title: America's Got Talent (season 15)

text: The fifteenth season was impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic that hit the United States in 2020, which affected arrangements for pre-recorded and live episodes. While most audition episodes had been filmed by the end of April (despite minor issues), remaining episodes were disrupted, but resumed after safety measures were implemented to prevent the risk of the infection spreading among staff and participants. Format changes included the use of a virtual audience for the live rounds, an alteration in the program's broadcast schedule for that year, and a revamp to the format for the Judge Cuts round that would condense it into a single episode while featuring no guest judges as in previous seasons.


title: America's Got Talent (season 15)

text: The fifteenth season was won by spoken word poet Brandon Leake, with singing guitarists duo Broken Roots finishing second, and singer Cristina Rae placing third. During its broadcast, the season averaged around 6.61 million viewers.


title: America's Got Talent (season 15)

text: Open auditions were held in late 2019, with closed auditions held across January to March the following year. Prior to the main auditions taking place, replacements were made for Julianne Hough and Gabrielle Union, who had been let go following the conclusion of the previous season. On February 27, 2020, it was announced that Heidi Klum would return as judge, in addition to newcomer Sofía Vergara.


title: America's Got Talent (season 15)

text: The season was impacted as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, which affected television and film shoots across the globe. Although it had been partially disrupted by Klum falling ill, leading to Eric Stonestreet standing in for her during an audition session, restrictions imposed by the United States to combat the spread of COVID-19 caused the program to initially move to filming without an audience present at auditions (before production was ultimately suspended). Additional auditions were later allowed, but these had to be conducted online as a safety precaution. By April 27, the season would broadcast as planned and premiere on May 26, with the season featuring a hiatus after the audition episodes had been aired with the footage that had already been filmed.


title: America's Got Talent (season 15)

text: In mid-June, production of the season resumed following changes in guidelines for media production by Californian state government, and discussions between industry unions, producers and local officials. While the Judges Cuts stage was held at an outdoor venue in Simi Valley, California, it required implementing several health and safety protocols including: performances conducted via videoconferencing on a cinema screen, masks being mandatory for all personnel when off-camera, enforced social distancing and regular testing of staff. The format was also changed with the number of participants for this stage reduced from seventy-two to sixty. No guest judges or Golden Buzzers were involved, and each participant were given a verdict after their performance. Cowell notably approved the change in format, including the decision to condense all footage taken into a single episode, having disliked the arrangement used in previous seasons.


title: America's Got Talent (season 15)

text: By the end of July, a decision on how to produce the live round episodes was reached to include a virtual audience for these rounds. Applications were made available within the week of July 28, in order to maintain safe working conditions, with Universal Studios Hollywood chosen as the venue for performances to take place within. This included an expansion in the number of quarter-finalists for the season, an additional quarter-final, and a change to the number of semi-finalists that each quarter-final had. Prior to the first quarter-final's live broadcast, Cowell had an accident that left him with a severe back injury. After undergoing surgery to help repair the damage, he stepped-down from the live episodes until doctors approved his return. Guest judges appeared during Cowell's absence for the first two quarter-finals, before deciding to have the remaining live episodes stick to using a judging panel of three.


title: America's Got Talent (season 15)

text: Of the participants who auditioned for this season, forty-four secured a place in the live quarter-finals, with eleven quarter-finalists in each one. Among these included: singer Roberta Battaglia, choir Voices of our City Choir, spoken word poet Brandon Leake and singer Cristina Rae and dance group W.A.F.F.L.E. Crew, who had each received a Golden Buzzer from the main judges and host. About twenty-two quarter-finalists advanced and were split between the two semi-finals, with ten semi-finalists securing a place in the finals. The following below lists the results of each participant's overall performance in this season:


title: Stretch Armstrong

text: Stretch Armstrong is a large, gel-filled action figure that was first introduced in 1976 by Kenner. In 2016, at the New York Toy Fair, Hasbro announced the return of the Stretch Armstrong toy in its original 1976 design.


title: Stretch Armstrong

text: Stretch Armstrong is made of latex rubber filled with a proprietary gelled substance similar to corn syrup, which allows it to retain shape for a short time before shrinking to its original shape.


title: Stretch Armstrong

text: Stretch Armstrong is an action figure shaped as a short muscular man with blond hair wearing black trunks. The doll's most notable feature is that it can be stretched from its normal size of about to . If a tear does develop, it could be fixed with an adhesive bandage. Information on how to repair Stretch is provided in the toy's instruction booklet included the original box.


title: Stretch Armstrong

text: The Stretch Armstrong toy concept was created by Jesse D. Horowitz, the industrial designer for Kenner's R&D group. The idea was approved for development by the head of R&D, Jeep (James) Kuhn, vice president of Kenner.


title: Stretch Armstrong

text: The "stretch man" idea as it was called was pursued with two different bodies in mind. One was a sumo wrestler and the other was an All-American blond hunk. Horowitz sculpted the models himself instead of hiring a freelancer. The sumo man was too bulky and large, so the All-American body was cast by Kenner's model maker Richard Dobek, and the resultant resin model was taken to a latex doll manufacturer in New Jersey, where the first bodies were dipped.


title: Stretch Armstrong

text: Originally, springs were thought of as the way to stretch the man. However, they were thought to be too awkward and stiff, too difficult to insert and would likely pierce the skin. Kuhn, a chemical engineer, pursued a liquid sugar idea which eventually proved successful. Tremendous quantities of Karo corn syrup were purchased from an A&P supermarket. The syrup was boiled down to get the proper viscosity. Kuhn and Horowitz flew to Kenner's headquarters in Cincinnati, Ohio, and presented the concept to Bernie Loomis, Kenner's president. He loved it and so a toy icon was born.


title: Stretch Armstrong

text: The original Stretch Armstrong figure was conceived and developed by Bill Armasmith, and was in production from 1976 until 1980. Denys Fisher manufactured and released the figure in Europe, under license from Kenner. The original 1970s toy commands high prices on the secondary collectors' market, selling for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of US dollars. Through storage and play, the figure could become damaged and rendered useless. There are still original Stretch Armstrongs that have survived the passing of time and are remarkably preserved through sheer luck or being stored at the correct temperature. The figure keeps best at room temperature.


title: Stretch Armstrong

text: Stretch Armstrong is made of latex rubber filled with gelled corn syrup, which allows it to retain shape for a short time before shrinking to its original shape.


title: Stretch Armstrong

text: An estimated 67 different versions from Japan, Germany, Italy, France, Australia, and other countries released Stretch Armstrong variations between 1976 and the 1990s.


title: Stretch Armstrong

text: The last two were filled with a granular solid in place of the viscous liquid found in the other figures. A vacuum pump, which attached to the heads of these figures, removed the air from within, which "froze" the toy in its stretched position.


title: Stretch Armstrong

text: Stretch Armstrong was reissued in the 1990s by Cap Toys, with a canine sidekick, "Fetch Armstrong". The reissue stretch Armstrong had a more comical exaggerated face (a huge genial smile) and had on a vanity T-shirt and shorts. This new reissue figure was introduced in 1993 and 1994 version exist with slightly different art work. He also has an evil brother named Evil X-ray Wretch Armstrong who has a skull face, sports a mohawk, and also stretches. Wretch Armstrong seems to be a redesigned, smaller remake of Stretch X-Ray but in reality looks nothing like the 1970s version. Evil X-ray Wretch Armstrong is only 7 inches tall whereas Stretch X-ray was over 12 inches tall.


title: Stretch Armstrong

text: In 1994, Walt Disney Studios obtained the film rights to the character. Several scripts were written, including an early version family comedy written by Greg Erb, a co-writer at Disney. The script which cast Tim Allen in the role of Stretch Armstrong as a "kind of single dad who is a research scientist" and is "stretched too thin" trying to balance his work and family life before he inadvertently accidentally takes one of his experimental serums giving himself "stretchy powers". A later version from screenwriter Michael Kalesniko was created and it was set in San Francisco. It was about a somewhat socially awkward nobody beset with troubles trying to venture out his failing personal life and is genetically modified with stretching abilities after a failed nuclear fusion experiment and must use his newfound abilities to solve the tragedy that has befallen his family. Among the actors who were considered for the role was Danny DeVito, who refused to do the film if the script made any jokes about his height. Several other writers, such as Mike Werb and Michael Colleary, provided rewrites, and Peter Care was attached to direct, but due to lack of time on the rights, both ideas from Disney were scrapped and the rights were bought up by Hasbro.


title: Stretch Armstrong

text: In 2008, Universal Studios signed a deal with Hasbro to create another film based on Stretch Armstrong from a screenplay written by Nicholas Stoller.


title: Stretch Armstrong

text: It was announced from the studios co-chairman Donna Langley that Taylor Lautner would star as Armstrong and that the film would be in 3-D. She stated that "with Lautner's success energy and athleticism he is a perfect fit to a unlikely hero." Producer Brian Grazer stated "Stretch Armstrong is a character I have wanted to see on screen for a long time ... It’s a story about a guy stretching ... the limits of what is possible to become all that he can be."<ref name="/Film"></ref>


title: Stretch Armstrong

text: Another script was being made by writer Steve Oedekerk introducing the character in the form of an uptight spy who stumbles across a stretching formula, which he takes and now must adjust to his newfound abilities when fighting crime and in his everyday life.


title: Stretch Armstrong

text: Two years later, after the excitement drummed up by the Studios ideas for the character, Relativity Media announced that they had picked up the film after it was dropped by Universal and set a new release date of April 11, 2014. Planning to make the film more serious than originally intended by Universal, Relativity hired "The Manchurian Candidate" writer Dean Georgaris to write a new script, dropped Lautner, and hired Breck Eisner to direct.


title: Stretch Armstrong

text: The film origin story was going to introduce an overwhelmed high schooler and the life-or-death consequences he was going to face after undergoing a transformation granting him superhuman abilities. Production was scheduled to start filming on May 15, 2013, in Montreal but by October 2013, both the studio and Hasbro had abandoned the film to work on other projects.


title: Stretch Armstrong

text: After four attempted films for Stretch Armstrong, Hasbro Studios made a deal with the video streaming service website Netflix where the property was picked up for a full 26-episode animated series, making it the first deal between the company and the streaming service. This superhero action/comedy animated series will follow an over-scheduled teenager named Jake Armstrong and his two best friends as they go into action after the trio are inadvertently exposed to an experimental chemical making them flexible and become "Stretch Armstrong and the Flex Fighters"—a team of stretchable superheroes who must work together and embark on a series of adventures to expand beyond the confines of their lives. The series had its debut on Netflix on November 17, 2017.


title: Stretch Armstrong

text: The series was developed by Kevin Burke, Victor Cook, and Chris "Doc" Wyatt; Burke and Wyatt also wrote a tie-in comic book for IDW Publishing. The first 13 episodes of the 26-episode first season were released on Netflix on November 17, 2017.


title: Stretch Armstrong

text: A similar concept with Stretch as a superhero was also shown in a one-off comic produced by Hasbro in 2011 dubbed "Unit:E"; there, the descendant of Acroyear and a Biotron (both from "Micronauts") and Synergy (from "Jem"; here an alien artificial intelligence) conducted reconnaissance on heroes from Earth and beyond (including characters from "G.I. Joe", "Transformers", "MASK", "Battleship Galaxies", "Action Man", and even "Candy Land") to help fight against Baron Karza (the enemy of the Micronauts).


title: Stretch Armstrong

text: In September 2017, IDW Publishing announced a new comic book based on the Netflix series "Stretch Armstrong and the Flex Fighters" for January 2018.


title: Stretch Armstrong

text: In 2018, a video game called "Stretch Armstrong: The Breakout" was released on Netflix. The game involves Jake Armstrong, Ricardo and Nathan stopping villains from rampaging through Charter City.


title: United Kingdom weather records

text: The United Kingdom weather records show the most extreme weather ever recorded in the United Kingdom, such as temperature, wind speed, and rainfall records. Reliable temperature records for the whole of the United Kingdom go back to about 1880.


title: United Kingdom weather records

text: Daily records unless otherwise specified are from 0900-0900 UTC. As of 19 July 2022, the records, as recorded by the Met Office, are:


title: United Kingdom weather records

text: Earlier records for England/UK since 1911 are shown with a * in the "Top 10 hottest days" table below.


title: United Kingdom weather records

text: Starred entries signify the then-highest temperature recorded up to that date, until surpassed by the next starred date above.


title: United Kingdom weather records

text: Shetland holds the unofficial British record for wind speed. A gust of was reported on 1 January 1992. An earlier gust in 1962 was recorded at 177 mph (285 km/h), both at RAF Saxa Vord. However, it is expected that higher gusts than those reported would have been achieved as during both storms the measuring equipment was destroyed by the extreme weather.


title: United Kingdom weather records

text: A wind gust of was recorded at Cairn Gorm on 19 December 2008 but was discovered too late to be verified by the Met Office.


title: Kirkuk

text: Kirkuk (, , , ) is a city in Iraq, serving as the capital of the Kirkuk Governorate, located north of Baghdad. The city is home to a diverse population of Turkmens, Arabs, Kurds, and Assyrians. Kirkuk sits on the ruins of the original Kirkuk Citadel which sits near the Khasa River.


title: Kirkuk

text: Kirkuk was proclaimed the "capital of Iraqi culture" in 2010. It is claimed by the Kurdistan Regional Government as its capital. Kirkuk is also considered by Iraqi Turkmens to be their cultural and historical capital. The government of Iraq states that Kirkuk represents a small version of Iraq due to its diverse population, and that the city is a model for coexistence in the country.


title: Kirkuk

text: The ancient name of Kirkuk was the Hurrian "Arrapha" During the Parthian era, a "Korkura/Corcura" () is mentioned by Ptolemy, which is believed to refer either to Kirkuk or to the site of Baba Gurgur from the city. Since the Seleucid Empire it was known as "Karkā d'Beṯ Ṣlōḥ" (), which means 'Citadel of the House of Seleucid' in Mesopotamian Aramaic, the lingua franca of the Fertile Crescent in that era.


title: Kirkuk

text: The region around Kirkuk was known historically in the Eastern Aramaic and Syriac Assyrian sources as "Beth Garmai" (). The name "Beth Garmai" or "Beth Garme" may be of Syriac origin which meaning "the house of bones", which is thought to be a reference to bones of slaughtered Achaemenids after a decisive battle between Alexander the Great and Darius III on the plains between the Upper Zab and Diyala river. It was one of a number of independent Neo-Assyrian states which flourished during the Parthian empire (150 BC–226 AD).


title: Kirkuk

text: It is also thought that region was known during the Parthian and Sassanid periods as "Garmakan", which means the 'Land of Warmth' or the 'Hot Land'. In Persian "Garm" means warm;


title: Kirkuk

text: After the 7th century, Muslim writers used the name "Kirkheni" (Syriac for "citadel") to refer to the city. Others used other variant, such as "Bajermi" (a corruption of Aramaic "B'th Garmayeh" or "Jermakan" (a corruption of Persian Garmakan) .


title: Kirkuk

text: It is suggested that Kirkuk was one of the places occupied by Neanderthals based on archeological findings in the Shanidar Cave settlement. A large amount of pottery shards dating to the Ubaid period were also excavated from several Tells in the city.


title: Kirkuk

text: Ancient Arrapkha was a part of Sargon of Akkad's Akkadian Empire (2335–2154 BC), and city was exposed to the raids of the Lullubi during Naram-Sin's reign.


title: Kirkuk

text: Later the city was occupied around 2150 BC by language Isolate speaking Zagros Mountains dwellers who were known as the Gutian people by the Semitic and Sumerian of Mesopotamians. Arraphkha was the capital of the short-lived Guti kingdom (Gutium), before it was destroyed and the Gutians driven from Mesopotamia by the Neo-Sumerian Empire c. 2090 BC. Arrapkha became a part of the Old Assyrian Empire (c.2025–1750 BC), before Hammurabi briefly subjected Assyria to the short-lived Babylonian Empire, after which it again became a part of Assyria c.1725 BC.


title: Kirkuk

text: However, by the middle of the 2nd millennium B.C. the Indo-Aryan Mittani of Anatolia formed a ruling class over the language isolate speaking Hurrians, and began to expand into a Hurri-Mitanni Empire. In the 1450s they attacked Assyria, sacking Assur, and bringing the cities of Gasur and Arrapkha under their control. From c.1450 to 1393 BC the kings of Assyria paid tribute to the kingdom of Mittani.


title: Kirkuk

text: The Middle Assyrian Empire (1365–1020 BC) overthrew the Hurri-Mitanni in the mid 14th century BC and Arrapha once more became incorporated into Assyria proper. In the 11th and 10th centuries BC the city rose to prominence, becoming an important city in Assyria until the fall of the Neo-Assyrian Empire (911–605 BC).


title: Kirkuk

text: The Hurri-Mitanni domination of Assyria was broken in the 1390s BC, and Arrapkha once more became an integral part of Assyria with the Middle Assyrian Empire (1365–1020 BC) which saw the Hurrian population driven from the region. It remained as such throughout the Neo-Assyrian Empire (911–605 BC) where it became an important Assyrian city.


title: Kirkuk

text: After the fall of Assyria between 612 and 599 BC it was still an integral part of the geo-political province of Assyria – Achaemenid Assyria, Athura, Seleucid Syria, Assyria (Roman province) and Assuristan. In the Parthian and Sassanid eras Kirkuk was capital of the small Assyrian state of Beth Garmai (c.160 BC–250 AD).


title: Kirkuk

text: The city briefly came to be part of the short-lived Median Empire before falling to the Achaemenid Empire (546–332 BC) where it was incorporated into the province of Athura (Achaemenid Assyria).


title: Kirkuk

text: Later it became part of the Macedonian Empire (332–312 BC) and succeeding Seleucid Empire (311–150 BC) before falling to the Parthian Empire (150 BC–224 AD) as a part of Athura. The Parthians seemed to only exercise loose control, and a number of small Neo-Assyrian kingdoms sprang up in the region between the 2nd century BC and 4th century AD, one such kingdom named "ܒܝܬܓܪܡܝ", (that is Bit Garmai in Syriac) had Arrapha as its capital. Christianity also arose during this period, with Arrapha and its surrounds being influenced by the Assyrian Church of the East. The Sassanid Empire destroyed these kingdoms during 3rd and early 4th centuries AD, and Arrapha was incorporated into Sassanid ruled Assuristan (Sassanid Assyria).


title: Kirkuk

text: In AD 341, the Zoroastrian Shapur II ordered the massacre of all Assyrian Christians in the Persian Sassanid Empire. During the persecution, about 1,150 were martyred in Arrapha. The city appears on the Peutinger Map of this time. The city remained a part of the Sassanid Empire until the Islamic conquest in the mid 7th century AD.


title: Kirkuk

text: Arab Muslims fought the Sassanid empire in the 7th century AD, conquering the region. The city was a part of the Islamic Caliphate until the tenth century. Kirkuk and the surrounding areas were then ruled by the Hasanwayhid Kurds & Annazid Kurds from 1014 to 1120 AD, then it was taken over by Seljuk Turks for many years. After the divided empire collapsed, the city came under the Abbasids rule once again Suleiman Shah who was the governor of the city until it was taken over by Mongols in 1258. After the Mongol invasion, the Ilkhanate State was founded in the region and the city became a part of the Mongol Ilkhanate. The Ilkhanate rule ended when in 1336, the Ardalan Kurds took over the city, despite being vassals themselves of the various in Persia centred succeeding Turkic federations in the region, namely that of the Kara Koyunlu, and the Ak Koyunlu specifically. After the battle of chaldiran in 1514 the city came under the soranid Kurds control until it was taken over by Babanids in 1694. In 1851 it became under direct control of the Ottoman Empire. Ottoman rule continued until World War I when the Ottoman Empire was pushed out of the region by the British Empire.


title: Kirkuk

text: At the end of World War I, the British occupied Kirkuk on 7 May 1918. Abandoning the city after about two weeks, the British returned to Kirkuk a few months later after the Armistice of Mudros. Kirkuk avoided the troubles caused by the Kurdish nationalist Mahmud Barzanji, who quickly attempted to overthrow the British Mandate in Iraq and establish his own fiefdom in Sulaymaniyah.


title: Kirkuk

text: As both Turkey and Great Britain desperately wanted control of the Vilayet of Mosul (of which Kirkuk was a part), the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923 failed to solve the issue. For this reason, the question of Mosul was sent to the League of Nations. A committee travelled to the area before coming to a final decision: the territory south of the "Brussels line" belonged to Iraq. By the Treaty of Angora of 1926, Kirkuk became a part of the Kingdom of Iraq.


title: Kirkuk

text: In 1927, Iraqi and American drillers working for the foreign-owned and British-led Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC) struck a huge oil gusher at Baba Gurgur ("St. Blaze" or father blaze in Kurdish) near Kirkuk. The IPC began exports from the Kirkuk oil field in 1934. The Company moved its headquarters from Tuz Khormatu to a camp on the outskirts of Kirkuk, which they named Arrapha after the ancient city. Arrapha remains a large neighborhood in Kirkuk to this day. The IPC exercised significant political power in the city and played a central role in Kirkuk's urbanization, initiating housing and development projects in collaboration with Iraqi authorities in the 1940s and 1950s.


title: Kirkuk

text: The presence of the oil industry had an effect on Kirkuk's demographics. The exploitation of Kirkuk's oil, which began around 1930, attracted both Arabs and Kurds to the city in search of work. Kirkuk, which had been a predominantly Iraqi Turkmen city, gradually lost its uniquely Turkmen character. At the same time, large numbers of Kurds from the mountains were settling in the uninhabited but cultivable rural parts of the district of Kirkuk. The influx of Kurds into Kirkuk continued through the 1960s. According to the 1957 census, Kirkuk city was 37.63% Iraqi Turkmen, 33.26% Kurdish with Arabs and Assyrians making up less than 23% of its population.


title: Kirkuk

text: Some analysts believe that poor reservoir-management practices during the Saddam Hussein years may have seriously, and even permanently, damaged Kirkuk's oil field. One example showed an estimated of excess fuel oil being reinjected. Other problems include refinery residue and gas-stripped oil. Fuel oil reinjection has increased oil viscosity at Kirkuk making it more difficult and expensive to get the oil out of the ground.


title: Kirkuk

text: Over all, between April 2003 and late December 2004 there were an estimated 123 attacks on Iraqi energy infrastructures, including the country's 7,000 km-long pipeline system. In response to these attacks, which cost Iraq billions of US dollars in lost oil-export revenues and repair costs, the US military set up the Task Force Shield to guard Iraq's energy infrastructure and the Kirkuk-Ceyhan Oil Pipeline in particular. In spite of the fact that little damage was done to Iraq's oil fields during the war itself, looting and sabotage after the war ended was highly destructive and accounted for perhaps eighty percent of the total damage.


title: Kirkuk

text: The discovery of vast quantities of oil in the region after World War I provided the impetus for the annexation of the former Ottoman Vilayet of Mosul (of which the Kirkuk region was a part), to the Iraqi Kingdom, established in 1921. Since then and particularly from 1963 onwards, there have been continuous attempts to transform the ethnic make-up of the region.


title: Kirkuk

text: Pipelines from Kirkuk run through Turkey to Ceyhan on the Mediterranean Sea and were one of the two main routes for the export of Iraqi oil under the Oil-for-Food Programme following the Gulf War of 1991. This was in accordance with a United Nations mandate that at least 50% of the oil exports pass through Turkey. There were two parallel lines built in 1977 and 1987.


title: Kirkuk

text: In 1970 the Iraqi government reached an agreement with Kurdish leader Mustafa Barzani called the March Agreement of 1970, but the question of whether the oil-rich province of Kirkuk would be included within the Kurdish autonomous region remained unresolved, pending a new census.


title: Kirkuk

text: Despite the signing of the March Agreement, relations between the Kurds and Iraqi government continued to deteriorate due to the unresolved status of Kirkuk, and there were two attempts to assassinate Barzani in 1972. In response to Barzani's continued demands during the early 1970s for Kirkuk to be recognized as part of the autonomous region under the terms of the March Agreement, settlement construction for newly arrived Arab families increased drastically as the Ba'athist government implemented Arabization policies to increase the Arab population of Kirkuk. Kurds were forbidden from buying property in Kirkuk, and could sell their properties only to Arabs. They were denied permission to renovate properties in need of maintenance, and poor Shi'a Arab families were paid to move to Kirkuk, while Kurds were paid to move out.


title: Kirkuk

text: Negotiations between Barzani's Kurdish Democratic Party and the Iraqi government collapsed in March 1974 and Barzani rejected President Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr declaration of Kurdish autonomy. Many disputes persisted between the Kurds and Arabs and the conflict escalated into the Second Iraqi–Kurdish War (also called the Barzani rebellion). The rebellion collapsed after Iran withdrew its support for Barzani's forces following the 1975 Algiers Agreement and the Ba'ath regime intensified Arabization efforts.


title: Kirkuk

text: After Barzani's rebellion was defeated in 1974, the districts of Chemchemal and Kelar, which had been part of Kirkuk, became part of Sulaymaniyah and Kifri became part of Diyala province. Other Arab-populated districts, like Zab, became part of Kirkuk. Kurds, Turkmen and Christian populations were forcibly relocated and replaced with Shi'a from Iraq's south. The expulsions continued after the 1991 uprisings. Kurdish villages were razed and thousands of new homes were built, including at least 200 homes for relatives of Iraqi soldiers killed during the Iran-Iraq War. Between 1968, when the Ba'ath Party first rose to power in Iraq, and 2003 between 200,000 and 300,000 persons were forcibly relocated out of Kirkuk. According to the Iraqi Ministry of Planning, by August 2005 (during the Iraq War), approximately 224,544 Kurds had returned to Kirkuk and 52,973 Arab persons had left the city.


title: Kirkuk

text: In 1972 the Iraqi government, led by then Vice-President Saddam Hussein, nationalized the Iraqi Petroleum Company (IPC), after being unable to reach an agreement that would increase oil exports and resolve a longstanding dispute over Law 80 of 1961. The Iraqi government began to sell its oil to Eastern bloc countries and the IPC's French partner CFP. After reaching an agreement with the Iraqis in 1973, the IPC members were able to retain some of their interests in southern Iraq through the Basra Petroleum Company but had lost Iraq's main oilfields, including the Kirkuk field.


title: Kirkuk

text: In 1991, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and was quickly routed by the United States in the First Gulf War (also called "Operation Desert Storm"). In the aftermath of the Iraqi army's defeat, rebellions broke out in Iraq; first in southern Iraq on March 1, and in the northern Kurdish region a few days later. By March 24, Kurdish "Peshmerga" forces had seized control of Kirkuk, but they were only able to hold it until March 28 when it was reclaimed by Hussein's forces. The US and UK began to enforce a no-fly zone in Northern Iraq and a "de facto" Kurdish Autonomous region emerged in the North. Arabs families were expelled from the Kurdish region and relocated to Kirkuk, which was still controlled by the Iraqi government. In these circumstances, Hussein's government further intensified the decades long policy of Arabization in Kirkuk, requiring that Kurds, Turkmen and Assyrians fill out "ethnic identity correction" forms and register as Arabs and many who refused to comply were forcibly relocated north of the Green Line. In May 1991, Massoud Barzani announced that Baghdad had conceded Kirkuk as the capital of the autonomous region, but when the Iraqi government demanded the Kurds join the Ba'athist government the dispute once again escalated to violent conflict and in October 1991 Iraqi forces had withdrawn from several Kurdish provinces in the North including Erbil, Dohuk and Sulaymaniyah.


title: Kirkuk

text: American and British military forces led an invasion of Iraq in March 2003, marking the start the of Second Iraq War. Kurdish "peshmerga" fighters assisted in the 2003 capture of Kirkuk. Though the "peshmerga" were allowed to operate even after the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) disbanded and outlawed most of the armed militias in Iraq, the "peshmerga" were eventually asked to withdraw from Kirkuk and other Kurdish held provinces.


title: Kirkuk

text: Under the supervision of chief executive of Coalition Provisional Authority L. Paul Bremer, a convention was held on 24 May 2003 to select the first City Council in the history of this oil-rich, ethnically divided city. Each of the city's four major ethnic groups was invited to send a 39-member delegation from which they would be allowed to select six to sit on the City Council. Another six council members were selected from among 144 delegates to represent independents social groups such as teachers, lawyers, religious leaders and artists.


title: Kirkuk

text: Kirkuk's 30 members council is made up of five blocs of six members each. Four of those blocs are formed along ethnic lines—Kurds, Arabs, Assyrian and Turkmen—and the fifth is made up of independents which meant 10 more council seats given to two main Kurdish Parties by Paul Bremer as token of appreciation for cooperation with American Forces. Turkmen and Arabs complained that the Kurds allegedly hold five of the seats in the independent block. They were also infuriated that their only representative at the council's helm was an assistant mayor whom they considered pro-Kurdish. Abdul Rahman Mustafa (), a Baghdad-educated lawyer was elected mayor by 20 votes to 10. The appointment of an Arab, Ismail Ahmed Rajab Al Hadidi (), as deputy mayor went some way towards addressing Arab concerns.


title: Kirkuk

text: On 30 June 2005, through a secret direct voting process, with the participation of the widest communities in the province and despite all the political legal security complexities of this process in the country generally and in Kirkuk in particular, Kirkuk witnessed the birth of its first elected Provincial Council. The Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq IECI approved the elections and announced the outcome of this process, which filled the 41 seats of Kirkuk Provincial Council as follows:


title: Kirkuk

text: The new Kirkuk Provincial Council started its second turn on 6 March 2005. Its inaugural session was dedicated to the introduction of its new members, followed by an oath ceremony supervised by Judge Thahir Hamza Salman, the Head of Kirkuk Appellate Court.


title: Kirkuk

text: Kirkuk is located in a disputed area of Iraq that runs from Sinjar on the Syrian border southeast to Khanaqin and Mandali on the Iranian border. Kirkuk has been a disputed territory for around eighty years — Kurds wanted Kirkuk to become part of the Kurdistan Region, which has been opposed by the region's Arab and Turkmen populations.


title: Kirkuk

text: The Kurds sought to annex the long disputed territory to the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) through Article 140 of the Iraqi Constitution that was enacted in 2005. Under Article 140 the Ba'athist Arabization policy would be reversed: Displaced Kurds who had relocated to areas in the Kurdish autonomous region would return to Kirkuk, while the Arab Shi'a population would be compensated and relocated to areas in the south. After the Ba'athist regimes demographic and redistricting policies were undone a census and referendum would determine whether Kirkuk would be administered by the KRG or Baghdad.


title: Kirkuk

text: Following the 2010 parliamentary election the Kurds signed the Erbil Agreement and backed Nouri al-Maliki on the condition that Article 140 would be implemented.


title: Kirkuk

text: Three churches in Kirkuk were targeted with bombs in August 2011. On 12 July 2013, Kirkuk was hit by a deadly bomb, killing 38 people in an attack on a café. A few days prior, on 11 July 2013, over 40 people were killed in a series of bombings and shootings across Iraq, including in Kirkuk.


title: Kirkuk

text: On 12 June 2014, following the 2014 Northern Iraq offensive of the Islamic State, during which it secured control of Tikrit and nearby areas in Syria, the Iraqi army retreated from their positions in Kirkuk and the Peshmerga of the Kurdistan Regional Government then took the city.


title: Kirkuk

text: On 21 October 2016, the Islamic State launched multiple attacks in Kirkuk to divert Iraqi military resources during the Battle of Mosul. Witnesses reported multiple explosions and gun battles in the city, most centered on a government compound. At least 11 workers, including several Iranians, were killed by a suicide bomber at a power plant in nearby Dibis. The attack was brought to an end by 24 October, with 74 militants being killed and others (including the leader) being arrested.


title: Kirkuk

text: Under Kurdish control, Turkmen and Arab residents in Kirkuk experienced intimidation, harassment and were forced to leave their homes, in order to increase the Kurdish demographic in Kirkuk and bolster their claims to the city. Multiple Human Rights Watch reports detail the confiscation of Turkmen and Arab families' documents, preventing them from voting, buying property and travelling. Turkmen residents of Kirkuk were detained by Kurdish forces and compelled to leave the city. Kurdish authorities expelled hundreds of Arab families from the city, demolishing their homes in the process.


title: Kirkuk

text: United Nations reports since 2006 have documented that Kurdish authorities and Peshmerga militia forces were illegally policing Kirkuk and other disputed areas, and that these militia have abducted Turkmen and Arabs, subjecting them to torture.


title: Kirkuk

text: On 16 October 2017, the Iraqi national army and PMF militia retook control of Kirkuk as the Kurdish Peshmerga forces fled the city without fighting.


title: Kirkuk

text: Kirkuk has been a disputed territory for around eighty years. The KRG wanted Kirkuk to become part of the Kurdistan Region, which is opposed by the region's Arab and Turkmen populations.


title: Kirkuk

text: There has been a long planned referendum to resolve Kirkuk's status under Article 140 of the Iraqi Constitution.


title: Kirkuk

text: Kirkuk's population was predominantly Turkmen in the early 20th century, when Turkish was the most common language spoken at home. The city had a population near 30,000 in the late 1910s. The Turkmen were majority in the city centre, dominating the political and economic life of the area.


title: Kirkuk

text: The most reliable census concerning the ethnic composition of Kirkuk dates back to 1957. The Turkish-speaking Turkmen formed the majority in the city of Kirkuk, whilst the Kurds were the plurality in the governorate. The provincial borders were later altered, the province was renamed al-Ta'mim, and some Kurdish-majority districts were added to Erbil and Sulamaniya provinces.


title: Kirkuk

text: A report by the International Crisis Group points out that figures from the 1977 and 1997 censuses "are all considered highly problematic, due to suspicions of regime manipulation" because Iraqi citizens were only allowed to indicate belonging to either the Arab or Kurdish ethnic groups; consequently, this skewed the number of other ethnic minorities. Many Iraqi Turkmen declared themselves as Arabs (because the Kurds were not desirable under Saddam Hussein's regime), reflecting the changes wrought by Arabisation.


title: Kirkuk

text: After attacks by ISIS, Kurdish authorities who were suspicious of the Arab refugees in Kirkuk, expelled hundreds of Arab families who had fled to the region during Iraq's war against ISIS. The refugees were sent to camps for the displaced or to their places of origin. Some of the displaced described themselves as locals and not as internally displaced.


title: Kirkuk

text: In 2017, around 30 Armenian families resided in the city. The community has also an Armenian Apostolic church.


title: Kirkuk

text: The Assyrians have an ancient history in Kirkuk, as they do throughout northern Iraq. As Arrapha it was a part of the Old Assyrian Empire (c.1975–1750 BC), and fully incorporated into Assyria proper by the 14th century BC during the Middle Assyrian Empire (1365–105 BC), and remained so until the downfall of the Neo-Assyrian Empire between 615 and 599 BC. After this it was an integral part of Achaemenid Assyria (Athura), and during the Parthian Empire was centre to an independent Neo Assyrian state named Beth Garmai, before being incorporated into Assuristan by the Sassanid Empire.


title: Kirkuk

text: The Seleucid town, like many other Upper Mesopotamian cities had a significant indigenous Assyrian population. Christianity was established among them in the 2nd century by the bishop Tuqrītā (Theocritos).


title: Kirkuk

text: During the Sasanian times the town became an important centre of the Assyrian Church of the East, with several of its bishops rising to the rank of Patriarch. Tensions among Christians and Zoroastrians led to a severe persecution of Christians during the reign of Shapur II (309–379 A.D.) as recorded in the Acts of the Persian Martyrs. Persecution resumed under Yazdegerd II in 445 A.D. who massacred thousands of them. Their situation greatly improved under the Sasanians in the following two centuries after the advent of a national Persian church of free of Byzantine influence, namely Nestorianism. Persecution resumed under Yazdegerd II in 445 A.D. who massacred thousands of them. Tradition puts the death toll at 12,000 among them the patriarch Shemon Bar Sabbae.


title: Kirkuk

text: The city was known as the centre of the prosperous Ecclesiastical Province of Beth Garmai which lingered until the conquests of Timur Leng in 1400 A.D.


title: Kirkuk

text: During the Ottoman period most of Kirkuk's Christians followed the Chaldean Catholic Church whose bishop resided in the Cathedral of the Great Martyrion which dates back to the 5th century. The cathedral was however used as a powder storage and was blown up as the Ottomans retreated in 1918.


title: Kirkuk

text: The discovery of oil brought more Christians to Kirkuk, however they were also affected by the Arabization policy of the Baath Party. Their numbers continued to plummet after the American invasion, and they occupy 4% of municipal offices, a percentage thought to be representative of their numbers in the city.


title: Kirkuk

text: Jews had a long history in Kirkuk. Ottoman records show that in 1560 there were 104 Jewish homes in Kirkuk, and in 1896 there were 760 Jews in the city. After World War I, the Jewish population increased, especially after Kirkuk became a petroleum center; in 1947 there were 2,350 counted in the census. Jews were generally engaged in commerce and handicraft. Social progress was slow, and it was only in the 1940s that some Jewish students acquired secondary academic education. By 1951 almost all of the Jews had left for Israel.


title: Kirkuk

text: The Baban family was a Kurdish family that, in the 18th and 19th centuries, dominated the political life of the province of Sharazor, in present-day Iraqi Kurdistan. The first member of the clan to gain control of the province and its capital, Kirkuk, was Sulayman Beg. Enjoying almost full autonomy, the Baban family established Kirkuk as their capital. It was from this time that Kurds in Iraq began to view Kirkuk as their capital. This persisted even after the Babans moved their administration to the new town of Sulaymaniya, named after the dynasty's founder, in the late 18th century. according to the Ottoman encyclopedist Shamsaddin Sami , author of Qamus al-A'lam published in Istanbul in 1897, describes the demography of Kirkuk in this way: “The Kurds represent three quarters of the population. The remaining quarter is made up of Turcomans , Arabs and others. There are also 760 Jews and 500 Assyrian-Chaldeans living there."


title: Kirkuk

text: Iraqi Turkmens view the city as their capital, with the last reliable census showing the city of Kirkuk had a Turkmen majority.


title: Kirkuk

text: In the city of Kirkuk, Turkmens reside in the neighborhoods of Tisin, Musalla, Korya, Baghdad Road, Sarıkahya, Şaturlu, Beyler, Piryadi, Almas, Arafa, Bulak, Çukur, İmam Abbas, Cırıt Square, Çay, 1 June and Beşiktaş. They are sparsely dispersed in other neighborhoods. It is also known that Christian Turkmens live in the neighborhoods of Şaturlu, Almas and Arafa in Kirkuk. There are many Turkmen villages around Kirkuk. These villages include Türkalan, Yayçı, Çardaklı, Kızılyar, Kümbetler, Bulova and Beşir.


title: Kirkuk

text: The Turkmen/Turkoman are descendants of numerous Turkic migration waves. The earliest arrivals date back to the Umayyads and Abbasid eras, when they arrived as military recruits. Considerable Turcoman settlement continued during the Seljuq era when Toghrul entered Iraq in 1055 with his army composed mostly of Oghuz Turks. Kirkuk remained under the control of the Seljuq Empire for 63 years. However, the largest Turkic migration waves occurred during the four centuries of Ottoman rule (1535–1919) when Turkish migrants from Anatolia were encouraged to settle in the region; indeed, it is largely from this period that modern Turkmens claim association with Anatolia and the modern Turkish state.


title: Kirkuk

text: In particular, following the conquest of Iraq by the Ottoman sultan Suleiman the Magnificent in 1535, Kirkuk came firmly under Ottoman control and was referred to “Gökyurt” (Blue Homeland) in the Ottoman records, "perhaps indicating that Kirkuk was identified as a particularly Turkic town by that time." Under the Ottomans, Turkish migrations from Anatolia to Kirkuk occurred throughout the centuries; firstly during the initial conquest of 1535, followed by the arrival of Turkish families with the army of sultan Murad IV in 1638, whilst others came later with other notable Ottoman figures. These families occupied the highest socioeconomic strata and held the most important bureaucratic jobs until the end of Ottoman rule. During this period, the Turcoman were the predominant population of Kirkuk city and its close environs but Kurds constituted the majority of the rural population of Kirkuk. Kirkuk had a population near 30,000 in the late 1910s, Turkmens were majority in the city center, dominating the political and economic life of the area.


title: Kirkuk

text: Currently Iraqi Turkmen politicians hold just over 20 percent of seats on Kirkuk's city council, while Turkmen leaders say they make up nearly a third of the city.


title: Kirkuk

text: The archaeological sites of Qal'at Jarmo and Yorgan Tepe are found at the outskirts of the modern city. In 1997, there were reports that the government of Saddam Hussein "demolished Kirkuk's historic citadel with its mosques and ancient church".


title: Kirkuk

text: The architectural heritage of Kirkuk sustained serious damage during World War I (when some pre-Muslim Assyrian Christian monuments were destroyed) and, more recently, during the Iraq War. Simon Jenkins reported in June 2007 that "eighteen ancient shrines have been lost, ten in Kirkuk and the south in the past month alone".


title: Kirkuk

text: Kirkuk experiences a hot semi-arid climate (Köppen climate classification: BSh) with extremely hot and dry summers and mild winters with moderate rainfall. Snow is rare but it fell on 22 February 2004, and from 10 to 11 January 2008.


title: Holland (album)

text: Holland is the 19th studio album by American rock band the Beach Boys, released January 8, 1973 on Brother/Reprise. It is their first album recorded without Bruce Johnston since 1965, their second with Blondie Chaplin and Ricky Fataar, and their final studio album created under the "de facto" leadership of Carl Wilson and manager Jack Rieley. The LP was originally packaged with a bonus EP, "Mount Vernon and Fairway", which consisted of a 12-minute fairy tale written and produced by Brian and Carl Wilson.


title: Holland (album)

text: Per its title, "Holland" was recorded over the summer of 1972 at a barn in Baambrugge, near Amsterdam, where the band members and their entourage had decamped for several months in the pursuit of creative inspiration. Recording the album was an unprecedented and extremely costly venture, as the group had commissioned their engineers to renovate the barn, which had housed an existing studio, using components from the band's studio in Los Angeles that were dismantled, shipped to Holland in crates, and then reassembled. Ultimately, only the album's basic tracks were recorded in Holland, with the band finishing off the record in late 1972 at Village Recorders in Los Angeles. Total expenses were estimated at $250,000 (equivalent to $ in ).


title: Holland (album)

text: "Holland" received generally favorable reviews and came to be viewed by many fans as the Beach Boys' last great album. It peaked at number 36 in the US and number 20 in the UK, and it produced two singles: "Sail On, Sailor" and "California Saga/California". Subsequently, the band recorded little in the studio for the next two years. Instead, they released the live album "The Beach Boys in Concert" (1973), and did not follow up with another studio album until "15 Big Ones" (1976). In 2022, an expanded version of "Holland" was packaged within the compilation "Sail On Sailor – 1972".


title: Holland (album)

text: In late December 1970, the Beach Boys played three concert dates in Amsterdam as part of a short European tour. On the first date, which had been scheduled to begin at 12:30 a.m., the band arrived four hours late due to a missed flight, and were surprised to find that the concert hall venue, the Concertgebouw, was still packed with attendees. Furthermore, the audience shouted for the group to perform their new songs, rather than their past hits. Carl Wilson told a local magazine, "I love this audience. Our last albums ["20/20" and "Sunflower"] sold poorly in the US, our financial situation is disastrous – and here we have success. I like this country."


title: Holland (album)

text: Reports from this period suggested that the group were planning to move from Los Angeles to Britain once their recording commitments were finished. In one report, manager Jack Rieley said they were "definitely leaving Los Angeles because of the smog." Later, Rieley told "Rolling Stone", "I wanted to [shift our base] and so did Carl. [Holland] seemed like an interesting place. But most importantly, I felt that The Beach Boys had to do a record outside of California, to get away from that whole scene, find a new scene, and create in that new scene."


title: Holland (album)

text: During the recording of "Carl and the Passions – "So Tough"", in late February 1972, the band returned to the Netherlands to film a promotional clip for their forthcoming single, "Marcella", and play a televised concert at the RAI Congrescentrum. There, the group decided on the Netherlands as the venue for their next recording project, and where they would set up headquarters for the next several months. A few days later, the band announced drummer Ricky Fataar and guitarist Blondie Chaplin as new additions to their official line-up. 1965 addition Bruce Johnston resigned from the group in April 1972.


title: Holland (album)

text: The band had expected to record their Netherlands-based album at a local studio, however, the country's few studios were already overbooked. To get around this, the group commissioned their engineer, Steve Moffit, to design and construct a portable mixing desk – something which had never been done before – and have it shipped to their Netherlands base. This meant dismantling the band's private studio located in Brian Wilson's home. Later, at the end of May, Moffit discovered a barn in Baambrugge, within 10 miles of Amsterdam, that housed an existing recording studio, which he then converted for the band's own purposes. The group also tasked their publicist, Bill DeSimone, with finding eleven houses for the Beach Boys' entourage, unaware that the Netherlands had suffered from a chronic housing shortage. After two weeks, he successfully secured four houses for the group. From May 5 to June 3, the group toured Europe and the UK while using their new homes and offices around Amsterdam as a base.


title: Holland (album)

text: Members of the group and their entourage – which included several wives, girlfriends, and relatives; Rieley and his dog; engineers Moffitt, Gordon Rudd, and Jon Parks; assistant Russ Mackie, and secretary Carol Hess and her husband – took residence at various locations within a 30-mile radius of central Amsterdam. Carl and Chaplin lived in Hilversum; Fataar lived in Vreeland; and Mike Love and Al Jardine lived in Bloemendaal. Brian, who had long resisted making the trip, ultimately settled in Laren with his wife Marilyn, their two children Carnie and Wendy, Marilyn's sister Diane Rovell, and a housekeeper. It took three attempts for Brian to successfully get on the flight from Los Angeles to Amsterdam.


title: Holland (album)

text: The sessions in Holland lasted from June 3 to August 15, 1972 at the BBC 2 Baambrugge studio near Amsterdam. Initially, the studio was in a non-functioning state, as there was not enough time to test the equipment shipped from Los Angeles before the group were due to record. According to biographer Steven Gaines, Moffit "spent eighteen hours a day for the next four and a half weeks trying to get the equipment running. This ruined the touring schedule the Beach Boys expected to keep in Europe, severely limiting the needed income to cover the expense of living in Holland." Al Jardine remembered, "It was rough being in Holland. We were working 24/7 in a small homemade rebuilt piecemeal little studio in a garage next to a cow pasture. Yeah, it was rough. We didn’t even have the correct electricity [...] so that kind of affected the sound of our equipment. It was a mixed blessing."


title: Holland (album)

text: According to Fataar, "Everybody would come in with a piece of a song or a completed song and kind of play around with it and then figure out how we wanted to record it. It was very casual." Carl produced every track on "Holland", except for the songs by Dennis Wilson, which Dennis produced himself. In the middle of recording, Dennis moved to the Canary Islands, opting to return to the studio only for certain sessions. Biographer Jon Stebbins explains that Dennis had not felt "comfortable living in Holland".


title: Holland (album)

text: Brian did not join most of his bandmate's sessions, instead preferring to work alone on late nights. Fataar said, "I can't even remember seeing him in the studio in Holland. Everyone had their own family situation and we'd just go to work and occasionally see each other. It wasn't like a one-big-family thing." Carl recalled, "It was a very creative time for me. Brian had me working on the album very hard so he could have some time for himself. He wasn't really up for doing much, as far as going into the studio every day." Biographer Peter Ames Carlin writes,


title: Holland (album)

text: At the end of the Holland stay, in early August, the band attended a party hosted by the Dutch record company Bovema Negram, where Rieley announced to local journalists that the Beach Boys' next release would be a double album titled "Holland". However, only the album's basic tracks were recorded in Holland; the band subsequently returned to California for further recording. Rieley stayed behind, intending from this point onward to manage the group from his office in Amsterdam.


title: Holland (album)

text: From late September through early October, the band refined the tracks at Village Recorders in Los Angeles, and a master was assembled on October 9. It was expected that the album would be released on November 5, but this motion was halted by Reprise/Warner Bros. executives who felt that the LP was a weak effort and lacked a hit single. The band were displeased; Gaines quoted one Warner Bros. executive as saying, "It was bloodshed. Everybody went wild." To satisfy the record company, the group recorded one more song, "Sail On, Sailor", after which the album was remastered and completed in late November. Production expenses for "Holland" totaled $250,000 (equivalent to $ in ). Rieley remarked of the exorbitant cost, "Someday accounting will face a column just titled 'Holland.'"


title: Holland (album)

text: "Sail On, Sailor" was written primarily by Van Dyke Parks and Brian Wilson with Rieley, Tandyn Almer, and Ray Kennedy. There are several contradicting accounts of the song's origins. Carlin states that the song was essentially co-written by Wilson and Parks in 1971, with Kennedy and Almer's contributions dating from impromptu sessions at Three Dog Night singer Danny Hutton's house during the epoch. Brian refused to participate on the recording.


title: Holland (album)

text: "Steamboat" was written by Dennis and Rieley, and sung by Carl. The lyrics reference Robert Fulton, the inventor of the steamboat. Carlin described the song as "a dreamlike journey back to the mythic heart of Mark Twain's America, borne by the insistent chug of an actual steam engine, hurtling keyboard glissandos, and a wonderfully bluesy slide guitar break". Musician Scott McCaughey wrote, "the chugging, almost industrial rhythm bed sounds like a modern sampled tape loop or a latter-day Tom Waits creation."


title: Holland (album)

text: "California Saga" is a three-part series of songs – "Big Sur", "The Beaks of Eagles", and "California" – that the members of the group produced when they had been feeling homesick. "Big Sur", an acoustic number about rural life in Northern California, is the first song in which Mike Love wrote both the words and music. It was originally recorded during the "Surf's Up" sessions; the version on "Holland" is a rerecording. "The Beaks of Eagles", composed by Jardine, is partly based on Robinson Jeffers' poem of the same name. "California" has Brian, who was otherwise barely present at the group's sessions, singing the opening line "On my way to sunny Californ-i-a".


title: Holland (album)

text: "The Trader" is a two-part composition by Carl, with lyrics by Rieley, who explained, "Carl was speaking out about the fact that it’s wrong to subjugate a people, as so many have been. The Trader is really about racism; these people who got their orders from the king or queen and colonised Africa, for example. The tender part of the song asks the Africans to reply. I believe it’s quite touching. I wasn’t consciously trying to do something political." According to Carlin, the lyrics explore "Manifest Destiny as seen through the eyes of the conquering and the conquered."


title: Holland (album)

text: "Leaving This Town" was written primarily by Fataar, who said, "I had parts of it and Carl came in the studio and suggested other things, so we were just making it up as we went along." "Only with You" was composed by Dennis, with words by Mike Love, and sung by Carl. "Funky Pretty" was produced by Carl and Brian, and features every member of the group trading the lead vocal.


title: Holland (album)

text: Among the outtakes, "We Got Love" is an anti-apartheid song by Blondie Chaplin, Fataar, and Love that was dropped from the album's track listing to make way for "Sail On, Sailor". A live recording of "We Got Love" was included on the album "The Beach Boys In Concert" (1973). "Hard Times" (not to be confused with "Hard Time") was written by Chaplin and recorded on October 4. "Pa, Let Her Go Out", written by Brian, evolved into "Better Get Back in Bed" and "Lazy Lizzie".


title: Holland (album)

text: "Carry Me Home" was written by Dennis, who shared the lead vocal with Chaplin. Stebbins refers to the song as "the most expressive of emotional pain" of any Beach Boys songs. Dennis explained to an interviewer, "I wrote a song intended for "Holland" about Vietnam. I got the image of a soldier—me—dying in a ditch, and I ended up doing a song about it. The soldier began feeling, 'Why the hell am I here?' Then the coldness started move up his body, from his feet to his legs, to his chest ... until he was dead. See? It was too negative! How could I put that on a Beach Boys album?" The song would have been released on the 2013 box set "Made in California" had there not already been a large number of Dennis songs on the compilation. Brother Records archive manager Alan Boyd said, "We also felt a little uncomfortable with the idea of at this point in time of Dennis singing (recites lyrics), 'Please God don’t let me die'." The song eventually was released fifty years after being recorded, as a teaser single for the Sail On, Sailor boxset, which it was also included in.


title: Holland (album)

text: The front cover depicts (upside down) a tugboat in the Kromme Waal, a canal in central Amsterdam. "Holland" was packaged with a 12-page booklet that provided a historical overview of the album's making, plus a bonus EP, "Mount Vernon and Fairway", that Brian and Carl had produced during the "Holland" sessions. The EP represented a compromise, as Brian had wanted "Mount Vernon and Fairway" featured on the album, a proposal that his bandmates had vetoed.


title: Holland (album)

text: Released on January 8, 1973, "Holland" peaked at number 36 in the U.S. and number 20 in the UK. Despite having a lower chart showing, the record outsold "Carl and the Passions". Lead single "Sail On, Sailor" (backed with "Only with You") was issued in February and reached number 79. In the UK, the lead single was "California Saga/California" (backed with "Sail On, Sailor"), reaching number 75. In March, the band remixed and overdubbed new vocals onto "California Saga/California" for a U.S. single release. Released in May, the single (backed with "Funky Pretty") reached number 84.


title: Holland (album)

text: From March 7 to May 17, the Beach Boys embarked on a ten-week U.S. tour with a supporting band that included guitarist Billy Hinsche, keyboardist Carlos Munoz, drummer Joe Pollard, bassist Ed Carter, and percussionist Richard "Didymus" Washington. Their set list included "Funky Pretty", "Leaving This Town", "California Saga/California", and "Sail On, Sailor". According to music historian Keith Badman, critics noted "some unusually long pauses between each song and the group's sometimes negative reaction to any audience requests for oldies." Brian Wilson, who last appeared with his bandmates in concert in 1970, briefly joined them onstage during their encore at the Hollywood Palladium on April 20.


title: Holland (album)

text: Over the next two years, the group maintained a touring regimen, but recorded very little in the studio. On November 19, Warner/Reprise issued "The Beach Boys in Concert", a live double album that became the band's best-selling release on the label. It included live performances of "Sail On, Sailor", "The Trader", "Leaving This Town", "Funky Pretty", and the "Holland" outtake "We Got Love".


title: Holland (album)

text: "Holland" received generally favorable reviews at the time of release. "Rolling Stone"s Jim Miller, who was displeased with "Carl and the Passions", praised "Holland" for its "occasionally unnerving simplicity of viewpoint [and] its frequently ornate perfection." The magazine later ranked it among the five best albums of 1973. Robert Christgau of "The Village Voice" praised the sound quality of "Holland", but believed that the album had strayed too far from what the Beach Boys did best, stating, "I suppose that in time their tongue-tied travelogue of Big Sur may seem no more escapist than 'Fun Fun Fun', but who'll ever believe it's equally simple, direct, or innocent?" In Britain, "NME"s Richard Williams wrote, "I expect more from the Beach Boys than from anyone else. "Holland" has the goods."


title: Holland (album)

text: "Holland" became regarded by many fans as the Beach Boys' "last, high-quality original album". Music journalist Peter Doggett opined, "After the false start of "Carl And The Passion", "Holland" proved that the Beach Boys could function as a creative rock band beyond the self-imposed limits of their 60s hits." "Mojo"s Danny Ecleston referred to "Holland" as his favorite Beach Boys album, as well as their "least-heard (and certainly last) great record."


title: Holland (album)

text: Less favorably, AllMusic reviewer John Bush rued that "Holland" was a "surprisingly weak" effort. Douglas Wolk of "Blender" thought that the band "got way self-indulgent, recording poetry, flutes and Moog solos." Among biographers, Stebbins called the record "a very respectable effort", though "not of the caliber of "Pet Sounds" or "Sunflower"". John Tobler praised the "California Saga" trilogy and "The Trader", but decreed, "some of the [other] tracks were less than exceptional".


title: Holland (album)

text: Brian's 2016 memoir, "I Am Brian Wilson", states of "Holland": "There are some great songs on that record. 'Steamboat' kicks ass. I really like 'Only with You' and 'Funky Pretty', too. It's a damned good album no matter where or how we made it."


title: Holland (album)

text: Elvis Costello ranked the album as one of his favorite records of all time. Tom Petty penned liner notes for the 2000 CD reissue, in which he described the album as "beautiful" and singled out "The Trader" as the album's "centerpiece". Primal Scream covered the "Holland" outtake "Carry Me Home". Camper Van Beethoven stated that "Holland" was an enormous inspiration on their 2013 album "La Costa Perdida".


title: Brexit withdrawal agreement

text: The Brexit withdrawal agreement, officially titled Agreement on the withdrawal of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland from the European Union and the European Atomic Energy Community, is a treaty between the European Union (EU), Euratom, and the United Kingdom (UK), signed on 24 January 2020, setting the terms of the withdrawal of the UK from the EU and Euratom. The text of the treaty was published on 17 October 2019, and is a renegotiated version of an agreement published half a year earlier. The earlier version of the withdrawal agreement was rejected by the House of Commons on three occasions, leading to the resignation of Theresa May as Prime Minister and the appointment of Boris Johnson as the new prime minister on 24 July 2019.


title: Brexit withdrawal agreement

text: The Parliament of the United Kingdom gave its approval to the agreement on 23 January 2020 and the UK government deposited Britain's instrument of ratification on 29 January 2020. The agreement was ratified by the Council of the European Union on 30 January 2020, following the consent of the European Parliament on 29 January 2020. The United Kingdom's withdrawal from the Union took effect on 11 p.m. GMT on 31 January 2020, and at that moment the Withdrawal Agreement entered into force, as per its article 185.


title: Brexit withdrawal agreement

text: The Agreement covers such matters as money, citizens' rights, border arrangements and dispute resolution. It also contains a transition period and an outline of the future relationship between the UK and the EU. Published on 14 November 2018, it was a result of the Brexit negotiations. The agreement was endorsed by the leaders of the 27 remaining EU countries and the British Government led by Prime Minister Theresa May, but faced opposition in the British parliament, whose approval was necessary for ratification. Approval by the European Parliament would also have been required. On 15 January 2019, the House of Commons rejected the withdrawal agreement by a vote of 432 to 202. The Commons rejected the agreement again on 12 March 2019, on a vote of 391 to 242, and rejected a third time of 29 March 2019 by 344 votes to 286. On 22 October 2019 the revised withdrawal agreement negotiated by Boris Johnson's government cleared the first stage in Parliament, but Johnson paused the legislative process when the accelerated programme for approval failed to achieve the necessary support, and announced his intention to call a general election. On 23 January 2020, Parliament ratified the agreement by passing the Withdrawal Agreement Act; on 29 January 2020, the European Parliament gave its consent to the withdrawal agreement. It was subsequently concluded by the Council of the European Union on 30 January 2020.


title: Brexit withdrawal agreement

text: The withdrawal agreement, in Part Four, provided for a transition or implementation period until 00:00 Central European Time on 1 January 2021 (11pm Greenwich Mean Time on 31 December 2020 in the UK) (referred to as "IP completion day" in British law and state terminology), during which time the UK remained in the single market, in order to ensure frictionless trade until a long-term relationship was agreed. If no agreement was reached by this date, then the UK would have left the single market without a trade deal on 1 January 2021. Closely connected to the withdrawal agreement is a non-binding political declaration on the future EU–UK relationship.


title: Brexit withdrawal agreement

text: In the Conservative Party's manifesto for the United Kingdom general election in May 2015, the party promised an EU referendum by the end of 2017.


title: Brexit withdrawal agreement

text: The referendum, held on 23 June 2016, resulted in a 51.9% to 48.1% majority vote for leaving the European Union.


title: Brexit withdrawal agreement

text: The agreement also set up a transitional period, which lasted until 31 December 2020 with a provision for extension by mutual consent. During the transitional period, EU law continued to apply to the UK (including participation in the European Economic Area, the single market, and the customs union), and the UK continued to pay into the EU budget, but the UK was not represented in the decision-making bodies of the EU. The transition period gave businesses time to adjust to the new situation and time for the British and EU governments to negotiate a new trade deal between the EU and UK.


title: Brexit withdrawal agreement

text: On the Irish border question, the Irish backstop was appended to the agreement setting a fall-back position if effective alternative arrangements failed to be agreed to avoid a hard border before the end of the transition period, with the UK shadowing the EU's Common external tariff and Northern Ireland keeping in aspects of the Single Market.


title: Brexit withdrawal agreement

text: The governance will be through a Joint Committee with representatives of both the European Union and the British government. There will be a number of specialised committees reporting to the Joint Committee.


title: Brexit withdrawal agreement

text: The withdrawal agreement also includes provisions for the UK to leave the Convention Defining the Statute of the European Schools, with the UK bound by the Convention and the accompanying regulations on Accredited European Schools until the end of the last academic year of the transition period, i.e. the end of the spring semester of 2020–2021.


title: Brexit withdrawal agreement

text: The Agreement assists the arrangements of withdrawing the UK from the European Union and Euratom (Art. 1), provides a clear definition for the territorial scope of the United Kingdom (Art. 3), and assures the legal liability of the Agreement (Art. 4). Additionally, it states that by the end of the transition period, the UK shall be denied access to "any network, any information system and any database established on the basis of Union law" (Art. 8).


title: Brexit withdrawal agreement

text: The Agreement defines and provides the personal scope of citizens, family members, frontier workers, host states, and nationals. Article 11 deals with continuity of residence and Article 12 discusses non-discrimination (i.e., it would be prohibited to discriminate on grounds of nationality).


title: Brexit withdrawal agreement

text: British nationals and European Union citizens, family members who are British nationals or European Union citizens and family members who are neither of those two shall maintain the right to reside in the host State (Art. 13). The host State may not limit or condition the persons for obtaining, retaining or losing residence rights (Art. 13). Persons with valid documentation would not require entry and exit visas or equal formalities and would be permitted to leave or enter the host state without complications (Art. 14). In case the host State demands "family members who join the Union citizen or United Kingdom national after the end of the transition period to have an entry visa", the host State is required to grant necessary visas through an accelerated process in appropriate facilities free of charge (Art. 14). The Agreement further deals with the issuance of permanent residence permits during and after the transition period, as well as its restrictions. Moreover, it clarifies the rights of workers and self-employed individuals, and provides recognition and identification of professional qualifications.


title: Brexit withdrawal agreement

text: This title discusses special cases, administrative cooperation, legal adaptations and development of Union laws.


title: Brexit withdrawal agreement

text: The Agreement defines the goods, services and the processes connected to them. It claims that any good or service that was lawfully placed in the market prior to the withdrawal from the Union may be further made available to the consumers in the UK or the Union States (Art. 40 & 41).


title: Brexit withdrawal agreement

text: This title addresses the custom procedures of goods moving from the customs territory of the UK to the customs territory of the Union and vice versa (Art. 47). The processes that start before the end of the transition period "shall be treated as an intra-Union movement regarding importation and exportation licensing requirements in Union law". The Agreement also addresses the ending of temporary storage or customs procedures (Art. 49).


title: Brexit withdrawal agreement

text: The VAT applies to goods that are exchanged between the Union and the UK. By way of derogation from previous Articles, the Title permits access to information systems that are necessary for the application or processing of the VAT (Art. 51).


title: Brexit withdrawal agreement

text: There are ten annexes to the draft. The first is a protocol to maintain an open border between the EU and the UK on the island of Ireland (generally known as the 'Irish backstop'). The second covers the arrangements for a common customs territory to operate between the EU and the UK, until a technical solution can be found that delivers both an open border and independent customs policies. The third covers operations of the joint customs territory. The fourth covers 'good governance in the area of taxation, environmental protection, labour and social standards, state aid, competition, and state-owned undertakings'. The fifth to eighth cover relevant provisions in EU law. The ninth and tenth details procedures arising from main sections of the draft.


title: Brexit withdrawal agreement

text: The Northern Ireland Protocol, known familiarly as the "Irish backstop", was an annex to the November 2018 draft agreement that described the provisions to prevent a hard border in Ireland after the United Kingdom leaves the European Union. The Protocol included a safety-net provision to handle the circumstances where satisfactory alternative arrangements remain to come into operation at the end of the transition period.


title: Brexit withdrawal agreement

text: This created considerable difficulties for the government, particularly with the Democratic Unionist Party on which the government depended on for votes


title: Brexit withdrawal agreement

text: The agreement was subject to revisions under the Johnson ministry's renegotiation in 2019. The amendments adjust approximately 5% of the text.


title: Brexit withdrawal agreement

text: The Irish backstop was removed, and replaced by on Northern Ireland/Ireland. This new protocol meant that Great Britain could fully leave the European Single Market and the EU Customs Union but that Northern Ireland would be out of the EU Customs Union de jure but not de facto. Another difference was a unilateral exit mechanism for the Northern Ireland Assembly which has a vote every four years on whether to continue with these arrangements, for which a simple majority is required.


title: Brexit withdrawal agreement

text: A continuity with the backstop was providing for the application of EU-law in the area of goods and electricity and a role for the European Court of Justice with regards to procedures in case of non-compliance as well as the possibility and requirement for UK courts to ask for preliminary rulings on the application of EU law and related parts of the protocol.


title: Brexit withdrawal agreement

text: The 2019 revisions also adjusted elements of the political declaration, replacing the word "adequate" with "appropriate" in regard to labour standards. According to Sam Lowe, trade fellow at the Centre for European Reform, the change excludes labour standards from dispute settlement mechanisms. In addition, the level playing field mechanism has been moved from the legally-binding withdrawal agreement to the political declaration, and the line in the political declaration that “the United Kingdom will consider aligning with union rules in relevant areas” has been removed.


title: Brexit withdrawal agreement

text: Article 164 establishes a joint committee for the implementation of the agreement, which is co-chaired by the EU and the UK and has 6 specialised committees. The Withdrawal Agreement delegated some arrangements relating to the UK's separation from the EU to the Joint Committee to decide upon. A Joint Committee is a commonly used process within deeper trade treaties to manage tensions.


title: Brexit withdrawal agreement

text: There is equal representation from both sides with no casting vote and the ability to go to an international arbitration panel if there is no agreement. There are a number of specialist subcommittees that report to the main committee, of which the 'Northern Ireland subcommittee' (dealing with the Northern Ireland Protocol) attracted most news-media attention in Spring 2021, because of the controversy over what became known as the Irish Sea border.


title: Brexit withdrawal agreement

text: The Specialised Committee on Citizens' Rights was established to monitor the implementation and application of citizens' rights under the agreement.


title: Brexit withdrawal agreement

text: The reception of the agreement in the House of Commons ranged from cool to hostile and the vote was delayed more than a month. Prime Minister May won a no confidence motion in her own party, but the EU refused to accept any further changes.


title: Brexit withdrawal agreement

text: On 15 November 2018, the day after the agreement was presented and received backing from the cabinet of the British government, several members of the government resigned, including Dominic Raab, Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union.


title: Brexit withdrawal agreement

text: Following an unprecedented vote on 4 December 2018, MPs ruled that the British government was in contempt of parliament for refusing to provide to Parliament the full legal advice it had been given on the effect of its proposed terms for withdrawal. The key point within the advice covered the legal effect of the "backstop" agreement governing Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland and the rest of the UK, in regard to the customs border between the EU and UK, and its implications for the Good Friday agreement which had led to the end of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, and specifically, whether the UK would be certain of being able to leave the EU in a practical sense, under the draft proposals.


title: Brexit withdrawal agreement

text: The following day, the advice was published. The question asked was, ""What is the legal effect of the UK agreeing to the Protocol to the Withdrawal Agreement on Ireland and Northern Ireland in particular its effect in conjunction with Articles5 and 184 of the main Withdrawal Agreement?"" The advice given was that:


title: Brexit withdrawal agreement

text: Immediately following announcement of a revised withdrawal agreement on 17 October 2019, Labour, the Liberal Democrats, and DUP said that they could not support the new deal.


title: Brexit withdrawal agreement

text: On 15 January 2019, the House of Commons voted down the Brexit withdrawal agreement by 230 votes, the largest vote against the United Kingdom government in history. The May government survived a confidence vote the following day. On 12 March 2019, the Commons voted down the agreement a second time by 149 votes, the fourth-largest defeat of the government in the history of the Commons. A third vote on the Brexit withdrawal agreement, widely expected to be held on 19 March 2019, was refused by the Speaker of the House of Commons on 18 March 2019 on the basis of a parliamentary convention dating from 2 April 1604 that prevents British governments from forcing the Commons to repeatedly vote on an issue that the Commons has already voted upon. A cut-down version of the withdrawal agreement, where the attached political declaration had been removed, passed the speaker's test for 'substantial change', so a third vote was held on 29 March 2019, but was voted down by 58 votes.


title: Brexit withdrawal agreement

text: On 22 October 2019, the House of Commons agreed by 329 votes to 299 to give a Second Reading to the revised withdrawal agreement (negotiated by Boris Johnson earlier that month), but when the accelerated timetable which he proposed failed to gain the necessary parliamentary support, Johnson announced that the legislation would be paused.


title: Brexit withdrawal agreement

text: On 20 December 2019, following the Conservative victory in the 2019 United Kingdom general election, the House of Commons passed the second reading of the Withdrawal Agreement Bill by a margin of 358–234. After amendments proposed by the House of Lords and ping-pong between the two houses, the bill received royal assent on 23 January 2020, enabling ratification on the British side.


title: Brexit withdrawal agreement

text: On the part of the European Union, the European Parliament gave its consent to the ratification of the Agreement also on 29 January 2020, and the Council of the European Union approved the conclusion of the Agreement on 30 January 2020 by written procedure. Accordingly, also on 30 January 2020, the European Union deposited its instrument of ratification of the Agreement, thus concluding the deal, and allowing it to enter into force at the moment of the United Kingdom's withdrawal from the Union at 11 p.m. GMT on 31 January 2020.


title: Brexit withdrawal agreement

text: The Declaration on Future European Union–United Kingdom Relations, also referred to as the Political Declaration, is a non-binding declaration that was negotiated and signed along with the binding and more comprehensive Withdrawal Agreement in connection with the withdrawal of the United Kingdom (UK) from the European Union (EU), colloquially known as Brexit, and the planned end of the transitional period.


title: Brexit withdrawal agreement

text: According to evidence presented by lobby group "British in Europe" (representing British citizens resident in EU countries) to the Brexit Select Committee of the House of Commons in June 2020, "as many as 23 EU member states [had] yet to implement systems to document the future rights of the estimated 1.2 million British citizens already living on the continent, who are in the dark over their future rights and obligations". "The UK launched its [registration] system for EU citizens last March [2020], with more than 3.3 million people granted pre-settled or settled status to remain in the country after Brexit", the Committee was told.


title: Brexit withdrawal agreement

text: Also, Brexit removed British resident living in EU countries the right to vote in elections to the European Parliament and the right to work in another EU country.


title: Brexit withdrawal agreement

text: On 6 September 2020, the "Financial Times" reported that the British government planned to draw up new legislation that would bypass the withdrawal agreement's Northern Ireland Protocol. The new law would give ministers the power to define what state aid needs to be reported to the EU, and define what products that at risk of being brought into Ireland from Northern Ireland (the withdrawal agreement states that in the absence of a mutual agreement, all products should be considered at risk). The government defended the move, saying the legislation was compliant with the protocol and merely "clarified" ambiguity in the protocol. Ursula von der Leyen warned Johnson not to break international law, saying that the UK's implementation of the withdrawal agreement was a "prerequisite for any future partnership". On 8 September, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Brandon Lewis told the British Parliament that the government's planned Internal Market Bill will "break international law".


title: Brexit withdrawal agreement

text: On 1 October 2020, the European Commission sent a letter of formal notice to the British government as the first step in an infringement procedure, as the UK's Internal Market Bill would be "in full contradiction" to the Northern Ireland Protocol if adopted as-is. Following discussions of the EU-UK Joint Committee on 8 December 2020, the two sides reached an agreement in principle on all issues regarding the implementation of the withdrawal agreement, and the UK agreed to withdraw the offending clauses of the Internal Market Bill.


title: Brexit withdrawal agreement

text: On 3 March 2021, without having used the Joint Committee process, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland informed the UK Parliament of the Government's intention to extend unilaterally (beyond 31 March 2021) the grace period for post-Brexit checks on some goods entering Northern Ireland from Great Britain. The EU objected to this and threatened to resort to legal action over what it said was the second time the UK had sought to breach international law in relation to the Northern Ireland Protocol. On 4 March 2021, Irish Minister for Foreign Affairs Simon Coveney supported the Commission's threat of legal action if the UK "cannot be trusted" to implement the Protocol. The European Parliament, which had yet to ratify the agreement, has postponed its decision pending a resolution to the proposed infringement.


title: Watchman Nee

text: Watchman Nee, Ni Tuosheng, or Nee T'o-sheng (; November 4, 1903 – May 30, 1972), was a Chinese church leader and Christian teacher who worked in China during the 20th century. His evangelism was influenced by the Plymouth Brethren.


title: Watchman Nee

text: In 1922, he initiated church meetings in Fuzhou that may be considered the beginning of the local churches. During his thirty years of ministry, Nee published many books expounding the Bible. He established churches throughout China and held many conferences to train Bible students and church workers. Following the Communist Revolution, Nee was persecuted and imprisoned for his faith and spent the last twenty years of his life in prison. He was honoured by Christopher H. Smith (R–NJ) in the US Congress on July 30, 2009.


title: Watchman Nee

text: Watchman Nee was born on November 4, 1903, the third of nine children of Ni Weng-hsiu, a well-respected officer in the Imperial Customs Service, and Lin He-Ping (Peace Lin), who excelled as a child at an American-staffed Methodist mission school. His grandfather was a gifted Anglican preacher. During a stint at the Chinese Western Girls' School in Shanghai to improve her English, Lin He-Ping met Dora Yu, a young woman who gave up a potential career in medicine to serve as an evangelist and preacher.


title: Watchman Nee

text: Since Nee's parents were both Methodists, he was baptized by a bishop of the Methodist Church as an infant.


title: Watchman Nee

text: In 1916, at age 13, Nee entered the Church Missionary Society Vernacular Middle School in Fuzhou, Fujian province to begin his Western-style education. He then went on to the middle school at Trinity College in Fuzhou, where he demonstrated great intelligence and ambition. Among his classmates was Wilson Wang, brother of one of Watchman Nee's good friends, Leland Wang. The two boys completed college despite severe flooding which brought cholera and plague and hardship to their region. In the final examinations, the 2 boys scored almost the same marks with Wilson Wang topping the class, followed closely by Watchman Nee in second place.


title: Watchman Nee

text: In the spring of 1920, when Nee was 17, Dora Yu was invited to hold ten days of revival meetings in the Church of Heavenly Peace in Fuzhou. After Nee's mother attended these meetings, she was moved to apologize to her son for a previous incident of unjust punishment. Her action impressed Nee so much that he determined to attend the next day's evangelistic meetings to see what was taking place there. After returning from the meeting, according to Nee's own account:


title: Watchman Nee

text: As a student at Trinity College, Nee began to speak to his classmates concerning his salvation experience. Later, he recounted:


title: Watchman Nee

text: After his conversion, Nee desired to be trained as a Christian worker. He first attended Dora Yu's Bible Institute in Shanghai, though he was still a high school student. However, he was dismissed due to his bad and lazy habits, such as sleeping in late. Eventually, Nee's seeking to improve his character brought him into close contact with a British missionary Margaret E. Barber who became his teacher and mentor. Nee would visit Barber on a weekly basis in order to receive spiritual help. Barber treated Nee as a young learner and frequently administered strict discipline. When she died in 1930, Barber left all of her belongings to Nee, who wrote:


title: Watchman Nee

text: Through Barber, Watchman Nee was introduced to the writings of D.M. Panton, Robert Govett, G.H. Pember, Jessie Penn-Lewis, T. Austin-Sparks, and others. In addition, he acquired books from Plymouth Brethren teachers like John Nelson Darby, William Kelly, and C.H. Mackintosh. Eventually, his personal library encompassed over three thousand titles on church history, spiritual growth, and Bible commentary, and he became intimately familiar with the Bible through diligent study using many different methods. In the early days of his ministry, he is said to have spent one-third of his income on personal needs, one-third to assist others, and the remaining third on spiritual books. He was known for his ability to select, comprehend, discern, and memorize relevant material, and grasp and retain the main points of a book while reading.


title: Watchman Nee

text: Nee derived many of his ideas, including plural eldership, disavowal of a clergy-laity distinction, and worship centered around the Lord's Supper, from the Plymouth Brethren. From 1930 to 1935, his movement interacted internationally with the Raven-Taylor group of Exclusive Brethren led by James Taylor, Sr. This group "recognized" the Local Church movement as a parallel work of God, albeit one that had developed independently. Nee refused, however, to follow their practice of isolating themselves from other Christians and rejected their ban on celebrating The Lord's Supper with other Christians. Matters came to a head when Exclusive Brethren leaders learned that during his 1933 visits to the United Kingdom and the United States Nee had broken bread with Honor Oak Christian Fellowship associated with the independent ministry of T. Austin-Sparks and with non-Brethren missionaries whom Nee had known in China. After a series of communications Nee received a letter dated 31 August 1935, signed by leading Brethren, severing fellowship with him and his movement.


title: Watchman Nee

text: As a teenager, Nee fell in love with Charity Chang. Their two families had been friends for three generations. When Nee became a Christian, Charity ridiculed Jesus in Nee's presence. This bothered him. Eventually, after much struggling, Nee felt he needed to give up on their relationship. Ten years later, after finishing her university education, Charity became a Christian. She began attending church meetings in Shanghai in 1934. In the same year, during Nee's fourth "Overcomer Conference" in Hangzhou, the two were married. Charity cared for Nee in his frequent illness and was the only visitor Nee was permitted during his imprisonment. They had no children.


title: Watchman Nee

text: Nee began to write and publish at a very early age. In 1923, he began to publish the magazine "The Present Testimony", and in 1925, he started another magazine entitled "The Christian." It was also in 1925 when Nee changed his name from Ni Shu-tsu to Ni To-sheng (English translation: Watchman Nee). At age 21, Nee established the first "local church" in Sitiawan, Malaysia while visiting his mother, who had moved there from China. In 1926, Nee established up another local church in Shanghai, which became the center of his work in China. By 1932, Nee's practice of meeting as local churches spread throughout China, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore. He maintained this pattern until his imprisonment.


title: Watchman Nee

text: In 1928, Nee published a three-volume book entitled "The Spiritual Man". In February of the same year, Nee held his first "Overcomer Conference" in Shanghai. In January 1934, Nee called a special conference on the subjects of "Christ as the Centrality and Universality of God" and "The Overcomers". According to Nee, this was a turning point for him in his ministry. He said, "My Christian life took a big turn from doctrines and knowledge to a living person, Christ, who is God's centrality and universality."


title: Watchman Nee

text: In February 1934, Nee gave a series of talks in which he defined and expounded the practice of the local churches, stating that in the Bible, the church is never divided into regions and never denominated based on a teaching or doctrine. These talks were eventually published in the book "The Assembly Life". In May of the same year, Nee encouraged Witness Lee to move to Shanghai from Yantai in order to join him and Ruth Lee in their work editing Nee's publications.


title: Watchman Nee

text: In 1938, Nee traveled to Europe and gave messages that were later published as "The Normal Christian Life." Upon his return, Nee gave a conference on the Body of Christ. According to Nee, this was the second turn in his ministry. Nee recounted, "My first turn was to know Christ, and my second turn was to know His Body. To know Christ is only half of what the believers need. The believers also must know the Body of Christ. Christ is the head, and He is also the Body."


title: Watchman Nee

text: In 1939, Nee became involved with his second brother's failing pharmaceutical company. Although acquiescing to family pressure, Nee also saw this as an opportunity to support his many co-workers who were suffering great poverty and hardship during the Second World War. Nee took over full management of the factory, reorganized it, and began to employ many local church members from Shanghai. At this time, some of the elders from the church in Shanghai questioned Nee's involvement in business, causing Nee to suspend his ministry in 1942. Shortly afterward, the church in Shanghai stopped meeting altogether.


title: Watchman Nee

text: On March 6, 1945, Nee moved to Chongqing to oversee the factory there. There, he delivered a series of messages on Revelation 2 and 3 published as "The Orthodoxy of the Church" as well as messages on the Song of Songs. On September 9, 1945, the Japanese army surrendered in China, ending the Second Sino-Japanese War. In 1946, Peace Wang and Witness Lee began to work to restore the church in Shanghai as well as Nee's public ministry there. Nee purchased twelve bungalows at Kuliang to hold trainings for his co-workers in the Christian work. By April 1948, a revival was brought to the church in Shanghai, and Nee resumed his ministry there. When he returned, Nee handed his pharmaceutical factory over to the Christian work as an offering to God, influencing many others to hand over their possessions to the work. Within a short time, the church in Shanghai grew to over 1000 members.


title: Watchman Nee

text: The rise of the Chinese Communist Party in 1949, with its doctrine of state atheism, caused Christians to come under great persecution. False charges and arrests were also brought against many foreign missionaries. Through intensive propaganda campaigns and threats of imprisonment, believers were influenced to accuse one another.


title: Watchman Nee

text: On April 10, 1952, Watchman Nee was arrested in Shanghai by Public Security officers from Manzhouli, Manchuria and charged with bribery, theft of state property, tax evasion, cheating on government contracts, and stealing of government economic information. Nee was also "re-educated". On January 11, 1956, there was a nationwide sweep targeting the co-workers and elders in the local churches. Some died in labor camps, while others faced long prison sentences. On January 18, 1956, the Religious Affairs Bureau began twelve days of accusation meetings at the church assembly hall on Nanyang Road in Shanghai, in which many accusations were brought against Nee in large accusation meetings. On June 21, 1956, Nee appeared before the High Court in Shanghai, where it was announced that he had been excommunicated by the elders in the church in Shanghai and found guilty on all charges. He was sentenced to fifteen years imprisonment with reform by labor. Initially, he was detained at Tilanqiao Prison in Shanghai but was later moved to other locations. Only his wife, Charity, was allowed to visit him.


title: Watchman Nee

text: On January 29, 1956, Public Security took over the Nanyang Road building, and many of Nee's co-workers were arrested, put into isolation, and forced to repudiate Watchman Nee. Some co-workers joined in the accusation of Watchman Nee while others, such as Peace Wang, Ruth Lee, and Yu Chenghua remained silent and were punished with life imprisonment. Following this, mass accusation meetings were held across the country to condemn the "anti-revolutionary sect of Watchman Nee".


title: Watchman Nee

text: One year before Nee's death in 1972, his wife, Charity, died due to an accident and high blood pressure; Nee was not allowed to attend her funeral. Charity's eldest sister then took the responsibility to care for Nee in prison. Nee was scheduled for release in 1967 but was detained in prison until his death on May 30, 1972. There was no announcement of his death nor any funeral. His remains were cremated on June 1, 1972, before his family arrived at the prison.