title: Public image of Vladimir Putin

text: By western commentators and the Russian opposition, Putin has been described as a dictator. Putin biographer Masha Gessen has stated that "Putin is a dictator," comparing him to Alexander Lukashenko. Former UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband has described Putin as a "ruthless dictator" whose "days are numbered." U.S. Presidential candidate Mitt Romney called Putin "a real threat to the stability and peace of the world."


title: Public image of Vladimir Putin

text: In the fall of 2011, the anti-Putin opposition movement in Russia became more visible, with street protests against allegedly falsified parliamentary elections (in favor of Putin's party, United Russia) cropping up across major Russian cities. Following Putin's re-election in March 2012, the movement struggled to redefine its new course of action. In early September 2014 Patriarch Filaret, head of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyivan Patriarchate, linked Putin with the biblical figure Cain because Filaret believed that although Putin claimed to be their “brother”, he was responsible for "shedding the brotherly blood" of Ukrainians during the War in Donbass. Filaret believed "Satan went into him, as into Judas Iscariot". The Dalai Lama criticized Putin's foreign policy practices, claiming it to be responsible for isolating Russia from the rest of the world. The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project named Putin as the 2014 Person of the Year, recognizing "the person who does the most to enable and promote organized criminal activity."


title: Public image of Vladimir Putin

text: According to Denis Volkov from Moscow Levada Center, drawing any conclusions from Russian poll results or comparing them with Western polls is pointless as there's no real political competition in Russia. Unlike in democratic states, the Russian voters aren't offered any "credible alternatives" and the public opinion is formed primarily with state-controlled media which promotes the ruling party and discredits any alternative candidates. This kind of illusion of democracy, choice only between "A and A", is part of "Russian consciousness", according to a nationalist publicist Alexander Prokhanov, who considers the "elections between A and B" to be part of a "liberal" mindset.


title: Public image of Vladimir Putin

text: Putin's name and image are widely used in advertisements and product branding. Among Putin-branded products are Putinka vodka, the PuTin brand of canned food, "Gorbusha Putina" caviar, and a collection of T-shirts with his image. In October 2016, the luxury company, Caviar, produced a limited series of iPhone 7s made from Damascus steel called Supremo Putin Damascus. It features a golden bas-relief portrait of Putin.


title: Public image of Vladimir Putin

text: Putin has created a cult of personality for himself as an outdoorsy, sporty, tough guy public image, demonstrating his physical capabilities and taking part in unusual or dangerous acts, such as extreme sports and interaction with wild animals. For example, in 2007, the tabloid "Komsomolskaya Pravda" published a huge photograph of a bare-chested Putin vacationing in the Siberian mountains under the headline: "Be Like Putin." Such photo ops are part of a public relations approach that, according to "Wired", "deliberately cultivates the macho, take-charge superhero image". The British tabloid "Daily Express" has commented that this cultivated image runs counter to the reality of Putin's modest physical stature, his height being officially reported as 170 cm (5'7"), and some of the activities used to promote his virile prowess have been criticized for involving deception or being completely staged. Notable examples of Putin's macho adventures include:


title: Public image of Vladimir Putin

text: On 11 December 2010, at a concert organized for a children's charity in Saint Petersburg, Putin sang "Blueberry Hill" with Maceo Parker's jazz band and played a little piano of it and of the Russian patriotic song "" from his favourite spy movie "The Shield and the Sword". After that he took part in singing of a Russian song about cosmonauts, "Grass by the Home". The concert was attended by various Hollywood and European stars such as Kevin Costner, Sharon Stone, Alain Delon, and Gérard Depardieu. Putin also played or sang "С чего начинается Родина" on a number of other occasions, such as a meeting with the Russian spies deported from the U.S., including Anna Chapman.


title: Public image of Vladimir Putin

text: Putin's painting ""Узор на заиндевевшем окне"" ("A Pattern on a Hoarfrost-Encrusted Window"), which he had painted during the Christmas Fair on 26 December 2008, became the top lot at the charity auction in Saint Petersburg and sold for 37 million rubles. The picture was made for a series of other paintings by famous Russians. The painters were required to illustrate one of the letters of the Russian alphabet with a subject connected to Nikolay Gogol's novel "Christmas Eve" (the 200th anniversary from Gogol's birth was celebrated in 2008). Putin's picture depicted a hoarfrost pattern (Russian: Узор, illustrating the Cyrillic letter У) on a window with curtains sewn with traditional Ukrainian ornaments. The creation of the painting coincided with the 2009 Russia–Ukraine gas dispute, which left a number of European states without Russian gas and amid January frosts.


title: Public image of Vladimir Putin

text: A Russian movie called "A Kiss not for Press" was premiered in 2008 on DVD. The movie is said to be based on biography of Vladimir Putin and his wife Lyudmila. Dobby, a house elf from "Harry Potter" film series, has been found to look like Putin, and so was also Daniel Craig in his role of James Bond (he was the first blond actor to play James Bond).


title: Public image of Vladimir Putin

text: Putin also is a subject of Russian jokes and chastushki, such as "[Before Putin] There Was No Orgasm" featured in the comedy film "". There is a meta-joke that, since the coming of Putin to power, all the classic jokes about a smart yet rude boy called "Вовочка" ("Vovochka", diminutive from Vladimir) have suddenly become political jokes.


title: Public image of Vladimir Putin

text: Putin features in the coloring book for children "Vova and Dima" (presented on his 59th birthday), where he and Dmitry Medvedev are drawn as good-behaving little boys, and in the "Superputin" online comics series, where Putin and Medvedev are portrayed first as superheroes, and then as a troll and an orc in the World of Warcraft.


title: Public image of Vladimir Putin

text: Putin was portrayed by internet personality Nice Peter in his YouTube series "Epic Rap Battles of History", in Season 2's finale episode, "Rasputin vs. Stalin" (aired on 22 April 2013).


title: Public image of Vladimir Putin

text: In 2014, Putin earned a nickname of "dickhead" or "fuckface" ("хуйло" in Russian and Ukrainian) in Ukraine, following the spread of the chant of Ukrainian football hooligans. On 14 June 2014, Ukraine's acting Foreign Minister Andriy Deshchytsia cited the chant in front of the cameras during an anti-Russian rally at Russia's Embassy in Kyiv.


title: Public image of Vladimir Putin

text: In the wake of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, leaders at the 48th G7 summit ridiculed Putin's photo ops—particularly his manly, bare-chested photographs with airbrushed muscles—including Boris Johnson.


title: Public image of Vladimir Putin

text: Putin has produced a large number of popular aphorisms and catch-phrases, known as "putinisms". Many of them were first made during his annual Q&A conferences, where Putin answered questions from journalists and other people in the studio, as well as from Russians throughout the country, who either phoned in or spoke from studios and outdoor sites across Russia. Putin is known for his often tough and sharp language. The examples of most popular putinisms include:


title: Reciprocating engine

text: A reciprocating engine, also often known as a piston engine, is typically a heat engine that uses one or more reciprocating pistons to convert high temperature and high pressure into a rotating motion. This article describes the common features of all types. The main types are: the internal combustion engine, used extensively in motor vehicles; the steam engine, the mainstay of the Industrial Revolution; and the Stirling engine for niche applications. Internal combustion engines are further classified in two ways: either a spark-ignition (SI) engine, where the spark plug initiates the combustion; or a compression-ignition (CI) engine, where the air within the cylinder is compressed, thus heating it, so that the heated air ignites fuel that is injected then or earlier.


title: Reciprocating engine

text: There may be one or more pistons. Each piston is inside a cylinder, into which a gas is introduced, either already under pressure (e.g. steam engine), or heated inside the cylinder either by ignition of a fuel air mixture (internal combustion engine) or by contact with a hot heat exchanger in the cylinder (Stirling engine). The hot gases expand, pushing the piston to the bottom of the cylinder. This position is also known as the Bottom Dead Center (BDC), or where the piston forms the largest volume in the cylinder. The piston is returned to the cylinder top (Top Dead Centre) (TDC) by a flywheel, the power from other pistons connected to the same shaft or (in a double acting cylinder) by the same process acting on the other side of the piston. This is where the piston forms the smallest volume in the cylinder. In most types the expanded or "exhausted" gases are removed from the cylinder by this stroke. The exception is the Stirling engine, which repeatedly heats and cools the same sealed quantity of gas. The stroke is simply the distance between the TDC and the BDC, or the greatest distance that the piston can travel in one direction.


title: Reciprocating engine

text: In some designs the piston may be powered in both directions in the cylinder, in which case it is said to be double-acting.


title: Reciprocating engine

text: In most types, the linear movement of the piston is converted to a rotating movement via a connecting rod and a crankshaft or by a swashplate or other suitable mechanism. A flywheel is often used to ensure smooth rotation or to store energy to carry the engine through an un-powered part of the cycle. The more cylinders a reciprocating engine has, generally, the more vibration-free (smoothly) it can operate. The power of a reciprocating engine is proportional to the volume of the combined pistons' displacement.


title: Reciprocating engine

text: A seal must be made between the sliding piston and the walls of the cylinder so that the high pressure gas above the piston does not leak past it and reduce the efficiency of the engine. This seal is usually provided by one or more piston rings. These are rings made of a hard metal, and are sprung into a circular groove in the piston head. The rings fit closely in the groove and press lightly against the cylinder wall to form a seal, and more heavily when higher combustion pressure moves around to their inner surfaces.


title: Reciprocating engine

text: It is common to classify such engines by the number and alignment of cylinders and total volume of displacement of gas by the pistons moving in the cylinders usually measured in cubic centimetres (cm or cc) or litres (l) or (L) (US: liter). For example, for internal combustion engines, single and two-cylinder designs are common in smaller vehicles such as motorcycles, while automobiles typically have between four and eight, and locomotives, and ships may have a dozen cylinders or more. Cylinder capacities may range from 10 cm or less in model engines up to thousands of liters in ships' engines.


title: Reciprocating engine

text: The compression ratio affects the performance in most types of reciprocating engine. It is the ratio between the volume of the cylinder, when the piston is at the bottom of its stroke, and the volume when the piston is at the top of its stroke.


title: Reciprocating engine

text: The bore/stroke ratio is the ratio of the diameter of the piston, or "bore", to the length of travel within the cylinder, or "stroke". If this is around 1 the engine is said to be "square", if it is greater than 1, i.e. the bore is larger than the stroke, it is "oversquare". If it is less than 1, i.e. the stroke is larger than the bore, it is "undersquare".


title: Reciprocating engine

text: Cylinders may be aligned in line, in a V configuration, horizontally opposite each other, or radially around the crankshaft. Opposed-piston engines put two pistons working at opposite ends of the same cylinder and this has been extended into triangular arrangements such as the Napier Deltic. Some designs have set the cylinders in motion around the shaft, such as the Rotary engine.


title: Reciprocating engine

text: In some steam engines, the cylinders may be of varying size with the smallest bore cylinder working the highest pressure steam. This is then fed through one or more, increasingly larger bore cylinders successively, to extract power from the steam at increasingly lower pressures. These engines are called Compound engines.


title: Reciprocating engine

text: Aside from looking at the power that the engine can produce, the Mean Effective Pressure (MEP), can also be used in comparing the power output and performance of reciprocating engines of the same size. The mean effective pressure is the fictitious pressure which would produce the same amount of net work that was produced during the power stroke cycle. This is shown by:


title: Reciprocating engine

text: where formula_2 is the total piston area of the engine, formula_3 is the stroke length of the pistons, and formula_4 is the total displacement volume of the engine. Therefore:


title: Reciprocating engine

text: Whichever engine with the larger value of MEP produces more net work per cycle and performs more efficiently.


title: Reciprocating engine

text: In steam engines and internal combustion engines, valves are required to allow the entry and exit of gases at the correct times in the piston's cycle. These are worked by cams, eccentrics or cranks driven by the shaft of the engine. Early designs used the D slide valve but this has been largely superseded by Piston valve or Poppet valve designs. In steam engines the point in the piston cycle at which the steam inlet valve closes is called the cutoff and this can often be controlled to adjust the torque supplied by the engine and improve efficiency. In some steam engines, the action of the valves can be replaced by an oscillating cylinder.


title: Reciprocating engine

text: Internal combustion engines operate through a sequence of strokes that admit and remove gases to and from the cylinder. These operations are repeated cyclically and an engine is said to be 2-stroke, 4-stroke or 6-stroke depending on the number of strokes it takes to complete a cycle.


title: Reciprocating engine

text: An early known example of rotary to reciprocating motion is the crank mechanism. The earliest hand-operated cranks appeared in China during the Han Dynasty (202 BC–220 AD). The Chinese used the crank-and-connecting rod for operating querns as far back as the Western Han dynasty (202 BC - 9 AD). Eventually crank-and-connecting rods were used in the inter-conversion of rotary and reciprocating motion for other applications such as flour-sifting, silk-reeling machines, treadle spinning wheels, and furnace bellows driven either by horses or waterwheels. Several saw mills in Roman Asia and Byzantine Syria during the 3rd–6th centuries AD had a crank and connecting rod mechanism which converted the rotary motion of a water wheel into the linear movement of saw blades. In 1206, Arab engineer Al-Jazari invented a crankshaft.


title: Reciprocating engine

text: The reciprocating engine developed in Europe during the 18th century, first as the atmospheric engine then later as the steam engine. These were followed by the Stirling engine and internal combustion engine in the 19th century. Today the most common form of reciprocating engine is the internal combustion engine running on the combustion of petrol, diesel, Liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) or compressed natural gas (CNG) and used to power motor vehicles and engine power plants.


title: Reciprocating engine

text: One notable reciprocating engine from the World War II Era was the 28-cylinder, Pratt & Whitney R-4360 Wasp Major radial engine. It powered the last generation of large piston-engined planes before jet engines and turboprops took over from 1944 onward. It had a total engine capacity of , and a high power-to-weight ratio.


title: Reciprocating engine

text: The largest reciprocating engine in production at present, but not the largest ever built, is the Wärtsilä-Sulzer RTA96-C turbocharged two-stroke diesel engine of 2006 built by Wärtsilä. It is used to power the largest modern container ships such as the Emma Mærsk. It is five stories high (), long, and weighs over in its largest 14 cylinders version producing more than 84.42 MW (114,800 bhp). Each cylinder has a capacity of , making a total capacity of for the largest versions.


title: Reciprocating engine

text: For piston engines, an engine's capacity is the engine displacement, in other words the volume swept by all the pistons of an engine in a single movement. It is generally measured in litres (l) or cubic inches (c.i.d., cu in, "or" in) for larger engines, and cubic centimetres (abbreviated cc) for smaller engines. All else being equal, engines with greater capacities are more powerful and consumption of fuel increases accordingly (although this is not true of every Reciprocating engine), although power and fuel consumption are affected by many factors outside of engine displacement.


title: Reciprocating engine

text: Reciprocating engines can be characterized by their specific power, which is typically given in kilowatts per litre of engine displacement (in the U.S. also horsepower per cubic inch). The result offers an approximation of the peak power output of an engine. This is not to be confused with fuel efficiency, since high efficiency often requires a lean fuel-air ratio, and thus lower power density. A modern high-performance car engine makes in excess of 75 kW/L (1.65 hp/in).


title: Reciprocating engine

text: Reciprocating engines that are powered by compressed air, steam or other hot gases are still used in some applications such as to drive many modern torpedoes or as pollution-free motive power. Most steam-driven applications use steam turbines, which are more efficient than piston engines.


title: Reciprocating engine

text: The French-designed FlowAIR vehicles use compressed air stored in a cylinder to drive a reciprocating engine in a local-pollution-free urban vehicle.


title: Reciprocating engine

text: Torpedoes may use a working gas produced by high test peroxide or Otto fuel II, which pressurize without combustion. The Mark 46 torpedo, for example, can travel underwater at fuelled by Otto fuel without oxidant.


title: Reciprocating engine

text: Quantum heat engines are devices that generate power from heat that flows from a hot to a cold reservoir.


title: Reciprocating engine

text: Quantum refrigerators are devices that consume power with the purpose to pump heat from a cold to a hot reservoir.


title: Reciprocating engine

text: In a reciprocating quantum heat engine, the working medium is a quantum system such as spin systems or a harmonic oscillator.


title: Reciprocating engine

text: The quantum versions obey the laws of thermodynamics. In addition, these models can justify the assumptions of


title: Reciprocating engine

text: A theoretical study has shown that it is possible and practical to build a reciprocating engine that is composed of a single oscillating atom. This is an area for future research and could have applications in nanotechnology.


title: Reciprocating engine

text: There are a large number of unusual varieties of piston engines that have various claimed advantages, many of which see little if any current use:


title: Ostinato

text: In music, an ostinato (; derived from Italian word for "stubborn", compare English "obstinate") is a motif or phrase that persistently repeats in the same musical voice, frequently in the same pitch. Well-known ostinato-based pieces include classical compositions such as Ravel's "Boléro" and the "Carol of the Bells", and popular songs such as Donna Summer and Giorgio Moroder's "I Feel Love" (1977), Henry Mancini's theme from "Peter Gunn" (1959), The Who's "Baba O'Riley" (1971), and The Verve's "Bitter Sweet Symphony" (1997).


title: Ostinato

text: Both "ostinatos" and "ostinati" are accepted English plural forms, the latter reflecting the word's Italian etymology.


title: Ostinato

text: The repeating idea may be a rhythmic pattern, part of a tune, or a complete melody in itself. Strictly speaking, ostinati should have exact repetition, but in common usage, the term covers repetition with variation and development, such as the alteration of an ostinato line to fit changing harmonies or keys.


title: Ostinato

text: Within the context of film music, Claudia Gorbman defines an "ostinato" as a repeated melodic or rhythmic figure that propels scenes that lack dynamic visual action.


title: Ostinato

text: Ostinati play an important part in improvised music (rock and jazz), in which they are often referred to as riffs or vamps. A "favorite technique of contemporary jazz writers", ostinati are often used in modal and Latin jazz and traditional African music including Gnawa music.


title: Ostinato

text: The term "ostinato" essentially has the same meaning as the medieval Latin word "pes", the word "ground" as applied to classical music, and the word "riff" in contemporary popular music.


title: Ostinato

text: "Ostinati" are used in 20th-century music to stabilize groups of pitches, as in Stravinsky's "The Rite of Spring" "Introduction" and "Augurs of Spring". A famous type of ostinato, called the "Rossini crescendo", owes its name to a crescendo that underlies a persistent musical pattern, which usually culminates in a solo vocal cadenza. This style was emulated by other bel canto composers, especially Vincenzo Bellini; and later by Wagner (in pure instrumental terms, discarding the closing vocal cadenza).


title: Ostinato

text: Applicable in homophonic and contrapuntal textures, they are "repetitive rhythmic-harmonic schemes", more familiar as accompanimental melodies, or purely rhythmic. The technique's appeal to composers from Debussy to avant-garde composers until at least the 1970s "... lies in part in the need for unity created by the virtual abandonment of functional chord progressions to shape phrases and define tonality". Similarly, in modal music, "... relentless, repetitive character help to establish and confirm the modal center". Their popularity may also be justified by their ease as well as range of use, though, "... ostinato must be employed judiciously, as its overuse can quickly lead to monotony".


title: Ostinato

text: Ostinato patterns have been present in European music from the Middle Ages onwards. In the famous English canon "Sumer Is Icumen In", the main vocal lines are underpinned by an ostinato pattern, known as a "pes":]


title: Ostinato

text: Later in the medieval era, Guillaume Dufay's 15th-century chanson "Resvelons Nous" features a similarly constructed ostinato pattern, but this time 5 bars long. Over this, the main melodic line moves freely, varying the phrase-lengths, while being "to some extent predetermined by the repeating pattern of the canon in the lower two voices." ]


title: Ostinato

text: "Ground bass" or "basso ostinato" (obstinate bass) is a type of variation form in which a bass line, or harmonic pattern (see Chaconne; also common in Elizabethan England as "Grounde") is repeated as the basis of a piece underneath variations. Aaron Copland describes basso ostinato as "... the easiest to recognize" of the variation forms wherein, "... a long phrase—either an accompanimental figure or an actual melody—is repeated over and over again in the bass part, while the upper parts proceed normally [with variation]". However, he cautions, "it might more properly be termed a musical device than a musical form."


title: Ostinato

text: One striking ostinato instrumental piece of the late Renaissance period is "The Bells", a piece for virginals by William Byrd. Here the ostinato (or 'ground') consists of just two notes:


title: Ostinato

text: In Italy, during the seventeenth century, Claudio Monteverdi composed many pieces using ostinato patterns in his operas and sacred works. One of these was his 1650 version of "Laetatus sum", an imposing setting of Psalm 122 that pits a four-note "ostinato of unquenchable energy." against both voices and instruments:]


title: Ostinato

text: Later in the same century, Henry Purcell became famous for his skilful deployment of ground bass patterns. His most famous ostinato is the descending chromatic ground bass that underpins the aria "When I am laid in earth" ("Dido's Lament") at the end of his opera "Dido and Aeneas": While the use of a descending chromatic scale to express pathos was fairly common at the end of the seventeenth century, Richard Taruskin pointed out that Purcell shows a fresh approach to this musical trope: "Altogether unconventional and characteristic, however, is the interpolation of an additional cadential measure into the stereotyped ground, increasing its length from a routine four to a haunting five bars, against which the vocal line, with its despondent refrain ("Remember me!"), is deployed with marked asymmetry. That, in addition to Purcell's distinctively dissonant, suspension-saturated harmony, enhanced by additional chromatic descents during the final ritornello and by many deceptive cadences, makes this little aria an unforgettably poignant embodiment of heartache." See also: Lament bass.


title: Ostinato

text: However, this is not the only ostinato pattern that Purcell uses in the opera. Dido's opening aria "Ah, Belinda" is a further demonstration of Purcell's technical mastery: the phrases of the vocal line do not always coincide with the four-bar ground:]


title: Ostinato

text: "Purcell's compositions over a ground vary in their working out, and the repetition never becomes a restriction." Purcell's instrumental music also featured ground patterns. A particularly fine and complex example is his Fantasia upon a Ground for three violins and continuo: ]


title: Ostinato

text: The intervals in the above pattern are found in many works of the Baroque Period. Pachelbel's Canon also uses a similar sequence of notes in the bass part:


title: Ostinato

text: Two pieces by J.S.Bach are particularly striking for their use of an ostinato bass: the Crucifixus from his Mass in B minor and the Passacaglia in C minor for organ, which has a ground rich in melodic intervals: The first variation that Bach builds over this ostinato consists of a gently syncopated motif in the upper voices: This characteristic rhythmic pattern continues in the second variation, but with some engaging harmonic subtleties, especially in the second bar, where an unexpected chord creates a passing implication of a related key: In common with other Passacaglias of the era, the ostinato is not simply confined to the bass, but rises to the uppermost part later in the piece: A performance of the entire piece can be heard here.


title: Ostinato

text: Ostinatos feature in many works of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Mozart uses an ostinato phrase throughout the big scene that ends Act 2 of the "Marriage of Figaro", to convey a sense of suspense as the jealous Count Almaviva tries in vain to incriminate the Countess, his wife, and Figaro, his butler, for plotting behind his back. A famous type of ostinato, called the Rossini crescendo, owes its name to a crescendo that underlies a persistent musical pattern, which usually culminates in a solo vocal cadenza.


title: Ostinato

text: In the energetic Scherzo of Beethoven’s late C sharp minor Quartet, Op. 131, there is a harmonically static passage, with "the repetitiveness of a nursery rhyme" that consists of an ostinato shared between viola and cello supporting a melody in octaves in the first and second violins: Beethoven reverses this relationship a few bars later with the melody in the viola and cello and the ostinato shared between the violins:


title: Ostinato

text: Both the first and third acts of Wagner's final opera "Parsifal" feature a passage accompanying a scene where a band of Knights solemnly processes from the depths of forest to the hall of the Grail. The "Transformation music" that supports this change of scene is dominated by the iterated tolling of four bells:] Brahms used ostinato patterns in both the finale of his Fourth Symphony and in the closing section of his "Variations on a Theme by Haydn": ]


title: Ostinato

text: Debussy featured an ostinato pattern throughout his Piano Prelude "Des pas sur la neige". Here, the ostinato pattern stays in the middle register of the piano – it is never used as a bass. "Remark that the footfall ostinato remains nearly throughout on the same notes, at the same pitch level... this piece is an appeal to the basic loneliness of all human beings, oft-forgotten perhaps, but, like the ostinato, forming a basic undercurrent of our history." ] Of all the major classical composers of the 20th century, Stravinsky is possibly the one most associated with the practice of ostinato. In conversation with the composer, his friend and colleague Robert Craft remarked "Your music always has an element of repetition, of ostinato. What is the function of ostinato?" Stravinsky replied; "It is static – that is, anti-development; and sometimes we need a contradiction to development." Stravinsky was particularly skilled at using ostinatos to confound rather than confirm rhythmic expectations. In the first of his "Three Pieces for String Quartet", Stravinsky sets up three repeated patterns, which overlap one another and never coincide. "Here a rigid pattern of (3+2+2/4) bars is laid over a strictly recurring 23-beat tune (the bars being marked by a cello ostinato), so that their changing relationship is governed primarily by the pre-compositional scheme." "The rhythmical current running through the music is what binds together these curious mosaic-like pieces."


title: Ostinato

text: A subtler metrical conflict can be found in the final section of Stravinsky's "Symphony of Psalms". The choir sing a melody in triple time, while the bass instruments in the orchestra play a 4-beat ostinato against this. "This is built up over an ostinato bass (harp, two pianos and timpani) moving in fourths like a pendulum."


title: Ostinato

text: Many instruments south of the Sahara Desert play ostinato melodies. These include lamellophones such as the mbira, as well as xylophones like the balafon, the bikutsi, and the gyil. Ostinato figures are also played on string instruments such as the kora, gankoqui bell ensembles, and pitched drums ensembles. Often, African ostinatos contain offbeats or cross-beats, that contradict the metric structure. Other African ostinatos generate complete cross-rhythms by sounding both the main beats and cross-beats. In the following example, a gyil sounds the three-against-two cross-rhythm (hemiola). The left hand (lower notes) sounds the two main beats, while the right hand (upper notes) sounds the three cross-beats.


title: Ostinato

text: Popular dance bands in West Africa and the Congo region feature ostinato-playing guitars. The African guitar parts are drawn from a variety of sources, including the indigenous mbira, as well as foreign influences such as James Brown-type funk riffs. However, the foreign influences are interpreted through a distinctly African ostinato sensibility. African guitar styles began with Congolese bands doing Cuban cover songs. The Cuban guajeo had a both familiar and exotic quality to the African musicians. Gradually, various regional guitar styles emerged, as indigenous influences became increasingly dominant within these "Africanized guajeos".


title: Ostinato

text: As Moore states, "One could say that I – IV – V – IV [chord progressions] is to African music what the 12-bar blues is to North American music." Such progressions seem superficially to follow the conventions of Western music theory. However, performers of African popular music do not perceive these progressions in the same way. Harmonic progressions which move from the tonic to the subdominant (as they are known in European music) have been used in Traditional sub-Saharan African harmony for hundreds of years. Their elaborations follow all the conventions of traditional African harmonic principles. Gehard Kubik concludes:


title: Ostinato

text: The harmonic cycle of C–F–G–F [I–IV–V–IV] prominent in Congo/Zaire popular music simply cannot be defined as a progression from tonic to subdominant to dominant and back to subdominant (on which it ends) because in the performer's appreciation they are of equal status, and not in any hierarchical order as in Western music—(Kubik 1999).


title: Ostinato

text: A guajeo is a typical Cuban ostinato melody, most often consisting of arpeggiated chords in syncopated patterns. The guajeo is a hybrid of the African and European ostinato. The guajeo was first played as accompaniment on the tres in the folkloric changüí and son. The term "guajeo" is often used to mean specific ostinato patterns played by a tres, piano, an instrument of the violin family, or saxophones. The guajeo is a fundamental component of modern-day salsa, and Latin jazz. The following example shows a basic guajeo pattern.


title: Ostinato

text: The guajeo is a seamless Afro-Euro ostinato hybrid, which has had a major influence upon jazz, R&B, rock 'n' roll and popular music in general. The Beatles' "I Feel Fine" guitar riff is guajeo-like.


title: Ostinato

text: In various popular music styles, riff refers to a brief, relaxed phrase repeated over changing melodies. It may serve as a refrain or melodic figure, often played by the rhythm section instruments or solo instruments that form the basis or accompaniment of a musical composition. Though they are most often found in rock music, heavy metal music, Latin, funk and jazz, classical music is also sometimes based on a simple riff, such as Ravel's "Boléro". Riffs can be as simple as a tenor saxophone honking a simple, catchy rhythmic figure, or as complex as the riff-based variations in the head arrangements played by the Count Basie Orchestra.


title: Ostinato

text: David Brackett (1999) defines riffs as "short melodic phrases", while Richard Middleton (1999) defines them as "short rhythmic, melodic, or harmonic figures repeated to form a structural framework". Rikky Rooksby states: "A riff is a short, repeated, memorable musical phrase, often pitched low on the guitar, which focuses much of the energy and excitement of a rock song."


title: Ostinato

text: In jazz and R&B, riffs are often used as the starting point for longer compositions. The riff from Charlie Parker's bebop number "Now's the Time" (1945) re-emerged four years later as the R&B dance hit "The Hucklebuck". The verse of "The Hucklebuck"—another riff—was "borrowed" from the Artie Matthews composition "Weary Blues". Glenn Miller's "In the Mood" had an earlier life as Wingy Manone's "Tar Paper Stomp". All these songs use twelve bar blues riffs, and most of these riffs probably precede the examples given.


title: Ostinato

text: Neither of the terms 'riff' or 'lick' are used in classical music. Instead, individual musical phrases used as the basis of classical music pieces are called ostinatos or simply phrases. Contemporary jazz writers also use riff- or lick-like ostinatos in modal music. Latin jazz often uses guajeo-based riffs.


title: Ostinato

text: In music, a vamp is a repeating musical figure, section, or accompaniment used in blues, jazz, gospel, soul, and musical theater. Vamps are also found in rock, funk, reggae, R&B, pop, and country. Vamps are usually harmonically sparse: A vamp may consist of a single chord or a sequence of chords played in a repeated rhythm. The term frequently appeared in the instruction 'Vamp till ready' on sheet music for popular songs in the 1930s and 1940s, indicating the accompanist should repeat the musical phrase until the vocalist was ready. Vamps are generally symmetrical, self-contained, and open to variation. The equivalent in classical music is an ostinato, in hip hop and electronic music the loop, and in rock music the riff.


title: Ostinato

text: The slang term "vamp" comes from the Middle English word "vampe" (sock), from Old French "avanpie", equivalent to Modern French "avant-pied", literally "before-foot".


title: Ostinato

text: Many vamp-oriented songwriters begin the creative process by attempting to evoke a mood or feeling while riffing freely on an instrument or scat singing. Many well known artists primarily build songs with a vamp/riff/ostinato based approach—including John Lee Hooker ("Boogie Chillen", "House Rent Boogie"), Bo Diddley ("Hey Bo Diddley", "Who Do You Love?"), Jimmy Page ("Ramble On", "Bron Yr Aur"), Nine Inch Nails ("Closer"), and Beck ("Loser").


title: Ostinato

text: Classic examples of vamps in jazz include "A Night in Tunisia", "Take Five", "A Love Supreme", "Maiden Voyage", and "Cantaloupe Island". Rock examples include the long jam at the ends of "Loose Change" by Neil Young and Crazy Horse and "Sooner or Later" by King's X.


title: Ostinato

text: In jazz, fusion, and related genres, a background vamp provides a performer with a harmonic framework supporting improvisation. In Latin jazz guajeos fulfill the role of piano vamp. A vamp at the beginning of a jazz tune may act as a springboard to the main tune; a vamp at the end of a song is often called a "tag".


title: Ostinato

text: "Take Five" begins with a repeated, syncopated figure in time, which pianist Dave Brubeck plays throughout the song (except for Joe Morello's drum solo and a variation on the chords in the middle section).


title: Ostinato

text: The music from Miles Davis's modal period (1958–1963) was based on improvising songs with a small number of chords. The jazz standard "So What" uses a vamp in the two-note "Sooooo what?" figure, regularly played by the piano and the trumpet throughout. Jazz scholar Barry Kernfeld calls this music "vamp music".


title: Ostinato

text: Examples include the outros to George Benson's "Body Talk" and "Plum", and the solo changes to "Breezin'". The following songs are dominated by vamps: John Coltrane, Kenny Burrell, and Grant Green's versions of "My Favorite Things", Herbie Hancock's "Watermelon Man" and "Chameleon", Wes Montgomery's "Bumpin' on Sunset", and Larry Carlton's "Room 335".


title: Ostinato

text: The Afro-Cuban vamp style known as guajeo is used in the bebop/Latin jazz standard "A Night in Tunisia". Depending upon the musician, a repeating figure in "A Night in Tunisia" could be called an "ostinato", "guajeo", "riff", or "vamp". The Cuban-jazz hybrid spans the disciplines that encompass all these terms.


title: Ostinato

text: In gospel and soul music, the band often vamps on a simple ostinato groove at the end of a song, usually over a single chord. In soul music, the end of recorded songs often contains a display of vocal effects—such as rapid scales, arpeggios, and improvised passages. For recordings, sound engineers gradually fade out the vamp section at the end of a song, to transition to the next track on the album. Salsoul singers such as Loleatta Holloway have become notable for their vocal improvisations at the end of songs, and they are sampled and used in other songs. Andrae Crouch extended the use of vamps in gospel, introducing chain vamps (one vamp after the other, each successive vamp drawn from the first).


title: Ostinato

text: 1970s-era funk music often takes a short one or two bar musical figure based on a single chord one would consider an introduction vamp in jazz or soul music, and then uses this vamp as the basis of the entire song ("Funky Drummer" by James Brown, for example). Jazz, blues, and rock are almost always based on chord progressions (a sequence of changing chords), and they use the changing harmony to build tension and sustain listener interest. Unlike these music genres, funk is based on the rhythmic groove of the percussion, rhythm section instruments, and a deep electric bass line, usually all over a single chord. "In funk, harmony is often second to the 'lock,' the linking of contrapuntal parts that are played on guitar, bass, and drums in the repeating vamp."


title: Ostinato

text: Examples include Stevie Wonder's vamp-based "Superstition" and Little Johnny Taylor's "Part Time Love", which features an extended improvisation over a two-chord vamp.


title: Ostinato

text: In musical theater, a vamp, or intro, is the few bars, one to eight, of music without lyrics that begin a printed copy of a song. The orchestra may repeat the vamp or other accompaniment during dialogue or stage business, as accompaniment for onstage transitions of indeterminate length. The score provides a one or two bar vamp figure, and indicates, "Vamp till cue", by the conductor. The vamp gives the onstage singers time to prepare for the song or the next verse, without requiring the music to pause. Once the vamp section is over, the music continues to the next section.


title: Ostinato

text: The vamp may be written by the composer of the song, a copyist employed by the publisher, or the arranger for the vocalist. The vamp serves three main purposes: it provides the key, establishes the tempo, and provides emotional context. The vamp may be as short as a "bell tone", "sting" (a harmonized bell tone with stress on the starting note), or measures long. The "rideout" is the transitional music that begins on the downbeat of the last word of the song and is usually two to four bars long, though it may be as short as a sting or as long as a Roxy Rideout.


title: Ostinato

text: In Indian classical music, during Tabla or Pakhawaj solo performances and Kathak dance accompaniments, a conceptually similar melodic pattern known as the Lehara (sometimes spelled Lehra) or Nagma is played repeatedly throughout the performance. This melodic pattern is set to the number of beats in a rhythmic cycle (Tala or Taal) being performed and may be based on one or a blend of multiple Ragas.


title: Ostinato

text: The basic idea of the lehara is to provide a steady melodious framework and keep the time-cycle for rhythmic improvisations. It serves as an auditory workbench not only for the soloist but also for the audience to appreciate the ingenuity of the improvisations and thus the merits of the overall performance. In Indian Classical Music, the concept of 'sam' (pronounced as 'sum') carries paramount importance. The sam is the target unison beat (and almost always the first beat) of any rhythmic cycle. The second most important beat is the Khali, which is a complement of the sam. Besides these two prominent beats, there are other beats of emphasis in any given taal, which signify 'khand's (divisions) of the taal. E.g. 'Roopak' or 'Rupak' taal, a 7-beat rhythmic cycle, is divided 3–2–2, further implying that the 1st, 4th, and 6th beats are the prominent beats in that taal. Therefore, it is customary, but not essential, to align the lehara according to the divisions of the Taal. It is done with a view to emphasize those beats that mark the divisions of the Taal.


title: Ostinato

text: The lehara can be played on a variety of instruments, including the sarangi, harmonium, sitar, sarod, flute and others. The playing of the lehara is relatively free from the numerous rules and constraints of "Raga Sangeet", which are upheld and honoured in the tradition of Indian Classical Music. The lehara may be interspersed with short and occasional improvisations built around the basic melody. It is also permissible to switch between two or more disparate melodies during the course of the performance. It is essential that the lehara be played with the highest precision in Laya (Tempo) and Swara control, which requires years of specialist training ("Taalim") and practice ("Riyaaz"). It is considered a hallmark of excellence to play lehara alongside a recognised Tabla or Pakhawaj virtuoso as it is a difficult task to keep a steady pulse while the percussionist is improvising or playing difficult compositions in counterpoint. While there may be scores of individually talented instrumentalists, there are very few who are capable of playing the lehra for a Tabla / Pakhawaj solo performance.


title: Trinity Broadcasting Network

text: The Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN) is an international Christian-based broadcast television network and the world's largest religious television network. TBN was headquartered in Costa Mesa, California, until March 3, 2017, when it sold its highly visible office park, Trinity Christian City. The broadcaster retained its studios in nearby Tustin. Auxiliary studio facilities are located in Irving, Hendersonville, Gadsden, Decatur, Miami and Orlando, Tulsa and New York City. TBN has characterized itself as broadcasting programs hosted by a diverse group of ministries from Evangelical, traditional Protestant and Catholic denominations, non-profit charities, Messianic Jewish and Christian media personalities. TBN also offers a wide range of original programming and faith-based films from various distributors.


title: Trinity Broadcasting Network

text: TBN owns and operates six broadcast networks, each reaching separate demographics. In addition to the main TBN network, TBN owns TBN Inspire, Smile, Enlace, TBN Salsa and Positiv. It also owns several other religious networks outside the United States, including international versions of its five U.S. networks. Matt Crouch is currently TBN's president and head of operations.


title: Trinity Broadcasting Network

text: The Trinity Broadcasting Network was co-founded as the Trinity Broadcasting Systems in 1973 by Paul Crouch, an Assemblies of God minister, and his spouse Jan Crouch. TBN began its broadcasting activities by renting time on the independent station KBSA (now UniMás owned-and-operated station KFTR-DT) in Ontario, California. After that station was sold, he began buying two hours a day of programming time on KLXA-TV in Fontana, California, in early 1974. That station was put up for sale shortly afterward. Paul Crouch then placed a bid to buy the station for $1 million and raised $100,000 for a down payment. After many struggles, the Crouches managed to raise the down payment and took over the station outright, with the station becoming KTBN-TV in 1977 and its city of license being reassigned to TBN's original homebase, Santa Ana, in 1983.


title: Trinity Broadcasting Network

text: Initially, the station ran Christian programs for about six hours a day, expanding its programming to 12 hours a day by 1975, and began selling time to other Christian organizations to supplement its local programming. The station eventually instituted a 24-hour schedule in 1978.


title: Trinity Broadcasting Network

text: The fledgling network was so weak in its first days, that, according to Crouch in his autobiography, "Hello World!", it almost went bankrupt after just two days on the air. TBN began national distribution through cable television providers in 1978. The ministry, which became known as the Trinity Broadcasting Network, gained national distribution via communications satellite in 1982. The network was a member of the National Religious Broadcasters association until 1990.


title: Trinity Broadcasting Network

text: In 1977, the ministry purchased KPAZ-TV in Phoenix, Arizona, becoming its second television station property. During the 1980s and 1990s, TBN purchased additional independent television stations and signed on new stations around the United States; the purchase of the existing stations was done in order to gain cable carriage, due to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)'s must-carry rules. TBN's availability eventually expanded to 95% of American households by early 2005.


title: Trinity Broadcasting Network

text: TBN owns 35 full-power television stations serving larger metropolitan areas in the United States; at its peak, the network also owned 252 low-power television stations, which are mixed among stations serving medium-sized cities and rural translator stations in order to maximize the network's reach as much as is permissible. TBN also has several hundred affiliate stations throughout the United States, although just 61 of these are full-power UHF or VHF stations; the rest are low-powered stations, requiring a viewer to be within several miles of the transmitter to receive the signal. According to "TVNewsCheck", TBN was the third largest over-the-air television station group in the country as of 2010, besting the station groups of CBS, Fox and NBC, but behind Ion Media Networks and Univision Communications.


title: Trinity Broadcasting Network

text: Many of TBN's stations are owned by the ministry outright, while others are owned through the subsidiary Community Educational Television, in order to own stations that TBN cannot acquire directly due to FCC ownership limits (which restrict companies from owning stations with a combined market reach of 39% of the United States), or are allocated for educational use and require additional programming to comply with that license purpose. TBN's programming is available by default via a national feed distributed to cable and satellite providers in markets without a local TBN station (this contrasts with the major commercial networks, which under FCC regulations, allow providers to import an owned-and-operated or affiliate station from a nearby market if no local over-the-air affiliate exists).


title: Trinity Broadcasting Network

text: Worldwide, TBN's channels are broadcast on 70 satellites and over 18,000 television and cable affiliates. The TBN networks are also streamed live on the internet globally; the network also provides select archived shows on demand, through the website and select IPTV services.


title: Trinity Broadcasting Network

text: During 2010, citing economic problems and a lack of donations, TBN closed down and sold many of its low-powered television repeaters. Of those, 17 were sold to another Christian television network, Daystar. On April 13, 2012, TBN sold 36 of its translators to Regal Media, a broadcasting group headed by George Cooney, the CEO of EUE/Screen Gems.


title: Trinity Broadcasting Network

text: Another 151 translators were donated to the Minority Media and Television Council (MMTC), an organization designed to preserve equal opportunity and civil rights in the media; MMTC would later sell 78 of these translators to Luken Communications, parent company of the Retro Television Network. Four more translators in Dothan, Alabama; Kirksville, Missouri; Jonesboro, Arkansas; and Jackson, Tennessee were sold by MMTC to New Moon Communications, with the intent to convert them into NBC affiliates. However, in September 2012, New Moon put all four of these translators for sale. Only Gray Television would purchase a transmitter in Dothan, which was converted into NBC affiliate WRGX-LD; the licenses in Ottumwa (KUMK-LP) and Jackson (WZMC-LP) would later be canceled (the NBC affiliate in Jackson, WNBJ-LD, operates using a different license). Its Jonesboro transmitter, KJNE-LP remained silent but with an active license; however, that market's ABC affiliate KAIT ended up obtaining the NBC affiliation instead, via a subchannel. KJNE-LP ended up becoming a translator station of Fox affiliate KJNB-LD. Another 44 of the licenses that were donated by TBN to the MMTC would be canceled on December 1, 2011 due to remaining silent for over a year.


title: Trinity Broadcasting Network

text: On October 22, 2012, TBN acquired WRBJ-TV in Jackson, Mississippi from Roberts Broadcasting. Following FCC and bankruptcy court approval on January 17, 2013, TBN officially took over operational control of WRBJ on May 24, 2013, dropping all secular and CW network programming and converting it into a full-time satellite of TBN (the network was previously available in the Jackson area on WJKO-LP, which was later sold to Daystar).


title: Trinity Broadcasting Network

text: On July 8, 2013, TBN announced an affiliation with the Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada religious station Miracle Channel; as part of the agreement, Miracle Channel added some of TBN's flagship programs, including "Praise The Lord" and "Behind The Scenes", while TBN picked up programs shown on Miracle Channel, including services from the Springs Church (of which Miracle Channel CEO Leon Fontaine is a pastor), and "The Leon Show" on The Church Channel. Plans were also announced for Fontaine to become a regular host on "Praise the Lord" and four episodes per-year to originate from Canada, and for Miracle Channel and TBN co-produce a new weekly program.


title: Trinity Broadcasting Network

text: The signals of TBN's television stations are multiplexed into digital subchannels, which carry additional networks operated by the organization. These subchannels typically include:


title: Trinity Broadcasting Network

text: TBN produces a variety of original Christian programs, such as gospel music concerts, live coverage of major Christian events, talk shows, health/fitness/nutrition programs with Christian family doctors, children's programs, contemporary Christian music videos, marriage enrichment series, holiday specials, Christian dramas, and full-length, family-oriented movies.


title: Trinity Broadcasting Network

text: The network's flagship program "Praise the Lord" was originally two hours long, and hosted by TBN founders Paul and Jan Crouch. Today, the ninety-minute program is hosted by various regular hosts, including TBN president Matt Crouch and his wife Laurie Crouch, and occasional guest hosts. It features interviews with celebrities, ministers, and laypeople discussing faith-based topics and their personal relationship with God; as well as musical performances from gospel and contemporary Christian artists. The "Praise the Lord" format is franchised to TBN owned-and-operated stations and affiliates to fulfill public affairs content guidelines.


title: Trinity Broadcasting Network

text: TBN runs "VeggieTales" under the "Smile" banner on Saturdays 8-10 a.m, and 12:30 p.m Eastern Time to fulfill E/I programming requirements as per the FCC's Children's Television Act. Programs previously featured as part of the lineup, which are also broadcast on TBN's Smile network, ranged from contemporary programs (such as "3-2-1 Penguins!"), classic series (such as "Davey and Goliath"), and TBN originals (such as "iShine Knect" and "Mary Rice Hopkins & Puppets with a Heart").


title: Trinity Broadcasting Network

text: Since 2009, TBN has broadcast feature-length religious- and/or inspirational-themed films; these films air primarily on weekend evenings (with films based on biblical stories most commonly airing on Sundays), with more contemporary films – which often incorporate moral lessons, faith-based lessons or a combination thereof, and are commonly targeted at youth audiences – airing on Saturday nights as part of the network's "preview" block of JUCE TV programs and intermittently on Monday through Fridays during the late-afternoon and overnight hours.


title: Trinity Broadcasting Network

text: Films produced by or for TBN have included "The Revolutionary" and "The Revolutionary II" (based on the life of Jesus); "The Emissary" (a film on the life of the apostle Paul); "The Omega Code" and its sequel ""; "Carman: The Champion"; "Time Changer"; and "Six: The Mark Unleashed" (starring Stephen Baldwin and David A.R. White). Some of these films were produced by Gener8Xion Entertainment, TBN's Hollywood, California-based Christian motion picture studio, which was co-founded by Matt and Laurie Crouch.


title: Trinity Broadcasting Network

text: TBN also broadcasts films from other production companies on its main network and some of its sister networks (in particular, JUCE TV and Smile of a Child TV in the U.S.). One notable film was Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ", which had its television premiere on TBN on April 17, 2011. TBN presented the film with much of the graphic violence included (due to its depiction of the events leading to and including the crucifixion of Jesus Christ as illustrated in Biblical teachings); as a result, TBN assigned a "TV-MA-V" rating for the film – a rarity for many Christian networks.


title: Trinity Broadcasting Network

text: On December 15, 2009, the Trinity Broadcasting Network became the first Christian television network to broadcast completely in high definition. However, until 2018 only the national cable-satellite feed was transmitted in HD; TBN's owned-and-operated broadcast stations were not equipped to allow HD broadcasts due partly to the bandwidth limitations caused by its mandatory carriage of five subchannels over a single broadcast signal and the lack of a modern multiplexer at the transmitter level, disallowing TBN's master control from sending the main feed in high definition or widescreen standard definition (this is in comparison to Ion Media Networks, which carries five to six multiplex services on most of its stations – including its flagship network Ion Television, which is transmitted in high-definition); the primary TBN network feed is transmitted in standard-definition by its owned-and-operated stations and affiliates. Thus, widescreen programming on TBN's broadcast services were offered over-the-air in a letterboxed picture format, though they are offered in their native formats on pay television and IPTV services (including TBN's mobile and digital media player apps, the latter requiring email authentication and an opt-in to the network's mailing list as of June 2018). At some point in 2018, some TBN over-the-air stations upgraded their primary feed and second subchannel to 720p HD, where available and/or technically possible.


title: Trinity Broadcasting Network

text: The Smile of a Child Foundation is a compassion-focused ministry, founded in 2005 by TBN co-founder Jan Crouch initially as a vehicle to reach the children of Haiti, providing food, medical care, toys and disaster relief to people in need. Crouch has over 20 years of personal involvement with the island country, having established a children's hospital, an orphanage and a school in Haiti. TBN spent millions in donations and other funding on these humanitarian projects.


title: Trinity Broadcasting Network

text: Following the January 12, 2010 Haiti earthquake, TBN made immediate contributions of $100,000 through Lake Charles, Louisiana-based Friend Ships, which speeds emergency relief aid and medical expertise all over the world in its fleet of dedicated cargo/ministry ships. Friend Ships has been partnering with TBN and Smile since 1992, Paul Crouch personally donated a Bell 206 Jet Ranger helicopter to the humanitarian organization.


title: Trinity Broadcasting Network

text: In May 2009, the United Nations officially recommended the Smile of a Child Foundation to receive special consultative status with the Economic and Social Council for the Democracy Coalition Project.


title: Trinity Broadcasting Network

text: Trinity Music City is an entertainment complex in Hendersonville, Tennessee; near Nashville, operated by TBN and serving as the studios for TBN's Nashville-area station, WPGD-TV. Formerly known as "Twitty City", the former estate of country music legend Conway Twitty, the complex includes the 2,000-seat Trinity Music City Church Auditorium, which is used for TBN-produced concerts, dramas, seminars and special events. A 50-seat virtual reality theater showcases four original productions from TBN Films.


title: Trinity Broadcasting Network

text: Trinity Christian City International was a complex in Costa Mesa, California, which served as the headquarters for TBN as well as a tourist attraction. On March 3, 2017, it was announced by The Christian media network that Trinity Christian City International had been sold to Greenlaw Partners, because TBN now finds its campus "obsolete". A sales price was not disclosed. On April 12, 2017, it was revealed that the sales price was $18.25 million.


title: Trinity Broadcasting Network

text: In June 2007, TBN purchased the bible-themed adventure park Holy Land Experience in Orlando, Florida for $37 million.


title: Trinity Broadcasting Network

text: Trinity Broadcasting Network had previously come under heavy criticism for its promotion of the prosperity gospel, teaching viewers that they will receive a reward if they donate or give offerings. In a 2004 interview with the "Los Angeles Times", Paul Crouch, Jr. expressed his disappointment that "the prosperity gospel is a lightning rod for the Body of Christ. It's not what drives TBN." Under leadership of Matt Crouch, TBN no longer adheres to or practices that theology, and programming changes such as removing Kenneth Copeland reflect that shift.


title: Trinity Broadcasting Network

text: However, TBN has always broadcast programming featuring Protestant pastors who are not into the prosperity gospel, such as Dr. Charles Stanley, Jack Graham, Franklin Graham, Billy Graham, Michael Youssef, David Jeremiah and Robert Jeffress. Senator Chuck Grassley, the chairman of the United States Senate Committee on Finance has conducted investigations into whether Joyce Meyer and Benny Hinn mishandled their finances; neither were found to have committed wrongdoing.


title: Trinity Broadcasting Network

text: TBN is a 501(c)(3) non-profit company. Full disclosure of TBN's financial statements have been evaluated by Charity Navigator, the largest evaluator of charities and non-profit companies in the U.S. TBN has received a three out of four star rating for four consecutive years, and in 2009 earned a rating of two out of four stars due to a 2% increase in administrative costs in 2009; the report also revealed that for the fiscal year ending December 2009, TBN president Paul Crouch, Sr. earned $419,500; co-vice president Jan Crouch earned $361,000; and co-vice president Paul Crouch, Jr. earned $214,137. TBN is currently under Donor Advisory status with Charity Navigator.


title: Trinity Broadcasting Network

text: Another charity watchdog group, Ministry Watch, gave TBN an "F" in 2011 for its failure to provide financial statements, lack of timeliness in responding to correspondence, and its lack of clarity in the provided information. As a result, TBN was placed on the group's alert list annually since 2009.


title: Trinity Broadcasting Network

text: TBN's annual financial information is monitored by the Chronicle of Philanthropy, where it is ranked 243 out of the top 400 non-profit corporations in the United States. TBN is not a member of the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability.


title: Trinity Broadcasting Network

text: In 2011, Paul Crouch, Jr. resigned from his position as co-vice president on TBN. On November 10 of that year, Crouch, Jr. joined The Word Network as its Director of Project Development.


title: Trinity Broadcasting Network

text: In February 2012, Brittany Koper, TBN's former Director of Finance (and the granddaughter of Paul Sr. and Jan Crouch), filed a lawsuit against her former attorneys, Davert & Loe. The three counts of the complaint were for breach of fiduciary duties, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and professional negligence. In this lawsuit, Koper alleged that TBN unlawfully distributed over $50 million to the ministry's directors. Koper filed the suit following the termination of her employment with TBN. Davert & Loe, who also represented TBN, denied her claims. Koper's suit against Davert & Loe is pending; no official judicial ruling has been made in this matter. In a May 2012 interview with "The New York Times", Koper claimed, "My job as finance director was to find ways to label extravagant personal spending as ministry expenses." Koper alleged that the network had herself and chauffeurs and sound engineers ordained as ministers in order to avoid paying Social Security taxes on their salaries.


title: Trinity Broadcasting Network

text: In September 2004, the "Los Angeles Times" reported that Paul Crouch had paid former TBN employee Enoch Lonnie Ford a $425,000 formal settlement to end a wrongful termination lawsuit in 1998. Ford alleged that he and Crouch had a homosexual tryst during his employment with the ministry. TBN officials acknowledged the settlement but contested Ford's credibility, noting that he had previously been convicted for child molestation and drug abuse. In 1996, Ford was fired by TBN after he was arrested for drug-related offenses and returned to prison for a year. Ford allegedly threatened to sue TBN for wrongful termination and sexual harassment after the network refused to hire him following his release, resulting in his claims against Crouch. TBN officials stated that the settlement was made in order to avoid a lengthy and expensive lawsuit.


title: Trinity Broadcasting Network

text: In late 2003, Ford attempted to extort Crouch, threatening to release an autobiographical manuscript of their alleged affair if TBN did not purchase the document for $10 million. In October 2004, Judge Robert J. O'Neill awarded Crouch $136,000 in legal fees to be paid by Ford for his violation of the terms of the settlement agreement, specifically the prohibition of discussing the details of the settlement. On March 15, 2005, Ford appeared on the PAX TV reality series "Lie Detector" to be given a polygraph test; the results of the test were never broadcast or made public.


title: Trinity Broadcasting Network

text: In June 2012, the "Orange County Register" reported that Carra Crouch, a granddaughter of Paul and Jan Crouch, alleged in a lawsuit that she had been raped by a TBN employee when she was 13 years old. Carra claimed to have been sexually abused while staying at an Atlanta hotel during TBN's "Spring Praise-a-Thon" in 2006. She also claimed that Jan Crouch and TBN attorney John Casoria blamed her for the incident, yet agreed not to turn the fired employee in to authorities if he did not file for unemployment, worker's comp or EEOC benefits. TBN attorney Colby May "vehemently denied" Carra's claims. In 2017, a year after Jan Crouch's death, a jury awarded Carra $2 million in damages for "mental suffering", but found that Jan had not been acting as a "Trinity Clergy Member" and therefore wasn't legally required to report the assault.


title: Trinity Broadcasting Network

text: Bible prophecy scholar Hal Lindsey's program "International Intelligence Briefing", which occasionally aired commentary segments criticizing Muslims and Islam, aired on TBN from 1994 to 2005. In December 2005, TBN pre-empted the program for the entire month. Lindsey accused the network of censorship, saying, "some at the network apparently feel that my message is too pro-Israel and too anti-Muslim." Paul Crouch issued a press release stating that the show was only pre-empted for Christmas programming, but eventually admitted that TBN management was concerned that Lindsey "placed Arabs in a negative light." Lindsey resigned from TBN on January 1, 2006, effectively canceling "International Intelligence Briefing". However, one year later, Crouch and Lindsey reconciled and a new program, "The Hal Lindsey Report", premiered on the network.


title: Trinity Broadcasting Network

text: In June 2011, TBN refused to rebroadcast an episode of Jack Van Impe's weekly program "Jack Van Impe Presents", in which the evangelist criticized pastors Rick Warren and Robert Schuller for participating in interfaith conferences alongside Muslim leaders. Both Warren and Schuller denied the accusations. Paul Crouch defended TBN's decision, stating that it was against network policy for personalities to attack each other on-air (Schuller had a regular show on TBN). As a result, Jack Van Impe Ministries announced that it would no longer air Van Impe's program on TBN.


title: Trinity Broadcasting Network

text: TBN produces and airs the Christian reality show "Travel the Road", which features missionaries Tim Scott and Will Decker in remote and often war-torn locations. In December 2008, the program attracted criticism from the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), a watchdog group that looks for religious discrimination in the United States military, which claimed that Scott and Decker were embedded with U.S. troops stationed in Afghanistan. According to MRFF president Mikey Weinstein, the military exercises a "complete prohibition of the proselytizing of any religion, faith, or practice...You see [Scott and Decker] wearing American helmets. It is obvious they were completely embedded." When ABC News contacted the U.S. Army in Afghanistan about Scott and Decker's alleged embed, which had taken place four years previously, they said that they no longer had the documentation of the missionaries' status with the troops.


title: Trinity Broadcasting Network

text: Scott defended the trip to Afghanistan, telling ABC, "It wasn't like we were hiding in the back saying we're going to preach. [The military] knew what we were doing. We told them that we were born again Christians, we're here doing ministry, we shoot for this TV station and we want to embed and see what it was like. We were interviewing the chaplains and we talked to them. We spoke at the services and things like that. So we did do our mission being over there as far as being able to document what the soldiers go through, what it's like in Afghanistan. So I could say that we were on a secular mission as well as far as documenting. I would say we were news reporters as well, we were delivering news of what was actually happening there, but we were also there to document the Christian side." Scott argued that since the pair were acting as Christian journalists, they had the same right to cover the war in Afghanistan as secular networks.


title: Satyameva Jayate

text: Satyameva Jayate (, ) is a part of a "mantra" from the Hindu scripture "Mundaka Upanishad". Following the independence of India, it was adopted as the national motto of India on 26 January 1950, the day India became a republic.


title: Satyameva Jayate

text: It is inscribed in the Devanagari script at the base of the Lion Capital of Ashoka and forms an integral part of the Indian national emblem. The emblem and the words "Satyameva Jayate" are inscribed on one side of all Indian currency and national documents.


title: Satyameva Jayate

text: The slogan was popularized and brought into the national lexicon by Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya in 1918 when serving his second of four terms as president of the Indian National Congress.


The 2018–2022 Turkish currency and debt crisis () is an ongoing financial and economic crisis in Turkey. It is characterized by the Turkish lira (TRY) plunging in value, high inflation, rising borrowing costs, and correspondingly rising loan defaults. The crisis was caused by the Turkish economy's excessive current account deficit and large amounts of private foreign-currency denominated debt, in combination with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's increasing authoritarianism and his unorthodox ideas about interest rate policy. Some analysts also stress the leveraging effects of the geopolitical frictions with the United States. Following the detention of American pastor Andrew Brunson, who was confined of espionage charges after the failed 2016 Turkish coup d'état attempt, the Trump administration exerted pressure towards Turkey by imposing further sanctions. The economic sanctions therefore doubled the tariffs on Turkey, as imported steel rises up to 50% and on aluminum to 20%. As a result, Turkish steel was priced out of the US market, which previously amounted to 13% of Turkey’s total steel exports.


title: 2018–2022 Turkish currency and debt crisis

text: While the crisis was prominent for waves of major depreciation of the currency, later stages were characterized by corporate debt defaults and finally by contraction of economic growth. With the inflation rate stuck in the double digits, stagflation ensued. The crisis ended a period of overheating economic growth under Erdoğan-led governments, built largely on a construction boom fueled by foreign borrowing, easy and cheap credit, and government spending.


text: After a period of modest recovery in 2020 and early 2021 amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the Turkish lira plunged following the replacement of Central Bank chief Naci Ağbal with Şahap Kavcıoğlu, who slashed interest rates from 19% to 14%. The lira lost 44% of its value in 2021 alone.


text: The economic crisis is believed to have caused a significant decline in Erdoğan's and AKP's popularity, which lost most of Turkey's biggest cities including Istanbul and Ankara in the 2019 local elections.


text: A longstanding characteristic of Turkey's economy is a low savings rate. Since Recep Tayyip Erdoğan assumed control of the government, Turkey has been running huge and growing current account deficits, $33.1 billion in 2016 and $47.3 billion in 2017, climbing to US$7.1 billion in the month of January 2018 with the rolling 12-month deficit rising to $51.6 billion, one of the largest current account deficits in the world. The economy has relied on capital inflows to fund private-sector excess, with Turkey's banks and big firms borrowing heavily, often in foreign currencies. Under these conditions, Turkey must find approximately $200 billion a year to fund its wide current account deficit and maturing debt, while being always at risk of inflows drying up; the state has gross foreign currency reserves of just $85 billion. The economic policy underlying these trends had increasingly been micro-managed by Erdoğan since the election of his Justice and Development Party (AKP) in 2002, and strongly so since 2008, with a focus on the construction industry, state-awarded contracts and stimulus measures. Although, research and development expenditure of the country (% of GDP) and the government expenditure on education (% of GDP) are nearly doubled during AKP governments, the desired outcomes could not be achieved The motive for these policies have been described as Erdoğan losing faith in Western-style capitalism since the 2008 financial crisis by the secretary general of the main Turkish business association, TUSIAD. Although not directly related in the conflict, the Turkish invasion of Afrin largely strained US-Turkish relations, and led to mass instability in Syria. This led to global view of Turkey as an unnecessary aggressor.


text: Investment inflows had already been declining in the period leading up to the crisis, owing to Erdoğan instigating political disagreements with countries that were major sources of such inflows (such as Germany, France, and the Netherlands). Following the 2016 coup attempt, the government seized the assets of those it stated were involved, even if their ties to the coup were tenuous. Erdoğan has not taken seriously concerns that foreign companies investing in Turkey might be deterred by the country's political instability. Other factors include worries about the decreasing value of lira (TRY) which threatens to eat into investors' profit margins. Investment inflows have also declined because Erdoğan's increasing authoritarianism has quelled free and factual reporting by financial analysts in Turkey. Between January and May 2017, foreign portfolio investors funded $13.2 billion of Turkey's $17.5 billion current account deficit, according to the latest available data. During the same period in 2018, they plugged just $763 million of a swollen $27.3 billion deficit.


text: By the end of 2017, the corporate foreign-currency debt in Turkey had more than doubled since 2009, up to $214 billion after netting against their foreign-exchange assets. Turkey's gross external debt, both public and private, stood at $453.2 billion at the end of 2017. As of March 2018, $181.8 billion of external debt, public and private, was due to mature within a year. Non-resident holdings of domestic shares stood at $53.3 billion in early March and at $39.6 billion in mid-May, and non-resident holdings of domestic government bonds stood at $32.0 billion in early March and at $24.7 billion in mid-May. Overall non-residents' ownership of Turkish equities, government bonds and corporate debt has plummeted from a high of $92 billion in August 2017 to just $53 billion as of 13 July 2018.


text: The finance minister of the Turkish government, Albayrak unveiled a new economic program to stave off the recent financial crisis. The three-year plan aims to "reign in inflation, spur growth and cut the current account deficit". The plan includes reduction on the government expenditures by $10 billion and suspension of the projects whose tender have not been carried out yet. The transformational phase of the plan will be focusing on value-added areas to increase the country's export volume and long-term production capacity with the goal of creating two million new jobs by 2021. The program is expected to lower economic growth substantially in the short term (from a previous forecast of 5.5% to 3.8% in 2018 and 2.3% in 2019) but with a gradual growth increase by 2021 towards 5%.


text: Turkey has experienced substantially higher inflation than other emerging markets. In October 2017, inflation was at 11.9%, the highest rate since July 2008. In 2018, the lira's exchange rate accelerated deterioration, reaching a level of 4.0 TRY per USD by late March, 4.5 TRY per USD by mid-May, 5.0 TRY per USD by early August and 6.0 as well as 7.0 TRY per USD by mid-August. Among economists, the accelerating loss of value was generally attributed to Recep Tayyip Erdoğan preventing the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey from making the necessary interest rate adjustments.


text: Erdoğan, who said interest rates beyond his control to be "the mother and father of all evil", shared his unorthodox interest rate theories in a 14 May interview with "Bloomberg" and said that "the central bank can't take this independence and set aside the signals given by the president." Presidential intervention with central bank policy comes with a general perception in international investment circles of a "textbook institutional decline" in Turkey, with Erdoğan seen increasingly reliant on politicians whose main qualifications for their jobs is loyalty, at the expense of more qualified and experienced options. Erdoğan also has a long history of voicing Islamist discourse of interest-based banking as "prohibited by Islam" and "a serious dead-end". He is also on record referring to interest rate increases as "treason". Despite Erdogan's opposition, Turkey's Central Bank made sharp interest rates increases.


text: The "Financial Times" quoted leading emerging markets financial analyst Timothy Ash analyzing that "Turkey has strong banks, healthy public finances, good demographics, pro-business culture but [has been] spoiled over past four to five years by unorthodox and loose macroeconomic management." By mid-June, analysts in London suggested that with its current government, Turkey would be well advised to seek an International Monetary Fund loan even before the dwindling central bank foreign exchange reserves run out, because it would strengthen the central bank's hand against Erdoğan and help gain back investor confidence in the soundness of Turkey's economic policies.


text: Economist Paul Krugman described the unfolding crisis as "a classic currency-and-debt crisis, of a kind we’ve seen many times", adding: "At such a time, the quality of leadership suddenly matters a great deal. You need officials who understand what's happening, can devise a response and have enough credibility that markets give them the benefit of the doubt. Some emerging markets have those things, and they are riding out the turmoil fairly well. The Erdoğan regime has none of that."


text: During the emergence of the crisis, lenders in Turkey were hit by restructuring demands of corporations unable to serve their USD or EUR denominated debt, due to the loss of value of their earnings in Turkish lira. While financial institutions had been the driver of the Istanbul stock exchange for many years, accounting for almost half its value, by mid-April they accounted for less than one-third. By late-May, lenders were facing a surge in demand from companies seeking to reorganise debt repayments. By early-July, public restructuring requests by some of the country's biggest businesses alone already totalled $20,000,000,000 with other debtors not publicly listed or large enough to require disclosures. The asset quality of Turkish banks, as well as their capital adequacy ratio, kept deteriorating throughout the crisis. By June Halk Bankası, the most vulnerable of the large lenders, had lost 63% of its US dollar value since last summer and traded at 40% of book value. However, it is hard to say that this is mainly due to the economic developments in Turkey since the valuation of Halkbank was largely affected by the rumors over the possible outcomes of the US investigation about the bank's stated help to Iran in evading US sanctions.


text: Banks continuously heightened interest rates for business and consumer loans and mortgage loan rates, towards 20% annually, thus curbing demand from businesses and consumers. With a corresponding growth in deposits, the gap between total deposits and total loans, which had been one of the highest in emerging markets, began to narrow. Nevertheless, this development has also led to incomplete or unoccupied housing and commercial real estate littering the outskirts of Turkey's major cities, as Erdoğan's policies had fuelled the construction sector, where many of his business allies are very active, to lead past economic growth. In March 2018, home sales fell 14% and mortgage sales declined 35% compared to a year earlier. As of May, Turkey had around 2,000,000 unsold houses, a backlog three times the size of the average annual number of new housing sales. In the first half of 2018, unsold stock of new housing kept increasing, while increases in new home prices in Turkey were lagging consumer price inflation by more than 10 percentage points.


text: While heavy portfolio capital outflows persisted, $883,000,000 in June, with official foreign exchange reserves declining by a $6,990,000,000 during June, the current account deficit started narrowing in June, due to the weakened exchange rate for the lira. This was perceived as a sign of getting balanced economy. Turkish Lira started recover its losses as of September 2018 and the current account deficit continued to shrink.


text: As a consequence of the earlier monetary policy of easy money, any newfound fragile short-term macroeconomic stability is based on higher interest rates, thus creating a recessionary effect for the Turkish economy. In mid-June, the "Washington Post" carried the quote from a senior financial figure in Istanbul that "years of irresponsible policies have overheated the Turkish economy. High inflation rates and current account deficits are going to prove sticky. I think we are at the end of our rope."


text: In January 2018, a worker burnt himself in the front of parliament. Another person also burnt himself in governor's office of Hatay.


text: In November 2019 four siblings were found dead in an apartment in Fatih, Istanbul, having committed suicide because they were unable to pay their bills. The price of electricity increased in 2019 around 57% and youth unemployment stood around 27%. The electricity bill for the apartment had not been paid for several months.


text: A family of four including two children 9 and 5 years old was similarly found in Antalya. A note left behind detailed the financial difficulties the family was experiencing.


text: In mid-November "The Guardian" reported that an anonymous benefactor had paid off some debts at local grocery stores in Tuzla and left envelopes of cash on doorstops after the suicides.


text: AK Parti officials and media have denied that the recent deaths were caused by the rising cost of living.


text: The crisis has brought considerable risks of financial contagion. One aspect concerns risk to foreign lenders, where according to the Bank for International Settlements, international banks had outstanding loans of $224 billion to Turkish borrowers, including $83 billion from banks in Spain, $35 billion from banks in France, $18 billion from banks in Italy, $17 billion each from banks in the United States and in the United Kingdom, and $13 billion from banks in Germany. Another aspect concerns the situation of other emerging economies with high levels of debt denominated in USD or EUR, with respect to which Turkey may either be considered "a canary in the coalmine" or even by its crisis and the bad handling thereof increase international investors' retreat for increased perception of risk in such countries. On 31 May 2018, the Institute of Financial Research (IIF) reported that the Turkish crisis has already spread to Lebanon, Colombia and South Africa. The fall of the value of the lira has also impoverished the inhabitants in northern Syria, who use the lira for everyday transactions, and impacted the hazelnut industry hard, which is economically important in the country and produces 70% of world's hazelnuts.


text: On 15 August 2018, Qatar pledged to invest $15 billion in the Turkish economy making the lira rally by 6%.


text: On 29 November 2018, the Turkish lira hit a 4-month high in value against the US Dollar. It recovered from 7.0738 against the dollar to 5.17 on 29 November, an increase of 36.8%. Reuters also reported in a response to a poll that it expects the inflation to decrease for the November month. The reasons that were given are the positive exchanges, discounts on products and tax cuts.


text: From a background of a long history of promoting conspiracy theories by the Turkish government of Erdoğan and the AKP, with the emergence of the financial crisis, members of the government have stated that the crisis were not attributable to the government's policies, but rather were the conspiratorial work of shadowy foreign actors, seeking to harm Turkey and deprive President Erdoğan of support. During the major lira sell-off on 23 May 2018, Turkey's energy minister, Erdoğan's son-in-law Berat Albayrak, told the media that the recent sharp drop in the value of the lira was the result of the machinations of Turkey's enemies. On 30 May 2018, foreign minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu said that the plunge of the lira would have been caused by an organized campaign masterminded abroad, adding that the conspiracy would include both "the interest rate lobby" and "some Muslim countries", which he however refused to name. At an election campaign rally in Istanbul on 11 June 2018, Erdoğan said that the recently published 7.4 percent GDP growth figure for the January to March period would demonstrate victory against what he called "conspirators" whom he blamed for May's heavy falls of the Turkish lira. In August, Erdoğan started using the formula of "the world fighting an economic war against Turkey". Part of this idea likely had to do with a row with America regarding the case of U.S. citizen Andrew Brunson, which had a deleterious effect on Turkey-U.S. relations. Alongside sanctions on specific government figures, tariffs were also used by both countries to create economic pressure. Vox describes it as a "trade spat". Commentators such as Vox's Jen Kirby have pointed to the pivotal role Brunson's case plays in it.


text: A tariff on steel and other products was placed on Turkey by the United States. However, Sarah Sanders has described the American tariffs as related to "national defense", and thus not changeable by circumstances, noting that only the sanctions would be lifted upon the release of Brunson.


text: In retaliation, Turkey announced tariffs on US products, including the iPhone. The tariffs by Turkey cover products such as American cars, and coal. At a White House Press conference, Sanders described these as "regrettable". Sanders said that the Turkish economic trouble was part of a long-term trend that was not related to any actions America did.


text: On 22 August 2018, John R. Bolton, speaking to Reuters, said "the Turkish government made a big mistake in not releasing Pastor Brunson... [e]very day that goes by that mistake continues, this crisis could be over instantly if they did the right thing as a NATO ally, part of the West, and release pastor Brunson without condition." He went on to state that Turkey's membership in NATO was not as much of a major foreign policy issue for the US, but instead the American focus was on individuals that the United States said Turkey is holding for non-legitimate reasons. Bolton also expressed skepticism in regard to Qatar's attempts to infuse money in the Turkish economy.


text: Erdogan spokesman Ibrahim Kalin, in a written statement, described these remarks as an admission that, contra Sanders, the American tariffs were, in fact, in relation to the Brunson case and proof that the US intended them to economically war against Turkey.


text: According to a poll from April 2018, 42 percent of Turks, and 59 percent of Erdoğan's governing AKP voters, saw the decline in the lira as a plot by foreign powers. In another poll from July, 36 percent of survey respondents said it the AKP government was most responsible for the depreciation of the Turkish lira, while 42 percent said it was foreign governments. This was said to be caused by the government's far-reaching control over the media via the fact that those respondents mostly reading alternative views in the Internet were more likely to see their own government responsible, at 47 percent, than foreign governments, at 34 percent.


text: On 16 May, a day after president Erdoğan had unsettled markets during his visit to London by suggesting he would curb the independence of the Central Bank of Turkey after the election, Republican People's Party (CHP) presidential candidate Muharrem İnce and İYİ Party presidential candidate Meral Akşener both vowed to ensure the independence of the central bank if elected.


text: In a 26 May interview on his campaign trail, CHP presidential candidate Muharrem İnce said on economic policy that "the central bank can only halt the lira's slide temporarily by raising interest rates, because it's not the case that depreciation fundamentally stems from interest rates being too high or too low. So, the central bank will intervene, but the things that really need to be done are in the political and legal areas. Turkey needs to immediately be extricated from a political situation that breeds economic uncertainty, and its economy must be handled by independent and autonomous institutions. My economic team is ready, and we have been working together for a long time."


text: In a nationwide survey conducted between 13 and 20 May, 45 percent saw the economy (including the steadily-dropping lira and unemployment) as the greatest challenge facing Turkey, with foreign policy at 18 percent, the justice system at 7 percent and terror and security at 5 percent.


text: İYİ Party presidential candidate Meral Akşener, supported by a strong economic team led by former Central Bank Governor Durmuş Yılmaz, had on 7 May presented her party's economic program, saying that "we will purchase the debts from consumer loans, credit card and overdraft accounts of 4.5 million citizens whose debts are under legal supervision of banks or consumer financing companies and whose debts have been sold to collection companies as of 30 April 2018. It is our duty to help our citizens with this condition, as the state has helped big companies in difficult situations."


text: On 13 June, CHP leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu reiterated the opposition's view that the state of emergency in place since July 2016 were an impediment to Turkey's currency, investment and economy, vowing that it be lifted within 48 hours in case of an opposition victory in the elections. İYİ Party leader and presidential candidate Akşener had made the same vow on 18 May, while CHP presidential candidate İnce had said on 30 May: "Foreign countries do not trust Turkey, thus they do not invest in our country. When Turkey becomes a country of the rule law, foreign investors will invest thus the lira will gain value." Early June, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had suggested in an interview that the issue of lifting the emergency rule would be discussed the elections, however asked back: "What's wrong with the state of emergency?"


text: In early April 2017, Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) presidential candidate Selahattin Demirtaş, writing in a letter from prison—where he has been held without conviction since 2016, charged of inciting violence with words— saying that "the biggest problem for the youth in Turkey is corruption which has accompanied with AKP governance."


text: In late May 2018, Republican People's Party (CHP) deputy chair Aykut Erdoğdu called the Financial Crimes Investigation Board of Turkey (MASAK) to investigate exchange rate transactions made amid rapid decline and partial recovery in the value of the lira on 23 May, saying there was insider trading by market participants who knew of the 300 basis points interest rate hike by the Turkish central bank in advance.


text: In early July 2018, Turkey's Capital Markets Board (SPK) said that until the end of August share purchases on the Borsa Istanbul by people party to the relevant company's internal information, or by those close to them (insider trading), would not be subject to a stock market abuse directive. Amid a public outcry, it suspended the directive some days later, without giving a reason for the move.


title: Monsterland (TV series)

text: Monsterland is an American drama anthology horror streaming television series created by Mary Laws, based upon the short story collection "North American Lake Monsters: Stories" by Nathan Ballingrud. It consists of eight episodes and premiered on October 2, 2020, on Hulu.


title: Monsterland (TV series)

text: In May 2019, it was announced Hulu had given the series an eight-episode order, with Mary Laws creating the series and serving as an executive producer based upon the short story "North American Lake Monsters: Stories" by Nathan Ballingrud, with Babak Anvari and Lucan Toh serving as executive producers with Anvari set to direct an episode of the series, and Annapurna Television attached to produce. The series was released on October 2, 2020.


title: Monsterland (TV series)

text: In November 2019, it was announced Kaitlyn Dever and Jonathan Tucker had joined the cast of the series, appearing in the first episode. In February 2020, Mike Colter joined the cast of the series. In July 2020, it was announced Kelly Marie Tran and Taylor Schilling had joined the cast of the series. In August 2020, it was announced Nicole Beharie, Adepero Oduye, Roberta Colindrez, Charlie Tahan and Hamish Linklater had joined the cast of the series.


title: Monsterland (TV series)

text: For the series, review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reported an approval rating of 82% based on 28 reviews, with an average rating of 6.71/10. The website's critics' consensus reads, "Though it struggles to find a strong through line, "Monsterland" cross-country scares are a perfect showcase for its talented cast and crew." Metacritic gave the series a weighted average score of 63 out of 100 based on five reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews".


title: Roots (2016 miniseries)

text: Roots is a 2016 American miniseries and a remake of the 1977 miniseries with the same name, based on Alex Haley's 1976 novel, "", which follows an African man who is shipped to North America as a slave and his descendents. It first aired on May 30, 2016 and stars Malachi Kirby, Forest Whitaker, Anna Paquin, Laurence Fishburne, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Anika Noni Rose, T.I. and South African actress Nokuthula Ledwaba. It was produced on a budget of $50 million.


title: Roots (2016 miniseries)

text: In 1767, Kunta Kinte (Malachi Kirby) is a Mandinka warrior from Jufureh in The Gambia, in West Africa. Kunta's family is loyal to the Mandinka king and are resistant to the Europeans. This, however, means the Kinte family faces the danger of reprisal from the rival Koro family, who trade African slaves for English guns. One day, Kunta is taken off into the jungle with other young boys to train to be a warrior. During a test in which Kunta must run through the jungle in a certain amount of time, he sees a man's dead body in a canoe. Kunta then sees the Koros in a separate boat, hunting for vulnerable people to capture. Kunta reports this to his teachers, who decide that it's best for training to end.


title: Roots (2016 miniseries)

text: After a ceremony, Kunta tells his father that he wants to go to university in Timbuktu, to which his father disagrees. Kunta then runs off into the jungle, where he meets up with his lover, Jinna. However the two are then surrounded by the Koros, who are looking to hold Kunta for ransom. However, Kunta runs away, killing one of the Koros in the process. He is then subdued, and the Koros decide to sell him to the English.


title: Roots (2016 miniseries)

text: Kunta and Jinna are sold to the "Lord Ligonier", a slave ship, with other Mandinkas, including Kunta's uncle, Silla. While boarding the ship, Silla attempts to escape, but is shot in the arm and restrained. Kunta and Silla are then chained in the brig of the ship with hundreds of other captives. One day, Jinna tries to jump off the ship, but is caught and taken to the captain, possibly to be raped. This provokes the other captives, and to prevent a mutiny, the ship's crew have Silla's arm cut off, not only because of it being infected by the gunshot, but also to intimidate the other prisoners. Despite this, Kunta is still able to start an uprising, but it is suppressed, and the captives are transported across the Atlantic Ocean to Annapolis, Maryland, where he is sold to John Waller (James Purefoy), who owns a tobacco plantation in Virginia. Kunta is renamed Toby, and put under the care of a musician slave called Fiddler, whose real name is Henry (Forest Whitaker). Throughout the months, Kunta tries to adapt to life on the plantation, but still thinks about escape. One night, while singing a song from his homeland, Fiddler reveals that he once heard his grandmother singing the same song, implying that she was a Mandinka that was kidnapped from Africa. Kunta then is able to obtain a sharp object to cut the chains that restrain him.