title: Bikini variants

text: In one major fashion show in 1985 were two-piece suits with cropped tank tops instead of the usual skimpy bandeaux, suits that are bikinis in front and one-piece in back, suspender straps, ruffles, and daring, navel-baring cutouts. Subsequent variations on the theme include the monokini, tankini, string bikini, thong, slingshot, minimini, teardrop, and micro.


title: Bikini variants

text: To meet fast-changing tastes, some of the manufacturers have made a business out of making made-to-order bikinis in around seven minutes. Popular Brazilian beach markets have been identified as the source for the most diverse range of bikini merchandises.


title: Bikini variants

text: Bikini tops come in several different styles and cuts, including a halter-style neck that offers more coverage and support, a strapless bandeau, a rectangular strip of fabric covering the breasts that minimizes large breasts, a top with cups similar to a push-up bra, and the more traditional triangle cups that lift and shape the breasts.


title: Bikini variants

text: There are four fundamental types of bare-midriff bikini tops: the "brassière", "halter", "bandeau", and "vest". These styles are differentiated by the number of shoulder straps and the resultant number of edges to the garment. Some of these tops include a halter-style neck strap that offers more coverage and support, a strapless bandeau, a rectangular strip of fabric covering the breasts that minimizes large breasts, a top with cups similar to a push-up bra, and the more traditional triangle cups that lift and shape the breasts.


title: Bikini variants

text: The website "Bikini Science" identifies 30 different types of bikini bottoms that vary in style, cut and the amount of rear coverage they offer. The coverage ranges from full, as in the case of more modest bottom pieces like briefs, shorts, or briefs with a small skirt-panel attached, to full buttock exposure, as in the case of the thong bikini. Skimpier styles have narrow sides, including V-cut (in front), French cut (with high-cut sides) and low-cut string (with string sides).


title: Bikini variants

text: Bikinis have been made out of just about every material used in fashion. The fabrics and other materials used to make bikinis are an essential element of their style and crucial modifiers of swimsuit design. The use of cotton made the swimsuit more practical, and the increased reliance on stretch fabric after 1960 simplified construction; alternative swimwear fabrics such as velvet, leather, and crocheted squares surfaced in the early 1970s. Crochet, lace, PVC, raffia, fur, latex, velvet and other uncommon items are also used as bikini material.


title: Bikini variants

text: Fashion adviser Malia Mills has two basic criteria to check the material—it does not wrinkle into a bundle at the back, and nothing "falls out" when picking a towel or raising the arms. For the female bodybuilder the material regulations are more stringent, as "the two pieces of the bikini are fastened together with two strings, and the fasteners as all as the bikini must not consist of metallic material or padding."


title: Bikini variants

text: Modern bikinis were first made of cotton and jersey. Today bikinis are made with mostly made with treated fabric, having been stretched over a plastic mold, then baked in order to set its shape and create bikini brassieres. They are usually lined with fabric which is designed to stop them becoming transparent when wet. The use of cotton made the swimsuit more practical, and the increased reliance on stretch fabric after 1960 simplified construction. Alternative swimwear fabrics such as velvet, leather, and crocheted squares surfaced in the early 1970s.


title: Bikini variants

text: The stretch nylon bikini briefs and bras which complemented the adolescent boutique fashions of the 1960s also allowed those to be minimal. Women on the beaches of Rio de Janeiro and Saint-Tropez went even further, forgoing all rear-view coverage to show off their thongs.


title: Bikini variants

text: When DuPont introduced Lycra (DuPont's brand name for spandex) in the 1960s, a stretch fibre that allowed them to stitch tinier pieces of fabric, it changed how suits were designed and who could wear them. Spandex expanded the range of novelty fabrics available to designers which meant suits could be made to fit like a second skin without heavy linings streamlined athletic styles, emphasizing high-tech fabrics and finishes. "The advent of Lycra allowed more women to wear a bikini," wrote Kelly Killoren Bensimon, a former model and author of "The Bikini Book", "It didn't sag, it didn't bag, and it concealed and revealed. It wasn't so much like lingerie anymore." It allowed designers to create the string bikini, and allowed Rudi Gernreich to create the topless monokini.


title: Bikini variants

text: Retailer Marks & Spencer reintroduced spandex as an alternative to nylon in swimsuits in the 1960s. While spandex is used in most swimsuits designs because of its high elasticity, lower expense, and water wicking nature, its major drawback is that it breaks down in chlorine, commonly found in swimming pools. When worn daily, a swimsuit made of spandex will break down in about 2–3 months. Speedo introduced Fastskin in 2007 as the lightest and fastest material for competitive swimwear. Unlike spandex, it does not break down in chlorine.


title: Bikini variants

text: Bikinis have been made out of just about every material known. UK actress Diana Dors wore a mink bikini designed by Julie Harris at the Cannes Film Festival to become an instant sensation. In 1967, a bikini made of paper was introduced in France, which disintegrated when in water. Italian sportswear designer Emilio Pucci produced bikinis in soft silk jersey in his signature style. Norma Kamali's innovative designs utilized gold Lurex for a shiny sexy swimsuit.


title: Bikini variants

text: Rio de Janeiro designer Triya created a rigid metal bandeau top that looked a cast of the model's chest. Designer Laura Jane created bikinis made of neoprene, the rubber-like material used to make wetsuits, in 1989. Fernando Garcia, a bikini designer in South Beach, Miami, turns various exotic material into bikinis including blacklight paint, python skin, Mongolian sheepskin fringe and black fox material.


title: Bikini variants

text: PETA used "Lettuce Bikinis" to promote vegetarianism in 2010. Apart from storming streets with women wearing bikinis made of faux lettuce, the activist organization had a number of celebrities to be their ""Lettuce Ladies"" including Pamela Anderson, Elizabeth Berkley, Jayde Nicole, Alicia Mayer, Courtney Stodden and others. Pop star Lady Gaga wore a "meat bikini" (not to be confused with the meat dress), for the cover of "Vogue", which was criticized by PETA.


title: Bikini variants

text: By the 2010s, a number of manufacturers came up with environmentally-friendly bikinis that used organic cotton, organic bamboo fibres, fabric remnants, post-consumer plastic including water bottles, discarded fishnet, recycled nylon, even soy (all of which used eco-friendly dyes). Inventor Claudia Escobar made bikinis out of tanned and dyed salmon skin in 2003 which earned a Green Seal of approval for sustainable products.


title: Bikini variants

text: A platinum bikini valued at US $9500 was made by Mappin and Webb of London in 1977, and was worn by Miss United Kingdom in that year's Miss World beauty pageant. It was entered as a Guinness World Record for the most expensive bikini. A more expensive but exclusive bikini was designed in February 2006 by Susan Rosen. The bikini, made up of over of flawless diamonds, was worth an estimated £20 million. Pistol Panties, a label favored by celebrities like Victoria Beckham and Kate Moss, introduced a UK£2,000 bikini in 2009. Unsuitable for swimming, it was covered with 5,000 Swarovski crystals.


title: Bikini variants

text: Bikini precursors and the first modern bikinis were made of cotton and jersey and were mostly striped or monochrome. Réard introduced the first printed material for bikini. By the 1970s, when American women were catching up with the Europeans attitudes, bikini variants started to diversify widely. Flower patterns became popular in the late 1960s. Designers like Tom Brigance at Lord & Taylor department store cut his swimwear from colorful cottons in stripes, large prints, and polka dots to give early bikinis a more tailored look.


title: Bikini variants

text: In April 2004, followers of Buddhism protested against a bikini design by Victoria's Secret that featured an image of Buddha. Buddhists were again upset in 2005, when organizers of Miss Universe photographed bikini-clad contestants in front of Buddhist religious sites in Thailand.


title: 2005–06 Serie A

text: The 2005–06 Serie A (known as the Serie A TIM for sponsorship reasons) was the 104th season of top-tier Italian football, the 74th in a round-robin tournament. The league commenced on 28 August 2005 and finished on 14 May 2006. While Juventus were originally the first-placed team, this title was put "sub judice" due to their involvement in the "Calciopoli" scandal, with Internazionale instead declared champions by the Italian Football Federation (FIGC) on 26 July 2006.


title: 2005–06 Serie A

text: Prior to the 2005–06 season, if two or more teams were tied in points for first place, for only one spot in a European tournament, or in the relegation zone, teams would play tie-breaking matches after the season was over to determine which team would be champion, or be awarded a European tournament spot, or be saved or relegated. However, 2005–06 saw the introduction of new rules. If two or more teams ended the season with the same number of points, the ordering was determined by their head-to-head records. If two or more teams had the same total points and head-to-head records, goal difference became the decisive factor.


title: 2005–06 Serie A

text: The "Capocannoniere" (top scorer) of 2005–06 was Luca Toni of Fiorentina. His 31 goals was the highest tally since Antonio Valentín Angelillo scored 33 for Internazionale in 1958–59.


title: Ivelisse Vélez

text: Ivelisse Milagro Vélez (born September 21, 1987), better known by her ring name Ivelisse, is a Puerto Rican professional wrestler. She is known for her time in Lucha Underground, where she twice held the Lucha Underground Trios Championship (with Son of Havoc and Angélico). Vélez also wrestles extensively on the independent circuit, most notably for Shine Wrestling, where she is the current Shine Champion (in her fourth reign), and a former Shine Tag Team Champion. Vélez has also performed for Impact Wrestling and All Elite Wrestling (AEW).


title: Ivelisse Vélez

text: In 2011, Vélez appeared in one season of "WWE Tough Enough" competitive reality show, and WWE signed her to a developmental wrestling contract later the same year. In 2011 and 2012, Vélez worked under the WWE ring name Sofia Cortez in the developmental territory Florida Championship Wrestling (renamed NXT in 2012).


title: Ivelisse Vélez

text: Vélez began training to be a wrestler at age fifteen in Puerto Rico, debuting in the World Wrestling Council, and later wrestling for the International Wrestling Association (IWA). After gaining experience, Vélez began wrestling on the U.S. mainland, beginning on the Chicago independent circuit, continuing her training under Chicago Style Wrestling's Steve "Boz" Bozniak.


title: Ivelisse Vélez

text: In March 2011, Vélez was announced as one of 14 contestants for the fifth season of "WWE Tough Enough". On the May 10 episode, she was eliminated due to a leg injury. However, WWE signed Vélez to a developmental contract that November 11.


title: Ivelisse Vélez

text: WWE assigned Vélez to its then-developmental territory, Florida Championship Wrestling (FCW), where she debuted (under the ring name Sofia Cortez) at an FCW house show in a six-woman tag team match (teaming with Cameron Lynn and Audrey Marie to defeat Caylee Turner, Leah West and Raquel Diaz). Vélez made her TV debut on the December 25, 2011, episode of "FCW TV", teaming with Turner to defeat Cameron Lynn and Kaitlyn. On the March 11 episode of "FCW TV", Cortez formed a villainous stable dubbed The Anti-Divas, consisting of herself, Paige and Raquel Diaz, with the trio attacking Audrey Marie. The following week on "FCW TV", Cortez and Paige and lost to Marie and Kaitlyn.


title: Ivelisse Vélez

text: WWE rebranded FCW "NXT" (emphasizing its wrestlers as the next generation of eventual WWE Superstars). Cortez's NXT TV debut was on the July 4 episode of "NXT", taped at Full Sail University in Orlando, Florida, where she defeated Paige. On the July 25 episode of "NXT", Cortez defeated WWE main roster wrestler Natalya by count-out, but suffered a post-match attack from Natalya. In August 2012, Vélez announced WWE had released her from her contract, ending her WWE employment. Her final match (taped before her release occurred) saw her lose to Tamina Snuka.


title: Ivelisse Vélez

text: During a May 2015 podcast with Vince Russo, Vélez alluded to her reporting the misconduct of WWE Performance Center head trainer Bill DeMott to WWE management as the likely reason she was fired, and said she was one of the first to report DeMott's misconduct. DeMott abruptly left WWE in March 2015 amid mounting public pressure on WWE after a wave of published news reports detailing similar accusations of grossly unprofessional misconduct by DeMott being made by over 12 former WWE trainees/wrestlers.


title: Ivelisse Vélez

text: On October 4, 2012, Vélez debuted at Family Wrestling Entertainment (FWE)'s "Back 2 Brooklyn" pay-per-view as a special guest, along with former WWE Diva Maryse Ouellet. Vélez established herself as a heel by delivering a promo about her dislike of "Divas", and being on a mission to make a statement. Later in the event, Vélez attacked Katarina Leigh after she and Maria Kanellis were defeated by The Beautiful People (Angelina Love and Velvet Sky).


title: Ivelisse Vélez

text: In December, Vélez was revealed as the newest member of the "Los Perros del Mal" stable. Vélez made her debut as a representative of the stable on January 1, 2013, at a Perros del Mal independent event, where she teamed with Cósmico and Eita to defeat Celestial, Flamita and Sexy Lady. On April 21, Vélez defeated Alissa Flash to win the PWR Women's Championship. On May 11, she re-lost the title to Flash, who now works under the ring name Cheerleader Melissa.


title: Ivelisse Vélez

text: On October 4, 2014, Vélez defeated Maria Kanellis to win the FWE Women's Championship. However, she lost the title the same night to Candice LeRae.


title: Ivelisse Vélez

text: On November 28, 2014, Vélez made her Mexican debut with Lucha Libre AAA Worldwide (AAA), teaming with Faby Apache to defeat Sexy Star and Taya. Vélez worked the match as a fan favorite, opposite Taya, a representative of "Los Perros del Mal", a stable she herself once represented.


title: Ivelisse Vélez

text: Vélez debuted in Shine Wrestling at Shine 5 on November 16, 2012, where she was defeated by Athena. At Shine 6, on January 11, 2013, Vélez defeated Su Yung. Later that night, the formation of the stable Valkyrie was revealed, consisting of Vélez, Rain, Allysin Kay, Taylor Made and April Hunter. At Shine 8, on March 23, Vélez and the rest of Valkyrie defeated the team of Amazing Kong, Angelina Love, Mia Yim and Christina Von Eerie. At Shine 9 on April 19, Vélez was defeated by Jazz in a Shine Championship tournament qualifying match. At Shine 16 on January 24, 2014, Vélez defeated Rain to win the Shine Championship. Following the match, Valkyrie turned on Vélez and kicked her out of the stable. Vélez went on to successfully defend the title against the likes of Mercedes Martinez, Leva Bates and Jazz, both on Shine pay-per-views and other promotion's events. At Shine 20, she defended her championship against Serena Deeb, wrestling to a "one-hour" time-limit draw. On November 16, 2014, on a WWNLive (Shine's parent company) show in China, Vélez lost the Shine Championship to Mia Yim.


title: Ivelisse Vélez

text: At Shine 30 on October 2, 2015, Vélez returned to Shine and defeated Thunderkitty. At Shine 35 On June 17, 2016, Ivelisse won the Shine Championship for the second time by winning a four-way match involving Shine Champion Taylor Made, Shimmer Champion Madison Eagles and TNA Knockouts Champion Allysin Kay. On January 14, 2017, the title was vacated due to her injury. At Shine 64 on December 15, 2019, Ivelisse won the Shine Championship for the third time by defeating Mercedes Martinez. She successfully retained the title at Shine 65 and Shine 66.


title: Ivelisse Vélez

text: On October 11, 2012, Vélez had a tryout match for Impact Wrestling (then called Total Nonstop Action Wrestling, or TNA), losing to Tara. On February 24, 2013, it was reported that Vélez would be competing in a TNA Gut Check match, in which she defeated Lei'D Tapa on the February 28 episode of "Impact Wrestling". On the March 7 episode of "Impact Wrestling", Vélez was eliminated from TNA Gut Check, thereby failing to earn a TNA contract.


title: Ivelisse Vélez

text: Vélez returned to make limited appearances, including at One Night Only: Knockouts Knockdown, where she lost to Lei'D Tapa. Vélez also appeared at One Night Only: World Cup, as part of team Aces & Eights including D.O.C., Knux, Mr. Anderson and Wes Brisco. Vélez defeated Team USA's Mickie James, with help from Aces & Eights, to advance to the finals, where team Aces & Eights lost to Team USA.


title: Ivelisse Vélez

text: Vélez debuted on the November 5, 2014, episode of "Lucha Underground", simply as Ivelisse, teaming with Son of Havoc in a loss to Sexy Star and Chavo Guerrero Jr. Ivelisse, Havoc and Angélico went on to form an alliance, and on February 8, 2015, the trio won a tournament to become the inaugural Lucha Underground Trios Champions. On the February 18 episode of "Lucha Underground", Ivelisse earned her first singles victory against Angélico. During the time Ivelisse, Havoc and Angélico held the championships, they defended and successfully retained them against The Crew (Cortez, Castro and Bael) in a ladder match on the May 20 episode of "Lucha Underground", and against Cage, DelAvar Daivari and Big Ryck on the June 3 episode, despite Ivelisse suffering from a legitimate foot injury. On July 29, at "Ultima Lucha Part 1", they lost the championships to The Disciples of Death (Barrio Negro, Trece and El Sinestro de la Muerte), due to interference from Catrina.


title: Ivelisse Vélez

text: On the Lucha Underground season 2 premiere on January 27, 2016, Ivelisse defeated Son of Havoc and Angélico to earn a Lucha Underground Championship match against Mil Muertes, but failed to capture the championship. At "Ultima Lucha Dos Part 3", Catrina cost Ivelisse her match against Taya and then delivering the Lick of Death to Ivelisse. On the first episode of "Lucha Underground Season 3", Ivelisse challenged Catrina to a match in Lucha Underground at "Ultima Lucha Tres". At part 2 of Ultima Lucha Tres, Ivelisse defeated Catrina by pinfall.


title: Ivelisse Vélez

text: In January 2019, Vélez stated Lucha Underground's production company would not release her from her multi-year contract (which excluded her from working for any other wrestling companies in the world), despite the show being on hiatus with no firm plans to resume production. She also said she had been trying to get a release for over a year. After a group of several wrestlers/cast members in the same situation filed a class action lawsuit against the show's producers, Vélez was released on March 26, 2019, as part of an out-of-court settlement of the lawsuit.


title: Ivelisse Vélez

text: Ivelisse made her AEW debut in its Women's Casino Battle Royal at the AEW All Out pay-per-view, on August 31, 2019. Ivelisse returned and made her AEW singles match debut on the July 22, 2020, episode of "AEW Dynamite", losing to Diamante. The two were cast as a tag team for AEW's Women's Tag Team Cup Tournament after they both picked the same color token in The Deadly Draw. They advanced to the finals by defeating Rachael Ellering and Dasha Gonzalez in the first round, then Tay Conti and Anna Jay in the semi-finals. On the August 22, 2020, episode of Dynamite, they defeated The Nightmare Sisters (Allie and Brandi Rhodes) to win the tournament. On the September 11 episode of Dynamite, Ivelisse lost a title match to NWA World Women's Champion Thunder Rosa. On April 14, 2021, Ivelisse announced AEW had released her after a backstage misunderstanding with Thunder Rosa.


title: Ivelisse Vélez

text: On February 6, 2019, it was reported that Ivelisse, Joey Ryan, Melissa Cervantes (Thunder Rosa) and Jorge Luis Alcantar (El Hijo del Fantasma/King Cuerno) had collectively filed a class-action lawsuit in California against the El Rey Network and the Baba-G production company producing the Lucha Underground TV series. The group claimed that their Lucha Underground contracts were illegal under state law because they unfairly restricted their ability to work in their chosen profession. The show's contracts with the wrestlers, though having different terms, all were multi-year deals that excluded them from performing for any other wrestling companies in the world. This became problematic when the producers ceased production after season three with no firm plans for when the hiatus would end, yet the wrestlers were obligated to stay available to LU and unavailable to work anywhere else until their contracts expired, or LU resumed production. Some wrestlers had signed 5-year contracts with LU when the show began, but the hiatus effectively banned them from wrestling anywhere else. Ivelisse stated she had been trying to get her release from the producers for over a year. After a group of several wrestlers/cast members in the same situation filed a class action lawsuit against the show's producers, Vélez was released on March 26, 2019, as part of an out-of-court settlement of the lawsuit.


title: Tetsuya Takahashi

text: Takahashi was born on November 18, 1966 in Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan. He began his career in video games in the 1980s working with Nihon Falcom.


title: Tetsuya Takahashi

text: Takahashi worked on "Final Fantasy VI", including the design of the Magitek armor from the opening scene of the game. He also was the graphics director on "Chrono Trigger".


title: Tetsuya Takahashi

text: Originally submitted as a potential plot for "Final Fantasy VII", it was made into its own project after being judged too dark and complicated for a fantasy game by others at Squaresoft.


title: Tetsuya Takahashi

text: While at Squaresoft, Takahashi realized that the company intended to focus on the "Final Fantasy" series, and that sequels to the "Xenogears" series were becoming unlikely. He then decided to leave and start his own software development company. In October 1999 he left Squaresoft to start a new company, Monolith Soft, together with Hirohide Sugiura.


title: Tetsuya Takahashi

text: Following a meeting about the game "Soma Bringer", Takahashi imagined what a game would be like where the world was actually the body of a "giant god". Takahashi attempted a more "mature" writing style for the game, and said he expects to continue in the same vein in the future. The game references both Japanese and Western RPG styles, referring to the western style in some cases "without thinking about it". In this way, the game is designed to appeal to fans of "text-based" JRPGs and western RPGs at the same time. Minor localizations were made for the American and European release, as well as bug fixes and game balancing. Originally Takahashi tried a more traditional turned based combat system, but he later incorporated a battle system where the protagonist can see into the future as a gameplay mechanic.


title: Tetsuya Takahashi

text: Takahashi and Monolith Soft were revealed to be working on a new game for the Wii U in September 2012.


title: Tetsuya Takahashi

text: It was later revealed in the January 2013 Nintendo Direct under the tentative title X, and shown further at E3 2013. For E3 2014, it was announced with the title "Xenoblade Chronicles X".


title: Pheu Thai Party

text: The Pheu Thai Party (PTP; , , ) is the third incarnation of a Thai political party founded by former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra. The Pheu Thai Party was founded on 20 September 2007, as an anticipated replacement for the People's Power Party (PPP), which the Constitutional Court of Thailand dissolved less than three months later after finding party members guilty of electoral fraud. The People's Power Party was itself a replacement for Thaksin's original Thai Rak Thai Party (TRT), dissolved by the Court in May 2007 for violation of electoral laws. , Pheu Thai had 22,771 members.


title: Pheu Thai Party

text: The PPP was dissolved by the Constitutional Court of Thailand on 2 December 2008. On 3 December 2008, the majority of the former PPP MPs defected to the Pheu Thai Party. In a PTP general assembly, the first executive commission was elected on 7 December 2008. Candidates for the party's leader were: Yongyuth Wichaidit, Apiwan Wiriyachai, former Vice President of the House of Representatives, former health minister Chalerm Yubamrung and former industry minister Mingkwan Saengsuwan. Yongyuth Wichaidit was elected as the party's leader.


title: Pheu Thai Party

text: In a December 2008 parliamentary session, MPs of five PPP coalition parties decided to endorse Abhisit Vejjajiva as the next prime minister and themselves forming a Democrat-led coalition. The PTP campaigned for their endorsement by the PPP-coalition parties. However, Abhisit had gained their support for the premiership. After that, the party called for a national unity government in which all parties would be involved, with Sanoh Thienthong of the Pracharaj Party as the new premier. This proposal was rejected by the defecting coalition parties and the Democrat Party. On 11 December, Worrawat Eua-apinyakul, then MP for Phrae from PTP, suggested that the party should push for a house dissolution and general elections, with the hope of depriving the prospective coalition of a parliamentary majority. However, The President of the House of Representatives; Chai Chidchob spoke against the plan.


title: Pheu Thai Party

text: On 15 December 2008, the party elected Pracha Promnok as the party's candidate for prime minister and has since been in opposition to prime minister Abhisit Vejjajiva's coalition government. As an opposition, the party received a rating of 3.75 out of 10 by a majority of respondents in a nationwide survey conducted on 24 and 25 December 2010, by Bangkok University.


title: Pheu Thai Party

text: In early May 2011, Charupong Ruangsuwan was named new Secretary general of the party. Following the discovery of illegal timber by Thai authorities, during an August 2014 search at Charupong's son's Mae Hong Son Province resort for buried war weapons and other illegal items, the media reported that both Charupong and his son were no longer present in Thailand.


title: Pheu Thai Party

text: In the 2011 general election, the Pheu Thai Party contested for the first time since its foundation. On 16 May, Thaksin's youngest sister Yingluck Shinawatra was nominated head of PTP's party-list proportional representation and contender of prime minister Abhisit. One of her main issues in the campaign was national reconciliation. The election was expected to be a neck-and-neck contest between Pheu Thai and the ruling Democrats. Unexpectedly, the party won 265 of 500 seats in the House of Representatives on 3 July. Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva acknowledged Pheu Thai's success in the election, and congratulated Yingluck Shinawatra as Thailand's first female prime minister. Despite its absolute majority, the winning party announced that it would form a coalition government with five minor parties. On 5 August, Yingluck was elected prime minister with 296 votes in favour. The election was approved and Yingluck was formally appointed by the king on 8 August.


title: History of the Spanish language

text: The language known today as Spanish is derived from a dialect of spoken Latin, which was brought to the Iberian Peninsula by the Romans after their occupation of the peninsula that started in the late 3rd century BC. Influenced by the peninsular hegemony of Al-Andalus in the early middle ages, Hispano-Romance varieties borrowed substantial lexicon from Arabic. Upon the southward territorial expansion of the Kingdom of Castile, Hispano-Romance norms associated to this polity displaced both Arabic and the Mozarabic romance varieties in the conquered territories, even though the resulting speech also assimilated features from the latter in the process. The first standard norm of Spanish was brought forward in the 13th century by Alfonso X the Wise (who replaced Latin with Castilian as language of the administration), probably drawing from the speech of the upper classes of Toledo. Features associated with the Castilian patterns of Hispano-Romance also spread west and east to the kingdoms of León and Aragón for the rest of the middle ages, owing to the political prestige achieved by the Kingdom of Castile in the peninsular context and to the lesser literary development of their vernacular norms. From the 1560s onward the standard written form followed Madrid's.


title: History of the Spanish language

text: The Spanish language expanded overseas in the Early Modern period in the wake of the Spanish conquests in the Americas (as well as the Canary Islands). Besides the Caribbean, the colonial administration in the new territories had its main centres of power located in Mexico City and Lima, which retained more features from the central peninsular norm than other more peripheral territories of the Spanish empire, where adoption of patterns from the southern peninsular norm of Seville (the largest city of the Crown in the 16th century and the port linking to the Americas) was more pervasive, even though in other regards the influence from the latter norm (associated to Andalusian Spanish) came to be preponderant in the entire Americas. Spanish varieties henceforth borrowed influence from Amerindian languages, primarily coming from the Caribbean, the Central-Andean and Mesoamerican regions. Today it is the official language of 20 countries, as well as an official language of numerous international organizations, including the United Nations.


title: History of the Spanish language

text: The development of Spanish phonology is distinguished from those of other nearby Romance languages (e.g. Portuguese, Catalan) by several features:


title: History of the Spanish language

text: The following features are characteristic of Spanish phonology and also of some other Ibero-Romance languages, but not the Romance languages as a whole:


title: History of the Spanish language

text: The Latin system of four verb conjugations (form classes) is reduced to three in Spanish. The Latin infinitives with the endings -ĀRE, -ĒRE, and -ĪRE become Spanish infinitives in "-ar", "-er", and "-ir" respectively. The Latin third conjugation—infinitives ending in -ĔRE—are redistributed between the Spanish "-er" and "-ir" classes (e.g. "facere" → "hacer", "dicere" → "decir").


title: History of the Spanish language

text: Spanish verbal morphology continues the use of some Latin synthetic forms that were replaced by analytic ones in spoken French and (partly) Italian (cf. Sp. "lavó", Fr. "il a lavé"), and the Spanish subjunctive mood maintains separate present and past-tense forms.


title: History of the Spanish language

text: Spanish syntax provides overt marking for some direct objects (the so-called "personal "a"", see differential object marking for the general phenomenon), and uses clitic doubling with indirect objects, in which a "redundant" pronoun ("le", "les") appears even in the presence of an explicit noun phrase. (Neither feature occurs in other Western Romance languages, but both are features of Romanian, with "pe" < PER corresponding to Spanish "a".) With regard to subject pronouns, Spanish is a pro-drop language, meaning that the verb phrase can often stand alone without the use of a subject pronoun (or a subject noun phrase). Compared to other Romance languages, Spanish has a somewhat freer syntax with relatively fewer restrictions on subject-verb-object word order.


title: History of the Spanish language

text: Due to prolonged language contact with other languages, the Spanish lexicon contains loanwords from Basque, Hispano-Celtic (Celtiberian and Gallaecian), Iberian, Germanic (Gothic), Arabic and indigenous languages of the Americas.


title: History of the Spanish language

text: Accents—used in Modern Spanish to mark the vowel of the stressed syllable in words where stress is not predictable from rules—came into use sporadically in the 15th century, and massively in the 16th century. Their use began to be standardized with the advent of the Spanish Royal Academy in the 18th century. See also Spanish orthography.


title: History of the Spanish language

text: The standard Spanish language is also called Castilian in its original variant, and in order to distinguish it from other languages native to parts of Spain, such as Galician, Catalan, Basque, etc. In its earliest documented form, and up through approximately the 15th century, the language is customarily called Old Spanish. From approximately the 16th century on, it is called Modern Spanish. Spanish of the 16th and 17th centuries is sometimes called "classical" Spanish, referring to the literary accomplishments of that period. Unlike English and French, it is not customary to speak of a "middle" stage in the development of Spanish.


title: History of the Spanish language

text: Castilian Spanish originated (after the decline of the Roman Empire) as a continuation of spoken Latin in several areas of northern and central Spain. Eventually, the variety spoken in the city of Toledo around the 13th century became the basis for the written standard. With the "Reconquista", this northern dialect spread to the south, where it almost entirely replaced or absorbed the local Romance dialects, at the same time as it borrowed many words from Andalusi Arabic and was influenced by Mozarabic (the Romance speech of Christians living in Moorish territory) and medieval Judaeo-Spanish (Ladino). These languages had vanished in the Iberian Peninsula by the late 16th century.


title: History of the Spanish language

text: The prestige of Castile and its language was propagated partly by the exploits of Castilian heroes in the battles of the "Reconquista"—among them Fernán González and Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar (El Cid)—and by the narrative poems about them that were recited in Castilian even outside the original territory of that dialect.


title: History of the Spanish language

text: The "first written Spanish" was traditionally considered to have appeared in the "Glosas Emilianenses" located in San Millán de la Cogolla, La Rioja. These are "glosses" (translations of isolated words and phrases in a form more like Hispanic Romance than Latin) added between the lines of a manuscript that was written earlier in Latin. Nowadays the language of the "Glosas Emilianenses" is considered to be closer to the Navarro-Aragonese language than to Spanish proper. Estimates of their date vary from the late 10th to the early 11th century.


title: History of the Spanish language

text: The first steps toward standardization of written Castilian were taken in the 13th century by King Alfonso X of Castile, known as Alfonso el Sabio (Alfonso the Wise), in his court in Toledo. He assembled scribes at his court and supervised their writing, in Castilian, of extensive works on history, astronomy, law, and other fields of knowledge.


title: History of the Spanish language

text: Antonio de Nebrija wrote the first grammar of Spanish, "Gramática de la lengua castellana", and presented it, in 1492, to Queen Isabella, who is said to have had an early appreciation of the usefulness of the language as a tool of hegemony, as if anticipating the empire that was about to be founded with the voyages of Columbus.


title: History of the Spanish language

text: Because Old Spanish resembles the modern written language to a relatively high degree, a reader of Modern Spanish can learn to read medieval documents without much difficulty.


title: History of the Spanish language

text: The Spanish Royal Academy was founded in 1713, largely with the purpose of standardizing the language. The Academy published its first dictionary in six volumes over the period 1726–1739, and its first grammar in 1771, and it continues to produce new editions of both from time to time. (The Academy's dictionary is now accessible on the Internet.) Today, each of the Spanish-speaking countries has an analogous language academy, and an Association of Spanish Language Academies was created in 1951.


title: History of the Spanish language

text: Beginning in the late fifteenth century, the discovery and colonization of the Americas by Spanish explorers brought the language across the Atlantic and to Mexico, Central America, and western and southern South America. Under the Spanish Crown, the language was used as a tool for colonization by Spanish soldiers, missionaries, conquistadors, and entrepreneurs. In the coming centuries, their descendants continued to spread the language.


title: History of the Spanish language

text: Use of the language in the Americas was continued by descendants of the Spaniards: Spanish "criollos" and Mestizos. After the wars of independence fought by these colonies in the 19th century, the new ruling elites extended their Spanish to the whole population, including the Amerindian majority, to strengthen national unity, and nowadays it is the first and official language of the resulting republics, except in very isolated parts of the former Spanish colonies.


title: History of the Spanish language

text: In the late 19th century, the still-Spanish colonies of Cuba and Puerto Rico encouraged more immigrants from Spain, and similarly other Spanish-speaking countries such as Argentina, Uruguay, and to a lesser extent Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Panama and Venezuela, attracted waves of European immigration, Spanish and non-Spanish, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. There, the countries' large (or sizable minority) population groups of second- and third-generation descendants adopted the Spanish language as part of their governments' official assimilation policies to include Europeans. In some countries, they had to be Catholics and agreed to take an oath of allegiance to their chosen nation's government.


title: History of the Spanish language

text: When Puerto Rico became a possession of the United States as a consequence of the Spanish–American War, its population—almost entirely of Spanish and mixed Afro-Caribbean/Spanish ("mulatto" and "mestizo") descent—retained its inherited Spanish language as a mother tongue, in co-existence with the American-imposed English as co-official. In the 20th century, more than a million Puerto Ricans migrated to the mainland U.S. (see Puerto Ricans in the United States).


title: History of the Spanish language

text: A similar situation occurred in the American Southwest, including California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas, where Spaniards, then "criollos" (Tejanos, Californios, etc.) followed by Chicanos (Mexican Americans) and later Mexican immigrants, kept the Spanish language alive before, during and after the American appropriation of those territories following the Mexican–American War. Spanish continues to be used by millions of citizens and immigrants to the United States from Spanish-speaking countries of the Americas (for example, many Cubans arrived in Miami, Florida, beginning with the Cuban Revolution in 1959, and followed by other Latin American groups; the local majority is now Spanish-speaking). Spanish is now treated as the country's "second language," and over 5 percent of the U.S. population are Spanish-speaking, but most Latino/Hispanic Americans are bilingual or also regularly speak English.


title: History of the Spanish language

text: The presence of Spanish in Equatorial Guinea dates from the late 18th century, and it was adopted as the official language when independence was granted in 1968.


title: History of the Spanish language

text: Spanish is widely spoken in Western Sahara, which was a protectorate/colony of Spain from the 1880s to the 1970s.


title: History of the Spanish language

text: In 1492 Spain expelled its Jewish population. Their Judaeo-Spanish language, called Ladino, developed along its own lines and continues to be spoken by a dwindling number of speakers, mainly in Israel, Turkey, and Greece.


title: History of the Spanish language

text: In the Marianas, the Spanish language was retained until the Pacific War, but is no longer spoken there by any significant number of people. As part of Chile since 1888, Spanish is spoken by most people in Easter Island along with Rapa Nui language.


title: History of the Spanish language

text: Language politics in Francoist Spain declared Spanish as the only official language in Spain, and to this day it is the most widely used language in government, business, public education, the workplace, cultural arts, and the media. But in the 1960s and 1970s, the Spanish parliament agreed to allow provinces to use, speak, and print official documents in three other languages: Catalan for Catalonia, Balearic Islands and Valencia; Basque for the


title: History of the Spanish language

text: Basque provinces and Navarre, and Galician for Galicia. Since 1975, following the death of Franco, Spain has become a multi-party democracy and decentralized country, constituted in autonomous communities. Under this system, some languages of Spain—such as Aranese (an Occitan language of northwestern Catalonia), Basque, Catalan/Valencian, and Galician—have gained co-official status in their respective geographical areas. Others—such as Aragonese, Asturian and Leonese—have been recognized by regional governments.


title: History of the Spanish language

text: When the United Nations organization was founded in 1945, Spanish was designated one of its five official languages (along with Chinese, English, French, and Russian; a sixth language, Arabic, was added in 1973).


title: History of the Spanish language

text: The list of Nobel laureates in Literature includes eleven authors who wrote in Spanish (José Echegaray, Jacinto Benavente, Gabriela Mistral, Juan Ramón Jiménez, Miguel Ángel Asturias, Pablo Neruda, Vicente Aleixandre, Gabriel García Márquez, Camilo José Cela, Octavio Paz, and Mario Vargas Llosa).


title: History of the Spanish language

text: The mention of "influences" on the Spanish language refers primarily to lexical borrowing. Throughout its history, Spanish has accepted loanwords, first from pre-Roman languages (including Basque, Iberian, Celtiberian and Gallaecian), and later from Greek, from Germanic languages, from Arabic, from neighboring Romance languages, from Native American languages, and from English.


title: History of the Spanish language

text: The most frequently used word that entered Spanish from (or through) Basque is "" "left". Basque is perhaps most evident in some common Spanish surnames, including "García" and "Echeverría". Basque place names also are prominent throughout Spain, because many Castilians who took part in the Reconquista and repopulation of Moorish Iberia by Christians were of Basque lineage. Iberian and Celtiberian likewise are thought to have contributed place names to Spain. Words of everyday use that are attributed to Celtic sources include "camino" "road", "carro" "cart", "colmena" "hive", and "cerveza" "beer". Suffixes such as -"iego": mujeriego "womanizer" and -"ego": gallego "Galician" are also attributed to Celtic sources.


title: History of the Spanish language

text: Influence of Basque phonology is credited by some researchers with softening the Spanish labiodentals: turning labiodental to bilabial , and ultimately deleting labiodental . Others negate or downplay Basque phonological influence, claiming that these changes occurred in the affected dialects wholly as a result of factors internal to the language, not outside influence. It is also possible that the two forces, internal and external, worked in concert and reinforced each other.


title: History of the Spanish language

text: Some words of Greek origin were already present in the spoken Latin that became Spanish. Additionally, many Greek words formed part of the language of the Church. Spanish also borrowed Ancient Greek vocabulary in the areas of medical, technical, and scientific language, beginning as early as the 13th century.


title: History of the Spanish language

text: The influence of Germanic languages is very little on phonological development, but rather is found mainly in the Spanish lexicon. Words of Germanic origin are common in all varieties of Spanish. The modern words for the cardinal directions ("norte, este, sur, oeste"), for example, are all taken from Germanic words (compare north, east, south and west in Modern English), after the contact with Atlantic sailors. These words did not exist in Spanish prior to the 15th century. Instead, "north" and "south" were and respectively (both virtually obsolete in Modern Spanish as nouns, unlike their not uncommon adjectival counterparts "septentrional" and "meridional"), while "east" was "oriente" (or "levante"), and "west" was "occidente" (or "poniente"). These older words for "east" and "west" continue to have some use in Modern Spanish.


title: History of the Spanish language

text: In 711 the Iberian Peninsula was invaded by Moors, who brought in the Arabic language. For about eight hundred years, until the fall of the Emirate of Granada (1492), Spanish borrowed thousands of words from Andalusi Arabic, such as alcalde "mayor", álgebra "algebra", aceite "oil", zanahoria "carrot", alquiler "rent", achacar "to blame", adelfa "oleander", barrio "neighbourhood", chaleco "vest", to name just a few; making up 8% of the Spanish dictionary—the second largest lexical influence on Spanish after Latin. It is thought that the bilingualism of the Mozarabs facilitated the large transfer of vocabulary from Arabic to Castilian.


title: History of the Spanish language

text: The neighboring Romance languages—such as Galician/Portuguese, Catalan, French, and Occitan—contributed greatly to the Spanish lexicon throughout the Middle Ages and into the modern era. Borrowing from Italian occurred most frequently in the 16th and 17th centuries, due largely to the influence of the Italian Renaissance.


title: History of the Spanish language

text: The creation of the Spanish Empire in the New World led to lexical borrowing from indigenous languages of the Americas, especially vocabulary dealing with flora, fauna, and cultural concepts unique to the Americas.


title: History of the Spanish language

text: Borrowing from English has become especially strong, beginning in the 20th century, with words borrowed from many fields of activity, including sports, technology, and commerce.


title: History of the Spanish language

text: The incorporation into Spanish of learned, or "bookish" words from its own ancestor language, Latin, is arguably another form of lexical borrowing through the influence of written language and the liturgical language of the Church. Throughout the Middle Ages and into the early modern period, most literate Spanish-speakers were also literate in Latin; and thus they easily adopted Latin words into their writing—and eventually speech—in Spanish. The form of Latin that Spaniards spoke and the loanwords came from was Classical Latin, but also Renaissance Latin, the form of Latin used in original works of the time.


title: History of the Spanish language

text: Spanish shares with other Romance languages most of the phonological and grammatical changes that characterized Vulgar Latin, such as the abandonment of distinctive vowel length, the loss of the case system for nouns, and the loss of deponent verbs.


title: History of the Spanish language

text: Syncope in the history of Spanish refers to the loss of an unstressed vowel from the syllable immediately preceding or following the stressed syllable. Early in its history, Spanish lost such vowels where they preceded or followed R or L, and between S and T.


title: History of the Spanish language

text: <nowiki>*</nowiki>"Solitario", which is derived from "sōlitārium", is a learned word; cf. the alternate form "soltero". As also "fábula" from "fabulam", although this last one has a different meaning in Spanish.


title: History of the Spanish language

text: Later, after the time of intervocalic voicing, unstressed vowels were lost between other combinations of consonants:


title: History of the Spanish language

text: Words "capital, computar, hospital, recitar" and "vindicar" are learned words; cf. "capitālem, computāre, hospitālem, recitāre," and "vindicāre" and alternate forms "caudal, contar, hostal, rezar," and "vengar".


title: History of the Spanish language

text: While voiceless intervocalic consonants regularly became voiced, many voiced intervocalic stops ("d", "g", and occasionally "b") were dropped from words altogether through a process called elision. Latin between vowels usually changed to in Old Spanish (e.g. "habēre" > "aver"), while Latin became ("sapere" > "saber"). In modern times the two phonemes merged into ("haber", "saber"), realized as between vowels (see Betacism). Latin voiced stops—, , and , which are represented orthographically as B, D, and G respectively—and also occurred in intervocalic positions also underwent lenition: , , and , but appeared in Spanish also through learned words from Classical Latin.


title: History of the Spanish language

text: Many forms with "d" and "g" preserved, e.g. "ligar, legal, "dígito", crudo", are learned words (Latinisms); cf. the alternate forms "liar, leal, dedo" and Old Spanish "cruo" and its Latin origin "crūdus".


title: History of the Spanish language

text: An exemption to the rule: The retention of the "d" and "g" is due to the invalidity of the "-ao", "-aa", "-oo," and "-oa" hiatuses in Old Spanish that would result from dropping it.


title: History of the Spanish language

text: In virtually all the Western Romance languages, the Latin voiceless stops—, , and , which are represented orthographically as P, T, and C (including Q) respectively—where they occurred in an "intervocalic" environment (qualified below), underwent one, two, or three successive stages of lenition, from voicing to spirantization to, in some cases, elision (deletion). In Spanish these three consonants generally undergo both voicing and spirantization, resulting in voiced fricatives: , , and , respectively. Although it was once speculated that this change came about as a transfer of phonological features from substrate Celtic and Basque languages, which were in geographical proximity to Iberian Vulgar Latin (see "Sprachbund"), it is now widely recognized that such change is a natural internal development. Intervocalic , , and reappeared in Spanish through learned words from Classical Latin and also appeared in Spanish through consonant cluster simplification from Vulgar Latin (see below), and Latin voiced stops—, , and , which are represented orthographically as B, D, and G respectively—and also occurred in intervocalic positions also underwent lenition: , , and , but appeared in Spanish also through learned words from Classical Latin and also appeared in Spanish through consonant cluster simplification from Vulgar Latin.


title: History of the Spanish language

text: The phonological environment of these changes is not only between vowels but also after a vowel and before a sonorant consonant such as (Latin "patrem" > Spanish "padre")—but not the reverse (Latin "partem" > Spanish "parte", not *"parde").


title: History of the Spanish language

text: The verb "decir", in its various conjugated forms, exemplifies different phonetic changes, depending on whether the letter <c> (Latin ) was followed by a front vowel or not. The Latin changes ultimately to Spanish when followed by the front vowels ( or —thus "dice", "decimos", etc.), but in other forms, before a back vowel, is voiced to and, in the modern language, realized as a spirant (as in "digo", "diga"). This also is the pattern of a few other Spanish verbs ending in "-cer" or "-cir", as in the table below:


title: History of the Spanish language

text: It is commonly thought that the reflexes of stressed short E and O of Latin were realised, after the loss of phonemic quantity, as the low-mid vowels /ɛ/ and /ɔ/ respectively in the Western Romance languages, contrasting with close-mid /e/ and /o/, which would have originated from the mergers between long E and short I and between long O and short U, respectively; this change would explain the similarity of the vowel systems in modern Romance languages such as Portuguese, Catalan and Italian. These low-mid vowels subsequently would have undergone diphthongization in many of the Western Romance languages. In Spanish this change occurs regardless of syllable shape (open or closed), in contrast to French and Italian, where it takes place only in open syllables, and in greater contrast to Portuguese where this diphthongization does not occur at all. As a result, Spanish phonology exhibits a five-vowel system, not the seven-vowel system that is typical of many other Western Romance languages. The stressed short and reappeared in Spanish through learned words from Classical Latin and also evolved from short vowels and from Vulgar Latin, and was retained from long vowels and from Vulgar Latin.


title: History of the Spanish language

text: Learned words—that is, "bookish" words transmitted partly through writing and thus affected by their Latin form—became increasingly frequent with the works of Alfonso X in the mid-to-late 13th century. Many of these words contained consonant clusters which, in oral transmission, had been reduced to simpler consonant clusters or single consonants in previous centuries. This same process affected many of these new, more academic, words, especially when the words extended into popular usage in the Old Spanish period. Some of the consonant clusters affected were -"ct"-, -"ct"[i]-, -"pt"-, -"gn"-, -"mn"-, -"mpt"-, and -"nct"-. Most of the simplified forms have since reverted to the learned forms or are now considered to be uneducated.


title: History of the Spanish language

text: Most of these words have modern forms which more closely resemble Latin than Old Spanish. In Old Spanish, the simplified forms were acceptable forms which were in coexistence (and sometimes competition) with the learned forms. The Spanish educational system, and later the Real Academia Española, with their demand that all consonants of a word be pronounced, steadily drove most simplified forms from existence. Many of the simplified forms were used in literary works in the Middle Ages and Renaissance (sometimes intentionally as an archaism), but have since been relegated mostly to popular and uneducated speech. Occasionally, both forms exist in Modern Spanish with different meanings or in idiomatic usage: for example "afición" is a 'fondness (of)' or 'taste (for)', while "afección" is 'illness'; Modern Spanish "respeto" is '(attitude of) respect', while "con respecto a" means 'with regard to'.


title: History of the Spanish language

text: Most words with consonant clusters in syllable-final position are loanwords from Classical Latin, examples are: "transporte" , "transmitir" , "instalar" , "constante" , "obstante" , "obstruir" , "perspectiva" , "istmo" . A syllable-final position cannot be more than one consonant (one of n, r, l, s or z) in most (or all) dialects in colloquial speech, reflecting Vulgar Latin background. Realizations like , , , , , , and are very common, and in many cases, they are considered acceptable even in formal speech.


title: History of the Spanish language

text: Another type of consonant cluster simplification involves "double" (geminate) plosives that reduced to single: "-pp-, -tt-, -cc-, -bb-, -dd-, -gg-" > "-p-, -t-, -c-, -b-, -d-, -g-" . The simplified Spanish outcomes of the Latin voiced series "-bb-, -dd-, -gg-" remain voiced, inducing phonemic merger with intervocalic /b/, /d/, /g/ that issued from voicing of Latin /p/, /t/, /k/, so that all are subject to the same phonetic realization as voiced fricatives: , , and , respectively.


title: History of the Spanish language

text: The term "vocalization" refers to the change from a consonant to the vowel-like sound of a glide. Some syllable-final consonants, regardless of whether they were already syllable-final in Latin or brought into that position by syncope, became glides. Labials ("b", "p", "v") yielded the rounded glide (which was in turn absorbed by a preceding round vowel), while the velar "c" () produced the palatal glide (which could palatalize a following and be absorbed by the resulting palatal affricate). (The forms "debda", "cobdo", and "dubdar" are documented in Old Spanish; but the hypothetical forms *"oito" and *"noite" had already given way to "ocho" and "noche" by the time Castilian became a written language.)


title: History of the Spanish language

text: Most Romance languages have maintained the distinction between a phoneme and a phoneme : a voiced bilabial stop and a voiced, usually labiodental, fricative, respectively. Instances of the phoneme could be inherited directly from Latin (unless between vowels), or they could result from the voicing of Latin between vowels. The phoneme was generally derived either from an allophone of Latin between vowels or from the Latin phoneme corresponding to the letter ⟨v⟩ (pronounced in Classical Latin but later fortified to the status of a fricative consonant in Vulgar Latin). In most Romance-speaking regions, had labiodental articulation, but in Old Spanish, which still distinguished /b/ and /v/, the latter was probably realized as a bilabial fricative . The contrast between the two phonemes was neutralized in certain environments, as the fricative also occurred as an allophone of /b/ between vowels, after a vowel, and after certain consonants in Old Spanish. The similarity between the stop and fricative resulted in their complete merger by the end of the Old Spanish period (16th century). In Modern Spanish, the letters ⟨b⟩ and ⟨v⟩ represent the same phoneme (usually treated as in phonemic transcription), which is generally realized as the fricative except when utterance-initial or after a nasal consonant, when it is realized as the stop . The same situation prevails in northern Portuguese dialects and in Galician, but the other Portuguese dialects maintain the distinction. The merger of and also occurs in Standard Catalan in eastern Catalonia, but the distinction is retained in most varieties of Valencian and in some areas in southern Catalonia, in the Balearic dialect, as well as in Algherese.


title: History of the Spanish language

text: In Modern Spanish, from the 16th century onward, the choice of orthographic ⟨b⟩ or ⟨v⟩ depends mainly on the etymology of the word. The orthography attempts to mimic the Latin spelling, rather than to keep the pronunciation-based spelling of Old Spanish. Thus, Old Spanish "bever" "to drink", "bivir/vivir" "to live" become "beber, vivir", respectively, following the Latin spelling "bibere, vīvere". The Spanish placename Córdoba, often spelled "Cordova" in Old Spanish (the spelling that prevailed in English until the 20th century), now reflects the spelling used by the city's Roman founders, "Corduba".


title: History of the Spanish language

text: "F" was almost always initial in Latin words, and in Spanish most of them passed through a stage in which the consonant eventually developed to and then was lost phonologically. Spelling conventions have grapheme ⟨h⟩ used in words such as "humo" 'smoke', "hormiga" 'ant', "hígado" 'liver' (compare Italian "fumo, formica, fegato", with intact), but in terms of both structure and pronunciation, the initial consonant has been lost: , , . It is thought that ⟨f⟩ represented the labiodental in Latin, which underwent a series of lenitions to become, successively, bilabial and then glottal (hence the modern spelling), and it was then lost altogether in most varieties; ⟨h⟩ is assumed to have been "silent" in Vulgar Latin. The first written evidence of the process dates from 863, when the Latin name "Forticius" was written as "Ortiço", which might have been pronounced with initial but certainly not . (The same name appears as "Hortiço" in a document from 927.) The replacement of ⟨f⟩ by ⟨h⟩ in spelling is not frequent before the 16th century, but that is thought not to reflect preservation of . Rather, ⟨f⟩ was consistently used to represent until the phoneme reappeared in the language (around the 16th century, as a result of loanwords from Classical Latin). Then, it became necessary to distinguish both phonemes in spelling.


title: History of the Spanish language

text: The change from to occurred in the Romance speech of Old Castile, eastern Asturian, and Gascon, but nowhere else nearby. Since much of this area was historically bilingual with Basque, and Basque once had but no , it is often suggested that the change was caused by Basque influence. However, this is contested by many linguists.


title: History of the Spanish language

text: Most current instances of ⟨f⟩ are either learned words (those influenced by their written Latin form, such as "forma", "falso", "fama", "feria"), loanwords of Arabic and Greek origin, or words whose initial ⟨f⟩ in Old Spanish is followed by a non-vowel (⟨r⟩, ⟨l⟩, or the glide element of a diphthong), as in "frente", "flor", "fiesta", "fuerte". That, along with the effect of preservation of regionally (Asturian "fumu" 'smoke', "formiga" 'ant', "fégadu" 'liver'), accounts for modern doublets such as "Fernando" (learned) and "Hernando" (inherited) (both Spanish for "Ferdinand"), "fierro" (regional) and "hierro" (both "iron"), "fastidio" and "hastío" (both Spanish for "boredom"), and "fondo" and "hondo" ("fondo" means "bottom" and "hondo" means "deep"). Also, "hacer" ("to make") is the root word of "satisfacer" ("to satisfy"), and "hecho" ("made") is the root word of "satisfecho" ("satisfied").


title: History of the Spanish language

text: As mentioned above, was not lost in all varieties. As of the late 20th century, word-initial was pronounced as an in lower-class, predominantly rural speech in a number of western regions of Spain, specifically western Andalusia and Extremadura, the Canary Islands, part of western Salamanca, part of Cantabria, a northeastern area in León, and in the Asturian language as spoken in eastern Asturias, as well as in much of Latin America, where it similarly tends to be confined to lower-class and rural speech. The distribution of this pronunciation throughout so much of western Spain suggests that its spread was due in large part to the role of eastern Asturians in the reconquest of these zones. At least in Latin America, the Canaries, Andalusia, and Extremadura, this is merged with the phoneme , which comes from medieval and .


title: History of the Spanish language

text: "Fabulāri" is translated as "make stories", opposed to its Spanish derivative "hablar" which means "speak" or "to talk".


title: History of the Spanish language

text: 'H' is originally pronounced in Classical Latin, but became silent in Vulgar Latin. Thus, words were spelled without any such consonant in Old Spanish; in Modern Spanish, from the 16th century onward, it attempts to mimic the Latin spelling rather than continue Old Spanish orthography.


title: History of the Spanish language

text: During the 16th century, the three voiced sibilant phonemes—dental , apico-alveolar , and palato-alveolar (as in Old Spanish "fazer", "casa", and "ojo", respectively) lost their voicing and merged with their voiceless counterparts: , , and (as in "caçar", "passar", and "baxar" respectively). The character ⟨ç⟩, called "⟨c⟩ cedilla", originated in Old Spanish but has been replaced by ⟨z⟩ in the modern language.


title: History of the Spanish language

text: Additionally, the affricate lost its stop component, to become a laminodental fricative, . As a result, the sound system then contained two sibilant fricative phonemes whose contrast depended entirely on a subtle distinction between their places of articulation: apicoalveolar, in the case of the , and laminodental, in the case of the new fricative sibilant , which was derived from the affricate . The distinction between the sounds grew in the dialects of northern and central Spain by paradigmatic dissimilation, but dialects in Andalusia and the Americas merged both sounds.


title: History of the Spanish language

text: The dissimilation in the northern and central dialects occurred with the laminodental fricative moving forward to an interdental place of articulation, losing its sibilance to become . The sound is represented in modern spelling by ⟨c⟩ before ⟨e⟩ or ⟨i⟩ and by ⟨z⟩ elsewhere. In the south of Spain, the deaffrication of resulted in a direct merger with , as both were homorganic, and the new phoneme became either laminodental ("seseo", in the Americas and parts of Andalusia) or ("ceceo", in a few parts of Andalusia). In general, coastal regions of Andalusia preferred , and more inland regions preferred (see the map at ceceo).


title: History of the Spanish language

text: During the colonization of the Americas, most settlers came from the south of Spain; that is the cause, according to almost all scholars, for nearly all Spanish-speakers in the New World still speaking a language variety derived largely from the Western Andalusian and Canarian dialects.


title: History of the Spanish language

text: Meanwhile, the alveopalatal fricative , the result of the merger of voiceless (spelled ⟨x⟩ in Old Spanish) with voiced (spelled with ⟨j⟩ in some words and in others with ⟨g⟩ before ⟨e⟩ or ⟨i⟩), was moved backwards in all dialects, to become (depending on geographical variety) velar , uvular (in parts of Spain) or glottal (in Andalusia, Canary Islands, and parts of the Americas, especially the Caribbean region).


title: History of the Spanish language

text: One unusual feature of Spanish etymology is the way in which the liquids and have sometimes replaced each other in words derived from Latin, French and other sources. For example, Spanish "milagro", "miracle", is derived from Latin "miraculum". More rarely, this process has involved consonants like and (as in "alma", from Latin "anima"). Here is an incomplete list of such words:


title: History of the Spanish language

text: Documents from as early as the 15th century show occasional evidence of sporadic confusion between the phoneme (generally spelled ⟨y⟩) and the palatal lateral (spelled ⟨ll⟩). The distinction is maintained in spelling, but in most dialects of Modern Spanish, the two have merged into the same, non-lateral palatal sound. Thus, for example, most Spanish-speakers have the same pronunciation for "haya" (from the verb "haber") as for "halla" (from "hallar"). The phonemic merger is called yeísmo, based on one name for the letter ⟨y⟩.


title: History of the Spanish language

text: Yeismo is a trait of the Andalusian dialect, among others. Since more than half of the early settlers of Spanish America came from Andalusia, most Spanish-speaking regions of the Americas have "yeísmo", but there are pockets in which the sounds are still distinguished. Native-speakers of neighboring languages, such as Galician, Astur-Leonese, Basque, Aragonese, Occitan and Catalan, usually do not feature "yeísmo" in their Spanish since those languages retain the phoneme.


title: History of the Spanish language

text: A related trait that has also been documented sporadically for several hundred years is "rehilamiento" (literally "whizzing"), the pronunciation of as a sibilant fricative or even an affricate , which is common among non-native Spanish speakers as well. The current pronunciation varies greatly depending on the geographical dialect and sociolect (with , especially, stigmatized except at the beginning of a word). Rioplatense Spanish (of Argentina and Uruguay) is particularly known for the pronunciation of both and original . A further development, the unvoiced pronunciation , during the second half of the twentieth century came to characterize the speech of "most younger residents of Buenos Aires" and continues to spread throughout Argentina.


title: Okinawan martial arts

text: Okinawan martial arts refers to the martial arts, such as karate, tegumi and Okinawan kobudō, which originated among the indigenous people of Okinawa Island. Due to its central location, Okinawa was influenced by various cultures with a long history of trade and cultural exchange, including Japan, China and Southeast Asia, that greatly influenced the development of martial arts on Okinawa.


title: Okinawan martial arts

text: In 1429, the three kingdoms on Okinawa unified to form the Kingdom of Ryukyu. When King Shō Shin came into power in 1477, he banned the practice of martial arts, due to fears of the widespread teaching of the art of deception . Tō-te and Ryukyu kobudō (deception) continued to be taught in secret. The ban was continued in 1609 after Okinawa was invaded by the Satsuma Domain of Japan. The bans contributed to the development of kobudō which uses common household and farming implements as weaponry.


title: Okinawan martial arts

text: The Okinawans combined Chinese martial arts with the existing local variants to form , sometimes called .


title: Okinawan martial arts

text: By the 18th century, different types of "Te" had developed in three different villages – Shuri, Naha and Tomari. The styles were named Shuri-te, Naha-te, and Tomari-te, respectively.


title: Okinawan martial arts

text: Well into the 20th century, the martial arts of Okinawa were generally referred to as "te" and "tii" 手 in Japanese and Okinawan for "hand". "Te" often varied from one town to another, so to distinguish among the various types of "te", the word was often prefaced with its area of origin; for example, Naha-te, Shuri-te, or Tomari-te.


title: Okinawan martial arts

text: Shuri-te, Naha-te and Tomari-te belong to a family of martial arts that were collectively defined as "Tode-jutsu" or "To-de."


title: Okinawan martial arts

text: Karate ("Okinawa-te" or "Karate-jutsu") was systematically taught in Japan after the Taishō era (after 1926).


title: Okinawan martial arts

text: is a pre-World War II term for a type of indigenous martial art to the area around Shuri, the old capital city of the Ryukyu Kingdom.


title: Okinawan martial arts

text: The successor styles to Shuri-te include Shotokan, Shitō-ryū, Shōrin-ryū, Shudokan, Shuri-ryū, Shōrinji-ryū, Shorei-Ryu, Goju-Ryu, Isshin-ryū, Gensei-ryu and Motobu-ryū.


title: Okinawan martial arts

text: is a pre-World War II term for a type of martial art indigenous to the area around Naha, the old commercial city of the Ryukyu Kingdom and now the capital city of Okinawa Prefecture.


title: Okinawan martial arts

text: The successor styles to Naha-te include Shōrei-ryū (earliest school), Gōjū-ryū, Uechi-ryū, Ryūei-ryū, Shito-ryu and Tōon-ryū.


title: Martin Hannett

text: James Martin Hannett (31 May 1948 – 18 April 1991), initially credited as Martin Zero, was an English record producer, musician and an original partner/director at Tony Wilson's Factory Records. Hannett produced music by artists including Joy Division, the Durutti Column, Magazine, John Cooper Clarke, New Order, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark and Happy Mondays. His distinctive production style embraced atmospheric sounds and electronics.


title: Martin Hannett

text: Born in Manchester, England, Hannett was raised in a working class, Catholic family in Miles Platting, Manchester; he attended Corpus Christi school and Xaverian College in Rusholme. In 1967, he went to the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST), where he earned a degree in chemistry but chose not to pursue the profession.


title: Martin Hannett

text: Hannett's uncle was a bass player and gave his nephew a bass guitar when he was 14. Hannett played bass with Spider Mike King and as member in a band called Paradox, in 1973, alongside Paul Young, later of Sad Café and Mike + The Mechanics.


title: Martin Hannett

text: Hannett's production work began with the animation film soundtrack "All Kinds of Heroes", written by Steve Hopkins (with whom Hannett later worked again). By this time, he also began to mix live sound at pub gigs. Other early production works included Greasy Bear material, Belt & Braces Road Show Band's eponymous album in 1975 and five songs from Pete Farrow's repertoire recorded at Pennine Studios, Oldham, later included on Farrow's compilation album "Who Says There's No Beach in Stockport". He attracted more musical attention in 1977, when, as Martin Zero, he produced the first independent punk record, Buzzcocks' "Spiral Scratch" EP. Under the same moniker he produced early records by punk poet John Cooper Clarke, whose Salford monotone was complemented by drum machines, simple synthesiser motifs and Hannett's bass playing. Jilted John's first single (titled "Jilted John") was Hannett's first hit single.


title: Martin Hannett

text: Hannett became closely associated with Joy Division; his production incorporated looping technology to treat musical notes with an array of filters, echoes and delays. Hannett had a collection of BBD echo devices which he called his "bluetop echo and delay boxes".


title: Martin Hannett

text: The Cargo Recording Studios in Rochdale were used for the recording of "Digital", "Glass", "Atmosphere", "Dead Souls" and "Ice Age". Hannett's unorthodox production methods resulted in drum sounds mixed with synthesisers that were complex and highly distinctive. According to Hannett: "There was a lot of space in [Joy Division's] sound. They were a gift to a producer, because they didn't have a clue. They didn't argue. "A Factory Sample" was the first thing I did with them. I think I'd had the new AMS delay line for about two weeks. It was called 'Digital'. It was heaven sent."


title: Martin Hannett

text: Hannett produced U2's first international single, "11 O'Clock Tick Tock", which was released in May 1980. He was set to produce their debut album, "Boy", but after the suicide of Joy Division singer Ian Curtis, Hannett was too distraught to work and backed out.


title: Martin Hannett

text: A rift developed with Factory and he sued them in 1982 over various financial matters. The dispute was eventually settled out of court; the lawsuit is listed as part of the Factory Records catalogue as FAC61. When Hannett returned to produce the Happy Mondays he worked as a freelance producer and was not reinstated as a Factory director.


title: Martin Hannett

text: Susanne O'Hara was Hannett's girlfriend from 1972 until 1984. They lived together from 1975 in Chorlton and Didsbury, in Manchester. O'Hara worked with Hannett at Music Force, a musicians' cooperative in Manchester, until it closed when Hannett's production career began to develop, around 1979.


title: Martin Hannett

text: After Factory, Hannett's career declined due to his heavy use of alcohol and drugs, especially heroin; his weight eventually reached 26 stone (165 kilograms, 364 pounds). Hannett died on 18 April 1991 at the age of 42 in Manchester, as a result of heart failure. He was survived by his wife Wendy, son James and stepdaughter Tania. His headstone at Southern Cemetery, Manchester pays him tribute as the creator of "The Manchester Sound".


title: Martin Hannett

text: A film documentary about Hannett's life was released on DVD on the 23rd anniversary of his death on 10 April 2014. A book was released the same day, "Martin Hannett – Pleasures of the Unknown" by Chris Hewitt. Another book by Hewitt, "Martin Hannett, His Equipment and Strawberry Studios", was published on 26 January 2016 to coincide with the 50th anniversary of Strawberry Recording Studios. Several weeks after his death, Factory Records released "Martin: The Work of Martin Hannett" (FACT325) as a tribute.


title: Martin Hannett

text: Hannett was portrayed by Andy Serkis in the 2002 film "24 Hour Party People", which was based on Tony Wilson's career as the co-founder of Factory Records and The Haçienda nightclub. In the DVD commentary, Wilson notes a review that described Hannett as Serkis' "strangest role" and points out that Serkis is best known for his portrayal of Gollum in Peter Jackson's "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy. Wilson concludes that the reviewer's implication is correct, that indeed, Hannett was far stranger than the "Lord of the Rings" character. Hannett was portrayed by Ben Naylor in Anton Corbijn's film "Control" (2007).


title: Scott Gottlieb

text: Scott Gottlieb (born June 11, 1972) is an American physician and investor who served as the 23rd commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) from May 2017 until April 2019. He is presently a senior fellow at the conservative think tank the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a partner at the venture capital firm New Enterprise Associates (NEA), a member of the board of directors of drug maker Pfizer, Inc, a member of the board of directors of Illumina, Inc., a contributor to the cable financial news network CNBC, and a frequent guest on the CBS News program "Face the Nation." An elected member of the National Academy of Medicine, Gottlieb is the author of "The New York Times" best selling book "Uncontrolled Spread" on the COVID-19 pandemic and the national security vulnerabilities that it revealed.


title: Scott Gottlieb

text: Before becoming FDA Commissioner, he was a Clinical Assistant Professor at New York University Grossman School of Medicine, the FDA's Deputy Commissioner for Medical and Scientific Affairs, a venture partner with New Enterprise Associates, a member of the policy board of the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, a senior official at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, and a member of the Federal Health Information Technology Policy Committee, which advises the United States Department of Health and Human Services on healthcare information technology. He was previously a resident fellow at AEI from 2007 to 2017, prior to joining the FDA as Commissioner in May 2017.


title: Scott Gottlieb

text: Gottlieb grew up in East Brunswick, New Jersey, the son of Stanley, who is a psychiatrist, and Marsha Gottlieb. He received his bachelor's degree in economics from Wesleyan University. After completing his undergraduate education, he worked as a healthcare analyst at the investment bank Alex. Brown & Sons in Baltimore. Gottlieb attended medical school at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and completed his residency in internal medicine at the Mount Sinai Hospital. He is Jewish.


title: Scott Gottlieb

text: Gottlieb worked for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) from 2002 to 2003 and 2005 to 2007. He first served as a senior advisor to the FDA Commissioner and then as the FDA's Director of Medical Policy Development from 2002 to 2003. He helped initiate the FDA's generic drug user fee program and the Physician Labeling Rule. He worked on development of the FDA's policies related to the tentative approval of fixed-dose combination drugs for the treatment of HIV/AIDS under the PEPFAR program. He left the FDA in the spring of 2003 to become a senior advisor to the Administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), where he worked on implementation of the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act (MMA), with its new Part D drug benefit, and helped advance the agency's coverage policies related to new medical technology.


title: Scott Gottlieb

text: He returned to the FDA from 2005 to 2007 as the agency's Deputy Commissioner for Medical and Scientific Affairs, where he was appointed to the Senior Executive Service and granted a top secret security clearance. He was a member of the Biodefense Interagency Working Group to help draft a strategic plan for U.S. biodefense countermeasures. He also worked on advancing a framework for the creation of a generic drug user fee program, final implementation of the physician labelling and pregnancy labelling rules, and pandemic preparedness. In that latter role, Gottlieb recused himself from key parts of the planning effort on a bird flu vaccine in 2005, because he had done consulting work for companies whose products might be used.


title: Scott Gottlieb

text: Gottlieb practiced internal medicine as an attending physician at New York University's Tisch Hospital in New York City.


title: Scott Gottlieb

text: In 2007, Gottlieb became a venture partner at New Enterprise Associates (NEA), the world's largest venture capital firm by assets under management. Gottlieb served as an active investing partner in the firm's healthcare division. He served on the boards of directors of several NEA portfolio companies, including Bravo Health (a Medicare Advantage health plan) and American Pathology Partners (a specialized anatomical pathology service provider). Gottlieb remained at NEA from 2007 until his appointment to be FDA Commissioner in May 2017.


title: Scott Gottlieb

text: In 2016, Gottlieb testified before committees of the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate on issues related to FDA regulation of drug prices, healthcare reform and medical innovation. During congressional investigations of the rise of the price of EpiPen, Gottlieb presented testimony arguing that generic drug companies set prices according to market demand, and that the generic drug industry is burdened by regulation that slows the development and review of new generic drug applications. These regulations, he argued, made it especially hard to bring forward generic equivalents of complex drugs, including drugs coupled to a device delivery system—a category of medicines that includes EpiPen. He argued that such excessive regulations "undermine the competitive opportunities that could help inspire more choice and competition, and help lower costs."


title: Scott Gottlieb

text: He was an independent director at Tolero Pharmaceuticals and Daiichi Sankyo Inc. and a member of GlaxoSmithKline's product investment board, which made decisions on which drugs GSK would take forward in development. He was a senior healthcare advisor to BDO and also a partner at T.R. Winston, a Los Angeles-based merchant bank with a focus on healthcare. In 2015, he served on the Board of Directors of Kure Corp, a provider of vaping products. Gottlieb served on the editorial board of the Food and Drug Law Institute's publication entitled "Food and Drug Policy Forum" that "provides for the exchange of ideas and recommendations on state, national, and international food and drug law and policy issues" and serves as a forum for discussion of regulatory policy in the food, drug, and medical device industry.


title: Scott Gottlieb

text: Starting in summer 2016, Gottlieb worked as an advisor to Donald Trump's presidential campaign, and then as a member of his transition team. He previously advised the 2016 presidential campaign of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker.


title: Scott Gottlieb

text: He was nominated as FDA Commissioner in March 2017. In advance of confirmation, Gottlieb expressed his intention to recuse himself "for one year from any agency decisions involving about 20 health care companies he worked with" under an ethics agreement, including such companies as Vertex Pharmaceuticals, GSK, Bristol Myers Squibb, and New Enterprise Associates. "Politico" reported that Gottlieb was "expected to push the boundaries of FDA reviews and using new authority" to streamline approvals using the 21st Century Cures Act. He testified before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. There, Gottlieb equated the spread of opioid addiction with earlier epidemics of Ebola and Zika. Supporting the nominee and addressing the opioid crisis on the Senate floor before the confirmation vote, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said in part, "I'm sure he'll be an ally to states that continue to struggle" with the crisis "because the FDA has a critical role to play." On May 9, 2017, he was confirmed by the Senate by a vote of 57–42, and he was sworn in on May 11, 2017.


title: Scott Gottlieb

text: As Commissioner, Gottlieb displayed "a collaborative management style, seeming to allay the concerns of some career employees who had balked at his industry ties," according to "The New York Times". While Commissioner, Gottlieb testified before Congress 19 times.


title: Scott Gottlieb

text: On June 8, 2017, Gottlieb requested the market withdrawal of the opioid Opana ER, based on a risk associated with the illicit use of the product when the drug was inappropriately reformulated for abuse through injection. It was the first time the FDA sought to withdraw a product based on a risk associated entirely with the illicit use of a medical product.


title: Scott Gottlieb

text: On July 28, 2017, Gottlieb delayed application deadlines on new tobacco products, including premium cigars and electronic cigarettes, and announced that the FDA would take steps to regulate nicotine levels in combustible cigarettes to render the combustible cigarettes "minimally or non-addictive," causing shares of tobacco company Altria that day to initially decline by 19%.


title: Scott Gottlieb

text: In December 2017, Gottlieb unveiled a policy to step up FDA's oversight of homeopathic drugs, which had previously gone largely unregulated. At the same time, the FDA issued a series of warning letters seeking to remove certain unsafe and violative homeopathic products from the market.


title: Scott Gottlieb

text: In March 2018, the FDA, under Gottlieb, initiated a rule to lower the amount of nicotine in cigarettes to make them less addictive—in "an unprecedented move by the agency… It's the boldest move yet against cigarette makers by the FDA, which only obtained permission to regulate tobacco products in 2009."


title: Scott Gottlieb

text: In May 2018, Gottlieb asked federal courts on opposite sides of the country to permanently stop two stem cell companies from operating after reports of patients being blinded by their treatments and released new guidelines on how the FDA would set enforcement priorities, while helping to advance development of effective products.


title: Scott Gottlieb

text: In September 2018, citing an epidemic of use of electronic cigarettes by teenagers, Gottlieb announced that the FDA would seek to ban flavors in e-cigs as a way to reduce their appeal to youth. On November 8, 2018, it was reported that the FDA was "expected to announce a ban on the sale of most flavored e-cigarettes in tens of thousands of convenience stores and gas stations across the country", according to senior agency officials, and "the agency will also impose such rules as age-verification requirements for online sales." The reports noted that "Gottlieb also is expected to propose banning menthol in regular cigarettes. The agency has been collecting public comments on such a prohibition, which is a major goal of the public health community but is likely to be strongly opposed by the cigarette industry." It was also reported that Gottlieb would seek to ban flavors in cigars. Gottlieb stated, "I will not allow a generation of children to become addicted to nicotine through e-cigarettes." with "The Washington Post" editorializing that the new rules "represent an extraordinary step in the fight against nicotine addiction, one that, if successful, would become one of the nation's greatest public-health victories." That policy was formally unveiled in March 2019. Gottlieb also called into question the motives behind the decision by Altria to take a minority stake in Juul and accused the manufacturer of reneging on commitments and representations it had made to FDA.


title: Scott Gottlieb

text: Gottlieb pursued policies to address barriers to the approval of complex generic drugs, including generic, functionally equivalent alternatives to EpiPen. Under his leadership, in August 2018, the FDA approved the first generic competitor of EpiPen, and later, in January 2019, the agency approved a generic competitor to the asthma drug Advair. Of the agency's more than 1,000 generic approvals in 2018, about 14 percent were for "complex generic drugs," or drugs that are particularly difficult to "genericize."


title: Scott Gottlieb

text: In November 2018, the FDA implemented a new framework, in collaboration with the Department of Defense, to expedite the development of medical products intended to support American soldiers on the battlefield. Gottlieb had fought to maintain FDA control over the review and approval of medical products intended to support the war fighter after the Pentagon had sought to acquire that authority for itself as part of the National Defense Authorization Act. "I'm fully committed to trying to expedite products for the war fighter, and ... if they pass the language that has been put forward — the alternative language — we will commit to very quickly putting in place the implementing guidance to stand up that process," Gottlieb said as the Pentagon's version of the provision was moving through the House and the Senate. Ultimately, the compromise was to retain the authority with the FDA but for the FDA to commit to offer products intended for the battlefield a higher priority of review, reflecting the compromise provision that Gottlieb had put forward. The episode exposed an unusual "turf war" that pitted Gottlieb and the FDA against Pentagon officials and "puts on public display an internal rift within the administration and in Republican congressional ranks."


title: Scott Gottlieb

text: Gottlieb advanced initiatives on addressing drug pricing, "in ways that the agency hasn't done before." In December 2018, Gottlieb announced a plan to transition the biologicals currently regulated as drugs, including insulin, to be regulated under the Public Health Services Act as a way to open up these drugs to competition from lower cost biosimilars.


title: Scott Gottlieb

text: He also committed to make fighting opioid addiction one of his highest priorities as Commissioner. He announced that the FDA would pursue a comparative approval standard for new opioids seeking to come to market, arguing that new opioid painkillers should show advantages over existing opioid drugs to win FDA approval. He undertook a series of new steps to rationalize prescribing as a way to reduce exposure to opioid drugs in order to cut the rate of new addiction. Under Gottlieb's leadership, "The FDA stirred up a hornet's nest with an unprecedented request to Endo International to remove voluntarily its opioid pain medication, a tamper-resistant reformulation of Opana ER (oxymorphone hydrochloride), from the market."


title: Scott Gottlieb

text: In February 2019, Gottlieb took action to curtail the marketing of 17 dietary supplements that were making unlawful and unproven medical claims to treat Alzheimer's disease and, at the same time, unveiled a set of policy steps to strengthen the FDA's oversight of dietary supplements that was billed as the most significant modernization of the agency's regulation of supplements in 25 years.


title: Scott Gottlieb

text: In Spring 2019, Gottlieb took a series of actions to create a new framework for the development and FDA oversight of artificial intelligence medical devices. The stated goal was to allow products that sought to make regulated medical claims to come to the market through a predictable, negotiable regulatory process.


title: Scott Gottlieb

text: In March 2019, Gottlieb pressed for the market withdrawal of certain cosmetics because they were found to contain asbestos, at the same time that he announced a set of new proposals to strengthen oversight of the cosmetics industry, winning praise from legislators who had been pressing for similar reforms.


title: Scott Gottlieb

text: On March 5, 2019, Gottlieb announced his resignation as FDA Commissioner, effective in about a month. He said that he wanted to spend more time with his family. At the time of his resignation, "Politico" observed, "FDA leaders have typically focused much of their attention on a handful of medical topics, but Gottlieb has been active and aggressive on many issues as commissioner without hewing to a strictly conservative or liberal ideology. It’s an approach that’s won him praise from many in the health sector, while garnering criticism from several of the targeted businesses like tobacco companies and the fast-growing e-cigarette industries."


title: Scott Gottlieb

text: Gottlieb was called "an unusually activist regulator in the Trump administration whose agenda touched everything from tobacco to trans-fats," and he "wasn't afraid to speak on topics normally seen as a third rail for a FDA commissioner, including drug pricing… His most high-profile advocacy came in the area of youth smoking, where he aggressively pressed e-cigarette manufacturers and retailers to halt marketing to teens." At the same time, other reports observed that Gottlieb left the FDA with some of his signature tobacco policies still awaiting full implementation, including his plans to ban menthol in cigarettes.


title: Scott Gottlieb

text: On March 13, 2019, Gottlieb moved to restrict sales of flavored e-cigarettes to try to reduce the soaring rate of teenage vaping. The agency issued a proposal requiring that stores sequester flavored e-cigarettes to areas off-limits to anyone under age 18. The proposal also called for banning the sale of many flavored cigars. Under the policy, the FDA would reserve the right to push companies to comply or remove their products from shelves.


title: Scott Gottlieb

text: On March 27, 2019, Gottlieb advanced a new federal rule stipulating, for the first time, that centers that provide mammograms to screen for breast cancer will have to tell women whether they have dense breast tissue, which can increase the risk of cancer and mask tumors. The rule marked the first changes proposed in 20 years to the FDA's regulations on mammography.


title: Scott Gottlieb

text: While commissioner, Gottlieb undertook a substantial expansion of the FDA’s interdiction activities inside the international mail facilities, to expand the agency's ability to intercept opioids being shipped through the mail from places like China. He sought and received money from Congress to hire dozens of more staff to inspect 100,000 packages per year that had been flagged as suspicious by customs agents, up from a prior capacity of roughly 40,000. The FDA also launched a new collaboration with Customs and Border Protection to step up joint inspectional activities.


title: Scott Gottlieb

text: Upon leaving the FDA, Gottlieb returned to the American Enterprise Institute. In May 2019, he returned to New Enterprise Associates as a partner in the firm's healthcare practice, and serves on the board of two NEA portfolio companies, Aetion, Inc. and Tempus Labs, Inc. Gottlieb was elected as an independent member of the board of directors of Pfizer, Inc. in June 2019. He joined the Illumina, Inc. board of directors in February 2020 and the National Resilience, Inc. board of directors in November 2020. He is also a member of the boards of trustees of the Mount Sinai Health System and Wesleyan University.


title: Scott Gottlieb

text: With the advent of the COVID-19 reaching the United States and a great deal of misinformation being presented or correct information not being presented, Gottlieb has spoken out with public information on the virus on many venues. On February 12, 2020, Gottlieb testified before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs on preparedness for the novel coronavirus and future pandemic threats. On March 29, 2020, Gottlieb and several public health experts published "National Coronavirus Response: A Road Map to Reopening", providing specific actions for navigating through the current COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. Since April 2020, Gottlieb has advised several governors on the COVID-19 pandemic. He joined Maryland Governor Larry Hogan's COVID-19 response team and Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker's COVID-19 Advisory Board. He has also advised Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont as a member of the Reopen Connecticut Advisory Group. On November 20, 2020, it was announced that Gottlieb would serve on Montana's Governor-elect Greg Gianforte's COVID-19 task force.


title: Scott Gottlieb

text: Gottlieb was a member of the Public Policy Committee to the Society of Hospital Medicine and an editorial board member of the journal Value Based Cancer Care. He served as an adviser to the National Comprehensive Cancer Network, the National Coalition for Cancer Survivorship, and Cancer Commons. Before first joining the FDA, and in between each of his three tours of government service, Gottlieb was a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.


title: Scott Gottlieb

text: Gottlieb was a staff writer of the "British Medical Journal" ("The BMJ") from 1997 to 2005 and a senior editor of the Pulse section of the "Journal of the American Medical Association" ("JAMA") from 1996 to 2001. He is a regular contributor to the editorial page of "The Wall Street Journal" and wrote regularly for "Forbes". Gottlieb was a frequent and early critic of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. He wrote an editorial in "The Wall Street Journal", on the day of the health plan's launch, predicting the ensuing problems with the healthcare.gov website. Gottlieb argued that patients who received Medicaid had worse outcomes, including death, with conditions like head and neck cancer than patients who had no insurance coverage at all. Critics said that his article was based on "a classic misunderstanding: confusing correlation for causation," a limitation explicitly mentioned in papers he cited.


title: Scott Gottlieb

text: In October 2019, Gottlieb wrote a feature for the conservative editorial page of "The Wall Street Journal", where he called for a "reckoning" when it comes to the impasse between state laws legalizing cannabis and the policy of federal prohibition that outlaws cannabis but is largely unenforced. In that op-ed, Gottlieb called for a pathway toward federal legalization of cannabis that would allow, among other reforms, easier access to the compound for research. In a separate editorial writing in "The Washington Post", Gottlieb called on Congress and the FDA to create a framework for the legal sale of regulated CBD.