title: Fiona Dourif

text: In 2012, Dourif starred in "This is Caroline" and "The Master". The following year, Dourif portrayed Nica Pierce in "Curse of Chucky", part of the "Child's Play" franchise in which her father, Brad Dourif, had long starred in as Chucky. The film was a cult hit.


title: Fiona Dourif

text: In 2014, she was cast in the indie films "Gutshot Straight", " Dangerous Words from the Fearless", "Precious Mettle", and "Fear Clinic".


title: Fiona Dourif

text: In 2016–17, Dourif played the "holistic assassin" Bart Curlish in "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency". The series ran for two seasons. Also in 2016, she portrayed the young Rachel Griffiths in the ABC mini-series "When We Rise". She played Brie in the indie thriller "Blood is Blood".


title: Fiona Dourif

text: In 2018, Dourif played Jennifer Reddington, long lost daughter of main character Raymond Reddington, in Season 5 of the NBC drama "The Blacklist". She also recurred in the 2018 series "The Purge" as Good Leader Tavis, a zealous cult leader.


title: Fiona Dourif

text: In 2020, Dourif was cast as the villainous Rat Woman in the miniseries adaptation of Stephen King's novel "The Stand".


title: Fiat 500

text: The Fiat 500 (, ) is a rear-engined, four-seat, small city car that was manufactured and marketed by Fiat Automobiles from 1957 until 1975 over a single generation in two-door saloon and two-door station wagon bodystyles.


title: Fiat 500

text: Launched as the "Nuova (new) 500" in July 1957, as a successor to the 500 "Topolino", it was an inexpensive and practical small car. Measuring long, and originally powered by a 479 cc two-cylinder, air-cooled engine, the 500 was smaller than Fiat's 600, launched two years earlier, and is considered one of the first purpose-designed city cars.


title: Fiat 500

text: In 1959, Dante Giacosa received a Compasso d'Oro industrial design prize for the Fiat 500. It was the first time when it was awarded to an automotive industry.


title: Fiat 500

text: In 2007, the 50th anniversary of the Nuova 500's launch, Fiat launched another new 500, stylistically inspired by the 1957 Nuova 500, featuring a front-mounted engine and front-wheel drive.


title: Fiat 500

text: In 2017 Fiat celebrated the 60th anniversary with an exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City and received one of the Corporate Art Awards by pptArt at an event hosted by the President of the Italian Republic Sergio Mattarella at the Quirinal Palace.


title: Fiat 500

text: In 1936, Fiat released the front engine Fiat 500 "Topolino" economy car. In 1949 to meet the demands of the post-war market, production resumed as the 500C with revised front and rear bodywork. It had a 2-door coupe body with sun-roof, which was later complemented by an Estate version. Both continued until 1957 when they were replaced by an all-new, lighter car. The new car had a rear-mounted engine, on the pattern of the Volkswagen Beetle, just like its bigger brother the 1955 Fiat 600. Several car makers followed the now uncommon rear engine configuration at the time and were quite successful. The Neckar version of the 500 was manufactured in Heilbronn under a complicated deal involving NSU, and was introduced in October 1961. Steyr-Puch produced cars based on the Fiat 500 under licence in Graz, Austria.


title: Fiat 500

text: Despite its very small size, the 500 proved to be an enormously practical vehicle with large sales throughout Europe. Besides the two-door coupé, it was also available as the "Giardiniera" estate; this variant featured the standard engine laid on its side, the wheelbase lengthened by to provide a more convenient rear seat, a full-length sunroof and larger brakes from the Fiat 600.


title: Fiat 500

text: Sports models were produced by Abarth, as well as by Giannini. An Austrian variant, produced by Steyr-Daimler-Puch, the 1957–1973 Steyr-Puch 500, had a motorcycle-derived Puch boxer twin motor, a sports model of which was the 1965–1969 Steyr-Puch 650 TR2.


title: Fiat 500

text: Production of the 500 ended in 1975, although its replacement, the Fiat 126, was launched two years earlier. The 126 was not as successful as its predecessor in Italy, but sold well in the Eastern Bloc countries, being assembled and manufactured in Poland as a Polski Fiat. The Fiat 500 has a Cx (aerodynamic resistance coefficient) of 0,38, a very good performance for its time.


title: Fiat 500

text: The 500 features a 479 cc (500cc nominal) two-cylinder engine, hence the name, producing just 13 horsepower. This model also features a fabric roof, foldable to the rear of the vehicle, like that of a Citroën 2CV — rather than the later roof design, which only folds half way back along the roof. The Nuova 500 is one of three models featuring "suicide doors."


title: Fiat 500

text: Including the Sport model, in total 181,036 examples of the "Nuova" 500 were produced from 1957 until 1960.


title: Fiat 500

text: In mid-1958 Fiat introduced the Nuova 500 Sport, featuring a more powerful engine and a two-tone livery—white with a red stripe along the flanks. Unique to the Sport was an all-metal rigid roof with three longitudinal grooves. A short-open-roof model was added a year later, in 1959.


title: Fiat 500

text: Coded type "110.004", the 500 Sport's two-cylinder engine had been bored out to 499.5 cc from the original 479 cc (bore and stroke now ), giving it a very respectable horsepower with the same block: . Top speed was over .


title: Fiat 500

text: Replacing the original Nuova in 1960, the D looks very similar to the Nuova, but there are two key differences. One is the engine size (the D features an uprated 499 cc engine producing 17 bhp as standard—this engine is used right through until the end of the L in 1973) and the other is the roof: the standard D roof does not fold back as far as the roof on the Nuova, though it was also available as the "Transformable" with the same roof as the Nuova. The D also features "suicide doors".


title: Fiat 500

text: In New Zealand, where it was locally assembled by Torino Motors, the 500 D was sold as the "Fiat Bambina" (Italian for "baby"), a name that is still in use there to describe this car.


title: Fiat 500

text: The 500 Giardiniera (500 K on some markets) estate version of the Fiat 500 is the longest running model. The engine is laid under the floor of the boot to create a flat loading surface. The roof on this model also stretches all the way to the rear, not stopping above the driver and front passenger as it does in other models of the same period. The Giardiniera also features "suicide doors" and was the only model to continue to use this door type into the 1970s. In 1966 production was transferred to Desio where the Giardiniera was built by Fiat subsidiary Autobianchi under their marque from 1968 to 1977. A total of 327,000 Giardinieras were produced, and from 1968 sold only as Autobianchi Giardiniera.


title: Fiat 500

text: The F spans two periods of 500 production, the D and the L. As such, it is the most frequently misidentified model. Between 1965 and 1969 the F carried the same badging as the D, but the two models are distinguishable by the positioning of their door hinges. The D has "suicide doors": the F, produced from June 1965, at last featured front-hinged doors. Between 1969 and 1972 the F was sold alongside the "Lusso" model as a cheaper "base model" alternative. While the F and L are mechanically very similar, the key differences are the bumpers (the L has an extra chrome nudge bar) and the interior (the F interior is nearly identical to the original 1957 design while the L sports a much more modern look).


title: Fiat 500

text: In September 1968 Fiat put on sale the 500 L or "Lusso" ("tipo 110 F/L"), a more richly trimmed and better appointed version of the standard 500 F. The 500 L remained on sale until 1972, when the new Fiat 126 was introduced.


title: Fiat 500

text: Perhaps the most obvious new feature of the 500 L were tubular guards protecting the front bumper and the corners of the rear one. As a result, the car was about longer than the 500 F at . Other model-specific exterior items were a new Fiat badge at the front, redesigned hubcaps, chrome plastic mouldings covering the roof drip rails, and bright trim around windscreen and rear window. Inside the dashboard was entirely covered in black anti-glare plastic material instead of being bare painted metal, and was fitted with a new trapezoid instrument binnacle replacing the round one used on all other 500 models. The steering wheel was black plastic with metal spokes. The door cards—upholstered in the same pleated pattern leatherette used on the seats—carried redesigned and relocated door handles and new door pockets. More storage space was provided in the form of a tray on the centre tunnel, which like the rest of the floor was covered in carpet rather than rubber mats.


title: Fiat 500

text: Except for radial instead of bias ply tires, from a mechanical standpoint the 500 L was identical to the coeval 500 F.


title: Fiat 500

text: The last incarnation of the Fiat 500 was the R model. It had the same 594 cc engine of the Fiat 126, however, the power rating is the same as the L but at lower rpm (4000 instead of 4400) and with a bit more torque; a full synchromesh gearbox is still missing. The floor-pan which was from either the 'L', or later, the new 126. It was also more comfortable, but more simply trimmed and equipped than before — the fuel gauge was omitted and only the low fuel indicator remained. The 500 R was also a stop-gap for Fiat prior to the launch of the Fiat 126, and when the new 126 was launched, sales of the old Fiat 500 R plummeted. It was sold alongside the Fiat 126 for another two years before Fiat retired the 500.


title: Fiat 500

text: During the years in which it was produced the 500 in Italy, Fiat designed and produced a US-market version of the car with prominent headlamps (also used on the American 500 Jolly). About 300 were made between 1958 and 1962.


title: Fiat 500

text: Of all the performance-oriented models created by Karl Abarth, later known as Carlo Abarth, perhaps the 695 "esse esse" is the best representation of the scorpion-branded firm's collaboration with Fiat. Around 1,000 Fiat Abarth 695 SS were produced and only 150 are believed to remain.


title: Fiat 500

text: Abarth introduced its 695 SS version in 1966, after the previous presentation back in 1964. The rear-engine, rear-wheel-drive layout Fiat 500 was the basis of the project. When compared to the production version of the 500, aesthetically the 695 was virtually identical except for the logo, badge on the radiator grille and the coat of arms on both sides of the car. The 695 SS was the only version to feature flared arches and the need to raise the engine cover for extra stability and cooling.


title: Fiat 500

text: Like all Abarths, the differences are found in the mechanical upgrades that helped to increase its top speed to around . The OHV 2 valves per cylinder inline-two engine, exhaust pipe, head and valve-springs were upgraded and specially designed pistons and camshaft fitted. It had an equal square bore and stroke ratio of for a total displacement of and the original single Solex 34PBIC carburetor was increased in size with a compression ratio of 9.8:1 developing at 5200 rpm and of torque at 4000 rpm.


title: Fiat 500

text: Carrozzeria Ghia custom manufactured a "Jolly" variant of the 500, inspired by the limited edition Fiat 600 Jolly, and featuring an open-air, doorless design with wicker seats and a removable fabric canopy roof — similar in concept to the Citroën Méhari, BMC Mini Moke and Volkswagen Type 181.


title: Fiat 500

text: First announced in May 2006, Fiat previewed an all-new four-seat three-door hatchback 500 model in March 2007 – fifty years after the first Fiat 500 was presented. The design of the 2007 Fiat 500 is based on the 2004 Fiat Trepiùno concept.


title: Fiat 500

text: The new model features a distinctive retro style – following the pattern of the Volkswagen New Beetle and BMW MINI – as modern reinterpretation of Dante Giacosa's 1957 original rear-engined Fiat 500. Production started in mid-2007 in Fiat facilities in Tychy, Poland, and later in Toluca, Mexico. Numerous trim, equipment, and performance versions are offered with a convertible body style available starting in 2009.


title: Fiat 500

text: The 500 is also offered in Abarth trim, with 1.4L Turbo Petrol engine, sport exhaust, suspension, and transmission.


title: Sandro Kopp

text: Sandro Kopp (born 1978) is a German-New Zealand visual artist based in Scotland. His work deals with the concept of "mediated presence" and explores the intersection of classical painting and digital technology.


title: Sandro Kopp

text: Kopp grew up in Germany and obtained Abitur with main subjects in Fine Art and English in 1998. He then emigrated to New Zealand, his mother's home country, in 2000 where he lived and studied in Wellington.


title: Sandro Kopp

text: Since 2006, he has been based in Nairn in the Highland region of Scotland working primarily on oil portraits of family and friends painted from Skype conversations.


title: Mehmed III

text: Mehmed III (, "Meḥmed-i sālis"; ; 26 May 1566 – 22 December 1603) was Sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1595 until his death in 1603. Mehmed was known for ordering the execution of his brothers and leading the army in the Long Turkish war, during which the Ottoman army was victorious at the decisive Battle of Keresztes. This victory was however undermined by some military losses such as in Gyor and Nikopol. He also ordered the successful quelling of the Jeleli rebellions. The sultan also communicated with the court of Elizabeth I on the grounds of stronger commercial relations and in the hopes of England to ally with the Ottomans against the Spanish.


title: Mehmed III

text: Mehmed was born at the Manisa Palace in 1566, during the reign of his great-grandfather, Suleiman the Magnificent. He was the son of Murad III, himself the son of Selim II, who was the son of Sultan Suleiman and Hurrem Sultan. His mother was Safiye Sultan, an Albanian from the Dukagjin highlands. His great-grandfather Suleiman I died the year he was born, and his grandfather became the new sultan, Selim II. His grandfather Selim II died when Mehmed was eight, and Mehmed's father, Murad III, became sultan in 1574. Murad died in 1595, when Mehmed was 28 years old.


title: Mehmed III

text: Mehmed spent most of his time in Manisa with his father Murad and mother Safiye, his first teacher Ibrahim Efendi. His circumcision took place on 29 May 1582 when he was 16 years old.


title: Mehmed III

text: Upon ascending to the throne, Mehmed III ordered that all of his nineteen brothers be executed. They were strangled by his royal executioners, many of whom were deaf, mute or 'half-witted' to ensure absolute loyalty. Fratricidal successions were not unprecedented, as sultans would often have dozens of children with their concubines.


title: Mehmed III

text: Mehmed III was an idle ruler, leaving government to his mother Safiye Sultan, the valide sultan. His first major problem was the rivalry between two of his viziers, Serdar Ferhad Pasha and Koca Sinan Pasha, and their supporters. His mother and her son-in-law Damat Ibrahim Pasha supported Koca Sinan Pasha and prevented Mehmed III from taking control of the issue himself. The issue grew to cause major disturbances by janissaries. On 7 July 1595, Mehmed III finally sacked Serdar Ferhad Pasha from the position of Grand Vizier due to his failure in Wallachia and replaced him with Sinan.


title: Mehmed III

text: The major event of his reign was the Austro-Ottoman War in Hungary (1593–1606). Ottoman defeats in the war caused Mehmed III to take personal command of the army, the first sultan to do so since Suleiman I in 1566. Accompanied by the Sultan, the Ottomans conquered Eger in 1596. Upon hearing of the Habsburg army's approach, Mehmed wanted to dismiss the army and return to Istanbul. However, the Ottomans eventually decided to face the enemy and defeated the Habsburg and Transylvanian forces at the Battle of Keresztes (known in Turkish as the Battle of Haçova), during which the Sultan had to be dissuaded from fleeing the field halfway through the battle. Upon returning to Istanbul in victory, Mehmed told his viziers that he would campaign again. The next year the Venetian Bailo in Istanbul noted, "the doctors declared that the Sultan cannot leave for a war on account of his bad health, produced by excesses of eating and drinking".


title: Mehmed III

text: In reward for his services at the war, Cigalazade Yusuf Sinan Pasha was made Grand Vizier in 1596. However, with pressure from the court and his mother, Mehmed reinstated Damat Ibrahim Pasha to this position shortly afterward.


title: Mehmed III

text: However, the victory at the Battle of Keresztes was soon set back by some important losses, including the loss of Győr () to the Austrians and the defeat of the Ottoman forces led by Hafız Ahmet Pasha by the Wallachian forces under Michael the Brave in Nikopol in 1599. In 1600, Ottoman forces under Tiryaki Hasan Pasha captured Nagykanizsa after a 40-day siege and later successfully held it against a much greater attacking force in the Siege of Nagykanizsa.


title: Mehmed III

text: Another major event of his reign was the Jelali revolts in Anatolia. Karayazıcı Abdülhalim, a former Ottoman official, captured the city of Urfa and declared himself a sultan in 1600. The rumors of his claim to the throne spread to Constantinople and Mehmed ordered the rebels to be treated harshly to dispel the rumors, among these, was the execution of Hüseyin Pasha, whom Karayazıcı Abdülhalim styled as Grand Vizier. In 1601, Abdülhalim fled to the vicinity of Samsun after being defeated by the forces under Sokulluzade Hasan Pasha, the governor of Baghdad. However, his brother, Deli Hasan, killed Sokulluzade Hasan Pasha and defeated troops under the command of Hadım Hüsrev Pasha. He then marched on to Kütahya, captured and burned the city.


title: Mehmed III

text: In 1599, the fourth year of Mehmed III's reign, Queen Elizabeth I sent a convoy of gifts to the Ottoman court. These gifts were originally intended for the sultan's predecessor, Murad III, who had died before they had arrived. Included in these gifts was a large jewel-studded clockwork organ that was assembled on the slope of the Royal Private Garden by a team of engineers including Thomas Dallam. The organ took many weeks to complete and featured dancing sculptures such as a flock of blackbirds that sung and shook their wings at the end of the music. Also among the English gifts was a ceremonial coach, accompanied by a letter from the Queen to Mehmed's mother, Safiye Sultan. These gifts were intended to cement relations between the two countries, building on the trade agreement signed in 1581 that gave English merchants priority in the Ottoman region. Under the looming threat of Spanish military presence, England was eager to secure an alliance with the Ottomans, the two nations together having the capability to divide the power. Elizabeth's gifts arrived in a large 27-gun merchantman ship that Mehmed personally inspected, a clear display of English maritime strength that would prompt him to build up his fleet over the following years of his reign. The Anglo-Ottoman alliance would never be consummated, however, as relations between the nations grew stagnant due to anti-European sentiments reaped from the worsening Austro-Ottoman War and the deaths of Safiye Sultan's interpreter and the pro-English chief Hasan Pasha.


title: Mehmed III

text: Mehmed died on 22 December 1603 at the age of 37. According to one source, the cause of his death was the distress caused by the death of his son, Şehzade Mahmud. According to another source, he died either of plague or of stroke. He was buried in Hagia Sophia Mosque. He was succeeded by his son Ahmed I as the new sultan.


title: Mehmed III

text: Mehmed III had three known concubines, none of whom, according to the harem records, held the title of Haseki Sultan:


title: Asian Development Bank

text: The Asian Development Bank (ADB) is a regional development bank established on 19 December 1966, which is headquartered in the Ortigas Center located in the city of Mandaluyong, Metro Manila, Philippines. The bank also maintains 31 field offices around the world to promote social and economic development in Asia. The bank admits the members of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP, formerly the Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East or ECAFE) and non-regional developed countries. From 31 members at its establishment, ADB now has 68 members.


title: Asian Development Bank

text: The ADB was modeled closely on the World Bank, and has a similar weighted voting system where votes are distributed in proportion with members' capital subscriptions. ADB releases an annual report that summarizes its operations, budget and other materials for review by the public. The ADB-Japan Scholarship Program (ADB-JSP) enrolls about 300 students annually in academic institutions located in 10 countries within the Region. Upon completion of their study programs, scholars are expected to contribute to the economic and social development of their home countries. ADB is an official United Nations Observer.


title: Asian Development Bank

text: As of 31 December 2020, Japan and the United States each holds the largest proportion of shares at 15.571%. China holds 6.429%, India holds 6.317%, and Australia holds 5.773%.


title: Asian Development Bank

text: The highest policy-making body of the bank is the Board of Governors, composed of one representative from each member state. The Board of Governors, in turn, elect among themselves the twelve members of the board of directors and their deputies. Eight of the twelve members come from regional (Asia-Pacific) members while the others come from non-regional members.


title: Asian Development Bank

text: The Board of Governors also elect the bank's president, who is the chairperson of the board of directors and manages ADB. The president has a term of office lasting five years, and may be reelected. Traditionally, and because Japan is one of the largest shareholders of the bank, the president has always been Japanese.


title: Asian Development Bank

text: The current president is Masatsugu Asakawa. He succeeded Takehiko Nakao on 17 January 2020, who succeeded Haruhiko Kuroda in 2013.


title: Asian Development Bank

text: The headquarters of the bank is at 6 ADB Avenue, Mandaluyong, Metro Manila, Philippines, and it has 42 field offices in Asia and the Pacific and representative offices in Washington, Frankfurt, Tokyo and Sydney. The bank employs about 3,000 people, representing 60 of its 68 members.


title: Asian Development Bank

text: As early as 1956, Japan Finance Minister Hisato Ichimada had suggested to United States Secretary of State John Foster Dulles that development projects in Southeast Asia could be supported by a new financial institution for the region. A year later, Japanese Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi announced that Japan intended to sponsor the establishment of a regional development fund with resources largely from Japan and other industrial countries. But the US did not warm to the plan and the concept was shelved. See full account in "Banking the Future of Asia and the Pacific: 50 Years of the Asian Development Bank," July 2017.


title: Asian Development Bank

text: The idea came up again late in 1962 when Kaoru Ohashi, an economist from a research institute in Tokyo, visited Takeshi Watanabe, then a private financial consultant in Tokyo, and proposed a study group to form a development bank for the Asian region. The group met regularly in 1963, examining various scenarios for setting up a new institution and drew on Watanabe's experiences with the World Bank. However, the idea received a cool reception from the World Bank itself and the study group became discouraged.


title: Asian Development Bank

text: In parallel, the concept was formally proposed at a trade conference organized by the Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East (ECAFE) in 1963 by a young Thai economist, Paul Sithi-Amnuai. (ESCAP, United Nations Publication March 2007, "The first parliament of Asia" pp. 65). Despite an initial mixed reaction, support for the establishment of a new bank soon grew.


title: Asian Development Bank

text: An expert group was convened to study the idea, with Japan invited to contribute to the group. When Watanabe was recommended, the two streams proposing a new bank—from ECAFE and Japan—came together. Initially, the US was on the fence, not opposing the idea but not ready to commit financial support. But a new bank for Asia was soon seen to fit in with a broader program of assistance to Asia planned by United States President Lyndon B. Johnson in the wake of the escalating U.S. military support for the government of South Vietnam.


title: Asian Development Bank

text: As a key player in the concept, Japan hoped that the ADB offices would be in Tokyo. However, eight other cities had also expressed an interest: Bangkok, Colombo, Kabul, Kuala Lumpur, Manila, Phnom Penh, Singapore, and Tehran. To decide, the 18 prospective regional members of the new bank held three rounds of votes at a ministerial conference in Manila in November/December 1965. In the first round on 30 November, Tokyo failed to win a majority, so a second ballot was held the next day at noon. Although Japan was in the lead, it was still inconclusive, so a final vote was held after lunch. In the third poll, Tokyo gained eight votes to Manila's nine, with one abstention. Therefore, Manila was declared the host of the new development bank; the Japanese were mystified and deeply disappointed. Watanabe later wrote in his personal history of ADB: "I felt as if the child I had so carefully reared had been taken away to a distant country." (Asian Development Bank publication, "Towards a New Asia", 1977, p. 16)


title: Asian Development Bank

text: As intensive work took place during 1966 to prepare for the opening of the new bank in Manila, high on the agenda was choice of president. Japanese Prime Minister Eisaku Satō asked Watanabe to be a candidate. Although he initially declined, pressure came from other countries and Watanabe agreed. In the absence of any other candidates, Watanabe was elected first President of the Asian Development Bank at its Inaugural Meeting on 24 November 1966.


title: Asian Development Bank

text: By the end of 1972, Japan had contributed $173.7 million (22.6% of the total) to the ordinary capital resources and $122.6 million (59.6% of the total) to the special funds. In contrast, the United States contributed only $1.25 million to the special fund.


title: Asian Development Bank

text: After its creation in the 1960s, ADB focused much of its assistance on food production and rural development. At the time, Asia was one of the poorest regions in the world.


title: Asian Development Bank

text: Early loans went largely to Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, South Korea and the Philippines; these nations accounted for 78.48% of the total ADB loans between 1967 and 1972. Moreover, Japan received tangible benefits, 41.67% of the total procurements between 1967 and 1976. Japan tied its special funds contributions to its preferred sectors and regions and procurements of its goods and services, as reflected in its $100 million donation for the Agricultural Special Fund in April 1968.


title: Asian Development Bank

text: In the 1970s, ADB's assistance to developing countries in Asia expanded into education and health, and then to infrastructure and industry. The gradual emergence of Asian economies in the latter part of the decade spurred demand for better infrastructure to support economic growth. ADB focused on improving roads and providing electricity. When the world suffered its first oil price shock, ADB shifted more of its assistance to support energy projects, especially those promoting the development of domestic energy sources in member countries.


title: Asian Development Bank

text: Following considerable pressure from the Reagan Administration in the 1980s, ADB reluctantly began working with the private sector in an attempt to increase the impact of its development assistance to poor countries in Asia and the Pacific. In the wake of the second oil crisis, ADB expanded its assistance to energy projects. In 1982, ADB opened its first field office, in Bangladesh, and later in the decade, it expanded its work with non-government organizations (NGOs).


title: Asian Development Bank

text: Japanese presidents Inoue Shiro (1972–76) and Yoshida Taroichi (1976–81) took the spotlight in the 1970s. Fujioka Masao, the fourth president (1981–90), adopted an assertive leadership style, launching an ambitious plan to expand the ADB into a high-impact development agency.


title: Asian Development Bank

text: On November 18, 1972, the Bank inaugurated its headquarters along Roxas Boulevard in Pasay City, Philippines. In the early 1990s, ADB moved its offices to Ortigas Center in Pasig City, with the Department of Foreign Affairs (Philippines) taking over its old Pasay premises.


title: Asian Development Bank

text: In the 1990s, ADB began promoting regional cooperation by helping the countries on the Mekong River to trade and work together. The decade also saw an expansion of ADB's membership with the addition of several Central Asian countries following the end of the Cold War.


title: Asian Development Bank

text: In mid-1997, ADB responded to the financial crisis that hit the region with projects designed to strengthen financial sectors and create social safety nets for the poor. During the crisis, ADB approved its largest single loan – a $4 billion emergency loan to South Korea. In 1999, ADB adopted poverty reduction as its overarching goal.


title: Asian Development Bank

text: The early 2000s saw a dramatic expansion of private sector finance. While the institution had such operations since the 1980s (under pressure from the Reagan Administration) the early attempts were highly unsuccessful with low lending volumes, considerable losses and financial scandals associated with an entity named AFIC. However, beginning in 2002, the ADB undertook a dramatic expansion of private sector lending under a new team. Over the course of the next six years, the Private Sector Operations Department (PSOD) grew by a factor of 41 times the 2001 levels of new financings and earnings for the ADB. This culminated with the Board's formal recognition if these achievements in March 2008, when the Board of Directors formally adopted the Long Term Strategic Framework (LTSF). That document formally stated that assistance to private sector development was the lead priority of the ADB and that it should constitute 50% of the bank's lending by 2020.


title: Asian Development Bank

text: In 2003, the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) epidemic hit the region and ADB responded with programs to help the countries in the region work together to address infectious diseases, including avian influenza and HIV/AIDS. ADB also responded to a multitude of natural disasters in the region, committing more than $850 million for recovery in areas of India, Indonesia, Maldives, and Sri Lanka which were impacted by the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami. In addition, $1 billion in loans and grants was provided to the victims of the October 2005 earthquake in Pakistan.


title: Asian Development Bank

text: In 2009, ADB's Board of Governors agreed to triple ADB's capital base from $55 billion to $165 billion, giving it much-needed resources to respond to the global economic crisis. The 200% increase is the largest in ADB's history, and was the first since 1994.


title: Asian Development Bank

text: Asia moved beyond the economic crisis and by 2010 had emerged as a new engine of global economic growth though it remained home to two-thirds of the world's poor. In addition, the increasing prosperity of many people in the region created a widening income gap that left many people behind. ADB responded to this with loans and grants that encouraged economic growth.


title: Asian Development Bank

text: In early 2012, the ADB began to re-engage with Myanmar in response to reforms initiated by the government. In April 2014, ADB opened an office in Myanmar and resumed making loans and grants to the country.


title: Asian Development Bank

text: In 2017, ADB combined the lending operations of its Asian Development Fund (ADF) with its ordinary capital resources (OCR). The result was to expand the OCR balance sheet to permit increasing annual lending and grants to $20 billion by 2020 — 50% more than the previous level.


title: Asian Development Bank

text: In 2020, ADB gave a $2 million grant from the Asia Pacific Disaster Response Fund, to support the Armenian government in the fight against the spread of COVID-19 pandemic. In the same year, the ADB committed a $20 million loan to Electric Networks of Armenia, that will ensure electricity for the citizens during the pandemic, as well as approved $500,000 in regional technical assistance to procure personal protective equipment and other medical supplies.


title: Asian Development Bank

text: The ADB defines itself as a social development organization that is dedicated to reducing poverty in Asia and the Pacific through inclusive economic growth, environmentally sustainable growth, and regional integration. This is carried out through investments – in the form of loans, grants and information sharing – in infrastructure, health care services, financial and public administration systems, helping nations prepare for the impact of climate change or better manage their natural resources, as well as other areas.


title: Asian Development Bank

text: The ADB offers "hard" loans on commercial terms primarily to middle income countries in Asia and "soft" loans with lower interest rates to poorer countries in the region. Based on a new policy, both types of loans will be sourced starting January 2017 from the bank's ordinary capital resources (OCR), which functions as its general operational fund.


title: Asian Development Bank

text: The ADB's Private Sector Department (PSOD) can and does offer a broader range of financings beyond commercial loans. They also have the capability to provide guarantees, equity and mezzanine finance (a combination of debt and equity).


title: Asian Development Bank

text: In 2017, ADB lent $19.1 billion of which $3.2 billion went to private enterprises, as part of its "nonsovereign" operations. ADB's operations in 2017, including grants and cofinancing, totaled $28.9 billion.


title: Asian Development Bank

text: ADB obtains its funding by issuing bonds on the world's capital markets. It also relies on the contributions of member countries, retained earnings from lending operations, and the repayment of loans.


title: Asian Development Bank

text: ADB provides direct financial assistance, in the form of debt, equity and mezzanine finance to private sector companies, for projects that have clear social benefits beyond the financial rate of return. ADB's participation is usually limited but it leverages a large amount of funds from commercial sources to finance these projects by holding no more than 25% of any given transaction.


title: Asian Development Bank

text: ADB partners with other development organizations on some projects to increase the amount of funding available. In 2014, $9.2 billion—or nearly half—of ADB's $22.9 billion in operations were financed by other organizations. According to Jason Rush, Principal Communication Specialist, the Bank communicates with many other multilateral organizations.


title: Asian Development Bank

text: More than 50 financing partnership facilities, trust funds, and other funds – totalling several billion each year – are administered by ADB and put toward projects that promote social and economic development in Asia and the Pacific. ADB has raised Rs 5 billion or around Rs 500 crores from its issuance of 5-year offshore Indian rupee (INR) linked bonds.


title: Asian Development Bank

text: On 26 Feb 2020, ADB raises $118 million from rupee-linked bonds and supporting the development of India International Exchange in India, as it also contributes to an established yield curve which stretches from 2021 through 2030 with $1 billion of outstanding bonds.


title: Asian Development Bank

text: ADB has an information disclosure policy that presumes all information that is produced by the institution should be disclosed to the public unless there is a specific reason to keep it confidential. The policy calls for accountability and transparency in operations and the timely response to requests for information and documents. ADB does not disclose information that jeopardizes personal privacy, safety and security, certain financial and commercial information, as well as other exceptions.


title: Asian Development Bank

text: Since the ADB's early days, critics have charged that the two major donors, Japan and the United States, have had extensive influence over lending, policy and staffing decisions.


title: Asian Development Bank

text: Oxfam Australia has criticized the Asian Development Bank for insensitivity to local communities. "Operating at a global and international level, these banks can undermine people's human rights through projects that have detrimental outcomes for poor and marginalized communities." The bank also received criticism from the United Nations Environmental Program, stating in a report that "much of the growth has bypassed more than 70 percent of its rural population, many of whom are directly dependent on natural resources for livelihoods and incomes."


title: Asian Development Bank

text: There had been criticism that ADB's large scale projects cause social and environmental damage due to lack of oversight. One of the most controversial ADB-related projects is Thailand's Mae Moh coal-fired power station. Environmental and human rights activists say ADB's environmental safeguards policy as well as policies for indigenous peoples and involuntary resettlement, while usually up to international standards on paper, are often ignored in practice, are too vague or weak to be effective, or are simply not enforced by bank officials.


title: Asian Development Bank

text: The bank has been criticized over its role and relevance in the food crisis. The ADB has been accused by civil society of ignoring warnings leading up the crisis and also contributing to it by pushing loan conditions that many say unfairly pressure governments to deregulate and privatize agriculture, leading to problems such as the rice supply shortage in Southeast Asia.


title: Asian Development Bank

text: Indeed, whereas the Private Sector Operations Department (PSOD) closed out that year with financings of $2.4 billion, the ADB has significantly dropped below that level in the years since and is clearly not on the path to achieving its stated goal of 50% of financings to the private sector by 2020. Critics also point out that the PSOD is the only Department that actually makes money for the ADB. Hence, with the vast majority of loans going to concessionary (sub-market) loans to the public sector, the ADB is facing considerable financial difficulty and continuous operating losses.


title: Asian Development Bank

text: The following table are amounts for 20 largest countries by subscribed capital and voting power at the Asian Development Bank as of December 2020.


title: Asian Development Bank

text: ADB has 68 members (as of 23 March 2019): 49 members from the Asian and Pacific Region, 19 members from Other Regions. The year after a member's name indicates the year of membership. At the time a country ceases to be a member, the Bank shall arrange for the repurchase of such country's shares by the Bank as a part of the settlement of accounts with such country in accordance with the provisions of paragraphs 3 and 4 of Article 43.


title: Washington Irving

text: Washington Irving (April 3, 1783 – November 28, 1859) was an American short-story writer, essayist, biographer, historian, and diplomat of the early 19th century. He is best known for his short stories "Rip Van Winkle" (1819) and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" (1820), both of which appear in his collection "The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent." His historical works include biographies of Oliver Goldsmith, Muhammad and George Washington, as well as several histories of 15th-century Spain that deal with subjects such as Alhambra, Christopher Columbus and the Moors. Irving served as American ambassador to Spain in the 1840s.


title: Washington Irving

text: Born and raised in Manhattan to a merchant family, Irving made his literary debut in 1802 with a series of observational letters to the "Morning Chronicle", written under the pseudonym Jonathan Oldstyle. He temporarily moved to England for the family business in 1815 where he achieved fame with the publication of "The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.", serialized from 1819 to 1820. He continued to publish regularly throughout his life, and he completed a five-volume biography of George Washington just eight months before his death at age 76 in Tarrytown, New York.


title: Washington Irving

text: Irving was one of the first American writers to earn acclaim in Europe, and he encouraged other American authors such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Herman Melville and Edgar Allan Poe. He was also admired by some British writers, including Lord Byron, Thomas Campbell, Charles Dickens, Mary Shelley, Francis Jeffrey and Walter Scott. He advocated for writing as a legitimate profession and argued for stronger laws to protect American writers from copyright infringement.


title: Washington Irving

text: Washington Irving's parents were William Irving Sr., originally of Quholm, Shapinsay, Orkney, Scotland, and Sarah (née Saunders), originally of Falmouth, Cornwall, England. They married in 1761 while William was serving as a petty officer in the British Navy. They had eleven children, eight of whom survived to adulthood. Their first two sons died in infancy, both named William, as did their fourth child John. Their surviving children were William Jr. (1766), Ann (1770), Peter (1771), Catherine (1774), Ebenezer (1776), John Treat (1778), Sarah (1780), and Washington.


title: Washington Irving

text: The Irving family settled in Manhattan, and were part of the city's merchant class. Washington was born on April 3, 1783, the same week that New York City residents learned of the British ceasefire which ended the American Revolution. Irving's mother named him after George Washington. Irving met his namesake at age 6 when George Washington was living in New York after his inauguration as President in 1789. The President blessed young Irving, an encounter that Irving had commemorated in a small watercolor painting which continues to hang in his home.


title: Washington Irving

text: The Irvings lived at 131 William Street at the time of Washington's birth, but they later moved across the street to 128 William St. Several of Irving's brothers became active New York merchants; they encouraged his literary aspirations, often supporting him financially as he pursued his writing career.


title: Washington Irving

text: Irving was an uninterested student who preferred adventure stories and drama, and he regularly sneaked out of class in the evenings to attend the theater by the time he was 14. An outbreak of yellow fever in Manhattan in 1798 prompted his family to send him upriver, where he stayed with his friend James Kirke Paulding in Tarrytown, New York. It was in Tarrytown he became familiar with the nearby town of Sleepy Hollow, New York, with its Dutch customs and local ghost stories. He made several other trips up the Hudson as a teenager, including an extended visit to Johnstown, New York where he passed through the Catskill Mountains region, the setting for "Rip Van Winkle". "Of all the scenery of the Hudson", Irving wrote, "the Kaatskill Mountains had the most witching effect on my boyish imagination".


title: Washington Irving

text: Irving began writing letters to the New York "Morning Chronicle" in 1802 when he was 19, submitting commentaries on the city's social and theater scene under the pseudonym Jonathan Oldstyle. The name evoked his Federalist leanings and was the first of many pseudonyms he employed throughout his career. The letters bought Irving some early fame and moderate notoriety. Aaron Burr was a co-publisher of the "Chronicle", and was impressed enough to send clippings of the Oldstyle pieces to his daughter Theodosia. Charles Brockden Brown made a trip to New York to try to recruit Oldstyle for a literary magazine he was editing in Philadelphia.


title: Washington Irving

text: Concerned for his health, Irving's brothers financed an extended tour of Europe from 1804 to 1806. He bypassed most of the sites and locations considered essential for the social development of a young man, to the dismay of his brother William who wrote that he was pleased that his brother's health was improving, but he did not like the choice to ""gallop through Italy"… leaving Florence on your left and Venice on your right". Instead, Irving honed the social and conversational skills that eventually made him one of the world's most in-demand guests. "I endeavor to take things as they come with cheerfulness", Irving wrote, "and when I cannot get a dinner to suit my taste, I endeavor to get a taste to suit my dinner". While visiting Rome in 1805, Irving struck up a friendship with painter Washington Allston and was almost persuaded into a career as a painter. "My lot in life, however, was differently cast".


title: Washington Irving

text: Irving returned from Europe to study law with his legal mentor Judge Josiah Ogden Hoffman in New York City. By his own admission, he was not a good student and barely passed the bar examination in 1806. He began socializing with a group of literate young men whom he dubbed "The Lads of Kilkenny", and he created the literary magazine "Salmagundi" in January 1807 with his brother William and his friend James Kirke Paulding, writing under various pseudonyms, such as William Wizard and Launcelot Langstaff. Irving lampooned New York culture and politics in a manner similar to the 20th century "Mad" magazine. "Salmagundi" was a moderate success, spreading Irving's name and reputation beyond New York. He gave New York City the nickname "Gotham" in its 17th issue dated November 11, 1807, an Anglo-Saxon word meaning "Goat's Town".


title: Washington Irving

text: Irving completed "A History of New-York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty, by Diedrich Knickerbocker" (1809) while mourning the death of his 17-year-old fiancée Matilda Hoffman. It was his first major book and a satire on self-important local history and contemporary politics. Before its publication, Irving started a hoax by placing a series of missing person advertisements in New York newspapers seeking information on Diedrich Knickerbocker, a crusty Dutch historian who had allegedly gone missing from his hotel in New York City. As part of the ruse, he placed a notice from the hotel's proprietor informing readers that, if Mr. Knickerbocker failed to return to the hotel to pay his bill, he would publish a manuscript that Knickerbocker had left behind.


title: Washington Irving

text: Unsuspecting readers followed the story of Knickerbocker and his manuscript with interest, and some New York city officials were concerned enough about the missing historian to offer a reward for his safe return. Irving then published "A History of New York" on December 6, 1809, under the Knickerbocker pseudonym, with immediate critical and popular success. "It took with the public", Irving remarked, "and gave me celebrity, as an original work was something remarkable and uncommon in America". The name Diedrich Knickerbocker became a nickname for Manhattan residents in general and was adopted by the New York Knickerbockers basketball team.


title: Washington Irving

text: After the success of "A History of New York", Irving searched for a job and eventually became an editor of "Analectic Magazine", where he wrote biographies of naval heroes such as James Lawrence and Oliver Hazard Perry. He was also among the first magazine editors to reprint Francis Scott Key's poem "Defense of Fort McHenry", which was immortalized as "The Star-Spangled Banner". Irving initially opposed the War of 1812 like many other merchants, but the British attack on Washington, D.C. in 1814 convinced him to enlist. He served on the staff of Daniel Tompkins, governor of New York and commander of the New York State Militia, but he saw no real action apart from a reconnaissance mission in the Great Lakes region. The war was disastrous for many American merchants, including Irving's family, and he left for England in mid-1815 to salvage the family trading company. He remained in Europe for the next 17 years.


title: Washington Irving

text: Irving spent the next two years trying to bail out the family firm financially but eventually had to declare bankruptcy. With no job prospects, he continued writing throughout 1817 and 1818. In the summer of 1817, he visited Walter Scott, beginning a lifelong personal and professional friendship.


title: Washington Irving

text: Irving composed the short story "Rip Van Winkle" overnight while staying with his sister Sarah and her husband, Henry van Wart in Birmingham, England, a place that inspired other works, as well. In October 1818, Irving's brother William secured for Irving a post as chief clerk to the United States Navy and urged him to return home. Irving turned the offer down, opting to stay in England to pursue a writing career.


title: Washington Irving

text: In the spring of 1819, Irving sent to his brother Ebenezer in New York a set of short prose pieces that he asked be published as "The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent." The first installment, containing "Rip Van Winkle", was an enormous success, and the rest of the work would be equally successful; it was issued in 1819–1820 in seven installments in New York, and in two volumes in London ("The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" would appear in the sixth issue of the New York edition, and the second volume of the London edition).


title: Washington Irving

text: Like many successful authors of this era, Irving struggled against literary bootleggers. In England, some of his sketches were reprinted in periodicals without his permission, a legal practice as there was no international copyright law at the time. To prevent further piracy in Britain, Irving paid to have the first four American installments published as a single volume by John Miller in London.


title: Washington Irving

text: Irving appealed to Walter Scott for help procuring a more reputable publisher for the remainder of the book. Scott referred Irving to his own publisher, London powerhouse John Murray, who agreed to take on "The Sketch Book". From then on, Irving would publish concurrently in the United States and Britain to protect his copyright, with Murray as his English publisher of choice.


title: Washington Irving

text: Irving's reputation soared, and for the next two years, he led an active social life in Paris and Great Britain, where he was often feted as an anomaly of literature: an upstart American who dared to write English well.


title: Washington Irving

text: With both Irving and publisher John Murray eager to follow up on the success of "The Sketch Book", Irving spent much of 1821 travelling in Europe in search of new material, reading widely in Dutch and German folk tales. Hampered by writer's block—and depressed by the death of his brother William—Irving worked slowly, finally delivering a completed manuscript to Murray in March 1822. The book, "Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists, A Medley" (the location was based loosely on Aston Hall, occupied by members of the Bracebridge family, near his sister's home in Birmingham) was published in June 1822.


title: Washington Irving

text: The format of "Bracebridge" was similar to that of "The Sketch Book", with Irving, as Crayon, narrating a series of more than 50 loosely connected short stories and essays. While some reviewers thought "Bracebridge" to be a lesser imitation of "The Sketch Book", the book was well received by readers and critics. "We have received so much pleasure from this book", wrote critic Francis Jeffrey in the "Edinburgh Review", "that we think ourselves bound in gratitude... to make a public acknowledgement of it". Irving was relieved at its reception, which did much to cement his reputation with European readers.


title: Washington Irving

text: Still struggling with writer's block, Irving traveled to Germany, settling in Dresden in the winter of 1822. Here he dazzled the royal family and attached himself to Amelia Foster, an American living in Dresden with her five children. Irving was particularly attracted to Foster's 18-year-old daughter Emily and vied in frustration for her hand. Emily finally refused his offer of marriage in the spring of 1823.


title: Washington Irving

text: He returned to Paris and began collaborating with playwright John Howard Payne on translations of French plays for the English stage, with little success. He also learned through Payne that the novelist Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was romantically interested in him, though Irving never pursued the relationship.


title: Washington Irving

text: In August 1824, Irving published the collection of essays "Tales of a Traveller"—including the short story "The Devil and Tom Walker"—under his Geoffrey Crayon persona. "I think there are in it some of the best things I have ever written", Irving told his sister. But while the book sold respectably, "Traveller" was dismissed by critics, who panned both "Traveller" and its author. "The public have been led to expect better things", wrote the "United States Literary Gazette", while the "New-York Mirror" pronounced Irving "overrated". Hurt and depressed by the book's reception, Irving retreated to Paris where he spent the next year worrying about finances and scribbling down ideas for projects that never materialized.


title: Washington Irving

text: While in Paris, Irving received a letter from Alexander Hill Everett on January 30, 1826. Everett, recently the American Minister to Spain, urged Irving to join him in Madrid, noting that a number of manuscripts dealing with the Spanish conquest of the Americas had recently been made public. Irving left for Madrid and enthusiastically began scouring the Spanish archives for colorful material.


title: Washington Irving

text: With full access to the American consul's massive library of Spanish history, Irving began working on several books at once. The first offspring of this hard work, "A History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus", was published in January 1828. The book was popular in the United States and in Europe and would have 175 editions published before the end of the century. It was also the first project of Irving's to be published with his own name, instead of a pseudonym, on the title page. Irving was invited to stay at the palace of the Duke of Gor, who gave him unfettered access to his library containing many medieval manuscripts." Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada" was published a year later, followed by "Voyages and Discoveries of the Companions of Columbus" in 1831.


title: Washington Irving

text: Irving's writings on Columbus are a mixture of history and fiction, a genre now called romantic history. Irving based them on extensive research in the Spanish archives, but also added imaginative elements aimed at sharpening the story. The first of these works is the source of the durable myth that medieval Europeans believed the Earth was flat. According to the popular book, Columbus proved the Earth was round.


title: Washington Irving

text: In 1829, Irving was elected to the American Philosophical Society. That same year, he moved into Granada's ancient palace Alhambra, "determined to linger here", he said, "until I get some writings under way connected with the place". Before he could get any significant writing underway, however, he was notified of his appointment as Secretary to the American Legation in London. Worried he would disappoint friends and family if he refused the position, Irving left Spain for England in July 1829.


title: Washington Irving

text: Arriving in London, Irving joined the staff of American Minister Louis McLane. McLane immediately assigned the daily secretary work to another man and tapped Irving to fill the role of aide-de-camp. The two worked over the next year to negotiate a trade agreement between the United States and the British West Indies, finally reaching a deal in August 1830. That same year, Irving was awarded a medal by the Royal Society of Literature, followed by an honorary doctorate of civil law from Oxford in 1831.


title: Washington Irving

text: Following McLane's recall to the United States in 1831 to serve as Secretary of Treasury, Irving stayed on as the legation's chargé d'affaires until the arrival of Martin Van Buren, President Andrew Jackson's nominee for British Minister. With Van Buren in place, Irving resigned his post to concentrate on writing, eventually completing "Tales of the Alhambra", which would be published concurrently in the United States and England in 1832.


title: Washington Irving

text: Irving was still in London when Van Buren received word that the United States Senate had refused to confirm him as the new Minister. Consoling Van Buren, Irving predicted that the Senate's partisan move would backfire. "I should not be surprised", Irving said, "if this vote of the Senate goes far toward elevating him to the presidential chair".


title: Washington Irving

text: Irving arrived in New York on May 21, 1832, after 17 years abroad. That September, he accompanied Commissioner on Indian Affairs Henry Leavitt Ellsworth on a surveying mission, along with companions Charles La Trobe and Count Albert-Alexandre de Pourtales, and they traveled deep into Indian Territory (now the state of Oklahoma). At the completion of his western tour, Irving traveled through Washington, D.C. and Baltimore, where he became acquainted with politician and novelist John Pendleton Kennedy.


title: Washington Irving

text: Irving was frustrated by bad investments, so he turned to writing to generate additional income, beginning with "A Tour on the Prairies" which related his recent travels on the frontier. The book was another popular success and also the first book written and published by Irving in the United States since "A History of New York" in 1809. In 1834, he was approached by fur magnate John Jacob Astor, who convinced him to write a history of his fur trading colony in Astoria, Oregon. Irving made quick work of Astor's project, shipping the fawning biographical account "Astoria" in February 1836. In 1835, Irving, Astor, and a few others founded the Saint Nicholas Society in the City of New York.


title: Washington Irving

text: During an extended stay at Astor's home, Irving met explorer Benjamin Bonneville and was intrigued with his maps and stories of the territories beyond the Rocky Mountains. The two men met in Washington, D.C. several months later, and Bonneville sold his maps and rough notes to Irving for $1,000. Irving used these materials as the basis for his 1837 book "The Adventures of Captain Bonneville". These three works made up Irving's "western" series of books and were written partly as a response to criticism that his time in England and Spain had made him more European than American. Critics such as James Fenimore Cooper and Philip Freneau felt that he had turned his back on his American heritage in favor of English aristocracy. Irving's western books were well received in the United States, particularly "A Tour on the Prairies", though British critics accused him of "book-making".


title: Washington Irving

text: In 1835, Irving purchased a "neglected cottage" and its surrounding riverfront property in Tarrytown, New York, which he named Sunnyside in 1841. It required constant repair and renovation over the next 20 years, with costs continually escalating, so he reluctantly agreed to become a regular contributor to "The Knickerbocker" magazine in 1839, writing new essays and short stories under the Knickerbocker and Crayon pseudonyms. He was regularly approached by aspiring young authors for advice or endorsement, including Edgar Allan Poe, who sought Irving's comments on "William Wilson" and "The Fall of the House of Usher".


title: Washington Irving

text: In 1837, a lady of Charleston, South Carolina brought to the attention of William Clancy, newly appointed bishop to Demerara, a passage in "The Crayon Miscellany", and questioned whether it accurately reflected Catholic teaching or practice. The passage under "Newstead Abbey" read:One of the parchment scrolls thus discovered, throws rather an awkward light upon the kind of life led by the friars of Newstead. It is an indulgence granted to them for a certain number of months, in which a plenary pardon is assured in advance for all kinds of crimes, among which, several of the most gross and sensual are specifically mentioned, and the weaknesses of the flesh to which they were prone.


title: Washington Irving

text: Clancy wrote Irving, who "promptly aided the investigation into the truth, and promised to correct in future editions the misrepresentation complained of". Clancy traveled to his new posting by way of England, and bearing a letter of introduction from Irving, stopped at Newstead Abbey and was able to view the document to which Irving had alluded. Upon inspection, Clancy discovered that it was, in fact, not an indulgence issued to the friars from any ecclesiastical authority, but a pardon given by the king to some parties suspected of having broken "forest laws". Clancy requested the local pastor to forward his findings to Catholic periodicals in England, and upon publication, send a copy to Irving. Whether this was done is not clear as the disputed text remains in the 1849 edition.


title: Washington Irving

text: Irving also championed America's maturing literature, advocating stronger copyright laws to protect writers from the kind of piracy that had initially plagued "The Sketch Book". Writing in the January 1840 issue of "Knickerbocker", he openly endorsed copyright legislation pending in Congress. "We have a young literature", he wrote, "springing up and daily unfolding itself with wonderful energy and luxuriance, which … deserves all its fostering care". The legislation, however, did not pass at that time.


title: Washington Irving

text: In 1841, Irving was elected to the National Academy of Design as an Honorary Academician. He also began a friendly correspondence with Charles Dickens and hosted Dickens and his wife at Sunnyside during Dickens's American tour in 1842.


title: Washington Irving

text: President John Tyler appointed Irving as Minister to Spain in February 1842, after an endorsement from Secretary of State Daniel Webster. Irving wrote, "It will be a severe trial to absent myself for a time from my dear little Sunnyside, but I shall return to it better enabled to carry it on comfortably". He hoped that his position as Minister would allow him plenty of time to write, but Spain was in a state of political upheaval during most of his tenure, with a number of warring factions vying for control of the 12-year-old Queen Isabella II. Irving maintained good relations with the various generals and politicians, as control of Spain rotated through Espartero, Bravo, then Narváez. Espartero was then locked in a power struggle with the Spanish Cortes. Irving's official reports on the ensuing civil war and revolution expressed his romantic fascination with the regent as young Queen Isabella's knight protector, He wrote with an anti-republican, undiplomatic bias. Though Espartero, ousted in July 1843, remained a fallen hero in his eyes, Irving began to view Spanish affairs more realistically. However, the politics and warfare were exhausting, and Irving was both homesick and suffering from a crippling skin condition.


title: Washington Irving

text: With the political situation relatively settled in Spain, Irving continued to closely monitor the development of the new government and the fate of Isabella. His official duties as Spanish Minister also involved negotiating American trade interests with Cuba and following the Spanish parliament's debates over the slave trade. He was also pressed into service by Louis McLane, the American Minister to the Court of St. James's in London, to assist in negotiating the Anglo-American disagreement over the Oregon border that newly elected president James K. Polk had vowed to resolve.


title: Washington Irving

text: Irving returned from Spain in September 1846, took up residence at Sunnyside, and began work on an "Author's Revised Edition" of his works for publisher George Palmer Putnam. For its publication, Irving had made a deal which guaranteed him 12 percent of the retail price of all copies sold, an agreement that was unprecedented at that time. As he revised his older works for Putnam, he continued to write regularly, publishing biographies of Oliver Goldsmith in 1849 and Islamic prophet Muhammad in 1850. In 1855, he produced "Wolfert's Roost", a collection of stories and essays that he had written for "The Knickerbocker" and other publications, and he began publishing a biography of his namesake George Washington which he expected to be his masterpiece. Five volumes of the biography were published between 1855 and 1859.


title: Washington Irving

text: Irving traveled regularly to Mount Vernon and Washington, D.C. for his research, and struck up friendships with Presidents Millard Fillmore and Franklin Pierce. He was elected an Associate Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1855. He was hired as an executor of John Jacob Astor's estate in 1848 and appointed by Astor's will as first chairman of the Astor Library, a forerunner to the New York Public Library.


title: Washington Irving

text: Irving continued to socialize and keep up with his correspondence well into his seventies, and his fame and popularity continued to soar. "I don't believe that any man, in any country, has ever had a more affectionate admiration for him than that given to you in America", wrote Senator William C. Preston in a letter to Irving. "I believe that we have had but one man who is so much in the popular heart". By 1859, author Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. noted that Sunnyside had become "next to Mount Vernon, the best known and most cherished of all the dwellings in our land".


title: Washington Irving

text: Irving died of a heart attack in his bedroom at Sunnyside on November 28, 1859, age 76—only eight months after completing the final volume of his Washington biography. Legend has it that his last words were: "Well, I must arrange my pillows for another night. When will this end?" He was buried under a simple headstone at Sleepy Hollow cemetery on December 1, 1859. Irving and his grave were commemorated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in his 1876 poem "In the Churchyard at Tarrytown", which concludes with:


title: Washington Irving

text: Irving is largely credited as the first American Man of Letters and the first to earn his living solely by his pen. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow acknowledged Irving's role in promoting American literature in December 1859: "We feel a just pride in his renown as an author, not forgetting that, to his other claims upon our gratitude, he adds also that of having been the first to win for our country an honourable name and position in the History of Letters".


title: Washington Irving

text: Irving perfected the American short story and was the first American writer to set his stories firmly in the United States, even as he poached from German or Dutch folklore. He is also generally credited as one of the first to write in the vernacular and without an obligation to presenting morals or being didactic in his short stories, writing stories simply to entertain rather than to enlighten. He also encouraged many would-be writers. As George William Curtis noted, there "is not a young literary aspirant in the country, who, if he ever personally met Irving, did not hear from him the kindest words of sympathy, regard, and encouragement".


title: Washington Irving

text: Edgar Allan Poe, on the other hand, felt that Irving should be given credit for being an innovator but that the writing itself was often unsophisticated. "Irving is much over-rated", Poe wrote in 1838, "and a nice distinction might be drawn between his just and his surreptitious and adventitious reputation—between what is due to the pioneer solely, and what to the writer". A critic for the "New-York Mirror" wrote: "No man in the Republic of Letters has been more overrated than Mr. Washington Irving". Some critics claimed that Irving catered to British sensibilities, and one critic charged that he wrote ""of" and "for" England, rather than his own country".


title: Washington Irving

text: Other critics were more supportive of Irving's style. William Makepeace Thackeray was the first to refer to Irving as the "ambassador whom the New World of Letters sent to the Old", a banner picked up by writers and critics throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. "He is the first of the American humorists, as he is almost the first of the American writers", wrote critic H.R. Hawless in 1881, "yet belonging to the New World, there is a quaint Old World flavor about him". Early critics often had difficulty separating Irving the man from Irving the writer. "The life of Washington Irving was one of the brightest ever led by an author", wrote Richard Henry Stoddard, an early Irving biographer. Later critics, however, began to review his writings as all style with no substance. "The man had no message", said critic Barrett Wendell.


title: Washington Irving

text: As a historian, Irving's reputation had fallen out of favor but then gained a resurgence. "With the advent of 'scientific' history in the generations that followed his, Irving's historical writings lapsed into disregard and disrespect. To late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century historians, including John Franklin Jameson, G. P. Gooch, and others, these works were demiromances, worthy at best of veiled condescension. However, more recently several of Irving's histories and biographies have again won praise for their reliability as well as the literary skill with which they were written. Specifically, "A History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus"; "Astoria, or Anecdotes of an Enterprise beyond the Rocky Mountains"; and "Life of George Washington" have earned the respect of scholars whose writings on those topics we consider authoritative in our generation: Samuel Eliot Morison, Bernard DeVoto, Douglas Southall Freeman".


title: Washington Irving

text: Irving popularized the nickname "Gotham" for New York City, and he is credited with inventing the expression "the almighty dollar". The surname of his fictional Dutch historian Diedrich Knickerbocker is generally associated with New York and New Yorkers, as found in New York's professional basketball team The New York Knickerbockers.


title: Washington Irving

text: One of Irving's most lasting contributions to American culture is in the way that Americans celebrate Christmas. In his 1812 revisions to "A History of New York", he inserted a dream sequence featuring St. Nicholas soaring over treetops in a flying wagon, an invention which others dressed up as Santa Claus. In his five Christmas stories in "The Sketch Book", Irving portrayed an idealized celebration of old-fashioned Christmas customs at a quaint English manor which depicted English Christmas festivities that he experienced while staying in England, which had largely been abandoned. He used text from "The Vindication of Christmas" (London 1652) of old English Christmas traditions, and the book contributed to the revival and reinterpretation of the Christmas holiday in the United States.


title: Washington Irving

text: Irving introduced the erroneous idea that Europeans believed the world to be flat prior to the discovery of the New World in his biography of Christopher Columbus, yet the flat-Earth myth has been taught in schools as fact to many generations of Americans. American painter John Quidor based many of his paintings on scenes from the works of Irving about Dutch New York, including such paintings as "Ichabod Crane Flying from the Headless Horseman" (1828), "The Return of Rip Van Winkle" (1849), and "The Headless Horseman Pursuing Ichabod Crane" (1858).


title: Washington Irving

text: The village of Dearman, New York, changed its name to "Irvington" in 1854 to honor Washington Irving, who was living in nearby Sunnyside, which is preserved as a museum. Influential residents of the village prevailed upon the Hudson River Railroad, which had reached the village by 1849, to change the name of the train station to "Irvington", and the village incorporated as Irvington on April 16, 1872.


title: Washington Irving

text: The town of Knickerbocker, Texas, was founded by two of Irving's nephews, who named it in honor of their uncle's literary pseudonym. The city of Irving, Texas, states that it is named for Washington Irving.


title: Washington Irving

text: The Irving Park neighborhood in Chicago is named for him as well, though the original name of the subdivision was Irvington and then later Irving Park before annexation to Chicago.


title: Washington Irving

text: Gibbons Memorial Park, located in Honesdale, Pennsylvania, is located on Irving Cliff, which was named after him.


title: Sam Lloyd

text: Sam Lloyd (November 12, 1963 – April 30, 2020) was an American actor and singer, best known for his portrayal of lawyer Ted Buckland on the comedy-drama series "Scrubs" and the sitcom "Cougar Town".


title: Sam Lloyd

text: Lloyd was born in Springfield, Vermont, on November 12, 1963, the son of Marianna McGuffin and Samuel Lloyd Sr., an actor. One of five siblings—which included Laurel, Robin, Sandra, and Jackson—he was the nephew of actor Christopher Lloyd.


title: Sam Lloyd

text: He attended Syracuse University in the 1980s. There he starred in friend Paul Perry's student film "Fan Mail", which Lloyd described as a "clever, fun, kind of homage to silent films".


title: Sam Lloyd

text: Lloyd is best known for his portrayal of lawyer Ted Buckland on the comedy-drama series "Scrubs" and the sitcom "Cougar Town". He and his uncle both guest-starred on "Malcolm in the Middle": Lloyd as a housing lawyer, and his uncle as Hal's father. The two also guested on "The West Wing": Lloyd requesting the White House to release information about UFOs, and his uncle as a constitutional law expert. He also appeared in "Desperate Housewives" as Albert Goldfine. Aside from acting, Lloyd was an accomplished singer with the a cappella group the Blanks, who made many appearances on "Scrubs" under the name The Worthless Peons (also known as Ted's Band). He also played the bass guitar in a Beatles tribute group called the Butties; although right-handed, he learned to play bass left-handed like Beatles bassist Paul McCartney to maintain authenticity.


title: Sam Lloyd

text: In January 2019, Lloyd was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor, which was subsequently revealed to be metastatic lung cancer that had spread to his liver, spine, and jaw. His wife Vanessa had given birth to their son, Weston, around the time Lloyd received his diagnosis. He died in Los Angeles on April 30, 2020, at the age of 56.


title: AZ Alkmaar

text: Alkmaar Zaanstreek (), better known as AZ Alkmaar or simply AZ (), is a Dutch professional football club from Alkmaar and the Zaan district. The club plays in the Eredivisie, the highest professional football league in the Netherlands, and hosts home matches at the AFAS Stadion.


title: AZ Alkmaar

text: AZ has won the Eredivisie twice, in 1980–81 and 2008–09. In the same season as their first league title, they also reached the UEFA Cup Final, which they lost to Ipswich Town. In addition, the team has won the KNVB Cup on four occasions and one Johan Cruyff Shield.


title: AZ Alkmaar

text: AZ was founded on 10 May 1967 as AZ '67, the result of a merger of Alkmaar '54 and FC Zaanstreek. Alkmaar '54 was founded as a professional team in April 1954 to play in the 10-team NBVB league, created because the Royal Dutch Football Association (KNVB) refused to organize a professional league (the KNVB took over in 1955). Alkmaar '54, and by extension AZ, played the very first professional match in the Netherlands: on 14 August 1954, they won 3–0 at home against Venlo '54, with Klaas Smit scoring the first (and third) goal. After winning the in 1960–61, it played one year in the Eredivisie.


title: AZ Alkmaar

text: FC Zaanstreek had been playing since 1910 as the Kooger Football Club (KFC). KFC had nearly become national champion in 1934 through a narrow loss to Ajax in the finals. The team became professional in 1955. In 1964 the professional part of KFC was renamed FC Zaanstreek, while the amateurs played on as KFC.


title: AZ Alkmaar

text: Also in 1964, the brothers Cees and Klaas Molenaar, former players and trainers for KFC and owners of a growing appliance store chain, sought to create a powerful football team in Zaanstreek by merging the two local professional teams: KFC and Zaanlandsche Football Club. After the ZFC leadership thwarted this attempt, the Molenaars successfully merged FC Zaanstreek with Alkmaar '54 in 1967. FC Zaanstreek had finished 7th and Alkmaar '54 12th in 1966–67 Eerste Divisie. The team would be based in Alkmaar, though the second team originally trained and played in Koog aan de Zaan.


title: AZ Alkmaar

text: Partially through the hiring of expensive foreign players, the new club soon acquired large debts. In 1972, the Molenaar brothers bailed it out and invested heavily in the club, to the point that AZ '67 were successful in the late 1970s and early '80s, regularly playing European football from 1977 to 1982 while also winning three KNVB Cups over that period.


title: AZ Alkmaar

text: After four close league campaigns, AZ finally became Dutch champions in 1981, becoming the only team other than the "big three" of Ajax, and PSV to do so in a 44-year period spanning from 1965 to 2009 (when AZ once again won the league title). They won the title with overwhelming power, winning 27 of 34 matches and only losing once, while scoring a club record 101 goals and conceding just 30. That same season, AZ reached the final of the UEFA Cup, losing 5–4 on aggregate to Ipswich Town. The next year, in the European Cup, they lost in the second round 3–2 on aggregate to Liverpool.


title: AZ Alkmaar

text: Georg Keßler was AZ's manager over most of these years (1978–82), while star players included: Kees Kist, the club's highest ever goalscorer with 212 goals and the first ever Dutchman to win the European Golden Boot in 1979 when he scored 34 goals in a season; Jan Peters, who played 120 matches for AZ during this period scoring 30 goals from midfield; and Hugo Hovenkamp, who played 239 matches in defence for AZ from 1975 to 1983, as well as receiving 31 caps for the Netherlands national team from 1977 to 1983 and playing each match in UEFA Euro 1980 while an AZ player. Additional stars included John Metgod, who spent six years at AZ playing 195 matches as a defender, scoring 26 goals including a goal against Ipswich Town in the final of the UEFA Cup. Like Hovenkamp, Metgod was also included in the Dutch squad for Euro 1980. Meanwhile, Danish forward Kristen Nygaard spent ten years at AZ, scoring 104 goals in 363 matches between 1972 and 1982.


title: AZ Alkmaar

text: Co-owner Cees Molenaar died in 1979. AZ's fortunes deteriorated after his brother, Klaas Molenaar, left the club in 1985. After several mid-table finishes in previous seasons, AZ was relegated in 1988 from the Eredivisie, ending the season on 28 points from 34 matches and falling to the due to the superior goal difference of Roda JC. This relegation was significant since it occurred just seven years after the club's historic domestic double and marked the end of AZ's first period of success in Dutch football. Following this, AZ spent much of the next decade in the second tier, struggling to find a return to the top flight.


title: AZ Alkmaar

text: The involvement of businessman Dirk Scheringa in the mid-1990s marked the revival of the club as AZ returned to the Eredivisie, winning the 1997-98 Eerste Divisie title. The club achieved consecutive finishes around the middle positions in the league until ending up in third place in the 2004-05 Eredivisie season, AZ's highest position for 23 years. In the summer of 2006, the club moved to a new 17,000 capacity stadium, AZ Stadion.


title: AZ Alkmaar

text: Despite playing strongly for the majority of the 2006–07 season, AZ's season ended in disappointment. First, entering the last matchday of the 2006–07 Eredivisie season, AZ led PSV and Ajax on goal difference at the top of the league table, but ended up third after losing their last match against 16th placed team Excelsior, AZ played with ten men for 80 minutes. Additionally, AZ then lost the KNVB Cup final to Ajax 8–7 after a penalty shoot-out, while also falling to Ajax over two play-off matches for participation in the Champions League. After the season, key players like Tim de Cler, Danny Koevermans and Shota Arveladze left the team.


title: AZ Alkmaar

text: A remarkable run ended in the 2007–08 season: after AZ lost a group stage match against Everton (3–2) in the UEFA Cup, the club's unbeaten run of 32 home matches in European competitions – lasting from 1977 to 2007 – ended. AZ had a poor season, suffering elimination in the first round of the KNVB Cup and the group stage of the UEFA Cup, as well as finishing the 2007–08 Eredivisie in a disappointing 11th place. Towards the latter stages of the season, in March 2008, AZ manager Louis van Gaal had initially tendered his resignation, but after protests the players and directors, he rescinded his resignation.


title: AZ Alkmaar

text: The 2008–09 season had an unpromising start after two opening defeats against NAC Breda and ADO Den Haag. However, starting with a 1–0 victory over defending league champions PSV, AZ did not lose a match in its next 28 matches, including a run of 11-straight matches where AZ did not concede an opposition goal. Three weeks before the end of the season, AZ became Eredivisie champions, edging nearest title rivals Twente and Ajax comfortably. This was a historic achievement for the club as this was the first title-winning season for 28 years, and it also meant a return to the UEFA Champions League.


title: AZ Alkmaar

text: Being league champions, AZ qualified for the Champions League for only the second time. It was drawn into a group alongside Arsenal FC, Standard Liège and Olympiacos but only took four points from six matches and finished bottom of their group.


title: AZ Alkmaar

text: For the 2009–10 season, Ronald Koeman succeeded Louis van Gaal, who had departed to manage Bayern Munich after leading AZ to the championship. Koeman was officially hired on 17 May 2009, but on 5 December, AZ announced he was no longer in charge of the club after losing 7 of his first 16 matches. Former Rangers and Zenit Saint Petersburg manager Dick Advocaat took over for the remainder of the season. Under Advocaat, AZ achieved solid results and secured European football for the next season.


title: AZ Alkmaar

text: For the 2010–11 season, AZ appointed Gertjan Verbeek as its new manager. They finished the 2010–11 Eredivisie in fourth place, thus securing Europa League football for the next season, while in the KNVB Cup, AZ reached the last eight, where they were beaten by rivals Ajax by a 1–0 scoreline. AZ also finished third in their Europa League group, thus failing to qualifying for the competition's knockout round.


title: AZ Alkmaar

text: In the 2011–12 season, AZ finished fourth in the Eredivisie, though performed significantly better in cup competitions, reaching the semi-finals in the KNVB Cup (losing to Heracles after extra time) and the quarter-finals in the Europa League. In the latter, the club ultimately lost to Valencia after having defeated Udinese, Anderlecht, Malmö FF, Austria Wien, Metalist Kharkiv, Aalesund and Baumit Jablonec to reach that stage.


title: AZ Alkmaar

text: On 21 December 2011, during the quarter-finals of the 2011–12 KNVB Cup, a 19-year-old Ajax fan invaded the Amsterdam Arena pitch in the 36th minute with Ajax winning 1–0, attacking AZ goalkeeper Esteban Alvarado. The fan slipped and Alvarado kicked the fan twice, prompting the referee to issue the goalkeeper a red card. Following this, AZ manager Gertjan Verbeek ordered his players to leave the pitch for the dressing room in protest. The match was later played on 19 January 2012, with Alvarado's red card rescinded; AZ won 3–2.


title: AZ Alkmaar

text: The 2012–13 season started in the Europa League with a qualifying play-off round against Guus Hiddink's Anzhi Makhachkala. AZ was hammered 6–0 on aggregate. Disappointingly, AZ finished tenth in the 2012–13 Eredivisie, although the club won the 2012–13 KNVB Cup after defeating PSV 2–1 in the final. As cup winners, AZ automatically qualified for the 2013–14 Europa League.


title: AZ Alkmaar

text: In September 2013, just one day after emphatically beating PSV, at the time the league leaders, Verbeek was dismissed as first team manager by the club due to "a lack of chemistry" between management and players. He was replaced by Dick Advocaat for the remainder of the season until a permanent replacement could be found. Advocaat took AZ to the semi-finals of the KNVB Cup, the quarter-finals of the Europa League and eighth in the league, ultimately losing to Groningen in the Europa League play-off final round (their 58th match of the season, a club record).


title: AZ Alkmaar

text: The 2014–15 season began with a new manager, former Heerenveen manager and Ajax great Marco van Basten. However, after just three matches into the season, Van Basten resigned as manager to become assistant manager under Alex Pastoor, citing heavy stress as the main reason. Pastoor was the interim manager during two matches under Van Basten's absence and received the official title on 16 September, but contract negotiations failed and he left the club just two days later. A week later, John van den Brom was appointed manager. Under Van den Brom, AZ quickly rose up to the sub-top, eventually finished the season in third place, surpassing Feyenoord on the final season's matchday and qualifying for the 2015–16 Europa League.


title: AZ Alkmaar

text: The 2015–16 Eredivisie started with AZ selling most of its first-team players from the previous season during the summer transfer period. As a response, AZ bought players from other Dutch clubs, notably Vincent Janssen from Almere City, Alireza Jahanbakhsh from NEC and Ben Rienstra from PEC Zwolle. In December, it was announced free agent Ron Vlaar signed a contract until the end of the season after training with the club for a few weeks prior. Vlaar quickly became team captain and helped lift AZ from tenth place to a fourth-place finish in the league. Along this rise, new signing Vincent Janssen scored 27 goals for the club, earning him the Eredivisie top goalscorer title. In the 2015–16 KNVB Cup, AZ made it to the semi-finals, losing 3–1 to Feyenoord. AZ won the first two qualification rounds to qualify for the 2015–16 Europa League group stage, but finished last in their group.


title: AZ Alkmaar

text: At the start of the 2016–17 Eredivisie, AZ sold last season's performer Vincent Janssen to Tottenham Hotspur and long-time midfielder Markus Henriksen to Hull City. In the 2016–17 Europa League, AZ finished second in Group D, surviving the group stage for the third time in five seasons.


title: AZ Alkmaar

text: After an excellent 2019/20 season in which AZ beat league leaders Ajax home and away, aided by consistent performances from youth academy talents such as Teun Koopmeiners, Myron Boadu, Calvin Stengs and Owen Wijndal, the season was forced to end early due to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Joint on points with Ajax at the top of the table, AZ were given second place on goal difference, and subsequently earned Qualification to the Champions League second qualifying round.


title: AZ Alkmaar

text: A poor start to their 2020/21 Eredivisie campaign saw AZ draw five games in a row, before eventually picking up a victory against RKC Waalwijk on the 1st of November 2020.


title: AZ Alkmaar

text: AZ also struggled in European competitions this season. Despite a strong start, with a 3–1 extra time come back against Viktoria Plzen in the Champions League qualifiers, the club lost 2–0 to Dynamo Kiev several weeks later, seeing them fall back into the Europa League. After victory against Napoli and Rijeka early in the pool stages, AZ was on track to advance, though lost to Real Sociedad away, obtained a 0–0 draw in the reverse fixture, and also drew 1–1 with Napoli. Following these results, AZ needed to defeat Rijeka away to advance. However, the departure the week before the game of manager Arne Slot saw an unorganised team lose 2–1 to Rijeka, ending their European dream.


title: Chipko movement

text: The movement originated in 1973 at the Himalayan region of Uttarakhand (then part of Uttar Pradesh) and went on to become a rallying point for many future environmental movements all over the world by Sunderlal Bahuguna. It created a precedent for starting nonviolent protest in India. However, it was Sunderlal Bahuguna, a Gandhian activist, who gave the movement a proper direction and its success meant that the world immediately took notice of this non-violent movement, which was to inspire in time many similar eco-groups to help slow down rapid deforestation, expose vested interests, increase social awareness and the need to save trees, increase ecological awareness, and demonstrate the viability of people power. He used the slogan "Ecology is the permanent economy". Above all, it stirred up the existing civil society in India, which began to address the issues of tribal and marginalized people. And it's true that the support for the movement came mainly from the womenfolk. The Chipko Andolan or the Chipko movement is a movement that practiced methods of Satyagraha where both male and female activists from Uttarakhand played vital roles, including Gaura Devi, Suraksha Devi, Sudesha Devi, Bachni Devi and Chandi


title: Chipko movement

text: Today, beyond the eco-socialism hue, it is seen increasingly as an ecofeminist movement. Although many of its leaders were men, women were not only its backbone, but also its mainstay, because they were the ones most affected by the rampant deforestation, which led to a lack of firewood and fodder as well as water for drinking and irrigation. Over the years they also became primary stakeholders in a majority of the afforestation work that happened under the Chipko movement. In 1987, the Chipko movement was awarded the Right Livelihood Award "for its dedication to the conservation, restoration and ecologically-sound use of India's natural resources."


title: Chipko movement

text: Inspired by Jayaprakash Narayan and the Sarvodaya movement, in the year 1964 "Dasholi Gram Swarajya Sangh" ("Dasholi Society for Village Self-Rule"), was set up by Gandhian social worker Chandi Prasad Bhatt in Chamoli Gopeshwar, with an aim to set up small industries using the resources of the forest. Their first project was a small workshop making farm tools for local use. Its name was later changed to DGSM from the original "Dashauli Gram Swarajya Sangh" (DGSS) in the 1980s. Here they had to face restrictive forest policies, a hangover of colonial era still prevalent, as well as the "contractor system", in which these pieces of forest land were commodified and auctioned to big contractors, usually from the plains, who brought along their own skilled and semi-skilled laborers, leaving only the menial jobs like hauling rocks for the hill people, and paying them next to nothing. On the other hand, the hill regions saw an influx of more people from the outside, which only added to the already strained ecological balance.


title: Chipko movement

text: Hastened by increasing hardships, the Garhwal Himalayas soon became the centre for a rising ecological awareness of how reckless deforestation had denuded much of the forest cover, resulting in the devastating Alaknanda River floods of July 1970, when a major landslide blocked the river and affected an area starting from Hanumanchatti, near Badrinath to 320 kilometers (200 miles) downstream till Haridwar, further numerous villages, bridges and roads were washed away. Thereafter, incidences of landslides and land subsidence became common in an area which was experiencing a rapid increase in civil engineering projects.


title: Chipko movement

text: Villagers and women began to organise themselves under several smaller groups, take up local causes with the authorities, and stand up against commercial logging operations that threatened their livelihoods. In October 1971, the Sangha workers held a demonstration in Gopeshwar to protest against the policies of the Forest Department. More rallies and marches were held in late 1972, but to little effect, until a decision to take shaurya direct action was taken. The first such occasion occurred when the Forest Department turned down the Sangh's annual request for ten ash trees for its farm tools workshop, and instead awarded a contract for 300 trees to Simon Company, a sporting goods manufacturer in distant Allahabad, to make tennis racquets. In March 1973, the lumbermen arrived at Gopeshwar, and after a couple of weeks, they were confronted at village Mandal on 24 April 1973, where about a hundred villagers and DGSS workers were beating drums and shouting slogans, thus forcing the contractors and their lumbermen to retreat.


title: Chipko movement

text: This was the first confrontation of the movement, The contract was eventually cancelled and awarded to the Sangh instead. By now, the issue had grown beyond the mere procurement of an annual quota of the ash trees and encompassed a growing concern over commercial logging and the government's forest policy, which the villagers saw as unfavourable towards them. The Sangh also decided to resort to tree-hugging, or Chipko, as a means of non-violent protest.


title: Chipko movement

text: But the struggle was far from over, as the same company was awarded more ash trees, in the Phata forest, 80 km (50 miles) away from Gopeshwar. Here again, due to local opposition, starting on 20 June 1974, the contractors retreated after a stand-off that lasted a few days. Thereafter, the villagers of Phata and Tarsali formed a vigil group and watched over the trees until December, when they had another successful stand-off when the activists reached the site in time. The lumbermen retreated leaving behind the five ash trees that felled.


title: Chipko movement

text: A few months later, the final flashpoint began when the government announced an auction scheduled in January 1974, for 2,500 trees near Reni village, overlooking the Alaknanda River. Bhatt set out for the villages in the Reni area and incited the villagers, who decided to protest against the actions of the government by hugging the trees. Over the next few weeks, rallies and meetings continued in the Reni area.


title: Chipko movement

text: On 25 March 1974, the day the lumbermen were to cut the trees, the men of Reni village and DGSS workers were in Chamoli, diverted by the state government and contractors to a fictional compensation payment site, while back home labourers arrived by the truckload to start logging operations. A local girl rushed to inform Gaura Devi, the head of the village "Mahila Mangal Dal", at Reni village (Laata was her ancestral home and Reni adopted home). Gaura Devi led 27 of the village women to the site and confronted the loggers. When all talking failed, and the loggers started to shout and abuse the women, threatening them with guns, the women resorted to hugging the trees to stop them from being felled. The women kept an all-night vigil guarding their trees against the cutters until a few of them relented and left the village. The next day, when the men and leaders returned, the news of the movement spread to the neighbouring Laata and other villages including Henwalghati, and more people joined in. Eventually, after a four-day stand-off, the contractors left.


title: Chipko movement

text: The news soon reached the state capital, where the then state Chief Minister, Hemwati Nandan Bahuguna, set up a committee to look into the matter, which eventually ruled in favour of the villagers. This became a turning point in the history of eco-development struggles in the region and around the world.


title: Chipko movement

text: The struggle soon spread across many parts of the region, and such spontaneous stand-offs between the local community and timber merchants occurred at several locations, with hill women demonstrating their new-found power as non-violent activists. As the movement gathered shape under its leaders, the name Chipko movement was attached to their activities. According to Chipko historians, the term originally used by Bhatt was the word "angalwaltha" in the Garhwali language for "embrace", which later was adapted to the Hindi word, "Chipko", which means to stick.