title: Joseph Barbera

text: Joseph Barbera was born at 10 Delancey Street in the Little Italy (Lower East Side) section of Manhattan, New York City, to Italian (Sicilian) immigrants Vincenzo Barbera, born in Castelvetrano, and Francesca Calvacca (1892–1974), born in Sciacca. Some people have claimed (without providing any source) that one or both of his parents were Lebanese, but he makes no mention of this in his own autobiography, asserting only that he and both of his parents were Sicilian and they spoke Italian. His family moved to Flatbush, Brooklyn, New York when he was four months old. He had two brothers, Larry (1909–1982) and Ted (1919–1994), both of whom served in World War II. As a member of the United States Army, Larry participated in the invasion of Sicily. Ted was a fighter pilot with the United States Army Air Forces and served in the Aleutian Islands Campaign. Barbera's father, Vincent, was the prosperous owner of three barbershops who squandered the family fortunes on gambling. By the time Barbera was 15, his father had abandoned the family and his maternal uncle Jim became a father figure to him.


title: Joseph Barbera

text: Barbera displayed a talent for drawing as early as the first grade. He graduated from Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn in 1928. While in high school, Barbera won several boxing titles. He was briefly managed by World Lightweight Boxing Champion Al Singer's manager but soon lost interest in boxing. In 1935, Barbera married his high school sweetheart, Dorothy Earl. In school, they had been known as "Romeo and Juliet".


title: Joseph Barbera

text: Barbera and his wife briefly separated when he went to California. They reunited but were on the verge of another separation when they discovered that Dorothy was pregnant with their first child. They had four children: two sons (Neal and an infant boy who died two days after his birth) and two daughters (Lynn and Jayne, who has been a producer in her own right). The marriage officially ended in 1963. Shortly after his divorce, Barbera met his second wife, Sheila Holden, sister of British rock and roll singer Vince Taylor at Musso & Frank's restaurant, where she worked as bookkeeper and cashier. Unlike Dorothy, who had preferred to stay at home with the children, Sheila enjoyed the Hollywood social scene that Barbera often frequented.


title: Joseph Barbera

text: During high school, Barbera worked as a tailor's delivery boy. In 1929, he became interested in animation after watching a screening of Walt Disney's "The Skeleton Dance". During the Great Depression, he tried unsuccessfully to become a cartoonist for a magazine called "The NY Hits Magazine". He supported himself with a job at a bank, and continued to pursue publication for his cartoons. His magazine drawings of single cartoons, not comic strips, began to be published in "Redbook", "Saturday Evening Post", and "Collier's"—the magazine with which he had the most success. Barbera also wrote to Walt Disney for advice on getting started in the animation industry. Disney wrote back, saying he would call Barbera during an upcoming trip to New York, but the call never took place.


title: Joseph Barbera

text: Barbera took art classes at the Art Students League of New York and the Pratt Institute and was hired to work in the ink and paint department of Fleischer Studios. In 1932, he joined the Van Beuren Studios as an animator and storyboard artist. He worked on cartoon series such as "Cubby Bear" and "Rainbow Parades", and an earlier "Tom and Jerry". This "Tom and Jerry" series starred two humans; it was unrelated to Barbera's later cat-and-mouse series, although both of these cartoons are adopted the name that created in 1821 book titled "Life in London", written by Pierce Egan. When Van Beuren closed down in 1936, Barbera moved over to Paul Terry's Terrytoons studio.


title: Joseph Barbera

text: In 1935, Barbera created his first solo-effort storyboard about a character named "Kiko the Kangaroo". The storyline was of Kiko in an airplane race with another character called "Dirty Dog". Terry declined to produce the story. In his autobiography, Barbera said of his efforts ..."I was, quite honestly, not in the least disappointed. I had proven to myself that I could do a storyboard, and that I had gained the experience of presenting it. For now, that was enough."The original storyboard, which had been passed down through the Barbera family, went on sale at auction in November 2013.


title: Joseph Barbera

text: Lured by a substantial salary increase, Barbera left Terrytoons and New York for the new Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer cartoon studio in California in 1937. He found that Los Angeles was suffering just as much from the Great Depression as Brooklyn and almost returned to Brooklyn.


title: Joseph Barbera

text: Barbera's desk was opposite that of William Hanna. The two quickly realized they would make a good team. By 1939, they had solidified a partnership that would last over 60 years. Barbera and Hanna worked alongside animator Tex Avery, who had created Daffy Duck and co-created Bugs Bunny for Warner Bros. and directed "Droopy" cartoons at MGM.


title: Joseph Barbera

text: In 1940, Hanna and Barbera jointly directed "Puss Gets the Boot", which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best (Cartoon) Short Subject. The studio wanted a diversified cartoon portfolio, so despite the success of "Puss Gets the Boot", Barbera and Hanna's supervisor, Fred Quimby, did not want to produce more cat and mouse cartoons believing that there were already enough cartoons of those in existence. Surprised by the success of "Puss Gets the Boot", Barbera and Hanna ignored Quimby's resistance and continued developing the cat-and-mouse theme. By this time, however, Hanna wanted to return to working for Rudolph Ising, to whom he felt very loyal. Barbera and Hanna met with Quimby, who discovered that although Ising had taken sole credit for producing "Puss Gets the Boot", he never actually worked on it. Quimby, who had wanted to start a new animation unit independent from Ising, then gave Hanna and Barbera permission to pursue their cat-and-mouse idea. The result was their most famous creation, "Tom and Jerry".


title: Joseph Barbera

text: Modeled after the "Puss Gets the Boot" characters with slight differences, the series followed Jerry, the pesky rodent who continuously outwitted his feline foe, Tom. Hanna said they settled on the cat and mouse theme for this cartoon because "we knew we needed two characters. We thought we needed conflict, and chase and action. And a cat after a mouse seemed like a good, basic thought." The revamped characters first appeared in 1941's "The Midnight Snack". Over the next 17 years, Barbera and Hanna worked exclusively on "Tom and Jerry", directing more than 114 popular cartoon shorts. During World War II, they also made animated training films. "Tom and Jerry" relied mostly on motion instead of dialog. Despite its popularity, "Tom and Jerry" has often been criticized as excessively violent. Nonetheless, the series won its first Academy Award for the 11th short, "The Yankee Doodle Mouse" (1943)—a war-time adventure. "Tom and Jerry" was ultimately nominated for 14 Academy Awards, winning 7, more than any other animated series featuring the same characters. Tom and Jerry also made guest appearances in several of MGM's live-action films, including "Anchors Aweigh" (1945) and "Invitation to the Dance" (1956) with Gene Kelly, and "Dangerous When Wet" (1953) with Esther Williams.


title: Joseph Barbera

text: In addition to his work in animated cartoons, Barbera and "Tom and Jerry" layout artist Harvey Eisenberg moonlit to run a comic book company named Dearfield Publishing. Active from 1946 to 1951, Dearfield's titles included ""Red" Rabbit Comics", "Foxy Fagan", and "Junie Prom".


title: Joseph Barbera

text: Quimby accepted each Academy Award for "Tom and Jerry" without inviting Barbera and Hanna onstage. The cartoons were also released with Quimby listed as the sole producer, following the same practice for which he had condemned Ising. Quimby once delayed a promised raise to Barbera by six months . When Quimby retired in late 1955, Hanna and Barbera were placed in charge of MGM's animation division. As MGM began to lose more revenue on animated cartoons due to television, the studio soon realized that re-releasing old cartoons was far more profitable than producing new ones. In 1957, MGM ordered Barbera and Hanna's business manager to close the cartoon division and lay off everyone by a phone call. Barbera and Hanna found the no-notice closing puzzling because "Tom and Jerry" had been so successful.


title: Joseph Barbera

text: In 1957, Barbera reteamed with his former partner Hanna to produce cartoon films for television and theatrical release. As they had at MGM, the two brought their different skills to the company; Barbera was a skilled gag writer and sketch artist, while Hanna had a gift for timing, story construction, and recruiting top artists. Major business decisions would be made together, though each year the title of president alternated between them. A coin toss determined that Hanna would have precedence in the naming of the new company, first called H-B Enterprises but soon changed to Hanna-Barbera Productions. Barbera and Hanna's MGM colleague George Sidney, the director of "Anchors Aweigh", became the third partner and business manager in the company, and arranged a deal for distribution and working capital with Screen Gems, the television division of Columbia Pictures, who took part ownership of the new studio.


title: Joseph Barbera

text: The first offering from the new company was "The Ruff & Reddy Show", a series which detailed the friendship between a dog and cat. Despite a lukewarm response for their first theatrical venture, "Loopy De Loop", Hanna-Barbera soon established themselves with two successful television series: "The Huckleberry Hound Show" and "The Yogi Bear Show". A 1960 survey showed that half of the viewers of "Huckleberry Hound" were adults. This prompted the company to create a new animated series, "The Flintstones". A parody of "The Honeymooners", the new show followed a typical Stone Age family with home appliances, talking animals, and celebrity guests. With an audience of both children and adults, "The Flintstones" became the first animated prime-time show to be a hit. Fred Flintstone's signature exclamation ""yabba dabba doo"" soon entered everyday usage, and the show boosted the studio to the top of the TV cartoon field. The company later produced a futuristic version of "The Flintstones", known as "The Jetsons". Although both shows reappeared in the 1970s and 1980s, "The Flintstones" was far more popular.


title: Joseph Barbera

text: By the late 1960s, Hanna-Barbera Productions was the most successful television animation studio in the business. The Hanna-Barbera studio produced over 3000 animated half-hour television shows. Among the more than 100 cartoon series they produced were "The Quick Draw McGraw Show", "Top Cat", "Jonny Quest", "The Magilla Gorilla Show", "The Atom Ant/Secret Squirrel Show", "Scooby-Doo", "Super Friends", and "The Smurfs". The company also produced animated specials based on "Alice in Wonderland", "Jack and the Beanstalk", and "Cyrano de Bergerac", as well as the feature-length films "Charlotte's Web" and "Heidi's Song".


title: Joseph Barbera

text: As popular as their cartoons were with 1960s audiences, they were disliked by artists. Television programs had lower budgets than theatrical animation, and this economic reality caused many animation studios to go out of business in the 1950s and 1960s, putting many people in the industry out of work. Hanna-Barbera was key in the development of an animation technique known as limited animation, which allowed television animation to be more cost-effective, but often reduced quality. Hanna and Barbera had first experimented with these techniques in the early days of "Tom and Jerry". To reduce the cost of each episode, shows often focused more on character dialogue than detailed animation. The number of drawings for a seven-minute cartoon decreased from 14,000 to nearly 2,000, and the company implemented innovative techniques such as rapid background changes to improve viewing. Critics criticized the change from detailed animation to repetitive movements by two-dimensional characters. Barbera once said that their choice was to adapt to the television budgets or change careers. The new style did not limit the success of their animated shows, enabling Hanna-Barbera to stay in business, providing employment to many who would otherwise have been out of work. Limited animation paved the way for future animated series such as "The Simpsons", "SpongeBob SquarePants", and "South Park".


title: Joseph Barbera

text: In December 1966, Hanna-Barbera Productions was sold to Taft Broadcasting (renamed Great American Communications in 1987) for $12 million. Barbera and Hanna remained at the head of the company until 1991. At that point, the company was sold to the Turner Broadcasting System for an estimated $320 million. Turner began using Hanna-Barbera's television catalog as material for its new Cartoon Network cable channel in 1992, and by the mid-1990s Hanna-Barbera was producing several original series for Cartoon Network, among them "Dexter's Laboratory" and "The Powerpuff Girls". In 1996, Turner merged with Time Warner, owners of Warner Bros., who would eventually absorb Hanna-Barbera into Warner Bros. Animation.


title: Joseph Barbera

text: Barbera and Hanna continued to advise their former company and periodically worked on new Hanna-Barbera shows, including shorts for the series "The Cartoon Cartoon Show" and feature film versions of "The Flintstones" (1994) and "Scooby-Doo" (2002). In a new "Tom and Jerry" cartoon produced in 2000, "The Mansion Cat", Barbera voiced the houseowner.


title: Joseph Barbera

text: After Hanna's death from throat cancer in March 2001, Hanna-Barbera was absorbed into Warner Bros. Animation, with the unit dedicated to the Cartoon Network original series spun off into Cartoon Network Studios. Barbera remained active as an executive producer for Warner Bros. on direct-to-video cartoon features as well as television series such as "What's New, Scooby-Doo?" and "Tom and Jerry Tales". He also wrote, co-storyboarded, co-directed and co-produced "The Karate Guard" (2005), the return of "Tom and Jerry" to the big screen. His final animated project was the direct-to-video feature "" (2007).


title: Joseph Barbera

text: On December 18, 2006, Barbera died of natural causes at his home in Studio City, Los Angeles, California, at the age of 95, ending a seventy-year career in animation. His wife Sheila was at his side at the end; he was also survived by three children from his first marriage: Jayne (who worked for Hanna-Barbera), Lynn, and Neal. He is buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park, in Glendale, California.


title: Joseph Barbera

text: Most of the cartoons Barbera and Hanna created revolved around close friendship or partnership; this theme is evident with Fred and Barney, Wilma Flintstone and Betty Rubble, Dick Dastardly and Muttley, Tom and Jerry, Scooby and Shaggy, Ruff and Reddy, Jake Clawson/Razor and Chance Furlong/T-Bone, The Jetson family and Yogi & Boo-Boo. These may have been a reflection of the close business friendship and partnership that Barbera and Hanna shared for over 60 years. Professionally, they balanced each other's strengths and weaknesses very well, but Barbera and Hanna traveled in completely different social circles. Hanna's circle of personal friends primarily included other animators; Barbera socialized with Hollywood celebrities—Zsa Zsa Gabor was a frequent visitor to his house. Their division of work roles complemented each other but they rarely talked outside of work since Hanna was interested in the outdoors and Barbera liked beaches and good food and drink. Nevertheless, in their long partnership, in which they worked with over 2000 animated characters, Barbera and Hanna rarely exchanged a cross word. Barbera said: "We understood each other perfectly, and each of us had deep respect for the other's work." Hanna once said that Barbera could "capture mood and expression in a quick sketch better than anyone I've ever known."


title: Joseph Barbera

text: Barbera and Hanna were also among the first animators to realize the enormous potential of television. Leonard Maltin says the Hanna–Barbera team "held a record for producing consistently superior cartoons using the same characters year after year—without a break or change in routine their characters are not only animated superstars, but also a very beloved part of American pop culture". They are often considered Walt Disney's only rivals in cartoon animation.


title: Joseph Barbera

text: Barbera and Hanna had a lasting impact on television animation. Cartoons they created often make "greatest" lists. Many of their characters have appeared in film, books, toys, and other media. Their shows had a worldwide audience of over 300 million people in the 1960s and have been translated into more than 20 languages. The works of Barbera and Hanna have been praised not only for their animation, but for their music. "The Cat Concerto" (1946) and "Johann Mouse" (1952) have both been called "masterpieces of animation" largely because of their classical music.


title: Joseph Barbera

text: In all, the Hanna–Barbera team won seven Academy Awards and eight Emmy Awards, including the 1960 award for "The Huckleberry Hound Show", which was the first Emmy awarded to an animated series. They also won these awards: Golden Globe for Television Achievement (1960), Golden IKE Award – Pacific Pioneers in Broadcasting (1983), Pioneer Award – Broadcast Music Incorporated (1987), Iris Award – NATPE Men of the Year (1988), Licensing Industry Merchandisers' Association award for Lifetime Achievement (1988), Governors Award of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (1988), Jackie Coogan Award for Outstanding Contribution to Youth through Entertainment Youth in Film (1988), Frederic W. Ziv Award for Outstanding Achievement in Telecommunications – Broadcasting Division College – Conservatory of Music University of Cincinnati (1989), stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (1976), several Annie Awards, several environmental awards, and were recipients of numerous other accolades prior to their induction into the Television Hall of Fame in 1994. In March 2005 the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences and Warner Bros. Animation dedicated a wall sculpture at the Television Academy's Hall of Fame Plaza in North Hollywood to Hanna and Barbera.


title: Joseph Barbera

text: In 1992, Barbera met with pop musician Michael Jackson, an avid cartoon fan, in an unsuccessful attempt to arrange for him to sing in "". Barbera drew five quick sketches of "Tom and Jerry" for Jackson and autographed them. Jackson autographed a picture of himself and his niece Nicole for Barbera with the words: "To my hero of yesterday, today, and tomorrow, with many thanks for all the many cartoon friends you gave me as a child. They were all I had. – Michael"


title: Gang rape

text: Gang rape, also called serial gang rape, group rape, or multiple perpetrator rape in scholarly literature, is the rape of a single victim by two or more violators (typically at least three). Gang rapes are forged on shared identity, religion, ethnic group, or race. There are multiple motives for serial gang rapes, such as for sexual entitlement, asserting sexual prowess, war, punishment, and, in up to 30% of cases, for targeting another race, ethnic group or religion.


title: Gang rape

text: The Hebrew Bible documents two narratives of gang rapes: the infamous account of Sodom and the story of the Levite Concubine in Gibeah (presented as a doublet with mimicking literary structure to the former). Both instances result in the judgement of God through destruction and war respectively.


title: Gang rape

text: Gang rapes are typically perpetrated by two or more men, and tend to have somewhat different characteristics than rapes by individuals. For instance, gang rapists tend to be younger and are more often repeat offenders, and the gang is more likely to be under the influence of drugs or alcohol.


title: Gang rape

text: Gang rapes are more violent on average, with significantly more severe sexual and non-sexual injuries to the victim. The gang members also typically dehumanize the victim more before and during the rape. Gang rapes are almost always premeditated in their intent, target victim(s), social proof, and psychological causes. Social factors such as civil wars, hate propaganda, and ethnic conflicts increase the rate of gang rape.


title: Gang rape

text: Rape gang members often have a binding force such as the same religion, race or place of residence thereby forming a close-knit peer pressure group, encouraged by the behavior of their fellow criminals. Gang rape can result from a group form of criminal spin, in which the group starts with less serious offenses which ultimately lead them to go well beyond their initial intention.


title: Gang rape

text: In a 2013 study based on 25-year crime data from US and Europe, between 10% to 20% of all rapes were gang rapes. Less than one in three gang rapes are reported, while less than 1 in 20 attempted but failed gang rapes are reported.


title: Gang rape

text: A 2013 "Lancet" report also found that among the motives for rape were sexual entitlement and seeking of entertainment. Associated factors in the crime included alcohol misuse, poverty, personal history of childhood victimization, need to prove heterosexual performance, dominance over women, and participation in gangs and related activities. Most cases were not reported to law enforcement, and just 23% of single or multiple perpetrator rapes that were reported by the victims ended in prison sentence. The 1886 Mount Rennie rape case in Sydney in Australia falls in this category.


title: Gang rape

text: Gang rapes during civil wars and ethnic riots take added dimension of becoming a means of revenge, sending a message to the victims' community, inducing fear in the opponent, and creating a sense of solidarity among the soldiers or militants or the violent group. Major ethnic conflicts and wars within the last 50 years have witnessed a campaign of gang rapes. Rapes by Soviet soldiers and the Mahmudiyah rape and killings by American soldiers are examples of such war crimes.


title: Gang rape

text: The Congo war saw thousands of gang rapes every week, with each relief center reporting 10 or more daily victims of gang rape with battering of women. The Rwandan genocide of 1994 witnessed numerous gang rapes by soldiers. The Bosnian war during the 1990s saw a similar campaign of gang rapes. In the 1990s, the Kashmir region which was a battlefield between Jihadists and the Indian armed forces also saw a number of gang rapes which were perpetrated by both sides of the conflict to distill fear in the population of each side.


title: Gang rape

text: In the 2000s, civil war-torn countries such as Sudan, Afghanistan and Syria reported high rates of gang rapes by government soldiers, security forces,


title: Gang rape

text: A 2013 Lancet report on rape and gang rape in Bangladesh, China, Cambodia, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, and Sri Lanka found that the crime was committed for various motives, including as a means to inflict punishment on the victim.


title: Gang rape

text: Traditionally, the Cheyenne people of North America used gang rape as punishment for female transgressions. A similar practice existed among the Munduruku people of South America.


title: Gang rape

text: Among the Mpumalanga of South Africa, there are instances of gang rape as punishment. In Argentina and Pakistan, gang rape has been reported to have been ordered as punishment.


title: Gang rape

text: Though having the same race or religion often acts as a binding force for creating a close-knit serial rape gangs, studies reported that 30% of these shared-identity rape gangs specifically targeted people of another religion or race.


title: Gang rape

text: A study found that the gang rapes involved more alcohol and drug use, night attacks and severe sexual assault outcomes and less victim resistance and fewer weapons than individual rapes. Another study found that group sexual assaults were more violent and had greater resistance from the victim than individual sexual assaults and that victims of group sexual assaults were more likely to seek crisis and police services, to contemplate suicide and seek psychotherapy than those involved in individual assaults. The two groups were about the same in the amount of drug use and drinking during the assault.


title: Gang rape

text: Porter and Alison have analyzed 739 gang rape cases from US and UK, and found over 20% of the gang rape victims died from injuries from the gang rape. Gang rape is sometimes stereotyped in media as a crime of poor, minorities, or culture; however, gang rape incidence rates are high in wealthy college campuses, among non-minorities and every culture.


title: Gang rape

text: A 2013 Lancet study reports 1.9% of all rural men in Bangladesh have committed multiple perpetrator rape (gang rape) of a woman who was not a partner, compared to 1.4% urban men. 35% of those who have committed gang rapes against women have also committed additional rapes where the victim was a man. The motives of rape included a combination of reasons. Two thirds of the gang rape perpetrators claimed entertainment as their motive, 30% claimed they participated in gang rape out of anger and to inflict punishment on the victim, while 11% indicated the crime followed alcohol consumption.


title: Gang rape

text: Gang rape, or "estupro coletivo", is prevalent in Brazil. In the state of Rio de Janeiro alone, over 6,000 rapes are reported every year (or about 37 per 100,000 people). Nationwide, the rape rate varied between 26 and 32 per 100,000 women in 2009. The arrest rates on rape complaints, was 4% in Rio. About 19.6% of 2011 rapes were gang rapes.


title: Gang rape

text: Peer pressure and sexual aggression are among the cited reasons for the crime. Since 1983, Canada does not track rape or gang rape statistics separately, but tracks and reports Sexual Assault Tier 3 which includes both rape and gang rape. The average Sexual Assault Tier 3 victim rate in Canada was 15 per 100,000 women, and 0 per 100,000 men, according to a 2013 Statistics Canada article.


title: Gang rape

text: A Lancet study reports, an online survey of 980 Chinese men, 2.2% of them admitted to having committed gang rape (multiple perpetrator rape) of a non-partner woman. About 36% of the perpetrators had raped more than one woman, 50% of those who had committed gang rape had raped both one partner as a single perpetrator as well as a non-partner during a gang rape, while 32% had gang raped a woman and raped a man. The study also found that 90% of the rapists were in the 15–29 age group at the time they perpetrated the first rape.


title: Gang rape

text: In July 2013, the son of a Chinese general was charged with four other men to being part of a gang rape. This case raised significant public anger over seemingly privileged treatment of elite gang rape criminals.


title: Gang rape

text: Over two dozen gang rapes were reported during civil protests in Egypt from January to March 2013; however, activists claim that many more gang rapes often go unreported because most women are too ashamed to go to the police or even tell their relatives.


title: Gang rape

text: During July 2013 at Tahrir Square, mobs assaulted and gang raped at least 46 women in 4 days. A Dutch journalist was also gang-raped in Tahrir Square. A similar gang rape and gang beating was reported by an American journalist in 2011. In a separate survey, over 90% of Egyptian women claimed to have experienced sexual violence in their lifetime.


title: Gang rape

text: In banlieues organised gang-rapes are referred to as , or "pass-arounds". One of the first people to bring public attention to the culture of gang rape was Samira Bellil, who published a book called "Dans l'enfer des tournantes" ("In Gang Rape Hell").


title: Gang rape

text: In October 2012, two girls in Fontenay-sous-Bois on the outskirts of Paris reported experiencing daily gang rapes in the high-rise tower blocks, sometimes by scores of boys. One witness described 50 boys "queuing" to rape her. 10 of the 14 defendants who were minors at the time of gang rape were acquitted, while the remaining 4 adults found guilty were given 0 to 12 months in prison. This case shocked the country. In 2014, the case of a Canadian tourist allegedly gang raped by four police officers in Paris received international attention.


title: Gang rape

text: As with other countries, India does not collect separate data on gang rapes. Rapes are also suggested to be underreported.


title: Gang rape

text: The gang rape of a 23-year-old student on a public bus, on 12 December 2012 has focused international attention on India's legal system, especially laws pertaining to the protection of women. It sparked large protests across the capital of India, Delhi. The large scale protests resulted in amendments in rape laws in India by way of Criminal Law (Amendment) Act, 2013 and formation of "The Nirbhaya Fund", designed to be used for schemes by different states to ensure women's safety and security at public places, a one-stop centre for their grievances, a helpline and other measures. Reports of gang rape of tourists in India have been reported.


title: Gang rape

text: Reported cases of gang rape include Jakarta International School gang rape of a six-year-old, gang rape of a Malaysian student in Indonesia, and Aceh gang rape case where the victim was charged with adultery when she reported the crime.


title: Gang rape

text: A Lancet study of Jakarta and Jayapura city on New Guinea island, found gang rape prevalence rate to be 2% and 6.8% of all Indonesian men respectively who, at some point in their lifetime, have committed multiple perpetrator rape. About 52% of the perpetrators had raped more than one woman, 64% of those who had committed gang rape had raped both partner as single perpetrator as well as non-partner during a gang rape, while 12% had gang raped a woman and raped a man. The study also found that 90% of the rapists in Indonesia were in the 15–29 age group when they committed their first rape.


title: Gang rape

text: Many incidents of gang rapes have been reported in Iran. In several cases, the police officials have blamed the victim for not wearing "hijab", and in one case arresting the victim and two activists, who were trying to bring attention to the gang rape.


title: Gang rape

text: While official statistics on reported and pending gang rapes in Iran are not published by the Iranian government, public hangings for gang rapes are routinely reported in Iranian newspapers.


title: Gang rape

text: A 15-year-old schoolgirl in Ketereh Kelantan, was gang raped by more than 30 men. Malaysia reported about 3,000 rape cases in 2012, a rape incidence rate of about 10.7 rapes per 100,000 people. About 52% of these victims were less than 16 years old. Like other nations, Malaysia does not segregate rape and gang rape cases.


title: Gang rape

text: Nigeria reports thousands of gang rapes every year. In 2011, the ABSU gang rape, in which the gang videotaped their crime, drew widespread attention and protests inside Nigeria. The prevalence of group rape has been proposed as a significant contributor to spread of sexual diseases and AIDS.


title: Gang rape

text: The 2013 National Crime Data report for Pakistan suggest a current rape rate of 8.4 women per 100,000 population, of which about 10% were gang rapes.


title: Gang rape

text: In some cases, such as Mukhtar Mai gang rape in Muzaffargarh, village elder's council ("jirga") in Pakistan have ordered that the girl in a family is gang-raped as a means of punishing her brother, and this punishment was then carried out in public with everyone watching. In 2011, Pakistan's Supreme Court freed 5 men who committed the gang-rape because their action was on orders of the village council. Other gang rape cases reported in 2013 include Bahawalpur gang rape, Lahore gang rape, Peshawar gang rape, Karachi gang rape of a girl with polio, among others.


title: Gang rape

text: Trans women are not immune. In 2018, a trans woman from Peshawar was kidnapped and raped by eleven men, who filmed the assault and shared it on social media.


title: Gang rape

text: A Lancet study reports 14.1% of all men admitted to having committed gang rape (multiple perpetrator rape) of a non-partner woman sometime in their lifetime. 44% of these perpetrators had raped more than 1 woman over their lifetime. In Papua New Guinea, 25% of the first rape was committed at a juvenile age less than 15, while in 70% of the cases the perpetrator's age was 15–29 at the time of first crime.


title: Gang rape

text: The Qatif rape case was a 2006 gang rape of a teenage girl by seven men. The justice received criticism because the victim was initially ordered to get lashed 200 times but the ruling was overturned by the monarch after a backlash.


title: Gang rape

text: Gang rapes occur frequently in South Africa, and in certain parts it is called "jackrolling". South Africa reported over 64,000 rapes in 2012, or about 127.5 women per 100,000 population. With one woman raped every 4 minutes, South Africa has world's highest rape incidence rate per 100,000 women. Between 10% to 33% of all rapes are gang rapes involving three or more people. About 25% of youth near Johannesburg described gang rape as recreational and fun.


title: Gang rape

text: In certain parts of South Africa where boys are often involved in gang rapes, rape rates are higher. 40% of reported rape cases are on children below the age of 12.


title: Gang rape

text: Vogelman and Lewis report 44% of rapists in South Africa have engaged in gang rape. The National Institute of Crime Rehabilitation of South Africa claims only 1 out of 20 rapes are reported in South Africa, suggesting 1,300 women are raped every day. A 2010 nationwide survey reported that about 27% of all South African men above the age of 18 have raped a woman in their lifetime one or more times, while 8.9% of all adult men have participated in a gang rape. The gang rape prevalence rate varied significantly in different provinces of South Africa; for example, in Eastern Cape, 13.9% of men had gang raped a woman who was not a partner.


title: Gang rape

text: In February 2013, a 17-year-old girl was gang raped, mutilated and left to die in a town near Cape Town. This led to widespread protests.


title: Gang rape

text: Reported gang rape cases include gang rape of a British tourist in Spain where one of the rapists (described by the victim as Arabic) was a 70-year-old man, and gang rape in Huelva of a 13-year-old girl with a mental disability.


title: Gang rape

text: In 2013, "Forskning & Framsteg" "(FoF)", a Swedish popular science magazine, published an article reporting that “The evidence suggests that gang rapes in Sweden is increasing - despite the decline in violent crime in general.” "FoF" went on to report that, “The increase, which primarily occurred in the 2000s, may have to do with "rape with multiple perpetrators" from 2004, classified as "serious crime", which means that more obscure cases fall into this category.” "FoF" further reports that “National Council's investigator, Klara Hradilova-Selin, said that "developments could at least partly be interpreted in terms of an actual increase." Although there are a number of other important reasons why we are seeing more reports, such as, Klara Hradilova-Selin goes on to say, “more woman dare to go the police” and an “increased alcohol consumption”. Finally "FoF" goes on to report that in the 1990s “In the gang rape of three or more perpetrators 39 percent are foreign born.” The statistics for gang rapes were not investigated by Swedish authorities after 2006.


title: Gang rape

text: On 21 January 2017, in Uppsala, Sweden, a group of Arab Facebook users allegedly gang-raped an unconscious woman for several hours. The crime was stopped when viewers of the Facebook live feed realized what was happening and phoned the police, who entered the apartment and interrupted the crime still in progress.


title: Gang rape

text: In March 2018, newspaper "Expressen" investigated gang rape court cases from the two preceding years and found that there were 43 men having been convicted. Their average age was 21 and 13 were under the age of 18 when the crime was committed. Of the convicted, 40 out of the 43 were either immigrants (born abroad) or born in Sweden to immigrant parents. Another investigation by newspaper Aftonbladet found that of 112 men and boys convicted for gang rape since July 2012, 82 were born outside Europe. The median age of the victims was 15, while 7 out of 10 perpetrators were between 15 and 20.


title: Gang rape

text: In several cases in 2013, the courts of the UAE have sentenced the gang raped woman to prison under its laws. For example, a British woman, after she reported being gang raped by three men, was charged with the crime of drinking alcohol in UAE; an Arab woman was sentenced to one year in prison for illicit sex after she complained of gang rape; an Australian woman was similarly sentenced to jail after she reported gang rape in the UAE, while a Norwegian woman was jailed for illicit sex when she reported rape by Arab men. In another case, an 18-year Arab woman withdrew her complaint of gang rape inside a car by six men when the prosecution threatened her with a long jail term for consensual sex with multiple men.


title: Gang rape

text: According to ABC News, a French teenage boy was gang raped by three Dubai men. The authorities demanded that the tourist confess he is gay and that he asked for sex. The boy insisted he was raped and diplomatic pressure led to the arrest and conviction of the gang members.


title: Gang rape

text: A number of gang rapes have taken place in the United Kingdom, although the UK authorities had not separately collected data on gang rapes until the 2011 Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre report on localised grooming entitled "Out of Mind, Out of Sight", but which only deals with adolescent victims. However Scotland Yard earlier in 2009, stated a concern over the rise of 'gang sex attacks' in London, detailing an increase of 71 cases in 2003/2004 to 93 cases in 2008/2009.


title: Gang rape

text: Media reports of gang rapes in the UK are often racially charged since late 2000. This due to a particular pattern of repeated non-white perpetrated gang rapes in the metropolitan areas. The Rochdale sex trafficking gang would later epitomise the phenomenon. The Home Office report of 2013 described these cases as '[showing] a particular model... of organised, serious exploitation and abuse that involves predominantly Pakistani-heritage men grooming and abusing predominantly white British girls.' The report stresses that the Government does not believe 'localised grooming' is intrinsic of any culture, religion, and or race, despite acknowledging the phenomenon.


title: Gang rape

text: In March 2014, Crime Prevention Minister Norman Baker described "ground breaking work" to identify women and girls who can get drawn into gangs. "Girls associated with gangs can face sexual violence and we have provided £1.2m for 13 Young People's Advocates to support those at risk," he said on the launch of a report by the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ), a think-tank established in 2002 by Iain Duncan Smith, another Cabinet minister. Baker said the government had set up a network of more than 70 people with experience of dealing with gangs to work with 33 of the worst affected areas of the country, including 20 in London. In one case cited by the CSJ report, a schoolgirl was abducted and sexually assaulted by nine males because she criticised a gang member. The report found that girls as young as eight were being used to carry drugs while female gang members in their teens were being pressured to have sex with boys as young as 10 to initiate males into gangs. A 2014 report by the Office of the Children's Commissioner suggested that almost 2,500 children had been known to be victims of child sexual exploitation by gangs and groups.


title: Gang rape

text: In July 2018 Home Secretary Sajid Javid ordered research into the particular characteristics of grooming gangs.


title: Gang rape

text: However, as of March 2020 this report has not been released with the Home Office claiming it is ‘not in public interest’ to release the findings.


title: Gang rape

text: The US reports about 85,000 rapes a year, or an average of 27.3 rapes per 100,000 population. There is a rape in the US every 6.2 minutes. As with other countries, the US does not collect separate data on gang rapes; Vogelman and Lewis estimate 25% of all rapes in the US are gang rapes. Another source indicates 21.8% of American rapes are gang rapes.


title: Gang rape

text: A Roger Williams University study estimates from survey of crime data that 16% of all male rapists in the US participated in a gang rape crime.


title: Gang rape

text: A 15-year-old girl in Chicago was gang raped on Facebook live in 2017 while watched by over 40 people. On a separate occasion two teens, one 15 years old and one 16, were gang raped by over 11 men.


title: Gang rape

text: Some examples of gang rapes reported in local media in 2013 include the Cleveland, Texas gang rape, Richmond gang rape, Vanderbilt University gang rape, New Orleans gang rape, St Paul gang rape, Miami gang rape/murder, among others.


title: Jim Corbett National Park

text: Jim Corbett National Park is a national park in India located in the Nainital district of Uttarakhand state. The first national park in India, it was established in 1936 during the British Raj and named "Hailey National Park" after William Malcolm Hailey, a governor of the United Provinces in which it was then located. In 1956, nearly a decade after India's independence, it was renamed "Corbett National Park" after the hunter and naturalist Jim Corbett, who had played a leading role in its establishment and had died the year before. The park was the first to come under the Project Tiger initiative.


title: Jim Corbett National Park

text: Corbett National Park comprises area of hills, riverine belts, marshy depressions, grasslands and a large lake. The elevation ranges from . Winter nights are cold but the days are bright and sunny. It rains from July to September. The park has sub-Himalayan belt geographical and ecological characteristics. Dense moist deciduous forest mainly consists of sal, haldu, peepal, rohini and mango trees. Forest covers almost 73% of the park, while 10% of the area consists of grasslands. It houses around 110 tree species, 50 species of mammals, 580 bird species and 25 reptile species.


title: Jim Corbett National Park

text: An ecotourism destination, the park contains 488 different species of plants and a diverse variety of fauna. The increase in tourist activities, among other problems, continues to present a serious challenge to the park's ecological balance.


title: Jim Corbett National Park

text: Some areas of the park were formerly part of the princely state of Tehri Garhwal. The forests were cleared by the Environment and Forests Department (Uttarakhand) to make the area less vulnerable to Rohilla invaders. The Raja of Tehri formally ceded a part of his princely state to the East India Company in return for their assistance in ousting the Gurkhas from his domain. The Buksas—a tribe from the Terai—settled on the land and began growing crops, but in the early 1860s they were evicted with the advent of British rule.


title: Jim Corbett National Park

text: Efforts to save the forests of the region began in the 19th century under Major Ramsay, the British Officer who was in-charge of the area during those times. The first step in the protection of the area began in 1868 when the British forest department established control over the land and prohibited cultivation and the operation of cattle stations. In 1879 these forests were constituted into a reserve forest where restricted felling was permitted.


title: Jim Corbett National Park

text: In the early 1900s, several Britishers, including E. R. Stevans and E. A. Smythies, suggested the setting up of a national park on this soil. The British administration considered the possibility of creating a game reserve there in 1907. It was only in the 1930s that the process of demarcation for such an area got underway. A reserve area known as "Hailey National Park" covering was created in 1936, when Sir Malcolm Hailey was the Governor of United Provinces; and Asia's first national park came into existence. Hunting was not allowed in the reserve, only timber cutting for domestic purposes. Soon after the establishment of the reserve, rules prohibiting killing and capturing of mammals, reptiles and birds within its boundaries were passed.


title: Jim Corbett National Park

text: The reserve was renamed in 1954–55 as "Ramganga National Park" and was again renamed in 1955–56 as "Corbett National Park", after author and naturalist Jim Corbett.


title: Jim Corbett National Park

text: The park fared well during the 1930s under an elected administration. But, during the Second World War, it suffered from excessive poaching and timber cutting. Over time, the area in the reserve was increased— were added in 1991 as a buffer zone to the Corbett Tiger Reserve. The 1991 addition included the entire Kalagarh forest division, assimilating the area of Sonanadi Wildlife Sanctuary as a part of the Kalagarh division. It was chosen in 1974 as the location for launching the Project Tiger wildlife conservation project. The reserve is administered from its headquarters in the Nainital district.


title: Jim Corbett National Park

text: Corbett National Park is one of the thirteen protected areas covered by the World Wide Fund For Nature under their Terai Arc Landscape Program. The program aims to protect three of the five terrestrial flagship species, the tiger, the Asian elephant and the great one-horned rhinoceros, by restoring corridors of forest to link 13 protected areas of Nepal and India, to enable wildlife migration.


title: Jim Corbett National Park

text: The park is located between 29°25' and 29°39'N latitude and between 78°44' and 79°07'E longitude. The altitude of the region ranges between and . It has numerous ravines, ridges, minor streams and small plateaus with varying aspects and degrees of slope. The park encompasses the "Patli Dun" valley formed by the Ramganga river. It protects parts of the Upper Gangetic Plains moist deciduous forests and Himalayan subtropical pine forests ecoregions. It has a humid subtropical and highland climate.


title: Jim Corbett National Park

text: The present area of the reserve is including of core area and of buffer area. The core area forms the Jim Corbett National Park while the buffer contains reserve forests () as well as the Sonanadi Wildlife Sanctuary ().


title: Jim Corbett National Park

text: The reserve, located partly along a valley between the Lesser Himalaya in the north and the Shivaliks in the south, has a sub-Himalayan belt structure. The upper tertiary rocks are exposed towards the base of the Shiwalik range and hard sandstone units form broad ridges. Characteristic longitudinal valleys, geographically termed "Doons," or "Duns" can be seen formed along the narrow tectonic zones between lineaments.


title: Jim Corbett National Park

text: The weather in the park is temperate compared to most other protected areas of India. The temperature may vary from to during the winter and some mornings are foggy. Summer temperatures normally do not rise above . Rainfall ranges from light during the winter to heavy during the monsoonal summer.


title: Jim Corbett National Park

text: A total of 488 different species of plants have been recorded in the park. Tree density inside the reserve is higher in the areas of "Sal" forests and lowest in the "Anogeissus"-"Acacia catechu" forests. Total tree basal cover is greater in Sal dominated areas of woody vegetation. Healthy regeneration in sapling and seedling layers is occurring in the "Mallotus philippensis", "Jamun" and "Diospyros tomentosa" communities, but in the Sal forests the regeneration of sapling and seedling is poor.


title: Jim Corbett National Park

text: More than 586 species of resident and migratory birds have been categorised, including the crested serpent eagle, blossom-headed parakeet and the red junglefowl — ancestor of all domestic fowl. 33 species of reptiles, seven species of amphibians, seven species of fish and 36 species of dragonflies have also been recorded.


title: Jim Corbett National Park

text: Bengal tigers, although plentiful, are not easily spotted due to the abundance of foliage - camouflage - in the reserve. Thick jungle, the Ramganga river and plentiful prey make this reserve an ideal habitat for tigers who are opportunistic feeders and prey upon a range of animals. The tigers in the park have been known to kill much larger animals such as buffalo and even elephant for food. The tigers prey upon the larger animals in rare cases of food shortage. There have been incidents of tigers attacking domestic animals in times of shortage of prey.


title: Jim Corbett National Park

text: Leopards are found in hilly areas but may also venture into the low land jungles. Small cats in the park include the jungle cat, fishing cat and leopard cat. Other mammals include barking deer, sambar deer, hog deer and chital, sloth and Himalayan black bears, Indian grey mongoose, otters, yellow-throated martens, Himalayan goral, Indian pangolins, and langur and rhesus macaques. Owls and nightjars can be heard during the night.


title: Jim Corbett National Park

text: In the summer, Indian elephants can be seen in herds of several hundred. The Indian python found in the reserve is a dangerous species, capable of killing a chital deer. Local crocodiles and gharials were saved from extinction by captive breeding programs that subsequently released crocodiles into the Ramganga river.


title: Jim Corbett National Park

text: Though the main focus is protection of wildlife, the reserve management has also encouraged ecotourism. In 1993, a training course covering natural history, visitor management and park interpretation was introduced to train nature guides. A second course followed in 1995 which recruited more guides for the same purpose. This allowed the staff of the reserve, previously preoccupied with guiding the visitors, to carry out management activities uninterrupted. Additionally, the Indian government has organised workshops on ecotourism in Corbett National Park and Garhwal region to ensure that the local citizens profit from tourism while the park remains protected.


title: Jim Corbett National Park

text: patil & Joshi (1997) consider summer (April–June) to be the best season for Indian tourists to visit the park while recommending the winter months (November–January) for foreign tourists. According to Riley & Riley (2005): "Best chances of seeing a tiger to come late in the dry season- April to mid-June-and go out with mahouts and elephants for several days."


title: Jim Corbett National Park

text: As early as 1991, the Corbett National Park played host to 3237 tourist vehicles carrying 45,215 visitors during the main tourist seasons between 15 November and 15 June. This heavy influx of tourists has led to visible stress signs on the natural ecosystem. Excessive trampling of soil due to tourist pressure has led to reduction in plant species and has also resulted in reduced soil moisture. The tourists have increasingly used fuel wood for cooking. This is a cause of concern as this fuel wood is obtained from the nearby forests, resulting in greater pressure on the forest ecosystem of the park. Additionally, tourists have also caused problems by making noise, littering and causing disturbances in general.


title: Jim Corbett National Park

text: In 2007, the naturalist and photographer Kahini Ghosh Mehta made the first comprehensive travel guide on Corbett National Park. The film, titled "Wild Saga of Corbett", shows how tourists can contribute to conservation efforts.


title: Jim Corbett National Park

text: The 2005 Bollywood movie "Kaal" has a plot set in the Jim Corbett National Park. The movie was filmed at the park as well.


title: Jim Corbett National Park

text: In August 2019, Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi appeared in a special episode of Discovery Channel's show "Man vs Wild" with the host Bear Grylls, where he trekked the jungles and talked about nature and wildlife conservation with Grylls. The episode was filmed in Jim Corbett National Park and broadcast in 180 countries along India.


title: Jim Corbett National Park

text: A major incident in the history of the reserve followed the construction of a dam at the Kalagarh river and the submerging of of prime low lying riverine area. The consequences ranged from local extinction of swamp deer to a massive reduction in hog deer population. The reservoir formed due to the submerging of land has also led to an increase in aquatic fauna and has additionally served as a habitat for winter migrants.


title: Jim Corbett National Park

text: Two villages situated on the southern boundary were shifted to the Firozpur–Manpur area situated on Ramnagar–Kashipur highway during 1990–93; the vacated areas were designated as buffer zones. The families in these villages were mostly dependent on forest products. With the passage of time, these areas began to show signs of ecological recovery. Vines, herbs, grasses and small trees began to appear, followed by herbaceous flora, eventually leading to natural forest type. It was observed that grass began to grow on the vacated agricultural fields and the adjoining forest areas started recuperating. By 1999–2002 several plant species emerged in these buffer zones. The newly arisen lush green fields attracted grass eating animals, mainly deer and elephants, who slowly migrated towards these areas and even preferred to stay there throughout the monsoon.


title: Jim Corbett National Park

text: There were 109 cases of poaching recorded in 1988–89. This figure dropped to 12 reported cases in 1997–98.


title: Jim Corbett National Park

text: In 1985 David Hunt, a British ornithologist and birdwatching tour guide, was killed by a tiger in the park.


title: Jim Corbett National Park

text: The habitat of the reserve faces threats from invasive species such as the exotic weeds "Lantana", "Parthenium" and "Cassia". Natural resources like trees and grasses are exploited by the local population while encroachment of at least of by 74 families has been recorded.


title: Jim Corbett National Park

text: The villages surrounding the park are at least 15–20 years old and no new villages have come up in the recent past. The increasing population growth rate and the density of population within to from the park present a challenge to the management of the reserve. Incidents of killing cattle by tigers and leopards have led to acts of retaliation by the local population in some cases. The Indian government has approved the construction of a stone masonry wall on the southern boundary of the reserve where it comes in direct contact with agricultural fields.


title: Jim Corbett National Park

text: In April 2008, the National Conservation Tiger Authority (NCTA) expressed serious concern that protection systems have weakened, and poachers have infiltrated into this park. Monitoring of wild animals in the prescribed format has not been followed despite advisories and observations made during field visits. Also the monthly monitoring report of field evidence relating to tigers has not been received since 2006. NCTA said that in the "absence of ongoing monitoring protocol in a standardised manner, it would be impossible to forecast and keep track of untoward happenings in the area targeted by poachers." A cement road has been built through the park against a Supreme Court order. The road has become a thoroughfare between Kalagarh and Ramnagar. Constantly increasing vehicle traffic on this road is affecting the wildlife of crucial ranges like Jhirna, Kotirau and Dhara. Additionally, the Kalagarh irrigation colony that takes up about of the park is yet to be vacated despite a 2007 Supreme Court order.


title: Jim Corbett National Park

text: As of 10 February 2014, nine local villagers are reported to have been killed by tigers originating from Jim Corbett National Park wildlife sanctuary opened a new zone for tourists stretched across 521 km


title: Jim Corbett National Park

text: An economic assessment study of Jim Corbett Tiger Reserve estimated its annual flow benefits to be 14.7 billion (1.14 lakh / hectare). Important ecosystem services included gene-pool protection (10.65 billion), provisioning of water to downstream districts of Uttar Pradesh (1.61 billion), water purification services to the city of New Delhi (550 million), employment for local communities (82 million), provision of habitat and refugia for wildlife (274 million) and sequestration of carbon (214 million).


title: Ella Mai

text: Ella Mai Howell (born 3 November 1994) is an English singer-songwriter. Her musical career began at London's British and Irish Modern Music Institute in 2014, during which time she auditioned as part of a trio on the 11th season of "The X Factor". In 2015, she uploaded a four-track solo EP of originals to SoundCloud titled "Troubled", and was discovered on social media by American record producer Mustard and signed with his record label, 10 Summers Records.


title: Ella Mai

text: From 2016 to 2018, she released three EPs on the label, including "Time", "Change", and "Ready". Her self-titled debut studio album was released in October 2018 and featured the singles "Boo'd Up" and "Trip", which charted in the US "Billboard" Hot 100 at number 5 and 11, respectively. In 2019, "Boo'd Up" was nominated for two Grammy Awards: Song of the Year and Best R&B Song, winning for the latter, as well as Mai herself being nominated for British Breakthrough Act at the 2019 Brit Awards. At the 2019 "Billboard" Music Awards, she won three awards, including the award for Top R&B Artist.


title: Ella Mai

text: Ella Mai was born on 3 November 1994 to a Jamaican mother and an English/Irish father in London. According to the singer, her mother, a lover of American jazz music, named her after Ella Fitzgerald. Mai moved from London to New York City at the age of 12 when her mother took on a teaching job there. Mai's transition to life in New York City was difficult because she was often bullied for her accent. Mai graduated from Queens High School of Teaching in Glen Oaks, Queens, before returning to England. She is a fan of Arsenal F.C. and club's legend Thierry Henry.


title: Ella Mai

text: Ella Mai's singing career began studying at the British and Irish Modern Music Institute London (BIMM London) in 2014. During that time she competed on series 11 of "The X Factor" as part of a trio, 'Arize', but didn't advance beyond the initial audition for the judges. The group broke up shortly thereafter.


title: Ella Mai

text: In 2015, Mai uploaded a four-track solo EP of original recorded songs to SoundCloud titled "Troubled" which was produced by Ella’s high school friend Kyle Dj Kam1 McCullough.. Shortly after the release of "Troubled", Mai was discovered on Instagram and signed to DJ Mustard's label, 10 Summers Records and Interscope Records. In February 2016, she released "Time", the first in her EP trilogy. The six-track EP included the single "She Don't", which featured Ty Dolla Sign. She released her second EP, "Change", in November 2016 and third, "Ready", in February 2017. "Boo'd Up", which was featured on the EP, rose in popularity on social media as well as in nightclubs over the next few months. Ella Mai toured with Kehlani on her SweetSexySavage World Tour. After Mai served as the opening act on Kehlani's tour, her music reached a bigger audience and the song grew on radio airplay in the spring of 2018.


title: Ella Mai

text: On 26 April 2018, she released a music video for "Boo'd Up" after it started to gain popularity. The song became her first top ten song in the US in the following month, deeming it her "breakthrough hit." "Rolling Stone" wrote that the single is "one of the biggest singles by a breakout female R&B singer in the past 10 years." The single peaked at number five on the US "Billboard" Hot 100, and broke the record for the most weeks at number one of any song by a woman on the R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay chart. On 14 August, she joined Bruno Mars on the 24K Magic World Tour after Cardi B dropped out.


title: Ella Mai

text: On 3 August, she released the single "Trip", with an accompanied music video releasing on 18 September. The song peaked at number 11 on the "Billboard" Hot 100. Ella Mai released her self-titled debut album, a 16-track set featuring "Boo'd Up", on 12 October 2018, with guest appearances from Chris Brown, John Legend, and H.E.R. The album sold 69,000 album-equivalent units with 17,000 coming from pure sales. On 22 October 2018, Mai announced her debut tour set to begin in January 2019.


title: Ella Mai

text: In November, she made two guest appearances on JID's song "Tiiied", along with 6lack and on Meek Mill's song "24/7", on the albums Dicapiro 2 and Championships respectively. On 18 November, she performed on "Saturday Night Live" with "Jezebel" describing Mai as "Pure '90s R&B Heartthrob".


title: Ella Mai

text: Mai was also nominated for two Grammy Awards: Best R&B Song and Song of the Year with "Boo'd Up", winning for the former. "Boo'd Up" would go onto to win the 2019 Billboard Music Award for Top R&B Song. In 2019, Mai won the Billboard Music Awards for Top R&B Artist and Top Female R&B Artist.


title: Ella Mai

text: Apart from her music, Mai also performed a sketch on Nickelodeon's "All That" (which aired on 27 July 2019) called "Boo'd Up", a paranormal parody of "The Dating Game", in which she played herself as a contestant looking for a ghost to haunt her family home, but instead of choosing the three suitors offered, she chose her former ghost who came back and she forgave him.


title: Ella Mai

text: In 2020, Mai received her third nomination for the Grammy Award for Best R&B Album for her self-titled debut at the 62nd Grammy Awards.


title: Ella Mai

text: On 2 October 2020, Mai released the single, "Not Another Love Song". On Friday, January 28, 2022, she released "DFMU". On March 28, 2022 Mai announced the title of her second studio album "Heart on My Sleeve" which was released on May 6, 2022. the album debuted at number 15 on the Billboard 200 making it her second top 20 on the chart.


title: Ella Mai

text: In multiple interviews, Ella Mai names Lauryn Hill, Chris Brown, Brandy, Destiny's Child, Alicia Keys, and Mariah Carey as her biggest influences. "Vibe" said her "perception of the powerful emotion is kindred to R&B heartthrobs of the '90s, who flooded the radio airwaves with soulful ballads, baby-making tunes, and heart-wrenching break-up anthems." "Rolling Stone" described her sound as "a British émigré full of self-confidence and an affinity for classic Nineties R&B."


title: 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix

text: The 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix (officially known as the Formula 1 Etihad Airways Abu Dhabi Grand Prix 2021) was a Formula One motor race held on 12 December 2021 at the Yas Marina Circuit in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. Contested over a distance of 58 laps, the race was the twenty-second and final round of the 2021 Formula One World Championship. The race decided both the Drivers' and Constructors' championships; Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton both had 369.5 points coming into the race. Hamilton led most of the race and appeared on course to win what would have been a record eighth World Drivers' Championship having taken the lead at the start of the race at turn 1 on the first lap, Verstappen won the race on the final lap with an overtake for the lead on title rival Hamilton, after a controversial safety car restart in the last moments of the race. The FIA thus conducted an inquiry into the race which led to a restructuring of race control including the replacement of Michael Masi as race director and amendments to the safety car rules. That inquiry subsequently concluded that the race officials had misapplied the then-regulations due to human error, but confirmed the results.


title: 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix

text: Verstappen's win secured his first Formula One World Drivers' Championship of his career by eight points from Hamilton, and Red Bull Racing's first since . Mercedes won their eighth consecutive Formula One World Constructors' Championship, setting a new record. The Grand Prix was also the final race for World Champion Kimi Räikkönen; the 42-year-old Finn retired from Formula One after a two-decade career spanning 349 Grands Prix starts.


title: 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix

text: The race was originally scheduled to take place on 5 December, but it was rescheduled after the postponement of the Australian Grand Prix due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Its original date was filled with the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix and the Australian race was eventually cancelled and replaced by the Qatar Grand Prix.


title: 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix

text: Yas Marina underwent redevelopment that shortened the track and the expected lap time in order to increase top speeds and overtaking opportunities. The chicane after turn 4 was removed, and the turn 5 hairpin (which was turn 7 before redevelopment) was widened. The four corner sequence of turns which was turns 11–14 became one banked turn 9. The radius of turns 12–15 (previously 17–20) were increased to allow cars to carry more speed, with the changes to turn 15 allowing cars to be able to travel flat out through the corner.


title: 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix

text: The drivers and teams were the same as the season entry list with no additional stand-in drivers for the race. Jack Aitken drove for Williams in the first practice session, in place of George Russell. Nikita Mazepin tested positive for coronavirus after qualifying, forcing his withdrawal from the race, he was not replaced.


title: 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix

text: The Grand Prix marked the last Formula One race for the World Champion Kimi Räikkönen, who had announced his intention of retiring at the end of the championship, ending his Formula One career after 19 seasons and moved to NASCAR Cup Series. , it also marked the last race for Antonio Giovinazzi, who moved to Formula E, and Nikita Mazepin, whose contract was terminated following the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine and the cancellation of Uralkali's title sponsorship. It was also the final races for George Russell and Valtteri Bottas at Williams and Mercedes, respectively, as they moved to Mercedes and Alfa Romeo Racing.


title: 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix

text: Bottas raced with a special helmet for the occasion, featuring photos of all the moments he spent at Mercedes, and he sported a special set of blue racing overalls. Alpine featured the words "El Plan" in both their cars referencing a popular Internet meme. This race also marked the last race for Honda, as the Japanese company ceased their engine supply to the Red Bull Racing and AlphaTauri teams, though they are set to provide assistance to Red Bull Powertrains, who take over the engine supply for the season.


title: 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix

text: Title rivals Max Verstappen (Red Bull Racing) and Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes) both entered the round with 369.5 points, leaving the championship contenders level on points for the final round for the first time since and for the second time in the sport's history. The Drivers' Championship was decided in the final round for the 30th time, and the first time since . The driver who scored the most points would win the championship; if the drivers had scored an equal amount of points, Verstappen would have won the championship due to having won more races (nine to Hamilton's eight) prior to this race. In the Constructors' Championship, Mercedes led with 587.5 points, 28 ahead of Red Bull on 559.5, with 44 still available; this was the first time since that the final round of the season decided the Constructors' Championship. In the midfield, Ferrari led McLaren in the battle for third place in the constructors by a margin of 38.5 points.


title: 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix

text: Acrimonious on-track battles throughout the season led to concerns that one of the drivers might cause a deliberate in-race collision in an attempt to win the championship: the championship battle between McLaren teammates Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost was decided by such an incident at the Japanese Grand Prix; the championship rematch, with Prost now at Ferrari, ended in Senna's favour with another collision at the Suzuka race; Michael Schumacher's collision with Damon Hill at the 1994 Australian Grand Prix took the Briton out of title contention in the season; and an unsuccessful collision caused by Schumacher against Jacques Villeneuve at the 1997 European Grand Prix led to the German driver's disqualification from the season. In response to the concerns, race director Michael Masi warned that Verstappen or Hamilton could be subject to further sanctions from the FIA if one of them decided to manufacture a deliberate race-ending collision in an attempt to engineer a favourable championship result, up to and including championship disqualification or future race bans.


title: 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix

text: Sole tyre supplier Pirelli provided the C3, C4, and C5 tyre compounds—the softest selections available—for use in dry conditions.


title: 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix

text: Three practice sessions were scheduled over the course of the weekend. The first session took place at 13:30 local time () on Friday 10 December. The second session took place at 17:00. The third session took place at 14:00 on Saturday 11 December. The first practice session passed without incident and ended with Max Verstappen setting the fastest time, followed by Valtteri Bottas and Lewis Hamilton. The second practice session ended with Hamilton fastest by 0.3 seconds to second-placed Esteban Ocon, while Bottas was third fastest ahead of Verstappen, 0.6 seconds behind Hamilton. Kimi Räikkönen crashed at turn 14 just as the session was concluding, but was unhurt.


title: 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix

text: Qualifying started at 17:00 local time on Saturday 11 December. The first qualifying session was briefly suspended after a Haas driver collided with a bollard but was resumed without further incident, with the Mercedes drivers of Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas recording the fastest times of the session. In the second qualifying session, initial flying laps on medium-compound tyres gave Hamilton a four-millisecond advantage over Red Bull Racing driver Max Verstappen. A lock-up on his second flying lap led to Verstappen's return to the pits to change to soft tyres. At the end of the session, Verstappen improved to take first place on the timesheets, setting the time on the faster soft-compound tyres locked him into starting the race on Sunday, and Hamilton was likewise locked into using the more durable medium-compound tyres. In the third and final qualifying session, Verstappen was able to use the slipstream of his teammate Sergio Pérez to secure pole position for the race, with Hamilton only able to take the second spot on the grid.


title: 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix

text: The race started at 17:00 local time on Sunday 12 December. Lewis Hamilton immediately took the lead from Max Verstappen on the race start, prompting Verstappen to attempt to regain his position at the turn 6 chicane. Verstappen's trajectory forced Hamilton off the track, and the Briton re-entered slightly further ahead of the Dutch driver than he was before the corner. Arguing that he should have ceded the position to Verstappen, Red Bull Racing protested the racing line taken by Hamilton, and were told by radio that Hamilton had ultimately given back any advantage gained. The incident was referred to the stewards, which concluded that no further investigation was necessary. Hamilton then utilised the durability of his medium-compound tyres to extend his lead over Verstappen, whose soft-compound tyres were suffering from greater degradation.


title: 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix

text: Verstappen made his stop at the end of lap 13 with Hamilton following suit one lap later, both opting for a set of the hardest tyres. The lead drivers pitting elevated Sergio Pérez to first, with the Mexican driver being informed his strategy was to hold up Hamilton to allow his teammate Verstappen to catch up. Hamilton caught up with Pérez on lap 20; a spirited defence from the Red Bull second driver allowed Verstappen to significantly close the gap from about 11 seconds after the pits to 1.3 second. Verstappen was unable to take advantage of it, with Hamilton's superior pace extending the gap to four seconds by the midpoint of the race.


title: 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix

text: On lap 26, Alfa Romeo's Kimi Räikkönen collided with the barriers at turn 6, prompting his retirement due to brake issues in his 349th and final Formula One race. On the same lap, George Russell retired in his final race for Williams due to gearbox issues. On lap 35, Antonio Giovinazzi retired his car alongside the track due to gearbox issues, which triggered a brief virtual safety car period. Red Bull used this opportunity to bring Verstappen in for a fresh set of the hard-compound tyres without losing track position; Mercedes, not wishing to give up track position, directed Hamilton to stay out. Using the advantage of fresher tyres, Verstappen gradually reduced the post-stop deficit from seventeen seconds to eleven, but not at a rate which would have been sufficient to catch Hamilton before the end of the race.


title: 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix

text: On lap 53, a crash at turn 14 for Nicholas Latifi, who was fighting for position with Haas' Mick Schumacher and had dirty tyres after going off circuit at turn 9, brought out the safety car. Hamilton again stayed out without pitting because he would have lost track position had the safety car period not ended, while Verstappen pitted behind him for a fresh set of the softest available tyres. Pérez retired under the safety car due to oil pressure. After Verstappen's pit stop, he retained second, but with five lapped cars (those of Lando Norris, Fernando Alonso, Esteban Ocon, Charles Leclerc, and Sebastian Vettel) between himself and Hamilton (in first). As the debris from Latifi's crash was being cleared by the race marshals, the lapped drivers were initially informed that they would not be permitted to overtake. On lap 57 Masi gave the direction that only the five cars between Hamilton and Verstappen were to unlap themselves.


title: 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix

text: Immediately after Vettel passed the safety car to join the lead lap, race control announced the safety car would enter the pits at the end of the lap to allow for a final lap of green-flag racing, leading to angry remonstrations from Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff. On the final lap, Verstappen used his fresh soft tyres to pass Hamilton into turn 5 to take the lead of the race. He held off counter-attacks from Hamilton to win the race and his first World Drivers' Championship, with Hamilton in second and Ferrari driver Carlos Sainz Jr. in third. AlphaTauri driver Yuki Tsunoda finished in a career-best fourth place. Mercedes gained enough points to win their eighth consecutive Constructors' title, extending their own record. Over the radio, Wolff appealed to Masi to reinstate the order of the penultimate lap, to which Masi gave the reply: "Toto, it's called a motor race, ok? We went car racing."


title: 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix

text: Michael Masi was involved in a safety car procedure controversy during the last laps of the race. On lap 56 of the race, during which Hamilton was leading, Masi allowed only the five cars directly in front of championship contender Verstappen to unlap themselves before the restart. The race restarted, and on the final lap of the race, Verstappen overtook Hamilton and won the 2021 World Drivers' Championship.


title: 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix

text: Mercedes protested the race result, alleging that Verstappen had overtaken Hamilton during the safety car and that Masi violated safety car procedure by allowing the cars directly in front of Verstappen to unlap themselves, and no others, and that according to regulations the restart should have occurred the following lap, which would have resulted in Hamilton's victory. While the first issue was dismissed because Verstappen was not ahead at the end of the safety car period, the second issue was more contentious, with Mercedes retaining legal counsel for the protest. Mercedes argued that if a message for lapped cars to overtake is issued under Article 48.12, then all lapped cars are required to unlap, and that the safety car was required to wait until the end of the following lap to return to the pit lane; if this process was complied with, Mercedes submitted that Hamilton would have won the race and therefore the championship, and requested that the classification be amended as such. Red Bull argued that a) the regulation stated "any cars", not "all cars", were required to overtake under Articles 48.12; b) 48.13, which governs the withdrawal of the safety car, overrides Article 48.12; c) Article 15.3 gives the race director overriding authority over the use of the safety car; and d) the race result would not have changed if all eight lapped cars were permitted to unlap. Masi argued that the principle behind Article 48.12 was to remove cars which "interfered" with drivers racing on the lead lap and that all teams had agreed in principle that all races should end under racing conditions.


title: 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix

text: The stewards dismissed the protest on the grounds that, according to article 48.13 and 15.3 in the Formula One sporting regulations, the race director has the "overriding authority" to amend any rule regarding safety car procedure as they wish, and to declare Hamilton the winner for leading at lap 57 would retrospectively shorten the race. With the protests dismissed, Verstappen was provisionally confirmed as the world champion, pending any appeal. Mercedes lodged their intention to appeal to the FIA's International Court of Appeal citing potential breaches of Article 15 of the International Sporting Code and Article 10 of the FIA's Judicial and Disciplinary Code, with the team given 96 hours after the race has concluded to decide whether they wish to take the matter further.


title: 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix

text: Mercedes lodged their intentions to appeal the ruling. Following the FIA's announcement that it would conduct a "detailed analysis and clarification exercise" of the incident and its admission that the controversy was "tarnishing the image" of the sport, Mercedes decided not to pursue their appeal, and announced the discontinuation of their protest on 16 December, several hours before the submission deadline. Amongst the reasons to discontinue, Wolff said that neither he nor Hamilton wished to be awarded the drivers' championship in court, and instead would focus their efforts in to ensuring an equitable result from the FIA's investigation into the sporting code. Wolff remained heavily critical of Masi's direction of the race—in particular, Wolff criticised Masi's decision in Abu Dhabi as being inconsistent with a decision at the 2020 Eifel Grand Prix, where Masi cited the need to let all cars unlap to extend a safety car period—and both he and Hamilton boycotted the FIA Prize Giving Ceremony that evening. Hamilton was later fined for not attending; he asked the FIA to donate the fine as contribution towards the work the body carries out with underprivileged children. The statement also fuelled speculation that Hamilton could announce a snap retirement after being disillusioned by the race's events, although Wolff indicated both he and his driver would continue in the sport after a period of reflection in the off-season.


title: 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix

text: In the immediate post-race interview, Hamilton and his father Anthony congratulated Verstappen and his family on his first World Drivers' Championship.


title: 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix

text: Several drivers criticised Masi's decision which was seen as a divergence from standard safety car procedure. In a last-lap radio message to his race engineer Peter Bonnington, that was not played on the television feed, Hamilton said the race result had been "manipulated". Russell, who was signed to be Hamilton's teammate at Mercedes in 2022, called the race finishing decision of race director Michael Masi "unacceptable". Norris, who was situated at the front of the five cars permitted to unlap, said the decision to go racing again on the last lap was made "for TV", and Alonso, Ocon, Leclerc, and Vettel, the drivers of the other four cars in the pack, also expressed confusion at the sudden instruction to unlap. Daniel Ricciardo, who was situated immediately behind Verstappen during the safety car period and was not permitted to unlap himself, said he was "speechless" at the instruction, especially as it did not allow him to also race the five-car pack on newer soft-compound tyres, and Sainz Jr., who was positioned behind Ricciardo and Lance Stroll's cars upon the restart and was under pressure from Yuki Tsunoda, Pierre Gasly, and Valtteri Bottas, opined that the decision to resume racing under the circumstances "nearly cost [him his] podium". Speaking at Aston Martin's 2022 car launch in February 2022, Lance Stroll described the Abu Dhabi situation as "ridiculous" and that rules should be set in stone before a season starts.


title: 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix

text: Masi's decisions were criticised on social media and by racing drivers as unusual and to contrive excitement. world champion Damon Hill commented that the decision appeared without precedent, stating that it was "a new way of running the sport, where the Race Director can make these "ad hoc" decisions". Former world champion Nico Rosberg felt that Masi "did not follow the rules", and said that Christian Horner demanding "one more lap of racing" to Masi via radio was inappropriate, but sympathised with Masi, commenting: "He's got the whole world watching and he has to decide in the next 15 seconds what he’s doing." Writing for Fox Sports, Jack Austin stated that Formula One "engineered" the finish to increase viewer excitement. Jordan Bianchi of "The Athletic" echoed a similar sentiment, suggesting that Masi's decision was to ensure that "Netflix gets another juicy storyline for the next season of """, and also questioned his capability in effectively officiating a race.


title: 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix

text: The fairness of Masi's decision in changing safety car procedure was also disputed. Swedish former racing driver, Stefan Johansson, commented: "Whether it’s intentional or not, the entertainment value of this controversy has gone through the roof. But I think there has to be a balance somewhere because the decisions Masi made...completely ignored any level of common sense as to what would have been a fair way to handle the situation". India's first Formula One driver, Narain Karthikeyan, also questioned the concept of fairness: "It was a great battle for the championship but what happened yesterday it wasn't sport. You need close battles in Formula One but it has to be fair at the same time...What happened was not fair". German former rally champion, Walter Röhrl, called for races to be decided on the track or in a "fair, clear process that is not influenced by any opaque external decisions". Dutchman and former Formula One driver, Christijan Albers, also raised the issue of fairness: "Michael Masi seemed a bit unsure at a few races last year. He made some ambiguous decisions. But he certainly played a decisive role in the final leg of the season, which left many in bewilderment. Everyone wanted the season finale to be fair". Writing in "The Times", Matt Dickinson agreed the officiating process should be thoroughly reviewed, he rejected complaints that the decision could have been made for entertainment on the grounds that "rules in sport are contrived — and frequently tweaked to make a sport more entertaining — and we should not pretend that there is only one perspective of justice, or that sport is an endless pursuit of fairness." Labour peer and vice-chairman of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Formula One, Peter Hain, commented that the events at the finale was not good for the sport. Hain said: "It may be exciting and it may be dramatic, it may gain the audiences that Formula One craves, but you have to think of the credibility and the integrity of the sport in the longer term...the FIA can't afford to have Formula One tarnished in this way".


title: 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix

text: BBC chief Formula One writer Andrew Benson commented that Masi had changed his mind about the procedure, going back to the 2020 Eifel Grand Prix, when both Hamilton and Verstappen complained that the safety car procedure was unnecessarily long.


title: 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix

text: Several analysts stated that Masi's decision had direct bearings on the championship results. Andrew Benson, writing for the BBC opined in March 2022, that if Masi had allowed all lapped cars to un-lap themselves, the race would not have restarted at all, and Hamilton would have won both the race and championship. David Croft stated that Hamilton would have won the race and the championship had "the rules been adhered to as they are written". Formula One driver Karun Chandhok stated that Verstappen would have won the championship, even if the normal procedure had been followed, "had the lapped cars gone past before the end of lap 56". Dutch newspaper "NRC Handelsblad" noted the role that luck had played throughout the season, and that it was not Verstappen's fault that his win had "become tainted with controversy."


title: 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix

text: Others drew attention to the pressure placed on Masi in ending the safety car. Dutch newspaper "de Volkskrant" made note of the immense pressure on a Formula One race director to make snap decisions, and expressed sympathy with Masi on that basis. Scuderia Ferrari team principal Mattia Binotto defended Masi, saying that "his job was the most difficult job on the planet at that time." Four-time world champion Sebastian Vettel defended Masi and the stewards, commenting: "Everyone has an opinion, I think leave the stewards alone, it's tough enough as it is. Ideally we'd like more consistency but there's also a human side, so it's probably difficult to get it 100 per cent right, but it has to be our target, so we need to see what we can improve." McLaren team principal Andreas Seidl said that Masi's role needs to be understood in the context of an intense title battle and appreciated.


title: 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix

text: Horner defended Masi's decision making, saying Mercedes lost the race due to strategic errors rather than from the restart. Formula One driver Narain Karthikeyan stated Mercedes had made the right strategic decisions and questioned Masi's ability to handle pressure. Former Formula One driver Romain Grosjean defended Masi's decision and commented: "There's a few ways of seeing it. It would have been very strange to not unlap those cars and have Lewis first and then Max four cars behind over one lap for the world championship. And, on the other hand, for Lewis it was definitely not a great call. But as a TV fan, as a spectator, as for the sport, I think Michael Masi made the right decision."


title: 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix

text: Nicholas Latifi apologised for causing the crash, which led to the controversial safety car period. Latifi stated that he received abuse and death threats from some fans on social media. Latifi subsequently issued a statement condemning the online abuse he received. Latifi stated that he had received messages of support from Hamilton and that he had to be accompanied by additional personal security when attending events ahead of the 2022 season. He also confirmed personal plans to highlight the effect on mental health that online abuse can have on people, following his own personal research into the subject. Masi has also been subject to social media abuse and death threats as a result of the race controversy.


title: 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix

text: On 11 January 2022, the BBC reported that Hamilton was considering his future in the sport pending the outcome of FIA's upcoming report into the events of the race with the Formula One paddock expecting the FIA to take significant action as a result of the race, including the replacement of Masi as FIA race director, with Hamilton ultimately staying in the sport. According to BBC journalist Benson, Masi had "failed to apply the rules correctly in two different ways" and that Mercedes denied claims that they dropped their post race appeal after being assured that Masi would step down or be removed from his role. Formula One journalist Mark Hughes said Hamilton's silence since the race had echoes of Ayrton Senna's past feud with the governing body after the championship deciders in 1989 and 1990. Mitchell commented that the Abu Dhabi situation was just one part of wider dissatisfaction from teams with how the FIA had begun to apply regulations in the seasons following Masi's appointment in 2019. Meanwhile, on the subject of Hamilton potentially announcing a snap retirement, 1978 World Champion Mario Andretti believed the desire to try an win an eighth title would prove too hard to resist regardless of the outcome of the inquiry and that Hamilton would drive in the 2022 season and that Hamilton would be doing a "disservice" to himself if he did not race for another season. McLaren CEO Zak Brown said the sport should not just automatically assume that Hamilton is going to stay on in the sport for 2022, though Brown personally expected him to contest it. Brown also cited the Abu Dhabi controversy along with the last minute cancellation of the 2020 Australian Grand Prix and the handling of the running of the rain affected 2021 Belgian Grand Prix as signs or symptoms of the fact the FIA had shown itself to be suffering from organisational and rule-making problems for a significant period of time and urgently needed to be resolved. The 1997 World Champion Jacques Villeneuve opined that Hamilton was staying silent because he was trying to distance himself from Mercedes boss Toto Wolff and perhaps considering a career in the film industry. Hamilton subsequently broke his silence, continuing to race for the 2022 season.


title: 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix

text: On 15 December 2021, the FIA announced that it would be investigating the running of the race with the goal of learning what happened and to determine if adjustments are needed for the safety car procedure. The FIA review started in January 2022. In the same statement, the FIA stated that misunderstandings from teams, drivers, and fans had "tarnished the image" of the World Drivers' Championship. Formula One journalist Scott Mitchell criticised the FIA's initial statement in response to the controversy for its suggestion that fans had misunderstood events that occurred at the end of the Grand Prix.


title: 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix

text: Speaking on 17 December 2021, FIA president Mohamed bin Sulayem hinted he was considering making changes to avoid such controversy in future, and did not rule out the possibility of removing Masi from his role of Formula One race director. On 13 January 2022, the FIA hinted that it was considering making changes to the safety car procedures as well as its own internal operational structure within Formula One after the FIA launched a consultation with all ten Formula One teams on "various issues", including a review of the events in Abu Dhabi.


title: 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix

text: The BBC reported that Mercedes had dropped their appeal against the results after reaching a "quid pro quo" agreement with the FIA, in which Masi and Formula One's technical director Nikolas Tombazis would not be in the same position for the 2022 season, in exchange for dropping their appeal. It was also reported that Wolff would have a personal meeting with Sulayem to discuss the way forward from the incident, including the future of race director Masi. Drivers were expected to cite what they perceived to be a lenient attitude by Masi and race stewards towards Verstappen's driving during the 2021 season, with Andrew Benson of BBC Sport saying this could result in the FIA being forced to take a harder line on driving standards in future., and the FIA subsequently published these new guidlines ahead of the 2022 season which included stricter rules on wheel to wheel combat and stricter and better defined imposing of track limits. Former Formula One driver-turned commentator Martin Brundle also commented on the controversy, stating that "removing Masi won't solve F1's credibility concerns".credibility problems caused by the incident, Three-time Grand Prix winner Johnny Herbert felt Masi had done "too much damage" to the sport's reputation with his action and should be replaced.


title: 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix

text: On 28 January 2022, the BBC reported that Masi would be replaced as part of a restructure to the FIA's Formula One race weekend officiating system with race officials expected to be given more flexibility through rule tweaks over matters, such as deployment of the safety car and that teams will likely be prohibited from talking to the race director on stewards decisions as part of such reforms. "The Race" and Sky Sports also ran similar stories on Masi being replaced. "The Race"'s article further stated that some of the responsibilities of the race director could be reassigned to different personnel. FIA secretary General Peter Bayer stated that the race director had "too much" to cope with. Bayer also stated that Masi could stay with the organisation in another capacity, even if he was to be replaced in role of race director. On 9 February 2022 it emerged the FIA had added previously unheard radio messages between Masi and Red Bull team manager Jonathan Wheatley to their lines of inquiry. This exchange seems to suggest that Masi seemed to be taking instructions from Wheatley with the Red Bull team manager appearing to tell Masi he did not need to let all the lapped cars unlap themselves and to withdraw the safety car quickly. Following its investigation and a meeting of the F1 Commission on 14 February 2022 the FIA said it would reveal an 'action plan' for structural changes within its organisation later that same week.


title: 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix

text: On 17 February 2022, race control was restructured, with Masi removed from the position of race director and with Eduardo Freitas and Niels Wittich alternating in the role with former deputy race director Herbie Blash as a permanent advisor and a new virtual race control with the parameters of acceptable communication between teams and race director being restricted to reduce lobbying. Radio transmissions between teams and the FIA will no longer be broadcast on television coverage to ease pressure on race officials. The FIA subsequently revealed regulation changes regarding safety car procedures to be used from the 2022 season onwards. Under these changes rather than waiting until the lap after the last car has unlapped itself from the leader, the safety car will now be withdrawn one lap after the instruction that lapped cars may unlap themselves has been given. In a Sky Sports F1 documentary (released after Masi's removal as race director reviewing the title battle between Hamilton and Verstappen), Mercedes boss Toto Wolff stated he had "never spoken with Masi since the race" and "did not wish to ever speak to him again", and claimed that Masi had "bromance" with Red Bull team manager Jonathan Wheatley suggesting that Masi may have been unduly influenced by Red Bull relating to decisions over restart positions in Saudi Arabia and the Abu Dhabi final lap restart which Wolff likened to the abolished golden goal rule formerly used in association football. Furthermore, in remarks published on 11 April 2022 Wolff referred to former race director Masi as having been a "liability" to the sport and hinted that Masi did not take well to receiving feedback or criticism from anybody as well as suggesting that Masi had acted disrespectfully at times towards some drivers in driver briefings on occasions.


title: 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix

text: Following the removal of Masi as race director, Max Verstappen stated that he does not care for the opinion of fans who say his title win might have been tarnished by Masi's actions.


title: 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix

text: On 19 March 2022 the FIA published their official report into the Abu Dhabi controversy. They noted that the safety car had not completed an additional lap before leaving the track as required by regulation 48.12. The report noted that differing interpretations of Article 48.12 and/or 48.13 "likely contributed to some of the confusion surrounding the safety car unlapping procedure". It further noted that not all lapped cars had been allowed to unlap and that this had stemmed from human error, following from the process of identifying the lapped cars being a manual one, and promised the implementation of software to automate communication. The report also noted that the 2022 Formula 1 Sporting Regulations were updated to clarify that "all" and not "any" cars must be permitted to unlap themselves"." The report concluded that Masi had acted in good faith and that there could be different interpretations of the rules. The findings also stated that the communication between the team principals of Mercedes and Red Bull with Masi during the final laps was inappropriate. The report further confirmed that the 2021 Formula One World Championship results remained valid. Recommendations were made to clarify the safety car regulations and to clamp down on radio communications between the teams and race control. In addition, from the 2022 Australian Grand Prix, the FIA restricted drivers from driving alongside other cars at the restart following a safety car period, a tactic Verstappen had employed at this race.