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 first worked at Fitel, a fintech telecommunications start-up, where he was tasked with building a network for international trade. <mask> was promoted to head of development and director of customer service thereafter. He transitioned into the banking industry when he became a product manager at Bankers Trust. He worked there from 1988 to 1990. He then joined D. E. Shaw & Co, a newly founded hedge fund with a strong emphasis on mathematical modelling in 1990 and worked there until 1994.<mask> became D. E. Shaw's fourth senior vice-president at age 30. Amazon

In late 1993, <mask> decided to establish an online bookstore. He left his job at D. E. Shaw and founded Amazon in his garage on July 5, 1994, after writing its business plan on a cross-country drive from New York City to Seattle. Prior to settling on Seattle, <mask> had investigated setting up his company at an Indian reservation near San Francisco in order to avoid paying taxes. <mask> initially named his new company Cadabra but later changed the name to Amazon after the Amazon River in South America, in part because the name begins with the letter A, which is at the beginning of the alphabet. At the time, website listings were alphabetized, so a name starting with "A" would appear sooner when customers conducted online searches. In addition, he regarded "Amazon," the name of the world's largest river as fitting for what he hoped would become the world's largest online bookstore.He accepted an estimated $300,000 from his parents and invested in Amazon. He warned many early investors that there was a 70% chance that Amazon would fail or go bankrupt. Although Amazon was originally an online bookstore, <mask> had always planned to expand to other products. Three years

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texts: after <mask> founded Amazon, he took it public with an initial public offering (IPO). In response to critical reports from Fortune and Barron's, <mask> maintained that the growth of the Internet would overtake competition from larger book retailers such as Borders and Barnes & Noble. In 1998, Bezos diversified into the online sale of music and video, and by the end of the year he had expanded the company's products to include a variety of other consumer goods. Bezos used the $54 million raised during the company's 1997 equity offering to finance aggressive acquisition of smaller competitors.In 2000, Bezos borrowed $2 billion from banks, as its cash balances dipped to only $350 million. In 2002, Bezos led Amazon to launch Amazon Web Services, which compiled data from weather channels and website traffic. In late 2002, rapid spending from Amazon caused it financial distress when revenues stagnated. After the company nearly went bankrupt, he closed distribution centers and laid off 14% of the Amazon workforce. In 2003, Amazon rebounded from financial instability and turned a profit of $400 million. In November 2007, Bezos launched the Amazon Kindle. According to a 2008 Time profile, Bezos wished to create a device that allowed a "flow state" in reading similar to the experience of video games.In 2013, <mask> secured a $600-million contract with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) on behalf of Amazon Web Services. In October of that year, Amazon was recognized as the largest online shopping retailer in the world. In May 2016, <mask> sold slightly more than one million shares of his holdings in the company for $671 million, the largest sum he had ever raised from selling some of his Amazon stock. On August 4, 2016, <mask> sold

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texts: another million of his shares for $756.7 million. A year later, <mask> took on 130,000 new employees when he ramped up hiring at company distribution centers. By January 19, 2018, his Amazon stock holdings had appreciated to slightly over $109 billion; months later he began to sell stock to raise cash for other enterprises, in particular, Blue Origin. On January 29, 2018, he was featured in Amazon's Super Bowl commercial.On February 1, 2018, Amazon reported its highest ever profit with quarterly earnings of $2 billion. Due to the growth of Alibaba in China, Bezos has often expressed interest in expanding Amazon into India. On July 27, 2017, Bezos momentarily became the world's wealthiest person over Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates when his estimated net worth increased to just over $90 billion. His wealth surpassed $100 billion for the first time on November 24, 2017, and he was formally designated the wealthiest person in the world by Forbes on March 6, 2018, with a net worth of $112 billion. In March 2018, Bezos dispatched Amit Agarwal, Amazon's global senior vice president, to India with $5.5 billion to localize operations throughout the company's supply chain routes. Later in the month, U.S. President Donald Trump accused Amazon and Bezos, specifically of sales tax avoidance, misusing postal routes, and anti-competitive business practices. Amazon's share price fell by 9% in response to the President's negative comments; this reduced Bezos's personal wealth by $10.7 billion.Weeks later, <mask> recouped his losses when academic reports out of Stanford University indicated that Trump could do little to regulate Amazon in any meaningful way. During July 2018, a number of members of the U.S. Congress called on Bezos to detail

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texts: the applications of Amazon's face recognition software, Rekognition. Criticism of Amazon's business practices continued in September 2018 when Senator Bernie Sanders introduced the Stop Bad Employers by Zeroing Out Subsidies (Stop BEZOS) Act and accused Amazon of receiving corporate welfare. This followed revelations by the non-profit group New Food Economy which found that one third of Amazon workers in Arizona, and one tenth of Amazon workers in Pennsylvania and Ohio, relied on food stamps. While preparing to introduce the bill, Sanders opined: "Instead of attempting to explore Mars or go to the moon, how about <mask> pays his workers a living wage?" He later said: "Bezos could play a profound role. If he said today, nobody who is employed at Amazon will receive less than a living wage, it would send a message to every corporation in America."Sanders's efforts elicited a response from Amazon which pointed to the 130,000 jobs it created in 2017 and called the $28,446 figure for its median salary "misleading" as it included part-time workers. However, Sanders countered that the companies targeted by his proposal have placed an increased focus on part-time workers to escape benefit obligations. On October 2, 2018, Bezos announced a company-wide wage increase, which Sanders applauded. The American workers who were being paid the minimum wage had this increased to $15 per hour, a decision that was interpreted as support for the Fight for $15 movement. In February 2021, <mask> announced that in the third quarter of 2021 he would step down from his role as CEO of Amazon, to become the Executive Chairman of the Amazon Board. He will be replaced as CEO by Andy Jassy. On February 2, 2021, Bezos sent an email to all Amazon employees,

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 telling them the transition would give him "the time and energy [he] need[s] to focus on the Day 1 Fund, the Bezos Earth Fund, Blue Origin, The Washington Post, and [his] other passions."In his final letter to Amazon shareholders, Bezos quoted geneticist Richard Dawkins: "Staving off death is a thing that you have to work at... If living things don't actively work to prevent it, they would eventually merge with their surroundings and cease to exist as autonomous beings. That is what happens when they die." Blue Origin

In September 2000, <mask> founded Blue Origin, a human spaceflight startup. <mask> has long expressed an interest in space travel and the development of human life in the Solar System. He was the valedictorian when he graduated from high school in 1982. His speech was followed up with a Miami Herald interview in which he expressed an interest to build and develop hotels, amusement parks, and colonies for human beings who were in orbit.The 18-year-old <mask> stated that he wanted to preserve Earth from overuse through resource depletion. Rob Meyerson led Blue Origin from 2003 to 2017 and served as its first president. After its founding, Blue Origin maintained a low profile until 2006 when it purchased a large tract of land in West Texas for a launch and test facility. After the company gained the public's attention during the late 2000s, <mask> additionally indicated his interest in reducing the cost of space travel for humans while also increasing the safety of extraterrestrial travel. In September 2011, one of the company's unmanned prototype vehicles crashed during a short-hop test flight. Although the crash was viewed as a setback, news outlets noted how far the company went from its founding-to-date in

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texts: advancing spaceflight. After the crash, <mask> has been superstitiously wearing his "lucky" Texas Cowboy boots to all rocket launches.In May 2013, <mask> met with Richard Branson, chairman of Virgin Galactic, to discuss commercial spaceflight opportunities and strategies. He has been compared to Branson and Elon Musk as all three are billionaires who prioritize spaceflight among their business interests. In 2015, <mask> announced that a new orbital launch vehicle was under development and would make its first flight in the late-2010s. Later in November, Blue Origin's New Shepard space vehicle successfully rocketed into space and reached its planned test altitude of 329,839 feet (100.5 kilometers) before executing a vertical landing back at the launch site in West Texas. In 2016, Bezos allowed select journalists to visit, tour, and photograph his facility. He has repeatedly called for increased inter-space energy and industrial manufacturing to decrease the negative costs associated with business-related pollution. In December 2017, New Shepard successfully flew and landed dummy passengers, amending and pushing its human space travel start date into late 2018.To execute this program, Blue Origin built six of the vehicles to support all phases of testing and operations: no-passenger test flights, flights with test passengers, and commercial-passenger weekly operations. Since 2016, <mask> has spoken more freely about his hopes to colonize the solar system, and has been selling US$1 billion in Amazon stock each year to capitalize Blue Origin in an effort to support this endeavor. In May 2018, <mask> maintained that the primary goal of Blue Origin is to preserve the natural resources of Earth by making the human species


texts:
 multi-planetary. He announced that New Shepard would begin transporting humans into sub-orbital space by November 2018. In July 2018, it was announced that <mask> had priced commercial spaceflight tickets from $200,000 to $300,000 per person. On July 20, 2021, he launched on the NS-16 mission with his brother Mark Bezos, Wally Funk, and Oliver Daemen. He launched nine days after Richard Branson launched onboard The Virgin Galactic Unity 22 mission.The Washington Post

On August 5, 2013, <mask> announced his purchase of The Washington Post for $250 million in cash, at the suggestion of his friend, Don Graham. To execute the sale, he established limited liability company Nash Holdings to serve as a holding company through which he would own the newspaper. The sale closed on October 1, 2013, and Nash Holdings took control. In March 2014, <mask> made his first significant change at The Washington Post and lifted the online paywall for subscribers of a number of U.S. local newspapers in Texas, Hawaii, and Minnesota. In January 2016, <mask> set out to reinvent the newspaper as a media and technology company by reconstructing its digital media, mobile platforms, and analytics software. Throughout the early years of ownership, <mask> was accused of having a potential conflict of interest with the paper. <mask> and the newspaper's editorial board have dismissed accusations that he unfairly controlled the paper's content and Bezos maintains the paper's independence.After a surge in online readership in 2016, the paper was profitable for the first time since Bezos made the purchase in 2013. Bezos Expeditions

Bezos makes personal investments through his venture capital vehicle, Bezos Expeditions. He was one of the first shareholders


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 in Google, when he invested $250,000 in 1998. That $250,000 investment resulted in 3.3 million shares of Google stock, worth about $3.1 billion in 2017. He also invested in Unity Biotechnology, a life-extension research firm hoping to slow or stop the process of aging. Bezos is involved in the healthcare sector, which includes investments in Unity Biotechnology, GRAIL, Juno Therapeutics, and Zocdoc. In January 2018, an announcement was made concerning Bezos's role within a new, unnamed healthcare company.This venture, later named Haven, is expected to be a partnership between Amazon, JPMorgan, and Berkshire Hathaway. Bezos also supports philanthropic efforts through direct donations and non-profit projects funded by Bezos Expeditions. Bezos used Bezos Expeditions to fund several philanthropic projects, including an Innovation center at the Seattle Museum of History and Industry and the Bezos Center for Neural Circuit Dynamics at Princeton Neuroscience Institute. In 2013, Bezos Expeditions funded the recovery of two Saturn V first-stage Rocketdyne F-1 engines from the floor of the Atlantic Ocean. They were positively identified as belonging to the Apollo 11 mission's S-1C stage from July 1969. The engines are currently on display at the Seattle Museum of Flight. Altos Labs

In September 2021, Bezos co-founded Altos Labs with Mail.ru founder Yuri Milner.Altos Labs is a generously funded biotechnology company dedicated to harnessing cellular reprogramming to develop longevity therapeutics. The company has recruited prominent scientists such as Juan Carlos Izpisúa Belmonte (known for work on rejuvenation through reprogramming), Steve Horvath (known for work in epigenetic aging clocks), and Shinya Yamanaka (the Nobel


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 Prize-winning inventor of cellular reprogramming in mammalian cells). The company left stealth mode and launched on January 19, 2022, with a start capital of $3 billion and an executive team led by Hal Barron. Public image

Journalist Nellie Bowles of The New York Times has described the public persona and personality of Bezos as that of "a brilliant but mysterious and coldblooded corporate titan". During the 1990s, Bezos earned a reputation for relentlessly pushing Amazon forward, often at the expense of public charity and social welfare. Journalist Mark O'Connell criticized Bezos' relentless customer focus as "very small" in terms of impact on humanity as a whole, a sentiment technologist Tim O'Reilly agreed with. His business practices projected a public image of prudence and parsimony with his own wealth and that of Amazon.<mask> was a multi-billionaire who drove a 1996 Honda Accord. Throughout the early 2000s, he was perceived to be geeky or nerdy. Bezos was seen by some as needlessly quantitative and data-driven. This perception was detailed by Alan Deutschman, who described him as "talking in lists" and "[enumerating] the criteria, in order of importance, for every decision he has made." Select accounts of his persona have drawn controversy and public attention. Notably, journalist Brad Stone wrote a book that described Bezos as a demanding boss as well as hyper-competitive, and opined that Bezos perhaps "bet the biggest on the Internet" than anyone else. <mask> has been characterized as a notoriously opportunistic CEO who operates with little concern for obstacles and externalities.During the early 2010s, Bezos solidified his reputation for aggressive business practices, and his public image began to shift. Bezos


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 started to wear tailored clothing; he weight trained, pursued a regimented diet and began to freely spend his money. His physical transformation has been compared to the transformation of Amazon; he is often referred to as the metonym of the company. His physical appearance increased the public's perception of him as a symbolically dominant figure in business and in popular culture, wherein he has been parodied as an enterprising supervillain. Since 2017, he has been portrayed by Kyle Mooney and Steve Carell on Saturday Night Live, usually as an undercutting, domineering figure. In May 2014, the International Trade Union Confederation named Bezos the "World's Worst Boss", with its general secretary Sharan Burrow saying: "<mask>s represents the inhumanity of employers who are promoting the North American corporate model", while in 2019, Harvard Business Review, which ranked Bezos the best-performing CEO for 4 years in a row since 2014, did not rank him even in the top 100 citing Amazon's "relatively low ESG (environment, social, and governance) scores" that reflect "risks created by working conditions and employment policies, data security, and antitrust issues." During the late 2010s, Bezos reversed his reputation for being reluctant to spend money on non-business-related expenses.His relative lack of philanthropy compared to other billionaires has drawn a negative response from the public since 2016. <mask> has been known to publicly contest claims made in critical articles, as exemplified in 2015 when he sent a memo to employees denouncing a New York Times piece. Leadership style
<mask> used what he called a "regret-minimization framework" while he worked at D. E. Shaw and again during the early years of Amazon. He

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texts: described this life philosophy by stating: "When I'm 80, am I going to regret leaving Wall Street? No. Will I regret missing the beginning of the Internet? Yes."During the 1990s and early 2000s at Amazon, he was characterized as trying to quantify all aspects of running the company, often listing employees on spreadsheets and basing executive decisions on data. To push Amazon forward, <mask> developed the mantra "Get Big Fast", establishing the company's need to scale its operations to produce market dominance. He favored diverting Amazon profits back into the company in lieu of allocating it amongst shareholders in the form of dividends. <mask> uses the term "work–life harmony" instead of the more standard "work–life balance" because he believes that balance implies that you can only have one and not the other. He believes that work and home life are interconnected, informing and calibrating each other. Journalist Walt Mossberg dubbed the idea that someone who cannot tolerate criticism or critique shouldn't do anything new or interesting "The Bezos Principle". Bezos does not schedule early morning meetings and enforces a two-pizza rule—a preference that meetings are small enough for two pizzas to feed everyone in the board room.When interviewing candidates for jobs at Amazon he has stated he considers three inquiries: can he admire the person, can the person raise the common standard, and under what circumstances could the person become exemplary. He meets with Amazon investors for a total of only six hours a year. Instead of using presentation slides, Bezos requires high-level employees to present information with six-page narratives. Starting in 1998, Bezos publishes an annual letter for Amazon shareholders wherein he


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 frequently refers to five principles: focus on customers not competitors, take risks for market leadership, facilitate staff morale, build a company culture, and empower people. Bezos maintains the email address jeff@amazon.com as an outlet for customers to reach out to him and the company. Although he does not respond to the emails, he forwards some of them with a question mark in the subject line to executives who attempt to address the issues. Bezos has cited <mask> (of New Enterprise Associates), Warren Buffett (of Berkshire Hathaway), Jamie Dimon (of JPMorgan Chase), and Bob Iger (of Walt Disney) as major influences on his leadership style.<mask> is known for creating an adversarial environment at Amazon, as well as insulting and verbally abusing his employees. As journalist Brad Stone revealed in his book The Everything Store, <mask> issued remarks to his employees such as "I'm sorry, did I take my stupid pills today? ", "Are you lazy or just incompetent? ", and "Why are you ruining my life?". Additionally, <mask> reportedly pitted Amazon teams against each other, and once declined to give Amazon employees city bus passes in order to discourage them from leaving the office. Recognition
 In 1999, <mask> received his first major award when Time named him Person of the Year. In 2008, he was selected by U.S. News & World Report as one of America's best leaders.<mask> was awarded an honorary doctorate in science and technology from Carnegie Mellon University in 2008. In 2011, The Economist gave <mask> and Gregg Zehr an Innovation Award for the Amazon Kindle. In 2012, <mask> was named Businessperson of the Year by Fortune. He is also a member of the Bilderberg Group and attended the 2011 Bilderberg conference in St. Moritz,

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 Switzerland, and the 2013 conference in Watford, Hertfordshire, England. He was a member of the executive committee of The Business Council for 2011 and 2012. 2014–2018, he was ranked the best-performing CEO in the world by Harvard Business Review. He has also figured in Fortunes list of 50 great leaders of the world for three straight years, topping the list in 2015.In September 2016, <mask> received a $250,000 prize for winning the Heinlein Prize for Advances in Space Commercialization, which he donated to the Students for the Exploration and Development of Space. In February 2018, <mask> was elected to the National Academy of Engineering for "leadership and innovation in space exploration, autonomous systems, and building a commercial pathway for human space flight". In March 2018, at the Explorers Club annual dinner, he was awarded the Buzz Aldrin Space Exploration Award in recognition of his work with Blue Origin. He received Germany's 2018 Axel Springer Award for Business Innovation and Social Responsibility. Time magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world on five separate occasions between 2008 and 2018. Wealth

<mask> first became a millionaire in 1997 after raising $54 million through Amazon's initial public offering (IPO). He was first included on the Forbes World's Billionaires list in 1999 with a registered net worth of $10.1 billion.His net worth decreased to $6.1 billion a year later, a 40.5% drop. His wealth plummeted even more the following year, dropping 66.6% to $2.0 billion. He lost $500 million the following year, which brought his net worth down to $1.5 billion. The following year, his net worth increased by 66.66% to $2.5 billion. From 2005 to 2007, he quadrupled his net

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texts: worth to $8.7 billion. After the financial crisis and succeeding economic recession, his net worth would decrease to $6.8 billion—a 17.7% drop. His wealth rose by 85.2% in 2010, leaving him with $12.6 billion.This percentage increase ascended him to the 43rd spot on the ranking from 68th. After a rumor broke out that Amazon was developing a smartphone, <mask>'s net worth rose to $30.5 billion in 2014. A year later, <mask> entered the top ten when he increased his net worth to a total of $50.3 billion. <mask> rose to be the 5th richest person in the world hours before market close; he gained $7 billion in one hour. By the time the Forbes list was calculated in March 2016, his net worth was registered at $45.2 billion. However, just months later in October 2016, his wealth increased by $16.2 billion to $66.5 billion, unofficially ranking him the third richest person in the world behind Warren Buffett. After sporadic jumps in Amazon's share price, in July 2017 he briefly unseated Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates as the wealthiest person in the world.<mask> would continue to sporadically surpass Gates throughout the month of October 2017 after Amazon's share price fluctuated. His net worth surpassed $100 billion for the first time on November 24, 2017, after Amazon's share price increased by more than 2.5%. When the 2017 list was issued, Bezos's net worth was registered at $72.8 billion, adding $27.6 billion from the previous year. <mask> was officially ranked as the third wealthiest person in the world up from the 5th spot in 2016. His wealth's rapid growth from 2016 to 2017 sparked a variety of assessments about how much money Bezos earned on a controlled, reduced time scale. On October 10, 2017, he made an estimated


texts: $6.24 billion in 5 minutes, slightly less than the annual gross domestic product of Kyrgyzstan. On March 6, 2018, <mask> was designated the wealthiest person in the world with a registered net worth of $112 billion.He unseated Bill Gates ($90 billion) who was $6 billion ahead of Warren Buffett ($84 billion), ranked third. He is considered the first registered centi-billionaire (not adjusted for inflation). His wealth, in 2017–18 terms, equaled that of 2.7 million Americans. Bezos's net worth increased by $33.6 billion from January 2017 to January 2018. This increase outstripped the economic development (in GDP terms) of more than 96 countries around the world. During March 9, Bezos earned $230,000 every 60 seconds. The Motley Fool estimated that if Bezos had not sold any of his shares from its original public offering in 1997, his net worth would sit at $181 billion in 2018.According to Quartz, his net worth of $150 billion in July 2018 was enough to purchase the entire stock markets of Nigeria, Hungary, Egypt, Luxembourg, and Iran. Following the report by Quartz, Amazon workers in Poland, (Germany), and Spain participated in demonstrations and labor strikes to draw attention to his growing wealth and the lack of compensation, labor rights, and satisfactory working conditions of select Amazon workers. On July 17, 2018, he was designated the "wealthiest person in modern history" by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Fortune, MarketWatch, The Wall Street Journal, and Forbes. In 2019, <mask>'s wealth was reduced by his divorce from his wife <mask>. According to Forbes, had the Washington state common law applied to their divorce without a prenuptial agreement, <mask>'s wealth could have been equitably divided with his ex-wife;

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 however, she eventually received 25% of Bezos's Amazon shares, valued at approximately $36 billion, making her the third richest woman in the world. <mask> retained his interest in The Washington Post and Blue Origin, as well as voting control of the shares received by his ex-wife. In June 2019, Bezos purchased three adjoining apartments overlooking Madison Square Park in Manhattan, including a penthouse, for a combined total of US$80 million, making this one of the most expensive real estate purchases within New York City in 2019.In February 2020, <mask> purchased the Warner Estate from David Geffen for $165 million, a record price paid for a residence in the Los Angeles area. The previous record high price of $150 million was paid by Lachlan Murdoch for the Chartwell Mansion. During the COVID-19 pandemic, it was reported that <mask>'s fortune had grown by $24 billion, citing a surge in demand from households on lockdown shopping on Amazon. He further expanded his residential holdings in february 2022, purchasing a $16.13 million dollar apartment at a 24-story boutique condominium, located across from Madison Square Park in the Flatiron neighbourhood, where he already owns all the units on the top floors. Bezos is the owner of the Y721, a luxury superyacht estimated to cost more than $500,000,000. It is the largest yacht in the world. Personal life

In 1992, <mask> was working for D. E. Shaw in Manhattan when he met novelist MacKenzie Tuttle, who was a research associate at the firm; the couple married a year later.In 1994, they moved across the country to Seattle, Washington, where Bezos founded Amazon. <mask> and his now ex-wife MacKenzie are the parents of four children: three sons, and one daughter adopted from China.


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 <mask> and MacKenzie have not disclosed their religious status. Public records, family history, and biographical details suggest that both were raised under some form of Christianity. In March 2003, <mask> was one of three passengers in a helicopter that crashed in West Texas after the craft's tail boom hit a tree. Bezos sustained minor injuries and was discharged from a local hospital the same day. In 2016, <mask> played a Starfleet official in the movie Star Trek Beyond, and joined the cast and crew at a San Diego Comic-Con screening.He had lobbied Paramount for the role apropos of Alexa and his personal/professional interest in speech recognition. His one line consisted of a response to an alien in distress: "Speak Normally." In his initial discussion of the project which became Alexa with his technical advisor Greg Hart in 2011, <mask> told him that the goal was to create "the Star Trek computer." Bezos's family office Zefram LLC is named after Zefram Cochrane, a character from Star Trek. On January 9, 2019, Bezos and MacKenzie announced on Twitter their intent to divorce after a "long period" of separation. On April 4, 2019, the divorce was finalized, with <mask> keeping 75% of the couple's Amazon stock and MacKenzie getting the remaining 25% ($35.6 billion) in Amazon stock. However, <mask> would keep all of the couple's voting rights.On February 7, 2019, <mask> published an online essay in which he accused American Media, Inc. owner David Pecker of "extortion and blackmail" for threatening to publish intimate photos of Bezos and current girlfriend Lauren Sánchez if he did not stop his investigation into how his text messages and other photos had been leaked to the National Enquirer. Politics

According to public

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texts: campaign finance records, Bezos supported the electoral campaigns of Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell, two Democratic U.S. senators from Washington. He has also supported Democrats U.S. representative John Conyers, as well as Patrick Leahy and Republican Spencer Abraham, U.S. senators serving on committees dealing with Internet-related issues. <mask> and <mask> have supported the legalization of same-sex marriage, and in 2012 contributed $2.5 million to Washington United for Marriage, a group supporting a yes vote on Washington Referendum 74, which affirmed a same-sex marriage law enacted in the state. <mask> donated $100,000 towards a movement against a Washington state income tax in 2010 for "top earners". In 2012, he donated to Amazon's political action committee (PAC), which has given $56,000 and $74,500 to Democrats and Republicans, respectively. After the 2016 presidential election, <mask> was invited to join Donald Trump's Defense Innovation Advisory Board, an advisory council to improve the technology used by the Defense Department.Trump has repeatedly attacked Bezos via Twitter, accused Bezos of avoiding corporate taxes, gaining undue political influence, and undermining his presidency by spreading "fake news". In 2014, Amazon won a bid for a cloud computing contract with the CIA valued at $600 million. A 2018, $10 billion contract known as the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) project, this time with the Pentagon, was allegedly written up in a way that favors Amazon. Controversy over this was raised when General James Mattis accepted a headquarters tour invitation from Bezos and co-ordinated the deal through Sally Donnelly, a lobbyist who previously worked for Amazon. In November 2019, when the contract

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 was awarded to Microsoft instead, Amazon filed a lawsuit with allegations that the bidding process was biased. On July 6, 2021, the Pentagon cancelled the JEDI contract with Microsoft, citing that “due to evolving requirements, increased cloud conversancy, and industry advances, the JEDI Cloud contract no longer meets its needs.” Despite Bezos's support for an open borders policy towards immigrants, Amazon has actively marketed facial recognition software to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). In 2019, a political action committee linked to Bezos spent over $1 million in an unsuccessful attempt to defeat the reelection bid of Seattle city council member and activist Kshama Sawant.On November 22, 2021, <mask> donated $100 million to the Obama Foundation to "to help expand the scope of programming that reaches emerging leaders," and requested the Obama Presidential Center's plaza to be named after John Lewis. Saudi hacking claim

In March 2018, Bezos met in Seattle with Mohammad bin Salman, the crown prince and de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, to discuss investment opportunities for Saudi Vision 2030. In March 2019, Bezos's security consultant accused the Saudi government of hacking Bezos's phone. According to BBC, Bezos's top security staffer, Gavin de Becker, "linked the hack to the Washington Posts coverage of the murder of Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul". Khashoggi, a Saudi journalist and dissident was employed as a writer at the Washington Post, owned by Bezos. Khashoggi was killed in late 2018, in Turkey's Saudi consulate for his critical stance and journalism against the Saudi government and its leader. In January 2020, The Guardian reported that the hack was initiated before


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 the murder but after Khashoggi wrote critically about the crown prince in the Washington Post.Forensic analysis of Bezos's mobile phone conducted by advisory firm FTI Consulting, concluded it "highly probable" that the hack was achieved using a malicious file hidden in a video sent in a WhatsApp message to Bezos from the personal account of the crown prince on May 1, 2018. Saudi Arabia has denied the claim. Philanthropy

<mask> donated to the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center several times between 2009 and 2017. In 2013, he pledged $500,000 to Worldreader, a non-profit founded by a former Amazon employee. In September 2018, Business Insider reported that Bezos was the only one of the top five billionaires in the world who had not signed the Giving Pledge, an initiative created by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett that encourages wealthy people to give away a majority of their wealth. That same month, Janet Camarena, director of transparency initiatives at Foundation Center, was quoted by CNBC as having questions about Bezos's new , including the fund's structure and how exactly it will be funded. In May 2017, Bezos gave $1 million to the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, which provides pro bono legal services for American journalists.On June 15, 2017, he posted a message on Twitter asking for ideas for philanthropy: "I'm thinking about a philanthropy strategy that is the opposite of how I mostly spend my time—working on the long term". At the time of the post, <mask>'s lifetime spending on charitable causes was estimated to be $100 million. Multiple opinion columnists responded by asking Bezos to pay higher wages to Amazon warehouse workers. A year later in June, he tweeted that he would announce two


texts: philanthropic foci by the end of summer 2018. <mask> announced in September 2018 that he would commit approximately $2 billion to a fund to deal with American homelessness and establish a network of non-profit preschools for low income communities. As part of this announcement, he committed to establishing the "Day 1 Families Fund" to finance "night shelters and day care centers for homeless families" and the "Day 1 Academies Fund" for early childhood education. In January 2018, <mask> made a $33 million donation to TheDream.US, a college scholarship fund for undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as minors.In June 2018, Bezos donated to Breakthrough Energy Ventures, a private philanthropic fund founded by Bill Gates aimed at promoting emissions-free energy. In September 2018, Bezos donated $10 million to With Honor, a nonpartisan organization that works to increase the number of veterans in political office. In February 2020, Bezos pledged $10 billion to combat climate change through the Bezos Earth Fund. Later that year, in November, Bezos announced $791M of donations to established, well-known groups, with $100M each going to Environmental Defense Fund, Natural Resources Defense Council, The Nature Conservancy, World Resources Institute and World Wildlife Fund, and the remainder going to 11 other groups. In April 2020, early in the COVID-19 pandemic, Bezos donated $100 million to food banks through Feeding America. In November 2021, Bezos pledged to donate $2 billion towards restructuring food systems and nature conservation at the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference. Bezos Academy is a group of tuition-free preschools for students from low-income families, which was created by Bezos, and which


texts:
 operate in a manner similar to the Montessori method.See also
 List of Princeton University alumni
 List of richest Americans in history
 List of Time Person of the Year recipients
 The World's Billionaires

Notes

References

Sources

Further reading

 Davenport, Christian (2018). The Space Barons: Elon Musk, <mask>, and the Quest to Colonize the Cosmos. PublicAffairs. .

 Fernholz, Tim (2018). Rocket Billionaires: Elon Musk, <mask>, and the New Space Race. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. .
 Leibovich, Mark. The New Imperialists (Prentice Hall, 2002) pp 55–104.online

External links

 Bezos Expeditions
 Forbes Profile

1964 births
Living people
20th-century American businesspeople
21st-century American businesspeople
Amazon (company) people
American adoptees
American aerospace businesspeople
American astronauts
American billionaires
American chairpersons of corporations
American computer businesspeople
American computer programmers
American Internet company founders
American manufacturing businesspeople
American mass media owners
American online retailer founders
American people of Danish descent
American philanthropists
American software engineers
American technology chief executives
American technology company founders
American venture capitalists
Blue Origin people
Businesspeople from Albuquerque, New Mexico
Businesspeople from Houston
Businesspeople from Miami
Businesspeople from Seattle
Commercial astronauts
Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Life extensionists
New Shepard passengers
People from Albuquerque, New Mexico
People from Medina, Washington
People in the space industry
People who have flown in suborbital spaceflight
Princeton University School of Engineering and Applied Science

masks:
Jeff Bes
Jeff Bezos


texts: <mask> (born Zoltán Verebes in 1978, in Budapest) is a Hungarian filmmaker and production designer. He graduated from London Film School as a director with a production designer distinction. He is the son of Hungarian actor/director/media personality István Verebes and grandson of actor Károly Verebes. Starting as an amateur filmmaker,  <mask> made his first two short films (Without With 1998, The Something 1999,)  which were nominated both year in competition in the biggest film festival in Hungary. Since being intertested in the boundaries of conventional filmmaking he applied  to the very pragmatic London Film School. While studying in London he had made two short films Sense (2001) Limit (2002) and worked in several film projects as a production designer. He graduated as a MA director and production designer with his diploma film called T?ick (2004) and wrote dissertation in the topic of non-narrative film theories.After living and studying in the United Kingdom, he returned to his hometown, Budapest where he started developing on his first feature film based on a Stanislaw Lem essay, with the help of his former mentor Zoltan Kamondi's company Honeymood Films. Meanwhile, he was making several experimental films and visual projects like RECYCLEd – Pro – Reo – Neo (2006) which also attracted attention to him. His first feature film 1 (2009) reached a big success for a debut film in Hungary, and also collected awards abroad. He is primarily interested in unique experimental style of mystic and surreal elements in shifted space and time with visual allegories and codes. He considers himself a filmmaker who approaches filmmaking as a visual communication in the face of storytelling. During the years he had experienced working in different fields of professional film and television crews,

masks:
Pater Sparrow
Sparrow


texts:
 such as assistant for director Zoltán Kamondi in The Alchemist And The Virgin (1999) assistant production designer for Academy Award winner Luciana Arigghi in Being Julia (2004) art director for Kevin Phipps production designer (Eyes Wide Shut, Fifth Element, Dune, Slipstream, etc. )in a Cadbury commercial which was directed by Brian Buckley, or production designer of <mask> Strickland's third feature film The Duke Of Burgundy (2014).In 2015 he made the production design on several Hungarian feature films such as 'My Night Is Your Day / Éjszakám a nappalod (2015), Well / Kút (2015), Troupers / Vándorszínészek (2015), in 2016 Budapest Noir (2016), in 2017 Swoon (2018), and in 2018 BUÉK (2018). He is currently developing his second feature film based on Boris Vian's Heartsnatcher, and working freelance in Hungary. Jappan & Barnsz / Holnap Hajnalig (2016/director: Miki357)– production designer
Ivan & The Parazol / F.É.SZ.E.K. (2011/director: Áron Mátyássy) – art director
Idol (2011/director: Geir Hornes) – production designer
Big Brother (2011/director: Geir Hornes) – production designer
Skai Vi Danse (2011/director: Geir Hornes) – production designer
aurA (2011) – production designer
Please sir! Granada International Film Festival – audience award for ’1’
2009 – 40th Hungarian Film Week – best visual design for ’1’
2009 – 40th Hungarian Film Week  / student jury – best debut feature for ’1’
2009 – 10th Golden Blade Creative Festival – Silver Heart Award for a social advertisement
2006 – 37th Hungarian Film Week  – special mention for Recycled/Pro-Reo-Neo
1998 – 30th Budapest Independent Film Festival – 3rd prize for Without With

External links
The Internet Movie Database
End And End Image
1 on Facebook

1978 births
Living people
Hungarian film directors
Alumni of the London Film


texts:
<mask> of Han (Liu Shi 劉奭; 75 BC – 8 July 33 BC) was an emperor of the Chinese Han dynasty. He reigned from 48 BC to 33 BC. Emperor <mask> promoted Confucianism as the official creed of the Chinese government. He appointed Confucius adherents to important government posts. However, at the same time that he was solidifying Confucianism's position as the official ideology, the empire's condition slowly deteriorated due to his indecisiveness, his inability to stop factional infighting between officials in his administration, and the trust he held in certain corrupt officials. Family background
When <mask> was born as Liu Shi in 75 BC, his parents Liu Bingyi and Xu Pingjun were commoners without titles. Bingyi was the great-grandson of Emperor Wu, and his grandfather Liu Ju was Emperor Wu's crown prince, until he was forced by Emperor Wu's paranoia into a failed rebellion in 91 BC while Bingyi was still just an infant.The aftermath of the failed rebellion was that Prince Ju committed suicide and virtually his entire family was wiped out. Bingyi was spared because of his young age, but became a commoner and survived on the largess of others. One of his supporters was chief eunuch Zhang He, who had been an advisor for Prince Ju before his rebellion, and who was punished by being castrated. Around 76 BC, Zhang wanted to marry his granddaughter to Bingyi, but his brother Zhang Anshi (), then an important official, opposed this, fearing that it would bring trouble. Zhang, instead, invited one of his subordinate eunuchs (who had also been castrated by Emperor Wu), Xu Guanghan (), to dinner, and persuaded him to marry his daughter Xu Pingjun to Liu Bingyi. When Xu's wife heard this, she became extremely angry and refused, but because Zhang was Xu's superior, Xu did not dare to renege on the

masks:
Emperor Yuan
Yuan
Emperor Yuan


texts:
 promise. Bingyi and Pingjun were married in a ceremony entirely paid for by Zhang (because Bingyi could not afford the cost).Zhang also paid the bride price. After their marriage, Bingyi heavily depended on his wife's family for support. Childhood and career as crown prince
Shi was less than a year old when something highly unusual happened to his father. Shi's great-granduncle, <mask>, had died that year and the regent, Huo Guang, having been dissatisfied with his initial selection of Prince He of Changyi, deposed Prince He and offered the throne to the commoner Bingyi instead. Bingyi accepted and took the throne as Emperor Xuan. Shi's mother Xu Pingjun was created empress. This action would cost Empress Xu her life, however, and cost Prince Shi his mother.Huo Guang's wife, Xian (), would not be denied her wish of making her daughter Huo Chengjun () an empress. In 71 BC, Empress Xu was pregnant when Lady Xian came up with a plot. She bribed Empress Xu's female physician Chunyu Yan (), under guise of giving Empress Xu medicine after she gave birth, to poison her. Chunyu did so, and Empress Xu died shortly after she gave birth. Her doctors were initially arrested to investigate whether they cared for the empress properly. Lady Xian, alarmed, informed Huo Guang what had actually happened, and Huo, not having the heart to turn in his wife, instead agreed to Chunyu's release. In 70 BC, Emperor Xuan created Huo Chengjun empress.Accustomed to luxury living, her palace expenditures far exceeded the late Empress Xu. Huo Chengjun becoming empress was a threat to Prince Shi's life. In 67 BC, Emperor Xuan created the eight-year-old as Crown Prince Shi and created Empress Xu's father and Prince Shi's grandfather, Xu Guanghan, the Marquess of Ping'en. Huo Guang opposed these actions. Huo's wife,


texts: Lady Xian  was shocked and displeased, because if her daughter ever had a son, that son could only be a prince and not the future emperor. She instructed her daughter to murder the crown prince. Allegedly, Empress Huo did make multiple attempts to do so, but failed each time.Around this time, the emperor also heard rumours that the Huos had murdered Empress Xu, which led him to begin stripping the Huos of actual power, while giving them impressive titles. In 66 BC, after there had been increasing public rumours that the Huos had murdered Empress Xu, Lady Xian finally revealed to her son and grandnephews that she had, indeed, murdered Empress Xu. In fear of what the emperor might do if he had actual proof, Lady Xian, her son, her grandnephews, and her sons-in-law formed a conspiracy to depose the emperor. The conspiracy was discovered, and the entire Huo clan was executed by Emperor Xuan. Empress Huo was deposed but not executed, but 12 years later she was exiled and, in response, she committed suicide. What Empress Huo tried to do influenced <mask> in his choice of his next wife. At that time, he favoured his consorts Hua, Zhang and Wei, each of whom bore him children.He almost settled on Consort Zhang as his new empress. However, he hesitated, remembering how Empress Huo had tried to murder the crown prince. He therefore resolved to create an empress who was childless and kind. He decided on the gentle Consort Wang, and created her empress in 64 BC. Emperor Xuan put Prince Shi in her care, and she cared for him well. Empress Wang would have a role in Crown Prince Shi's eventual choice of a wife. In the middle of the 50s BC, Consort Sima, the favourite consort of Prince Shi, died from an illness.Prince Shi was grief-stricken and became ill and depressed. Emperor Xuan was concerned, so


texts: he had Empress Wang select the most beautiful of the young ladies in waiting and had them sent to Prince Shi. Wang Zhengjun was one of the ladies in waiting chosen. She bore him his first-born son Liu Ao (劉驁, later <mask>) c. 51 BC. Prince Ao became Emperor Xuan's favourite grandson and often accompanied him. During his years as crown prince, Prince Shi did not have a major role in government, given the forceful nature of his father's personality. He was taught the Confucian classics by a succession of Confucian scholars during his pre-teen and teenage years.Prince Shi became a mild-mannered and strict adherent of Confucian principles, unlike his father who made effective use of both Legalist and Confucian principles in his governance. This would bring his father's ire on him. In 53 BC, when Emperor Xuan and Prince Shi were having dinner, he suggested that Emperor Xuan employ more Confucian officials in key positions. Emperor Xuan became extremely angry and commented that Confucian scholars were impractical and could not be given responsibilities, and further commented that Emperor <mask>'s reign would lead to the downfall of the Liu imperial clan, words that would turn out to be prophetic. This would also bring his father to consider changing the succession plans, as he was also disappointed by Prince Shi's general lack of resolve. He considered creating Prince Shi's younger brother, Liu Qin, the Prince of Huaiyang, crown prince instead. However, he could not bring himself to do so, remembering how Prince Shi's mother, Empress Xu, was his first love and had been murdered by poisoning, and also how he depended on his father-in-law in his youth.Prince Shi's position therefore was not seriously threatened. In 49 BC, Emperor Xuan became seriously ill. Before his death, he commissioned his

masks:
Emperor Cheng
Yuan


texts:
 cousin-once-removed Shi Gao (), Prince Shi's teacher Xiao Wangzhi (:zh:蕭望之), and Xiao's assistant Zhou Kan () to serve as regents. After he died, Prince Shi ascended the throne as Emperor <mask>. Reign as emperor
As emperor, Emperor <mask> immediately started a regimen of reducing governmental spending, with the objective of reducing the burdens of the people. He also started a program for social assistance to provide stipends for the poor and also for new entrepreneurs. Contrary to his father's governing philosophy, he relied heavily on Confucian scholars and put them into important governmental positions. In 48 BC, Emperor <mask> created Consort Wang Zhengjun, the mother of his first-born son, Prince Ao, empress.In 47 BC, he created Prince Ao crown prince. In 46 BC, alarmed at the high human and monetary cost of occupying Hainan and suppressing the frequent native rebellions, Emperor <mask> decreed that the two commanderies on the island be abandoned. Similarly, in 40 BC, alarmed at the high cost of maintaining imperial temples, he reduced the number of standing temples. Factionalism
Early in Emperor <mask>'s administration a factional schism developed, a phenomenon that would plague his entire reign and cause officials to concentrate on infighting rather than effective governance. One faction included mainly Confucian scholars, his teachers, Xiao and Zhou, aligned with an imperial clan member who was also a Confucian scholar, Liu Gengsheng (劉更生, later named Liu Xiang 劉向), and imperial assistant Jin Chang (). The other faction was his cousin-twice-removed Shi, imperial secretary Hong Gong () and chief eunuch Shi Xian (). The Confucian faction derived their power from the fact that Emperor <mask> trusted and respected their advice.The "court faction" derived their power from their

masks: Yuan Yuan Yuan Yuan Yuan Yuan


texts: physical closeness to the emperor and their key roles in processing reports and edicts for Emperor <mask>. Policy-wise, the Confucian faction advocated returning to the ancient policies of the early Zhou Dynasty, while the court faction advocated keeping the traditions of the Han Dynasty. In 47 BC, Hong and Shi used procedural traps which led to Zhou and Liu being demoted to commoners and Xiao retired. Later that year, the court faction further pressed Xiao into committing suicide. They did this by tricking <mask> into deciding to have Xiao investigated for inducing his son to make a petition for him, something considered inappropriate. Hong and Shi calculated that Xiao would rather commit suicide than face an investigation, and that was what Xiao did. As a result, the court faction prevailed.Consistent with his personality, <mask> rebuked Hong and Shi harshly for misleading him and buried Xiao with great honour, but did not punish Hong (who died later that year) and Shi. In 46 BC, Emperor <mask> summoned Zhou back to his administration and gave him a mid-level office, along with Zhou's student Zhang Meng (張猛, a grandson of the great explorer Zhang Qian). Despite the relatively low positions that Zhou and Zhang had, their advice was highly valued by Emperor <mask>. In 44 BC, he promoted the highly regarded Confucian scholar Gong Yu (), who tried not to engage himself in factional politics, to the position of vice prime minister, and heeded many of his suggestions to further reduce governmental spending and to encourage the study of Confucianism. In 43 BC, there were a number of unusual astronomical and meteorological signs that were considered signs of divine disapproval. Shi Xian and his allies, the Xu and Shi clans, alleged that this was a sign of divine disapproval of Zhou and

masks:
Yuan
Emperor Yuan
Emperor Yuan
Yuan
Yuan


texts:
 Zhang's policies. Zhou and Zhang were demoted to local posts.In 42 BC, he promoted another Confucian scholar, Kuang Heng (), to be his key advisor, and Kuang, aware of the fate of the other Confucian scholars, entered into an alliance with Shi Xian to ensure his own safety and power. In 40 BC, more unusual signs occurred and <mask> asked the court faction to explain how they could continue to occur if, as they alleged, they were signs of divine disapproval of Zhou and Zhang. They could not, and so <mask> summoned Zhou and Zhang back to the capital to serve as advisors. However, this would not last long, as Zhou soon died of a stroke, and Shi Xian found an opportunity to falsely accuse Zhang of crimes and forced him to commit suicide. In 37 BC, another Confucian scholar would try to shake the influence of Shi Xian. He was Jing Fang (), who, in addition to studying Confucianism, was also an accomplished fortune teller. (At this time, fortune telling was still considered to be a part of Confucian studies, indeed, a highly honoured part; it was not until several decades later that Confucians began to disfavour fortune telling.)Jing, who had become a trusted advisor of Emperor <mask> after Emperor <mask> greatly favoured his proposed system for examining and promoting regional officials, accused Shi and Shi's assistant Wulu Chongzong () of being corrupt and evil. Initially, Emperor <mask> believed him, but took no action against Shi and Wulu. Shi and Wulu soon found out and fought back by accusing Jing of conspiring with Emperor <mask>'s brother Liu Qin, the Prince of Huaiyang, and Prince Qin's uncle. As a result, Jing was executed. Victory over western Xiongnu and complete hegemony over central Asia
Around the same time, despite Emperor <mask>'s general tendency for pacificism, a military

masks:
Emperor Yuan
Emperor Yuan
Yuan
Yuan
Yuan
Yuan
Yuan


texts: confrontation had developed with one branch of Xiongnu, which had split into competing courts ruled by Chanyus Huhanye in the east and Zhizhi in the west. During Emperor Xuan's reign, Chanyu Huhanye had officially submitted to Han as a subject and received Han assistance. Chanyu Zhizhi, then the stronger of the two, tried to maintain a détente with Han by sending his son Juyulishou () to the Han court, but was not so willing to submit, and soon found himself out-powered by the Han-assisted Huhanye.In 49 BC, the last year of Emperor Xuan's reign, Chanyu Zhizhi headed north-west and conquered several Xiyu kingdoms, basing his capital in Jiankun (modern Altay, Xinjiang). From there, he frequently attacked the Han ally, the Wusun. In 44 BC, Chanyu Zhizhi sent an ambassador to offer tributes to Han, but at the same time demanded that Han deliver his son Juyilishou back to him. Emperor <mask> commissioned a guard commander, Gu Ji (), to escort Juyilishou. Initially, based on advice from Gong and other key officials, who reasoned that Zhizhi had no real intention to submit and was far away, Emperor <mask> instructed Gu to escort Juyilishou only to the Han borders, and let him travel the reaming journey on his own. Gu reasoned that by escorting Juyilishou all the way to Jiankun, he might be able to persuade Zhizhi to submit, and that he was willing to risk his own life to do so. Emperor <mask> agreed and Gu escorted Juyilishou to Jiankun.Chanyu Zhizhi was not impressed and had Gu executed. Zhizhi then realized that he made a major mistake, and he entered into an alliance with Kangju to conquer Wusun, a traditional enemy of Kangju. They repeatedly inflicted heavy losses on the Wusun over several years. In 36 BC, two Han commanders, Gan Yanshou () and his lieutenant Chen Tang (), took the

masks: Yuan Yuan Yuan


texts: initiative and destroyed Zhizhi as a threat. Zhizhi, after winning many victories over the Wusun and other Xiyu kingdoms, had become exceedingly arrogant, and treated his ally, the king of Kangju, as a subject, and he even executed the daughter of the king of Kangju, who had been given to him as a wife as part of the alliance. He also forced the other kingdoms in the region, including the powerful Dayuan, to pay him tribute. Chen felt that Chanyu Zhizhi would eventually become a major threat and devised a plan to destroy him.Reasoning that Zhizhi was a powerful warrior but lacked the affection of the kingdoms that were subject to him, and also that his new capital (on the banks of Lake Balkhash) had only recently been built and lacked strong defences, his plan was to use the colonization forces that Han had in Xiyu as well as Wusun forces to advance to and capture Zhizhi's capital. Gan agreed with his plan and wanted to request approval, but Chen feared that civilian officials would disapprove of the plan. Therefore, when Gan fell sick, Chen forged imperial edicts and requisitioned the colonization forces as well as the forces of the kingdoms that submitted to Han authority. Once Gan recovered, he tried to reverse Chen's actions, but Chen warned him that it was too late to do so. They then set out (after submitting reports admitting to forging edicts but providing the reasons for doing so), marching along two routes, one force taking a route through Dayuan and the other through Wusun. The forces rejoined when they entered Kangju. They then set a trap for Zhizhi, by pretending that they were running low on supplies, to ward off the possibility that Zhizhi would flee.Zhizhi took the bait and stayed in his capital. The coalition forces soon arrived at his capital and besieged it with


texts:
 Chanyu Zhizhi dying in the subsequent battle. After this Chanyu Huhanye made an official visit to the Han capital of Chang'an in 33 BC and formally asked to become a "son-in-law of Han". In response, Emperor <mask> gave him five ladies in waiting as a reward, and one of them was the beautiful Wang Zhaojun. Impressed that Emperor <mask> gave him the most beautiful woman that he had ever seen, Huhanye offered to have his forces serve as the northern defence forces for Han, a proposal that Emperor <mask>nu thereafter grew stronger. Succession issues

Emperor <mask> had two favourite concubines in addition to Empress Wang, Consort Fu () and Consort <mask> (), each of whom bore him one son. Empress Wang apparently tried to maintain a cordial relationship with both, and she was largely successful, at least as far as Consort Feng was concerned.However, a struggle between Empress Wang and Consort Fu for their sons' heir status erupted. As Crown Prince Ao grew older, Emperor <mask> became increasingly unhappy with his fitness as imperial heir and impressed with Consort Fu's son, Prince Kang of Dingtao (). Several incidents led to this situation. One happened in 35 BC, when Emperor <mask>'s youngest brother Prince Liu Jing of Zhongshan () died. Emperor <mask> became angry because he felt that the teenage Crown Prince Ao was not grieving sufficiently, particularly because Princes Ao and Jing were of similar age and grew up together as playmates, thus showing insufficient respect to Prince Jing. Prince Ao's head of household, Shi Dan (), a relative of Emperor <mask>'s grandmother and a senior official respected by Emperor <mask>, managed to convince Emperor <mask> that Crown Prince Ao was trying to stop Emperor <mask> himself from over-grieving, but the seed of dissatisfaction was sown. As the

masks:
Yuan
Yuan
Yuanong
Yuan
Feng Yuan
Yuan
Yuan
Yuan
Yuan
Yuan
Yuan
Yuan


texts:
 princes grew older, Emperor <mask> and Prince Kang became closer.They shared a love of and skills in music, particularly the playing of drums. Prince Kang also showed high intelligence and diligence, while Crown Prince Ao was known for drinking and womanizing. When Emperor <mask> grew ill during 35 BC, an illness that he would not recover from, Consort Fu and Prince Kang were often summoned to his sickbed to attend to him, while Empress Wang and Crown Prince Ao rarely were. During his illness, apparently encouraged by Consort Fu, Emperor <mask> reconsidered whether he should make Prince Kang his heir instead. Only the intercession of Shi Dan, who risked his life by stepping onto the carpet of the imperial bed chamber, an act that only the empress was allowed to do (on pain of death) led Emperor <mask> to cease those thoughts. When Emperor <mask> died in 33 BC, Crown Prince Ao ascended the throne (as Emperor Cheng). Era names
Chuyuan () 48 BC – 44 BC
Yongguang () 43 BC – 39 BC
Jianzhao () 38 BC – 34 BC
Jingning () 33 BC

Family
Consorts and Issue:
 Empress Xiaoyuan, of the Wang clan (; 71 BC – 13), personal name Zhengjun ()
 Liu Ao, Emperor Xiaocheng (; 51–7 BC), first son
 Zhaoyi, of the Fu clan (; d. 2 BC)
 Princess Pingdou ()
 Liu Kang, Emperor Gong (; d. 23 BC), second son
 Zhaoyi, of the Feng clan (; d. 6 BC), personal name <mask> ()
 Liu Xing, Prince Xiao of Zhongshan (; d. 8 BC), third son
 Jieyu, of the Wei clan ()
 Princess Pingyang ()
 Unknown
 Princess Yingyi ()
 Married Du Ye ()

Ancestry

See also
 Family tree of the Han Dynasty

References

 Book of Han, vol.9. Zizhi Tongjian, vols. 24, 25, 27, 28, 29. Yap Joseph P. Chapters 11–12. Wars With The Xiongnu - A Translation From Zizhi Tongjian, Author House (2009)

Western Han dynasty emperors
75 BC births
33 BC


texts:
<mask> (1 December 1831 – 4 February 1853) was a princess of the Empire of Brazil and a member of the Brazilian branch of the House of Braganza. Her parents were Emperor Dom Pedro I, the first ruler of Brazil, and Amélie of Leuchtenberg. The only child of her father's second marriage, <mask>lia was born in France after Pedro I abdicated the Brazilian throne in favor of his son Dom Pedro II. Before <mask>lia was a month old, Pedro I went to Portugal to restore the crown of the eldest daughter of his first marriage, <mask>. He fought a successful war against his brother Miguel I, who had usurped <mask>'s throne. Only a few months after his victory, Pedro I died from tuberculosis. <mask>lia's mother took her to Portugal, where she remained for most of her life without ever visiting Brazil.The Brazilian government refused to recognize <mask> as a member of Brazil's Imperial House because she was foreign-born, but when her elder half-brother Pedro II was declared of age in 1840, he successfully intervened on her behalf. <mask> became engaged to Archduke Maximilian of Austria in early 1852, but before the marriage could take place she contracted tuberculosis, and was taken to the town of Funchal on the Portuguese island of Madeira. Despite its reputedly healthy climate, her health continued to deteriorate, and she died on 4 February 1853. Her body was taken to mainland Portugal and interred in the Pantheon of the House of Braganza; almost 130 years later, her remains were taken to Brazil. In honor of her daughter, <mask>'s mother financed the construction of the "Princesa D. Maria Amélia" hospital in Funchal. <mask>'s fiancé, Maximilian, made a pilgrimage to Brazil and Madeira, a journey that influenced his acceptance of the throne of Mexico in 1864. Early life

Birth
<mask> was born on 1 December 1831 in Paris and christened <mask> Augusta Eugênia Josefina Luísa Teodolinda Elói Francisco Xavier de Paula Gabriela Rafaela Gonzaga.She was the only daughter of

masks:
Dona Maria Amélia
Maria Amé
Maria Amé
Dona Maria II
Maria II
Maria Amé
Maria Amélia
Maria Amélia
Maria Amélia
Maria Amélia
Maria Amélia
Maria Amélia


texts:
 Dom Pedro, the Duke of Braganza, and his second wife Amélie of Leuchtenberg. Through her father, <mask> was a member of the Brazilian branch of the House of Braganza (Portuguese: Bragança), and was referred to by the honorific Dona (Lady) from birth. She was the granddaughter of the Portuguese King João VI. <mask>lia's mother was the daughter of Eugène de Beauharnais, Duke of Leuchtenberg and the stepson of Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte of France. Eugène was married to Princess Augusta, eldest daughter of King Maximilian I of Bavaria. Pedro had formerly been the first Emperor of Brazil, as Pedro I, and also King of Portugal, as Pedro IV. He was succeeded on the Portuguese throne by his eldest daughter, <mask> II, <mask>lia's elder half-sister.The young Queen was the child of Pedro's first marriage to Archduchess <mask> of Austria. In 1828, <mask>'s crown was usurped by Dom Miguel I, Pedro's younger brother. Eager to restore his daughter to her throne, Pedro abdicated the Brazilian crown in April 1831 and departed for Europe with Amélie, who was pregnant with <mask>lia. To acknowledge <mask>lia's rights as a Brazilian princess, Pedro invited several guests to observe her birth, including the Brazilian diplomatic envoy to France. The newborn's godparents were the French King Louis Philippe I and his consort <mask> of Naples and Sicily, after whom she was named. Pedro sent a letter to his children who had remained in Brazil—including his son, child-emperor Dom Pedro II—with the message: "Divine Providence wanted to lessen the sorrow that my paternal heart feels in the separation from Y.I.M. [Your Imperial Majesty], giving me one more Daughter, and to Y.I.M., one more sister and subject".Brazilian princess

When <mask>lia was only 20 days old, her father departed France to invade Portugal. For almost two years, she lived in Paris with her mother and half-sister <mask> II. When news arrived that the Portuguese capital, Lisbon, had fallen to Pedro's forces,

masks:
Maria Amélia
Maria Amé
Maria
Maria Amé
Maria Leopoldina
Maria II
Maria Amé
Maria Amé
Maria Amalia
Maria Amé
Maria


texts:
 Amélie of Leuchtenberg left Paris with her infant daughter and stepdaughter for Portugal. They arrived in Lisbon on 22 September 1833 and disembarked the next day. Charles John Napier, a British naval officer who had fought alongside Pedro, wrote about the emotional reunion:

With Miguel I defeated and in exile, and <mask> restored to the throne, <mask>lia and her family remained in Portugal, first residing in Ramalhão Palace, and later in the Royal Palace of Queluz near Lisbon. But the war had taken its toll on Pedro's health, and he was dying of tuberculosis. <mask>lia, who was not yet three years old, was taken during the early hours of 24 September 1834 to Pedro's deathbed.Very weak, Pedro raised his hands to bless her and said: "Always tell this child of the father who loved her so dearly ... not to forget me ... always to obey her mother ... those are my last wishes". Pedro died in the early afternoon of the same day. The widowed Amélie never remarried, and spent her time overseeing her daughter's upbringing in Portugal, where they remained despite not being members of the Portuguese Royal Family, though closely related. Neither Amélie nor her daughter ever visited Brazil, but Amélie unsuccessfully petitioned the Brazilian government to recognize her daughter as a member of Brazil's Imperial Family, which would have entitled her to an income. <mask>lia's half-brother Pedro II was a minor, and the government of Brazil was in the hands of a precarious regency. The government refused to acknowledge <mask>lia as a Brazilian princess owing to her foreign birth, and forbade both her and her mother from setting foot in Brazil. The situation would only change after Pedro II was declared of age in 1840 and was in a position to insist that she be recognized as a member of his household.Aureliano Coutinho (later Viscount of Sepetiba), the Minister of Foreign Affairs, requested the Brazilian parliament to grant <mask>élia recognition, which occurred on 5

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Maria Amé
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 July 1841. Education and engagement

With the purpose of refining her education, <mask>lia moved with her mother in the middle 1840s to Munich, capital of Bavaria, where many of her relatives lived. A dedicated student, she was given classes that encompassed a broad array of subjects that included rhetoric, philosophy, history, geography, German literature, mathematics and physics. She learned to speak and write not only in Portuguese, but also in English, French and German. She became highly skilled in drawing, painting and playing the piano. An intelligent young woman with a fiery temper and shrewd mind, <mask>lia was described by a teacher as having, "without knowing, an exceptional talent for dialectic, an ability that would make the fortune of a young law student." The memory of her father apparently motivated <mask>élia's dedication to her education.The late Duke of Braganza cast a large shadow in her life, and was always remembered by his daughter, who would often ask the people around her: "and my father, who looks at me from heaven, shall he be pleased with his daughter?" She was never quite able to cope with her father's death and it deeply touched her. <mask>lia remarked after she saw a garden where Pedro planted a sycamore:

At the end of 1850 <mask>lia and her mother returned to Portugal, and settled in the Janelas Verdes palace. In early 1852, her cousin the Austrian Archduke Maximilian, then serving in the Austrian navy and on a stopover in Portugal, paid a visit to her. Maximilian's mother was the younger half-sister of <mask>lia's maternal grandmother, and both women were members of the House of Wittelsbach from Bavaria. He was also related to <mask>lia's older half-siblings, as his father was the younger brother of Brazilian Empress Leopoldina. They had met previously at a family reunion in Munich in 1838, when she was only a child.In this second meeting, however, they fell in love. Maximilian was enthralled by <mask>lia, a kind

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Maria Amé
Maria Am
Maria Amé
Maria Amé
Maria Amé
Maria Amé
Maria Amé


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 young woman with blue eyes and blonde hair "of striking beauty as well as cultivated intelligence". They were betrothed, but the engagement was never made official as a result of her early death. Later years

Death

In February 1852, <mask>lia contracted scarlet fever. As the months passed, she did not recover and developed a persistent cough, the onset of tuberculosis. On 26 August, the princess departed from the Janelas Verdes palace, where she lived, and traveled to the island of Madeira. The island's climate had a salutary reputation, as <mask>lia noted: "the fevers disappear, they say, as if by magic!"<mask> and her mother, who had accompanied her, disembarked on 31 August in Funchal, the capital of Madeira. The entire town greeted her joyfully, and a crowd followed the princess to her new home. She adored the island and told her mother: "If I one day recover my previous robust health, isn't that so mommy, we will stay a long time in this island. We will make long excursions in the mountains, we will find new paths, just as we did in Stein!" But her health worsened, and by the end of November, all hope was gone. By the beginning of 1853, the princess was bedridden, and she knew death was approaching: "My strength diminishes from day to day; I can feel it ... we are reaching the beginning of the end." A little after midnight in the early hours of 4 February, a priest administered the last rites.<mask> tried to comfort her mother: "Do not cry ... let God's will be done; may He come to my aid in my last hour; may He console my poor mother!" She died later that morning at around 04:00. The princess's body remained in a chapel next to the house where she died until it was taken back to the Portuguese mainland on 7 May 1853. On 12 May, the coffin was disembarked at Lisbon, and a grandiose funeral followed. Her remains were interred next to her father's in the Braganza Pantheon, located in the Monastery of São Vicente de Fora. Almost 130 years later, in

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Maria Amé
Maria Amlia
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 1982, <mask>'s remains were carried to Brazil and placed in the Convento de Santo Antônio (Convent of Saint Anthony) in Rio de Janeiro, where other Brazilian royals are interred. Legacy

Emperor Pedro II had never met his younger sister in person, but had developed a strong relationship with her through her letters.He wrote in his journal seven years after her death: "I heard the mass for my sister [<mask>] <mask> with whom I was so close and feel so sorry for never having met." Amélie visited her daughter's tomb every 4 February until her own death, and financed the construction of a hospital in Funchal called "Princesa D. Maria Amélia" in her daughter's honor; the hospital is still in existence. Amélie bequeathed her properties in Bavaria to Archduke Maximilian, "whom [she] would [have felt] happy having as a son-in-law, had God conserved [her] beloved daughter <mask>élia". Archduke Maximilian was haunted by the memory of <mask>, and after his marriage to Charlotte of Belgium he made a pilgrimage in 1859–60 to locations connected to his ex-fiancée. Upon reaching the island of Madeira, he wrote: "Here died, of tuberculosis, on 4 February 1853, the only daughter of the Empress of Brazil, an extraordinarily gifted creature. She left this flawed world, pure as an angel who returns to Heaven, her true native land." Maximilian visited the hospital in Funchal that bore <mask>lia's name, and until his death financed the maintenance of a double hospital room there.He also donated a statue of Our Lady <mask>rrows in memory of <mask>élia. Next he visited the house (called Quinta das Angústias, or Anguished Villa) where she died; he wrote: "for a long time I stood silent amidst thoughts of sorrow and longing under the shadow of a magnificent tree that enfolds and protects the house where the angel, so bitterly wept for, ceased to exist". In his memoirs, Maximilian also mentioned the island of Madeira, where "the life [was] extinguished that seemed destined to

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Maria Amélia
Maria
Amélia
Maria Am
Maria Amlia
Maria Amé
of So
Maria Am


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 guarantee my own tranquil happiness". Following his arrival in Brazil on 11 January 1860 Maximilian became fascinated by the country, the only monarchy in South America, and then under the rule of his deceased fiancée's elder brother. Inspired by the stability and prosperity he saw there, on 10 April 1864 he agreed to become emperor of the newly founded Mexican Empire, believing he could achieve the same results in Mexico. But instead Maximilian was executed on 19 June 1867, after being captured by Mexican republicans. In a last homage to <mask>lia, as he was stripped of his belongings to face a firing squad, Maximilian asked that the small medallion of the Blessed Virgin Mary she had given to him, and which he wore around his neck, be sent to her mother.While <mask>'s life had little effect on events in either Brazil or Portugal, her death had significant, if indirect, repercussions on the history of Mexico. Titles and honors

Titles and styles
 1 December 1831 – 4 February 1853: Her Highness The Princess Dona <mask>lia of Brazil

Honors
Princess <mask> was a recipient of the following Brazilian Orders:

 Grand Cross of the Order of Pedro I. Grand Cross of the Order of the Rose. She was a recipient of the following foreign honors:

 Royal Order of Noble Ladies of Queen Maria Luisa. Grand Cross of the Portuguese Order of the Immaculate Conception of Vila Viçosa. Grand Cross of the Portuguese Order of Saint Isabel. Insignia of the Austrian Order of the Starry Cross.Insignia of the Bavarian Order of Saint Elizabeth. Ancestry

Endnotes

References

Bibliography

External links

1831 births
1853 deaths
Brazilian people of French descent
Brazilian people of German descent
Brazilian people of Portuguese descent
House of Braganza
Brazilian princesses
19th-century deaths from tuberculosis
Tuberculosis deaths in Portugal
Nobility from Paris
Knights Grand Cross of the Order of the Immaculate Conception of Vila Viçosa
Dames of the Order of Saint

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Maria Amé
Maria Amélia
Maria Amé
Maria Amélia


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<mask> (; born 27 January 1954) is a Belgian politician who was the European Commissioner for Trade from February 2010 until 31 October 2014. Previously, he served as Belgium's Minister of Foreign Affairs from 2004 to 2009 and as the European Commissioner for International Cooperation, Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Response from 2009 to 2010. Early life and education
<mask> was born in Overmere, Belgium. He entered politics at a young age, and became president of the Flemish Liberal Students while studying at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel in Brussels. He graduated with a master's degree in Law and practised as a lawyer, mainly in commercial matters, at the bar of Ghent. He later taught European Law at his university. Political career

Member of the European Parliament, 1980–1994
<mask> became a member of the European Parliament in 1980 and fulfilled this mandate until 1994.In 1989 he was the rapporteur of a landmark Parliamentary Declaration on the Fundamental Rights, leading eventually to the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, which was later integrated as an essential part of the Treaty of Lisbon. Career in national politics
<mask> entered the Flemish Parliament after the elections of 1994 and moved to the Belgian Federal Parliament in 2003, where he remained until 2004. In 1999 he was elected party president of the Flemish liberal party (Open Vlaamse Liberalen en Democraten). Although he was elected to the Federal Parliament in the general election on 18 May 2003 and to the European Parliament in the elections of June 2004, he occupied the first seat only very briefly and the second not at all. He entered the Belgian government on 18 July 2004 as Belgian Minister of Foreign Affairs. He

masks: Karel Lodewijk Georgette Emmerence De Gucht


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 served as deputy prime minister in 2008–2009. He was Chairman-in-Office of the OSCE in 2006.He was a Member of the Security Council of the United Nations (2007–08) and Member of the European Council (2004–09). European Commission, 2009–2014
In July 2009 <mask> was appointed as the Belgian European Commissioner, in succession of Louis Michel. Like his predecessor, he was in charge of Development and Humanitarian Aid, but from February 2010 onwards, he became Commissioner of Trade in the Barroso II Commission, until 31 October 2014. He prepared and launched free trade negotiations with the United States, the so-called Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). He achieved important trade agreements, among others with South-Korea (2011), Colombia and Peru (2013), Central America, Singapore, Georgia, Moldavia and Ukraine (2014). In October 2014 he concluded CETA, the free trade agreement with Canada and the first ever agreement with a G7 member. He oversaw the start of trade negotiations with Japan and Vietnam, resumed talks with Mercosur and began investment agreement negotiations with China.He also concluded landmark economic partnership agreements with West Africa (ECOWAS), South Africa (SADC) and Eastern Africa (EAC), covering together 75% of African economy. <mask>t performed his ultimate duty as a commissioner by signing in Nairobi on 31 October 2014 the agreement with the Eastern African Community (EAC), consisting of Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda. He also played a key role in the conclusion of an Association Agreement between the European Union and Ukraine, which was a direct cause of Euromaidan and the Revolution of Dignity. At the end of his mandate he enjoyed a strong

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De Gucht
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 reputation within the European Commission because of the progression in the trade portfolio during his mandate and because of his strong views on European policy questions. At the end of this mandate he decided to leave politics, except on the local level, where he will be the chairman of the local council. Controversies
<mask> is well known for his outspoken views on different political issues. On a trip to Africa in late 2004, <mask>t sparked a diplomatic controversy when he said that "there is a problem with the political class in the Congo" and questioned its ability to tackle corruption.<mask>t received a lot of informal support in diplomatic circles and media and refused to retract his statement. Subsequent news stories suggested his concerns were well-founded. In November 2008 he was accused by an anonymous person and by the president of the extreme-right party Vlaams Belang of insider trading. The Ghent public prosecutor ultimately decided not to pursue an investigation in the matter stating that "from the investigations it appears that Mr. <mask>t has never abused his inside knowledge of the Fortis situation, more specifically the loss in the value of its shares", and closed the case. Later in his career, <mask>t caused controversy by his active promotion of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). Some critics accused him of being over-enthusiastic about the TTIP, playing down potential risks to European small and medium-sized companies associated with the so-called Investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanism, and even of ignoring public concerns about the ISDS. Other activities

Corporate boards
 ArcelorMittal, Member of the Board of Directors (since 2016)
 Proximus, Member

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De Gucht
De Guch
De Guch
De Guch
De Guch


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 of the Board of Directors
 CVC Capital Partners, Member of the European Advisory Board (since 2015)

Non-profit organizations
 Institute for European Studies (IES) at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), President

Honours
 : 1st class - Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland.Personal life
<mask> is married to Mireille Schreurs, who is a judge. They live in Berlare and they have two sons, Frédéric and Jean-Jacques <mask>t. Publications
  ["Ketterijen – how  do we survive our time?] Polis, 2017. ["Pluche - On the banalisation of the extreme right"], Houtekiet, 2007. ["The future is free – On liberalism in the 21st century"], Houtekiet, 2002. ["The end of religious and philosophical pillars in society – Tuscany conversations"]- with MEP Johan Van Hecke, Houtekiet, 2001.["No man is an island - On democracy, liberty and human rights"], with Dirk Sterckx MEP, Houtekiet, 1999.
 , Praeger Publishers, 1991. References

External links

1954 births
Living people
Belgian European Commissioners
Belgian Ministers of State
Foreign ministers of Belgium
Free University of Brussels alumni
Members of the Belgian Federal Parliament
MEPs for Belgium 1989–1994
Open Vlaamse Liberalen en Democraten politicians
People from Berlare
Grand Crosses of the Order of Merit of the Republic of


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<mask> (; born 1 June 1987) is an Afghan cricketer. He is a right-arm fast bowler and a right-handed batsman who mainly plays as a bowler. He made his international debut for Afghanistan in April 2009. Early life and career
<mask> was born in 1987. He was the second of three sons; his older brother was Rashid and his younger brother was Shamshad. When <mask> was six years old, his family fled fighting in their home district of Bati Kot near Jalalabad, Afghanistan to go to Pakistan as refugees. They lived in a refugee camp Peshawar, where <mask> learned to play cricket on the streets with a taped tennis ball from his older brother Rashid.Cricket had a stigma among his people, and when his grades started to suffer at school as a result of cricket, his parents tried to stop him from playing, but he continued to play in secret. <mask> joined a cricket club in 2002 and got selected for a team to go to the ACC Under 17 Trophy in 2003. <mask> weighed nearly , but after watching the 2005 Ashes series on TV and being inspired by Andrew Flintoff, he lost weight until he was down to  so that he could bowl fast. In March 2006, <mask> played a match for Afghanistan against a Marylebone Cricket Club team led by Mike Gatting in Mumbai. Afghanistan thrashed MCC by 179 runs, and <mask> took the wicket of Gatting. He was subsequently invited to join MCC Young Cricketers. At 20 years of age, <mask> became the first Afghanistani to play cricket at Lord’s.He played for the Marylebone Cricket Club in a match against a European XI in June 2007. He bowled with good control at over , with Mike Gatting calling him a “huge potential”. International career

World Cricket League
<mask> was part of Afghanistan’s squad for the 2008 ICC World Cricket

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Hamid Hassan
Hassan
Hassan
Hassan
Hassan
Hassan
Hassan
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 League Division Five in Jersey, which was the start of the qualification process for the 2011 Cricket World Cup. <mask> took three wickets in Afghanistan’s win against Botswana and two wickets in their win over Nepal, which gave Afghanistan a place in the tournament final and ensured they would progress to the next stage of World Cup qualification. He was Afghanistan’s best bowler in the tournament final against Jersey, taking four wickets for 27 runs, decimating Jersey’s middle order and giving Afghanistan control of the match. <mask> began division four with a dominant performance against Fiji. Though Afghanistan had only managed to score 132 runs in their innings, <mask> took four wickets for 25 runs as Afghanistan bowled out Fiji for just 52, starting the tournament with an 80-run win.<mask> was influential through the rest of the tournament, taking three wickets against Tanzania and running out Joe Scuderi when Afghanistan defeated Italy, gaining another promotion to the next stage of the World Cricket League. Afghanistan won the tournament final against Hong Kong, and <mask> almost finished the tournament with a hat-trick. He took two wickets on consecutive deliveries, but bowled a front-foot no-ball on the third. <mask> was then an instrumental part of Afghanistan’s team for division three, taking three wickets in matches against both Papua New Guinea and Cayman Islands. Afghanistan won the tournament and qualified for the World Cup Qualifier, returning to Afghanistan expecting a large crowd to receive them in Kabul. World Cup Qualifier
<mask> was in Afghanistan’s squad for the 2009 Cricket World Cup Qualifier, which was the first time Afghanistan had participated in the event. During the group stage of the

masks: Hassan Hassan Hassan Hassan Hassan Hassan Hassan


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 tournament, <mask> mostly played as a first-change bowler, and he surprised opposition teams in the tournament with his skill and pace, with Bermuda captain Irving Romaine claiming he was one of the fastest bowlers in the tournament.<mask> took two wickets against Bermuda, and Afghanistan progressed from the group stage of the tournament to the Super Eights. Opening the bowling against Ireland, <mask> took five wickets. He dismissed William Porterfield early, then removed Ireland’s two established batsmen Andrew White and Kevin O’Brien in consecutive overs before taking two more wickets in Ireland’s tail. Four of his five wickets came bowled. His bowling performance was enough to give Afghanistan a 22-run win, causing a massive upset over the team who went on to win the tournament. <mask> was far less successful in the next match against Canada, conceding 32 runs in three overs. Afghanistan lost to Canada and their chances of qualifying for the World Cup were virtually over.<mask> finished the tournament with 3/37 against Namibia and 3/26 against Scotland, and though they didn’t qualify for the World Cup, Afghanistan did achieve official One Day International status for the next four years. In 2010, <mask> compared Afghanistan's rise through the ranks of international cricket with the film Rocky. Early success in first-class cricket
<mask> played for Afghanistan in the 2009-10 ICC Intercontinental Cup, the first time Afghanistan had participated in the first-class tournament. In a match against the Netherlands, <mask> took four wickets in the first innings and was batting at the end of the final innings when Afghanistan won the thrilling match by a single wicket. <mask> recorded his first ten-wicket haul against

masks: Hassan Hassan Hassan Hassan Hassan Hassan Hassan Hassan Hassan


texts: Scotland. After Afghanistan had been bowled out for 435 runs in the first innings, <mask> bowled first change and almost took the wicket of Fraser Watts immediately. Watts hit the ball straight to second slip, but the fielder dropped the catch and the ball went to the boundary for four runs.Later in the over he got Watts to edge the ball in the same direction and had him caught. He then caused a middle-order collapse, taking five wickets in a period in which Scotland lost seven wickets for just 19 runs. Most of his wickets came caught behind by the wicket-keeper, and he finished the innings with 6 wickets for 40 runs. During Scotland’s second innings, <mask> injured his ankle and was told by doctors not to bowl, but he decided to bowl regardless and bowled a further 27 overs. He took 5 wickets in the second innings to finish with 11 for the match. In Afghanistan’s next match against Kenya, <mask> got his second ten-wicket haul. He took five of Afghanistan’s first six wickets in the first innings to leave Kenya at 90 for 6, then followed it up with 6 wickets in the second innings to single-handedly win the game for Afghanistan on the final day.This took Afghanistan to the Intercontinental Cup Final against Scotland, where Afghanistan won by seven wickets and <mask> was named the player of the match after taking 8 wickets despite playing with a heel injury. <mask> took by far the most wickets for the whole tournament, with 43 wickets from 6 matches at a bowling average of 19.18 (the next-most wickets was 24 wickets by Scotland's Majid Haq). He was named as one of the bowlers in the team of the tournament. In March 2011 he was called up by the Marylebone Cricket Club to represent them in the Champion County match against

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 Nottinghamshire. He was impressive with the ball, taking seven wickets for the match, but his most entertaining performance was with the bat. He came out at number 11 in MCC's first innings and hit his first three deliveries for four. He scored 26 runs from 14 deliveries before being dismissed.2010 World Twenty20
<mask> was a crucial part of the Afghanistan team in the 2010 ICC World Twenty20 Qualifier as their specialist death bowler, bowling the final overs of most matches. He took wickets throughout the tournament and played an important role in Afghanistan’s wins over Scotland, the United States and the United Arab Emirates. Afghanistan won the tournament and qualified for the 2010 ICC World Twenty20, and <mask> himself took 12 wickets throughout the tournament at a bowling average of just 11.14. At the World Twenty20, <mask> was a standout both with the ball and, unusually, with the bat. In Afghanistan’s second and final match against South Africa, <mask> bowled very well at the death, taking 3 wickets for 21 runs from his four overs to restrict South Africa to 139 runs. Afghanistan then collapsed to be 32 for 8 when <mask> came to the crease, but he scored a quick 22 runs from 21 balls to help Afghanistan avoid the lowest score of the tournament. Despite having lost both matches, <mask> was proud of Afghanistan’s performance at the World Twenty20 and believed they needed to play more matches against full members to improve.2011–15 Cycle: Injuries and World Cup Debut
Following the 2011 Cricket World Cup, which Afghanistan did not qualify for, <mask> played with Afghanistan in both the 2011–13 ICC Intercontinental Cup and the 2011–13 ICC World Cricket League Championship, which ran simultaneously to each other.


texts: After playing cricket against domestic teams in Pakistan and Sri Lanka, these tournaments began for Afghanistan in Canada in August 2011. Afghanistan batted first in the Intercontinental Cup match, and were bowled out for 293 before the end of the first day. Afghanistan then had 12 overs to bowl to Canada before the end of the day, and <mask> managed to take four wickets for 12 runs before stumps. He followed this up the next day with 3 more wickets to achieve figures of 7/61, his best ever first-class bowling figures. <mask> then took three early wickets in Canada's second innings to record his third ten-wicket haul, and he was named the player-of-the match in a nine-wicket win. <mask> was selected to play for a combined Associate and Affiliate XI in a tour match against England in Dubai in January 2012.<mask> took two early wickets in England's first innings, but on the second day he fell over the boundary fence and injured himself, causing him to miss the rest of the match. Though he was initially cleared of any serious damage, the knee injury kept him out of international cricket until he was named in Afghanistan's squad for the 2012 ICC World Twenty20, where due to fitness concerns he was still unable to play any matches. <mask> returned to good bowling form in the latter half of 2013, with impressive bowling performances in limited overs cricket against Namibia and Kenya as Afghanistan secured qualification for the 2015 Cricket World Cup. His return to form was expected to make him a key player in the 2013 ICC World Twenty20 Qualifier, and Afghanistan went into the tournament as favourites to win it, but his knee injury flared up again after playing just one match and he missed the rest of the tournament. He was


texts: replaced in Afghanistan's squad by Izatullah Dawlatzai and they still qualified for the World Twenty20 without <mask>. <mask> was named in Afghanistan's squad for both the 2014 Asia Cup and the 2014 ICC World Twenty20, but his knee injury continued to cause problems and he missed more matches. <mask> again returned from injury in December 2014 for an ODI series against the UAE, and he took 5 for 45 in the fourth match of the series.This gave Afghanistan the confidence to include him in their squad for the 2015 Cricket World Cup despite his proneness to injury. <mask> opened the bowling in Afghanistan's opening match against Bangladesh, bowling Afghanistan's first ever ball in a World Cup match. He was able to keep Bangladesh's openers slow at the start of the match, but he finished the match with expensive figures of 2/61 and Afghanistan lost by 105 runs. <mask>'s bowling was fast and precise against Sri Lanka. He dismissed Kumar Sangakkara early with a delivery that swung in from outside off to bowl him, celebrating with a cartwheel and leaving Sri Lanka at 3/18. <mask> then bowled two consecutive deliveries past the edge of Dimuth Karunaratne's bat before having him caught at slip at 4/51. <mask> took three wickets in total, and for most of the match it looked like Afghanistan could win, but late in the innings Thisara Perera hit a very quick 47 runs from 26 balls to get Sri Lanka across the line.<mask> gained international notoriety after this match because he celebrated taking the wicket of Kumar Sangakkara with a cartwheel. Afghanistan's match against Scotland was their only match against a fellow associate team for the World Cup, and thus the match they were considered most likely to win. After bowling a very

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 economical 1/32 from 10 overs in the first innings, <mask> came in to bat in the second innings with Afghanistan still needing another 79 runs for victory. He provided support for teammate Samiullah Shenwari in a ninth-wicket stand of 60 runs, following Shenwari's instructions about when to farm the strike and when to rotate it. Shenwari hit a number of sixes in their partnership, but was caught at deep midwicket attempting a fourth inside one over. This left <mask> with fellow tailender Shapoor Zadran still needing to score another 19 runs to achieve victory. <mask> stayed in until the end of the innings with 15 runs in over an hour of batting, and Shapoor hit the winning runs in the final over to give Afghanistan their maiden World Cup victory.<mask> bowled Australian James Faulkner with a beautiful in-swinging yorker in Afghanistan's fourth match, but his bowling figures were 1/70 from 10 overs and Afghanistan lost by 275 runs to the eventual champions. Following the match, <mask> spoke with Australian fast bowler Mitchell Starc about shoes, as <mask> had gone through five pairs of bowling shoes already in the World Cup. <mask> bowled economically against New Zealand with 0/36 off of 7 overs, and in Afghanistan's final match against England he was the only Afghanistan bowler to take a wicket, removing Alex Hales with a thin outside edge. Despite being referred to by ground announcers as a medium-pace bowler, <mask> was Afghanistan's fastest bowler at the World Cup; his bowling was measured at speeds of over . 2015–present
<mask> played Afghanistan's first three matches in the 2015 ICC World Twenty20 Qualifier, taking six wickets across the three matches, but he limped off the field after bowling the 19th over against