prompt_front: Answer the question based on the given passages. Only give me the answer and do not output any other words.

Question: Which two features were played up the person who had the biggest net worth in 2017?

The following are given passages.
Context 1: Passage 1:
Red Bull
Red Bull is a brand of energy drinks created and owned by the Austrian company Red Bull GmbH  With a market share of 43%, it is the most popular energy drink brand as of 2020, and the third most valuable soft drink brand behind Coca-Cola and Pepsi  Since its launch in 1987, more than 100 billion cans of Red Bull have been sold worldwide, including over 11 5 billion in 2022 Originally available only in a single nondescript flavor sold in a tall and slim silver-blue can, called Red Bull Energy Drink, numerous variants of the drink were added over the course of time  Its slogan, "Red Bull Gives You Wings", is considered one of the most popular and memorable advertising slogans in the United States, ranking at 16 out of 25 with a 59 3% slogan recognition rate according to a study by advertising and market research firm Survata  Rather than following a traditional marketing approach, Red Bull has generated awareness and created a "brand myth" through proprietary extreme sport event series such as Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series, Red Bull Air Race, Red Bull Crashed Ice and standout stunts such as the Stratos space diving project  In addition to sport series, its marketing includes multiple sports team ownerships; celebrity endorsements; and music, through its Red Bull Records label Red Bull was first derived from a similar drink called Krating Daeng that originated in Thailand and was introduced by the pharmacist Chaleo Yoovidhya  While doing business in Thailand, Dietrich Mateschitz purchased a can of Krating Daeng and claimed it cured his jet lag  Mateschitz sought to create a partnership with Yoovidhya and formulated a product that would suit the tastes of Westerners, such as by carbonating the drink  In 1984, the two founded Red Bull GmbH in Fuschl am See, Salzburg, Austria  When branding their new product, Mateschitz referenced Krating Daeng's name: in Thai, daeng means red, and a krating (known in English as a gaur or Indian bison) is a large species of wild bovine native to the Indian subcontinent  In 1987, the company sold its first can of Red Bull in Austria  In 1996, Red Bull began operation in the United States, and has seen steady growth ever since  Both Red Bull and Kraeting Daeng use the same red bull on yellow sun logo while continuing to market their drinks separately in the Thai and Western markets 

History
In 1976, Chaleo Yoovidhya introduced a drink called Krating Daeng in Thailand, which means "red gaur" in English  It was popular among Thai truck drivers and labourers  While working for German manufacturer Blendax (later acquired by Procter & Gamble) in 1982, Dietrich Mateschitz travelled to Thailand and met Chaleo, owner of T C  Pharmaceutical  During his visit, Mateschitz discovered that Krating Daeng helped cure his jet lag  In 1984, Mateschitz co-founded Red Bull GmbH with Yoovidhya and turned it into an international brand  Each partner invested US$500,000 of savings to fund the company  Yoovidhya and Mateschitz each held a 49 percent share of the new company  They gave the remaining two percent to Yoovidhya's son, Chalerm, but it was agreed that Mateschitz would run the company  The product was first launched in Austria on 1 April 1987 In Thailand, energy drinks are most popular with blue-collar workers  Red Bull re-positioned the drink as a trendy, upscale drink, first introducing it at Austrian ski resorts  Pricing was a key differentiator, with Red Bull positioned as a premium drink and Krating Daeng as a lower cost item  In many countries, both drinks are available, dominating both ends of the price spectrum  The flavouring used for Red Bull is still produced in Bangkok and exported worldwide  Gary Smith is one of the co-CEOs of Red Bull  As a senior board member and corporate secretary between 2000 and 2007, Mr  Smith was also responsible for all day-to-day operations of the company as the COO, including sales, trade marketing, motorsports marketing, finance, information systems, legal, supply chain, operations, and human resources During the 1990s, the product expanded into Hungary, Slovenia, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States  It entered Germany and the UK in 1994, the United States (via California) in 1996 and the Middle East in 2000  In 2008, Forbes magazine listed both Chaleo and Mateschitz as the 250th richest people in the world with an estimated net worth of US$4 billion Mateschitz died on 22 October 2022 aged 78, following a long illness Red Bull GmbH is headquartered in Fuschl am See, an Austrian village of about 1,500 inhabitants near Salzburg  The company is 51 percent controlled by the Yoovidhya family who, for technical reasons, own the trademark in Europe and the US 

Ingredients
Depending on the country, Red Bull contains different amounts of caffeine, taurine, B vitamins (B2, B3, B5, B6, B12), glucuronolactone and simple sugars (sucrose and glucose) in a buffer solution of carbonated water, sodium bicarbonate and magnesium carbonate (substituted in some flavours with a trisodium citrate/citric acid buffer, each solution providing electrolytes)  To produce Red Bull Sugarfree, sucrose and glucose have been replaced by artificial sweeteners acesulfame K and aspartame or sucralose 

Health effects
Claims about the drink's effects and performance have been challenged on various occasions, with the UK's Advertising Standards Authority imposing advertising restrictions in 2001 in response to complaints recorded as early as 1997 Energy drinks have the effects that caffeine and sugar provide, but experts still argue about the possible effects of the other ingredients  Most of the effects of energy drinks on cognitive performance, such as increased attention and reaction speed, are primarily due to the presence of caffeine  There is evidence that energy drinks can increase mental and athletic performance  A study funded by Red Bull GmbH, which did not include a caffeine-only control group, found that performance during prolonged driving is increased after consumption of Red Bull  Other tests for physical performance showed results such as increased endurance and power  Red Bull energy drink increased upper body muscle endurance during repeated Wingate tests in young healthy adults  Excessive or repeated consumption of energy drinks can lead to cardiac and psychiatric conditions The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) concluded that exposure to taurine and glucuronolactone at the levels presently used in energy drinks is not a safety concern  In a separate analysis, they also concluded that there is insufficient evidence to support a number of commercial health claims about taurine  A review published in 2008 found no documented reports of negative or positive health effects associated with the amount of taurine used in energy drinks, including Red Bull 

Caffeine content
The caffeine content of a single 250ml can of Red Bull is approximately 40–80 mg / 250 ml (15–32 mg / 100 ml)  The caffeine level in Red Bull varies depending on country, as some countries have legal restrictions on how much caffeine is allowed in drinks  As is the case with other caffeinated beverages, Red Bull drinkers may experience adverse effects as a result of overuse  Excessive consumption may induce mild to moderate euphoria primarily caused by stimulant properties of caffeine and may also induce agitation, anxiety, irritability and insomnia The general population of healthy adults is not at risk for potential adverse effects from caffeine if they limit their consumption to 400 mg per day, which is provided by 5 standard 250 ml cans  Consumption of a single energy drink will not lead to excessive caffeine intake  Adverse effects associated with caffeine consumption in amounts greater than 400 mg include nervousness, irritability, sleeplessness, increased urination, abnormal heart rhythms (arrhythmia), and dyspepsia  Consumption also has been known to cause pupil dilation when taken with certain antidepressants or SSRIs  Caffeine dosage is not required to be on the product label for food in the United States, unlike drugs, but some advocates are urging the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to change this practice  (Red Bull voluntarily lists the caffeine content in each can along with the ingredient list )

Variants
Over the years, Red Bull has offered many variations of its drink, all based on the same formula but differing in taste and colour Red Bull began offering variations on its drinks in 2003 with a sugar-free version of the drink with a different flavor from the original, called Red Bull Sugarfree  In 2012, Red Bull released Red Bull Total Zero, a variant with zero calories  In 2018, the company released Red Bull Zero, a different sugar-free formulation designed to taste more like the original flavor In 2009, Red Bull unveiled a highly concentrated variant of its drink called Red Bull Energy Shot, supplied in 2 oz (60 ml) cans The company began expanding its flavor offerings in 2013 with the launch of Red Bull Editions  Initially available in cranberry, lime, and blueberry, the Editions line has expanded to include a variety of flavours, including some available only during specific seasons or in certain regions 

Other products
Red Bull released a cola drink, called Simply Cola, in 2008  A new version of the cola was released in 2019, as part of Red Bull's Organics line 
In 2018, the company launched Organics by Red Bull, a line of organic sodas with four flavours; bitter lemon, ginger ale, tonic water, and a new version of Red Bull Simply Cola 

Regulatory approval and legal status
Authorities in France, Denmark, and Norway initially did not permit the sale of Red Bull  However, as of 2021, it is on sale in all 27 member states of the European Union and in 171 countries around the world The French food safety agency was concerned about taurine; a Red Bull drink that did not contain taurine was introduced  The French refusal of market approval was challenged by the European Commission, and partially upheld by the European Court of Justice in 2004  The French food safety agency relented in 2008, because it was unable to prove a definite health risk, taurine-related or not 

Litigation
In 2013, Red Bull told the Redwell Brewery, a Norfolk micro brewery, to change its name or face legal action, because it sounded too similar to Red Bull  The eight-man brewery in Norwich was told its name could "confuse" customers and "tarnish" its trademark  The two companies reached a settlement permitting Redwell to continue using its name In 2014, Red Bull entered into a US$13 million settlement to resolve two consumer class action lawsuits in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York  Named as plaintiffs were Benjamin Careathers, David Wolf, and Miguel Almarez, who had sued the company claiming breach of express warranty and unjust enrichment, saying that Red Bull falsely asserted performance-enhancing benefits from the drink's ingredients that were unsubstantiated by scientific studies  On 1 May 2015 the Court approved the settlement, giving customers who had submitted claims the opportunity to receive a US$10 cash reimbursement or US$15 in Red Bull products within 150 days of affirmance on any appeal  Contrary to reports from some news outlets, the plaintiffs had not alleged that the drink did not give consumers actual wings 

Advertising, sports team ownership, and sponsorships
Since 1997, Red Bull has been making commercials bearing its slogan "Red Bull gives you wings " Commercials usually were crudely animated and featured characters with constant squints 
Red Bull's international marketing campaign is largely linked to extreme sports  These range from motorcycle racing, such as MotoGP, Dakar Rally, motorcycle speedway, mountain biking, aerobatics, BMX, motocross, windsurfing, snowboarding, skateboarding, kayaking, rowing, wakeboarding, cliff-diving, parkour, surfing, skating, freestyle motocross, rallycross, Formula 1 motor racing, NASCAR racing, to breakdancing  Red Bull uses music and video games, and has enlisted celebrities, such as Eminem (sponsoring the Red Bull "EmSee Battle Rap championships")  It hosts events such as art shows and the "Red Bull Flugtag" (German for "flight day" or "flying day") Red Bull owns football teams, with clubs in Austria, Germany, the United States, and Brazil featuring the Red Bull trademark in their names  By associating the drink's image with these activities, the company seeks to promote a "cool" public image and raise brand power  The energy drink has created a market for over 150 related types of products In the PlayStation 3's social gaming platform, PlayStation Home, Red Bull developed its own in-game island, specifically advertising its energy drink and the Red Bull Air Race event (for which the space is named) released in January 2009  In late November 2009, Red Bull produced two new spaces, the Red Bull Illume space, and the Red Bull Beach space featuring the Red Bull Flugtag, both released on the same day  In January 2012, Red Bull released its first personal space called the "Red Bull House of Skate" featuring an indoor skate park In 2010, the company enlisted Adrian Newey to design a prototype racing car, the Red Bull X2010, for the video game Gran Turismo 5 In 2022, Red Bull announced a full-on production of a hypercar called RB17, also designed by Newey 

Red Bull Arts
Red Bull Arts is an art fellowship program launched by Red Bull in 2013 under the name Red Bull House of Arts  The program has multiple locations, including Detroit, Michigan; São Paulo, Brazil; and formerly New York City  The program typically consists of a three-month period during which six to eight participants create new artwork to be displayed at a final exhibition  During the fellowship, artists receive unlimited access to the galleries and a stipend for art supplies  Some of the artwork has been used in Red Bull advertising campaigns 

Sports and esports sponsorships
Red Bull has used sports sponsorships as an advertising vehicle for most of its existence  The company first started sponsoring athletes in 1989, initially focusing on Formula One racing and extreme sports such as windsurfing and hang gliding, and later growing to include more mainstream sports such as basketball and soccer  As of 2016, the company sponsored more than 750 individual athletes and more than a dozen teams in various disciplines, including motorsports, soccer, and esports 

Athlete sponsorships
Austrian Formula One driver Gerhard Berger was the first athlete to be sponsored by Red Bull in 1989  Many of the company's early sponsorships were in lesser-known or extreme sports, including Olympic rower Xeno Müller, who won a gold medal at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics in the single scull race and BASE jumpers Frank "Gambler" Gambalie, Miles Dashier, and Shane McConkey  In the 2010s, Red Bull began expanding its athlete base to include athletes from more mainstream sports, including Austrian tennis player Dominic Thiem, Brazilian skateboarder Letícia Bufoni, American skier Lindsey Vonn, and American Major League Baseball player Kris Bryant  The company also started sponsoring video game players and esports athletes, including American Fortnite player Richard "Ninja" Blevins, Spanish League of Legends player Enrique Cedeño "xPeke" Martinez, and Swedish Super Smash Bros  player William "Leffen" Hjelte 

Team ownership and sponsorships
The first team sponsored by Red Bull was ice hockey's EC Salzburg during the 1987–88 season  Red Bull acquired the club outright in 2000  Since 2014, Salzburg has also hosted the company's joint ice hockey and soccer academy  Red Bull became the title sponsor of DEL team EHC München in 2012, and took full ownership the following year  It also financed the team's new arena, SAP Garden In 1995, Red Bull sponsored its first motorsports team, the Swiss Formula One team Sauber and in 1999 started sponsoring the Flying Bulls, a Czech aerobatics team In the 2000s, the company expanded its sporting team ownership to include several soccer teams, including the Austrian Bundesliga team SV Austria Salzburg (rebranded as Red Bull Salzburg), the Major League Soccer team the New York MetroStars (rebranded as the New York Red Bulls) in 2006, and the fifth-tier German team SSV Markranstadt (rebranded as RasenBallsport Leipzig) in 2009, which the company sought to move to the top of the German Bundesliga  RB Leipzig has been divisive and the subject of protests by some fans but has also experienced rapid success, climbing through the German soccer divisions to get a place in the top-flight German Bundesliga and earning berths in the UEFA Champions League in 2017–2018 and 2019–2020, the latter trip ending with a semi-final loss to Paris St  Germain  The company also sponsors the Los Angeles Clippers NBA team and Red Bull 3X, a series of men's and women's 3x3 basketball tournaments In the 2010s, Red Bull began sponsoring gamers and esports organizations, including OG, G2 Esports and Cloud9, and founded the Red Bulls League of Legends team In 2021, Red Bull sponsored Hoang Anh Gia Lai from V League 1 
 Red Bull Salzburg
 FC Liefering
 Red Bull Bragantino
 Red Bull Brasil
 RB Leipzig
 RB Leipzig II
 Red Bull New York
 Red Bull New York II

Events
Current and former Red Bull events include ACF Nationals (2009), Air Race World Championship (2003–2019), Argentine motorcycle Grand Prix, Art of Motion, BC One, Big Wave Africa, Cape Fear, Cliff Diving World Series, Crashed Ice, Dolomitenmann, Drifting World Championship, Flugtag, Frozen Rush, Indianapolis motorcycle Grand Prix, King of the Air, King of the Rock Tournament, Last Man Standing, MotoGP Rookies Cup, Motorcycle Grand Prix of the Americas, New Year No Limits, Paper Wings, Rampage, Red Bull 400, Red Bull Joyride, Road Rage, Romaniacs Hard Enduro Rallye, Soapbox Race, Spanish motorcycle Grand Prix, Stratos, Street Freestyle World Champions (2019), Trolley Grand Prix, Unleashed (2015), Wings for Life World Run, X-Alps, Xcbusa, and X-Fighters 

See also
Red Bull Stratos – 2012 stratospheric parachute jump
Passage 2:
Ural Rakhimov
Ural Murtazovich Rakhimov (Russian: Урал Муртазович Рахимов; Bashkir: Рәхимов Урал Мортаза улы, Räximov Ural Mortaza ulı; born 13 December 1961) is a Russian businessman of Bashkir ethnicity  Rakhimov is the 191st richest man in Russia with a net worth of US$500 million as of 2011 

Biography
Rakhimov was born in Ufa  Worldwide, Rakhimov is known to be the only son of Murtaza Rakhimov, the former president of Bashkortostan  Throughout most of Rakhimov's life, he maintained a deep interest in science, eventually studying at Ufa State Petroleum Technological University and graduating in 1984 He then studied at the French Petroleum Institute, receiving a Master's of Science, and then he studied in the United States for another Master's degree  For most of his business career, he was a member of Bashneft  In 2003, he initiated the creation of Bashkir capital  During 2009 till early 2010, he was the owner of Salavat Yulaev Ufa 
Passage 3:
The World's Billionaires
The World's Billionaires is an annual ranking of people who are considered to have a net worth of $1 billion or more, by the American business magazine Forbes  The list was first published in March 1987  The total net worth of each individual on the list is estimated and is cited in United States dollars, based on their documented assets and accounting for debt and other factors  Royalty and dictators whose wealth comes from their positions are excluded from these lists  This ranking is an index of the wealthiest documented individuals, excluding any ranking of those with wealth that is not able to be completely ascertained In 2018, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos was ranked at the top for the first time and became the first centibillionaire included in the ranking, surpassing Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who had topped the list 18 of the previous 24 years  In 2022, after topping the list for four years, Bezos was surpassed by Elon Musk  In 2023, Musk was in turn surpassed by French businessman Bernard Arnault, after topping the list for just a year  Arnault became the first French person to top the list 

Methodology
Each year, Forbes employs a team of over 50 reporters from a variety of countries to track the activity of the world's wealthiest individuals and sometimes groups or families – who share wealth  Preliminary surveys are sent to those who may qualify for the list  According to Forbes, they received three types of responses – some people try to inflate their wealth, others cooperate but leave out details, and some refuse to answer any questions  Business deals are then scrutinized and estimates of valuable assets – land, homes, vehicles, artwork, etc  – are made  Interviews are conducted to vet the figures and improve the estimate of an individual's holdings  Finally, positions in a publicly traded stock are priced to market on a date roughly a month before publication  Privately held companies are priced by the prevailing price-to-sales or price-to-earnings ratios  Known debt is subtracted from assets to get a final estimate of an individual's estimated worth in United States dollars  Since stock prices fluctuate rapidly, an individual's true wealth and ranking at the time of publication may vary from their situation when the list was compiled When a living individual has dispersed his or her wealth to immediate family members it is included under a single listing (as a single "family fortune") provided that individual (the grantor) is still living  However, if a deceased billionaire's fortune has been dispersed, it will not appear as a single listing, and each recipient will only appear if his or her own total net worth is over a $Billion (his or her net worth will not be combined with family members') Royal families and dictators that have their wealth contingent on a position are always excluded from these lists 

Annual rankings
The rankings are published annually in March, so the net worths listed are snapshots taken at that time  These lists only show the top 10 wealthiest billionaires for each year 

Legend
2023
In the 37th annual Forbes list of the world's billionaires, the list included 2,640 billionaires with a total net wealth of $12 2 trillion, down 28 members and $500 billion from 2022  Nearly half the list is poorer than the previous year, including Elon Musk, who fell from No  1 to No  2  The list also marks for the first time a French citizen was in the top position as well as a non-American for the first time since 2013 when the Mexican Carlos Slim Helu was the world's richest person  The list, like in 2022, counted 15 under 30 billionaires with the richest of them being Red Bull heir Mark Mateschitz with a net worth of $34 7 billion  The youngest of the lot were Clemente Del Vecchio, heir to the Luxottica fortune shared with his six siblings and stepmother and Kim Jung-yang, whose fortune lies in Japanese-South Korean gaming giant Nexon, both under-20s 

2022
In the 36th annual Forbes list of the world's billionaires, the list included 2,668 billionaires with a total net wealth of $12 7 trillion, down 97 members from 2021 

2021
In the 35th annual Forbes list of the world's billionaires, the list included 2,755 billionaires with a total net wealth of $13 1 trillion, up 660 members from 2020; 86% of these billionaires had more wealth than they possessed last year 

2020
In the 34th annual Forbes list of the world's billionaires, the list included 2,095 billionaires with a total net wealth of $8 trillion, down 58 members and $700 billion from 2019; 51% of these billionaires had less wealth than they possessed last year  The list was finalized as of 18 March, thus was already partially influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic 

2019
In the 33rd annual Forbes list of the world's billionaires, the list included 2,153 billionaires with a total net wealth of $8 7 trillion, down 55 members and $400 billion from 2018   The U S  continued to have the most billionaires in the world, with a record of 609, while China dropped to 324 (when not including Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan) 

2018
In the 32nd annual Forbes list of the world's billionaires, the aggregate wealth of the top 20 richest people on Earth amounted to about 13 percent of all billionaires' fortunes combined  A record of 2,208 billionaires were in the ranking and the total wealth was $9 1 trillion, up 18% since 2017  For the first time, Jeff Bezos was listed as the top billionaire due to Amazon's rising stock price that resulted in one person's biggest one-year gain in wealth ($35 billion) since Forbes started tracking in 1987  The U S  had the most billionaires in the world, with 585, while China was catching up with 476 when including Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan; it had 372 when excluding those three places  Forbes excluded Al-Walid bin Talal and all other Saudi billionaires due to the absence of accurate wealth estimations as a result of the 2017–19 Saudi Arabian purge 

2017
On the 30th anniversary of the Forbes list of the world's billionaires, for the fourth year in a row, Bill Gates was named the richest man in the world  In 2017, there was a record of 2,043 people on the list, which is the first time over 2,000 people were listed  This included 195 newcomers of whom 76 were from China and 25 from the U S ; there were 56 people under 40 and it had a record of 227 women  The number of billionaires increased 13% to 2,043 from 1,810 in 2016; this was the biggest change in over 30 years of tracking billionaires globally  Added together, the total net worth for 2017's billionaires was US$7 67 trillion, up from US$7 1 trillion in 2015  This was the first time after 12 years that Carlos Slim was not within the top five  The U S  had the most billionaires in the world, with a record of 565  China had 319 (not including Hong Kong, Taiwan or Macau), Germany had 114, and India had the fourth most with 101; India reached over 100 billionaires for its first time 

2016
For the third year in a row, Bill Gates was named the richest man in the world by Forbes' 2016 list of the world's billionaires  This is the 17th time that the founder of Microsoft had claimed the top spot  Amancio Ortega rose from last year's position of number four to second  Warren Buffett of Berkshire Hathaway came in third for the second consecutive time, while Mexican telecommunication mogul Carlos Slim slipped  from last year's second position to fourth  Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and Michael Bloomberg of Bloomberg L P , appeared for the first time on the Forbes top 10 billionaires list, coming at fifth, sixth and eighth positions, respectively  Zuckerberg became the youngest top 10 billionaire this year at the age of 31  Larry Ellison, Charles Koch and David Koch also slipped from their previous year's positions, with Ellison dropping to seventh from fifth, and the Kochs falling to ninth position from sixth 

2015
In the 29th annual Forbes list of global billionaires, a record 1,826 billionaires were named with an aggregated net worth of $7 1 trillion compared to $6 4 trillion in the previous year  46 of the billionaires in this list were under the age of 40  A record number of 290 people joined the list for the first time, of whom 25 percent hailed from China, which produced a world-leading 71 newcomers  The United States came in second, with 57; followed by India, with 28; and Germany, with 23  The United States had the largest number of billionaires with 526  Russia went down to 88 from 111 in 2014  Russia was placed behind China, Germany and India by the number of billionaires  Self-made billionaires made up the largest number of people on the list with 1,191 positions (over 65 percent), while just 230 (under 13 percent) had wealth through inheritance  The number of billionaires who inherited a portion but were still working to increase their fortunes is 405 Bill Gates was named the richest man in the world by Forbes' annual list of the world's billionaires  This was the 16th time that the founder of Microsoft claimed the top spot  Carlos Slim came in second for the second consecutive time  Warren Buffett of Berkshire Hathaway placed third, while Amancio Ortega of Spain, slipped down a position from the previous year to number four  Larry Ellison, the founder of Oracle, rounded off the top five  Christy Walton was the highest-ranking female at number eight  America's Evan Spiegel, co-founder of photo messaging app Snapchat, became the youngest billionaire this year at age 24  At age 99, David Rockefeller maintained his position as the oldest billionaire included in the list  Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, rose to number 16 with $33 4 billion  Iceland had a billionaire, Thor Bjorgolfsson, in the list after a gap of five years  Guatemala had a billionaire, Mario Lopez Estrada, for the first time in its history 

2014
Gates added $9 billion to his fortune since 2013 and topped the Forbes 2014 billionaire list  He had topped the list in 15 of the previous 20 years, but his previous number one ranking was in 2009  Mexican telecommunication mogul Carlos Slim came in second place after being number one the previous four years  Zara founder Amancio Ortega placed third for the second consecutive year  American investor Warren Buffett was in the top five for the 20th consecutive year, placing fourth  America's Christy Walton was the highest ranking woman, placing ninth overall  Aliko Dangote of Nigeria became the first African to enter the top 25, with an estimated net worth of $25 billion A total of 1,645 people made the 2014 billionaire list, representing a combined wealth of $6 4 trillion  Of those, a record 268 were newcomers, surpassing 2008's 226 newcomers  100 people listed in 2013 failed to make the list  The number of women on the list rose to a record 172 in 2014  Approximately 66 percent of the list were self-made, 13 percent achieved their wealth through inheritance alone, and 21 percent through a mixture of the two The United States had 492 billionaires on the list, the most of any country  It also had the most newcomers with 50, and women with 54  China had the second most billionaires with 152, while Russia was third with 111  Algeria, Lithuania, Tanzania, and Uganda were all represented on the list for the first time  Turkey saw the most people drop off the list, 19, due to a period of high inflation in the country 

2013
Carlos Slim topped the 2013 billionaire list, marking his fourth consecutive year at the top  Gates remained in second, while Amancio Ortega moved up to third  Ortega's gain of $19 5 billion was the largest of anyone on the list  Warren Buffett failed to make the top three for the first time since 2000, placing fourth  Diesel founder Renzo Rosso was among the top newcomers, debuting with an estimate net worth of $3 billion A global rise in asset prices led Forbes editor Randall Lane to declare "It [was] a very good year to be a billionaire"  However, it was not a good year to be Eike Batista, who fell from seventh to 100th, suffering the largest net loss of anyone on the list  Overall, net gainers outnumbered net losers by 4:1 A record total of 1,426 people made the 2013 list, representing $5 4 trillion of assets  Of those, 442 billionaires hailed from the United States  The Asian-Pacific region had 386 billionaires and Europe 366  The list also featured a record number of newcomers, 210, representing 42 countries  60 people from the 2012 list fell below a billion dollars of assets in 2013, and eight others from the 2012 list died  The Asia-Pacific region had the most drop-offs, with 29, followed by the United States with 16  The 2013 list featured 138 women, of which 50 came from the United States  A majority of the list (961 individuals, 67 percent) were entirely self-made; 184 (13 percent) inherited their wealth, and 281 (20 percent) achieved their fortune through a combination of inheritance and business acumen  Vietnam's Phạm Nhật Vượng was the first person from that country to be included in this list 

2012
Carlos Slim topped the 2012 list, marking this third consecutive year at the top  Gates placed second but narrowed the gap from 2011 as Slim's fortune fell $5 billion while Gates' rose $5 billion  Warren Buffett remained in third place  Bernard Arnault of France was the top-ranking European on the list, placing fourth  Ricardo Salinas Pliego was the greatest gainer in terms of dollars, adding $9 2 billion to his fortune and moving up to number 37 overall  Making her debut on the list at age 27, Spanx founder Sara Blakely became the youngest self-made female billionaire ever  Colombia's Alejandro Santo Domingo was the highest-ranked newcomer, inheriting a $9 5 billion stake in Santo Domingo Group from his father  India's Lakshmi Mittal was the largest loser as his fortune dropped from $31 1 billion to $20 7 billion as the price of steelmaker ArcelorMittal fell sharply  As a result, he failed to make the top 10 for the first time since 2004 and lost his title of richest Asian to Hong Kong's Li Ka-shing A record total of 1,226 people made the 2012 list, representing 58 countries  Of those, 126 were newcomers to the list and 104 were women  The United States had the greatest number of billionaires with 425  Russia had 96 people on the list, while China had 95  Georgia, Morocco, and Peru were newly represented on the list  Falling stock prices in Asia contributed to 117 former billionaires falling from the list worldwide  Twelve others listed in 2011 died  Overall, net gainers (460) barely outnumbered net losers (441) To coincide with the release of the 2012 list, Forbes announced a then-new "Billionaire Real-Time Ticker" updating the wealth of the world's top 50 billionaires in real time 

2011
In the 25th annual Forbes list of global billionaires, Slim added $20 5 billion to his fortune, the most of anyone, and retained his number one ranking with a total fortune of $74 billion  Gates remained in second place with $56 billion, while Warren Buffett was third with $50 billion  The top 10 had a combined wealth of $406 billion, up from $342 billion in 2010  According to Forbes editor Kerry Dolan, "media and technology billionaires definitely benefited from a stronger stock market and a growing enthusiasm for all things social" since the 2010 list  However, Nigerian commodity mogul Aliko Dangote was the greatest gainer on a percentage basis as his fortune increased 557 percent to $13 5 billion  Mark Zuckerberg was one of seven Facebook-related billionaires on the list, as he added $9 5 billion to his net worth to move up to 52nd  Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz was the youngest person on the list  Aged 26, eight days younger than Zuckerberg, he debuted at number 420 with an estimated fortune of $2 7 billion  IKEA founder Ingvar Kamprad was the largest loser as he saw his fortune plummet from $23 billion to $6 billion, dropping him from 11th to 162nd overall A record 1,210 billionaires made the 2011 list, representing a combined wealth of $4 5 trillion, up from $3 6 trillion the previous year  One third of the world's billionaires, 413, came from the United States  China had the second most billionaires with 115, while Russia was third with 101  Asia moved up to 332 billionaires, passing Europe as a region for the first time since the 1990s  The 2011 list included 214 newcomers and the average net worth of those on it increased to $3 7 billion 

2010
Slim narrowly eclipsed Gates to top the billionaire list for the first time  Slim saw his estimated worth surge $18 5 billion to $53 5 billion as shares of America Movil rose 35 percent  Gates' estimated wealth rose $13 billion to $53 billion, placing him second  Warren Buffett was third with $47 billion  Christy Walton was the highest-ranking woman, placing 12th overall, with an inherited fortune of $22 5 billion  At age 25, Mark Zuckerberg continued to be the world's youngest self-made billionaire  American Isaac Perlmutter was among the newcomers with an estimated fortune of $4 billion largely acquired in his sale of Marvel Entertainment to Disney A total of 1,011 people made the 2010 list  The United States accounted for 403 billionaires, followed by China with 89 and Russia with 62  It was the first time China, while including Hong Kong, placed second  A total of 55 countries were represented on the 2010 list, including Finland and Pakistan which claimed their first billionaires  Eighty-nine women made the list, but only 14 of them were self-made  The combined net worth of the list was $3 6 trillion, up 50 percent from 2009's $2 4 trillion, while the average net worth was $3 5 billion The 2010 list featured 164 re-entries and 97 true newcomers  Asia accounted for more than 100 of the new entrants  Overall, just 12 percent of the list lost wealth since 2009, and 30 people fell off the list  13 others died  Of the 89 women, 12 were newcomers in 2010  Steve Forbes said the growing number of billionaires was a clear sign that the world's economy was recovering from 2009's global financial crisis In June 2010, Gates and Buffett announced the Giving Pledge, a promise to give the majority of their wealth to philanthropic causes  As of 2017, the pledge had 158 signatories, but some of the signatories have since died  Most of the signers of the pledge are billionaires, and their pledges total over $365 billion 

2009
In the wake of the Financial crisis of 2007–2008, the world's billionaires lost $2 trillion in net worth and the list became 30% smaller than the previous year's list 

2008
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, four years after starting the company, joined the list at 23 to become the youngest self-made billionaire 

2007
Forbes recorded a then record of 946 billionaires  There were 178 newcomers, as well as the first billionaires from Cyprus, Oman, Romania and Serbia  Over 66% of the previous year's billionaires became richer  The billionaires' net worth increased in 2007 by $900 billion to $3 5 trillion 

2006
Free cash used by consumers from home equity extraction, known as the real estate bubble created a total of nearly $5 trillion in 2005, contributing to economic growth worldwide 

2005
The net worth of 2005's 691 billionaires was $2 2 trillion  More than half of them had self-made fortunes 

2004
The founders of Google, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, became billionaires at age 30 

* Each hold an essentially equal share in Walmart 

2003
Oprah Winfrey became the first female African-American billionaire 

* Each hold an essentially equal share in Walmart 

2002
As a result of the market crash caused by the Dot-com bubble, 83 billionaires dropped off the list from the previous year 

* Each hold an essentially equal share in Walmart 

2001
In 2001, BET founder Robert L  Johnson became the first ever African-American billionaire 
* Each hold an essentially equal share in Wal-Mart  Had he been alive in 2001, Sam Walton would have been the world's wealthiest person 

2000
Gates became the first American to take the top spot of the world's billionaires in 1995 with a net worth of $12 5 billion, and he remained there during the dot-com bubble's height in 1999 when his fortune peaked at $90 billion  After the dot-com bubble started to collapse in 2000, his wealth dropped to $60 billion, although he remained at the top of the list 

1999
1998
1997
1996
1995
1994
1993
1992
1991
1990
1989
1988
1987
Statistics
The dot-com bubble created the most paper wealth for some billionaires  However, once the dotcom bubble burst the new rich saw their fortunes disappear  Billionaires' fortunes were hit even harder by the global financial crisis; 2009 was the first time in five years that the world had a net loss in the number of billionaires  The strong performance of the financial markets and global economic recovery have erased financial assets losses  Most of the richest people in the world saw their fortunes soar in the early 2010s 

See also
Passage 4:
Windows 98
Windows 98 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of Microsoft Windows operating systems  The second operating system in the 9x line, it is the successor to Windows 95, and was released to manufacturing on May 15, 1998, and generally to retail on June 25, 1998  Like its predecessor, it is a hybrid 16-bit and 32-bit monolithic product with the boot stage based on MS-DOS Windows 98 is a web-integrated operating system that bears numerous similarities to its predecessor  Most of its improvements were cosmetic or designed to improve the user experience, but there were also a handful of features introduced to enhance system functionality and capabilities, including improved USB support and accessibility, as well as support for hardware advancements such as DVD players  Windows 98 was the first edition of Windows to adopt the Windows Driver Model, and introduced features that would become standard in future generations of Windows, such as Disk Cleanup, Windows Update, multi-monitor support, and Internet Connection Sharing 
Microsoft had marketed Windows 98 as a "tune-up" to Windows 95, rather than an entirely improved next generation of Windows  Upon release, it was generally well-received for its web-integrated interface and ease of use, as well as its addressing of issues present in Windows 95, although some pointed out that it was not significantly more stable than its predecessor  Windows 98 sold an estimated 58 million licenses and saw one major update, known as Windows 98 Second Edition (SE), released on May 5, 1999  After the release of its successor, Windows Me in 2000, mainstream support for Windows 98 and 98 SE ended on June 30, 2002, followed by extended support on July 11, 2006 

Development
Following the success of Windows 95, the development of Windows 98 began, initially under the development codename "Memphis " The first test version, Windows Memphis Developer Release, was released in January 1997 Memphis first entered beta as Windows Memphis Beta 1, released on June 30, 1997  It was followed by Windows 98 Beta 2, which dropped the Memphis name and was released in July  Microsoft had planned a full release of Windows 98 for the first quarter of 1998, along with a Windows 98 upgrade pack for Windows 95, but it also had a similar upgrade for Windows 3 x operating systems planned for the second quarter  Stacey Breyfogle, a product manager for Microsoft, explained that the later release of the upgrade for Windows 3 was because the upgrade required more testing than that for Windows 95 due to the presence of more compatibility issues, and without user objections, Microsoft merged the two upgrade packs into one and set all of their release dates to the second quarter On December 15, Microsoft released Windows 98 Beta 3  It was the first build to be able to upgrade from Windows 3 1x, and introduced new startup and shutdown sounds Near its completion, Windows 98 was released as Windows 98 Release Candidate on April 3, 1998, which expired on December 31  This coincided with a notable press demonstration at COMDEX that month  Microsoft CEO Bill Gates was highlighting the operating system's ease of use and enhanced support for Plug and Play (PnP)  However, when presentation assistant Chris Capossela plugged a USB scanner in, the operating system crashed, displaying a Blue Screen of Death  Bill Gates remarked after derisive applause and cheering from the audience, "That must be why we're not shipping Windows 98 yet " Video footage of this event became a popular Internet phenomenon Microsoft had quietly marketed the operating system as a "tune-up" to Windows 95  It was compiled as Windows 98 on May 11, 1998, before being fully released to manufacturing on May 15  The company was facing pending legal action for allowing free downloads of, and planning to ship Windows licenses with, Internet Explorer 4 0 in an alleged effort to expand its software monopoly  Microsoft's critics believed the lawsuit would further delay Windows 98's public release; it did not, and the operating system was released on June 25, 1998 A second major version of the operating system called Windows 98 Second Edition was later unveiled in March 1999  Microsoft compiled the final build on April 23, 1999, before publicly releasing it on May 5, 1999  Windows 98 was to be the final product in the Windows 9x line until Microsoft briefly revived the line to release Windows Me in 2000 as the final Windows 9x product before the introduction of Windows XP in 2001, which was based on the Windows NT architecture and kernel used in Windows 2000 

New and updated features
Web integration and shell enhancements
The first release of Windows 98 included Internet Explorer 4 01  This was updated to 5 0 in the Second Edition  Besides Internet Explorer, many other Internet companion applications are included such as Outlook Express, Windows Address Book, FrontPage Express, Microsoft Chat, Personal Web Server and a Web Publishing Wizard, and NetShow  NetMeeting allows multiple users to hold conference calls and work with each other on a document The Windows 98 shell is web-integrated; it contains deskbands, Active Desktop, Channels, ability to minimize foreground windows by clicking their button on the taskbar, single-click launching, Back and Forward navigation buttons, favorites, and address bar in Windows Explorer, image thumbnails, folder infotips and Web view in folders, and folder customization through HTML-based templates  The taskbar supports customizable toolbars designed to speed up access to the Web or the user's desktop; these toolbars include an Address Bar and Quick Launch  With the Address Bar, the user accesses the Web by typing in a URL, and Quick Launch contains shortcuts or buttons that perform system functions such as switching between windows and the desktop with the Show Desktop button  Another feature of this new shell is that dialog boxes show up in the Alt-Tab sequence 
Windows 98 also integrates shell enhancements, themes and other features from Microsoft Plus! for Windows 95 such as DriveSpace 3, Compression Agent, Dial-Up Networking Server, Dial-Up Scripting Tool and Task Scheduler  3D Pinball Space Cadet is included on the CD-ROM, but not installed by default  Windows 98 had its own separately purchasable Plus! pack, called Plus! 98 Title bars of windows and dialog boxes support two-color gradients, a feature ported from and refined from Microsoft Office 95  Windows menus and tooltips support slide animation  Windows Explorer in Windows 98, as in Windows 95, converts all-uppercase filenames to sentence case for readability purposes; however, it also provides an option Allow all uppercase names to display them in their original case  Windows Explorer includes support for compressed CAB files  The Quick Res and Telephony Location Manager Windows 95 PowerToys are integrated into the core operating system 

Improvements to hardware support
Windows Driver Model
Windows 98 was the first operating system to use the Windows Driver Model (WDM)  This fact was not well publicized when Windows 98 was released, and most hardware producers continued to develop drivers for the older VxD driver standard, which Windows 98 supported for compatibility's sake  The WDM standard only achieved widespread adoption years later, mostly through Windows 2000 and Windows XP, as they were not compatible with the older VxD standard  With the Windows Driver Model, developers could write drivers that were compatible with other versions of Windows  Device driver access in WDM is implemented through a VxD device driver, NTKERN VXD, which implements several Windows NT-specific kernel support functions Support for WDM audio enables digital mixing, routing and processing of simultaneous audio streams and kernel streaming with high quality sample rate conversion on Windows 98  WDM Audio allows for software emulation of legacy hardware to support MS-DOS games, DirectSound support and MIDI wavetable synthesis  The Windows 95 11-device limitation for MIDI devices is eliminated  A Microsoft GS Wavetable Synthesizer licensed from Roland shipped with Windows 98 for WDM audio drivers  Windows 98 supports digital playback of audio CDs, and the Second Edition improves WDM audio support by adding DirectSound hardware mixing and DirectSound 3D hardware abstraction, DirectMusic kernel support, KMixer sample-rate conversion for capture streams and multichannel audio support  All audio is sampled by the Kernel Mixer to a fixed sampling rate which may result in some audio getting upsampled or downsampled and having a high latency, except when using Kernel Streaming or third-party audio paths like ASIO which allow unmixed audio streams and lower latency  Windows 98 also includes a WDM streaming class driver (Stream sys) to address real time multimedia data stream processing requirements and a WDM kernel-mode video transport for enhanced video playback and capture 
Windows Driver Model also includes Broadcast Driver Architecture, the backbone for TV technologies support in Windows  WebTV for Windows utilized BDA to allow viewing television on the computer if a compatible TV tuner card is installed  TV listings could be updated from the Internet and WaveTop Data Broadcasting allowed extra data about broadcasts to be received via regular television signals using an antenna or cable, by embedding data streams into the vertical blanking interval portion of existing broadcast television signals 

Other device support improvements
Windows 98 had more robust USB support than Windows 95, which only had support in OEM versions OSR2 1 and later  Windows 98 supports USB hubs, USB scanners and imaging class devices  Windows 98 also introduced built-in support for some USB Human Interface Device class (USB HID) and PID class devices such as USB mice, keyboards, force feedback joysticks etc  including additional keyboard functions through a certain number of Consumer Page HID controls Windows 98 introduced ACPI 1 0 support which enabled Standby and Hibernate states  However, hibernation support was extremely limited and vendor-specific  Hibernation was only available if compatible (PnP) hardware and BIOS are present, and the hardware manufacturer or OEM supplied compatible WDM drivers, non-VxD drivers  However, there are hibernation issues with the FAT32 file system, making hibernation problematic and unreliable 
Windows 98, in general, provides improved — and a broader range of — support for IDE and SCSI drives and drive controllers, floppy drive controllers and all other classes of hardware as compared to Windows 95  There is integrated Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP) support (although the USB Supplement to Windows 95 OSR2 and later releases of Windows 95 did have AGP support)  Windows 98 has built-in DVD support and UDF 1 02 read support  The Still imaging architecture (STI) with TWAIN support was introduced for scanners and cameras and Image Color Management 2 0 for devices to perform color space transformations  Multiple monitor support allows using up to nine multiple monitors on a single PC, with the feature requiring one PCI graphics adapter per monitor  Windows 98 shipped with DirectX 5 2, which notably included DirectShow  Windows 98 Second Edition would later ship with DirectX 6 1 

Networking enhancements
Windows 98 networking enhancements to TCP/IP include built-in support for Winsock 2, SMB signing, a new IP Helper API, Automatic Private IP Addressing (also known as link-local addressing), IP multicasting, and performance enhancements for high-speed high bandwidth networks  Multihoming support with TCP/IP is improved and includes RIP listener support 
The DHCP client has been enhanced to include address assignment conflict detection and longer timeout intervals  NetBT configuration in the WINS client has been improved to continue persistently querying multiple WINS servers if it failed to establish the initial session until all of the WINS servers specified have been queried or a connection is established 
Network Driver Interface Specification 5 support means Windows 98 can support a wide range of network media, including Ethernet, Fiber Distributed Data Interface (FDDI), Token Ring, Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM), ISDN, wide area networks, X 25, and Frame Relay  Additional features include NDIS power management, support for quality of service, Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) and support for a single INF file format across all Windows versions Windows 98 Dial-Up Networking supports PPTP tunneling, support for ISDN adapters, multilink support, and connection-time scripting to automate non-standard login connections  Multilink channel aggregation enables users to combine all available dial-up lines to achieve higher transfer speeds  PPP connection logs can show actual packets being passed and Windows 98 allows PPP logging per connection  The Dial-Up Networking improvements are also available in Windows 95 OSR2 and are downloadable for earlier Windows 95 releases 
For networked computers that have user profiles enabled, Windows 98 introduces Microsoft Family Logon which lists all users that have been configured for that computer, enabling users to simply select their names from a list rather than having to type them in Windows 98 supports IrDA 3 0 which specifies both Serial Infrared Devices and Fast Infrared devices, which are capable of sending and receiving data at 4 Mbit/s  Infrared Recipient, a new application for transferring files through an infrared connection is included  The IrDA stack in Windows 98 supports networking profiles over the IrCOMM kernel-mode driver  Windows 98 also has built-in support for browsing Distributed File System trees on Server Message Block shares such as Windows NT servers UPnP and NAT traversal APIs can be installed on Windows 98 by installing the Windows XP Network Setup Wizard  An L2TP/IPsec VPN client can also be downloaded  By installing Active Directory Client Extensions, Windows 98 can take advantage of several Windows 2000 Active Directory features 

Improvements to the system and built-in utilities
Performance improvements
Windows 95 introduced the 32-bit, protected-mode cache driver VCACHE (replacing SMARTDrv) to cache the most recently accessed information from the hard drive in memory, divided into chunks  However, the cache parameters needed manual tuning as it degraded performance by consuming too much memory and not releasing it quickly enough, forcing paging to occur far too early  The Windows 98 VCACHE cache size management for disk and network access, CD-ROM access and paging is more dynamic compared to Windows 95, resulting in no tuning being required for cache parameters  On the FAT32 file system, Windows 98 has a performance feature called MapCache that can run applications from the disk cache itself if the code pages of executable files are aligned/mapped on 4K boundaries, instead of copying them to virtual memory  This results in more memory being available to run applications, and lesser usage of the swap file 
Windows 98 registry handling is more robust than Windows 95 to avoid corruption and there are several enhancements to eliminate limitations and improve registry performance  The Windows 95 registry key size limitation of 64 KB is gone  The registry uses less memory and has better caching Disk Defragmenter has been improved to rearrange program files that are frequently used to a hard disk region optimized for program start  However, as with Windows 95, the message "Drive contents changed    restarting " still exists in this version (i e  if the contents of the hard drive changed, then the entire drive is then rescanned and then progress resumed where it had left off)  If it gets stuck on the same area too many times, it will ask the user if it should keep trying or give up  The version of Disk Defragmenter from Windows Me does not have this problem and will function on Windows 98 or Windows 95 if the user simply copies it over Windows 98 also supports a Fast Shutdown feature that initiates shutdown without uninitializing device drivers  However, this can cause Windows 98 to hang instead of shutting down the computer if a buggy driver is active, so Microsoft supplied instructions for disabling the feature  Windows 98 supports write-behind caching for removable disk drives  A utility for converting FAT16 partitions to FAT32 without formatting the partition is also included 

Other system tools
A number of improvements are made to various other system tools and accessories in Windows 98  Microsoft Backup supports differential backup and SCSI tape devices in Windows 98  Disk Cleanup, a new tool, enables users to clear their disks of unnecessary files  Cleanup locations are extensible through Disk Cleanup handlers  Disk Cleanup can be automated for regular silent cleanups Scanreg (DOS) and ScanRegW are Registry Checker tools used to back up, restore or optimize the Windows registry  ScanRegW tests the registry's integrity and saves a backup copy each time Windows successfully boots  The maximum number of copies could be customized by the user through "scanreg ini" file  The restoration of a registry that causes Windows to fail to boot can only be done from DOS mode using ScanReg System Configuration Utility is a new system utility used to disable programs and services that are not required to run the computer  A Maintenance Wizard is included that schedules and automates ScanDisk, Disk Defragmenter and Disk Cleanup  Windows Script Host, with VBScript and JScript engines is built-in and upgradeable to version 5 6  System File Checker checks installed versions of system files to ensure they were the same version as the one installed with Windows 98 or newer  Corrupt or older versions are replaced by the correct versions  This tool was introduced to resolve the DLL hell issue and was replaced in Windows Me by System File Protection 
Windows 98 Setup simplifies installation, reducing the bulk of user input required  The Windows 98 Startup Disk contains generic, real-mode ATAPI and SCSI CD-ROM drivers that can be used instead in the event that the specific driver for a CD-ROM is unavailable The system could be updated using Windows Update  A utility to automatically notify the user of critical updates was later released Windows 98 includes an improved version of the Dr  Watson utility that collects and lists comprehensive information such as running tasks, startup programs with their command line switches, system patches, kernel driver, user drivers, DOS drivers and 16-bit modules  With Dr  Watson loaded in the system tray, whenever a software fault occurs (general protection fault, hang, etc ), Dr  Watson will intercept it and indicate what software crashed and its cause Windows Report Tool takes a snapshot of system configuration and lets users submit a manual problem report along with system information to technicians  It has e-mail confirmation for submitted reports 

Accessories
Windows 98 includes Microsoft Magnifier, Accessibility Wizard and Microsoft Active Accessibility 1 1 API (upgradeable to MSAA 2 0 ) A new HTML Help system with 15 Troubleshooting Wizards was introduced to replace WinHelp 
Users can configure the font in Notepad  Microsoft Paint supports GIF transparency  HyperTerminal supports a TCP/IP connection method, which allows it to be used as a Telnet client  Imaging for Windows is updated  System Monitor—used to track the performance of hardware and software—supports output to a log file 

Miscellaneous improvements
Telephony API (TAPI) 2 1
DCOM version 1 2
Ability to list fonts by similarity determined using PANOSE information 
Tools to automate setup, such as Batch 98 and INFInst exe, support error-checking, gathering information automatically to create an INF file directly from a machine's registry, customizing IE4, shell and desktop settings and adding custom drivers 
Several other Resource Kit tools are included on the Windows 98 CD 
Windows 98 has new system event sounds for Low Battery Alarm and Critical Battery Alarm 
Windows 98 also introduced new and updated system sounds  The new startup sound for Windows 98 was composed by Microsoft sound engineer Ken Kato, who considered it to be a "tough act to follow" 
Windows 98 shipped with Flash Player and Shockwave Player preinstalled 

Windows 98 Second Edition
Windows 98 Second Edition (often shortened to Windows 98 SE and sometimes to Win98 SE) is an updated version of Windows 98 released on May 5, 1999, nine months before the release of Windows 2000  It includes many bug fixes, improved WDM audio and modem support, improved USB support, the replacement of Internet Explorer 4 0 with Internet Explorer 5 0, Web Folders (WebDAV namespace extension for Windows Explorer), and related shell updates  Also included is basic OHCI-compliant FireWire DV camcorder support (MSDV class driver) and SBP-2 support for mass storage class devices  Wake-On-LAN reenables suspended networked computers due to network activity, and Internet Connection Sharing allows multiple networked client computers to share an Internet connection via a single host computer Other features in the update include DirectX 6 1 which introduced major improvements to DirectSound and the introduction of DirectMusic, improvements to Asynchronous Transfer Mode support (IP/ATM, PPP/ATM and WinSock 2/ATM support), Windows Media Player 6 1 replacing the older Media Player, Microsoft NetMeeting 3 0, MDAC 2 1 and WMI  A memory overflow issue was resolved in which earlier versions of Windows 98 would crash most systems if left running for 49 7 days (equal to 232 milliseconds)  Windows 98 SE could be obtained as retail upgrade and full version packages, as well as OEM and a Second Edition Updates Disc for existing Windows 98 users  USB audio device class support is present from Windows 98 SE onwards  Windows 98 Second Edition improved WDM support in general for all devices, and it introduced support for WDM for modems (and therefore USB modems and virtual COM ports)  However, Microsoft driver support for both USB printers and USB mass-storage device class is not available for Windows 98 

Removed features
Windows 98 Second Edition did not ship with the WinG API or RealPlayer 4 0, unlike the original release of Windows 98, due to both of these having been superseded by DirectX and Windows Media Player, respectively 

Upgradeability
Several components of both Windows 98 and Windows 98 Second Edition can be updated to newer versions  These include:

Internet Explorer 6 SP1 and Outlook Express 6 SP1
Windows Media Format Runtime and Windows Media Player 9 Series on Windows 98 Second Edition (Windows Media Player 7 1 on Windows 98 original release)
Windows Media Encoder 7 1 and Windows Media 8 Encoding Utility
DirectX 9 0c (the latest compatible runtime is from October 2007 )
MSN Messenger 7 0
Significant features from newer Microsoft operating systems can be installed on Windows 98  Chief among them are  NET Framework versions 1 0, 1 1 and 2 0, the Visual C++ 2005 runtime, Windows Installer 2 0, the GDI+ redistributable library, Remote Desktop Connection client 5 2 and the Text Services Framework 
Several other components such as MSXML 3 0 SP7, Microsoft Agent 2 0, NetMeeting 3 01, MSAA 2 0, ActiveSync 3 8, WSH 5 6, Microsoft Data Access Components 2 81 SP1, WMI 1 5 and Speech API 4 0 
Office XP is the last version of Microsoft Office that is compatible with Windows 98 
Although Windows 98 does not fully support Unicode, certain Unicode applications can run if the Microsoft Layer for Unicode is installed 

System requirements
The two major versions of Windows 98 have minimum requirements needed to be run 

Users can bypass processor requirement checks with the undocumented /NM setup switch  This allows installation on computers with processors as old as the Intel 80386 

Limitations
The original release of Windows 98 may fail to boot on computers with a processor faster than 2 1 GHz  Windows 98 is only designed to handle up to 512 MB of RAM without changes  The maximum amount of RAM the operating system is designed to use is up to 1 GB of RAM  Systems with more than 1 5 GB of RAM may continuously reboot during startup  Both Windows 98 and Windows 98 Second Edition have problems running on hard drives of capacities larger than 32 GB in systems with certain Phoenix BIOS configurations  A software update fixed this shortcoming 

Support lifecycle
All computers running Windows NT 4 0 Workstation, Windows 2000 Professional, and Windows 98 can be directly upgraded to Windows XP Professional  Support for Windows 98 under Microsoft's consumer product life cycle policy was originally planned to end on June 30, 2003, however, in December 2002, Microsoft extended the support window to January 16, 2004  This date would then be extended again to June 30, 2006 on January 13, 2004 up to a final end of support date of July 11, 2006, citing support volumes in emerging markets as the reason for the extension Retail availability for Windows 98 ended on June 30, 2002, and later became completely unavailable from Microsoft in any form (through MSDN or otherwise) due to the terms of Java-related settlements Microsoft made with Sun Microsystems The Windows Update website continued to be available after Windows 98's end of support date, however, in 2011, Microsoft retired the Windows Update v4 website and removed the updates for Windows 98 and Windows 98 SE from its servers 

Reception
Windows 98 was released to generally favorable reviews, with praise directed to its improved graphical user interface and customizability, ease of use,: 30–31  and the degree to which it addressed complaints that users and critics had with Windows 95  Michael Sweet of Smart Computing characterized it as heavily integrating features of the Internet browser, and found file and folder navigation easier : 30–31  Ed Bott of PC Computing lauded the bug fixes, easier troubleshooting, and support for hardware advances such as DVD players and USB  However, he also found that the operating system crashed only slightly less frequently, and criticized the high upgrade price and system requirements  He rated it four stars out of five 

Sales
Windows 98 sold 530,000 licenses in its first four days of availability, overtaking Windows 95's 510,000  It later sold a total of 580,000 and 350,000 licenses in the first and second months of availability, respectively In the first year of its release, Windows 98 sold a total of 15 million licenses – 2 million more than its predecessor  However, International Data Corporation estimated that of the roughly 89 million shipped computers in the desktop market, the operating system had a market share of 17 2 percent, compared to Windows 95's 57 4 percent  Meanwhile, the two operating systems continued to observe a trend whereby Windows 98 improved in sales performance, whereas Windows 95 dwindled  After a legal dispute and subsequent settlement with Sun Microsystems over the former's Java Virtual Machine, Microsoft ceased distributing the operating system on December 15, 2003, and IDC estimated that a total of 58 million copies were installed worldwide by then 
Passage 5:
Susanne Klatten
Susanne Hanna Ursula Klatten (née Quandt, born 28 April 1962) is a German billionaire heiress, the daughter of Herbert and Johanna Quandt  As of January 2022, her net worth was estimated at US$23 4 billion, and the richest woman in Germany and the 50th richest person in the world according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index 

Education
Klatten was born in Bad Homburg, West Germany  After gaining a degree in business finance, she worked for the advertising agency Young & Rubicam in Frankfurt from 1981 to 1983  This was followed by a course in marketing and management at the University of Buckingham, and an MBA from IMD Business School in Lausanne specialising in advertising She gained further business experience in London with Dresdner Bank, the Munich branch of management consultants McKinsey and the bank Bankhaus Reuschel & Co 
She has often worked under the name Susanne Kant 

Investments
On her father's death she inherited his 50 1% stake in pharmaceutical and chemicals manufacturer Altana  She sits on Altana's supervisory board and helped transform it into a world-class corporation in the German DAX list of 30 top companies  In 2006 Altana AG sold its pharmaceutical activities to Nycomed for €4 5 billion, leaving only its speciality chemicals business  The €4 5 billion was distributed to shareholders as a dividend  Altana maintained its stock exchange listing and Klatten remained its majority shareholder  
In 2009, she bought almost all shares she did not already own in Altana  Altana and SKion, which are both wholly owned by Susanne Klatten, are shareholder of Landa Digital Printing with together 46% since 2018  Landa Digital Printing is a company of the Israeli entrepreneur and inventor Benny Landa in the field of digital printing and nanotechnology Her father also left her a 12 50% stake in BMW, but following the death of her mother in 2015, her stake in BMW is now 19 2%  She was appointed to the supervisory board of BMW with her brother Stefan Quandt in 1997 
German graphite maker SGL Carbon said on 16 March 2009 that Klatten owns options to raise her stake in SGL from 8% to almost a quarter of the shares but no more than that 

Quandt family activities during WWII
The Hanns Joachim Friedrichs Award winning documentary film The Silence of the Quandts by the German public broadcaster ARD described in October 2007 the role of the Quandt family businesses during the Second World War  The family's Nazi past was not well known, but the documentary film revealed this to a wide audience and confronted the Quandts about the use of slave labourers in the family's factories during World War II  As a result, five days after the showing, four family members announced, on behalf of the entire Quandt family, their intention to fund a research project in which a historian would examine the family's activities during Adolf Hitler's dictatorship  The independent 1,200-page study researched and compiled by Bonn historian, Joachim Scholtyseck, that was released in 2011 concluded: "The Quandts were linked inseparably with the crimes of the Nazis"  As of 2008, no compensation, apology or even memorial at the site of one of their factories, have been permitted  BMW was not implicated in the report 

Personal life
Police prevented an attempt to kidnap her and her mother Johanna Quandt in 1978 Susanne met Jan Klatten while she was doing an internship with BMW in Regensburg, where he worked as an engineer  It is reported that during this time, she called herself Kant and did not tell him who she was until they were sure about each other, but Klatten himself denies the story  They married in 1990 in Kitzbühel and live in Munich  They have three children  The couple separated in 2018  She has been a member of the University Council of the Technical University of Munich since 2005  In 2007 she was awarded the Bayerischer Verdienstorden, the Bavarian Order of Merit  She is one of the biggest donors of the centre-right political party, the Christian Democratic Union In 2007 Klatten was blackmailed by Helg "Russak" Sgarbi, a 44-year-old Swiss national who threatened to release materials depicting the two having an affair  Sgarbi, who was charged with similar blackmail schemes against multiple women, was arrested in January 2009 and brought to court in Germany, where he was sentenced to six years in jail  His accomplice, the Italian hotel owner Ernano Barretta who allegedly filmed Sgarbi and Klatten with hidden cameras, was also arrested and was sentenced in 2012 to seven years in prison 

See also
List of female billionaires
Passage 6:
List of countries by steel production
This article summarizes the world steel production by country 
In 2020, total world crude steel production was 1877 5 million tonnes (Mt)   The biggest steel producing country is currently China, which accounted for 57% of world steel production in 2020  In 2020, China became the first country to produce over one billion tons of steel  In 2008, 2009, 2015 and 2016 output fell in the majority of steel-producing countries as a result of the global recession  In 2010 and 2017, it started to rise again  Crude steel production contracted in all regions in 2019 except in Asia and the Middle East 

List of countries by steel production
This is a list of countries by steel production in 1967, 1980, 1990, 2000 and from 2007 to 2021, based on data provided by the World Steel Association  All countries with annual production of crude steel at least 2 million metric tons 

Exports
net: exports - imports

Imports
Net: imports − exports

See also
Steel industry
Global steel industry trends
List of steel producers
List of countries by iron ore production
Context 2: Passage 1:
457 visa
In Australia, the 457 visa was the most common visa for Australian or overseas employers to sponsor skilled overseas workers to work temporarily in Australia  It was abolished on 18 March 2018 by the Turnbull government and replaced by another visa category  The full title of this subclass of visa was Temporary Business (Long Stay) and was introduced soon after John Howard became Prime Minister in 1996  The title of the visa was changed to Temporary Work (Skilled) (Subclass 457) visa on 24 November 2012   Applications were processed by the Department of Immigration and Border Protection (DIBP)  On 18 April 2017, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull announced that the 457 visas will be replaced with two new visa categories 

Requirements
Holders of a 457 visa may be employed for a period of up to four years and may bring any eligible family members, including same-sex partners, who have unrestricted work and study rights in Australia  "If your sponsor is a start-up business or has traded in Australia for less than 12 months, then the visa will be granted for 18 months " Holders of the subclass 457 visa have no limit on the number of times they travel in and out of Australia Employers must be approved by the Department of Immigration and Border Protection as an approved sponsor  Primary subclass 457 visa holders are restricted to working for their sponsor and may not work (or volunteer) for any other organisation (other than associated entities as defined by the Corporations Act)  In order to change employer and sponsor, the "new employer" must be or become an approved 457 sponsor and then lodge a 457 nomination  Once the nomination is approved, the employer obligations will shift to the new employer and the visa applicant is restricted to working for it  There is no need to apply for a new 457 visa within the validity of the visa 
Employees must also meet minimum levels of skill and English language requirements, in addition to character and health requirements  Some trades occupations and passport holders from certain countries may be required to do a skills assessment (see the TRA website) 
It is common for 457 visa holders to apply for a permanent Australia residents visa with a view to permanently settle in Australia and become Australian citizens 

Restrictions on the 457 visa
A 457 visa holder can only work in a nominated occupation for the sponsor employer  Medical practitioners and general managers must work in their nominated occupation but they can work for employers other than their sponsor or an associated entity of their sponsor  The specific occupations to which this rule applies are listed in Exemption from the requirement to work directly for the sponsor  The worker must also not have ceased employment for more than 60 consecutive days 

457 visa update
The Australian Government reviewed the 457 skilled immigrant visa and made some provisions to quicken the transition to permanent residency starting on 1 July 2012   From that date, non-resident workers on the 457 skilled immigration visa are able to transition to permanent residency if they have two years with the employer who has sponsored them and if the employer provides a full-time position in the 457 visa holder's nominated occupation 
Furthermore, the Australian government has recognised that 457 visas deserve priority in review as they are highly responsive to the needs of the market  Overseas workers will be able to work in Australia on a six-month short term work visa before they apply for a 457 visa 
As at 30 June 2016, the size of the subclass 457 programme was 94,890 Primary visa holders in Australia 

Criticisms
An audit by the Fair Work Ombudsman conducted between September 2013 and June 2014 found that 40% of 457 visa holders were no longer employed by a sponsor or were being paid well below the statutory minimum wage of $53,900 In October 2014, the Abbott government announced that it would make it easier for businesses to apply for 457 visa workers by relaxing rules for English language competency to broaden the pool of potential workers from overseas With the commencement of the Japan free trade agreement in 2015, employers no longer need to offer jobs to locals or to prove that none could fill vacancies before Japanese nationals eligible for 457 visas are employed In December 2014, the Department of Immigration and Border Protection released recommendations to relax 457 visa requirements  The recommendations include extending the six-month short term work visa to 12 months with no obligation to apply for a 457 visa  The Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) has criticized this change on the grounds that it avoids the 457 visa's requirement for English language and skills tests and employers would not be required to demonstrate they had first tried to fill job vacancies with Australian workers 

Replacement
On 18 April 2017, Malcolm Turnbull announced his intention to replace the 457 visas with 2 new categories (short term and medium term) of visas One of the replacements was the Temporary Skill Shortage visa, known as a 482 Visa  It allows immigration It requires candidates to obtain an IELTS (English Language) exam band score of 5 or higher, or other method of showing the English level 

See also
Visa documentation
Working holiday visa
Working Holidays in Australia
Passage 2:
M  King Hubbert
Marion King Hubbert (October 5, 1903 – October 11, 1989) was an American geologist and geophysicist  He worked at the Shell research lab in Houston, Texas   He made several important contributions to geology, geophysics, and petroleum geology, most notably the Hubbert curve and Hubbert peak theory (a basic component of peak oil), with important political ramifications   He was often referred to as "M  King Hubbert" or "King Hubbert" 

Biography
Hubbert was born in San Saba, Texas  He attended the University of Chicago, where he received a Bachelor of Science in 1926, a Master of Science in 1928, and a Doctor of Philosophy in 1937, studying geology, mathematics, and physics   He worked as an assistant geologist for the Amerada Petroleum Company for two years while pursuing the PhD, additionally teaching geophysics at Columbia University  He also served as a senior analyst at the Board of Economic Warfare  He joined the Shell Oil Company in 1943, retiring from that firm in 1964  After he retired from Shell, he became a senior research geophysicist for the United States Geological Survey until his retirement in 1976   He also held positions as a professor of geology and geophysics at Stanford University from 1963 to 1968, and as a professor at UC Berkeley from 1973 to 1976 Hubbert was an avid technocrat  He co-founded Technocracy Incorporated with Howard Scott  Hubbert wrote a study course that was published without attribution called the Technocracy Study Course, which advocates a non-market economics form of energy accounting, in contrast to the current price system method Hubbert was a member of the board of governors, and served as secretary of education in that organization  Hubert died on October 11, 1988 at the age of 86 while receiving treatment for pulmonary embolism 

Research
Hubbert made several contributions to geophysics, including a mathematical demonstration that rock in the earth's crust, because it is under immense pressure in large areas, should exhibit plasticity, similar to clay   This demonstration explained the observed results that the earth's crust deforms over time   He also studied the flow of underground fluids 
Based on theoretical arguments, Hubbert (1940) proposed a constitutive equation 
  
    
      
        
          K
          
            a
            b
            s
          
        
        =
        N
        
          D
          
            2
          
        
      
    
    {\displaystyle K_{abs}=ND^{2}}
   for absolute permeability 
  
    
      
        
          K
          
            a
            b
            s
          
        
      
    
    {\displaystyle K_{abs}}
   of an underground water or oil reservoir where 
  
    
      
        D
      
    
    {\displaystyle D}
   is the average grain diameter and 
  
    
      
        N
      
    
    {\displaystyle N}
   is a dimensionless proportionality constant  However, Kozeny (1927) proposed a constitutive equation for absolute permeability which contains Hubbert's proposal as a factor  Hubbert (1940, 1956) also presented a force potential, denoted 
  
    
      
        Φ
      
    
    {\displaystyle \Phi }
   or 
  
    
      
        
          Φ
          
            h
          
        
      
    
    {\displaystyle \Phi _{h}}
  , that bears his name:

  
    
      
        Φ
        =
        
          ∫
          
            P
            r
            e
            f
          
          
            P
          
        
        
          
            
              d
              P
            
            
              ρ
              (
              P
              )
            
          
        
        −
        g
        z
        
        ⟹
        
        ∇
        
          Φ
          
            h
          
        
        =
        
          
            1
            ρ
          
        
        ∇
        P
        −
        g
        ∇
        z
      
    
    {\displaystyle \Phi =\int _{Pref}^{P}{\frac {dP}{\rho (P)}}-gz\implies \nabla \Phi _{h}={\frac {1}{\rho }}\nabla P-g\nabla z}
  Some years later Hubbert (1956) showed that Darcy's law can be derived from the Navier-Stokes equation of motion of a viscous fluid 
Hubbert is best known for his studies on the size of oil fields and natural gas reserves, and the limits these impose on rates of oil and gas production  He predicted that for any oil-producing area, whether a province, a nation, or the planet as a whole, the rate of petroleum production of the reserve over time would resemble a bell curve  Based on his theory, he presented a paper to the 1956 meeting of the American Petroleum Institute in San Antonio, Texas, which predicted that overall petroleum production would peak in the United States between 1965, which he considered most likely, and 1970, which he considered an upper bound  At first his prediction received much criticism, for the most part because many other predictions of oil capacity had been made over the preceding half century, but these had usually been based on the reserves-to-production ratio, had not taken into account future discoveries, and had proven false   Hubbert became famous when U S  oil production peaked in 1970 and began to decline, as he had predicted 
In 1974, Hubbert projected that global oil production would peak in 1995 "if current trends continue"  Various subsequent predictions have been made by others as trends have fluctuated in the intervening years 
Hubbert believed that solar power would be a practical renewable energy replacement for fossil fuels, and that nuclear energy in breeder reactors would be able to sustain humanity for centuries  He also states that "provided world population can somehow be brought under control, we may at last have found an energy supply (uranium) adequate for our needs for at least the next few centuries of the 'foreseeable future' "

Contributions
Hubbert's contributions to science have been summarized as follows:

Mathematical demonstration that rock in the earth's crust is plastic, and that the earth's crust deforms over time 
Prediction of migration paths of hydrocarbons 
Predictions of peak rates of oil and gas production, based on a consistent mathematical model which ties reserves, discovery rates, and production rates  His model remains highly influential, and has been widely applied to other finite resources 

Renewable resources
Fisheries: At least one researcher has attempted to perform Hubbert linearization (Hubbert curve) on the whaling industry, as well as charting the transparently dependent price of caviar on sturgeon depletion  The Atlantic northwest cod fishery was a renewable resource, but the numbers of fish taken exceeded the fish's rate of recovery  The end of the cod fishery matches the exponential drop of the Hubbert bell curve  The comparison of the cases of fisheries and of mineral extraction tells us that the human pressure on the environment is causing a wide range of resources to go through a depletion cycle which mirrors the Hubbert curve 

Accolades
Hubbert was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences   He was long affiliated with the Geological Society of America, receiving their Arthur L  Day Medal in 1954, being elected President of the Society in 1962, and receiving the Society's Penrose Medal in 1973   He received the Vetlesen Prize from the G  Unger Vetlesen Foundation and Columbia University in 1981   He also received the Elliott Cresson Medal in 1981 

Hubbert on peak oil
Hubbert explaining some aspects of worldwide peak oil  1976 video clip of M King Hubbert speaking about fossil fuel depletion on YouTube 

See also
Bioeconomics (biology)
Fred Meissner

Notes
External links
 Media related to Marion King Hubbert at Wikimedia Commons
 Quotations related to M  King Hubbert at Wikiquote
M  King Hubbert Bibliography Archived 2019-08-01 at the Wayback Machine
M  King Hubbert papers at the University of Wyoming - American Heritage Center
Passage 3:
Royal Dutch Shell
Shell plc is a British multinational oil and gas company headquartered in London, England  Shell is a public limited company with a primary listing on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) and secondary listings on Euronext Amsterdam and the New York Stock Exchange  A core component of Big Oil, Shell is the second largest investor-owned oil and gas company in the world by revenue (after ExxonMobil), and among the world's largest companies out of any industry  Measured by both its own emissions, and the emissions of all the fossil fuels it sells, Shell was the ninth-largest corporate producer of greenhouse gas emissions in the period 1988–2015 Shell was formed in 1907 through the merger of Royal Dutch Petroleum Company of the Netherlands and The "Shell" Transport and Trading Company of the United Kingdom  The combined company rapidly became the leading competitor of the American Standard Oil and by 1920 Shell was the largest producer of oil in the world  Shell first entered the chemicals industry in 1929  Shell was one of the "Seven Sisters" which dominated the global petroleum industry from the mid-1940s to the mid-1970s  In 1964, Shell was a partner in the world's first commercial sea transportation of liquefied natural gas (LNG)  In 1970, Shell acquired the mining company Billiton, which it subsequently sold in 1994 and now forms part of BHP  In recent decades gas has become an increasingly important part of Shell's business and Shell acquired BG Group in 2016 Shell is vertically integrated and is active in every area of the oil and gas industry, including exploration, production, refining, transport, distribution and marketing, petrochemicals, power generation, and trading  Shell has operations in over 99 countries, produces around 3 7 million barrels of oil equivalent per day and has around 44,000 service stations worldwide  As of 31 December 2019, Shell had total proved reserves of 11 1 billion barrels (1 76×109 m3) of oil equivalent  Shell USA, its principal subsidiary in the United States, is one of its largest businesses  Shell holds 44% of Raízen, a publicly-listed joint venture with Cosan, which is the third-largest Brazil-based energy company  In addition to the main Shell brand, the company also owns the Jiffy Lube, Pennzoil and Quaker State brands 
Shell is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index and had a market capitalisation of US$199 billion on 15 September 2022, the largest of any company listed on the LSE and the 44th-largest of any company in the world  By 2021 revenues, Shell is the second-largest investor-owned oil company in the world (after ExxonMobil), the largest company headquartered in the United Kingdom, the second-largest company headquartered in Europe (after Volkswagen), and the 15th largest company in the world  Until its unification in 2005 as Royal Dutch Shell plc, the firm operated as a dual-listed company, whereby the British and Dutch companies maintained their legal existence and separate listings but operated as a single-unit partnership  From 2005 to 2022, the company had its headquarters in The Hague, its registered office in London and had two types of shares (A and B)  In January 2022, the firm merged the A and B shares, moved its headquarters to London, and changed its legal name to Shell plc 

History
Origins
The Royal Dutch Shell Group was created in April 1907 through the amalgamation of two rival companies: the Royal Dutch Petroleum Company (Dutch: Koninklijke Nederlandse Petroleum Maatschappij) of the Netherlands and the Shell Transport and Trading Company Limited of the United Kingdom  It was a move largely driven by the need to compete globally with Standard Oil  The Royal Dutch Petroleum Company was a Dutch company founded in 1890 to develop an oilfield in Pangkalan Brandan, North Sumatra, and initially led by August Kessler, Hugo Loudon, and Henri Deterding  The "Shell" Transport and Trading Company (the quotation marks were part of the legal name) was a British company, founded in 1897 by Marcus Samuel, 1st Viscount Bearsted, and his brother Samuel Samuel  Their father had owned an antique company in Houndsditch, London, which expanded in 1833 to import and sell seashells, after which the company "Shell" took its name For various reasons, the new firm operated as a dual-listed company, whereby the merging companies maintained their legal existence but operated as a single-unit partnership for business purposes  The terms of the merger gave 60 percent stock ownership of the new group to Royal Dutch, and 40 percent to Shell  Both became holding companies for Bataafsche Petroleum Maatschappij, containing the production and refining assets, and Anglo-Saxon Petroleum Company, containing the transport and storage assets  National patriotic sensibilities would not permit a full-scale merger or takeover of either of the two companies  The Dutch company, Koninklijke Nederlandsche Petroleum Maatschappij at The Hague, was in charge of production and manufacture  The British Anglo-Saxon Petroleum Company was based in London, to direct the transport and storage of the products In 1912, Royal Dutch Shell purchased the Rothschilds' Russian oil assets in a stock deal  The Group's production portfolio then consisted of 53 percent from the East Indies, 29 percent from the Russian Empire, and 17 percent from Romania 

20th century
During the First World War, Shell was the main supplier of fuel to the British Expeditionary Force  It was also the sole supplier of aviation fuel and supplied 80 percent of the British Army's TNT  It also volunteered all of its shipping to the British Admiralty The German invasion of Romania in 1916 saw 17% of the group's worldwide production destroyed In 1919, Shell took control of the Mexican Eagle Petroleum Company and in 1921 formed Shell-Mex Limited, which marketed products under the "Shell" and "Eagle" brands in the United Kingdom  During the Genoa Conference of 1922 Royal Dutch Shell was in negotiations for a monopoly over Soviet oilfields in Baku and Grosny, although the leak of a draft treaty led to breakdown of the talks  In 1929, Shell Chemicals was founded  By the end of the 1920s, Shell was the world's leading oil company, producing 11 percent of the world's crude oil supply and owning 10 percent of its tanker tonnage Shell Mex House was completed in 1931, and was the head office for Shell's marketing activity worldwide  In 1932, partly in response to the difficult economic conditions of the Great Depression, Shell-Mex merged its UK marketing operations with those of BP to create Shell-Mex & BP, a company that traded until the brands separated in 1975  Royal Dutch Company ranked 79th among United States corporations in the value of World War II military production contracts 
The 1930s saw Shell's Mexican assets seized by the local government  After the invasion of the Netherlands by Nazi Germany in 1940, the head office of the Dutch companies was moved to Curaçao  In 1945 Shell's Danish headquarters in Copenhagen, at the time being used by the Gestapo, was bombed by Royal Air Force De Havilland Mosquitoes in Operation Carthage In 1937, Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC), 23 75 percent owned by Royal Dutch Shell plc, signed an oil concession agreement with the Sultan of Muscat  In 1952, IPC offered financial support to raise an armed force that would assist the Sultan in occupying the interior region of Oman, an area that geologists believed to be rich in oil  This led to the 1954 outbreak of Jebel Akhdar War in Oman that lasted for more than 5 years Around 1952, Shell was the first company to purchase and use a computer in the Netherlands  The computer, a Ferranti Mark 1*, was assembled and used at the Shell laboratory in Amsterdam  In 1970 Shell acquired the mining company Billiton, which it subsequently sold in 1994 In the 1990s, protesters criticised the company's environmental record, particularly the possible pollution caused by the proposed disposal of the Brent Spar platform into the North Sea  Despite support from the UK government, Shell reversed the decision under public pressure but maintained that sinking the platform would have been environmentally better  Shell subsequently published an unequivocal commitment to sustainable development, supported by executive speeches reinforcing this commitment  Shell was subsequently criticised by the European Commission and five European Union members after deciding to leave part of its decommissioned oil rigs standing in the North Sea  Shell argued that removing them would be too costly and risky  Germany said that the estimated 11,000 tonnes of raw oil and toxins remaining in the rigs would eventually seep into the sea, and called it a 'ticking timebomb' On 15 January 1999, off the Argentinian town of Magdalena, Buenos Aires, the Shell tanker Estrella pampeana collided with a German cargo ship, emptying its contents into the lake, polluting the environment, drinkable water, plants and animals  Over a decade after the spill, a referendum held in Magdalena determined the acceptance of a US$9 5 million compensatory payout from Shell  Shell denied responsibility for the spill, but an Argentine court ruled in 2002 that the corporation was responsible 

21st century
In 2002, Shell acquired Pennzoil-Quaker State through its American division for $22 USD per share, or about $1 8 billion USD  Through its acquisition of Pennzoil, Shell became a descendant of Standard Oil  With its acquisition, Shell inherited multiple auto part brands including Jiffy Lube, Rain-X, and Fix-a-Flat  The company was notably late in its acquisition as seen by journalists, with Shell seen as streamlining its assets around the same time of other major mergers and acquisitions in the industry, such as BP's purchase of Amoco and the merger of Exxon and Mobil In 2004, Shell overstated its oil reserves, resulting in loss of confidence in the group, a £17 million fine by the Financial Services Authority and the departure of the chairman Philip Watts  A lawsuit resulted in the payment of $450 million to non-American shareholders in 2007 As a result of the scandal, the corporate structure was simplified  Two classes of ordinary shares, A (code RDSA) and B (code RDSB), identical but for the tax treatment of dividends, were issued for the company In November 2004, following a period of turmoil caused by the revelation that Shell had been overstating its oil reserves, it was announced that the Shell Group would move to a single capital structure, creating a new parent company to be named Royal Dutch Shell plc, with its primary listing on the LSE, a secondary listing on Euronext Amsterdam, its headquarters and tax residency in The Hague, Netherlands and its registered office in London  The company was already incorporated in 2002 as Forthdeal Limited, a shelf corporation incorporated by Swift Incorporations Limited and Instant Companies Limited, both based in Bristol  The unification was completed on 20 July 2005 and the original owners delisted their companies from the respective exchanges  On 20 July 2005, the Shell Transport & Trading Company plc was delisted from the LSE, whereas, Royal Dutch Petroleum Company from the New York Stock Exchange on 18 November 2005  The shares of the company were issued at a 60/40 advantage for the shareholders of Royal Dutch in line with the original ownership of the Shell Group During the 2009 Iraqi oil services contracts tender, a consortium led by Shell (45%) and which included Petronas (30%) was awarded a production contract for the "Majnoon field" in the south of Iraq, which contains an estimated 12 6 billion barrels (2 00×109 m3) of oil  The "West Qurna 1 field" production contract was awarded to a consortium led by ExxonMobil (60%) and included Shell (15%) In February 2010, Shell and Cosan formed a 50:50 joint-venture, Raízen, comprising all of Cosan's Brazilian ethanol, energy generation, fuel distribution and sugar activities, and all of Shell's Brazilian retail fuel and aviation distribution businesses  In March 2010, Shell announced the sale of some of its assets, including its liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) business, to meet the cost of a planned $28bn capital spending programme  Shell invited buyers to submit indicative bids, due by 22 March, with a plan to raise $2–3bn from the sale  In June 2010, Shell agreed to acquire all the business of East Resources for a cash consideration of $4 7 billion  The transaction included East Resources' tight gas fields Over the course of 2013, the corporation began the sale of its US shale gas assets and canceled a US$20 billion gas project that was to be constructed in the US state of Louisiana  A new CEO Ben van Beurden was appointed in January 2014, prior to the announcement that the corporation's overall performance in 2013 was 38 percent lower than in 2012—the value of Shell's shares fell by 3 percent as a result  Following the sale of the majority of its Australian assets in February 2014, the corporation plans to sell a further US$15 billion worth of assets in the period leading up to 2015, with deals announced in Australia, Brazil and Italy Shell announced on 8 April 2015 it had agreed to buy BG Group for £47 billion (US$70 billion), subject to shareholder and regulatory approval  The acquisition was completed in February 2016, resulting in Shell surpassing Chevron Corporation and becoming the world's second largest non-state oil company On 7 June 2016, Shell announced that it would build an ethane cracker plant near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, after spending several years doing an environmental cleanup of the proposed plant's site In January 2017, Shell agreed to sell £2 46bn worth of North Sea assets to oil exploration firm Chrysaor  In 2017, Shell sold its oil sands assets to Canadian Natural Resources in exchange of approximately 8 8% stake in that company  In May 2017, it was reported that Shell plans to sell its shares in Canadian Natural Resources fully exiting the oil sands business On 5 November 2017, the Paradise Papers, a set of confidential electronic documents relating to offshore investment, revealed that Argentine Energy Minister Juan José Aranguren was revealed to have managed the offshore companies 'Shell Western Supply and Trading Limited' and 'Sol Antilles y Guianas Limited', both subsidiaries of Shell  One is the main bidder for the purchase of diesel oil by the government through the state owned CAMMESA (Compañía Administradora del Mercado Mayorista Eléctrico) On 30 April 2020, Shell announced that it would cut its dividend for the first time since the Second World War, due to the oil price collapse following the reduction in oil demand during the COVID-19 pandemic  Shell stated that their net income adjusted for the cost of supply dropped to US$2 9 billion in three months to 31 March  This compared with US$5 3 billion in the same period the previous year  On 30 September 2020, the company said that it would cut up to 9,000 jobs as a result of the economic effects caused by the pandemic and announced a "broad restructuring"  In December 2020, Shell forecast another write-down of $3 5-4 5 billion for the fourth quarter due to lower oil prices, following $16 8 billion of impairment in the second quarter In February 2021, Shell announced a loss of $21 7 billion in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, despite reducing its operating expenses by 12%, or $4 5 billion, according to a Morningstar analysis cited by Barron's In November 2021, Shell announced that it is planning to relocate their headquarters to London, abandon its dual share structure, and change its name from Royal Dutch Shell plc to Shell plc  The company's name change was registered in the Companies House on 21 January 2022 In December 2021, Shell pulled out of the Cambo oil field, off the Shetland Islands, claiming that "the economic case for investment in this project is not strong enough at this time, as well as having the potential for delays"  The proposed oilfield had been the subject of intense campaigning by environmentalists in the run-up to the COP26 UN climate summit in Glasgow in November 2021 On 4 March 2022, during the Russian invasion of Ukraine and in the midst of the growing boycott of Russian economy and related divestments, Shell bought a cargo of discounted Russian crude oil  The next day, following criticism from Ukraine's Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, Shell defended the purchase as a short term necessity, but also announced that it intended to reduce such purchases, and it would put profits from any Russian oil it purchases into a fund that would go towards humanitarian aid to Ukraine  On 8 March, Shell announced that it would stop buying Russian oil and gas and close its service stations in the country In 2022, the major oil and gas companies, including Shell, reported sharp rises in interim revenues and profits  In fact, this rise in profit for Shell was so sharp, that 2022 was the company's best year, as Shell recorded double the profits from 2021, and the highest profit in its entire history 

Corporate affairs
Management
On 4 August 2005, the board of directors announced the appointment of Jorma Ollila, chairman and CEO of Nokia at the time, to succeed Aad Jacobs as the company's non-executive chairman on 1 June 2006  Ollila is the first Shell chairman to be neither Dutch nor British  Other non-executive directors include Maarten van den Bergh, Wim Kok, Nina Henderson, Lord Kerr, Adelbert van Roxe, and Christine Morin-Postel Since 3 January 2014, Ben van Beurden has been CEO of Shell  His predecessor was Peter Voser who became CEO of Shell on 1 July 2009 Following a career at the corporation, in locations such as Australia and Africa, Ann Pickard was appointed as the executive vice president of the Arctic at Royal Dutch Shell, a role that was publicized in an interview with McKinsey & Company in June 2014 In January 2023, Wael Sawan succeeded Ben van Beurden as CEO 

Board of directors
As of 25 January 2023, the Shell board members are:
Andrew Mackenzie (chair), former CEO of BHP Billiton
Euleen Goh, former CEO of Standard Chartered Singapore
Wael Sawan, CEO of Shell plc
Sinead Gorman, CFO of Shell plc
Dick Boer, former president and CEO of Ahold Delhaize
Neil Carson, former CEO of Johnson Matthey
Ann Godbehere, former CFO of Swiss Re and Northern Rock
Catherine J  Hughes, former executive at Nexen, Husky Oil, and Schlumberger
Jane Holl Lute, former president and CEO of SICPA North America
Martina Hund-Mejean, former CFO of Mastercard
Abraham Schot, former CEO of Audi AG
Caroline Omloo, company secretary

Historical leadership
Name and logo
The name Shell is linked to The "Shell" Transport and Trading Company  In 1833, the founder's father, Marcus Samuel Sr , founded an import business to sell seashells to London collectors  When collecting seashell specimens in the Caspian Sea area in 1892, the younger Samuel realised there was potential in exporting lamp oil from the region and commissioned the world's first purpose-built oil tanker, the Murex (Latin for a type of snail shell), to enter this market; by 1907 the company had a fleet  Although for several decades the company had a refinery at Shell Haven on the Thames, there is no evidence of this having provided the name The Shell logo is one of the most familiar commercial symbols in the world  This logo is known as the "pecten" after the sea shell Pecten maximus (the giant scallop), on which its design is based  The yellow and red colours used are thought to relate to the colours of the flag of Spain, as Shell built early service stations in California, previously a Spanish colony  The current revision of the logo was designed by Raymond Loewy in 1971 The slash was removed from the name "Royal Dutch/Shell" in 2005, concurrent with moves to merge the two legally separate companies (Royal Dutch and Shell) to the single legal entity which exists today On 15 November 2021, Royal Dutch Shell plc announced plans to change its name to Shell plc 

Logo evolution
Operations
Business groupings
Shell is organised into four major business groupings:
Upstream – manages the upstream business  It searches for and recovers crude oil and natural gas and operates the upstream and midstream infrastructure necessary to deliver oil and gas to the market  Its activities are organised primarily within geographic units, although there are some activities that are managed across the business or provided through support units 
Integrated Gas and New Energies – manages to liquefy natural gas, converting gas to liquids and low-carbon opportunities 
Downstream – manages Shell's manufacturing, distribution, and marketing activities for oil products and chemicals  Manufacturing and supply include refinery, supply, and shipping of crude oil 
Projects and technology – manages the delivery of Shell's major projects, provides technical services and technology capability covering both upstream and downstream activities  It is also responsible for providing functional leadership across Shell in the areas of health, safety and environment, and contracting and procurement 

Oil and gas activities
Shell's primary business is the management of a vertically integrated oil company  The development of technical and commercial expertise in all stages of this vertical integration, from the initial search for oil (exploration) through its harvesting (production), transportation, refining and finally trading and marketing established the core competencies on which the company was founded  Similar competencies were required for natural gas, which has become one of the most important businesses in which Shell is involved, and which contributes a significant proportion of the company's profits  While the vertically integrated business model provided significant economies of scale and barriers to entry, each business now seeks to be a self-supporting unit without subsidies from other parts of the company Traditionally, Shell was a heavily decentralised business worldwide (especially in the downstream) with companies in over 100 countries, each of which operated with a high degree of independence  The upstream tended to be far more centralised with much of the technical and financial direction coming from the central offices in The Hague  The upstream oil sector is also commonly known as the "exploration and production" sector Downstream operations, which now also includes the chemicals business, generate the majority of Shell's profits worldwide and is known for its global network of more than 40,000 petrol stations and its various oil refineries  The downstream business, which in some countries also included oil refining, generally included a retail petrol station network, lubricants manufacture and marketing, industrial fuel and lubricants sales, and a host of other product/market sectors such as LPG and bitumen  The practice in Shell was that these businesses were essentially local and that they were best managed by local "operating companies" – often with middle and senior management reinforced by expatriates 

Sponsorships
Shell has a long history of motorsport sponsorship, most notably Scuderia Ferrari (1951–1964, 1966–1973 and 1996-present), BRM (1962–1966 and 1968–1972), Scuderia Toro Rosso (2007–2013 and 2016), McLaren (1967–1968 and 1984–1994), Lotus (1968–1971), Ducati Corse (since 1999), Team Penske (2011–present), Hyundai Motorsport (since 2005), AF Corse, Risi Competizione, BMW Motorsport (2015–present with also Pennzoil) and Dick Johnson Racing (1987-2004 and 2017–present) Starting in 2023, Shell will become the official fuel for IndyCar Series, supplying E100 race fuel for all teams 

Operations by region
Arctic
Kulluk oil rig
Following the purchase of an offshore lease in 2005, Shell initiated its US$4 5 billion Arctic drilling program in 2006, after the corporation purchased the "Kulluk" oil rig and leased the Noble Discoverer drillship  At inception, the project was led by Pete Slaiby, a Shell executive who had previously worked in the North Sea  However, after the purchase of a second offshore lease in 2008, Shell only commenced drilling work in 2012, due to the refurbishment of rigs, permit delays from the relevant authorities and lawsuits  The plans to drill in the Arctic led to protests from environmental groups, particularly Greenpeace; furthermore, analysts in the energy field, as well as related industries, also expressed skepticism due to perceptions that drilling in the region is "too dangerous because of harsh conditions and remote locations" Further problems hampered the Arctic project after the commencement of drilling in 2012, as Shell dealt with a series of issues that involved air permits, Coast Guard certification of a marine vessel, and severe damage to essential oil-spill equipment  Additionally, difficult weather conditions resulted in the delay of drilling during mid-2012 and the already dire situation was exacerbated by the "Kulluk" incident at the end of the year  Shell had invested nearly US$5 billion by this stage of the project As the Kulluk oil rig was being towed to the American state of Washington to be serviced in preparation for the 2013 drilling season, a winter storm on 27 December 2012 caused the towing crews, as well as the rescue service, to lose control of the rig  As of 1 January 2013, the Kulluk was grounded off the coast Sitkalidak Island, near the eastern end of Kodiak Island  Following the accident, a Fortune magazine contacted Larry McKinney, the executive director at the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies at Texas A&M, and he explained that "A two-month delay in the Arctic is not a two-month delay     A two-month delay could wipe out the entire drilling season "It was unclear if Shell would recommence drilling in mid-2013, following the "Kulluk" incident, and, in February 2013, the corporation stated that it would "pause" its closely watched drilling project off the Alaskan coast in 2013, and will instead prepare for future exploration  In January 2014, the corporation announced the extension of the suspension of its drilling program in the Arctic, with chief executive van Beurden explaining that the project is "under review" due to both market and internal issues A June 2014 interview with Pickard indicated that, following a forensic analysis of the problems encountered in 2012, Shell will continue with the project and Pickard stated that she perceives the future of the corporation activity in the Arctic region as a long-term "marathon"  Pickard stated that the forensic "look back" revealed "there was an on/off switch" and further explained:

In other words, don't spend the money unless you're sure you're going to have the legal environment to go forward  Don't spend the money unless you're sure you're going to have the permit  No, I can't tell you that I'm going to have that permit until June, but we need to plan like we're going to have that permit in June  And so probably the biggest lesson is to make sure we could smooth out the on/off switches wherever we could and take control of our own destiny 
Based upon the interview with Pickard, Shell is approaching the project as an investment that will reap energy resources with a lifespan of around 30 years According to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management report in 2015 the chances of a major spill in a deep-sea Arctic drilling is 75% before century's end 

Kodiak Island
In 2010, Greenpeace activists painted "No Arctic Drilling" using spilled BP oil on the side of a ship in the Gulf of Mexico that was en route to explore for Arctic oil for Shell  At the protest, Phil Radford of Greenpeace called for "President Obama [to] ban all offshore oil drilling and call for an end to the use of oil in our cars by 2030 "On 16 March 2012, 52 Greenpeace activists from five different countries boarded Fennica and Nordica, multipurpose icebreakers chartered to support Shell's drilling rigs near Alaska  Around the same time period, a reporter for Fortune magazine spoke with Edward Itta, an Inupiat leader and the former mayor of the North Slope Borough, who expressed that he was conflicted about Shell's plans in the Arctic, as he was concerned that an oil spill could destroy the Inupiat peoples hunting-and-fishing culture, but his borough also received major tax revenue from oil and gas production; additionally, further revenue from energy activity was considered crucial to the future of the living standard in Itta's community In July 2012, Greenpeace activists shut down 53 Shell petrol stations in Edinburgh and London in a protest against the company's plans to drill for oil in the Arctic  Greenpeace's "Save the Arctic" campaign aims to prevent oil drilling and industrial fishing in the Arctic by declaring the uninhabited area around the North Pole a global sanctuary A review was announced after the Kulluk oil rig ran aground near Kodiak Island in December 2012 In response, Shell filed lawsuits to seek injunctions from possible protests, and Benjamin Jealous of the NAACP and Radford argued that the legal action was "trampling Americans' rights " According to Greenpeace, Shell lodged a request with Google to take down video footage of a Greenpeace protest action that occurred at the Shell-sponsored Formula One (F1) Belgian Grand Prix on 25 August 2013, in which "SaveTheArctic org" banners appear at the winners' podium ceremony  In the video, the banners rise up automatically—activists controlled their appearance with the use of four radio car antennas—revealing the website URL, alongside an image that consists of half of a polar bear's head and half of the Shell logo Shell then announced a "pause" in the timeline of the project in early 2013 and, in September 2015, the corporation announced the extension of the suspension of its drilling program in the Arctic 

Polar Pioneer rig
A June 2014 interview with the corporation's new executive vice president of the Arctic indicated that Shell will continue with its activity in the region In Seattle protests began in May 2015 in response to the news that the Port of Seattle made an agreement with Shell to berth rigs at the Port's Terminal 5 during the off-season of oil exploration in Alaskan waters  The arrival of Shell's new Arctic drilling vessel, Polar Pioneer (IMO number: 8754140), a semi-submersible offshore drilling rig, was greeted by large numbers of environmental protesters paddling kayaks in Elliott Bay On 6 May 2015, it was reported that during a coast guard inspection of Polar Pioneer, a piece of anti-pollution gear failed, resulting in fines and delay of the operation  Oil executives from Total and Eni interviewed by the New York Times, expressed scepticism about Shell's new ambitions for offshore drilling in the Arctic, and cited economic and environmental hurdles  ConocoPhillips and Equinor (formerly Statoil) suspended Arctic drilling earlier, after Shell's failed attempt in 2012 

Australia
On 20 May 2011, Shell's final investment decision for the world's first floating liquefied natural gas (FLNG) facility was finalized following the discovery of the remote offshore Prelude field—located off Australia's northwestern coast and estimated to contain about 3 trillion cubic feet of natural gas equivalent reserves—in 2007  FLNG technology is based on liquefied natural gas (LNG) developments that were pioneered in the mid-20th century and facilitates the exploitation of untapped natural gas reserves located in remote areas, often too small to extract any other way The floating vessel to be used for the Prelude field, known as Prelude FLNG, is promoted as the longest floating structure in the world and will take in the equivalent of 110,000 barrels of oil per day in natural gas—at a location 200 km (125 miles) off the coast of Western Australia—and cool it into liquefied natural gas for transport and sale in Asia  The Prelude is expected to start producing LNG in 2017—analysts estimated the total cost of construction at more than US$12 billion Following the decision by the Shell fuel corporation to close its Geelong Oil Refinery in Australia in April 2013, a third consecutive annual loss was recorded for Shell's Australian refining and fuel marketing assets  Revealed in June 2013, the writedown is worth A$203 million and was preceded by a A$638m writedown in 2012 and a A$407m writedown in 2011, after the closure of the Clyde Refinery in Sydney, Australia In February 2014, Shell sold its Australian refinery and petrol stations for US$2 6 billion (A$2 9 billion) to Swiss company Vitol At the time of the downstream sale to Vitol, Shell was expected to continue investment into Australian upstream projects, with projects that involve Chevron Corp , Woodside Petroleum and Prelude  In June 2014, Shell sold 9 5% of its 23 1% stake in Woodside Petroleum and advised that it had reached an agreement for Woodside to buy back 9 5% of its shares at a later stage  Shell became a major shareholder in Woodside after a 2001 takeover attempt was blocked by then federal Treasurer Peter Costello and the corporation has been open about its intention to sell its stake in Woodside as part of its target to shed assets  At a general body meeting, held on 1 August 2014, 72 percent of shareholders voted to approve the buy-back, short of the 75 percent vote that was required for approval  A statement from Shell read: "Royal Dutch Shell acknowledges the outcome of Woodside Petroleum Limited's shareholders' negative vote on the selective buy-back proposal  Shell is reviewing its options in relation to its remaining 13 6 percent holding "

Brunei
Brunei Shell Petroleum (BSP) is a joint venture between the Government of Brunei and Shell  The British Malayan Petroleum Company (BMPC), owned by Royal Dutch Shell, first found commercial amounts of oil in 1929  It currently produces 350,000 barrels of oil and gas equivalent per day  BSP is the largest oil and gas company in Brunei, a sector which contributes 90% of government revenue  In 1954, the BMPC in Seria had a total of 1,277 European and Asian staff 

China
The company has upstream operations in unconventional oil and gas in China  Shell has a joint venture with PetroChina at the Changbei tight gas field in Shaanxi, which has produced natural gas since 2008  The company has also invested in exploring for shale oil in Sichuan  The other unconventional resource which Shell invested in in China was shale  The company was an early entrant in shale oil exploration in China but scaled down operations in 2014 due to difficulties with geology and population density  It has a joint venture to explore for oil shale in Jilin through a joint venture with Jilin Guangzheng Mineral Development Company Limited 

Hong Kong
Shell has been active in Hong Kong for a century, providing Retail, LPG, Commercial Fuel, Lubricants, Bitumen, Aviation, Marine and Chemicals services, and products  Shell also sponsored the first Hong Kong-built aircraft, Inspiration, for its around-the-world trip 

India
Shell India has inaugurated its new lubricants laboratory at its Technology Centre in Bangalore 

Ireland
Shell first started trading in Ireland in 1902  Shell E&P Ireland (SEPIL) (previously Enterprise Energy Ireland) is an Irish exploration and production subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell  Its headquarters are on Leeson Street in Dublin  It was acquired in May 2002  Its main project is the Corrib gas project, a large gas field off the northwest coast, for which Shell has encountered controversy and protests in relation to the onshore pipeline and licence terms In 2005, Shell disposed of its entire retail and commercial fuels business in Ireland to Topaz Energy Group  This included depots, company-owned petrol stations and supply agreements stations throughout the island of Ireland  The retail outlets were re-branded as Topaz in 2008/9 The Topaz fuel network was subsequently acquired in 2015 by Couchetard and these stations began re-branding to Circle K in 2018 

Malaysia
Shell discovered the first oil well in Malaysia in 1910, in Miri, Sarawak  Today the oil well is a state monument known as the Grand Old Lady  In 1914, following this discovery, Shell built Malaysia's first oil refinery and laid a submarine pipeline in Miri 

Nigeria
Shell began production in Nigeria in 1958  In Nigeria, Shell told US diplomats that it had placed staff in all the main ministries of the government  Shell continues however upstream activities/extracting crude oil in the oil-rich Niger Delta as well as downstream/commercial activities in South Africa  In June 2013, the company announced a strategic review of its operations in Nigeria, hinting that assets could be divested  In August 2014, the company disclosed it was in the process of finalizing the sale of its interests in four Nigerian oil fields  On 29 January 2021 a Dutch court ruled that Shell was responsible for multiple oil leaks in Nigeria The actions of companies like Shell has led to extreme environmental issues in the Niger Delta  Many pipelines in the Niger Delta owned by Shell are old and corroded  Shell has acknowledged its responsibility for keeping the pipelines new but has also denied responsibility for environmental causes  The heavy contamination of the air, ground and water with toxic pollutants by the oil industry in the Niger Delta is often used as an example of ecocide  This has led to mass protests from the Niger Delta inhabitants, Amnesty International, and Friends of the Earth the Netherlands against Shell  It has also led to action plans to boycott Shell by environmental and human rights groups  In January 2013, a Dutch court rejected four out of five allegations brought against the firm over oil pollution in the Niger Delta but found a subsidiary guilty of one case of pollution, ordering compensation to be paid to a Nigerian farmer 

Nordic countries
On 27 August 2007, Shell and Reitan Group, the owner of the 7-Eleven brand in Scandinavia, announced an agreement to re-brand some 269 service stations across Norway, Sweden, Finland and Denmark, subject to obtaining regulatory approvals under the different competition laws in each country  In April 2010 Shell announced that the corporation is in process of trying to find a potential buyer for all of its operations in Finland and is doing similar market research concerning Swedish operations  In October 2010 Shell's gas stations and the heavy vehicle fuel supply networks in Finland and Sweden, along with a refinery located in Gothenburg, Sweden were sold to St1, a Finnish energy company, more precisely to its major shareholding parent company Keele Oy 

North America
Through most of Shell's early history, Shell USA business in the United States was substantially independent  Its stock was traded on the NYSE, and the group's central office had little direct involvement in running the operation  However, in 1984, Shell made a bid to purchase those shares of Shell Oil Company it did not own (around 30%) and, despite opposition from some minority shareholders which led to a court case, Shell completed the buyout for a sum of $5 7 billion 

Philippines
Royal Dutch Shell operates in the Philippines under its subsidiary, Pilipinas Shell Petroleum Corporation  Its headquarters is in Makati and it has facilities in the Pandacan oil depot and other key locations In January 2010, the Bureau of Customs claimed 7 34 billion pesos worth of unpaid excise taxes against Pilipinas Shell for importing Catalytic cracked gasoline (CCG) and light catalytic cracked gasoline (LCCG) stating that those imports are bound for tariff charges In August 2016, Pilipinas Shell filed an application to sell US$629 million worth of primary and secondary shares to the investing public (registration statement) with the SEC  This was a prelude to filing its IPO listing application with the Philippine Stock Exchange  On 3 November 2016 the Pilipinas Shell Petroleum Corporation was officially listed on the Philippine Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol SHLPH after they held its initial public offering on 19 to 25 October of the same year Due to the economic slowdown caused by the COVID-19 pandemic on the global, regional and local economies, continually low refining margins, and competition with imported refined products, the management of Pilipinas Shell announced in August 2020 that the 110,000 bbl/d refinery in Tabangao, Batangas, which started operations in 1962, will be shutting down permanently and turned into an import terminal instead 

Russia
In February 2022, Shell exited all its joint ventures with Gazprom because of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine and, in March 2022, Shell announced that it would stop buying oil from Russia and close all its service stations there  In April 2022, it emerged that Shell was to book up to $5 billion in impairment charges from exiting its interests in Russia 

Singapore
Singapore is the main centre for Shell's petrochemical operations in the Asia Pacific region  Shell Eastern Petroleum limited (SEPL) have their refinery located in Singapore's Pulau Bukom island  They also operate as Shell Chemicals Seraya in Jurong Island  In November 2020, Shell announced that, as part of efforts to curtail pollution emissions, it will cut its oil-processing capacity in Singapore 

United Kingdom
In the UK sector of the North Sea Shell employs around 4,500 staff in Scotland as well as an additional 1,000 service contractors: however in August 2014 it announced it was laying off 250 of them, mainly in Aberdeen  Shell paid no UK taxes on its North Sea operations over the period 2018 to 2021 

Alternative energy
In the early 2000s Shell moved into alternative energy and there is now an embryonic "Renewables" business that has made investments in solar power, wind power, hydrogen, and forestry  The forestry business went the way of nuclear, coal, metals and electricity generation, and was disposed of in 2003  In 2006 Shell paid SolarWorld to take over its entire solar business and in 2008, the company withdrew from the London Array which when built was the world's largest offshore wind farm Shell also is involved in large-scale hydrogen projects  HydrogenForecast com describes Shell's approach thus far as consisting of "baby steps", but with an underlying message of "extreme optimism"  In 2015, the company announced plans to install hydrogen fuel pumps across Germany, planning on having 400 locations in operation by 2023 Shell holds 44% of Raízen, a joint venture with Brazilian sugarcane producer Cosan which is the third-largest Brazil-based energy company by revenues and a major producer of ethanol  In 2015, the company partnered with Brazilian start-up company Insolar to install solar panels in Rio de Janeiro to deliver electricity to the Santa Marta neighbourhood Shell is the operator and major shareholder of The Shell Canada Quest Energy project, based within the Athabasca Oil Sands Project, located near Fort McMurray, Alberta  It holds a 60% share, alongside Chevron Canada Limited, which holds 20%, and Marathon Canadian Oil Sands Holding Limited, which holds the final 20%  Commercial operations launched in November 2015  It was the world's first commercial-scale oil and sand carbon capture storage (CCS) project  It is expected to reduce CO2 emissions in Canada by 1 08 million tonnes per year In December 2016, Shell won the auction for the 700 MW Borssele III & IV offshore wind farms at a price of 5 45 c/kWh, beating 6 other consortia  In June 2018, it was announced that the company and its co-investor Partners Group had secured $1 5bn for the project, which also involves Eneco, Van Oord, and Mitsubishi/DGE In October 2017, it bought Europe's biggest vehicle charging network, "NewMotion "In November 2017, Shell's CEO Ben van Beurden announced Shell's plan to cut half of its carbon emissions by 2050, and 20 percent by 2035  In this regard, Shell promised to spend $2 billion annually on renewable energy sources  Shell began to develop its wind energy segment in 2001, the company now operates six wind farms in the United States and is part of a plan to build two offshore wind farms in the Netherlands In December 2017, the company announced plans to buy UK household energy and broadband provider First Utility  In March 2019 it rebranded to Shell Energy and announced that all electricity would be supplied from renewable sources In December 2018, the company announced that it had partnered with SkyNRG to begin supplying sustainable aviation fuel to airlines operating out of San Francisco Airport (SFO), including KLM, SAS, and Finnair  In the same month, the company announced plans to double its renewable energy budget to investment in low-carbon energy to $4 billion US each year, with an aim to spend up to $2 billion US on renewable energy by 2021 In January 2018, the company acquired a 44% interest in Silicon Ranch, a solar energy company run by Matt Kisber, as part of its global New Energies project  The company took over from Partners Group, paying up to an estimated $217 million for the minority interest In February 2019, the company acquired German solar battery company Sonnen  It first invested in the company in May 2018 as part of its New Energies project  As of late 2021, the company had 800 employees and has installed 70 000 home battery systems On 27 February 2019, the company acquired British VPP operator Limejump for an undisclosed amount In July 2019, Shell installed their first 150 kW electric car chargers at its London petrol stations with payments handled via SMOOV  They also plan to provide 350 kW chargers in Europe by entering into an agreement with IONITY On 26 January 2021, Shell said it would buy 100 per cent of Ubitricity, owner of the largest public charging network for electric vehicles in the United Kingdom, as the company expands its presence along the power supply chain On 25 February 2021, Shell announced the acquisition of German Virtual Power Plant (VPP) company Next Kraftwerke for an undisclosed amount  Next Kraftwerke connects renewable electricity generation- and storage projects to optimize the usage of those assets  The company mostly operates in Europe In November 2022, it was announced Shell's wholly-owned subsidiary, Shell Petroleum NV, had acquired the Odense-headquartered renewable natural gas producer, Nature Energy Biogas A/S for nearly $2 billion USD 

Controversies
General issues
Shell's public rhetoric and pledges emphasize that the company is shifting towards climate-friendly, low-carbon and transition strategies  However, a 2022 study found that the company's spending on clean energy was insignificant and opaque, with little to suggest that the company's discourse matched its actions In 1989, Shell redesigned a $3-billion natural gas platform in the North Sea, raising its height one to two meters, to accommodate an anticipated sea level rise due to global warming  In 2013, Royal Dutch Shell PLC reported CO2 emissions of 81 million metric tonnes In 2017, Shell sold non-compliant foreign fuel to consumers In 2020, the Northern Lights CCS project was announced, which is a joint project between Equinor, Shell and Total, operating in the European Union (Norway) and aiming to store liquid CO2 beneath the seabed Environmentalists have expressed concern that Shell is processing oil from the Amazon region of South America  In the United States, the Martinez refinery (CA) and the Puget Sound Refinery (WA) carry Amazonian oil  In 2015, 14% of the Martinez refinery's gross, at 19,570 barrels per day, came from the Amazon In 2021, Shell was ranked as the 10th most environmentally responsible company out of 120 oil, gas, and mining companies involved in resource extraction north of the Arctic Circle in the Arctic Environmental Responsibility Index (AERI) In December 2021, Royal Dutch Shell decided to move ahead with seismic tests to explore for oil in humpback whale breeding grounds along South Africa's eastern coastline  On 3 December 2021, a South African high court struck down an urgent application brought by environmentalists to stop the project, which will involve a vessel regularly firing an air gun that produces a very powerful shock wave underwater to help map subsea geology  According to Greenpeace Africa and the South African Deep Sea Angling Association, this could cause "irreparable harm" to the marine environment, especially to migrating humpback whales in the area 

Climate change
In 2017, a public information film ("Climate of Concern") unseen for years resurfaced and showed Shell had clear grasp of global warming 26 years earlier but has not acted accordingly since, said critics The burning of the fossil fuels produced by Shell are responsible for 1 67% of global industrial greenhouse gas emissions from 1988 to 2015  In April 2020, Shell announced plans to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 or sooner  However, internal documents from the company released by the Democratic-led House committee reveal a private 2020 communication saying Shell does not have any plans to bring emissions to zero for next 10–20 years 

Climate case
On 5 April 2019, Milieudefensie (Dutch for "environmental defense"), together with six NGOs and more than 17,000 citizens, sued Shell, accusing the company of harming the climate despite knowing about global warming since 1986  In May 2021, the district court of The Hague ruled that Shell must reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 45% by 2030 (compared to 2019 levels) 

Oil spills
Shell was responsible for around 21,000 gallons of oil spilled near Tracy, California, in May 2016 due to a pipeline crack 
Shell was responsible for an 88,200-gallon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in May 2016 
Two ruptures in a Shell Oil Co  pipeline in Altamont, California – one in September 2015 and another in May 2016 – led to questions on whether the Office of the State Fire Marshal, charged with overseeing the pipeline, was doing an adequate job 
On 29 January 2021, a Dutch court ordered Royal Dutch Shell plc's Nigerian unit to compensate for oil spills in two villages over 13 years ago  Shell Nigeria is liable for damages from pipeline leaks in the villages of Oruma and Goi, the Hague Court of Appeals said in a ruling  Shell said that it should not be liable, as the spills were the result of sabotage 

Accusations of greenwashing
On 2 September 2002, Shell Chairman Philip Watts accepted the "Greenwash Lifetime Achievement Award" from the Greenwash Academy's Oscar Green, near the World Summit on Sustainable Development In 2007, British ASA ruled against a Shell ad involving chimneys spewing flowers, which depicted Shell's waste management policies, claiming it was misleading the public about Shell's environmental impact In 2008, the British ASA ruled that Shell had misled the public in an advertisement when it claimed that a $10 billion oil sands project in Alberta, Canada, was a "sustainable energy source" In 2021, Netherlands officials told Shell to stop running a campaign which claimed customers could turn their fuel "carbon neutral" by buying offsets, as it was concluded that this claim was devoid of evidence In December 2022, U S  House Oversight and Reform Committee Chair Carolyn Maloney and U S  House Oversight Environment Subcommittee Chair Ro Khanna sent a memorandum to all House Oversight and Reform Committee members summarizing additional findings from the Committee's investigation into the fossil fuel industry disinformation campaign to obscure the role of fossil fuels in causing global warming, and that upon reviewing internal company documents, accused Shell  along with BP, Chevron Corporation, and ExxonMobil of greenwashing their Paris Agreement carbon neutrality pledges while continuing long-term investment in fossil fuel production and sales, for engaging in a campaign to promote the use of natural gas as a clean energy source and bridge fuel to renewable energy, and of intimidating journalists reporting about the companies' climate actions and of obstructing the Committee's investigation, which ExxonMobil, Shell, and the American Petroleum Institute denied 

Health and safety
A number of incidents over the years led to criticism of Shell's health and safety record, including repeated warnings by the UK Health and Safety Executive about the poor state of the company's North Sea platforms 

Reaction to the War in Ukraine
Shell already had previous experience exiting markets that were subject to sanctions pressure from NATO or EU member states  In particular, in 2013, Shell announced that it was suspending its operations in Syria  On 8 March 2022, Shell announced its intention to phase out all Russian hydrocarbon production and acquisition projects, including crude oil, petroleum products, natural gas and liquefied natural gas (LNG)   In early 2022 the company criticized by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine for its slow response to the war in Ukraine  As of April 2023, Shell still had shares in Russian companies, such as 27 5% in Sakhalin Energy Investment Company (SEIC), a joint venture with Gazprom (50%), Mitsui (12 5%) and Mitsubishi (10%) 

royaldutchshellplc com
This domain name was first registered by a former marketing manager for Royal Dutch Shell plc, Alfred Donovan, and has been used as a "gripe site"  It avoids being an illegal cybersquatter as long as it is non-commercial, active, and no attempt is made to sell the domain name, as determined by WIPO proceedings  In 2005, Donovan said he would relinquish the site to Shell after it "gets rid of all the management he deems responsible for its various recent woes " The site has been recognized by several media outlets for its role as an Internet leak  In 2008 the Financial Times published an article based on a letter published by royaldutchshellplc com, which Reuters and The Times also covered shortly thereafter  On 18 October 2006, the site published an article stating that Shell had for some time been supplying information to the Russian government relating to Sakhalin II  The Russian energy company Gazprom subsequently obtained a 50% stake in the Sakhalin-II project  Other instances where the site has acted as an Internet leak include a 2007 IT outsourcing plan, as well as a 2008 internal memo where CEO Jeroen van der Veer expressed disappointment in the company's share-price performance The gripe site has also been recognized as a source of information regarding Shell by several news sources  In the 2006 Fortune Global 500 rankings, in which Royal Dutch Shell placed third, royaldutchshellplc com was listed alongside shell com as a source of information  In 2007 the site was described as "a hub for activists and disgruntled former employees " A 2009 article called royaldutchshellplc com "the world's most effective adversarial Web site " The site has been described as "an open wound for Shell "

See also
Notes
Passage 4:
Jack Hubbert
Jack Hubbert (19 March 1916 – 5 August 1990) was an Australian rules footballer who played with Essendon in the Victorian Football League (VFL) 

Notes
External links
Jack Hubbert's playing statistics from AFL Tables
Jack Hubbert at AustralianFootball com
Passage 5:
San Ardo, California
San Ardo, formerly known as San Bernardo (Spanish for "St  Bernard"), is an unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) in Monterey County, California, United States  San Ardo is located 18 miles (29 km) southeast of King City at an elevation of 449 feet (137 m)  The population was 392 at the 2020 census, down from 517 in 2010 

History
The owner of the San Bernardo land grant, M J  Brandenstein, laid out the town when the railroad reached his land in 1887  The San Bernardo post office opened in 1886, and changed its name to San Ardo in 1887  The former name of San Bernardo was changed to avoid confusion with San Bernardino, California 

Geography
San Ardo is near the point where the broad Salinas Valley has its southeastern terminus and pinches out within the converging portions of the California Coast Ranges, including the Santa Lucia Mountains on the west and the Cholame Hills and the Diablo Range on the east  U S  Route 101 passes west of the town, leading northwest to 18 miles (29 km) to King City and 66 miles (106 km) to Salinas, the Monterey county seat, while to the southeast it leads 33 miles (53 km) to Paso Robles 
According to the United States Census Bureau, the CDP has a total area of 0 4 square miles (1 0 km2), all of it land  The Salinas River flows northward along the west side of the community 

Climate
This region experiences warm (but not hot) and dry summers, with no average monthly temperatures above 71 6 °F   According to the Köppen Climate Classification system, San Ardo has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate, abbreviated "Csb" on climate maps 

Economy
The huge San Ardo Oil Field is about 5 miles (8 km) south of town   Much of the local economy is based on agriculture (including farming and ranching), and servicing the oil field 

Demographics
2010
At the 2010 census San Ardo had a population of 517  The population density was 1,150 7 inhabitants per square mile (444 3/km2)  The racial makeup of San Ardo was 252 (48 7%) White, 1 (0 2%) African American, 3 (0 6%) Native American, 5 (1 0%) Asian, 0 (0 0%) Pacific Islander, 245 (47 4%) from other races, and 11 (2 1%) from two or more races   Hispanic or Latino of any race were 363 people (70 2%) The whole population lived in households, no one lived in non-institutionalized group quarters and no one was institutionalized 
There were 140 households, 76 (54 3%) had children under the age of 18 living in them, 82 (58 6%) were opposite-sex married couples living together, 16 (11 4%) had a female householder with no husband present, 13 (9 3%) had a male householder with no wife present   There were 6 (4 3%) unmarried opposite-sex partnerships, and 1 (0 7%) same-sex married couples or partnerships  22 households (15 7%) were one person and 9 (6 4%) had someone living alone who was 65 or older  The average household size was 3 69   There were 111 families (79 3% of households); the average family size was 4 13 
The age distribution was 185 people (35 8%) under the age of 18, 66 people (12 8%) aged 18 to 24, 139 people (26 9%) aged 25 to 44, 83 people (16 1%) aged 45 to 64, and 44 people (8 5%) who were 65 or older   The median age was 26 6 years  For every 100 females, there were 112 8 males   For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 129 0 males 
There were 158 housing units at an average density of 351 7 per square mile, of the occupied units 47 (33 6%) were owner-occupied and 93 (66 4%) were rented  The homeowner vacancy rate was 4 1%; the rental vacancy rate was 9 6%   145 people (28 0% of the population) lived in owner-occupied housing units and 372 people (72 0%) lived in rental housing units 

2000
At the 2000 census there were 501 people, 157 households, and 110 families in the CDP   The population density was 1,114 6 inhabitants per square mile (430 3/km2)   There were 167 housing units at an average density of 371 5 per square mile (143 4/km2)   The racial makeup of the CDP was 47 90% White, 0 40% African American, 2 40% Native American, 0 40% Asian, 46 91% from other races, and 2 00% from two or more races  Hispanic or Latino of any race were 65 67% Of the 157 households 41 4% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 47 1% were married couples living together, 10 2% had a female householder with no husband present, and 29 3% were non-families  24 2% of households were one person and 7 6% were one person aged 65 or older   The average household size was 3 19 and the average family size was 3 82 
The age distribution was 35 3% under the age of 18, 11 8% from 18 to 24, 27 7% from 25 to 44, 15 8% from 45 to 64, and 9 4% 65 or older   The median age was 27 years  For every 100 females, there were 106 2 males   For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 114 6 males 
The median household income was $25,208 and the median family income  was $31,500  Males had a median income of $30,417 versus $14,375 for females  The per capita income for the CDP was $11,379   About 15 4% of families and 24 0% of the population were below the poverty line, including 32 5% of those under age 18 and 13 5% of those age 65 or over 
Context 3: Passage 1:
American Horror Story: Freak Show
The fourth season of the American horror anthology television series American Horror Story, subtitled Freak Show, is set in 1952 Jupiter, Florida, telling the story of one of the last remaining freak shows in the United States and their struggle for survival  The ensemble cast includes Sarah Paulson, Evan Peters, Michael Chiklis, Frances Conroy, Denis O'Hare, Emma Roberts, Finn Wittrock, Angela Bassett, Kathy Bates, and Jessica Lange, with all returning from previous seasons, except newcomers Chiklis and Wittrock  The season marks the first not to be strictly anthological, with Lily Rabe, Naomi Grossman, and John Cromwell reprising their roles from the series' second cycle, Asylum 
Created by Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk for cable network FX, the series is produced by 20th Century Fox Television  Freak Show was broadcast between October 8, 2014, to January 21, 2015, consisting of 13 episodes  Like its predecessors, the season was met with positive reviews and consistently strong ratings  The premiere episode attracted a series high of 6 13 million viewers, making it the most viewed episode of the series  It ultimately became FX's most-watched program ever, surpassing its previous installment, Coven  The season garnered a total of twenty Emmy Award nominations, the most for any season of American Horror Story to date, including nominations for Outstanding Limited Series, and six acting nominations for Lange, O'Hare, Wittrock, Paulson, Bassett, and Bates  In addition, Paulson won for Best Supporting Actress in a Movie or Limited Series at the 5th Critics' Choice Television Awards 

Cast and characters
Main
Sarah Paulson as Bette and Dot Tattler
Evan Peters as Jimmy Darling
Michael Chiklis as Dell Toledo
Frances Conroy as Gloria Mott
Denis O'Hare as Stanley
Emma Roberts as Maggie Esmerelda
Finn Wittrock as Dandy Mott
Angela Bassett as Desiree Dupree
Kathy Bates as Ethel Darling
Jessica Lange as Elsa Mars

Special guest stars
Wes Bentley as Edward Mordrake
Celia Weston as Lillian Hemmings
Gabourey Sidibe as Regina Ross
Matt Bomer as Andy
Danny Huston as Massimo Dolcefino
Lily Rabe as Sister Mary Eunice McKee
Neil Patrick Harris as Chester Creb

Recurring
Naomi Grossman as Pepper
Grace Gummer as Penny
Chrissy Metz as Barbara / Ima Wiggles
Malcolm-Jamal Warner as Angus T  Jefferson
Erika Ervin as Amazon Eve
Mat Fraser as Paul the Illustrated Seal
Jyoti Amge as Ma Petite
Rose Siggins as Legless Suzi
Ben Woolf as Meep
Lee Tergesen as Vince
Christopher Neiman as Salty
Drew Rin Varick as Toulouse
PJ Marshall as Detective Colquitt
John Carroll Lynch as Twisty the Clown
Major Dodson as Corey Bachman
Skyler Samuels as Bonnie Lipton
Patti LaBelle as Dora Ross

Guest stars
Jamie Brewer as Marjorie
Mare Winningham as Rita Gayheart
Matthew Glave as Larry Gayheart
David Burtka as Michael Beck
Heather Langenkamp as Female Toulouse
Jerry Leggio as Dr  Bonham
Dalton E  Gray as Mike
Shauna Rappold as Lucy Creb
Kathy Deitch as young Ethel Darling
Edward Gelhaus as young Dell Toledo
Jyoti Amge as Ma Petite
Angela Sarafyan as Alice
John Cromwell as young Arthur Arden

Episodes
Production
Development
In November 2013, FX announced that the show had been renewed for a fourth season  Series co-creator Ryan Murphy hinted that clues about the fourth season would be hidden in the final episodes of the third season  In March 2014, the season was revealed to be set at a carnival, according to co-executive producer/writer Douglas Petrie  It was also revealed that Lange would be playing a role similar to Marlene Dietrich  Murphy revealed that the season would take place in 1950, adding: "If you look historically what happened in the year 1950, there's some more clues in that year  It's a period piece  We try and do the opposite of what we've done before  Jessica Lange has already started practicing her German accent, so I'm very excited!" Murphy indicated that this season drew inspiration from Tod Browning's Freaks and Herk Harvey's Carnival of Souls  This season featured the largest set ever constructed for American Horror Story, with Murphy stating: "We had to build an entire city  We built an entire huge compound, and then we had to build the interior of all those buildings on set  It's all, period  And it's all based on [production designer] Mark Worthington's immaculate research "

Casting
Ryan Murphy confirmed that Jessica Lange would be returning for a fourth season, although said to be in a reduced capacity  She portrayed Elsa Mars, the owner of the freak show  In November 2013, Murphy said he approached Kathy Bates and Angela Bassett to return  Bassett later confirmed in an interview with Access Hollywood that she would be indeed coming back  They portrayed Ethel Darling and Desiree Dupree, respectively  In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Sarah Paulson revealed she would be returning, possibly for a main role, which was later revealed to be the conjoined twins Bette and Dot Tattler  It was announced at the PaleyFest 2014 that the cast members present at the panel would all be returning for the fourth season in some capacity, including Denis O'Hare (Stanley), Emma Roberts (Maggie Esmerelda), Frances Conroy (Gloria Mott), Evan Peters (Jimmy Darling), and Gabourey Sidibe (Regina Ross)  Jamie Brewer was also added to the present roster, although Murphy later indicated Brewer may not appear during the season  She was later confirmed to portray the ventriloquist dummy Marjorie after appearing in a promo for the final episodes  Additionally, Michael Chiklis was announced to play the father of Peters' character and ex-husband of Bates' character, the strongman Dell Toledo  Finn Wittrock was the last lead actor joining the cast  He portrayed the psychopathic Dandy Mott 
In July 2014, TVLine reported that Wes Bentley would appear in the season' two-part Halloween episode as Edward Mordrake  At the Comic-Con 2014, it was announced that John Carroll Lynch would portray one of the central antagonist during the season, Twisty the Clown  In August 2014, R&B singer Patti LaBelle joined the cast for a four-episode story arc as the mother of Sidibe's character, named Dora, the Motts' housekeeper  Also in August 2014, it was revealed that Matt Bomer would  be guest-starring in one episode as Andy, Dell's secret lover  Murphy took to his Twitter account to announce that the world's smallest woman Jyoti Amge has joined the cast as Ma Petite  Murphy had written a role specifically for Coven alum Leslie Jordan, but he did not appear on the show due to scheduling conflicts In September 2014, it was reported that Asylum alum Naomi Grossman would return to portray Pepper, which marked the first time a character appeared in multiple seasons of the series  Lily Rabe also reprised her Asylum character Sister Mary Eunice McKee in the tenth episode, "Orphans"  Mare Winningham made an appearance in the same episode, as Pepper's sister Rita  Neil Patrick Harris guest starred in two episodes as Chester, who takes over the freak show when Elsa leaves for Hollywood  Harris' husband, David Burtka, appeared in the season finale as Elsa's husband 

Filming
At Paley Center for Media's 2014 PaleyFest event, Ryan Murphy announced that the season's filming would take place again in New Orleans, Louisiana, although the show's setting is in Jupiter, Florida  The premiere episode was directed by co-creator Murphy, his first effort since the pilot  Principal photography for the season began on July 15, 2014  Production on the season concluded on December 19, 2014 

Marketing
A video released in July 2014, entitled "Fallen Angel", was reported by many news sources to be an official Freak Show trailer  The video – which featured the American Horror Story title card – was later taken down after FX confirmed it was fan-made  Before the debut of the fan-made video, FX had not released any official trailers concerning the upcoming season  The first official teaser was released on August 20, 2014, entitled "Admit One" As with previous seasons, FX released a series of teaser trailers on the show's YouTube page  FX also used the marketing hashtag #WirSindAlleFreaks in the German language, and its English translation #WeAreAllFreaks 

Reception
Critical response
American Horror Story: Freak Show has received mostly positive reviews from critics  On Metacritic, it scored a 69 out of 100 based on 19 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews"  The review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes reported a 77% approval rating with an average rating of 7 29/10 based on 35 reviews  The website's consensus reads, "Though it may turn off new viewers unaccustomed to its unabashed weirdness, Freak Show still brings the thrills, thanks to its reliably stylish presentation and game cast "

Awards and nominations
In its fourth season, the series was nominated for 76 awards, 21 of which were won 

Home media
Soundtrack
The opening theme for the 4th season of AHS is "Carousel" by Melanie Martinez, a song from her debut album "Cry Baby" 
Every cover song performed in Freak Show was released by 20th Century Fox TV Records in online music stores following the broadcast of the episode in which it appeared, except the cover of David Bowie's "Heroes", performed by Jessica Lange in "Curtain Call "
Passage 2:
Adelaide Malanotte
Adelaide Malanotte (1785 – 31 December 1832) was an Italian operatic contralto who performed in major opera houses in Italy from 1806–1821  She is best known for creating the title role in the world premiere of Gioachino Rossini's Tancredi in 1813  After her marriage, she performed under the name Adelaide Montresor  Her son, Giovanni Battista Montresor, had a career as a tenor and impresario in the United States  From 1812 until her death 20 years later she carried on an extra-marital affair with the poet Luigi Lechi 

Life and career
Born in Verona, Malanotte made her professional opera debut in her native city in 1806  In 1808 she was heard at the Teatro Comunale di Bologna as Ariodante in Simon Mayr's Ginevra di Scozia  In 1809 she performed the role of Enrico in the world premiere of Stefano Pavesi's Elisabetta regina d'Inghilterra at the Teatro Regio di Torino  She returned to that theatre the following year to perform the role of Itaferne in the premiere of Giuseppe Nicolini's Dario Istaspe  She also appeared at the Teatro Valle in Rome in 1810 in the premiere of Nicola Antonio Manfroce's Alzira In 1811 Malanotte made appearances at the opera house in Ravenna and sang in Alzira again at the opera house in Monza  In 1812 she sang at La Fenice in the title role of Gaetano Rossi's Teodoro for the work's world premiere  She was also heard that year in Florence  She had a major triumph at La Fenice in 1813 when she performed the title role in the world premiere of Gioachino Rossini's Tancredi  She later performed that role in Ferrara (1814), Bologna (1814), Livorno (1816), and Naples (1818)  The latter performance was attended by composer Ferdinand Hérold who "did not like the timbre of her voice but thought her style, taste and intonation perfect" Malanotte sang in two more world premieres at La Fenice during her career: Pavesi's Le Danaidi romane (1816, Cajo Valerio) and Francesco Basili's L'ira d'Achille (1817, Achille)  She retired from the stage in 1821  She died in Salò in 1832 at the age of 47 
Passage 3:
Today Is the Day (Lincoln Brewster album)
Today Is the Day is the fourth studio album from contemporary Christian musician Lincoln Brewster  It was released on September 23, 2008 and debuted at No  56 on the Billboard 200  Lincoln has embedded many personal connections into the audio on this record, the foremost of which is his son's unborn heartbeat, setting the tempo in the first seconds of "The Power of Your Name" 

Release
The song "Today is the Day" marked the first all-new studio single released by Brewster since 2002, in his album Amazed  Christianity Today's Russ Breimeier attributed this six-year hiatus in new material to Brewster's new family and to his responsibilities as Worship Arts pastor at Bayside Church nearby Sacramento, California  The song's lyrics were written by Paul Baloche, combining the themes of Bible verses Matthew 6 and Psalm 118  The second track, "Everywhere I Go", was written with Glenn Packiam, a member of Desperation Band 

Track listing
Personnel
Reception
Christianity Today's Russ Breimeier stated that "Today Is the Day" and "Everywhere I Go", the first two tracks of the album, were a "welcome return to form, even if the first two songs aren't the strongest way to start " He said that "Today Is the Day" was neither bad nor boring, but felt it was "on par with the average modern worship song " Russmeier compared the familiarity of "Today Is the Day" with the more experimental songs later in the eponymous album, praising Brewster's ability to experiment over his first few songs Breimeier noted the similarities in style between Brewster's "The Arms of My Savior" and John Mayer's Gravity, and between "This Love" and Mayer's Waiting on the World to Change  He also related the "bluesy gospel-rock"  song "Give Him Praise" to Robert Randolph and the Family Band, praising it for its "thrilling and joyful" feel 
Passage 4:
Hummingbird Heartbeat
"Hummingbird Heartbeat" is a song recorded by American singer Katy Perry for her third studio album, Teenage Dream (2010)  It was written by Perry, Christopher "Tricky" Stewart, Stacy Barthe, and Monte Neuble  Stewart handled the production of the song, while Kuk Harrell produced Perry's vocals  "Hummingbird Heartbeat" was inspired by Perry's boyfriend at the time, Russell Brand Musically, it is a 1980s-styled hard rock song that contains a mixture of elements from rock and electronica  Lyrically, the song compares the feeling of being in love to the speed of a hummingbird's heartbeat  The song received generally positive reviews from music critics, many of whom labeled it as a potential single choice  Upon the release of Teenage Dream, "Hummingbird Heartbeat" charted on the lower regions of the South Korea Gaon International Chart, peaking at 124 

Background and composition
In an interview with YouTube about Teenage Dream in August 2010, Perry revealed that "Hummingbird Heartbeat" was one of the first songs she wrote for the album after she finished her Hello Katy Tour (2009)  When speaking about the song, Perry said she first had the idea for the song while she was in her hometown of Santa Barbara, California:
"I was at breakfast when I saw this hummingbird, and the hummingbird was having breakfast as well      and I don't know if you know this but hummingbirds are supposedly good luck and I was thinking 'How fast does their hearts beat?' , like 'how many beats per minute?' And using that idea for how someone makes you feel, instead of those butterflies, it makes your heart beat really, really fast ""Hummingbird Heartbeat" is a 1980s-styled hard rock song that contains a mixture of elements from rock and electronica  The song encompasses electric guitars, a piano, and synthesizers in its production  The song also features an acoustic drum kit, unlike the other songs in the album 

Reception
Upon the release of the Teenage Dream album, "Hummingbird Heartbeat" charted on the lower regions of the South Korea Gaon International Chart, peaking at 124  Tom Thorogood from MTV gave a positive review of the song, labeling it a strong single choice and calling it a: "nice companion to Teenage Dream, 'the story of the birds and the bees' is more grown up with proper guitars " Jeb Inge of The Journal called "Hummingbird Heartbeat" the strongest song on the album, while Michael Gallucci of Cleveland Scene declared the song an album highlight and compared it to "Teenage Dream", adding that they were both "top-down bangers " Gary Trust from Billboard compared "Hummingbird Heartbeat" to the first five Teenage Dream singles, and felt that if released as a single, would help Perry become the first artist with six number-one singles on the Billboard Hot 100  In July 2013, Robert Copsey and Lewis Corner of Digital Spy said "a full music video and worldwide push would have been more satisfactory" From February 20, 2011 to January 22, 2012, Perry embarked on the California Dreams Tour, where she performed "Hummingbird Heartbeat"  For most of its shows, the song was the second track performed  It preceded "Waking Up in Vegas" and followed "Teenage Dream" 

Credits and personnel
Credits are adapted from the liner notes of Teenage Dream 

Charts
Passage 5:
Eye of the Tiger
"Eye of the Tiger" is a song by American rock band Survivor  It was released as a single from their third album of the same name and was also the theme song for the 1982 film Rocky III, which was released a day before the single  The song was written by Survivor guitarist Frankie Sullivan and keyboardist Jim Peterik, and it was recorded at the request of Rocky III star, writer, and director Sylvester Stallone, after Queen denied him permission to use "Another One Bites the Dust", the song Stallone intended as the Rocky III theme  The version of the song that appears in the film is the demo version of the song  The film version also contained tiger growls, which did not appear on the album version  It features original Survivor singer Dave Bickler on lead vocals  The song is also the title song to the 1986 film of the same name  "Eye of the Tiger" is written in the key of C minor It gained tremendous MTV and radio airplay and topped charts worldwide during 1982  In the United States, it held No  1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart for six consecutive weeks (the band's only song to top the chart) and was the No  2 single of 1982, behind Olivia Newton-John's "Physical"  It spent fifteen consecutive weeks in the top ten, the second-longest run of 1982, behind "Hurts So Good" by John Mellencamp (which was prevented from reaching the top of the Hot 100 by "Eye of the Tiger")  This top ten run is tied with the aforementioned "Another One Bites the Dust" as well as "Physical" as the longest run in the top ten for a number one song during the entire 1980s decade  The band won an award for "Best Rock Performance by Duo or Group with Vocal" at the 25th Annual Grammy Awards  In September 1982, it also peaked at No  1 in the United Kingdom, remaining at the top of the UK Singles Chart for four consecutive weeks  The single sold 956,000 copies in United Kingdom in 1982 It was certified platinum in August 1982 by the RIAA, signifying sales of 2 million vinyl copies  The song had sold over 4 1 million in digital downloads in the United States alone by February 2015  It was voted VH1's 63rd-greatest hard rock song 

Background
In an interview with Songfacts, co-writer Jim Peterik, who shared writing credit with Frankie Sullivan, explained the song's title 

At first, we wondered if calling it "Eye of the Tiger" was too obvious  The initial draft of the song, we started with "It's the eye of the tiger, it's the thrill of the fight, rising up to the spirit of our rival, and the last known survivor stalks his prey in the night, and it all comes down to survival " We were going to call the song "Survival"  In the rhyme scheme, you can tell we had set up "rival" to rhyme with "survival"  At the end of the day, we said, "Are we nuts?" That hook is so strong, and "rival" doesn't have to be a perfect rhyme with the word "tiger"  We made the right choice and went with "Eye of the Tiger" 

Accolades
The song was nominated for the 1982 Academy Award for Best Original Song (the only Oscar nomination for Rocky III), but it lost to "Up Where We Belong" from An Officer and a Gentleman The band won an award for "Best Rock Performance by Duo or Group with Vocal" at the 25th Annual Grammy Awards  The song was also nominated for the 1983 Grammy Award for Song of the Year, but lost to the Willie Nelson hit "Always on My Mind" 

Lawsuits
Newt Gingrich campaign
In 2012, Survivor sued Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich in Illinois federal court for using "Eye of the Tiger" without authorization as entrance music at his political rallies going back as far as 2009  The suit was later settled out of court 

Mitt Romney campaign
The same year Sullivan also demanded that Mitt Romney, also a Republican candidate for president, should stop using "Eye of the Tiger" at his campaign rallies  Romney agreed to drop the song from the campaign's playlists 

Mike Huckabee's campaign
Frankie Sullivan's company Rude Music filed a lawsuit in federal court in Chicago, Illinois, on November 18, 2015, against the former Governor of Arkansas and Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee's campaign organization for using "Eye of the Tiger" at a political rally without permission  The rally took place on September 8, 2015, when Kim Davis, a Kentucky county clerk, was released from jail after spending five days there for refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples in Kentucky  In June 2016 it was reported by CNN that Huckabee had agreed, in a confidential, out-of-court settlement with Sullivan's Rude Music, to pay $25,000 in compensation 

Credits and personnel
Credits adapted from the album Eye of the Tiger 
Dave Bickler – lead vocals
Frankie Sullivan – lead and rhythm guitars
Jim Peterik – grand piano, electric guitar
Stephan Ellis – bass
Marc Droubay – drums

Charts
Weekly charts
Certifications
See also
Passage 6:
Heartbeat (Nina Sky song)
"Heartbeat" is a song by American twins duo Nina Sky  It was released as a second single from their third studio album Nicole and Natalie on June 14, 2012  The song is released independently through their official website  Music video for the song is released on July 27, 2012, four days before the album's release  Later, Heartbeat: Remixes, a remix EP, was also released 

Music video
Its filming as started on May 26, 2012 when they put pictures of filming on Facebook  It was directed by Adam Sauermlich for the second time (he also has directed music video for the song "Day Dreaming")  Concerning the video, the band stated: "We knew we wanted it to be more about the feeling of the song and less about the story  The colors, environment, and everyone dancing in their own element creates this surreal feeling of freedom  It’s just about listening to the rhythm inside you and letting that rhythm guide you " On July 27 the music video was released  It features the sisters prancing through fields during a party with multi-colored smoke and dancing with many people 

Track listing
Digital download"Heartbeat" - 4:20Heartbeat – The Remixes EP"Heartbeat" (AC Slater Remix) - 4:45
"Heartbeat" (Bailey Smalls Remix) - 6:22
"Heartbeat" (The Sizzaandz Remix)
Passage 7:
Lovely to See You
On the Threshold of a Dream is the fourth album by The Moody Blues, released in April 1969 on the Deram label 

Content
The album begins with a poem derived from Cogito, ergo sum and inspired by I have no mouth and I must scream accompanied by electronic sounds, and these sounds also appear at the close of the album –  Most European vinyl pressings of the album continue the sounds into the album's run-out groove, causing them to play continuously until the record player's tonearm is lifted  Tape and CD versions of the album employ a slow fade 

Release
On the Threshold of a Dream was released on 25 April 1969 in the UK and 30 May 1969 in the US  On the Threshold of a Dream provided the Moody Blues with their first British number-one album, and also boosted their American fortunes by becoming their first top-20 album there  It proved to be one of the group's more enduring records in the US, staying in the Billboard LPs chart for more than two and a half years 
The album, along with the subsequent To Our Children's Children's Children, was among the tapes carried by Apollo 15 astronaut Al Worden to the moon In March 2006 the album was completely remastered into SACD format and repackaged with nine extra tracks  In 2008 a remaster for standard audio CD was issued with the same bonus tracks 

Track listing
Personnel
Justin Hayward – vocals, guitars, cello, Mellotron (7)
John Lodge – vocals, bass guitar, cello, double bass
Ray Thomas – vocals, harmonica, flute, tambourine, oboe, piccolo, EMS VCS 3
Graeme Edge – drums, percussion, vocals, EMS VCS 3
Mike Pinder – vocals, Mellotron, Hammond organ, piano, celloAdditional personnelTony Clarke - Producer
Pete Jackson – triangle
Phil Travers – cover artwork
Lionel Bart, David Symonds – sleeve note

Charts
Certifications
Passage 8:
Nina Sky
Nina Sky is an American musical duo consisting of identical twins Nicole and Natalie Albino  Their debut single "Move Ya Body", released from their self-titled debut album in 2004, was a success, reaching number four on the Billboard Hot 100  Their second album, Nicole & Natalie, was released in July 2012  Their third studio album, Brightest Gold, was announced for 2016 release through Tommy Boy Entertainment 

Early lives
The Albino sisters were born on March 13, 1984 to a Puerto Rican family in Queens, with Natalie being the older twin  Their parents later moved to New York City and divorced when the girls were young  The sisters grew up in Astoria, Queens in the Marine Terrace area  As a result of their stepfather working as a DJ, the twins were influenced by different types of music at an early age  By the age of 7, the twins had already written their first song, titled "Sisters"  By 10, they knew that they wanted to become singers  When they were 13, they learned how to DJ and two years later were playing concerts in many clubs 
The twins' parents were very supportive of their daughters' ambitions  Their stepfather provided guitar and drum lessons and took them to auditions  They even performed occasionally on some showcases 

History
Name origin
The sisters wanted to devise a band name of their own, so they used the first two syllables of their names ("Ni" and "Na"), to come up with Nina  They then added Sky, which for them represented "independent twins" 

2003–2006: Nina Sky and mixtapes
In 2003, The Jettsonz (Elijah Wells & Lionel Bermingham) introduced the girls to Cipha Sounds, a hip hop DJ under the Star Trak label owned by The Neptunes (Pharrell and Chad Hugo)  Cipha Sounds was impressed when he heard the duo sing and suggested that they use the "Coolie Dance" riddim  The duo then proceeded to write "Move Ya Body" (alongside The Jettsonz Elijah Wells & Lionel Bermingham, who also produced the record), mixing Caribbean, R&B, and pop rhythms  Eventually, a demo of the song was made  The demo fell into the hands of Eddie O'Loughlin, the president of Next Plateau Entertainment (which is a division of Universal Records)  O'Loughlin signed the twins to a contract and they started working on their debut album  On March 18, 2004, they had their first concert under their current name at Club Demara 
The single "Move Ya Body" was released on April 27, 2004 and reached number four on the Billboard Hot 100, and number 22 on the Billboard Year-End chart  Urban music and rhythmic top 40 stations quickly added the song to their play lists, sending the song up the charts  By July 17, "Move Ya Body" had gone to the top five on both sides of the Atlantic and had also reached the top five of a world combined R&B chart based on the US, UK, Germany, France and Australia  The song had also reached the top 50 of the Australian charts  On June 22, 2004 they released their first self-titled album, featuring Jabba and Betty Wright  The album charted #44 on the US Billboard 200 and number four on the U S  R&B chart  Another single from the album, titled "Turnin' Me On," was released on November 30, 2004  It didn't have the same success as "Move Ya Body", but charted at #5 on Billboard's Bubbling Under Hot 100 chart and was a minor success in France 
Nina Sky continued to work and promote their music  They have contributed to the reggaeton movement with songs such as "Oye Mi Canto", and "Más Maíz" with artist and producer N O R E  They were also a featured artist on Sean Paul's song "Connection" from his album The Trinity 
On October 25, 2005, they released their second mixtape called La Conexión, influenced by Latin music  The album contained the single "Ladies Night" (released April 17, 2006 and featuring Ivy Queen), released with the songs "Loving You" and "Your Time"  It also contained Kassanova's remix of their single "Turnin' Me On " The album features a lot of singers: Pitbull, N O R E , Notch, Richie Rivera, Mackie, and Yaga  It also included Tony Touch's hit "Play That Song," featuring Nina Sky and B-Real, released one month before the mixtape's release  In August 2006, Nina Sky were first featured on the cover of the publication The FADER, in its 39th issue  In 2006, their third mixtape "80's Babies" was released 

2007–2011: Label issues, marriages and The Other Side
Nina Sky collaborated with French singer Kenza Farah for the song "Celle Qu'Il Te Faut", and was released in both French and English versions  The video was shot in New York  Nina Sky were recording their second studio album, Starting Today  The album was originally due on July 27, 2007  Producers include Stereotypes, Bruno & Phil, Neo da Matrix, Ryan Leslie, Salaam Remi, and more  Guests include Rick Ross and others that have yet to be announced  In late 2007, Nina Sky left their label, Universal, and signed with Polo Grounds Music/J Records 
Nina Sky have also put together remixes of popular songs including J  Holiday's, "Bed," Elliott Yamin's, "Wait For You", Cassidy's, "My Drink n My 2 Step, and The-Dream's, "I Love Your Girl"  They have also worked with Brooklyn MC Red Cafe on his street album The Co-Op, and The Alchemist on his song "Key to the City"  In 2008, Nina Sky released two singles, for Starting Today: "Curtain Call" (featuring Rick Ross) and "On Some Bulls**t"  These singles were never a big success  On December 19, 2008 Nina Sky released their first Holiday album, an EP titled Christmas 
Nina Sky appeared on Major Lazer's album, Guns Don't Kill People    Lazers Do  They were in a battle with their record company Polo Grounds Records over the release of their album Starting Today  They have said they want to be released from their contract with the label because the label does not support them  In 2010, Nicole Albino revealed she is lesbian and married female fashion designer, Erin Magee  The couple had been dating since 2009  In an interview with Inked Magazine, Magee revealed that she had her last name legally changed to Nicole's and had gotten a tattoo of the name across her right breast  With a new masculine style, the duo independently released an eight-song EP for digital download in August 2010, entitled The Other Side, which features production from DJ Yonny, Salaam Remi, Kidz in the Hall and many more  A video for the lead single, "You Ain't Got It (Funk That)" was also released  In early 2011 they worked with Creep on their song "You"  On May 16, they released the music video on their official website 

2012–present: Nicole and Natalie, motherhood, new label contract and Brightest Gold
On February 2, 2012, Nina Sky released the lead single from their upcoming third studio album, Nicole and Natalie  The single, entitled "Day Dreaming", was produced by Beau Vallis  The video for the song, directed by Adam Sauermilch, was released on February 28  On June 14, the band released "Heartbeat", the second single from the new album  A month later, on July 27, the video for "Heartbeat" was released  Concerning the video, the band stated: "We knew we wanted it to be more about the feeling of the song and less about the story  The colors, environment, and everyone dancing in their own element creates this surreal feeling of freedom  It’s just about listening to the rhythm inside you and letting that rhythm guide you " On July 31 the album was released  Album had electro, house, pop and R&B elements in songs  The album failed to charts because of independent release  On October 14, 2012, Nina Sky released third and final single from their album "Comatose"  In 2012, they finally signed out from recording label Polo Grounds Music/J Records 
On June 9, 2012, Nina Sky performed at OUT/LOUD Queer Women's Music Festival in Eugene, Oregon along with artists such as Krudas Cubensi, Tender Forever and Andrea Gibson  Later, on November 15, Nina Sky hosted Women in Business' fourth annual "Dress for Success" fashion show at Baruch College  On March 11, 2013, group released their sixth mixtape, titled Valentine's Day, hosted by Miss KL  On December 12, group released their new promotional single titled "Overtime" for digital download  The song was produced by Slimmy Neutron, who produced their album Nicole and Natalie, released in 2012 
On March 9, 2014, Natalie Albino gave birth to her son, Max  In the same month, Nicole released her first solo project, a mixtape album titled Currently Vol  1 which contained her remixes to many popular songs by singers such as Madonna, Beyoncé, R  Kelly, Mariah Carey, etc  On April 17 they announced a new single via their official Facebook site  One day later, their new song "Stoners", featuring Smoke DZA was out  Single had better success than the previous one, released in 2013



ground_truth: ease of use and enhanced support for Plug and Play

prompt_front: Answer the question based on the given passages. Only give me the answer and do not output any other words.

Question: What did M. King Hubbert's employer announce it was in the process of doing in April 2010?

The following are given passages.
Context 4: Passage 1:
Standing Rules of the United States Senate
The Standing Rules of the Senate are the parliamentary procedures adopted by the United States Senate that govern its procedure  The Senate's power to establish rules derives from Article One, Section 5 of the United States Constitution: "Each House may determine the rules of its proceedings    "
There are currently forty-five rules, with the latest revision adopted on January 24, 2013  The most recent addition of a new rule occurred in 2006, when The Legislative Transparency and Accountability Act of 2006 introduced a 44th rule on earmarks  The stricter rules are often waived by unanimous consent 

Outline of rules
Quorum
The Constitution provides that a majority of the Senate constitutes a quorum to do business  Under the rules and customs of the Senate, a quorum is always assumed to be present unless a quorum call explicitly demonstrates otherwise  Any senator may request a quorum call by "suggesting the absence of a quorum"; a clerk then calls the roll of the Senate and notes which members are present  In practice, senators almost always request quorum calls not to establish the presence of a quorum, but to temporarily delay proceedings without having to adjourn the session  Such a delay may serve one of many purposes; often, it allows Senate leaders to negotiate compromises off the floor or to allow senators time to come to the Senate floor to make speeches without having to constantly be present in the chamber while waiting for the opportunity  Once the need for a delay has ended, any senator may request unanimous consent to rescind the quorum call 

Debate
The Senate is presided over by the Presiding Officer, either the President of the Senate (the Vice President) or more often the President pro tempore (in special cases the Chief Justice presides)  During debates, senators may speak only if called upon by the Presiding Officer  The Presiding Officer is, however, required to recognize the first senator who rises to speak  Thus, the Presiding Officer has little control over the course of debate  Customarily, the majority leader and minority leader are accorded priority during debates, even if another senator rises first  All speeches must be addressed to the Presiding Officer, using the words "Mr  President" or "Madam President"  Only the Presiding Officer may be directly addressed in speeches; other members must be referred to in the third person  In most cases, senators refer to each other not by name, but by state, using forms such as "the senior senator from Virginia" or "the junior senator from California" 
There are very few restrictions on the content of speeches, and there is no requirement that speeches be germane to the matter before the Senate 
The Senate Rules provide that no senator may make more than two speeches on a motion or bill on the same legislative day (a legislative day begins when the Senate convenes and ends when it adjourns; hence, it does not necessarily coincide with the calendar day)  The length of these speeches is not limited by the rules; thus, in most cases, senators may speak for as long as they please  Often, the Senate adopts unanimous consent agreements imposing time limits  In other cases (for example, for the budget process), limits are imposed by statute  In general, however, the right to unlimited debate is preserved 

Filibuster
The filibuster is an obstructionary tactic used to defeat bills and motions by prolonging debate indefinitely  A filibuster may entail, but does not actually require, long speeches, dilatory motions, and an extensive series of proposed amendments  The longest filibuster speech in the history of the Senate was delivered by Strom Thurmond, who spoke for over twenty-four hours in an unsuccessful attempt to block the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1957  The Senate may end a filibuster by invoking cloture  In most cases, cloture requires the support of three-fifths of the Senate  Cloture is invoked very rarely, particularly because bipartisan support is usually necessary to obtain the required supermajority  If the Senate does invoke cloture, debate does not end immediately; instead, further debate is limited to thirty additional hours unless increased by another three-fifths vote 

Closed session
On occasion, the Senate may go into what is called a secret or closed session  During a closed session, the chamber doors are closed and the galleries are completely cleared of anyone not sworn to secrecy, not instructed in the rules of the closed session, or not essential to the session  Closed sessions are rare and are usually held only under certain circumstances in which the Senate is discussing sensitive subject matter, such as information critical to national security, private communications from the president, or discussions of Senate deliberations during impeachment trials  Any Senator has the right to call a closed session as long as the motion is seconded 

Voting
When debate concludes, the motion in question is put to a vote  In many cases, the Senate votes by voice vote; the presiding officer puts the question, and Members respond either "Aye!" (in favor of the motion) or "No!" (against the motion)  The presiding officer then announces the result of the voice vote  Any senator, however, may challenge the presiding officer's assessment and request a recorded vote  The request may be granted only if it is seconded by one-fifth of the senators present  In practice, however, senators second requests for recorded votes as a matter of courtesy  When a recorded vote is held, the clerk calls the roll of the Senate in alphabetical order; each senator responds when their name is called  Senators who miss the roll call may still cast a vote as long as the recorded vote remains open  The vote is closed at the discretion of the presiding officer but must remain open for a minimum of fifteen minutes  If the vote is tied, the Vice President, if present, is entitled to a casting vote  If the Vice President is not present, however, the motion is resolved in the negative 

Committees
Tasks in the Senate are divided among sixteen standing committees, four select committees, four joint committees, and occasionally temporary committees  Senate rules establish the policy jurisdictions of each committee; for example, the Committee on Foreign Relations deals with all matters relating to foreign policy  Committees act, in effect, as "little legislatures", monitoring ongoing governmental operations, identifying issues suitable for legislative review, gathering and evaluating information, and recommending courses of action to their parent body in matters relating to their jurisdiction  Senate rules give committees significant gatekeeping authority over legislation that falls under their jurisdiction, with proposed bills submitted to the relevant committee, which can hold hearings, "mark up" bills, consolidate bills into a "clean bill", or ignore the bill altogether (there exist some workarounds for Senators to circumvent committees, but in general Senators work through the committee system) The size of each standing committee is established by Senate rules  The makeup of committees are established through inter-party negotiations before each new Congress, with the percentage of a party's representation within the Senate determining the percentage of seats it will have on each committee 

Reconciliation
Legislation affecting spending, revenues, and the federal debt limit is governed under a special rules process called "Reconciliation" that prohibits filibusters by limiting debate to twenty hours  Congress can pass up to three reconciliation bills per year, with each bill addressing one of the topics of reconciliation (revenue, spending, or the debt limit)  However, if Congress passes a reconciliation bill affecting more than one of those topics, it cannot pass another reconciliation bill later in the year affecting one of the topics addressed by the previous reconciliation bill  In practice, reconciliation bills have usually been passed once per year at most  Reconciliation cannot be used to enact or rescind discretionary spending (which is controlled through the annual appropriations process) or adjust Social Security spending, and is limited by the Byrd Rule, which allows senators to block provisions that are "extraneous" to spending, revenues, or the debt limit Reconciliation was created by the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, and significantly altered with the introduction of the Byrd Rule in 1985 (amended in 1990)  Originally infrequently used (it did not see first use until 1980) 

Nominations
Selected public positions in the United States are appointed by the president but require Senate approval  Senate rule XXXI governs the Senate process for considering the president's nominations 
For most positions the nomination is passed first to a Senate committee for review  Generally it is the Senate committee with jurisdiction over the topic or department related to the position to be filled A public hearing by the committee is possible  Historically about half of civilian appointees were approved without a hearing  After consideration, the committee can report a favorable recommendation, or an unfavorable recommendation, or it can report no recommendation  It can also fail to act  To simplify the process, and with the support of the committee, the Senate by unanimous consent might discharge a nomination from the committee without the committee having acted It is up to the leadership of the Senate to then place the nomination on the Senate calendar for a vote in executive session  Some nominations are passed by unanimous consent  The leadership may delay putting a nomination on the calendar, in which case it may not be acted upon 

Nomination Time Limit
Paragraph 6 of rule XXXI specifies that if final action has not been taken before Congress adjourns the nomination is returned to the President  By the same rule nominations are returned when the Senate goes into recess for more than 30 days  However, in modern practice some nominations may stay active over long recesses if the Senate holds pro forma sessions during recess or agrees to suspend the rule by unanimous consent  When a nomination is returned without action, the president may nominate a different person or re-nominate the same person 

Rules by number
There are currently forty-four Standing Rules of the Senate:
SR Rule I: Appointment of a Senator to the Chair
SR Rule II: Presentation of Credentials and Questions of Privilege
SR Rule III: Oaths
SR Rule IV: Commencement of Daily Sessions
SR Rule V: Suspension and Amendment of the Rules
SR Rule VI: Quorum – Absent Senators May Be Sent For
SR Rule VII: Morning Business
SR Rule VIII: Order of Business
SR Rule IX: Messages
SR Rule X: Special Orders
SR Rule XI: Papers – Withdrawal, Printing, Reading of, and Reference
SR Rule XII: Voting Procedure
SR Rule XIII: Reconsideration
SR Rule XIV: Joint Resolutions, and Preambles Thereto
SR Rule XV: Amendments and Resolutions
SR Rule XVI: Appropriations and Amendments to General Appropriation Bills
SR Rule XVII: Reference to Committees; Motions to Discharge; Reports of Committees; and Hearings Available
SR Rule XVIII: Business Continued from Session to Session
SR Rule XIX: Debate
SR Rule XX: Questions for Order
SR Rule XXI: Session with Closed Doors
SR Rule XXII: Precedence of Motions
SR Rule XXIII: Privilege of the Floor
SR Rule XXIV: Appointments of Committee
SR Rule XXV: Standing Committees
SR Rule XXVI: Committee Procedure
SR Rule XXVII: Committee Staff
SR Rule XXVIII: Conference Committees; Reports; Open Meetings
SR Rule XXIX: Executive Sessions
SR Rule XXX: Executive Session – Proceedings on Treaties
SR Rule XXXI: Executive Session – Proceedings on Nominations
SR Rule XXXII: The President Furnished with Copies of Record Executive Sessions
SR Rule XXXIII: Senate Chamber – Senate Wing of the Capitol
SR Rule XXXIV: Public Financial Disclosure
SR Rule XXXV: Gifts
SR Rule XXXVI: Outside Earned Income
SR Rule XXXVII: Conflict of Interest
SR Rule XXXVIII: Prohibition of Unofficial Office Accounts
SR Rule XXXIX: Foreign Travel
SR Rule XL: Franking Privilege and Radio and Television Studios
SR Rule XLI: Political Fund Activity; Definitions
SR Rule XLII: Employment Practices
SR Rule XLIII: Representation by Members
SR Rule XLIV: Congressionally Directed Spending and Related ItemsThe latest change was the introduction in 2006 of a 44th rule on earmarks, by the Legislative Transparency and Accountability Act 
Passage 2:
Sulaiman Mohammed Nazif
Sulaiman Mohammed Nazif (born 14 April 1970) is a Nigerian politician, who represented the Bauchi North constituency of Bauchi State, Nigeria, in the Senate of Nigeria  He took office on 29 May 2007  He was elected on the Action Congress (AC) platform Nazif attended the Federal Polytechnic Staff School, Bauchi (1981–1983), the Nigerian Military School (1983–1988) and Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, graduating in 1990 as an Engineer 
After taking his seat in the Senate, he was appointed to committees on Women and Youth, Water Resources, Solid Minerals, Local & Foreign Debts, Land Transport (Vice Chairman), Drugs and Narcotics, Anti Corruption and Communications 
He was also appointed the Publicity Secretary of the Northern Senators Forum He was nominated to go to the U S  to witness the inauguration of President Barack Obama  However, when he arrived at Washington Dulles International Airport he was told his visa was not in order and was not allowed to enter the country 
In a mid-term evaluation of Senators in May 2009, ThisDay said that he had not sponsored any bill but co-sponsored some bills, including the Nigerian Railway Corporation (Repeal and Reenactment) Bill 2008  He co-sponsored fifteen motions and made brilliant contributions to debates in plenary Nazif was a contender to become governor of Bauchi State in the 28 April 2011 elections, running on the All Nigeria People's Party (ANPP) platform  He came fourth with 102,093 votes, losing to the incumbent Governor Isa Yuguda, who won 771,503 votes 

Incomplete project controversy
In January 2022, WikkiTimes reported on several incomplete constituency projects from Nazif's term in office, specifically two nonexistent skills acquisition centres that cost over ₦41 million in public funds  One "centre" was entirely on paper with no evidence of any construction while the other "centre" was simply an abandoned building that had never been utilized  The investigation also found that the contract awarding process did not follow legally required procedures and the companies given the construction contracts did not have any physical or recent presence  Nazif did not respond to requests for comment 
Passage 3:
Marriage Protection Act
The Marriage Protection Act of 2004 (MPA) was a bill introduced in the United States Congress in 2003 to amend the federal judicial code to deny federal courts jurisdiction to hear or decide any question pertaining to the interpretation of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) or the MPA itself  Introduced as H R  3313 during the 108th Congress, the Republican-controlled House passed it in 2004, but it did not pass the Senate 

Text
The version approved by the House of Representatives would have added this text as Section 1632 to Chapter 99 in Part IV of Title 28 of the United States Code (28 U S C  § 1632), governing the judiciary and judicial procedures: 

No court created by Act of Congress shall have any jurisdiction, and the Supreme Court shall have no appellate jurisdiction, to hear or decide any question pertaining to the interpretation of, or the validity under the Constitution of, section 1738C or this section  
28 U S C  § 1738C forbade (prior to the Respect for Marriage Act) requiring any state or any other political subdivision of the United States to credit as a marriage a same-sex relationship treated as marriage in another state or equivalent government 

Major actions
On October 16, 2003, the bill was introduced in the House of Representatives by John Hostettler (R–Indiana) and immediately referred to the House Committee on the Judiciary  The bill was co-sponsored by Ron Paul of Texas (R–Texas)  The legislation passed the House by a vote of 233 to 194  The Senate referred the bill to the Senate Judiciary Committee on September 7, 2004, where it died in committee 
Hostettler reintroduced the legislation as H R  1100 in the 109th Congress on March 3, 2005  It had 76 co-sponsors  It again died in committee  Dan Burton (R–Indiana) reintroduced the legislation as H R  724 in the 110th United States Congress, on January 30, 2007, with 50 cosponsors  It died when the 110th Congress ended  Burton reintroduced it again in the 111th Congress on March 3, 2009 as H R  1269 and it died in committee  Dan Burton reintroduced it in the 112th Congress on March 2, 2011 as H R  875 with 26 cosponsors  It was referred to the Subcommittee on Courts, Commercial and Administrative Law and the Subcommittee on Constitution 

Analysis
The proposed legislation raises Constitutional questions in relation to the Full Faith and Credit Clause  Joanna Grossman, writing for FindLaw, emphasized "the need for the federal courts to weigh in", rather than for states to continue making a public-policy exception when deciding the status of same-sex relationships independently of the decisions of other states, as states have been permitted to do in the case of incestuous marriages  The Act was designed to protect DOMA by prohibiting federal courts from hearing cases like that of Nancy Wilson, who sued to have her relationship with Paula Schoenwether treated as marriage in Florida because it had been treated as marriage in Massachusetts  In that case, the federal court upheld DOMA The U S  Constitution permits Congress to make exceptions to court jurisdiction  The degree to which such exceptions may undermine federal separation of powers, the Equal Protection Clause, or the Due Process Clause, may render the Marriage Protection Act unconstitutional, according to Grossman 

See also
Jurisdiction stripping
Federal Marriage Amendment
Defense of Marriage Act (2004)
LGBT rights in the United States
We the People Act
Respect for Marriage Act (2022)
Passage 4:
2014 United States Senate elections
The 2014 United States Senate elections were held on November 4, 2014  A total of 36 seats in the 100-member U S  Senate were contested  Thirty-three Class 2 seats were contested for regular six-year terms to be served from January 3, 2015, to January 3, 2021, and three Class 3 seats were contested in special elections due to Senate vacancies  The elections marked 100 years of direct elections of U S  senators  Going into the elections, 21 of the contested seats were held by the Democratic Party, while 15 were held by the Republican Party 
The Republicans regained the majority of the Senate in the 114th Congress, which started in January 2015; the Republicans had not controlled the Senate since January 2007  They needed a net gain of at least six seats to obtain a majority and were projected by polls to do so  On election night, they held all of their seats and gained nine Democratic-held seats  Republicans defeated five Democratic incumbents: Mark Begich of Alaska lost to Dan Sullivan, Mark Pryor of Arkansas lost to Tom Cotton, Mark Udall of Colorado lost to Cory Gardner, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana lost to Bill Cassidy, and Kay Hagan of North Carolina lost to Thom Tillis  Republicans also picked up another four open seats in Iowa, Montana, South Dakota, and West Virginia  Democrats did not pick up any Republican-held seats, but they did hold an open seat in Michigan 
This was the second consecutive election held in a president's sixth year where control of the Senate changed hands, the first being in 2006  This was also the first time that the Democrats lost control of the Senate in a sixth-year midterm since 1918  With a total net gain of nine seats, the Republicans made the largest Senate gain by any party since 1980  This is also the first election since 1980 in which more than two incumbent Democratic Senators were defeated by their Republican challengers  Days after the election, the United States Election Project estimated that 36 4% of eligible voters voted, 4% lower than the 2010 elections, and possibly the lowest turnout rate since the 1942 election As of 2022, this remains the last time that a Republican has won a U S  Senate election in Colorado  This is the most recent Senate elections where any Republican flipped an open Democratic-held seat  This is also the most recent election where the party winning control of the Senate won the popular vote  It also remains the last time that the president's party has suffered a net loss of Senate seats in a midterm 

Partisan composition
For a majority, Republicans needed at least 51 seats  Democrats could have retained a majority with 48 seats (assuming the two Independents continued to caucus with them) because the Democratic Vice President Joe Biden would become the tie-breaker  From 1915 to 2013, control of the U S  Senate flipped in 10 of 50 cycles, or 20% of the time  Republicans had lost ground in the 2012 elections, leading to an internal fight among the Republican leadership over the best strategies and tactics for the 2014 Senate races  By December 2013, eight of the twelve incumbent Republicans running for re-election saw Tea Party challenges  However, Republican incumbents won every primary challenge  Although Democrats saw some opportunities for pickups, the combination of Democratic retirements and numerous Democratic seats up for election in swing states and red states gave Republicans hopes of taking control of the Senate  7 of the 21 states with Democratic seats up for election in 2014 had voted for Republican Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential election compared to just 1 state with a Republican senator that voted for Barack Obama  Democrats also faced the lower voter turnout that accompanies mid-term elections Poll aggregation website FiveThirtyEight gave the Republican Party a 60% chance of taking control of the Senate as of September 28  Another poll aggregation website, RealClearPolitics, gave the Republican Party a net gain of 7 seats  Due to the closeness of several races, it was initially believed that Senate control might not be decided on election night  Both Louisiana and Georgia were seen as competitive, and both states require a run-off election if no candidate takes a majority of the vote 
Two independent candidates (in Kansas and South Dakota) refused to commit to caucusing with either party  In the final months of the race, polls showed them with viable chances of winning, leading some analysts to speculate on the possibility of an "Independent caucus" that could also include Maine Senator Angus King and possibly Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders  However, no Independent won a Senate race in 2014, and King and Sanders continue to caucus with the Democratic Party following the 2014 election 
By midnight ET, most major networks projected that the Republicans would take control of the Senate  The party held all three competitive Republican-held seats (Kentucky, Kansas, and Georgia), and defeated incumbent Democrats in North Carolina, Colorado, and Arkansas  Combined with the pick-ups of open seats in Iowa, Montana, South Dakota, and West Virginia, the Republicans made a net gain of 7 seats before the end of the night  Republicans defeated three incumbent Democrats, a task the party had not accomplished since the 1980 election  Five of the seven confirmed pickups were in states that voted for Mitt Romney in 2012, but two of the seats that Republicans won represent states that voted for Barack Obama in 2012 (Colorado and Iowa)  Of the three races that were not called by the end of election night, Alaska and Virginia were still too close to call, while Louisiana held a December 6 run-off election  Virginia declared Democrat Mark Warner the winner of his race by a narrow margin over Republican Ed Gillespie on November 7, and Alaska declared Dan Sullivan the winner against Democratic incumbent Mark Begich a week later, on November 12  Republican Bill Cassidy defeated Democratic incumbent Mary Landrieu in the Louisiana runoff on December 6 

Election spending
Altogether, at least $3 67 billion was spent by candidates, parties, committees and outside groups in the 2014 election  Spending on the 2014 Senate elections by outside groups (i e , organizations other than a candidate's campaign, such as super PACs and "dark money" nonprofit groups) more than doubled from 2010  In the 10 competitive races for which data was available, outside groups accounted for 47% of spending, candidates accounted for 41% of spending, and parties accounted for 12% of spending  The Senate race with the most outside spending was in North Carolina, at $80 million, a new record The top outside spenders in the 11 most competitive Senate races were the following:

On the Republican side, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, Crossroads GPS, U S  Chamber of Commerce, Ending Spending Action Fund, Freedom Partners Action Fund, American Crossroads, and the NRA Political Victory Fund 
On the Democratic side, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, Senate Majority PAC, and NextGen Climate Action Committee 

Results summary
The Republican Party made a net gain of nine U S  Senate seats in the 2014 elections Going into the elections, there were 53 Democratic, 45 Republican and 2 independent senators (both of whom caucus with the Democrats)  In all, there were 36 elections: 33 senators were up for election this year as class 2 senators, and 3 faced special elections (all from Class 3)  Of all these seats, 21 were held by Democrats and 15 were held by Republicans 

Colored shading indicates party with largest share of that row 

Source: Clerk of the U S  House of Representatives

Change in composition
Before the elections
After the elections
Gains and losses
Retirements
Four Democrats and two Republicans retired instead of seeking re-election 

Resignations
One Republican resigned four years into his six-year term 

Nomination withdrawn
One Democrat was originally to seek election for a full 6-year term in office but withdrew 

Defeats
Five Democrats sought re-election but lost in the general election 

Race summaries
Special elections during the preceding Congress
In these special elections, the winners were elected during 2014 and seated before January 3, 2015 — except that one was seated on January 3, 2015, the effective date of the predecessor's resignation 

Elections leading to the next Congress
In these general elections, the winners were elected for the term beginning January 3, 2015; ordered by state 
All of the elections involved the Class 2 seats 

Closest races
In seven races the margin of victory was under 10% 

Final pre-election predictions
Predicted probability of Republican takeover
Several websites used poll aggregation and psephology to estimate the probability that the Republican Party would gain enough seats to take control of the Senate 

Predictions
Republicans needed to win at least six in order to gain a majority of 51 seats and Democrats needed to win at least seven in order to hold a majority of 50 seats (including the two independents who currently caucus with the Democrats) and the tie-breaking vote of Vice President Joe Biden 

Alabama
Three-term incumbent Republican Jeff Sessions had been re-elected with 63% of the vote in 2008  Sessions sought re-election  Democrat Victor Sanchez Williams ran against Sessions as a write-in candidate  Sessions won with 97 3 percent of the vote against assorted write-in candidates 

Alaska
One-term incumbent Democrat Mark Begich had been first elected with 48% of the vote in 2008, defeating six-term Senator Ted Stevens by 3,953 votes (a margin of 1 25%)  Begich was 52 years old in 2014 and was seeking re-election to a second term  Stevens, who would have been almost 91 years old at the time of the election, had already filed for a rematch back in 2009, but was killed in a plane crash the following year 
Republican Lieutenant Governor Mead Treadwell, 2010 nominee Joe Miller, State Natural Resources Commissioner Daniel S  Sullivan, and Air Force veteran John Jaramillo ran for the GOP nomination  In the August 19 primary, Sullivan won the Republican nomination with 40% and defeated Begich in the general election 

Arkansas
Two-term incumbent Democrat Mark Pryor had been re-elected with 80% of the vote without Republican opposition in 2008  Pryor was running for a third term Freshman Representative Tom Cotton of Arkansas's 4th congressional district was the Republican nominee  In the general election, Cotton defeated Pryor 

Colorado
One-term incumbent Democrat Mark Udall had been elected with 53% of the vote in 2008  Udall was running for re-election Congressman Cory Gardner of Colorado's 4th congressional district was the Republican nominee; his late entry into the race caused numerous Republicans to withdraw their candidacies  Gaylon Kent was the Libertarian Party nominee  Unity Party of America founder and National Chairman Bill Hammons was the Unity Party nominee 

Delaware
Democrat Chris Coons won in the 2010 United States Senate special election in Delaware caused by Joe Biden's election as Vice President, winning by a 57% to 41% margin  Coons sought re-election  His Republican opponent was engineer Kevin Wade, whom Coons went on to defeat in the general election 

Georgia
Two-term incumbent Republican Saxby Chambliss had been re-elected with 57% of the vote in 2008 in a runoff election with former state Representative Jim Martin; Georgia requires run-off elections when no Senate candidate wins over 50% of the vote  Chambliss did not seek a third term Political activist Derrick Grayson, Representatives Jack Kingston of Georgia's 1st congressional district, Paul Broun of Georgia's 10th congressional district, and Phil Gingrey of Georgia's 11th congressional district all declared their candidacy for the Republican nomination, as did former Secretary of State Karen Handel  In the May 20 primary, no candidate received a majority of votes, so the top two candidates faced each other in a runoff; Perdue narrowly won against Kingston in the runoff primary election on July 22 with 50 9% of the vote Michelle Nunn, CEO of Points of Light and the daughter of former U S  Senator Sam Nunn, won the Democratic nomination  Other declared Democratic candidates included former State Senator Steen Miles, psychiatrist Branko Radulovacki, and former US Army Ranger Todd Robinson  Amanda Swafford, a former Flowery Branch, Georgia, city councilwoman, received the Libertarian Party of Georgia nomination 

Hawaii (special)
Daniel Inouye, the second longest serving United States Senator in U S  history, died on December 17, 2012, after respiratory complications  Hawaii law allows the Governor of Hawaii, to appoint an interim Senator "who serves until the next regularly-scheduled general election, chosen from a list of three prospective appointees that the prior incumbent's political party submits"  Governor Neil Abercrombie did so, selecting Lieutenant Governor Brian Schatz to fill the Senate seat  Inouye had been re-elected in 2010 with 72% of the vote  Schatz was challenged in the Democratic primary by Congresswoman Colleen Hanabusa of Hawaii's 1st congressional district, who Inouye had hoped would be his successor  Schatz defeated Hanabusa in the primary with 48 5% to 47 8% Campbell Cavasso, former State Representative and nominee for the U S  Senate in 2004 and 2010, was the Republican nominee 

Idaho
One-term incumbent Republican Jim Risch had been elected with 58% of the vote in 2008  Risch sought a second term Boise attorney Nels Mitchell was the Democratic nominee 

Illinois
Three-term incumbent and Senate Majority Whip Democrat Dick Durbin had been re-elected with 68% of the vote in 2008  Durbin ran for a fourth term State Senator Jim Oberweis was the Republican nominee  He defeated primary challenger Doug Truax with 56% of the vote 

Iowa
Five-term incumbent Democrat Tom Harkin had been re-elected with 63% of the vote in 2008  Harkin announced on January 26, 2013, that he would not seek a sixth term  Congressman Bruce Braley was the Democratic nominee State Senator Joni Ernst was the Republican nominee Doug Butzier, who was the Libertarian Party's nominee, died in a plane crash on October 13, 2014, but still appeared on the ballot 

Kansas
Three-term incumbent Republican Pat Roberts had been re-elected with 60% of the vote in 2008  Roberts sought a fourth term  He faced a primary challenge from radiologist Milton Wolf, a conservative Tea Party supporter  Roberts defeated Wolf in the Republican primary by 48% to 41%  Shawnee County District Attorney Chad Taylor won the Democratic nomination  Randall Batson from Wichita was on the general election ballot as a Libertarian  Also, Greg Orman qualified for the ballot as an independent On September 3, Taylor announced he was dropping out of the election, leading to speculation that Democrats would support Orman's candidacy  On September 18, the Kansas Supreme Court ruled that Taylor's name had to be removed from the ballot 

Kentucky
Five-term Republican incumbent and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell had been re-elected with 53% of the vote in 2008  McConnell sought re-election to a sixth term  McConnell defeated businessman Matt Bevin in the Republican primary on May 20 Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes, with support from much of Kentucky's Democratic leadership, won the Democratic primary  Actress Ashley Judd publicly claimed to be considering a run for the Democratic nomination, but ultimately decided against it Ed Marksberry pursued an independent bid after dropping out of the Democratic field in September 2013 

Louisiana
Three-term incumbent Democrat Mary Landrieu had been re-elected with 52% of the vote in 2008  Landrieu ran for a fourth term Louisiana uses a unique jungle primary system that eschews primaries in favor of run-off elections between the top two candidates; this run-off can be avoided if the winning candidate receives over 50% of the vote  Democrats Wayne Ables, Vallian Senegal, and William Waymire ran against Landrieu in the election, as did Republicans Bill Cassidy (representative of Louisiana's 6th congressional district), Thomas Clements (small business owner), and retired Air Force Colonel Rob Maness  Electrical Engineer Brannon McMorris ran as a Libertarian Because Republican candidate Maness took almost 14% of the votes in the primary, there was a runoff election on December 6, 2014, between Landrieu (42%) and Cassidy (41%)  Cassidy won the runoff with 56% of the vote 

Maine
Three-term incumbent Republican Susan Collins was seeking a fourth term  Shenna Bellows, former executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Maine, was the Democratic nominee 

Massachusetts
Five-term incumbent and 2004 Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry had been re-elected with 66% of the vote in 2008  Kerry resigned in early 2013 to become U S  Secretary of State  Governor Deval Patrick appointed Democrat Mo Cowan to the seat  Democratic Congressman Ed Markey beat Republican Gabriel E  Gomez in the June 25, 2013 special election by a 55% to 45% margin  Markey had served the remainder of Kerry's term before running for re-election to a first full term in 2014  Hopkinton Town Selectman Brian Herr was the Republican nominee 

Michigan
Six-term incumbent Senator and Chairman of the Armed Services Committee Democrat Carl Levin, the longest-serving senator in Michigan's history, had been re-elected with 63% of the vote in 2008  Levin announced on March 7, 2013, that he would not seek re-election 
Three term Democratic Representative Gary Peters of MI-14 was the Democratic nominee  He defeated Republican former Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land who was unopposed for the Republican nomination 

Minnesota
One-term incumbent Democrat Al Franken unseated one-term Republican Norm Coleman by 312 votes in a contested three-way race with 42% of the vote in 2008; the third candidate in the race, former Senator Dean Barkley of the Independence Party of Minnesota, won 15% of the vote  Franken sought re-election  State Representative Jim Abeler, St  Louis County Commissioner Chris Dahlberg, co-CEO of Lazard Middle Market Mike McFadden, bison farmer and former hair salon owner Monti Moreno, state Senator Julianne Ortman, and U S  Navy reservist Phillip Parrish ran for the Republican nomination  McFadden won the Republican primary and was the Republican nominee in the general election Hannah Nicollet of the Independence Party of Minnesota also ran 

Mississippi
Six-term incumbent Republican Thad Cochran, re-elected with 62% of the vote in 2008, ran for re-election  Cochran was the last incumbent Senator to declare his plans, leading to widespread speculation that he might announce his retirement Tea Party candidate Chris McDaniel, a conservative Mississippi state senator, ran against Cochran in the Republican primary  Neither McDaniel nor Cochran was able to get 50% of the vote in the first round of the primary, so a runoff election was held June 24  Cochran won the runoff election by 51% to 49%, with the help of Democratic voters eligible to vote in the state's open primaries who chose Cochran as their preferred Republican  McDaniel filed a lawsuit to challenge the results of the run-off, but the challenge was rejected on appeal by the Supreme Court of Mississippi Former Congressman Travis Childers was the Democratic nominee 

Montana
Six-term incumbent Democrat Max Baucus, the longest-serving senator in Montana's history, had been re-elected with 73% of the vote in 2008



ground_truth: trying to find a potential buyer for all of its operations in Finland

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prompt_front: Answer the question based on the given passages. Only give me the answer and do not output any other words.

Question: What is the performer of Heartbeat named after?

The following are given passages.
Context 3:  It reached top 10 on New Electronic Music chart  The official music video for the single was released on July 25, via their official profiles  The extended remix for the song, made by Trayze, was also released  After the music video was released, they announced more of new music and new projects (and probably their third studio album) coming in 2015  On October 22, 2014, Nina Sky featured on Lady Bee's single "Do It All Again" from their album What Is a Jeffree?  Music video was also released 
After finishing their Euro Tour in May 2015, on June 2, their Vito Fun and Spaceplant produced electropop single titled "Forever" was released from their upcoming extended play Brightest Gold, set to release in September 2015  "We wanted something that was smooth but also had a bounce," Nina Sky told The FADER in an email  "Spaceplant finessed the verses with a modern '90s freestyle beat pattern and built up the hook just enough that song still has its original sweet vibe but if you drop it at the right time in a club, it will still go off!" twins added  EP will also be produced by Vito Fun and Spaceplant  Another tracks, including "The Brightest Gold", "Nancy", "Zero Gravity", "Champion Lover" and "Lock and Key" will also be on EP  The sample of "Champion Lover" was released on Nina Sky's official Instagram account, and is reported to be released as the second single from EP  In 2016, the twins signed a recording contract with Warner Music Group's independent recording label Tommy Boy Entertainment 

Discography
Nina Sky (2004)
The Other Side (2010)
Nicole and Natalie (2012)

See also
List of Puerto Ricans
List of twins
Passage 9:
Fischerspooner
Fischerspooner were an electroclash duo and performance troupe formed in 1998 in Chicago after meeting in school  The name is a combination of the founders' last names, Warren Fischer and Casey Spooner 

Career
Originally a duo formed by classically trained musician Warren Fischer and video-artist and experimental theater performer Casey Spooner for an impromptu rendition of their makeshift track "Indian Cab Driver" at the Astor Place Starbucks, the group grew to over 20 performers, most of whom are dancers and guest vocalists  "We started as a performance art piece about entertainment that ultimately became legitimate entertainment," said Casey Spooner, when talking about the group's origins in an April 2009 interview 

#1 (2001)
Their debut album, #1, has been released on several record labels, including International DJ Gigolo, Ministry of Sound and Capitol Records, and includes their hit singles "Sweetness", "Emerge", and a cover of Wire's "the 15th"  In the final months of 2004, Fischerspooner opened up their FS Studios in New York City to the public for a few hours once a week, allowing people to meet the band and production team, as well as preview new video, music and dance projects that they were working on 

Odyssey (2005)
In 2005, Odyssey, the band's second album, was released  The album featured songs that were more structured and more accurately described as electropop than electroclash  "Odyssey was really about being on Capitol, which was this icon of classic American music, trying to embrace that cliché and find a way to embody it and infiltrate it and take it apart at the same time", says Spooner 
The lead single, "Just Let Go", featuring live drums and guitars, possessed a markedly different sound than those heard on their debut album  "Just Let Go" was featured on season 2, episode 15 of Nip/Tuck; "All We Are" was also featured on the same TV series, in season 3, episode 1  The second single, "Never Win", went on to become the album's biggest hit, and was well received in both clubs and radio  Furthermore, it was also featured in the 2006 Happy Madison movie Grandma's Boy  "A Kick in the Teeth" was rumored to be the album's third, and possibly final, single but was only pressed on 12" that included a remix by Tiefschwarz  This was followed after a duration of silence by a 12" remix of "We Need a War" with a mix by DJ Hell  Other remixes believed to have been done are of "All We Are" and "Get Confused"  "All We Are" was featured as the credits track in the first episode of season two of Sweetbitter 
After the album's release, Fischerspooner toured a new, more elaborate show in Europe, but the band found themselves without the funds to tour the show fully in North America  "I was incredibly frustrated because I had worked two years on this huge record and I was only able to perform for three months", recalls Spooner, who subsequently retreated to his theatrical roots, joining experimental New York performance ensemble The Wooster Group  During this period, it was unclear whether the band would record together again; and, in May 2007, the band was released from its Capitol Records recording contract 

Entertainment (2009)
Early European gig recordings of "The Best Revenge" surfaced on the internet during summer 2007  "The Best Revenge" was released on January 14, 2008, with French label Kitsune Music  The track includes a remix package from the likes of Autokratz, Tocadisco, Alex Gopher, The Passions and Tony Senghore  Fischerspooner also released "Danse en France" as a single on the Kitsuné label 
Warren and Casey subsequently began to work on more material for a new album while Casey was performing the role of Ophelia's brother Laertes in The Wooster Group's production of Hamlet (Fischerspooner also contributed two original songs to the production) 
Released in North America via the band's own label FS Studios on May 4, 2009, Entertainment is their third full-length album and was produced by Jeff Saltzman (The Killers, The Black Keys, The Sounds) 
The album's cover was listed on Pitchfork's worst album covers of 2009 

Sir (2018)
The album Sir, executive-produced and co-written by Michael Stipe of R E M  and Boots, was released on February 16, 2018, on Ultra  The band released the first single "Have Fun Tonight" on June 19, 2017  The song "Top Brazil", was released on January 19, 2018; along with an electro-pop music video which Billboard called, "provocative " 
NPR interpreted the album as a retrospective collage of Reagan-era queer references framed in an undeniably contemporary style;
"Even the cheapskate metaphor passions in the lyrics, read as physical, often NSFW desires — 'raging motorcycle thoroughbred,' 'not opposed to humiliation,' 'denim on denim,' 'dorsal fins at night in Berlin,' 'Butterscotch Goddam,' 'dark pink Saturday night' — that are dated just enough to seem older and odder  Pairing these with layered synthesizer lines and drum-machines that invoke Reagan-era industrial and EBM reinforces nostalgic notions of sexual danger "In an interview with the album collaborators, it was said that, "[the album] explores Spooner’s 're-entry into the sexual playground now defined by technology, but also the muddled ways that feelings and self-image are present in that experience' while simultaneously examining the years of 'emotional and sexual turbulence' he experienced with his ex-partner "

Break-up
On October 30, 2019, the duo announced their breakup via Instagram 

Band members
Warren Fischer – composer
Casey Spooner – songwriter, vocals
Sam Kearney – guitar
Peanuts, aka Jeremiah Clancy – attendant to Casey, actor
Adam Crystal - keyboards
Cindy Greene – vocals
Lizzy Yoder – vocals
Ian Pai – musical director, drums
Vanessa Walters – choreographer, dancer
Stephanie Dixon – dancer

Discography
Albums
Bootleg (self-titled, with PS1 Cover Artwork) (1998)
Fischerspooner (2000) – "For Those Who Know" release
#1 or Best Album Ever, originally titled Best Album Ever, "International DJ Gigolos" release in 2001, Ministry of Sound release in 2002, Capitol Records reissue with DVD in 2003 - UK #92
Odyssey (2005) US #172, UK #110
Entertainment (2009)
Sir (2018)

Singles
Music videos
"Emerge" – Original version (2001)
"Emerge" – Skin version (2003)
"The 15th" (2003)
"Sweetness" (2003)
"Just Let Go" (2005)
"Never Win" (2005)
"Never Win" – Mirwais version (2005)
"All We Are" (made for a Coca-Cola project by Rex & Tennant) (2006)
"Get Confused" (2008)
"We Are Electric" (2009)
"The Best Revenge" (2011)
"Have Fun Tonight" (2017)
"Togetherness" (2017)
"TopBrazil" (2017)
Passage 10:
Rex (Live at the Fillmore)
Rex (Live at the Fillmore) is the thirteenth album by Keller Williams, recorded live on February 8, 2006 at the Fillmore Auditorium in Denver, Colorado The collaborative show features Williams, Keith Moseley (of The String Cheese Incident) and Jeff Austin (of Yonder Mountain String Band) performing bluegrass versions of Grateful Dead songs   The group performed under the name Grateful Grass The album is available only as a digital download only, and was released on April 30, 2008   Proceeds from the album go to the Rex Foundation 

Track listing
"One More Saturday Night" (Bob Weir)
"Mississippi Half Step Uptown Toodeloo" (Jerry Garcia, Robert Hunter)
"Eyes Of The World" (Garcia, Hunter)
"Candyman" (Garcia, Hunter)
"Loose Lucy" (Garcia, Hunter)
"Black Peter" (Garcia, Hunter)
"St  Stephen" (Garcia, Phil Lesh, Hunter)
"Casey Jones" (Garcia, Hunter)
"Brown-Eyed Women" (Garcia, Hunter)
"Bird Song" (Garcia, Hunter)
"Scarlet Begonias" > "Fire On The Mountain" (Garcia, Hunter / Mickey Hart, Hunter)

Notes
Passage 11:
Chen Peisi
Chen Peisi (Chinese: 陈佩斯; born 1 February 1954) is a Chinese sketch comedian, film and stage actor, and voice actor   Chen's oft-time comedy partner is Zhu Shimao 

Name
Chen Peisi is the second son of famous stage and film actor Chen Qiang  Chen Qiang's first son (Chen Peisi's brother) was born in 1951 while he was overseas in the Hungarian capital Budapest performing The White-Haired Girl, so he named his first son Chen Buda (陈布达) after Buda, the western half of Budapest, as he loved the city during the visit   When the second son was born three years later, he named the son Peisi after Pest, the eastern half of Budapest, as the Standard Chinese phonetic translation of Budapest is "Bù Dá Peì Sī"   Chen Qiang's youngest child and daughter Chen Lida (陈丽达) was also named after a part of Budapest — the Margaret Island in the Danube between Buda and Pest 

Biography
Chen was born in Changchun, Jilin on 1 February 1954  In 1966, Chen studied at The High School Affiliated to Beijing Normal University  In 1969, during the Cultural Revolution, he worked in Inner Mongolia Production and Construction Corps  In 1973, Chen worked in August First Film Studio as an actor  In 1991, Chen set up a company named Hainan Comedy Film and Television Limited Company (海南喜剧影视有限公司), then renamed it Dadao Film and Television Limited Company (大道影业有限公司)  In 2000, Chen and his partner Zhu Shimao sued the China International Television Corporation over royalties from broadcasts which they won, but they were then taken off air by the parent company, China Central Television On October 26, 2020, he returned to the CCTV stage and served as the first instructor of the variety show "Gold Medal Comedy Class" after 20 years 

Filmography
Film
Television
Variety show
Passage 12:
Song Beneath the Song
"Song Beneath the Song", also known as Grey's Anatomy: The Music Event, is the eighteenth episode of the seventh season of the American television medical drama Grey's Anatomy, and the 144th episode overall  It was named after a song initially performed by American singer Maria Taylor  Written by series creator Shonda Rhimes and directed by Tony Phelan, it premiered on ABC in the United States on March 31, 2011  It is the series's first musical episode, and features the cast performing songs previously featured within the program  It is accompanied by a soundtrack album, titled Grey's Anatomy: The Music Event, also released on March 31, 2011 
The episode revolves around Callie Torres (Sara Ramirez) and Arizona Robbins (Jessica Capshaw), just after they are involved in a vehicular collision  Various songs are performed by the cast members, as they attempt to save the life of Torres  Rhimes originally idealized the episode at the conception of the drama, while the show remained untitled  The episode opened to polarized reviews from television critics, and it was the second most-watched program of the night  "Song Beneath the Song" was ranked in several "best and worst" lists, and the soundtrack also charted on the Billboard 200 

Plot
En route to a weekend getaway, surgeons Callie Torres (Sara Ramirez) and Arizona Robbins (Jessica Capshaw) are involved in a vehicular collision, moments after Robbins proposes marriage  Torres suffers severe injuries, which endanger both her life and the life of her unborn child  She and Robbins are taken to Seattle Grace Mercy West Hospital, the institute at which they both work  Their colleagues attempt to save Torres, while Robbins and Mark Sloan (Eric Dane), the father of Torres's baby, stand by  Torres's many injuries include neurological trauma  While barely conscious, she hallucinates an uninjured version of herself standing beside her  The hallucinatory Torres begins to sing, and is gradually joined by the doctors treating her  This singing continues throughout the episode, as Torres's projection of herself attempts to reach out to Robbins 
Torres goes into cardiac arrest and is taken into an operating room she is temporarily stabilized, pending further surgery  She is moved into intensive care, while neonatal surgeon Addison Montgomery (Kate Walsh) is flown in by helicopter in case the baby has to be delivered prematurely  Robbins and Sloan argue over Torres's treatment; Robbins believes that Torres would not risk endangering the baby, but Sloan argues for saving Torres at all costs  The attending surgeons devise a treatment plan, led by trauma surgeon Owen Hunt (Kevin McKidd)  As they do so, Torres dreams about the moments preceding the accident  Her dream self sings to Robbins, interspersed with shots of the hospital staff singing and dancing with their own partners  Dr  Cristina Yang (Sandra Oh) suggests treating Torres with a high-risk but potentially effective cardiothoracic procedure she learned from her old mentor, Preston Burke (Isaiah Washington)  Her current mentor, Teddy Altman (Kim Raver), refuses to perform it, but when Torres's condition deteriorates and she is rushed back into surgery, Hunt agrees that Yang should attempt the procedure 
When Torres again goes into cardiac arrest, Montgomery delivers her daughter at twenty-three week's gestation  The baby is initially unable to breathe, so with Sloan's support, Robbins steps in and is able to revive her  Across the operating room, Torres's condition begins to improve  Once the surgery is complete, the doctors deal with their own affairs; Sloan's former partner Lexie Grey (Chyler Leigh) commits to her new relationship with resident Jackson Avery (Jesse Williams); Lexie's sister, Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo) confesses that she was jealous of Torres's pregnancy, which prompts her husband Derek Shepherd (Patrick Dempsey) to promise that they will have a child together; Altman tells Yang that she can no longer teach her; Sloan and Robbins bond over their shared parenthood  Later, as Robbins keeps a vigil by Torres's bedside, the hallucinatory Torres is able to rouse her recovering self  As she regains consciousness, Torres accepts Robbins's proposal 

Production
Conception
Since Grey's Anatomy began, series creator Shonda Rhimes had planned to produce a musical episode  She first discussed the idea during filming of the pilot episode, when the program was as yet untitled  Rhimes felt that seasons 6 and 7 were the right time for the crew to "try anything and everything [they had] always wanted to do," and explained that she "finally [had] the right idea and the right talent to make [a musical episode] happen " Filming began 7-and-a-half years after Rhimes initially raised the idea  The episode was shot in approximately 2 weeks  Though cast member Dempsey jokingly referred to the episode as Glee M D , Rhimes intended for it to differ from other musical television episodes  She called it the opposite of "Once More, with Feeling," the "all-out, show-stopping," musical episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, as she aimed to "do something that was musical without being a musical "Rhimes said she had difficulty getting the network's permission  She added: "I begged the studio people  I begged the network people  I took these people to dinner and begged  I jumped out at these people in bathrooms and begged  And they all smiled politely but what they were clearly really thinking was, 'This woman is an idiot '"Rhimes also told about delays in producing this episode: 

Explaining what the heck took us so long is too complicated to go into here  There are a lot of reasons – I was busy telling other awesome stories at Seattle Grace, [   ] I was raising my tiny human, my musical talent involves oboe-playing and nothing else, the network thought it was the dumbest idea they’d ever heard of and refused to do it  
The script was written by Rhimes in November 2010  She centered the episode around Ramirez's character, Callie, and stated that the storyline would have developed regardless of whether it involved musical performances  Sara Ramirez used the opportunity to launch their career as a singer-songwriter; an alternate version of "The Story" is included on their debut EP, released four days prior to the episode's premiere  In this episode, Mark and Arizona improve their relationship  Capshaw said, "The traumatic circumstance leads to them having a greater understanding of each other and then appreciation, and then need for each other and desire to be in each other’s lives  They come to care, I think, for one another "

Musical performances
Rhimes, executive producer Betsy Beers and director Tony Phelan selected songs that had become well-known by their use in Grey's Anatomy, and chose "the most iconic ones, the ones that best suited [their] singers, and the ones that made the most sense " The multiple cover versions include the program's theme tune, "Cosy in the Rocket" by Psapp  The primary vocalists are cast members Ramirez, McKidd, Leigh and Chandra Wilson  The soundtrack also includes "How to Save a Life" by The Fray and "Running on Sunshine" by Jesus Jackson, performed as ensemble pieces by Ramirez, McKidd, Leigh, Daniel Sunjata, Scott Foley, Ellen Pompeo, Justin Chambers, Raver, Dane, and Capshaw  Ramirez, McKidd and Wilson also perform together on Snow Patrol's "Chasing Cars " Ramirez is the lead vocalist on "The Story" by Brandi Carlile, and "Grace" by Kate Havnevik, which also features the other female cast members, including Leigh and Sarah Drew on the chorus  Capshaw duets with Ramirez on KT Tunstall's "Universe & U " Wilson is the lead vocalist on "Wait" by Get Set Go, McKidd on "How We Operate" by Gomez, and Leigh on Anna Nalick's "Breathe (2 AM) "

Leigh said that some actors were not "excited" about singing but still could participate in the episode  "There were certain ways in which the scenes were written, even if there was a song in there, that perhaps a line was spoken instead of sung," she said A vocal coach was enlisted to help the cast  Music director Chris Horvath was recruited to arrange the selected songs for the cast  The arrangements took around two months, with vocals recorded over four days in February 2011  Horvath praised the cast's response to the episode, noting that only four performers had "serious vocal talent," while some had "barely sung in the shower" before  Those with professional singing experience include Ramirez, who won a Tony Award for their role in the musical Spamalot, and Wilson, who appeared in the Broadway production of Caroline, or Change  Cast members' reactions toward the episode varied  Pompeo initially deemed the idea "crazy," but changed her mind following the first read-through  Recurring cast member Sunjata stated that singing was "a bit out of [his] comfort zone," but found it an "interesting challenge," and McKidd deemed it "very exciting to do something that's completely out on a limb for the show "

Reception
Pre-broadcast commentary
Critical response prior to broadcast was mixed  TVLine's Michael Ausiello assessed that the episode would "either be a show-stopping triumph or a spectacular failure," with no possible middle ground  William Keck of TV Guide initially had "serious doubts," which were allayed by a visit to the set, during which he listened to the soundtrack  Keck likened it to the "much-beloved early seasons of Grey's, when music played a vital role on the show " Entertainment Weekly's Dan Snierson predicted heavy use of Auto Tune, though fellow EW writer Jennifer Armstrong was optimistic that the episode would be a success, commenting: "I have faith  I like musicals, I like Grey's  I'm rooting for this to work "

Ratings
During its original broadcast, "Song Beneath the Song" was watched by an average of 13 09 million American viewers  It attained a 4 9/13 Nielsen rating/share in the 18–49 demographic, making it the second highest-rated program of the night, behind only American Idol on the Fox network  The rating was the second-highest of the seventh season until that point, and a 30% increase from the previous episode, "This is How We Do It," which was watched by 2 4 million fewer viewers In Canada, where the episode also aired on March 31, 2011, it was watched by 3 18 million viewers  Viewership again increased on "This is How We Do It," which attained 2 63 million viewers  However, while the preceding episode was the most-viewed scripted show for the week of its original broadcast, "Song Beneath the Song" ranked second, behind The Big Bang Theory 

Post-broadcast commentary
Following the first minutes of the drama, reactions on Twitter were polarized  Nicole Golden from TV Fanatic gave the episode 4 5 stars out of 5 0  She found that "overall, the concept worked since music really has always played a big part in the show  Some songs were more appropriate and/or better performed than others, though " She also wrote the concept worked in part because it was new but noted "the format would probably not have the same effect if used in future episodes " Even though Boston Herald's critic Mark Perigard was not a fan of the concept, saying "the Grey's Anatomy event proved how tricky it is for an established show, especially a drama, to pull off a musical episode," he did like several actors' performances  He wrote: "Chandra Wilson and Chyler Leigh (whom I never have anything good to say about) delivered some impressive vocal work  Eric Dane did some of his best acting of his career last night as an anxious father-to-be terrified he would lose his best friend " Lyneka Little of The Wall Street Journal wrote, "If Glee and ER had a baby it would be tonight’s episode of the medical drama Grey’s Anatomy titled 'Song Beneath the Song' " In his review of the episode Alan Sepinwall of HitFix wrote "Like Grey's Anatomy as a whole, some parts were unintentionally silly, others were surprisingly powerful, and it was rarely dull, at least "Patrick Dempsey admitted that the musical episode might not have been showrunner Shonda Rhimes's best idea  He explained: "It's very difficult to keep it fresh when you're doing 24 episodes a year  Shonda Rhimes has a lot of ideas, and she is in a position where she can take more chances  Sometimes that works, sometimes it does not  Last year we had the singing episode, which I think was a big mistake  But you have to try "

Accolades
In 2011, the episode was ranked #19 on the TV Guide Network special, 25 Biggest TV Blunders 2  It was included in TV Guide's list "The Worst Of 2011" saying, "Sara Ramirez has powerhouse pipes, but what this episode desperately needed was a better playlist " BuddyTV, however, ranked it #43 on its list of 2011's 50 Best TV Episodes and it also appeared on Digital Spy's shortlist of "TV's Best Musical Episodes " Supervising Music Editor Jennifer Barak and Music Editors Carli Barber and Jessica Harrison were nominated in the Best Sound Editing: Short Form Musical in Television category at the 2012 Golden Reel Awards for their work on the episode 

Soundtrack
Track listing
Chart history
Grey's Anatomy: The Music Event debuted at #24 on the Billboard 200, with 19,000 copies sold  It reached #2 on the U S  Soundtracks chart, and was #5 on the Independent Album chart  "The Story" entered the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart at #69, and the Canadian Hot 100 at #72 
Passage 13:
Beckmann rearrangement
The Beckmann rearrangement, named after the German chemist Ernst Otto Beckmann (1853–1923), is a rearrangement of an oxime functional group to substituted amides  The rearrangement has also been successfully performed on haloimines and nitrones  Cyclic oximes and haloimines yield lactams 
The Beckmann rearrangement is often catalyzed by acid; however, other reagents have been known to promote the rearrangement  These include tosyl chloride, thionyl chloride, phosphorus pentachloride, phosphorus pentoxide, triethylamine, sodium hydroxide, trimethylsilyl iodide among others  The Beckmann fragmentation is another reaction that often competes with the rearrangement, though careful selection of promoting reagent and solvent conditions can favor the formation of one over the other, sometimes giving almost exclusively one product  The rearrangement occurs stereospecifically for ketoximes and N-chloro/N-fluoro imines, with the migrating group being anti-periplanar to the leaving group on the nitrogen  Certain conditions have been known to racemize the oxime geometry, leading to the formation of both regioisomers  The rearrangement of aldoximes occurs with stereospecificity in the gas phase and without stereospecificity in the solution phase  A few methodologies allow for the rearrangement of aldoximes to primary amides, but fragmentation commonly competes in these systems  Nitrone rearrangement also occurs without stereospecificity; the regioisomer formed has the amide nitrogen substituted with the group possessing the greatest migratory aptitude 

The archetypal Beckmann rearrangement is the conversion of cyclohexanone to caprolactam via the oxime  Caprolactam is the feedstock in the production of Nylon 6 The Beckmann solution consists of acetic acid, hydrochloric acid and acetic anhydride, and was widely used to catalyze the rearrangement   Other acids, such as sulfuric acid, polyphosphoric acid, and hydrogen fluoride have all been used  Sulfuric acid is the most commonly used acid for commercial lactam production due to its formation of an ammonium sulfate by-product when neutralized with ammonia  Ammonium sulfate is a common agricultural fertilizer providing nitrogen and sulfur 

Reaction mechanism
The most common reaction mechanism of the Beckmann rearrangement consists generally of an alkyl migration anti-periplanar to the expulsion of a leaving group to form a nitrilium ion  This is followed by solvolysis to an imidate and then tautomerization to the amide:
This nitrilium ion has been known to be intercepted by other nucleophiles, including the leaving group from the oxime 

Presumably after the phenyl group migrates and expels the cyanate, the latter then attacks the nitrilium ion formed  In carbon tetrachloride the isocyanate can be isolated, whereas in ethanol, the urethane is formed after solvolysis of the isocyanate 
One computational study has established the mechanism accounting for solvent molecules and substituents  The rearrangement of acetone oxime in the Beckmann solution involved three acetic acid molecules and one proton (present as an oxonium ion)  In the transition state leading to the iminium ion (σ-complex), the methyl group migrates to the nitrogen atom in a concerted reaction as the hydroxyl group is expelled  The oxygen atom in the hydroxyl group is stabilized by three acetic acid molecules  In the next step the electrophilic carbon atom in the nitrilium ion is attacked by water and a proton is donated back to acetic acid  In the transition state leading to the imidate, the water oxygen atom is coordinated to 4 other atoms  In the third step, an isomerization step protonates the nitrogen atom leading to the amide 

The same computation with a hydroxonium ion and 6 molecules of water has the same result, but when the migrating substituent is a phenyl group, the mechanism favors the formation of an intermediate three-membered π-complex  This π-complex is not found in the H3O+(H2O)6 

With the cyclohexanone-oxime, the relief of ring strain results in a third reaction mechanism, leading directly to the protonated caprolactam in a single concerted step without the intermediate formation of a π-complex or σ-complex 

Cyanuric chloride assisted Beckmann reaction
Beckmann rearrangement can be rendered catalytic using cyanuric chloride and zinc chloride as a co-catalyst  For example, cyclododecanone can be converted to the corresponding lactam, the monomer used in the production of Nylon 12 

The reaction mechanism for this reaction is based on a catalytic cycle with cyanuric chloride activating the hydroxyl group via a nucleophilic aromatic substitution  The reaction product is dislodged and replaced by new reactant via an intermediate Meisenheimer complex 

Beckmann fragmentation
The Beckmann fragmentation is a reaction that frequently competes with the Beckmann rearrangement  When the group α to the oxime is capable of stabilizing carbocation formation, the fragmentation becomes a viable reaction pathway  The reaction generates a nitrile and a carbocation, which is quickly intercepted to form a variety of products  The nitrile can also be hydrolyzed under reaction conditions to give carboxylic acids  Different reaction conditions can favor the fragmentation over the rearrangement 

Quaternary carbon centers promote fragmentation by stabilizing carbocation formation through hyperconjugation  As shown in the above picture, the "stable" carbocation is formed, which then loses a hydrogen to give a site of unsaturation  Oxygen and nitrogen atoms also promote fragmentation through the formation of ketones and imines respectively 
Sulfur is also capable of promoting fragmentation, albeit at a longer range than oxygen or nitrogen 

Silicon is capable of directing the fragmentation through the beta-silicon effect 
The carbocation intermediate in this reaction is intercepted by nucleophilic fluoride from diethylaminosulfur trifluoride (DAST):

Semmler–Wolff reaction
The oxime of cyclohexenone with acid forms aniline in a dehydration – aromatization reaction called the Semmler–Wolff reaction or Wolff aromatization 
The mechanism can be shown as below:

The reaction is intrinsically a special case of Beckmann rearrangement combined with neighbouring group participation 

Applications in drug synthesis
An industrial synthesis of paracetamol developed by Hoechst–Celanese involves the conversion of a methyl ketone to an acetanilide via a Beckmann rearrangement The thermal rearrangement that occurs in the synthesis of ketamine was claimed to be a Beckmann rearrangement according to: url 

See also
Curtius rearrangement
Dakin reaction
Schmidt reaction
Stieglitz rearrangement
Lossen rearrangement
Passage 14:
Heartbeat in the Brain
Heartbeat in the Brain is a 1970 documentary film produced and directed by Amanda Feilding, an advocate of trepanation  It was filmed by Joseph Mellen 

Summary
In the film, Feilding, a 27-year-old student at the time, drills a hole in her forehead with a dentist's drill  In the documentary, surgical scenes alternate with motion studies of Feilding's pet pigeon Birdie 

Release and rediscovery
In 1978, Feilding screened the movie at the Suydam Gallery in New York  More than one audience member fainted during the climax The 1998 documentary A Hole in the Head contains footage from Heartbeat in the Brain The documentary, long believed to be lost, was publicly screened at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London on 28 April 2011 
Passage 15:
Eye of the Tiger
"Eye of the Tiger" is a song by American rock band Survivor  It was released as a single from their third album of the same name and was also the theme song for the 1982 film Rocky III, which was released a day before the single  The song was written by Survivor guitarist Frankie Sullivan and keyboardist Jim Peterik, and it was recorded at the request of Rocky III star, writer, and director Sylvester Stallone, after Queen denied him permission to use "Another One Bites the Dust", the song Stallone intended as the Rocky III theme  The version of the song that appears in the film is the demo version of the song  The film version also contained tiger growls, which did not appear on the album version  It features original Survivor singer Dave Bickler on lead vocals  The song is also the title song to the 1986 film of the same name  "Eye of the Tiger" is written in the key of C minor It gained tremendous MTV and radio airplay and topped charts worldwide during 1982  In the United States, it held No  1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart for six consecutive weeks (the band's only song to top the chart) and was the No  2 single of 1982, behind Olivia Newton-John's "Physical"  It spent fifteen consecutive weeks in the top ten, the second-longest run of 1982, behind "Hurts So Good" by John Mellencamp (which was prevented from reaching the top of the Hot 100 by "Eye of the Tiger")  This top ten run is tied with the aforementioned "Another One Bites the Dust" as well as "Physical" as the longest run in the top ten for a number one song during the entire 1980s decade  The band won an award for "Best Rock Performance by Duo or Group with Vocal" at the 25th Annual Grammy Awards  In September 1982, it also peaked at No  1 in the United Kingdom, remaining at the top of the UK Singles Chart for four consecutive weeks  The single sold 956,000 copies in United Kingdom in 1982 It was certified platinum in August 1982 by the RIAA, signifying sales of 2 million vinyl copies  The song had sold over 4 1 million in digital downloads in the United States alone by February 2015  It was voted VH1's 63rd-greatest hard rock song 

Background
In an interview with Songfacts, co-writer Jim Peterik, who shared writing credit with Frankie Sullivan, explained the song's title 

At first, we wondered if calling it "Eye of the Tiger" was too obvious  The initial draft of the song, we started with "It's the eye of the tiger, it's the thrill of the fight, rising up to the spirit of our rival, and the last known survivor stalks his prey in the night, and it all comes down to survival " We were going to call the song "Survival"  In the rhyme scheme, you can tell we had set up "rival" to rhyme with "survival"  At the end of the day, we said, "Are we nuts?" That hook is so strong, and "rival" doesn't have to be a perfect rhyme with the word "tiger"  We made the right choice and went with "Eye of the Tiger" 

Accolades
The song was nominated for the 1982 Academy Award for Best Original Song (the only Oscar nomination for Rocky III), but it lost to "Up Where We Belong" from An Officer and a Gentleman The band won an award for "Best Rock Performance by Duo or Group with Vocal" at the 25th Annual Grammy Awards  The song was also nominated for the 1983 Grammy Award for Song of the Year, but lost to the Willie Nelson hit "Always on My Mind" 

Lawsuits
Newt Gingrich campaign
In 2012, Survivor sued Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich in Illinois federal court for using "Eye of the Tiger" without authorization as entrance music at his political rallies going back as far as 2009  The suit was later settled out of court 

Mitt Romney campaign
The same year Sullivan also demanded that Mitt Romney, also a Republican candidate for president, should stop using "Eye of the Tiger" at his campaign rallies  Romney agreed to drop the song from the campaign's playlists 

Mike Huckabee's campaign
Frankie Sullivan's company Rude Music filed a lawsuit in federal court in Chicago, Illinois, on November 18, 2015, against the former Governor of Arkansas and Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee's campaign organization for using "Eye of the Tiger" at a political rally without permission  The rally took place on September 8, 2015, when Kim Davis, a Kentucky county clerk, was released from jail after spending five days there for refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples in Kentucky  In June 2016 it was reported by CNN that Huckabee had agreed, in a confidential, out-of-court settlement with Sullivan's Rude Music, to pay $25,000 in compensation 

Credits and personnel
Credits adapted from the album Eye of the Tiger 
Dave Bickler – lead vocals
Frankie Sullivan – lead and rhythm guitars
Jim Peterik – grand piano, electric guitar
Stephan Ellis – bass
Marc Droubay – drums

Charts
Weekly charts
Certifications
See also



ground_truth: Natalie Albino

Nina Sky