title: Tone (linguistics)

text: In many contour-tone languages, one tone may affect the shape of an adjacent tone. The affected tone may become something new, a tone that only occurs in such situations, or it may be changed into a different existing tone. This is called tone sandhi. In Mandarin Chinese, for example, a dipping tone between two other tones is reduced to a simple low tone, which otherwise does not occur in Mandarin Chinese, whereas if two dipping tones occur in a row, the first becomes a rising tone, indistinguishable from other rising tones in the language. For example, the words 很 ('very') and 好 ('good') produce the phrase 很好 ('very good'). The two transcriptions may be conflated with reversed tone letters as .


title: Tone (linguistics)

text: Tone sandhi in Sinitic languages can be classified with a left-dominant or right-dominant system. In a language of the right-dominant system, the right-most syllable of a word retains its citation tone (i.e., the tone in its isolation form). All the other syllables of the word must take their sandhi form. Taiwanese Southern Min is known for its complex sandhi system. Example: 鹹kiam 'salty'; 酸sng 'sour'; 甜tinn 'sweet'; 鹹酸甜kiam sng tinn 'candied fruit'. In this example, only the last syllable remains unchanged. Subscripted numbers represent the changed tone.


title: Tone (linguistics)

text: Tone change must be distinguished from tone sandhi. Tone sandhi is a compulsory change that occurs when certain tones are juxtaposed. Tone change, however, is a morphologically conditioned alternation and is used as an inflectional or a derivational strategy. Lien indicated that causative verbs in modern Southern Min are expressed with tonal alternation, and that tonal alternation may come from earlier affixes. Examples: 長 tng 'long' vs. tng 'grow'; 斷 tng 'break' vs. tng 'cause to break'. Also, 毒 in Taiwanese Southern Min has two pronunciations: to̍k (entering tone) means 'poison' or 'poisonous', while thāu (departing tone) means 'to kill with poison'. The same usage can be found in Min, Yue, and Hakka.


title: Tone (linguistics)

text: In East Asia, tone is typically lexical. That is, tone is used to distinguish words which would otherwise be homonyms. This is characteristic of heavily tonal languages such as Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai, and Hmong.


title: Tone (linguistics)

text: However, in many African languages, especially in the Niger–Congo family, tone can be both lexical and grammatical. In the Kru languages, a combination of these patterns is found: nouns tend to have complex tone systems but are not much affected by grammatical inflections, whereas verbs tend to have simple tone systems, which are inflected to indicate tense and mood, person, and polarity, so that tone may be the only distinguishing feature between "you went" and "I won't go".


title: Tone (linguistics)

text: In colloquial Yoruba, especially when spoken quickly, vowels may assimilate to each other, and consonants elide so much that much of the lexical and grammatical information is carried by tone. In languages of West Africa such as Yoruba, people may even communicate with so-called "talking drums", which are modulated to imitate the tones of the language, or by whistling the tones of speech.


title: Tone (linguistics)

text: Note that tonal languages are not distributed evenly across the same range as non-tonal languages. Instead, the majority of tone languages belong to the Niger-Congo, Sino-Tibetan and Vietic groups, which are then composed by a large majority of tone languages and dominate a single region. Only in limited locations (South Africa, New Guinea, Mexico, Brazil and a few others) do tone languages occur as individual members or small clusters within a non-tone dominated area. In some locations, like Central America, it may represent no more than an incidental effect of which languages were included when one examines the distribution; for groups like Khoi-San in Southern Africa and Papuan languages, whole families of languages possess tonality but simply have relatively few members, and for some North American tone languages, multiple independent origins are suspected.


title: Tone (linguistics)

text: If generally considering only complex-tone vs. no-tone, it might be concluded that tone is almost always an ancient feature within a language family that is highly conserved among members. However, when considered in addition to "simple" tone systems that include only two tones, tone, as a whole, appears to be more labile, appearing several times within Indo-European languages, several times in American languages, and several times in Papuan families. That may indicate that rather than a trait unique to some language families, tone is a latent feature of most language families that may more easily arise and disappear as languages change over time.


title: Tone (linguistics)

text: A 2015 study by Caleb Everett argued that tonal languages are more common in hot and humid climates, which make them easier to pronounce, even when considering familial relationships. If the conclusions of Everett's work are sound, this is perhaps the first known case of influence of the environment on the structure of the languages spoken in it. The proposed relationship between climate and tone is controversial, and logical and statistical issues have been raised by various scholars.


title: Tone (linguistics)

text: Tone has long been viewed as merely a phonological system. It was not until recent years that tone was found to play a role in inflectional morphology. Palancar and Léonard (2016) provided an example with Tlatepuzco Chinantec (an Oto-Manguean language spoken in Southern Mexico), where tones are able to distinguish mood, person, and number:


title: Tone (linguistics)

text: In Iau language (the most tonally complex Lakes Plain language, predominantly monosyllabic), nouns have an inherent tone (e.g. be˧ 'fire' but be˦˧ 'flower'), but verbs don't have any inherent tone. For verbs, a tone is used to mark aspect. The first work that mentioned this was published in 1986. Example paradigms:


title: Tone (linguistics)

text: Tones are used to differentiate cases as well, as in Maasai language (a Nilo-Saharan language spoken in Kenya and Tanzania):


title: Tone (linguistics)

text: Certain varieties of Chinese are known to express meaning by means of tone change although further investigations are required. Examples from two Yue dialects spoken in Guangdong Province are shown below. In Taishan, tone change indicates the grammatical number of personal pronouns. In Zhongshan, perfective verbs are marked with tone change.


title: Tone (linguistics)

text: The following table compares the personal pronouns of Sixian dialect (a dialect of Taiwanese Hakka) with Zaiwa and Jingpho (both Tibeto-Burman languages spoken in Yunnan and Burma). From this table, we find the distinction between nominative, genitive, and accusative is marked by tone change and sound alternation.


title: Tone (linguistics)

text: There are several approaches to notating tones in the description of a language. A fundamental difference is between "phonemic" and "phonetic" transcription.


title: Tone (linguistics)

text: A phonemic notation will typically lack any consideration of the actual phonetic values of the tones. Such notations are especially common when comparing dialects with wildly different phonetic realizations of what are historically the same set of tones. In Chinese, for example, the "four tones" may be assigned numbers, such as ① to ④ or – after the historical tone split that affected all Chinese languages to at least some extent – ① to ⑧ (with odd numbers for the "yin" tones and even numbers for the "yang"). In traditional Chinese notation, the equivalent diacritics are attached to the Chinese character, marking the same distinctions, plus underlined for the "yang" tones where a split has occurred. If further splits occurred in some language or dialect, the results may be numbered '4a' and '4b' or something similar. Among the Kradai languages, tones are typically assigned the letters A through D or, after a historical tone split similar to what occurred in Chinese, A1 to D1 and A2 to D2. (See Proto-Tai language.) With such a system, it can be seen which words in two languages have the same historical tone (say tone ③) even though they no longer sound anything alike.


title: Tone (linguistics)

text: Also phonemic are upstep and downstep, which are indicated by the IPA diacritics and , respectively, or by the typographic substitutes and , respectively. Upstep and downstep affect the tones within a language as it is being spoken, typically due to grammatical inflection or when certain tones are brought together. (For example, a high tone may be stepped down when it occurs after a low tone, compared to the pitch it would have after a mid tone or another high tone.)


title: Tone (linguistics)

text: Phonetic notation records the actual relative pitch of the tones. Since tones tend to vary over time periods as short as centuries, this means that the historical connections among the tones of two language varieties will generally be lost by such notation, even if they are dialects of the same language.


title: Tone (linguistics)

text: An IPA/Chao tone letter will rarely be composed of more than three elements (which are sufficient for peaking and dipping tones). Occasionally, however, peaking–dipping and dipping–peaking tones, which require four elements – or even double-peaking and double-dipping tones, which require five – are encountered. This is usually only the case when prosody is superposed on lexical or grammatical tone, but a good computer font will allow an indefinite number of tone letters to be concatenated. The IPA diacritics placed over vowels and other letters have not been extended to this level of complexity.


title: Tone (linguistics)

text: In African linguistics (as well as in many African orthographies), a set of diacritics is usual to mark tone. The most common are a subset of the International Phonetic Alphabet:


title: Tone (linguistics)

text: Minor variations are common. In many three-tone languages, it is usual to mark high and low tone as indicated above but to omit marking of the mid tone: "má" (high), "ma" (mid), "mà" (low). Similarly, in two-tone languages, only one tone may be marked explicitly, usually the less common or more 'marked' tone (see markedness).


title: Tone (linguistics)

text: When digits are used, typically 1 is high and 5 is low, except in Omotic languages, where 1 is low and 5 or 6 is high. In languages with just two tones, 1 may be high and 2 low, etc.


title: Tone (linguistics)

text: In the Chinese tradition, digits are assigned to various tones (see tone number). For instance, Standard Mandarin Chinese, the official language of China, has four lexically contrastive tones, and the digits 1, 2, 3, and 4 are assigned to four tones. Syllables can sometimes be toneless and are described as having a neutral tone, typically indicated by omitting tone markings. Chinese varieties are traditionally described in terms of four tonal categories "ping" ('level'), "shang" ('rising'), "qu" ('exiting'), "ru" ('entering'), based on the traditional analysis of Middle Chinese (see Four tones); note that these are not at all the same as the four tones of modern standard Mandarin Chinese. Depending on the dialect, each of these categories may then be divided into two tones, typically called "yin" and "yang." Typically, syllables carrying the "ru" tones are closed by voiceless stops in Chinese varieties that have such coda(s) so in such dialects, "ru" is not a tonal category in the sense used by Western linguistics but rather a category of syllable structures. Chinese phonologists perceived these checked syllables as having concomitant short tones, justifying them as a tonal category. In Middle Chinese, when the tonal categories were established, the "shang" and "qu" tones also had characteristic final obstruents with concomitant tonic differences whereas syllables bearing the "ping" tone ended in a simple sonorant. An alternative to using the Chinese category names is assigning to each category a digit ranging from 1 to 8, sometimes higher for some Southern Chinese dialects with additional tone splits. Syllables belonging to the same tone category differ drastically in actual phonetic tone across the varieties of Chinese even among dialects of the same group. For example, the "yin ping" tone is a high level tone in Beijing Mandarin Chinese but a low level tone in Tianjin Mandarin Chinese.


title: Tone (linguistics)

text: More iconic systems use tone numbers or an equivalent set of graphic pictograms known as "Chao tone letters." These divide the pitch into five levels, with the lowest being assigned the value 1 and the highest the value 5. (This is the opposite of equivalent systems in Africa and the Americas.) The variation in pitch of a tone contour is notated as a string of two or three numbers. For instance, the four Mandarin Chinese tones are transcribed as follows (the tone letters will not display properly without a compatible font installed):


title: Tone (linguistics)

text: A mid-level tone would be indicated by /33/, a low level tone /11/, etc. The doubling of the number is commonly used with level tones to distinguish them from tone numbers; tone 3 in Mandarin Chinese, for example, is not mid /3/. However, it is not necessary with tone letters, so /33/ = or simply . If a distinction is made, it may be that is mid tone in a register system and is mid level tone in a contour system, or may be mid tone on a short syllable or a mid checked tone, while is mid tone on a long syllable or a mid unchecked tone.


title: Tone (linguistics)

text: IPA diacritic notation is also sometimes seen for Chinese. One reason it is not more widespread is that only two contour tones, rising and falling , are widely supported by IPA fonts while several Chinese varieties have more than one rising or falling tone. One common workaround is to retain standard IPA and for high-rising (e.g. ) and high-falling (e.g. ) tones and to use the subscript diacritics and for low-rising (e.g. ) and low-falling (e.g. ) tones.


title: Tone (linguistics)

text: Several North American languages have tone, one of which is Cherokee, an Iroquoian language. Oklahoma Cherokee has six tones (1 low, 2 medium, 3 high, 4 very high, 5 rising and 6 falling). The Tanoan languages have tone as well. For instance, Kiowa has three tones (high, low, falling), while Jemez has four (high, mid, low, and falling).


title: Tone (linguistics)

text: In Mesoamericanist linguistics, /1/ stands for high tone and /5/ stands for low tone, except in Oto-Manguean languages for which /1/ may be low tone and /3/ high tone. It is also common to see acute accents for high tone and grave accents for low tone and combinations of these for contour tones. Several popular orthographies use or after a vowel to indicate low tone. The Southern Athabascan languages that include the Navajo and Apache languages are tonal, and are analyzed as having two tones: high and low. One variety of Hopi has developed tone, as has the Cheyenne language.


title: Tone (linguistics)

text: In Roman script orthographies, a number of approaches are used. Diacritics are common, as in pinyin, but they tend to be omitted. Thai uses a combination of redundant consonants and diacritics. Tone letters may also be used, for example in Hmong RPA and several minority languages in China. Tone may simply be ignored, as is possible even for highly tonal languages: for example, the Chinese navy has successfully used toneless pinyin in government telegraph communications for decades. Likewise, Chinese reporters abroad may file their stories in toneless pinyin. Dungan, a variety of Mandarin Chinese spoken in Central Asia, has, since 1927, been written in orthographies that do not indicate tone. Ndjuka, in which tone is less important, ignores tone except for a negative marker. However, the reverse is also true: in the Congo, there have been complaints from readers that newspapers written in orthographies without tone marking are insufficiently legible.


title: Tone (linguistics)

text: Standard Central Thai has five tones–mid, low, falling, high and rising–often indicated respectively by the numbers zero, one, two, three and four. The Thai alphabet is an alphasyllabary, which specifies the tone unambiguously. Tone is indicated by an interaction of the initial consonant of a syllable, the vowel length, the final consonant (if present), and sometimes a tone mark. A particular tone mark may denote different tones depending on the initial consonant. The Shan alphabet, derived from the Burmese script, has five tone letters: , , , , ; a sixth tone is unmarked.


title: Tone (linguistics)

text: Vietnamese uses the Latin alphabet and its six tones are marked by letters with diacritics above or below a certain vowel. Basic notation for Vietnamese tones are as follows:


title: Tone (linguistics)

text: The Latin-based Hmong and Iu Mien alphabets use full letters for tones. In Hmong, one of the eight tones (the tone) is left unwritten while the other seven are indicated by the letters "b, m, d, j, v, s, g" at the end of the syllable. Since Hmong has no phonemic syllable-final consonants, there is no ambiguity. That system enables Hmong speakers to type their language with an ordinary Latin-letter keyboard without having to resort to diacritics. In the Iu Mien, the letters "v, c, h, x, z" indicate tones but unlike Hmong, it also has final consonants written before the tone.


title: Tone (linguistics)

text: The Standard Zhuang and Zhuang languages used to use a unique set of six "tone letters" based on the shapes of numbers, but slightly modified, to depict what tone a syllable was in. This was replaced in 1982 with the use of normal letters in the same manner, like Hmong.


title: Tone (linguistics)

text: The syllabary of the Nuosu language depicts tone in a unique manner, having separate glyphs for each tone other than for the mid-rising tone, which is denoted by the addition of a diacritic. Take the difference between ꉬ nge [ŋɯ³³] , and ꉫ ngex [ŋɯ³⁴]. In romanisation, the letters t, x, and p are used to demarcate tone. As codas are forbidden in Nuosu there is no ambiguity.


title: Tone (linguistics)

text: André-Georges Haudricourt established that Vietnamese tone originated in earlier consonantal contrasts and suggested similar mechanisms for Chinese. It is now widely held that Old Chinese did not have phonemically contrastive tone. The historical origin of tone is called "tonogenesis," a term coined by James Matisoff.


title: Tone (linguistics)

text: Tone is sometimes an areal rather than a phylogenetic feature. That is to say, a language may acquire tones through bilingualism if influential neighbouring languages are tonal or if speakers of a tonal language shift to the language in question and bring their tones with them. The process is referred to as contact-induced tonogenesis by linguists. In other cases, tone may arise spontaneously and surprisingly fast: the dialect of Cherokee in Oklahoma has tone, but the dialect in North Carolina does not although they were separated only in 1838.


title: Tone (linguistics)

text: Tone arose in the Athabascan languages at least twice, in a patchwork of two systems. In some languages, such as Navajo, syllables with glottalized consonants (including glottal stops) in the syllable coda developed low tones, whereas in others, such as Slavey, they developed high tones, so that the two tonal systems are almost mirror images of each other. Syllables without glottalized codas developed the opposite tone. For example, high tone in Navajo and low tone in Slavey are due to contrast with the tone triggered by the glottalization.


title: Tone (linguistics)

text: Other Athabascan languages, namely those in western Alaska (such as Koyukon) and the Pacific coast (such as Hupa), did not develop tone. Thus, the Proto-Athabascan word ' ('water') is toneless ' in Hupa, high-tone ' in Navajo, and low-tone "tù" in Slavey; while Proto-Athabascan ' ('knee') is toneless ' in Hupa, low-tone ' in Navajo, and high-tone "" in Slavey. provides a phonetic explanation for the opposite development of tone based on the two different ways of producing glottalized consonants with either tense voice on the preceding vowel, which tends to produce a high F0, or creaky voice, which tends to produce a low F0. Languages with "stiff" glottalized consonants and tense voice developed high tone on the preceding vowel and those with "slack" glottalized consonants with creaky voice developed low tone.


title: Tone (linguistics)

text: The Bantu languages also have "mirror" tone systems in which the languages in the northwest corner of the Bantu area have the opposite tones of other Bantu languages.


title: Tone (linguistics)

text: Three Algonquian languages developed tone independently of one another and of neighboring languages: Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Kickapoo. In Cheyenne, tone arose via vowel contraction; the long vowels of Proto-Algonquian contracted into high-pitched vowels in Cheyenne while the short vowels became low-pitched. In Kickapoo, a vowel with a following [h] acquired a low tone, and this tone later extended to all vowels followed by a fricative.


title: Tone (linguistics)

text: In Mohawk, a glottal stop can disappear in a combination of morphemes, leaving behind a long falling tone. Note that it has the reverse effect of the postulated rising tone in Cantonese or Middle Chinese, derived from a lost final glottal stop.


title: Tone (linguistics)

text: In Korean, a 2013 study which compared voice recordings of Seoul speech from 1935 and 2005 found that in recent years, lenis consonants (ㅂㅈㄷㄱ), aspirated consonants (ㅍㅊㅌㅋ) and fortis consonants (ㅃㅉㄸㄲ) were shifting from a distinction via voice onset time to that of pitch change, and suggests that the modern Seoul dialect is currently undergoing tonogenesis. These sound shifts still show variations among different speakers, suggesting that the transition is still ongoing. Among 141 examined Seoul speakers, these pitch changes were originally initiated by females born in the 1950s, and has almost reached completion in the speech of those born in the 1990s.


title: Tone (linguistics)

text: "There is tonogenetic potential in various series of phonemes: glottalized vs. plain consonants, unvoiced vs. voiced, aspirated vs. unaspirated, geminates vs. simple (...), and even among vowels". Very often, tone arises as an effect of the loss or merger of consonants. In a nontonal language, voiced consonants commonly cause following vowels to be pronounced at a lower pitch than other consonants. That is usually a minor phonetic detail of voicing. However, if consonant voicing is subsequently lost, that incidental pitch difference may be left over to carry the distinction that the voicing previously carried (a process called transphonologization) and thus becomes meaningful (phonemic).


title: Tone (linguistics)

text: This process happened in the Punjabi language: the Punjabi murmured (voiced aspirate) consonants have disappeared and left tone in their wake. If the murmured consonant was at the beginning of a word, it left behind a low tone; at the end, it left behind a high tone. If there was no such consonant, the pitch was unaffected; however, the unaffected words are limited in pitch and did not interfere with the low and high tones. That produced a tone of its own, mid tone. The historical connection is so regular that Punjabi is still written as if it had murmured consonants, and tone is not marked. The written consonants tell the reader which tone to use.


title: Tone (linguistics)

text: Similarly, final fricatives or other consonants may phonetically affect the pitch of preceding vowels, and if they then weaken to and finally disappear completely, the difference in pitch, now a true difference in tone, carries on in their stead. This was the case with Chinese. Two of the three tones of Middle Chinese, the "rising" and the "departing" tones, arose as the Old Chinese final consonants and disappeared, while syllables that ended with neither of these consonants were interpreted as carrying the third tone, "even". Most varieties descending from Middle Chinese were further affected by a tone split in which each tone divided in two depending on whether the initial consonant was voiced. Vowels following a voiced consonant (depressor consonant) acquired a lower tone as the voicing lost its distinctiveness.


title: Tone (linguistics)

text: The same changes affected many other languages in the same area, and at around the same time (AD 1000–1500). The tone split, for example, also occurred in Thai and Vietnamese.


title: Tone (linguistics)

text: In general, voiced initial consonants lead to low tones while vowels after aspirated consonants acquire a high tone. When final consonants are lost, a glottal stop tends to leave a preceding vowel with a high or rising tone (although glottalized vowels tend to be low tone so if the glottal stop causes vowel glottalization, that will tend to leave behind a low vowel). A final fricative tends to leave a preceding vowel with a low or falling tone. Vowel phonation also frequently develops into tone, as can be seen in the case of Burmese.


title: Tone (linguistics)

text: 1. The table below is the process of tonogenesis in White Hmong, described by Martha Ratliff. The tone values described in the table are from Christina Esposito.


title: Tone (linguistics)

text: 3. The table below is the tonogenesis of Tai Dam (Black Tai). Displayed in the first row is the Proto-Southern Kra-Dai, as reconstructed by Norquest. Tone values are taken from Pittayaporn.


title: Tone (linguistics)

text: The tones across all varieties (or dialects) of Chinese correspond to each other, although they may not correspond to each other perfectly. Moreover, listed above are citation tones, but in actual conversations, obligatory sandhi rules will reshape them. The Sixian and Hailu Hakka in Taiwan are famous for their near-regular and opposite pattern (of pitch height). Both will be compared with Standard Chinese below.


title: Tone (linguistics)

text: 5. The table below shows Punjabi tonogenesis in bisyllabic words. Unlike the above four examples, Punjab was not under the east Asian tone sprachbund, instead belonging to a separate one in its own area of Punjab. As well, unlike the above languages, which developed tone from syllable endings, Punjab developed tone from its voiced aspirated stops losing their aspiration. Tone does occur in monosyllabic words as well, but are not discussed in the chart below.


title: Tone (linguistics)

text: Most languages of Sub-Saharan Africa are members of the Niger-Congo family, which is predominantly tonal; notable exceptions are Swahili (in the southeast), most languages spoken in the Senegambia (among them Wolof, Serer and Cangin languages), and Fulani. The Afroasiatic languages include both tonal (Chadic, Omotic) and nontonal (Semitic, Berber, Egyptian, and most Cushitic) branches. All three Khoisan language families—Khoe, Kx'a and Tuu—are tonal. All languages of the Nilotic language family are tonal.


title: Tone (linguistics)

text: Numerous tonal languages are widely spoken in China and Mainland Southeast Asia. Sino-Tibetan languages (including Meitei-Lon, Burmese, Mog and most varieties of Chinese; though some, such as Shanghainese, are only marginally tonal) and Kra–Dai languages (including Thai and Lao) are mostly tonal. The Hmong–Mien languages are some of the most tonal languages in the world, with as many as twelve phonemically distinct tones. Austroasiatic (such as Khmer and Mon) and Austronesian (such as Malay, Javanese, Tagalog, and Maori) languages are mostly non tonal with the rare exception of Austroasiatic languages like Vietnamese, and Austronesian languages like Cèmuhî, Paicî, Drubea, Numèè, Kwenyii, Matbat, Bukawa, Yabem, Ma'ya, and Tsat. Tones in Vietnamese and Tsat may result from Chinese influence on both languages. There were tones in Middle Korean. Other languages represented in the region, such as Mongolian, Uyghur, and Japanese belong to language families that do not contain any tonality as defined here. In South Asia tonal languages are rare, but some Indo-Aryan languages have tonality, including Punjabi and Dogri, as well as the Eastern Bengali lects.


title: Tone (linguistics)

text: A large number of North, South and Central American languages are tonal, including many of the Athabaskan languages of Alaska and the American Southwest (including Navajo), and the Oto-Manguean languages of Mexico. Among the Mayan languages, which are mostly non-tonal, Yucatec (with the largest number of speakers), Uspantek, and one dialect of Tzotzil have developed tone systems. The Ticuna language of the western Amazon is perhaps the most tonal language of the Americas. Other languages of the western Amazon have fairly simple tone systems as well. However, although tone systems have been recorded for many American languages, little theoretical work has been completed for the characterization of their tone systems. In different cases, Oto-Manguean tone languages in Mexico have been found to possess tone systems similar to both Asian and African tone languages.


title: Tone (linguistics)

text: Norwegian and Swedish share tonal language features via the 'Single' and 'Double' tone, which can be marked in phonetic descriptions by either a preceding ' (single tone) or ៴ (double tone). Examples in Norwegian: 'bønder (farmers) and ៴bønner (beans) are, apart from the intonation, phonetically identical (despite the spelling difference). Similarly, and with in this case identical spelling, 'tømmer (timber) and ៴tømmer (present tense of verb tømme – to empty) are distinguished only through intonation.


title: Tone (linguistics)

text: The single tone starts low and rises to a high note towards the end of the word, while the double tone starts higher than the single tone, falls, and then rises again to a higher pitch than the start.


title: Tone (linguistics)

text: In some cases it is difficult to determine whether a language is tonal. For example, the Ket language has been described as having up to eight tones by some investigators, as having four tones by others, but by some as having no tone at all. In cases such as these, the classification of a language as tonal may depend on the researcher's interpretation of what tone is. For instance, the Burmese language has phonetic tone, but each of its three tones is accompanied by a distinctive phonation (creaky, murmured or plain vowels). It could be argued either that the tone is incidental to the phonation, in which case Burmese would not be phonemically tonal, or that the phonation is incidental to the tone, in which case it would be considered tonal. Something similar appears to be the case with Ket.


title: Tone (linguistics)

text: The 19th-century constructed language Solresol can consist of only tone, but unlike all natural tonal languages, Solresol's tone is absolute, rather than relative, and no tone sandhi occurs.


title: National Pension System

text: specialised division of Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority which is under the jurisdiction of Ministry of Finance of the Government of India. The National Pension System (NPS) is a voluntary defined contribution pension system in India. National Pension System, like PPF and EPF is an EEE (Exempt-Exempt-Exempt) instrument in India where the entire corpus escapes tax at maturity and entire pension withdrawal amount is tax-free.


title: National Pension System

text: NPS started with the decision of the Government of India to stop defined benefit pensions for all its employees who joined after 1 April 2004. While the scheme was initially designed for government employees only, it was opened up for all citizens of India between the age of 18 and 65 in 2009, for OCI card holders and PIO's in October 2019. On 26 August 2021, PFRDA increased the entry age for the National Pension System (NPS) from 65 years to 70 years. As per the revised norms, any Indian Citizen, resident or non-resident and Overseas Citizen of India (OCI) between the age of 65–70 years can join NPS and continue or defer their NPS Account up to the age of 75 years. It is administered and regulated by the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA).


title: National Pension System

text: On 10 December 2018, the Government of India made NPS an entirely tax-free instrument in India where the entire corpus escapes tax at maturity; the 40% annuity also became tax-free. Any individual who is Subscriber of NPS can claim tax benefit for Tier-I account under Sec 80 CCD (1) with in the overall ceiling of Rs. 1.5 lac under Sec 80 C of Income Tax Act. 1961. An additional deduction for investment up to Rs. 50,000 in NPS (Tier I account) is available exclusively to NPS subscribers under subsection 80CCD (1B). The changes in NPS was notified through changes in The Income-tax Act, 1961, during the 2019 Union budget of India. There is no tax benefit on investment towards Tier II NPS Account. NPS is limited EEE, to the extent of 60%. 40% has to be compulsorily used to purchase an annuity, which is taxable at the applicable tax slab.


title: National Pension System

text: Contributions to NPS receive tax exemptions under Section 80C, Section 80CCC and Section 80CCD(1) of Income Tax Act. Starting from 2016, an additional tax benefit of Rs 50,000 under Section 80CCD(1b) is provided under NPS, which is over the Rs 1.5 lakh exemption of Section 80C. Private fund managers are important parts of NPS. NPS is considered one of the best tax saving instruments, after 40% of the corpus was made tax-free at the time of maturity and it is ranked just below equity-linked savings scheme (ELSS).


title: National Pension System

text: The National Pension System (NPS) is a voluntary defined contribution pension system administered and regulated by the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA), created by an Act of the Parliament of India. The NPS started with the decision of the Government of India to stop defined benefit pensions for all its employees who joined after 1 January 2004. While the scheme was initially designed for government employees only, it was opened up for all citizens of India in 2009. NPS is an attempt by the government to create a pensioned society in India. Today, the NPS is readily available and tax efficient under Section 80CCC and Section 80CCD. Under the NPS, an individual can contribute to his retirement account. Also, his employer can contribute to the welfare and social security of the individual.


title: National Pension System

text: NPS is a quasi-EET instrument in India where 40% of the corpus escapes tax at maturity, while 60% of the corpus is taxable. Of the 60% taxable corpus, 40% is tax-exempt as it has to be compulsorily used to purchase an annuity. The annuity income will be taxed, though. The remaining 20% alone will now be taxed at slab rates on withdrawal. In 2017 Union budget of India, 25% exemption of the contribution made by an employee has been announced as a form of premature partial withdrawal in NPS. This amendment will take effect on 1 April 2018 and will, accordingly, apply in relation to the assessment year 2018-19. NPS is a market-linked annuity product.


title: National Pension System

text: In 1999 the Government of India commissioned a national project, OASIS (an acronym for "old age social and income security"), to examine policies related to old age income security in India. Based on the recommendations of the OASIS report, the Government of India introduced a new Defined Contribution Pension System for the new entrants to Central/State Government service, except to the Defence forces i.e. Army, Navy and Air Force, replacing the existing system of the Defined Benefit Pension System.


title: National Pension System

text: On 23 August 2003, the Interim Pension Fund Regulatory & Development Authority (PFRDA) was established through a resolution by the Government of India to "promote old age income security by establishing, developing and regulating pension funds, to protect the interests of subscribers to schemes of pension funds and for matters connected therewith or incidental thereto." The Pension Fund Regulatory & Development Authority Act was passed on 19 September 2013 and notified on 1 February 2014, thus setting up PFRDA as the regulator for pension sector in India. However, there remains a considerable amount of confusion with other entities like the Employee Provident Fund, pension funds run by life insurers, and mutual fund companies being outside the purview of PFRDA.


title: National Pension System

text: The contributory pension system was notified by the Government of India on 22 December 2003, now named the National Pension System (NPS) with effect from 1 January 2004. The NPS was subsequently extended to all citizens of the country with effect from 1 May 2009, including self-employed professionals and others in the unorganized sector on a voluntary basis.


title: National Pension System

text: Unlike traditional financial products where all the functions (sales, operations, service, fund management, depository) are done by one company, NPS follows an unbundled architecture where each step of the value chain has been made disjointed from the other. This unbundling not only allows the customer to mix and match his providers of service through the value chain, picking the best-suited option, but it also curbs the incidence of misselling.


title: National Pension System

text: NPS architecture consists of the NPS Trust, which is entrusted with safeguarding subscribers' interests, two privately owned Central Recordkeeping Agencies (CRAs), which maintain the data and records, Point of Presence (POP) as collection, distribution and servicing arms, pension fund managers (PFM) for managing the investments of subscribers, a custodian to take care of the assets purchased by the fund managers, and a trustee bank to manage the banking operations. At age 60 the customer can choose to purchase pension Annuity Service Providers (ASP). NPS investors can't opt for two pension fund managers, neither can switch to another pension fund before a year. In 2017, PFRDA increased the entry age in NPS to 70 years.


title: National Pension System

text: The number of pension fund managers (PFM) has increased to seven in NPS: SBI Pension Funds is the largest pension fund manager (PFM) in India and its assets under management(AUM) level is Rs 61,000 crore.


title: National Pension System

text: At present, central government employees have no say in the matter of choice of fund manager or investment allocation in NPS, as both are decided by the government. All the NPS contributions of Central government employees are being distributed evenly across three public sector fund managers :LIC Pension Fund, SBI Pension Fund and UTI Retirement Solutions.


title: National Pension System

text: All the major commercial banks, brokers and stock holding corporations perform the role of PoP. The subscriber can choose any one of them. There are seven fund managers and eight annuity service providers for subscribers to choose from. The subscriber can choose to invest either, wholly or in combination, in four types of investment schemes offered by the pension fund managers. These are:


title: National Pension System

text: Alternatively, the subscriber can opt for the default scheme, whereas per the time left to retirement his portfolio is rebalanced each year for the proportion of equity, corporate bonds, and government bonds.


title: National Pension System

text: The contribution to voluntary savings account (also called Tier-II account) can only be made by the subscriber and not by any third party.


title: National Pension System

text: The regulator add a new asset class Alternative Investment Funds (AIF) to the existing menu of equities, government securities and corporate bonds, available on NPS.


title: National Pension System

text: A citizen of India, whether resident or non-resident or an OCI card holder can join NPS (Through a circular issued on 29 October 2019 PFRDA has stated that now Overseas Citizen of India (OCIs) can enrol to invest in NPS tier-1 accounts), subject to the following conditions:


title: National Pension System

text: The Central government employee subscribers grew 4.9% on year to 2.28 million in FY22 while state governments subscribers grew 8.5% to 5.58 million during the year. The total number of subscribers as of March 31, 2022, was 52 million, up 23% from a year ago. Total NPS assets under management stood at Rs 7.36 trillion as of March 31, 2022, up from Rs 5.78 trillion as on March 31, 2021


title: National Pension System

text: Premature withdrawal in NPS before age 60 required parking 80% of the sum in an annuity. One can withdraw 20 percent of the corpus before 60 years but he/she must buy annuity with 80 percent of the corpus. In 2016, the NPS allowed withdrawal of up to 25% of contributions for specified reasons, if the scheme is at least 3 years old with certain conditions.


title: National Pension System

text: One can withdraw the complete amount if the pension collected is less than INR 5,00,000. This amount was increased to INR 5,00,000 as per PFRDA Circular dated 14 June 2021.


title: Dexter Darden

text: Dexter Darden (born June 24, 1991) is an American actor, best known for playing the role of Walter Hill in "Joyful Noise" and Frypan in the "Maze Runner" film series.


title: Telstra

text: Telstra Group Limited is an Australian telecommunications company which builds and operates telecommunications networks and markets voice, mobile, internet access, pay television and other products and services. It is a member of the S&P/ASX 20 and Australia's largest telecommunications company by market share. Telstra is the largest wireless carrier in Australia, with 18.8 million subscribers as of 2020.


title: Telstra

text: Telstra has a long history in Australia, originating together with Australia Post as the Postmaster-General's Department upon federation in 1901. Telstra has transitioned from a state-owned enterprise to a fully privatised company and has recently focused on diversified products and emerging technologies.


title: Telstra

text: Australia's telecommunications services were originally controlled by the Postmaster-General's Department (PMG), formed in 1901 as a result of Australian Federation. Prior to 1901, telecommunications were administered by each colony. On 1 July 1975, separate commissions were established by statute to replace the PMG. Responsibility for postal services was transferred to the Australian Postal Commission (Australia Post). The Australian Telecommunications Commission (ATC), trading as Telecom Australia, ran domestic telecommunication services.


title: Telstra

text: In 1993, the Overseas Telecommunications Commission, a separate government body established in 1946, was merged with the Australian Telecommunications Corporation into the short-lived Australian and Overseas Telecommunications Corporation (AOTC) which continued trading under the established identities of Telecom and OTC. The AOTC was renamed to Telstra Corporation Limited in 1993. The name "Telstra" is derived from the word Telecom Australia (TEL from Telecom and STRA from Australia). The corporation then traded under the "Telstra" brand internationally and "Telecom Australia" domestically until uniform branding of "Telstra" was introduced throughout the entire organisation in 1995, following an unsuccessful attempt to register the trademark "Telecom Australia".


title: Telstra

text: Telstra has faced competition since the early 1990s from Optus (Australia's second largest communication company) and a number of smaller providers. Telstra once retained ownership of the fixed-line telephone network, but since the nationwide upgrade to the National Broadband Network (NBN), the Australian Government now has legal ownership of these lines since 2007, though Telstra has played a big part in this upgrade supplying resources to the Government on the new network. Telstra also has pay TV and owns 35% of the Australian media company Foxtel. Other companies offering fixed-line services must therefore deal with Telstra, except Optus, TransACT and a few others who have installed their own infrastructure.


title: Telstra

text: The Overseas Telecommunications Commission (OTC) was established by an Act of Parliament in August 1946. It inherited facilities and resources from Amalgamated Wireless Australasia Limited (AWA) and Cable & Wireless, and was charged with responsibility for all international telecommunications services into, through and out of Australia.


title: Telstra

text: On 1 February 1992, it was merged with Australia's domestic telecommunications carrier, the Australian Telecommunications Corporation Limited ("Telecom"), to create the Australian and Overseas Telecommunications Corporation Limited (AOTC). The new organisation underwent a corporate identity review and was subsequently renamed Telstra Corporation Limited ("Telstra") for international business in 1993 and domestic business in 1995.


title: Telstra

text: Beginning in 1997 and finalizing in 2011, the federal government began to privatise the corporation. The first three stages were initiated by the Liberal–National Coalition's Howard Government: the first, informally known as "T1" (with shares priced at $3.30), occurred in 1997. "T2" ($7.40) followed in 1999; "T3" ($3.60) in 2006.


title: Telstra

text: In T1, the government sold one third of its shares in Telstra for A$14 billion and publicly listed the company on the Australian Stock Exchange. In 1998, a further 16% of Telstra shares were sold to the public, leaving the Australian government with 51% ownership. In 2006, T3 was announced by the government and was the largest of the three public releases, reducing the government's ownership of Telstra to 17%. The 17% remainder of Telstra was placed in Australia's Future Fund, a sovereign wealth fund established mainly to meet future liabilities for payment of superannuation to retired federal public servants. In 2009, the Future Fund sold off another $2.4 billion worth of shares, reducing the government's stake in Telstra to 10.9%. In August 2011, under Labor's Gillard Government, the Future Fund sold its remaining "above market weight" Telstra shares, effectively completing Telstra's privatisation.


title: Telstra

text: With more than one million shareholders, Telstra is currently the most widely held ASX-listed company.


title: Telstra

text: On 26 November 2008, Telstra submitted a non-complying tender issued by the federal government to build a National Broadband Network, a 12-page letter proposing a $5 billion broadband network covering between 80 and 90 percent of the Australian population in major cities, despite the tender requiring 98 percent coverage.


title: Telstra

text: As a result, Telstra was removed from the National Broadband Network RFP process on 15 December 2008. In response, Telstra announced that it would raise speeds on its existing Next G network and HFC "cable" network so that they both offer higher speeds than the RFP for the NBN requires. Following Telstra's exclusion from the National Broadband Network bidding process Telstra's share price suffered the biggest one-day percentage fall in its history.


title: Telstra

text: NBN Co Limited signed a definitive agreement with Telstra on , estimated to be worth post-tax net present value, building upon the signing of a financial heads of agreement a year beforehand. Telstra agreed to "disconnect"<ref name='joint-committee-16/5/11-p16'></ref> its Internet customers from the copper and hybrid fibre-coaxial networks in areas where FTTP has been installed, and agreed to lease dark fibre, exchange space and ducts to NBN Co. As part of the agreement, Telstra would not be able to market their mobile network as an alternative to the NBN for a number of years. Telstra remains the owner of its networks.<ref name='joint-committee-16/5/11-p16,31'></ref> On 18 October 2011, Telstra shareholders overwhelmingly approved the deal.


title: Telstra

text: On 14 December 2014 it was announced that in a A$11b renegotiated deal Telstra will transfer ownership of its copper and hybrid fibre-coaxial (HFC) networks to NBN while disconnecting premises from these networks. This ownership allows NBN Co to use these networks "where it sees fit in for its multi-technology NBN rollout."


title: Telstra

text: Under the leadership of David Thodey, Telstra embarked upon a transformation agenda to become more sales and service focused.


title: Telstra

text: Early in 2010, Telstra announced the creation of a $1 billion "fighting fund" to be used in a concerted effort to win back market share in key product categories. This effort seems to have paid off with strong sales momentum announced in February 2011.


title: Telstra

text: As part of its new strategy, Telstra announced that its "goal is for customer service to be fundamental to everything we do". In August 2011, Telstra Digital announced expansion of customer service into social media with 24/7 coverage. By November 2012, Telstra claimed 140,000 live chats for the month and a growth rate of this service of 600% p.a. In October 2013, Telstra announced that it had grown its Live Chat workforce to 600 and its social media workforce to 30.


title: Telstra

text: The following table shows total complaints handled by the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO) 2010–2015, and of those, the ones made against Telstra.


title: Telstra

text: In February 2011, Telstra announced the formation of Telstra Digital under the leadership of Gerd Schenkel who was hired from National Australia Bank/UBank. Telstra Digital's initial purpose was to improve the use of digital channels for customer service. In April 2011, Telstra Digital relaunched its web homepage design. In July 2011, Telstra Digital launched "CrowdSupport", an online forum to crowd source customer service. As of July 2017, Telstra's "CrowdSupport" had 463,000 posts. It was also cited as an example of "scaling at the edge" by Deloitte's Centre for the Edge.


title: Telstra

text: In September 2011, Telstra Digital launched a new account services portal to help achieve its goal of managing 35% of Telstra's transactions. In October 2011, Telstra Digital announced a new mobile smartphone optimised version of its website. In November 2011, Telstra Digital launched an iPhone app on a trial basis as well as a new online mobile phone shop.


title: Telstra

text: In July 2012, Telstra Digital launched smartphone and Facebook apps for customers to manage their Telstra accounts and in November 2012, Telstra claimed that over 700,000 customers had downloaded those apps. In August 2013, Telstra revealed that the apps reached 2.5 million downloads.


title: Telstra

text: At a results announcement, CEO David Thodey remarked that "the group's new online strategy was delivering" in the context of a 28% reduction of inbound service calls. Telstra estimated that its digital program will provide productivity benefits of $100 million in the 2013 financial year from lower printing costs, decreasing commissions to third parties, and reduced dependence on call center staff.


title: Telstra

text: In October 2012, Telstra's CEO David Thodey stated, "The rise of online and social media had 'fundamentally changed the way' which the company communicated with its customers". In a 2015 Deloitte report, Telstra disclosed that its "CrowdSupport" service community had generated 200,000 pieces of user-generated content. In August 2016, Telstra disclosed that "more than 60%" of visitors to "CrowdSupport" manage to find an answer on the community.


title: Telstra

text: In February 2013, Telstra introduced the ability to pay its bills via PayPal. And in June 2013, Telstra launched a new website, including the ability for customers to link their online accounts to their Facebook identity.


title: Telstra

text: In March 2014, Telstra announced a new digital development program called "Digital First" with a stated aim to conduct 65 to 70 percent of its transactions online. Telstra published a white paper sharing some key metrics of its digital program:


title: Telstra

text: In September 2014, Telstra announced the opening of a "Digital Transformation Centre" in Sydney to design and built new digital tools for its service systems.


title: Telstra

text: In June 2014, Telstra disclosed that it had 3 million customers on "electronic billing" saving it $3 million per month in costs. Telstra also mentioned that live chat accounted for 10% of total contact centre activity.


title: Telstra

text: In October 2016, the Executive Director of Telstra Digital Gerd Schenkel left Telstra to become CEO of a fintech company.


title: Telstra

text: Telstra owns and operates a series of retail stores known as Telstra Stores. Some are directly owned and operated by the Telstra Corporation and some are operated by licensees.


title: Telstra

text: As of May 2016, Telstra has a total of 360 retail stores across Australia. This includes several new 'Discovery' stores, where Telstra has invested millions in redesigning key stores based on local requirements. These designs include new displays, accessory shops, digital tickets and free baristas.


title: Telstra

text: 109 of Telstra's stores are owned and operated by Vita Group, a publicly listed company with a market capitalisation of approximately $600m (June 2016).


title: Telstra

text: In February 2011, Telstra announced the creation of an additional 100 retail stores within three years.


title: Telstra

text: In August 2016, Telstra disclosed that "over 300" Telstra stores were equipped with low energy Bluetooth beacons.


title: Telstra

text: The carrier opened the world's first Android store, called "Androidland", on Bourke Street, Melbourne, Australia, in December 2011.


title: Telstra

text: In October 2011, Telstra launched a new brand identity and color scheme. The new identity launched with the slogan "It's how we connect", and features the "T" from the previous logo in a variety of colors. This was followed by a "brand refresh" in February 2014 and again in 2016.


title: Telstra

text: In 2013, Telstra was assessed as Australia's third most valuable brand, after Woolworths and BHP Billiton. In 2016 Telstra became Australia's most valuable brand, which it maintained in 2017.


title: Telstra

text: Telstra sponsors numerous awards around Australia, including the Australian Business of the Year award, the MYOB Small Business Award, and the National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award (NATSIAA) which has become known as the Telstra Award. Notable past winners include Vaxine, APS Plastics, and eWAY.


title: Telstra

text: Telstra was a major sponsor of the V8 Supercars car racing championship through its BigPond brand and directly sponsored the Sydney Telstra 500 event, the final round of the series held at Sydney Olympic Park. The sport ended this deal at the conclusion of the 2012 season.


title: Telstra

text: Telstra had naming rights to the Docklands Stadium in Melbourne from 2000 until 2009. Telstra is also the naming rights sponsor of the National Rugby League Premiership. Telstra is also the principal sponsor of Swimming Australia. They also sponsored the Minardi team for the 2002 Formula One season, and the Rally Australia 2006 Championships.


title: Telstra

text: Telstra also had the naming rights (under TelstraClear) for the TelstraClear Pacific events centre in Manukau City, New Zealand.


title: Telstra

text: In November 1997, the Australian government sold the first tranche of its Telstra shares, 4.29 Billion shares, publicly at a price of $3.40 per share to institutional investors and $3.30 to retail investors. This sale is commonly referred to as "T1". In October 1999, the Australian government sold the second tranche of its Telstra shares under the "T2" program for $7.80 per share to institutional investors and $7.40 to retail investors. In November 2006, the government sold a third tranche of its shares, "T3", at $3.60 per share.


title: Telstra

text: Since its privatisation, Telstra shares have hit a low of just over $2.50 per share in late 2010. Since then, Telstra shares have risen to $5 per share in December 2013 and $6 per share in December 2014.


title: Telstra

text: Amid the global pandemic crisis of the coronavirus in 2020, Telstra was one of three companies of the ASX 200 to gain in the week starting 15 March. It increased by 1.8 percent on the Australian Securities Exchange.


title: Telstra

text: In January 2014, Telstra announced its intention to sell 70% of Sensis to Platinum Equity for $454 million. Sensis was said to have once been "one of Telstra's most lucrative businesses" and reportedly "has been under pressure in recent years amid competition from more agile digital alternatives such as Google".


title: Telstra

text: In February 2014, Telstra was reportedly seeking to reduce Sensis employment by 400 to 1,000 positions.


title: Telstra

text: In September 2013, Telstra launched a new health business unit – Telstra Health and hired Shane Solomon as the head.


title: Telstra

text: In September 2016, Telstra Health was awarded a $220m government contract amidst claims of "lack of transparency".


title: Telstra

text: In December 2014, Telstra signed an agreement with the federal government's A.C.N. 86 136 533 741 (NBN Co) Limited. This agreement is said to retain the $11b value for Telstra of the original agreement from October 2011 and will see the company progressively sell its copper and Hybrid_fiber-coaxial networks to A.C.N. 86 136 533 741 (NBN Co) Limited.


title: Telstra

text: On 19 February 2015, Telstra announced that CEO David Thodey would retire on 1 May 2015 and be replaced by successor Andy Penn. Penn indicated new focus on growth in international markets, however this strategy experienced a setback with the failure of a joint venture to build a mobile phone network in the Philippines. On 14 March 2016, Telstra ended their talks between the company and the Philippine-based conglomerate San Miguel Corporation for a planned joint telecommunications venture in the Philippines due to several factors.


title: Telstra

text: In 2016, Telstra suffered a series of network outages for which the company apologised. In December of that year, Telstra announced the appointment of Robyn Denholm as its new COO, following the departure of Kate McKenzie who left after a series of network outages. In December, Telstra announced the hire of a new CTO to replace the predecessor who left amongst allegations of CV fraud. In 2016, the government raised the possibility that Telstra's regional mobile network may be forced to be opened to competitor' use under a roaming scheme. A prospect strongly being fought by Telstra.


title: Telstra

text: In February 2017, Telstra announced a that revenue had dropped 3.5%, Net Profit After Tax had dropped by over 14%. As a result, Telstra's share price dropped by 4.5% on the same day. In August 2017, Telstra announced that it would cut its dividend, leading to a drop in share price by over 10% in a single day to reach a 5-year low. Andy Penn's CEO tenure had been severely tarnished after $28.5b in Telstra's market value had been destroyed under his leadership.


title: Telstra

text: In May 2018, Telstra issued a profit warning which lead to a decline in the company's share price of 4% on that day. In the weeks after the announcement, the share price continued to drop to a seven-year low, amidst speculation that the company may be forced to cut its dividend again. As a consequence, [CEO] [Andy Penn]'s tenure came into question with his presiding over a $46b loss of shareholder value.


title: Telstra

text: In June 2018, Telstra announced its Telstra2022 Strategy designed to face into headwinds from the NBN rollout and return the business to growth. Composed of four pillars, the strategy was designed to remove $1 billion of operating costs from the business, simplifying its overall structure and leading to six key outcomes: improve customer experiences, simplify its products and operating model, extend network superiority and 5G leadership, achieve global high performance in employee engagement, reduce net productivity costs, and attain a return on capital investment post the NBN rollout.


title: Telstra

text: On 20 June 2018, Telstra announced a reduction of 9,500 jobs (8,000 net job losses after considering 1,500 new roles to be created) as part of its "Telstra 2022" (T22) plan. The news was not well received: Telstra's share price dropped as much as 7.4% immediately. Unions, politicians, and the wider community condemned the move which was widely considered a last ditch attempt of Andy Penn to secure his own job.


title: Telstra

text: Created on 1 July 2018, Telstra InfraCo would serve as the infrastructure business, owning an estimated $11 billion AUD in assets made up of data centres, non-mobiles related domestic fibre, copper, HFC, subsea cables, exchanges, poles, ducts, and pipes. InfraCo opened its dark fibre network across six Australian state capitals in February 2021 Telstra said the dark fibre network would open up a wealth of capabilities and control for its targeted audience of network operates and service providers such as global carriers, data centre operators, internet service producers and over the top providers.


title: Telstra

text: In February 2021, Telstra announced plans to take back full ownership of its 337 retail stores. At the time of the announcement Telstra owned and operated 67 of its stores, Vita Group owned and operated 104 stores, and the remaining 166 were operated by individual licensees. The process of transitioning stores back to Telstra ownership will take around 12 to 18 months to complete.


title: Telstra

text: On 30 March 2022, Telstra announced that Vicki Brady will become the new chief executive officer effective 1 September 2022.


title: Telstra

text: Telstra is Australia's incumbent and largest provider of fixed-line services. These include home phone, business and other PSTN products.


title: Telstra

text: Telstra outsources a significant portion of network installation and maintenance to private contractors and joint ventures, such as ABB Communications and STCJV (Siemens Thiess Communications Joint Venture).


title: Telstra

text: Telstra also owns and maintains the majority of Australia's public telephones. In 2006, Telstra announced it would remove many of the phones, citing vandalism and the increasing adoption of mobile telephones.


title: Telstra

text: Telstra Mobile is Australia's largest mobile telephone service providers, in terms of both subscriptions and coverage. Telstra operates Australia's largest GSM and 3G UMTS (branded as Next G) mobile telephony networks in Australia, as well as holding a 50% stake in the 3GIS Ltd 2100 MHz UMTS network infrastructure, shared with Hutchison (Three). As of September 2007, Telstra had an estimated 9.3M mobile subscribers. Telstra Mobile services are available in post-paid and prepaid payment types, known as Telstra Pre-Paid (formerly communic8 Pre-Paid).


title: Telstra

text: Telstra's GSM network was the first digital mobile network in Australia. It was launched in April 1993 on the 900 MHz band as "Telstra MobileNet Digital". The GSM network has carried the majority of Telstra's mobile subscribers for the last 10 years and has seen numerous upgrades. 1800 MHz capacity channels were added to the network in the late 1990s as well as GPRS packet data transmission capabilities. As part of the UMTS Next G deployment, the GSM network was also upgraded to a full EDGE data transmission capability in 2006 providing data transmission capabilities greater than 40 kbit/s on its GSM network.


title: Telstra

text: In 1981, Telstra (then Telecom Australia) was the first company to provide mobile telephony services in Australia. The first automated mobile service operated in the major capital cities on 500 MHz using the '007' dialling prefix. This network only provided "car phone" capabilities to subscribers as portable hand-held terminals were not practical at that time. The first cellular system in Australia offering portable hand-held phones was launched by Telstra in 1987 using the AMPS analogue standard on the 800 MHz band. This network at its peak had over 1 million subscribers, but was mandated by the government to be closed down by 2000, partially due to privacy concerns which resulted from the AMPS technology, but also because of arrangements undertaken to secure sufficient interest in the GSM network licenses offered in 1992 to competitors. A license condition placed on Telstra to maintain an equivalent coverage footprint at the time resulted in Telstra deciding to deploy an IS-95 CDMA network in its place.


title: Telstra

text: Telstra Wholesale provides products such as Data, Mobile, Voice, and other Facilities (including Co-location and Duct Access) to other companies and organisations for re-sale. Telstra Wholesale also provides operational support for its customers, and facilities for international customers such as International Data Transport and IP Transport.


title: Telstra

text: Due to Telstra's position as Australia's incumbent telecommunications provider, Telstra Wholesale is the incumbent and dominant wholesaler of ADSL services to other Internet Service Providers. Telstra installed the first DSLAMs in exchanges prior to 2000, and began wholesaling access in late 2000. Telstra Wholesale has a comprehensive network of ADSL DSLAMs (the largest in Australia) and allows competitors access to each Telstra DSLAM at up to ADSL2+ speeds if available, and at ADSL1 speeds should 2+ be unavailable.


title: Telstra

text: Since 2013, Telstra has wholesaled its 3G and 4G network. However the wholesale product only gives access to 7000 of Telstra's over 8000 base stations, and does not include access to its faster 4GX and 5G networks.


title: Telstra

text: Telstra provides internet services for personal and business clients, through its internet service provider (ISP), BigPond. BigPond provides internet products over various delivery methods, including ADSL, Cable Internet, Dialup, Satellite, and Wireless Internet (through the Next G network). At the end of the 2007 financial year, BigPond had over two million broadband subscribers. In 2007 a survey of 14,000 people by PC Authority magazine found BigPond users rated poorly for customer service, and less than a third considered their service value for money. However, BigPond argued that the survey's structure had encouraged people to provide extreme opinions. In January 2009, Telstra was ranked as the top Australian ISP in terms of performance by Epitiro.


title: Telstra

text: Telstra owned and operated the largest cable internet Hybrid Fibre cable network in Australia. Telstra Cable operates in selected cities and areas of Australia including (Melbourne, Brisbane, Canberra, Sydney, Perth, Adelaide and the Gold Coast), providing downstream speeds of up to 30 Mbit/s in selected areas. The upgrade to 100 Mbit/s was complete in Melbourne by Christmas 2009, and launched the new DOCSIS 3.0 services on 1 December 2009 before the deadline.


title: Telstra

text: On 10 November 2006, Telstra made two major changes to their ADSL network. The first was an increase of wholesale ADSL speeds from 1.5 Mbit/s/256 kbit/s to 8 Mbit/s/384 kbit/s. Telstra also released an ADSL2+ broadband service offering download speeds of up to 24 Mbit/s from exchanges where competitors were already offering ADSL2+ services.


title: Telstra

text: On 6 February 2008, Telstra announced that it would activate high-speed ADSL2+ broadband in a further 900 telephone exchanges serving 2.4 million consumers across every state and territory in Australia. Telstra also claimed that it has received assurances from the Government that it would not be forced to wholesale these services to other providers, and that the move came "after the Government made clear it did not consider a compelling case had been made for regulating third-party access to the service – an assurance sought by Telstra for more than one year".


title: Telstra

text: On 10 June 2008, it was announced that Telstra was in discussions with some wholesale customers in reference to wholesaling ADSL2+ services.


title: Telstra

text: In October 2013 Telstra launched "Belong", a low-cost mobile and internet service provider. As of February 2020, Belong has over 600,000 services made up of almost 340,000 mobile services and around 300,000 broadband internet services. Belong is Australia's first carbon neutral telecommunications provider certified by Climate Active, a partnership between the Australian Government and businesses that encourages voluntary action to reduce the impacts of climate change.


title: Telstra

text: Telstra's Hybrid Fibre Coax (HFC) (commonly referred to as "cable") network is one of the delivery systems used by the Australian Subscription Television provider Foxtel. Telstra owns 35% of Foxtel in a joint venture with News Corp Australia who own the remainder. Telstra also sell Foxtel's "iQ digital-video-recorder" to customers in Foxtel's service area (as "Foxtel from Telstra"). Telstra offers discounts for Telstra full-service fixed-line customers, with internet, pay TV and/or mobile services with Telstra. Such discounts can include free installation and the first month of the best Foxtel package (all channels) for free.


title: Telstra

text: MOG, a subscription online music service and blog network, announced a partnership with Telstra offer their product in Australia – the first region outside of the United States to have access. Telstra and MOG launched under the BigPond Music branding on 21 June 2012, however ended this service in September 2014. They replaced it with bonus inclusions related to Apple Music.


title: Telstra

text: GameArena was a website dedicated to video gaming operating under the BigPond brand that was managed by Mammoth Media and based on the east coast of Australia. The site provided news, downloads and servers primarily for the PC, and Mac, though it later branched out to include console sites. GameArena provided an online game shop GameNow, which sported various benefits to Telstra customers.


title: Telstra

text: Usage of the GameArena file library, gaming servers and booking service were freely available to anyone, but provided specific advantages to Telstra customers such as preference in downloads and unmetered usage, as well as various bonuses in competitions. In 2005, GameArena went through a new shift with the merging of GameNow and Gameshop into itself. The name became simply BigPond GameArena.


title: Telstra

text: GameArena once operated over 100 gaming servers, which were monitored by a volunteer force of administrators, known as GameOps. "GameCreate" was a service offered free of charge where users may book a server for a specific game for a 2-hour period of time. This server was private and could be used for either ladder training or social events.


title: Telstra

text: Telstra BigPond owned and operated a number of virtual islands in the online game "Second Life" for approximately three years. BigPond closed its "Second Life" presence in December 2009.


title: Telstra

text: In 2011, Telstra launched "Blurtl", a Facebook application that allows the user to leave audio messages on their Facebook walls.


title: Telstra

text: On 20 March 2019, Telstra denied access to millions of Australians to the websites 4chan, 8chan, Zero Hedge, and Liveleak as a reaction to the Christchurch mosque shootings.


title: Telstra

text: In May 2021, the Federal Court of Australia ordered the company to pay a $50 million fine for mistreating their Indigenous customers.


title: Telstra

text: February 2011: Ericsson wins the LTE contract with Telstra. The LTE network is being deployed in capital city CBDs and select regional centres throughout 2011. It will operate at 1800 MHz and integrate with a HSPA+ service at 850 MHz. A dual mode (LTE/HSPA+) mobile broadband device has been developed for the network.


title: Telstra

text: January 2012: Initial major LTE rollout complete. Incremental rollout continues, widening the coverage in capital cities and introducing new LTE coverage to regional centres.


title: Telstra

text: July 2012: Telstra commences retailing a pocket-sized battery powered 4G WiFi router (ZTE MF91) for prepaid data customers, locked to Telstra, complementing its range of 4G-capable devices. Apart from the ZTE MF91, the Telstra 4G hardware range now comprises two dual mode (4G/3G) voice-capable handsets by HTC and ZTE (available for purchase outright or on a post-paid plan), a Sierra USB wireless modem (outright or post-paid plan), a ZTE USB wireless modem (prepaid, locked to Telstra) and a Sierra 4G Wifi battery powered pocket-sized router (outright or post-paid plan). Telstra is reported to now be operating LTE facilities from more than 3,500 transmission sites.


title: Telstra

text: August 2013: Telstra demonstrates the world's first ever LTE- Advanced Carrier Aggregation network using the 900 MHz and 1800 MHz spectrum bands in the Sunshine Coast.


title: Telstra

text: April 2014: Telstra introduced a mobile broadband device from Huawei ("E5786") with LTE Advanced capability.


title: Telstra

text: May 2014: Telstra and Ericsson demonstrate world first 450 Mbit/s LTE-A downlink speeds in a commercial network with a Category 9 device.


title: Telstra

text: September 2015: Telstra, in collaboration with NETGEAR, Ericsson and Qualcomm Technologies announce that it is bringing the world's first 4G LTE Advanced 600 Mbit/s Category 11 device to customers.


title: Telstra

text: September 2016: Telstra conducts the first live 5G trial in Australia with Ericsson, demonstrating 5G capabilities in a real world environment, including speed and beam steering tests.


title: Telstra

text: December 2016: Telstra shuts down the 900 MHz GSM/EDGE network on 1 December. Prior to this, EDGE data capabilities were available on 100% of the GSM networks used.


title: Telstra

text: April 2021: Telstra purchased via Auction 800 MHz of 26 GHz (26,000 MHz) Spectrum nationally for 5G mmWave technology.


title: Telstra

text: In 2005, Telstra announced a plan to upgrade its ageing networks and systems; which includes a new 3G network to replace the then current CDMA mobile network.


title: Telstra

text: The network was built between November 2005 and September 2006, and launched in October 2006. , Next G was the largest mobile network in Australia, providing greater coverage than other 3G providers in Australia and over three times greater than any 2G provider in Australia. In December 2008, the Next G Network was also the fastest mobile network in the World, delivering theoretical network speeds of up to 21Mbit/s


title: Telstra

text: On 26 September 2011, Telstra launched its 4G 1800 MHz LTE network, claiming typical download speeds of up to 40Mbit/s.


title: Telstra

text: The network is used for BigPond's wireless broadband service and Telstra Mobile, which is Australia's largest mobile telephone service provider, in terms of both subscriptions and coverage


title: Telstra

text: It was built to replace Telstra's CDMA network which operated from 1999 until 28 April 2008. Telstra opted to use the 850 MHz band for Next G in preference to the more common 2100 MHz band, since it requires fewer base stations to provide coverage, providing a lower capital cost. This network was implemented under contract by Ericsson as part of a project internally dubbed "Project Jersey" and launched on 6 October 2006. HSPA technology was included in the network to provide Australia's first wide area wireless broadband network. The efficiency of the Next G network and its coverage has been challenged and scrutinised since its launch, requiring Telstra to go back to areas with average coverage, particularly rural towns to improve its coverage footprint. On 18 January 2008, Stephen Conroy, Minister for Communications, declined the proposal for Telstra to switch off its CDMA network on 28 January 2008, stating that whilst the Next G network provided coverage equal to or better than the CDMA network, the range of handsets available was not yet satisfactory. On 15 April 2008, the Minister gave approval to close the CDMA network after 28 April 2008. Telstra closed the network nationally during the early morning hours of 29 April 2008.


title: Telstra

text: While most wireless modems offered by Telstra allow peak download speeds of up to 7.2 Mbit/s, a modem by Sierra Wireless was announced in 2009 that supported increased throughput. The "USB 306" is marketed and sold by Telstra as the "Telstra Turbo 21 Modem", and was available in limited quantity in early 2009. By April, the "Turbo 21" was available to customers and offered peak download speeds of 21 Mbit/s, although actual speeds vary between 550kbit/s and 8Mbit/s. , Next G network HSUPA upgrades in selected regional and metropolitan areas, combined with software updates for the "Turbo 21" modem, will allow peak uplink speeds of up to 5.76 Mbit/s.


title: Telstra

text: On 1 January 2015, Telstra launched, what it calls "4GX": a 700 MHz based component of its mobile network claiming speeds of up to 75Mbit/s with compatible devices.


title: Telstra

text: In January 2016, Telstra announced its acquisition of cloud service provider Kloud. This was followed closely by the acquisition of application development company Readify in July 2016.


title: Telstra

text: Since the Australian telecommunications industry was deregulated in the early 1990s, Telstra has managed to remain the largest provider of telecommunications services despite the emergence of rivals Optus and TPG Telecom. A "Harvard Business Review" article from 2005 authored by a consultant to Telstra on this topic, reported "that a strategy of offering lower rates on some routes and at certain times of day, even though its prices, on average, were higher than its rivals", helped Telstra retain several points of market share it otherwise may have lost.


title: Telstra

text: In early 2011, Telstra successfully extended its market share lead by discounting its mobile phone products.


title: Telstra

text: By 2020, Telstra's revenue was $26.2 billion, Optus' was $9.0 billion, and TPG Telecom's was $4.4 billion.


title: Telstra

text: Telstra has over 200 subsidiary businesses as of 30 June 2016. The full list can be found at their website


title: Telstra

text: In January 2007 Telstra launched WotNext, a video-publishing website that allowed users to upload videos. The video content was then sold to mobile users for A$1, which the uploader and Telstra split equally. The website was shut down in after a media backlash over uploaded semi-pornographic videos.


title: Telstra

text: On 12 July 2011, the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) released the findings of its investigation into a mailing list error that resulted in approximately 60,300 Telstra customers' personal information being sent to other customers. The Australian Privacy Commissioner Timothy Pilgrim said "Our investigation has confirmed that while Telstra breached the Privacy Act when the personal information of a number of its customers was disclosed to third parties; this incident was caused by a one-off human error. It was not a result of Telstra failing to have reasonable steps in place to protect the personal information of its customers, as required by the Privacy Act."


title: Telstra

text: The government probe determined that Telstra had security measures in place to protect customer personal information involved in mail campaigns. These measures included privacy obligations in agreements with mailing houses, privacy impact assessments, and procedures to ensure staff handle personal information appropriately during mail campaigns.


title: Telstra

text: "In this instance, taking into account the range of measures Telstra has in place for mail campaigns, I consider that the one-off human error that occurred does not mean that Telstra failed to comply with its obligation to take reasonable steps to protect the personal information of its customers. Therefore, I consider that Telstra has not breached this particular aspect of the Privacy Act", the privacy commissioner said.


title: Telstra

text: The commissioner determined that Telstra had acted "immediately" to prevent further breaches, notify customers, and review its data security practices.


title: Telstra

text: In the report, Pilgrim related that the Australian government is currently considering recommendations from the Australian Law Reform Commission to introduce mandatory data breach notification laws in Australia.


title: Sadie Calvano

text: Sadie Calvano (born April 8, 1997) is an American actress, known for her role as Violet Plunkett on the CBS sitcom "Mom". In 2016 she played the titular role in the television film "The Perfect Daughter". She was a competitive gymnast before focusing on acting full-time after fourth grade.


title: Lee Ryan

text: Ryan took part in the BBC series "Strictly Come Dancing". He was partnered with professional dancer Nadiya Bychkova and was the second contestant to be eliminated on 7 October 2018. In 2019, Ryan starred in "Celebs Go Dating" on E4 and released his first single after nine years called "Ghost". Ryan subsequently released two further solo singles in 2020, "Mockingbirds" and "Swayed".


title: Lee Ryan

text: Ryan reunited with Blue in 2011 and in 2022 they released singles "Haven't Found You Yet" and "Dance with Me" from their upcoming sixth studio album "Heart & Soul".


title: Lee Ryan

text: Lee Ryan was born in Chatham, Kent. His parents split up when he was six years old. Ryan mostly lived with his mother, sister Gemma and his grandmother. Ryan went to Bedonwell School before attending performing arts schools, including Welling School and the Independent Performing Arts School Belcanto London Academy (BLA), where he first developed his talent, then independent fee-paying theatre schools Sylvia Young Theatre School and Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts.


title: Lee Ryan

text: Ryan is a member of boy band Blue along with Simon Webbe, Duncan James and Antony Costa. The group has sold over 14 million records worldwide. In August 2005, Blue split up to pursue solo careers under the advice of Sir Elton John. Blue reformed on 28 April 2009.


title: Lee Ryan

text: Ryan has had three number one hits while with Blue. He had previously co-directed the video for Blue's single "Breathe Easy", which he also wrote and which was shot in Prague. In 2001 the group were in New York during the September 11 attacks after which Ryan commented that "This New York thing is being blown out of proportion" and asked "What about whales? They are ignoring animals that are more important. Animals need saving and that's more important." The other members of the group tried to silence Ryan, but he went on. This caused a huge media backlash that resulted in Blue losing a record deal in the United States and campaigns to sack Ryan from the line up.


title: Lee Ryan

text: Ryan released his first single "Army of Lovers" in July 2005. It debuted at No. 3 in the UK Singles Chart and hit No. 1 in Italy. In August 2005, Ryan released his debut album, "Lee Ryan", to mixed reviews. The album reached No. 6 in the UK Album Chart and No. 3 in Italy. "Turn Your Car Around" was the second single lifted from the album which had moderate success. In January 2006, Ryan released his third and final single in the UK "When I Think of You". The song reached No. 15 in the UK. "Real Love" was used for the end credits of the film "" which later led to Ryan voicing the part of an elk in the UK version of the film and Eddie in the Italian version. In late 2005, Dolce & Gabbana signed Ryan up to be the UK face of their new line of clothing.


title: Lee Ryan

text: After the relative success of his first solo album, Ryan started planning his second solo album. The single "Reinforce Love" was released in December 2007. The single was being released for Great Ormond Street Hospital and CLIC Sargent, which were the two charities that Ryan was touring for in November and December 2007, with young voices. The album was then postponed, and finally cancelled. He appeared in the video for the single "Red Light" by a British girlband named Fe-Nix. In September 2007, he appeared as one of the contestants in "Hell's Kitchen". However he rowed with Marco Pierre White about White's use of the term "", and subsequently left the show. In August and September 2008, Ryan acted alongside Natalie Casey in "The Pretender Agenda" at The New Players Theatre in London. In June 2008 Ryan was found guilty of assaulting a taxi driver in Oxted and ordered to pay compensation to the victim.


title: Lee Ryan

text: In March 2010, Ryan confirmed that he had signed a new record deal with Geffen Records, due to last until 2013. Later that month, it was announced that Ryan's first album on his new record label, "Confessions", was due to be released in October 2010. The first single from the album, "Secret Love", was released as a double A-Side with "I Am Who I Am" on 4 July 2010. The single peaked at number 33 on the UK Singles Chart. Following this, it was announced that Geffen were set to drop Ryan from the label, before work on his album had been completed. Ryan announced in January 2011 that there was no deal to release his album.


title: Lee Ryan

text: The track listing for Ryan's aborted album was as follows: "Secret Love", "I Am Who I Am", "Guardian Angel", "Perfect Strangers", "I Don't Wanna Let You Down", "I Love Your Smile", "It's Not Me", "Confessions", "Light of Your Soul", "Peaches", "Reinforce Love", "Suffice to Say", "To See the Stars", "Stop the Rain", "Why Me" and "Stand Up as People".


title: Lee Ryan

text: Ryan stated in January 2011 that he was working on an album with Blue to be released later in the year. Blue represented the United Kingdom at the Eurovision Song Contest 2011 in Düsseldorf, Germany with the song "I Can", placing 11th overall.


title: Lee Ryan

text: In August 2013, Ryan and Duncan James appeared in an episode of comedy panel show "Through the Keyhole" in which the host showed around their home in London.


title: Lee Ryan

text: Ryan appeared in "Celebrity Big Brother 13" in 2014. Following the show he entered a relationship with fellow "Big Brother" participant Jasmine Waltz. Waltz split with Ryan a few weeks later claiming on Twitter that Ryan had cheated on her with a man. Ryan came out as bisexual during his time on "Big Brother", later stating in an interview, "I'm very open about what I've done in the past but that was the easiest way to come out. I did so much other stuff that people didn't even notice." During his time on Big Brother Ryan admitted he sleeps with his Blue bandmate Duncan James stating, “I work with Duncan, I go on holiday with Duncan, I live with Duncan.” Asked: “Do you have sex with Duncan?”, he replied: “Yeah all the time".


title: Lee Ryan

text: In November 2014, Blue announced they had signed a two-album record deal with Sony Music. The band released their fifth studio album "Colours" on 9 March 2015. He was in "Strictly Come Dancing 2018", but went out in the third round.


title: Lee Ryan

text: On 15 February 2017, it was confirmed that Ryan had landed a role in the BBC soap opera, "EastEnders". He was cast as Woody Woodward, initially for a short stint between 18 April and 19 May. It was later announced that Woody would be promoted to a regular role and that Ryan had signed a one-year contract with the show. He later received 2017 "Inside Soap" Award nomination for Best Newcomer. Unsure his contract would be extended, Ryan signed to play Aladdin opposite Paul Merton’s Widow Twanky in panto in Wimbledon, and was hence written out of Eastenders.


title: Lee Ryan

text: In 2019, he was a candidate in the seventh season of the British reality TV-show "Celebs Go Dating". From September to November 2019 Lee Ryan went on a UK-Tour with the musical "Rip it Up the 70s".


title: Lee Ryan

text: On 30 November 2021 the group confirmed they would be going on an arena tour to celebrate their 20th anniversary, it was also confirmed that Atomic Kitten would be supporting them on the tour. When interviewed on "This Morning" the group also confirmed that they were back in the studio recording, a new album is expected to follow along with the tour.


title: Lee Ryan

text: On 11 April 2022 the group announced that their sixth studio album "Heart & Soul" which would be released on 9 September 2022. On 20 May the group unveiled the track listing for the album on their social media accounts, following with first single "Haven't Found You Yet". On 29 June 2022, the group released the single "Dance with Me", a cover of the 2001 112 single.


title: Lee Ryan

text: In August 2003, Ryan was arrested and charged with driving with excess alcohol in central London. In May 2004 Ryan was cleared of assaulting two photographers who had attempted to take photos of him leaving a nightclub, however he was convicted of criminal damage for smashing their cameras.


title: Lee Ryan

text: In August 2010, Ryan was charged with assaulting his former fiancée, but these charges were officially withdrawn.


title: Lee Ryan

text: In May 2014, Ryan pleaded guilty to criminal damage and failing to provide a specimen after being caught driving erratically in April.


title: Lee Ryan

text: In 2020, on two occasions Ryan was charged with driving a Mercedes at 70 mph in a 60 mph limit in Peterborough, but the charges were dismissed as the prosecution offered no evidence, due to there being no means of proving who was driving. However, Ryan was later charged and found guilty at trial of two counts of failing to provide information about the driver. At a subsequent hearing, Magistrate Alison Marsh gave Ryan two lots of six points against his driving licence, resulting in a disqualification from driving for 12 months. Fined £1,501 for one of the charges, Ryan, speaking via a remote link from Spain, said he was "out of work due to Covid" and "just don't have the money."


title: Lee Ryan

text: When discussing sexuality and dating on "Good Morning Britain" in August 2019, Ryan was asked if he had dated men, to which he replied, "Yeah, I think a lot of people are a lot more liberal which is great for our society. I mean we aren't living in the Dark Ages any more and for people to have some kind of prejudice against these kinds of things is just ignorant".


title: World War II in Yugoslavia

text: World War II in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia began on 6 April 1941, when the country was swiftly conquered by Axis forces and partitioned between Germany, Italy, Hungary, Bulgaria and their client regimes. Shortly after Germany attacked the USSR on 22 June 1941, the communist-led republican Yugoslav Partisans, on orders from Moscow, launched a guerrilla liberation war fighting against the Axis forces and their locally established puppet regimes, including the Axis-allied Independent State of Croatia (NDH) and the Government of National Salvation in the German-occupied territory of Serbia. This was dubbed the National Liberation War and Socialist Revolution in post-war Yugoslav communist historiography. Simultaneously, a multi-side civil war was waged between the Yugoslav communist Partisans, the Serbian royalist Chetniks, the Axis-allied Croatian Ustaše and Home Guard, Serbian Volunteer Corps and State Guard, Slovene Home Guard, as well as Nazi-allied Russian Protective Corps troops.


title: World War II in Yugoslavia

text: Both the Yugoslav Partisans and the Chetnik movement initially resisted the Axis rule. However, after 1941, Chetniks extensively and systematically collaborated with the Italian occupation forces until the Italian capitulation, and thereon also with German and Ustaše forces. The Axis mounted a series of offensives intended to destroy the Partisans, coming close to doing so in the Battles of Neretva and Sutjeska in the spring and summer of 1943.


title: World War II in Yugoslavia

text: Despite the setbacks, the Partisans remained a credible fighting force, with their organisation gaining recognition from the Western Allies at the Tehran Conference and laying the foundations for the post-war Yugoslav socialist state. With support in logistics and air power from the Western Allies, and Soviet ground troops in the Belgrade offensive, the Partisans eventually gained control of the entire country and of the border regions of Trieste and Carinthia.


title: World War II in Yugoslavia

text: The human cost of the war was enormous. The number of war victims is still in dispute but is generally agreed to have been at least one million. Non-combat victims included the majority of the country's Jewish population, many of whom perished in concentration and extermination camps (e.g. Jasenovac, Stara Gradiška, Banjica, Sajmište, etc.) run by the client regimes or occupying forces themselves.


title: World War II in Yugoslavia

text: The Ustaše regime in Croatia (mostly Croats, but also Muslims and others) committed genocide against Serbs, Jews, Roma and anti-fascist Croats. The Chetniks (mostly Serbs, but also Montenegrins and others) pursued genocide against Muslims, Croats and Pro-Partisan Serbs, and the Italian occupation authorities pursued violence and ethnic cleansing (Italianization) against Slovenes and Croats. The Wehrmacht carried out mass executions of civilians in retaliation for resistance activity (e.g. the Kragujevac massacre and the Kraljevo massacre). SS Division "Prinz Eugen" massacred large numbers of civilians and prisoners of war. Hungarian occupation troops massacred civilians (mostly Serbs and Jews) during a major raid in southern Bačka, under the pretext of suppressing resistance activities.


title: World War II in Yugoslavia

text: Finally, during and after the final stages of the war, Yugoslav communist authorities and Partisan troops carried out reprisals, including the deportation of the German and Italian populations, forced marches and execution of tens of thousands of captured soldiers and civilians (predominantly Croats associated with the NDH, but also Slovenes and others) fleeing their advance (the Bleiburg repatriations), atrocities against the Italian population in Istria (the foibe massacres) and purges against Serbs, Hungarians and Germans associated with the fascist forces.


title: World War II in Yugoslavia

text: Prior to the outbreak of war, the government of Milan Stojadinović (1935–1939) tried to navigate between the Axis Powers and the imperial powers by seeking neutral status, signing a non-aggression treaty with Italy and extending its treaty of friendship with France. At the same time, the country was destabilized by internal tensions, as Croatian leaders demanded a greater level of autonomy. Stojadinović was sacked by the regent Prince Paul in 1939 and replaced by Dragiša Cvetković, who negotiated a compromise with Croatian leader Vladko Maček in 1939, resulting in the formation of the Banovina of Croatia.


title: World War II in Yugoslavia

text: However, rather than reducing tensions, the agreement only reinforced the crisis in the country's governance. Groups from both sides of the political spectrum were not satisfied: the pro-fascist Ustaše sought an independent Croatia allied with the Axis, Serbian public and military circles preferred alliance with the Western European empires, while the then-banned Communist Party of Yugoslavia saw the Soviet Union as a natural ally.


title: World War II in Yugoslavia

text: Following the fall of France to Nazi Germany in May 1940, Britain was the only power in conflict with Germany and Italy (from 10 June 1941), and Yugoslavia's Regent Prince Paul and his government saw no way of saving the Kingdom of Yugoslavia except through adopting policies of accommodation with the Axis powers. Although Germany's Adolf Hitler was not particularly interested in creating another front in the Balkans, and Yugoslavia itself remained at peace during the first year of the war, Benito Mussolini's Italy had invaded Albania in April 1939 and launched the rather unsuccessful Italo-Greek War in October 1940. These events resulted in Yugoslavia's geographical isolation from potential Allied support. The government tried to negotiate with the Axis on cooperation with as few concessions as possible, while attempting secret negotiations with the Allies and the Soviet Union, but those moves would fail to keep the country out of the war. A secret mission to the U.S., led by the influential Serbian-Jewish Captain David Albala with the purpose of obtaining funding to buy arms for the expected invasion went nowhere, while Soviet Union's Joseph Stalin expelled Yugoslav Ambassador Milan Gavrilović just one month after agreeing a treaty of friendship with Yugoslavia (prior to 22 June 1941, Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia adhered to the non-aggression pact the parties had signed in August 1939 and in the autumn 1940, Germany and the Soviet Union had been in talks on the USSR's potential accession to the Tripartite Pact).


title: World War II in Yugoslavia

text: Having steadily fallen within the orbit of the Axis during 1940 after events such as the Second Vienna Award, Yugoslavia followed Bulgaria and formally joined the Tripartite Pact on 25 March 1941. Senior Serbian air force officers opposed to the move staged a coup d'état and took over in the following days. These events were viewed with dismay in Berlin, and as Germany was preparing to help its Italian ally in its war against Greece anyway, the plans were modified to include Yugoslavia as well.


title: World War II in Yugoslavia

text: On 6 April 1941 the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was invaded from all sides — by Germany, Italy, and their ally Hungary. Belgrade was bombed by the German air force ("Luftwaffe"). The war, known in the post-Yugoslavia states as the "April War", lasted little more than ten days, ending with the unconditional surrender of the Royal Yugoslav Army on 17 April. Apart from being hopelessly ill-equipped when compared to the German Army ("Heer"), the Yugoslav army attempted to defend all borders, a tactic that resulted in thinly spreading the scarce resources available. Additionally, large numbers of the population refused to fight, instead welcoming the Germans as liberators from government oppression. As this meant that each individual ethnic group would turn to movements opposed to the unity promoted by the South Slavic state, two different concepts of anti-Axis resistance emerged: the royalist Chetniks, and the communist-led Partisans.