title: RK-Bro

text: On the May 3 episode of "Raw", Orton and Riddle defeated Elias and Jaxson Ryker; this brought RK-Bro's record to 2–0. On the May 10 episode of "Raw", RK-Bro teamed up with The New Day (Kofi Kingston and Xavier Woods) to defeat AJ Styles, Omos, Elias, and Ryker in an eight-man tag team match, increasing RK-Bro's record to 3–0. On the June 14 episode of "Raw", RK-Bro defeated The New Day in a face vs. face tag team match, bringing RK-Bro's record to 4-0. The following week on the June 21 episode of "Raw", Orton faced John Morrison in a Money in the Bank qualifying match, but was defeated, while Riddle won his qualifying match against Drew McIntyre. The following week, Orton was scheduled to face AJ Styles and Drew McIntyre in a last chance match, but for unknown reasons was pulled and replaced by Riddle who would go on to lose the match for Orton.


title: RK-Bro

text: After a seven-week absence, Orton returned on the August 9 episode of "Raw", where he initially discontinued his team with Riddle. Later that night, Orton defeated AJ Styles in a match following assistance from Riddle and afterwards pretended to hug him,


title: RK-Bro

text: however, Orton attacked Riddle with an RKO, which was not construed as a heel turn but rather as Orton's unique way of showing gratitude. The following week, Orton officially reunited the team after Riddle saved him from an attack at the hands of AJ Styles and Omos. At SummerSlam, RK-Bro defeated Styles and Omos to win their first WWE Raw Tag Team Championship, both individually and as a team, giving Omos his first WWE loss by pinning Styles. On the August 30 edition of "Raw", they successfully defended their titles against Bobby Lashley and MVP of The Hurt Business. At Crown Jewel, RK-Bro would retain their titles against AJ Styles and Omos. At Survivor Series, RK-Bro would defeat SmackDown Tag Team Champions, The Usos in an interbrand match. RK-Bro would then go on the successfully defend the Raw Tag Team Championships against Dolph Ziggler and Robert Roode on the November 29 episode of "Raw" and against The Street Profits at Day 1. On the January 10, 2022, episode of "Raw", RK-Bro dropped the titles to Alpha Academy (Chad Gable and Otis), ending their reign at 142 days. However, on the March 7 episode of "Raw", RK-Bro regained their tag team championships in a triple threat tag team match against Alpha Academy and the team of Kevin Owens and Seth "Freakin" Rollins; with Riddle pinning Chad Gable. At night two of WrestleMania 38, RK-Bro successfully defended their Raw Tag Team Championships in a triple threat tag team match against The Street Profits and Alpha Academy.


title: RK-Bro

text: On the April 11 episode of "Raw", SmackDown Tag Team Champions The Usos issued a challenge to RK-Bro, who accepted and the match was made official as a Winners Takes All championship unification match at WrestleMania Backlash. However, on the April 29 episode of "SmackDown", the contract signing for the match ended with Roman Reigns assisting The Usos in attacking RK-Bro and tearing up the contract in the process. Drew McIntyre then came out and joined forces with RK-Bro in driving off The Bloodline from the ring. Because of what had transpired, Roman Reigns' special counsel, Paul Heyman, then met with WWE official Adam Pearce backstage where Heyman requested that the resulting tag team championship unification match be called off and instead, a six-man tag team match featuring The Bloodline against RK-Bro and Drew McIntyre be made for WrestleMania Backlash, in which they lost after Roman Reigns pinned Riddle. The unification match between The Usos and RK-Bro was later scheduled on the May 20 episode of "SmackDown", where they lost their titles to The Usos, ending their second reign at 74 days.


title: Justin Gatlin

text: Justin Alexander Gatlin (born February 10, 1982) is a retired American sprinter who competed in the 60 meters, 100 meters and 200 meters. He is the 2004 Olympic Champion in the 100 meters, the 2005 and 2017 World Champion in the 100 meters, the 2005 World Champion in the 200 meters, and the 2019 World Champion in the 4 x 100 meters relay. In addition, Gatlin is the 2003 and 2012 World Indoor Champion in the 60 meters. He is a 5-time Olympic medalist and a 12-time World Championship medalist. At the World Athletics Relays, Gatlin won two gold medals in the 4 x 100 meters relay in 2015 and 2017. Gatlin is also a record 3-time Diamond League Champion in the 100 meters. He won the Diamond League trophy in 2013, 2014 and 2015.


title: Justin Gatlin

text: Justin Gatlin's personal best of 9.74 seconds ranks fifth on the all-time list of male 100-meter athletes. He is a two-time 100 meters World Champion (2005 & 2017) and a two-time 60 meters World Indoor Champion (2003 & 2012). Gatlin won both the 100 meters and 200 meters at the 2005 World Championships. He is also a World Champion in the 4 x 100 meters relay, which the United States of America team won at the 2019 World Championships.


title: Justin Gatlin

text: In 2001, he incurred a two-year ban from athletics for testing positive for amphetamines, later reduced to one year because of an appeal. In 2006, he incurred a further four-year ban for testing positive for testosterone, with this sanction erasing his then-world-record time of 9.77 seconds in the 100 meters.


title: Justin Gatlin

text: Gatlin returned to competition in August 2010. In June 2012 at the US Olympic trials, Gatlin ran a time of 9.80 seconds, which was the fastest-ever time recorded for a man over the age of 30. In May 2015 at the IAAF Doha Diamond League, at the age of 33, Gatlin broke his own 100m record for a man over the age of 30 by running 9.74 seconds, also Gatlin’s personal best over the distance.


title: Justin Gatlin

text: Gatlin won the gold medal in the 100 meters at the 2004 Olympics. At the London 2012 Olympics, he ran a time of 9.79 seconds, earning a bronze medal. He won his third Olympic medal in the 100 meters in the 2016 Olympic 100-meter final, finishing with the silver. At 34, he became the oldest man to win an Olympic medal in a non-relay sprint event. At the age of 35, Gatlin won the gold medal in the 100 meters at the 2017 World Championships, 12 years after his first triumph in the event. At the 2019 World Championships, Gatlin won the silver medal in the 100m in a time of 9.89, making him the most decorated 100m sprinter in World Championship history, with a record of five individual 100m medals. Gatlin’s tally of eight global championship 100m medals (three Olympic and five World Championship) makes him the most decorated 100m sprinter of all time, a feat he accomplished at the 2019 World Athletics Championships in Doha.


title: Justin Gatlin

text: Gatlin attended Woodham High School in Pensacola, Florida, where he competed as a hurdler. He was eventually noticed by University of Tennessee coaches Vince Anderson and Bill Webb, who awarded him a scholarship and trained him to become a sprinter rather than a hurdler. In 2001, in his freshman year at Tennessee, Gatlin won NCAA outdoor titles in both the 100 and 200 meters.


title: Justin Gatlin

text: Not long after, Gatlin was banned from international competition for two years by the IAAF after testing positive for amphetamines. Gatlin appealed on the grounds that the positive test had been due to medication that he had been taking since his childhood, when he was diagnosed with attention deficit disorder. The appeal resulted in an early reinstatement by the IAAF. Gatlin was banned from international competition, but was still allowed to compete nationally as an NCAA athlete, and he went on to win 4 more NCAA titles; however, these do not count for records purposes on his international profile.


title: Justin Gatlin

text: In an unexpected move, Gatlin decided to turn professional after his sophomore season, foregoing his remaining 2 years of collegiate eligibility. He moved to Florida to begin training with new coach Trevor Graham.


title: Justin Gatlin

text: In his first indoor season as a professional athlete, Gatlin won the national 60 meters title in Boston in 6.45 seconds, a personal best. 2 weeks later, Gatlin stormed to his first world title, clocking 6.46 at the World Indoor Championships in Birmingham to win.


title: Justin Gatlin

text: Not long after, Gatlin suffered a hamstring injury and was forced to miss the 2003 National Championships in Palo Alto, meaning he would miss the World Championships in Paris as well. On August 15, despite a very inconsistent few months, Gatlin finally broke ten seconds in the 100 meters for the first time, with 9.97 at the Weltklasse Zürich. In order to fully recover and prepare for next year's Olympic Games in Athens, Gatlin and his coach decided to skip the 2004 indoor season.


title: Justin Gatlin

text: Gatlin's plan worked and he qualified for the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, after finishing 2nd in both the 100 meters and 200 meters at the Olympic Trials in Sacramento. The following month, Gatlin made history and won the Olympic 100 meter title in 9.85 seconds, a new personal best, only one hundredth slower than the Olympic record. The finish was incredibly tight, with Francis Obikwelu of Portugal one hundredth behind for the silver medal, his teammate and defending champion Maurice Greene another hundredth back for the bronze medal, and his other teammate Shawn Crawford another two hundredths back for 4th place. In the 200 meters, Gatlin won the bronze medal, completing an American sweep of the podium behind Crawford (Gold) and Bernard Williams (Silver) Finally, he won the silver medal as a member of the 4 × 100 meters relay squad.


title: Justin Gatlin

text: With an Olympic title under his belt, Gatlin was favored for the 100 meter title at the 2005 World Championships in Helsinki, along with Asafa Powell of Jamaica, who broke the 100m world record. Gatlin won the 100/200 double at the 2005 National Championships in Carson; his first national outdoor titles. Then, Powell pulled out of the world championships due to injury, effectively removing any opposition to Gatlin. He went on to win the 100 in 9.88, a season's best; his winning margin of 0.17 seconds was the widest in world championship 100m history. With Crawford not entered, Gatlin won the 200 as well, becoming the second man in history to win both events at a single world championships. His fellow Americans also took the 2nd, 3rd and 4th places, the first time any nation had swept the top 4 positions at a world championship.


title: Justin Gatlin

text: On May 12, at the Qatar Athletic Super Grand Prix, Gatlin initially broke the 100-meter world record with 9.76 seconds, one hundredth faster than Powell's record of 9.77 set the previous year. 4 days later however, the IAAF revealed on that his time had been 9.766 seconds, which was subsequently rounded up to 9.77, in line with regulations. Shortly thereafter, with the track and field community itching for a Gatlin-Powell showdown, the two both appeared at the Prefontaine Classic in Oregon. No agreement could be reached with the meet organizers, however, so the two competed in separate heats. Gatlin won the event with a time of 9.88 seconds over Powell's 9.93 seconds.


title: Justin Gatlin

text: On July 29, a month after winning the US title, Gatlin told the media that he had been informed by the USADA that he had given a positive doping test in April the same year. He claimed his innocence in the matter:


title: Justin Gatlin

text: Gatlin's coach, Trevor Graham, had eight athletes who had tested positive or received bans for performance-enhancing drugs. After Gatlin's failed test, Graham stated in an interview that Gatlin had been sabotaged. He blamed massage therapist Christopher Whetstine for rubbing a cream containing testosterone onto Gatlin's buttocks without his knowledge. The therapist denied the claim, saying: "Trevor Graham is not speaking on behalf of Justin Gatlin and the story about me is not true."


title: Justin Gatlin

text: On August 22, Gatlin accepted an eight-year ban from track and field, avoiding a lifetime ban in exchange for his cooperation with the doping authorities, and because of the "exceptional circumstances" surrounding his first positive drug test. Gatlin appealed against the ban; an arbitration panel reduced it to four years at a hearing in December 2007. The USADA's chief executive officer explained "Given his cooperation and the circumstances relating to Mr Gatlin's first offence, the four-year penalty issued by the arbitration panel is a fair and just outcome". His 9.77 was subsequently annulled.


title: Justin Gatlin

text: On December 19, 2006, ESPN reported that Gatlin would work with Woodham High School's track team as a voluntary coach, helping his old high school with "some workouts, sprint work, block work, where he sees something and can give encouragement."


title: Justin Gatlin

text: It was reported that Gatlin planned to serve his four-year ban from the track on a football field. On November 29, 2006 ESPN reported that Gatlin had worked out with the Houston Texans, although he has little football experience and "has not played football since 10th grade".


title: Justin Gatlin

text: On May 4, 2007 The Tampa Bay Buccaneers announced that Gatlin was one of 28 free agents taken to their 2007 rookie camp on tryout contracts, and was considered to be the most intriguing unsigned athlete in attendance. He tried out for the team as a wide receiver. He was unsuccessful, though he stated that he believed that he had all the necessary skills and that the only reason he did not make the team was because coaches viewed him as a "track guy."


title: Justin Gatlin

text: During the course of his ban, Gatlin's weight ballooned to over 200lbs. He found a new coach in Loren Seagrave, who helped Gatlin shave his weight down to 183lbs, his weight when he won the Olympic title 6 years prior. In his absence, Gatlin's teammate Tyson Gay took the 100, 200 and 4x100 meters relay titles at the 2007 World Championships in Athletics in Osaka. Then, Usain Bolt of Jamaica won the 100, 200 and 4x100 meters relay in historic world record times at the 2008 Summer Olympic in Beijing, then did it again the following year at the World Championships in Berlin. Gatlin was preparing to go up against a new generation of talent in both Bolt and his Jamaican teammates.


title: Justin Gatlin

text: On August 3, 2010, Gatlin made his return to the athletics circuit with a tour of Estonia and Finland. He won the 100 meters in Rakvere, recording 10.24 seconds. At the Ergo World Challenge meeting in Tallinn he improved further with a win in 10.17 seconds. His coach, Loren Seagrave, acknowledged that the sprinter's starts were poor, but that Gatlin's finish to the race remained strong. Running at the final meet of the Finnish Elite Games series in Joensuu, Gatlin won in the absence of injured Steve Mullings. In Rovereto, Italy, on August 31, 2010 Gatlin was placed second in the 100 meters with a time of 10.09 seconds, behind Yohan Blake, who won in 10.06 seconds.


title: Justin Gatlin

text: After the 2010 season, Gatlin switched coaches to Brooks Johnson. On June 25, 2011, at the 2011 USA Track & Field Championships, Gatlin was second behind Walter Dix with a season's best time of 9.95 seconds; his first sub-10 second performance in 5 years. He represented the United States at the IAAF World Championships in Daegu, South Korea, where he was eliminated in the semi-finals of the 100 meters.


title: Justin Gatlin

text: Under the coaching of former Olympian Dennis Mitchell, 2012 proved to be Gatlin's most successful season yet. He returned to the indoor circuit and finished second in the 60 meters at the national indoor championships in Albuquerque. Then, two weeks later, Gatlin stormed to the World Indoor Championship title in the 60 meters once again, clocking 6.46 seconds; the same time he ran to win the indoor title 9 years prior.


title: Justin Gatlin

text: Outdoors, Gatlin returned to the Qatar Athletic Super Grand Prix, the same meet and venue where he broke the 100 meter world record until it was annulled. He won in 9.87 seconds, defeating Asafa Powell by one hundredth of a second. After taking wins in Daegu, Rabat, and at the Prefontaine Classic in Eugene, Gatlin placed himself as a favorite for a medal at the 2012 London Olympics. On June 24, Gatlin won the 100-meter final at the Olympic Trials in Eugene, Oregon with a personal best time of 9.80 seconds, the fastest time in history for a man over 30.


title: Justin Gatlin

text: On August 5, 2012, at the London 2012 Summer Olympics, he recorded a new personal best time of 9.79 seconds in the 100 meters final, when he won bronze behind Usain Bolt and Yohan Blake.


title: Justin Gatlin

text: On June 6, 2013, Gatlin beat world record holder Usain Bolt by one-hundredth of a second to win the 100 meters at the Golden Gala meet in Rome, Italy. On August 11, 2013, Gatlin won a silver medal behind Usain Bolt in the 100 meters at the IAAF World Championships in a time of 9.85. Bolt won the race in 9.77. Gatlin also took another silver in the 4 × 100-meter relay, crossing the line in 37.66 seconds, behind the Jamaican team that won in 37.36 seconds. With Diamond League victories in Doha, Eugene, Rome and Monaco in 2013, Gatlin became the Diamond League Champion in the 100 meters for the first time in his career.


title: Justin Gatlin

text: On September 5, 2014, Gatlin won the 100 meters at the IAAF Diamond League final in Brussels with a personal best of 9.77 seconds. He then went on to complete a sprint double at the meet, winning the 200 meters in a time of 19.71 seconds. This was the second fastest time of the season, behind his world lead of 19.68 that he set at the Monaco Diamond League earlier in the year. Gatlin's 9.77 time in the 100 meters time and 19.71 time in the 200 meters became the fastest single day 100 and 200 meters performance ever recorded. Gatlin's victory in the 100 meters secured him the Diamond League trophy for the second straight year. Gatlin's performances earned him a nomination for IAAF Athlete of the Year. Other athletes responded skeptically to Gatlin, questioning whether he is continuing to benefit from the banned substances taken earlier in his career. German discus champion Robert Harting requested to the IAAF that his nomination for Athlete of the Year be rescinded in protest at Gatlin being nominated.


title: Justin Gatlin

text: On May 2, 2015, Gatlin won the gold medal in the 4 × 100 meters relay at the World Athletics Relays in Nassau, Bahamas. It was the first defeat for Usain Bolt and Jamaica team in the 4 × 100 meters relay since 2007. The American quartet, consisting of Mike Rodgers, Tyson Gay, Ryan Bailey and Justin Gatlin, ran a time of 37.38 to win the 4 × 100 meters relay at the World Athletics Relays. On May 15, 2015, Gatlin improved his personal best to 9.74 seconds (+0.9 m/s) at the Qatar Athletic Super Grand Prix. His time was the fastest in the world since Yohan Blake ran 9.69 seconds in August 2012. It was the ninth-best performance in history and improved Gatlin's standing as the fifth best 100 meters athlete of all time. On May 30, Gatlin equalled his 200m personal best at the Prefontaine Classic, running 19.68, a new world lead. On June 5, 2015, Gatlin beat Usain Bolt's 100-meter 2012 Rome Diamond League record of 9.76 seconds, finishing with a time of 9.75 seconds. At the USATF Track and Field Championships, Gatlin set a new personal best in the 200 meters, running 19.57 which was the fifth fastest performance in history. On the 9th of July at the Lausanne Diamond League, Gatlin ran 9.75 once again and beat Tyson Gay and Asafa Powell by a considerable margin. In his final Diamond League before the World Championships, Gatlin ran 9.78 at the on July 17 at the Monaco Diamond League, setting the Meeting Record.


title: Justin Gatlin

text: On August 23, 2015, Gatlin ran 9.77 in his semi-final of the 100 meters at the 2015 World Championships in Athletics in Beijing — the fastest time ever recorded in a preliminary or semi final round in World Championship or Olympic history — and was the heavy favorite to win gold. Gatlin finished second behind Usain Bolt in the final; Bolt's winning time was 9.79 seconds, with Gatlin 0.01 seconds behind. On August 27, 2015, Gatlin finished second behind by Bolt in the final of the 200 meters at the same event, with a time of 19.74 seconds, 0.19 seconds behind Bolt's 19.55 seconds.


title: Justin Gatlin

text: On September 11, Gatlin ended his 2015 season with a victory at the Brussels Diamond League and secured the Diamond League trophy for the third consecutive year, winning the 100 meters in a time of 9.98.


title: Justin Gatlin

text: Gatlin's 2015 is one of the fastest seasons in sprinting history and he became the only man to ever run below 9.80 on five separate occasions in one season.


title: Justin Gatlin

text: After beginning the season with Diamond League victories in Shanghai in 9.94, and Eugene in 9.88, Gatlin won the 100 meters in 9.80 seconds and 200 meters in 19.75 seconds at the 2016 United States Olympic Trials, becoming the oldest sprinter to make an American Olympic team.


title: Justin Gatlin

text: At the 2016 Rio Olympics, Gatlin received a silver medal in the 100 meters final with a time of 9.89 seconds. Usain Bolt, who won gold, had a time of 9.81 seconds. Gatlin also ran in the qualifying heats of the 200 meters. However, with a time of 20.13 seconds in the semi-finals, he failed to qualify for the final. To qualify for the final, he would have needed to have run 20.09.


title: Justin Gatlin

text: On April 22, 2017, Gatlin won the gold medal in the 4 × 100 meters relay for the second time in his career at the World Athletics Relays in Nassau, Bahamas. At the 2017 USA Outdoor Track and Field Championships, Justin Gatlin won the 100 meters in 9.95 seconds, beating young favorite Christian Coleman, who clocked 9.98 seconds. In doing so, he broke Kim Collins' World M35 Masters Record of 9.96 seconds, and was 0.02 of a second away from breaking the World Masters All-Time record of 9.93 also from Collins. He opted out of the 200 meters after his Olympic injury, which was caused by a rolled ankle coming off the turn.


title: Justin Gatlin

text: Gatlin was a surprise champion at the 2017 World Championships in Athletics, winning gold in the 100 meters in a time of 9.92 seconds, beating Usain Bolt, the greatest sprinter of all time. Despite the crowd being against him, he won the World title twelve years after his first 100m World title at the 2005 World Championships. He beat his American teammate Christian Coleman, who won the silver, and Usain Bolt (in his final World Championships) who earned the bronze. Several spectators booed at the result, and IAAF President Lord Coe commented that he should have been banned for life. Usain Bolt, however, condemned the booing as unfair and emphasised that Gatlin worked very hard.


title: Justin Gatlin

text: After reports surfaced involving Dennis Mitchell in a doping scandal, Gatlin fired his coach and returned to former coach Brooks Johnson.


title: Justin Gatlin

text: After an off season in 2018 — with no global outdoor championship — Gatlin ran 9.87 seconds in the 100 meters at the Prefontaine Classic in Stanford, California, finishing second to teammate Christian Coleman, who ran a world-leading 9.81. Gatlin’s 9.87 improved upon his own world masters record from 9.92, as well as making him the fourth fastest man in the world for that year. In July, it was revealed that Gatlin, along with several of his teammates, were sent to train with Dennis Mitchell again by Nike, despite the recent doping investigations.


title: Justin Gatlin

text: Gatlin won the silver medal in the 100m final at the 2019 World Athletics Championships in an attempt to defend his world title. His time of 9.89s was .13 seconds behind his teammate Christian Coleman, who won gold in 9.76 seconds. At 37 years, 230 days, Gatlin became the oldest sprinter to win a medal in the men’s 100 meters at the World Athletics Championships. At the same World Championships, Gatlin was part of the American team who won gold in the 4 x 100 meters relay, the first time he had won the event in his career at World Championships. The American quartet, consisting of Christian Coleman, Noah Lyles, Michael Rodgers and Gatlin, ran a time of 37.10, the fastest-ever by an American team, breaking the previous American record of 37.38 set at the 2012 London Olympics.


title: Justin Gatlin

text: In 2021, Gatlin attempted to become the oldest man to win a medal in the 100m by qualifying for the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, Japan at the age of 39. In April 2021, he won the Tom Jones Memorial Invitational with a time of 9.98 against a field of potential gold medal contenders. At the 2020 US Olympic Trials, Gatlin finished 2nd in his first heat and third in the semifinals to earn a spot in the final. During the final he came up with a hamstring injury and limped across the finish line in last place, ending his chances of qualifying for the Tokyo Olympics.


title: Justin Gatlin

text: He is a regular competitor on Spike TV's show "Pros vs Joes", which pits professional athletes against non-professionals.


title: Justin Gatlin

text: In 2011, on the Japanese TV show "Kasupe!", Gatlin ran 100 meters in 9.45 seconds (+20 m/s)—faster than Usain Bolt's 9.58 seconds record—assisted by large wind machines blowing at speeds over 25 meters per second. He received 2 million yen (approximately US$25,000) for appearing on the program.


title: Andrew Holness

text: Andrew Michael Holness, (born 22 July 1972) is a Jamaican politician who has been the Prime Minister of Jamaica since 3 March 2016, following the 2016 Jamaican general election. Holness previously served as prime minister from October 2011 to 5 January 2012. He succeeded Bruce Golding as prime minister, and decided to go to the polls in the 29 December 2011 general election in an attempt to get his own mandate from the Jamaican electorate. He failed in that bid, however, losing to the People's National Party led by Portia Simpson-Miller, with the PNP gaining 42 seats to the Jamaica Labour Party's 21. Following that defeat, Holness served as Leader of the Opposition from January 2012 to March 2016, when he once again assumed the position of prime minister. In 2020, the Labour Party won a landslide in another general election, and on 7 September Holness was sworn in for another term as prime minister.


title: Andrew Holness

text: In October 2011, at the age of 39, Holness became the youngest person ever to be elected prime minister in Jamaica's history. In March 2016, aged 43, he became the youngest to ever be re-elected prime minister. He is also the first prime minister to have been born after Jamaica gained independence in 1962.


title: Andrew Holness

text: Andrew Holness is a graduate of St. Catherine High School and of the University of the West Indies, where he pursued a Bachelor of Science in Management Studies and a Master of Science in Development Studies. In 1997 he married Juliet Holness ("née" Landell), an accountant, whom he had met as a student at St. Catherine High School during the 1980s. The couple have two children, Adam and Matthew.


title: Andrew Holness

text: Holness served as Executive Director at the Voluntary Organization for Uplifting Children from 1994 to 1996 and then joined the Premium Group of Companies, acting as a special assistant to Edward Seaga.


title: Andrew Holness

text: In 1997, he became a Member of Parliament for West Central St. Andrew and served as Opposition Spokesperson on Land and Development from 1999 to 2002. In 2002, he switched portfolio to Housing and then Education in 2005. He was sworn in as Minister of Education in September 2007.


title: Andrew Holness

text: He succeeded Bruce Golding as both leader of the JLP and prime minister on 23 October 2011, making him the ninth person to hold the office. As prime minister, he chose to retain the education portfolio.


title: Andrew Holness

text: On 5 December 2011, Holness called an election set for 29 December 2011. The JLP campaigned in its strongholds, and Holness highlighted the accomplishments during the four years of JLP government, such as economic growth and crime reduction, which the JLP said the PNP failed to do during its own eighteen years' rule of the country.


title: Andrew Holness

text: The JLP, however, lost the election to the PNP, which gained a large majority of 42 to the JLP's 21 parliamentary seats. Portia Simpson-Miller and the PNP returned to power. The voter turnout was 53.17%.


title: Andrew Holness

text: On 25 February 2016, the JLP won the 2016 election winning 32 seats compared to 31 seats for the incumbent PNP. His wife Juliet also won a seat in parliament, the first time a prime minister or opposition leader and their spouse sat simultaneously in the Parliament of Jamaica. As a result, Simpson-Miller became Opposition Leader for a second time. The voter turnout dipped below 50% for the first time, registering just 48.37%.


title: Andrew Holness

text: On 3 September 2020, Holness led the JLP to a second consecutive general election victory, but this time by a much larger margin. The JLP won 49 seats, as compared to the 14 seats for the PNP. However, the turnout was just 37%, probably affected by the coronavirus pandemic. With this victory, he became the youngest person in Jamaica's history to be elected twice. He was sworn in for another term on 7 September 2020.


title: Andrew Holness

text: During the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge's tour of Jamaica in March 2022, on behalf of the Jamaican monarch, Queen Elizabeth II, and as part of the celebrations of the 70th anniversary of her accession, Holness told the royal couple that their nation was "moving on and we intend to attain in short order our development goals and fulfil our true ambitions as an independent, developed, prosperous country".


title: The New Guy

text: The New Guy is a 2002 American teen comedy film directed by Ed Decter, written by David Kendall and starring DJ Qualls and Eliza Dushku.


title: The New Guy

text: The film tells the story of high school loser Dizzy Harrison (Qualls) who gets himself expelled so that he can move schools and reinvent himself. Learning how to be cool from a prison inmate, he renames himself Gil Harris and is quick to make new friends and soon gains respect from jocks and geeks alike. He begins dating popular girl Danielle (Dushku) and unites a once-divided school, also greatly improving its football team. Eventually, Gil has to face his demons from his old school when they face each other in a football game. The film received generally negative reviews, but was a modest box office success.


title: The New Guy

text: Prison inmate Luther speaks directly to the camera in the opening, telling the story of Dizzy Gillespie Harrison, an 18-year-old nerdy high school senior in Austin, Texas. Dizzy is friends with Nora, Kirk, and Glen, who together started a funk rock band called "Suburban Funk" and are addicted to video games.


title: The New Guy

text: Attending Rocky Creek High School, Dizzy is picked on by everyone, especially star football player Barclay. After Tina Osgood touches his arm, causing him to have an erection and embarrassing him as the jocks belittle him, his briefs are yanked from under his pants and placed around his head. The school librarian "breaks" his penis after Dizzy refuses to "hand" over the "weapon" to her.


title: The New Guy

text: Dizzy is misdiagnosed with Tourette's syndrome and placed on medication by the school counselor, who advises his father to spend every possible moment with him. While at the mall's food court, the heavily medicated Dizzy makes a fool of himself at a church revival and gets arrested.


title: The New Guy

text: In jail, Dizzy meets Luther, who turns out to be a sympathetic ex-victim who makes it his goal to teach him how to be cool. To wipe the slate clean, Dizzy gets himself expelled from his old high school, then undergoes a makeover with the help of the prison inmates and guards. Changing his name to "Gil Harris", he enrolls at East Highland High and makes an impression by being dropped off in a prison van in restraints and beating up the school bully, Conner.


title: The New Guy

text: The action has the intended effect, and head cheerleader Danielle welcomes the newcomer to school. Her friend Courtney invites Dizzy to a party and through a mishap, he gives her the impression that he has blown her off. Using a photo given to him by the prison inmates and help from his old friends, Dizzy manages to escape the party with his reputation intact. Upon returning home, however, he finds his father has sold their house and quit work to supervise him, which results in them living in a trailer.


title: The New Guy

text: Danielle asks Dizzy to encourage the school to go to see the football team play; he, referencing General Patton and Braveheart, gives an impassioned speech, inspiring the team to win their first game in years. He is soon enlisted by the coach and principal to plan the school's homecoming dance, and becomes imbued with school spirit, shedding his bad boy image. Danielle breaks up with Conner and starts a relationship with Dizzy.


title: The New Guy

text: However, Dizzy and Gil are fast becoming too big for one body. When Nora berates Dizzy for becoming the same person he once hated, he uses his newfound popularity to confront Conner. Dizzy and Danielle spur the students to reunite, and the lines dividing the different cliques are broken.


title: The New Guy

text: With a new philosophy, the school football team wins more games and bullying becomes a thing of the past. Reaching the state championship, where they play Rocky Creek, Dizzy's antics on the sideline cost Rocky Creek the game.


title: The New Guy

text: After Rocky Creek's loss to East Highland, Barclay slowly starts realizing who Gil is, as East Highland High celebrates their victory. At school the next day, while East Highland still celebrates, Barclay confronts and attempts to fight Dizzy, but before he can do anything, he is attacked by the entire student body. After the attack, Conner helps Barclay up from the ground, telling him he wants to know what he knows about Dizzy.


title: The New Guy

text: The homecoming dance, which Dizzy's funk band is supposed to play, is crashed by the students of Rocky Creek. Barclay and Conner, who have joined forces to set a trap for Dizzy, play an embarrassing video of the librarian incident. However, Luther and the other inmates arrive to save Dizzy, tying up the two bullies. Nora admits longstanding feelings for Glen, and Danielle reveals to Dizzy that she was also a nerd growing up. She forgives him for hiding who he was, and they kiss.


title: The New Guy

text: Luther ends the film, and the man he is talking to is revealed to be David Hasselhoff. In a mid-credits scene, Dizzy and Danielle mount a horse and ride off into the sunset together.


title: The New Guy

text: The film was shot in Austin and around Austin (San Marcos, Elgin, and Del Valle) utilized Texas State University, Driskell Hotel, and an FYE at Lakeline Mall between October 23, 2000 to January 12, 2001.


title: The New Guy

text: In the 92-minute unrated cut, Dizzy appears to be a "child of divorce." He once had a mother named Beth Anne but she left the family while Dizzy was doing his "godfather of soul" routine. Miss Kiki Pierce talks about Dizzy's excessive masturbation and becomes his stepmother in the uncensored version (unlike the PG-13 version).


title: The New Guy

text: According to the storyline in the uncensored version, Gil Harris had apparently murdered a guy in Rhode Island before being sent off to prison while no back story was made for the name in the theatrical version.


title: The New Guy

text: Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a score of 7% based on 99 reviews, with an average rating of 3.30/10. The consensus reads: "Incoherent, silly, and unoriginal, "The New Guy" offers up the same old teen gross-out comedy cliches." On Metacritic, the film has a 24% rating, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews" based on reviews from 23 critics.


title: Mark Magsayo

text: Jessel Mark Araula Magsayo (born June 22, 1995) is a Filipino professional boxer who held the WBC featherweight title in 2022.


title: Mark Magsayo

text: As of March 2022, Magsayo is ranked as the second best featherweight in the world by "The Ring" and the third best by the TBRB and BoxRec.


title: Mark Magsayo

text: Magsayo began boxing when he was just 8 years old and by the time he had turned professional he had fought in around 200 amateur contests and was 4-time amateur boxing champion at the annual Amateur Boxing Association of the Philippines (ABAP) national tournaments. In those 4 tournaments he claimed the title of "Best Boxer" twice.


title: Mark Magsayo

text: Magsayo made his professional debut against Melton Sandal on May 25, 2013. He won the fight by a first-round knockout. He amassed a 10-0 record during the next two years, before being scheduled to face Rafael Reyes for the vacant IBF Youth featherweight title. He won the fight by a fifth-round technical knockout. Magsayo was scheduled to defend his IBF Youth title against Yardley Suarez on July 11, 2015. He won the fight by a first-round knockout.


title: Mark Magsayo

text: Magsayo was scheduled to face Eduardo Montoya for the vacant WBO Youth featherweight title on February 27, 2016. He won the fight by unanimous decision. Magsayo made his first WBO Youth title defense against Chris Avalos on April 23, 2016. He won the fight by a sixth-round technical knockout. Magsayo was scheduled to make his second title defense against Ramiro Robles on September 24, 2016. He won the fight by unanimous decision.


title: Mark Magsayo

text: Magsayo was scheduled to fight Issa Nampepeche in a non-title bout on April 29, 2017. He won the fight by a first-round knockout. Magsayo was afterwards made his third WBO Youth title defense against Daniel Diaz on July 8, 2017. He won the fight by a first-round technical knockout. Magsayo made his fourth and final WBO Youth title defense against Shota Hayashi on November 25, 2017. He won the fight by unanimous decision.


title: Mark Magsayo

text: On May 25, 2017, Magsayo's promotional contract with the ALA group expired. On June 4, 2017, it was announced that Magsayo had signed with the Now Boxing Promotions.


title: Mark Magsayo

text: Magsayo returned from a 17-month absence from the sport to face Erick Deztroyer on April 12, 2019. He won the fight by a fourth-round knockout. Magsayo challenged Panya Uthok for the WBC-ABC featherweight title in his next fight, which was scheduled for August 29, 2019. He won the fight by unanimous decision.


title: Mark Magsayo

text: Magsayo was scheduled to face Rigoberto Hermosillo on October 4, 2020. He won the fight by split decision. Magsayo was next scheduled to face Pablo Cruz on April 10, 2021. He won the fight by a fourth-round technical knockout.


title: Mark Magsayo

text: Magsayo faced Julio Ceja in a WBC featherweight title eliminator on August 21, 2021 on the undercard of Manny Pacquiao vs. Yordenis Ugás, with the winner of the bout earning the right to challenge the reigning champion Gary Russell Jr. Ceja was ranked #12 by the WBC at featherweight. He won the fight by a tenth-round knockout that was selected as the Premier Boxing Champions Knockout of the Year 2021.


title: Mark Magsayo

text: On September 21, 2021, the WBC ordered Gary Russell Jr. to defend his featherweight title against Magsayo.The title bout was scheduled as the main event of a Showtime broadcast card, which took place at the Borgata in Atlantic City, New Jersey on January 22, 2022. Despite being the underdog Magsayo won his first world title by majority decision. Two judges scored the fight 115–113 for Magsayo, while the third judge scored the fight as an even 114–114 draw. Magsayo ends Gary Russell's seven-year title reign and became the new WBC featherweight champion expressing his win saying “This is a dream come true,” “This was my dream since I was a kid, since I was an amateur. And now I’m champion. This is my dream.”


title: Ali Hassan al-Majid

text: Ali Hassan Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti (; 30 November 1941 – 25 January 2010), nicknamed Chemical Ali (), was an Iraqi politician and military commander under Saddam Hussein who served as defence minister, interior minister, and chief of the Iraqi Intelligence Service. He was also the governor of Kuwait during much of the 1990–91 Gulf War.


title: Ali Hassan al-Majid

text: A first cousin of former Ba'athist Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, he became notorious in the 1980s and 1990s for his alleged role in the Iraqi government's campaigns against internal opposition forces, namely the ethnic Kurdish rebels of the north, and the Shia rebels of the south. Repressive measures included deportations and mass killings; al-Majid was dubbed "Chemical Ali" (, "Ali Al-Kīmāwī") by Iraqis for his use of chemical weapons in attacks against the Kurds.


title: Ali Hassan al-Majid

text: Al-Majid was captured following the 2003 invasion of Iraq and was charged by the Iraqi government with war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. He was convicted in June 2007 and was sentenced to death for crimes of genocide against the Kurds committed in the al-Anfal campaign of the 1980s. His appeal of the death sentence was rejected on 4 September 2007, and he was sentenced to death for the fourth time on 17 January 2010 and was hanged eight days later, on 25 January 2010.


title: Ali Hassan al-Majid

text: Ali Hassan al-Majid is thought to have been born in 1941 in al-Awja near Tikrit, though he claimed in court that he was born three years later in 1944. The US, the United Nations and the Bank of England have also listed possible alternative birth years of 1943, 1939 & 1940. Official Iraqi court documents and the vast majority of journalistic obituaries cite 1941 as his approximate year of birth. Al-Majid was a member of the Bejat clan of the Al-Bu Nasir tribe, to which his elder cousin Saddam Hussein also belonged. Saddam later relied heavily on the clan & tribe to fill senior posts in his government. Like Saddam, al-Majid also was a Sunni Muslim who came from a poor tribal family and had little formal education. He worked as a motorcycle messenger and driver in the Iraqi Army from 1959 until the Ba'ath Party seized power in 1968. Thereafter, he was able to gain entry into the Military Academy and was commissioned as an officer in the Infantry.


title: Ali Hassan al-Majid

text: His rise thereafter, aided by his cousin Saddam, was swift. He initially became an aide to Iraqi defence minister Hammadi Shihab in the early 1970s after joining the Ba'ath party. He then became head of the government's Security Office, serving as an enforcer for the increasingly powerful Saddam. In 1979 Saddam seized power, ousting President Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr. At a videotaped assembly of Ba'ath party officials in July 1979, Saddam read out the names of political opponents, denouncing them as 'traitors', ordering that they be removed one by one from the room; many were later executed. Al-Majid could be seen in the background telling Saddam, "What you have done in the past was good. What you will do in the future is good. But there's this one small point. You have been too gentle, too merciful."


title: Ali Hassan al-Majid

text: Al-Majid became one of Saddam's closest military advisors and head of the Iraqi Intelligence Service, Iraqi secret police known as the "Mukhabarat". Following an unsuccessful assassination attempt on Saddam in 1983 in the town of Dujail, north of Baghdad, al-Majid directed the subsequent collective punishment operations in which scores of local men were killed, thousands more inhabitants were deported and the entire town was razed to the ground.


title: Ali Hassan al-Majid

text: During the late stages of the Iran–Iraq War al-Majid was given the post of Secretary General of the Northern Bureau of the Ba'ath Party, in which capacity he served from March 1987 to April 1989. This effectively made him Saddam's proconsul in the north of the country, commanding all state agencies in the rebellious Kurdish-populated region of the country. He was known for his ruthlessness, ordering the indiscriminate use of chemical weapons such as mustard gas, sarin, tabun and VX against Kurdish targets during a genocidal campaign dubbed Al-Anfal or "The Spoils of War". The first such attacks occurred as early as April 1987 and continued into 1988, culminating in the notorious attack on Halabja in which over 5,000 people were killed.


title: Ali Hassan al-Majid

text: With Kurdish resistance continuing, al-Majid decided to cripple the rebellion by eradicating the civilian population of the Kurdish regions. His forces embarked on a systematic campaign of mass killings, property destruction and forced population transfer (called "Arabization") in which thousands of Kurdish and Assyrian villages were razed and their inhabitants either killed or deported to the south of Iraq. He signed a decree in June 1987 stating that "Within their jurisdiction, the armed forces must kill any human being or animal present in these areas." By 1988, some 4,000 villages had been destroyed, an estimated 180,000 Kurds had been killed and some 1.5 million had been deported. The Kurds called him Chemical Ali ("Ali Al-Kīmāwī") for his role in the campaign; according to Iraqi Kurdish sources, Ali Hassan openly boasted of this nickname. Others dubbed him the "Butcher of Kurdistan".


title: Ali Hassan al-Majid

text: He was appointed Minister of Local Government following the war's end in 1988, with responsibility for the repopulation of the Kurdish and Assyrian region with Arab settlers relocated from elsewhere in Iraq. Two years later, after the invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, he became the military governor of the occupied emirate. He instituted a violent regime under which Kuwait was systematically looted and purged of "disloyal elements". In November 1990, he was recalled to Baghdad and was appointed Interior Minister in March 1991. Following the Iraqi defeat in the war, he was given the task of quelling the uprisings in the Shi'ite south of Iraq as well as the Kurdish and Assyrian north. Both revolts were crushed with great brutality, with many thousands killed.


title: Ali Hassan al-Majid

text: He was subsequently given the post of Defense Minister, though he briefly fell from grace in 1995 when Saddam dismissed him after it was discovered that al-Majid was involved in illegally smuggling grain to Iran. In December 1998, however, Saddam recalled him and appointed him commander of the southern region of Iraq, where the United States was increasingly carrying out air strikes in the northern no-fly zone. Al-Majid was re-appointed to this post in March 2003, immediately before the start of the Iraq War. He based himself in the southern port city of Basra and in April 2003 he was mistakenly reported to have been killed there in a U.S. air strike.


title: Ali Hassan al-Majid

text: He survived the April 2003 attack but was arrested by American forces on 17 August 2003 in Basra. He had been listed as the fifth most-wanted man in Iraq, shown as the King of Spades in the deck of most-wanted Iraqi playing cards. In 2006 he was charged with genocide and crimes against humanity for his part in the Anfal campaign and was transferred to the Iraq Special Tribunal for trial. He received four death sentences for his role in killing Shia Muslims in 1991 and 1999, the genocide of the Kurds in the 1980s, and ordering the gassing of Kurds at Halabja.


title: Ali Hassan al-Majid

text: The trial began on 21 August 2006, in acrimonious circumstances when al-Majid refused to enter a plea. He subsequently had a not guilty plea entered on his behalf by the court.


title: Ali Hassan al-Majid

text: He was unapologetic about his actions, telling the court that he had ordered the destruction of Kurdish and Assyrian villages because they were "full of Iranian agents". At one hearing, he declared: "I am the one who gave orders to the army to demolish villages and relocate the villagers. The army was responsible to carry out those orders. I am not defending myself. I am not apologizing. I did not make a mistake."


title: Ali Hassan al-Majid

text: During the trial, the court heard tape-recorded conversations between al-Majid and senior Ba'ath party officials regarding the use of chemical weapons. Responding to a question about the success of the deportation campaign, Ali Hassan told his interlocutors:


title: Ali Hassan al-Majid

text: I went to Sulaymaniyah and hit them with the special ammunition [i.e. chemical weapons]. That was my answer. We continued the deportations. I told the mustashars [village heads] that they might say that they like their villages and that they won't leave. I said I cannot let your village stay because I will attack it with chemical weapons. Then you and your family will die. You must leave right now. Because I cannot tell you the same day that I am going to attack with chemical weapons. I will kill them all with chemical weapons! Who is going to say anything? The international community? Fuck them! The international community and those who listen to them.


title: Ali Hassan al-Majid

text: ... This is my intention, and I want you to take serious note of it. As soon as we complete the deportations, we will start attacking them everywhere according to a systematic military plan. Even their strongholds. In our attacks we will take back one third or one half of what is under their control. If we can try to take two-thirds, then we will surround them in a small pocket and attack them with chemical weapons. I will not attack them with chemicals just one day, but I will continue to attack them with chemicals for fifteen days. Then I will announce that anyone who wishes to surrender with his gun will be allowed to do so. Anyone willing to come back is welcome, and those who do not return will be attacked again with new, destructive chemicals. I will not mention the name of the chemical because that is classified information. But I will say with new destructive weapons that will destroy you. So I will threaten them and motivate them to surrender.


title: Ali Hassan al-Majid

text: During the next few days of the trial, more recordings of al-Majid were heard in which he once again discussed the government's goals in dealing with the Iraqi Kurds. In the recordings, Ali Hassan calls the Iraqi Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani "wicked and a pimp," and promises not to leave alive anyone who speaks the Kurdish language.


title: Ali Hassan al-Majid

text: Ali Hassan's defence claimed that he used such language as "psychological and propaganda" tools against the Kurds, to prevent them from fighting government forces. "All the words used by me, such as 'deport them' or 'wipe them out,' were only for psychological effect," Ali Hassan said.


title: Ali Hassan al-Majid

text: On 24 June 2007, the court returned a verdict of guilty on all counts. The presiding judge, Mohammed Oreibi al-Khalifa, told al-Majid: "You had all the civil and military authority for northern Iraq. You gave orders to the troops to kill Kurdish and Assyrian civilians and put them in severe conditions. You subjected them to wide and systematic attacks using chemical weapons and artillery. You led the killing of villagers. You ... committed genocide. There are enough documents against you."


title: Ali Hassan al-Majid

text: He received five death sentences for genocide, crimes against humanity (specifically willful killing, forced disappearances and extermination), and war crimes (intentionally directing attacks against a civilian population). He was also sentenced to multiple prison terms ranging from seven years to life for other crimes. As his sentences were upheld, under Iraqi law, sentence was to be carried out by hanging, subject to the convictions being upheld following an automatic appeal, and he was to be executed in the following 30 days along with two others – Sultan Hashim Ahmad al-Tai, military commander of the Anfal campaign; and Hussein Rashid Mohammed, deputy general commander of the Iraqi armed force, assistant chief of staff for military operations, and former Republican Guard commander. However, the executions were postponed to 16 October, because of the arrival of the holy month of Ramadan. He was supposed to be executed 16 October 2007, but the execution was delayed when Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi expressed opposition to the sentences of al-Majid's co-defendants and refused to sign the execution orders. He then entered into a legal row with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, and as a result the Americans refused to hand any of the condemned prisoners over until the issue was resolved.


title: Ali Hassan al-Majid

text: In February 2008 an anonymous informant stated that Ali Hassan al-Majid's execution was finally approved by Talabani, al-Hashemi, and al-Maliki; this was the final hurdle in the way of the execution.


title: Ali Hassan al-Majid

text: On 2 December 2008, al-Majid was once again sentenced to death, but this time for playing a role in killing between 20,000 and 100,000 Shi'ite Muslims during the revolt in southern Iraq that followed the 1991 Persian Gulf War.<ref name="CNN 2/12/08"></ref>


title: Ali Hassan al-Majid

text: On 2 March 2009, al-Majid was sentenced to death for the third time, this for the assassination of Grand-Ayatollah Mohammad al-Sadr in 1999.


title: Ali Hassan al-Majid

text: The Iraqi Cabinet put pressure on the Presidential council on 17 March 2009 for Al-Majid's execution.


title: Ali Hassan al-Majid

text: The situation was similar on 17 January 2010 prior to 9 am (GMT); a fourth death penalty was issued against him in response to his acts of genocide against Kurds in the 1980s. He was also convicted of killing Shia Muslims in 1991 and 1999. Alongside him in the trial was former defense minister Sultan Hashem, who was also found guilty by The Iraqi High Tribunal for the Halabja attack and sentenced to 15 years' imprisonment. Al-Majid was executed by hanging on 25 January 2010. He was buried in Saddam's family cemetery in al-Awja the next day; near Saddam's sons, half-brother and the former vice president, but outside the mosque housing the tomb of Saddam. While he was sentenced to death on four separate occasions, the original 2007 verdict sentenced him to five death sentences, and so the combined tally of death sentences handed out was eight.


title: Ali Hassan al-Majid

text: Amnesty International's Middle East and North Africa Director Malcolm Smart later criticized the execution as "only the latest of a mounting number of executions, some of whom did not receive fair trials, in gross violation of human rights..."


title: Paris Peace Accords

text: The Paris Peace Accords, () officially titled the Agreement on Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Viet Nam ("Hiệp định về chấm dứt chiến tranh, lập lại hòa bình ở Việt Nam"), was a peace treaty signed on January 27, 1973, to establish peace in Vietnam and end the Vietnam War. The treaty included the governments of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam), the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam), and the United States, as well as the Republic of South Vietnam (PRG) that represented South Vietnamese communists. US ground forces up to that point had been sidelined with deteriorating morale and gradually withdrawn to coastal regions, not taking part in offensive operations or much direct combat for the preceding two-year period. The Paris Agreement Treaty would in effect remove all remaining US Forces, including air and naval forces in exchange. Direct U.S. military intervention was ended, and fighting between the three remaining powers temporarily stopped for less than a day. The agreement was not ratified by the United States Senate.


title: Paris Peace Accords

text: The negotiations that led to the accord began in 1968, after various lengthy delays. As a result of the accord, the International Control Commission (ICC) was replaced by the International Commission of Control and Supervision (ICCS) to fulfill the agreement. The main negotiators of the agreement were United States National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger and North Vietnamese politburo member Lê Đức Thọ; the two men were awarded the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts, although Lê Đức Thọ refused to accept it.


title: Paris Peace Accords

text: The agreement's provisions were immediately and frequently broken by both North and South Vietnamese forces with no official response from the United States. Open fighting broke out in March 1973, and North Vietnamese offenses enlarged their control by the end of the year. Two years later, a massive North Vietnamese offensive conquered South Vietnam on April 30, 1975, after which the two countries, separated since 1954, united once more on July 2, 1976, as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.


title: Paris Peace Accords

text: Part of the negotiations took place in the former residence of French painter Fernand Léger which was bequeathed to the French Communist Party. Ironically the street of the house was named after Philippe Leclerc de Hauteclocque who had commanded French forces in Vietnam after the Second World War.


title: Paris Peace Accords

text: Following the success of anti-war candidate Eugene McCarthy in the New Hampshire primary, in March 1968 U.S President Lyndon B. Johnson halted bombing operations over the northern portion of North Vietnam (Operation Rolling Thunder), in order to encourage Hanoi (the perceived locus of the insurgency) to begin negotiations. Although some sources state that the bombing halt decision announced on March 31, 1968 was related to events occurring within the White House and the Presidents counsel of Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford and others rather than the events in New Hampshire. Shortly thereafter, Hanoi agreed to discuss a complete halt of the bombing, and a date was set for representatives of both parties to meet in Paris, France. The sides first met on May 10, with the delegations headed by Xuân Thuỷ, who would remain the official leader of the North Vietnamese delegation throughout the process, and U.S. ambassador-at-large W. Averell Harriman.


title: Paris Peace Accords

text: For five months, the negotiations stalled as North Vietnam demanded that all bombing of North Vietnam be stopped, while the U.S. side demanded that North Vietnam agree to a reciprocal de-escalation in South Vietnam; it was not until October 31 that Johnson agreed to end the air strikes and serious negotiations could begin.


title: Paris Peace Accords

text: One of the largest hurdles to effective negotiation was the fact that North Vietnam and the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam (NLF, or Viet Cong) in the South, refused to recognize the government of South Vietnam; with equal persistence, the government in Saigon refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of the NLF. Harriman resolved this dispute by developing a system by which North Vietnam and U.S. would be the named parties; NLF officials could join the North Vietnam team without being recognized by South Vietnam, while Saigon's representatives joined their U.S. allies.


title: Paris Peace Accords

text: A similar debate concerned the shape of the table to be used at the conference. The North favored a circular table, in which all parties, including NLF representatives, would appear to be "equal"' in importance. The South Vietnamese argued that only a rectangular table was acceptable, for only a rectangle could show two distinct sides to the conflict. Eventually a compromise was reached, in which representatives of the northern and southern governments would sit at a circular table, with members representing all other parties sitting at individual square tables around them.


title: Paris Peace Accords

text: Bryce Harlow, a former White House staff member in the Eisenhower administration, claimed to have "a double agent working in the White House...I kept Nixon informed." Harlow and Henry Kissinger (who was friendly with both campaigns and guaranteed a job in either a Humphrey or Nixon administration in the upcoming election) separately predicted Johnson's "bombing halt". Democratic senator George Smathers informed President Johnson that "the word is out that we are making an effort to throw the election to Humphrey. Nixon has been told of it".


title: Paris Peace Accords

text: According to presidential historian Robert Dallek, Kissinger's advice "rested not on special knowledge of decision making at the White House but on an astute analyst's insight into what was happening." CIA intelligence analyst William Bundy stated that Kissinger obtained "no useful inside information" from his trip to Paris, and "almost any experienced Hanoi watcher might have come to the same conclusion". While Kissinger may have "hinted that his advice was based on contacts with the Paris delegation," this sort of "self-promotion...is at worst a minor and not uncommon practice, quite different from getting and reporting real secrets."


title: Paris Peace Accords

text: Nixon asked prominent Chinese-American politician Anna Chennault to be his "channel to Mr. Thieu"; Chennault agreed and periodically reported to John Mitchell that Thieu had no intention of attending a peace conference. On November 2, Chennault informed the South Vietnamese ambassador: "I have just heard from my boss in Albuquerque who says his boss [Nixon] is going to win. And you tell your boss [Thieu] to hold on a while longer." Johnson found out through the NSA and was enraged saying that Nixon had "blood on his hands" and that Senate Minority Leader Everett Dirksen agreed with Johnson that such action was "treason." Defense Secretary Clark Clifford considered the moves an illegal violation of the Logan Act.


title: Paris Peace Accords

text: In response, President Johnson ordered the wire-tapping of members of the Nixon campaign. Dallek wrote that Nixon's efforts "probably made no difference" because Thieu was unwilling to attend the talks and there was little chance of an agreement being reached before the election; however, his use of information provided by Harlow and Kissinger was morally questionable, and vice president Hubert Humphrey's decision not to make Nixon's actions public was "an uncommon act of political decency."


title: Paris Peace Accords

text: After winning the 1968 presidential election, Richard Nixon became president of the U.S. in January 1969. He then replaced U.S. ambassador Harriman with Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., who was later replaced by David Bruce. Also that year, the NLF set up a Provisional Revolutionary Government (PRG) to gain government status at the talks. However, the primary negotiations that led to the agreement did not occur at the Peace Conference at all but were carried out during secret negotiations between Kissinger and Lê Đức Thọ, which began on August 4, 1969.


title: Paris Peace Accords

text: North Vietnam insisted for three years that the agreement could not be concluded unless the United States agreed to remove South Vietnamese President Nguyễn Văn Thiệu from power and replace him with someone more acceptable to Hanoi. Nixon and Kissinger were unwilling to sign an agreement to overthrow a government the NLF had failed to overthrow by force of arms, though the extent of North Vietnamese demands is contested. Historian Marilyn B. Young, contends that the contents of Hanoi's proposal were systematically distorted from their original plea to "permit" Thiệu's replacement, to what Kissinger propagated as a demand for his overthrow.


title: Paris Peace Accords

text: On May 8, 1972, President Nixon made a major concession to North Vietnam by announcing that the U.S. would accept a cease-fire in place as a precondition for its military withdrawal. In other words, the U.S. would withdraw its forces from South Vietnam without North Vietnam doing the same. The concession broke a deadlock and resulted in progress in the talks over the next few months.


title: Paris Peace Accords

text: The final major breakthrough came on October 8, 1972. Prior to this, North Vietnam had been disappointed by the results of its "Nguyen Hue Offensive" (known in the West as the Easter Offensive), which had resulted in the United States countering with "Operation Linebacker," a significant air bombing campaign that blunted the North's drive in the South as well as inflicting damage in the North. Also, they feared increased isolation if Nixon's efforts at détente significantly improved U.S. relations with the chief communist powers, the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China, who were backing the North Vietnamese military effort. In a meeting with Kissinger, Thọ significantly modified his bargaining line, allowing that the Saigon government could remain in power and that negotiations between the two South Vietnamese parties could develop a final settlement. Within 10 days the secret talks drew up a final draft. Kissinger held a press conference in Washington during which he announced that "peace is at hand."


title: Paris Peace Accords

text: When Thiệu, who had not even been informed of the secret negotiations, was presented with the draft of the new agreement, he was furious with Kissinger and Nixon (who were perfectly aware of South Vietnam's negotiating position) and refused to accept it without significant changes. He then made several public radio addresses, claiming that the proposed agreement was worse than it actually was. Hanoi was flabbergasted, believing that it had been duped into a propaganda ploy by Kissinger. On October 26, Radio Hanoi broadcast key details of the draft agreement.


title: Paris Peace Accords

text: However, as U.S. casualties had mounted throughout the conflict since 1965, American domestic support for the war had deteriorated, and by the fall of 1972 there was major pressure on the Nixon administration to withdraw from the war. Consequently, the U.S. brought great diplomatic pressure upon their South Vietnamese ally to sign the peace treaty even if the concessions Thiệu wanted could not be achieved. Nixon pledged to provide continued substantial aid to South Vietnam, and given his recent landslide victory in the presidential election, it seemed possible that he would be able to follow through on that pledge. To demonstrate his seriousness to Thiệu, Nixon ordered the heavy Operation Linebacker II bombings of North Vietnam in December 1972. Nixon also attempted to bolster South Vietnam's military forces by ordering that large quantities of U.S. military material and equipment be given to South Vietnam from May to December 1972 under Operations Enhance and Enhance Plus. These operations were also designed to keep North Vietnam at the negotiating table and to prevent them from abandoning negotiations and seeking total victory. When the North Vietnamese government agreed to resume "technical" discussions with the United States, Nixon ordered a halt to bombings north of the 20th parallel on December 30. With the U.S. committed to disengagement (and after threats from Nixon that South Vietnam would be abandoned if he did not agree), Thiệu had little choice but to accede.


title: Paris Peace Accords

text: On January 15, 1973, President Nixon announced a suspension of offensive actions against North Vietnam. Kissinger and Thọ met again on January 23 and signed off on a treaty that was basically identical to the draft of three months earlier. The agreement was signed by the leaders of the official delegations on January 27, 1973, at the Hotel Majestic in Paris, France.


title: Paris Peace Accords

text: The Paris Peace Accords effectively removed the U.S. from the conflict in Vietnam. Prisoners from both sides were exchanged, with American ones primarily released during Operation Homecoming. Around 31,961 North Vietnamese/VC prisoners (26,880 military, 5081 civilians) were released in return for 5942 South Vietnamese prisoners. However, the agreement's provisions were routinely flouted by both the North Vietnamese and the South Vietnamese government, eliciting no response from the United States, and ultimately resulting in the communists enlarging the area under their control by the end of 1973. North Vietnamese military forces gradually built up their military infrastructure in the areas they controlled and two years later were in a position to launch the successful offensive that ended South Vietnam's status as an independent country. Fighting began almost immediately after the agreement was signed, due to a series of mutual retaliations, and by March 1973, full-fledged war had resumed.


title: Paris Peace Accords

text: Nixon had secretly promised Thiệu that he would use airpower to support the South Vietnamese government should it be necessary. During his confirmation hearings in June 1973, Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger was sharply criticized by some senators after he stated that he would recommend resumption of U.S. bombing in North Vietnam if North Vietnam launched a major offensive against South Vietnam, but by August 15, 1973, 95% of American troops and their allies had left Vietnam (both North and South) as well as Cambodia and Laos under the Case-Church Amendment. The amendment, which was approved by the U.S. Congress in June 1973, prohibited further U.S. military activity in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia unless the president secured Congressional approval in advance. However, during this time, Nixon was being driven from office due to the Watergate scandal, which led to his resignation in 1974. When the North Vietnamese began their final offensive early in 1975, the U.S. Congress refused to appropriate increased military assistance for South Vietnam, citing strong opposition to the war by Americans and the loss of American equipment to the North by retreating Southern forces. Thiệu subsequently resigned, accusing the U.S. of betrayal in a TV and radio address:


title: Paris Peace Accords

text: Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese army supported by Viet Cong units on April 30, 1975. Schlesinger had announced early in the morning of April 29 the beginning of Operation Frequent Wind, which entailed the evacuation of the last U.S. diplomatic, military and civilian personnel from Saigon via helicopter, which was completed in the early morning hours of April 30. Not only did North Vietnam conquer South Vietnam, but the communists were also victorious in Cambodia when the Khmer Rouge captured Phnom Penh on April 17, as were the Pathet Lao in Laos successful in capturing Vientiane on December 2. Like Saigon, U.S. civilian and military personnel were evacuated from Phnom Penh, U.S. diplomatic presence in Vientiane was significantly downgraded, and the number of remaining U.S. personnel was severely reduced.


title: Paris Peace Accords

text: According to Finnish historian Jussi Hanhimäki, due to triangular diplomacy which isolated it, South Vietnam was "pressurized into accepting an agreement that virtually ensured its collapse". During negotiations, Kissinger stated that the United States would not intervene militarily 18 months after an agreement, but that it might intervene before that. In Vietnam War historiography, this has been termed the "decent interval".


title: Battle of Vukovar

text: The Battle of Vukovar was an 87-day siege of Vukovar in eastern Croatia by the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA), supported by various paramilitary forces from Serbia, between August and November 1991. Before the Croatian War of Independence the Baroque town was a prosperous, mixed community of Croats, Serbs and other ethnic groups. As Yugoslavia began to break up, Serbia's President Slobodan Milošević and Croatia's President Franjo Tuđman began pursuing nationalist politics. In 1990, an armed insurrection was started by Croatian Serb militias, supported by the Serbian government and paramilitary groups, who seized control of Serb-populated areas of Croatia. The JNA began to intervene in favour of the rebellion, and conflict broke out in the eastern Croatian region of Slavonia in May 1991. In August, the JNA launched a full-scale attack against Croatian-held territory in eastern Slavonia, including Vukovar.


title: Battle of Vukovar

text: Vukovar was defended by around 1,800 lightly armed soldiers of the Croatian National Guard (ZNG) and civilian volunteers, against as many as 36,000 JNA soldiers and Serb paramilitaries equipped with heavy armour and artillery. During the battle, shells and rockets were fired into the town at a rate of up to 12,000 a day. At the time, it was the fiercest and most protracted battle seen in Europe since 1945, and Vukovar was the first major European town to be entirely destroyed since the Second World War. When Vukovar fell on 18 November 1991, several hundred soldiers and civilians were massacred by Serb forces and at least 20,000 inhabitants were expelled. Overall, around 3,000 people died during the battle. Most of Vukovar was ethnically cleansed of its non-Serb population and became part of the self-declared proto-state known as the Republic of Serbian Krajina. Several Serb military and political officials, including Milošević, were later indicted and in some cases jailed for war crimes committed during and after the battle.


title: Battle of Vukovar

text: The battle exhausted the JNA and proved a turning point in the Croatian War of Independence. A cease-fire was declared a few weeks later. Vukovar remained in Serb hands until 1998, when it was peacefully reintegrated into Croatia with the signing of the Erdut Agreement. It has since been rebuilt but has less than half of its pre-war population and many buildings are still scarred by the battle. Its two principal ethnic communities remain deeply divided and it has not regained its former prosperity.


title: Battle of Vukovar

text: Vukovar is an important regional centre on Croatia's eastern border, situated in eastern Slavonia on the west bank of the Danube river. The area has a diverse population of Croats, Serbs, Hungarians, Slovaks, Ruthenians and many other nationalities, who had lived together for centuries in relative harmony before the Croatian War of Independence. It was also one of the wealthiest areas of Yugoslavia before the conflict. Vukovar's long-standing prosperity was reflected in one of Croatia's finest ensembles of Baroque architecture.


title: Battle of Vukovar

text: The region underwent major demographic changes following the Second World War, when its ethnic German inhabitants were expelled and replaced with settlers from elsewhere in Yugoslavia. In 1991, the last Yugoslav census recorded the Vukovar municipality, which included the town and surrounding villages, as having 84,189 inhabitants, of whom 44 percent were Croats, 38 percent were Serbs and the remainder were members of other ethnic groups. The town's population was 47 percent Croat and 33 percent Serb.


title: Battle of Vukovar

text: From 1945, Yugoslavia was governed as a federal socialist state comprising six newly created republics – Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia. The current border between Serbia and Croatia was defined in 1945 by a Yugoslav federal government commission which assigned areas with a Serb majority to the Socialist Republic of Serbia and those with a Croat majority to the Socialist Republic of Croatia. Nevertheless, a sizable Serb minority remained within the latter.


title: Battle of Vukovar

text: Following the death of Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito in 1980, long-suppressed ethnic nationalism revived and the individual republics began to assert their authority more strongly as the federal government weakened. Slovenia and Croatia moved towards multi-party democracy and economic reform, but Serbia's authoritarian communist President Slobodan Milošević opposed reform and sought to increase the power of the Yugoslav government. In 1990, Slovenia and Croatia held elections that ended communist rule and brought pro-independence nationalist parties to power in both republics. In Croatia, the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) of Franjo Tuđman took power, with Tuđman as president.


title: Battle of Vukovar

text: Tuđman's programme was opposed by many members of Croatia's Serb minority, towards whom he was overtly antagonistic. Croatia's Serb Democratic Party (SDS), supported by Milošević, denounced the HDZ as a reincarnation of the nationalist-fascist "Ustaše" movement, which had massacred hundreds of thousands of Serbs during the Second World War. From mid-1990, the SDS mounted an armed rebellion in Serb-inhabited areas of Croatia and set up the self-declared Serbian Autonomous Oblast of Krajina, with covert support from the Serbian government and Serbian paramilitary groups. The Croatian government rapidly lost control of large swathes of the republic. In February 1991, the Krajina Serbs declared independence from Croatia and announced that they would unite with Serbia. Other Serb communities in Croatia also announced that they would secede and established their own militias.


title: Battle of Vukovar

text: The conflict between Serbs and Croats spread to eastern Slavonia in early 1991. On 1 April, Serb villagers around Vukovar and other towns in eastern Slavonia began to erect barricades across main roads. The White Eagles, a Serbian paramilitary group led by Vojislav Šešelj, moved into the Serb-populated village of Borovo Selo just north of Vukovar. In mid-April 1991, an incident occurred in the outskirts of Borovo Selo when three Armbrust man-portable recoilless guns were fired on Serb positions. There were allegations that Gojko Šušak, at the time the Deputy Minister of Defence, led the attack. There were no casualties, but the attack aggravated and deepened ethnic tensions. On 2 May, Serb paramilitaries ambushed two Croatian police buses in the centre of Borovo Selo, killing 12 policemen and injuring 22 more. One Serb paramilitary was also killed. The Battle of Borovo Selo represented the worst act of violence between the country's Serbs and Croats since the Second World War. It enraged many Croatians and led to a surge of ethnic violence across Slavonia.


title: Battle of Vukovar

text: Shortly after, Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) units moved into Borovo Selo. The army's intervention was welcomed by local Croatian leaders, but Croatia's Deputy Interior Minister, Milan Brezak, accused the JNA of preventing the Croatian police from dealing with the paramilitaries. Gun battles broke out across the region between rival militias. In Vukovar, Croatians harassed Serb residents, sometimes violently. Croatian police forcibly took over the local radio station, Radio Vukovar, and Serb members of the station's ethnically mixed staff were fired and replaced with Croats. Serb militias systematically blocked transport routes in the predominantly Serb-inhabited countryside around Vukovar, and within days the town could only be reached by an unpaved track running through Croat-inhabited villages. The atmosphere in Vukovar was said to be "murderous".


title: Battle of Vukovar

text: On 19 May 1991, the Croatian government held a nationwide referendum on a declaration of sovereignty. In Vukovar, as elsewhere in Croatia, hardline Serb nationalists urged Serbs to boycott the referendum, while moderates advocated using the poll to register opposition to independence. Many local Serbs did vote. The referendum passed with 94 percent nationally voting in favour.


title: Battle of Vukovar

text: Violence in and around Vukovar worsened after the independence referendum. Repeated gun and bomb attacks were reported in the town and surrounding villages. Sporadic shelling of the city started in June, and increased in intensity throughout the summer. Borovo Naselje, the Croatian-held northern suburb of Vukovar, sustained a significant shelling on 4 July. Serb paramilitaries expelled thousands of non-Serbs from their homes in the municipality. Croatian paramilitaries, led by Tomislav Merčep, attacked Serbs in and around Vukovar (in what was later investigated as the 1991 killings of Serbs in Vukovar). Between 30 and 86 Serbs disappeared or were killed, and thousands of others fled their homes. A Croatian government representative in Vukovar told the Zagreb authorities that "the city is again [the] victim of terror, armed strife and provocative shoot-outs with potentially unfathomable consequences. The policy pursued so far has created an atmosphere of terror among the Croatian and Serbian population." Gunmen from both sides burned and looted hundreds of houses and farms in the area.


title: Battle of Vukovar

text: The conflict blurred ethnic lines. Many Serbs who had lived in Vukovar for generations – known as the "starosedioci" or "old settlers" – resisted the propaganda coming from Belgrade and Knin and continued to live peacefully with their Croatian neighbours. The "došljaci", or "newcomers", whose families had relocated from southern Serbia and Montenegro to replace the deported Germans after 1945, were the most responsive to nationalist appeals. The journalist Paolo Rumiz describes how they "tried to win their coethnics over to the patriotic mobilization, and when they had no success with that, they killed them, plundered their property and goods, or drove them away. The old settlers would not let themselves be stirred up against other nationalities." When Croats fled the fighting they often gave their house keys for safekeeping to their Serb neighbours, whom they trusted, rather than to the Croatian police. The political scientist Sabrina P. Ramet notes that a distinctive feature of the war in eastern Slavonia was "the mobilization of those who were not integrated into the multi-cultural life of the cities against urban multi-culturalism." Former Belgrade mayor Bogdan Bogdanović characterised the attack on Vukovar as an act of urbicide, a deliberate assault on urbanism.


title: Battle of Vukovar

text: By the end of July 1991, an improvised Croatian defence force in Vukovar was almost surrounded by Serbian militias in the neighbouring villages. Paramilitaries, JNA soldiers and Serbian Territorial Defence (TO) conscripts were present in Serb-inhabited areas. There was a small JNA barracks in Vukovar's Sajmište district, surrounded by Croatian-controlled territory. Although the two sides were commonly referred to as "Croatian" and "Serbian" or "Yugoslav", Serbs and Croats as well as many other of Yugoslavia's national groups fought on both sides. The first commander of the attacking force was Macedonian. Serbs and members of other ethnicities made up a substantial portion of the Croatian defenders.


title: Battle of Vukovar

text: The Croatian force in Vukovar comprised 1,800 men assembled from units of the newly created Croatian National Guard, including 400 members of the 3rd Guards Brigade and the 1st Guards Brigade. The 4th Battalion of the 3rd Guards Brigade was stationed in the city from the beginning, while elements of the 1st Guards Brigade arrived retreating from elsewhere in western Syrmia. In addition to the guardsmen there were 300 police officers and 1,100 civilian volunteers from Vukovar and nearby communities. The bulk of the force had initially been organised in an improvised manner. In late September 1991, it was formally reorganised as the 204th Vukovar Brigade, also known as the 124th Brigade.


title: Battle of Vukovar

text: Volunteers arrived from other parts of Croatia, including 58 members of the far-right paramilitary Croatian Defence Forces (HOS), backed by Dobroslav Paraga's extreme nationalist Croatian Party of Rights (HSP). The defenders were a cross-section of Vukovar society. As many as one-third were non-Croats, including Serbs, Ruthenians, Hungarians and members of other ethnicities. About 100 of the defenders were Serbs. "We had complete confidence in them", one Croatian veteran later said. "They defended Vukovar alongside us."


title: Battle of Vukovar

text: Croatian forces in Vukovar were commanded by Mile Dedaković, a former JNA officer who had joined the ZNG and volunteered to take charge of the town's defences. During the battle, he went by the "nom de guerre" "Jastreb" ("Hawk"). Gojko Šušak, by now Croatia's Minister of Defence, used Dedaković as an example of how Serbs were also taking part in Vukovar's defence. The claim was later reprinted by independent sources, but was false.


title: Battle of Vukovar

text: Dedaković's second-in-command, Branko Borković, was another former JNA officer who had volunteered for service in Vukovar. The two men established a unified command structure, organised the defenders into a single brigade and implemented an integrated defence system. A defensive ring of six sectors was established, each assigned to one unit within the 204th Brigade. The defenders used a network of cellars, canals, ditches and trenches to redeploy around the sectors as needed.


title: Battle of Vukovar

text: At the start of the battle, they were poorly armed and many were equipped only with hunting rifles. They relied mostly on light infantry weapons, but obtained a few artillery pieces and anti-aircraft guns and improvised their own land mines. They also obtained several hundred anti-tank weapons such as M79 and M80 rocket launchers, but were critically short of ammunition throughout the battle. The capture of JNA barracks somewhat improved the situation as Vukovar had the priority in the supply of arms. It is estimated that the Vukovar battlefield consumed around 55–60 percent of all ammunition available to the Croatian forces.


title: Battle of Vukovar

text: The attacking force included JNA soldiers conscripted from across Yugoslavia, members of the TO, Chetniks (Serbian nationalist paramilitaries), local Serb militiamen and units of the Yugoslav Navy and the Yugoslav Air Force. At their peak, the Yugoslav and Serb forces in the vicinity of Vukovar numbered about 36,000. They were equipped with heavy artillery, rockets and tanks and supported by aircraft and naval vessels on the Danube.


title: Battle of Vukovar

text: Although the battle was fought primarily by the federal Yugoslav military, the government of Serbia was directly involved. The Serbian secret police agency, the SDB, took part in military operations, and some of its officers commanded Serbian TO units fighting in Vukovar. Serbia's Ministry of Internal Affairs directed the activities of the paramilitaries. It was also responsible for arming and equipping them. Slobodan Milošević was later accused of direct involvement. According to Veselin Šljivančanin, who was later convicted of war crimes committed at Vukovar, the order to shell Vukovar came "from Dedinje" – the elite Belgrade quarter where Milošević lived.


title: Battle of Vukovar

text: At the start of the war in Slovenia, the army still saw itself as the defender of a federal, communist Yugoslavia, rather than an instrument of Serbian nationalism. Its head, General Veljko Kadijević, the Yugoslav Minister of Defence and a committed communist, initially sought to forcibly keep Yugoslavia together and proclaimed the army's neutrality in the Serb-Croat conflict. The JNA leadership aimed to cut Croatia in two by seizing the Serb-inhabited inland regions, almost all of the Dalmatian coast and much of central and eastern Croatia. It aimed to force Croatia's political leadership to capitulate and renegotiate its membership of Yugoslavia. The JNA's leadership was not yet dominated by ethnic Serbs, and these early goals reflected the Yugoslav outlook of its multiethnic leadership. Kadijević was half-Croat and half-Serb, his deputy was a Slovene, the commander of the JNA forces in the first phase of the battle was a Macedonian, and the head of the Yugoslav Air Force, which repeatedly bombed Vukovar during the battle, was a Croat.


title: Battle of Vukovar

text: The loss of Slovenia in the Ten-Day War made it impossible to fulfil the original objective of keeping Yugoslavia intact. Many of the Serb members of the army no longer wanted to fight for a multiethnic Yugoslavia. The army developed an increasingly Serbian character as non-Serbs deserted or refused to be drafted. Some JNA commanders overtly supported the Serb rebels in Croatia and provided them with weapons. Although Kadijević and other senior JNA commanders initially argued that "the JNA must defend all the nations of Yugoslavia", they eventually recognised that they had no chance of achieving their original goals, and threw their support behind the rebel Serbs of Croatia.


title: Battle of Vukovar

text: Yugoslav and Serb propaganda portrayed Croatian separatists as genocidal "Ustaše", who had illegally taken over Yugoslav territory and were threatening Serb civilians in a reprise of the anti-Serb pogroms of the Second World War. Kadijević later justified the JNA's offensive against Vukovar on the grounds that it was part of the "backbone of the Croatian army" and had to be "liberated". The JNA's periodical "Narodna Armija" claimed after the battle that Vukovar "had for decades been prepared to support German military penetration down the Danube." Šešelj declared: "We're all one army. This war is a great test for Serbs. Those who pass the test will become winners. Deserters cannot go unpunished. Not a single "Ustaša" must leave Vukovar alive."


title: Battle of Vukovar

text: The Battle of Vukovar took place in two phases over about 90 days: from August to September 1991, before the town was fully surrounded, and from early October to mid-November, when the town was encircled then taken by the JNA. Starting in June, Vukovar and neighbouring villages were subjected to daily or near-daily artillery and mortar fire. In July, the JNA and TO began deploying in large numbers across eastern Slavonia, surrounding Vukovar from three sides. Heavy fighting began at the end of August. On 23 August, Borovo Naselje came under heavy shellfire, and Croatian forces shot down two Yugoslav G-2 Galeb ground-attack aircraft using shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missiles. The following day, the JNA, the Yugoslav Air Force and the Yugoslav Navy launched a major attack using aircraft, naval vessels on the Danube, tanks and artillery. The attack, which was mounted from both sides of the border, caused extensive damage and resulted in many civilian casualties.


title: Battle of Vukovar

text: On 14 September, the Croatian government ordered an attack against all JNA garrisons and arms depots in the country, an offensive dubbed the Battle of the Barracks. Vukovar's JNA barracks was among those attacked that day, but the JNA managed to defend it. In retaliation, Serb paramilitaries attacked areas to the southwest of Vukovar from the direction of Negoslavci, forcing about 2,000 people to flee. There were reports of mass killings and scores of civilian deaths. Croatian forces outside the Vukovar perimeter received large quantities of arms and ammunition from depots captured elsewhere, enabling them to hold the line.


title: Battle of Vukovar

text: The JNA responded by launching a major offensive in eastern Slavonia, from where it intended to progress west via Vinkovci and Osijek to Zagreb. The JNA did not bypass Vukovar because its leadership wished to relieve the besieged barracks and to eliminate a possible threat to their supply lines. The JNA did not intend to make Vukovar the main focus of the offensive, but as happened with Stalingrad in the Second World War, an initially inconsequential engagement became an essential political symbol for both sides.


title: Battle of Vukovar

text: On 19 September, a JNA force consisting of at least 100 T-55 and M-84 tanks with armoured personnel carriers and heavy artillery pieces left Belgrade. It crossed into Croatia near the Serbian town of Šid on 20 September. The Croatians were quickly routed and fell back to Vukovar. The JNA's 1st Guards Mechanised Brigade soon reached the Vukovar barracks and lifted the Croatian siege of the facility. They also moved to encircle Vukovar. By 30 September, the town was almost completely surrounded. All roads in and out were blocked, and the only route in was via a farm track through a perilously exposed cornfield.


title: Battle of Vukovar

text: The JNA launched repeated assaults on Vukovar but failed to make any progress. Its armour, designed for combat in open country, was barely able to enter Vukovar's narrow streets. Support from regular infantry was lacking, and the TO's poorly trained and motivated troops were inadequate substitutes. The JNA's soldiers appeared to have little understanding of how to conduct urban operations and its officers displayed slow and reactive decision-making on the ground.


title: Battle of Vukovar

text: Croatian forces countered the JNA's attacks by mining approach roads, sending out mobile teams equipped with anti-tank weapons, deploying many snipers, and fighting back from heavily fortified positions. The JNA initially relied on massing armoured spearheads which would advance along a street in a column followed by a few companies of infantry. The Croatians responded by opening fire with anti-tank weapons at very close range – often as short as  – to disable the lead and rear vehicles, trapping the rest of the column, where it could be systematically disabled. They tried to avoid completely destroying the JNA's armour, as the materiel they retrieved from disabled vehicles was an important source of resupply. The Croatians employed a strategy of "active defence", carrying out hit-and-run attacks to keep the JNA off balance. Anti-tank and anti-personnel mines hindered JNA manoeuvres. Unconventional tactics were used to undermine the JNA's morale, such as firing weather rockets and sabotaging JNA tanks by planting mines underneath them while they were parked at night, causing them to explode when their crews started them in the morning. JNA casualties were heavy. On one road, dubbed the "tank graveyard", about a hundred JNA armoured vehicles were destroyed, fifteen of them by Colonel Marko Babić. The high casualties had a debilitating effect on morale all the way up the chain of command.


title: Battle of Vukovar

text: The JNA began launching artillery and rocket barrages against the town. By the end of the battle, over 700,000 shells and other missiles had been fired at Vukovar at a rate of up to 12,000 a day. It is estimated that Vukovar as well as its surroundings were bombarded with more than 2.5 million shells over . Metre for metre, the bombardment was more intense than at Stalingrad. The thousands of civilians remaining in Vukovar took shelter in cellars and bomb shelters that had been built during the Cold War.


title: Battle of Vukovar

text: The JNA's lack of infantry support was due to a disastrously low level of mobilisation in the preceding months. Many reservists – who were drawn from all the Yugoslav republics, including Croatia – refused to report for duty, and many serving soldiers deserted rather than fight. Serbia was never formally at war and no general mobilisation was carried out. An estimated 150,000 Serbs went abroad to avoid conscription, and many others deserted or went into hiding. Only 13 percent of conscripts reported for duty. Another 40,000 staged rebellions in towns across Serbia; the Serbian newspaper "Vreme" commented in July 1991 that the situation was one of "total military disintegration".


title: Battle of Vukovar

text: Morale on the battlefield was poor. JNA commanders resorted to firing on their own positions to motivate their men to fight. When the commander of a JNA unit at Vukovar demanded to know who was willing to fight and who wanted to go home, the unit split in two. One conscript, unable to decide which side to take, shot himself on the spot. A JNA officer who served at Vukovar later described how his men refused to obey orders on several occasions, "abandoning combat vehicles, discarding weapons, gathering on some flat ground, sitting and singing "Give Peace a Chance" by John Lennon." In late October, an entire infantry battalion from Novi Sad in Serbia abandoned an attack on Borovo Naselje and fled. Another group of reservists threw away their weapons and went back to Serbia on foot across a nearby bridge. A tank driver, Vladimir Živković, drove his vehicle from the front line at Vukovar to the Yugoslav parliament in Belgrade, where he parked on the steps in front of the building. He was arrested and declared insane by the authorities. His treatment enraged his colleagues, who protested by taking over a local radio station at gunpoint and issuing a declaration that "we are not traitors, but we do not want to be aggressors."


title: Battle of Vukovar

text: In late September, Lieutenant Colonel General Života Panić was put in charge of the operation against Vukovar. He established new headquarters and command-and-control arrangements to resolve the disorganisation that had hindered the JNA's operations. Panić divided the JNA forces into Northern and Southern Areas of Responsibility (AORs). The northern AOR was assigned to Major General Mladen Bratić, while Colonel Mile Mrkšić was given charge of the south. As well as fresh troops, paramilitary volunteers from Serbia were brought in. They were well armed and highly motivated but often undisciplined and brutal. They were formed into units of company and battalion size as substitutes for the missing reservists. The commander of the Novi Sad corps was videotaped after the battle praising the Serb Volunteer Guard ("Tigers") of Željko Ražnatović, known as "Arkan":