title: Four Beauties

text: Yang Guifei lived in the 8th century, and was the beloved consort of Emperor Xuanzong of Tang. She was said to have a face that puts all flowers to shame. Emperor Xuanzong doted on her so much that she was able to persuade him to make her cousin, Yang Guozhong, leading chancellor. During the An Lushan Rebellion, as Emperor Xuanzong and his cortege were fleeing from the capital Chang'an to Chengdu, the emperor's guards demanded that he put Yang Guifei to death because they blamed the rebellion on her cousin Yang Guozhong and the rest of her family. The emperor capitulated and reluctantly ordered his attendant Gao Lishi to strangle Yang to death. Yang Guifei became a tragic figure in later depictions. Particularly influential was the Tang poet Bai Juyi's long poem, "Chang hen ge" ("").


title: Four Beauties

text: These separate idioms are sometimes merged to describe especially beautiful women or simply to refer to the Four Beauties' legendary good looks. The merged idiom is (sinks fish and entices birds to fall, eclipses the moon and shames flowers); the two parts can also be used separately.


title: Nisse (folklore)

text: A (, ), tomte (), , or () is a mythological creature from Nordic folklore today typically associated with the winter solstice and the Christmas season. They are generally described as being short, having a long white beard, and wearing a conical or knit cap in gray, red or some other bright colour. They often have an appearance somewhat similar to that of a garden gnome.


title: Nisse (folklore)

text: The nisse is one of the most familiar creatures of Scandinavian folklore, and he has appeared in many works of Scandinavian literature. With the romanticisation and collection of folklore during the 19th century, the nisse gained popularity.


title: Nisse (folklore)

text: The word "nisse" is a pan-Scandinavian term. Its current use in Norway into the 19th century is evidenced in Asbjørnsen's collection. The Norwegian is also equated to "nisse" or "tomte".


title: Nisse (folklore)

text: While the term "nisse" in the native Norwegian is retained in Pat Shaw Iversen's English translation (1960), appended with the parenthetical remark that it is a household spirit, H. L. Braekstad (1881) chose to substitute "nisse" with "brownie". Brynildsen's dictionary (1927) glossed "nisse" as 'goblin' or 'hobgoblin'.


title: Nisse (folklore)

text: In the English editions of the Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales the Danish word has been translated as 'goblin', for example, in the tale "The Goblin at the Grocer's".


title: Nisse (folklore)

text: Forms such as have been seen as dialect. Aasen noted the variant form to be prevalent in the Nordland and Trondheim areas of Norway, and the tale "Tuftefolket på Sandflesa" published by Asbjørnsen is localized in Træna in Nordland. Another synonym is tunkall ("yard fellow") also found in the north and west.


title: Nisse (folklore)

text: Thus ostensibly prevails in eastern Norway (and adjoining Sweden), although there are caveats attached to such over-generalizations by linguist . It might also be conceded that is more a Swedish term than Norwegian. In Scania, Halland and Blekinge ist the Nisse also known as goanisse (Godnisse, Goenisse≈the good Nisse).


title: Nisse (folklore)

text: Reidar Thoralf Christiansen remarked that the "belief in the is confined to the south and east" of Norway, and theorized the "nisse" was introduced to Norway (from Denmark) in the 17th century, but there is already mention of "Nisse pugen" in a Norwegian legal tract c. 1600 or earlier, and (1938) believed the introduction to be as early as 13 to 14c. The "Norsk Allkunnebok" encyclopedia was of the view that "nisse" was introduced from Denmark relatively late, and that native names found in Norway such as "tomte", , tufte, tuftekall, , etc., date much older.


title: Nisse (folklore)

text: The term "nisse" may be derived from Old Norse , meaning "dear little relative". Another explanation is that it is a corruption of Nils, the Scandinavian form of Nicholas. A conjecture has also been advanced that "nisse" might be related to the "nixie", but this is a water-sprite and the proper cognate is the "nøkk", not the "nisse".


title: Nisse (folklore)

text: The ("homestead man"), ("farm guardian"), and ("yard fellow") bear names that associated them with the farmstead. The Finnish is also derived from the term for a place of residence and area of influence: the house lot, (Finnish).


title: Nisse (folklore)

text: Norwegian is a synonym for "nisse", or has become conflated ("mixed up") with it. Likewise is a synonym.


title: Nisse (folklore)

text: According to Oddrun Grønvik, the "nisse" has a distinct connotation and is not synonymous with the or (from the Old Norse 'mound'), although the latter has become indistinguishable with ', as evident from the form '.


title: Nisse (folklore)

text: According to tradition, the nisse lives in the houses and barns of the farmstead, and secretly acts as their guardian. If treated well, they protect the family and animals from evil and misfortune, and may also aid the chores and farm work. However, they are known to be short tempered, especially when offended. Once insulted, they will usually play tricks, steal items and even maim or kill livestock.


title: Nisse (folklore)

text: The nisse/tomte was often imagined as a small, elderly man (size varies from a few inches to about half the height of an adult man), often with a full beard; dressed in the traditional farmer garb, consisting of a pull-over woolen tunic belted at the waist and knee breeches with stockings. This was still the common male dress in rural Scandinavia in the 17th century, giving an indication of when the idea of the nisse spread. However, there are also folktales where he is believed to be a shapeshifter able to take a shape far larger than an adult man, and other tales where the nisse is believed to have a single, Cyclopean eye. In modern Denmark, nisser are often seen as beardless, wearing grey and red woolens with a red cap. Since nisser are thought to be skilled in illusions and sometimes able to make themselves invisible, one was unlikely to get more than brief glimpses of him no matter what he looked like. Norwegian folklore states that he has four fingers, and sometimes with pointed ears and eyes reflecting light in the dark, like those of a cat.


title: Nisse (folklore)

text: The "tomte"s height is anywhere from to no taller than according to one Swedish-American source, whereas the "tomte" (pl. "tomtarna") were just 1 "aln" tall (an "aln" or Swedish ell being just shy of 60 cm or 2 ft), according to one local Swedish tradition.


title: Nisse (folklore)

text: Despite his small size, nisse possess immense strength. They are easily offended by carelessness, lack of proper respect, and lazy farmers. As the protector of the farm and caretaker of livestock, their retributions for bad practices range from small pranks like a hard strike to the ear to more severe punishment like killing of livestock or ruining of the farm's fortune. Observance of traditions is thought to be important to the nisse, as they do not like changes in the way things are done at their farms. They are also easily offended by rudeness; farm workers swearing, urinating in the barns, or not treating the creatures well can frequently lead to a sound thrashing by the tomte/nisse. If anyone spills something on the floor in the nisse‘s house, it is considered proper to shout a warning to the tomte below.


title: Nisse (folklore)

text: One is also expected to please nisse with gifts (see ) – a traditional gift is a bowl of porridge on Christmas Eve. If the tomte is not given his gift, he might leave the farm or house or engage in mischief such as tying the cows' tails together in the barn, turning objects upside-down, and breaking things (like a troll). The nisse likes his porridge with a pat of butter on the top. In an often retold story, a farmer put the butter "underneath" the porridge. When the nisse of his farmstead found that the butter was missing, he was filled with rage and killed the cow resting in the barn. But, as he thus became hungry, he went back to his porridge (ricepudding) and ate it, and so found the butter at the bottom of the bowl. Full of grief, he then hurried to search the lands to find another farmer with an identical cow, and replaced the former with the latter. In another tale a Norwegian maid decided to eat the porridge herself, and ended up severely beaten by the nisse. The being swore: "Have you eaten the porridge for the nisse, you have to dance with him!". The farmer found her nearly lifeless the morning after.


title: Nisse (folklore)

text: The nisse is connected to farm animals in general, but his most treasured animal is the horse. Belief has it that one could see which horse was the tomte's favourite as it will be especially healthy and well taken care of. Sometimes the tomte will even braid its hair and tail. Undoing these braids without permission can mean misfortune or angering the tomte. Some stories tell how the nisse could drive people mad or bite them. The bite from a nisse is poisonous, and otherworldly healing is usually required. As the story goes, a girl who was bitten withered and died before help arrived.


title: Nisse (folklore)

text: An angry tomte is featured in the popular children's book by Swedish author , ("The Wonderful Adventures of Nils"). The tomte turns the naughty boy Nils into a pixie in the beginning of the book, and Nils then travels across Sweden on the back of a goose.


title: Nisse (folklore)

text: The nisse or tomte was in ancient times believed to be the "soul" of the first inhabitor of the farm; he who cleared the (house lot). He had his dwellings in the burial mounds on the farm, hence the now somewhat archaic Swedish names and , the Swedish and Norwegian and ("tomte farmer"), Danish ("house nisse"), the Norwegian ("mound man"), and the Finnish (lit. "house lot man").


title: Nisse (folklore)

text: The nisse was not always a popular figure, particularly during and after the Christianization of Scandinavia. Like most creatures of folklore he would be seen as heathen (pre-Christian) and be demonized and connected to the Devil. Farmers believing in the house tomte could be seen as worshipping false gods or demons; in a famous 14th century decree Saint Birgitta warns against the worship of , "tomte gods" (, book VI, ch. 78). Folklore added other negative beliefs about the tomte, such as that having a tomte on the farm meant you put the fate of your soul at risk, or that you had to perform various non-Christian rites to lure a tomte to your farm.


title: Nisse (folklore)

text: The belief in a nisse's tendency to bring riches to the farm by his unseen work could also be dragged into the conflicts between neighbours. If one farmer was doing far better for himself than the others, someone might say that it was because he had a nisse on the farm, doing "ungodly" work and stealing from the neighbours. These rumours could be very damaging for the farmer who found himself accused, much like accusations of witchcraft during the Inquisitions.


title: Nisse (folklore)

text: The nisse shares many aspects with other Scandinavian wights such as the Swedish (from the Old Norse ), Danish , Norwegian or . These beings are social, however, whereas the nisse is always solitary (though he is now often pictured with other nisser). Synonyms of includes ("(farm)yard-dweller"), ("yard-warden", see ) in all Scandinavian languages, and ("good farmer"), ("yard-spirit") in Swedish and Norwegian and ("barn gnome") in Norwegian. The tomte could also take a ship for his home, and was then known as a or . In Finland, the sauna has a "saunatonttu". Also related is the Nis Puk, which is widespread in the area of Southern Jutland/Schleswig, in the Danish-German border area.


title: Nisse (folklore)

text: In other European folklore, there are many beings similar to the nisse, such as the Scots and English "brownie", Northumbrian English "hob", West Country "pixie", the German , the Dutch or the Slavic . Usage in folklore in expressions such as Nisse god dräng ("Nisse good lad") is suggestive of Robin Goodfellow.


title: Nisse (folklore)

text: The tradition of nisse/tomte is also associated with Christmas (, , , or .) The tomte is accompanied by another mythological creature: the Yule goat (). The pair appear on Christmas Eve, knocking on the doors of people's homes, handing out presents.


title: Nisse (folklore)

text: The nisse will deliver gifts at the door, in accordance with the modern-day tradition of the visiting Santa Claus, enters homes to hand out presents. The tomte/nisse is also commonly seen with a pig, another popular Christmas symbol in Scandinavia, probably related to fertility and their role as guardians of the farmstead. It is customary to leave behind a bowl of porridge with butter for the tomte/nisse, in gratitude for the services rendered.


title: Nisse (folklore)

text: In the 1840s the farm's became the bearer of Christmas presents in Denmark, and was then called (Yule Nisse). In 1881, the Swedish magazine published Viktor Rydberg's poem "Tomten", where the tomte is alone awake in the cold Christmas night, pondering the mysteries of life and death. This poem featured the first painting by Jenny Nyström of this traditional Swedish mythical character which she turned into the white-bearded, red-capped friendly figure associated with Christmas ever since. Shortly afterwards, and obviously influenced by the emerging Father Christmas traditions as well as the new Danish tradition, a variant of the nisse/tomte, called the in Sweden and in Norway, started bringing the Christmas presents in Sweden and Norway, instead of the traditional (Yule Goat).


title: Nisse (folklore)

text: Gradually, commercialism has made him look more and more like the American Santa Claus, but the Swedish , the Norwegian , the Danish and the Finnish (in Finland he is still called the "Yule Goat", although his animal features have disappeared) still has features and traditions that are rooted in the local culture. He doesn't live on the North Pole, but perhaps in a forest nearby, or in Denmark he lives on Greenland, and in Finland he lives in Lapland; he doesn't come down the chimney at night, but through the front door, delivering the presents directly to the children, just like the Yule Goat did; he is not overweight; and even if he nowadays sometimes rides in a sleigh drawn by reindeer, instead of just walking around with his sack, his reindeer don't fly — and in Sweden, Denmark and Norway some still put out a bowl of porridge for him on Christmas Eve. He is still often pictured on Christmas cards and house and garden decorations as the little man of Jenny Nyström's imagination, often with a horse or cat, or riding on a goat or in a sled pulled by a goat, and for many people the idea of the farm tomte still lives on, if only in the imagination and literature.


title: Nisse (folklore)

text: The use of the word in Swedish is now somewhat ambiguous, but often when one speaks of (definite article) or (definite article) one is referring to the more modern version, while if one speaks of (plural) or (plural, definite article) one could also likely be referring to the more traditional . The traditional word tomte lives on in an idiom, referring to the human caretaker of a property (), as well as referring to someone in one's building who mysteriously does someone a favour, such as hanging up one's laundry. A person might also wish for a little to tidy up for them. A tomte stars in one of author Jan Brett's children's stories, "Hedgie's Surprise". When adapting the mainly English-language concept of having helpers (sometimes in a workshop), can also correspond to the Christmas elf, either replacing it completely, or simply lending its name to the elf-like depictions in the case of translations.


title: Nisse (folklore)

text: Nisser/tomte often appear in Christmas calendar TV series and other modern fiction. In some versions the tomte are portrayed as very small; in others they are human-sized. The nisse usually exist hidden from humans and are often able to use magic.


title: Nisse (folklore)

text: The appearance traditionally ascribed to a nisse or tomte resembles that of the garden gnome figurine for outdoors, which are in turn, also called in Swedish, in Danish, in Norwegian and in Finnish.


title: Cibo Matto

text: Cibo Matto (, Italian for "crazy food") was an American alternative rock band formed by Yuka Honda and Miho Hatori in New York City in 1994. Initially, the band's lyrics were primarily concerned with food, before expanding into broader subject matter following the addition of Sean Lennon, Timo Ellis, and Duma Love to the band for their second studio album.


title: Cibo Matto

text: While Honda and Hatori are Japanese expatriates, the group initially did not gain as large a following in Japan as it did in the United States. Their first album "Viva! La Woman" sold 40,000 copies in Japan, but was more successful in the U.S., with over 74,000 copies sold. Over time, the group's following in Japan grew, which resulted in their signing to Japanese record label Commmons in 2014.


title: Cibo Matto

text: After an almost decade-long hiatus, Honda and Hatori reunited as Cibo Matto in 2011, playing a series of concerts and recording new material. They released their third and final studio album "Hotel Valentine" on February 14, 2014. It peaked at number 168 on the "Billboard" 200. Cibo Matto announced their split in December 2017.


title: Cibo Matto

text: After working together in the noise rock band Leitoh Lychee, Miho Hatori and Yuka Honda formed Cibo Matto in 1994 with Honda as the instrumentalist and Hatori as the vocalist (although occasionally Honda sang and Hatori contributed instrumentally). In 1995, Cibo Matto released a self titled EP on El Diablo Records. The EP caught the attention of Warner Bros. Records, which signed Cibo Matto later in the year. Through Warner Bros., the duo released its first major album, "Viva! La Woman". Cibo Matto is an Italian phrase that translates to "Crazy Food" and many of the tracks from "Viva! La Woman", which was produced by Mitchell Froom, featured lyrics related to food, including "Know Your Chicken", "Apple", and "Birthday Cake". The album's first single, "Sugar Water", was a modest college radio and dance hit. The song was accompanied by an innovative split screen music video that was directed by Michel Gondry, where each side showed the same footage—one side going forward, and one backward, meeting mid-song. After the music videos for "Know Your Chicken" and "Sugar Water" enjoyed success on MTV, Cibo Matto made appearances on various television shows such as "Oddville", "Viva Variety", and "Buffy the Vampire Slayer". "Birthday Cake" was heavily featured in the video game "Jet Set Radio Future". In 1996, Cibo Matto contributed "Águas De Março (Waters of March)" to the AIDS benefit album "", which was produced by the Red Hot Organization.


title: Cibo Matto

text: In 1997, Cibo Matto released a new EP entitled "Super Relax", which would complete the line-up by introducing new members Sean Lennon and Timo Ellis with Duma Love joining soon thereafter. In 1998 Lennon released his debut solo album "Into the Sun", which featured Hatori ("Into the Sun", "Sean's Theme") and Ellis ("Mystery Juice", "Home", "Spaceship"). "Into the Sun" was produced and inspired by Honda (whom Lennon was dating at the time). Honda, Hatori, Ellis and Love appeared in the closing scene of the video for Lennon's single "Home". Cibo Matto went on to release its second album "Stereo Type A" in 1999. Although it was a departure from the familiar sound of "Viva! La Woman", "Stereo Type A" was well received by music critics. That year the band performed in Toronto with Luscious Jackson at The Opera House in Toronto.


title: Cibo Matto

text: Cibo Matto continued to play live and tour until disbanding in 2002. Honda said: "We felt the need to move to the next step. It was a healthy decision, though it was sad at the same time. Things just need to grow out of things sometimes." All of the members of Cibo Matto went on to release solo material. A compilation entitled "" was released in 2007.


title: Cibo Matto

text: Cibo Matto announced its reunion on March 18, 2011, to perform as part of a benefit concert for victims of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami. The concert, which took place on March 27 at Columbia University in New York City, also included Yoko Ono, John Zorn, Sonic Youth, and Mike Patton. Following the success of this show, a second was added, this time featuring the Plastic Ono Band and Patti Smith along with Cibo Matto.


title: Cibo Matto

text: The group appeared at the Hollywood Bowl on June 26, 2011, for another benefit, alongside Yellow Magic Orchestra.


title: Cibo Matto

text: On May 16, 2011, Cibo Matto announced its US reunion tour titled "Yeah, Basically Cibo Matto" with a tour Web site Wayback Machine and promotional video. During the concerts, the band reportedly spoke about a new studio album that was to be released in 2012. On July 17, 2012, the band announced it would be opening for Wilco at one of its shows. The band included Yuko Araki on drums during this time.


title: Cibo Matto

text: On June 15, 2013, the band played the Meltdown Festival in London and announced that its new album would be released in 2014. While the performance also featured Yoko Ono on "Know Your Chicken", the group also played new songs titled "MFN", "Check In", and "Tenth Floor Ghost Girl". On December 11, "Pitchfork" reported that "Hotel Valentine" would be released on February 14, 2014 (Valentine's Day), and that Cibo Matto had shared its music video for "MFN". "Hotel Valentine" peaked at number 168 on the "Billboard" 200.


title: Cibo Matto

text: In 2014, the band signed with Japanese label Commmons. This new relationship resulted in several live dates in Japan including Summer Sonic Festival 2014 and shows at Blue Note Jazz Club Nagoya and Blue Note Jazz Club Tokyo.


title: Cibo Matto

text: In September 2014, Cibo Matto released a teaser video announcing their Fall Flavor Tour and a new music video. Rioux opened for multiple US shows. Nels Cline (of Wilco) also performed with the group on tour. The music video for "Déjà Vu" was released on September 18, 2014 in collaboration with New York City-based director Jean Claude Billmaier and creative house Marabigo. "Pitchfork" identified the video as "a colorful, datamosh-y new video", and "Spin" as a "stylish bubblegum pop-meets-digital-disaster (intentional)."


title: Cibo Matto

text: Cibo Matto completed two small tours in 2015; an "Avocado Tour" of Japan and a "Banana Split Tour" across the eastern US and Canada. On December 11, 2017, Cibo Matto announced their breakup, explaining that this was a "necessary and positive change for [them]."


title: Cibo Matto

text: Although Cibo Matto was represented by Warner Bros. Records, they were also considered to be a major part of the Grand Royal Records family.


title: Cibo Matto

text: They also appear in the second season of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" episode "When She Was Bad", to play a concert in the fictional Sunnydale nightclub, the Bronze.


title: Percy Hynes White

text: Hynes White is the son of Joel Thomas Hynes, a writer, actor and director, and Sherry White, an actress and writer. Percy studied for two years at the performing arts group in his hometown of St. John's.


title: Percy Hynes White

text: Hynes 's first role was Andy Strucker, a mutant in the "X-Men"-derived Fox TV pilot "The Gifted".. In 2022 he played the role of Xavier Thorpe in the series Wednesday.


title: Niger Delta

text: The Niger Delta is the delta of the Niger River sitting directly on the Gulf of Guinea on the Atlantic Ocean in Nigeria. It is located within nine coastal southern Nigerian states, which include: all six states from the South South geopolitical zone, one state (Ondo) from South West geopolitical zone and two states (Abia and Imo) from South East geopolitical zone.


title: Niger Delta

text: The Niger Delta is a very densely populated region sometimes called the Oil Rivers because it was once a major producer of palm oil. The area was the British Oil Rivers Protectorate from 1885 until 1893, when it was expanded and became the Niger Coast Protectorate. The delta is a petroleum-rich region and has been the center of international concern over pollution that has resulted principally from major oil spills of multinational corporations of the petroleum industry.


title: Niger Delta

text: The Niger Delta, as now defined officially by the Nigerian government, extends over about and makes up 7.5% of Nigeria's land mass. Historically and cartographically, it consists of present-day Bayelsa, Delta, and Rivers States. In 2000, however, Obasanjo's regime included Abia, Akwa-Ibom, Cross River State, Edo, Imo and Ondo States in the region.


title: Niger Delta

text: The Niger Delta and the South South geopolitical zone (which contains six of the states in Niger Delta) are two different entities. The Niger Delta separates the Bight of Benin from the Bight of Bonny within the larger Gulf of Guinea.


title: Niger Delta

text: Some 31 million people of more than 40 ethnic groups including the Ukwuani people, Abua, Bini, Ohaji/Egbema, Itsekiri, Efik, Esan, Ibibio, Annang, Oron, Ijaw, Igbo, Isoko, Urhobo, Kalabari, Yoruba, Okrika, Ogoni, Ogba–Egbema–Ndoni, Epie-Atissa people and Obolo people, are among the inhabitants of the political Niger Delta, speaking about 250 different dialects. Language groups spoken in the Niger Delta include the Ijaw languages, Igboid languages, Itsekiri language, Central Delta languages, Edoid languages, and Yoruboid Languages,


title: Niger Delta

text: The area was the British Oil Rivers Protectorate from 1885 until 1893, when it was expanded and became the Niger Coast Protectorate. The core Niger Delta later became a part of the eastern region of Nigeria, which came into being in 1951 (one of the three regions, and later one of the four regions). The majority of the people were those from the colonial Calabar, Itsekiri and Ogoja divisions, the present-day Ogoja, Itsekiri, Annang, IbpeoplOron, Efik, Ijaw and Ogoni people. The National Council of Nigeria and Cameroon (NCNC) was the ruling political party of the region. The NCNC later became the National Convention of Nigerian Citizens, after western Cameroon decided to separate from Nigeria. The ruling party of eastern Nigeria did not seek to preclude the separation and even encouraged it. The then Eastern Region had the third, fourth and fifth largest indigenous ethnic groups in the country including Igbo, Efik-Ibibio and Ijaw.


title: Niger Delta

text: In 1953, the old eastern region had a major crisis when professor Eyo Ita was expelled from office by the majority Igbo tribe of the old eastern region. Ita, an Efik man from Calabar, was one of the pioneer nationalists for Nigerian independence. The minorities in the region, the Ibibio, Annang, Efik, Ijaw and Ogoja, were situated along the southeastern coast and in the delta region and demanded a state of their own, the Calabar-Ogoja-Rivers (COR) state. The struggle for the creation of the COR state continued and was a major issue concerning the status of minorities in Nigeria during debates in Europe on Nigerian independence. As a result of this crisis, Professor Eyo Ita left the NCNC to form a new political party called the National Independence Party which was one of the five Nigerian political parties represented at the conferences on Nigerian Constitution and Independence.


title: Niger Delta

text: In 1961, another major crisis occurred when the then eastern region of Nigeria allowed present-day southwestern Cameroon to separate from Nigeria (from the region of what is now Akwa Ibom and Cross River states) through a plebiscite while the leadership of the Northern Region took the necessary steps to keep northwestern Cameroon in Nigeria, in present-day Adamawa and Taraba states. The aftermath of the 1961 plebiscite has led to a dispute between Cameroon and Nigeria over the small territory of Bakassi.


title: Niger Delta

text: A new phase of the struggle saw the declaration of an Independent Niger Delta Republic by Isaac Adaka Boro during Nigerian president Ironsi's administration, just before the Nigerian Civil War. Also just before the Nigerian civil war, Southeastern State of Nigeria was created (also known as Southeastern Nigeria or Coastal Southeastern Nigeria), which had the colonial Calabar division, and colonial Ogoja division. Rivers State was also created. Southeastern State and River State became two states for the minorities of the old eastern region, and the majority Igbo of the old eastern region had a state called East Central state. Southeastern State was renamed Cross River State and was later split into Cross River State and Akwa Ibom State. Rivers State was later divided into Rivers State and Bayelsa State.


title: Niger Delta

text: The people of the Eastern region mostly the Igbo speaking language suffered heavily with the great loss of lives and properties, hunger and starvation, and sustained many deaths during 1967–1970 Nigerian Civil War, also known as the Biafran War, in which the eastern region declared an independent state named Biafra that was eventually defeated. During this period, schools were shutdown completely, and gunfire became a daily occurrence.


title: Niger Delta

text: Following the civil war, local communities increasingly demanded social and environmental justice from the federal government, with Ken Saro Wiwa and the Ogoni tribe as the lead figures for this phase of the struggle. Cohesive oil protests became most pronounced in 1990 with the publication of the Ogoni Bill of Rights. Indigenous people protested against the lack of economic development, e.g. schools, good roads, and hospitals, in the region, despite all the oil wealth created. They also complained about environmental pollution and destruction of their land and rivers by foreign oil companies. Ken Saro Wiwa and nine other oil activists from Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) were arrested and killed under Sani Abacha in 1995.


title: Niger Delta

text: When long-held concerns about loss of control over resources to the oil companies were voiced by the Ijaw people in the Kaiama Declaration in 1998, the Nigerian government sent troops to occupy the Bayelsa and Delta states. Soldiers opened fire with rifles, machine guns, and tear gas, killing at least three protesters and arresting twenty-five more. Since then, local indigenous activity against commercial oil refineries and pipelines in the region have increased in frequency and militancy. Recently foreign employees of Shell, the primary corporation operating in the region, were taken hostage by local people. Such activities have also resulted in greater governmental intervention in the area and the mobilization of the Nigerian Army and State Security Service into the region, resulting in violence and human rights abuses. In April 2006, a bomb exploded near an oil refinery in the Niger Delta region, a warning against Chinese expansion in the region. The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) stated: "We wish to warn the Chinese government and its oil companies to steer well clear of the Niger Delta. The Chinese government, by investing in stolen crude, places its citizens in our line of fire."


title: Niger Delta

text: Government and private initiatives to develop the Niger Delta region have been introduced recently. These include the Niger Delta Development Commission, a government initiative, and the Development Initiative, a community development non-governmental organization based in Port Harcourt. Uz and Uz Transnational, a company with a strong commitment to the Niger Delta, has introduced ways of developing the poor in the Niger Delta, especially in Rivers State. In September 2008, MEND released a statement proclaiming that their militants had launched an "oil war" throughout the Niger Delta against both, pipelines and oil-production facilities, and the Nigerian soldiers that protect them. Both MEND and the Nigerian Government claim to have inflicted heavy casualties on one another. In August 2009, the Nigerian government granted amnesty to the militants; many militants subsequently surrendered their weapons in exchange for a presidential pardon, rehabilitation programme, and education.


title: Niger Delta

text: Western Niger Delta consists of the western section of coastal South-South Nigeria which includes Delta, and the southernmost parts of Edo, and Ondo States. The western (or Northern) Niger Delta is a heterogeneous society with several ethnic groups including the Itsekiri, Urhobo, Isoko, Ijaw (or Izon) and Ukwuani; the Bini, Esan, Auchi, Esako, oral, igara and Afenmai in Edo State; and the Ilaje Yoruba in Ondo State. Their livelihoods are primarily based on fishing and farming. History has it that the Western Niger was controlled by chiefs of the four primary ethnic groups the Itsekiri, Isoko, Ijaw, and Urhobo with whom the British government had to sign separate "Treaties of Protection" in their formation of "Protectorates" that later became southern Nigeria.


title: Niger Delta

text: Central Niger Delta consists of the central section of coastal South-South Nigeria which includes Bayelsa, Rivers, Abia and Imo States. The Central Niger Delta region has the Ijaw (including the Nembe-Brass, Ogbia, Kalabari people, Ibani of Opobo & Bonny, Abua, Okrika, Engenni and Andoni clans), the Ogoni people (Khana, Gokana, Tai and Eleme), the Etche, Egbema, Omuma, Ogba, Ikwerre, Ndoni, Ekpeye and Ndoki in Rivers State, Abia State and Imo State, who are considered as a sub-group of the Igbo ethnic group.


title: Niger Delta

text: Eastern Niger Delta consists of Cross River State and Akwa Ibom State. It has the homogeneous Annang, Efik and Ibibio people.


title: Niger Delta

text: Nigeria has become West Africa's biggest producer of petroleum. Some per day are extracted in the Niger Delta, with an estimated 38 billion barrels of reserves. The first oil operations in the region began in the 1950s and were undertaken by multinational corporations, which provided Nigeria with necessary technological and financial resources to extract oil. Since 1975, the region has accounted for more than 75% of Nigeria's export earnings. Together oil and natural gas extraction comprise "97 per cent of Nigeria's foreign exchange revenues". Much of the natural gas extracted in oil wells in the delta is immediately burned, or flared, into the air at a rate of approximately 70 million m³per day. This is equivalent to 41% of African natural gas consumption and forms the largest single source of greenhouse gas emissions on the planet. In 2003, about 99% of excess gas was flared in the Niger Delta, although this value has fallen to 11% in 2010. (See also gas flaring volumes). The biggest gas flaring company is the Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria Ltd, a joint venture that is majority owned by the Nigerian government. In Nigeria, "...despite regulations introduced 20 years ago to outlaw the practice, most associated gas is flared, causing local pollution and contributing to climate change." The environmental devastation associated with the industry and the lack of distribution of oil wealth have been the source and/or key aggravating factors of numerous environmental movements and inter-ethnic conflicts in the region, including recent guerrilla activity by MEND.


title: Niger Delta

text: In September 2012 Eland Oil & Gas purchased a 45% interest in OML 40, with its partner Starcrest Energy Nigeria Limited, from the Shell Group. They intend to recommission the existing infrastructure and restart existing wells to re-commence production at an initial gross rate of of oil per day with a target to grow gross production to of oil per day within four years.


title: Niger Delta

text: Oil revenue allocation has been the subject of much contention well before Nigeria gained its independence. Allocations have varied from as much as 50%, owing to the First Republic's high degree of regional autonomy, and as low as 10% during the military dictatorships.


title: Niger Delta

text: "* State allocations are based on 5 criteria: equality (equal shares per state), population, social development, land mass, and revenue generation. "


title: Niger Delta

text: "**The derivation formula refers to the percentage of the revenue oil-producing states retain from taxes on oil and other natural resources produced in the state." World Bank Report


title: Niger Delta

text: The documentary film "Sweet Crude", which premiered April 2009 at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, tells the story of Nigeria's Niger Delta.


title: Niger Delta

text: The effects of oil exploration in the fragile region of Niger Delta communities and environment have been enormous. Local indigenous people have seen little of any improvement in their standard of living while suffering serious damage to their natural environment. Some of the hazardous damage of oil and gas exploration in the ecosystem are life threatening which includes Air pollution, Water pollution, Noise pollution etc. Affecting the aquatic lives, human health, also leads to deforestation. According to Nigerian federal government figures, there were more than 7,000 oil spills between 1970 and 2000. It has been estimated that a clean-up of the region, including full restoration of swamps, creeks, fishing grounds and mangroves, could take 25 years.


title: Battle of the Caucasus

text: The Battle of the Caucasus is a name given to a series of Axis and Soviet operations in the Caucasus area on the Eastern Front of World War II. On 25 July 1942, German troops captured Rostov-on-Don, Russia, opening the Caucasus region of the southern Soviet Union, and the oil fields beyond at Maikop, Grozny, and ultimately Baku, to the Germans. Two days prior, Adolf Hitler issued a directive to launch such an operation into the Caucasus region, to be named Operation Edelweiß. German forces were compelled to withdraw from the area that winter as Operation Little Saturn threatened to cut them off.


title: Battle of the Caucasus

text: Operation Edelweiss, named after the mountain flower, was a German plan to gain control over the Caucasus and capture the oil fields of Baku during the Soviet-German War. The operation was authorised by Hitler on 23 July 1942. The main forces included Army Group A commanded by Wilhelm List, 1st Panzer Army (Ewald von Kleist), 4th Panzer Army (Colonel-General Hermann Hoth), 17th Army (Colonel-General Richard Ruoff), part of the Luftflotte 4 (Generalfeldmarschall Wolfram Freiherr von Richthofen) and the 3rd Romanian Army (General Petre Dumitrescu). Army Group A was supported to the east by Army Group B commanded by Fedor von Bock and by the remaining 4th Air Fleet aircraft (1,000 aircraft in all). The land forces, accompanied by 15,000 oil industry workers, included 167,000 troopers, 4,540 guns and 1,130 tanks.


title: Battle of the Caucasus

text: Several oil firms such as "German Oil on Caucasus", "Ost-Öl" and "Karpaten-Öl" had been established in Germany. They were awarded an exclusive 99-year lease to exploit the Caucasian oil fields. For this purpose, a large number of pipes—which later proved useful to Soviet oil industry workers—were delivered. A special economic inspection "A", headed by Lieutenant-General Nidenfuhr was created. Bombing of the oil fields was forbidden. To defend them from destruction by Soviet units under the command of Nikolai Baibakov and Semyon Budyonny, an SS guard regiment and a Cossack regiment were formed. The head of the Abwehr developed Operation "Schamil", which called for landing in the Grozny, Malgobek and Maikop regions. They would be supported by the local fifth column.


title: Battle of the Caucasus

text: After neutralizing the Soviet counter-attack in the Izyum-Barvenkovsk direction the German Army Group A rapidly attacked towards the Caucasus. When Rostov-on-Don, nicknamed "The Gates of Caucasus," fell on 23 July 1942, the tank units of Ewald von Kleist moved towards the Caucasian Mountain Range. The "Edelweiss" division commander, Hubert Lanz, decided to advance through the gorges of rivers of the Kuban River basin and by crossing the Marukhskiy Pass (Maly Zelenchuk River), Teberda, Uchkulan reach the Klukhorskiy Pass, and simultaneously through the Khotyu-tau Pass block the upper reaches of the Baksan River and the Donguz-Orun and Becho passes.


title: Battle of the Caucasus

text: Concurrently with the outflanking maneuvers, the Caucasian Mountain Range was supposed to be crossed through such passes as Sancharo, Klukhorskiy and Marukhskiy to reach Kutaisi, Zugdidi, Sukhumi and the Soviet Georgian capital city of Tbilisi. The units of the 4th German Mountain Division, manned with Tyroleans, were active in this thrust. They succeeded in advancing 30 km toward Sukhumi. To attack from the Kuban region, capture the passes that led to Elbrus, and cover the "Edelweiss" flank, a vanguard detachment of 150 men commanded by Captain (Hauptmann) Heinz Groth, was formed. From the Old Karachay through the Khurzuk aul and the Ullu-kam Gorge the detachment reached the Khotyu-tau Pass, which had not been defended by the Soviet troops. Khotyu-tau gained a new name – "The Pass of General Konrad".


title: Battle of the Caucasus

text: The starting point of the operation on the Krasnodar-Pyatigorsk-Maikop line was reached on 10 August 1942. On 16 August the battalion commanded by von Hirschfeld made a feint and reached the Kadar Gorge. On 21 August troops from the 1st Mountain Division planted the flag of Nazi Germany on the summit of Mount Elbrus, the highest peak in both the Caucasus and Europe.


title: Battle of the Caucasus

text: There were no military operations in the region in 1941. But the region was affected by warfare elsewhere in the Soviet Union.


title: Battle of the Caucasus

text: In his memoirs, Soviet Transcaucasian Front commander Ivan Tiulenev recounts how thousands of civilians attempted to flee from the Ukraine to the comparatively safe Caspian ports, such as Makhachkala and Baku. The Caucasus area became a new area of industry when 226 factories were evacuated there during the industrial evacuations undertaken by the Soviet Union in 1941. After the Grozny to Kiev line was captured during Axis advances, a new link between Moscow and Transcaucasia was established with the construction of the new railway line running from Baku to Orsk (via Astrakhan), bypassing the front line at Grozny, while a shipping line was maintained over the Caspian Sea through the town of Krasnovodsk in Turkmenistan.


title: Battle of the Caucasus

text: In 1942, the German Army launched Operation Edelweiss which was aimed at advancing to the oil fields of Azerbaijan. The German offensive slowed as it entered the mountains in the southern Caucasus and did not reach all of its 1942 objectives. After the Soviet breakthroughs in the region around Stalingrad, the German forces in the Caucasus were put on the defensive.


title: Battle of the Caucasus

text: In early 1943, the Germans began to withdraw and consolidate their positions in the region due to setbacks elsewhere. They established a defensive line (Kuban bridgehead) in the Taman Peninsula from which they hoped to eventually launch new operations in the Caucasus. The fighting remained reasonably static until September 1943 when the Germans ordered fresh withdrawals which effectively ended the period of fighting in the Caucasus.


title: Battle of the Caucasus

text: During the Winter Spring Campaign of 1944 (1 January – 31 May), the Soviet army was able to launch an invasion of the Crimea from the Caucasus, which was fully recaptured by 12 May 1944.


title: Irish slaves myth

text: The Irish slaves myth is a fringe pseudohistorical narrative in that conflates the penal transportation and indentured servitude of Irish people during the 17th and 18th centuries, with the hereditary chattel slavery experienced by the forebears of the African diaspora. Some white nationalists, and others who want to minimize the effects of hereditary chattel slavery on Africans and their descendants, have used this false equivalence to deny racism against African Americans or claim that African Americans are too vocal in seeking justice for historical grievances. It also can hide the facts around Irish involvement in the transatlantic slave trade. The myth has been in circulation since at least the 1990s and has been disseminated in online memes and social media debates. According to historians Jerome S. Handler and Matthew C. Reilly, "it is misleading, if not erroneous, to apply the term 'slave' to Irish and other indentured servants in early Barbados". In 2016, academics and Irish historians wrote to condemn the myth.


title: Irish slaves myth

text: During British rule in Ireland, and particularly during the Plantations of Ireland and the Cromwellian conquest, the terms "slaves" or "bond slaves" were used to describe the "time-bound" system of servitude of tens of thousands of Irish. The official British legal terminology used was "indentured servants" whether the servants in question had willingly signed the indenture contract to emigrate to the Americas or were forced to go. In any other form, those transported unwillingly were not considered to be indentured. This included political prisoners, vagrants, convicts, prostitutes, or people who had been defined as "undesirable" by the British government. Penal transportation of Irish people was at its height during the 17th century, most was for various felonies such as highway robbery, vagrancy (homelessness), burglary, and horse theft. Penal transportation was a general practice in Great Britain as well as Ireland. These were the offences most often punished with transportation for men in the 1670s, though for women it was theft. They were then subjected to forced labour for a given period when they arrived in the Americas or Australia. During this same period, the Atlantic slave trade was transporting millions of Africans across the Atlantic and bringing them to various European colonies in America (including British America) where they were purchased by European colonists and put to work.


title: Irish slaves myth

text: Treatment of Irish indentured servants varied widely, but the transport, physical work, and living conditions have been compared by scholars to the treatment of enslaved Africans. However, the usual period of indenture for an Irish person was from four years to nine years, after which they were free – able to travel freely, own property, and accumulate wealth. Additionally, the formerly indentured Irish person could now marry whom they chose and their children were born free. Unlike Irish indentured servants, enslaved Africans generally were made slaves for life and this perpetual slave status was imposed on their children at birth. Both systematically and legally, enslaved Africans were subjected to a lifelong, inheritable condition of slavery that indentured Irish people never were. Donald Harman Akenson makes the point that in this "white indentured servitude was so very different from black slavery as to be from another galaxy of human experience". Additionally, in terms of numbers, the "most likely exaggerated" high estimates of Irish laborers sent to the Caribbean, along with estimates of total numbers of prisoners and indentured servants in British America, "pales by comparison" to the millions of enslaved Africans who were transported to the Americas."


title: Irish slaves myth

text: According to historian Nini Rodgers, in the 18th century "every group in Ireland [Gaelic, Hiberno-Norman or Anglo-Irish] produced merchants who benefited from the slave trade and the expanding slave colonies." However, historians have noted that "very little of the slave trade profits actually wound up in Ireland."


title: Irish slaves myth

text: During this same period, the transatlantic slave trade was transporting millions of Africans across the Atlantic and bringing them to various European colonies in the Americas, where they were purchased by European colonists and put to work. Although the Navigation Acts prevented Ireland from participating directly in the slave trade, Irish merchants of different religious and social backgrounds generated significant wealth by exporting goods to overseas plantations and importing slave-produced goods into Ireland as part of the triangular trade. Exports of salted and pickled provisions to colonies were central to economic expansion in Georgian era Cork, Limerick, and Belfast, while imports of West Indian sugar contributed to urban growth and the rise of a Catholic middle class. Rodgers concluded that by the end of the 18th century "Ireland was very much a part of the Black Atlantic World".


title: Irish slaves myth

text: Some Irishmen worked as "agents of empire". Jane Ohlmeyer notes that by 1660, Irishmen, both Protestants and Catholics, "were to be found in the French Caribbean, the Portuguese and later Dutch Amazon, Spanish Mexico, and the English colonies in the Atlantic where they... forged commercial networks as they traded calicos, spices, tobacco, sugar, and slaves." The French port of Nantes, in particular, was dominated by a community of exiled Irish Jacobites, and rose to prominence in the 18th century as France's foremost slave trading port.


title: Irish slaves myth

text: Irish-Catholics made up more than two-thirds of the Anglo-Caribbean island of Montserrat's plantation owners as early as the 17th century, and according to historian Donald Akenson "they knew how to be hard and efficient slave masters."


title: Irish slaves myth

text: American historian Brian Kelly cautions against indicting "the country as a whole" as "overwhelmingly the benefits of Ireland’s involvement in transatlantic slavery went to the same class that presided over the misery that culminated in the horrors of famine and mass starvation."


title: Irish slaves myth

text: According to historian Liam Kennedy, the idea of 'Irish slavery' was popular within the nineteenth-century Irish independence movement Young Ireland. Young Irelander John Mitchel was particularly vocal in his claim that the Irish had been enslaved, although he was a supporter of the Atlantic slave trade.


title: Irish slaves myth

text: An "Irish Times" article notes that Irish republicans "are intent on drawing direct parallels between the experiences of black people under slavery and of Irish people under British rule", which has in turn been repurposed "by white supremacist groups in the US to attack and denigrate the African-American experience of slavery." According to history professor Ciaran O’Neill of Trinity College Dublin, while those most active in propagating myth – who are often located in Australia and the United States – "want to create false equivalence between the Atlantic slave trade and the phenomenon of indentured Irish labour in the Caribbean" for the purpose of undermining the Black Lives Matter movement, research librarian and independent scholar Liam Hogan "also makes the point that this narrative has been used to help obscure the fact that many Irish people participated in and profited from slavery."


title: Irish slaves myth

text: In the "Dublin Review of Books", professor Bryan Fanning states: "The popularity of the 'Irish slaves' meme cannot simply be blamed on the online propaganda of white supremacist groups. There are several elements at play beyond the deliberate falsification of the past. Widespread acceptance online of a false equivalence between chattel slavery and the treatment of Irish migrants appears to be rooted in Irish narratives of victimhood that continue to be articulated within Ireland’s cultural and political mainstreams." Irish people's history has embraced both a legacy of identification with the oppressed, and elements of racism in the service of Irish nationalism, according to Fanning.


title: Irish slaves myth

text: A number of books have been written on the subject, including "White Cargo: The Forgotten History of Britain's White Slaves in America"; and "The Irish Slaves: Slavery, Indenture and Contract Labor Among Irish Immigrants". According to Hogan, the most influential book to assert the myth was "They Were White and They Were Slaves: The Untold History of the Enslavement of Whites in Early America", self-published in the US in 1993 by conspiracy theorist and Holocaust denier Michael A. Hoffman II (who blamed Jews for the Atlantic slave trade).


title: Irish slaves myth

text: "To Hell Or Barbados: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ireland" (2000)"," by Irish writer Sean O'Callaghan, is advertised as "a vivid account of the Irish slave trade: the previously untold story of over 50,000 Irish men, women and children who were transported to Barbados and Virginia." The book continued the same themes as Hoffman, and introduced the concept of Irish women being forcibly bred with Africans. Other authors repeated these lurid descriptions of Irish women being compelled to have sex with African men. The book has been described as shoddily researched. Brian Kelly calls the book "highly problematic" and writes: "The careless blurring of the lines between slavery and indenture in O’Callaghan’s work, rooted in sentimental nationalism than a commitment to white supremacy – provided an aura of credibility for the ‘Irish slaves’ meme that it would not have otherwise enjoyed." According to "The New York Times", "In America, [O'Callaghan's] book connected the white slave narrative to an influential ethnic group [Irish-Americans] of over 34 million people, many of whom had been raised on stories of Irish rebellion against Britain and tales of anti-Irish bias in America at the turn of the 20th century. From there, it took off."


title: Irish slaves myth

text: O'Callaghan's claims were repeated on Irish genealogy websites, the Canadian conspiracy theory website "GlobalResearch.ca", and Niall O'Dowd's "IrishCentral". The 2008 article on "GlobalResearch.ca" has been a significant online source for the myth, having been shared almost a million times by March 2016. The myth has been spread on white nationalist message boards, neo-Nazi websites, the far-right conspiracy website "InfoWars", and has been shared millions of times on Facebook.


title: Irish slaves myth

text: The myth was shared in the form of a meme, frequently used historical paintings or photographs purposefully misidentified via historical falsifications. For example, images of child labourers, paintings of Roman-era slaves, and photographs of prisoners of war were all falsely captioned as evidence of Irish slaves.


title: Irish slaves myth

text: "Almost all of the popular 'Irish slaves' articles are promoted by websites or Facebook groups based in the U.S. So it’s predominantly a social media phenomenon of white America." The myth is especially popular with apologists for the Confederate States of America, the secessionist slave states of the South during the American Civil War.


title: Irish slaves myth

text: The myth has been a common trope on the white supremacist website "Stormfront" since 2003. It has circulated widely in the United States, and has recently begun to become common in Ireland after the "Irish slaves" meme went viral on social media in 2013. After the 2014 arrival of the Black Lives Matter movement, the myth was frequently referenced by right-wing white Americans attempting to undermine it and other African-American civil rights issues, according to Aidan McQuade, director of Anti-Slavery International.


title: Irish slaves myth

text: In August 2015, the meme was referred to in the context of debates about the continued flying of the Confederate flag, following the Charleston church shooting.


title: Irish slaves myth

text: In May 2016, it was referenced by prominent members of Sinn Féin, after their leader Gerry Adams, "while seeking to compare the treatment of African Americans with Catholics in Northern Ireland", became involved in a controversy over his use of the word "nigger" in a false-equivalence reference to Irish nationalists in Northern Ireland.


title: Irish slaves myth

text: "Irish Times" columnist Donald Clarke criticises the myth as being racist, writing that "more commonly we see racists using the myth to belittle the suffering visited on black slaves and to siphon some sympathy towards their own clan." According to "The New York Times", the myth is "often politically motivated" and has been used to create "racist barbs" against African-Americans.


title: Irish slaves myth

text: Several online articles about "Irish slaves" substituted the 132 African victims of the 1781 Zong massacre with Irish victims. "GlobalResearch.ca" and "InfoWars", both conspiracy websites, inflated the number from 132 victims to 1,302 during such substitutions. In 2015, independent scholar Liam Hogan theorized that the juxtaposing of the "Zong" massacre with Irish penal labourers originated with a 2002 article, by James Mullin, then chair of the New Jersey-based Irish Famine Curriculum Committee and Education Fund, titled, "Out of Africa". Though Mullin did not misidentify the victims of the "Zong" Massacre, his article nevertheless blurred the line between the history of African slavery in colonial America with the history of Irish indentured servants sent to English colonies in North America.


title: Irish slaves myth

text: The "Irish Examiner" removed an article that cited John Martin's 'Globalresearch.ca' piece from its website in early 2016 after 82 writers, historians and academics wrote an open letter condemning the myth. "Scientific American" published a blog post in 2015, which was also debunked in the open letter, and later heavily revised the blog to remove the incorrect historical material.


title: Irish slaves myth

text: Writing in "The New York Times", Liam Stack noted that inaccurate "Irish slavery" claims "also appeared on "IrishCentral", a leading Irish-American news website." In 2017 "IrishCentral" publisher Niall O'Dowd then wrote an op-ed in which he states that "there is no way the Irish slave experience mirrored the extent or level of centuries-long degradation that African slaves went through." In 2020, the website said that propagation of false social media about Irish slaves are "attempts to trivialize and deny centuries institutionalized, race-based slavery."


title: Irish slaves myth

text: Sean O'Callaghan's book "To Hell or Barbados" in particular has been criticised by, among others, Nini Rodgers, who stated that his narrative appeared to arise from his horror at seeing white people being treated on the same social level with blacks. Bryan Fanning notes the book ignored scholarly research. Anthropologist Mark Auslander states in a 2017 article that the current racial climate is leaning toward denial of certain events in history: "There is a strange war on memory that's going on right now, denying the facts of chattel slavery, or claiming to have learned on Facebook or social media that, say, Irish slavery was worse, that white people were enslaved as well. Not true."


title: Irish slaves myth

text: Historians note that unlike slaves, many indentured servants willingly entered into contracts, served for a finite period, did not pass their unfree status on to their children, and were still considered fully human. In "Jezebel", Matthew Reilly states clearly: "The Irish slave myth is not supported by the historical evidence. Thousands of Irish were sent to colonies like Barbados against their will, never to return. Upon their arrival, however, they were socially and legally distinct from the enslaved Africans with whom they often labored. While not denying the vast hardships endured by indentured servants, it is necessary to recognize the differences between forms of labor in order to understand the depths of the inhumane system of chattel slavery that endured in the region for several centuries, as well as the legacies of race-based slavery in our own times." According to Hogan, the debate over the exact definition of slavery allowed for a grey area in historical discourse that was then seized upon as a political weapon by white supremacists.


title: Athleisure

text: Athleisure is a hybrid style of athletic clothing typically worn as everyday wear. Athleisure outfits can include yoga pants, tights, sneakers, leggings and shorts that look like athletic wear, characterized as "fashionable, dressed-up sweats and exercise clothing". Since the 2010s, it has become more acceptable to wear gym clothes all day, whether the wearer exercises that day or not.


title: Athleisure

text: Athleisure can be considered as a fashion industry movement, enabled by improved textile materials, which allow sportswear to be more versatile, comfortable, and fashionable.


title: Athleisure

text: In the 1930s, Champion began producing hoodies for laborers working in freezing temperatures. In 1958, DuPont invented spandex, a crucial athleisure component. Adidas popularized athletic fashion by introducing sport-to-street tracksuits in 1963. By the 1970s, athletic fashion was ubiquitous in street culture and grew in popularity in the 1980s from hip hop music videos.


title: Athleisure

text: By some accounts, the athleisure trend in the 21st century grew out of women wearing yoga pants, and the convenience of wearing clothes for multiple occasions without having to change. Its popularity may have stemmed from its ability to fill a gap in the market, when athletic apparel was once merely functional rather than stylish. Another account suggests that the cyclical nature of blue jean sales has allowed athleisure apparel to supplant denim as casual wear. Sportswear that had been worn exclusively in gyms is now being worn elsewhere by young adults and fitness-conscious consumers and has been accompanied by a relaxation in dress codes. The styles, colors, and fabrics of athleisure suggest a broader emphasis on fashion as opposed to functionality. Innovations in textiles have brought improvements in functionality, such that garments and footwear have become more breathable, lightweight, and waterproof. The new garments are performance enhancing and allow wearers to carry out everyday activities easily.


title: Athleisure

text: By 2020, a so-called "next-gen athleisure" category had emerged, owing to increasing acceptance in the workplace and advances in fabric and production technology, for instance yoga pants that double as totally acceptable office pants. The COVID-19 pandemic contributed to a continued increase in the popularity of athleisure wear. Some fashion brands that had previously made streetwear or suits pivoted to items like hoodies and jogging trousers, since many people were quarantined at home and wanted comfortable clothing that would still look stylish for virtual meetings.


title: Athleisure

text: Reports in "USA Today" and "The Wall Street Journal" in 2015 described the athleisure market as growing, displacing typical workwear styles, and cutting in to sales of jeans, with a market size in 2014 as US$35 billion, representing an 8% increase from the previous year. According to one estimate, the athleisure market, including footwear, was US$270 billion in 2016, and was estimated to grow of 30% in the United States and Asia by the year 2020. The global market as of 2018, assessed by Allied Market Research, was noted as US$155 billion. Analysts at Morgan Stanley believed that global sales could rise to over US$350 billion by 2020. In Canada as of 2019, "active" clothing made up about 25 per cent of the apparel that Canadians were buying, but in 2021 that number grew to more than one-third, and sales were growing twice as fast as other forms of clothing.


title: Athleisure

text: In spite of this, there is an arising issue regarding market saturation as traditional luxury and mass merchant brands tap into this trend. The athleisure market for casual athletic clothing has become increasingly crowded with big-box retailers such as Walmart and Target, as well as fast fashion brands joining the fray, often at cheaper prices. An analyst estimated that the athleisure market was not slowing down, with much competition and pressure on various retail outlets including sporting goods stores.


title: Athleisure

text: Global shifts toward a rise in health and fitness trends has led to growing interest and participation in sports among the public. Many have actively joined clubs and competitions in order to fully adopt the characteristics of this lifestyle. Consequently, sportswear brands can utilize this opportunity to improve and introduce better quality apparel, footwear, and gear. By presenting their devotion towards a lifestyle, it thus allows brands to garner customer loyalty.


title: Athleisure

text: New fibers enable greater odor reduction, sweat-wicking, and stretchability to conform to the body's shape. Some athleisure designs allow certain segments more breathability while other parts can have greater tension or durability. A type of athleisure sometimes called "technical wear" focuses on clothes that are more suitable for wearing to the office while being comfortable.


title: Athleisure

text: There have been concerns that materials used in athleisure may have negative consequences for the environment; these chemicals include dyes and solvents and polyfluorinated chemicals and petroleum which are used to make athleisure resistant to water and grease and stains.


title: Asphalt 9: Legends

text: Asphalt 9: Legends is a 2018 racing video game developed by Gameloft Barcelona and published by Gameloft. Released on July 25, 2018, it is the ninth main installment in the "Asphalt" series. In comparison to previous entries, there are several new and improved features, such as a prestigious car lineup, new control schemes, including the autopilot mode called "TouchDrive", and race modes, and the reimplemented "shockwave nitro" from "". The graphics are considered significantly improved compared to its 2013 predecessor, "".


title: Asphalt 9: Legends

text: The gameplay in "Asphalt 9" is similar to the other "Asphalt" Games with noticeable differences in graphics and design. There were 48 cars featured in the game when soft-launched, but the worldwide release saw the introduction of four new cars, leading to 52 cars.


title: Asphalt 9: Legends

text: There are currently 189 cars as of the December 2022 update. Like its predecessor, each of the cars belongs to a class progressively featuring higher performance and rarity: D, C, B, A, and S. The player starts with a car in the lowest class (Class D), the Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution X. All cars in the game now require blueprints to unlock and later "star up", with each of them having anywhere from 3 to 6 stars. For each new star, the car's performance capability is increased (at the cost of a lesser fuel quantity). Each car can also be customized with the new car editor feature. Each car now also uses fuel when used for a race event, limiting its use for any game mode. The fuel quantity for each individual car is based on the number of stars of that particular car.


title: Asphalt 9: Legends

text: Upon unlocking a car, the player can choose from a few official stock colors. Once the car has been starred up at least once, the player can create custom paint job colors to the body, rims, and brake calipers for most models. Some models also allow for carbon parts on the hood, trunk, and wings. Several cars are also convertibles (they can be converted from closed roofs to open ones in-game), like the BMW Z4 LCI E89, the Chevrolet Corvette Grand Sport, and the McLaren 570S Spider. Introduced in the 2019 Summer Update, several cars like the Mercedes-AMG GTS may also be customized with special tires, rims, and bodywork modifications. Also new to the series are "clubs", where up to 20 players can collaboratively score "reputation points" to acquire exclusive rewards. The more reputation points the club scores, the better rewards, ranging from credits to blueprints for cars.


title: Asphalt 9: Legends

text: The game also features "nitro shockwave", returning from "" and "". When the player has a full nitro bar and taps twice on the Nitro button in a quick succession, a purple pulse is released from the vehicle while the car's speed increases. On mobile platforms, "Asphalt 9" has three control schemes: Tilt to Steer, Tap to Steer, and the brand new "Touch Drive" in which the player selects routes and stunts by swiping left and right. Touch Drive is intended for beginners and casual players. On Windows 10 devices, Touch Drive and manual controls can be used with the keyboard; or with a tilt to steer, if the device has a touchscreen and an accelerometer.


title: Asphalt 9: Legends

text: In the game, there are four playing modes: Career, Multiplayer, Events, and Special Events (including Grand Prix). In career mode, the player participates in an extensive single-player campaign consisting of six chapters, each containing several series of races focusing on a certain car class or manufacturer, with more chapters set to be added. In Multiplayer, the player competes against other players in real-time asynchronous online multiplayer races. In Events, the player participates in a daily or weekly competition to beat other players' times or earn other items.


title: Asphalt 9: Legends

text: There are also "Special Events", which were introduced with the Bugatti Chiron special event in December 2018, and have continued since with the introduction of "Drive Syndicate" events in July 2019 and, more recently, another special event released on July 31, 2020, starting with the SSC Tuatara. Since the "Godly Beasts Update", a new type of Special Event called "Grand Prix" has been launched, starting with the Techrules AT96 Track Edition Grand Prix. Players compete against other players for rewards, including the Key that allows the player to immediately unlock the featured Grand Prix car, though the car itself can still be "starred up" with blueprints.


title: Asphalt 9: Legends

text: Drive Syndicate events have been subject to criticism due to their numerous paywalls and high requirements, having the player complete a series of missions to accumulate points towards the rewards track, which goes up to approximately one million points to unlock certain cars. However, the events run on a separate "energy" system, which only allows players to play a certain amount of races, regardless of gas. Some cars are also required to race in the event, and the player may not be given them immediately (though they can acquire the cards for them through the event shop). Upon completing all missions, and thus acquiring enough points, players will earn the event's flagship cars, usually being acquired as a key rather than a set of cards (along with other cars as well).


title: Asphalt 9: Legends

text: There are 4 race types in "Asphalt 9". The "classic" race mode from previous games has returned alongside new races, "Time Attack", "Hunted" and "Slipstream". In Time Attack, the player has to cross the finish line within a time limit. In Hunted, the player must escape a police pursuit in a car chase without getting busted or running out of time. The player must also avoid wrecking their car, for if they do, they are immediately busted and must restart the race. In "Slipstream", players can perform a slipstream by driving behind opponents, allowing them to quickly build up their nitro. Slipstreaming can only be interrupted by holding the brake button.


title: Asphalt 9: Legends

text: The game features a number of race tracks set in new locations: Cairo (including Giza), the Himalayas, Wyoming (named U.S. Midwest), Scotland, the Caribbean, Auckland (featuring street circuit-inspired aesthetics), Buenos Aires and Greenland. It also brings back several locations from previous games in the series: San Francisco, Rome, Shanghai, Osaka, New York and Nevada.


title: Asphalt 9: Legends

text: The game was developed by Gameloft's Barcelona Studio which also made "Asphalt 8: Airborne", and co-developed "Asphalt Xtreme" with Gameloft Madrid. The game uses the Bullet physics engine and the Jet Engine game engine. Continuing the tradition from "Asphalt 8", the game features licensed soundtracks.


title: Asphalt 9: Legends

text: The first rumors of "Asphalt 9: Legends" began back in 2016, with Gameloft posting pictures on Twitter, showing Gameloft Barcelona making a map that had not been seen in "Asphalt 8: Airborne". The game was scheduled to be released in the summer of 2017 according to Gameloft's press release, and the name was going to be "Asphalt 9: Shockwave". In February 2018, Gameloft was doing a live Q&A with one of their community managers at Gameloft London, where he responded to questions about "Asphalt 9", and said that he was not allowed to comment on the future of the "Asphalt" series. Four days later, however, a trailer was revealed for "Asphalt 9".


title: Asphalt 9: Legends

text: The game was first released for iOS as a soft launch on February 26, 2018, in the Philippines, then in Thailand on March 22, 2018. It was later released for Android as a soft launch, on May 17, 2018, in the Philippines. Pre-registration for the worldwide launch began on June 29, 2018. Around the same time, people could pre-register the game on the Google Play Store. On July 24, 2018, Gameloft announced the game's release date, July 26, 2018, on a Facebook and YouTube Livestream. However, the game was released a day earlier than planned. When the game was released worldwide, it reached 4 million downloads across all platforms in less than a week.


title: Asphalt 9: Legends

text: On June 6, 2019, Gameloft announced that the game would be available on Nintendo Switch. The port was released on October 8, 2019. There is a mode where players can play offline with friends and family with different controllers but it needs to have to earn a certain amount of career flags to unlock Offline Mode. There are Joy-Con controls and Touchscreen controls when using the Switch in Handheld Mode, allowing use of either the screen itself (akin to mobile devices) or use of the controllers.


title: Asphalt 9: Legends

text: An Xbox One and Series X/S port was announced in April 2021 and it was released on August 31, 2021. An arcade adaptation, developed by IGS and Wahlap Technology under a license from Gameloft, was released worldwide in 2021 under the name "Asphalt 9 Legends: Arcade DX".


title: Asphalt 9: Legends

text: "Asphalt 9" received positive reviews upon release, with the new graphics and visual design being almost unanimously praised as a major improvement over the series' predecessors, but there were mixed responses to the progression system, including its hostile monetization and “energy” systems.


title: Asphalt 9: Legends

text: Prasad of GSMArena.com wrote: "Visually, Asphalt 9 is stunning and quite possibly the best-looking game on the mobile platform today", while TechCommuters' review stated, "Regardless of the platform you're playing on, the game delivers...With a wide variety of cars, accessories, tracks, and events, you can play this game for a long time without any dull moment." Nick Tylwalk of Gamezebo also praised the graphics, but wrote that the "blueprint system can be a mixed bag and there are times when you feel stuck, progression-wise." Vishal Mathur of "News18" mentioned "every time you run a wheel off the road, the dust that gets thrown up is finely detailed. The cars look very realistic too... However, it isn't exactly easy to get exotic cars. As with most racing games, you start from the bottom of the pyramid and then work your way up. In many races, the rewards that you get are blueprints of vehicles. You will need to collect the required number of blueprints for the car that you are eyeing before you can unlock it. This is slightly difficult, and we feel that element has been added to ensure that players remain active for longer on the game, in the pursuit of their favorite car."


title: Asphalt 9: Legends

text: "Asphalt 9" had also won the 2019 Apple Design Awards, and is the only racing game to win the Design Award.


title: Laura Wright

text: Laura Wright (née Sisk) is an American actress. She is perhaps best known for her roles as Ally Rescott on "Loving" (1991–1995) and "The City" (1995–1997), Cassie Layne Winslow on "Guiding Light" (1997–2005) and Carly Corinthos on "General Hospital" (2005–present); the latter garnered her the Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series in 2011.


title: Laura Wright

text: Wright was born Laura Sisk in Washington, D.C., and was raised in Clinton, Maryland. She appeared in several high school plays such as "", "Our Town", and "You Can't Take It with You".


title: Laura Wright

text: Wright (then credited by her maiden name of Sisk) made her television acting debut on ABC's daytime soap opera "Loving" in 1991, playing the character of Allison "Ally" Rescott Bowman. She also starred in "The City" from 1995 to 1997 as the same character, and then she played the role of Cassie Layne Winslow on CBS soap opera "Guiding Light" from 1997 to 2005. On September 12, 2005, Wright was cast as the fourth actress to play the character of Carly Corinthos on ABC's "General Hospital". ABC Daytime executive Brian Frons said in a statement, "Carly is a complex character, and we are excited to bring Laura's talent, beauty and intelligence to this role. [...] Fans can look forward to high drama between Sonny, Carly and Alcazar this fall." In a statement, Wright, who was still appearing in episodes of "Guiding Light" when the announcement was made, said:


title: Laura Wright

text: In 2009, Wright announced through her official Twitter page that she had signed a four-year contract with the series, ensuring her stay as Carly until sometime in 2013. At the fan club weekend in July 2013, Wright confirmed she had signed another four-year deal with the series. In 2011, after 20 years on soaps, Wright was nominated for a Daytime Emmy Award for her portrayal of Carly in the Outstanding Lead Actress category. Wright won the award at the 38th Daytime Emmy Awards. Wright was later nominated again in the Lead Actress category for the 39th Daytime Emmy Awards. She lost the award to Heather Tom for her portrayal of Katie Logan Spencer on "The Bold and the Beautiful". In 2015, Wright made a cameo appearance in the film "Joy", alongside "General Hospital" co-stars Maurice Benard and Donna Mills. She also starred in the Lifetime film "Deadly Patient", which premiered December 14, 2018.


title: Laura Wright

text: Wright married architect John Wright on October 7, 1995. They have two children. In April 2016, Wright announced that she and John decided to end their marriage.


title: Jason Heyward

text: Jason Alias Heyward (born August 9, 1989), nicknamed "J-Hey" is an American professional baseball right fielder for the Los Angeles Dodgers organization. He has played in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the Atlanta Braves, St. Louis Cardinals and Chicago Cubs. Originally the Braves' first-round selection in the 2007 MLB draft from Henry County High School in Georgia, he began his minor league career at age 17. Heyward soon became one of the top-rated prospects in all of baseball for batting, speed, and defense, and debuted in MLB as Atlanta's starting right fielder on Opening Day 2010. There, he played until being traded to the Cardinals after the 2014 season. Standing tall and weighing , he throws and bats left-handed. He has worn uniform No. 22 throughout his major league career in honor of a high school friend and teammate who died in a traffic collision.


title: Jason Heyward

text: A three-time minor league All-Star game selection, "Baseball America" selected Heyward as the Braves' top overall prospect in 2007 and the organization's best power hitter; it cited Heyward as having the best strike zone discipline and excelling at multiple other skills. In 2009, he won a Minor League Player of the Year Award from both "Baseball America" and "USA Today." That year, he batted .323 with 17 home runs (HR), 63 runs batted in (RBI), a .408 on-base percentage, and a .555 slugging percentage over 99 games. A consensus number-one MLB prospect entering the 2010 season, "Baseball America", Keith Law of ESPN.com, and Jonathan Mayo of MLB.com all listed Heyward as baseball's top prospect.


title: Jason Heyward

text: After making his MLB debut for Atlanta in 2010, Heyward was named to the National League (NL) All-Star team and finished second in the NL Rookie of the Year Award. "Baseball America" named him their MLB Rookie of the Year. Injuries limited his playing time in 2011 and 2013. With a breakout season in 2012, he hit 27 home runs with 82 RBI and 21 stolen bases while finishing tenth in the NL in runs scored with 93. Also recognized for his defense including coverage in the deepest parts of right field, he won both the Fielding Bible and NL Gold Glove Awards for right fielders in 2012, 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017 and Wilson's MLB Defensive Player of the Year in 2014. He is widely regarded as one of the best outfield defenders in baseball.


title: Jason Heyward

text: The son of Dartmouth graduates, Jason Heyward was born on August 9, 1989, in Ridgewood, New Jersey. His father, Eugene, is from Beaufort, South Carolina, and mother, Laura, is from New York City; they met at Dartmouth. Eugene played basketball and majored in engineering and Laura studied French. Eugene's uncle, Kenny Washington, played basketball for two John Wooden-led NCAA championship UCLA teams in 1964 and 1965. Jason has one younger brother, Jacob (b. 1995), who attended the University of Miami and played baseball for the Hurricanes. Jacob was drafted by the San Francisco Giants in 2016 and has played in the minors since.


title: Jason Heyward

text: The Heywards moved to the Atlanta metropolitan area soon after he was born. Jason played and showed marked ability in baseball from an early age. Before he turned 10, he played for a national championship. Eugene helped fuel both of his sons' passion for baseball. He dedicated himself to driving them to every tournament and competition possible in the family Chevrolet Suburban, which racked up hundreds of thousands of miles between the events and his 90-minute work commute to and from Robins Air Force Base to the south in Houston County.


title: Jason Heyward

text: While his father emphasized that working hard and approaching the game with discipline were important, he also stressed that baseball was to be, above all else, fun. Heyward has maintained this same approach throughout his youth and professional career. One tournament in which he played was the renowned East Cobb Baseball program, where he was a standout and has produced other major league players. Heyward attended Henry County High School in McDonough near Atlanta. Heyward briefly played basketball in his youth but concentrated exclusively on baseball in high school at his father's urging. In February 2010, an Associated Press reporter learned from a varsity coach that Heyward's early batting practice exploits proved fatal to an oak tree in deep center field at the high school playing field.


title: Jason Heyward

text: Facing off against future Major League Baseball (MLB) catcher Buster Posey of Lee County High in the Georgia Class AAAA baseball championship during Heyward's sophomore year, Henry County won two of the best-of-three series. Posey was actually the starting pitcher in the first game as Henry Country prevailed, 2–1. Heyward hit a game-tying home run in Game 2 to cap an eight-run comeback, but Lee County prevailed 14–10. The next game, Heyward's three-run single was the game and series winner in a 16–14 outcome. During his junior season, he again helped lead the Henry County High Warhawks to the state championship. As a senior, he batted .520 with eight home runs (HR) and 29 runs batted in (RBI).


title: Jason Heyward

text: One of Heyward's close friends and teammates from the 2005 AAAA Georgia state championship team, Andrew Wilmot, died in a traffic collision while attending college. Wilmot was a catcher who wore the uniform number 22, the number Heyward would later wear in his major league career to honor him. Wilmot's mother, Tammie Ruston, was Heyward's high school literature teacher in his senior year.


title: Jason Heyward

text: Numerous colleges showed interest and recruited Heyward, including UCLA, which offered a full-ride scholarship due in part to the family connection. Heyward was also especially interested in Clemson and Georgia Tech. Concurrently, the hometown Atlanta Braves had followed and scouted him for years, while attempting to conceal their excitement. They made him the 14th overall selection in the 2007 Major League Baseball draft. Despite signing a National Letter of Intent with UCLA, Heyward chose professional baseball over college and signed a contract with them worth $1.7 million – $170,000 more than MLB's slot recommendation of $1.53 million on the following August 12. It was the same as the 2006 14th-slot amount that the Toronto Blue Jays gave Travis Snider.


title: Jason Heyward

text: At age 17, Heyward started his professional career in Minor League Baseball in the Braves' system. He played for both the Gulf Coast League Braves and the Danville Braves of the Appalachian League in 2007. He homered in his first professional game. In 12 minor league contests in 2007, he batted .302 with one home run and six runs batted in (RBIs). He split the next season with Class-A Rome of the South Atlantic League (SAL) and Advanced-A Myrtle Beach of the Carolina League.


title: Jason Heyward

text: Beginning the season with Rome, Heyward batted .330 (33-for-100) in April 26 games to go with three home runs, 16 RBI, and seven stolen bases (SB). He was subsequently named the club's Player of the Month. In each month that followed, he also batted over .300, except for July: .345 in May, .315 in June, .250 in July, and .386 in August. From May 7–19, he put together a season-high 11-game hitting streak, batting .386 with five doubles (2B) and two home runs. He drove in a season-high five runs on June 30 against Columbus to go with three hits, including a home run.


title: Jason Heyward

text: While playing for Rome, Heyward authored 42 multi-hit games, including two four-hit games. He finished in the top three in nine offensive categories for the club. He batted .351 (33-for-94) off left-handed pitchers (LHP) with four home runs and .315 (112-for-355) with seven home runs against right-handed pitchers (RHP). His season totals with the club included a .323 batting average (third in the SAL), .388 on-base percentage (OBP, fourth), 88 runs scored (fifth), and an .874 on-base plus slugging percentage (OPS, sixth).


title: Jason Heyward

text: The Braves promoted him to Myrtle Beach on August 25, where he played seven more games. With four hits in 22 AB, his average was .182. There, he added four RBI. Between the two clubs, his .316 batting average led the Braves' minor league system, 91 runs ranked second, 29 doubles and 149 hits both ranked fifth, and six triples and .854 OPS both ranked sixth. He also totaled 15 stolen bases.


title: Jason Heyward

text: More awards followed the 2008 season. "Baseball America" named Heyward the South Atlantic League's Most Outstanding Prospect, Top Batting Prospect, and Most Exciting Player. He was also a "Baseball America" All-Star for the entire minor leagues, Mid- and Post-Season All-Star, Low-Class A All-Star, and the Braves' second-best prospect. MLB.com named him the third-best overall minor league prospect. ESPN.com named him the minor leagues' best corner outfield prospect, the #1 Atlanta prospect, and third-overall minor-league prospect.


title: Jason Heyward

text: Starting 2009 at Myrtle Beach, Heyward then gained successive promotions to Double-A Mississippi and Triple-A Gwinnett that year. He reached base in 42 of 49 contests at Myrtle Beach and assembled 16 multi-hit contests. He was the Carolina League Player of the Week on May 18 after garnering six hits in 23 at-bats (.261), with three home runs and five RBI. In late May, he endured an oblique injury, which caused him to miss several games. He was a selection to the Carolina League All-Star team but missed the game due to the oblique injury. He participated in the All-Star Futures Game at Busch Stadium, where he collected one hit in two at-bats. He carried a nine-game hitting streak through July 4.


title: Jason Heyward

text: On July 4, the Braves promoted Heyward to Mississippi, where he extended the streak to 13 games, totaling 19 hits in 52 at-bats (.352) with four doubles and 14 RBI. On July 16, he matched a career-high with four hits. For that month, he attained 34 hits, 14 walks, 11 doubles, three home runs, 19 RBI, and a 1.230 OPS in 22 games. The Braves named him their Mississippi Player of the Month. His totals with the club included a .446 OBP and 1.057 OPS. From September 5–7, he appeared with the Gwinnett Braves of the Triple-A of the International League. He also played four games with the Peoria Saguaros of the Arizona Fall League (AFL), collecting four hits in 14 AB and three 2B.


title: Jason Heyward

text: Over three levels in 99 games, he batted .323 with 17 home runs and 10 steals, including high numbers in OBP (.408), slugging percentage (SLG, .555), and OPS (.963), while scoring 69 runs and driving in 63 runs. He ranked in the top ten in the organization in many offensive categories including second in runs, third in average, home runs and OPS, sixth in hits (117) and RBI and tied for seventh in doubles (25). He displayed consistent hitting ability against both RHP and LHP. In 2009, Heyward hit .339 in 112 AB against LHP and .316 against RHP. In his minor league career through 2009, he had batted .335 with six home runs against left-handed pitchers and .313 with 23 home runs against right-handed pitchers.


title: Jason Heyward

text: That September, both "Baseball America" and "USA Today" named him their Minor League Player of the Year. A consensus number-one MLB prospect entering the 2010 season, "Baseball America", Keith Law of ESPN.com and Jonathan Mayo of MLB.com each listed Heyward as baseball's top prospect; BA ranked him ahead of Stephen Strasburg and Giancarlo Stanton. Further, "Baseball America" tabbed him the #1 prospect in both the Southern and Carolina Leagues, the Best Batting Prospect in all of Double-A and the Most Exciting Player in Single-A. He won the Braves' organization Hank Aaron Award (not to be confused with MLB's Hank Aaron Award), conferred annually to the top offensive player in the Braves organization.


title: Jason Heyward

text: During his first three years in the minor leagues, "Baseball America" also ranked parts of Heyward's skill sets as the best among Braves minor leaguers, including Best Strike-Zone Discipline (three times), Best Hitter for Average (twice), Best Hitter for Power (once), Best Defensive Outfielder (once), and Best Outfield Arm (once). The Braves added Heyward to their 40-man roster before the 2010 season.


title: Jason Heyward

text: After a rapid ascent through the minor leagues, the Braves invited Heyward to spring training in March 2010. There, his hitting continued to draw notice, as he routinely hit "rockets" all over the field and over the fences, compelling manager Bobby Cox to make him a regular in the lineup. He mentioned that he heard the balls hit off Heyward's bat made a different, more pronounced sound. Reggie Jackson, a New York Yankees special assistant, concurred, characterizing that sound as "stereo," while everyone else was "in AM." Heyward hit two notable batting practice home runs at the Champion Stadium training complex in the Lake Buena Vista, Florida. One damaged a Coca-Cola truck in the parking lot, and another broke the sunroof of Atlanta Braves' assistant general manager Bruce Manno's car. He was initially issued uniform number 71. At the end of spring training, he asked the team for and received number 22. He presented one of his jerseys with the number 22 to Ruston to show that he honored her son, which elicited an emotional reaction from her.


title: Jason Heyward

text: By now one of the most anticipated prospects in all baseball, shirts depicting his nickname, "The J-Hey Kid," was in high demand before he even played his first official major league game. Fans and pundits prognosticated on a future Hall of Fame career, eliciting comparisons to former greats such as Darryl Strawberry, Willie McCovey and Willie Mays, among many others. In fact, "The J-Hey Kid" was drawn from Mays' nickname, "The Say Hey Kid." On March 26, after leading the club in on-base and slugging percentages in spring training, the Braves named Heyward their starting right fielder.


title: Jason Heyward

text: Eugene Heyward purchased 60 tickets in advance of his son's MLB debut on April 5 against the Chicago Cubs. Wearing Heyward's #22 jersey, Ruston was also in attendance for the game. During his first MLB plate appearance – and first swing at an MLB pitch – Heyward hit a three-run home run, estimated at , off starter Carlos Zambrano. The ball landed near the right-field seats where Ruston was sitting. Heyward became the fifth player in Braves history to hit a home run in his first major league at-bat, and the eleventh in franchise history to do so in his MLB debut, on the heels of Jordan Schafer, who did it the previous year.


title: Jason Heyward

text: Through Atlanta's first 50 games, Heyward robustly lived up to the hype, hitting 10 home runs while batting .301 with a .421 OBP and .596 slugging percentage. He was named the National League (NL) Rookie of the Month in both April and May. However, after sustaining a thumb injury while sliding in May, he missed playing time. After he returned later in the season, his performance declined, and consistency was elusive. He was selected as a starter for the NL All-Star team, but did not participate due to the thumb injury.


title: Jason Heyward

text: After stealing home in a double steal against the Washington Nationals in the first inning on July 28, he became the first Brave to do so since Rafael Furcal, who did it more than ten years earlier. A 16–5 victory over the Cubs on August featured Heyward's first MLB multi-home run game and career highs in hits and runs scored with four each. In the final 112 games of the season, Heyward batted .266 with a .381 OBP and .396 SLG. His postseason debut was on October 7 in the National League Division Series (NLDS) against the San Francisco Giants. Heyward was hitless in three at bats with two strikeouts. After he collected just two hits in the series, San Francisco eliminated Atlanta on their way to winning the World Series.


title: Jason Heyward

text: Heyward finished his first major league season with a .277 batting average, .393 on-base percentage, 18 home runs, 29 doubles, 91 bases on balls, and 83 runs scored in 142 regular season games. He ranked fourth overall in the NL in OBP and walks. His longest streak of reaching base was 36 consecutive games. At the time, his OBP was the second-highest in major league history for a rookie aged 20 years or younger, after Ted Williams and before Frank Robinson, and OPS of .849 placed 30th in all MLB history counting rookie seasons. The recipient of several major awards, Heyward was named the "Sporting News" NL Rookie of the Year, "Baseball America"'s MLB Rookie of the Year, an outfielder on the magazine's All-Rookie Team, and to Topps' Major League Rookie All-Star Team. He finished second to Posey for the NL Rookie of the Year award and 20th in the NL Most Valuable Player (MVP) award balloting.


title: Jason Heyward

text: Heyward's second MLB season commenced in a fashion that reprised the high expectations from his rookie season, but injuries ultimately factored into a lengthy and dramatic slump. In the spring, he was diagnosed with a degenerative condition in his lower back. Like his first MLB at-bat, he began with a home run in his first at-bat of the season on March 31, of Nationals pitcher Liván Hernández. He became just the second player, after Kazuo Matsui, to homer in his first major league at-bat on opening day, and do the same the following year. Since being drafted in 2007, it was also the third time Heyward homered in his first game of the season.


title: Jason Heyward

text: In a back-and-forth game with the Giants on April 24, he hit a go-ahead home run off relief pitcher Jeremy Affeldt in a 9–6, ten-inning victory. In the final eight games of the month, he hit .400 with three home runs and a .714 slugging percentage. For the month of April, Heyward hit seven home runs with an .879 OPS. Having previously been represented by Victor Menocal from Career Sports Entertainment (CSE) until Menocal resigned from CSE, news emerged on May 6 that Heyward switched his agent to Casey Close.


title: Jason Heyward

text: From the beginning of spring training, Heyward endured lingering shoulder soreness. After collecting just four hits in 41 at-bats in May, the Braves performed a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan on May 12 which revealed an inflamed rotator cuff but no structural damage. He rested and received a cortisone injection, but aggravated the injury days later during batting practice. The Braves placed him on the disabled list (DL) on May 22. Public criticism from teammate Chipper Jones for not playing through his injuries followed the next month; said Jones, "I think where Jason might have erred was the comment that he made, 'I'm not coming back until it doesn't hurt anymore.' ... What Jason needs to realize is that Jason at 80 percent is a force, and Jason at 80 percent is better than a lot of people in this league." Jones later explained that he reassured Heyward in a phone call that he did not intend to misrepresent Heyward's efforts to rehabilitate.


title: Jason Heyward

text: Heyward returned from the DL with increased difficulty to drive the ball while batting. A sixth-inning home run against the Baltimore Orioles on July 1 was Heyward's first since April 29 against the St. Louis Cardinals, a span of 104 at-bats. However, he hit just four home runs from the end of April through August 11. Further, his walk rate declined from 14.6 percent the year before to 10.7 percent. His line drive rate in that time dropped from 17.8 to 13 percent and one-quarter of his balls hit in the air were infield pop-ups, compared with eight percent the year before. During a game against the Chicago Cubs on August 23, he hit his first career grand slam.