title: Physical (Dua Lipa song)

text: In the following yellow segment, Lipa rollerblades with the male dancer on a rotating platform. Their hands animate when they touch and sparkles from her eyes animate, forming a heart. For the climax, dancers from each colour set flood to the middle of the stage, forming a rainbow colour palette around Lipa. They dance together in mixed and same-gender couples. Serrano explained that in this final scene "all the colours (concepts) break their chromatic group obedience and meet together in a purely human celebration of lust and freedom and eclecticism".


title: Physical (Dua Lipa song)

text: Lipa first teased the music video on social media 15 December 2019, sharing a selfie in costume for it. She shared another photo of herself in costume for it on 16 January 2020, with the caption, "New music coming soon to a galaxy near you...". On 20 January 2020, she shared an image on social media of the sports car featured in the video, with the caption, "Remember the signs..." The music video was released to YouTube on 31 January 2020 at 05:00 PT (12:00 UTC). It was preceded by the release of teaser trailer on the platform, and two teaser clips shared on social media by Lipa. The trailer showed Lipa solving a Rubik's Cube while staring out of an apartment window. On 21 February 2020, a director's cut of the music video was shared via YouTube.


title: Physical (Dua Lipa song)

text: Brian O'Flynn of "i-D" wrote that the music video marked the return of high-concept pop videos, calling it Lipa's "ascent to art girl glory", and appreciating its diversity, and rejection of heteronormativity. Brendan Wetmore of "Paper" said the visual "nearly broke gay Twitter". For MTV, Patrick Hosken felt the video manifested Lipa's newfound confidence as a singer and called it "an opus" with "eye-popping production detail". "W" magazine's Kyle Munzenreider viewed the music video as "a literal kaleidoscope of late '90s and early '00s music video signifiers simmered down to their essence and built up into something new". Rachel Hahn of "Vogue" said the fashion eschewed maximalist trends, while also favouring deceptive simplicity over extravagance.


title: Physical (Dua Lipa song)

text: The music video for "Physical" placed on numerous year-end lists, including at number four in "Elite Daily", number five in "IndieWire", number six in "Insider", number 13 in "Idolator", as well as an unranked list published by "Slant Magazine". The video also received numerous awards and nominations, including nominations for Best Video at the 2020 LOS40 Music Awards, Best International Video at the 2021 MVPA Awards, Video of the Year at the 2020 NRJ Music Awards and Favorite Music Video Choreography at the 2021 iHeartRadio Music Awards. It was nominated for Best Music Video and Best Cinematography at the Camerimage Music Video Awards in 2020 while placing in silver for both Best Achievement in Music Video Production and Best Music Promo Film at the Creative Circle Awards. At the 2020 MTV Video Music Awards, the video was nominated for Best Art Direction and Best Choreography as well as winning Best Visual Effects. It was nominated for Best Pop Video, Best Production Design in a Video, Best Styling in a Video and Best Editing in a Video at the 2020 UK Music Video Awards.


title: Physical (Dua Lipa song)

text: A 1980s-inspired workout video for "Physical" was released to YouTube on 6 March 2020. It was directed by Daniel Carberry and filmed in New York City on 17 February 2020. The video was created as Lipa desired her own Jane Fonda-like workout video. Branded merchandise from the video was made available for purchase on Lipa's website the same day as the video's release. A version of the video mixed entirely in Sony's 360 Reality Audio from the usage of MPEG-H 3D Audio was released through Amazon Music, Tidal and Deezer. Lipa teased the release with several images on social media and a mock VHS cover art.


title: Physical (Dua Lipa song)

text: The workout video begins with Lipa dressed in a yellow leotard, introducing herself as the instructor of "Physical: Get Fit in Under 6". She starts the aerobics class with a breathing exercise and introduction of the attendees; Ginger Snap, Good Ol' Steve, Chitter & Chad, Extra-Va, Bruce the Juice, Sunny & Delight, Tardy B & Upset, and Shay & Dee. Their outfits are imprinted with manga versions of Lipa. Throughout the workout, she does several voice-overs of encouragement as they do routines such as the Hip Thruster, the Fonda, Step Back Step Touch, the Rump Shaker, and the Crybaby. The class also makes time for a water stop, with Lipa noting, "Make sure you stay hydrated during your workout." The video features various 1980s-style neon graphics and technicolour visual effects.


title: Physical (Dua Lipa song)

text: Guy Pewsey of "Grazia" said the workout video surpassed "Physical" by Newton-John and "Call on Me" by Eric Prydz to become "without question, the most iconic fitness-themed music video of all time". Robin Murray of "Clash" described it as "tongue in cheek panache" and a homage to "the glory years of workout videos". "Newsbeat" reporter Steve Holden said Lipa helped lead a re-emergence of 1980s inspiration in pop music in 2020 with the video, calling it "a camp and colourful homage" to televised aerobics classes from the 1980s. In "The New York Times", Joe Coscarelli wrote that the video's relevance was renewed during the COVID-19 pandemic.


title: Physical (Dua Lipa song)

text: On 17 March 2020, a remix of the song, featuring South Korean singer Hwasa, was released. It features Hwasa singing the first verse in Korean and the bridge in English, while the middle eight is performed bilingually by both singers. An extended play (EP) for remixes of "Physical", including those by Ofenbach, Claptone and Erika de Casier was released on 25 March 2020. A remix of the song by Brazilian DJ Alok was released on 9 April. Lipa and Alok appeared together in an Instagram Live video to promote the remix's release. A remix of "Physical" by Mark Ronson, featuring Gwen Stefani is included on Lipa and the Blessed Madonna's DJ Mix crafted remix album, "Club Future Nostalgia", released on 28 August 2020, while the unmixed version was released on 11 September 2020. An electro track, Ronson took apart the original intending for a Ruff Ryders direction, and electronic-R&B mood. After being approached for a "Hollaback Girl" sample on Mr. Fingers' "Hallucinate" remix, Stefani expressed her desire to be on the album. Ronson and the Blessed Madonna quickly incorporated a place for her on "Physical", shortly thereafter. Stefani's vocals were produced and recorded by Lauren D'Elia at Westlake Recording Studios in Los Angeles. The remix was mixed by Brandon Bost.


title: 2021 World Snooker Championship

text: The 2021 World Snooker Championship (officially the 2021 Betfred World Snooker Championship) was a professional snooker tournament that took place from 17 April to 3 May 2021 at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, England. It was the 45th consecutive year the World Snooker Championship was held at the Crucible Theatre and the 15th and final ranking event of the 2020–21 snooker season. It was organised by the World Snooker Tour. The event was sponsored by sports betting company Betfred and broadcast by the BBC, Eurosport and Matchroom Sport. It featured a total prize fund of £2,395,000 of which the winner received £500,000.


title: 2021 World Snooker Championship

text: Qualifying for the tournament took place between 5 and 14 April 2021 at the English Institute of Sport in Sheffield. There were 128 participants in the qualifying rounds, consisting of a mix of professional and invited amateur players. The main stage of the tournament featured 32 players: the top 16 players from the snooker world rankings and an additional 16 players from the qualifying rounds. Ronnie O'Sullivan was the defending champion, having won his sixth world title at the previous year's event, where he defeated Kyren Wilson 18–8 in the final. O'Sullivan lost in the second round to Anthony McGill 12–13. Mark Selby defeated Shaun Murphy 18–15 in the final to win his fourth world title and the 20th ranking title of his career. There were a record 108 century breaks made at the Crucible, with an additional 106 made in qualifying rounds. The tournament's highest break was 144 by Murphy in the second round.


title: 2021 World Snooker Championship

text: The World Snooker Championship features 32 professional players competing in one-on-one snooker matches in a single-elimination format, each match played over a number of . The 32 players for the event are selected through a mix of the snooker world rankings and a pre-tournament qualifying stage. The first World Snooker Championship final took place in 1927. The final was held at Camkin's Hall in Birmingham, England, and the title was won by Joe Davis. Since 1977, the event has been held at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, England. It is organised by World Snooker along with the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association (WPBSA). , Stephen Hendry and Ronnie O’Sullivan are the event's most successful participants in the modern era, having both won the championship seven times. The 2020 championship had been won by English player Ronnie O'Sullivan, who defeated compatriot Kyren Wilson in the final 18–8 to win his sixth world title. The event was returned to its traditional April schedule after the 2020 championship was delayed to late July because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The winner of the 2021 championship received £500,000 from a total prize fund of £2,395,000.


title: 2021 World Snooker Championship

text: The 2021 World Snooker Championship took place between 17 April and 3 May 2021 at the Crucible Theatre. The event featured a 32-player main draw, preceded by a 128-player qualifying draw held at the English Institute of Sport. Qualifying for the event was played between 5 and 14 April, finishing three days before the start of the main draw. The qualifying stage was played over four rounds, and the higher-ranked players were seeded and given byes to the later rounds. The tournament was the last of 15 ranking events in the 2020–21 season on the World Snooker Tour. It was the 45th consecutive year that the tournament had been held at the Crucible, and the 53rd successive world championship to be contested through the modern knockout format. The tournament was sponsored by sports betting company Betfred, as it had been since 2009.


title: 2021 World Snooker Championship

text: The top 16 players in the latest 2020–21 snooker world rankings automatically qualified for the main draw as seeded players. Defending champion Ronnie O'Sullivan was automatically seeded first overall. The remaining 15 seeds were allocated based on the latest world rankings, released after the 2021 Tour Championship. Matches in the first round of the main draw were played as the best of 19 frames, second-round matches and quarter-finals were played as the best of 25 frames, and the semi-finals were played as the best of 33 frames. The final was played over two days as a best-of-35-frames match.


title: 2021 World Snooker Championship

text: The tournament was broadcast in the United Kingdom on the BBC and Eurosport. The event was broadcast in Europe and Australia by Eurosport. Other international broadcasts were provided by Kuaishou, Migu, Zhibo.tv, Youku, and CCTV in China; by NowTV in Hong Kong; and by DAZN in Canada, the United States, and Brazil. In territories where there was no other coverage, the event was broadcast by Matchroom Sport.


title: 2021 World Snooker Championship

text: On 13 March 2021, World Snooker announced that the championship would welcome a limited number of spectators, as part of the Events Research Programme run by the British government in response to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Details were announced on 7 April, beginning with an audience of 33 per cent of the arena's full capacity for the first round, an increasing number of spectators through the tournament, and a full-capacity crowd to be admitted for the final. All spectators were tested for COVID-19 before and after attending the event.


title: 2021 World Snooker Championship

text: The winner of the event received £500,000 from a total prize fund of £2,395,000. The breakdown of prize money is shown below:


title: 2021 World Snooker Championship

text: Qualifying for the event was held between 5 and 14 April over four rounds, and 16 players qualified for the main stage. Seven-time champion Stephen Hendry was playing in the World Championship for the first time since announcing his retirement in 2012. He met six-time runner-up Jimmy White in the first round, the pair having met in four previous finals. Hendry defeated White 6–3, but lost his second-round match 1–6 to Xu Si. The defeat for White meant he was not ranked high enough to remain on the World Snooker Tour, but he was later given an invitational place for the following two seasons.


title: 2021 World Snooker Championship

text: Three-time World Championship semi-finalist Alan McManus announced his retirement after his second-round loss to Bai Langning. Bai reached the final round of qualifying by defeating Ben Woollaston 6–5. Two amateur players progressed through the first round. Julien Leclercq defeated Soheil Vahedi 6–5 in the first round, but lost 2–6 to Chang Bingyu. Florian Nüßle defeated world number 111 Ben Hancorn in the first round 6–2, but lost to world number 50 Mark King 3–6 in the second round. World number 84 Jamie Clarke was trailing 0–5 in his second-round match against Jamie O'Neill, but won six frames in a row to win the match. He then defeated world number 20 Joe Perry 6–2 to reach the final round of qualifying.


title: 2021 World Snooker Championship

text: The fourth and final round of qualifying took place on 13 and 14 April. Matches in this round were played over the best of 19 frames. Four players were competing having started in the opening round: Bai Langning, Jamie Clarke, Igor Figueiredo, and Steven Hallworth, but all four lost their final qualifying match. Bai lost 5–10 to Martin Gould; Clarke led 7–2, but won just one more frame, as he lost 8–10 to Mark Davis; Figueiredo lost 7–10 to Mark Joyce and Hallworth lost to 2019 semi-finalist Gary Wilson 3–10.


title: 2021 World Snooker Championship

text: The draw for the main stage of the tournament was held on 15 April 2021. The opening round took place between 17 and 22 April, each match played as the best of 19 frames. Defending champion O'Sullivan played debutant Joyce in the opening match. O'Sullivan led 3–1, before Joyce made two half-century breaks to trail by one frame. O'Sullivan won the last two frames of the first session to take a 6–3 lead. Joyce won the first frame in the second session, but O'Sullivan took the next to lead 7–4 and then scored three century breaks of 124, 137, and 112 to win the match 10–4. Reigning Masters champion Yan Bingtao played Gould, making five breaks higher than 50 and tying the score at 4–4, having only played eight frames in their opening session. Yan then made two century breaks to lead 8–5, and won the match 10–6.<ref name="Yan/Gilbert"></ref> David Gilbert, the 2019 semi-finalist, won seven of the first eight frames of his match against Chris Wakelin, winning the first session 7–2 and the match 10–4. The 2010 champion and third seed Neil Robertson led 6–3 over Liang Wenbo after their first session. Robertson won all four frames in the second session to progress with a 10–3 victory.


title: 2021 World Snooker Championship

text: Jamie Jones had returned to the tour for the 2020–21 season, having lost his professional status in 2019 after serving a year-long ban for contravening betting regulations. Jones trailed Stephen Maguire 0–3, but pulled ahead to lead 5–4 after the first session, and took all five frames played in the second session to win the match 10–4. He commented that he felt the ban had caused him to "lose everything", while Maguire commented that he was "frustrated. I don’t think there's a word for how I played. If there is a word, I'd get fined!". The previous year's semi-finalist Anthony McGill led Ricky Walden 5–4 in the first session, and won five of the next six to win 10–5. Four-time champion John Higgins played qualifier Tian Pengfei. The pair played just seven of the nine allotted frames in their opening session due to slow play, Tian winning four of the first five to lead 4–3. In the second session, Tian took three of the first four frames to lead 7–4. Higgins, however, won five frames in a row to lead 9–7 before the match was halted as their afternoon session overran. When the match resumed later, Higgins took the 17th frame to win 10–7. After the match, Higgins suggested that Tian would be "kicking himself" for not taking advantage of his own "soul destroying" performance.


title: 2021 World Snooker Championship

text: Kyren Wilson trailed 1–5 in his match against Gary Wilson, but recovered by winning the last three frames of the opening session to only trail 4–5. He also took the first three frames of the second session to move ahead 7–5. Gary Wilson made two half-century breaks to tie the match 7–7, before Kyren scored a half century and a break of 119 to lead 9–7. Gary Wilson took frame 18, but Kyren Wilson won the match with a break of 73. Jack Lisowski trailed Ali Carter 1–3, but ended up leading 5–4 after the first session. The pair were later tied at 8–8, before Carter won frame 17 and Lisowski won the next with a break of 82 to force a deciding frame. Lisowski made a break of 60 to win the final frame and the match. When interviewed afterwards, he admitted that Carter was the "worst draw" but added: "I've never won a tournament so why not make the World Championship the first one?" Mark Allen defeated Lyu Haotian, having led 7–2 after the first session and then winning three straight frames to take the match 10–2. The first session of the match between Ding Junhui and Stuart Bingham ended with a on the final , Ding attempting a pot, in which the black ended in the opposite corner from where he was attempting a pot, giving him a 5–4 lead. Bingham made breaks of 60, 92, and 104, en route to a 9–8 advantage, before Ding took frame 18 to tie the match and force a deciding frame. This final frame was delayed until after the next session ended; Ding made a break of 45, but misjudged a pot on a , allowing Bingham to make a break of 70 to win the match.


title: 2021 World Snooker Championship

text: World number one Judd Trump defeated Liam Highfield 10–4, having won the opening session 7–2. Barry Hawkins took a 6–3 lead over Matthew Selt after their first session of play, and took four of the five frames in the second session to win the match 10–4. Three-time champion Mark Williams trailed 0–2 at the start of his match against Sam Craigie, but won five of the next seven frames to take a 5–4 lead. On the resumption of play, Williams won five straight frames to take the match 10–4. Commenting afterwards he indicated he was not going to turn down any opportunity to pot a ball after that first session, that he would "go for everything". The 2005 champion Shaun Murphy trailed 3–5 in his match against Mark Davis, but won the final frame of the first session with a break of 113. Murphy credited this century for giving him additional motivation for the second session as he won six of the eight frames to seal a 10–7 victory. The final match of the first round was contested between Mark Selby and Kurt Maflin. Selby won the first three frames, before Maflin took the fourth with a break of 91. Maflin only scored six points across the next four frames as Selby finished the first session 8–1 ahead. He then took the next two frames to win the match 10–1. Only two of the sixteen qualifiers advanced to the second round.


title: 2021 World Snooker Championship

text: The second-round matches were played from 22 to 26 April, as the best of 25 frames over three sessions. O'Sullivan met McGill, who had never defeated him in their six professional matches. O'Sullivan made breaks of 81, 105 and 138 to lead 4–1, but McGill won the final three frames to tie the match 4–4 after the first session. McGill also won the next four frames (seven in a row) with breaks of 71, 126 and 89. O'Sullivan won frame 13, before McGill won the next two. The final frame of the second session was won by O'Sullivan to trail 6–10. The third session saw O'Sullivan win the first five frames to lead 11–10. McGill won the next frame, before O'Sullivan won frame 23. McGill forced a deciding frame, tying the scores at 12–12 with a break of 136. O'Sullivan had the first chance to score points in the frame, but missed a pot on a red, allowing McGill to win the frame and match.


title: 2021 World Snooker Championship

text: Robertson met Lisowski and led 5–3 and then 9–7 after the second session. He made breaks of 126 and 87 to go 11–7 ahead, before going in the next, allowing Lisowski to win the frame. He made a break of 71 in frame 20 and won the match two frames later, a 13–9 victory. This was Robertson's sixth successive victory over Lisowski. Robertson, however, praised Lisowski's play, saying "Jack did really well throughout the whole match... I really want to see [him] do well. He's such a nice guy and so talented". Wilson led Hawkins 9–4 before Hawkins won the final three frames of the second session to trail by two. Hawkins made breaks of 107 and 53 to tie the match at 9–9, but Wilson won four more frames to win 13–10. The match contained 22 breaks of 50 or above in the 23 frames played. In a rematch of the 2018 World Snooker Championship final, Williams played Higgins. Williams lost three of the first four frames, but won nine successive frames to lead 10–3. Higgins won the final three frames of the second session, but Williams took three of the next four frames, all with breaks over 70, to complete a 13–7 victory. Williams commented that he was playing as well as he had during the 2002–03 snooker season, in which he won all three Triple Crown events.


title: 2021 World Snooker Championship

text: The two remaining qualifiers left in the competition – Bingham and Jones – met in the second round. The pair were tied after the first session 4–4, with seven breaks over 50. During the second frame, with Bingham leading 109–0 with just two balls remaining, the referee awarded him the frame. Jones, however, wished to play on only to pot the , as he had not potted a ball to that point, but still lost the frame 109–6. Bingham won the second session, leading 10–6, before winning three frames in the third to win 13–6. Gilbert led Trump 3–1, but missed a black ball, allowing Trump to win the next four frames to lead after the first session. Gilbert won just two of the frames in the second session as Trump led 11–5 and went on to win 13–8.<ref name="Trump/Bingham"></ref> Murphy faced the last Chinese player remaining, Yan, and won the opening session 6–2, making the highest break of the tournament, a 144. Murphy also led by four frames after the second session 10–6, and won three of the four frames in the third session to win 13–7. Despite the loss, Yan made more half-century breaks than Murphy. Fourth seed Selby faced thirteenth seed Allen, and led 6–2 after the opening session, making six breaks over 50. Selby's lead was cut to 8–6, but he won the final frame of the second session to lead by three. He won the match taking four of the next five frames to win 13–7. Five of the top eight seeds made the quarter-finals.


title: 2021 World Snooker Championship

text: The quarter-finals were played on 27 and 28 April as best of 25 frames held over three sessions. Robertson played Wilson, and took a 5–3 lead after the opening session.<ref name="Wilson/Bingham s1"></ref> After they were tied at 8–8 at the end of the second session, Wilson won five straight frames to win the match 13–8. Selby defeated Williams with a . With a of 99 per cent in the first four frames, Selby won the opening session 6–2, before winning seven of the next eight to win 13–3. Throughout the tournament, Williams was playing a where he rolled up to the reds, rather than play a to bring the to the , which other players such as O'Sullivan had also attempted. Williams defended the strategy and commented that he had received backlash from fans and fellow players.


title: 2021 World Snooker Championship

text: After making his 500th career century in frame five, Bingham led McGill 6–4 before McGill won five of the next six with breaks of 126, 83, 92, 130 and 75 to lead by two. In the final session, McGill won the first frame before Bingham made breaks of 75, 51, 90 and 91 to take an 11–10 lead.<ref name="Bingham/McGill"></ref> McGill had the first chance in frame 22, but went in-off, allowing Bingham to win the frame. However, McGill won the next two frames to force a deciding frame. McGill had the first chance in the final frame, but was unable to get position on a red after going into . Bingham, however, made a break of 125 to win the match, which he called "the best of my career". McGill, however was confident despite the loss, saying "What I am doing is working, I am going in the right direction." Murphy and Trump were tied at 4–4 after the first session, and then at 6–6 before Murphy won the last four frames of the second session to lead 10–6. Trump won five of the next six frames to tie the match at 11–11, during which Murphy made a high break of only 30. Murphy, however, won the next two frames to win the match 13–11.


title: 2021 World Snooker Championship

text: The semi-finals were played between 29 April and 1 May as the best of 33 frames held over four sessions. After Murphy won the opening frame, Wilson won the second frame and made a century break in frame three. After going 3–1 ahead, Wilson made breaks of 121 and 127, a total of 248 points without reply.<ref name="Murphy/Wilson SL"></ref> Wilson ended the first session 6–2 ahead. After winning frame nine, Wilson was placed into a from which he failed to escape on several occasions, conceding 53 foul points to Murphy and allowing him to win the frame. Wilson won frames 11, 13 and 14 to lead by six frames at 10–4. Murphy won the final two frames of the session, punching the air in celebration, to trail by four. Wilson won the first frame of the third session, but Murphy won six of the next seven frames to tie the match 12–12. In the final session, Murphy won five straight frames to win the match 17–12. In total, Murphy won 13 out of the last 15 frames to win the match. After the match, Wilson commented that some of Murphy's celebrations were "theatrical", but Murphy replied that they were "in a theatre and we are putting on a show."


title: 2021 World Snooker Championship

text: Bingham took the opening frame against Selby, but trailed 1–3 into the mid-session interval. Bingham, however, made breaks of 92 and 82 in winning three straight frames to lead 4–3 and the match was tied at 4–4 after the first session. Selby made a break of 52 in frame nine, but still lost the frame as Bingham led again at 6–5. Selby won four of the next five frames to lead 9–7, during which he made two century breaks. Bingham tied the scores at 9–9 after breaks of 131 and 96, before frame 19 was also won by Bingham on the final black ball. During the frame, Selby was asked to play a shot by the referee after not having acted for three minutes. Bingham also won the next two frames, before the one after was halted twice for a and won by Selby. Selby won the next frame, but Bingham won the last of the session to lead 13–11. In the fourth session, Selby tied the score by winning the opening two frames, before Bingham won the next to lead 14–13. Selby then won three straight frames to get to one frame away from victory. Bingham won the next frame, but due to the length of the session, the remaining frames were delayed until the culmination of the other semi-final with the scores at 16–15. Returning three hours later, Selby won frame 32 after laying a snooker behind the green ball. This match was more than three and a half hours longer than the other semi-final, in part due to extended safety play and two frames having to be restarted twice.


title: 2021 World Snooker Championship

text: The final was played on 2 and 3 May as the best of 35 frames held over four sessions, between Mark Selby and Shaun Murphy. Both players had won the World Championship previously. Murphy was appearing in his fourth final, having won the title in 2005, and been runner-up in 2009 and 2015; Selby was playing in his fifth final, having won the event in 2014, 2016, and 2017, and been runner-up in 2007. The two players shared the same coach, Chris Henry.


title: 2021 World Snooker Championship

text: Murphy won the first two frames of the match, but missed a pot in the third frame on a break of 65, allowing Selby to win the frame. Selby compiled a break of 89 in frame four to draw level at 2–2. Murphy took three of the next four frames to lead by two after the first session. Selby then tied the score again at 6–6 by winning three of the first four frames in the second session, despite Murphy not missing a pot in the first three. Selby then won four of the next five frames to end the second session 10–7 ahead, as Murphy failed to pot a ball for an hour.


title: 2021 World Snooker Championship

text: Murphy won the first frame of the third session with a break of 77, but missed the final black ball in the next, allowing Selby to win frame 19. Murphy won the next frame, but Selby scored the first century break of the final, a 107, in frame 21. Selby won frame 22 to lead by four frames, before Murphy made a break of 100. Murphy also won the next frame, but trailed 11–14 after Selby won the final frame of the third session. Selby won the opening frame of the fourth and final session, before Murphy cleared the table with a break of 43 to cut Selby's lead to 15–12. The two went into the mid-session interval at 16–13 after Selby played a poor shot. After a safety battle, Selby won the next frame with a break of 120, and was one frame away from victory at 17–13. Murphy, however, won the next two frames with breaks of 100 and 102. After Murphy missed a pot on a red down the cushion in frame 33, Selby cleared the table to win the match 18–15.


title: 2021 World Snooker Championship

text: This was Selby's fourth championship, behind only Hendry (with seven), Steve Davis, Ray Reardon, and Ronnie O'Sullivan (each with six) in the modern era, and equal with John Higgins. Davis commented that Selby was the "best all-rounder we have ever seen", and suggested he may win more world championships than Hendry. The final was broadcast to a peak audience of 4.1 million viewers on domestic television, equating to 27 per cent of all viewers in the United Kingdom, compared with the 2.9 million viewers for the 2020 event. The win raised Selby from fourth in the world rankings up to world number two. Murphy, who had celebrated specific shots throughout the event, vowed to use the experience to be more of an entertainer for the coming 2021–22 season. He reflected: "In terms of performance, it turned my year around and ended a poor season on a high note." Selby commented: "To win it once against Ronnie O'Sullivan for the first time was a dream come true – to win it four times is something I could only have dreamed of."


title: 2021 World Snooker Championship

text: The results for the main draw are shown below. Numbers given in brackets are the players' seedings. Match winners are denoted in bold.


title: 2021 World Snooker Championship

text: Qualifying for the main stages of the tournament took place between 5 and 14 April 2021 at the English Institute of Sport in Sheffield. The WPBSA selected 16 amateur players to participate in the qualifying rounds together with the 112 professionals outside the top 16 of the world rankings. The amateur players were selected based on performances in the 2020–21 season, and because of the disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, performances in the 2019–20 season were also included.


title: 2021 World Snooker Championship

text: Antoni Kowalski and Wu Yize were initially invited, but withdrew and were replaced by Hamim Hussain and Julien Leclercq. Noppon Saengkham, who was scheduled to enter in the third qualifying round, was forced to withdraw after testing positive for COVID-19. Finally, additional amateur players were given places to fill out the remaining places.


title: 2021 World Snooker Championship

text: The results from qualifying are shown below. Numbers given before players' names show world rankings of the top 112 players, while "a" indicates the amateur players in the draw. The match winners are denoted in bold text.


title: 2021 World Snooker Championship

text: A record number of century breaks, 108, was made during the main event. There were 22 players that made at least one century break. The highest break was a 144 made by Shaun Murphy in his second-round match against Yan Bingtao.


title: 2021 World Snooker Championship

text: A total of 106 century breaks were made during the qualifying rounds. The highest was a 143 made by Mark Davis in his third-round match against Stuart Carrington.


title: Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum

text: The President Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum () is a mausoleum which serves as the resting place of Vietnamese revolutionary leader and President Ho Chi Minh in Hanoi, Vietnam. It is a large building located in the center of Ba Dinh Square, where Ho, Chairman of the Workers' Party of Vietnam from 1951 until his death in 1969, read the Declaration of Independence on 2 September 1945, establishing the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. It is open to the public every morning except Monday.


title: Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum

text: Construction work began on September 2, 1973, and the mausoleum was formally inaugurated on August 29, 1975. It was inspired by Lenin's Mausoleum in Moscow but incorporates distinct Vietnamese architectural elements, such as the sloping roof. The exterior is made of grey granite, while the interior is grey, black and red polished stone. The mausoleum's portico has the words "Chủ tịch Hồ-Chí-Minh" (President Ho Chi Minh) inscribed across it. The banner beside says "Nước Cộng Hòa Xã Hội Chủ Nghĩa Việt Nam Muôn Năm" (en: "Long live The Socialist Republic of Vietnam").


title: Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum

text: The structure is high and wide. Flanking the mausoleum are two platforms with seven steps for parade viewing. The plaza in front of the mausoleum is divided into 240 green squares separated by pathways. The gardens surrounding the mausoleum have nearly 250 different species of plants and flowers, all from different regions of Vietnam. Also during parades, the tribune is used as a viewing stage for leaders to watch from similar to the tribune of Lenin's Tomb.


title: Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum

text: The embalmed body of President Ho Chi Minh is preserved in the cooler, central hall of the mausoleum, which is protected by a military honour guard. The body lies in a glass case with dim lights. The mausoleum is generally open to the public.


title: Al Jazeera controversies and criticism

text: Al Jazeera Media Network, endowed by the Government of Qatar, is one of the world's largest news organizations. It provides extensive news coverage through 80 bureaus on a variety of media platforms in several languages, including Arabic and English. Al Jazeera has a large audience, but the organization (particularly its original Arabic channel) has been criticized for its alleged involvement in controversies ranging from and slanted journalism to anti-Hindu bias and anti-Israel bias.


title: Al Jazeera controversies and criticism

text: An article by Sherry Ricchiardi in the "American Journalism Review" (AJR) noted that critics of Al Jazeera have "assailed what they see as anti-Semitic, anti-American bias in the channel's news content." Ricchiardi had earlier criticized an Al Jazeera report that Jewish employees of 9/11 targets were informed of the attacks beforehand, a report which was also criticized in an October 2001 "New York Times" editorial. She cited the former Al Jazeera weekly show "Sharia and Life", hosted by Yusuf Qaradawi (an Egyptian cleric who "argues clearly and consistently that hatred of Israel and Jews is Islamically sanctioned"). The organization held a 2008 on-air birthday party for Samir Kuntar, a Lebanese terrorist convicted of killing four Israelis who was released in July of that year, later admitting that its coverage of Kuntar's release violated its code of ethics. The organization's Beirut bureau chief said, "Brother Samir, we wish to celebrate your birthday with you" and called him a "pan-Arab hero."


title: Al Jazeera controversies and criticism

text: Former Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly has called Al Jazeera "anti-Semitic" and "anti-American." Dave Marash, a veteran correspondent for ABC's "Nightline" who resigned from his position as Washington anchor for Al Jazeera English in 2008 due to his perception of anti-American bias there, appeared on "The O'Reilly Factor" and said: "They certainly aren't anti-Semitic, but they are anti-Netanyahu and anti-Lieberman and anti-Israeli, right ..."


title: Al Jazeera controversies and criticism

text: On May 30, 2017, Al Jazeera's English-language account retweeted an Anti-Semitic meme. The network tweeted an apology after the incident, calling it a "mistake."


title: Al Jazeera controversies and criticism

text: On May 20, 2019, AJ+ Arabic posted a video which was widely criticized as denying the holocaust. It was pulled soon thereafter, amid backlash on social media, including from Al Jazeera's own employees.


title: Al Jazeera controversies and criticism

text: Due to Al Jazeera's position as a major Middle Eastern news outlet, its editorial positions often receive increased scrutiny. During the Second Intifada, Palestinians killed by Israelis were referred to as "martyrs"; Israelis killed by Palestinians were not.


title: Al Jazeera controversies and criticism

text: Israel announced a "boycott" of the Arabic broadcaster on 13 March 2008, accusing it of bias in its coverage of the Gaza Strip conflict and toward Hamas. Israeli government employees declined interviews and denied visa applications for the organization's staff. Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Majalli Wahabi accused it of focusing on Palestinian suffering and ignoring that of Israel: "We have seen that Al-Jazeera has become part of Hamas ... [sic] taking sides and cooperating with people who are enemies of the state of Israel." According to Israeli officials, Al-Jazeera covered the Gaza incursion but not Palestinian rocket attacks against the Israeli city of Ashkelon. Wahabi said that the Israeli Foreign Ministry would send letters of complaint to the organization and the Qatari government. Officials of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah party has accused Al-Jazeera of bias toward Hamas (with which it is at political loggerheads), and Fatah official Mohammed Dahlan sued the broadcaster. Al-Jazeera agreed to discuss its coverage of Mideast conflict, and the issue has apparently been settled.


title: Al Jazeera controversies and criticism

text: In February 2009, Israel again imposed sanctions on Al Jazeera after Qatar closed the Israeli trade office in Doha in protest against the Gaza War. Israel had considered declaring Al Jazeera a hostile entity and shutting its Israeli offices, but after a legal review the Israeli government decided to impose limited measures restricting the organization's activities in the country. All Al Jazeera employees would not have their visas renewed, and the Israeli government would issue no new visas. Al Jazeera staff would not be allowed to attend government briefings; its access to government and military offices was reduced, and it could not interview Knesset members. The organization would only have access to three agencies: representatives of the Prime Minister's Office, the Foreign Ministry, and the IDF Spokesperson's Unit.


title: Al Jazeera controversies and criticism

text: On 15 July of that year, the Palestinian National Authority (PA) closed down Al Jazeera's offices in the West Bank in an apparent response to claims made on the channel by Farouk Kaddoumi that PA president Mahmoud Abbas had been involved in the death of Yasser Arafat. The Palestinian Information Ministry called the organization's coverage "unbalanced" and accused it of incitement against the PLO and the PA. Four days later, Abbas rescinded the ban and allowed Al Jazeera to resume operations.


title: Al Jazeera controversies and criticism

text: In August 2011, Afghan bureau chief Samer Allawi was arrested by Israeli authorities and charged with being a member of Hamas. Walied Al-Omary, Al Jazeera bureau chief in Israel and the Palestinian territories, said that a military court accused Allawi of making contact with members of Hamas' armed wing. The Committee to Protect Journalists Middle East and North Africa program coordinator Mohamed Abdel Dayem stated that "Israel must clarify why it continues to hold Samer Allawi." Allawi was imprisoned for over a month and fined $1,400 after pleading guilty to meeting with Hamas, a militant group viewed as terrorist by Israel and most of the West. In 2013, UN researcher Nicola Perugini was accused by UN Watch of fabricating a United Nations Human Rights Council session in his Al Jazeera article about the latest UNHRC report on Israeli settlements.


title: Al Jazeera controversies and criticism

text: Al Jazeera was founded in 1996 as part of Qatari efforts to turn economic power into political influence in the Arab world and beyond, and continues to receive political and financial backing from the government of Qatar. As a result, Al Jazeera has been criticized for being Qatari state media. In 2010, U.S. State Department internal communications released by WikiLeaks as part of the 2010 diplomatic cables leak said that the Qatari government manipulates Al Jazeera coverage to suit the country's political interests.


title: Al Jazeera controversies and criticism

text: Al Jazeera reporters and anchors in London, Paris, Moscow, Beirut and Cairo have resigned. Ali Hashem, the organization's Shia Beirut correspondent, resigned after leaked emails publicized his discontent with Al Jazeera's "unprofessional" and biased coverage of the Syrian civil war at the expense of the 2011 Bahraini uprising. Since the Bahrain government was supported by the Gulf Cooperation Council (of which Qatar is a member), the protests were given less prominence than the Syrian conflict on the network. Longtime Berlin correspondent Aktham Suliman left in late 2012, saying that he felt he was no longer allowed to work as an independent journalist: Before the beginning of the Arab Spring, we were a voice for change, a platform for critics and political activists throughout the region. Now, Al-Jazeera has become a propaganda broadcaster... Al-Jazeera takes a clear position in every country from which it reports—not based on journalistic priorities, but rather on the interests of the Foreign Ministry of Qatar. In order to maintain my integrity as a reporter, I had to quit.


title: Al Jazeera controversies and criticism

text: He added, "The news channel Al Jazeera was committed to the truth. Now it is bent. It's about politics, not journalism. For the reporter that means: time to go ... The decline [in] 2004–2011 was insidious, subliminal, and very slow, but with a disastrous end."


title: Al Jazeera controversies and criticism

text: According to Walid Phares, Al Jazeera became the "primary ideological and communication network" for the Muslim Brotherhood during the 2011 Arab Spring in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, and Syria. Phares noted that after democratic forces had begun the rebellions, Al Jazeera played a "tremendous role" in supporting Islamist elements of the revolution.


title: Al Jazeera controversies and criticism

text: One of the organization's largest resignations was that of 22 members of Al Jazeera's Egyptian bureau. The group announced their resignation on 8 July 2013, citing biased coverage of Egyptian power redistribution favoring the Muslim Brotherhood.


title: Al Jazeera controversies and criticism

text: During the visit of the Qatari delegation to the 2017 UN General Assembly, anonymous critics commissioned what ostensibly appeared to be a news website, authoring a variety of articles calling Al Jazeera a "state-run propaganda arm", criticizing the Gulf state's link to terror groups or to Iran, and promoting a dark view of the Qatari economy in response to the diplomatic crisis that year. The organization commissioned to launch this website was later identified as a conservative-leaning PR firm, Definers Public Affairs, which was also hired by Facebook to attack the social network's opponents, including Apple, Google, and the philanthropist George Soros.


title: Al Jazeera controversies and criticism

text: Since Al Jazeera's founding in 1996, its Islamist skew grew stronger and damaged Qatar’s political relations with its neighboring states of Saudi Arabia and Egypt. According to Hugh Miles writing for the BBC, "Al-Jazeera network remains the standard bearer for the Islamist position."


title: Al Jazeera controversies and criticism

text: During the 2010 FIFA World Cup opening game, Al Jazeera Sports' transmission to the Arab world went down without explanation in the first half; second-half transmission was patchy. Al Jazeera and FIFA said that they were working to figure out the cause of the disruption of Al Jazeera's broadcast rights. According to a report in "The Guardian", evidence indicated jamming by the Jordanian government.


title: Al Jazeera controversies and criticism

text: The organization was instrumental in exposing pitch-fixing and -tampering controversies in Sri Lanka and India by covering pitch-fixing, primarily at Sri Lanka's Galle International Stadium. The Al Jazeera documentary "Cricket's Match-Fixers" revealed secret plans to fix the first match, scheduled at Galle during the November 2018 test series between England and Sri Lanka.


title: Al Jazeera controversies and criticism

text: According to Al Jazeera's Investigative Unit, the groundsman at Galle helped bookmakers fix test matches at the stadium by changing the condition of the pitch. Al Jazeera reported that the last two test matches (Sri Lanka v Australia in 2016 and India v Sri Lanka in 2017) played at Galle were fixed by bookmakers who were seen bribing the groundsman at Galle. The report said that the bookmakers identified as suspects, including former Indian professional domestic cricketer Robin Morris, former Pakistani domestic cricketer Hasan Raza and former Sri Lankan cricketer Tharindu Mendis, were filmed secretly by an Al Jazeera reporter in the United Arab Emirates as they discussed past and future match-fixing.


title: Al Jazeera controversies and criticism

text: Several Algerian cities lost power on 27 January 1999, reportedly to keep residents from watching a program in which Algerian dissidents implicated the Algerian military in a series of massacres. On 4 July 2004, the Algerian government froze the activities of Al Jazeera's Algerian correspondent. The official reason was that a reorganization of the work of foreign correspondents was in progress. According to Reporters Without Borders, however, the measure was a reprisal for a broadcast the previous week of another "Al-Itijah al-Mouakiss" debate on the political situation in Algeria.


title: Al Jazeera controversies and criticism

text: In 2012, Al Jazeera faced criticism from Bangladeshi human rights activists and relatives of those killed in the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War. The news channel is often accused of downplaying the 1971 Bangladesh genocide, in which Islamist militias assisted the Pakistan Army in targeting Bengalis who sought independence from Pakistan.


title: Al Jazeera controversies and criticism

text: In response to the Al Jazeera Investigates documentary "All the Prime Minister's Men", the Government of Bangladesh described it as "a misleading series of innuendos and insinuations in what is apparently a politically motivated “smear campaign” by notorious individuals associated with the Jamaat-i-Islami extremist group, which has been opposing the progressive and secular principles of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh since its very birth as an independent nation in 1971". The foreign ministry stated that the Bangladeshi government "regrets that Al Jazeera has allowed itself to become an instrument for their malicious political designs aimed at destabilizing the secular democratic Government of Bangladesh with a proven track record of extraordinary socio-economic development and progress". The ministry also stated that "the fact that the report’s historical account fails to even mention the horrific genocide in 1971 in which Jamaat perpetrators killed millions of Bengali civilians" was "one reflection of the political bias in Al Jazeera’s coverage". The Bangladesh Army called the documentary a "concocted and ill-intended report by a vested group in the news channel Al-Jazeera", according to a statement by ISPR.


title: Al Jazeera controversies and criticism

text: Responding to allegations by Al Jazeera that Israeli surveillance equipment is used by Bangladesh UN Peacekeeping Forces, United Nations spokesman Stéphane Dujarric said that UN agreements with Bangladesh on peacekeeping deployments did not include the "operation of electronic equipment in the nature described by Al Jazeera in its documentary, and such equipment has not been deployed with Bangladeshi contingents in UN peacekeeping operations". The UN called for an investigation into allegations of corruption among senior Bangladeshi officials.


title: Al Jazeera controversies and criticism

text: The Bangladesh Federal Union of Journalists demanded a ban on Al Jazeera transmission within Bangladesh citing similar bans in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan and the UAE.


title: Al Jazeera controversies and criticism

text: Lamenting the censorship of Bangladeshi media, Mahfuz Anam, editor of "The Daily Star", wrote "Besides the government, the Al Jazeera report has also put us, the Bangladeshi media, on the dock, which is the main focus of my piece. Thousands of our readers want to know how come we are publishing the government and military's condemnation of Al Jazeera without ever telling our readers what Al Jazeera said or reported. A normal journalistic practice, and one that we follow at The Daily Star, is that unless we carry the original story, in this case the Al Jazeera report, we do not publish any rejoinder, in this case the condemnatory statements of our foreign office and the military. They want to know, what prevented us from carrying the said report in the first place? If we were a free media today, we would have delved deeper into the widely-talked-about Al Jazeera report and analysed it, point by point, and exposed it for what it really is — not a top-class work of investigative journalism".


title: Al Jazeera controversies and criticism

text: Bahrain Information Minister Nabeel bin Yaqub Al-Hamar banned Al Jazeera correspondents from reporting from inside the country on 10 May 2002, saying that the station was biased towards Israel and against Bahrain. After improvements in relations between Bahrain and Qatar in 2004, Al Jazeera correspondents returned to Bahrain. In 2010, however, the Information Ministry again banned Al Jazeera correspondents from reporting inside the country. The ministry accused the network of "flouting [Bahrain's] laws regulating the press and publishing" after Al Jazeera aired a report on poverty in Bahrain.


title: Al Jazeera controversies and criticism

text: During his visit to Egypt in November 2011, Bahrain Centre for Human Rights president Nabeel Rajab criticized Al Jazeera's coverage of the 2011 protests and said that it represents an Arabic double standard. Rajab said, "Al Jazeera's intentional ignoring  ... coverage of Bahrain protests makes me strongly believe that we need channels that are sponsored by people rather than by regimes." In the run-up to the Qatar diplomatic crisis, Bahrain blocked Al Jazeera within its borders.


title: Al Jazeera controversies and criticism

text: Al Jazeera has faced considerable criticism and backlash in Egypt and other Arab countries; from ordinary people, media outlets, and governments who accuse it of supporting Qatari agenda and Islamists such as the Muslim Brotherhood Al Jazeera has been criticized by an Egyptian newspaper for its allegedly-biased coverage of news related to Egypt and its government. According to the Egypt Independent, many Egyptians believe Al Jazeera’s attacks to be a concerted effort by the channel to destroy Egypt’s image in the region."


title: Al Jazeera controversies and criticism

text: In 2010, Al Jazeera filed a lawsuit against the Egyptian "Al-Ahram" newspaper for "Jazeerat al-Taharoush" ("Al Jazeera: An Island of Harassment"), a 9 June 2010 article which Al Jazeera found "wholly deceptive and journalistically unprofessional" with an aim to "damage the reputation of the Al Jazeera Network." The Egyptian regime later collapsed as a result of the Arab Spring.


title: Al Jazeera controversies and criticism

text: A Cairo court ordered Al Jazeera to stop broadcasting in Egypt in September 2013, saying that it was "inciting violence that led to the deaths of Egyptians." On December 29 of that year, three journalists working for Al Jazeera English (Australian Peter Greste, Egyptian-Canadian Mohamed Fahmy and Egyptian Baher Mohammed) were taken into custody by Egyptian security forces at the Cairo Marriott Hotel. On June 23, 2014, after a four-month trial, they were found guilty of spreading false news and collaborating with the Muslim Brotherhood and sentenced to seven to 10 years' imprisonment. They were released on bail shortly afterwards, and Mohamed Fahmy sued Al Jazeera on 5 May 2015 for 100 million (83m; £53m) in punitive and remedial damages for negligence and breach of contract. He accused the network of "negligence" by misinforming him about its legal status and their safety in Egypt. The three were pardoned on September 23, 2015, and released. Egypt blocked 21 websites, including Al-Jazeera and Masr AlArabiya, in May 2017, for allegedly supporting terrorism and spreading fake news by supporting the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood.


title: Al Jazeera controversies and criticism

text: In 2021, Egyptian media criticized Al Jazeera for refusing to cover the protests against a controversial electoral law in Qatar which limited the voting rights of a Bedouin tribe. According to Ikram Badr al-Din, a professor of political science at Cairo University, this "suggests that it is not independent and works only for the benefit of the ruling family in Qatar.”


title: Al Jazeera controversies and criticism

text: Columnist Seema Sirohi has accused Al Jazeera of spreading an ignorant anti-India narrative in its coverage of the country. The Indian government banned the Al Jazeera TV channel in April 2015 for five days for repeatedly broadcasting disputed maps of India. According to the Surveyor General (SGI) had observed that in some of the maps displayed by Al Jazeera, "a portion of the Indian territory of Jammu and Kashmir (i.e. PoK and Aksai Chin) has not been shown as a part of Indian territory" on some Al Jazeera maps; Lakshadweep and the Andaman Islands were also not shown as Indian territories on some of the maps. In its reply to an order to show cause, Al Jazeera said that all its maps are generated by internationally known software used by Global News Providers. In a separate statement, "Al Jazeera" said that it was penalised for a legacy issue since it had abided by the Indian guidelines since 2014.


title: Al Jazeera controversies and criticism

text: During the Iraq War, Al Jazeera and other news-gathering organizations experienced reporting and movement restrictions. Reporter Tayseer Allouni was expelled from the country and Diyar Al-Omari, another reporter, was stripped of his journalistic credentials by the US. On 2 April 2003, the organization announced that it would "temporarily freeze all coverage" of Iraq in protest of what Al Jazeera called unreasonable interference by Iraqi officials. Contrary to allegations, including those by Donald Rumsfeld on 4 June 2005, Al Jazeera has never shown beheadings; beheadings have appeared on a number of other websites, and have sometimes been misattributed to the organization. When the allegations were reported in other media, Al Jazeera pressed for retractions; "The Guardian" later corrected its report that the organization "had shown videos of masked terrorists beheading western hostages". The allegation was repeated on Fox News, however, when Al Jazeera's English service was launched on 15 November 2006.


title: Al Jazeera controversies and criticism

text: The Iraqi Allawi government closed Al Jazeera's Iraq office on 7 August 2004, calling the network responsible for a negative image of Iraq and charging it with fueling anti-Coalition hostilities. Al Jazeera spokesman Jihad Ballout said, "It's regrettable and we believe it's not justifiable. This latest decision runs contrary to all the promises made by Iraqi authorities concerning freedom of expression and freedom of the press," and Al Jazeera vowed to continue reporting from inside Iraq. Photographs showed United States and Iraqi military personnel closing the office. The initial one-month shutdown was extended indefinitely in September 2004 and the offices were sealed, drawing condemnation from international journalists.


title: Al Jazeera controversies and criticism

text: In April 2013, Iraq banned Al Jazeera and nine other TV channels for "sectarian bias". In a statement, the Iraqi Communication and Media Commission said that the satellite channels had "exaggerated things, given misinformation and called for breaking the law and attacking Iraqi security forces". The commission noted a "sectarian tone" in the TV coverage and "undisciplined media messages exceeded all reasonable limits", threatening to "jeopardize the democratic process".


title: Al Jazeera controversies and criticism

text: Al Jazeera TV covered welcome-home festivities for Samir Kuntar, a Lebanese terrorist imprisoned in Israel for killing several people in a Palestine Liberation Front raid from Lebanon into that country, on 19 July 2008. On the program, Al Jazeera Beirut office head Ghassan bin Jiddo called Kuntar a "pan-Arab hero" and organized a birthday party for him. Israel's Government Press Office (GPO) announced a boycott of the channel, including a refusal by Israeli officials to be interviewed and a ban of its correspondents entering government offices in Jerusalem. Several days later, Al Jazeera director-general Wadah Khanfar issued a letter admitting that the program violated the channel's code of ethics and saying that he ordered its programming director to take steps to ensure that such an incident would not recur.


title: Al Jazeera controversies and criticism

text: The channel was also criticized for allegedly-biased coverage of events in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, including the 2002 Bat Mitzvah massacre where the network omitted the facts that the victims were attending a bat mitzvah at a crowded banquet hall. When Palestinian militant Raed Karmi was killed by the Israeli Army, Al Jazeera was criticized for failing to provide sufficient context in its story.


title: Al Jazeera controversies and criticism

text: Israel again accused Al Jazeera of bias in 2008. Deputy Foreign Minister Majalli Wahabi accused the organization of focusing on Palestinian suffering and downplaying that of Israel, referring to Israeli residents of the western Negev who had been the target of rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip. "We have seen that Al-Jazeera has become part of Hamas ... taking sides and cooperating with people who are enemies of the state of Israel," said Wahabi, a Druze. "The moment a station like Al-Jazeera gives unreliable reports, represents only one side, and doesn't present the positions of the other side, why should we cooperate?" According to Israeli officials, Al Jazeera covered the Gaza incursion but not Palestinian rocket attacks on the Israeli city of Ashkelon. Wahabi said that the Israeli Foreign Ministry would send letters of complaint to the government of Qatar and Al Jazeera.


title: Al Jazeera controversies and criticism

text: In February 2015, Al Jazeera posted an article on its online edition alleging that the Israeli government had opened dams in its southern region to intentionally flood parts of the Gaza Strip. The article was replaced on 25 February with a statement that there were no dams in southern Israel and the original article was false. During the June 2017 Jerusalem attack, Israeli media accused Al-Jazeera of not identifying it as a terrorist attack and ignoring an attack by three Palestinians on the Temple Mount in Old Jerusalem (focusing instead on the killing of a Palestinian by Israeli forces during Friday prayers).


title: Al Jazeera controversies and criticism

text: The Al Jazeera office in Kuwait City was closed by government officials after the organization aired a story on police crackdowns. The story included interviews with members of the Kuwaiti opposition and a video of police beating activists. Four National Assembly members were injured in the crackdown. Kuwait's Minister of Information described Al Jazeera's coverage as "intervention in a Kuwaiti domestic issue."


title: Al Jazeera controversies and criticism

text: According to Libyan media, Al Jazeera worked on behalf of the Western world and the Gulf Cooperation Council to promote anti-Libyan policies and "disseminate falsehoods and lies to incite international public opinion."


title: Al Jazeera controversies and criticism

text: The Emir of Qatar Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani opposed the government of Libya and supported the 2011 Libyan Civil War. The emir ordered Al Jazeera to emphasize the Libyan conflict, contributing to the insurgency's spread and influencing the Arab world's view of Libya. Within a week of the start of the rebellion, Al Jazeera began using the rebels' tricolor flag to identify its coverage.


title: Al Jazeera controversies and criticism

text: The emir appeared on Al Jazeera, saying that military intervention in Libya was necessary, and the organization's journalists were criticized for not challenging his position. The organization reported that Muammar Gaddafi was ordering troops to use rape as a weapon of war and issuing Viagra to his troops. Amnesty International investigated the claims and found them groundless.


title: Al Jazeera controversies and criticism

text: Al Jazeera aired "Locked Up in Malaysia's Lockdown", a "101 East" documentary alleging that the government of Malaysia mistreated illegal migrants and foreign workers during the country's COVID-19 lockdown, on 3 July 2020. The documentary was called "misleading" and "inaccurate" by the Malaysian government; Senior Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob demanded an apology from the organization for "false reporting." The Royal Malaysia Police began an investigation of the documentary, and the Immigration Department sought to question the Al Jazeera journalists and a Bangladeshi migrant whom they interviewed. Several non-governmental organizations, including the Centre for Investigative Journalism (CIJ), issued a statement defending Al Jazeera and calling on the Malaysian government to end its "intimidatory measures" against Al Jazeera and migrant workers.


title: Al Jazeera controversies and criticism

text: On 4 August, a team of Malaysian police officers and personnel from the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission raided Al Jazeera's office near the Petronas Towers and seized several devices as part of their investigation of the documentary. Al Jazeera English managing director Giles Trendle condemned the raid as a "crackdown on media freedom", and called on Malaysian authorities to end the criminal investigation of its journalists.


title: Al Jazeera controversies and criticism

text: Saudi Arabia banned Al-Jazeera and another Qatari website in early 2017 after Qatari Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani said that he recognized Iran as an Islamic regional power and criticized Saudi Arabia and Donald Trump's policy toward Iran. He praised the Lebanese organization Hezbollah and the Palestinian group Hamas. Qatar denied the allegations, saying that its QNA website had been hacked and it was investigating the incident.


title: Al Jazeera controversies and criticism

text: Al Jazeera aired "The Toxic Truth", a two-part documentary on toxic waste dumped in Somalia, in January 2009. A Somali journalist who studied the documentary concluded that the organization failed to rigorously research the story. Another criticism of the documentary was that Al Jazeera did not allow former Somali interim president Ali Mahdi Muhammad to exercise his right of reply to accusations that he authorized Italy-based companies to dump in Somalia.


title: Al Jazeera controversies and criticism

text: Reporter Tayseer Allouni was arrested in Spain on 5 September 2003 and charged with providing support to members of al-Qaeda. Judge Baltasar Garzón, who issued the arrest warrant, ordered Allouni held without bail. Al Jazeera wrote to Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar in protest: "On several occasions, Western journalists met secretly with secret organizations and they were not subjected to any legal action because they were doing their job, so why is Allouni being excluded?" Allouni was later released on bail for health reasons, but was prohibited from leaving the country.


title: Al Jazeera controversies and criticism

text: On 19 September, a Spanish court issued an arrest warrant for Allouni before the expected verdict. Allouni had asked the court for permission to attend his mother's funeral in Syria, but authorities denied his request and ordered him back to jail.


title: Al Jazeera controversies and criticism

text: After pleading not guilty, Allouni was sentenced on 26 September 2005 to seven years in prison for being a financial courier for al-Qaeda. Allouni insisted that he merely interviewed Osama bin Laden after the 11 September 2001 attack on the United States. Al Jazeera has supported Allouni, insisting that he is innocent.


title: Al Jazeera controversies and criticism

text: Reporters Without Borders) condemned Allouni's rearrest, and called on the Spanish court to free him. In January 2012, The European Court of Human Rights ruled on 17 January 2012 that the Spanish sentence was illegal, and Allouni was freed in March.


title: Al Jazeera controversies and criticism

text: In May 2019, Sudan closed Al Jazeera's office. Sudan summoned its envoy in Qatar for consultation the following month, saying that the envoy would soon return to Qatar. Qatar was seen as a close ally of ousted Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir.


title: Al Jazeera controversies and criticism

text: Al Jazeera has been criticized for its coverage of the Syrian civil war, largely supporting the rebels and demonizing the Syrian government. The Lebanese newspaper "As-Safir" cited outtakes of interviews in which the channel's staff coached Syrian eyewitnesses and fabricated reports of government oppression and leaked internal emails suggesting that the organization has become a tool of the Qatari emir's foreign policy supporting Syria's rebels and advocating military intervention in the country.


title: Al Jazeera controversies and criticism

text: Ahmad Ibrahim, in charge of Al Jazeera's coverage of Syria, is the brother of a leading member of the rebel Syrian National Council. Al Jazeera reportedly pressured its journalists to use the term "martyr" for slain Syrian rebels, but not pro-government forces.


title: Al Jazeera controversies and criticism

text: A former Al Jazeera news editor from Syria who had worked at the organization for "nearly a decade" was fired without cause in January 2013. In an interview, they said that it was linked to their resistance to pressure to provide biased coverage of the civil war. The According to the editor, the Muslim Brotherhood was "controlling the Syrian file at Al-Jazeera"; both organizations slanted news coverage in favor of the Brotherhood ousting the Syrian government by force, and warned the then-editor that "the majority [in Syria] is with the Muslim Brotherhood and [taking power] is within our grasp ... thank your god if you get a pardon when we become the government." The source named several other employees who resigned in protest, including Berlin bureau director Aktham Sleiman (a Syrian "who was, in the beginning, with the [Syrian] opposition" but resisted what the editor called the "lies and despicable [political and ethnic] sectarianism"). "Al-Jazeera has lied and is still lying" about Syria, favoring armed insurrection and the Muslim Brotherhood.


title: Al Jazeera controversies and criticism

text: In midst the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021, Al Jazeera retracted an article which accused Tunisia of "internalised Islamophobia" for closing the country’s mosques to prevent the spread of the coronavirus disease 2019.


title: Al Jazeera controversies and criticism

text: During the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, "Al Jazeera English" said of the Ukrainian refugees that "These are not, obviously, refugees trying to get away from areas in the Middle East that are still in a big state of war" and that "They look like any European family that you would live next door to." The network later issued an apology for these remarks, calling them "insensitive and irresponsible".


title: Al Jazeera controversies and criticism

text: In 2015, Al Jazeera was condemned by UAE Minister of Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash for twisting a statement by UAE Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan about the Russian Sukhoi Su-24 downed by Turkey. During a press conference with a Russian official in Abu Dhabi, Al Nahyan said that the UAE "offers its deepest condolences to our Russian friends on the incident of the military plane that crashed recently in Syria" and called the crash of a Russian civilian plane in Egypt "a terrorist act." Al Jazeera reported that he "describes the Turkish shooting of the Russian fight jet a terrorist act," which Gargash said ignored the fact that he was referring to the Russian passenger plane which crashed in Egypt. The Al Jazeera statement was reported more than once, and was tweeted by the channel on its main Twitter account. According to Gargash, "The way Al Jazeera channel has dealt with the statement of Shaikh Abdullah Bin Zayed was not a professional blunder; It was part of a smear campaign [by the media] against the UAE."


title: Al Jazeera controversies and criticism

text: The UAE blocked Al Jazeera in the emirates on 5 June 2017 (after the onset of the Qatar diplomatic crisis) because the organization was a state-endowed entity of the Qatari government and Qatar is "a major sponsor of hate speech through Al Jazeera’s Arabic-language network and its other state-controlled media entities." In the International Court of Justice case filed by Qatar against the United Arab Emirates about the elimination of all forms of racial discrimination ("Qatar v. United Arab Emirates"), Qatar requested that the court order the UAE to suspend its block of Al Jazeera. The court ruled, "both parties shall refrain from any action which might aggravate or extend the dispute


title: Al Jazeera controversies and criticism

text: In June 2017, hacked emails from UAE ambassador to the US Yousef Al Otaiba were reported as "embarrassing" by HuffPost because they indicated links between the UAE and the US-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies. According to a number of observers, the extensive media coverage of the alleged email hack was seen as exacerbatiing the Qatar diplomatic crisis and orchestrated by Qatar.


title: Al Jazeera controversies and criticism

text: After the 2017 Qatar diplomatic crisis and in 2018, Al Jazeera reported apparent new details about a 1996 Qatari coup d'état attempt which accused the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Egypt of plotting to overthrow Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani. According to the organization, former French National Gendarmerie commander Paul Barril was contracted and supplied with weapons by the UAE to carry out the coup in Qatar. UAE Minister of Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash said that Barril was a security guard for Qatari emir Khalifa bin Hamad Al Thani during the emir's visit to Abu Dhabi; had no connection to the UAE, and the report was an attempt to involve the UAE in the coup attempt.


title: Al Jazeera controversies and criticism

text: In 2019, Al Jazeera Arabic tweeted that a photograph of a Buddhist sculpture in Abu Dhabi which was part of a Louvre Abu Dhabi cultural initiative led to "commentators saying there is a return of idol worship to the Arabian Peninsula." "The National" called the insinuation that the sculpture contradicted Islam fake news.


title: Al Jazeera controversies and criticism

text: UK officials, like their US counterparts, protested against Al Jazeera's coverage of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. According to the organization, coalition leaders objected because its reporting made it more difficult for both countries to manage the reporting of the war.


title: Al Jazeera controversies and criticism

text: Several pro-Israel British activists and a former Israeli embassy employee filed complaints with UK media regulator Ofcom in 2017 that "The Lobby", an Al Jazeera four-part documentary series, was antisemitic. The complaints also accused the organization of bias, unfair editing, and infringement of privacy, because "The Lobby" used hidden cameras and undercover journalism to investigate alleged efforts by Israeli diplomats and UK pro-Israel advocacy groups to influence British foreign policy to favor Israel. On 9 October 2017, Ofcom issued a 60-page ruling rejecting the complaints which was welcomed by an Al Jazeera source as vindicating the organization's journalism.


title: Al Jazeera controversies and criticism

text: Since the September 11 attacks, US officials have accused Al Jazeera's news coverage of anti-American bias. The organization first received widespread attention in the West after 9/11, when it broadcast videos in which Osama bin Laden and Sulaiman Abu Ghaith defended the attacks. This led to accusations by the United States government that Al Jazeera was broadcasting propaganda on behalf of terrorists. The organization countered that it was making information available without comment, and several Western television channels later broadcast portions of the tapes. At a 3 October 2001 press conference, Colin Powell tried to persuade the emir of Qatar to close Al Jazeera.


title: Al Jazeera controversies and criticism

text: On 13 November 2001, during the war in Afghanistan, a US missile destroyed Al Jazeera's office in Kabul. There were no casualties.


title: Al Jazeera controversies and criticism

text: When Al Jazeera reported events with graphic footage from inside Iraq, the organization was described as anti-American and inciting violence because it reported on issues of national security. In 2003, Washington bureau chief Hafez al-Mirazi resigned to protest the organization's "Islamist drift."


title: Al Jazeera controversies and criticism

text: On 24 March 2003, two Al Jazeera reporters covering the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) had their credentials revoked. The NYSE banned Al Jazeera and several other undisclosed news organizations from its trading floor indefinitely. According to NYSE spokesman Ray Pellechia, the ban was for "security reasons" and the exchange had decided to allow access only to networks focusing "on responsible business coverage". Pellechia denied that the revocation of credentials was connected to Al Jazeera's Iraq War coverage. However, NYSE executive vice president for communications Robert Zito indicated that Al Jazeera's 22 March 2003 broadcast of US POWs and dead American soldiers led him to ban the organization. The move was quickly mirrored by NASDAQ stock-market officials. The NYSE ban was lifted several months later. Akamai Technologies, a US company whose founder was killed in the 11 September World Trade Center attacks, canceled a contract to provide web services for Al Jazeera's English-language website.


title: Al Jazeera controversies and criticism

text: On 12 October 2008, Al Jazeera broadcast interviews with attendees of a Sarah Palin rally in St. Clairsville, Ohio. The interviewees made racist remarks about Barack Obama, such as "he regards white people as trash" and "I'm afraid if he wins, the blacks will take over". The report received over 2 million views on YouTube and, according to Colin Powell, "Those kind of images going out on Al Jazeera are killing us." "The Washington Post" then ran an op-ed saying that Al Jazeera was deliberately encouraging "anti-American sentiment overseas". The organization called the column "a gratuitous and uninformed shot at Al Jazeera's motives", and its report was only one of "hundreds of hours of diverse coverage."


title: Al Jazeera controversies and criticism

text: Al Jazeera has reportedly censored criticism of the United States in response to US pressure. Al Jazeera English director Wadah Khanfar resigned in September 2011 after WikiLeaks documents asserted that he had close ties to the US and agreed to remove content if Washington objected.


title: Al Jazeera controversies and criticism

text: In 2014, Al Jazeera retracted an article which claimed that the murders of two US journalists (James Foley and Steven Sotloff) by Islamic State were staged by the US as an excuse for attacking ISIS.


title: Al Jazeera controversies and criticism

text: On 28 April 2015, Al Jazeera America supervisor of media and archive management Matthew Luke filed a US$15 million lawsuit against the organization for unfair dismissal. Luke alleged that he had been unfairly dismissed after he had raised concerns with Al Jazeera's human-resource division that senior vice-president of broadcast operations and technology Osman Mahmud (his boss) discriminated against female employees and made antisemitic remarks. Al Jazeera America head Ehab Al Shihabi announced that the organization would contest the lawsuit in court. Mahmud denied Luke's charges, calling him a difficult employee. In an unrelated development, two female Al Jazeera America employees (executive vice-president for human resources Diana Lee and executive vice-president for communications Dawn Bridges) had resigned that week. On 4 May, senior Al Jazeera America executive and former CBS news anchor Marcy McGinnis resigned from the organization for undisclosed reasons. The following day, Al Jazeera Media Network demoted Al Shihabi from CEO to chief operations officer (COO) of Al Jazeera America after "The New York Times" reported that he had attempted to fire and sue popular host Ali Velshi. Shihabi was replaced by former Al Jazeera English managing director Al Anstey. Anstey announced on 13 January 2016 that Al Jazeera America would cease operations in April; the "decision by Al Jazeera America’s board is driven by the fact that our business model is simply not sustainable in light of the economic challenges in the U.S. media marketplace".


title: Al Jazeera controversies and criticism

text: Al Jazeera's Baghdad office was hit by a missile fired by an American ground-attack aircraft on 8 April 2003, killing reporter Tareq Ayyoub and wounding another person. Al Jazeera reported that it had mailed the coordinates of its office to the US State Department six weeks earlier. Dima Tareq Tahboub, Ayyoub's widow, denounced her husband's death; she has written for "The Guardian" and participated in an Al Jazeera English documentary. "The New York Times" reported on 30 January 2005 that the Qatari government, under pressure from the Bush administration, was planning to sell Al Jazeera.


title: Al Jazeera controversies and criticism

text: Shireen Abu Akleh was associated with Al Jazeera since 2000, the beginning of second Palestinian Intifada. In May 2022, she was in West Bank to cover the Israeli raids in Jenin. On 11 May, Abu Akleh was shot in the head during crossfire between Israeli forces and Palestinian militants. The Israeli military has admitted that there is a high probability of taking the shot "by mistake". She was taken to the hospital in a critical condition and was shortly pronounced dead. Al Jazeera claimed that it was a deliberate act of targeting and killing their journalist by the Israeli forces. Israeli Defence Forces said the firing was from two sides, Israeli forces and Palestinian suspects of “terrorist activities”. They also said that it was being investigated if Abu Akleh was possibly hit by Palestinian gunfire. However, Al Jazeera disagreed saying there was no shooting by Palestinian gunmen.


title: Al Jazeera controversies and criticism

text: The UK tabloid "Daily Mirror" reported on 22 November 2005 that it had obtained a leaked memo from 10 Downing Street that US President George W. Bush had considered bombing Al Jazeera's Doha headquarters in April 2004, when United States Marines were conducting a contentious assault on Fallujah.


title: Al Jazeera controversies and criticism

text: Oren Kessler accused Al Jazeera of defending Omar Abdel-Rahman for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Arabs and Westerners received differing messages from news organizations in the Gulf states. Al Jazeera reportedly praised Abdel-Rahman, saying that he "defended human rights" and "rejected tyranny".


title: Al Jazeera controversies and criticism

text: Al Jazeera cameraman Sami al-Hajj, a Sudanese national, was detained en route to Afghanistan in December 2001 and held without charge as an enemy combatant in Camp Delta of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp until May 2008. The reasons for his detention remain unknown, although the official US position on all detainees is that they are security threats. Reporters Without Borders repeatedly expressed concern about al-Hajj's detention, mentioning him in its annual Press Freedom Index and circulating a petition for his release.


title: Al Jazeera controversies and criticism

text: Clive Stafford Smith, al-Hajj's lawyer, reported on 23 November 2005 that US officials had asked his client in 125 of 130 interviews if Al Jazeera was a front for al-Qaeda. After his release, al-Hajj expressed plans to sue US President George W. Bush for his treatment at Guantanamo. According to Stafford Smith, his accusations include beatings and sexual assault.


title: Al Jazeera controversies and criticism

text: Al-Hajj was released on 1 May 2008 from Guantanamo Bay and flown to Sudan, arriving in Khartoum on a US military plane early on 2 May. Al Jazeera broadcast video in which he was carried into a hospital on a stretcher, looking frail but smiling and surrounded by well-wishers.


title: Al Jazeera controversies and criticism

text: Al Jazeera English and Al Jazeera America broadcast "", an episode of "Al Jazeera Investigates" examining professional athletes' possible use of performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs), on 27 December 2015. Peyton Manning and other prominent athletes were identified as having received drugs from Charles Sly, a pharmacist who had worked at the Guyer Anti-Aging Clinic in Indianapolis in the fall of 2011.


title: Al Jazeera controversies and criticism

text: "The Huffington Post" leaked the episode a day before Al Jazeera's broadcast. In a "Sunday NFL Countdown" interview with ESPN's Lisa Salters on the morning of 27 December, Manning called the documentary "completely fabricated" and "garbage" and expressed anger about his wife was mentioned. When Salters noted that other athletes had first denied and then admitted allegations, Manning said that he could not speak for others. He said that he had visited the Guyer clinic 35 times in 2011 and received medication and treatment.


title: Al Jazeera controversies and criticism

text: Sly recanted his story and requested that the report not be aired via a YouTube video. Although Sly later said that he had never seen the Mannings and told ESPN's Chris Mortensen that he is not a pharmacist and was not at the Guyer institute in 2011 (as Al Jazeera reported), state licensing records indicate that a Charles David Sly was licensed as a pharmacy intern in Indiana from April 2010 to 1 May 2013.


title: Al Jazeera controversies and criticism

text: Manning hired former George W. Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer to manage the issue, and threatened to sue Al Jazeera. On 5 January 2016, it was announced that Ryan Howard and Ryan Zimmerman were suing Al Jazeera for defamation after the documentary aired. In January 2021 attorneys for Al Jazeera Media presented sealed evidence in court, which they said supported their original report.


title: Al Jazeera controversies and criticism

text: Journalist Armin Rosen of the American Jewish magazine "Tablet" published an article on 20 January 2017 saying that pro-Palestinian filmmaker and undercover Al Jazeera reporter James Anthony Kleinfeld had infiltrated several pro-Israel advocacy organizations in Washington, D.C., including StandWithUs, the Israel Project, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, the Israel on Campus Coalition, and the Zionist Organization of America's (ZOA) Fuel For Truth. According to the article, Kleinfeld had also infiltrated pro-Israel organizations and circles in the United Kingdom (the subject of an Al Jazeera documentary that month). As an undercover journalist, Kleinfield had reportedly obtained work at several pro-Israel organizations, interviewed dozens of Jewish pro-Israel activists, had access to donors, hosted Israeli embassy officials at his home, and filmed dozens of hours of video. Kleinfield left Washington suddenly in January 2017, around the time that Al Jazeera broadcast "The Lobby": a four-part documentary series which used undercover journalism to infiltrate several pro-Israel advocacy groups in the United Kingdom.


title: Al Jazeera controversies and criticism

text: On 11 October 2017, Al Jazeera admitted that it had installed an undercover journalist in several Washington-based pro-Israel organizations the previous year and was planning to air a documentary film based on the reporter's work. The announcement followed a ruling by the British media regulator Ofcom which rejected complaints about "The Lobby"; the documentary led to the resignation of an Israeli diplomat and sparked accusations of antisemitism from UK pro-Israel advocacy groups and representatives of the Jewish community. Clayton Swisher, Al Jazeera's director of investigative reporting, acknowledged that the network had stationed an undercover journalist in the UK and the US at the same time.


title: Al Jazeera controversies and criticism

text: On 8 February 2018, it was reported that Qatari leaders had reassured the leaders of American Jewish organizations that Al Jazeera would not air its companion documentary series on the Israel lobby in the United States. According to "Haaretz", the Qatari government had hired Republican Senator Ted Cruz's former aide Nicolas Muzin to open communications channels with Jewish American organizations. Al Jazeera had earlier sent letters to several American pro-Israel organizations informing them that their employees would appear in the documentary. The letters generated speculation that the Qatari government had reneged on its promise to prevent Al Jazeera from screening the documentary, which (like the British series) had used clandestine footage and recordings of pro-Israel activists.


title: Al Jazeera controversies and criticism

text: Al Jazeera's decision not to screen the documentary was criticized by Swisher, who defended the investigation unit's use of undercover journalism, accused the organization of bowing to outside pressure, and took a sabbatical to express his displeasure. In March, a bipartisan group of US lawmakers which included Democratic Congressman Josh Gottheimer, Republican Congressman Lee Zeldin, and Ted Cruz wrote a letter urging United States Attorney General Jeff Sessions to investigate whether Al Jazeera should register as a foreign agent under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. They also urged the Justice Department to investigate reports that the organization had infiltrated nonprofit organizations and accused Al Jazeera of broadcasting "anti-American, anti-Semitic, and anti-Israel" content.


title: Al Jazeera controversies and criticism

text: The Zionist Organization of America said on 10 April 2018 that Morton Klein, its president, lobbied the Qatari government not to screen the companion documentary series focusing on the American pro-Israel lobby. Portions of the series were leaked in late August and early September by several outlets, including the Electronic Intifada. The Electronic Intifada, French media outlet Orient XXI and Lebanon's "Al Akhbar" newspaper released the four episodes of "The Lobby—USA" in early November.


title: Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program

text: The Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program, more commonly known as CARP, is an agrarian reform law of the Philippines whose legal basis is the Republic Act No. 6657, otherwise known as the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law (CARL). It is the redistribution of private and public agricultural lands to help the beneficiaries survive as small independent farmers, regardless of the “tenurial” arrangement. Its goals are to provide landowners equality in terms of income and opportunities, empower land owner beneficiaries to have equitable land ownership, enhance agricultural production and productivity, provide employment to more agricultural workers, and put an end to conflicts regarding land ownership.


title: Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program

text: The agrarian reform is part of the long history of attempts of land reform in the Philippines. The law was outlined by former President Corazon C. Aquino through Presidential Proclamation 131 and Executive Order 229 on June 22, 1987, and it was enacted by the 8th Congress of the Philippines and signed by Aquino on June 10, 1988. In 1998, which was the year that it was scheduled to be completed, the Congress enacted Republic Act No. 8532 to allocate additional funds for the program and extending the automatic appropriation of ill-gotten wealth recovered by the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) for CARP until the year 2008.


title: Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program

text: An amendatory law, CARPER or the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program Extension with Reforms or the Republic Act. 9700 was passed. It extended the deadline of distributing agricultural lands to the farmers for an additional five years. This law also amends other provisions and regulations formerly stated in the CARP. It was signed into law on August 7, 2009, and was set to be accomplished by the year 2014.


title: Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program

text: The implementation of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program relies heavily on the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR). As the lead implementing agency, the DAR has the responsibility in carrying out the principal aspects of the program, which are Land Tenure Improvement (LTI), Program Beneficiary Development (PBD), and the Agrarian Justice Delivery (AJD).


title: Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program

text: The Land Tenure Improvement is highly recognized as the most integral aspect of the program. This component seeks to secure the tenurial status of the farmers and farmworkers. The DAR implements this component through Land Acquisition and Distribution (LAD) or Non-land Transfer Schemes.


title: Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program

text: The Land Acquisition and Distribution involves the redistribution of private and government-owned land to landless farmers and farm workers. Under Section 6 of RA 9700 ( Section 16 of RA 6657 as amended) regarding Land Acquisition, the DAR identifies lands that are eligible for distribution under the CARP with accordance to the law, acquires the land by delivering a notice containing the offer with its corresponding value to the owner should he choose to accept the payment. Following the acquisition of lands under Section 11 of RA 9700(Section 26 of RA 6657 as amended) the DAR distributes these to the qualified beneficiaries, who then pay for the land through the Land Bank of the Philippines or directly to their former owners.


title: Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program

text: Under the CARP, a total target of 10.3 million hectares of land was programmed to be distributed over a span of ten years. Out of the total land, 6.5 million hectares of public disposal lands and Integrated Social Forestry areas are to be distributed by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) while 3.8 million hectares of private agricultural lands are to be distributed by the DAR. From July 1987 to June 1992, the DAR was able to distribute 1.77 million hectares benefiting .933 million beneficiaries, while the DENR has distributed 1.88 million hectares to .760 million farmers.


title: Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program

text: Leasehold Operations is the alternative non-land transfer scheme that covers all tenanted agricultural lands in retained areas and in yet to be acquired or distributed lands. Under this component, the DAR mediates between the landowners and tenants so that their share tenancy arrangement could be turned into a leasehold agreement, whereby the beneficiaries will pay a fixed fee based on their own historical production records instead of paying a large percentage share of their produce to the landowner.


title: Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program

text: The Program Beneficiaries Development is a support service delivery component of CARP. It aims to aid the agrarian reform beneficiaries by providing them necessary support services to make their lands more productive, and enable them to venture in income generating livelihood projects in accordance to Section 14 of RA 9700(Section 37 of RA 6657 as amended) . Under the support service delivery programs, the Presidential Agrarian Reform Council(PARC) ensures that agrarian reform beneficiaries are provided with support services such as land surveys and tilting, construction of infrastructures, marketing and production assistance, credit and training.


title: Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program

text: Agrarian Justice Delivery provides agrarian legal assistance and oversees the adjudication of cases. Under Section 19 of RA 97600 (Section 50 of RA 6657 as amended), the DAR is hereby vested with the primary jurisdiction to determine and adjudicate agrarian reform matters and shall have exclusive original jurisdiction over all matters involving the implementation of agrarian reform except those falling under the exclusive jurisdiction of the Department of Agriculture (DA) and the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR).


title: Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program

text: The Agrarian Legal Assistance is under the Bureau of Legal Assistance (BALA). The BALA provides legal assistance to the beneficiaries affected by agrarian cases, particularly those whose legal rights as ARB's are challenged by landowners.


title: Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program

text: The Adjudication of Cases involves the adjudication of cases by the Department of Agrarian Reform Adjudication Board (DARAB). The adjudication of cases deals with disputes pertaining to tenancy relations; valuation of lands acquired by DAR under compulsory acquisition mode; rights and obligations of persons, whether natural or juridical, engaged in the management cultivation and use of all agricultural lands; ejectment and dispossession of tenants/leaseholders; review of leasehold rentals; and other similar disputes.


title: Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program

text: At the end of the 20th century, the population of the Philippines increased rapidly to 75.32 million in a country of 297,410 square kilometers, with an average family size of six, making the Philippines known for high population density. In addition to this, with a population growth of 2.02 per year, the Philippine population is expected to double in the span of 25 years. 60 percent of the Philippine population is rural, and over 12 million Filipinos make a living directly from agricultural cultivation. Around 9.5 million hectares of land across the Philippines are used to plan various crops. In terms of landlessness, the number of landless agricultural families rose up from 5 million to 11.32 million families. Out of these 11.32 families, 4.6 million make a living from lands they don't own. 0.70 million are rented, 2 million are laborers, while 1.9 million are farming as tenants.


title: Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program

text: During the start of President Corazon Aquino's term in 1986, the Constitutional Commission approved Section 21 under Article II, which states that “The State shall promote comprehensive rural development and agrarian reform.” This led to the drafting of CARP, which took the Congress a year to make. On June 10, 1988, Republic Act No. 6657, also known as the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law (CARL), was passed to promote social justice and industrialization. Although it was still a product of adherence to democratic principles, this law was found to have many flaws. Because of much dissatisfaction with the agrarian reform law, proposals from peasant groups and non-government organizations grew in order to implement an alternative program that was more advantageous to them. However, this did not succeed.


title: Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program

text: CARP recognizes not only farmers but all landless workers as beneficiaries with the condition that they cultivate the land. The two main departments in charge of this program are Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) and Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR). Aside from the land distribution, it also provides the delivery of support services and security to the farmers.


title: Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program

text: Under the Aquino administration, a total of 898,420 landless tenants and farmers became recipients of land titles and support services. Even with this, it can be considered unsuccessful because it only accomplished 22.5 percent of land distribution in 6 years. This was due to the fact that Aquino assigned 4 different DAR secretaries. The major setback for CARP was Aquino's Hacienda Luisita's Stock Distribution Option, which says that she was the first landlord to evade CARP on a grand scale.