title: Rick Yune

text: Yune was educated at Our Lady of Good Counsel High School (Silver Spring, Maryland) and St. John's College High School. In 1994, he received his degree in finance from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School. Yune was one of the original hedge fund traders for SAC Capital but left to pursue entrepreneurial ventures.


title: Rick Yune

text: Yune practices many forms of martial arts. He changed the spelling of his last name from "Yun" to "Yune" for Screen Actors Guild (SAG) purposes.


title: Rick Yune

text: While studying at Wharton, Rick Yune worked as an intern on Wall Street trading stocks during the mid-1992. During that time, he was "discovered" by a modeling agent and soon became the first Asian-American featured in advertisements for Versace and Ralph Lauren's Polo.


title: Rick Yune

text: Yune made his film debut in 1999, playing Kazuo Miyamoto, a Japanese-American war hero accused of killing a respected fisherman (played by Daniel von Bargen) in the close-knit community, in director Scott Hicks' film adaptation of David Guterson's post-World War II novel, "Snow Falling on Cedars".


title: Rick Yune

text: Yune co-starred as Johnny Tran, a Vietnamese gang leader and the rival of Vin Diesel's character, in the 2001 film "The Fast and the Furious".


title: Rick Yune

text: In 2002 Yune portrayed Zao, a North Korean terrorist who works for the Korean People's Army, opposite Pierce Brosnan and Halle Berry, in the James Bond film "Die Another Day". That year Yune was voted one of "People" magazine's "Sexiest Man Alive".


title: Rick Yune

text: Yune appeared in the 2004 video "Call U Sexy" by the band VS, as well as in "Someone" (1997) by SWV, featuring Sean "Puffy" Combs.


title: Rick Yune

text: Yune appeared in two 2005 episodes of ABC's spy series "Alias", playing a modern-day samurai Kazu Tamazaki who is hunted down by Jennifer Garner as Sydney. He also appeared as a guest in an episode of ABC's legal dramedy series "Boston Legal" and the CBS crime drama "".


title: Rick Yune

text: He produced, and starred as a Thai assassin in, the action/adventure movie "The Fifth Commandment", directed by Jesse V. Johnson and also stars Keith David and Bokeem Woodbine.


title: Rick Yune

text: Yune starred with Russell Crowe and Lucy Liu in the 2012 martial arts film, "The Man with the Iron Fists".


title: Rick Yune

text: In 2013 Yune played Kang Yeonsak, a North Korean ultra-nationalist and ex-terrorist mastermind who plans a terrorist attack on the White House, in the action thriller "Olympus Has Fallen", opposite Gerard Butler.


title: Rick Yune

text: In 2014, Yune took on the role of Kaidu, a Mongol Khan, in the historical drama series "Marco Polo". Yune reprised his role in the second season, which was released in 2016.


title: Rick Yune

text: Yune is a board member of the Center for Global Dialogue and Cooperation and an Ambassador for the Princess Charlene foundation of Monaco.


title: Attu Island

text: Attu (, ) is an island in the Near Islands (part of the Aleutian Islands chain). It is the westernmost point of the U.S. state of Alaska. The island became uninhabited in 2010, making it the largest uninhabited island to be politically part of the United States.


title: Attu Island

text: The Battle of Attu was the site of the only World War II land battle fought in the United States. The battlefield area is a U.S. National Historic Landmark.


title: Attu Island

text: Attu Station, a former Coast Guard LORAN station, is located at , making it one of the westernmost points of the United States relative to the rest of the country. However, since it is in the Eastern Hemisphere, being on the opposite side of the 180° longitude line of the contiguous 48 states, it can also be considered one of the easternmost points of the country (a second Aleutian Island, Semisopochnoi Island at 179°46′E, is the easternmost location in the United States by this definition). For purposes of calendar date, the International Date Line, however, passes to the west of Attu Island, making it the westernmost place in the United States with the same date.


title: Attu Island

text: In the chain of the Aleuts, the next island to the west of Attu are the Russian Commander Islands, away (and on the other side of the International Date Line). Attu is nearly from the Alaskan mainland and northeast of the northernmost of the Kuril Islands of Russia, as well as being from Anchorage, from Alaska's capital of Juneau, and from New York City. Attu is about in size with a land area of , making it #23 on the list of largest islands in the United States. The population in the 2010 census was 20 people, all at the Attu Station, though all inhabitants left the island later in the year when the station closed. It then became the largest uninhabited island in the United States.


title: Attu Island

text: In 1982, the only significant trees on the island were those planted by American soldiers at a chapel constructed after the 1943 battle when the Japanese occupation was over; they have since gone.


title: Attu Island

text: Although Attu Island is the westernmost body of land east of the International Date Line, its time zone is the same as other western Aleutian Islands, UTC−10, which means that locations to the south-southeast (such as the uninhabited Baker Island and Howland Island in UTC−12 and Niue, Midway Atoll and American Samoa in UTC −11) have earlier clocks.


title: Attu Island

text: The name "Attu" is the Unangan language (Aleut) name for the island. Archaeological research of the large number of archaeological sites on the island suggests an estimated precontact population ranging from 2,000 to 5,000 Unangan (Aleut).


title: Attu Island

text: Attu, being the nearest to Kamchatka, was the first of the Aleutian Islands exploited by Russian traders. Russian explorer Aleksei Chirikov called the island Saint Theodore in 1742. Russians stayed on the island several years at a stretch to hunt sea otters. The Russians often clashed with the local Unangan population. After the initial wave of traders, European ships largely overlooked Attu.


title: Attu Island

text: The Aleuts were the primary inhabitants of the island prior to World War II. But, on June 7, 1942, six months after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the 301st Independent Infantry Battalion of the Japanese Northern Army landed on the island without opposition, one day after landing on nearby Kiska, which made Attu the second of the only two invasion sites on United States soil during the war. Earlier, American authorities had forcibly moved about 880 Aleuts from villages elsewhere in the Aleutian Islands to internment camps in the Alaska Panhandle, where about 75 of them died of various infectious diseases over two years.


title: Attu Island

text: However, Attu Village had not yet been evacuated when the Japanese invaded. At the time, Attu's population consisted of 45 native Aleuts and two white Americans, Charles Foster Jones (1879–1942), a radio technician, originally from St. Paris, Ohio, and his wife Etta (1879–1965), a schoolteacher, originally from Vineland, New Jersey. The village consisted of several houses around Chichagof Harbor. The 42 Attu inhabitants who survived the Japanese invasion were taken to a prison camp near Otaru, Hokkaidō. Twenty-one of them died while they were imprisoned. Mr. Jones, 63, was murdered by the Japanese forces almost immediately after the invasion. Mrs. Jones, 63, was subsequently taken to the Bund Hotel in Yokohama, Japan, which also housed Australian prisoners of war from the 1942 Battle of Rabaul in Papua New Guinea. Later, Mrs. Jones and the Australian prisoners were held at the Yokohama Yacht Club from 1942 to 1944, and then at the Totsuka prisoner of war camp until their release in August 1945. Mrs. Jones died in December 1965 at age 86 in Bradenton, Florida.


title: Attu Island

text: Before the Attu villagers were returned to the U.S., the American government stated publicly that it was not aware of their status.


title: Attu Island

text: According to Gen. Kiichiro Higuchi, the Commander of the Japanese Northern Army, the invasion of Kiska and Attu was part of a threefold objective:


title: Attu Island

text: In late September 1942, the Japanese garrison on Attu was transferred to Kiska, and then Attu was essentially left unoccupied, but American forces made no attempt to occupy Attu during this time. On October 29, 1942, the Japanese reestablished a base on Attu at Holtz Bay under the command of Lt. Col. Hiroshi Yanekawa. Initially, the garrison was about 500 troops, but through reinforcements, that number reached about 2,300 by March 10, 1943. No more reinforcements arrived after that time, owing mainly to the efforts of the U.S. naval force under Rear Admiral Charles "Soc" McMorris, and United States Navy submarines. McMorris had been assigned to interdict the Japanese supply and reinforcement convoys. After the sizable naval Battle of the Komandorski Islands, the Japanese abandoned their attempts to resupply its Aleutian garrisons by surface ships. From then on, only submarines were used for the resupply runs.


title: Attu Island

text: On May 11, 1943, the American operation to recapture Attu began. A shortage of landing craft, unsuitable beaches, and equipment that failed to operate in the appalling weather caused great difficulties in projecting any force against the Japanese. Many soldiers suffered from frostbite – because essential supplies could not be landed, or having been landed, could not be moved to where they were needed. Army vehicles would not work on the tundra. The Japanese defenders under Colonel Yasuyo Yamasaki did not contest the landings, but rather they dug in on high ground away from the shore. This resulted in bloody fighting: there were 3,929 U.S. casualties: 549 were killed, 1,148 were injured, 1,200 had severe cold injuries, 614 succumbed to infectious diseases, and 318 died of miscellaneous causes – largely from Japanese booby traps and from friendly fire. The Japanese were defeated in Massacre Valley. The death count for the Japanese was 2,035. The Americans then built "Navy Town" near Massacre Bay.


title: Attu Island

text: On May 29, the last of the Japanese forces suddenly attacked near Massacre Bay in one of the largest banzai charges of the Pacific campaign. The charge, led by Colonel Yamasaki, penetrated U.S. lines far enough to encounter shocked rear-echelon units of the American force. After furious, brutal, close-quarter, and often hand-to-hand combat, the Japanese force was killed almost to the last man: only 28 prisoners were taken, none of them officers. U.S. burial teams counted 2,351 Japanese dead, but it was presumed that hundreds more had been buried by naval, air, and artillery bombardments over the course of the battle.


title: Attu Island

text: The Japanese Navy, realizing that their position was now untenable, evacuated Kiska three months later.


title: Attu Island

text: The United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) built a larger airfield, the Alexai Point Army Airfield, and then used it on July 10, 1943, as the base for an air attack on the Japanese-held Kurile Islands, now a part of Russia. This was the first air attack on the Japanese "homelands" since the famous Doolittle Raid in 1942. Other attacks followed.


title: Attu Island

text: On April 11, 1945, in a period of only two hours, at least nine Japanese incendiary balloons sent to start forest fires in the United States West Coast were intercepted and shot down near Attu by USAAF P-38 Lightning aircraft.


title: Attu Island

text: After the war, the survivors of the Otaru prison camp were shipped to other Aleutian islands or to the mainland of Alaska. The US government did not allow them to return, despite their intense desire to do so. The United States government decided to construct a LORAN station on the southern tip of Attu, at Theodore Point. This installation was manned by a crew of about twenty members of the United States Coast Guard. The equipment to build the station came out of Holtz Bay and was ferried on barges and landing craft to Baxter Cove, about one mile east of the station. Bulldozers were used to cut a road from Baxter Cove to Theodore Point.


title: Attu Island

text: In 1954, the station was moved to Casco Cove, near the former Navy Base at Massacre Bay. In 1960, it was moved to Massacre Bay.


title: Attu Island

text: The island previously had scheduled airline service to and from Anchorage (ANC) flown by Reeve Aleutian Airways (RAA) which in 1976 was operating two direct flights a week between ANC and Attu with Lockheed L-188 Electra turboprop aircraft via an en route stop either at Adak Airport or Shemya in the Aleutian Islands. At the time, the airport on Attu was the westernmost airfield located in the U.S. to have scheduled passenger airline service.


title: Attu Island

text: In 1984, the "392" exchange in the 907 area code, which includes Attu (and whose rate center is on nearby Shemya Island), became the last telephone exchange in the United States to be upgraded to dial service. Prior to that, all telephone calls placed to and from that exchange could only be placed with the assistance of an operator.


title: Attu Island

text: The battlefield area and subsequent military sites were declared a National Historic Landmark in 1985. The battlefield is now part of Aleutian Islands World War II National Monument.


title: Attu Island

text: In 1987, with the approval of the U.S. Department of the Interior, the government of Japan placed a monument on Engineer Hill, site of the hand-to-hand finale of the battle against the Japanese. An inscription, in Japanese and English, reads: "In memory of all those who sacrificed their lives in the islands and seas of the North Pacific during World War II and in dedication to world peace."


title: Attu Island

text: In July 2007, the boots and foot bones of a Japanese soldier were found on the island, and on May 23, 2008, the remains of two more Japanese soldiers were discovered by U.S. Coast Guard Petty Officer 3rd Class Richard Brahm, a public affairs specialist who was a documentarian for the remains recovery team. More remains were located at the burial site, but were left untouched with plans to return at a later time and have them exhumed properly.


title: Attu Island

text: On August 1, 2010, the United States Coast Guard LORAN station on Attu permanently ceased operation. On August 27, 2010, the station was decommissioned and the Coast Guard personnel left, leaving the island with no resident population.


title: Attu Island

text: On June 7, 2012, the 70th anniversary of the Japanese invasion, Senator Lisa Murkowski and United States Coast Guard Rear Admiral Thomas Ostebo dedicated a memorial to Attu Village, its residents who died in Japanese captivity, and the survivors who were unable to return.


title: Attu Island

text: In 2015, Attu Island was visited by pilot and world circumnavigator Michael Smith. The island was a crucial refueling stop for Smith as he made his way from Adak island in the Aleutian Islands to Japan. As the island is uninhabited, he had to first fly containers of fuel there and then return as part of the journey from Adak to Japan. He was advised against staying overnight as there are large rats on the island.


title: Attu Island

text: After three months of efforts in digging up and removing contaminated soil from the island in the summer of 2016 via funding from the Formerly Used Defense Sites program, it was expected that further efforts would be required to finish the environmental clean up of the island.


title: Attu Island

text: Attu first appeared on the 1880 U.S. Census as the unincorporated Aleut village of "Attoo", which at the time consisted of the village on western Chichagof Harbor. It had 107 residents, consisting of 74 Aleuts, 32 "Creoles" (mixed Russian and Native) and 1 White resident. In 1890, it appeared as Attu. It did not return again on the census until 1930. It appeared on the 1940 census, two years before the Japanese invasion of the village and island. It did not return again until 1980, when it consisted of the naval station residents at Massacre Bay, and was made a census-designated place (CDP). It did not return on the 1990 census. The name was changed to Attu Naval Station and redesignated a CDP in 2000. It last appeared on the 2010 census, just before the closure of the station in August that year and the departure of its remaining residents.


title: Attu Island

text: The weather on Attu is typically cloudy, rainy, and foggy. High winds occur occasionally. Five or six days a week are likely to be rainy, and there are only about eight to ten clear days a year. The rest of the time, even if rain is not falling, fog of varying density is the rule rather than the exception. There are of annual rainfall and other precipitation, with the heaviest rains in the autumn and early winter. According to the Köppen climate classification system, Attu has a subpolar oceanic climate (Cfc) closely bordering on a tundra climate ("ET"). For its latitude the climate is exceptionally chilly in the summer, with daytime maximum temperatures averaging in the mid-50s (°F), and a winter that is exceptionally warm given the extreme Subarctic climate found over the rest of Alaska.


title: Attu Island

text: Attu was an important location in the world of competitive birding, whose goal is to see or hear the largest possible number of bird species within a specific geographic area during a specific time period. Because it is so physically remote from other parts of North America, there are a number of bird species likely to be found on Attu that are not seen anywhere else on the continent. John Fitchen called the island "the Holy Grail of North American birding".


title: Attu Island

text: During his record-setting big year of 1998, in which he identified a record 745 species (later revised to 748), Sandy Komito spent 29 days (May 10 – June 7) on the island. Since the closure of Attu Station by the U.S. Coast Guard in 2010, access to the island by birders has been greatly restricted. In a 2010 interview on the subject, Al Levantin (one of Komito's competitors during the 1998 season) singled out inaccessibility of Attu as the factor that would make it nearly impossible to break Komito's record. However, Neil Hayward did break the record, by one species, in 2013 without visiting Attu.


title: Attu Island

text: In the pre-World War II period, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) operated the sole school on the island. At the time of Attu's capture, the school had a single teacher who was a White American woman. , the uninhabited island is physically within the Aleutian Region School District.


title: Tian Shan

text: The Tian Shan, also known as the Tengri Tagh or Tengir-Too, meaning the "Mountains of Heaven" or the "Heavenly Mountain", is a large system of mountain ranges located in Central Asia. The highest peak in the Tian Shan is Jengish Chokusu, at high. Its lowest point is the Turpan Depression, which is below sea level.


title: Tian Shan

text: One of the earliest historical references to these mountains may be related to the Xiongnu word "Qilian" () – according to Tang commentator Yan Shigu, "Qilian" is the Xiongnu word for sky or heaven. Sima Qian in the "Records of the Grand Historian" mentioned "Qilian" in relation to the homeland of the Yuezhi and the term is believed to refer to the Tian Shan rather than the Qilian Mountains further east now known by this name. The Tannu-Ola mountains in Tuva has the same meaning in its name ("heaven/celestial mountains" or "god/spirit mountains"). The name in Chinese, Tian Shan, is most likely a direct translation of the traditional Kyrgyz name for the mountains, Teñir Too. The Tian Shan is sacred in Tengrism, and its second-highest peak is known as Khan Tengri which may be translated as "Lord of the Spirits". At the 2013 Conference on World Heritage, the eastern portion of Tian Shan in western China's Xinjiang Region was listed as a World Heritage Site. The western portion in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan was then listed in 2016.


title: Tian Shan

text: Tian Shan is north and west of the Taklamakan Desert and directly north of the Tarim Basin in the border region of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Xinjiang in Northwest China. In the south it links up with the Pamir Mountains and to north and east it meets the Altai Mountains of Mongolia.


title: Tian Shan

text: In Western cartography as noted by the National Geographic Society, the eastern end of the Tian Shan is usually understood to be east of Ürümqi, with the range to the east of that city known as the Bogda Shan as part of the Tian Shan. Chinese cartography from the Han Dynasty to the present agrees, with the Tian Shan including the Bogda Shan and Barkol ranges.


title: Tian Shan

text: The Tian Shan are a part of the Himalayan orogenic belt, which was formed by the collision of the Indian and Eurasian plates in the Cenozoic era. They are one of the longest mountain ranges in Central Asia and stretch some eastward from Tashkent in Uzbekistan.


title: Tian Shan

text: The highest peak in the Tian Shan is Jengish Chokusu (also called Victory Peak) on the border of China. At high, it is the highest point in Kyrgyzstan. The Tian Shan's second highest peak, Khan Tengri (King Heaven), straddles the Kazakhstan-Kyrgyzstan-China tripoint and at is the highest point of Kazakhstan. Mountaineers class these as the two most northerly peaks over in the world.


title: Tian Shan

text: The Torugart Pass, at , is located at the border between Kyrgyzstan and China's Xinjiang province. The forested Alatau ranges, which are at a lower altitude in the northern part of the Tian Shan, are inhabited by pastoral tribes that speak Turkic languages.


title: Tian Shan

text: The Tian Shan are separated from the Tibetan Plateau by the Taklimakan Desert and the Tarim Basin to the south.


title: Tian Shan

text: The major rivers rising in the Tian Shan are the Syr Darya, the Ili River and the Tarim River. The Aksu Canyon is a notable feature in the northwestern Tian Shan.


title: Tian Shan

text: Continuous permafrost is typically found in the Tian Shan starting at the elevation of about 3,500-3,700 m above the sea level. Discontinuous alpine permafrost usually occurs down to 2,700-3,300 m, but in certain locations, due to the peculiarity of the aspect and the microclimate, it can be found at elevations as low as 2,000 m.


title: Tian Shan

text: One of the first Europeans to visit and the first to describe the Tian Shan in detail was the Russian explorer Peter Semenov, who did so in the 1850s.


title: Tian Shan

text: Glaciers in the Tian Shan Mountains have been rapidly shrinking and have lost 27%, or 5.4 billion tons annually, of its ice mass since 1961 compared to an average of 7% worldwide. It is estimated that by 2050 half of the remaining glaciers will have melted.


title: Tian Shan

text: The Tian Shan have a number of named ranges which are often mentioned separately (all distances are approximate).


title: Tian Shan

text: In China the Tian Shan starts north of Kumul City (Hami) with the U-shaped Barkol Mountains, from about east of Ürümqi. Then the Bogda Shan (god mountains) run from east of Ürümqi. Then there is a low area between Ürümqi and the Turfan Depression. The Borohoro Mountains start just south of Ürümqi and run west-northwest separating Dzungaria from the Ili River basin. Their north end abuts on the Dzungarian Alatau which runs east northeast along Sino-Kazakh border. They start east of Taldykorgan in Kazakhstan and end at the Dzungarian Gate. The Dzungarian Alatau in the north, the Borohoro Mountains in the middle and the Ketmen Ridge in the south make a reversed Z or S, the northeast enclosing part of Dzungaria and the southwest enclosing the upper Ili valley.


title: Tian Shan

text: In Kyrgyzstan the mainline of the Tian Shan continues as Narat Range from the base of the Borohoros west to the point where China, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan meet. Here is the highest part of the range – the Central Tian Shan, with Peak Pobeda (Kakshaal Too range) and Khan Tengri. West of this, the Tian Shan split into an 'eye', with Issyk Kul Lake in its center. The south side of the lake is the Terskey Alatau and the north side the Kyungey Ala-Too (shady and sunny Ala-Too). North of the Kyungey Ala-Too and parallel to it is the Trans-Ili Alatau in Kazakhstan just south of Almaty. West of the eye, the range continues as the Kyrgyz Ala-Too, separating Chüy Region from Naryn Region and then Kazakhstan from the upper valley of the river Talas, the south side of which is the Talas Ala-Too Range ('Ala-too' is a Kyrgyz spelling of Alatau). At the east end of the Talas Alatau the Suusamyr Too range runs southeast enclosing the Suusamyr Valley or plateau.


title: Tian Shan

text: As for the area south of the Fergana Valley there is an group of mountains that curves west-southwest from south of Issyk Kul Lake separating the Tarim Basin from the Fergana Valley. The Fergana Range runs northeast towards the Talas Ala-Too and separates the upper Naryn basin from Fergana proper. The southern side of these mountains merge into the Pamirs in Tajikistan (Alay Mountains and Trans-Alay Range). West of this is the Turkestan Range, which continues almost to Samarkand.


title: Tian Shan

text: On the north margin of the Tarim basin between the mountain chain of the Kokshaal-Tau in the south and that one of the Terskey Alatau in the north there stretches the wide Tian Shan plateau with its set up mountain landscape. The Kokshaal-Tau continues with an overall length of from W of Pik Dankowa (Dankov, 5986 m) up to east-north-east to Pik Pobeda (Tumor Feng, 7439 m) and beyond it. This mountain chain as well as that of the 300 km long parallel mountain chain of the Terskey Alatau and the Tian Shan plateau situated in between, during glacial times were covered by connected ice-stream-networks and a plateau glacier. Currently, the interglacial remnant of this glaciation is formed by the only just 61 km long South Inylschek glacier. The outlet glacier tongues of the plateau glacier flowed to the north as far as down to Lake Issyk Kul (Lake) at 1605 (1609) m asl calving in this 160 km long lake.


title: Tian Shan

text: In the same way, strong glaciation was in excess of 50  km wide in the high mountain area of the Kungey Alatau, connecting north of Issyk Kul and stretching as far as the mountain foreland near Alma Ata. The Kungey Alatau is 230  km long. Down from the Kungey Alatau the glacial glaciers also calved into the Issyk Kul lake. The Chon-Kemin valley was glaciated up to its inflow into the Chu valley. From the west-elongation of the Kungey Alatau—that is the Kirgizskiy Alatau range (42°25′N/74–75°E)—the glacial glaciers flowed down as far as into the mountain foreland down to 900 m asl (close to the town Bishkek). Among others the Ak-Sai valley glacier has developed there a mountain foreland glacier.


title: Tian Shan

text: Altogether the glacial Tian Shan glaciation occupied an area of c. . The glacier snowline (ELA) between the glacier feeding area and melting zone was about 1200m lower during the last ice age than it is today.


title: Tian Shan

text: Under the condition of a comparable precipitation ratio, there would result from this a depression of the average annual temperature of 7.2 to 8.4 °C for the Last Glacial Maximum compared with today.


title: Tian Shan

text: The Tian Shan holds important forests of Schrenk's Spruce ("Picea schrenkiana") at altitudes of over ; the lower slopes have unique natural forests of wild walnuts and apples.


title: Tian Shan

text: The Tian Shan in its immediate geological past was kept from glaciation due to the "protecting" warm influence of the Indian Ocean monsoon climate. This defined its ecological features which could sustain its distinctive ecosphere. The mountains were subjected to constant geological changes with constantly evolving drainage systems which affected the patterns of vegetation, as well as exposing fertile soil for newly emerging seedlings to thrive in.


title: Tian Shan

text: Tulips originated in Tian Shan Mountains. The plant then made its way to Turkey via the Silk Road and became a symbol of the Ottoman Empire.


title: Tian Shan

text: Ancestors of important crop vegetation were established and thrived in the area, among them: apricots ("Prunus armeniaca"), pears ("Pyrus" spp.), pomegranates ("Punica granatum"), figs ("Ficus"), cherries ("Prunus avium") and mulberries ("Morus"). The Tian Shan region also included important animals like bear, deer and wild boar, which helped to spread seeds and expand the ecological diversity.


title: Tian Shan

text: Among the vegetation colonizing the Tian Shan came, likely via birds from the east, the ancestors of what we know as the "sweet" apple. The fruit


title: Tian Shan

text: probably then looked like a tiny, long-stalked, bitter apple something like Malus baccata, the Siberian crab. The pips may have been carried in a bird's crop or clotted onto feet or feathers.


title: Tian Shan

text: In Tengrism, Khan Tengri is the lord of all spirits and the religion's supreme deity, and it is the name given to the second highest peak of Tian Shan.


title: Battle of Debaltseve

text: The Battle of Debaltseve was a military confrontation in the city of Debaltseve, Donetsk Oblast, between the pro-Russian separatist forces of the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) and Luhansk People's Republic (LPR), and the Ukrainian Armed Forces, starting in mid-January 2015 during the war in the Donbas region. The DPR forces recaptured Debaltseve, which had been under Ukrainian control since a counter-offensive by government forces in July 2014. The city lay in a "wedge" of Ukrainian-held territory bordered by the DPR on one side, and the LPR on the other, and is a vital road and railway junction. Separatists began a concerted effort to force Ukrainian troops out of the city on 16–17 January, sparking the battle. Heavy fighting went on until 18 February 2015, when Ukrainian forces retreated from Debaltseve to Artemivsk.


title: Battle of Debaltseve

text: It was the last major battle during the 2014–2015 phase of the War in Donbas, as the Minsk II ceasefire took effect on 15 February 2015. Large-scale fighting resumed on 24 February 2022 when Russia invaded Ukraine.


title: Battle of Debaltseve

text: Debaltseve came under pro-Russian separatist control in April 2014, amidst widespread unrest across eastern and southern Ukraine in the aftermath of the 2014 Ukrainian revolution. Ukrainian forces managed to recapture the city on 28 July 2014, and continued to hold on to it firmly until January 2015. After the Minsk Protocol ceasefire agreement was signed on 5 September 2014, intermittent violations occurred around Debaltseve.


title: Battle of Debaltseve

text: Thousands of Ukrainian troops dug in at Debaltseve in January 2015. The city is a vital railway and road junction, and was sandwiched between DPR and LPR territories as a "pocket" or "wedge" of Ukrainian territory - a 15-mile salient into separatist-controlled territory. Most residents had left by this time, with shops closed, schools abandoned, and houses damaged. Intermittent shelling of the city was common in the months preceding the January 2015 escalation. Heavy shelling, however, began on 17 January, and continued through 20 January.


title: Battle of Debaltseve

text: DPR forces attacked Ukrainian positions in the area around Debaltseve on 22 January. Heavy shelling continued into the next day, while Ukrainian forces continued to hold their positions in the city. An empty school building was hit by a shell during the fighting. In retaliation, Ukrainian forces began an artillery barrage on separatist positions outside the city. On the following day, the DPR vowed to retake Debaltseve, which was surrounded by DPR and LPR-controlled territory on three sides. According to a report on 24 January, a Ukrainian checkpoint near the city came under direct attack by DPR rebels. DPR forces attacked another Ukrainian checkpoint near Debaltseve on 25 January, but the attack was repelled. On the next day, such attacks continued, with heavy fighting taking place all around Debaltseve. A resident of the city told Reuters that Debaltseve had been almost completely surrounded by separatist insurgents, but that Ukrainian forces had managed to hold on despite constant attacks.


title: Battle of Debaltseve

text: Separatists attempted to enter Debaltseve on 27 January, this time from the direction of Horlivka, but were repelled. On the following day, a DPR commander said that his forces had captured the highway that leads into the city, and that the city had been nearly completely surrounded. However, Ukrainian member of parliament Dmytro Tymchuk said on 29 January that separatist forces had been forced to "scale back" their offensive in the Debaltseve area. According to him, an artillery counterattack by government forces had caused heavy losses amongst separatists that had been trying to cut off Ukrainian troops from Ukrainian-controlled territory. BBC News released a video that showed pro-Russian forces caught in this shelling. Despite this, separatists captured Vuhlehirsk, a town west of Debaltseve on the highway to DPR-controlled Horlivka. The separatists broke through Ukrainian lines, overran a government checkpoint, entered the town, and then proceeded into its centre. Reinforcements were sent to aid government soldiers in Vuhlehirsk. According to an Associated Press report, the loss of this town made it much more difficult for Ukrainian forces to hold onto Debaltseve. Meanwhile, three civilians in Debaltseve proper were killed by what government forces described as "continuous" shelling by the rebels.


title: Battle of Debaltseve

text: During the day on 30 January, shells hit a bus, and also a cultural centre in Kyibishevskiy district that was being used to distribute humanitarian aid. According to the BBC, many civilians became trapped along with Ukrainian troops in the city. Some escaped to Artemivsk, in Ukrainian-controlled territory at the entrance to Debaltseve pocket. A report by Russian television channel Vesti said that around 8,000 Ukrainian troops remained in Debaltseve, and that separatist forces were close to closing the pocket's entrance. Ukrainian territorial defence battalion commander Semen Semenchenko said that some Ukrainian soldiers continued to hold out in Vuhlehirsk, despite the fact that it was largely under DPR control. Spokesman for the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine (NSDC) said that reinforcements had arrived to relieve Ukrainian troops at Vuhlehirsk, and that the front line was holding. Over the course of the day, Ukrainian supply lines were nearly cut off, as Grad rocket fire made it difficult for armoured personnel carriers and lorries to travel on the north–south highway between Artemivsk and Debaltseve. At least seven civilians were killed when a Grad rocket struck a block of flats in the city. The remaining residents of Debaltseve began to attempt to evacuate from the city amidst increasing fighting. Three buses per day were arranged to take people out of conflict zone to Artemivsk.


title: Battle of Debaltseve

text: Twelve more civilians were killed by DPR shelling in Debaltseve on 31 January. Government forces continued to use artillery fire to cut off DPR reinforcements from entering Vuhlehirsk. A ground offensive to dislodge separatists from that town failed, resulting in the deaths of three members of the Donbas Battalion, and injuring battalion commander Semenchenko. Evacuation of civilians from Debaltseve continued amid harsh winter conditions. As of that day, the city had been without water, gas, or electricity for at least ten days. According to Ukrainian prime minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, at least 1,000 people had been evacuated from Debaltseve by 31 January. Ukrainian defence minister Stepan Poltorak confirmed that part of Debaltseve was under DPR control.


title: Battle of Debaltseve

text: On the first day of February, the situation in Debaltseve rapidly deteriorated. According to the "Kyiv Post", some units of the National Guard of Ukraine had been forced to flee as DPR forces pushed into the outskirts of the city. The situation in Debaltseve continued to worsen into 2 February. "The New York Times" reported that it appeared that the separatists could seize the Artemivsk highway "at any moment". The road had become nearly impassable, with multiple refugee-laden buses having been hit by artillery fire. Referring to the pocket of Ukrainian-held territory around Debaltseve as a "kettle", as became common, DPR leader Alexander Zakharchenko said that anyone that attempted to leave "the kettle" would be in the "interlocking field of fire of our artillery". A report by aid workers in the combat zone said that 8,000 residents had escaped from the Debaltseve area by 2 February. One aid worker said that pro-Russian forces were deliberately targeting the buses being used to transport residents out of the city. An observer with Amnesty International said that the humanitarian situation in Debaltseve had become "catastrophic". In order to assist the remaining Ukrainian troops in Debaltseve, the Armed Forces sent a large column of reinforcements, including armoured vehicles and troop transports, from their base of operations at Kramatorsk to besieged Debaltseve.


title: Battle of Debaltseve

text: A ceasefire between separatist and Ukrainian forces was agreed to for the day of 3 February. The stated intent was to allow remaining civilians to escape from the Debaltseve area. Shelling lessened until 13:00 EET, when salvos of Grad rockets were fired towards Debaltseve. Fighting continued into the next day. One resident of Debaltseve who had fled to Artemivsk said that there was "nothing left" in the city. DPR forces gained control of Vuhlehirsk on 4 February, allowing the separatists to increase shelling of the Artemivsk highway and Debaltseve. DPR and Ukrainian forces agreed to establish a humanitarian corridor on 6 February, in another attempt to allow the remaining civilians to escape from Debaltseve. Hundreds of civilians were able to flee. Fighting resumed on 7 February. DPR forces said that they had fully encircled the town by capturing the village of Lohvynove on 9 February, thus "closing the kettle". Only four Ukrainian soldiers had been stationed in the village at the time, allowing the separatists to capture it easily. Government forces said that fighting was still ongoing on the Artemivsk highway, and that the kettle had not been completely closed. By the morning of 10 February, it became clear that separatist forces had gained control of the Artemivsk highway, thereby cutting off government forces. Videos showed DPR militants and tanks moving along the highway. During the day, the Lviv police chief was wounded in an explosion on a road near the town. Ukrainian forces took heavy casualties from artillery fire into 11 February. Nineteen soldiers were killed and seventy-eight injured in twenty-four hours. Those that died had been fighting near Hostra Mohyla hill, close to Debaltseve. In addition, DPR forces assaulted the Debaltseve police headquarters, killing the city's chief of police.


title: Battle of Debaltseve

text: Despite the signing of a new ceasefire agreement on 12 February 2015, fighting intensified around Debaltseve. Separatist forces attempted an offensive on Debaltseve proper in an effort to push out government troops before the start of the ceasefire, which was to come into effect at 0:00 EET on 15 February 2015. Heavy artillery barrages were reported to have struck the city, and the strategic Artemivsk highway was under intense shelling. Government troops made an attempt to recapture Lohvynove, but were ambushed by separatist militants. One Ukrainian soldier described the situation in the village as a "meat grinder" that was "worse than even those in Donetsk and Luhansk airports". At least 96 Ukrainian soldiers were wounded, whilst the number of dead was unknown because Ukrainian forces were forced to escape before they could remove the bodies of their comrades. Fighting continued along the Artemivsk highway into 14 February, as DPR insurgents continued their attempt to eliminate Ukrainian resistance. Donetsk regional chief of police Vyacheslav Abroskin said that intense shelling was "destroying Debaltseve". United States Department of State spokeswoman Jen Psaki said that the Russian Armed Forces had deployed "a large amount of artillery and multiple rocket launcher systems around Debaltseve", and that Russia was responsible for shelling of the city. A report by "The New York Times" said that the Artemivsk highway had become completely impassable by 12 February, and that no one had travelled on it since that day. It also said that the road had been laced with land mines. Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko ordered his forces to observe the ceasefire as it came into effect at 0:00 EET on 15 February, and insurgent commanders did the same. Though fighting ceased across most of the combat zone, it continued at Debaltseve. DPR leader Alexander Zakharchenko said that Minsk II did not apply to Debaltseve, as it was not mentioned in the agreement. One Ukrainian soldier who was stationed at a checkpoint in the village of Luhanske, to the north of Debaltseve, said that there was "no ceasefire". During the course of 15 February, shelling struck Ukrainian positions, and separatist forces made multiple attacks upon the city from the west and east, storming government positions in the nearby village of Chornukhyne. Nevertheless, shelling in the area was less severe than it had been in the days prior to the start of the ceasefire. OSCE monitors, meant to observe the implementation of Minsk II, were denied access to Debaltseve by the separatist authorities.


title: Battle of Debaltseve

text: Fighting further intensified into 16 February, with "non-stop explosions" striking the city. Early in the day, the Debaltseve police station was destroyed by separatist shelling. Kryvbas Battalion deputy commander Yuriy Sinkovskiy said that Ukrainian soldiers in Debaltseve were either completely or partially surrounded, and that there was no available communication link to the Ukrainian General Staff. Soldiers subsisted in freezing conditions and had little food or ammunition. Sinkovskiy said that he risked being court-martialed for disclosing this information, and that he simply wanted to save the men that were trapped in Debaltseve. He said that the troops should withdraw or even surrender if it would save their lives. DPR commander Eduard Basurin said that he would provide a corridor to allow Ukrainian troops to lay down their weapons and leave Debaltseve. Armed Forces spokesman Vladislav Seleznyov said that this was unacceptable, and that Debaltseve was Ukrainian territory according to the Minsk agreements. Reuters described the ceasefire as "stillborn" in Debaltseve. One member of the Donbas Battalion said that the situation for Ukrainian soldiers in the city was dire, and resembled the "Ilovaisk kettle", but on a much larger scale.


title: Battle of Debaltseve

text: Separatist forces pushed into Debaltseve proper on 17 February. For the first time, fighting took place in the streets of the city. Separatist authorities said that they had captured the city's railway station, and also its eastern outskirts. The NSDC spokesman denied this, and said that fighting was ongoing throughout Debaltseve. Following this, the separatists said that they had captured most of the city, and were conducting a "mopping-up operation". They said they had taken at least 300 Ukrainian soldiers prisoner. A statement issued by the Ukrainian Defence Ministry confirmed that part of the city had fallen to "bandits", and that some soldiers had been taken prisoner. Ukrainian soldiers in the village of Komuna, just west of Debaltseve, told reporters that they could maintain their positions only for twelve more hours or they would be overrun and killed by the separatists. Concurrently, a spokesman for the Ukrainian military operation in Donbas said that Lohvynove and the Artemivsk highway had been returned to Ukrainian control.


title: Battle of Debaltseve

text: Ukrainian forces began to withdraw from Debaltseve in the early morning on 18 February. Prior to the withdrawal, about 6,000 soldiers had been holed up in the city. Preparations for the retreat had been going on in secret for days prior. According to "The New York Times", the leadership of the Ukrainian military operation had spent much time attempting to find a road to escape on, as the Artemivsk highway had become impassable. The situation in Debaltseve had become untenable for Ukrainian troops positioned there. One soldier said that if Ukrainian forces had stayed in the city, "it would definitely be either captivity or death". In order to find a usable route out of Debaltseve, ambulances were sent through "farmers' fields and down back roads", ensuring that such movements would not attract the notice of the separatists. Having selected a route north to the Ukrainian-controlled village of Luhanske, the withdrawal plan was put into action. Troop transports queued on the edge of Debaltseve at 01:00 EET. Soldiers were told to prepare to leave in ten minutes with no prior notice, and then to load into the prepared lorries. They abandoned their heavy weaponry, and destroyed their ammunition so as to prevent it from falling into separatist hands. After loading, the column of about 2,000 men, including tanks and other armoured vehicles, began to proceed away from the city. Headlamps were kept off to avoid attracting the separatist attention. In spite of these preparations, the convoy was swiftly attacked by the separatist forces. Vehicles broke down and crashed, with fire raining down on the convoy from all sides. One soldier said that the separatists were "shooting with tanks, rocket-propelled grenades and sniper rifles", and that the column had been "disintegrated". Many soldiers were forced to abandon their vehicles and proceed on foot. Dead and wounded soldiers were left behind, as it was impossible to evacuate them. The withdrawal was complicated by the fact that government forces had not gained control of Lohvynove, as had been claimed a day earlier. Donbas Battalion commander Semen Semenchenko said "All the fairytales about Lohvynove turned out to be fairytales". Streams of ragged Ukrainian soldiers who had left Debaltseve arrived in Luhanske as the day went on. "The New York Times" said that Ukrainian forces had suffered "major losses, both in equipment and human life". Debaltseve fell silent by 15:00 EET. The flag of Novorossiya was raised over a former Ukrainian base of operations. Separatist authorities said that they had taken hundreds of Ukrainian troops captive. Ukrainian officials told AFP that during the evacuation "Full-scale street fighting continues and there was also a small tank battle."


title: Battle of Debaltseve

text: Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko said that the withdrawal had been "planned and organised", and that this orderly withdrawal proved that Debaltseve had been under Ukrainian control, and that "there was no encirclement". Soldiers on the ground, however, disputed President Poroshenko's account. Some soldiers said that "they had actually been told to stay put", and that they had been "left to die in a trap". They said that the Ukrainian government and media repeated "lies" about the status of Debaltseve, and that Ukrainian forces had been surrounded for more than a week. First Lt. Yuriy Prekharia, who had previously survived the encirclement of Ukrainian forces at Ilovaisk, said that Chief of the General Staff Viktor Muzhenko had repeated the same mistake, allowing Ukrainian forces to be trapped without support. He said that "The commanders should have given the order to break through and retreat as soon as the threat of encirclement became obvious". Commander Semenchenko likewise said: "The problem was with the leadership and coordination of actions … What’s going on now is the result of incompetent management of our troops, even though they’re trying to cover this up with a propaganda storm". President Poroshenko said that about 2,500 men had withdrawn from Debaltseve by the end of the day on 18 February, and this number represented 80% of the Ukrainian troops that had been in the city. Official reports said that thirteen soldiers had died during the retreat, and that 157 had been wounded. As above, soldiers on the ground disputed these numbers as grossly inaccurate, and said that the number of dead was "clearly in the hundreds". Two weeks later, the official casualty toll during the retreat was put at 19 dead, 12 missing, 9 captured and 135 wounded. Ukrainian government sources, on the other hand, reported that 185 soldiers had died during the battle, 112 had been taken prisoner, and 81 were missing. The Ukrainian death toll was later updated to 267 dead, after the bodies of many of the missing were found. Separatist leaders also said that their forces had captured a significant amount of Ukrainian heavy weaponry that had been left behind during the retreat.


title: Battle of Debaltseve

text: Some soldiers remained trapped in Debaltseve on 19 February, but soldiers that previously escaped said that they were forbidden from rescuing their trapped comrades. Separatist forces removed the last pockets of Ukrainian resistance in the Debaltseve area on 20 February, when they captured the villages of Chornukhyne, Ridkodub, and Mius. According to a 27 February report by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), DPR authorities found 500 civilian corpses in houses and cellars in Debaltseve after the battle. Nearly all of the buildings in the city centre were either heavily damaged or destroyed by the fighting.


title: Hippophae

text: Hippophae is the genus of sea buckthorns, deciduous shrubs in the family Elaeagnaceae. The name sea buckthorn may be hyphenated to avoid confusion with the unrelated true buckthorns ("Rhamnus", family Rhamnaceae). It is also referred to as sandthorn, sallowthorn, or seaberry. It produces orange-yellow berries, which have been used over centuries as food, traditional medicine, and skin treatment in Mongolia, Ladakh, Russia, Ukraine, and northern Europe, which are its origin regions.


title: Hippophae

text: It is an exceptionally hardy plant able to withstand winter temperatures as low as . Because "Hippophae" develops an aggressive and extensive root system, it is planted to inhibit soil erosion and is used in land reclamation for its nitrogen fixing properties, wildlife habitat, and soil enrichment. "Hippophae" berries and leaves are manufactured into various human and animal food and skincare products.


title: Hippophae

text: The shrubs reach tall, rarely up to in central Asia. The leaf arrangement can be alternate or opposite.


title: Hippophae

text: "Hippophae" is a small genus of Elaeagnaceae having a terminal taxon with seven species recognized, as of 2002. "Hippophae rhamnoides" is a highly variable species with eight subspecies.


title: Hippophae

text: In ancient times, leaves and young branches from sea buckthorn were supposedly fed as a remedy to horses to support weight gain and appearance of the coat, leading to the name of the genus, "Hippophae" derived from "hippo" (horse), and "phaos" (shining).


title: Hippophae

text: "Hippophae rhamnoides", the common sea buckthorn, is the most widespread of the species in the genus, with the ranges of its eight subspecies extending from the Atlantic coasts of Europe across to northwestern Mongolia, northwestern China and Northern Pakistan. In western Europe, it is largely confined to sea coasts where salt spray off the sea prevents other larger plants from outcompeting it. In central Asia, it is more widespread in dry semi-desert sites where other plants cannot survive the dry conditions.


title: Hippophae

text: In central Europe and Asia, it also occurs as a sub-alpine shrub above the tree line in mountains, and other sunny areas such as river banks where it has been used to stabilize erosion. They are tolerant of salt in the air and soil, but demand full sunlight for good growth and do not tolerate shady conditions near larger trees. They typically grow in dry, sandy areas.


title: Hippophae

text: More than 90% or about of the world's natural sea buckthorn habitat is found in China, India, Pakistan, Mongolia, Russia, northern Europe, Ukraine, and Canada, where the plant is used for soil, water and wildlife conservation, anti-desertification purposes, and consumer products.


title: Hippophae

text: During the Cold War, Russian and East German horticulturists developed new varieties with greater nutritional value, larger berries, different ripening months and branches that are easier to harvest. Over the past 20 years, experimental crops have been grown in the United States, one in Nevada and one in Arizona, and in several provinces of Canada.


title: Hippophae

text: A study of nuclear ribosomal internal transcribed spacer sequence data showed that the genus can be divided into three clades:


title: Hippophae

text: Leaves are eaten by the larva of the coastal race of the ash pug moth and by larvae of other Lepidoptera, including brown-tail, dun-bar, emperor moth, mottled umber, and "Coleophora elaeagnisella".


title: Hippophae

text: Sea buckthorn berries are edible and nutritious, though astringent, sour, and oily unless 'bletted' (frosted to reduce the astringency) and/or mixed as a drink with sweeter substances such as apple or grape juice. Additionally, malolactic fermentation of sea buckthorn juice reduces sourness, enhancing its sensory properties. The mechanism behind this change is transformation of malic acid into lactic acid in microbial metabolism.


title: Hippophae

text: When the berries are pressed, the resulting sea buckthorn juice separates into three layers: on top is a thick, orange cream; in the middle, a layer containing sea buckthorn's characteristic high content of saturated and polyunsaturated fats; and the bottom layer is sediment and juice. The upper two layers contain fat sources applicable for cosmetic purposes and can be processed for skin creams and liniments, whereas the bottom layer can be used for edible products such as syrup.


title: Hippophae

text: Besides juice, sea buckthorn fruit can be used to make pies, jams, lotions, teas, fruit wines, and liquors. The juice or pulp has other potential applications in foods, beverages, or cosmetics products such as shower gel. Fruit drinks were among the earliest sea buckthorn products developed in China. Sea buckthorn-based juice is common in Germany and Scandinavian countries. It provides a beverage rich in vitamin C and carotenoids. Sea Buckthorn berries are also used to produce rich orange-coloured ice-cream, with a melon-type taste and hints of citrus.


title: Hippophae

text: For its troops confronting low winter temperatures (see Siachen), India's Defence Research Development Organization established a factory in Leh to manufacture a multivitamin herbal beverage based on sea buckthorn juice.


title: Hippophae

text: The seed and pulp oils have nutritional properties that vary under different processing methods. Sea buckthorn oils are used as a source for ingredients in several commercially available cosmetic products and nutritional supplements.


title: Hippophae

text: Sea buckthorn may be used as a landscaping shrub with an aggressive basal shoot system used for barrier hedges and windbreaks, and to stabilize riverbanks and steep slopes. They have value in northern climates for their landscape qualities, as the colorful berry clusters are retained through winter. Branches may be used by florists for designing ornaments.


title: Hippophae

text: In northwestern China, sea buckthorn shrubs have been planted on the bottoms of dry riverbeds to increase water retention of the soil, thus decreasing sediment loss. Because of increased moisture conservation of the soil and nitrogen-fixing capabilities of sea buckthorn, vegetation levels have increased in areas where sea buckthorn have been planted. Sea buckthorn was once distributed free of charge to Canadian prairie farmers by PFRA to be used in shelterbelts.


title: Hippophae

text: Sea buckthorn has been used over centuries in traditional medicine. Although sea buckthorn fruit extracts are under preliminary research for their pharmacological effects, there is no high-quality clinical evidence for the ability of "Hippophae" products to lower the risk of human diseases, and as of 2020 none are approved as prescription drugs by any national regulatory agency. Berry oil from seeds or fruit pulp, either taken orally as a dietary supplement or applied topically, is believed to be a skin softener or medicine, but there is inadequate clinical evidence of its effectiveness. There have been no systematic studies of toxicity and safety for any "Hippophae" product.


title: Hippophae

text: The International Seabuckthorn Association, formerly the International Center for Research and Training on Seabuckthorn (ICRTS), was formed jointly in 1988 by the China Research and Training Center on Seabuckthorn, the Seabuckthorn Office of the Yellow River Water Commission, and the Shaanxi Seabuckthorn Development Office. From 1995 to 2000, ICRTS published the research journal, "Hippophae", which appears to be no longer active.


title: Hippophae

text: In 2005 - 2007, the "EAN-Seabuck" network between European Union states, China, Russia and New Independent States was funded by the European Commission to promote sustainable crop and consumer product development.


title: Long-Term Capital Management

text: Long-Term Capital Management L.P. (LTCM) was a highly-leveraged hedge fund. In 1998, it received a $3.6 billion bailout from a group of 14 banks, in a deal brokered and put together by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.


title: Long-Term Capital Management

text: LTCM was founded in 1994 by John Meriwether, the former vice-chairman and head of bond trading at Salomon Brothers. Members of LTCM's board of directors included Myron Scholes and Robert C. Merton, who three years later in 1997 shared the Nobel Prize in Economics for having developed the Black–Scholes model of financial dynamics.


title: Long-Term Capital Management

text: LTCM was initially successful, with annualized returns (after fees) of around 21% in its first year, 43% in its second year and 41% in its third year. However, in 1998 it lost $4.6 billion in less than four months due to a combination of high leverage and exposure to the 1997 Asian financial crisis and 1998 Russian financial crisis. The master hedge fund, Long-Term Capital Portfolio L.P., collapsed soon thereafter, leading to an agreement on September 23, 1998, among 14 financial institutions for a $3.65 billion recapitalization under the supervision of the Federal Reserve. The fund was liquidated and dissolved in early 2000.


title: Long-Term Capital Management

text: John Meriwether headed Salomon Brothers' bond arbitrage desk until he resigned in 1991 amid a trading scandal. According to Chi-fu Huang, later a Principal at LTCM, the bond arbitrage group was responsible for 80–100% of Salomon's global total earnings from the late 1980s until the early 1990s.


title: Long-Term Capital Management

text: In 1993 Meriwether created Long-Term Capital as a hedge fund and recruited several Salomon bond traders; Larry Hilibrand and Victor Haghani in particular would wield substantial clout and two future winners of the Nobel Memorial Prize, Myron Scholes and Robert C. Merton. Other principals included Eric Rosenfeld, Greg Hawkins, William Krasker, Dick Leahy, James McEntee, Robert Shustak, and David W. Mullins Jr.


title: Long-Term Capital Management

text: The company consisted of Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM), a company incorporated in Delaware but based in Greenwich, Connecticut. LTCM managed trades in Long-Term Capital Portfolio LP, a partnership registered in the Cayman Islands. The fund's operation was designed to have extremely low overhead; trades were conducted through a partnership with Bear Stearns and client relations were handled by Merrill Lynch.


title: Long-Term Capital Management

text: Meriwether chose to start a hedge fund to avoid the financial regulation imposed on more traditional investment vehicles, such as mutual funds, as established by the Investment Company Act of 1940—funds which accepted stakes from 100 or fewer individuals each with more than $1 million in net worth were exempt from most of the regulations that bound other investment companies. The bulk of the money raised, in late 1993, came from companies and individuals connected to the financial industry. With the help of Merrill Lynch, LTCM also secured hundreds of millions of dollars from high-net-worth individual including business owners and celebrities, as well as private university endowments and later the Italian central bank. By 24 February 1994, the day LTCM began trading, the company had amassed just over $1.01 billion in capital.


title: Long-Term Capital Management

text: The main strategy was to find pairs of bonds which should have a predictable spread between their prices, and then when this spread widened further to basically place a bet that the two prices would come back towards each other.


title: Long-Term Capital Management

text: The core investment strategy of the company was then known as involving convergence trading: using quantitative models to exploit deviations from fair value in the relationships between liquid securities across nations, and between asset classes (i.e Fed model-type strategies). In fixed income the company was involved in US Treasuries, Japanese Government Bonds, UK Gilts, Italian BTPs, and Latin American debt, although their activities were not confined to these markets or to government bonds. LTCM was the brightest star on Wall Street at that time.


title: Long-Term Capital Management

text: Fixed income securities pay a set of coupons at specified dates in the future, and make a defined redemption payment at maturity. Since bonds of similar maturities and the same credit quality are close substitutes for investors, there tends to be a close relationship between their prices (and yields). Whereas it is possible to construct a single set of valuation curves for derivative instruments based on LIBOR-type fixings, it is not possible to do so for government bond securities because every bond has slightly different characteristics. It is therefore necessary to construct a theoretical model of what the relationships between different but closely related fixed income securities should be.


title: Long-Term Capital Management

text: For example, the most recently issued treasury bond in the US – known as the benchmark – will be more liquid than bonds of similar but slightly shorter maturity that were issued previously. Trading is concentrated in the benchmark bond, and transaction costs are lower for buying or selling it. As a consequence, it tends to trade more expensively than less liquid older bonds, but this expensiveness (or richness) tends to have a limited duration, because after a certain time there will be a new benchmark, and trading will shift to this security newly issued by the Treasury. One core trade in the LTCM strategies was to purchase the old benchmark – now a 29.75-year bond, and which no longer had a significant premium – and to sell short the newly issued benchmark 30-year, which traded at a premium. Over time the valuations of the two bonds would tend to converge as the richness of the benchmark faded once a new benchmark was issued. If the coupons of the two bonds were similar, then this trade would create an exposure to changes in the shape of the typically upward sloping yield curve: a flattening would depress the yields and raise the prices of longer-dated bonds, and raise the yields and depress the prices of shorter-dated bonds. It would therefore tend to create losses by making the 30-year bond that LTCM was short more expensive (and the 29.75-year bond they owned cheaper) even if there had been no change in the true relative valuation of the securities. This exposure to the shape of the yield curve could be managed at a portfolio level, and hedged out by entering a smaller steepener in other similar securities.


title: Long-Term Capital Management

text: Because the magnitude of discrepancies in valuations in this kind of trade is small (for the benchmark Treasury convergence trade, typically a few basis points), in order to earn significant returns for investors, LTCM used leverage to create a portfolio that was a significant multiple (varying over time depending on their portfolio composition) of investors' equity in the fund. It was also necessary to access the financing market in order to borrow the securities that they had sold short. In order to maintain their portfolio, LTCM was therefore dependent on the willingness of its counterparties in the government bond (repo) market to continue to finance their portfolio. If the company were unable to extend its financing agreements, then it would be forced to sell the securities it owned and to buy back the securities it was short at market prices, regardless of whether these were favourable from a valuation perspective.


title: Long-Term Capital Management

text: At the beginning of 1998, the firm had equity of $4.7 billion and had borrowed over $124.5 billion with assets of around $129 billion, for a debt-to-equity ratio of over 25 to 1. It had off-balance sheet derivative positions with a notional value of approximately $1.25 trillion, most of which were in interest rate derivatives such as interest rate swaps. The fund also invested in other derivatives such as equity options.


title: Long-Term Capital Management

text: John Quiggin's book "Zombie Economics" (2010) states, "These derivatives, such as interest rate swaps, were developed with the supposed goal of allowing firms to manage risk on exchange rates and interest rate movements. Instead, they allowed speculation on an unparalleled scale."


title: Long-Term Capital Management

text: LTCM was open about its overall strategy, but very secretive about its specific operations, including scattering trades among banks. And in perhaps a disconcerting note, "since Long-Term was flourishing, no one needed to know exactly what they were doing. All they knew was that the profits were coming in as promised," or at least perhaps what should have been a disconcerting note when looked at in hindsight.


title: Long-Term Capital Management

text: Opaqueness may have made even more of a difference and investors may have had even a harder time judging the risk involved when LTCM moved from bond arbitrage into arbitrage involving common stocks and corporate mergers.


title: Long-Term Capital Management

text: Under prevailing US tax laws, there was a different treatment of long-term capital gains, which were taxed at 20.0 percent, and income, which was taxed at 39.6 percent. The earnings for partners in a hedge fund was taxed at the higher rate applying to income, and LTCM applied its financial engineering expertise to legally transform income into capital gains. It did so by engaging in a transaction with UBS (Union Bank of Switzerland) that would defer foreign interest income for seven years, thereby being able to earn the more favourable capital gains treatment. LTCM purchased a call option on 1 million of their own shares (valued then at $800 million) for a premium paid to UBS of $300 million. This transaction was completed in three tranches: in June, August, and October 1997. Under the terms of the deal, UBS agreed to reinvest the $300 million premium directly back into LTCM for a minimum of three years. In order to hedge its exposure from being short the call option, UBS also purchased 1 million of LTCM shares. Put-call parity means that being short a call and long the same amount of notional as underlying the call is equivalent to being short a put. So the net effect of the transaction was for UBS to lend $300 million to LTCM at LIBOR+50 and to be short a put on 1 million shares. UBS's own motivation for the trade was to be able to invest in LTCM – a possibility that was not open to investors generally – and to become closer to LTCM as a client. LTCM quickly became the largest client of the hedge fund desk, generating $15 million in fees annually.


title: Long-Term Capital Management

text: LTCM attempted to create a splinter fund in 1996 called LTCM-X that would invest in even higher risk trades and focus on Latin American markets. LTCM turned to UBS to invest in and write the warrant for this new spin-off company.


title: Long-Term Capital Management

text: LTCM faced challenges in deploying capital as their capital base grew due to initially strong returns, and as the magnitude of anomalies in market pricing diminished over time. James Surowiecki concludes that LTCM grew such a large portion of such illiquid markets that there was no diversity in buyers in them, or no buyers at all, so the wisdom of the market did not function and it was impossible to determine a price for its assets (such as Danish bonds in September 1998).


title: Long-Term Capital Management

text: In Q4 1997, a year in which it earned 27%, LTCM returned capital to investors. It also broadened its strategies to include new approaches in markets outside of fixed income: many of these were not market neutral – they were dependent on overall interest rates or stock prices going up (or down) – and they were not traditional convergence trades. By 1998, LTCM had accumulated extremely large positions in areas such as merger arbitrage (betting on differences between a proprietary view of the likelihood of success of mergers and other corporate transactions would be completed and the implied market pricing) and S&P 500 options (net short long-term S&P volatility). LTCM had become a major supplier of S&P 500 vega, which had been in demand by companies seeking to essentially insure equities against future declines.


title: Long-Term Capital Management

text: Despite the fund's prominent leadership and strong growth at LTCM, that there were skeptics from the very beginning. Investor Seth Klarman believed it was reckless to have the combination of high leverage and not accounting for rare or outlying scenarios. Software designer Mitch Kapor, who had sold a statistical program with LTCM partner Eric Rosenfeld, saw quantitative finance as a faith, rather than science. Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Samuelson was concerned about extraordinary events affecting the market. Economist Eugene Fama found in his research that stocks were bound to have extreme outliers. Furthermore, he believed that, because they are subject to discontinuous price changes, real-life markets are inherently more risky than models. He became even more concerned when LTCM began adding stocks to their bond portfolio.


title: Long-Term Capital Management

text: Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger were two of the individual investors that Meriwether approached in 1993 to invest in the fund. Both analyzed the company but turned down the offer, considering the leverage plan to be too risky.


title: Long-Term Capital Management

text: LTCM's profit percentage for 1996 was 40%. However, for 1997, it was "only" 17%, which was actually right at average for hedge funds. A big reason was that other companies were by now following LTCM's example. And this greater competition left fewer arbitrage opportunities for LTCM themselves.


title: Long-Term Capital Management

text: As a result, LTCM began investing in emerging-market debt and foreign currencies. Some of the major partners, particularly Myron Scholes, had their doubts about these new investments. For example, when LTCM took a major position in the Norwegian kroner, Scholes warned that they had no "informational advantage" in this area.


title: Long-Term Capital Management

text: In June 1998 – which was before the Russian financial crisis – LTCM posted a 10% loss, which was their biggest monthly loss to date.


title: Long-Term Capital Management

text: Although 1997 had been a very profitable year for LTCM (27%), the lingering effects of the 1997 Asian crisis continued to shape developments in asset markets into 1998. Despite the crisis originating in Asia, its effects were not confined to that region. The rise in risk aversion had raised concerns amongst investors regarding all markets heavily dependent on international capital flows, and this shaped asset pricing in markets outside Asia too.


title: Long-Term Capital Management

text: Although periods of distress have often created tremendous opportunities for relative value strategies, this did not prove to be the case on this occasion, and the seeds of LTCM's demise were sown before the Russian default of 17 August 1998. LTCM had returned $2.7 bn to investors in Q4 of 1997, although it had also raised a total in capital of $1.066 bn from UBS and $133 m from CSFB. Since position sizes had not been reduced, the net effect was to raise the leverage of the fund.


title: Long-Term Capital Management

text: In May and June 1998 returns from the fund were -6.42% and -10.14% respectively, reducing LTCM's capital by $461 million. This was further aggravated by the exit of Salomon Brothers from the arbitrage business in July 1998. Because the Salomon arbitrage group (where many of LTCM's strategies had first been incubated) had been a significant player in the kinds of strategies also pursued by LTCM, the liquidation of the Salomon portfolio (and its announcement itself) had the effect of depressing the prices of the securities owned by LTCM and bidding up the prices of the securities LTCM was short. According to Michael Lewis in the New York Times article of July 1998, returns that month were circa -10%. One LTCM partner commented that because there was a clear temporary reason to explain the widening of arbitrage spreads, at the time it gave them more conviction that these trades would eventually return to fair value (as they did, but not without widening much further first).


title: Long-Term Capital Management

text: Such losses were accentuated through the 1998 Russian financial crisis in August and September 1998, when the Russian government defaulted on its domestic local currency bonds. This came as a surprise to many investors because according to traditional economic thinking of the time, a sovereign issuer should never need to default given access to the printing press. There was a flight to quality, bidding up the prices of the most liquid and benchmark securities that LTCM was short, and depressing the price of the less liquid securities it owned. This phenomenon occurred not merely in the US Treasury market but across the full spectrum of financial assets. Although LTCM was diversified, the nature of its strategy implied an exposure to a latent factor risk of the price of liquidity across markets. As a consequence, when a much larger flight to liquidity occurred than had been anticipated when constructing its portfolio, its positions designed to profit from convergence to fair value incurred large losses as expensive but liquid securities became more expensive, and cheap but illiquid securities became cheaper. By the end of August, the fund had lost $1.85 billion in capital.


title: Long-Term Capital Management

text: Because LTCM was not the only fund pursuing such a strategy, and because the proprietary trading desks of the banks also held some similar trades, the divergence from fair value was made worse as these other positions were also liquidated. As rumours of LTCM's difficulties spread, some market participants positioned in anticipation of a forced liquidation. Victor Haghani, a partner at LTCM, said about this time "it was as if there was someone out there with our exact portfolio... only it was three times as large as ours, and they were liquidating all at once."


title: Long-Term Capital Management

text: Because these losses reduced the capital base of LTCM, and its ability to maintain the magnitude of its existing portfolio, LTCM was forced to liquidate a number of its positions at a highly unfavorable moment and suffer further losses. A vivid illustration of the consequences of these forced liquidations is given by Lowenstein (2000). He reports that LTCM established an arbitrage position in the dual-listed company (or "DLC") Royal Dutch Shell in the summer of 1997, when Royal Dutch traded at an 8%–10% premium relative to Shell. In total $2.3 billion was invested, half of which was "long" in Shell and the other half was "short" in Royal Dutch.


title: Long-Term Capital Management

text: LTCM was essentially betting that the share prices of Royal Dutch and Shell would converge because in their belief the present value of the future cashflows of the two securities should be similar. This might have happened in the long run, but due to its losses on other positions, LTCM had to unwind its position in Royal Dutch Shell. Lowenstein reports that the premium of Royal Dutch had increased to about 22%, which implies that LTCM incurred a large loss on this arbitrage strategy. LTCM lost $286 million in equity pairs trading and more than half of this loss is accounted for by the Royal Dutch Shell trade.


title: Long-Term Capital Management

text: The company, which had historically earned annualised compounded returns of almost 40% up to this point, experienced a flight to liquidity. In the first three weeks of September, LTCM's equity tumbled from $2.3 billion at the start of the month to just $400 million by September 25. With liabilities still over $100 billion, this translated to an effective leverage ratio of more than 250-to-1.


title: Long-Term Capital Management

text: Long-Term Capital Management did business with nearly every important person on Wall Street. Indeed, much of LTCM's capital was composed of funds from the same financial professionals with whom it traded. As LTCM teetered, Wall Street feared that Long-Term's failure could cause a chain reaction in numerous markets, causing catastrophic losses throughout the financial system.


title: Long-Term Capital Management

text: After LTCM failed to raise more money on its own, it became clear it was running out of options. On September 23, 1998, Goldman Sachs, AIG, and Berkshire Hathaway offered then to buy out the fund's partners for $250 million, to inject $3.75 billion and to operate LTCM within Goldman's own trading division. The offer of $250 million was stunningly low to LTCM's partners because at the start of the year their firm had been worth $4.7 billion. Warren Buffett gave Meriwether less than one hour to accept the deal; the time lapsed before a deal could be worked out.


title: Long-Term Capital Management

text: Seeing no options left, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York organized a bailout of $3.625 billion by the major creditors to avoid a wider collapse in the financial markets. The principal negotiator for LTCM was general counsel James G. Rickards. The contributions from the various institutions were as follows:


title: Long-Term Capital Management

text: In return, the participating banks got a 90% share in the fund and a promise that a supervisory board would be established. LTCM's partners received a 10% stake, still worth about $400 million, but this money was completely consumed by their debts. The partners once had $1.9 billion of their own money invested in LTCM, all of which was wiped out.


title: Long-Term Capital Management

text: The fear was that there would be a chain reaction as the company liquidated its securities to cover its debt, leading to a drop in prices, which would force other companies to liquidate their own debt in a vicious cycle.


title: Long-Term Capital Management

text: The total losses were found to be $4.6 billion. The losses in the major investment categories were (ordered by magnitude):


title: Long-Term Capital Management

text: Long-Term Capital was audited by Price Waterhouse LLP. After the bailout by the other investors, the panic abated, and the positions formerly held by LTCM were eventually liquidated at a small profit to the rescuers. Although termed a bailout, the transaction effectively amounted to an orderly liquidation of the positions held by LTCM with creditor involvement and supervision by the Federal Reserve Bank. No public money was injected or directly at risk, and the companies involved in providing support to LTCM were also those that stood to lose from its failure. The creditors themselves did not lose money from being involved in the transaction.


title: Long-Term Capital Management

text: Some industry officials said that Federal Reserve Bank of New York involvement in the rescue, however benign, would encourage large financial institutions to assume more risk, in the belief that the Federal Reserve would intervene on their behalf in the event of trouble. Federal Reserve Bank of New York actions raised concerns among some market observers that it could create moral hazard since even though the Fed had not directly injected capital, its use of moral suasion to encourage creditor involvement emphasized its interest in supporting the financial system .


title: Long-Term Capital Management

text: LTCM's strategies were compared to "picking up nickels in front of a bulldozer" – a likely small gain balanced against a small chance of a large loss, like the payouts from selling an out-of-the-money naked call option. This contrasts with the market efficiency aphorism that there are no $100 bills lying on the street, as someone else has already picked them up.


title: Long-Term Capital Management

text: In 1998, the chairman of Union Bank of Switzerland resigned as a result of a $780 million loss incurred from the being short put options on LTCM, which had become significantly in-the-money due to LTCM's collapse.


title: Long-Term Capital Management

text: After the bailout, Long-Term Capital Management continued operations. In the year following the bailout, it earned 10%. By early 2000, the fund had been liquidated, and the consortium of banks that financed the bailout had been paid back, but the collapse was devastating for many involved. Mullins, once considered a possible successor to Alan Greenspan, saw his future with the Fed dashed. The theories of Merton and Scholes took a public beating. In its annual reports, Merrill Lynch observed that mathematical risk models "may provide a greater sense of security than warranted; therefore, reliance on these models should be limited."


title: Long-Term Capital Management

text: After helping unwind LTCM, John Meriwether launched JWM Partners. Haghani, Hilibrand, Leahy, and Rosenfeld signed up as principals of the new firm. By December 1999, they had raised $250 million for a fund that would continue many of LTCM's strategies – this time, using less leverage. With the credit crisis of 2008, JWM Partners LLC was hit with a 44% loss from September 2007 to February 2009 in its Relative Value Opportunity II fund. As such, JWM Hedge Fund was shut down in July 2009. Meriwether then launched a third hedge fund in 2010 called JM Advisors Management. A 2014 "Business Insider" article stated that his later two funds used "the same investment strategy from his time at LTCM and Salomon."


title: Long-Term Capital Management

text: Historian Niall Ferguson proposed that LTCM's collapse stemmed in part from their use of only five years of financial data to prepare their mathematical models, thus drastically under-estimating the risks of a profound economic crisis. Using ten years of data would have included the 1987 US market crash, while using 80 years of data would have included many minor and major economic downturns including the 1918 Russian sovereign debt default after the First World War and Russian Civil War, highlighting the possibility of a major foreign event causing international repercussions that LTCM seemingly overlooked.


title: Long-Term Capital Management

text: A 2016 CFA article written by Ron Rimkus pointed out that the VaR model, one of the major quantitative analysis tool by LTCM, had several flaws in it. A VaR model is calculated based on historical data, but the data sample used by LTCM excluded previous economic crises such as those of 1987 and 1994. VaR also could not interpret extreme events such as a financial crisis in terms of timing.


title: United States Soccer Federation

text: The United States Soccer Federation (USSF), commonly referred to as U.S. Soccer, is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization and the official governing body of the sport of soccer in the United States. Headquartered in Chicago, the federation is a full member of FIFA and governs American soccer at the international, professional, and amateur levels, including: the men's and women's national teams, Major League Soccer, National Women's Soccer League, youth organizations, beach soccer, futsal, Paralympic and deaf national teams. U.S. Soccer sanctions referees and soccer tournaments for most soccer leagues in the United States. The U.S. Soccer Federation also administers and operates the U.S. Open Cup and the SheBelieves Cup.


title: United States Soccer Federation

text: U.S. Soccer was originally known as the United States Football Association. It formed on 5 April 1913, at the Astor House Hotel in Lower Manhattan and on 15 August of that year was accepted as one of the earliest member organizations of FIFA and the first from North and Central America. The affiliation was originally provisional but during FIFA Congress in Oslo, Norway on 24 June 1914, the USFA, as it was abbreviated at the time, was accepted as a full FIFA member. The governing body of the sport in the United States added the word "soccer" to its name in 1945, when it became the United States Soccer Football Association; by this point, "football" as a standalone word had come to define a totally different sport in the U.S. It dropped the word "football" from its name in 1974 to become known as the United States Soccer Federation.


title: United States Soccer Federation

text: U.S. Soccer has hosted several global soccer tournaments, including the 1994 FIFA World Cup, the 1999 and 2003 FIFA Women's World Cup, and the Summer Olympic football tournaments in 1984 and 1996.


title: United States Soccer Federation

text: Originally based in Colorado Springs, Colorado, U.S. Soccer headquarters were moved to Chicago in 1991 under the leadership of former Secretary General, Hank Steinbrecher Called U.S. Soccer House, it is currently located in two refurbished mansions at 1801 South Prairie Avenue in Chicago.


title: United States Soccer Federation

text: In 2003, U.S. Soccer opened their National Training Center at Dignity Health Sports Park (then named Home Depot Center) in Carson, California. The $130 million facility includes a soccer-specific stadium, home to the MLS team Los Angeles Galaxy. Additionally, four grass soccer fields, a FieldTurf soccer field and a general training area are specifically dedicated to U.S. Soccer. Both the senior and youth men's and women's US national teams hold regular camps at Dignity Health Sports Park.


title: United States Soccer Federation

text: U.S. Soccer was also exploring a possibility of building the National Training and Coaching Development Center in Kansas City, Kansas. On 9 April 2015, the Training Center received final approval from the local governments. U.S. Soccer agreed to a 20-year lease, with the project set to break ground in 2016 and finishing some time in 2017.


title: United States Soccer Federation

text: On October 3, 2022, the Federation publicly released the 173-page "Yates Report", officially titled "Report of the Independent Investigation to the U.S. Soccer Federation Concerning Allegations of Abusive Behavior and Sexual Misconduct in Women's Professional Soccer", the official report documenting the findings and conclusions concerning abusive behavior and sexual misconduct in women's professional soccer. The report is named for Sally Yates, the lawyer who led the investigation, a former Acting United States Attorney General.


title: United States Soccer Federation

text: U.S. Soccer is governed by a board of directors that administers the affairs of U.S. Soccer. Cindy Parlow Cone, former 1999 FIFA Women's World Cup champion and long-time U.S. Soccer administrator, is the current president while William Wilson, a sports agent for Wasserman Media Group, is the current chief executive officer and secretary general.


title: United States Soccer Federation

text: U.S. Soccer members are individuals and affiliate organizations. The national council is the representative membership body of the federation. It elects the president and vice president, amends the bylaws, approves the budgets, decides on policies adopted by the board, and affirms actions of the Board. The non-profit organization is a member of the worldwide soccer body FIFA and the North American soccer body CONCACAF, and also has a relationship with the U.S. Olympic Committee and the International Olympic Committee.


title: United States Soccer Federation

text: The federation convenes an annual meeting, usually held in February. Every four years, the annual meeting's attendees hold an election for the federation's president and vice president.


title: United States Soccer Federation

text: The United States men's national team was assembled in 1885 to play Canada in the first international match held outside the United Kingdom. The team was invited to the inaugural FIFA World Cup in 1930 and qualified for the World Cup in 1934, finishing third place (semifinals) in 1930 out of 13 teams participating. In 1950 the United States scored one of its most surprising victories with a 1–0 win over heavily favored England, who were amongst the world's best sides at the time. The United States did not reach another World Cup until an upstart team qualified for the 1990 World Cup with the "goal heard around the world" scored by Paul Caligiuri against Trinidad and Tobago, which started the modern era of soccer in the United States. The 1990 men's national team was quickly disposed of at the World Cup, but nonetheless had qualified for its first World Cup in 40 years.


title: United States Soccer Federation

text: The United States hosted the 1994 FIFA World Cup, setting total and average attendance records that still stand, including drawing 94,194 fans to the final. The United States made a surprising run to the second round with a shocking victory over Colombia which saw Andrés Escobar, the player responsible for the United States' first goal (an own goal), later shot to death in his homeland. 1998 saw another disappointing addition to the history of the men's national team as it finished last out of the 32 teams that qualified for the World Cup. This embarrassment, which included a total collapse of team chemistry and leadership, led to the firing of manager Steve Sampson.


title: United States Soccer Federation

text: Bob Bradley, Chivas USA manager and Arena's assistant manager with the men's national team, eventually succeeded Arena in 2007. The U.S. qualified for the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa, winning the CONCACAF qualifying tournament. At the World Cup, the Americans tied England 1–1, tied Slovenia, 2–2. and then won their group in Group C by defeating Algeria 1–0 on a stoppage time goal by Landon Donovan. In the Round of 16, the United States played with Group D runners-up Ghana, and fell 2–1 in overtime (OT).


title: United States Soccer Federation

text: Entering the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil, the U.S. team won all three friendly "send-off" matches leading up to the competition: 2–0, over Azerbaijan, 2–1, over Turkey, and 2–1 over fellow World Cup participant and defending African champions Nigeria. They were led at the time by Jürgen Klinsmann, who helped lead West Germany to victory in the 1990 World Cup and was the first player to score at least three goals in three consecutive World Cups. During the 2014 FIFA World Cup, the U.S. won their first match against Ghana, 2–1. Clint Dempsey scored in the first minute of the match giving the U.S. the early lead. Ghana did not respond until the 82nd minute scoring the equalizer goal. The U.S. then reclaimed the lead, thanks to John Brooks scoring the game-winning goal off his head just four minutes later in the 86th minute to regain the lead and take the match. The U.S. gained three points for their win and was off to a great start in the "Group of Death" claimed by critics for the teams the U.S. would have to go through in Group G (Germany, Ghana, and Portugal). The second match of the World Cup for the U.S. was a different story. Portugal claimed the early lead, with Nani scoring in the fifth minute to take the early 1–0 lead. It wasn't until the 64th minute until the U.S. scored the equalizing goal, thanks to Jermaine Jones, tying the match at 1 apiece. The U.S. then claimed the lead on a goal by Clint Dempsey again, scoring in the 81st minute to take a 2–1 lead. However, in the final minute of extra time, the world player of the year, Cristiano Ronaldo drilled a cross to teammate Silvestre Varela who headed in the tying goal, making the final score 2–2. The tie gave each team a point in the overall standings, bringing the U.S. to 4 points total, and gave Portugal their first point of the World Cup having lost their opening match to Germany, 4–0. The U.S. claimed a spot in the knockout round in spite of a 1–0 loss to eventual champion Germany in their final Group G game due to them winning the tiebreaker with Portugal. However, they bowed out the tournament in the round of 16 in a 2–1 loss to Group H winner Belgium. Goalkeeper Tim Howard helped the U.S. keep a 0–0 tie at full time. In extra time, there were two Belgian goals. The U.S. struck back with a goal by 19-year-old phenom Julian Green but could not manage another goal. Jürgen Klinsmann was let go after he has been fired as USMNT Director of Coaching and was replaced by Bruce Arena in November 2016.


title: United States Soccer Federation

text: The U.S. finished in fifth place in the Final round of the CONCACAF qualifying for the spot of the 2018 FIFA World Cup, which concluded in October 2017. In doing so, they marking the first time that the U.S. did not qualify for the World Cup since 1986. As a result of the fifth-place finish, Bruce Arena was let go as USMNT Director of Coaching later that month.


title: United States Soccer Federation

text: The U.S. qualified for the 2022 FIFA World Cup, played in Qatar, the first Middle East nation to host a World Cup. The 2022 FIFA World Cup is the first World Cup played in November and December, due to the extreme temperatures in June and July in Qatar. The United States played in Group B with Wales, England and Iran. The United States took a 1–0 lead with a goal from Timothy Weah and were looking good to get the 3 points when Walker Zimmerman fouled Gareth Bale in the waning minutes of the game. Matt Turner was unable to stop the penalty kick and the US had to settle for a 1–1 tie in their first game. The U.S. went into the second group game against England as serious underdogs. The second youngest overall team in the tournament held the perennial powerhouse scoreless for 90 minutes plus stoppage time to secure their second tie and put them in a have to win position for their game against Iran to make it to the knockout stage in the World Cup. Christian Pulisic scored a go ahead goal at the end of the first half, but paid a steep price with a pelvic contusion that would send him out of the second half and directly to the hospital where he watched the U.S. hold on to beat Iran 1–0. As the second place team in group B, the U.S. would take on The Netherlands, winners of group A to open the knockout round at the 2022 FIFA World Cup. The U.S. was eliminated in a 3–1 loss in the opening game of the Round of 16.


title: United States Soccer Federation

text: The United States will co-host the 2026 FIFA World Cup, the first 48-team World Cup, with Canada and Mexico after beating out Morocco on June 13, 2018, in Moscow, Russia.


title: United States Soccer Federation

text: The women's national team has won four FIFA Women's World Cup tournaments: 1991, 1999, 2015, and 2019. The team finished second in 2011 and third in 1995, 2003, and 2007. It has won Olympic gold medals at the 1996, 2004, 2008, and 2012 Summer Olympics. In addition, it has won seven titles at the Algarve Cup and six at the CONCACAF Women's Championship, the qualifying tournament for the FIFA Women's World Cup.


title: United States Soccer Federation

text: The inaugural FIFA Women's World Cup was held in 1991 in China. The U.S. women's national team was the first team to win the prize after beating Norway in the final.


title: United States Soccer Federation

text: In 1999, the United States hosted the FIFA Women's World Cup for the first time. During their tournament run, the women's national team established a new level of popularity for the women's game, culminating in a final against China that drew 90,185 fans, an all-time attendance record for a women's sports event, to a sold-out Rose Bowl. After neither team scored in regulation or extra time, the final went to a penalty shootout, which the United States won 5–4. The celebration by Brandi Chastain after she converted the winning penalty, in which she took off her shirt, is one of the more famous images in U.S. women's sports.


title: United States Soccer Federation

text: Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, U.S. Soccer Federation ceased operations on its youth national team programming with the exception of the U-23, U-20, and U-17 teams on the men's side and the U-20 and U-17 teams on the women's side.


title: United States Soccer Federation

text: The U.S. Paralympic Soccer Team is an elite level program for men that selects players from across the United States in preparation for International standard competition. The team competes in 7-a-side football. The squad is composed of athletes who have cerebral palsy or have suffered a stroke or traumatic brain injury. The program is Coached by Stuart Sharp under the oversight of the U.S. Soccer Federation.