title: Street-Legal (album)

text: Unlike previous albums, the outtakes for "Street-Legal" are few in number. Only three additional songs were recorded for the album, of which none have seen release. There are two takes of "Stop Now", sounding very much like an additional "Street-Legal" song, in circulation. The Searchers would record "Coming From The Heart (The Road Is Long)" and Eric Clapton would release "Walk Out In the Rain" on his album "Backless", which also included another song written at this time, "If I Don't Be There By Morning".


title: Street-Legal (album)

text: Following the twin successes of "Blood on the Tracks" and "Desire", "Street-Legal" was another gold record for Dylan, peaking at No. 11 on the U.S. Billboard charts, making it his first studio album to miss the U.S. Top 10 since 1964. However, it became his best-selling studio album in the UK, reaching No. 2 on the charts (his highest position in eight years) and achieving platinum status with 300,000 copies sold (the only other Dylan album to do this is "The Essential Bob Dylan").


title: Street-Legal (album)

text: When "Street-Legal" was released, it was dismissed by the American press. "Crawdaddy!" critic Jon Pareles remarked that "Dylan still needs a producer," but others found fault with both the songs and the performances. Greil Marcus criticized the singing as "simply impossible to pay attention to for more than a couple of minutes at a time" and accused "Is Your Love in Vain?" of sexism, claiming Dylan was "speak[ing] to the woman like a sultan checking out a promising servant girl for VD."


title: Street-Legal (album)

text: In the UK, reviews were positive, with Michael Watts of "Melody Maker" proclaiming it Dylan's "best album since "John Wesley Harding"". "NME"'s Angus MacKinnon hailed it as Dylan's "second major album of the 70s." In contrast to the record's still mixed reputation, Q Magazine has given the album a 5 star rating on re-release on two occasions, pointing out that the original muddiness of the production was part of the reason the record has so long been critically overlooked.


title: Street-Legal (album)

text: When Dylan embarked on his European tour, he would be greeted by a generally warm audience reception, and his single, "Baby, Stop Crying" (the lyrics of which were allegedly inspired by Robert Johnson's "Stop Breaking Down"), would chart in the top ten throughout Europe, and reached number 13 on the UK Singles Chart with the album peaking at number 2 on the album chart. In the US, however, the single failed to crack the top 100 and the album itself peaked at number 11, ending Dylan's string of number 1 albums in America until 2006's "Modern Times". When Dylan continued his tour in America, it would be derided by the American press as the Alimony Tour and later the Vegas Tour, much to Dylan's chagrin.


title: Street-Legal (album)

text: Many years later, even "Street-Legal"'s most ardent admirers would admit some flaws in the album, finding most fault with the production. ""Street-Legal" would be the first in a long line of song collections whose failure to be realized in the studio would lay a 'dust of rumors' over Dylan as an abidingly creative artist that he has never been able to fully shake," writes Heylin.


title: Street-Legal (album)

text: This LP was pressed at the same time as a Pink Floyd, "Wish You Were Here" 1978 repress was being prepared, so many (exact quantity unknown, possibly 300 per stamper) of LP's marked Pink Floyd "WYWH" actually contain side one of Street Legal by Bob Dylan.


title: Street-Legal (album)

text: The original 1978 LP sleeve credits mastering to Stan Kalina at CBS Recording Studios NY; the album was produced by Don DeVito. In 1999, DeVito revisited "Street-Legal" and remixed the album with modern, digital techniques in an attempt to improve the mix and produce a richer overall sound. The remix was also used in a 2003 SACD reissue of "Street-Legal". However, in 2013, when "Street-Legal" was remastered as part of "", the original 1978 Kalina mix was reinstated.


title: Meet the Browns (film)

text: Meet the Browns is a 2008 American romantic comedy-drama film released by Lionsgate on March 21, 2008. The film was based on the play of the same name by Tyler Perry and is the third film in the "Madea" cinematic universe. It was written and directed by Tyler Perry with Ruben Cannon helping with the writing, and starring Angela Bassett, Rick Fox, Margaret Avery, Frankie Faison, Jenifer Lewis, Lance Gross, Sofía Vergara, Lamman Rucker, Tamela Mann, Tyler Perry, and introducing David Mann as Leroy Brown. The film tells the story of a struggling single mother from Chicago who takes her children to Georgia to attend her long-lost father's funeral and meets the relatives she didn't know she had.


title: Meet the Browns (film)

text: In Chicago, Brenda Brown-Davis is the struggling single mother of Mike Jr., Lena, and Tosha. She receives a letter telling her that the father she has never met has died and his funeral will be in Georgia. The same day, the plant where she works at with her friend Cheryl "relocates its business to Mexico", adding to her existing financial difficulties. Then Miss Mildred, who supervises Lena in her home daycare, says she will not work for Brenda anymore due to the fact that Brenda has not been paying her.


title: Meet the Browns (film)

text: A basketball scout named Harry notices Mike Jr. when he plays well at a game and comes to their house to talk about the boy's future. Harry asks Brenda out but she says has no interest in hearing about her son going professional and walks away. She begs Miss Mildred to watch Lena briefly and goes to see her ex with Cheryl for financial help to pay the woman back. Mike Sr., who has never given Brenda any assistance, says no and Brenda runs after Cheryl throws a brick at him.


title: Meet the Browns (film)

text: Brenda takes her children to Georgia to attend her father's funeral and meets half-siblings who did not know she existed and are led by Cora Simmons and Leroy Brown. She is surprised to run into Harry, who lives in the same town and is friendly with her father's family members LB, Sarah, Vera, and Will. Harry does partaking in a basketball game with Mike Jr. and Will.


title: Meet the Browns (film)

text: At dinner, Brenda learns that LB was the only one who knew about her when she shows the letter to Vera. On his deathbed, Pop confessed to LB that he had been a pimp in Chicago. Brenda's mother who was LB's mother and many of Pop's friends, the children had all known, were his working girls much to the shock of the rest of the Browns. The family welcomes Brenda, offering support and encouragement. After the funeral, they learn that Pop Brown left an old house to Brenda in his will. Brenda decides not to move into the house, despite Harry's suggestion that she should stay.


title: Meet the Browns (film)

text: Once Brenda is back in Chicago, Mike Sr. offers money in exchange for a one-night stand. After Brenda rejects him, Mike Jr. overhears Mike Sr. insulting her and storms out. In an attempt to make money to help, Mike Jr. turns to Calvin, a friend who deals drugs. Harry sees them together and suspects something is wrong. He counsels Mike Jr. and goes home with him, to explain the situation to Brenda, who threatens to kick Mike Jr. out if he starts dealing drugs. Mike Jr. realizes the risks involved in drug dealing would let his family down and promises that he will not do it.


title: Meet the Browns (film)

text: When Harry and Brenda leave for a date, Mike Jr. tells Calvin that he has changed his mind and returns the drugs. A group of rival drug dealers arrive and attack Calvin for selling on their turf. Michael is shot and wounded when he runs away at Calvin's urging. Cheryl informs Brenda about what happened. This leads to a further breakdown in Brenda's relationship with Mike Sr.


title: Meet the Browns (film)

text: After Mike Jr. recovers, Harry asks the Browns for help to get Pop Brown's run-down house for Brenda and her kids; they renovate the house and surprise her. Brenda overhears Vera talking to Sarah suggesting that Harry is only dating Brenda to get his "perks" from helping Mike Jr. Brenda overhears the conversation and confronts Harry. He asserts that he truly means well, but she breaks up with him. At the same time, Cora and Leroy watch the news of a high speed chase involving their relatives Madea and Joe Simmons. As Madea is arrested and Joe flees, Leroy gives Cora money to bail her mother out.


title: Meet the Browns (film)

text: A basketball league representative visits Brenda and offers Mike Jr. a million-dollar contract; Brenda learns that Harry referred them, and that Harry didn't ask for any money. On the day Mike Jr. signs his contract, Mike Sr. arrives to be photographed with his ex and son, but Mike Jr. announces to the press that he does not know his father, and that his mother had raised him without support.


title: Meet the Browns (film)

text: After they leave, Mike Jr. tells his mother that Harry is a good man and more of a father figure than his actual father had been. Brenda goes to see Harry and they reconcile, ultimately leading to marriage. The Browns are seen attending Brenda and Harry's wedding.


title: Meet the Browns (film)

text: The film is based on certain plot points of its namesake, while majority of the storyline comes from the 2006 play, "What's Done in the Dark".


title: Meet the Browns (film)

text: "Meet the Browns" aired on TBS starring David Mann and Tamela Mann. The show's plot is different from the play and movie. Mr. Brown has opened up a senior citizens' home with the help of Cora, his nephew Will and his wife Sasha. Storylines involve the various zany residents of the home. The series, however, is a spin-off of the film, the stageplay and three episodes of "Tyler Perry's House of Payne" where Mann guest-starred as Mr. Brown, who learns that his deceased father states in his will that he wants him to open a senior citizens' home. Brown enlists the help of the Paynes, Cora, and Will. The other characters from the play and film are neither mentioned nor seen. However, Brown's sister Vera made a guest appearance in the third season of the series.


title: Meet the Browns (film)

text: The film received mixed reviews from critics. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a 33% approval rating based on 58 reviews, with an average rating of 4.85/10. The site's critics consensus reads: "Angela Bassett's considerable charms can't compensate for "Meet the Browns" incessant melodrama and scattered narrative threads." Metacritic reported the film had an average score of 45 out of 100, based on 14 reviews. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale.


title: Meet the Browns (film)

text: In its opening weekend, the film grossed an estimated $20 million in 2,006 theaters in the United States and Canada, ranking #2 at the box office behind "Horton Hears a Who!". Although the film ranked second at the box office, it ranked first in average gross per theater, grossing $9,977 per theater compared to "Horton"s $6,336 per theater. When the film ended its run at the box office, it had grossed $41,975,388 over its $20 million budget, making the film a success.


title: Meet the Browns (film)

text: "Tyler Perry's Meet the Browns" was sold in 1-disc and 2-disc DVD and Blu-ray on July 1, 2008. DVD sales have so far gathered $17,810,803 in revenue.


title: Normal mapping

text: In 3D computer graphics, normal mapping, or Dot3 bump mapping, is a texture mapping technique used for faking the lighting of bumps and dents – an implementation of bump mapping. It is used to add details without using more polygons. A common use of this technique is to greatly enhance the appearance and details of a low polygon model by generating a normal map from a high polygon model or height map.


title: Normal mapping

text: Normal maps are commonly stored as regular RGB images where the RGB components correspond to the X, Y, and Z coordinates, respectively, of the surface normal.


title: Normal mapping

text: In 1978 Jim Blinn described how the normals of a surface could be perturbed to make geometrically flat faces have a detailed appearance.


title: Normal mapping

text: The idea of taking geometric details from a high polygon model was introduced in "Fitting Smooth Surfaces to Dense Polygon Meshes" by Krishnamurthy and Levoy, Proc. SIGGRAPH 1996, where this approach was used for creating displacement maps over nurbs. In 1998, two papers were presented with key ideas for transferring details with normal maps from high to low polygon meshes: "Appearance Preserving Simplification", by Cohen et al. SIGGRAPH 1998, and "A general method for preserving attribute values on simplified meshes" by Cignoni et al. IEEE Visualization '98. The former introduced the idea of storing surface normals directly in a texture, rather than displacements, though it required the low-detail model to be generated by a particular constrained simplification algorithm. The latter presented a simpler approach that decouples the high and low polygonal mesh and allows the recreation of any attributes of the high-detail model (color, texture coordinates, displacements, etc.) in a way that is not dependent on how the low-detail model was created. The combination of storing normals in a texture, with the more general creation process is still used by most currently available tools.


title: Normal mapping

text: The orientation of coordinate axes differs depending on the space in which the normal map was encoded.


title: Normal mapping

text: A straightforward implementation encodes normals in object-space, so that red, green, and blue components correspond directly with X, Y, and Z coordinates.


title: Normal mapping

text: However object-space normal maps cannot be easily reused on multiple models, as the orientation of the surfaces differ.


title: Normal mapping

text: Since color texture maps can be reused freely, and normal maps tend to correspond with a particular texture map,


title: Normal mapping

text: The coordinate system varies smoothly (based on the derivatives of position with respect to texture coordinates) across the surface.


title: Normal mapping

text: Tangent space normal maps can be identified by their dominant purple color, corresponding to a vector facing directly out from the surface.


title: Normal mapping

text: In order to find the perturbation in the normal the tangent space must be correctly calculated. Most often the normal is perturbed in a fragment shader after applying the model and view matrices. Typically the geometry provides a normal and tangent. The tangent is part of the tangent plane and can be transformed simply with the linear part of the matrix (the upper 3x3). However, the normal needs to be transformed by the inverse transpose. Most applications will want bitangent to match the transformed geometry (and associated UVs). So instead of enforcing the bitangent to be perpendicular to the tangent, it is generally preferable to transform the bitangent just like the tangent. Let "t" be tangent, "b" be bitangent, "n" be normal, "M" be the linear part of model matrix, and "V" be the linear part of the view matrix.


title: Normal mapping

text: To calculate the Lambertian (diffuse) lighting of a surface, the unit vector from the shading point to the light source is dotted with the unit vector normal to that surface, and the result is the intensity of the light on that surface. Imagine a polygonal model of a sphere - you can only approximate the shape of the surface. By using a 3-channel bitmap textured across the model, more detailed normal vector information can be encoded. Each channel in the bitmap corresponds to a spatial dimension (X, Y and Z). These spatial dimensions are relative to a constant coordinate system for object-space normal maps, or to a smoothly varying coordinate system (based on the derivatives of position with respect to texture coordinates) in the case of tangent-space normal maps. This adds much more detail to the surface of a model, especially in conjunction with advanced lighting techniques.


title: Normal mapping

text: Unit Normal vectors corresponding to the u,v texture coordinate are mapped onto normal maps. Only vectors pointing towards the viewer (z: 0 to -1 for Left Handed Orientation) are present, since the vectors on geometries pointing away from the viewer are never shown. The mapping is as follows:


title: Normal mapping

text: Since a normal will be used in the dot product calculation for the diffuse lighting computation, we can see that the {0, 0, –1} would be remapped to the {128, 128, 255} values, giving that kind of sky blue color seen in normal maps (blue (z) coordinate is perspective (deepness) coordinate and RG-xy flat coordinates on screen). {0.3, 0.4, –0.866} would be remapped to the ({0.3, 0.4, –0.866}/2+{0.5, 0.5, 0.5})*255={0.15+0.5, 0.2+0.5, -0.433+0.5}*255={0.65, 0.7, 0.067}*255={166, 179, 17} values (formula_4). The sign of the z-coordinate (blue channel) must be flipped to match the normal map's normal vector with that of the eye (the viewpoint or camera) or the light vector. Since negative z values mean that the vertex is in front of the camera (rather than behind the camera) this convention guarantees that the surface shines with maximum strength precisely when the light vector and normal vector are coincident.


title: Normal mapping

text: Interactive normal map rendering was originally only possible on PixelFlow, a parallel rendering machine built at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It was later possible to perform normal mapping on high-end SGI workstations using multi-pass rendering and framebuffer operations or on low end PC hardware with some tricks using paletted textures. However, with the advent of shaders in personal computers and game consoles, normal mapping became widely used in commercial video games starting in late 2003. Normal mapping's popularity for real-time rendering is due to its good quality to processing requirements ratio versus other methods of producing similar effects. Much of this efficiency is made possible by distance-indexed detail scaling, a technique which selectively decreases the detail of the normal map of a given texture (cf. mipmapping), meaning that more distant surfaces require less complex lighting simulation. Many authoring pipelines use high resolution models baked into low/medium resolution in-game models augmented with normal maps.


title: Normal mapping

text: Basic normal mapping can be implemented in any hardware that supports palettized textures. The first game console to have specialized normal mapping hardware was the Sega Dreamcast. However, Microsoft's Xbox was the first console to widely use the effect in retail games. Out of the sixth generation consoles, only the PlayStation 2's GPU lacks built-in normal mapping support, though it can be simulated using the PlayStation 2 hardware's vector units. Games for the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 rely heavily on normal mapping and were the first game console generation to make use of parallax mapping. The Nintendo 3DS has been shown to support normal mapping, as demonstrated by "" and "".


title: Moody's Corporation

text: Moody's Corporation, often referred to as Moody's, is an American business and financial services company. It is the holding company for Moody's Investors Service (MIS), an American credit rating agency, and Moody's Analytics (MA), an American provider of financial analysis software and services.


title: Moody's Corporation

text: Moody's was founded by John Moody in 1909 to produce manuals of statistics related to stocks and bonds and bond ratings. Moody's was acquired by Dun & Bradstreet in 1962. In 2000, Dun & Bradstreet spun off Moody's Corporation as a separate company that was listed on the NYSE under MCO. In 2007, Moody's Corporation was split into two operating divisions, Moody's Investors Service, the rating agency, and Moody's Analytics, with all of its other products. It was included in the Fortune 500 list for the first time in 2021.


title: Moody's Corporation

text: Moody's Corporation traces its history back to two publishing companies established by John Moody, the inventor of modern bond credit ratings. It was first published in 1900 by John Moody, nine years before he founded Moody's Corporation. Initially called "Moody's Manual of Industrial and Miscellaneous Securities", it was later superseded by "Moody's Manual of Railroads and Corporation Securities", then by "Moody's Analyses of Investments".


title: Moody's Corporation

text: In 1900, Moody published his first market assessment, called "Moody's Manual of Industrial and Miscellaneous Securities", and established John Moody & Company. The publication provided detailed statistics relating to stocks and bonds of financial institutions, government agencies, manufacturing, mining, utilities, and food companies. It experienced early success, selling out its first print run in its first two months.


title: Moody's Corporation

text: By 1903, "Moody's Manual" was a nationally recognized publication. The 1907 financial crisis fueled several changes in the markets, including the creation of the Federal Reserve System. Meanwhile, Moody was forced to sell his business, due to a shortage of capital. Moody returned in 1909 with a new publication focused solely on railroad bonds, "Analysis of Railroad Investments", and a new company, Moody's Analyses Publishing Company.


title: Moody's Corporation

text: In 1962, Moody's Investors Service was bought by Dun & Bradstreet, a firm engaged in the related field of credit reporting, although they continued to operate largely as independent companies. By the late 1990s, Moody's superior performance compared to its parent company brought investor pressure to separate the businesses. In 1998, Dun & Bradstreet sold the Moody's publishing business to Financial Communications (later renamed Mergent). In December 1999, Dun & Bradstreet announced it would spin off Moody's Investors Service into a separate publicly traded company. The spin-off was completed on September 30, 2000.


title: Moody's Corporation

text: Moody's Investors Service is the bond credit rating business of Moody's Corporation, representing the company's traditional line of business and its historical name. Moody's Investors Service rates debt securities in several market segments related to public and commercial securities in the bond market. These include government, municipal and corporate bonds; managed investments such as money market funds, fixed-income funds and hedge funds; financial institutions including banks and non-bank finance companies; and asset classes in structured finance.


title: Moody's Corporation

text: Moody's Investors Service's closest competitors are Standard & Poor's (S&P) and Fitch Group. Together, they are sometimes referred to as the Big Three credit rating agencies. Moody's Investors Service and its close competitors play a key role in global capital markets as a supplementary credit analysis provider for banks and other financial institutions in assessing the credit risk of particular securities.


title: Moody's Corporation

text: According to Moody's, the purpose of its ratings is to "provide investors with a simple system of gradation by which future relative creditworthiness of securities may be gauged". To each of its ratings from Aaa through Caa, Moody's appends numerical modifiers 1, 2 and 3; the lower the number, the higher-end the rating. Aaa, Ca and C are not modified this way.


title: Moody's Corporation

text: Moody's Analytics is a subsidiary of Moody's Corporation established in 2007 to focus on non-rating activities. It performs economic research related to credit analysis, performance management, financial modeling, structured analysis and financial risk management. Moody's Analytics also offers software and consulting services, including proprietary economic models and software tools, as well as professional training for the financial services sector, particularly risk management accreditation.


title: Moody's Corporation

text: Moody's Analytics started in 1995 as a business unit providing quantitative analysis services, including credit risk assessment software and services, called Moody's Risk Management Service (MRMS), and grew through partnerships and acquisitions in the late 1990s and 2000s, expanding its client base and capabilities. Acquisitions included KMV, Economy.com, Wall Street Analytics, Fermat International, Enb Consulting Ltd., The Institute of Risk Standards and Qualifications (iRSQ), CSI Global Education Inc., and Bureau van Dijk.


title: Moody's Corporation

text: In 2002, Moody's Corporation created a corporate philanthropy program, The Moody's Foundation, focused on educational initiatives in mathematics, economics and finance. The organization offers grants to 501(c)(3) non-profits and equivalent international organizations, accredited schools and some governmental organizations.


title: Moody's Corporation

text: Since 2006, its main program is the annual Moody's Mega Math Challenge (M Challenge), a student academic challenge co-sponsored with the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM), in which several hundred teams of high school students use quantitative analysis and modeling to solve problems related to real-life financial topics such as Social Security and the Economic Stimulus Act of 2008. Since 2010.


title: Moody's Corporation

text: Moody's Research Labs, Inc. was a business incubator focused on research and development specializing in financial risk modeling and analysis, focused on developing such products for use by other divisions of Moody's Corporation. Its president was Roger Stein. In March 2011 Moody's Analytics announced the release of a software program developed by Moody's Research Labs, the Mortgage Portfolio Analyzer, to assist portfolio managers in managing credit risk.


title: Moody's Corporation

text: October 2011: Moody’s reached a settlement resolving claims by the state of Connecticut that the credit rating company unfairly gave lower ratings to public bonds.


title: Moody's Corporation

text: July 2012: Moody’s said it reached a settlement with stockholders in lawsuits filed over structured finance ratings.


title: Moody's Corporation

text: April 2013: Moody's reached a settlement avoiding what would have been their first jury trial over crisis-era ratings. The fourteen plaintiffs, were led by Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank and King County, Washington. They claimed lawsuits filed in 2008 and 2009 that Moody's misled them by allegedly inflating ratings on two so-called structured investment vehicles they purchased.


title: Moody's Corporation

text: January 2017: Moody's Corporation, Moody's Analytics, and Moody's Investors Service reached an $863 million settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice and the attorneys general of 21 states and the District of Columbia "Arising From Conduct in the Lead up to the Financial Crisis." "The settlement resolves allegations arising from Moody’s role in providing credit ratings for Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities (RMBS) and Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDO), contributing to the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression." Then California Attorney General Kamala Harris and then Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley were among the 21 state signatories.


title: Moody's Corporation

text: March 2021: Moody's reached a settlement with the European Union regarding conflicts of interest. Moody's was fined €3.7 million ($4.35 million).


title: Moody's Corporation

text: In 2019, Moody's Corporation purchased the majority share in the California-based climate risk data firm, Four Twenty Seven (427), that "measures the physical risks" of "climate change". This acquisition is the "latest indication that global warming can threaten the creditworthiness of governments and companies" globally, according to a July 25, 2019 article in "The New York Times". In 2021, Moody's acquired Risk Management Solutions (RMS) from Daily Mail and General Trust for $2 billion. RMS generates risk models for the insurance and reinsurance industries.


title: Donation

text: A donation is a gift for charity, humanitarian aid, or to benefit a cause. A donation may take various forms, including money, alms, services, or goods such as clothing, toys, food, or vehicles. A donation may satisfy medical needs such as blood or organs for transplant.


title: Donation

text: In the United States, in 2007, the Bureau of Labor Statistics found that American households in the lowest fifth in terms of wealth, gave on average a higher percentage of their incomes to charitable organizations than those households in the highest fifth. Charity Navigator writes that, according to Giving USA, Americans gave $298 billion in 2011 (about 2% of GDP). The majority of donations were from individuals (73%), then from bequests (about 12%), foundations (2%) and less than 1% from corporations. The largest sector to receive donations was religious organizations (32%), then education (13%). Giving has increased in 3 out of 4 years since 1971 (with the occasional declines occurring around recession years).


title: Donation

text: Blackbaud reports that, in the US, online giving in 2012 grew by 11% on a year-over-year basis. The percentage of total fundraising that comes from online giving was about 7% in 2012. This was an increase from 6% in 2011 and is nearing the record level of 8% from 2010 when online giving spiked in response to Haitian earthquake relief efforts. Steve MacLaughlin notes in the report that "the Internet has now become the first-response channel of choice for donors during disasters and other emergency events."


title: Donation

text: Blackbaud's 2015 Charitable Giving report revealed a 9% increase in online donations compared to 2014. In addition, online giving represented 7% of overall fundraising, with 14% of all online donations made on mobile devices. Donations made on the international online giving day #GivingTuesday were up 52% from the previous year.


title: Donation

text: In Australia, donation statistics are made available annually by the Australian Taxation Office (ATO), in the form of detailed tables breaking down the items in the individual tax return by gender, age, income, and state/territory. In Australia, individuals submit an income tax return based on their personal income levels and source(s). Unlike in other Western jurisdictions, income tax returns cannot be submitted as a couple or household, and standard deductions are not available for donations.


title: Donation

text: The most recent year of available data (2019–2020) covers the Australian bushfire summer as well as the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. In 2019–20, 14.9 million Australians submitted a tax return, and 4.3 million claimed a gift made to an organisation endorsed as a Deductible Gift Recipient (DGR). The total amount donated and claimed as tax-deductible donations in 2019–20 in Australia was $3.85 billion (compared to $3.93 billion for the previous income year). This constitutes a decrease of 2.11 per cent or $83 million from the previous income year. The average tax-deductible donation made to DGRs and claimed by Australian taxpayers in 2019–20 was $886.75 (compared to $933.20 in the previous income year). This is a decrease of 4.98 per cent.


title: Donation

text: It is important to note that the ATO data in no way represents all gifts, being limited to giving by individual taxpayers to DGRs. Furthermore, not all gifts will be claimed, either due to forgetfulness or a conscious decision not to claim.  Broadly speaking, those whose income is derived from their superannuation (personal retirement savings) are not required to pay tax or submit a return, so their gifts are not included. Additionally, the data does not include giving from trusts or companies or giving by persons overseas who are not Australian taxpayers.  The ATO dataset also does not examine other forms of giving such as time (volunteering) or goods under $5,000 in value.


title: Donation

text: Donations are given without return consideration. This lack of return consideration means that, in common law, an agreement to make a donation is an "imperfect contract void for want of consideration." Only when the donation is actually made does it acquire legal status as a transfer or property.


title: Donation

text: In politics, the law of some countries may prohibit or restrict the extent to which politicians may accept gifts or donations of large sums of money, especially from business or lobby groups (see campaign finance). Donations of money or property to qualifying charitable organizations are also usually tax deductible. Because this reduces the state's tax income, calls have been raised that the state (and the public in general) should pay more attention towards ensuring that charities actually use this 'tax money' in suitable ways.


title: Donation

text: The person or institution giving a gift is called the donor, and the person or institution getting the gift is called the donee.


title: Donation

text: It is possible to donate in the name of a third party, making a gift in honor or in memory of someone or something. Gifts in honor or memory of a third party are made for various reasons, such as holiday gifts, wedding gifts, in memory of somebody who has died, in memory of pets or in the name of groups or associations no longer existing. Memorial gifts are sometimes requested by their survivors (e.g. "in lieu of flowers, contributions may be made to ABC Charity"), usually directing donations to a charitable organization for which the deceased was a donor or volunteer, or for a cause befitting the deceased's priorities in life or manner of death. Memorial donations are also sometimes given by people if they are unable to attend the ceremony.


title: Donation

text: There are also circumstances when people like to donate funds to their preferred causes by not revealing their names. Many donors such as public figures or philanthropists like to stay anonymous while making generous donations according to their wishes. Many donors like to stay anonymous because of their religious beliefs or simply don't want any notoriety from giving.


title: Vietnam Television

text: Vietnam Television (), or VTV, is the national television broadcaster of Vietnam. As the state broadcaster under the direction of the government of Vietnam, VTV is tasked with "propagating the views of the Party, policies, laws of the government".


title: Vietnam Television

text: VTV was established with technical assistance and training from Cuba on 7 September 1970, in Hanoi, as a department of Voice of Vietnam. During the Vietnam War it broadcast intermittently from a mountainous region.


title: Vietnam Television

text: After reunification in 1975, the former US-run stations in the south became part of the national network, and broadcasting was extended to the entire country.


title: Vietnam Television

text: Color television was experimented in 1977 and adopted the French SECAM standard and fully implemented in 1986. Vietnam Television became an official name on 30 April 1987. And by 1990, VTV viewers had two national TV channels to choose from as VTV2 was launched and that year switched to PAL.


title: Vietnam Television

text: VTV's regional broadcasting centres are located in Ho Chi Minh City, Huế, Da Nang, Nha Trang (formerly in Phú Yên), and Cần Thơ. Programming is relayed nationwide via a network of provincial and municipal television stations. There are transmitters in most outlying areas of the country. By 2003, more than 80% of all urban households owned a television set. The percentage was considerably less in rural areas, but even the most remote village cafe has a TV and video or DVD player.


title: Vietnam Television

text: Between 19 March and 30 April 2020, as a safety precaution due to the COVID-19 pandemic in the country, Vietnam Television temporarily suspended the overnight timeslot on most channels, with the exception of VTV1, VTV4 and VTV7, and limited the broadcast time to 19 hours per day. The overnight timeslot returned to these channels as of 00:00, 1 May 2020.


title: Vietnam Television

text: From May 10, 2020, Decree 34/2020/ND-CP officially takes effect. Accordingly, VTV merged and restructured the station's editing, production and broadcasting units and Vietnam Television Centers in the Central and Southern regions.


title: Vietnam Television

text: From July 30 to September 2, 2020, during the time of social distancing to prevent the COVID-19 epidemic in central provinces and cities, VTV8 continues to shorten the broadcast time to 19 hours daily. From September 3, 2020, VTV8 has broadcast 24 hours daily again.


title: Vietnam Television

text: December 31, 2020: The station stopped broadcasting terrestrial analogue television in 15 provinces of group IV of the Terrestrial Television Digitization Scheme, completing the national television digitization.


title: Vietnam Television

text: On September 8, 2022, Decree No. 60/2022/ND-CP on the organization, tasks and powers of Vietnam Television was issued. Accordingly, the Youth Department is no longer part of the department system of Vietnam Television Station from October 1, 2022. At the same time, the Vietnam Television Center in the Southern region was split and re-established. Vietnam Television Center in Ho Chi Minh City as well as Vietnam Television Center in the Southwest region (on the basis of the Southwest Regional Office of Vietnam Television Center in the Southern region). The Vietnam Television Center in the Southwest region is responsible for producing programs for the VTV Can Tho television channel and other VTV channels.


title: Vietnam Television

text: October 13, 2022: Officially broadcast the National Television Channel of the Southwest region - VTV Cần Thơ.


title: Vietnam Television

text: November 1, 2022: officially synchronized SD & HD channel streams for all channels (except for channels VTV5 Tây Nam Bộ, VTV8 and VTV Cần Thơ which have synchronized streams before)


title: Vietnam Television

text: On November 21, 2022, VTV Cần Thơ channel increases the broadcast time 24/7 daily, during the broadcast of programs related to the matches of the FIFA World Cup 2022 taking place in Qatar.


title: Vietnam Television

text: Since 2003, all the above channels are also available via satellite, digital terrestrial and digital cable networks across Vietnam. The VTV itself offers 15 pay TV channels through satellite television and digital cable which are called K+ and VTVCab respectively,


title: Vietnam Television

text: Changes to VTV regional channels were made on 1 January 2016. VTV Huế, VTV Đà Nẵng, and VTV Phú Yên ceased programming and became VTV8, a specific channel for Central and Highland Regions of Vietnam. Both the "old" VTV9 (which was only for Ho Chi Minh City and Southeast Vietnam regions) and VTV Cần Thơ 1 (which was only for Cần Thơ City and Hậu Giang Province) merged to form the "new" VTV9 for both southeast and southwest of Vietnam, while VTV Cần Thơ 2 was renamed VTV5 Tây Nam Bộ, a bilingual Khmer-Vietnamese channel and the first regional variation of VTV5. On 17 October 2016, VTV5 Tây Nguyên, a channel for ethnic minorities in Central Highlands of Vietnam and another regional variation of VTV5, was also launched.


title: Vietnam Television

text: VTV has its own film production company, the Vietnam Television Film Centre (formerly Vietnam Television Film Company), or VFC, which produces made-for-television movies and miniseries. Shows may also include foreign serial melodramas dubbed in Vietnamese, shown on VTV1 or VTV3.


title: Vietnam Television

text: Aside from news and current affairs programming, VTV1 devotes itself to orchestral concerts, ballets, traditional theatre, ethnic minority culture shows and films.


title: Vietnam Television

text: On Vietnamese New Year's Eve, VTV broadcasts a block of specialised programmes, including "Chiều cuối năm" ("Last Afternoon of the Year"), a special edition of the 7pm news bulletin, satirical theatrical comedy "Gặp nhau cuối năm" ("Year-end meet"), dedicated music shows, and a live broadcast of New Year's Eve celebrations across the country.


title: Vietnam Television

text: VTV4 has been criticized by South Vietnamese refugees and Vietnamese emigrants. This is because they do not like VTV supporting the Communist state.


title: Vietnam Television

text: This controversy was initiated in 2004, when the Australian public broadcaster SBS began to air news bulletin from VTV4 as a part of "WorldWatch", a program which transmitting news program from public broadcasters around the world. VTV4's bulletin was quickly removed after the backlash. On the 2019 Lunar New Year edition of the cultural show "Vietnamese Beauties" (), VTV used the figure of Trần Lệ Xuân, the former South Vietnamese First Lady to illustrate Vietnamese áo dài styles through the times. Two days later, on the variety show called "12 Zodiacs" (), VTV unintentionally displayed a frame showing a member of "P336" band wearing a yellow jacket which resembled the South Vietnamese flag.


title: Vietnam Television

text: On 28 February 2016, VTV admitted that they had used copyrighted content without permission in some of its programs. Thus, VTV's YouTube channel was terminated. The case was exposed after Bui Minh Tuan, reported that VTV had repeatedly used his drone videos. He claimed that between 2015 and 2016 he had sent many complaints to VTV, the Department of Copyright and the Vietnam Ministry of Information and Communications to report around 20 copyright infringements by VTV, to no avail. Tuan decided to report the case to Google.In 2008, VTV lost its rights to broadcast the Miss World competition due to copyright issues. In 2016, it lost the broadcasting rights to the 2015-16 UEFA Champions League season.


title: Vietnam Television

text: Sites such as https://vtvgo.vn/ show online live broadcasts of VTV channels. The "VTV Go" app can be used for Smart TV devices, or the app can be downloaded via app-stores for smart-phones.


title: The Tallest Man on Earth

text: Kristian Matsson (born 30 April 1983) is a Swedish singer-songwriter who performs under the stage name The Tallest Man on Earth. Matsson grew up in Leksand, and began his solo career in 2006, having previously been the lead singer of the indie band Montezumas. His music has often drawn comparisons to the music of Bob Dylan.


title: The Tallest Man on Earth

text: Since 2006, Matsson has released five full-length albums and two EPs. He records and produces these in his home, and usually records his voice and guitar together on one track. He is known for his charismatic stage presence.


title: The Tallest Man on Earth

text: He was previously married to Amanda Bergman, also known by the stage name "Idiot Wind". Together, they wrote the music for the Swedish drama film "Once a Year".


title: The Tallest Man on Earth

text: Matsson's first solo release, "The Tallest Man on Earth", was released in 2006. The EP received positive reviews.


title: The Tallest Man on Earth

text: At the start of his solo career, Matsson didn't plan to make music full-time, and he released his music without providing personal information or photographs of himself to journalists.


title: The Tallest Man on Earth

text: To celebrate the 10-year anniversary of The Wild Hunt, Matsson released a cover of Graceland by "Paul Simon" through "Dead Oceans".


title: The Tallest Man on Earth

text: In 2008, Matsson released an album, "Shallow Grave", which was praised by the music site Pitchfork and was listed #47 on Pitchfork's list of the "50 Best Albums of 2008". The album received generally favorable reviews. Following "Shallow Grave"'s release, Matsson was chosen as the opening act for the American indie folk band Bon Iver. The resulting publicity led to a solo tour throughout the United States, Australia and Europe, where he attracted large crowds, in spite of the lack of a record deal or distribution in the United States.


title: The Tallest Man on Earth

text: The song "Pistol Dreams", also released as a single, appeared in the Swedish television serial How Soon Is Now? .


title: The Tallest Man on Earth

text: On 9 October 2009, Matsson visited the Daytrotter studio, where he recorded four songs, including a cover of Bob Dylan's "I Want You." At that time, Matsson cited Roscoe Holcomb as an influence for his singing style and later included Emmylou Harris, Feist and Cat Power as influences.


title: The Tallest Man on Earth

text: Mattson signed with the American label Dead Oceans, and in April 2010 released his second album, "The Wild Hunt". The album was well received. The single "King of Spain" contains, besides the title track, a cover of Paul Simon's "Graceland" and the previously unreleased track "Where I Thought I Met the Angels"; it was sold exclusively at the subsequent European tour. During the late summer and autumn of 2010 Matsson went on tour in North America and Europe.


title: The Tallest Man on Earth

text: The album was followed that same year by an EP, "Sometimes the Blues Is Just a Passing Bird", which also got good reviews. The EP was released through the iTunes Store in September, and in November was published on CD, LP and MP3. The album consists of five songs, all written for "The Wild Hunt"; "Like the Wheel" the conclusion of many of Matsson's gigs, and "The Dreamer", was the first recording on which he plays electric guitar.


title: The Tallest Man on Earth

text: "The Wild Hunt" garnered Matsson several award nominations. In 2011, he was nominated in the category "Best Male Artist" in the Grammis Awards, the Swedish equivalent of the American Grammy Awards, but lost to Håkan Hellström. Matsson was also nominated in the category "pop" in the 2011 P3 Gold Awards, but lost to Malmö indie pop band This Is Head. In February 2011, Matsson won the Manifest Award in the "singer/songwriter" category; he was also nominated in the "live" category, lost to Robyn.


title: The Tallest Man on Earth

text: On 5 April 2011, Matsson participated in the BBC's program, "Later... with Jools Holland", where he performed the songs "King of Spain" and "Love Is All". In June of the same year, Matsson's debut EP, The Tallest Man on Earth, was reissued with the previously unreleased track "In the Pockets" exclusive to the vinyl edition of the reissue. In July, he released the single "Weather of a Killing Kind" as part of the 2011 Adult Swim Singles program.


title: The Tallest Man on Earth

text: In August 2011, Matsson had contributed to the soundtrack of the Swedish drama film "En gång om året" , along with the Idiot Wind. The film premiered at the Gothenburg Film Festival on 29 January 2012 and had a theatrical release on 17 May 2013.


title: The Tallest Man on Earth

text: On 27 January 2012, Matsson took part in the Swedish TV game show, På spåret where he, backed by a studio band, performed two cover songs: Thin Lizzy's "Dancing in the Moonlight" and Cornelis Vreeswijk's "En Fattig Trubadur" . In February of that year, he re-released "King of Spain" as 12" vinyl for the event Record Store Day. the album was limited to 2000 copies.


title: The Tallest Man on Earth

text: On 12 June 2012 (June 11 in the UK), Matsson released his third studio album as The Tallest Man on Earth, "There's No Leaving Now", on Dead Oceans. The album was recorded by Matsson himself in his home studio in Dalarna during the latter part of 2011 and early 2012. The album was streamed on Dead Oceans' website a week before its official release.


title: The Tallest Man on Earth

text: At the same time, Matsson released "1904 b/w Cycles", a 7" LP of his song "1904" as well his cover of the song "Cycles," written by Gayle Caldwell and made famous by Frank Sinatra. He has also covered this song in live performances.


title: The Tallest Man on Earth

text: Along with the album, Matsson announced a summer tour throughout Europe and the United States including two gigs in Sweden (at the Södra Teatern in Stockholm) and a performance at the Newport Folk Festival in Newport, Rhode Island. Matsson also toured in Europe in October 2012.


title: The Tallest Man on Earth

text: On 28 January 2013, Matsson took part in a benefit concert for the American musician Jason Molina, who did not have health insurance and, consequently, was in debt after a hospital stay. The concert took place at the Södra Teatern in Stockholm, where Matsson played alongside, among others, I'm Kingfisher and Idiot Wind. Molina died on 16 March 2013.


title: The Tallest Man on Earth

text: Matsson's fourth studio album as The Tallest Man on Earth, "Dark Bird Is Home", was released on 12 May 2015 on Dead Oceans. The album was largely inspired by Matsson's divorce from Amanda Bergman as well as the death of a close family member, and its more elaborate instrumentation represented a musical shift from previous albums.


title: The Tallest Man on Earth

text: Following its release, Matsson performed—with a full band—at several festivals, including the Roskilde Festival in 2015 and the Edmonton Folk Music Festival in 2016.


title: The Tallest Man on Earth

text: On 4 February 2019, Matsson revealed that a new album would be released in 2019. In late February 2019, he revealed that his new album, now titled "I Love You. It's a Fever Dream.", would be released sometime in April. He also released the first single, "The Running Styles of New York" the same day. The second single, "I'm a Stranger Now" was released on 27 March. The album was released on April 19 2019.


title: The Tallest Man on Earth

text: Matsson's song "It Will Follow the Rain" from his eponymous EP was featured in a 2019 commercial for the Infiniti QX50 automobile.


title: The Tallest Man on Earth

text: On 19 September 2022, Matsson announced a new album of covers. It was released later that week on 23 September 2022 and includes covers of songs from The National and Bon Iver, among others. The album's title, "Too Late for Edelweiss", is a reference to the album "För sent för Edelweiss" by Swedish singer Håkan Hellström and that titular song is the first cover on the album.


title: The Tallest Man on Earth

text: Critics have compared The Tallest Man on Earth to Bob Dylan both in terms of songwriting ability and vocal style. When asked about his lyrical style, Matsson explains that he began listening to Bob Dylan at fifteen, and upon hearing Dylan's cover material, he "tried to figure out where those songs came from" and became slowly exposed to early American folk, such as Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie. But he is careful to qualify this, saying "I don't consider my work to be a part of any tradition. This is how I play. This is how I write songs."


title: The Tallest Man on Earth

text: With regard to his guitar technique, Matsson uses a variety of open tunings, and standard tuning to a lesser degree. He had classical guitar training in his youth, but says he "never really focused on it" and that by the end of high school he "got bored playing guitar because it was like math", until he then discovered open tunings while listening to Nick Drake in his early twenties. He was drawn to this style of playing because it allowed him to focus on singing while still performing intricate music.


title: Wild Kingdom

text: Wild Kingdom, also known as Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom, is an American documentary television program that features wildlife and nature. It was originally produced from 1963 until 1988, and it was revived in 2002. The show's second incarnation aired until 2011 on Animal Planet in the United States. A third incarnation streamed webisodes on a dedicated YouTube channel from 2013 to 2018. Starting April 4, 2021, the program is shown in its traditional Sunday timeslot on the cable channel RFDTV.


title: Wild Kingdom

text: The original "Wild Kingdom" grew from discussions that started in 1962 between zoologist Marlin Perkins and V. J. Skutt, the chairman and CEO of insurance company Mutual of Omaha. The company had been the sponsor of an earlier animal-related show, "Zoo Parade", that Perkins had hosted from 1952 until 1957. Also intimately involved with the creation of "Wild Kingdom" was "Zoo Parade" producer Don Meier, who was credited as the program's creator. Mutual of Omaha sponsored and lent its name to the new program.


title: Wild Kingdom

text: Liz and Henk Maartens, from Irene, Pretoria, South Africa, won five Emmy Awards for the documentary program "Wild Kingdom" in 1970. One Emmy Award was for camerawork while the other Emmy Awards were for aspects of production.


title: Wild Kingdom

text: "Wild Kingdom" was first broadcast by NBC. The half-hour show aired on Sundays starting January 6, 1963, and continued until 1971, when the program entered first-run syndication. As a prime-time syndicated program, "Wild Kingdom" enjoyed great popularity. Although most of the programs aired after 1971 were repeats, new shows continued to be produced until 1987. Several episodes were filmed by cameraman Roy Pinney. Perkins was the host for most of the show's history until he was forced to retire in 1985 for health reasons, and Jim Fowler, Perkins' long-time assistant and sidekick, became the host. Perkins died of cancer one year later at age 81.


title: Wild Kingdom

text: One of "Wild Kingdom"s film editors, Bernard Braham, was offered membership with the American Cinema Editors in 1979 and won an EDDIE award in Hollywood for best documentary of the year for the episode "Desert Spring". His competition for the award was a National Geographic episode titled "Gold". He was also nominated for several other awards.


title: Wild Kingdom

text: Perkins often introduced commercial spots by tying them into the subject of the show. For example, at the end of a segment about lions, he might say something like, "Just as the mother lion protects her cubs, you can protect your children with an insurance policy from Mutual of Omaha..."


title: Wild Kingdom

text: The format of the show often featured Perkins narrating off-camera, describing Fowler's on-camera work with the wild animals. This was commonly parodied as Perkins saying "I'll wait here [someplace safe] while Jim [does something or other with the dangerous animal]". However, according to a 1997 interview with Fowler, Perkins never said any such thing: according to Fowler, "Johnny Carson started the jokes about me and Marlin in his monologues".


title: Wild Kingdom

text: Perkins often featured pet chimpanzees in the studio: one named "W. K." (Wild Kingdom); the other named "Mr. Moke", after the Mini Moke vehicle.


title: Wild Kingdom

text: "Wild Kingdom" increased ecological and environmental awareness in the United States. Its exciting footage brought the wilds of Africa, the Amazon River, and other exotic locales into the living rooms of millions of Americans. It created an interest in commercial nature programming that led to several other wildlife documentary programs going on the air, including "Animal World", "Wild, Wild World of Animals" and "Lorne Greene's New Wilderness", and in subsequent decades, to entire cable television networks devoted to these topics, such as the Discovery Channel and Animal Planet. Many fans of wildlife documentaries still consider "Wild Kingdom" the "gold standard" against which other such shows are compared.


title: Wild Kingdom

text: Mutual of Omaha owns the rights to the program, but several episodes have been released on DVD from BCI Eclipse under license from Mutual of Omaha. Some episodes are also available on an official YouTube channel.


title: Wild Kingdom

text: The show was criticized in the 1982 investigative piece "Cruel Camera" by "The Fifth Estate", a news magazine program on Canada's CBC Television network, for claims of staging scenes of animal capture or "rescue" simply for dramatic effect or theatrical opportunity, which could thus be construed as cruelty or create undue risk to the creatures. Several interviewees who had worked on "Wild Kingdom" confirmed the rumors that many of the sequences were staged, such as in the episode where Perkins and crew captured a bear in the Florida swamps. In fact, the bear had actually been "placed" there by the production. Perkins denied such allegations on camera, and when interviewer Bob McKeown pressed him, said, <nowiki>"I'd like you to stop your camera right now, please."</nowiki>


title: Wild Kingdom

text: In 2002, a completely new "Wild Kingdom", also sponsored by Mutual of Omaha, began airing new "Wild Kingdom" specials on Animal Planet. The specials proved to be so popular that, in 2005, the network began airing new weekly episodes during the original Sunday night timeslot.


title: Wild Kingdom

text: As of on April 4, 2021, Mutual of Omaha started syndicating the original series to RFD-TV, airing them in the original Sunday night timeslot.


title: Wild Kingdom

text: On November 3, 2013, "Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom" premiered as a series of webisodes that featured new host Stephanie Arne, a new format, and new stories.


title: Wild Kingdom

text: A second season of new webisodes began in July 2014, and the third season began in March 2015. The fifth and last season was released in 2018.


title: Aleksander Kwaśniewski

text: Aleksander Kwaśniewski (; born 15 November 1954) is a Polish politician and journalist. He served as the President of Poland from 1995 to 2005. He was born in Białogard, and during communist rule, he was active in the Socialist Union of Polish Students and was the Minister for Sport in the Communist government during the 1980s. After the fall of Communism, he became a leader of the left-wing Social Democracy of the Republic of Poland, a successor to the former ruling Polish United Workers' Party, and a co-founder of the Democratic Left Alliance.


title: Aleksander Kwaśniewski

text: Kwaśniewski was elected to the presidency in 1995, defeating the incumbent, Lech Wałęsa. He was re-elected to a second and final term as president in 2000 in a decisive first-round victory. Although he was praised for attempting to further integrate Poland into the European Union, he faced criticism for involving the country in the Iraq War. His term ended on 23 December 2005, when he handed over power to his elected successor, conservative Lech Kaczyński.


title: Aleksander Kwaśniewski

text: From 1973–77, Kwaśniewski studied Transport Economics and Foreign Trade at the University of Gdańsk, although he never graduated. He became politically active at this time, and joined the ruling Polish United Workers' Party (PZPR) in 1977, remaining a member until it was dissolved in 1990.


title: Aleksander Kwaśniewski

text: An activist in the communist student movement until 1982, he held, among other positions, the chairmanship of the University Council of the Socialist Union of Polish Students (SZSP) from 1976–77 and the vice-chairmanship of the Gdańsk Voivodship Union from 1977–79. Kwaśniewski was a member of the SZSP supreme authorities from 1977–82.


title: Aleksander Kwaśniewski

text: From November 1981 to February 1984 he was the editor-in-chief of the communist-controlled student weekly "ITD", then editor-in-chief of the daily communist youth "Sztandar Młodych" from 1984–85. He was a co-founder of the first computer-science periodical in Poland, "Bajtek", in 1985. From 1985–87, Kwaśniewski was Minister for Youth Affairs in the Zbigniew Messner government, and then Chairman of the Committee for Youth and Physical Culture till June 1990.


title: Aleksander Kwaśniewski

text: He joined the government of Mieczysław Rakowski, first as a Cabinet Minister and then as chairman of the government Social-Political Committee from October 1988 to September 1989. A participant in the Round-Table negotiations, he co-chaired the task group for trade-union pluralism with Tadeusz Mazowiecki and Romuald Sosnowski.


title: Aleksander Kwaśniewski

text: As the PZPR was wound up, he became a founding member of the post-communist Social Democratic Party of the Republic of Poland (SdRP) from January to February 1990, and its first chairman until he assumed the presidency in December 1995. He was also one of the founding members of the coalition Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) in 1991.


title: Aleksander Kwaśniewski

text: Kwaśniewski was an activist in the Student Sports Union from 1975–79 and the Polish Olympic Committee (PKOL); he later served as PKOL president from 1988–91. Running for the Sejm from the Warsaw constituency in 1991, he won the largest number of votes (148,533), although did not win an absolute majority. Kwaśniewski headed the parliamentary caucus of the Democratic Left Alliance in his first and second terms (1991–1995).


title: Aleksander Kwaśniewski

text: He was a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee and chairman of the Constitutional Committee of the National Assembly from November 1993 to November 1995.


title: Aleksander Kwaśniewski

text: In an often bitter campaign, Kwaśniewski won the presidential election in 1995, collecting 51.7 percent of votes in the run-off, against 48.3 percent for the incumbent, Lech Wałęsa, the former Solidarity leader. Kwaśniewski's campaign slogans were "Let's choose the future" ("Wybierzmy przyszłość") and "A Poland for all" ("Wspólna Polska").


title: Aleksander Kwaśniewski

text: Political opponents disputed his victory and produced evidence to show that he had lied about his education in registration documents and public presentations. There was also some mystery over his graduation from university. A law court confirmed that Kwaśniewski had lied about his record—and this did not come to light until after the election—but did not penalise him for it. Kwaśniewski took the presidential oath of office on 23 December 1995. Later the same day, he was sworn in as Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces at the Warszawa First Fighter Wing, in Mińsk Mazowiecki.


title: Aleksander Kwaśniewski

text: His political course resembled that of Wałęsa's in several key respects, such as the pursuit of closer ties to the European Union and NATO. Kwaśniewski also continued the transition to a market economy and the privatization of state-owned enterprises, although with less energy than his predecessor.


title: Aleksander Kwaśniewski

text: Hoping to be seen as "the president of all Poles", including his political opponents, he quit the Social Democratic Party after the election. Later, he formed a coalition with the rightist government of Jerzy Buzek with few major conflicts and on several occasions, he stood against movements of the Democratic Left Alliance government of Leszek Miller. At one moment, support for Kwaśniewski reached as high as 80% in popularity polls; most of the time it was over 50%.


title: Aleksander Kwaśniewski

text: In 1997, the Polish newspaper "Zycie" reported that Kwaśniewski had met former KGB officer Vladimir Alganov at the Baltic sea resort Cetniewo in 1994. First Kwaśniewski denied ever meeting Alganov and filed a libel suit against the newspaper. Eventually, Kwaśniewski admitted that he had met Alganov on official occasions, but denied meeting him in Cetniewo.


title: Aleksander Kwaśniewski

text: Kwaśniewski's greatest achievement was his ability to bring about a new Constitution of Poland to replace the modified Stalinist document then still in use. The failure to create a new document had been a criticism often levelled at Wałęsa. Kwaśniewski actively campaigned for its approval in the subsequent referendum, and he signed it into law on 16 July 1997. He took an active part in the efforts to secure Polish membership of NATO.


title: Aleksander Kwaśniewski

text: He headed Poland's delegation at the 1997 Madrid summit, where Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary were promised membership; and the Washington summit, where on 26 February 1999, during the Kosovo conflict, which he supported, he signed the instruments ratifying Poland's membership of NATO. He also took an active part in promoting further enlargement of the alliance, speaking out in favor of membership for a further seven states and the open-door policy that leaves open the option of further members.


title: Aleksander Kwaśniewski

text: He was an author of the 2002 Riga Initiative, a forum for cooperation between Central European states, aimed towards further enlargement of NATO and the European Union.


title: Aleksander Kwaśniewski

text: An advocate of regional cooperation in Central and Eastern Europe, Kwaśniewski hosted a summit of the region's leaders at Łańcut in 1996. Speaking out against the danger organized crime posed to the region, he submitted a draft of a convention on fighting organised crime to the UN in 1996. He was an active participant at meetings of regional leaders in Portorož in 1997, Levoča in 1998, and Lviv and Yalta in 1999.


title: Aleksander Kwaśniewski

text: After a history of sometimes acrimonious relations with Lithuania, Kwaśniewski was a driving force behind the presidential summit in Vilnius in 1997, at which the two countries' presidents signed a treaty of friendship. Poland subsequently became one of the strongest advocates of Lithuanian membership in NATO and the European Union and the strongest advocate of Ukraine in Europe. In 2000 he was re-elected in the first round of voting, collecting 53.9 percent of the vote. His election campaign slogan was: "A home for all—Poland" ("Dom wszystkich—Polska"). On 23 December 2000, he took office for the second term.


title: Aleksander Kwaśniewski

text: Following the 11 September 2001 attacks, Kwaśniewski organized an international conference in Warsaw, with the participation of leaders from Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe to strengthen regional activities in fighting international terrorism. Under Kwaśniewski's leadership, Poland became a strong ally of the United States in the War on Terror and contributed troops in the Iraq War, a move that was highly controversial in Poland and Europe.


title: Aleksander Kwaśniewski

text: Poland was in charge of a sector of Iraq after the removal of Saddam Hussein. Polish membership of the European Union became a reality on 1 May 2004, during Kwaśniewski's second term. Both he and his wife Jolanta had campaigned for approval of the EU accession treaty in June 2003. He strongly supported including mention of Europe's Christian roots into the European Constitution. Thanks to his close relations with Leonid Kuchma, in late 2004 he became a mediator in a political conflict in Ukraine – the Orange Revolution, and according to some commentators, he played the major role in its peaceful solution.


title: Aleksander Kwaśniewski

text: After the release of the Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture in December 2014, Kwaśniewski admitted that he had agreed in 2003 to host a secret CIA black site in Poland, but that activities were to be carried out in accordance to Polish law. He said that a U.S. draft memorandum had stated that "people held in Poland are to be treated as prisoners of war and will be afforded all the rights they are entitled to", but due to time constraints, the U.S. had not signed the memorandum. The U.S. had conducted activities in great secrecy at the site.


title: Aleksander Kwaśniewski

text: In December 2005, when his presidency was coming to an end, he granted clemency for a post-Communist deputy minister of Justice Zbigniew Sobotka, who had been sentenced for 3.5 years of prison for revealing a state secret (effectively, he warned gangsters about an operation against them). Kwaśniewski changed the prison sentence to probation.


title: Aleksander Kwaśniewski

text: Another case of Kwaśniewski's controversial granting of pardons was the Peter Vogel case. The story goes back to 1971 when Piotr Filipczyński, a.k.a. Peter Vogel was sentenced to 25 years in jail for a brutal murder (shortened to 15 years in 1979). Surprisingly enough, in 1983 (during martial law in Poland) he was granted a passport and allowed to leave the country. He returned in 1990 soon earning the nickname "the accountant of the Left" as a former Swiss banker who took care of more than thirty accounts of Polish social democrats. Despite an arrest warrant issued in 1987, Vogel moved freely in Poland and was eventually arrested in 1998 in Switzerland. After Vogel's extradition to Poland, in 1999 Kwaśniewski initiated the procedure of granting him amnesty. In December 2005 (a few days before leaving his office) Kwaśniewski pardoned Vogel despite the negative opinion of the procurer.


title: Aleksander Kwaśniewski

text: Kwaśniewski refused in 2003 to face a special parliamentary commission, which was set up to reveal all circumstances linked with Rywingate. Kwaśniewski argued, that the constitution did not allow parliamentary commissions to investigate the president, and there were no clear law opinions. The commission decided eventually not to summon Kwaśniewski.


title: Aleksander Kwaśniewski

text: For a second time Kwaśniewski refused as a witness to face the commission investigating the privatization of Orlen petrol concern, in March 2005. He argued that the actions of commission members, being in opposition to the leftist government supported by him, were directed against him. He sought to undermine the commission by releasing considerable amounts of information to journalists while only belatedly making it available to the commission members.


title: Aleksander Kwaśniewski

text: In 2007, IPN revealed that Kwaśniewski was registered during communist times as an agent "Alek" of the secret police, the Security Service ("Służba Bezpieczeństwa" – SB), from 1983 to 1989. Kwaśniewski himself denied having been an agent in a special statement, demanded from politicians by Polish law, and a court confirmed his statement.


title: Aleksander Kwaśniewski

text: On 7 March 2006, Kwaśniewski was appointed Distinguished Scholar in the Practice of Global Leadership at Georgetown University, where he teaches students in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service about contemporary European politics, the trans-Atlantic relationship, and democratization in Central and Eastern Europe. He also teaches a course on political leadership, convened by Professor Carol Lancaster, with former Spanish Prime Minister José María Aznar. He is also Chairman of the supervisory board of the International Centre for Policy Studies in Kiev, Ukraine and a member of the International Honorary Council of the European Academy of Diplomacy.


title: Aleksander Kwaśniewski

text: In 2008 Aleksander Kwaśniewski became Chairman of the European Council on Tolerance and Reconciliation, a not-for-profit organization established to monitor tolerance in Europe, prepare practical recommendations to governments and international organisations on improving interreligious and interethnic relations on the continent. The organization is co-chaired by European Jewish Fund President Viatcheslav Moshe Kantor.


title: Aleksander Kwaśniewski

text: Since June 2012 Kwaśniewski and Pat Cox lead a European Parliament monitoring mission in Ukraine to monitor the criminal cases against Yulia Tymoshenko, Yuriy Lutsenko and Valeriy Ivaschenko.


title: Aleksander Kwaśniewski

text: Since 2011, Kwaśniewski has served on the Leadership Council for Concordia, a nonpartisan, nonprofit based in New York City focused on promoting effective public-private collaboration to create a more prosperous and sustainable future.


title: Aleksander Kwaśniewski

text: Kwaśniewski was also involved with the EU talks with the Ukrainian government about the association agreement with the EU that the Ukrainian parliament failed to ratify in November 2013. After the Maidan unrest had installed the transitional government under Yatsenyuk, who signed the EU association agreement for Ukraine in 2014, Kwaśniewski took up in a director's post in the gas company ″Burisma Holdings Limited″ which owns licenses for the major Ukrainian gas fields.


title: Aleksander Kwaśniewski

text: In a plea agreement filed in United States Federal court on 14 September 2018, former Donald Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort admitted to organizing a group of former European heads of state to illegally lobby, starting in 2011, on behalf of then-Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych. The plea agreement describes one of the heads of state involved in this secret lobbying as a "former Polish President" who "was also a representative of the European Parliament with oversight responsibility for Ukraine." At least one press report claimed that Kwaśniewski was this former Polish President.


title: Aleksander Kwaśniewski

text: In 1979, Kwaśniewski married lawyer Jolanta Konty in a civil ceremony. They have one child: a daughter, Aleksandra (born 1981).


title: Aleksander Kwaśniewski

text: He identifies as an atheist. In 2005, at the end of his second presidential term, the couple finalised their marriage in a low-key Catholic ceremony presided by Kwaśniewski's former presidential chaplain, in the presidential chapel.


title: Super Collider (album)

text: Super Collider is the fourteenth studio album by American heavy metal band Megadeth. It was released on June 4, 2013, and is Megadeth's first album to be released on Tradecraft, a Universal label created for frontman Dave Mustaine. In the U.S., a special edition of the album was made available exclusively through Best Buy retailers. The album features a guest appearance from Disturbed vocalist David Draiman. On April 23, 2013, the title track was released on iTunes as the album's lead single.


title: Super Collider (album)

text: At the time of its release, it marked the first time the band had released an album with the same lineup as its predecessor since 1997's "Cryptic Writings", however it is the band's final album to feature drummer Shawn Drover and guitarist Chris Broderick, due to their departures from Megadeth in November 2014. The album debuted at number six on the "Billboard 200" and has sold over 86,000 copies in the United States as of December 2015. The album received mixed reviews from critics and, as of August 2014, has a Metacritic rating of 41/100.


title: Super Collider (album)

text: On July 17, 2012, a tweet from the Twitter account for Megadeth's mascot Vic Rattlehead implied that frontman Dave Mustaine had begun writing lyrics for a follow-up album to 2011's "Th1rt3en". In an interview with "NME", Mustaine confirmed that the band had been working on new material, commenting: "Some of it's a little darker, some of it's a little faster."


title: Super Collider (album)

text: Later Mustaine announced that the band was preparing to start work on the album, and suggested early 2013 as a tentative release, on a new label, as the band had split from their previous label, Roadrunner Records. The band's previous contract with that label was only for three albums, expiring after the release of "Th1rt3en".


title: Super Collider (album)

text: On October 27, Mustaine revealed that the band was planning to enter the studio to begin tracking the album in the first week of November 2012, before leaving the studio for the American leg of the "Countdown to Extinction" 20th anniversary tour. However, drummer Shawn Drover later suggested that recording for the album wouldn't begin until early 2013, and also suggested that the album would possibly be released in the summer of that year, rather than Mustaine's initial projection of a late-spring release. Drover said the band was in the process of composing material and determining what riffs to use on the record. On December 24, 2012, Mustaine announced that three new songs were "tracked and almost done". Mustaine later announced via the Vic Rattlehead Twitter page that he had chosen a title and cover art for the new album, though neither was revealed at that time. As with "Thirteen", work on the album was done at "Vic's Garage", the band's own studio in San Marcos, California.


title: Super Collider (album)

text: From January 2013 onwards, several short video clips were uploaded to the band's official YouTube channel, showing the band members working on new material in the studio. Later that month, Mustaine announced that the band had finished recording 11 of 13 songs that the band planned to give to the label. Additionally, he confirmed that the band had decided on a new label and was signed. The label was later revealed to be to Tradecraft, a Universal label created for Mustaine. Several days later, on February 1, Mustaine announced that mixing had begun.


title: Super Collider (album)

text: On February 12, 2013, the album's title was revealed as "Super Collider". About two weeks later, Mustaine announced several song titles in an interview, discussing some of those songs in the process. Mustaine also revealed that fourteen songs were being worked on in total. Recording for the album was completed in mid-March.


title: Super Collider (album)

text: On April 10, 2013, a snippet of a new song titled "Don't Turn Your Back" was posted to the band's website for streaming, and the cover artwork for the album was revealed. Later that month, it was announced that David Draiman (of Disturbed and Device) would be featured as a guest vocalist on "Dance in the Rain". The title track was released as the album's lead single, and "Kingmaker" was released for streaming in May.


title: Super Collider (album)

text: "Super Collider" was released in several versions domestically. There are two versions of the CD: a standard edition and a Best Buy-exclusive edition which features three bonus tracks along with 3D cover art. Additionally, standard and limited vinyl editions were made available, as well.


title: Super Collider (album)

text: The cover artwork is modified from an existing photograph of the Inner Barrel of the Compact Muon Solenoid's Silicon Tracker, a particle physics experiment built on the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. A very faint reflection of Vic Rattlehead can be seen in the object's center. A 3D cover is featured on the special edition.


title: Super Collider (album)

text: On April 23, 2013, "Super Collider" was released as the album's lead single through iTunes. Several days earlier, the track debuted on an edition of the "Full Metal Jackie" radio show. A video was also produced for the song. The track deviates from a more traditional metal style in favor of a more radio-oriented rock sound, which Mustaine claims was done to show the record label that the band could write and play more commercially accessible material. Mustaine also stated that while the track drew some inspiration from particle colliders and the search for the "God particle", the lyrical meaning was less scientific. The original title of "The Disintegrators" from "Cryptic Writings" was also "Super Collider".


title: Super Collider (album)

text: On May 18, 2013 "Kingmaker" was announced and released for streaming via YouTube. Mustaine has revealed that "Kingmaker" was written about painkiller abuse and dependency. He also said that he had altered the lyrics many times to "fit the intention" of the song. Additionally, "Built for War" was featured on an episode of "" on October 8, 2013.


title: Super Collider (album)

text: Mustaine has elaborated on the subject matter of several of the album's other songs as well. He has noted that "Forget to Remember" was intentionally written in an ambiguous way so that it could interpreted as being about either a person trying to forget about a relationship or someone who suffers from Alzheimer's disease and has memory problems. He also compared the concept behind the song to the film "The Notebook". "The Blackest Crow" has a Southern influence and features a slide guitar, while the lyrics are about loss and subsequent depression. Mustaine initially hoped to have a guest feature on the song, and reached out to country musicians Willie Nelson and Miranda Lambert; however, neither appeared on the song. "Don't Turn Your Back..." was inspired by a friend of Mustaine, who described him as "the kind of guy that will steal your dope and then help you look for it."


title: Super Collider (album)

text: "Cold Sweat" is a Thin Lizzy cover, originally appearing on "Thunder and Lightning" (1983). Excluding bonus tracks, it is the first cover song to appear on a Megadeth album since "Anarchy in the U.K.", a Sex Pistols cover, was included on "So Far, So Good... So What!" in 1988. Mustaine said he had been wanting to cover the song since the early 1990s.


title: Super Collider (album)

text: The album received mixed to negative reviews from music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 41, based on 8 reviews, making it the worst-reviewed album of 2013. Much of the criticism of the album centers around Mustaine's lyrics and/or vocals and the return to more commercial-sounding material, from the heavier approach that the band had taken on the last several releases. Some reviewers compared "Super Collider" to "Risk", the band's much-critiqued 1999 studio effort which saw Mustaine attempting to take a more commercial stand with the band's music. Many critics and fans named "Kingmaker" as a highlight, even those who took a generally dismissive view of the rest of the album.


title: Super Collider (album)

text: Positive comments did come from AllMusic reviewer James Christopher Monger and "Brave Words & Bloody Knuckles" reviewer Mark Gromen. Monger commented that the album had a few good songs ("Kingmaker", "Built for War" and "The Blackest Crow"), but commented that the remainder of the album "is so mired in midtempo drudgery and familiar hard rock (not thrash) tropes that it never really connects", giving the album a 2.5/5 star rating. Gromen showed more sympathy towards the album, and commented that although it is more of a rock record than recent albums such as "United Abominations" or "Endgame", he felt that one song, "Built for War", had a ""Rust in Peace" feel." Gromen did criticize "Burn!" for having mundane lyrics.


title: Super Collider (album)

text: Another generally positive review came from "Blabbermouth.net" reviewer Ray Van Horn Jr., who gave the album a 7.5/10 score despite noting that he felt the album had numerous flaws. Specific praise was directed at many of Ellefson's bass parts, as well as much of the guitar solo work on the album. Van Horn declared that the album is no "Risk" despite the insistence of other critics and fans, but expressed uncertainty as to which sonic direction the band might take in the future. Chad Bowar of "Loudwire" had a mixed overall opinion on the album and mainly criticized the album for being more akin to "Risk" and "The World Needs a Hero" than other recent albums. Bowar gave reserved praise for the tracks "Kingmaker" and the band's cover of "Cold Sweat".


title: Super Collider (album)

text: Other reviewers generally took a more dismissive view of the album, and many of them gave the album a rating of around 5/10 or lower. Greg Pratt of "Exclaim!" described much of the material on the album as being an attempt on Mustaine's part to both maintain credibility with his fanbase and score a radio hit at the same time, a result that Pratt concluded was impossible. Pratt took a negative view of several songs on the album, describing "Off the Edge" as "unlovable", "The Blackest Crow" as "an unfocused mess", and the title track as having a radio-oriented sound, much to his dislike. However, he did describe "Kingmaker" as "relentless", and commented that it sounded similar to material from "Countdown to Extinction" (1992).


title: Super Collider (album)

text: Dean Brown of PopMatters wrote a highly critical review of the album. He characterized the title track as a "ghastly attempt" at arena rock that "even Bon Jovi would have thought twice about releasing as a B-side." Brown reacted positively to "Kingmaker," though noted that the song seems to "pillage" Black Sabbath's "Children of the Grave." Many of the remaining songs on the album were criticized by Brown for being "cliché," "pathetic" and/or "awkward," among other things.


title: Super Collider (album)

text: In spite of the lackluster reception by critics, "Super Collider" debuted at number six on the "Billboard" 200, selling 29,000 copies in the U.S. in its first week. Although it sold fewer copies than its predecessor "Thirteen" (42,000), it charted higher after the first week, as "Thirteen" debuted at number eleven. This makes the album Megadeth's highest-charting album in the U.S. since "Youthanasia", which peaked at number four in 1994. The album dropped to number 39 on the "Billboard" 200 in its second week. As of December 2015, the album has sold 86,000 copies in the United States. The album had further top ten success in Canada and Finland, where the album hit number four, and Norway, where it hit number seven. Additionally, the album charted at number fifteen in Sweden, although elsewhere, the album did not manage to break into the top twenty.


title: 2021 ATP Finals

text: The 2021 ATP Finals (also known as the 2021 Nitto ATP Finals for sponsorship reasons) was a men's tennis tournament played on indoor hard courts at the Pala Alpitour in Turin, Italy, from 14 to 21 November 2021. It was the season-ending event for the highest-ranked singles players and doubles teams on the 2021 ATP Tour.


title: 2021 ATP Finals

text: This was the 52nd edition of the tournament (47th in doubles), and the first time Turin hosted the ATP Tour year-end championships.


title: 2021 ATP Finals

text: The ATP Finals group stage had a round-robin format, with eight players/teams divided into two groups of four and each player/team in a group playing the other three in the group. The eight seeds were determined by the ATP rankings and ATP Doubles Team Rankings on the Monday after the last ATP Tour tournament of the calendar year. All singles matches, including the final, were best of three sets with tie-breaks in each set including the third. All doubles matches were two sets (no ad) and a Match Tie-break.


title: 2021 ATP Finals

text: Criteria 4–6 were used only in the event of a three-way tie; if one of these criteria decided a winner or loser among the three, the remaining two would have been ranked by head-to-head result.


title: 2021 ATP Finals

text: The top two of each group advanced to semifinals, with the winner of each group playing the runner-up of the other group. The winners of the semifinals then played for the title.


title: 2021 ATP Finals

text: Eight players compete at the tournament, with two named alternates. Players receive places in the following order of precedence:


title: 2021 ATP Finals

text: In the event of this totaling more than 8 players, those lower down in the selection order become the alternates. If further alternates are needed, these players are selected by the ATP.


title: 2021 ATP Finals

text: Provisional rankings are published weekly as the "ATP Race to Turin", which only counts events played in 2021. Points are accumulated in Grand Slam, ATP Tour, ATP Cup, ATP Challenger Tour and ITF Tour tournaments. Players accrue points across 19 tournaments, usually made up of:


title: 2021 ATP Finals

text: All players must include the ranking points for mandatory Masters tournaments for which they are on the original acceptance list and for all Grand Slams for which they would be eligible, even if they do not compete (in which case they receive zero points). Furthermore, players who finished 2020 in the world's top 30 are "commitment players" who must (if not injured) include points for the 8 mandatory Masters tournament regardless of whether they enter, and who must compete in at least 4 ATP 500 tournaments (though the Monte Carlo Masters may count to this total), of which one must take place after the US Open. Zero point scores may also be taken from withdrawals by non-injured players from ATP 500 tournaments according to certain other conditions outlined by the ATP. Beyond these rules, however, a player may substitute his next best tournament result for missed Masters and Grand Slam tournaments.


title: 2021 ATP Finals

text: Players may have their ATP Tour Masters 1000 commitment reduced by one tournament, by reaching each of the following milestones:


title: 2021 ATP Finals

text: If a player satisfies all three of these conditions, their mandatory ATP Tour Masters 1000 commitment is dropped entirely. Players must be in good standing as defined by the ATP as to avail of the reduced commitment.


title: 2021 ATP Finals

text: Eight teams compete at the tournament, with one named alternates. The eight competing teams receive places according to the same order of precedence as in singles. The named alternate will be offered first to any unaccepted teams in the selection order, then to the highest ranked unaccepted team, and then to a team selected by the ATP. Points are accumulated in the same competitions as for the singles tournament. However, for Doubles teams there are no commitment tournaments, so teams are ranked according to their 19 highest points scoring results from any tournaments on the ATP Tour.


title: 2021 ATP Finals

text: The singles draw of the 2021 edition of the Year–end Championships will feature one number one, two major champions and three major finalists. The competitors were divided into two groups.


title: 2021 ATP Finals

text: The doubles draw of the 2021 edition of the Year–end Championships will feature four number-ones, six major champions and one major finalist team. The pairs were divided into two groups.


title: Murder of Maria Ridulph

text: Maria Elizabeth Ridulph (March 12, 1950 – c. December 1957) was a seven-year-old girl who disappeared from Sycamore, Illinois on December 3, 1957. Her remains were found almost five months later in a wooded area near Woodbine, Illinois, approximately 90 miles from her home. Maria was last seen by her friend on her neighborhood corner of Center Cross Street and Archie Place with an unknown man in his early twenties who called himself "Johnny".


title: Murder of Maria Ridulph

text: The case, which was well known in the Chicago area, was one of the oldest cold case murders in the United States to be presumably solved. Jack McCullough, who under his former name John Tessier had been a neighbor of the Ridulph family, was convicted for her murder in September 2012. However, in March 2016, the DeKalb County State's Attorney announced that a post-conviction review of available evidence showed McCullough could not have been present at the place and time of Maria Ridulph's likely abduction. McCullough was released from prison on April 15, 2016, and the charges against him were dismissed on April 22, 2016. McCullough was declared innocent of the crime by the DeKalb County Circuit Court on April 12, 2017.


title: Murder of Maria Ridulph

text: Maria Ridulph was born on March 12, 1950, to Michael and Frances Ivy Ridulph in Sycamore, Illinois. She was the youngest of four children and had two sisters and a brother. Although many residents lived or worked on farms in the area, her father Michael worked at one of Sycamore's few factories; her mother Frances was a homemaker. At the time she was abducted, Maria was 7 years old, 44 inches tall, and weighed 53 pounds, with brown hair and brown eyes. She was an honor student, then in second grade. She also received awards for perfect Sunday school attendance at Evangelical Lutheran Church of St. John.


title: Murder of Maria Ridulph

text: According to her mother, Maria was high-strung. "My daughter was a nervous girl and if she got in any trouble would become hysterical," Frances said in a 1957 interview shortly after Maria disappeared. "Someone would probably have to kill her to keep her quiet. I am the only one who could calm her down." Maria was also described as a "screamer" and afraid of the dark. Her best friend was 8-year-old Kathy Sigman, who lived on the same street as the Ridulphs.


title: Murder of Maria Ridulph

text: On the evening of December 3, 1957, Maria begged to be allowed to go outside as it had started to snow. After finishing dinner, Maria and Kathy Sigman went outside in the dark (as the sun had set) near Maria's house and played a game they called "duck the cars", running back and forth trying to avoid the headlights of oncoming cars in the street. According to Kathy, they were approached by a man, whom Kathy later described to police as in his early 20s and tall with a slender chin, light hair, a gap in his teeth, and wearing a colorful sweater. The man, who said his name was "Johnny", told the girls that he was 24 and not married. He asked if they liked dolls and if they liked piggyback rides. He gave Maria a piggyback ride, after which she went back to her house and got a doll to show him. After Maria returned, Kathy ran back to her house to get her mittens, leaving Maria alone with the man. When Kathy returned, Maria and the man were gone.


title: Murder of Maria Ridulph

text: Kathy went to the Ridulph house to tell them she couldn't find Maria. The family initially thought Maria was hiding, and sent Maria's 11-year-old brother to look for her. After he was unable to find her, the Ridulphs called the police, and within an hour, police and armed civilians began a search of the town, but failed to locate Maria or "Johnny", the man with whom she was last seen. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), presuming that Maria might have been abducted across state lines (a federal crime), arrived in Sycamore within two days to help the local and state police in the search. The FBI and police interviewed numerous witnesses who had seen the two girls playing without any other person present between 6 pm and 6:30 pm, and also spoke to family members who had seen or spoken with Maria and Kathy in the course of Maria getting her doll, Kathy getting her mittens, and Kathy reporting Maria's disappearance to the Ridulphs. Based on these interviews, "Johnny" was thought to have approached the girls after 6:30 pm, and the FBI concluded that Maria was abducted between 6:45 and 7 pm.


title: Murder of Maria Ridulph

text: Kathy Sigman was the only witness who had seen "Johnny" and was placed in protective custody, as the police and FBI feared that the kidnapper would come back and harm her. The authorities had her look at photos of convicted felons or suspects who bore a resemblance to "Johnny". John Tessier, who was convicted of the crime over 50 years later, lived in the girls' neighborhood and was on the original list of suspects based on a tip, but the police failed to have Kathy identify him after he provided an alibi for the night of the crime (see Suspects). In late December 1957, Kathy was taken to the Dane County Sheriff's Office in Madison, Wisconsin to see a lineup of possible suspects. She positively identified Thomas Joseph Rivard, described in FBI documents as a 35-year-old man approximately 5 foot 4 inches tall and 156 lbs., with dark blond wavy (bushy) hair. However, Rivard had an alibi, as he was in jail at the time of the kidnapping; police suspected someone else in the lineup as the real culprit and Rivard was merely used to fill out the lineup. Rivard also did not physically resemble Tessier, who was six inches taller and 17 years younger than Rivard. When asked years later about the 1957 lineup, Kathy said she did not remember picking Rivard out of the lineup.


title: Murder of Maria Ridulph

text: Maria's disappearance received national news coverage, and both President Dwight D. Eisenhower and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover took an interest in the case. Law enforcement continued to investigate various suspects in the area, including transients, known sex offenders, and a local man who had given children piggyback rides, but developed no solid leads. Maria's parents appeared on television and in other media pleading for their daughter's safe return and the public's help in finding her.


title: Murder of Maria Ridulph

text: On April 26, 1958, near Woodbine, Illinois (23 miles east of Galena and approximately 100 miles from Sycamore), two tourists searching for mushrooms in a wooded area along US Route 20 discovered the skeletal remains of a small child, wearing only a shirt, undershirt, and socks, under a partially fallen tree. The decomposed condition of the body indicated it had been there for several months. The body was identified as Maria Ridulph based on dental records, a lock of hair, and the shirts and socks she had been wearing when she disappeared. The rest of Maria's clothing, including her coat, slacks, shoes and an undergarment, was not found. No photographs were taken of the crime scene (although photos were taken of the general location without showing the body) because the coroner, James Furlong, did not want photos of the child's body leaked to newspapers. Because the crime had occurred within Illinois rather than crossing state lines, the FBI withdrew from the case, leaving it to state and local police.


title: Murder of Maria Ridulph

text: The initial autopsy did not determine a cause of death due to the state of decomposition. During an autopsy done 50 years later, a forensic anthropologist determined Maria had likely been stabbed several times in the throat (see Reopening of the case).


title: Murder of Maria Ridulph

text: John Tessier was born John Cherry on November 27, 1939, in Belfast, Northern Ireland, to British sergeant Samuel Cherry and his wife Eileen McCullough Cherry. Samuel Cherry was killed early in World War II. During the war, Eileen Cherry served as one of the first female airplane spotters with the UK's Royal Air Force and met Ralph Tessier, who was serving with the United States 8th Army-Air Force at RAF Bovingdon, England. She married Ralph Tessier in November 1944, and after the war, she and her son John, then aged 7, followed Ralph to Sycamore, Illinois, where Ralph and Eileen had six more children together over the years. After his mother's marriage, John used the last name Tessier, although he was still sometimes called John Cherry.


title: Murder of Maria Ridulph

text: The Tessier family home in Sycamore was located around the corner from the Ridulph home, less than two blocks away. Ralph Tessier, a sign painter, painted insignia on the doors of Sycamore police cars and was friendly with the police chief. John Tessier was expelled from school in the tenth grade for pushing a teacher and calling her a name. At the time of Maria Ridulph's disappearance, he was 18 years old and living at home with his parents and siblings while making plans to join the U.S. Air Force.