title: Murder Inc. Records

text: Murder Inc. and TVT Records were also blocked by Universal from releasing a Cash Money Click reunion album featuring Ja Rule, due to his contractual obligations. Def Jam was ordered to pay TVT $132 million in punitive damages in 2003. However, Def Jam won an appeal and instead only paid TVT $126,720. The Cash Money Click reunion album, scheduled for a November 2002 release through Murder Inc., was ultimately shelved.


title: Murder Inc. Records

text: On December 4, 2003, during a press conference, Irv Gotti announced that in light of the recent changes, setbacks, and controversies surrounding the label, Murder Inc. would be renamed to "The Inc." In 2004, Lloyd was signed and released his debut album "Southside". Ja Rule would see his music return to form, with his Gold RIAA-selling sixth studio album "R.U.L.E.", while Ashanti would also release her fourth studio album, "Concrete Rose", neither of which were as successful as both artists' previous works. At the end of 2004, they were ordered to leave Def Jam offices while the investigations were on. When the trials began in early 2005, Def Jam made them honor their contracts and release compilation albums; then they were not re-signed.


title: Murder Inc. Records

text: Murder Inc. spent 2005 and part of 2006 searching for distribution. In August 2006, Irv Gotti and The Inc. signed to Universal Motown and soon began releasing music. After settling in at Universal Motown, Irv Gotti signed Vanessa Carlton that year.


title: Murder Inc. Records

text: On August 1, 2007, Ja Rule would return to radio and television on "Sucker Free" on MTV, where he debuted his single "Uh-Ohhh!!" with Lil Wayne and his return to recording music. Irv Gotti and Eastwood created Murder Inc. West with Eastwood serving as its president and Gotti on A&R. Techniec also signed to the label and was appointed vice president. Techniec's group Dynamic Certified also signed to the label. Irv Gotti later gave Ja Rule his own label, MPire.


title: Murder Inc. Records

text: In May 2009, Irv Gotti announced to MTV that he was releasing Ashanti from her contract with Murder Inc. A month later Lloyd—who had been with Murder Inc. for 5 years—asked to be released from his contract. Lloyd cited the need for more control and change as reasons for his departure from the slowly shrinking label. "I'm ready for a change. There's no bad blood. I just feel I need to take more control over my career and get a fresh start. Hopefully Irv can understand my position," Lloyd explained in a press release.


title: Murder Inc. Records

text: "We find ourselves in limbo for the second time in three years," Henry 'Noonie' Lee, Lloyd's manager said in a statement. "It's frustrating to know that opportunities to advance Lloyd's career are out there but we can't exploit them due to our current situation. Even though Lloyd is appreciative of the opportunity that has been afforded him by Murder Inc., he feels it's time for him to move on and seek opportunities that will allow him to build and enhance his brand."


title: Murder Inc. Records

text: That same year, Ja Rule announced that he was no longer signed to Murder Inc. as well, the same label he had been with since its beginnings in 1997. Ja Rule decided to go independent on his own label, Mpire, which is distributed through Fontana. Although Ja Rule had departed from Murder Inc., he revealed he was still on great terms with Irv Gotti and the two worked together for Ja Rule's next album, "Pain Is Love 2". Baltimore soon left the label in 2010 for new opportunities.


title: Murder Inc. Records

text: In September 2013, Murder Inc. was relaunched as an umbrella label under Irv Gotti's new label, Visionary. On September 27, Murder Inc. released its first songs in years, Ja Rule's "Fresh Out da Pen" and "Everything", both produced by Murder Inc./Visionary producers Reefa and Myles William.


title: Murder Inc. Records

text: On Friday, January 3, 2003, federal agents and New York Police Department investigators raided the headquarters of Murder Inc. Records, located at One Worldwide Plaza in Midtown Manhattan. The raid was a part of a yearlong investigation into the connection between The Lorenzo brothers and American drug lord Kenneth “Supreme” McGriff. Investigators believed that the Lorenzos launched Murder Inc. Records using money bankrolled by McGriff to launder McGriff’s drug money, as well as help McGriff launder drug money through the making of the 2003 film "Crime Partners". Although computers and documents were seized, no charges were immediately filed, and no arrests were immediately made. The raid was dramatized in the music video for Ja Rule’s "Murder Reigns".


title: Murder Inc. Records

text: Chris and Irv Gotti’s history with McGriff dates back to 1994, when McGriff, newly paroled from prison, met Chris and Irv on the set of a music video in Queens, New York. McGriff wanted to go into cinematography and sought help from Chris and Irv Gotti to produce and direct a film based on Donald Goines’ Kenyatta series’ novel Crime Partners. The Lorenzos since then maintained a friendship with McGriff, having him appear in the music video for Ja Rule’s 1999 single “Murda 4 Life” and helped financed McGriff’s dream project, "Crime Partners", around 2000.


title: Murder Inc. Records

text: On January 25, 2005, Chris and Irv Gotti surrendered to authorities in New York City and were officially charged with money laundering and conspiracy to launder money. During the trial, Irv Gotti was represented by Gerald B. Lefcourt, and Chris Gotti was represented by Gerald Shargel. In December 2005, Chris and Irv Gotti were found not guilty of money laundering and conspiracy to launder money.


title: Benevento Calcio

text: Benevento Calcio, commonly referred to as Benevento, is an Italian football club based in Benevento, Campania. The club was originally founded in 1929 and then re-founded in 2005. They currently compete in Serie B, having been relegated from Serie A in the 2020–21 season.


title: Benevento Calcio

text: The club was founded as Associazione Calcio Benevento in 1929, their original home was the "Meomartini" which was built by Ciccio Minocchia.


title: Benevento Calcio

text: After working their way up the country's lower divisions during their early years, Benevento reached Prima Divisione, Italy's third highest professional league at the time, in the 1934–35 season. They finished above clubs such as Reggina during the club's first season within the league. Although they did not win promotion to Serie B, the team did remain in the third tier of Italian football for the 1935–36 season, re-organized to a smaller 64-team league renamed Serie C.


title: Benevento Calcio

text: The club F.C. Sporting Benevento S.r.l. folded in 2005. At the same time Benevento Calcio S.p.A. was founded, using the same stadium and playing kit.


title: Benevento Calcio

text: In the 2007–08 Serie C2 regular season the team finished first in Girone C, winning direct promotion to the now called Lega Pro Prima Divisione for the 2008–09 season. In the 2008–09 season, Benevento's first season in Lega Pro Prima Divisione, they finished in 2nd place. This meant Benevento would be in a two-legged play-off. They won their first two-legged play-off, but lost to Crotone 1–0 (2–1) on aggregate in the final.


title: Benevento Calcio

text: Gaetano Auteri was appointed as the head manager for the 2015–16 season. In this season, Benevento won its league and reached Serie B for the first time in its history. The mathematical certainty arrived on 30 April 2016, after defeating Lecce 3–0.


title: Benevento Calcio

text: On 8 June 2017, they were promoted to Serie A, for the first time in their history, after defeating Carpi in the Serie B play-offs 1–0 on aggregate, remarkably winning promotion in their inaugural season in Serie B. The club struggled in its top-flight debut in the 2017-18 season as Benevento set a record for the worst start to a season in any of Europe's top five leagues by losing their first 14 Serie A matches. This streak ended on 3 December 2017, with a 95th-minute equalising header from goalkeeper Alberto Brignoli for a 2–2 home draw against A.C. Milan. Benevento's time in Serie A lasted one season and they were relegated after a last-place finish, although there was a clear uptick in form after their dismal opening to the campaign, ultimately winning six of their last 23 games.


title: Benevento Calcio

text: On 22 June 2019, Benevento hired Filippo Inzaghi as their new manager. In June 2020, with seven matches still left in the league season, the club won promotion back to the first-division of Italian football following an impressive Serie B campaign.


title: Benevento Calcio

text: Benevento's second season in Serie A was again unsuccessful, ending with another relegation, but the club was much more competitive and performed particularly admirably in the first half of the season. By the campaign's midway point, Benevento had won six matches and was placed in 10th position, appearing well-set for a mid-table finish. However, a dramatic downturn in form from January until the end of the campaign, scoring only 16 goals and winning just one of the final 22 matches in that time, meant that the club again fell back into Serie B for the 2021-22 season. Benevento eventually finished in 18th place, with four points fewer than Torino in the final non-relegation position.


title: Benevento Calcio

text: The team's colours are yellow and red, and their badge features red and yellow stripes and the black image of a witch riding a broom. Benevento are nicknamed the "Stregoni", Italian for sorcerers, or occasionally, the "Streghe", Italian for witches, a reference to the legends dating to the 13th century of the witches of Benevento.


title: Benevento Calcio

text: Benevento plays their home matches at the Stadio Ciro Vigorito. Building on the stadium broke ground in 1976 and it was opened in 1979. It is able to hold 25,000 people.


title: Benevento Calcio

text: The stadium was originally named Santa Colomba but was renamed to honor who was the brother of club president . Ciro was a successful entrepreneur and sports manager who was the managing director and oversaw the youth sector at Benevento from 2006 until his death in 2010.


title: Benevento Calcio

text: The following players have been selected by their country in the World Cup Finals, while playing for Benevento.


title: Overthrow of Slobodan Milošević

text: The overthrow of Slobodan Milošević in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, began after the presidential election on 24 September and culminated in the downfall of Slobodan Milošević's government on 5 October 2000. It is sometimes referred to as the 5 October Overthrow () and sometimes colloquially called the (), after one of the most memorable episodes from the day-long protest in which a heavy equipment operator charged the Radio Television of Serbia building, considered to be symbolic of the Milošević regime's propaganda.


title: Overthrow of Slobodan Milošević

text: Milošević's rule has been described by observers as authoritarian or autocratic, as well as kleptocratic, with numerous accusations of electoral frauds, political assassinations, suppression of media freedom and police brutality. He became the first sitting head of state to be charged with war crimes. His role in the Yugoslav Wars led to international sanctions against FR Yugoslavia, which had a devastating impact on the Yugoslav economy and society, while NATO bombing significantly damaged the country's infrastructure. While the overthrow of Milošević was reported as a spontaneous revolution, there had been a year-long battle involving thousands of Serbs in a strategy to strip the leader of his legitimacy, turn his security forces against him, and force him to call for elections, the result of which he would not acknowledge.


title: Overthrow of Slobodan Milošević

text: In 1998, a dozen students met to form Otpor! (Serbian for "resistance"). Analysing the mistakes of the 1996–97 protests, they realised they needed more effective organisation, strategy, planning, recruiting, and all else necessary for a sustained fight. Galvanised by outrage over new laws that imposed political control of their universities and harassment of independent media, the Otpor students called for the removal of Milošević and the establishment of democracy and the rule of law.


title: Overthrow of Slobodan Milošević

text: Prior to this, Milošević was cracking down on opposition, non-government organisations and independent media. From 1991 onwards there were campaigns of civil resistance against his administration that were to culminate in the largely non-violent revolution of October 2000. As the end of his first term in office of the president of Yugoslavia approached (previously, he had been elected president of Serbia, in two terms, from 1989 to 1997), on 6 July 2000, the rules of the election of the president were changed. Whilst the president of Yugoslavia had previously been chosen for one term only by the legislature, in the Yugoslav parliament, it was now to be directly elected via the two-round voting system of presidential elections with a maximum of two terms. Many onlookers believed that Milošević's intentions for supporting such reforms had more to do with holding power than with improving democracy. On 27 July 2000, the authorities announced that the early elections were to be held 24 September 2000, although Milošević's term wouldn't expire until 23 July 2001. The elections for the upper house of the federal parliament, Council of Citizens ("Veće građana"), as well as the local elections were also scheduled to be held on the same date.


title: Overthrow of Slobodan Milošević

text: On 25 August 2000, Ivan Stambolić, a former mentor and political ally of Milošević, was mysteriously kidnapped and detained from his home and was summarily executed in Fruška Gora. The hit was believed to have been initiated by Milošević so he could prevent Stambolić from being a potential electoral opponent. His decomposed body was found three years later in March 2003. The four officers who had kidnapped him were sentenced. Milošević was charged for initiating the assassination.


title: Overthrow of Slobodan Milošević

text: Soon after the announcement, the anti-government youth movement Otpor! led the campaign to topple the administration and introduce a transparent democracy. To unify opposition, eighteen parties in Serbia formed the Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS) coalition, with Vojislav Koštunica as the candidate to confront Milošević. Apart from this, two major opposition parties, Serbian Radical Party and Serbian Renewal Movement also had candidates (Tomislav Nikolić and Vojislav Mihailović, respectively), but the main battle of the elections was the one between Milošević and Koštunica. The election campaign lasted for about two months and was extremely tense, with numerous incidents, accusations of treason, independent media shutdowns and even murders.


title: Overthrow of Slobodan Milošević

text: For a year leading up to the elections, the United States-funded consultants played a crucial role in the anti-Milošević campaign. The key symbol of the campaign was the slogan Gotov je! (, meaning "He is finished!"), created by Otpor!. Part of the U.S. funding of the opposition (a reported $41 million) included 2.5 million stickers with the slogan and 5,000 spray cans for anti-Milošević graffiti. Material was channeled by the U.S. Department of State through QUANGOs.


title: Overthrow of Slobodan Milošević

text: The vote took place on 24 September 2000. The DOS coalition reported that Vojislav Koštunica won over half of the votes, enough to defeat Milošević in a single round. The government-controlled Federal Electoral Committee claimed that no candidate won over 50% of the votes and that a second round between Koštunica and Milošević would take place. The vote was largely boycotted in Montenegro and by Kosovo Albanians (not under Yugoslavian control). Yet, Milošević officially won by a large margin in these parts of the country. These unexpected results provoked stronger accusations of election fraud and led DOS to call for peaceful protests to topple the government.


title: Overthrow of Slobodan Milošević

text: Some obvious irregularities could be found in the Federal Electoral Committee official results. For example, the sum of the numbers of valid and invalid votes was not equal to the number of voters; the sum of the numbers of the voters voting at the polling stations and the voters voting at home exceeded the total number of voters; the sum of the numbers of the used and the unused ballot papers was short by 117,244 in comparison to the number of eligible voters, the number of eligible voters was different from the one announced before the elections and has differed in the presidential, federal and local elections results, etc.


title: Overthrow of Slobodan Milošević

text: All of these discrepancies provoked massive outrage. The results were declared false immediately after Milošević was removed, and revised official results were released shortly afterwards. The new results were practically the same, except for the number of total votes and the votes for Milošević, both of which were lower by 125,000–130,000 votes, thus giving Koštunica an absolute, if narrow, first-round victory; Koštunica finished with just a few thousand votes over the threshold to avoid a runoff.


title: Overthrow of Slobodan Milošević

text: The protests initially started with strikers at the Kolubara mines on 29 September, which produced most of Serbia's electricity. The protest reached its height on 5 October 2000. Several hundred thousand protesters from all over Serbia arrived in Belgrade to protest, chanting "He's finished! He's finished!" Unlike previous protests, there was no large scale police crackdown. The parliament was partially burned during the protests.


title: Overthrow of Slobodan Milošević

text: The protest is frequently named the "Bulldozer Revolution" after one of the most memorable episodes from the day-long protest in which heavy equipment operator Ljubisav Đokić, nicknamed "Joe", fired up his machine — actually neither an excavator nor a bulldozer, but rather a wheel loader - and used it to charge a Belgrade building. Its tenant, Serbian state television RTS, had for a decade been a symbol and bastion of Milošević's rule. When their studios were taken over, the station was quickly renamed "Novi RTS" ("New RTS") as a sign that the regime had lost power.


title: Overthrow of Slobodan Milošević

text: Although the protest was mostly peaceful, without a larger escalation of violence, two people died. Jasmina Jovanović fell under a wheel loader or, according to other sources, a truck, and Momčilo Stakić succumbed to a fatal heart attack. 65 people were injured in the riots.


title: Overthrow of Slobodan Milošević

text: In the time between elections and the protest, Milošević said that he would gladly resign but only when his term expired in June 2001. Due to pressure caused by the protests, Milošević resigned on 5 October 2000.


title: Overthrow of Slobodan Milošević

text: A DOS victory was guaranteed in parliamentary elections in December, where they achieved a two-thirds majority. On 1 April 2001, Milošević was detained by Serbian police and later transferred to The Hague to be prosecuted by the ICTY. He died in his cell on 11 March 2006, a few months before the conclusion of his four-year trial.


title: Alan Cumming filmography

text: This is the filmography list for the Scottish-American actor, voice actor, director, producer, writer and activist Alan Cumming.


title: Shahid Khaqan Abbasi

text: Shahid Khaqan Abbasi (; born 27 December 1958) is a Pakistani politician and businessman who served as the 21st prime minister of Pakistan from August 2017 to May 2018. Abbasi is the senior vice president of the Pakiatan Muslim League-N (PML-N), and secretary-general of Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM), an anti-PTI coalition of political parties in Pakistan. He has been a Member of the National Assembly of Pakistan since October 2018. Previously, he served as a member of the National Assembly for 8


title: Shahid Khaqan Abbasi

text: Abbasi started his political career after the death of his father in 1988, and since then he has been elected a Member of the National Assembly six times for Constituency NA-50 (Rawalpindi). After the PML-N victory in the 1997 general election, he served as Chairman of Pakistan International Airlines until the 1999 Pakistani coup d'état. After the formation of a temporary coalition government following the 2008 general election, he was briefly the Minister for Commerce in the Gillani ministry. After the 2013 general election, he became the Minister for Petroleum and Natural Resources in the third Sharif ministry, where he served from 2013 until the disqualification of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif after the Panama Papers case decision in July 2017. In August 2017, he was elected as 21st Prime Minister of Pakistan by the National Assembly.


title: Shahid Khaqan Abbasi

text: Abbasi was born on 27 December 1958 in his hometown of Murree in Murree District, Punjab.<ref name="dawn/30july2017"></ref><ref name="pakobserver/31juy2017"></ref> He attended Lawrence College in Murree.<ref name="app/30july2017"></ref> In 1978, he attended the University of California, Los Angeles, where he received a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering.<ref name="hindustantimes/29july2017"></ref><ref name="aawsat/12aug2017"></ref> Following this, he began a career as an electrical engineer. In 1985, he attended George Washington University, where he gained a master's degree in Electrical Engineering.<ref name="dawn1/29july2017"></ref>


title: Shahid Khaqan Abbasi

text: After graduating from George Washington University, Abbasi became a professional electrical engineer. He worked in the United States during the 1980s before moving to Saudi Arabia,<ref name="thenews/30july2017"></ref> where he worked on energy projects in the oil and gas industry.


title: Shahid Khaqan Abbasi

text: Abbasi's political career began after the death of his father Khaqan Abbasi in 1988.<ref name="dawn/25dec2007"></ref> In May 1988, President Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq sacked the government of his handpicked Prime Minister, Muhammad Khan Junejo, and prematurely dissolved the National Assembly. Consequently, new parliamentary elections were called for 16 November 1988. Abbasi ran for the National Assembly seat from Constituency NA-36 (Rawalpindi-I), which had been held by his father until his death. Abassi was elected with 47,295 votes as an independent candidate. He acquired Rawalpindi's National Assembly seat for the first time at the age of 30 by defeating both Raja Zafar ul Haq, a candidate of Islami Jamhoori Ittehad (IJI), and Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) candidate Raja Muhammad Anwar by a narrow margin. After winning the election he joined the IJI,<ref name="dawn/30march2013"></ref> which was newly founded in September 1988 by then Director-General of Inter-Services Intelligence to counter the PPP. His tenure as a Member of the National Assembly terminated after the National Assembly was dissolved prematurely in August 1990 following the dismissal of the government of Benazir Bhutto by President Ghulam Ishaq Khan.<ref name="dawn/4june2006"></ref>


title: Shahid Khaqan Abbasi

text: New parliamentary elections were called for 24 October 1990.<ref name="book/9781135355760"></ref> Abbasi ran for a National Assembly seat as a candidate of IJI and was successfully re-elected from Constituency NA-36 (Rawalpindi-I). He received 80,305 votes against 54,011 votes for PPP candidate Raja Muhammad Anwar. Upon the victory of IJI in the 1990 national election, he was made Federal Parliamentary Secretary for Defence, a post he retained until the dissolution of the National Assembly in April 1993 with the dismissal of the Nawaz Sharif government by then President Ghulam Ishaq Khan.<ref name="dawn/27june2004"></ref>


title: Shahid Khaqan Abbasi

text: New snap elections were called for 6 October 1993. Abbasi ran for a National Assembly seat as a candidate of the Pakistan Muslim League (N) (PML-N) and was re-elected for the third time from Constituency NA-36 (Rawalpindi-I). He secured 76,596 votes against the PPP candidate, retired Colonel Habib Khan, who received 45,173 votes. As a Member of the National Assembly, he performed his duties as the Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National Assembly on Defence. His tenure was terminated with the dissolution of the National Assembly in 1996 following the dismissal of the Benazir Bhutto government by President Farooq Leghari.


title: Shahid Khaqan Abbasi

text: New parliamentary elections were called for 3 February 1997, and Abbasi successfully retained his National Assembly seat as a candidate of the PML-N from Constituency NA-36 (Rawalpindi-I) for the fourth time. He defeated Pakistan Muslim League (J) candidate Babar Awan and independent candidate Javed Iqbal Satti by securing 65,194 votes. PML-N won a clear majority in the National Assembly for the first time. That same year, he was appointed as the chairman of Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.<ref name="Aaj/7june2013"></ref><ref name="dawn/14September2008"></ref> During his two years in this office, he is credited with implementing long-term and comprehensive reforms and getting the airline out of debt.<ref name="jang/30july2017"></ref> His tenure as the Chairman of PIA was terminated following the 1999 Pakistani coup d'état, during which then-Chief of Army Staff General Pervez Musharraf overthrew Sharif and his existing elected government.<ref name="Dawn/17june2013"></ref> Abbasi's tenure as Member of the National Assembly was also terminated with the dissolution of the assembly. Abbasi, along with Sharif, was named in the infamous plane hijacking case. Charges were levelled against him for denying the landing of Musharraf's PIA plane at Karachi's Jinnah International Airport on its way back from Sri Lanka on 12 October 1999, and he was held responsible for conspiring with Sharif to kill Musharraf. He was forced to provide a testimonial statement against Sharif for the hijacking case, but he refused to release the statement.<ref name="nyt/1aug2017"></ref> He was also pressured by the Pakistan Army to switch allegiance from Sharif, but he refused. He remained in jail for two years before his acquittal by the court in 2001. By then, Sharif had gone into exile in Saudi Arabia. In a 2008 interview, Abbasi claimed that Musharraf himself took control of the plane in 1999. As chairman of PIA, he was accused of 11 million in corruption in the purchase of 200 computers for the airline, however he was acquitted of this in 2008.


title: Shahid Khaqan Abbasi

text: General elections were held on 10 October 2002 under Musharraf. Abbasi was the PML-N candidate for the Constituency NA-50 (Rawalpindi) seat, but lost to PPP candidate Ghulam Murtaza Satti<ref name="dawn/4may2013"></ref> with 63,797 votes (37.21%) to 74,259 (43.31%). Abbasi indicated that the exile of Sharif disappointed the people, due to which PML-N only won 19 out of 342 seats in the National Assembly. People from his constituency claim he contested the election unwillingly, explaining why he lost it.<ref name="bbcurdu/30july2017"></ref> After his defeat, he distanced himself from politics to focus on Airblue Limited, which he founded in 2003. He served as its first chairman until 2007 and then went on to become its chief operating officer.


title: Shahid Khaqan Abbasi

text: After Sharif's return to Pakistan from exile in 2007, Abbasi joined him and ran for a seat in the National Assembly in the 18 February 2008 general election as a candidate of the PML-N, and was successfully re-elected for the fifth time with 99,987 votes from Constituency NA-50 (Rawalpindi) by defeating PPP candidate Ghulam Murtaza Satti who secured 77,978 votes. The election resulted in a hung parliament where PPP had secured the most seats in the National Assembly and PML-N the second most. After the formation of a coalition government between PPP and PML-N with Yousaf Raza Gillani as Prime Minister, Abbasi was inducted into the federal cabinet of Gillani with the status of a federal minister in March 2008 and was appointed as the Minister for Commerce.<ref name="Dawn/14May2008"></ref> However, he resigned as Minister for Commerce after the PML-N left the PPP-led coalition government in May 2008 to lead the movement to impeach Pervez Musharraf and to restore the judiciary after the coalition failed to restore the judiciary, as agreed between PML-N and PPP in the Bhurban Accord. Abbasi was reported to have held the cabinet portfolio of Defence Production during his short-lived tenure as Commerce Minister, a claim later proved to be untrue.


title: Shahid Khaqan Abbasi

text: After the completion of a five-year PPP government, an election was scheduled for 11 May 2013. Abbasi ran for a seat in the National Assembly as a candidate of the PML-N and successfully retained his seat from Constituency NA-50 (Rawalpindi) for the sixth time<ref name="tribune/13may2013"></ref> with 134,439 votes by defeating PPP candidate Ghulam Murtaza Satti. "The Express Tribune" noted PML-N won the seat despite unsatisfactory performance in the constituency as Nisar Ali Khan had moved development projects allotted for Abbasi's constituency to his own constituency. Upon the victory of PML-N in the 2013 national election, he was inducted into the federal cabinet as the Minister for Petroleum and Natural Resources and was given the task of ending the Pakistan's electricity crisis. As Minister for Petroleum, he proposed to ban the usage of oil and coal-powered energy generation plants terming them expensive,<ref name="tribune/10aug2017"></ref> and instead advocated and pushed for the liquefied natural gas (LNG) powered electricity production saying that LNG was more cheaper and would save the government billion of dollars. He claimed the government could save US$1 billion annually if 1,800MW of diesel-powered energy plants in the country were run on LNG and furnace-oil based plants would save US$600 million. In February 2016, Abbasi in his capacity as Minister for Petroleum signed US$16 billion agreement with Qatargas for purchasing 3.75 million metric tons of LNG annually for a period of 15 years, to generate 2,000 MW of electricity and to meet 20% gas requirements of Pakistan where demand for natural gas was 8,000 MMFCD against a supply of 4,000 MMFCD. The deal which made to overcome the country's swelling power crisis was referred to as Pakistan's biggest commercial transaction ever.<ref name="reuters/10feb2016"></ref> After the LNG contract received criticism from the opposition parties over price issue and for being non-transparent, Abbasi defended the agreement with Qatar saying Pakistan has negotiated cheapest price with Qatar.<ref name="thenews/29feb2016"></ref> He said the contract which took 14 months of negotiation with the government of Qatar was made under his supervision and he is responsible for it.


title: Shahid Khaqan Abbasi

text: In July 2015, Abbasi was accused of issuing illegal contracts worth 220 billion between the period of 2013 and 2015 for the import and distribution of LNG without a proper bidding process, after which the National Accountability Bureau registered a case and began an investigation.<ref name="frontierpost/30july2017"></ref><ref name="tribune/1aug2017"></ref> He denied the corruption allegations. The case was closed in December 2016 after it was found that all rules were followed during procurement and the bidding process to award the contract was transparent. "The Express Tribune" described the LNG project as successful and one of the cheapest regasifications in the world. Abbasi ceased to hold the ministerial office of Petroleum and Natural Resources on 28 July 2017 when the cabinet of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was disbanded following his disqualification by the Supreme Court of Pakistan in the Panama Papers case decision.<ref name="reuters/29july2017"></ref> To minimise the shortage of gas, and to overcome the persistent power crises in the country, Abbasi's proposal to bring the LNG to Pakistan as source of power generation was lauded and praised. According to BBC Urdu, Abbasi had not become a part of any major political or financial controversy throughout his time in a ministerial office which is considered a high-profile cabinet slot.


title: Shahid Khaqan Abbasi

text: Nawaz Sharif resigned as Prime Minister on 29 July 2017 and nominated his brother Shehbaz Sharif as his successor, but as Shehbaz was not a member of the National Assembly, he could not be immediately sworn in as Prime Minister.<ref name="gulfnews/29july2017"></ref> Therefore, Abbasi was chosen by Sharif as a temporary Prime Minister for 45 days,<ref name="hindu/29july2017"></ref><ref name="dawn/29july2017"></ref> which would allow two months time for Shehbaz to contest elections from Nawaz's vacated constituency in Lahore, be elected to the National Assembly, and become eligible to be Prime Minister. BBC News noted that Abbasi was selected as the Prime Minister for two reasons. The first for being the least controversial among the PML-N leaders, and the second for having links with the Military of Pakistan.


title: Shahid Khaqan Abbasi

text: On 1 August 2017, Abbasi was elected as Prime Minister of Pakistan by the National Assembly, defeating his rival Naveed Qamar of the PPP by 221 votes to 47.<ref name="dawn/1aug2017"></ref> Jamiat Ulema-e Islam (F) and the Muttahida Qaumi Movement also supported his election. Addressing the National Assembly after his election, he said, "I may be here for 45 days or 45 hours, but I'm not here to keep the seat warm. I intend to work and get some important things done." On that same day, he was sworn in as the Prime Minister in an oath-taking ceremony at the Presidency Palace. After he took charge, Nawaz Sharif decided that Shehbaz Sharif would remain in Punjab and Abbasi would continue as Prime Minister until the June 2018 general election. According to Rana Sanaullah Khan, PML-N senior leadership feared that if Shahbaz Sharif left the post of Chief Ministership of Punjab it would weaken the party's hold in the country's most populous province, which has 183 out of the 342 seats in the National Assembly and plays a crucial role in determining the successive government in Pakistan.


title: Shahid Khaqan Abbasi

text: After assuming the office as the Prime Minister, Abbasi, in consultation with Sharif, formed a 43-member cabinet. Of the 43 ministers sworn in on 4 August 2017, 27 were federal ministers and 16 were ministers of state.<ref name="dawn/5aug2017"></ref> Except Nisar Ali Khan, Abbasi retained the entire cabinet of his predecessor Nawaz Sharif, most of whom retained their previous portfolios.<ref name="thenews/28aug2017"></ref><ref name="gulfnews/7aug2017"></ref> Nisar Ali Khan who was Minister for Interior in the previous cabinet refused to join the cabinet of Abbasi, citing differences with the leaders of PML-N. The cabinet was criticised by Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf for its large size, but it was praised by "The Nation". Reuters said that the cabinet "appears aimed at bolstering support" ahead of the general election.<ref name="reuters/4aug2017"></ref> The second part of his cabinet, consisting of two federal ministers and two ministers of state, was sworn in on 10 August 2017, increasing the size of the cabinet to 47. On 13 August 2017, the cabinet was further expanded after Abbasi appointed six advisers. On the following day, five special assistants to the Prime Minister were appointed, thus increasing the cabinet size to 58.<ref name="dawn/16aug2017"></ref> Abbasi justified the large size of his cabinet by saying that "he had limited experience of running the affairs of the government, and therefore required more ministers, advisers and special assistants." Two more advisors were added to the federal cabinet on 23 August 2017.


title: Shahid Khaqan Abbasi

text: Abbasi appointed Khawaja Muhammad Asif as a full-time Minister for Foreign Affairs, the first since PML-N came into power in the 2013 general election.<ref name="tribune/5aug2017"></ref> The appointment of a full-time Foreign Affair's Minister was welcomed. Previously, Nawaz Sharif had held the portfolio of the Minister for Foreign Affairs himself and was criticised for not appointing a full-fledged Foreign Minister. He also inducted a Hindu parliamentarian, Darshan Punshi, into the federal cabinet, the first in more than 20 years.


title: Shahid Khaqan Abbasi

text: In December 2017, Abbasi appointed the Faisalabad MNA and Parliamentary Finance, Revenue and Privatization Secretary Rana Afzal Khan as the State Minister of Finance and Economic Affairs, a position left vacant by Ishaq Dar.


title: Shahid Khaqan Abbasi

text: In his first speech as Prime Minister, Abbasi announced that security, tax reform, agriculture, education, health services, infrastructure and development projects, and the country's power crisis would be his top concerns. He vowed to continue the policies of his predecessor, Nawaz Sharif, calling him the "people's prime minister" from the floor of the National Assembly.<ref name="dawn/2aug2017"></ref><ref name="dawn/7aug2017"></ref> In his maiden speech, Abbasi specifically promised to widen the tax net, saying "Those who do not pay taxes and live a luxurious life will have to pay taxes now." He also called for banning automatic firearms across the country and said the federal government would seize all automatic firearms if his cabinet was to approve.


title: Shahid Khaqan Abbasi

text: To improve the governance<ref name="tribune/11aug2017"></ref> and efficiency of the government and to accommodate newly inducted cabinet members, Abbasi created seven new ministries. Amongst which the establishment of the long-awaited<ref name="dawn/6aug2017"></ref> Ministry of Energy was praised.<ref name="thenation/29dec2017"></ref> The Ministry was part of PML-N's 2013 election manifesto, however its formation had been delayed.<ref name="dawn/5sept2017"></ref> Abbasi kept the cabinet portfolio of Energy Minister for himself<ref name="nation/11aug2017"></ref> which was created through the merger of the power wing of the Ministry of Water and Power and the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Resources,<ref name="profilt/4august2017"></ref> an office Abbasi held before becoming Prime Minister. It was noted that formation of the Energy Ministry was the first step to solve the financial issues in the power sector.


title: Shahid Khaqan Abbasi

text: After assuming the office of Prime Minister, Abbasi focus remained on energy sector and he took keen interest in the promotion of the LNG. Chairing the first meeting of the energy sector as Prime Minister, Abbasi directed to expedite conversion of furnace oil-powered power plants to natural gas and said that he would reduce the usage of thermal power plants and rely on the usage of domestic coal and regasified LNG for the production of energy in order to achieve a balanced energy mix. He directed the ministry to utilise the maximum usage of coal reserves from the Thar coalfield<ref name="dawn/9aug2017"></ref> and promised to end power outages in the country by November 2017.<ref name="Reuters/9aug2017"></ref> Reuters noted that Pakistan's embrace of LNG, for which Abbasi has advocated since PML-N formed the government in June 2013, has largely been successful.


title: Shahid Khaqan Abbasi

text: As Prime Minister, Abbasi inaugurated two LNG regasification terminals at Port Qasim made to handle the imported LNG, for which he took credit as the former Minister for Petroleum and Natural Resources taking the overall supply of LNG to 1200 million cubic feet per day. He recommitted his government to resolve the country's energy crisis saying LNG was the only inexpensive solution to overcome the Pakistan's crippling energy crisis.


title: Shahid Khaqan Abbasi

text: In December 2017, Abbasi as part of his government's policy to promote usage of the liquefied LNG, ordered the conversion of four independent fuel-powered energy plants into LNG to reduce the cost of power generation.,<ref name="tribune/30dec2017"></ref> and imposed a ban on import of furnace oil to make maximum utilisation of LNG powered-power plants. He also ordered revamping of the transmission and distribution system and directed to find a permanent solution to Pakistan's chronic circular debt issue.


title: Shahid Khaqan Abbasi

text: Immediately after taking office, Abbasi made himself the head of major cabinet committees dealing with economic matters, including those that fall under the domain of Finance Minister, to consolidate more power and to get a grip on financial issues.<ref name="dawn/21aug2017"></ref> This usurpation minimised the powers of the Finance Minister Ishaq Dar, who was once considered as a de facto deputy Prime Minister under Nawaz Sharif.


title: Shahid Khaqan Abbasi

text: On 26 August, Abbasi approved the results of the 2017 Census of Pakistan with a total population of the country excluding of that of Gilgit Baltistan and Azad Kashmir at 207.77 million. On 28 August, he restructured the eight member Council of Common Interests by increasing the seats of members from Punjab from two to four, making the council Punjab-dominated.


title: Shahid Khaqan Abbasi

text: To speed up the development of the construction projects related to China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), Abbasi also kept the cabinet portfolio of Ministry of Planning and Development after becoming the Prime Minister<ref name="nation/25aug2017"></ref> followed by forming a cabinet committee on 31 August to hold more power which eventually made the role of ministry irrelevant over CPEC-related work. But after China expressed reservations, Abbasi on 16 September assigned the portfolio back to incumbent interior minister Ahsan Iqbal who headed the Ministry of Planning and Development in the previous cabinet.


title: Shahid Khaqan Abbasi

text: The first 30 days of Abbasi in the office suggested that he would prefer an "as-usual routine" contrary to the expectations of the business community and the bureaucracy which had initially hoped for policy changes that would attempt to resolve the outstanding issues the country was facing. Since the next general election was scheduled ten months into Abbasi's tenure as Prime Minister, it was noted that Abbasi would carry forward the policies and development agenda of his predecessor Nawaz Sharif and might not opt for major changes before the election when the term of the Parliament elected in 2013 was due to expire.


title: Shahid Khaqan Abbasi

text: Abbasi visited Karachi on 12 August 2017 and pledged 25 billion and 5 billion for Karachi and Hyderabad, respectively, for infrastructure development.


title: Shahid Khaqan Abbasi

text: On 13 September, the federal cabinet of Abbasi approved the decision to table the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) reforms bill in the National Assembly for the extension of the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court of Pakistan and the Islamabad High Court to the FATA as part of steps towards the merger of former with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. On 12 January 2018, the National Assembly successfully passed the bill to extend the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court and the Peshawar High Court to the FATA. Upon the passage of the bill, Abbasi said "It is a historic measure for tribesmen and it can also help repeal the decades-old Frontier Crimes Regulation."


title: Shahid Khaqan Abbasi

text: On 17 September, Abbasi approved a proposal to increase the positions of civilian director generals in Inter-Services Intelligence.


title: Shahid Khaqan Abbasi

text: In November 2017, Abbasi took charge of the Ministry of Finance on an ad interim basis after Finance Minister Ishaq Dar went to the United Kingdom for a medical checkup in late October amid his arrest warrant in a corruption case for having wealth beyond his known sources of income, On 24 November, Ishaq Dar stepped down from the ministerial office after taking medical leave. In December 2017, it was reported that Abbasi would continue as Finance Minister until the 2018 general election, even though the ministry was suffering as Abbasi was unable to give proper attention to it. On 26 December, Abbasi appointed Federal Parliamentary Secretary for Finance Rana Afzal Khan as Minister of State for Finance and Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Economic Affairs Miftah Ismail was elevated as Adviser to the Prime Minister on Finance, Revenue and Economic Affairs with the status of a federal minister<ref name="nation/27dec2017"></ref> while retaining the portfolio of Finance with himself. On 9 January 2018, Abbasi elevated his Special Assistant on Revenue Haroon Akhtar Khan as Federal Minister for Revenue and advised him to execute the tax agenda.


title: Shahid Khaqan Abbasi

text: In November 2017, the Ministry of Interior suspended the licences for all automatic firearms across Pakistan as part of Abbasi's policy to make Pakistan free of automatic weapons. On 28 November 2017, Abbasi and Minister for Interior Ahsan Iqbal were criticised by the Chairman of the Senate of Pakistan Raza Rabbani for striking a deal with the Tehreek-e-Labaik protestors and for not taking the Senate in confidence with regards to the crackdown against them that led to resignation of Minister for Law and Justice, Zahid Hamid. On 5 December 2017, Abbasi gave his Special Assistant on Law Zafarullah Khan the responsibility to oversee the affairs of Law Ministry until the appointment of a Federal Minister for Law. On 9 January 2018, Abbasi appointed Chaudhry Mehmood Bashir as Federal Minister for Law.


title: Shahid Khaqan Abbasi

text: On 2 January 2018, "The Express Tribune" commended the five month performance of Abbasi in his capacity as Prime Minister.<ref name="tribune/2jan2018"></ref>


title: Shahid Khaqan Abbasi

text: During his time in office, Abbasi has been repeatedly criticised by Imran Khan as a "puppet prime minister" of Nawaz Sharif.


title: Shahid Khaqan Abbasi

text: On 9 January 2018, Abbasi visited Balochistan amidst a political crisis in the Provincial Assembly of Balochistan where both PML-N dissidents and opposition MPA's decided to present a motion of no confidence against Chief Ministers Nawab Sanaullah Khan Zehri. After Abbasi was unable to curb the PML-N dissidents, he advised Zehri to step down instead of facing a motion of no confidence, in order to stem the situation and to prevent the PML-N from disintegration in the province. Later that day, Zehri tendered his resignation which was immediately accepted.


title: Shahid Khaqan Abbasi

text: On 23 January, Abbasi in an interview with "Reuters" confirmed his government plans to seize control of Lashkar-e-Taiba and Falah-e-Insaniat Foundation, both run by Hafiz Muhammad Saeed.


title: Shahid Khaqan Abbasi

text: On 27 March, Abbasi in an unprecedented move, called on the Chief Justice of Pakistan, Mian Saqib Nisar.


title: Shahid Khaqan Abbasi

text: In April 2018, Abbasi announced a tax reforms package which included reduction in income tax rates and a tax amnesty scheme for undeclared assets.


title: Shahid Khaqan Abbasi

text: After the announcement of a new United States policy on Afghanistan by United States President Donald Trump on 21 August 2017, during which he accused Pakistan of supporting state terrorism, Abbasi made his first foreign trip as Prime Minister, going to Saudi Arabia on 23 August 2017 to discuss the new U.S. strategy with Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman and to further strengthen the bilateral relations between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, with Pakistan's relationship with the United States being strained.<ref name="nytimes/22aug2017"></ref> On 23 August, Abbasi chaired a meeting of the National Security Council (NSC) which rejected the allegations made by Trump and call the new US policy an attempt “to scapegoat Pakistan”. On 30 August, the Trump administration announced withholding US$255 million in military financial assistance to Pakistan until the latter do more to clamp down on terrorist groups operating inside the country.


title: Shahid Khaqan Abbasi

text: In September 2017, Abbasi travelled to the United States to speak at the 72nd session of the United Nations General Assembly. During the visit, he met with Vice-president Mike Pence<ref name="dawn/20sept2017"></ref> and also had a brief meeting with Trump. Abbasi's meeting with Pence was the highest-level meeting between the two states since Trump's new Afghanistan policy was announced in August 2017.<ref name="pakistantoday/5jan2018"></ref> Both Abbasi and Pence agreed to work together to carry forward the relationship between the US and Pakistan. Abbasi also met President of Iran Hassan Rouhani and President of Turkey Tayyip Erdogan on the sidelines of the assembly.


title: Shahid Khaqan Abbasi

text: On 18 October 2017, US Vice-president Pence telephoned Abbasi to thank the government of Pakistan for the safe recovery of the Canadian-American couple Joshua Boyle and Caitlan Coleman. On 24 October, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson made his maiden visit to Pakistan to normalise the bilateral ties which became strained over remarks of Trump in August. Tillerson met Abbasi and reiterated Trump's message that Pakistan must speed up its efforts to against terrorist groups operating within the country and described Pakistan as "incredibly important" player in the region.


title: Shahid Khaqan Abbasi

text: On 1 December, Abbasi travelled to Russia to attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit where he met Prime Minister of Russia Dmitry Medvedev, Premier of the People's Republic of China Li Keqiang and Prime Minister of Kyrgyzstan Sapar Isakov.


title: Shahid Khaqan Abbasi

text: After Trump acknowledged Jerusalem as Israel's capital, Abbasi attended the emergency conference of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation on Jerusalem in Turkey on 12 December, where he condemned Trump's decision to relocate the embassy to Jerusalem and urged the United States to withdraw its decision. On 29 December, US decided to block US$255 million in security aid to Pakistan.


title: Shahid Khaqan Abbasi

text: On 1 January 2018, the relations with United States suffered a major setback when President Trump accused Pakistan of deceit in the War on Terror, claiming the United States had "foolishly given Pakistan more than 33 billion dollars in aid over the last 15 years, and they have given us nothing but lies and deceit, thinking of our leaders as fools. They give safe haven to the terrorists we hunt in Afghanistan, with little help. No more!". The next day, Abbasi chaired a meeting of the NSC which expressed disappointment over Trump remarks and observed that Pakistan cannot be held responsible for US failure in Afghanistan. On 5 January, United States announced suspension of security aid to Pakistan which was estimated to be of at least US$2 billion. Abbasi called US aid insignificant saying “I am not sure what US aid has been talked here. The aid in the last five years at least has been less than $10m a year."


title: Shahid Khaqan Abbasi

text: On 23 January, Abbasi travelled to Davos to attend the World Economic Forum. He was accompanied by Foreign Minister Khawaja Asif, Health Minister Saira Afzal Tarar, State Minister for Information Marriyum Aurangzeb and State Minister for Information Technology and Telecommunication Anusha Rahman.


title: Shahid Khaqan Abbasi

text: On 31 May 2018, incumbent PML-N government completed its five years term becoming the country's second civilian dispensation government to complete a five-year term in office (the other being Pakistan Peoples Party). Abbasi was succeeded by caretaker Prime Minister Justice Nasirul Mulk on 1 June 2018 until the country elected the new government in the 2018 general elections which were held on 25 July 2018.


title: Shahid Khaqan Abbasi

text: It was noted that Abbasi, as Prime Minister, lived in his own home in Islamabad instead of living in the Prime Minister House.


title: Shahid Khaqan Abbasi

text: On 24 June 2018, Abbasi was allocated PML-N ticket to contest the 2018 general election from Constituency NA-57 (Rawalpindi-I). On 27 June, Abbasi was disqualified for life by an election tribunal in Rawalpindi, under Article 62(1)(f), from contesting election following the rejection of his nomination papers after Abbasi was accused of tampering the documents. However, Abbasi challenged the verdict in Lahore High Court (LHC). On 29 June, his appeal was accepted by a two-member bench, which suspended the tribunal's order against Abbasi and allowed him to contest the election. On 14 September 2018, the appellate tribunal issued its detailed verdict on the barring of Abbasi from contesting the 2018 general election and ruled that Abbasi was not honest and sagacious and hence disqualified for life.


title: Shahid Khaqan Abbasi

text: He ran for the seat of the National Assembly as a candidate of PML-N from Constituency NA-57 (Rawalpindi-I) in the 2018 general election, but was unsuccessful. He received 124,703 votes and lost the seat to Sadaqat Ali Abbasi. Abbasi alleged rigging was done in the constituency and filed a petition for a recount which was rejected by Returning Officer.


title: Shahid Khaqan Abbasi

text: He was re-elected to the National Assembly as a candidate of PML-N from Constituency NA-124 (Lahore-II) in by-election held on 14 October 2018. He took oath as a member of the National Assembly on 1 November.


title: Shahid Khaqan Abbasi

text: Abbasi was granted bail in the Liquified Natural Gas case while Iqbal was granted bail in the Narowal Sports City complex corruption case. Abbasi was on his way to attend a press conference, accompanied by PML-N leader Ahsan Iqbal and spokesperson Marriyum Aurangzeb, when he was arrested on the Thokar Niaz Baig interchange on 18 July 2019. A sedition case was registered against him along with other Pakistan Muslim League (N) leaders in October 2020.


title: Shahid Khaqan Abbasi

text: Abbasi belongs to a wealthy political family and hails from Dewal village. He belongs to the Dhund Abbasi clan, which is predominant in northern Punjab.


title: Shahid Khaqan Abbasi

text: Abbasi is married and has three sons. His father, Khaqan Abbasi, was an air commodore in the Pakistan Air Force. He entered politics and became a Member of the National Assembly and was inducted as the Federal Minister for Production in the cabinet of Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, until his death in 1988 at Ojhri Camp in a military accident that resulted in more than 100 casualties. His brother, Zahid Abbasi, was also injured in that incident, after which he went into coma and died in 2005, having remained bedridden for 17 years. His sister Sadia Abbasi has been a member of the Senate of Pakistan. His father-in-law, General Muhammad Riaz Abbasi, was the director-general of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) from 1977 to 1979.


title: Shahid Khaqan Abbasi

text: He is also an aviation enthusiast and an amateur skydiver. He is the first Prime Minister of Pakistan to participate in a Pakistan Air Force mission by flying in an F-16 Fighting Falcon and a military helicopter. In an interview, he said he has been a pilot for more than forty years. In December 2017, he became the first prime minister of Pakistan to board a submarine in the open sea where he conducted submarine diving and surfacing procedures which earned him Pakistan Navy insignia worn by qualified submariners.


title: Shahid Khaqan Abbasi

text: Abbasi is a businessman<ref name="business-standard/1aug2017"></ref> and an aviation expert. He was the owner of Airblue which he founded in 2003, but in 2016 he denied being a stakeholder, saying he has not visited the airline's office for years.<ref name="tribune/5February2016"></ref>


title: Shahid Khaqan Abbasi

text: He is one of the richest parliamentarians in Pakistan, with a net worth of 1.3 billion to 2.3 billion. His assets include shares in Airblue, a house in Islamabad, a hotel business, and land properties in Murree.


title: Avenged Sevenfold (album)

text: Avenged Sevenfold (also known as "The White Album") is the fourth studio album by American heavy metal band Avenged Sevenfold, released on October 30, 2007, through Warner Bros. and Hopeless Records. It is their last studio album to feature The Rev performing on drums, due to his death in December 2009 during production of their follow-up album, "Nightmare".


title: Avenged Sevenfold (album)

text: Originally slated for an October 16 release, it was delayed by two weeks in order to provide more time to complete bonus material and production for the record. The album debuted at number 4 on the "Billboard" 200. On May 4, 2021, it was certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). The band supported the album with a tour, beginning a day before the release of the album and ending in August 2009.


title: Avenged Sevenfold (album)

text: Although critical reception to the album was mixed compared to previous releases, "Avenged Sevenfold "won the "Kerrang!" Award for Best Album in 2008. In addition, the album was included in "Kerrang!"'s "666 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die". As of 2014, it has sold over 960,161 copies in the United States and 152,123 copies in the United Kingdom.


title: Avenged Sevenfold (album)

text: Avenged Sevenfold revealed the track listing for the album on their YouTube profile on August 9, 2007, as well as their text messaging service, A7X Mobile. The band also posted a teaser on a recent YouTube blog featuring an excerpt of vocalist M. Shadows screaming in the studio.


title: Avenged Sevenfold (album)

text: "Critical Acclaim" was the first single from the album. A 2-minute and 15-seconds teaser was posted on the band's MySpace to tide fans over until the iTunes release date, but on August 20, 2007, Avenged Sevenfold uploaded the full version on their MySpace. The full song was released on iTunes on August 28, 2007.


title: Avenged Sevenfold (album)

text: In the weeks leading up to the album's release, a series of ten video clips, called "webisodes", were recorded featuring "Wolfie the Fox". The first webisode was released on August 24, 2007; a 3:41 clip that was posted on the band's YouTube channel. The clip consists of a pre-recorded phone message from "Wolfie the Fox" and a few scenes of their process of making "Critical Acclaim". Each of the subsequent webisodes was similar in content. The clips featured a short mock-interview between M. Shadows and Wolfie the Fox, various band members during the making of various tracks for "Avenged Sevenfold", and other background videos. About eleven days before the album's release, the Wolfie Trailer was posted on YouTube. In it, Wolfie sings "Critical Acclaim" and talks about the MVI version of the new album. The webisodes can all be viewed on the band's Myspace and YouTube pages.


title: Avenged Sevenfold (album)

text: By September 9, 2007, news leaked of the completion of a music video for the song "Almost Easy". It was directed by P.R. Brown, known for his collaborations with Mötley Crüe and Marilyn Manson, among many others. On September 12, 2007, the release date of the single "Almost Easy" was announced and was released six days later on September 18 to purchase via digital download.


title: Avenged Sevenfold (album)

text: The month of October was a busy one for the upcoming album. On October 3, "Kerrang!" released an article in which M. Shadows and Synyster Gates were interviewed about the new album. This day also saw the release of a live performance of "Almost Easy" at the Warped Tour 2007. Originally the band intended to release this footage if viewers watched the official music video for the track on YouTube 150,000 times. Though the goal fell short at 120,000 the band still released the footage. Another live video, featuring the third track "Scream" performed in Liverpool, England, was posted on YouTube on October 11. The song was also heard during a commercial for the Scream Awards on Spike TV. M. Shadows can clearly be heard singing, "You know I make you wanna scream," which is an excerpt from the chorus. "Scream" was performed live at the 2007 Spike TV Scream Awards on October 23. Also, LoveLine played the radio premiere of "Afterlife" and "Almost Easy", which was guest hosted by M. Shadows and The Rev. Three days before, the Keyclub revealed an animated music video for "A Little Piece of Heaven".


title: Avenged Sevenfold (album)

text: To promote their new album, Avenged Sevenfold started their US tour on October 29, headlining in Los Angeles at The Wiltern. Their opening acts were Black Tide and Operator.


title: Avenged Sevenfold (album)

text: On October 31, 2008, Avenged Sevenfold mentioned that fans of the band were eligible to make their own music video for the song "Scream". The video had to be submitted to YouTube before November 30, 2008. The winner and five runners-up of the contest were announced on December 15, 2008. The winner received a new MacBook Air computer that came with Avenged Sevenfold videos, music, and other items from the band. The winning video was also featured on the Avenged Sevenfold website, MySpace page, YouTube account, and Facebook account. The five runners-up in this contest received a copy of the DVD and CD "Live in the LBC & Diamonds in the Rough", signed by the members of the band; in addition, a merchandise pack was also rewarded to these runners-up.


title: Avenged Sevenfold (album)

text: "Critical Acclaim" was the first song written for the album, and was also released as the lead single. The song is about people in the United States who criticize each other, but never do anything to make a change. It also features lyrics about people not appreciating what soldiers do for them. The song received negative attention due to the perceived political nature of the lyrics, though bassist Johnny Christ explained that it was "more of a human thing", and not a criticism of one group of people.


title: Avenged Sevenfold (album)

text: "Almost Easy" was released as the second single from the album. The song was written by drummer The Rev. It was originally supposed to appear in the 2007 Transformers film, but it wasn't finished in time. It was later featured in the film's sequel, Revenge of the Fallen. The song has been certified platinum by the RIAA.


title: Avenged Sevenfold (album)

text: "Scream" is the third song on the record, and was released as the fifth and final single from the album in October 2008. The song opens with a scream by Valary Sanders, who is singer M. Shadows' wife.


title: Avenged Sevenfold (album)

text: "Afterlife" is about a man who dies suddenly, and finds himself in heaven. Although he enjoys the peace, he decides he needs to escape, because he isn't ready to die. The song didn't do as well on charts as "Almost Easy", but, although it hasn't been certified by the RIAA, the song has beaten all others from the album in terms of digital streams.


title: Avenged Sevenfold (album)

text: "Gunslinger" is the second song on the album to feature political lyrics. The song moves from a country ballad into a more regular hard rock song.<ref name="Dear God/Gunslinger"></ref> The song is about a soldier returning home after war.


title: Avenged Sevenfold (album)

text: "Unbound (The Wild Ride)" is the sixth track on the album. It features a childrens choir singing the outro. The song is singer M. Shadows least favorite Avenged Sevenfold song.


title: Avenged Sevenfold (album)

text: "Dear God" was the fourth single and a notable deviation from the band's usual heavy metal style, taking on more of a country feel. Johnny Christ has stated that the inspiration for the song came from the band's friendship with country act Big & Rich. Their influence can be heard in the background vocals of MuzikMafia member Shanna Crooks.


title: Avenged Sevenfold (album)

text: The album represents a further move away from the metalcore of the band's early work, and away from the mainstream heavy metal sound of "City of Evil", into more of a hard rock genre, with other genres represented on some songs. It has been considered a hard rock album with elements of symphonic rock, rock, country music and experimental music. The band worked with brass and string sections on "A Little Piece of Heaven", an avant-garde metal song inspired by Broadway show tunes, in which horns and orchestral strings replaced the band's lead and rhythm guitars. The album features The Rev doing co-lead vocals on the songs "Critical Acclaim", "Scream", "Afterlife", "Lost", and "A Little Piece of Heaven".


title: Avenged Sevenfold (album)

text: Upon release, "Avenged Sevenfold" was met with mixed reviews. Metacritic accumulated an average score of 56 out of 100 based on thirteen reviews on the website.


title: Avenged Sevenfold (album)

text: Jason Lymangrover of AllMusic had given the album a rating of three stars out of five and wrote "While their willingness to experiment is admirable, despite the fact that they've gone overboard with their overdubs, the overabundance of studio polish leaves one to wonder if it's not because the songs just aren't as strong this time around". A more positive review came from Andrew Earles of "The A.V. Club" who commented "The catchy Stone Temple Pilots vibe of 'Scream' is enough to put the band back on the charts, but that could happen with more than half of this album...And it probably will". He graded the album a B.


title: Avenged Sevenfold (album)

text: The album wasn't without its more hostile responses. A much more negative review came from Dave de Sylvia of Sputnikmusic summarising "Avenged Sevenfold resemble a poor man's Hardcore Superstar" and rated the album one out of five. Andrew Blackie of PopMatters rated the album two out of ten and dismissed it as being "Unoriginal, overlong even at a ten track setlist, and riddled with banality..." He even went far enough to add "...the disc is even being released the day before Halloween, could it get more corny?"


title: Avenged Sevenfold (album)

text: The USC Trojans Marching Band performed the song "Almost Easy" at the Rose Bowl halftime show on January 1, 2009.


title: UMTS

text: The Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) is a third generation mobile cellular system for networks based on the GSM standard. Developed and maintained by the 3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project), UMTS is a component of the International Telecommunication Union IMT-2000 standard set and compares with the CDMA2000 standard set for networks based on the competing cdmaOne technology. UMTS uses wideband code-division multiple access (W-CDMA) radio access technology to offer greater spectral efficiency and bandwidth to mobile network operators.


title: UMTS

text: UMTS specifies a complete network system, which includes the radio access network (UMTS Terrestrial Radio Access Network, or UTRAN), the core network (Mobile Application Part, or MAP) and the authentication of users via SIM (subscriber identity module) cards.


title: UMTS

text: The technology described in UMTS is sometimes also referred to as Freedom of Mobile Multimedia Access (FOMA) or 3GSM.


title: UMTS

text: Unlike EDGE (IMT Single-Carrier, based on GSM) and CDMA2000 (IMT Multi-Carrier), UMTS requires new base stations and new frequency allocations.


title: UMTS

text: UMTS supports maximum theoretical data transfer rates of 42 Mbit/s when Evolved HSPA (HSPA+) is implemented in the network. Users in deployed networks can expect a transfer rate of up to 384 kbit/s for Release '99 (R99) handsets (the original UMTS release), and 7.2 Mbit/s for High-Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) handsets in the downlink connection. These speeds are significantly faster than the 9.6 kbit/s of a single GSM error-corrected circuit switched data channel, multiple 9.6 kbit/s channels in High-Speed Circuit-Switched Data (HSCSD) and 14.4 kbit/s for CDMAOne channels.


title: UMTS

text: Since 2006, UMTS networks in many countries have been or are in the process of being upgraded with High-Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA), sometimes known as 3.5G. Currently, HSDPA enables downlink transfer speeds of up to 21 Mbit/s. Work is also progressing on improving the uplink transfer speed with the High-Speed Uplink Packet Access (HSUPA). Longer term, the 3GPP Long Term Evolution (LTE) project plans to move UMTS to 4G speeds of 100 Mbit/s down and 50 Mbit/s up, using a next generation air interface technology based upon orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing.


title: UMTS

text: The first national consumer UMTS networks launched in 2002 with a heavy emphasis on telco-provided mobile applications such as mobile TV and video calling. The high data speeds of UMTS are now most often utilised for Internet access: experience in Japan and elsewhere has shown that user demand for video calls is not high, and telco-provided audio/video content has declined in popularity in favour of high-speed access to the World Wide Web either directly on a handset or connected to a computer via Wi-Fi, Bluetooth or USB.


title: UMTS

text: UMTS combines three different terrestrial air interfaces, GSM's Mobile Application Part (MAP) core, and the GSM family of speech codecs.


title: UMTS

text: The air interfaces are called UMTS Terrestrial Radio Access (UTRA). All air interface options are part of ITU's IMT-2000. In the currently most popular variant for cellular mobile telephones, W-CDMA (IMT Direct Spread) is used. It is also called "Uu interface", as it links User Equipment to the UMTS Terrestrial Radio Access Network.


title: UMTS

text: Please note that the terms W-CDMA, TD-CDMA and TD-SCDMA are misleading. While they suggest covering just a channel access method (namely a variant of CDMA), they are actually the common names for the whole air interface standards.


title: UMTS

text: W-CDMA (WCDMA; Wideband Code-Division Multiple Access), along with UMTS-FDD, UTRA-FDD, or IMT-2000 CDMA Direct Spread is an air interface standard found in 3G mobile telecommunications networks. It supports conventional cellular voice, text and MMS services, but can also carry data at high speeds, allowing mobile operators to deliver higher bandwidth applications including streaming and broadband Internet access.


title: UMTS

text: W-CDMA uses the DS-CDMA channel access method with a pair of 5 MHz wide channels. In contrast, the competing CDMA2000 system uses one or more available 1.25 MHz channels for each direction of communication. W-CDMA systems are widely criticized for their large spectrum usage, which delayed deployment in countries that acted relatively slowly in allocating new frequencies specifically for 3G services (such as the United States).


title: UMTS

text: The specific frequency bands originally defined by the UMTS standard are 1885–2025 MHz for the mobile-to-base (uplink) and 2110–2200 MHz for the base-to-mobile (downlink). In the US, 1710–1755 MHz and 2110–2155 MHz are used instead, as the 1900 MHz band was already used. While UMTS2100 is the most widely deployed UMTS band, some countries' UMTS operators use the 850 MHz (900 MHz in Europe) and/or 1900 MHz bands (independently, meaning uplink and downlink are within the same band), notably in the US by AT&T Mobility, New Zealand by Telecom New Zealand on the XT Mobile Network and in Australia by Telstra on the Next G network. Some carriers such as T-Mobile use band numbers to identify the UMTS frequencies. For example, Band I (2100 MHz), Band IV (1700/2100 MHz), and Band V (850 MHz).


title: UMTS

text: UMTS-FDD is an acronym for Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) frequency-division duplexing (FDD) and a 3GPP standardized version of UMTS networks that makes use of frequency-division duplexing for duplexing over an UMTS Terrestrial Radio Access (UTRA) air interface.


title: UMTS

text: W-CDMA is the basis of Japan's NTT DoCoMo's FOMA service and the most-commonly used member of the Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) family and sometimes used as a synonym for UMTS. It uses the DS-CDMA channel access method and the FDD duplexing method to achieve higher speeds and support more users compared to most previously used time-division multiple access (TDMA) and time-division duplex (TDD) schemes.


title: UMTS

text: While not an evolutionary upgrade on the airside, it uses the same core network as the 2G GSM networks deployed worldwide, allowing dual-mode mobile operation along with GSM/EDGE; a feature it shares with other members of the UMTS family.


title: UMTS

text: In the late 1990s, W-CDMA was developed by NTT DoCoMo as the air interface for their 3G network FOMA. Later NTT DoCoMo submitted the specification to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) as a candidate for the international 3G standard known as IMT-2000. The ITU eventually accepted W-CDMA as part of the IMT-2000 family of 3G standards, as an alternative to CDMA2000, EDGE, and the short range DECT system. Later, W-CDMA was selected as an air interface for UMTS.


title: UMTS

text: As NTT DoCoMo did not wait for the finalisation of the 3G Release 99 specification, their network was initially incompatible with UMTS. However, this has been resolved by NTT DoCoMo updating their network.


title: UMTS

text: Code-Division Multiple Access communication networks have been developed by a number of companies over the years, but development of cell-phone networks based on CDMA (prior to W-CDMA) was dominated by Qualcomm, the first company to succeed in developing a practical and cost-effective CDMA implementation for consumer cell phones and its early IS-95 air interface standard has evolved into the current CDMA2000 (IS-856/IS-2000) standard. Qualcomm created an experimental wideband CDMA system called CDMA2000 3x which unified the W-CDMA (3GPP) and CDMA2000 (3GPP2) network technologies into a single design for a worldwide standard air interface. Compatibility with CDMA2000 would have beneficially enabled roaming on existing networks beyond Japan, since Qualcomm CDMA2000 networks are widely deployed, especially in the Americas, with coverage in 58 countries . However, divergent requirements resulted in the W-CDMA standard being retained and deployed globally. W-CDMA has then become the dominant technology with 457 commercial networks in 178 countries as of April 2012. Several CDMA2000 operators have even converted their networks to W-CDMA for international roaming compatibility and smooth upgrade path to LTE.


title: UMTS

text: Despite incompatibility with existing air-interface standards, late introduction and the high upgrade cost of deploying an all-new transmitter technology, W-CDMA has become the dominant standard.


title: UMTS

text: W-CDMA transmits on a pair of 5 MHz-wide radio channels, while CDMA2000 transmits on one or several pairs of 1.25 MHz radio channels. Though W-CDMA does use a direct-sequence CDMA transmission technique like CDMA2000, W-CDMA is not simply a wideband version of CDMA2000 and differs in many aspects from CDMA2000. From an engineering point of view, W-CDMA provides a different balance of trade-offs between cost, capacity, performance, and density; it also promises to achieve a benefit of reduced cost for video phone handsets. W-CDMA may also be better suited for deployment in the very dense cities of Europe and Asia. However, hurdles remain, and cross-licensing of patents between Qualcomm and W-CDMA vendors has not eliminated possible patent issues due to the features of W-CDMA which remain covered by Qualcomm patents.


title: UMTS

text: W-CDMA has been developed into a complete set of specifications, a detailed protocol that defines how a mobile phone communicates with the tower, how signals are modulated, how datagrams are structured, and system interfaces are specified allowing free competition on technology elements.


title: UMTS

text: W-CDMA has also been adapted for use in satellite communications on the U.S. Mobile User Objective System using geosynchronous satellites in place of cell towers.


title: UMTS

text: J-Phone Japan (once Vodafone and now SoftBank Mobile) soon followed by launching their own W-CDMA based service, originally branded "Vodafone Global Standard" and claiming UMTS compatibility. The name of the service was changed to "Vodafone 3G" (now "SoftBank 3G") in December 2004.


title: UMTS

text: Most countries have, since the ITU approved of the 3G mobile service, either "auctioned" the radio frequencies to the company willing to pay the most, or conducted a "beauty contest" asking the various companies to present what they intend to commit to if awarded the licences. This strategy has been criticised for aiming to drain the cash of operators to the brink of bankruptcy in order to honour their bids or proposals. Most of them have a time constraint for the rollout of the service where a certain "coverage" must be achieved within a given date or the licence will be revoked.


title: UMTS

text: Vodafone launched several UMTS networks in Europe in February 2004. MobileOne of Singapore commercially launched its 3G (W-CDMA) services in February 2005. New Zealand in August 2005 and Australia in October 2005.


title: UMTS

text: Rogers in Canada March 2007 has launched HSDPA in the Toronto Golden Horseshoe district on W-CDMA at 850/1900 MHz and plan the launch the service commercial in the top 25 cities October, 2007.


title: UMTS

text: TeliaSonera opened W-CDMA service in Finland October 13, 2004, with speeds up to 384 kbit/s. Availability only in main cities. Pricing is approx. €2/MB.


title: UMTS

text: SK Telecom and KTF, two largest mobile phone service providers in South Korea, have each started offering W-CDMA service in December 2003. Due to poor coverage and lack of choice in handhelds, the W-CDMA service has barely made a dent in the Korean market which was dominated by CDMA2000. By October 2006 both companies are covering more than 90 cities while SK Telecom has announced that it will provide nationwide coverage for its WCDMA network in order for it to offer SBSM (Single Band Single Mode) handsets by the first half of 2007. KT Freecel will thus cut funding to its CDMA2000 network development to the minimum.


title: UMTS

text: In Norway, Telenor introduced W-CDMA in major cities by the end of 2004, while their competitor, NetCom, followed suit a few months later. Both operators have 98% national coverage on EDGE, but Telenor has parallel WLAN roaming networks on GSM, where the UMTS service is competing with this. For this reason Telenor is dropping support of their WLAN service in Austria (2006).


title: UMTS

text: Maxis Communications and Celcom, two mobile phone service providers in Malaysia, started offering W-CDMA services in 2005.


title: UMTS

text: UMTS-TDD, an acronym for Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) time-division duplexing (TDD), is a 3GPP standardized version of UMTS networks that use UTRA-TDD. UTRA-TDD is a UTRA that uses time-division duplexing for duplexing. While a full implementation of UMTS, it is mainly used to provide Internet access in circumstances similar to those where WiMAX might be used. UMTS-TDD is not directly compatible with UMTS-FDD: a device designed to use one standard cannot, unless specifically designed to, work on the other, because of the difference in air interface technologies and frequencies used. It is more formally as IMT-2000 CDMA-TDD or IMT 2000 Time-Division (IMT-TD).


title: UMTS

text: The two UMTS air interfaces (UTRAs) for UMTS-TDD are TD-CDMA and TD-SCDMA. Both air interfaces use a combination of two channel access methods, code-division multiple access (CDMA) and time-division multiple access (TDMA): the frequency band is divided into time slots (TDMA), which are further divided into channels using CDMA spreading codes. These air interfaces are classified as TDD, because time slots can be allocated to either uplink or downlink traffic.


title: UMTS

text: TD-CDMA, an acronym for Time-Division-Code-Division Multiple Access, is a channel-access method based on using spread-spectrum multiple-access (CDMA) across multiple time slots (TDMA). TD-CDMA is the channel access method for UTRA-TDD HCR, which is an acronym for UMTS Terrestrial Radio Access-Time Division Duplex High Chip Rate.


title: UMTS

text: UMTS-TDD's air interfaces that use the TD-CDMA channel access technique are standardized as UTRA-TDD HCR, which uses increments of 5 MHz of spectrum, each slice divided into 10 ms frames containing fifteen time slots (1500 per second). The time slots (TS) are allocated in fixed percentage for downlink and uplink. TD-CDMA is used to multiplex streams from or to multiple transceivers. Unlike W-CDMA, it does not need separate frequency bands for up- and downstream, allowing deployment in tight frequency bands.


title: UMTS

text: TD-CDMA is a part of IMT-2000, defined as IMT-TD Time-Division (IMT CDMA TDD), and is one of the three UMTS air interfaces (UTRAs), as standardized by the 3GPP in UTRA-TDD HCR. UTRA-TDD HCR is closely related to W-CDMA, and provides the same types of channels where possible. UMTS's HSDPA/HSUPA enhancements are also implemented under TD-CDMA.


title: UMTS

text: In the United States, the technology has been used for public safety and government use in the New York City and a few other areas. In Japan, IPMobile planned to provide TD-CDMA service in year 2006, but it was delayed, changed to TD-SCDMA, and bankrupt before the service officially started.


title: UMTS

text: Time-Division Synchronous Code-Division Multiple Access (TD-SCDMA) or UTRA TDD 1.28 Mcps low chip rate (UTRA-TDD LCR) is an air interface found in UMTS mobile telecommunications networks in China as an alternative to W-CDMA.


title: UMTS

text: TD-SCDMA uses the TDMA channel access method combined with an adaptive synchronous CDMA component on 1.6 MHz slices of spectrum, allowing deployment in even tighter frequency bands than TD-CDMA. It is standardized by the 3GPP and also referred to as "UTRA-TDD LCR". However, the main incentive for development of this Chinese-developed standard was avoiding or reducing the license fees that have to be paid to non-Chinese patent owners. Unlike the other air interfaces, TD-SCDMA was not part of UMTS from the beginning but has been added in Release 4 of the specification.


title: UMTS

text: The term "TD-SCDMA" is misleading. While it suggests covering only a channel access method, it is actually the common name for the whole air interface specification.


title: UMTS

text: TD-SCDMA / UMTS-TDD (LCR) networks are incompatible with W-CDMA / UMTS-FDD and TD-CDMA / UMTS-TDD (HCR) networks.


title: UMTS

text: TD-SCDMA was developed in the People's Republic of China by the Chinese Academy of Telecommunications Technology (CATT), Datang Telecom, and Siemens AG in an attempt to avoid dependence on Western technology. This is likely primarily for practical reasons, since other 3G formats require the payment of patent fees to a large number of Western patent holders.


title: UMTS

text: TD-SCDMA proponents also claim it is better suited for densely populated areas. Further, it is supposed to cover all usage scenarios, whereas W-CDMA is optimised for symmetric traffic and macro cells, while TD-CDMA is best used in low mobility scenarios within micro or pico cells.


title: UMTS

text: TD-SCDMA is based on spread-spectrum technology which makes it unlikely that it will be able to completely escape the payment of license fees to western patent holders. The launch of a national TD-SCDMA network was initially projected by 2005 but only reached large scale commercial trials with 60,000 users across eight cities in 2008.


title: UMTS

text: On September 21, 2009, China Mobile officially announced that it had 1,327,000 TD-SCDMA subscribers as of the end of August, 2009.


title: UMTS

text: While TD is primarily a China-only system, it may well be exported to developing countries. It is likely to be replaced with a newer TD-LTE system over the next 5 years.


title: UMTS

text: TD-SCDMA uses TDD, in contrast to the FDD scheme used by W-CDMA. By dynamically adjusting the number of timeslots used for downlink and uplink, the system can more easily accommodate asymmetric traffic with different data rate requirements on downlink and uplink than FDD schemes. Since it does not require paired spectrum for downlink and uplink, spectrum allocation flexibility is also increased. Using the same carrier frequency for uplink and downlink also means that the channel condition is the same on both directions, and the base station can deduce the downlink channel information from uplink channel estimates, which is helpful to the application of beamforming techniques.


title: UMTS

text: TD-SCDMA also uses TDMA in addition to the CDMA used in WCDMA. This reduces the number of users in each timeslot, which reduces the implementation complexity of multiuser detection and beamforming schemes, but the non-continuous transmission also reduces coverage (because of the higher peak power needed), mobility (because of lower power control frequency) and complicates radio resource management algorithms.


title: UMTS

text: The "S" in TD-SCDMA stands for "synchronous", which means that uplink signals are synchronized at the base station receiver, achieved by continuous timing adjustments. This reduces the interference between users of the same timeslot using different codes by improving the orthogonality between the codes, therefore increasing system capacity, at the cost of some hardware complexity in achieving uplink synchronization.


title: UMTS

text: On January 20, 2006, Ministry of Information Industry of the People's Republic of China formally announced that TD-SCDMA is the country's standard of 3G mobile telecommunication. On February 15, 2006, a timeline for deployment of the network in China was announced, stating pre-commercial trials would take place starting after completion of a number of test networks in select cities. These trials ran from March to October, 2006, but the results were apparently unsatisfactory. In early 2007, the Chinese government instructed the dominant cellular carrier, China Mobile, to build commercial trial networks in eight cities, and the two fixed-line carriers, China Telecom and China Netcom, to build one each in two other cities. Construction of these trial networks was scheduled to finish during the fourth quarter of 2007, but delays meant that construction was not complete until early 2008.


title: UMTS

text: On March 28, 2008, China Mobile Group announced TD-SCDMA "commercial trials" for 60,000 test users in eight cities from April 1, 2008. Networks using other 3G standards (WCDMA and CDMA2000 EV/DO) had still not been launched in China, as these were delayed until TD-SCDMA was ready for commercial launch.


title: UMTS

text: In January 2009, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) in China took the unusual step of assigning licences for 3 different third-generation mobile phone standards to three carriers in a long-awaited step that is expected to prompt $41 billion in spending on new equipment. The Chinese-developed standard, TD-SCDMA, was assigned to China Mobile, the world's biggest phone carrier by subscribers. That appeared to be an effort to make sure the new system has the financial and technical backing to succeed. Licences for two existing 3G standards, W-CDMA and CDMA2000 1xEV-DO, were assigned to China Unicom and China Telecom, respectively. Third-generation, or 3G, technology supports Web surfing, wireless video and other services and the start of service is expected to spur new revenue growth.


title: UMTS

text: The technical split by MIIT has hampered the performance of China Mobile in the 3G market, with users and China Mobile engineers alike pointing to the lack of suitable handsets to use on the network. Deployment of base stations has also been slow, resulting in lack of improvement of service for users. The network connection itself has consistently been slower than that from the other two carriers, leading to a sharp decline in market share. By 2011 China Mobile has already moved its focus onto TD-LTE. Gradual closures of TD-SCDMA stations started in 2016.


title: UMTS

text: The following is a list of mobile telecommunications networks using third-generation TD-SCDMA / UMTS-TDD (LCR) technology.


title: UMTS

text: In Europe, CEPT allocated the 2010–2020 MHz range for a variant of UMTS-TDD designed for unlicensed, self-provided use. Some telecom groups and jurisdictions have proposed withdrawing this service in favour of licensed UMTS-TDD, due to lack of demand, and lack of development of a UMTS TDD air interface technology suitable for deployment in this band.


title: UMTS

text: Ordinary UMTS uses UTRA-FDD as an air interface and is known as UMTS-FDD. UMTS-FDD uses W-CDMA for multiple access and frequency-division duplex for duplexing, meaning that the up-link and down-link transmit on different frequencies. UMTS is usually transmitted on frequencies assigned for 1G, 2G, or 3G mobile telephone service in the countries of operation.


title: UMTS

text: UMTS-TDD uses time-division duplexing, allowing the up-link and down-link to share the same spectrum. This allows the operator to more flexibly divide the usage of available spectrum according to traffic patterns. For ordinary phone service, you would expect the up-link and down-link to carry approximately equal amounts of data (because every phone call needs a voice transmission in either direction), but Internet-oriented traffic is more frequently one-way. For example, when browsing a website, the user will send commands, which are short, to the server, but the server will send whole files, that are generally larger than those commands, in response.


title: UMTS

text: UMTS-TDD tends to be allocated frequency intended for mobile/wireless Internet services rather than used on existing cellular frequencies. This is, in part, because TDD duplexing is not normally allowed on cellular, PCS/PCN, and 3G frequencies. TDD technologies open up the usage of left-over unpaired spectrum.


title: UMTS

text: Europe-wide, several bands are provided either specifically for UMTS-TDD or for similar technologies. These are 1900 MHz and 1920 MHz and between 2010 MHz and 2025 MHz. In several countries the 2500-2690 MHz band (also known as MMDS in the USA) have been used for UMTS-TDD deployments. Additionally, spectrum around the 3.5 GHz range has been allocated in some countries, notably Britain, in a technology-neutral environment. In the Czech Republic UTMS-TDD is also used in a frequency range around 872 MHz.


title: UMTS

text: UMTS-TDD has been deployed for public and/or private networks in at least nineteen countries around the world, with live systems in, amongst other countries, Australia, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Japan, New Zealand, Botswana, South Africa, the UK, and the USA.


title: UMTS

text: Deployments in the US thus far have been limited. It has been selected for a public safety support network used by emergency responders in New York, but outside of some experimental systems, notably one from Nextel, thus far the WiMAX standard appears to have gained greater traction as a general mobile Internet access system.


title: UMTS

text: A variety of Internet-access systems exist which provide broadband speed access to the net. These include WiMAX and HIPERMAN. UMTS-TDD has the advantages of being able to use an operator's existing UMTS/GSM infrastructure, should it have one, and that it includes UMTS modes optimized for circuit switching should, for example, the operator want to offer telephone service. UMTS-TDD's performance is also more consistent. However, UMTS-TDD deployers often have regulatory problems with taking advantage of some of the services UMTS compatibility provides. For example, the UMTS-TDD spectrum in the UK cannot be used to provide telephone service, though the regulator OFCOM is discussing the possibility of allowing it at some point in the future. Few operators considering UMTS-TDD have existing UMTS/GSM infrastructure.


title: UMTS

text: Additionally, the WiMAX and HIPERMAN systems provide significantly larger bandwidths when the mobile station is in close proximity to the tower.


title: UMTS

text: Like most mobile Internet access systems, many users who might otherwise choose UMTS-TDD will find their needs covered by the ad hoc collection of unconnected Wi-Fi access points at many restaurants and transportation hubs, and/or by Internet access already provided by their mobile phone operator. By comparison, UMTS-TDD (and systems like WiMAX) offers mobile, and more consistent, access than the former, and generally faster access than the latter.


title: UMTS

text: UMTS also specifies the Universal Terrestrial Radio Access Network (UTRAN), which is composed of multiple base stations, possibly using different terrestrial air interface standards and frequency bands.


title: UMTS

text: UMTS and GSM/EDGE can share a Core Network (CN), making UTRAN an alternative radio access network to GERAN (GSM/EDGE RAN), and allowing (mostly) transparent switching between the RANs according to available coverage and service needs. Because of that, UMTS's and GSM/EDGE's radio access networks are sometimes collectively referred to as UTRAN/GERAN.


title: UMTS

text: The UE (User Equipment) interface of the RAN (Radio Access Network) primarily consists of RRC (Radio Resource Control), PDCP (Packet Data Convergence Protocol), RLC (Radio Link Control) and MAC (Media Access Control) protocols. RRC protocol handles connection establishment, measurements, radio bearer services, security and handover decisions. RLC protocol primarily divides into three Modes Transparent Mode (TM), Unacknowledge Mode (UM), Acknowledge Mode (AM). The functionality of AM entity resembles TCP operation whereas UM operation resembles UDP operation. In TM mode, data will be sent to lower layers without adding any header to SDU of higher layers. MAC handles the scheduling of data on air interface depending on higher layer (RRC) configured parameters.


title: UMTS

text: The set of properties related to data transmission is called Radio Bearer (RB). This set of properties decides the maximum allowed data in a TTI (Transmission Time Interval). RB includes RLC information and RB mapping. RB mapping decides the mapping between RB<->logical channel<->transport channel. Signaling messages are sent on Signaling Radio Bearers (SRBs) and data packets (either CS or PS) are sent on data RBs. RRC and NAS messages go on SRBs.


title: UMTS

text: Security includes two procedures: integrity and ciphering. Integrity validates the resource of messages and also makes sure that no one (third/unknown party) on the radio interface has modified the messages. Ciphering ensures that no one listens to your data on the air interface. Both integrity and ciphering are applied for SRBs whereas only ciphering is applied for data RBs.


title: UMTS

text: With Mobile Application Part, UMTS uses the same core network standard as GSM/EDGE. This allows a simple migration for existing GSM operators. However, the migration path to UMTS is still costly: while much of the core infrastructure is shared with GSM, the cost of obtaining new spectrum licenses and overlaying UMTS at existing towers is high.


title: UMTS

text: The CN can be connected to various backbone networks, such as the Internet or an Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) telephone network. UMTS (and GERAN) include the three lowest layers of OSI model. The network layer (OSI 3) includes the Radio Resource Management protocol (RRM) that manages the bearer channels between the mobile terminals and the fixed network, including the handovers.


title: UMTS

text: A UARFCN (abbreviation for UTRA Absolute Radio Frequency Channel Number, where UTRA stands for UMTS Terrestrial Radio Access) is used to identify a frequency in the UMTS frequency bands.


title: UMTS

text: Typically channel number is derived from the frequency in MHz through the formula Channel Number = Frequency * 5. However, this is only able to represent channels that are centered on a multiple of 200 kHz, which do not align with licensing in North America. 3GPP added several special values for the common North American channels.


title: UMTS

text: Over 130 licenses have already been awarded to operators worldwide (as of December 2004), specifying W-CDMA radio access technology that builds on GSM. In Europe, the license process occurred at the tail end of the technology bubble, and the auction mechanisms for allocation set up in some countries resulted in some extremely high prices being paid for the original 2100 MHz licenses, notably in the UK and Germany. In Germany, bidders paid a total €50.8 billion for six licenses, two of which were subsequently abandoned and written off by their purchasers (Mobilcom and the Sonera/Telefónica consortium). It has been suggested that these huge license fees have the character of a very large tax paid on future income expected many years down the road. In any event, the high prices paid put some European telecom operators close to bankruptcy (most notably KPN). Over the last few years some operators have written off some or all of the license costs. Between 2007 and 2009, all three Finnish carriers began to use 900 MHz UMTS in a shared arrangement with its surrounding 2G GSM base stations for rural area coverage, a trend that is expected to expand over Europe in the next 1–3 years.


title: UMTS

text: The 2100 MHz band (downlink around 2100 MHz and uplink around 1900 MHz) allocated for UMTS in Europe and most of Asia is already used in North America. The 1900 MHz range is used for 2G (PCS) services, and 2100 MHz range is used for satellite communications. Regulators have, however, freed up some of the 2100 MHz range for 3G services, together with a different range around 1700 MHz for the uplink.


title: UMTS

text: AT&T Wireless launched UMTS services in the United States by the end of 2004 strictly using the existing 1900 MHz spectrum allocated for 2G PCS services. Cingular acquired AT&T Wireless in 2004 and has since then launched UMTS in select US cities. Cingular renamed itself AT&T Mobility and rolled out some cities with a UMTS network at 850 MHz to enhance its existing UMTS network at 1900 MHz and now offers subscribers a number of dual-band UMTS 850/1900 phones.


title: UMTS

text: T-Mobile's rollout of UMTS in the US was originally focused on the 1700 MHz band. However, T-Mobile has been moving users from 1700 MHz to 1900 MHz (PCS) in order to reallocate the spectrum to 4G LTE services.


title: UMTS

text: In Canada, UMTS coverage is being provided on the 850 MHz and 1900 MHz bands on the Rogers and Bell-Telus networks. Bell and Telus share the network. Recently, new providers Wind Mobile, Mobilicity and Videotron have begun operations in the 1700 MHz band.