended the 2005 series for ages three and up, praising it for showing how to "stay calm in a crisis" and rely on a team to solve problems. The American website found that the "distinctly Welsh characters, community, accents, and expressions may pose some minor comprehension problems for kids on this side of the pond", but considered it a useful example of life in another part of the world.


title: Fireman Sam

text: In July 2016, it emerged that in Series 9, Episode 6 called "Troubled Waters" – in which the character Elvis slips on a piece of paper and falls into a stack of sheets of paper, causing them to fly everywhere – one of the flying pages that briefly came into view was identified as a page from the Quran: "Surah Mulk (67), verses 13–26". The production company Mattel apologised for this accident, removed the episode from broadcast, and ceased work with Xing Xing, the animation company responsible for the error. Mattel stated: "Someone from the production company thought they were just putting in random text. We have no reason to believe it was done maliciously." It was at first thought that this episode would have to be removed from broadcast circulation, but instead was censored by having the scene edited to show Elvis just slipping on a blank piece of paper, so the television networks were still able to broadcast it. The BBC received more than 1,000 complaints and forwarded them to Channel 5 as the BBC has not aired Fireman Sam since 2008.


title: Fireman Sam

text: In October 2017, the London Fire Commissioner Dany Cotton highlighted Fireman Sam in a campaign fighting sexism and promoting the gender-neutral term . She proposed that Fireman Sam should be renamed "Firefighter Sam", and said that research showed that women are put off a career in the fire service because it is seen as a job for men.


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: Verónica Michelle Bachelet Jeria (; born 29 September 1951) is a Chilean politician who served as United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights from 2018 to 2022. She previously served as President of Chile from 2006 to 2010 and 2014 to 2018 for the Socialist Party of Chile; she is the first woman to hold the Chilean presidency and the first elected female leader in South America. After leaving the presidency in 2010 and while not immediately reelectable, she was appointed the first executive director of the newly created United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women. In December 2013, Bachelet was reelected with over 62% of the vote, bettering the 54% she obtained in 2006. She was the first President of Chile to be reelected since 1932.


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: Bachelet, a physician who has studied military strategy at university level, was Health Minister and Defense Minister under her predecessor, Ricardo Lagos. She is a separated mother of three and describes herself as an agnostic. She speaks English fluently, as well as some German, French, and Portuguese.


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: Verónica Michelle Bachelet Jeria is the second child of archaeologist Ángela Jeria Gómez (1926–2020) and Air Force Brigadier General Alberto Bachelet Martínez (1923–1974).


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: Bachelet's paternal great-great-grandfather, Louis-Joseph Bachelet Lapierre (1820–1864), was a French wine merchant from Chassagne-Montrachet who immigrated to Chile with his Parisian wife, Françoise Jeanne Beault, in 1860; he was hired as a wine-making expert by the Subercaseaux vineyards in Santiago. Bachelet Lapierre's son, Germán, was born in Santiago in 1862, and in 1891 married Luisa Brandt Cadot, a Chilean of French and Swiss descent, giving birth in 1894 to Alberto Bachelet Brandt.


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: Bachelet's maternal great-grandfather, Máximo Jeria Chacón, of Spanish (Basque region) and Greek heritage, was the first person to receive a degree in agronomic engineering in Chile and founded several agronomy schools in the country. He married Lely Johnson, the daughter of an English physician working in Chile. Their son, Máximo Jeria Johnson, married Ángela Gómez Zamora. Their union produced five children, the fourth of whom is Bachelet's mother.


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: Bachelet was born in La Cisterna, a middle-class suburb of Santiago. She was named after French actress Michèle Morgan. Bachelet spent many of her childhood years traveling around her native Chile, moving with her family from one military base to another. She lived and attended primary schools in, among other places, Quintero, Antofagasta, and San Bernardo. In 1962, she moved with her family to the United States, where her father was assigned to the military mission at the Chilean Embassy in Washington D.C. Her family lived for almost two years in Bethesda, Maryland, where she attended Western Junior High School and learned to speak English fluently.


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: Returning to Chile in 1964, she graduated in 1969 from Liceo Nº 1 Javiera Carrera, a prestigious girls' public high school, finishing near the top of her class. There she was class president, a member of the choir and volleyball teams, and part of a theater group and a band, "Las Clap Clap", which she co-founded and which toured around several school festivals. In 1970, after obtaining a relatively high score on the university admission test, she entered medical school at the University of Chile, where she was selected in the 113th position (out of 160 admitted applicants). She originally intended to study sociology or economics, but was prevailed upon by her father to study medicine instead. She has said she opted for medicine because it was "a concrete way of helping people cope with pain" and "a way to contribute to improve health in Chile."


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: Facing growing food shortages, the government of Salvador Allende placed Bachelet's father in charge of the Food Distribution Office. When General Augusto Pinochet suddenly came to power via the 11 September 1973 coup d'état, Bachelet's father was detained at the Air War Academy on charges of treason. Following months of daily torture at Santiago's Public Prison, he suffered a cardiac arrest that resulted in his death on 12 March 1974. In early January 1975, Bachelet and her mother were detained at their apartment by two DINA agents, who blindfolded them and drove them to Villa Grimaldi, a notorious secret detention center in Santiago, where they were separated and subjected to interrogation and torture.


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: In 2013, Bachelet revealed she had been interrogated by DINA chief Manuel Contreras there. Some days later, Bachelet was transferred to Cuatro Álamos ("Four Poplars") detention center, where she was held until the end of January. Thanks to the assistance of Roberto Kozak, Bachelet was able to go into exile in Australia, where her older brother, Alberto, had moved in 1969.


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: Of her torture, Bachelet said, in 2004, that "it was nothing in comparison to what others suffered". She was "yelled at using abusive language, shaken," and both she and her mother were "threatened with the killing of the other." She was "never tortured with electricity," but she did see it done to other prisoners.


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: In May 1975 Bachelet left Australia and later moved to East Germany, to an apartment assigned to her by the German Democratic Republic (GDR) government in Am Stern, Potsdam; her mother joined her a month later, living separately in Leipzig. In October 1976, she began working at a communal clinic in the Babelsberg neighborhood, as a preparatory step to continuing her medical studies at an East German university. During this period, she met architect Jorge Leopoldo Dávalos Cartes, another Chilean exile, whom she married in 1977. In January 1978 she went to Leipzig to learn German at the Karl Marx University's Herder Institute (now the University of Leipzig). Her first child with Dávalos, Jorge Alberto Sebastián, was born there in June 1978. She returned to Potsdam in September 1978 to continue her medical studies at the Humboldt University of Berlin for two years. Five months after enrolling as a student, however, she obtained authorization to return to her country.


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: After four years in exile, Bachelet returned to Chile in 1979. Her medical school credits from the GDR were not transferred, forcing her to resume her studies where she had left off before fleeing the country. She graduated as physician-surgeon on 7 January 1983. She wished to work in the public sector wherever attention was most needed, applying for a position as general practitioner; her petition was rejected by the military government on "political grounds".


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: Instead, owing to her academic performance and published papers, she earned a scholarship from the Chilean Medical Chamber to specialize in pediatrics and public health at the University of Chile's Roberto del Río Children's Hospital (1983–86). She completed the program with excellent grades but for "financial reasons" did not obtain her certification.


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: During this time she also worked at PIDEE (Protection of Children Injured by States of Emergency Foundation), a non-governmental organization helping children of the tortured and missing in Santiago and Chillán. She was head of the foundation's Medical Department between 1986 and 1990. Some time after her second child with Dávalos, Francisca Valentina, was born in February 1984, she and her husband legally separated. Between 1985 and 1987, Bachelet had a romantic relationship with Alex Vojkovic Trier, an engineer and spokesman for the Manuel Rodríguez Patriotic Front, an armed group that, among other activities, attempted to assassinate Pinochet in 1986. The affair was a minor issue during her presidential campaign, during which she argued that she never supported any of Vojkovic's activities.


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: After Chile made a transition to democracy in 1990, Bachelet worked for the Ministry of Health's West Santiago Health Service and was a consultant for the Pan-American Health Organization, the World Health Organization and the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit. While working for the National AIDS Commission (Conasida) she became romantically involved with Aníbal Hernán Henríquez Marich, a fellow physician – and right-wing Pinochet supporter – who fathered her third child, Sofía Catalina, in December 1992; their relationship ended a few years later. Between March 1994 and July 1997, Bachelet worked as Senior Assistant to the Deputy Health Minister. Driven by an interest in civil-military relations, in 1996 Bachelet began studies in military strategy at the National Academy of Political and Strategic Studies (ANEPE) in Chile, obtaining first place in her class. Her student achievement earned her a presidential scholarship, permitting her to continue her studies in the United States at the Inter-American Defense College in Washington, D.C., completing a Continental Defense Course in 1998. That same year she returned to Chile to work for the Defense Ministry as Senior Assistant to the Defense Minister. She subsequently graduated from a Master's program in military science at the Chilean Army's War Academy.


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: In her first year as a university student (1970), Bachelet became a member of the Socialist Youth, known as the “Commander Claudia”, part or the MIR (Movimiento Revolucionario de Izquierda, which tried several attempts to Chilean lives between 1970 and 1990), and was an active supporter of the Popular Unity. In the immediate aftermath of the coup, she and her mother worked as couriers for the underground Socialist Party directorate that was trying to organize a resistance movement; eventually almost all of them were captured and disappeared.


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: Following her return from exile she became politically active during the second half of the 1980s, fighting – though not on the front line – for the re-establishment of democracy in Chile. In 1995 she became part of the party's Central Committee, and from 1998 until 2000 she was an active member of the Political Commission. In 1996 Bachelet ran against future presidential adversary Joaquín Lavín for the mayorship of Las Condes, a wealthy Santiago suburb and a right-wing stronghold. Lavín won the 22-candidate election with nearly 78% of the vote, while she finished fourth with 2.35%. At the 1999 presidential primary of the "Concertación", Chile's governing coalition from 1990 to 2010, she worked for Ricardo Lagos's nomination, heading the Santiago electoral zone.


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: On 11 March 2000, Bachelet – virtually unknown at the time – was appointed Minister of Health by President Ricardo Lagos. She began an in-depth study of the public health-care system that led to the AUGE plan a few years later. She was also given the task of eliminating waiting lists in the saturated public hospital system within the first 100 days of Lagos's government. She reduced waiting lists by 90%, but was unable to eliminate them completely and offered her resignation, which was promptly rejected by the President. She authorized free distribution of the morning-after pill for victims of sexual abuse, generating controversy.


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: On 7 January 2002, she was appointed Minister of National Defense, becoming the first woman to hold this post in a Latin American country and one of the few in the world. While Minister of Defense she promoted reconciliatory gestures between the military and victims of the dictatorship, culminating in the historic 2003 declaration by General Juan Emilio Cheyre, head of the army, that "never again" would the military subvert democracy in Chile. She also oversaw a reform of the military pension system and continued with the process of modernization of the Chilean armed forces with the purchasing of new military equipment, while engaging in international peace operations. A moment which has been cited as key to Bachelet's chances to the presidency came in mid-2002 during a flood in northern Santiago where she, as Defense Minister, led a rescue operation on top of an amphibious tank, wearing a cloak and military cap.


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: In late 2004, following a surge of her popularity in opinion polls, Bachelet was considered the only politician of the Coalition of Parties for Democracy (Concertación de los Partidos por la Democracia; CPD) able to defeat Joaquín Lavín, and she was asked to become the Socialists' candidate for the presidency. At first hesitant to accept the nomination as it was never one of her goals, she finally agreed because she felt she could not disappoint her supporters. On 1 October of that year she was freed from her government post in order to begin her campaign and to help the CPD at the municipal elections held later that month. On 28 January 2005 she was named the Socialist Party's candidate for president. An open primary scheduled for July 2005 to define the sole presidential candidate of the CPD was canceled after Bachelet's only rival, Christian Democrat Soledad Alvear, a cabinet member in the first three CPD administrations, pulled out early due to a lack of support within her own party and in opinion polls.


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: In the December 2005 election, Bachelet faced the center-right candidate Sebastián Piñera (RN), the right-wing candidate Joaquín Lavín (UDI) and the leftist candidate Tomás Hirsch (JPM). As the opinion polls had forecast, she failed to obtain the absolute majority needed to win the election outright, winning 46% of the vote. In the runoff election on 15 January 2006, Bachelet faced Piñera, and won the presidency with 53.5% of the vote, thus becoming her country's first female elected president and the first woman who was not the wife of a previous head of state or political leader to reach the presidency of a Latin American nation in a direct election.


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: On 30 January 2006, after being declared President-elect by the Elections Qualifying Court (Tricel), Bachelet announced her cabinet of ministers, which was unprecedentedly composed of an equal number of men and women, as was promised during her campaign. In keeping with the Coalition's internal balance of power she named seven ministers from the Christian Democrat Party (PDC), five from the Party for Democracy (PPD), four from the Socialist Party (PS), one from the Social Democrat Radical Party (PRSD) and three without party affiliation.


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: Bachelet was sworn in as President of the Republic of Chile on 11 March 2006 in a ceremony held in a plenary session of the National Congress in Valparaíso attended by many foreign heads of states and delegates. Much of Bachelet's first three months as president were spent working on 36 measures she had promised during her campaign to implement during her first 100 days in office. They ranged from simple presidential decrees, such as providing free health care for older patients, to complex bills to reform the social security system and the electoral system. For her first state visit, Bachelet chose Argentina, arriving in Buenos Aires on 21 March. There she met with president Néstor Kirchner, with whom she signed strategic agreements on energy and infrastructure, including the possibility of launching a bidding process to operate the Transandine Railway.


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: In March 2006 Bachelet created an advisory committee to reform the pension system, which was headed by former budget director Mario Marcel. The commission issued its final report in July 2006, and in March 2008 Bachelet signed the bill into law. The new legislation established a Basic Solidarity Pension (PBS) and a Solidarity Pension Contribution (APS), guaranteeing a minimum pension for the 60% poorest segment of the population, regardless of their contribution history. The reform also grants a bonus to female pensioners for every child born alive.


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: In October 2006 Bachelet enacted legislation to protect subcontracted employees, which would benefit an estimated 1.2 million workers. In June 2009 she introduced pay equality legislation, guaranteeing equal pay for equal work in the private sector, regardless of gender.


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: In September 2009 Bachelet signed the "Chile Grows with You" plan into law, providing comprehensive social services to vulnerable children from ages zero to six. That law also established a social welfare management framework called the "Intersectoral Social Protection System", made up of subsystems such as "Chile Solidario" and "Chile Grows with You".


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: Between 2008 and 2010 the Bachelet administration delivered a so-called "literary briefcase" (a box of books including encyclopedias, dictionaries, poetry works and books for both children and adults) to the 400,000 poorest families with children attending primary school from first to fourth grade.


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: In March 2009, Bachelet launched the "I Choose my PC" program, awarding free computers to poor seventh-graders with excellent academic performance attending government-subsidized schools. During 2009 and 2010 Bachelet delivered maternity packages to all babies born in public hospitals, which are about 80% of total births. In January 2010, Bachelet promulgated a law allowing the distribution of Emergency contraception pills in public and private health centers, including to persons under 14, without parental consent. The law also requires high schools to add a sexual education program to their curriculum.


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: Bachelet's first political crisis came in late April 2006, when massive high school student demonstrations – unseen in three decades – broke out throughout the country, demanding better public education. In June 2006, she sought to dampen the student protests by setting up an 81-member advisory committee, including education experts from all political backgrounds, representatives of ethnic groups, parents, teachers, students, school owners, university rectors, people from diverse religious denominations, etc. Its purpose was to propose changes to the country's educational system and serve as a forum to share ideas and views. The committee issued its final report in December 2006. In August 2009, she signed the education reform bill into law, which created two new regulatory bodies: a Superintendency on Education and a Quality Agency.


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: During her presidency Bachelet opened 18 new subway stations in Santiago, nine in 2006, one in 2009 and eight in 2010. In December 2009 Bachelet announced the construction of a new subway line in Santiago, to be operational by 2014 (the date was later changed to mid-2016).


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: In February 2007 Santiago's transport system was radically altered with the introduction of Transantiago, designed under the previous administration. The system was nearly unanimously condemned by the media, the users and the opposition, significantly damaging her popularity, and leading to the sacking of her Transport minister. On her decision not to abort the plan's start, she said in April 2007 she was given erroneous information which caused her to act against her "instincts."


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: In September 2008, Chile's Constitutional Court declared a US$400 million loan by the Inter-American Development Bank to fund the transport system unconstitutional. Bachelet – who had been forced to ask for the loan after Congress had refused to approve funds for the beleaguered program in November 2007 – made use of an emergency clause in the Constitution that grants funds equivalent to 2% of the fiscal budget. In November 2008, she invoked the emergency clause again after Congress denied once again funds for the system for 2009.


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: On 27 February 2010, in the last week of summer vacations and less than two weeks before Bachelet's term expired, Chile was ravaged by an 8.8-magnitude earthquake that killed more than 500 people, toppled apartment buildings and bridges and triggered tsunamis that wiped away entire fishing villages. Bachelet and the government were criticized for a slow response to the disaster, which hit on a Saturday at 3:34 am. and left most of the country without electricity, phone or Internet access. Bachelet declared a "state of catastrophe" and on Sunday afternoon sent military troops to the most affected areas in an effort to quell scenes of looting and arson. She imposed night curfews in the most affected cities. She was criticized for not deploying the troops fast enough.


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: In January 2009 Bachelet opened the Museum of Memory and Human Rights in Santiago, documenting the horrors of Pinochet's 16-and-a-half-year dictatorship. In November she promulgated a law (submitted to Congress during the previous administration) creating the National Institute for Human Rights, with the goal of protecting and promoting human rights in the country. The law also allowed for the reopening of the Rettig and Valech commissions for 18 months. She used her power as president to send a bill to legalize gay marriages, and sponsored a reproductive rights bill,


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: On 10 August 2018 the outgoing UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein warmly welcomed the UN General Assembly's appointment of Michelle Bachelet to succeed him. He said that "She has all the attributes – courage, perseverance, passion, and a deep commitment to human rights"


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: In August 2008, Bachelet signed a freedom of information bill into law, which became effective in April 2009.


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: In January 2010, Bachelet enacted a law creating the Ministry for the Environment. The new legislation also created the Environmental Evaluation Service and the Superintendency for the Environment.


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: Half of the ministries in her first government were occupied by women; in her successor's team, Sebastián Piñera, 18% were.


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: Bachelet was widely credited for resisting calls from politicians from her own coalition to spend the huge copper revenues to close the country's income gap. Instead in 2007 she created the Economic and Social Stabilization Fund, a sovereign wealth fund which accumulates fiscal surpluses which are above 1% of GDP. This allowed her to finance new social policies and provide economic stimulus packages when the 2008 financial crisis hit the country.


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: During Bachelet's four years in office the economy grew at an average of 3.3% (2.3% in per capita terms), with a high of 5.7% in 2006 and a negative growth of −1.0% in 2009 due to the global financial crisis. The minimum wage increased an average of 2% per year in real terms (the lowest of any president since 1990), while unemployment hovered between seven and eight percent during her first three years and rose to nearly 11% during 2009. Inflation averaged 4.5% during her term, reaching close to 9% during 2008 due to an increase in food prices. Absolute poverty fell from 13.7% in November 2006 to 11.5% in November 2009.


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: Bachelet began her term with an unprecedented absolute majority in both chambers of Congress – before appointed senators were eliminated in the 2005 constitutional reforms the CPD never had a majority in the Senate – but she was soon faced with internal opposition from a number of dissatisfied lawmakers from both chambers of Congress, the so-called "díscolos" ("disobedient", "ungovernable"), which jeopardized the coalition's narrow and historic congressional majority on a number of key executive-sponsored bills during much of her first two years in office, and forced her to negotiate with a right-wing opposition she saw as "obstructionist". During 2007 the CPD lost its absolute majority in both chambers of Congress, as several senators and deputies from that coalition became independent.


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: In December 2006, Pinochet died. Bachelet decided not to grant him a state funeral, an honour bestowed upon constitutionally elected Chilean presidents, but a military funeral as former commander-in-chief of the Army appointed by President Salvador Allende. She also refused to declare an official national day of mourning, but did authorize flags at military barracks to fly at half staff. Pinochet's coffin was also allowed to be draped in a Chilean flag. Bachelet did not attend his funeral, saying it would be "a violation of [her] conscience", and sent Defense Minister Vivianne Blanlot.


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: In April 2008, Bachelet's Education Minister, Yasna Provoste, was impeached by Congress for her handling of a scandal involving mismanagement of school subsidies. Her conviction was the first for a sitting minister in 36 years.


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: During her first year in office Bachelet faced continuing problems from neighbors Argentina and Peru. In July 2006 she sent a letter of protest to Argentine president Néstor Kirchner after his government issued a decree increasing export tariffs on natural gas to Chile, which was considered by Bachelet to be a violation of a tacit bilateral agreement. A month later a long-standing border dispute resurfaced after Argentina published some tourist maps showing contested territory in the south – the Southern Patagonian Ice Field ("Campo de Hielo Patagónico Sur") – as Argentine, violating an agreement not to define a border over the area.


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: In early 2007, Peru accused Chile of unilaterally redefining their shared sea boundary in a section of a law passed by Congress that detailed the borders of the new administrative region of Arica and Parinacota. The impasse was resolved by the Chilean Constitutional Tribunal, which declared that section unconstitutional. In March 2007, the Chilean state-owned and independent public broadcaster Televisión Nacional de Chile (TVN) canceled the broadcast of a documentary about the War of the Pacific after a cautionary call was made to the stations’ board of directors by Chilean Foreign Relations Minister Alejandro Foxley, apparently acting on demands made by the Peruvian ambassador to Chile; the show was finally broadcast in late May of that year. In August 2007 the Chilean government filed a formal diplomatic protest with Peru and summoned home its ambassador after Peru published an official map claiming a part of the Pacific Ocean that Chile considers its sovereign territory. Peru said this was just another step in its plans to bring the dispute to the International Court of Justice in The Hague. In January 2008 Peru asked the court to consider the dispute, prompting Bachelet to summon home the Chilean ambassador in Lima for consultations.


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: Chile's 16 October 2006 vote in the United Nations Security Council election – with Venezuela and Guatemala deadlocked in a bid for the two-year, non-permanent Latin American and Caribbean seat on the Security Council – developed into a major ideological issue in the country and was seen as a test for Bachelet. The governing coalition was divided between the Socialists, who supported a vote for Venezuela, and the Christian Democrats, who strongly opposed it. The day before the vote the president announced (through her spokesman) that Chile would abstain, citing a lack of regional consensus on a single candidate, ending months of speculation. In March 2007 Chile's ambassador to Venezuela, Claudio Huepe, revealed in an interview with teleSUR that Bachelet personally told him that she initially wanted to vote for Venezuela, but then "there were a series of circumstances that forced me to abstain." The government quickly recalled Huepe and accepted his resignation.


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: In May 2008, Bachelet became the first President pro tempore of the Union of South American Nations (Unasur) and in September she called for an urgent summit after Bolivian President Evo Morales warned of a possible coup attempt against him. The presidents of Bolivia, Ecuador, Uruguay, Argentina, Paraguay, Brazil and Colombia, and the Secretary-General of the Organization of American States, met with Bachelet at the La Moneda Palace in Santiago, where they agreed to send two commissions to Bolivia: one to mediate between the executive and the opposition, and another to investigate the killings in Pando Department.


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: In February 2009, Bachelet visited Cuba and met with Fidel Castro. There she urged the United States to put an end to the embargo. No Chilean head of state had visited the country in 37 years. Soon after the meeting, Castro wrote that the "fascist and vengeful Chilean oligarchy is the same which more than 100 years ago robbed Bolivia of its access to the Pacific and of copper-rich lands in a humiliating war."


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: In March 2009, Bachelet hosted in Viña del Mar the "Progressive Leaders Summit", meeting with U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and presidents Tabaré Vázquez of Uruguay, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner of Argentina. The meeting garnered some media interest because it took place six days before the highly anticipated G-20 Summit in London.


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: Continuing the coalition's free-trade strategy, in August 2006 Bachelet promulgated a free trade agreement with the People's Republic of China (signed under the previous administration of Ricardo Lagos), the first Chinese free-trade agreement with a Latin American nation; similar deals with Japan and India were promulgated in August 2007. In October 2006, Bachelet promulgated a multilateral trade deal with New Zealand, Singapore and Brunei, the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership (P4), also signed under Lagos's presidency. She held free-trade talks with other countries, including Australia, Vietnam, Turkey and Malaysia. Regionally, she signed bilateral free trade agreements with Panama, Peru and Colombia.


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: In October 2007, Bachelet granted amnesty to undocumented migrants from other Latin American countries. The measure was expected to benefit around 15,000 Peruvians and 2,000 Bolivians. In December 2007 she signed in Bolivia a trilateral agreement with the presidents of Brazil and Bolivia to complete and improve a 4,700 km road to connect the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, via Arica and Iquique in Chile and Santos in Brazil. In May 2008, following months of intense lobbying, Chile was elected as member of the United Nations Human Rights Council, obtaining the largest vote among Latin American countries.


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: In December 2009 Chile became the first country in South America, and the second in Latin America after Mexico, to receive an invitation to join the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Bachelet signed the accession agreement in January 2010, but it formally became a member in May 2010, after she had left office.


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: Bachelet enjoyed an approval rating above 50% for her first three months in office, during the so-called "honeymoon period". Her popularity fell during the student protests that year, hovering in the mid-40s. In July she had a disastrous public relations incident when a group of residents she was visiting in the southern city of Chiguayante who were affected by a landslide berated her publicly on television, accusing her of using their tragedy to boost her falling popularity. One woman demanded that she leave the scene so rescue efforts could continue. In July, after only four months in office, Bachelet was forced to reshuffle her cabinet, in what was the fastest ministerial adjustment since 1990.


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: Bachelet's popularity dipped further in her second year, reaching a low of 35% approval, 46% disapproval in September 2007. This fall was mainly attributed to the Transantiago fiasco. That same month she had a second negative incident when a group of earthquake and tsunami victims she was visiting in the southern region of Aisén received her bearing black flags and accused her of showing up late. The city mayor, who told Bachelet to "go to hell", later apologized. Over the following 12 months, however, Bachelet's approval ratings did not improve.


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: At the onset of the global financial crisis in September 2008 Bachelet's popularity was at 42%, but gradually her job approval ratings began to rise. When she left office in March 2010 her popular support was at a record 84%, according to conservative polling institute Adimark GfK.


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: The Chilean Constitution does not allow a president to serve two consecutive terms and Bachelet endorsed Christian Democratic Party candidate Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle for the December 2009 election.


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: In April 2010, Bachelet inaugurated her own think-tank, "Fundación Dialoga". Its headquarters are located in Providencia, a suburb of Santiago.


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: Bachelet is a member of the Club of Madrid, the world's largest forum of former heads of state and government. Since 2010 she has also been a member of the Inter-American Dialogue, the leading think tank on Western Hemisphere relations and affairs, and served as the organization's co-chair.


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: On 14 September 2010, Bachelet was appointed head of the newly created United Nations body UN Women by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. She took office on 19 September 2010. On 15 March 2013 she announced her resignation.


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: On 27 March 2013, Bachelet announced that she would seek a second term as President of Chile in the 2013 elections. The well-respected CEP released a poll in May 2012 suggesting that 51% of voters wished to see her become the next president, far ahead of any other would-be candidate.


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: On 30 June 2013, Bachelet became the Nueva Mayoría's candidate for president after she won a four-way primary election with the support of five center and left parties (PS, PPD, PC, IC, MAS) and 73% of the vote.


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: In the 17 November 2013 presidential election, Bachelet fell short of the absolute majority needed for an outright win. In the runoff election, held on 15 December of that year, she beat former senator and Minister of Labor Evelyn Matthei with over 62% of the vote; turnout was significantly lower than in the first round.


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: Bachelet was sworn in as President of the Republic of Chile for a second time on 11 March 2014 at the National Congress in Valparaíso. Isabel Allende, daughter of former President Salvador Allende, as the newly elected President of the Senate, administered the affirmation of office to Bachelet, the first time in the country's history both parties involved were women.


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: Among Bachelet's main campaign promises for the 2013 election was the introduction of free university education in Chile and the end of profit-making educational institutions, as a response to the 2011–13 Chilean student protests. The intention was that revenue from the increase in corporate tax rate by 2017 would be used to fund free education. The proposals were criticized and quickly became unpopular due to the opposition from students who felt that the proposals did not go far enough in removing profit making. Opposition parties, lower middle class voters and certain members of Bachelet's New Majority coalition attacked the proposals as the law that would prevent individuals from earning profits on public resources would not address making improvements in quality of education.


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: In 2015, the Chile Constitutional Court rejected large portions of Bachelet's plan to offer free college education to half of the nation's poorest students on grounds that requiring them to attend certain schools participating in the program could be considered discrimination. However, what remained of the plan allowed Bachelet to send 200,000 students from low-income families to college free of cost.


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: In January 2018, the Chilean Senate passed a law guaranteeing free education which was supported by conservative opposition parties as well, allowing the poorest 60% of students to study for free and doubled state funding for public universities. The new legislation created a higher education Superintendent empowered to supervise and penalize institutions which do not provide quality of education or have for-profit operations.


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: In September 2014, the Chilean Congress passed Bachelet's tax reform proposal which aimed to increase revenue by 3% of gross domestic product. Measures included in the reform were:


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: Critics blamed tax reforms for complexity driving away investment and for the slowdown of the Chilean economy during Bachelet's second period in office. However, Bachelet's supporters argue that falling copper prices were more to blame for the economic slowdown. They argue that economic forecasts of faster growth in conjunction with rising copper prices and exports from 2018 onwards (after Bachelet's term) suggest that the tax reforms did not negatively affect the economy. Others, such as MIT-trained economist and academic Klaus Schmidt-Hebbel, have found that Chile's overall terms of trade under Bachelet's second term worsened only marginally compared to those of her predecessor Sebastián Piñera, due in part to a lower cost of key imports like petroleum. Consequently, he concludes that Bachelet's reforms and governance likely were instrumental in causing a period of dampened growth throughout her presidency.


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: After Easter Island's Rapa Nui inhabitants voted 73% in favor of establishing a conservation zone, Michelle Bachelet designated a new 720,000 square kilometer protection area in September 2017, protecting at least 142 endemic marine species, including 27 threatened with extinction. Five new national parks in the Patagonia region were created under a presidential decree, covering 10 million acres in January 2018, including 1 million acres of land contributed by conservationist Kris Tompkins. On 9 March 2018, Bachelet created nine marine reserves to protect biodiversity with her final presidential decree, increasing the area of the sea under state protection from 4.2 percent to 42.4 percent. The measure is expected to benefit marine life in approximately 1.4 million square kilometers.


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: When Michelle Bachelet again took office of President in March 2014, she made passing Piñera's civil union bill a priority.


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: The name of the bill was changed to "Civil Union Pact" ("Pacto de Unión Civil") on 17 December, and Congress reiterated their intention to hold the final vote by January 2015. On 6 January 2015, a provision recognizing foreign marriages as civil unions was approved in the Constitutional Committee while the child adoption clause was turned down. The bill went to a final vote before both the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies as it was amended. On 13 January, the full Chamber of Deputies reinserted the adoption provision. On 20 January 2015, the Chamber approved the bill on a vote of 86 to 23 with 2 abstentions. On 27 January, the Senate rejected all the Chamber's amendments, so the bill was headed to the joint committee of both houses. The committee reached the agreement in regard to the text of the bill and changed its name to "Civil Union Agreement" ("Acuerdo de Unión Civil") the same day. The bill was passed in both houses on 28 January 2015. Several lawmakers asked the Chilean Constitutional Court to verify the bill's constitutionality, which was upheld by the court in a ruling released on 6 April 2015. The bill was signed into law by President Bachelet on 13 April 2015. It was published in the Official Gazette on 21 April 2015 and took effect on 22 October 2015.


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: Chile's civil union provisions enable couples to claim pension benefits and inherit property if their civil partner dies as well as more easily co-own property and make medical decisions for one another. The Government estimated at the time of the law going into effect that some two million Chilean couples cohabiting could have their unions legally recognized. In the day following the law going into effect, approximately 1,600 couples signed up to register their unions.


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: On 1 December 2016, the Chamber of Deputies unanimously approved (except for 6 abstentions) a bill to give couples who enter in a civil union five days off, like what married couples have. The bill was approved by the Senate in October 2017, in a unanimous 15–0 vote.


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: A new Ministry for Women and Gender Inequality was formed, replacing the National Women's Service in June 2016 which aimed to formulate policies against abuse of women and gender inequality. Claudia Pascual was appointed as the first ever Minister for Women and Gender Inequality.


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: The Chilean Congress approved Bachelet's abortion legalization bill in some circumstances in July 2017, but was subjected to challenge in the Constitutional Court.


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: Later, Chile's total abortion ban implemented under the Pinochet regime in 1989 was lifted in August 2017 after the Constitutional Court voted 6–4 to allow the procedure under some circumstances: in cases of pregnancy as a result of rape (up to 12 weeks), if the fetus endangers the mother's life, or if the fetus is not viable. Prior to this, Chile was one of only four nations in the Americas that had a total ban on abortions, the others being El Salvador, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic.


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: The Chilean Congress passed Bachelet's proposed abolishment of the binomial voting system introduced by the Augusto Pinochet regime and restoring proportional representation for election to both chambers of the Chilean Congress and requirements that 40% of candidates nominated are female in January 2015. The new system took effect from the 2017 elections, increasing the members of the Chamber of Deputies from 120 to 155 seats and the Senate from 38 seats to 43 seats in 2017 and 50 seats in 2021. As a result, the 2017 election saw the end of the dominance of Bachelet's New Majority and conservative coalitions and increased number of new political parties represented in Congress.


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: Following revelations that President Bachelet's son and daughter in-law were caught in an influence-peddling scandal, she appointed a Presidential Advisory Council on Conflicts of Interest, Influence Peddling, and Corruption (known as the "Engel Commission") headed by economist Eduardo Engel. Subsequently, reforms recommended by the commission were implemented which included, ability to remove politicians from office if found guilty for transparency and election spending limits violations with disqualification for two subsequent elections and constitutional autonomy to Chile's electoral service (SERVEL), giving it complete independence from the government to more effectively oversee electoral processes and the functioning of politics in general.


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: In 2016, overseas voting rights for Chilean women and men living outside the country were introduced, allowing Chilean citizens who live abroad to exercise their right to vote beginning from the 2017 elections.


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: On 8 March 2018, three days before Bachelet left office, the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) multilateral trade agreement was signed in Santiago with Chile and 10 other signatory countries in the Asia Pacific region, following renegotiation of the original Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) which was signed in February 2016. The TPP was renegotiated into the CPTPP following the United States' withdrawal from the original TPP in January 2017.


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: In September 2015, Bachelet's approval rating was 24%, compared to 72% disapproval. Chileans' support for her dropped sharply after revelations of corruption scandals such as the Caval scandal, which involved her son and daughter-in-law accepting millions of dollars in the form of a loan from vice-chairman of the Banco de Chile Andrónico Luksic Craig. The couple's company (Caval) used the money to purchase land and resell it at a $5 million profit after repaying the loan. Bachelet maintains that she was unaware of her family's actions and found out about the agreement between Luksic and her daughter-in-law through the press. By August 2016, Bachelet's approval rating dropped to 15%, the lowest for any President since the return of free elections in 1990, and in March 2017, Bachelet's approval rating remained low, at about 23%.


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: Bachelet left office in March 2018 with an approval rating at 39% according to Adimark, in contrast to the 84% rating when she left office in 2010.


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: On 10 September 2018, Bachelet urged China to allow observers into Xinjiang and expressed concern about the situation there. She said that: "The UN rights group had shown that Uyghurs and other Muslims are being detained in camps across Xinjiang and I expect discussions with Chinese officials to begin soon". China called for Bachelet to respect its sovereignty.


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: In September 2018, Bachelet criticized the Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen. She has called on Saudi Arabia to hold accountable those responsible for airstrikes on civilians in Yemen.


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: On 5 October 2019, Bachelet said she was "troubled by the high levels of violence associated with some demonstrations" during the 2019–20 Hong Kong protests, and stressed that any measures to quell the unrest must be grounded in law. She also stated that "Freedom of peaceful assembly … should be enjoyed without restriction to the greatest extent possible. But on the other hand, we cannot accept people who use masks to provoke violence."


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: Regarding the November 2019 Iranian protests, Nasrin Sotoudeh, a jailed Iranian lawyer, asked Bachelet to administrate an independent investigation into the alleged atrocities committed by the Iranian security forces in the uprising.


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: In January 2020, Bachelet has issued a report on Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and in the occupied Syrian Golan. This report said that "the establishment and expansion of settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory amounts to the transfer by Israel of its population into the Occupied Palestinian Territory, which is prohibited under international humanitarian law. The transfer of an occupying Power’s population to a territory it occupies amounts to a war crime that may engage the individual criminal responsibility of those involved. A number of international bodies have confirmed the illegality of Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and the occupied Syrian Golan, including the International Court of Justice, the Security Council, the General Assembly and the Human Rights Council."


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: On 9 October 2020, Bachelet expressed concern about the suffering of civilians during the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan.


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: In January 2021, in preparation for the 2021 spring session of the UN Human Rights Council, Bachelet has issued a report on Sri Lanka. The report criticizes the failure of the current Sri Lankan government to address documented accusations of grave and numerous human rights crimes perpetrated during and after the Civil war in Sri Lanka, even though the war ended in 2009.


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: In February 2022, Bachelet report on Human rights situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory said that "there are serious concerns that steps taken thus far by Israel and the Palestinian authorities to investigate alleged violations of international humanitarian law during the escalation of hostilities in May 2021 have not been sufficient" and "there was an almost total failure to ensure accountability for numerous allegations of the excessive use of force by Israeli forces in the context of law enforcement operations in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, resulting in the killing and injury of Palestinians. With regard to the Palestinian authorities, few steps were documented in the investigation and prosecution of members of Palestinian security forces or of the security forces in Gaza responsible for the alleged excessive use of force and other human rights violations committed against Palestinians".


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: Bachelet's visited Xinjiang in May 2022 which marked the first time in 17 years that a UN high commissioner for human rights had travelled to China. Bachelet's statement following the visit praised China's "[p]overty alleviation and the eradication of extreme poverty, 10 years ahead of its target date" as "tremendous achievements," noting also that China's "introduction of universal health care and almost universal unemployment insurance scheme go a long way in ensuring protection of the right to health and broader social and economic rights." Bachelet stated that in Xinjiang she "raised questions and concerns about the application of counter-terrorism and de-radicalisation measures and their broad application – particularly their impact on the rights of Uyghurs and other predominantly Muslim minorities" and that "the Government assured me that the [Vocational and Educational Training Center] system has been dismantled." She also "encouraged the Government to undertake a review of all counter terrorism and deradicalization policies to ensure they fully comply with international human rights standards, and in particular that they are not applied in an arbitrary and discriminatory way."


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: Bachelet’s visit was criticized by organizations such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the Campaign for Uyghurs, and the World Uyghur Congress. The New York Times described Bachelet's comments regarding Xinjiang as "couched in the language of the Chinese government" and the editorial boards of "The Guardian" and "The Washington Post" criticized the visit.


title: Michelle Bachelet

text: On 13 June 2022, Bachelet announced that she would not seek a second term as UN High Commissioner on Human Rights following the expiration of her current term on August 31, 2022. She said the decision was motivated by her desire to spend more time with her family in Chile and was unrelated to her recently concluded trip to Xinjiang. According to Al Jazeera, the United Nation’s Human Rights Office is politically charged and nearly all its high commissioners have avoided seeking term extensions. In her final brief at the UN's summer session, Bachelet touched on a number of issues, including the work her office was doing to provide an updated assessment on the human rights situation in Xinjiang and supporting calls for investigation into Israel's alleged killing of journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, stating that the "now chronically high levels of killings and injuries of Palestinians, including children by Israeli forces in the occupied Palestinian territory, have continued in the first six months of 2022.” Bachelet's report on Xinjiang was published on her final day in the role of high commissioner, but unusually she did not sign off on the report with her signature.


title: Obsessed (2009 film)

text: Obsessed is a 2009 American psychological thriller film directed by Steve Shill and written by David Loughery. Starring Idris Elba, Beyoncé Knowles, and Ali Larter, the film tells the story of Lisa (Larter), an office temp who develops unrequited feelings for her boss, Derek Charles (Elba), and repeatedly attempts to seduce him. Derek's wife, Sharon (Beyoncé), learns of Lisa's obsessive behavior, and suspects an affair. "Obsessed" was inspired by the work of directors Roman Polanski and Alfred Hitchcock, and its score was written by James Dooley. Lisa and Sharon were dressed in contrasting styles to reinforce their conflicting characters. It was released in the United States on April 24, 2009, by Sony Pictures Releasing through Screen Gems.


title: Obsessed (2009 film)

text: The film received generally negative reviews from critics, who criticized the absence of an explanation for Lisa's obsession with Derek, failure to explore the potential theme of interracial conflict between the Charles family, who are black, and Lisa, who is white, the comparisons to the 1987 film "Fatal Attraction", and the fact that Derek did not yield to Lisa's seduction. However, the finale fight scene between Beyoncé and Larter's characters received positive reviews, and won the MTV Movie Award for Best Fight. "Obsessed" spent its first week atop the US box office, and grossed $73.8 million from theaters, internationally. Sony Pictures Home Entertainment released the film on home video on August 4, 2009, in the US and has sold 1.3 million DVDs, worth $21 million of consumer spending.


title: Obsessed (2009 film)

text: Derek Charles works for a finance company and lives with his wife, Sharon, with whom he has a two-year-old son, Kyle. While Derek is at work, he befriends a temporary worker, Lisa Sheridan. Believing Derek was flirting with her, Lisa tries to seduce Derek. Although Derek repeatedly rejects her, Lisa continues to pursue him, and makes sexual advances toward him at the office Christmas party. Later, she follows Derek to his car and flashes him until he forces her out of his car. Derek intends to report Lisa to his firm's human resource management, but learns that she has quit her job.


title: Obsessed (2009 film)

text: Thinking that Lisa has given up, Derek is annoyed when he receives flirtatious emails from her. Derek and his workmates visit a resort for a conference. Lisa is also present and Derek confronts her, and she spikes his drink. Incapacitated, Derek is followed by Lisa into his hotel room. He confronts Lisa again the following day, and hours later discovers her lying naked in his bed after attempting suicide, and calls for an ambulance. After repeated attempts to reach Derek on his phone, Sharon finds him at the hospital and suspects that he and Lisa had an affair, as Lisa claims. Detective Monica Reese questions Derek's fidelity to Sharon, but soon becomes skeptical of Lisa's claims due to inconsistencies in her story. Refusing to believe Derek, Sharon kicks him out of their house, and he moves into a separate apartment.


title: Obsessed (2009 film)

text: Months later, Derek and Sharon reconcile and meet for dinner. While they are out, Lisa tricks the babysitter Samantha into letting her into the house under the pretense of being one of Sharon's friends delivering a gift. When Derek and Sharon return home from dinner, they discover that Lisa has been in their house and kidnapped Kyle. Derek goes to his car with the intent to pursue Lisa, only to find Kyle is safely sitting in the back seat. He and Sharon immediately take Kyle to the hospital for a check-up. When Derek and Sharon return home, they find Lisa has trashed their bedroom and removed Sharon's face from their family portrait. Sharon leaves a threatening voice message on Lisa's phone, and she and Derek set up a home alarm system. Lisa learns that Derek and Sharon will be going away from town for a few days, with Sharon leaving one afternoon and Derek the next day. While Sharon is on her way to pick up Kyle, she realizes she forgot to set the alarm system and returns home.


title: Obsessed (2009 film)

text: Lisa breaks into the Charles' house and decorates the master bed with rose petals. While setting the alarm, Sharon hears Lisa in the bedroom. She confronts Lisa, who tries to convince her that Derek was having an affair with Lisa. Sharon tries to call the police, but Lisa stops her, and Sharon and Lisa engage in an altercation. When Derek calls the home phone, Lisa answers, prompting him to alert Detective Reese as he rushes home. Sharon chases Lisa to the attic and leads her to a weak spot in the attic floor, where she falls through. Sharon tries to reach out her hand to Lisa, but she tries to pull Sharon down with her instead. Sharon pries Lisa off of her arm, causing her to grab hold of the chandelier she falls onto. The chandelier loosens and Lisa falls onto the glass table below, and is killed when the chandelier falls from the ceiling and crushes her. At the end of the film, Detective Reese arrives as Sharon comes out of the house and embraces Derek. Detective Reese enters Derek and Sharon's house to investigate Lisa's actions.


title: Obsessed (2009 film)

text: The concept of "Obsessed" was thought up by Clint Culpepper, president of Screen Gems, and was shared with David Loughery, who then wrote the screenplay, taking basic inspiration from the similar stalker thriller "Fatal Attraction" (1987). Producer William Packer read the script and signed on; executive producers for the film were Glenn S. Gainor, Jeff Graup, Earvin "Magic" Johnson, Beyoncé, Mathew Knowles, Damon Lee and Loughery, while Nicholas Stern and George Flynn served as co-producer and associate producer, respectively. Director Steve Shill signed on after reading the script and hearing that Beyoncé was on board. Part of the reason Elba joined in was that the black–white theme was ignored; "It's not mentioned in the film, it's never an issue, and I think that's phenomenal ... To me, that was very refreshing that the studio execs didn't want to make an issue of it." "Obsessed" was allocated a production budget of $20 million. Shill stated that the intended effect of the film was to have the audience discuss the characters' motivations. Writer David Loughery designed Lisa as "not a villain in a traditional sense; she's not setting out to wreck a marriage or ruin somebody's life. She really believes that [Derek] is in love with her." Lisa's past was deliberately omitted from the film, explaining, "It's scarier if we never really know how she's developed this personality that can go from very loving to ultimately deadly."


title: Obsessed (2009 film)

text: The casting directors for "Obsessed" were Ron Digman and Valorie Massalas. According to Packer, Elba and Zoe Saldana were the favorite actors for their respective lead roles; he stated that "they both brought the right amount of depth and sex appeal" to the film. He emphasized the need for actors "who were relatable and who can handle that type of human interplay that we have in the film." Packer showed the film script to Beyoncé's talent agent, who suggested that Beyoncé play the role of Sharon. The producers "immediately ... fell in love with that idea; once she suggested Beyoncé, nobody else could play the role." Packer said that Beyoncé became interested in working on "Obsessed" because the film was not focused on the music industry, and that it was the first time she played a non-singer. Packer also reported that "she was looking for that challenge and welcomed this opportunity". Beyoncé stated that she found it challenging to concentrate purely on "the emotion and the psychology of the relationship". Beyoncé had never taken part in a fight scene, but she was able to learn how to perform the scenes quickly because they were similar to dance choreography, with which she was familiar. "Obsessed" was filmed over the summer of 2008, and the final fight scene between Sharon and Lisa was shot over one week.


title: Obsessed (2009 film)

text: Shill and cinematographer Ken Seng were inspired by Roman Polanski and Alfred Hitchcock when constructing the set, and attempted to make it look both frightening and suburban. Shill stated, "It didn't look like typical Hollywood; it didn't look cosmetic." The Charles' family home was set in a 1923 Altadena, California house, however the action scenes were shot on a separate purpose-built set. The set was customized from a house built for "The Stepfather" (2009), which in turn was adapted from a block of apartments for "Quarantine" (2008). The Charles' living room had a ceiling high, and a custom-built chandelier for the climactic ending of the film. According to Gainor, the house is symbolic of the family's aspirations, and is intentionally too large for the three occupants; he said, "It's a little awkward and a little bit eerie." The fight scene was filmed on a sound stage set, rather than in the house, for safety and practicability reasons.


title: Obsessed (2009 film)

text: Costume designer Maya Lieberman attempted to contrast the costumes of Sharon and Lisa to reinforce the conflict between the two characters. She said, "With Ali, our discussion started with wanting really clean, classic and sharp lines, whereas Beyoncé's character [wore] more soft, more textural cashmeres and knits." Sharon wore clothes designed by Zac Posen, Yves Saint Laurent, Jimmy Choo, Diane von Fürstenberg, Valentino, Stella McCartney and Missoni, while Lisa wore Gucci, Dolce & Gabbana and Burberry outfits. Derek was dressed in Dolce & Gabbana and Versace suits with Thomas Pink shirts to create a "prestigious yet contemporary" look.


title: Obsessed (2009 film)

text: The film score for "Obsessed" was written by James Dooley. The beginning of "Obsessed", where the Charles are seen in their home, plays adult contemporary music in the background. The remainder of the film's first act is supported by light piano instrumentation, and occasional "low-register whoosh-thump noises, of the kind you might hear in a stalker movie", according to Sady Doyle of "The Guardian".


title: Obsessed (2009 film)

text: Studio recorded songs on the soundtrack of "Obsessed" are "Any Other Day" (Wyclef Jean and Norah Jones), "Black and Gold" (Sam Sparro), "Soul Food" (Martina Topley-Bird), "American Boy" (Estelle), "Jolly Holly (Deck the Halls)" (Mike Strickland), "I'm Gonna Getcha" (Crudo), "The Christmas Song" (Marcus Miller), "Play That Funky Music" (Wild Cherry), "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" (Ruben Studdard and Tamyra Gray), "Wild Thing" (Tone Lōc), "Oye Al Desierto" (With the Quickness), "Destiny" (Zero 7), "Meet the Brilliant" (Draque Bozung), "Golden" (Jill Scott), "Bambool Wall" (Patch), and "Smash into You" (Beyoncé).


title: Obsessed (2009 film)

text: "Obsessed" premiered at the School of Visual Arts, New York City on April 23, 2009, and opened at US cinemas the following day. The film began showing in the United Kingdom on May 29, 2009. It was screened at 2,514 theaters and grossed $11,209,297 on its opening day of April 24, 2009; it ended its opening weekend at the top of the box office, with gross revenue of $28,612,730 in those three days, and became the second-biggest opening weekend for a Screen Gems film ever. The film spent its entire first week of release at number one and grossed $34,802,334, however it slipped to number three the following week due to the release of "" and "Ghosts of Girlfriends Past".


title: Obsessed (2009 film)

text: "Obsessed" closed in US cinemas on June 14, 2009, having grossed $68,261,644 domestically in its eight weeks of availability, which made up 92.5% of its gross worldwide takings. Outside the US, the film grossed an additional $5,568,696, bringing its total gross box office revenue to $73,830,340. The top performing international territory was Spain, with an opening weekend of $646,760 and a final total of 1,914,828, followed by the United Kingdom with a total of $854,917, Germany with $529,794, and the region of Southern Africa with $343,932.


title: Obsessed (2009 film)

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 19% based on 85 reviews, with an average rating of 3.7/10. The site's critics consensus reads: "The inevitable "Fatal Attraction" comparisons aside, "Obsessed" is a generic, toothless thriller both instantly predictable and instantly forgettable." Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 25 out of 100, based on 10 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.


title: Obsessed (2009 film)

text: A common complaint about the film was that, unlike most "deranged stalker"-themed films, "Obsessed" did not explain why Lisa was so determined to seduce Derek, who showed no interest in her at all. "Variety" John Anderson and "The Hollywood Reporter" Kirk Honeycutt criticized Lisa's lack of motive and backstory. Stella Papamichael of Digital Spy called the film predictable and blamed the well-defined morality of the characters. She wrote, "Unlike the bunny-boiling '80s classic Fatal Attraction, the characters are drawn in 2D. They are either good or bad, and there is absolutely no attempt to understand what drives them either way." Liz Braun from Jam! lambasted the lack of character development in "Obsessed" and called it "a chemistry-free movie". Jason McKiernan of Filmcritic.com described the film as "so steeped in the formula of the psycho-sexual suspense flick that it works as both a thriller and a comedy" and "very good trash".


title: Obsessed (2009 film)

text: Reviewers also noted that the potential for interracial conflict remained unexplored; "Entertainment Weekly" Owen Gleiberman wrote, "The movie wants to tease us with intimations of a steamy biracial liaison; it just doesn't want to actually go there." Wesley Morris of "The Boston Globe" was disappointed that ""Obsessed" basically plays it safe. The obvious racial buttons are never pushed". Greg Quill from the "Toronto Star" agreed, and wrote that Shill and Loughery "stripped the drama of its potentially gripping – and obvious – racial overtones". However, Carrie Rickey of "The Philadelphia Inquirer" pointed out that having the two female roles of differing races "creates racial tension", and noted similarities to "the racially charged" "Lakeview Terrace" (2008), which Loughery also wrote. Braun was of the impression that a well-written script was replaced by the film's "racial politics". When Derek confronts Lisa at the business conference, she threatens him with a sexual harassment complaint; Sady Doyle from "The Guardian" wrote that this alludes to "the history of black men being lynched for their perceived threat to white women". Doyle pointed out that historically white women are more revered for their beauty than black women, which is a side theme of the fight between Sharon and Lisa. Melissa Anderson of "LA Weekly" suggested that awkwardness of the interracial relationship of Derek and Lisa as a reason why the filmmakers did not have the two characters partake in any sexual activity.


title: Obsessed (2009 film)

text: Critics drew close comparisons between "Obsessed" and Adrian Lyne's 1987 stalker thriller "Fatal Attraction". However, two distinctions noted were that "Obsessed" contains no bunny boiling-like incidents, and that Derek and Lisa did not actually have sexual intercourse. John Anderson of "Variety" wrote, "If Derek had actually slept with Lisa, a la Michael Douglas in "Fatal Attraction," "Obsessed" would at least have had the spurned-woman gambit to play, however hoary." Peter Travers of "Rolling Stone" gave the film zero out of four stars, and wrote that Derek's lack of interest in Lisa allowed for no conflict in the film. Travers concluded, "Everything you need to know is in the trailer." "The Daily Telegraph" Tim Robey thought that "Obsessed" would have been more entertaining had Lisa's character been fiercer like Alex Forrest in "Fatal Attraction". Rickey opined that while the lack of infidelity made the film less thrilling, it "is about the sanctity of marriage rather than the shame of adultery."


title: Obsessed (2009 film)

text: The final fight scene between Sharon and Lisa was lauded by critics. Marjorie Baumgarten from "The Austin Chronicle" stated that, despite the predictability of its plot, "Obsessed" caters to "the American moviegoers' appetite for a juicy catfight." E! Online's Natasha Vargas-Cooper lauded the choreography and noted the scene as the highlight of the film. McKiernan called it the "best knock-down, drag-out girlfight" of 2009. However, Alex Navarro from Screened called the fight "boring" because of the poor filming and editing of the scene.


title: Obsessed (2009 film)

text: At the 2009 Teen Choice Awards, "Obsessed" was nominated in the category of Choice Movie: Drama, while Beyoncé was a nominee for the Choice Movie Actress: Drama award. The fight scene between Sharon and Lisa garnered Beyoncé and Larter a nomination in the Teen Choice Awards' Choice Movie Rumble category, but lost to "Twilight". Beyoncé and Larter were nominated in the categories of Worst Actress and Worst Supporting Actress, but lost to Sandra Bullock and Sienna Miller respectively, at the 30th Golden Raspberry Awards ("Razzies"). Elba was nominated for the award for Outstanding Actor in a Motion Picture at the 41st NAACP Image Awards, but lost to Morgan Freeman's portrayal of Nelson Mandela in "Invictus" (2009). "Obsessed" won the award for Best Fight at the 2010 MTV Movie Awards, for the fight between Sharon and Lisa. The stunt work was recognized at the 2010 Taurus World Stunt Awards with nominations for Best Fight and Best High Work, and the award for Best Overall Stunt by a Woman.


title: Obsessed (2009 film)

text: "Obsessed" was released for home viewing via DVD, Blu-ray and digital distribution by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment on August 4, 2009 in the US. In its first week of release, "Obsessed" sold 540,925 DVD copies in the US, worth $8,806,259 of sales. the film has sold 1,263,325 DVDs in the US, worth $23,681,293 of consumer expenditure.


title: Amitābha

text: Amitābha (, IPA: ), also known as Amitāyus, is the primary Buddha of Pure Land Buddhism. In Vajrayana Buddhism, he is known for his longevity, discernment, pure perception, purification of aggregates, and deep awareness of emptiness. He possesses infinite merit resulting from good deeds over countless past lives as a bodhisattva named Dharmākara.


title: Amitābha

text: According to the "Larger Sūtra of Immeasurable Life", Amitābha was, in very ancient times and possibly in another system of worlds, a monk named Dharmākara. In some versions of the sūtra, Dharmākara is described as a former king who, having come into contact with Buddhist teachings through the buddha Lokeśvararāja, renounced his throne. He then resolved to become a Buddha and to create a "" (literally "buddha-field", often called a "Pureland" or "Buddha Land": a realm existing in the primordial universe outside of ordinary reality, produced by a buddha's merit) possessed of many perfections. These resolutions were expressed in his , which set out the type of Pureland Dharmākara aspired to create, the conditions under which beings might be born into that world, and what kind of beings they would be when reborn there.


title: Amitābha

text: In the versions of the sutra widely known in China, Vietnam, Korea and Japan, Dharmākara's eighteenth vow was that any being in any universe desiring to be reborn into Amitābha's pure land () and calling upon his name with sincerity, even as few as ten times will be guaranteed rebirth there. His nineteenth vow promises that he, together with his bodhisattvas and other blessed Buddhists, will appear before those who, at the moment of death, call upon him. This openness and acceptance of all kinds of people has made belief in pure lands one of the major influences in Mahāyāna Buddhism. Pure Land Buddhism seems to have first become popular in Gandhara, from where it spread to China and influenced by Taoists and Confucian philosophy before spreading to Central and East Asia.


title: Amitābha

text: The sutra goes on to explain that Amitābha, after accumulating great merit over countless lives, finally achieved buddhahood and created a pure land called "Sukhāvatī" (Sanskrit: "possessing happiness"). Sukhāvatī is situated in the uttermost west, beyond the bounds of our own world. By the power of his vows, Amitābha has made it possible for all who call upon him to be reborn into this land, there to undergo instruction by him in the dharma and ultimately become bodhisattvas and buddhas in their turn (the ultimate goal of Mahāyāna Buddhism). From there, these same bodhisattvas and buddhas return to our world to help yet more people while still residing in his land of Sukhāvatī, whose many virtues and joys are described.


title: Amitābha

text: Amitābha is the buddha of comprehensive love. He lives in the West (represented as a meditating Buddha) and works for the enlightenment of all beings (represented as a blessing Buddha). His most important enlightenment technique is the visualization of the surrounding world as a paradise. Those who see his world as a paradise awaken his enlightenment energy. The world can be seen as a paradise by a corresponding positive thought (enlightenment thought) or by sending light to all beings (wish all beings to be happy). After the Amitābha doctrine, one can come to paradise (in the Pure Land of Amitābha), if they visualize at their death Amitābha in the heaven (sun) over their head (western horizon), think his name as a mantra and leave the body as a soul through the crown chakra.


title: Amitābha

text: Amitābha is also known in Tibet, Mongolia, and other regions where Tibetan Buddhism is practiced. In the Highest Yogatantra of Tibetan Buddhism, Amitābha is considered one of the Five Dhyāni Buddhas (together with , Amoghasiddhi, Ratnasambhava, and Vairocana), who is associated with the western direction and the "skandha" of "", the aggregate of distinguishing (recognition) and the deep awareness of individualities. His consort is Pāṇḍaravāsinī. His two main disciples (the same number as Gautama Buddha) are the bodhisattvas Vajrapani and Avalokiteśvara, the former to his left and the latter to his right. In Tibetan Buddhism, there exist a number of famous prayers for taking rebirth in Sukhāvatī (Dewachen). One of these was written by Je Tsongkhapa on the request of Manjushri (For a discussion and translation of the most important prayers in the Tibetan tradition see Halkias).


title: Amitābha

text: He is frequently invoked in Tibet either as Amitābha – especially in the phowa practices or as Amitāyus – especially in practices relating to longevity and preventing an untimely death.


title: Amitābha

text: In Shingon Buddhism, Amitābha is seen as one of the thirteen Buddhas to whom practitioners can pay homage. Shingon, like Tibetan Buddhism, also uses special devotional mantras for Amitābha, though the mantras used differ. Amitābha is also one of the Buddhas featured in the Womb Realm Mandala used in Shingon practices, and sits to the west, which is where the Pure Land of Amitābha is said to dwell.


title: Amitābha

text: Amitābha is the center of a number of mantras in Vajrayana practices. The Sanskrit form of the mantra of Amitābha is (Devanagari: ), which is pronounced in Japanese as "Namu Amida Butsu" and in its Tibetan version as "Om ami dewa hri" (Sanskrit: oṃ amideva hrīḥ). His mantra in Shingon Buddhism is "On amirita teizei kara un"（Japanese: オン・アミリタ・テイゼイ・カラ・ウン）, which represents the underlying Indic form "".


title: Amitābha

text: In addition to using the mantras listed above, many Buddhist schools invoke Amitābha's name in a practice known as "nianfo" () in Chinese and "nembutsu" in Japanese.


title: Amitābha

text: The proper form of Amitābha's name in Sanskrit is ', masculine, and the nominative singular is '. This is a compound of the Sanskrit words "amita" ("without bound, infinite") and "ābhā" ("light, splendor"). Consequently, the name is to be interpreted as "he who possesses light without bound, he whose splendor is infinite".


title: Amitābha

text: The name "Amitāyus" (nominative form "") is also used for the Sambhogakāya aspect of Amitābha, particularly associated with longevity. He is mostly depicted sitting and holding in his hands a vessel containing the nectar of immortality. In Tibetan Buddhism, Amitāyus is also one of the three deities of long life (Amitāyus, White Tara and Uṣṇīṣavijayā). "Amitāyus" being a compound of "amita" ("infinite") and "āyus" ("life"), and so means "he whose life is boundless".


title: Amitābha

text: In Chinese, , pronounced "Ēmítuófó", is the Chinese pronunciation for the Sanskrit name of the Amitābha Buddha (Amida Buddha). The "e mi tuo" is the transliteration of the Sanskrit word "amita" which means "boundless" (, "wuliang"). "Fo" is the Chinese word for "Buddha".


title: Amitābha

text: In Vietnamese, Korean, and Japanese, the same Chinese characters used for Amitābha are used to represent his name, though they are pronounced slightly differently:


title: Amitābha

text: In addition to transliteration, the name Amitābha has also been translated into Chinese using characters which, taken together, convey the meaning "Infinite Light": 無量光 (Wúliàngguāng). In the same fashion, the name Amitāyus ("Infinite Life") has been translated as 無量壽 (Wúliàngshòu). These translated names are not, however, very commonly used.


title: Amitābha

text: In Tibetan, Amitābha is called and in its reflex form as Amitāyus, . They are iconographically distinct.


title: Amitābha

text: When in the descending standing position, Amitābha is often shown with left arm bare and extended downward with thumb and forefinger touching, with the right hand facing outward also with thumb and forefinger touching. The meaning of this mudra is that wisdom (symbolized by the raised hand) is accessible to even the lowest beings, while the outstretched hand shows that Amitābha's compassion is directed at the lowest beings, who cannot save themselves.


title: Amitābha

text: When not depicted alone, Amitābha is often portrayed with two assistant bodhisattvas, usually Avalokiteśvara on the right and Mahāsthāmaprāpta on the left. This iconography is known as an Amitabha triad, and is especially common in Japanese and Korean art.


title: Amitābha

text: Amitābha is said to display 84,000 auspicious and distinguishing marks reflecting his many virtues. Amitābha can often be distinguished by his mudrā: Amitābha is often depicted, when shown seated, displaying the meditation mudrā (thumbs touching and fingers together as in the Great Buddha of Kamakura () at Kōtoku-in or the exposition mudrā, while the earth-touching mudrā (right hand pointed downward over the right leg, palm inward) is reserved for a seated Gautama Buddha alone. He can also be seen holding a lotus in his hands while displaying the meditation mudrā.