title: Bristol Motor Speedway

text: On Saturday, March 20, 2010, during the NASCAR "Saturday Night Showdown", where retired NASCAR drivers drove in a 35-lap race for charity, a terrifying crash involving Larry Pearson and Charlie Glotzbach ended up in a near-tragedy. The race was put under immediate red flag. Pearson spun out in turn 2, and as his car was sliding down the track, Glotzbach exited turn 2 and rammed into the driver's door of Pearson's car. As Glotzbach climbed out of his car and went to the infield care center, Pearson was unconscious in his car while rescue workers sawed off the roof of the car to get him out. After they got Pearson out, he regained consciousness, as reported by his brothers who talked to him. They also reported that Larry was able to move his arms around. Pearson was air lifted to a nearby hospital. Later, Glotzbach was driven to the same hospital. Before the race started back up, NASCAR legend David Pearson (Larry's father), who was also racing that day, withdrew from the race and went down to the hospital to see his son.


title: Bristol Motor Speedway

text: On the week ending August 21, 2010, Kyle Busch became the first driver ever to win races in all three NASCAR national series during a single race meeting. He began the historic week by winning the Truck race on Wednesday. Two days later, he won the Nationwide race following an incident with Brad Keselowski. Late in the race, the two raced for the lead side-by-side before Keselowski bumped Busch during a pass. Busch responded with a harder bump to Keselowski, spinning the latter out. After the race, the two took verbal potshots at one another. Then, during driver introductions immediately before the Cup series race, Keselowski introduced himself and then shouted "Kyle Busch is an ass!" Ultimately, there were no on-track incidents between the two in the Cup race. Busch also exchanged words with David Reutimann after the Cup race.


title: Bristol Motor Speedway

text: Busch would repeat this feat at Bristol in 2017, again winning all 3 races during a single race weekend.


title: Bristol Motor Speedway

text: In 2016 the scoring pylon was replaced by a large 4-sided display hung by cables over the center of the infield. Named "Colossus TV", the track claims it is the largest outdoor-hung display of its kind in the world, with each screen measuring by .


title: Bristol Motor Speedway

text: BMS has announced a new event called the Short Track U.S. Nationals in May 2017. The event will feature five classes of cars that are featured at local weekly tracks: Super Late Models, Pro (Crate) Late Models, Southern Modifieds, Late Model Stock, Street Stocks, and Compact (4 cylinder) cars. Champion Racing Association will be the lead sanctioning body of the event. The Super Late Model class is co-sanctioned with CRA Super Series, CARS Super Late Model Tour, and Southern Super Series cars.


title: Bristol Motor Speedway

text: Every year since 2016, PJ1 TrackBite is applied on the bottom of the track in an attempt to restore racing in the bottom groove that has been lost with changes to the banking in 2007 and 2012.


title: Bristol Motor Speedway

text: Bristol was again converted to a dirt track in the spring of 2021. The Bristol Dirt Nationals super late model race was held on March 15–20; the NASCAR Cup Series Food City Dirt Race and NASCAR Truck Series Pinty's Dirt Truck Race will be held on March 29; the World of Outlaws Late Model Series Bristol Bash will be held on April 8–10; and the World of Outlaws Sprint Car Series Bristol Throwdown will be held on April 22–24.


title: Bristol Motor Speedway

text: In addition to the speedway, there is a dragstrip that hosts an annual NHRA event each year, the NHRA Thunder Valley Nationals. Prior to its status as an NHRA national event track, the Bristol Dragway was the flagship strip of the rival IHRA organization; the strip's owner Larry Carrier formed the IHRA at the Bristol Dragway in November 1970. The relationship ended when Bruton Smith took over its ownership. The dragstrip has long been nicknamed "Thunder Valley" due to its location and surrounding scenery.


title: Bristol Motor Speedway

text: Bristol Dragway also hosts the Eastern Conference Finals for the Summit Jr. Drag Racing League, the AMRA Thunder Valley Nitro Nationals, the Fall Fling, World Footbrake Challenge, and numerous bracket racing and street car events throughout the year.


title: Bristol Motor Speedway

text: In the fall of 2002, students from Sullivan East High School in Bluff City, Tennessee, attended the skyboxes at the Speedway as temporary school facilities, due to an outbreak of black mold that closed the school for nearly 6 weeks.


title: Bristol Motor Speedway

text: In October 2010, Remote Area Medical held a health clinic on the infield of the track, providing free vision, dental and general-medical care to people who do not have medical insurance. The free clinic at Bristol Motor Speedway has become an annual event with Tri-Cities Remote Area Medical continuing the service on the speedway's infield in the Spring of 2012 and again in Spring 2013.


title: Bristol Motor Speedway

text: During the holiday season, Bristol Motor Speedway hosts "Pinnacle Speedway in Lights", an event featuring christmas light displays along a 5-mile route around the Speedway and its grounds, as well as other activities. The event benefits various local charities.


title: Bristol Motor Speedway

text: Bristol Motor Speedway has opened their campgrounds to evacuees of hurricanes, including during Hurricane Irma in 2017, Hurricane Florence in 2018, and Hurricane Dorian in 2019.


title: Bristol Motor Speedway

text: In early 2021, Bristol was one of several NASCAR tracks that were used as distribution facilities for the COVID-19 vaccine.


title: Bristol Motor Speedway

text: In the summer of 2021, the racetrack played host to a MrBeast YouTube video where 10 contestants from a previous video played a game of tag inside of the speedway where the winner won $500,000.


title: Bristol Motor Speedway

text: In 1961, the track hosted a National Football League preseason game between the Philadelphia Eagles and Washington Redskins.


title: Bristol Motor Speedway

text: In 2005, track owner Bruton Smith made a public offer of $20 million apiece to the University of Tennessee (UT) and Virginia Tech to schedule a non-conference college football game between the Tennessee Volunteers and Virginia Tech Hokies. Smith suggested that grass could be grown in the infield section of the racetrack. Virginia Tech showed much interest and nearly agreed to the proposal, but UT, on the other hand, showed little or no interest and in fact avoided the offer which made this possibility ultimately fall by the wayside.


title: Bristol Motor Speedway

text: On October 14, 2013, after years of attempts to schedule a game, Virginia Tech, UT, and Bristol Motor Speedway announced plans for the game to be held on Saturday, September 10, 2016. Organizers envisioned attendance for the non-conference game, dubbed the "Battle at Bristol", to draw 150,000 spectators, which would surpass the current NCAA record for highest single-game attendance of 115,109 then held by Michigan. Bristol Motor Speedway's location near the Virginia/Tennessee state line placed the game about from the Virginia Tech campus in Blacksburg, Virginia, and about from the UT campus in Knoxville. The game, won 45–24 by the Volunteers, drew an announced crowd of 156,990, breaking the previous record by more than 40,000.


title: Bristol Motor Speedway

text: The football field remained in place for one week after the Tennessee–Virginia Tech game. On September 17, the local East Tennessee State Buccaneers played their scheduled Southern Conference home game against the Western Carolina Catamounts at BMS, an event billed as "Bucs at Bristol". This was ETSU's first Southern Conference home game since dropping football after the 2003 season, not reinstating the sport until 2015. The Buccaneers came back from a 21–3 second-quarter deficit to win 34–31.


title: Ecological niche

text: In ecology, a niche is the match of a species to a specific environmental condition. It describes how an organism or population responds to the distribution of resources and competitors (for example, by growing when resources are abundant, and when predators, parasites and pathogens are scarce) and how it in turn alters those same factors (for example, limiting access to resources by other organisms, acting as a food source for predators and a consumer of prey). "The type and number of variables comprising the dimensions of an environmental niche vary from one species to another [and] the relative importance of particular environmental variables for a species may vary according to the geographic and biotic contexts".


title: Ecological niche

text: A Grinnellian niche is determined by the habitat in which a species lives and its accompanying behavioral adaptations. An Eltonian niche emphasizes that a species not only grows in and responds to an environment, it may also change the environment and its behavior as it grows. The Hutchinsonian niche uses mathematics and statistics to try to explain how species coexist within a given community.


title: Ecological niche

text: The concept of ecological niche is central to ecological biogeography, which focuses on spatial patterns of ecological communities. "Species distributions and their dynamics over time result from properties of the species, environmental variation..., and interactions between the two—in particular the abilities of some species, especially our own, to modify their environments and alter the range dynamics of many other species." Alteration of an ecological niche by its inhabitants is the topic of niche construction.


title: Ecological niche

text: The majority of species exist in a standard ecological niche, sharing behaviors, adaptations, and functional traits similar to the other closely related species within the same broad taxonomic class, but there are exceptions. A premier example of a non-standard niche filling species is the flightless, ground-dwelling kiwi bird of New Zealand, which feeds on worms and other ground creatures, and lives its life in a mammal-like niche. Island biogeography can help explain island species and associated unfilled niches.


title: Ecological niche

text: The ecological meaning of niche comes from the meaning of niche as a recess in a wall for a statue, which itself is probably derived from the Middle French word "nicher", meaning "to nest".


title: Ecological niche

text: but Joseph Grinnell was probably the first to use it in a research program in 1917, in his paper "The niche relationships of the California Thrasher".


title: Ecological niche

text: The Grinnellian niche concept embodies the idea that the niche of a species is determined by the habitat in which it lives and its accompanying behavioral adaptations. In other words, the niche is the sum of the habitat requirements and behaviors that allow a species to persist and produce offspring. For example, the behavior of the California thrasher is consistent with the chaparral habitat it lives in—it breeds and feeds in the underbrush and escapes from its predators by shuffling from underbrush to underbrush. Its 'niche' is defined by the felicitous complementing of the thrasher's behavior and physical traits (camouflaging color, short wings, strong legs) with this habitat.


title: Ecological niche

text: Grinnellian niches can be defined by non-interactive (abiotic) variables and environmental conditions on broad scales. Variables of interest in this niche class include average temperature, precipitation, solar radiation, and terrain aspect which have become increasingly accessible across spatial scales. Most literature has focused on Ginnellian niche constructs, often from a climatic perspective, to explain distribution and abundance. Current predictions on species responses to climate change strongly rely on projecting altered environmental conditions on species distributions. However, it is increasingly acknowledged that climate change also influences species interactions and an Eltonian perspective may be advantageous in explaining these processes.


title: Ecological niche

text: This perspective of niche allows for the existence of both ecological equivalents and empty niches. An ecological equivalent to an organism is an organism from a different taxonomic group exhibiting similar adaptations in a similar habitat, an example being the different succulents found in American and African deserts, cactus and euphorbia, respectively. As another example, the anole lizards of the Greater Antilles are a rare example of convergent evolution, adaptive radiation, and the existence of ecological equivalents: the anole lizards evolved in similar microhabitats independently of each other and resulted in the same ecomorphs across all four islands.


title: Ecological niche

text: In 1927 Charles Sutherland Elton, a British ecologist, defined a niche as follows: "The 'niche' of an animal means its place in the biotic environment, "its relations to food and enemies"."


title: Ecological niche

text: Conceptually, the Eltonian niche introduces the idea of a species' "response" "to" and "effect on" the environment. Unlike other niche concepts, it emphasizes that a species not only grows in and responds to an environment based on available resources, predators, and climatic conditions, but also changes the availability and behavior of those factors as it grows. In an extreme example, beavers require certain resources in order to survive and reproduce, but also construct dams that alter water flow in the river where the beaver lives. Thus, the beaver affects the biotic and abiotic conditions of other species that live in and near the watershed. In a more subtle case, competitors that consume resources at different rates can lead to cycles in resource density that differ between species. Not only do species grow differently with respect to resource density, but their own population growth can affect resource density over time.


title: Ecological niche

text: Eltonian niches focus on biotic interactions and consumer–resource dynamics (biotic variables) on local scales. Because of the narrow extent of focus, data sets characterizing Eltonian niches typically are in the form of detailed field studies of specific individual phenomena, as the dynamics of this class of niche are difficult to measure at a broad geographic scale. However, the Eltonian niche may be useful in the explanation of a species' endurance of global change. Because adjustments in biotic interactions inevitably change abiotic factors, Eltonian niches can be useful in describing the overall response of a species to new environments.


title: Ecological niche

text: The Hutchinsonian niche is an "n-dimensional hypervolume", where the dimensions are environmental conditions and resources, that define the requirements of an individual or a species to practice its way of life, more particularly, for its population to persist. The "hypervolume" defines the multi-dimensional space of resources (e.g., light, nutrients, structure, etc.) available to (and specifically used by) organisms, and "all species other than those under consideration are regarded as part of the coordinate system."


title: Ecological niche

text: The niche concept was popularized by the zoologist G. Evelyn Hutchinson in 1957. Hutchinson inquired into the question of why there are so many types of organisms in any one habitat. His work inspired many others to develop models to explain how many and how similar coexisting species could be within a given community, and led to the concepts of 'niche breadth' (the variety of resources or habitats used by a given species), 'niche partitioning' (resource differentiation by coexisting species), and 'niche overlap' (overlap of resource use by different species).


title: Ecological niche

text: Statistics were introduced into the Hutchinson niche by Robert MacArthur and Richard Levins using the 'resource-utilization' niche employing histograms to describe the 'frequency of occurrence' as a function of a Hutchinson coordinate. So, for instance, a Gaussian might describe the frequency with which a species ate prey of a certain size, giving a more detailed niche description than simply specifying some median or average prey size. For such a bell-shaped distribution, the "position", "width" and "form" of the niche correspond to the "mean", "standard deviation" and the actual distribution itself. One advantage in using statistics is illustrated in the figure, where it is clear that for the narrower distributions (top) there is no competition for prey between the extreme left and extreme right species, while for the broader distribution (bottom), niche overlap indicates competition can occur between all species. The resource-utilization approach consists in postulating that not only competition "can" occur, but also that it "does" occur, and that overlap in resource utilization directly enables the estimation of the competition coefficients. This postulate, however, can be misguided, as it ignores the impacts that the resources of each category have on the organism and the impacts that the organism has on the resources of each category. For instance, the resource in the overlap region can be non-limiting, in which case there is no competition for this resource despite niche overlap.


title: Ecological niche

text: An organism free of interference from other species could use the full range of conditions (biotic and abiotic) and resources in which it could survive and reproduce which is called its fundamental niche. However, as a result of pressure from, and interactions with, other organisms (i.e. inter-specific competition) species are usually forced to occupy a niche that is narrower than this, and to which they are mostly highly adapted; this is termed the realized niche. Hutchinson used the idea of competition for resources as the primary mechanism driving ecology, but overemphasis upon this focus has proved to be a handicap for the niche concept. In particular, overemphasis upon a species' dependence upon resources has led to too little emphasis upon the effects of organisms on their environment, for instance, colonization and invasions.


title: Ecological niche

text: The term "adaptive zone" was coined by the paleontologist George Gaylord Simpson to explain how a population could jump from one niche to another that suited it, jump to an 'adaptive zone', made available by virtue of some modification, or possibly a change in the food chain, that made the adaptive zone available to it without a discontinuity in its way of life because the group was 'pre-adapted' to the new ecological opportunity.


title: Ecological niche

text: Hutchinson's "niche" (a description of the ecological space occupied by a species) is subtly different from the "niche" as defined by Grinnell (an ecological role, that may or may not be actually filled by a species—see vacant niches).


title: Ecological niche

text: A niche is a very specific segment of ecospace occupied by a single species. On the presumption that no two species are identical in all respects (called Hardin's 'axiom of inequality') and the competitive exclusion principle, "some" resource or adaptive dimension will provide a niche specific to each species. Species can however share a 'mode of life' or 'autecological strategy' which are broader definitions of ecospace. For example, Australian grasslands species, though different from those of the Great Plains grasslands, exhibit similar modes of life.


title: Ecological niche

text: Once a niche is left vacant, other organisms can fill that position. For example, the niche that was left vacant by the extinction of the tarpan has been filled by other animals (in particular a small horse breed, the konik). Also, when plants and animals are introduced into a new environment, they have the potential to occupy or invade the niche or niches of native organisms, often outcompeting the indigenous species. Introduction of non-indigenous species to non-native habitats by humans often results in biological pollution by the exotic or invasive species.


title: Ecological niche

text: The mathematical representation of a species' fundamental niche in ecological space, and its subsequent projection back into geographic space, is the domain of niche modelling.


title: Ecological niche

text: Contemporary niche theory (also called "classic niche theory" in some contexts) is a framework that was originally designed to reconcile different definitions of niches (see Grinnellian, Eltonian, and Hutchinsonian definitions above), and to help explain the underlying processes that affect Lotka-Volterra relationships within an ecosystem. The framework centers around "consumer-resource models" which largely split a given ecosystem into resources (e.g. sunlight or available water in soil) and consumers (e.g. any living thing, including plants and animals), and attempts to define the scope of possible relationships that could exist between the two groups.


title: Ecological niche

text: In contemporary niche theory, the "impact niche" is defined as the combination of effects that a given consumer has on both a). the resources that it uses, and b). the other consumers in the ecosystem. Therefore, the impact niche is equivalent to the Eltonian niche since both concepts are defined by the impact of a given species on its environment.


title: Ecological niche

text: The range of environmental conditions where a species can successfully survive and reproduce (i.e. the Hutchinsonian definition of a realized niche) is also encompassed under contemporary niche theory, termed the "requirement niche". The requirement niche is bounded by both the availability of resources as well as the effects of coexisting consumers (e.g. competitors and predators).


title: Ecological niche

text: Contemporary niche theory provides three requirements that must be met in order for two species (consumers) to coexist:


title: Ecological niche

text: These requirements are interesting and controversial because they require any two species to share a certain environment (have overlapping requirement niches) but fundamentally differ the ways that they use (or "impact") that environment. These requirements have repeatedly been violated by nonnative (i.e. introduced and invasive) species, which often coexist with new species in their nonnative ranges, but do not appear to be constricted these requirements. In other words, contemporary niche theory predicts that species will be unable to invade new environments outside of their requirement (i.e. realized) niche, yet many examples of this are well-documented. Additionally, contemporary niche theory predicts that species will be unable to establish in environments where other species already consume resources in the same ways as the incoming species, however examples of this are also numerous.


title: Ecological niche

text: The geographic range of a species can be viewed as a spatial reflection of its niche, along with characteristics of the geographic template and the species that influence its potential to colonize. The fundamental geographic range of a species is the area it occupies in which environmental conditions are favorable, without restriction from barriers to disperse or colonize. A species will be confined to its realized geographic range when confronting biotic interactions or abiotic barriers that limit dispersal, a more narrow subset of its larger fundamental geographic range.


title: Ecological niche

text: An early study on ecological niches conducted by Joseph H. Connell analyzed the environmental factors that limit the range of a barnacle ("Chthamalus stellatus") on Scotland's Isle of Cumbrae. In his experiments, Connell described the dominant features of "C. stellatus" niches and provided explanation for their distribution on intertidal zone of the rocky coast of the Isle. Connell described the upper portion of C. stellatus's range is limited by the barnacle's ability to resist dehydration during periods of low tide. The lower portion of the range was limited by interspecific interactions, namely competition with a cohabiting barnacle species and predation by a snail. By removing the competing "B. balanoides", Connell showed that "C. stellatus" was able to extend the lower edge of its realized niche in the absence of competitive exclusion. These experiments demonstrate how biotic and abiotic factors limit the distribution of an organism.


title: Ecological niche

text: The different dimensions, or "plot axes", of a niche represent different biotic and abiotic variables. These factors may include descriptions of the organism's life history, habitat, trophic position (place in the food chain), and geographic range. According to the competitive exclusion principle, no two species can occupy the same niche in the same environment for a long time. The parameters of a realized niche are described by the realized niche width of that species. Some plants and animals, called specialists, need specific habitats and surroundings to survive, such as the spotted owl, which lives specifically in old growth forests. Other plants and animals, called generalists, are not as particular and can survive in a range of conditions, for example the dandelion.


title: Convex polygon

text: In geometry, a convex polygon is a polygon that is the boundary of a convex set. This means that the line segment between two points of the polygon is contained in the union of the interior and the boundary of the polygon. In particular, it is a simple polygon (not self-intersecting). Equivalently, a polygon is convex if every line that does not contain any edge intersects the polygon in at most two points.


title: Convex polygon

text: A strictly convex polygon is a convex polygon such that no line contains two of its edges. In a convex polygon, all interior angles are less than or equal to 180 degrees, while in a strictly convex polygon all interior angles are strictly less than 180 degrees.


title: Convex polygon

text: Every polygon inscribed in a circle (such that all vertices of the polygon touch the circle), if not self-intersecting, is convex. However, not every convex polygon can be inscribed in a circle.


title: Kara Tointon

text: Kara Louise Tointon (born 5 August 1983) is an English actress, known for portraying the role of Dawn Swann in the BBC soap opera "EastEnders". In 2010, she won the BBC competition series "Strictly Come Dancing", and in 2015, she appeared as Maria in the ITV live production of "The Sound of Music Live".


title: Kara Tointon

text: Tointon was born to parents Ken (b. 1948) and Carol Tointon (1957–2019). Together with her actress sister, Hannah (born 1987), Tointon was brought up in Leigh-on-Sea. Both sisters attended St Michael's School, Leigh, and St Hilda's School, Westcliff-on-Sea, Essex. Tointon was diagnosed with dyslexia at age seven. She had speech and drama lessons. Tointon's debut in acting was when she played Brigitta in the local amateur dramatic society's version of "The Sound of Music" at the Cliffs Pavilion, Westcliff-on-Sea.


title: Kara Tointon

text: Tointon's was a paid professional child dancer at age 11 for Snow White pantomime at the Cliffs Pavilion. Her first appearance on television was as a school friend of Sonia Fowler in "EastEnders" in 1994. She played the part of student Pauline Young in 2001's first series of "Teachers" on Channel 4. She also starred in BBC's "Curriculum Bites" as a presenter in 2002.


title: Kara Tointon

text: In 2005, Tointon joined the cast of the BBC soap "EastEnders" as Dawn Swann, a role she played for 4 years until being written out, along with co-star Ricky Groves, in August 2009.


title: Kara Tointon

text: In July 2010, she recorded a documentary for BBC Three called "Kara Tointon: Don't Call Me Stupid". The programme examined the impact dyslexia can have on people's lives and the difference different learning styles can have on dyslexic people. Tointon revealed that she struggles as a dyslexic person, and had a reading age of 12. During the programme, Tointon visited Shapwick School in Somerset, which specialises in the education of dyslexic pupils, and talked with the pupils about their experiences.


title: Kara Tointon

text: In 2008, Tointon won the Sport Relief special edition of "Strictly Come Dancing" with Mark Ramprakash. Her samba was enough to get her the Glitterball Trophy.


title: Kara Tointon

text: In September 2010, Tointon was a contestant on "Strictly Come Dancing" Series 8, partnered with Artem Chigvintsev. The pair achieved good scores in the first five weeks of 30, 32, 31, 32 and 37. In week 5, Tointon was awarded the first 10 of the series by Alesha Dixon for her Pasodoble. In week 6 she was top of the leaderboard with her Salsa. She also had good scores for the next five weeks of 36, 38, 35, 34 and 38. In week 11, she got her highest score of 39 for the Viennese Waltz and Rumba and got the maximum 5/5 for the swing-a-thon. Tointon made it to the final along with Matt Baker and Pamela Stephenson, where she made it to the final two, then went on to win and be crowned champion.


title: Kara Tointon

text: From May to September 2011, Tointon played Eliza Doolittle in the West End production of "Pygmalion" at the Garrick Theatre, opposite Rupert Everett as Professor Higgins. In 2012, Tointon was cast as Evelyn in Alan Ayckbourn's revival of the 1974 play "Absent Friends", alongside Reece Shearsmith at the Harold Pinter Theatre' She followed this by playing Giny in Ayckbourn's "Relatively Speaking", with Felicity Kendal, Jonathan Coy, and Max Bennett at the Wyndham's Theatre in 2013.


title: Kara Tointon

text: In February 2011, Tointon took part in the BT Red Nose Desert Trek for Comic Relief 2011. In September, it was announced that Kara would play a lead role in the new film "Last Passenger", opposite Dougray Scott and directed by Omid Nooshin.


title: Kara Tointon

text: In 2015 and 2016, Tointon played Rosalie Selfridge in the television drama series "Mr Selfridge", the semi-fictional story based on the life of Harry Selfridge. Tointon played the part of Maria in "The Sound of Music Live" in the UK, broadcast on 20 December.


title: Kara Tointon

text: In January 2017, Tointon appeared in the ITV period drama "The Halcyon", which was set in 1940 at a five-star hotel “at the centre of London Society and a world at war”. From November, Tointon played the role of Olivia in The Royal Shakespeare Company production of "Twelfth Night".


title: Kara Tointon

text: In 2018, Tointon joined 26 other celebrities at Metropolis Studios, to perform an original Christmas song called Rock With Rudolph, written and produced by Grahame and Jack Corbyn. The song was released in aid of Great Ormond Street Hospital and was released digitally on independent record label Saga Entertainment on 30 November 2018 under the artist name The Celebs. The music video debuted exclusively with The Sun on 29 November 2018 and had its first TV showing on Good Morning Britain on 30 November 2018. The song peaked at number two on the iTunes pop chart.


title: Kara Tointon

text: In September 2014, Tointon took part in the Great North Run to raise money for Share A Star, a charity set up to help severely unwell children and teenagers.


title: Kara Tointon

text: In November 2018, Tointon gave birth to her first child, a boy, with her then fiancé Marius Jensen. In January 2021, their second son was born.


title: Bulma

text: Bulma is the daughter of Dr. Brief, the founder of the Capsule Corporation, a company that creates special small capsules that shrink and hold objects of various sizes for easy storage. Being the daughter of a brilliant scientist, Bulma is also a scientific genius, as well as an inventor and engineer. Along with creating the Dragon Radar, a device that detects the energy signal emitted by a Dragon Ball, Bulma's role as an inventor becomes important at several points in the series; including the time machine that brings her future son Trunks to the past.


title: Bulma

text: Bulma's appearance in the anime is slightly different than in the manga. In the manga version her hair color is violet, while in the anime it is turquoise. Her long hairstyle stays shoulder-length as a teenager. She changes her hairstyle and cut very often, and rarely the same dress for long periods. Many of the dresses that bear her name or the Capsule Corporation logo. Bulma is presented as an extraordinarily intelligent individual, being able to create technology capable of feats beyond contemporary science. She usually displays strong analytical skills and the ability to recognize design and engineering styles. Although not a martial artist, Bulma occasionally defends herself with the use of firearms and other technological equipment.


title: Bulma

text: Bulma is loosely based on the character Tang Sanzang from the Chinese classic novel "Journey to the West". Bulma and Goku were the first pair of characters which were introduced in the manga and Toriyama stated that he subsequently introduced other characters in pairs because "that way, I'm able to explain the characters and their relationship to each other through their interactions. In my case, I feel that it isn't good to insert too much narration. I suppose Goku and Bulma are representative of that." He further added that "as a child, Goku doesn't know anything [of the world], so without Bulma, he'd be a character who didn't say anything." The author also claimed that when the series started, his editor at the time, Kazuhiko Torishima, wanted Bulma and Goku to form a romantic relationship.


title: Bulma

text: Bulma's appearance in the series is not as consistent as the other characters as she often changes her hairstyle and clothing being fashion-conscious. Her hair is usually depicted in a shade of fuchsia, although in the first chapter and the anime her hair is turquoise. When asked about the first time Bulma's hairstyle changed, Toriyama said it was to show that three years had passed and because he personally liked girls with short hair. She sometimes wears clothing with either her name on it or the Capsule Corporation logo.


title: Bulma

text: Her name "Buruma" is the Japanese pronunciation of "bloomer", a type of gym shorts worn by Japanese girls at school. As with most characters in the "Dragon Ball" series, Bulma's name is consistent with those of the rest of her family. All of Bulma's family members are named after underclothing of some sort. Her father's name is Dr. Briefs, while her son and daughter are named Trunks and respectively. Her mother is never named in the original series, being referred to only as . However, when asked in 2004 what name he would choose if he were to name her mother, Toriyama suggested , a pun on panties. Toriyama stated in an interview that Bulma's family has a "laissez-faire attitude, but Bulma has complete control over things." This name was later used in other media, including the English-language release of "Dragon Ball Super".


title: Bulma

text: Bulma was voiced by Hiromi Tsuru in all Japanese media until her death in November 2017. As a new voice actress at the time, she had to audition for the part. She also said that all her previous roles were well-behaved characters, but Bulma was easy to play because she is down-to-earth. In February 2018, Aya Hisakawa was announced as the new voice actress for Bulma.


title: Bulma

text: In Funimation's in house English dub, Bulma is voiced by Tiffany Vollmer in the original "Dragon Ball" series"." After Vollmer retired from voice acting, she was replaced by Monica Rial starting from "Dragon Ball Z Kai".


title: Bulma

text: Bulma is introduced as the teenaged inventor of the , a device used to detect the Dragon Balls that she is searching for. She was hoping to use the Dragon Balls to wish for the perfect boyfriend. While searching for a nearby Dragon Ball, she runs into Goku and finds out that he inherited the four-star Dragon Ball from his adoptive father Grandpa Son Gohan. Because of Goku's love for the ball and his belief that his Grandpa's spirit lives in the ball, Goku isn't willing to give it up. Bulma then asks him to loan it for her in exchange for taking him in her travels. At that point, they team up to find the remainder of the balls and the adventure begins. As the search progresses, Bulma and Goku meet Kame-Sen'nin after finding his pet turtle; Oolong, a shapeshifting pig who is terrorizing a village; and Yamcha, and his shapeshifting cat companion Pu'ar, a desert bandit who Bulma soon finds herself attracted to, and who she eventually starts a romantic relationship with.


title: Bulma

text: After five years of peace, an evil menace comes to the Earth. It is Goku's elder brother, an extraterrestrial Saiyan, named Raditz. After Goku and Piccolo kill him, Bulma takes the from Raditz and fixes it to find the power levels of people in human numbers. During the subsequent battle against Vegeta and Nappa, Yamcha, Tenshinhan, Chaozu and Piccolo are killed and because Piccolo dies, the Dragon Balls are rendered useless.


title: Bulma

text: After Goku defeats the Saiyans, Bulma volunteers to travel to Piccolo's home planet Namek and use the Namekian Dragon Balls to restore Yamcha and the others back to life. In need of a spaceship, Mr. Popo reveals one to Bulma, which had been the ship Kami had used to travel to Earth when he was a boy. She repairs the ship with the help of her father and flies off to Namek with Krillin and Son Gohan. After Goku defeats the tyrant Frieza, Yamcha and the others who were killed are revived by Porunga, the dragon of the Namekian Dragon Balls. Vegeta returns to Earth, staying with Bulma and her family.


title: Bulma

text: Several years before the arrival of the Androids, Bulma ends her relationship with Yamcha and begins a relationship with Vegeta that leads to the birth of their son, Trunks. She used Dr. Gero's stolen blueprints to build a detonator to destroy the Androids, but Krillin broke it after realizing his feelings for Android 18. With her father's help, Bulma later repairs Android 16 before the Tournament of Martial Arts.


title: Bulma

text: In the alternate future timeline, Bulma survives the Androids' onslaught and lives at the former site of Capsule Corp. She spends most of her life devoted to building a time machine, attempting to prevent the devastation brought by the Androids. She is very protective of Trunks and hates the idea of him fighting, but nevertheless allows him to travel to the past to deliver Goku an antidote for a heart virus that claimed his life in the alternate timeline. Once the Androids (or more importantly, Cell) are taken care of in the main timeline, Trunks returns to his original time and defeats the much weaker Androids and Cell with ease, thus restoring peace to the future timeline world.


title: Bulma

text: Seven years after the battle against the Androids, Bulma helps Gohan by making a watch which automatically changes his clothes into a super-hero costume so he could fight crime, without his real identity being known. She and the other heroes, with the exception of Goku, Vegeta, Tenshinhan, Chaozu, and Gohan, hide at Kami's from the monstrous Majin Buu, however, she is killed when Buu turns her into chocolate and eats her. Bulma is revived by the Porunga, along with the rest of the Earth, and gives her energy to Goku to eliminate Majin Buu once and for all. Many years later, she gives birth to her and Vegeta's daughter, Bulla.


title: Bulma

text: Prior to Bulla's birth, during the events of "" and the first half of the first season of "Dragon Ball Super", Bulma hosts a party with the prize being the Dragon Balls and unknowingly provoked the Destroyer God Beerus into nearly destroying Earth when she slapped him for ruining the event. She would soon learn if the resurrected Frieza's advance on Earth from her old friend during the second half of the first season and "", narrowly escapes being when Frieza destroys Earth thanks to Whis rewinding the event so he can quickly be killed.


title: Bulma

text: After Frieza's defeat, she creates the Super Dragon Radar in order to find the Super Dragon Balls in Universe 7 first to prevent Beerus from using them to wish for the total annihilation of the entire universe. The alternate timeline version of Bulma is killed by Goku Black. After Bulma reunites with Trunks, Bulma works on a time machine to send him back to his timeline to defeat Goku Black. After an unsuccessful attempt, Bulma travels with them to the timeline, showing Trunks a recording of Piccolo performing the "Evil Containment Wave" and fighting with and being injured by Zamasu. Bulma tries creating a time machine, only for Beerus to destroy it and she later summons Beerus to quell a perceived threat from Arale and then satisfies his taste by using Senbei's Reality Machine and viewers of the award ceremony she was attending to imagine the most tasteful food they could think of.


title: Bulma

text: In the Universe Survival Saga, Bulma agreed to pay 100 million Zeni to every member of Team Universe 7 who participated in the Tournament of Power if their team wins. She later accompanies Goku and Vegeta during the events of "" when Frieza is trying to use Earth's Dragon Balls, revealed to have been using the wishes as a form of cosmetic surgery to maintain her youthful appearance. Following the event, as revealed in "", Bulma established a branch of Capsule Corp to acquire the Dragon Balls for her so they would not fall into evil hands.


title: Bulma

text: Bulma appears in eight "Dragon Ball Z" films; in the , Bulma makes a brief appearance when using the Dragon Radar to find Gohan after his abduction by Garlic Jr.'s henchman; in the , she is used as leverage by Kochin to get Kame-Sennin to come back to the lair of Dr. Wheelo, where she is forced to accompany him as well; in the , she is seen camping with Oolong and Krillin before the Tree of Might is planted and later appears at Goku's home; in the , Bulma's mind is probed by Lord Slug to aid in his quest to secure the Dragon Balls, her losing consciousness thereafter; in the , she makes a small appearance at the beginning, attending a picnic with the other characters; in the , Bulma watches a fighting tournament with Chi-Chi and Trunks while baring her midriff in a yellow tank crop top with short-shorts, a yellow headband, and a pearl necklace; arguing with Chi-Chi during the shared viewing; in the , Bulma gathers the Dragon Balls to send the souls of the deceased back to Other World; in the , Bulma creates a room for Tapion who she confronts over the friendship he has established with her son.


title: Bulma

text: In filler episodes of "Dragon Ball Z", during the Namek arc, Bulma travels to a fake Namek and while on Namek, she meets Captain Ginyu, after his loss to Goku and his becoming a frog, and bonds with him, leading her to create a machine for him to speak to her through. Ginyu uses the machine to utter the name of his technique "Body Change", allowing him to switch bodies with Bulma and leave her trapped in the frog's body. Bulma manages to stay around him as he looks for Frieza and the two encounter Gohan, Krillin and Piccolo while they're watching Goku and Frieza fight, Gohan realizing the change just as Ginyu attempts to switch bodies with Piccolo and Bulma receives her body back when Gohan throws her in the way of the technique. Bulma is then blown away from the battlefield and later uses Ginyu to try finding out how the battle is progressing. During the Garlic Jr. arc, Bulma falls under the control of the Black Water Mist, leading her to attack her unaffected friends, being freed of the condition later on.


title: Bulma

text: In "Dragon Ball GT", she becomes possessed by Baby, who takes her as his apparent queen (or second in command), as possessing Vegeta gave him all of his memories and emotions. During this time, she organizes the migration to Planet Vegeta (renamed Planet Tuffle), and creates the that helps Baby become the Saiyan's Golden Great Ape transformation. However, the Holy Water hidden in Dende's Lookout is used to free her and the rest of Earth from Baby's enslavement. Later, she helps Vegeta reach Super Saiyan 4 by exposing him to a new Super Bruits Wave Generator, and witnesses Omega Shenron's defeat at the hands of Goku.


title: Bulma

text: Bulma usually appears as a non-playable character in cut scenes for most "Dragon Ball" video games, such as "", "" and "". However, she is a playable character in "" and . In "Dragon Power", the North American version of "Dragon Ball: Shenlong no Nazo" that removes all references to "Dragon Ball", her character was named "Nora". In "", Bulma sells capsules in the Skill Shop. In "", Bulma appears in the Options Mode explaining how the various game settings work. In "Budokai Tenkaichi 2", she appears in the data center, explaining about custom characters and in practice mode. Bulma is a Help Koma in "Jump Ultimate Stars"; giving more SP for collected coins to the Battle Koma she is attached to. Though she does not appear in "", she is mentioned during the story mode fight against Beerus as having slapped him, as the fight is based on the film "". Bulma is an assist character in "Dragon Ball Z: Extreme Butōden", firing a gun.


title: Bulma

text: Bulma has been portrayed by Jeannie Hsieh in the unofficial live-action "Dragon Ball" movie "Dragon Ball: The Magic Begins". She was also featured in the 1990 unofficial Korean adaptation where she was played by Lee Ju Hee. Bulma appeared in the live-action film "Dragonball Evolution", portrayed by Emmy Rossum. Rossum described her portrayal of Bulma in "Dragonball Evolution" as "pretty bad-ass, but still quirky and fun, and kind of ridiculous in the way she is in the anime."


title: Bulma

text: Bulma has a cameo in the 2006 "Dragon Ball" and "One Piece" crossover, "Cross Epoch". She is partnered up with the character Nami and the two act as a pair of space pirates. In the final chapter of Toriyama's 2013 manga series "Jaco the Galactic Patrolman", it is revealed that the series is set before "Dragon Ball", and Bulma makes an appearance as a child, as do her father and mother. The character , is actually revealed to be Bulma's older sister. To promote the 2015 "" movie, a blog run by Bulma was launched on the website Ameblo.


title: Bulma

text: Brian Camp and Julie Davis, the authors of "", noted that Bulma's character went through the greatest number of changes in the series, and praised the evolution of her character from a "brass, boy-crazy teen girl" in the earliest episodes of "Dragon Ball" to winding up as one of the matriarchs of the group. They further added that while Goku is the heart and soul of the group, Bulma is its body, the one who gives it structure and cohesion. Reviewing the arc of Majin Buu, Anime News Network's Martin Theron said "Bulma loses something just sitting around acting like a worried mother/wife."


title: Bulma

text: Japanese fans voted Bulma the seventeenth most popular character of the series in a 2004 poll. Bulma's voice actress Hiromi Tsuru said she liked Bulma, describing the character as "energetic" and "cheeky." She also joked that it was difficult for her to love Vegeta, having thought Bulma would end up with Yamcha. In a top ten list for IGN, David Smith ranked Bulma forming a relationship with Vegeta as the top plot twist of "Dragon Ball Z". On the other hand, Josh Begley of The Fandom Post felt Bulma "browbeats everyone around her."


title: Bulma

text: Reviewing the live-action "Dragonball Evolution" for "IGN", Christopher Monfette said that Emmy Rossum's performance of Bulma is "something of a departure from the anime's vision" of the character, but "brings a lot of kick-ass chick charisma to the role."


title: Nara Lokesh

text: Nara Lokesh (born 23 January 1983) is an Indian politician. He is the son of former Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh and Telugu Desam Party (TDP) chief N. Chandrababu Naidu and Nara Bhuvaneshwari, and grandson of N. T. Rama Rao.


title: Nara Lokesh

text: Lokesh became cabinet minister for information technology, Panchayati Raj and rural development in Andhra Pradesh state in 2017.


title: Nara Lokesh

text: Lokesh joined the TDP in May 2013, and worked on the election strategy for the 2014 General Elections. He sought election as a Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) for the Mangalagiri constituency in the 2019 Andhra Pradesh assembly elections and lost to Alla Ramakrishna Reddy of the YSR Congress Party (YSRCP) by a less margin. However, he is still a member of Andhra Pradesh Legislative Council.


title: Nara Lokesh

text: Lokesh has an MBA from Stanford University Graduate School of Business and Bachelor of Science with a specialization in Management Information Systems from Carnegie Mellon University.


title: Nara Lokesh

text: Though he never won a direct election, Lokesh held several key positions in both party and state of Andhra Pradesh.


title: Nara Lokesh

text: In 2014, Lokesh became TDP's General Secretary, a member of the Politburo, the highest decision-making body of the party. He managed the party, interacted with party workers and citizens, and helped set the party policies and strategy. He claimed in January 2013 that Rahul Gandhi and the Congress party derived the Direct Benefit Transfer System from a TDP proposal submitted to the central government.


title: Nara Lokesh

text: Lokesh is credited with successfully managing the TDP party's membership drive that added five million members. The digital technology used by the onboarding team – tablets, live data feeds and a real-time dashboard – was probably the first such use for enrolling and managing party members in the country. In 2017, Chandrababu Naidu inducted Lokesh as an MLC and a month later he was appointed the Cabinet minister for IT, Panchayathi Raj and Rural Development.


title: Nara Lokesh

text: Lokesh has been one of the Trustees of NTR Memorial Trust (popularly known as NTR Trust) on Healthcare, Education, Skills Enhancement and Disaster Management.


title: Nara Lokesh

text: Lokesh oversees the disaster response program of the Trust that operates in times of natural calamities.


title: Nara Lokesh

text: Each active member of the party will get a personal insurance cover of ₹2 lakh in case of a fatal accident, ₹2 lakh for permanent disability, ₹1 lakh for the partially disabled, and ₹50,000 in case of accidental injuries.


title: Nara Lokesh

text: Lokesh unsuccessfully contested from Mangalagiri constituency and lost to Alla Rama Krishna Reddy of YSRCP.


title: Nara Lokesh

text: Lokesh won the "Skoch Person of the Year" award in 2018, for his innovative use of technology while resolving issues related to drinking water supply, transparency in governance, and other activities under his Panchayati Raj portfolio.


title: Nara Lokesh

text: In May 2018, he won the Business World magazine "Digital Leader of the Year" at the Businessworld Digital India summit in New Delhi. The award recognises the best utilisation of technology in governance. The same year, the Kalam Centre for Livable Planet Earth and Sustainable Development recognised Lokesh's efforts in the successful integration of technology in rural governance and awarded the innovation award to Andhra Pradesh in the Panchayat Raj and Rural Development category. He was also awarded the Kalam Innovation in Governance Award in 2018.


title: Nara Lokesh

text: In September 2018, Lokesh was invited to represent India at the World Economic Forum (WEF) Entrepreneurship Summit and Annual Meeting of World Champions in Tianjin, China. In the following month, he became the only Indian politician to be nominated to the WEF's Network of Global Future Councils (NGFC), an interdisciplinary knowledge group that deliberates on agile governance in terms of emerging technologies and business models.


title: Nara Lokesh

text: In 2007, Lokesh married Brahmani, his first cousin on maternal side and daughter of actor and politician Nandamuri Balakrishna. The couple has a son, Devansh.


title: Mike Watt

text: Watt co-founded and played bass guitar for the rock bands Minutemen (1980–1985), Dos (1985–present), and Firehose (1986–1994). He began a solo career with the 1994 album "Ball-Hog or Tugboat?", he has since released three additional solo albums, most recently in 2010 with "Hyphenated-man". He is also the frontman for the supergroup Big Walnuts Yonder (2008–present), a member of the art rock group Banyan (1997–present) and is involved with several other musical projects. From 2003 until 2013, he was the bass guitarist for The Stooges.


title: Mike Watt

text: Watt has been called "one of the greatest bassists on the planet." "CMJ New Music" called Watt a "seminal post-punk bass player." Readers of "NME" voted Mike Watt one of the "40 Greatest Bassists of All Time" and "LA Weekly" awarded him the number six spot in "The 20 Best Bassists of All Time."


title: Mike Watt

text: In November 2008, Watt received the "Bass Player Magazine" lifetime achievement award, presented by Flea.


title: Mike Watt

text: The Red Hot Chili Peppers dedicated their best-selling album, 1991's "Blood Sugar Sex Magik", to Watt.


title: Mike Watt

text: Watt was born in Portsmouth, Virginia. His father was in the Navy and when he was young, Watt's family moved to San Pedro, California, where he became good friends with D. Boon. Watt and Boon picked up bass and guitar, respectively. Watt was a fan of T. Rex and Blue Öyster Cult, while Boon's exposure to rock music was limited to Creedence Clearwater Revival, another Watt favorite.


title: Mike Watt

text: In 1978, Watt and Boon formed a band called The Reactionaries with drummer George Hurley and vocalist Martin Tamburovich. The band later became Minutemen with another drummer named Frank Tonche, who only lasted two shows with the group; Hurley, who had been in the short-lived new wave group Hey Taxi! at the time Minutemen first formed, rejoined Watt and Boon. After signing with SST Records in 1980, Minutemen began touring constantly, releasing a number of albums along the way. Their music was based on the speed, brevity, and intensity of punk, but included elements of jazz, folk, and funk.


title: Mike Watt

text: Born with Osgood–Schlatter disease, Watt had surgeries on both knees in the early 1980s which limited touring in 1981. Watt wrote all of the music for "What Makes a Man Start Fires?" as he was laid up after one of his knee surgeries, living with his mother at the time and needed to keep himself occupied.


title: Mike Watt

text: In 1984, Watt met Black Flag bassist Kira Roessler during a Black Flag/Minutemen tour. They soon became romantically involved, and subsequently began collaborating on songs, including material on Minutemen's final album "3-Way Tie (For Last)". They also formed a two-bass duo, Dos, and have since recorded and released three records.


title: Mike Watt

text: Minutemen ended tragically on December 22, 1985, when Boon was killed in an automobile crash at the age of 27 while driving to Arizona with his girlfriend. Their fifth full-length album, "3-Way Tie (For Last)" had already been scheduled for release at the time of the accident. In the documentary film "We Jam Econo", Watt mentioned that the last time he saw Boon, he had received lyrics for 10 songs from critic and songwriter Richard Meltzer for a planned collaboration with Minutemen. Minutemen were also planning to record a triple album with the working title "3 Dudes, 6 Sides, 3 Studio, 3 Live" as way to counteract bootleggers.


title: Mike Watt

text: After Boon's death, Watt was profoundly depressed; he and Hurley initially intended to quit music altogether. Sonic Youth invited Watt to hang out with them in New York City in 1986; they recorded a cover of Madonna's "Burnin' Up" (with additional guitars by Greg Ginn) on the first Ciccone Youth EP, and Watt played bass for two songs on the Sonic Youth album "Evol". Watt cites this period as critical in inspiring his post-Minutemen career saying, "The first thing I did was Thurston asked me to play bass on "Evol". That was a big highlight, man. Like, 'What, you want me to play without D. Boon?'"


title: Mike Watt

text: Subsequently, Ed Crawford, a Minutemen fan who drove to San Pedro from Ohio, persuaded the Watt/Hurley rhythm section to continue playing music. Firehose was formed soon after. Following three releases on SST, Firehose was signed to Columbia Records by A&R man Jim Dunbar. Shortly after the release of 1993's "Mr. Machinery Operator", the band decided to call it quits.


title: Mike Watt

text: Watt and Kira married in 1987, but their marriage ended not long after Firehose's break-up. However, both their friendship and Dos have remained intact; they even recorded their third album, "Justamente Tres", not long after their divorce.


title: Mike Watt

text: After working with Firehose, Watt began a solo career. His first album, "Ball-Hog or Tugboat?", featured appearances from dozens of musicians (many were Watt's peers from the 1980s SST era), including Henry Rollins, Eddie Vedder, J Mascis, Carla Bozulich, Evan Dando, members of Sonic Youth, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Frank Black, Nirvana, Soul Asylum, Jane's Addiction, the Beastie Boys and the Screaming Trees. The album and its supporting tour were Watt's first taste of mainstream fame, when Vedder and Dave Grohl of Nirvana were part of his touring group. After Vedder returned to his Pearl Jam commitments and Grohl began working with his new band Foo Fighters, Watt formed his only four-piece touring group to date, The Crew Of The Flying Saucer, featuring guitarist Nels Cline and two drummers.


title: Mike Watt

text: In 1996, Watt contributed bass guitar on two songs for Porno for Pyros' second album, "Good God's Urge", filling in for Martyn LeNoble who quit the band during recording sessions. Watt subsequently ended up being the bassist for the band's tour that followed the release of the album.


title: Mike Watt

text: In 1997, Watt released "Contemplating the Engine Room", a punk rock song cycle using naval life as an extended metaphor for both Watt's family history (the album has a picture of his father in his Navy uniform on the cover) and the Minutemen. The album, which was critically well received, features the trio of musicians Nels Cline on guitar, Stephen Hodges on drums, and Watt as the only singer.


title: Mike Watt

text: Watt went on to play in such groups as Banyan (with Stephen Perkins and Nels Cline) and Hellride, a sometime live outfit that plays cover versions of Stooges songs. He also played in Wylde Ratttz with Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore and The Stooges' Ron Asheton, recording a song for the film "Velvet Goldmine". Watt also recorded a bass line to send to the Pennsylvania space-folk band The Clubber Lang Gang for their record "Now Here This", on the track "For the Broken People". Starting in mid-2011, Watt began playing bass for a psychedelic/progressive rock band called Anywhere with the Mars Volta's Cedric Bixler-Zavala and Christian Eric Beaulieu of Triclops! In 2015 Mike Watt joined the Waywords and Meansigns project, a collaborative project setting James Joyce's Finnegans Wake to music.


title: Mike Watt

text: In January 2000, Watt fell ill with an infection of his perineum, forcing him into emergency surgery and nine weeks of bedrest in his San Pedro apartment. Initially unable to play his bass, he rebuilt his strength with intense practice as well as live club gigs where he performed sets of Stooges covers with Hellride in California and with J Mascis and Dinosaur Jr. drummer Murph in New York City under the name Hellride East.


title: Mike Watt

text: In 2000, Mascis asked Watt to participate in a world tour behind Mascis' first post-Dinosaur Jr. release, J Mascis and the Fog's "More Light". At several of the shows, Ron Asheton formerly of The Stooges joined Mascis and Watt onstage, wherein the group would play entire sets of Stooges songs. Watt and Mascis later joined Asheton and his brother, Stooges drummer Scott Asheton, for a one-time-only performance at a Belgian festival under the name Asheton, Asheton, Mascis & Watt. In 2001, Watt was one of several bassists invited to participate in the sessions for Gov't Mule's "The Deep End", partly on the recommendation of Primus' Les Claypool. Watt and Gov't Mule recorded a cover version of Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Effigy" for the album. The sessions were immortalized in the documentary feature film "Rising Low".


title: Mike Watt

text: In 2002, Watt, along with Pete Yorn and members of The Hives, backed Iggy Pop for a short set of Stooges songs at that year's Shortlist Music Prize ceremony, after which Watt was asked to play bass in the reunited Stooges lineup in 2003. The reunited Stooges played their first show in almost 20 years at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in May 2003.


title: Mike Watt

text: Watt's third solo album "The Secondman's Middle Stand", inspired by both his 2000 illness and one of his favorite books, Dante's "The Divine Comedy", was released in 2004; one reviewer writes that the album is a "harrowing, funny, and genuinely moving stuff from a true American original.". For the first time since the Minutemen, Watt recorded the album with an "all-Pedro band", Mike Watt and the Secondmen, consisting of organist Pete Mazich and drummer Jerry Trebotic, along with former that dog. vocalist Petra Haden.


title: Mike Watt

text: While promoting and touring behind "The Secondman's Middle Stand", Watt announced plans for future recordings, stating that he intended to record as frequently as he did in the Minutemen days for as long as he could.


title: Mike Watt

text: Watt would part amicably with Columbia/Sony BMG in 2005, after 14 years as both a solo artist and as one-third of Firehose.


title: Mike Watt

text: In 2005, another side project featuring Watt came to light with the announced September 20 release of "The Way Things Work", an album of improvised music under the group name, Unknown Instructors with George Hurley, Saccharine Trust's Joe Baiza and Jack Brewer, and poet/saxophonist Dan McGuire. A month after the album's release, the Unknown Instructors recorded a second album, "The Master's Voice", with Pere Ubu frontman David Thomas and artist Raymond Pettibon joining the core quartet of Watt, Hurley, McGuire and Baiza. A third album with the same lineup, "Funland", was released in 2009 and features a semi-cover version (the original lyrics over new music) of Captain Beefheart's "Frownland" (from the "Trout Mask Replica" album). Basic tracks have already been laid down for the fourth Unknown Instructors album at Secondmen organist Pete Mazich's Casa Hanzo studio in San Pedro.


title: Mike Watt

text: Watt would further his interest in improvised music by forming a trio, Los Pumpkinheads, with former Beastie Boys keyboardist Money Mark and Caroline Bermudez.


title: Mike Watt

text: On December 14, 2005, the McNally-Smith College of Music in Saint Paul, Minnesota announced the formation of the Mike Watt Bass Guitar Scholarship, which is to be awarded annually to a bass major starting in the Fall of 2006.


title: Mike Watt

text: In March 2006, Watt took part in the performance at Disney Hall, Los Angeles, of Glenn Branca's "Hallucination City" Symphony #13.


title: Mike Watt

text: In October 2006, Watt joined the rest of The Stooges at recording engineer Steve Albini's Electrical Audio Studio in Chicago, Illinois to record "The Weirdness", the first Stooges studio album since 1973's "Raw Power". The album was released on March 6, 2007, and much of Watt's 2007 was devoted to Stooges duties, including the band's first full-length U.S. tour since the band's reformation.


title: Mike Watt

text: Watt also worked on two other projects during this time period: Funanori, a musical collaboration with Kaori Tsuchida, guitarist of The Go! Team, on shamisen and other instruments, and Pelicanman (named after the closing track on "The Secondman's Middle Stand") with Petra Haden. The first three songs recorded by Watt and Tsuchida as Funanori were released on a split EP with Tokyo band LITE in the summer of 2007 by Transduction Records. Watt also contributed a cover of Blue Öyster Cult's "Burning For You", recorded with Haden, Nels Cline, Money Mark Nishita, and Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith, to the all-star compilation album "Guilt by Association", released in August by the independent label Engine Room Recordings.


title: Mike Watt

text: On June 9, 2007, Watt was the live narrator for the silent movie "Brand Upon the Brain!" at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood, California.


title: Mike Watt

text: Big Walnuts Yonder is an American supergroup formed in 2008 consisting of bassist/vocalist Watt, guitarist Nels Cline from Wilco, drummer Greg Saunier from Deerhoof, and guitarist/vocalist Nick Reinhart from Tera Melos. They released their debut album in March 2017 though Sargent House.


title: Mike Watt

text: Watt reunited with the final Black Gang lineup of Nels Cline and Bob Lee to record a new album, tentatively titled "My Shibun No Hi", in 2008. No release date has yet been set for the album.


title: Mike Watt

text: Continuing his exploration of both improvised music and the Japanese independent music scene, Watt, along with Nels Cline and producer Kramer, formed Brother's Sister's Daughter with mi-gu members Shimizu "Shimmy" Hirotaka and Yuko Araki to do a two-week tour of the country in late 2008 and record an album afterward. The album was mixed down by Hirotake but has not lined up a label or release date yet. Since then, two more albums by the band have been recorded but have yet


title: Mike Watt

text: Watt and Cline teamed up in New York to form Floored by Four with ex-Cibo Matto keyboardist Yuka Honda and Lounge Lizards drummer Dougie Boune. The group debuted at Central Park Summerstage on August 1, and recorded their first self-titled album right afterward. The album was released in late September 2010 on Sean Lennon's Chimera Music label. Honda would later rejoin Watt and Cline for a second Brother's Sister's Daughter tour and album session in Japan


title: Mike Watt

text: Watt is interviewed in the 2009 documentary film Live House, about the underground music scene in Japan.


title: Mike Watt

text: Watt is using his clenchedwrench label to put out some other long-awaited recording projects from the stockpile he has accumulated over the past few years, starting with the fourth Dos album ("Dos y Dos", released July 16, 2011), followed by the Spielgusher project with Richard Meltzer and mi-gu's Shimizu "Shimmy" Hirotaka and Yuko Araki ("Spielgusher", released January 17, 2012) and two Il Sogno del Marinaio albums. Watt chose to start clenchedwrench after returning from his Japanese "Hyphenated-man" tour because "I've got so many proj[ect]s in the pipeline... and I want no hiccups with getting them out, so up goes my own freak flag flying."


title: Mike Watt

text: Firehose's reunion was formally announced as part of the lineup of the 2012 Coachella Festival. The band underwent a short tour in April centered around both Coachella dates.


title: Mike Watt

text: In late November 2009, Watt traveled to Italy to tour and record at the invitation of Italian guitarist Stefano Pilia. The project band, Il Sogno Del Marinaio,(the name is Italian for "The Sailor's Dream") did a short six-date tour, after which recording for an album (later entitled "La Busta Gialla") took place.


title: Mike Watt

text: The band is an experimental music trio consisting of Watt on vocals and bass guitar, Stefano Pilla on guitar and vocals, and Andrea Belfi on drums and vocals. The band has released two studio albums on clenchedwrench: "La busta gialla" (2013) and "Canto Secondo" (2014).


title: Mike Watt

text: Watt recorded his first post-Columbia solo album, "Hyphenated-man", in two sessions 13 months apart, with The Missingmen at Studio G, the New York studio of former Pere Ubu bassist Tony Maimone. "Hypnenated-man" consists of 30 short songs inspired by the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch. The first session for the album took place during a planned break in Watt's Spring 2009 tour, during which, in a deliberate move, only the drum and guitar tracks were completed. Watt overdubbed his vocal and bass tracks with Maimone in June 2010. The album was released in Japan by Parabolic Records on October 6, 2010, and Watt undertook his first tour of the country as a solo artist in support of it (before his work with Brother's Sister's Daughter, he previously toured there as a sideman with J Mascis and as one-fifth of The Stooges). A release of the album for the rest of the world took place on Watt's newly established clenchedwrench label on March 1, 2011, with an accompanying 51-date US/Canadian tour occurring between March 10 and April 30.


title: Mike Watt

text: In 2006, Watt met Sam Dook of The Go! Team at Big Day Out. The continued emailing and decided to form a band. They recorded some sessions in 2008 while Watt was touring Europe and finished the album over email. The album, entitled "Tamatebako", was released in 2014 under the band name CUZ and features guest vocals by Charles Plymell, DJ Scotch Egg, and fellow Go! Team member Kaori Tsuchida. The album title references the mysterious box of Japanese legend.


title: Mike Watt

text: In 2010, Thollem McDonas, John Dieterich, Tim Barnes, and Watt formed an experimental improvisational supergroup. Their debut album, "You Are Always On Our Minds", was released in 2012.


title: Mike Watt

text: Watt and S. Howe of the band Schooner formed an experimental music project called The Island and released "Listening to the Warning" in 2011 and "Lamia" in 2018.


title: Mike Watt

text: In 2014, Watt joined with Mark Shippy (U.S. Maple), Jim Sykes (Invisible Things), Matthew Wascovich (Scarcity Of Tanks), and Norman Westberg (Swans) to form the art rock project band Hidden Rifles. Their debut album, "Across The Neighborhoods", was released in October 2017.


title: Mike Watt

text: Along with keyboardist Matt Mottel and percussionist Danny Frankel, Watt formed the trio Afternoon Freak and released the album "The Blind Strut" in 2018. The album was recorded in one day on January 14, 2017, at BIG EGO studios.


title: Mike Watt

text: In 2018, Watt joined with Bucky Pope, John Herndon, Vince Meghrouni, and Pete Mazich to form the project band Tone Scientists. A 7-inch consisting of a Bucky Pope original entitled "Nuts" and a cover of Sun Ra's "Tiny Pyramids" was released on Record Store Day 2018 by Org Music.


title: Mike Watt

text: In 2019, Watt joined Todd Congelliere to form Jumpstarted Plowhards. Their debut album, "Round One", was recorded for release on October 4, 2019, with Recess Records. Drums are handled by a rotating roster including former Minutemen and fIREHOSE bandmate George Hurley, Hole drummer Patty Schemel, The Secondmen's Jerry Trebotic and The Missingmen's Raul Morales.


title: Mike Watt

text: Initially formed as a one-off group for Wire's DRILL festival in Los Angeles, Watt, Graham Lewis (Wire), Matthew Simms (Wire), and Bob Lee (The Black Gang) formed FITTED and decided to stay together and record.


title: Mike Watt

text: Watt played bass with guitarist Mike Baggetta and drummer Jim Keltner for Baggetta's "Wall of Flowers" album in March 2019. Watt joined Baggetta for a ten date March tour with Stephen Hodges substituting for Keltner.


title: Mike Watt

text: The resulting trio named themselves mssv and recorded a live album entitled "Live Flowers". A studio album entitled "Main Steam Stop Valve" followed in 2020.


title: Mike Watt

text: In 2021, Watt with percussionist Mike Pride and guitarist Brandon Seabrook formed Three-Layer Cake and released an album, "Stove Top", on RareNoiseRecords.


title: Mike Watt

text: Mike Watt was recruited by Flipper's Ted Falconi and Stephen DePace to play bass for a 2019 summer European tour with David Yow (The Jesus Lizard, Scratch Acid) substituting for the retired Bruce Loose and the otherwise engaged then-current Flipper bassist, Rachel Theole. The shows were billed as Flipper with You and Watt.


title: Mike Watt

text: In 2022, Flipper announced that they would tour again, with Watt returning on both bass and lead vocals. A European tour was announced, but cancelled due to COVID-19 concerns. The band then quickly booked an autumn US tour with the same lineup.


title: Mike Watt

text: In November 2006, Watt revealed to Pitchfork Media that he contributed his bass skills to six tracks for "American Idol" singer Kelly Clarkson, a studio assignment that he took at the invitation of his "old friend", producer/engineer David Kahne. In 2007, Watt's work appeared on Clarkson's "My December" album.


title: Mike Watt

text: Watt and drummer Stephen Hodges joined violinist Chris Murphy for "Blues for Bukowski" on his Murphy's album "Luminous". Hodges had previously worked with Watt on "Contemplating the Engine Room".


title: Mike Watt

text: Watt played bass on two tracks for the Black Flag tribute album "" alongside Dez Cadena and Keith Morris.


title: Mike Watt

text: In 2018, Black Moth Super Rainbow released a 7-inch for Record Store Day with Watt and Flea covering "Drippy Eye". Watt had earlier appeared on the song "Black Yogurt" on Black Moth Super Rainbow's "Drippers" EP in 2008. The same year Watt appeared on Macedonia’s Bernays Propaganda song "Ništo Nema da ne Razdeli" for the "Songs From Under the Floorboard, Vol. 1" compilation album put out by DJ Dave Cantrell. The album is a charitable compilation with proceeds going to Planned Parenthood.


title: Mike Watt

text: Watt also appeared on a split 7-inch with MB Jones playing on the song "Jail for Trees" in April 2018.


title: Mike Watt

text: In October 2018, Watt joined Abby Travis, Keith Morris, Flea, Jennifer Finch, Chip Kinman and others for a spoken word engagement at the Roxy Theatre entitled "War Stories: Tales of 70's & 80's Punk Mayhem Told By The Perpetrators Themselves".


title: Mike Watt

text: In 2019, Watt appeared with Macedonian jazz guitarist Toni Kitanovski on the track "Nisto nema da ne' razdeli" for Bernays Propaganda's 2019 release, "Vtora mladost, treta svetska vojna" ("2nd Youth, 3rd World War") The track was also donated to "Songs From Under the Floorboard, Vol. 1", proceeds of which go to Planned Parenthood.


title: Mike Watt

text: Watt has said he generally charges no fee to play on somebody's album saying "All payment is not in the coin...Anytime you play, you're investing in the next time you play."


title: Mike Watt

text: In 2003, Watt's first book, "Spiels Of A Minuteman", was released by the Quebec book publisher . The book, printed in both English and French, contains all of Watt's song lyrics from the Minutemen era as well as the tour journal he wrote during the Minutemen's only European tour with Black Flag, essays by former SST co-owner Joe Carducci, Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore, and Blue Öyster Cult lyricist and longtime Watt hero Richard Meltzer, and illustrations by Raymond Pettibon that had been used in all of the Minutemen's album artwork.


title: Mike Watt

text: Watt published his second book in 2012. Entitled "Mike Watt: On and Off Bass", the book is a photo memoir featuring photos taken by Watt coupled with excerpts from Watt's Stooges tour diaries mixed with free verse poems.


title: Mike Watt

text: In 2016, Watt contributed a chapter to John Doe's memoir "Under The Big Black Sun: A Personal History of L.A. Punk".


title: Mike Watt

text: Watt has long been a fan of James Joyce having first discovered "Ulysses" while playing with Minutemen on a European tour with Black Flag. He credits reading Joyce with helping him process the loss of D. Boon and he used it as inspiration when writing "Contemplating the Engine Room".


title: Mike Watt

text: Watt has said that Joyce's stream-of-consciousness style directly influenced "Double Nickels on the Dime" with songs like "June 16th", which is the date of Bloomsday. Watt attended the 2004 Bloomsday celebration in Dublin and claimed that it was the first time he went to a town without having to perform a gig. Watt attended Bloomsday again in 2008 while touring with The Stooges.


title: Mike Watt

text: In 2008, Watt was invited to contribute music to an adaptation of Joyce's "Chamber Music" released by Fire Records


title: Mike Watt

text: In 2017, Watt participated in an international project setting Joyce's "Finnegans Wake" to music entitled "Waywords and Meansigns" It was released on May 4, 2017, to coincide with the 76th anniversary of the book's first publication.


title: Mike Watt

text: When he is not on tour, Watt hosts a regular internet radio show, "The Watt from Pedro Show", a continuation of a program Watt had first done on a low-power FM station in the late 1990s. The program debuted on May 19, 2001, and became so popular with Watt's fans that the website's host, Sightworks, temporarily forced the show offline on weekdays until a sponsor or other solution could be found. On January 10, 2006, "The Watt from Pedro Show" became available as a podcast.


title: Mike Watt

text: Watt's first bass was a Kay he purchased for $100. He played a Fender Precision Bass formerly owned by Fear bassist Derf Scratch on "What Makes A Man Start Fires?"


title: Mike Watt

text: For most of his fIREHOSE tenure, Watt played a 1956 Fender Precision Bass. From 1995 until 1999, Watt predominately played a non-reverse Gibson Thunderbird which he altered with a Bartolini pre-amp and Grover tuning machines.


title: Mike Watt

text: Following his 2000 illness, Watt switched to short-scale basses for live work. Watt played a 1963 Gibson EB-3 until it was stolen while on tour with The Stooges. After the theft, Watt was gifted with a 1969 Gibson EB-3 and a Gibson EB-0.


title: Mike Watt

text: More recently, Watt plays a signature "Wattplower" bass he designed with Reverend Musical Instruments. In early 2020, it was announced that a "Mark II" iteration of the bass would be released.


title: Bill Hagerty

text: William Francis Hagerty IV (born August 14, 1959) is an American politician, businessman, and former diplomat serving as the junior United States senator from Tennessee since 2021. A member of the Republican Party, he served as the 30th U.S. ambassador to Japan from 2017 to 2019.


title: Bill Hagerty

text: Hagerty worked as an economic advisor and White House fellow under President George H. W. Bush. He then began a career in private equity. Hagerty is the co-founder of Hagerty Peterson & Company, a private equity investment firm; he is a former managing director of the firm. From 2011 to 2014, Hagerty served as commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development. He led a successful effort to bring a Major League Soccer franchise to Nashville. President Donald Trump nominated Hagerty to serve as U.S. ambassador to Japan on March 27, 2017; he was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on July 13, 2017, in an 86–12 vote. Hagerty was sworn in as the 30th United States ambassador to Japan on July 27, 2017; he resigned in July 2019 to run for the U.S. Senate.


title: Bill Hagerty

text: Hagerty ran in the 2020 election for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Lamar Alexander. He won the Republican primary and defeated Democratic nominee Marquita Bradshaw in the general election.


title: Bill Hagerty

text: Hagerty is a native of Gallatin, in Sumner County, Tennessee. He became an Eagle Scout, and was awarded the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award in 2017. He is a 1977 graduate of Madisonville North Hopkins High School in Kentucky. He earned a Bachelor of Arts in economics and business administration in 1981 from Vanderbilt University and a Juris Doctor from Vanderbilt Law School in 1984.


title: Bill Hagerty

text: Hagerty began his career at Boston Consulting Group, culminating in a three-year assignment to Tokyo. He was an economic advisor and White House Fellow in the administration of President George H. W. Bush and then began a career in private equity, initially at Trident Capital in Silicon Valley. Hagerty is the co-founder of Hagerty Peterson & Company, a private equity investment firm; he is a former managing director of the firm. He served as a national finance chair for Mitt Romney's 2008 presidential campaign.


title: Bill Hagerty

text: From 2011 to 2014, Hagerty served as commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development in the cabinet of Governor Bill Haslam, where he played a role in investments by Bridgestone, Calsonic Kansei (now Magneti Marelli), and Nissan in Tennessee.


title: Bill Hagerty

text: Hagerty has served on the board of CyMed, NEW Customer Services, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Ryman Hospitality, Pinnacle Financial Partners, and R.J. O'Brien.


title: Bill Hagerty

text: Before his confirmation as U.S. Ambassador to Japan, Hagerty founded and led the Nashville MLS Steering Committee, a coalition seeking to bring a Major League Soccer franchise to Nashville, Tennessee. The effort was successful, with Nashville being officially selected and named the first of two new MLS expansion markets on December 20, 2017. Nashville SC debuted in the 2020 MLS season.


title: Bill Hagerty

text: During the early stages of the 2016 presidential election, Hagerty was nominated to serve on the ballot as a delegate for Jeb Bush. Bush dropped out of the race before the Tennessee primary on March 1, 2016. After the Tennessee primary, Hagerty served as Trump Victory Chair for Tennessee. After Trump became the Republican nominee, he was selected in August 2016 as director of appointments for Trump's presidential transition team.


title: Bill Hagerty

text: Trump nominated Hagerty to be the United States Ambassador to Japan on March 27, 2017. He was confirmed by the United States Senate on July 13, 2017, in an 86–12 vote. He was sworn in as the 30th U.S. Ambassador on July 27, 2017.


title: Bill Hagerty

text: Before his confirmation, Hagerty was reportedly also under consideration for United States Trade Representative, based on his prior international trade and U.S. foreign investment experience. The job eventually went to Robert Lighthizer, an attorney and former Reagan Administration official.


title: Bill Hagerty

text: On July 16, 2019, Hagerty announced that he would resign as Ambassador to Japan to run for the Senate.


title: Bill Hagerty

text: In December 2018, U.S. Senator Lamar Alexander announced that he would not run for reelection in 2020. When asked about possible successors, Alexander named Hagerty and former governor Bill Haslam as the "most obvious" candidates. On July 11, 2019, Haslam announced that he would not run for the Senate. The next day, Trump tweeted that Hagerty would resign as ambassador to Japan to run for the open Senate seat. In the same tweet, Trump endorsed Hagerty for Senate. Hagerty was mentioned as a potential U.S. secretary of state during the same period.


title: Bill Hagerty

text: Hagerty officially launched his Senate campaign in September 2019. By the end of the month, he had raised $1.9 million for his campaign. By April 6, Hagerty had raised more than $7 million, with $1.2 million raised in the first quarter of 2020. Speakers at Hagerty campaign fundraisers included Donald Trump Jr., Kimberly Guilfoyle, and Nikki Haley.


title: Bill Hagerty

text: Beginning in late May 2020, news outlets began circulating an article, originally published by Roger Sollenberger in "Salon", discussing allegations of campaign finance misconduct by Hagerty. The article focused largely on a loan given to the Hagerty Campaign by Pinnacle Financial Partners almost immediately following the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act.


title: Bill Hagerty

text: On August 6, 2020, Hagerty won the Republican primary. He defeated Democratic nominee Marquita Bradshaw in the November general election, 1,840,926 votes to 1,040,691. Hagerty took office on January 3, 2021.


title: Bill Hagerty

text: Hagerty initially planned to object to certifying the 2021 United States Electoral College vote count over unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud. But after Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol, he changed his mind and voted to certify the count. On May 28, 2021, Hagerty voted against creating an independent commission to investigate the Capitol attack.


title: Bill Hagerty

text: In August 2021, Hagerty used a procedural maneuver to grind the final vote on the $1 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act to a halt, citing the expense and the upcoming $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill. His actions drew the ire of both Democratic and Republican senators, with Democrats accusing Hagerty of doing Trump's bidding and Republicans such as Mitt Romney and Kevin Cramer showing frustration.


title: Bill Hagerty

text: Hagerty is a self-described conservative. His views have been characterized as populist and in line with Trump's political views.


title: Bill Hagerty

text: During his 2020 Senate campaign, Hagerty resigned from the board of futures brokerage R.J. O'Brien & Associates after an opponent claimed the firm was donating money to the Black Lives Matter Foundation, an organization of which Hagerty is critical. He was also called "entitled" for acquiring a $2.5 million loan to his campaign from Pinnacle Bank (where he had formerly been a director) at a time when small businesses were having difficulty getting federal stimulus loans during the COVID-19 pandemic.


title: Bill Hagerty

text: Hagerty supports the death penalty for people convicted of engaging in human trafficking acts. He believes that Sharia Law is a national security threat to the U.S. and that the U.S. should continue to support Israel. Hagerty supports reducing taxes and supports enacting a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution of the United States. He opposes raising the federal minimum wage. Hagerty opposes the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, and believes that the federal government should reduce its involvement in health care. He supports efforts to prevent the closure of rural hospitals. Hagerty supports increased investment and development of fossil fuels, and supports repealing renewable energy and energy efficiency standards. He also supports American energy independence.


title: Bill Hagerty

text: Hagerty is married to Chrissy Hagerty, and has four children. He identifies as a conservative Christian.


title: Turkistan Islamic Party

text: The Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP) or the Turkistan Islamic Movement (TIM), formerly known as the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) and other names, is an Uyghur Islamic extremist organization founded in Western China. Its stated goals are to establish an independent state called East Turkestan replacing Xinjiang. The UN Security Council Al-Qaeda Sanctions Committee has listed ETIM as a terrorist organization since 2002. The United States removed it from its list of Terrorist Organizations in 2020, claiming it ceased to exist.


title: Turkistan Islamic Party

text: Influenced by the success of the Afghan mujahideen against the Soviets in the Soviet–Afghan War, the TIP became prominent in 1990 during the Baren Township riot. The conflict took the form of a "jihad" which envisioned a similar result to the earlier creation of the First East Turkestan Republic (1933–1934). Their slogans contained anti-Communist rhetoric and calls for uniting Turks, indicating a movement akin to Islamic pan-Turkism historically congruent with southern Xinjiang rather than pure, radical Salafi jihadism or religious extremism. The revolt lasted several days and was put down by the Chinese government, which deployed significant forces to suppress the insurrection. The Chinese government viewed them as a jihadist movement akin to the mujahideen in Afghanistan across the border which gave birth to more radical movements such as the Party of Allah and the Islamic Movement of East Turkistan.


title: Turkistan Islamic Party

text: Abdul Hameed, Abdul Azeez Makhdoom and Abdul Hakeem Makhdoom launched the "Hizbul Islam Li-Turkestan" (Islamic Party of Turkistan or Turkistan Islamic Movement) in 1940. They were killed, imprisoned or driven underground by the Chinese state by the late 1950s. After being set free from prison in 1979, Abdul Hakeem Makhdoom instructed Muhammad Amin Jan and other Uyghurs in his version of Islam.


title: Turkistan Islamic Party

text: In 1989, Zeydin Yusup created the East Turkistan Islamic Party (ETIP), which reportedly developed a network of mosques in Xinjiang. It gained prominence during the Baren Township conflict, which led to Yusup's death. The group was briefly led by Abudu Rehmen and Muhammed Tuhit but it collapsed again.


title: Turkistan Islamic Party

text: The group in its present incarnation was organised in Pakistan by Hasan Mahsum and Abudukadir Yapuquan in September 1997. In 1998, Mahsum moved ETIM's headquarters to Kabul, taking shelter under Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. The group's infrastructure was crippled after the United States invaded Afghanistan and bombed Al Qaeda bases in the mountainous regions along the border with Pakistan. The leader, Hasan Mahsum, was killed by a Pakistani raid on a suspected Al-Qaeda camp in South Waziristan in 2003, leading to the group's collapse.


title: Turkistan Islamic Party

text: However, ETIM resurged after the Iraq War inflamed mujaheddin sentiment. The group was mentioned again in 2007, when China announced it raided its militants in Akto County. China alleged that ETIM received material support from the Taliban and had links to the Pakistani Taliban (Tehreek i Taliban Pakistan), prompting China to urge Pakistan to take action against the militants in 2009.


title: Turkistan Islamic Party

text: The new organization called itself the Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP) to reflect its new domain and abandoned usage of the name ETIP, although China still calls it by the name ETIM. The Turkistan Islamic Party was originally subordinated to the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) but then split off and declared its name as TIP and started making itself known by promoting itself with its "Islamic Turkistan" magazine and Voice of Islam media in Chinese, Arabic, Russian, and Turkish in order to reach out to global jihadists. Control over the Uyghur and Uzbek militants was transferred to the Pakistani Taliban from the Afghan Taliban after 2001, so violence against the militant's countries of origins can no longer restrained by the Afghan Taliban since the Pakistani Taliban does not have a stake in doing so.


title: Turkistan Islamic Party

text: In 2013, the group announced it was moving fighters to Syria, its profile in China and even Afghanistan and Pakistan has decisively waned since then, while in Syria it has risen.


title: Turkistan Islamic Party

text: The TIP are believed to have links to al-Qaeda and affiliated groups such as the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, and the Pakistani Taliban. The US has designated it as having received "training and financial assistance" from al-Qaeda.


title: Turkistan Islamic Party

text: University of Virginia associate professor Philip B. K. Potter wrote in 2013 that, despite the fact that "throughout the 1990s, Chinese authorities went to great lengths to publicly link organizations active in Xinjiang—particularly the ETIM—to al-Qaeda [...] the best information indicates that prior to 2001, the relationship included some training and funding but relatively little operational cooperation." Meanwhile, specific incidents were downplayed by Chinese authorities as isolated criminal acts. However, in 1998 the group's headquarters were moved to Kabul, in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, while "China’s ongoing security crackdown in Xinjiang has forced the most militant Uyghur separatists into volatile neighboring countries, such as Pakistan," Potter writes, "where they are forging strategic alliances with, and even leading, jihadist factions affiliated with al-Qaeda and the Taliban."


title: Turkistan Islamic Party

text: However, according to the US Treasury, TIP member Abdul Haq al Turkistani joined al-Qaeda's Majlis-ash-Shura (executive leadership council) in 2005 and TIP member Abdul Shakoor Turkistani was appointed military commander of its forces in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan. Abdul Haq was considered sufficiently influential by the al-Qaeda leadership that he served as a mediator between rival Taliban factions and played a role in military planning.


title: Turkistan Islamic Party

text: In the mid-2010s, TIP's relationship to al-Qaeda was still contested but they became more closely aligned and TIP leader head Abdul Haq confirmed loyalty to al-Qaeda in May 2016. In 2014, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, the al-Qaeda aligned al-Fajr Media Center began to distribute TIP promotional material, placing it in the "jihadist mainstream". The East Turkestan independence movement was endorsed in the serial "Islamic Spring"'s 9th release by Ayman Al-Zawahiri in 2016. Zawahiri confirmed that the Afghanistan war after 9/11 included the participation of Uighurs and that the jihadists like Zarwaqi, Bin Ladin and the Uighur Hasan Mahsum were provided with refuge together in Afghanistan under Taliban rule. This was before the Bishkek Chinese Embassy Bombing. The Turkistan Islamic Party slammed and attacked Assad, Russia, NATO, the United States and other western countries in its propaganda outlets such as the "Islamic Turkestan" magazine and its Telegram channel.


title: Turkistan Islamic Party

text: In February 2018, airstrikes were conducted by American forces in Afghanistan’s Badakhshan province against training camps belonging to the Taliban and the Turkistan Islamic Party. Speaking with Pentagon reporters, U.S. Air Force Maj. Gen. James B. Hecker, commander of NATO Air Command Afghanistan was quoted "The destruction of these training facilities prevents terrorists from planning any acts near the border with China and Tajikistan. The strikes also destroyed stolen Afghan National Army vehicles in the process of being converted to vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices. ETIM enjoys support from the Taliban in the mountains of Badakhshan, so hitting these Taliban training facilities and squeezing the Taliban's support networks degrades ETIM capabilities."


title: Turkistan Islamic Party

text: After the 2021 Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, TIP was removed from Badakhshan, as the new Afghan government seeks aid from China.


title: Turkistan Islamic Party

text: TIP (ETIM) sent the "Turkistan Brigade" (Katibat Turkistani), also known as the Turkistan Islamic Party in Syria to take part in the Syrian Civil War as part of a network of al-Qaeda linked groups alongside al-Nusra, most notably in the 2015 Jisr al-Shughur offensive where they were part of the Army of Conquest coalition. They have been described as well organized, experienced and as having an important role in offensives against President Bashar al-Assad's forces in Syria's northern regions.


title: Turkistan Islamic Party

text: The NEFA Foundation, an American terrorist analyst foundation, translated and released a jihad article from ETIM, whose membership it said consisted primarily of "Uyghur Muslims from Western China." The TIP's primary goal is the independence of East Turkestan. ETIM continues this theme of contrasting "Muslims" and "Chinese", in a six-minute video in 2008, where "Commander Seyfullah" warns Muslims not to bring their children to the 2008 Summer Olympics, and also saying "do not stay on the same bus, on the same train, on the same plane, in the same buildings, or any place the Chinese are".


title: Turkistan Islamic Party

text: TIP is led by Abdul Haq al-Turkistani, who's the group's Emir and leader of the Shura Council. The Council also includes a Deputy Emir, and the heads of at least three groups: Religious Education Division, Military Affairs Division and Information Center. There have also been reports of a Intelligence Division and a Logistics Division.


title: Turkistan Islamic Party

text: In 2008, TIP's "Ṣawt al-Islām" (Voice of Islam) media arm was created and began releasing video messages. The full name of their media center is "Turkistan Islamic Party Voice of Islam Media Center" (Uyghur: تۈركىستان ئىسلام پارتىيىسى ئىسلام ئاۋازى تەشۋىقات مەركىزى; Türkistan Islam Partiyisi Islam Awazi Teshwiqat Merkizi).


title: Turkistan Islamic Party

text: In October 2008, the Chinese Ministry of Public Security released a list of eight terrorists linked to ETIM, including some of the leadership, with detailed charges. They are:


title: Turkistan Islamic Party

text: The United States captured 22 Uyghur militants from combat zones in Afghanistan in 2006 on information that they were linked to Al-Qaeda. They were imprisoned without trial for five to seven years, where they testified that they were trained by ETIM leader Abdul Haq, at an ETIM training camp. After being found No Longer Enemy Combatant, i.e. never having been enemy combatants, a panel of judges ordered them released into the United States. Despite the alarm of politicians that the release of embittered former Guantanamo detainees into the United States was unsafe and illegal, the United States did not want to release them back to China as they were wanted on charges that included arson and illegal manufacture of explosives, though "ABC News" wrote that "It is believed that if the United States returned the men to China, they could be tortured."


title: Turkistan Islamic Party

text: Since the September 11 attacks, the group has been designated as a terrorist organization by China, the European Union, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Pakistan, Russia, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, and the United Nations.


title: Turkistan Islamic Party

text: The organization was also formerly classified as a terrorist organization under Title 8 of the United States Code Section 1189 by the United States since 2002. The United States Department of the Treasury has blocked the property and prohibited transactions with the organization according to Executive Order 13224 and the State Department has blocked its members for immigration purposes. The U.S. revoked that classification in October 2020 on the basis that "there has been no credible evidence that ETIM continues to exist." China accused the U.S. of double standards as it dropped ETIM from its terrorism list, while the U.S. contends that the label has been broadly misused to oppress Muslims including ethnic Uyghurs in Xinjiang.