title: History of Qatar

text: Britain's desire for secure passage for East India Company ships led it to impose its own order in the Persian Gulf. An agreement known as the General Maritime Treaty was signed between the East India Company and the sheikhs of the coastal area (later to be known as the Trucial Coast) in 1820. It acknowledged British authority in the Persian Gulf and sought to end piracy and the slave trade. Bahrain became a party to the treaty, and it was assumed that Qatar, as a dependency, was also a party to it.


title: History of Qatar

text: A report compiled by Major Colebrook in 1820 gives the first descriptions of the major towns in Qatar. All of the coastal cities mentioned in his report were situated near the Persian Gulf pearl banks and had been practicing pearl fishing for millenniums. Until the late eighteenth century, all of the principal towns of Qatar including Al Huwaila, Fuwayrit, Al Bidda and Doha were situated on the east coast. Doha developed around the largest of these, Al Bidda. The population consisted of nomadic and settled Arabs and a significant proportion of slaves brought from East Africa. As punishment for piracy committed by the inhabitants of Doha, an East India Company vessel bombarded the town in 1821. They razed the town, forcing between 300 and 400 natives to flee.


title: History of Qatar

text: A survey carried out by the British in 1825 notes that Qatar did not have a central authority and was governed by local sheikhs. Doha was ruled by the Al-Buainain tribe. In 1828, a member of the Al-Buainain murdered a native of Bahrain, prompting the Bahraini sheikh to imprison the offender. The Al-Buainain tribe revolted, provoking the Al Khalifa to destroy their fort and expel them from Doha. The expulsion of the Al-Buainain granted the Al Khalifa more jurisdiction over Doha.


title: History of Qatar

text: Desiring to keep surveillance over the proceedings of the Wahhabi, Bahrain stationed a government official named Abdullah bin Ahmad Al-Khalifa on the coast of Qatar as early as 1833. Turning against the Bahrainis, he instigated the people of Al Huwailah to revolt against the Al Khalifa and open up a correspondence with the Wahhabi in 1835. Shortly after the revolt, a peace agreement was signed by both parties under the mediation of the son of the Sultan of Muscat. As part of the stipulations, Al Huwailah was demolished and its residents were removed to Bahrain. Nephews of Abdullah bin Ahmed almost immediately violated the agreement when they incited members of the Al Kuwari tribe to attack Al Huwailah, however.


title: History of Qatar

text: Residents of the peninsula were susceptible to skirmishes between the forces of the sheikh of Bahrain and the Egyptian military commander of Al-Hasa. At the end of 1839 or beginning of 1840, the governor of Al-Hasa dispatched troops to lay waste to Qatar following the refusal of the Al Nuaim tribe of Zubarah to pay the demanded tribute. The assassination of a governor in Hofuf prematurely ended the expedition before the forces could reach the country.


title: History of Qatar

text: In 1847, Abdullah bin Ahmed Al Khalifa and a Qatari chief named Isa bin Tarif formed a coalition against Mohammed bin Khalifa, the ruler of Bahrain. In November, bin Khalifa landed in Al Khor with 500 troops and military support from the governors of Qatif and Al-Hasa. The opposition forces numbered 600 troops and were led by bin Tarif. On 17 November, a decisive battle, which came to be known as the Battle of Fuwayrit, took place between the coalition forces and the Bahraini forces. The coalition forces were defeated after bin Tarif and eighty of his men were killed. After he defeated the resistance troop, bin Khalifa demolished Al Bidda and moved its inhabitants to Bahrain. He sent his brother, Ali bin Khalifa, as an envoy to Al Bidda. However, he did not exercise any administrative powers, and local tribal leaders remained responsible for the internal affairs of Qatar.


title: History of Qatar

text: After having concocted a plan to invade Bahrain, the Wahhabi amir Faisal bin Turki left his headquarters in Najd with a platoon of troops in February 1851. Several offers of appeasement were made on behalf of Mohammed bin Khalifa, but these were met with rejection by Faisal. In anticipation of the impending invasion, Ali bin Khalifa moved to enlist military support in Qatar, but Mohammed bin Thani was persuaded to grant support to Faisal's forces when they reached Al Bidda in May. On June 8, forces loyal to Al Thani took possession of an important tower situated close to Ali bin Khalifa's residence in the Al Bidda Fort. This prompted Bahrain to initiate negotiations for a protective treaty with the British in an attempt to thwart Faisal's advances. They were initially unsuccessful in doing so, but the British reconsidered their position after receiving an intelligence report on the conflict and hastily situated a naval blockade in Manama. Accompanying a peace treaty on 25 July 1851, the sheikh of Bahrain agreed to pay a fee of 4,000 German krones in return for the restoration of the Bahraini-occupied Al Bidda Fort and the disassociation of the Wahhabi from the inhabitants of Qatar.


title: History of Qatar

text: In a move which angered Mohammed bin Khalifa, Faisal bin Turki provided a safe haven for Abdullah bin Ahmed's sons in Dammam in 1852. Consequently, the Bahrainis attempted to drive away residents of Al Bidda and Doha who were suspected of being loyal to the Wahhabi by imposing an economic blockade on the inhabitants which prevented them from engaging in pearl hunting. The blockade continued until the end of the year. In February 1853, the Wahhabi began marching from Al-Hasa to Al Khor. After Bahrain received assurance from the Qatar that they would not cooperate with the Wahhabi forces if they crossed into their borders, they sent Ali bin Khalifa to the mainland to act as a collaborator with the local resistance. A British-mediated peace agreement was reached between the two parties in 1853.


title: History of Qatar

text: Hostilities were provoked again after the Bahraini sheikh, in response to the harboring of Bahraini fugitives in Dammam, stopped paying tribute to the Wahhabi amir in 1859 and proceeded to instigate Qatari tribes to attack its subjects. Following threats made by Abdullah bin Faisal to attack Bahrain, the British navy dispatched a ship off the coast of Dammam to prevent any attacks. The situation escalated in May 1860 when Abdullah threatened to occupy the coast of Qatar until the annual tribute was paid. In May 1861, Bahrain signed a treaty with the British government in which the latter agreed to offer protection and recognize Qatar as a dependent of Bahrain. In February 1862, the treaty was ratified by the Indian government.


title: History of Qatar

text: Proceeding the British involvement, the sway that the Al Khalifa tribe held over Qatar's affairs began declining. Mohammed bin Thani was described by Gifford Palgrave as the acknowledged governor of the Qatar Peninsula in 1863. Some of Al Wakrah's inhabitants were forced to vacate the town by the Bahraini sheikh in April 1863 due to alleged links with the Wahhabi. The town's chief, Mohammed Bu Kuwara, was taken into custody on a similar charge. In 1866, a report by the British revealed that Qatar was paying an annual zakat of 4,000 German krones to the Wahhabi, in encroachment of the 1861 British treaty. The report also contended that the Al Khalifa were taxing the people of Qatar for the same annual payment.


title: History of Qatar

text: In June 1867, a representative of Mohammed Al Khalifa seized a Bedouin from Al Wakrah and deported him to Bahrain. Mohammed bin Thani demanded his release, but the representative refused. This prompted Mohammed bin Thani to expel him from Al Wakrah. Upon receiving news of this, Mohammed Al Khalifa released the Bedouin prisoner and expressed his desire of renewed peace talks. Jassim bin Mohammed Al Thani, the son of Mohammed bin Thani, traveled to Bahrain to negotiate on his behalf. He was imprisoned on arrival and a large number of ships and troops were soon sent to punish the people of Al Wakrah and Al Bidda. Abu Dhabi joined on Bahrain's behalf due to the conception that Al Wakrah served as a refuge for fugitives from Oman. Later that year, the combined forces sacked the two aforementioned Qatari cities with 2,000 men in what would come to be known as the Qatari–Bahraini War. A British record later stated: In June 1868, Qatari tribes retaliated against Bahrain and a battle ensued in which 60 boats were sunk and 1000 men were killed. Afterwards, the Bahraini sheikh agreed to free Jassim bin Mohammed in return for captured Bahraini prisoners.


title: History of Qatar

text: The joint Bahraini-Abu Dhabi incursion and Qatari counterattack prompted the British political agent, Colonel Lewis Pelly, to impose a settlement in 1868. Pelly's mission to Bahrain and Qatar and the peace treaty that resulted were milestones in Qatar's history. It implicitly recognized the distinctness of Qatar from Bahrain and explicitly acknowledged the position of Mohammed bin Thani as an important representative of the Peninsula's tribes.


title: History of Qatar

text: The Ottoman Empire expanded into Eastern Arabia in 1871. After establishing themselves on Al-Hasa coast, they advanced towards Qatar. Al Bidda soon came to serve as a base of operations for Bedouins harassing the Ottomans in the south, and Abdullah II Al-Sabah of Kuwait was sent to the town to secure a landing for the Ottoman troops. He brought with him four Ottoman flags for the most influential personages in Qatar. Mohammed bin Thani received and accepted one of the flags, but he sent it to Al Wakrah and continued hoisting the local flag above his house. Jassim bin Mohammed accepted a flag and flew it above his house. A third flag was given to Ali bin Abdul Aziz, the ruler of Al Khor.


title: History of Qatar

text: The British reacted negatively to the Ottoman's advancements as they felt their interests were at stake. Receiving no response to their objections, the British gunboat Hugh Rose arrived in Qatar on 19 July 1871. After inspecting the situation, Sidney Smith, the assistant political resident in the Persian Gulf, discovered that Qatar flew the flags willingly. To further add to their apprehension, Jassim bin Mohammed, who assumed his father's role during this period, authorized the Ottomans to send 100 troops and equipment to Al Bidda in December 1871. By January 1872, the Ottomans incorporated Qatar into their dominion. It was designated a province in Najd under the control of the sanjak of Najd. Jassim bin Mohammed was appointed as the Kaymakam (sub-governor) of the district, and most other Qataris were allowed to keep their positions in the new government.


title: History of Qatar

text: Charles Grant, the assistant political resident, falsely reported that the Ottomans sent a contingent of 100 troops from Qatif to Zubarah under the command of Hossein Effendi in August 1873. The sheikh of Bahrain reacted negatively to this because the Al Nuaim tribe which resided in Zubarah had signed a treaty agreeing to be subjects of his. Upon being confronted by the sheikh, Grant referred him to political resident Edward Ross. Ross informed the sheikh that he believed he had no right to protect tribes residing in Qatar. In September, the sheikh reiterated his sovereignty over the town and tribe. Grant replied by arguing that there was no special mention of the Al Nuaim or Zubarah in any treaties signed with Bahrain. A British government official concurred with his views, stating that the sheikh of Bahrain "should, as far as practicable abstain from interfering in complications on the mainland."


title: History of Qatar

text: Another chance arose for the Al Khalifa to renew their claim on Zubarah in 1874 after an opposition leader named Nasir bin Mubarak moved to Qatar. They believed that Mubarak, with the assistance of Jassim bin Mohammed, would target the Al Nuaim living in Zubarah as a prelude to an invasion. As a result, a contingent of Bahraini reinforcements were sent to Zubarah, much to the disapproval of the British who suggested that the sheikh was involving himself in complications. Edward Ross made it apparent that a government council decision advised the sheikh that he should not interfere in the affairs of Qatar. The Al Khalifa remained in consistent contact with the Al Nuaim, drafting 100 members of the tribe in their army and offering financial assistance. Jassim bin Mohammed expelled some members of the tribe after they attacked ships near Al Bidda in 1878.


title: History of Qatar

text: Despite the opposition of many prominent Qatari tribes, Jassim bin Mohammed continued to show support for the Ottomans. However, there were no signs of improvement in the partnership between the two parties, and relations further deteriorated when the Ottomans refused to aid Jassim in his expedition of Abu Dhabi-occupied Khawr al Udayd in 1882. In addition, the Ottomans supported the Ottoman subject Mohammed bin Abdul Wahab who attempted to supplant Jassim bin Mohammed in 1888.


title: History of Qatar

text: In February 1893, Mehmed Hafiz Pasha arrived in Qatar in the interests of seeking unpaid taxes and accosting Jassim bin Mohammed's opposition to proposed Ottoman administrative reforms. Fearing that he would face death or imprisonment, Jassim bin Mohammed moved to Al Wajbah (10 miles west of Doha); he was accompanied by several tribe members. Mehmed demanded that he disband his troops and pledge his loyalty to the Ottomans. However, Jassim bin Mohammed remained adamant in his refusal to comply with Ottoman authority. In March 1893, Mehmed imprisoned his brother, Ahmed bin Mohammed Al Thani, in addition to 13 prominent Qatari tribal leaders on the Ottoman corvette 'Merrikh'. After Mehmed declined an offer to release the captives for a fee of ten thousand liras, he ordered a column of approximately 200 Ottoman troops to advance towards Jassim bin Mohammed's fortress in Al Wajbah under the command of Yusuf Effendi.


title: History of Qatar

text: Shortly after arriving to Al Wajbah, Effendi's troops came under heavy gunfire by Qatari infantry and cavalry troops, which totaled 3,000 to 4,000 men. They retreated to Shebaka fortress, where they once again sustained casualties from a Qatari incursion. After they retreated to the fortress of Al Bidda, Jassim bin Mohammed's advancing column besieged the fortress and cut off the water supply of the neighborhood. The Ottomans conceded defeat and agreed to relinquish the Qatari captives in return for the safe passage of Mehmed Pasha's cavalry to Hofuf by land. Although Qatar did not gain full independence from the Ottoman Empire, the result of the battle forced a treaty that would later form the basis of Qatar emerging as an autonomous separate country within the empire.


title: History of Qatar

text: On the cusp of Ottoman withdrawal from the Peninsula in 1915, the British government wrote the following description of the Ottoman presence in Qatar:


title: History of Qatar

text: The Ottomans officially renounced sovereignty over Qatar in 1913, and in 1916 the new ruler Abdullah bin Jassim Al Thani signed a treaty with Britain, thereby instating the area under the trucial system. This meant that Qatar relinquished its autonomy in foreign affairs, such as the power to cede territory, and other affairs, in exchange for Britain's military protection from external threats. The treaty also had provisions suppressing slavery, piracy, and gunrunning, but the British were not strict about enforcing those provisions.


title: History of Qatar

text: Despite Qatar coming under British protection, Abdullah bin Jassim's position was insecure. Recalcitrant tribes refused to pay tribute; disgruntled family members intrigued against him; and he felt vulnerable to the designs of Bahrain and the Wahhabi. The Al Thani were merchant princes, reliant on trade and especially the pearl trade, and dependent on other tribes to do their fighting for them, primarily the Bani Hajer who owed their allegiance to Ibn Saud, amir of the Najd and Al-Hasa. Despite numerous requests by Abdullah bin Jassim for strong military support, weapons, and a loan, the British were reluctant to become involved in inland affairs. This changed in the 1930s, when competition for oil concessions in the region intensified.


title: History of Qatar

text: The scramble for oil raised the stakes in regional territorial disputes and signified the need to establish territorial borders. The first move came in 1922 at a boundary conference in Uqair when prospector Major Frank Holmes attempted to include Qatar in an oil concession he was discussing with Ibn Saud. Sir Percy Cox, the British representative, saw through the ploy and drew a line on the map separating the Qatar Peninsula from the mainland. The first oil survey took place in 1926 under the direction of George Martin Lees, a geologist contracted to the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, but no oil was found. The oil issue raised its head again in 1933 after an oil strike in Bahrain. Lees had already noted that, in such an eventuality, Qatar should be investigated again. After lengthy negotiations on 17 May 1935, Abdullah bin Jassim signed a concession agreement with Anglo-Persian representatives for a period of 75 years in return for 400,000 rupees on signature and 150,000 rupees per annum with royalties. As part of the agreement, Great Britain made more specific promises of assistance than they had in earlier treaties. Anglo-Persian transferred the concession to the IPC subsidiary company Petroleum Development (Qatar) Ltd. in order to meet its obligations under the Red Line Agreement.


title: History of Qatar

text: Bahrain claimed rule over a group of islands encompassing the two countries in 1936. The largest island was Hawar Islands, situated off the west coast of Qatar, where the Bahrainis had established a small military garrison. Britain accepted the Bahraini claim over Abdullah bin Jassim's objections, in large part because the Bahraini sheikh's personal British adviser was able to phrase their case in a legal manner familiar to British officials. In 1937, the Bahrainis again laid claim to the deserted town of Zubarah after being involved in a dispute involving the Al Nuaim tribe. Abdullah bin Jassim sent a large, heavily armed force and succeeded in defeating the Al Nuaim. The British political resident in Bahrain supported Qatar's claim and warned Hamad ibn Isa Al Khalifa, the ruler of Bahrain, not to intervene militarily. Indignant over the loss of Zubarah, Hamad ibn Isa imposed a crushing embargo on trade and travel to Qatar.


title: History of Qatar

text: Drilling of the first oil well began in Dukhan in October 1938 and over a year later, the well struck oil in the Upper Jurassic limestone. Unlike the Bahraini strike, this was similar to Saudi Arabia's Dammam field discovered three years before. Production was halted between 1942 and 1947 because of World War II and its aftermath. The disruption of food supplies caused by the war prolonged a period of economic hardship in Qatar which began in the 1920s with the collapse of the pearl trade and was exacerbated in the early 1930s with the onsets of the Great Depression and the Bahraini embargo. As was the case in previous times of privation, entire families and tribes moved to other parts of the Persian Gulf, leaving many Qatari villages deserted. Abdullah bin Jassim went into debt and groomed his favored second son, Hamad bin Abdullah Al Thani, to be his successor in preparation for his retirement. However, Hamad bin Abdullah's death in 1948 led to a succession crisis in which the main candidates were Abdullah bin Jassim's eldest son, Ali bin Abdullah Al Thani, and Hamad bin Abdullah's teenage son, Khalifa bin Hamad Al Thani.


title: History of Qatar

text: Oil exports and payments for offshore rights began in 1949 and marked a turning point in Qatar. The oil revenues would dramatically transform the economy and society and would also provide the focus for domestic disputes and foreign relations. This became apparent to Abdullah bin Jassim when several of his relatives threatened armed opposition if they did not receive increases in their allowances. Aged and anxious, Abdullah bin Jassim turned to the British. He promised to abdicate and agreed to an official British presence in Qatar in exchange for recognition and support of Ali bin Abdullah as ruler in 1949.


title: History of Qatar

text: Under British tutelage, the 1950s witnessed the development of government structures and public services. Ali bin Abdullah was at first reluctant to share power, which had centered in his household, with an infant bureaucracy run and staffed mainly by outsiders. Ali bin Abdullah's increasing financial difficulties and inability to control striking oil workers and obstreperous sheikhs led him to succumb to British pressure. The first official budget was drawn up by a British adviser in 1953. By 1954 there were forty-two Qatari government employees.


title: History of Qatar

text: Large numbers of protests against the British and the ruling family occurred during the 1950s. One of the largest protests took place in 1956; it drew 2,000 participants, most of whom were high-ranking Qataris allied with Arab nationalists and dissatisfied oil workers. During another protest which took place in August 1956, the participants waved Egyptian flags and chanted anti-colonialism slogans. In October 1956, protesters tried to sabotage oil pipelines in the Persian Gulf by destroying the pipelines with a bulldozer. These were major impetuses to the development of the British-run police force which was established by the British in 1949. The demonstrations led Ali bin Abdullah to invest the police with his personal authority and support. This was a significant reversal of his previous reliance on his retainers and Bedouin fighters.


title: History of Qatar

text: Public services developed slowly during the 1950s. The first telephone exchange opened in 1953, the first desalination plant in 1954, and the first power plant in 1957. Also built in this period were a dock, a customs warehouse, an airstrip, and a police headquarters. In the 1950s, 150 adult males of the ruling family received grants from the government. Sheikhs also received land and government positions. This mollified them as long as oil revenues increased. However, when revenues declined in the late 1950s, Ali bin Abdullah could not handle the family pressures this engendered. Discontent was fueled by his residence in Switzerland, extravagant spending, and hunting trips in Pakistan, especially among those who were excluded from the regime's largesse (non-Al Thani Qataris) and among other branches of Al Thani who desired more privileges. Seniority and proximity to the sheikh determined the size of allowances.


title: History of Qatar

text: Succumbing to family pressures and poor health, Ali bin Abdullah abdicated in 1960. Instead of handing power over to Khalifa bin Hamad, who had been named heir apparent in 1948, he made his son, Ahmad bin Ali, ruler. Nonetheless, Khalifa bin Hamad gained considerable power as heir apparent and deputy ruler, in large part because Ahmad bin Ali spent much time outside the country. One of his first acts was to increase funding for the sheikhs at the expense of development projects and social services. In addition to allowances, adult male Al Thani were given government positions. This added to the anti-regime resentment already felt by, among others, oil workers, low-ranking Al Thani, dissident sheikhs, and some leading government officials. These individuals formed the National Unity Front in response to a fatal shooting of a protester on 19 April 1963 by one of Sheikh Ahmad bin Ali's nephews. While the Saudi monarch was at the ruler's palace on 20 April 1963, a demonstration occurred in front of the building. Police fired and killed three demonstrators, prompting the National Unity Front to organize a general strike on 21 April. The strike lasted around two weeks, and most public services were affected.


title: History of Qatar

text: The group made a statement that week where it listed 35 of its demands to the government entailing less authority for the ruling family; protection for oil workers; recognition of trade unions; voting rights for citizens and the Arabization of the leadership. Ahmed bin Ali rejected most of these demands and moved to arrest and detain fifty of the most prominent National Unity Front members and sympathizers without trial in early May. The government also instituted some reforms in response to the movements. This included the provision of land and loans to poor farmers, instituting a policy of preferential hiring of Qatari citizens, and the election of a municipal council.


title: History of Qatar

text: The infrastructure, foreign labor force, and bureaucracy continued to grow in the 1960s, largely under the instruction of Khalifa bin Hamad. There were also some early attempts at diversifying Qatar's economic base, most notably with the establishment of a cement factory, a national fishing company, and small-scale agriculture. An official gazette was first published in 1961, and in 1962, a nationality law was introduced. No cabinets existed during this period, however, British and Egyptian advisers helped establish a number of governmental departments, such as the Department of Agriculture and a Department of Labor and Social Affairs.


title: History of Qatar

text: In 1968, Britain announced its plans of withdrawing its military commitments east of Suez (including those in force with Qatar) in the following three years. Because of the Persian Gulf sheikhdoms' vulnerability and small size, the rulers of Bahrain, Qatar and the Trucial Coast contemplated forming a federation after the British withdrawal. The federation was first proposed in February 1968, when the rulers of Abu Dhabi and Dubai announced their intention to form a coalition, extending an invitation to other Gulf states to join. Later that month, in a summit meeting attended by the rulers of Bahrain, Qatar and the Trucial Coast, the government of Qatar proposed the formation of a federation of Arab Emirates to be governed by a higher council composed of nine rulers. This proposal was accepted and a declaration of union was approved. There were, however, several disagreements between the rulers on matters such as the location of the capital, the drafting of the constitution and the distribution of ministries.


title: History of Qatar

text: The rulers remained divided on multiple issues despite Khalifa bin Hamad's election as chairman of the Temporary Federal Council in July 1968 and the establishment of numerous ministries. Two opposing blocs surfaced soon after the initial proposal, with Qatar and Dubai aligning together to oppose the inclinations of Bahrain and Abu Dhabi. Bahrain, being backed by Abu Dhabi, made efforts to marginalize the other rulers' roles in the union in an attempt to assume a leadership role and thus gain political leverage over their long-standing territorial disputes with Iran. The last meeting took place in October 1969 when Zayed Al Nahyan and Khalifa bin Hamad were elected the first president and prime minister of the federation, respectively. There were stalemates on numerous issues during the meeting, including the position of vice-president, the defense of the federation, and whether a constitution was required. Shortly after the meeting, the Political Agent in Abu Dhabi revealed the British government's interests in the outcome of the session, prompting Qatar and Ras al-Khaimah to withdraw from the federation over perceived foreign interference in internal affairs. The federation was consequently disbanded despite efforts by Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Britain to reinvigorate discussions.


title: History of Qatar

text: Ahmad bin Ali subsequently promulgated a provisional constitution in April 1970 which declared Qatar an independent Arab Islamic state with the Sharia as its basic law. Khalifa bin Hamad was appointed prime minister in May. The first Council of Ministers was sworn in on 1 January 1970 and seven of its ten members were Al Thani. Khalifa bin Hamad's argument prevailed with regard to the federation proposal.


title: History of Qatar

text: Qatar declared its independence on 1 September 1971 and became an independent state on 3 September. When Ahmad bin Ali issued the formal announcement from his Swiss villa instead of from his palace in Doha, many Qataris were convinced that it was time for a change in leadership. On 22 February 1972, Khalifa bin Hamad deposed Ahmad bin Ali when he was on a hunting trip in Iran. Khalifa bin Hamad had the tacit support of the Al Thani and Britain and also had the political, financial and military support of Saudi Arabia.


title: History of Qatar

text: In contrast to his predecessor's policies, Khalifa bin Hamad cut family allowances and increased spending on social programs, including housing, health, education, and pensions. In addition, he filled many top government posts with close relatives. In 1993, Khalifa bin Hamad remained the Emir, but his son, Hamad bin Khalifa, the heir apparent and minister of defense, had taken over much of the day-to-day running of the country. The two consulted with each other on all matters of importance.


title: History of Qatar

text: In 1991, Qatar played a significant role in the Gulf War, particularly during the Battle of Khafji in which Qatari tanks rolled through the streets of the town and provided fire support for Saudi Arabian National Guard units which were engaging Iraqi Army troops. Qatar allowed coalition troops from Canada to use the country as an airbase to launch aircraft on CAP duty, and also permitted air forces from the United States and France to operate in its territories.


title: History of Qatar

text: On 27 June 1995, deputy emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa deposed his father Khalifa in a bloodless coup. An unsuccessful counter-coup was staged in 1996. The emir and his father are now reconciled, although some supporters of the counter-coup remain in prison. The emir announced his intention for Qatar to move toward democracy and permitted more liberal press and municipal elections as a precursor to expected parliamentary elections. A new constitution was approved via public referendum in April 2003 and came into effect in June 2005. Economic, social, and democratic reforms occurred in the proceeding years. In 2003, a woman was appointed to the cabinet as minister of education.


title: History of Qatar

text: Qatar and Bahrain have had disputes over the ownership of Hawar Islands since the mid-20th century. In 2001, the International Court of Justice awarded Bahrain sovereignty over Hawar Islands while allotting Qatar sovereignty over smaller disputed islands and the Zubarah region in mainland Qatar. During the trial, Qatar provided the court with 82 forged documents to substantiate their claims of sovereignty over the territories in question. These claims were withdrawn at a later stage after Bahrain discovered the forgeries.


title: History of Qatar

text: In 2003, Qatar served as the US Central Command headquarters and one of the main launching sites of the invasion of Iraq. In March 2005, a suicide bombing killed a British teacher at the Doha Players Theatre, shocking the country, which had not previously experienced acts of terrorism. The bombing was carried out by Omar Ahmed Abdullah Ali, an Egyptian resident in Qatar who had suspected ties to Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. In June 2013, Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa stepped down as emir and transferred leadership to his son and heir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani.


title: History of Qatar

text: As a means to manage the revenue gained from LNG sales, the Qatar Investment Authority was established in 2005. In 2008, the government launched Qatar National Vision 2030, which provides a framework for Qatar's long-term development as well as identifying threats and solutions.


title: History of Qatar

text: Qatar played a role in the revolutionary wave of demonstrations, protests and civil wars in the Arab world collectively known as the Arab Spring. Having shifted from its traditional diplomatic role as a mediator, Qatar moved to support several transitional states and upheavals in the Middle East and North Africa.


title: History of Qatar

text: During the initial months of the Arab Spring, the country's most extensive media network, Al Jazeera, helped mobilize Arab support and shaped the narratives of protests and demonstrations. Qatar sent hundreds of ground troops to support the National Transitional Council during the 2011 Libyan Civil War. The troops were primarily military advisers, and were sometimes labelled as "mercenaries" by the media. Qatar also participated in the aerial campaign alongside several other coalition members.


title: History of Qatar

text: Qatar has taken a proactive role in the Syrian Civil War, which began in Spring of 2011. In 2012, Qatar announced they would begin arming and bankrolling the opposition. It was further reported that Qatar had funded the Syrian rebellion by "as much as $3 billion" over the first two years of the civil war.


title: History of Qatar

text: Beginning in 2015, Qatar has participated in the Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen against the Houthis and forces loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who was deposed in the aftermath of the Arab Spring uprisings.


title: History of Qatar

text: In March 2014, in protest of Qatar's alleged involvement in financing factions and political parties in ongoing Middle Eastern conflicts, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain recalled their ambassadors to Qatar. The three countries returned their ambassadors in November of that year after an agreement was reached.


title: History of Qatar

text: On 5 June 2017, a number of countries led by Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt (collectively referred to as the 'Quartet') severed ties with Qatar and enacted several punitive measures, such as closing air, land and sea borders to Qatar. Saudi Arabia also halted Qatari involvement in the ongoing war in Yemen. The Quartet justified their actions by alluding to alleged Qatari ties to 'terrorist groups' in the region.


title: Atom Egoyan

text: Atom Egoyan (; ; born July 19, 1960) is a Canadian filmmaker. He was part of a loosely-affiliated group of filmmakers to emerge in the 1980s from Toronto known as the Toronto New Wave. Egoyan made his career breakthrough with "Exotica" (1994), a film set primarily in and around the fictional Exotica strip club. Egoyan's most critically acclaimed film is the drama "The Sweet Hereafter" (1997), for which he received two Academy Award nominations, and his biggest commercial success is the erotic thriller "Chloe" (2009). He is considered by local film critic Geoff Pevere to be one of the greatest filmmakers of his generation.


title: Atom Egoyan

text: Egoyan's work often explores themes of alienation and isolation, featuring characters whose interactions are mediated through technology, bureaucracy, or other power structures. Egoyan's films often follow non-linear plot structures, in which events are placed out of sequence in order to elicit specific emotional reactions from the audience by withholding key information.


title: Atom Egoyan

text: In 2008, Egoyan received the Dan David Prize for "Creative Rendering of the Past." Egoyan later received the Governor General's Performing Arts Award, Canada's highest royal honour in the performing arts, in 2015.


title: Atom Egoyan

text: Egoyan was born Atom Yeghoyan on July 19, 1960, in Cairo, then in the United Arab Republic (now Egypt), to Armenian-Egyptian painters Shushan () and Joseph Yeghoyan. He was named Atom to mark the completion of Egypt's first nuclear reactor. He has a younger sister, Eve. In 1963, the family immigrated to Victoria, British Columbia, due to the rise of Arab nationalism, and changed their last name to Egoyan.


title: Atom Egoyan

text: As a teenager, Egoyan became interested in reading and writing plays. Influences included Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter. He also attributes his future in the film industry to "Persona" (1966), which he viewed at age 14, according to an interview he had with journalist Robert K. Elder for "The Film That Changed My Life":


title: Atom Egoyan

text: Egoyan graduated from Trinity College at the University of Toronto. It was at Trinity College that he came into contact with Harold Nahabedian, the Armenian-Canadian Anglican Chaplain of Trinity College. In interviews Egoyan credited Nahabedian for introducing him to the language and history of his ethnic heritage. Egoyan also wrote for the University of Toronto's independent weekly, "The Newspaper", during his time at the school.


title: Atom Egoyan

text: Egoyan began making films in the early 1980s; his debut film "Next of Kin" (1984) world-premiered at the International Filmfestival Mannheim-Heidelberg and won a major prize. He directed the 1985 "Twilight Zone" episode "The Wall". His commercial breakthrough came with the film "Exotica" (1994). He received the Grand Prix (Belgian Film Critics Association) in Brussels, the FIPRESCI Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, and Best Motion Picture at the Canadian Screen Awards (then called the Genie Awards). However, it was Egoyan's first attempt at adapted material that resulted in his best-known work, "The Sweet Hereafter" (1997), which earned him three prizes at the 50th Cannes Film Festival: the Grand Prix, the FIPRESCI Jury Prize, and the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury. The film also earned Egoyan Academy Award nominations for Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay.


title: Atom Egoyan

text: The film "Ararat" (2002) generated much publicity for Egoyan. After Henri Verneuil's French-language film "Mayrig" (1991), it was the first major motion picture to deal directly with the Armenian genocide. "Ararat" later won the award for Best Motion Picture at the Canadian Screen Awards, marking his third win. The film was released in over 30 countries around the world. In 2004, Egoyan opened Camera Bar, a 50-seat cinema-lounge on Queen Street West in Toronto.


title: Atom Egoyan

text: Beginning in September 2006, Egoyan taught at the University of Toronto for three years. He joined the Faculty of Arts and Science as the Dean's Distinguished Visitor in theatre, film, music, and visual studies. He subsequently taught at Ryerson University. In 2006, he received the Master of Cinema Award of the International Filmfestival Mannheim-Heidelberg.


title: Atom Egoyan

text: In 2009, he directed the erotic thriller "Chloe", which was theatrically released by Sony Pictures Classics on March 26, 2010. This film grossed $3 million in box office sales in the United States and became one of the higher-grossing specialty films of the year in the United States. Several months after the DVD/Blu-ray release of "Chloe", Egoyan said that "Chloe" had made more money than any of his previous films. The success of "Chloe" led Egoyan to receive many scripts of erotic thrillers.


title: Atom Egoyan

text: In 2012, he directed a production of Martin Crimp's "Cruel and Tender", starring Khanjian, at Canadian Stage in Toronto.


title: Atom Egoyan

text: After the release of the West Memphis Three from 18 years in prison, Egoyan directed a movie about the case called "Devil's Knot" (2013) starring Reese Witherspoon and Colin Firth, based on a book, "" by Mara Leveritt. His next feature, "The Captive" (2014), starred Ryan Reynolds and screened in competition for the Palme d'Or at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival, where it received largely negative reviews from critics. Justin Chang from "Variety" described the film as "a ludicrous abduction thriller that finds a once-great filmmaker slipping into previously un-entered realms of self-parody."


title: Atom Egoyan

text: In 2015, Egoyan directed the thriller "Remember", which starred Christopher Plummer and premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September, before being given a limited release in theatres. His latest film is the drama "Guest of Honour", was nominated for a Golden Lion in competition in Venice in 2019, had a Special Presentation at the Toronto International Film Festival, and opening night galas in Vancouver and Montreal.


title: Atom Egoyan

text: Beginning around 1996, Egoyan has directed several operas, including "Salome", "Così fan tutte", and "The Ring Cycle", at the Canadian Opera, Vancouver Opera, and elsewhere.


title: Atom Egoyan

text: Egoyan is based in Toronto, where he lives with his wife, actress Arsinée Khanjian, who appears in many of his films, and their son, Arshile (named after the Armenian-American painter Arshile Gorky).


title: Atom Egoyan

text: In 1999, Egoyan was made an Officer of the Order of Canada, it was later upgraded to Companion of the order in 2015, the highest level of the honour. In 2009, he won the 'Master of Cinema' award from the Mannheim Film Festival, 25 years after receiving his international festival premiere at the same event. Egoyan was presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award at the International Film Festival of India in 2017.


title: UNISOC

text: UNISOC (), formerly Spreadtrum Communications, Inc. (), is a Chinese fabless semiconductor company headquartered in Shanghai which produces chipsets for mobile phones. UNISOC develops its business in two major fields - consumer electronics and industrial electronics, including smart phones, feature phones, smart audio systems, smart wear and other application fields; Industrial electronics cover the fields such as LAN IoT, WAN IoT and smart display.


title: UNISOC

text: As of 2021, it is the fourth largest mobile processor manufacturer in the world, after Mediatek, Qualcomm and Apple, with 9% of global market share.


title: UNISOC

text: UNISOC has research centres in Shanghai, Beijing, Tianjin, Suzhou, Hangzhou, Chengdu, Xiamen, United States, Finland and India, technical support centre in Shenzhen, and international field support offices in South Korea, Taiwan and Mexico. Its products support a broad range of wireless communications standards, including GSM, GPRS, EDGE, TD-SCDMA, W-CDMA, HSPA+ and TD-LTE. UNISOC has a global R & D layout, with more than 5,000 employees worldwide, 90% of whom are R&D personnel.


title: UNISOC

text: The company originally produced chips for GSM handsets, but most of its resources in the late 2000s were then focused on the Chinese TD-SCDMA 3G standard. In addition to GSM and combined GSM/TD-SCDMA baseband chipsets, Spreadtrum also supplies chips for two Chinese mobile TV standards: TD-MBMS and CMMB. Spreadtrum's customers accounted for 50% of TD-SCDMA handset sales in China Mobile's current round of TD-SCDMA trials.


title: UNISOC

text: UNISOC, then still known as Spreadtrum, was formerly a public company listed on NASDAQ, but agreed to an acquisition by Tsinghua Holdings subsidiary Tsinghua Unigroup, in July 2013, for about US$1.78 billion; the deal completed on 23 December 2013.


title: UNISOC

text: In 2014, Tsinghua Unigroup acquired RDA Microelectronics for US$907 Million. RDA Microelectronics was a fabless semiconductor company that designs, develops and markets wireless system-on-chip and radio-frequency semiconductors for cellular, connectivity and broadcast applications.


title: UNISOC

text: In 2018, the company Spreadtrum Communications and RDA Microelectronics was merged and rebranded to UNISOC, in which Intel agreed to invest $1.5 billion for a 20 percent stake. The company also began working on a 5G smartphone platform with an Intel 5G modem. In February 2018, Spreadtrum was introducing high-end smartphones with augmented reality.


title: UNISOC

text: Unisoc released 5G technology platform Makalu 1.0 and 5G baseband chip V510 in February 2019, then, a year later, launched T7520, a 5G SoC initiating the use of 6nm EUV advanced process technology.


title: UNISOC

text: Currently, UNISOC’s main products include mobile communication central processing units, baseband chips, AI chips, radio frequency front-end chips, radio frequency chips and other communication, computing and control chips, which are widely used in consumer electronics fields such as smart phones, smart tablets, and smart wearables, finance, smart logistics, smart power, smart medical and other industries.


title: MCI Inc.

text: MCI, Inc. (subsequently Worldcom and MCI WorldCom) was a telecommunications company. For a time, it was the second largest long-distance telephone company in the United States, after AT&T. Worldcom grew largely by acquiring other telecommunications companies, including MCI Communications in 1998, and filed bankruptcy in 2002 after an accounting scandal, in which several executives, including CEO Bernard Ebbers, were convicted of a scheme to inflate the company's assets. In January 2006, the company, by then renamed MCI, was acquired by Verizon Communications and was later integrated into Verizon Business.


title: MCI Inc.

text: Worldcom was originally headquartered in Clinton, Mississippi before relocating to Ashburn, Virginia when it changed its name to MCI.


title: MCI Inc.

text: In 1983, in a coffee shop in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, Bernard Ebbers and three other investors formed Long Distance Discount Services, Inc. based in Jackson, Mississippi and in 1985, Ebbers was named chief executive officer. The company acquired over 60 telecommunications firms, and in 1995, it changed its name to WorldCom.


title: MCI Inc.

text: In 1989, it became a corporation as a result of a merger with Advantage Companies Inc. The company name was changed to LDDS WorldCom in 1995, and it relocated to Clinton, Mississippi.


title: MCI Inc.

text: Worldcom's first major acquisition was in 1992 with the $720 million acquisition of Advanced Telecommunications Corporation, outbidding larger rivals Sprint Corporation and AT&T to secure the deal, making Worldcom a larger player in the telecoms market.


title: MCI Inc.

text: Other acquisitions included: Metromedia Communication Corp. and Resurgens Communications Group in 1993, IDB Communications Group, Inc (1994), Williams Technology Group, Inc. (1995), and MFS Communications Company (1996), and MCI in 1998. The acquisition of MFS included UUNET Technologies, Inc., which had been acquired by MFS shortly before the merger with WorldCom. In February 1998, WorldCom acquired CompuServe from its parent company H&R Block. WorldCom then retained the CompuServe Network Services Division, sold its online service to America Online, and received AOL's network division, ANS. WorldCom acquired the corporate parent of Digex, Intermedia Communications in June 2001 and then sold all of Intermedia's non-Digex assets to Allegiance Telecom.


title: MCI Inc.

text: On November 4, 1997, WorldCom and MCI Communications announced a $37 billion merger to form MCI WorldCom, making it the largest corporate merger in U.S. history. On September 15, 1998, the merger was consummated, forming MCI WorldCom. MCI divested itself of its "internetMCI" business to gain approval from the United States Department of Justice.


title: MCI Inc.

text: On October 5, 1999, Sprint Corporation and MCI WorldCom announced a $129 billion merger. Had the deal been completed, it would have been the largest corporate merger in history. The merged company would have surpassed AT&T as the largest communications company in the United States. However, the deal foundered due to opposition from the United States Department of Justice and the European Union on concerns that it would create a monopoly. On July 13, 2000, the boards of directors of both companies terminated the merger. Later that year, MCI WorldCom renamed itself "WorldCom".


title: MCI Inc.

text: Between September 2000 and April 2002, the board of directors of Worldcom authorized several loans and loan guarantees to CEO Bernard Ebbers so that he would not have to sell his Worldcom shares to meet margin calls as the share price plummeted during the bursting of the dot-com bubble. By April 2002, the board had lost patience with these loans. Directors also believed that Ebbers didn't seem to have a coherent strategy after the Sprint merger collapsed. On April 26, the board voted to ask for Ebbers' resignation. Ebbers formally resigned on April 30, 2002 and was replaced by John W. Sidgmore, former CEO of UUNET. As part of his departure, Ebbers's loans were consolidated into a single $408.2 million promissory note. In 2003, Ebbers defaulted on the note and Worldcom foreclosed on many of his assets.


title: MCI Inc.

text: Beginning modestly during mid-1999 and continuing at an accelerated pace through May 2002, Ebbers, CFO Scott Sullivan, controller David Myers and general accounting director Buford "Buddy" Yates used fraudulent accounting methods to disguise WorldCom's decreasing earnings in order to maintain the company's stock price.


title: MCI Inc.

text: In June 2002, a small team of internal auditors at WorldCom led by division vice president Cynthia Cooper and senior associate Eugene Morse worked together, often at night and secretly, to investigate and reveal what was ultimately discovered to be $3.8 billion worth of fraudulent entries in WorldCom's books. The investigation was triggered by suspicious balance sheet entries discovered during a routine capital expenditure audit. Cooper notified the company's audit committee and board of directors in June 2002. The board moved swiftly, forcing Myers to resign and firing Sullivan when he refused to resign. Arthur Andersen withdrew its audit opinion for 2001. Cooper and her team had exposed the largest accounting fraud in American history, displacing the fraud uncovered at Enron less than a year earlier. It would remain the largest accounting fraud ever uncovered until the exposure of Bernard Madoff's giant Ponzi scheme in 2008.


title: MCI Inc.

text: By this time, the U. S. Attorney for the Southern District of Mississippi, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission were already looking into the matter as well. The SEC launched a formal inquiry into these matters on June 26, 2002. The SEC was already investigating WorldCom for questionable accounting practices. By the end of 2003, it was estimated that the company's total assets had been inflated by about $11 billion.


title: MCI Inc.

text: The fraud came to light just days after Andersen was convicted of obstruction of justice in the Enron scandal, a verdict that effectively put Andersen out of business. In his post-mortem of the Enron scandal, "Conspiracy of Fools," journalist Kurt Eichenwald argued that Andersen's failure to uncover WorldCom's deceit would have brought Andersen down even if it had escaped the Enron fraud unscathed.


title: MCI Inc.

text: On July 21, 2002, WorldCom filed bankruptcy in the largest such filing in United States history at the time (overtaken by the bankruptcies of both Lehman Brothers and Washington Mutual in a span of eleven days during September 2008). The WorldCom bankruptcy proceedings were held before U.S. Federal Bankruptcy Judge Arthur Gonzalez, who simultaneously heard the Enron bankruptcy proceedings, which were the second largest bankruptcy case resulting from one of the largest corporate fraud scandals. None of the criminal proceedings against WorldCom and its officers and agents were originated by referral from Gonzalez or the Department of Justice lawyers. By the bankruptcy reorganization agreement, the company paid $750 million to the SEC in cash and stock in the new MCI, which was intended to be paid to wronged investors.


title: MCI Inc.

text: Effective December 16, 2002, Michael Capellas became chairman and chief executive officer. On April 14, 2003, WorldCom changed its name to MCI, and relocated its corporate headquarters from Clinton, Mississippi, to Ashburn, Virginia.


title: MCI Inc.

text: Even before then, however, employees from the MCI side of the merger had taken over top executive posts, while many longtime executives from the old WorldCom were pushed out. In late 2002, the company began moving most of its operations to its campus in Ashburn, which had opened in 2000. Capellas, for instance, spent most of his time in Northern Virginia. After the name change, one executive from the old MCI said, "We're taking our company back." Another wrote in an email, "My company was not founded in a motel coffee shop."


title: MCI Inc.

text: In May 2003, in a controversial deal, the company was given a $45 million no-bid contract by the United States Department of Defense to build a cellular phone service in Iraq as part of the U.S.-led reconstruction effort despite the fact that the company was not known for its expertise in building wireless networks.


title: MCI Inc.

text: WorldCom agreed to pay a civil penalty of $2.25 billion to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The deal was approved by federal judge Jed Rakoff in July 2003. In a sweeping consent decree, the SEC and Rakoff essentially took control of WorldCom. Rakoff appointed former SEC chairman Richard C. Breeden to oversee WorldCom's compliance with the SEC agreement. Breeden actively involved himself with the management of the company, and prepared a report for Rakoff, titled Restoring Trust, in which he proposed extensive corporate governance reforms, as part of an effort to "cast the new MCI into what he hoped would become a model of how shareholders should be protected and how companies should be run".


title: MCI Inc.

text: The company emerged from bankruptcy in 2004 with about $5.7 billion in debt and $6 billion in cash. About half of the cash was intended to pay various claims and settlements. Previous bondholders ended up being paid 35.7 cents on the dollar, in bonds and stock in the new MCI company. The previous stockholders' stock was cancelled.


title: MCI Inc.

text: It had yet to pay many of its creditors, who had waited for two years for a portion of the money owed. Many of the small creditors included former employees, primarily those who were dismissed during June 2002 and whose severance and benefits were withheld when WorldCom filed for bankruptcy.


title: MCI Inc.

text: Citigroup settled with Worldcom investors for $2.65 billion on May 10, 2004. In March 2007, 16 of WorldCom's 17 former underwriters reached settlements with investors.


title: MCI Inc.

text: On March 15, 2005, Bernard Ebbers was found guilty of all charges and convicted of fraud, conspiracy and filing false documents with regulators — all related to the $11 billion accounting scandal. Other former WorldCom officials charged with criminal penalties in relation to the company's financial misstatements include former CFO Scott Sullivan (entered a guilty plea on March 2, 2004, to one count each of securities fraud, conspiracy to commit securities fraud, and filing false statements), former controller David Myers (pleaded guilty to securities fraud, conspiracy to commit securities fraud, and filing false statements on September 27, 2002), former accounting director Buford Yates (pleaded guilty to conspiracy and fraud charges on October 7, 2002), and former accounting managers Betty Vinson and Troy Normand (both pleading guilty to conspiracy and securities fraud on October 10, 2002).


title: MCI Inc.

text: On July 13, 2005, Bernard Ebbers received a sentence that would have kept him imprisoned for 25 years. At time of sentencing, Ebbers was 63 years old. On September 26, 2006, Ebbers surrendered himself to the Federal Bureau of Prisons prison at Oakdale, Louisiana, the Oakdale Federal Correctional Institution, to begin serving his sentence; he was released in late 2019 for health reasons and died in February 2020, after serving 13 years of his sentence.


title: MCI Inc.

text: In December 2005, Microsoft announced a partnership with MCI to provide Windows Live Messenger customers voice over IP service to make telephone calls - called "MCI Web Calling". After the merger with Verizon, this product was renamed "Verizon Web Calling".


title: MCI Inc.

text: In January 2006, the company was acquired by Verizon Communications and was later integrated into Verizon Business.


title: Great Famine of 1876–1878

text: The Great Famine of 1876–1878 was a famine in India under Crown rule. It began in 1876 after an intense drought resulted in crop failure in the Deccan Plateau. It affected south and Southwestern India—the British-administered presidencies of Madras and Bombay, and the princely states of Mysore and Hyderabad—for a period of two years. In 1877, famine came to affect regions northward, including parts of the Central Provinces and the North-Western Provinces, and a small area in the Punjab. The famine ultimately affected an area of and caused distress to a population totalling 58,500,000. The excess mortality in the famine has been estimated in a range whose low end is 5.6 million human fatalities, high end 9.6 million fatalities, and a careful modern demographic estimate 8.2 million fatalities. The famine is also known as the Southern India famine of 1876–1878 and the Madras famine of 1877.


title: Great Famine of 1876–1878

text: The "Great Famine" may have partially been caused by an intense drought resulting in crop failure in the Deccan Plateau. It was part of a larger pattern of drought and crop failure across India, China, South America and parts of Africa caused by an interplay between a strong El Niño and an active Indian Ocean Dipole that led to between 19 and 50 million deaths.


title: Great Famine of 1876–1878

text: The regular export of grain by the colonial government continued; during the famine, the viceroy, Lord Robert Bulwer-Lytton, oversaw the export to England of a record 6.4 million hundredweight (320,000 tons) of wheat, which made the region more vulnerable. The cultivation of alternate cash crops, in addition to the commodification of grain, played a significant role in the events.


title: Great Famine of 1876–1878

text: The famine occurred at a time when the colonial government was attempting to reduce expenses on welfare. Earlier, in the Bihar famine of 1873–74, severe mortality had been avoided by importing rice from Burma. The Government of Bengal and its Lieutenant-Governor, Sir Richard Temple, were criticised for excessive expenditure on charitable relief. Sensitive to any renewed accusations of excess in 1876, Temple, who was now Famine Commissioner for the Government of India, insisted not only on a policy of "laissez faire" with respect to the trade in grain, but also on stricter standards of qualification for relief and on more meagre relief rations. Two kinds of relief were offered: "relief works" for able-bodied men, women, and working children, and gratuitous (or charitable) relief for small children, the elderly, and the indigent.


title: Great Famine of 1876–1878

text: The insistence on more rigorous tests for qualification, however, led to strikes by "relief workers" in the Bombay presidency.


title: Great Famine of 1876–1878

text: In January 1877, Temple reduced the wage for a day's hard work in the relief camps in Madras and Bombay—this 'Temple wage' consisted of of grain plus one anna for a man, and a slightly reduced amount for a woman or working child, for a "long day of hard labour without shade or rest." The rationale behind the reduced wage, which was in keeping with a prevailing belief of the time, was that any excessive payment might create 'dependency' (or "demoralisation" in contemporaneous usage) among the famine-afflicted population.


title: Great Famine of 1876–1878

text: Temple's recommendations were opposed by some officials, including William Digby and the physician W. R. Cornish, Sanitary Commissioner for the Madras Presidency. Cornish argued for a minimum of of grain and, in addition, supplements of vegetables and protein, especially if the individuals were performing strenuous labour in the relief works. However, Lytton supported Temple, who argued that "everything must be subordinated to the financial consideration of disbursing the smallest sum of money."


title: Great Famine of 1876–1878

text: In March 1877, the provincial government of Madras increased the ration halfway towards Cornish's recommendations, to of grain and of protein in the form of "daal" (pulses). Meanwhile, many more people had succumbed to the famine. In other parts of India, such as the United Provinces, where relief was meagre, the resulting mortality was high. In the second half of 1878, an epidemic of malaria killed many more who were already weakened by malnutrition.


title: Great Famine of 1876–1878

text: By early 1877, Temple proclaimed that he had put "the famine under control". Digby noted that "a famine can scarcely be said to be adequately controlled which leaves one-fourth of the people dead."


title: Great Famine of 1876–1878

text: All in all, the Government of India spent Rs. 30 million in relieving 700 million units (1 unit = relief for 1 person for 1 day) in British India and, in addition, another Rs. 7.2 million in relieving 72 million units in the princely states of Mysore and Hyderabad. Revenue (tax) payments to the amount of Rs. 6 million were either not enforced or postponed until the following year, and charitable donations from Great Britain and the colonies totaled Rs. 8.4 million. However, this cost was minuscule "per capita"; for example, the expenditure incurred in the Bombay Presidency was less than one-fifth of that in the Bihar famine of 1873–74, which affected a smaller area and did not last as long.


title: Great Famine of 1876–1878

text: Two years before the famine of 1876, heavy rain destroyed ragi crops (a type of millet) in Kolar and Bangalore. Scant rainfall the following year resulted in drying up of lakes, affecting food stock. As a result of the famine, the population of the state decreased by 874,000 (in comparison with the 1871 census).


title: Great Famine of 1876–1878

text: Sir Richard Temple was sent by the British India Government as Special Famine Commissioner to oversee the relief works of the Mysore government. To deal with the famine, the government of Mysore started relief kitchens. A large number of people journeyed to Bangalore when relief was available. These people had to work on the Bangalore–Mysore railway line in exchange for food and grains. The Mysore government imported large quantities of grain from the neighbouring British ruled Madras Presidency. Grazing in forests was allowed temporarily, and new tanks were constructed and old tanks repaired. The Dewan of Mysore State, C. V. Rungacharlu, in his Dasara speech estimated the cost to the state at 160 lakhs, with the state incurring a debt of 80 lakhs.


title: Great Famine of 1876–1878

text: The excess mortality in the famine has been estimated to lie in a range whose low end is approximately 5.5 million human deaths, the high end approximately is 9.6 million deaths and a careful modern demographic estimate of which is 8.2 million deaths.


title: Great Famine of 1876–1878

text: The excessive mortality and the renewed questions of "relief and protection" asked in its wake, led directly to the constituting of the Famine Commission of 1880 and to the eventual adoption of the Indian Famine Codes. After the famine, a large number of agricultural labourers and handloom weavers in South India emigrated to British tropical colonies to work as indentured labourers in plantations. The excessive mortality in the famine also neutralized the natural population growth in the Bombay and Madras presidencies during the decade between the first and second censuses of British India in 1871 and 1881 respectively. The famine lives on in the Tamil and other literary traditions. A large number of "Kummi" folk songs describing this famine have been documented.


title: Great Famine of 1876–1878

text: The Great Famine had a lasting political impact on events in India. Among the British administrators in India who were unsettled by the official reactions to the famine and, in particular by the stifling of the official debate about the best form of famine relief, were William Wedderburn and A. O. Hume. Less than a decade later, they would found the Indian National Congress and, in turn, influence a generation of Indian nationalists. Among the latter were Dadabhai Naoroji and Romesh Chunder Dutt for whom the "Great Famine" would become a cornerstone of the economic critique of the British Raj.


title: Paul Blobel

text: Paul Blobel (13 August 1894 – 7 June 1951) was a German "Sicherheitsdienst" (SD) commander and convicted war criminal who played a leading role in the Holocaust. He organised and executed the Babi Yar massacre, the largest massacre of the Second World War at Babi Yar ravine in September 1941, pioneered the use of the gas van, and, following re-assignment, developed the gas chambers for the extermination camps in occupied Poland. From late 1942 onwards, he led Sonderaktion 1005, wherein millions of bodies were exhumed at the massacre sites and extermination camps across Eastern Europe in an effort to erase all evidence of the Holocaust and specifically of Operation Reinhard. After the war, Blobel was tried at the Einsatzgruppen Trial and sentenced to death. He was executed in 1951.


title: Paul Blobel

text: Born in the city of Potsdam, Blobel fought in the First World War as an engineer as part of a pioneer battalion, in which by all accounts he served well, being decorated with the Iron Cross first class. After the war, Blobel studied architecture and practiced this profession from 1924 until 1931, when upon losing his job he joined the Nazi Party, the SA, and the SS (he had joined all of these by 1 December 1931).


title: Paul Blobel

text: In 1933 Blobel joined the police force in Düsseldorf. In June 1934 he was recruited into the SD Security Service. During World War II, following Operation Barbarossa, in June 1941 Blobel became the commanding officer of "Sonderkommando 4a" of "Einsatzgruppe C", active in Reichskommissariat Ukraine. Both, "Einsatzgruppen" and the Order Police battalions were responsible for massacres of Jews behind the "Wehrmacht" lines in the Soviet Union. The murder campaign included all political and racial undesirables. In August 1941 Blobel was put in charge of creating a Nazi ghetto in Zhytomyr to enclose around 3,000 Jews who were murdered a month later.


title: Paul Blobel

text: On 10 or 11 August 1941, Friedrich Jeckeln ordered him, on behalf of Adolf Hitler, to exterminate the entire Jewish population. On 22 August 1941, the "Sonderkommando" murdered Jewish women and children at Bila Tserkva with the consent of Field Marshal Walther von Reichenau, commander of the 6th Army. SS-"Obersturmführer" August Häfner testified at his own 1942 trial:


title: Paul Blobel

text: Blobel, in conjunction with Reichenau's and Friedrich Jeckeln's units, organised the Babi Yar massacre in late September 1941 in Kyiv, where 33,771 Jews were murdered. In November 1941, Blobel received and activated the first gas vans at Poltava.


title: Paul Blobel

text: Blobel was officially relieved of his command on 13 January 1942 for health reasons due to alcoholism. This was an elaborate cover, however. Whilst in the hospital, Blobel was visited by Reinhard Heydrich and tasked with a top secret Reich matter that was presumably suspended upon the fatal shooting of Heydrich in Prague by British-trained Czech partisans. During this time, according to Dieter Wisliceny, Blobel developed the concept of the gas chambers for the extermination camps in Poland. In June 1942 Blobel was contacted by Heinrich Müller, Chief of the Gestapo and secretly placed in charge of "Sonderaktion 1005" with his official cover being SD Chief of the City of Nuremberg. This secret task consisted of the destruction of the evidence of all Nazi atrocities in Eastern Europe, beginning at Chelmno and continuing on to Sobibor Extermination Camp, Auschwitz, the camps in the Independent State of Croatia, the Baltic States, and eventually back to the site of the Babi Yar Massacre in the Ukraine. This entailed exhumation of mass graves, then incinerating the bodies. Blobel developed efficient disposal techniques such as alternating layers of bodies with firewood on a frame of iron rails.


title: Paul Blobel

text: In October 1944 he headed an anti-partisan group in Yugoslavia. Gitta Sereny related the conversation about Blobel she once had with one-time Chief of the Church Information Branch at the Reich Security Head Office, Albert Hartl.


title: Paul Blobel

text: Up to 59,018 killings are attributable to Blobel, albeit he personally claimed to have killed 10,000–15,000 people. He was later sentenced to death by the U.S. Nuremberg Military Tribunal in the Einsatzgruppen trial. He was hanged at Landsberg Prison shortly after midnight on 7 June 1951.


title: Paul Blobel

text: Blobel's last words were "Whatever I have done, I did as a soldier who obeyed orders. I have committed no crime. I will be vindicated by God and history. God have mercy on those who murder me."


title: Su Bingtian

text: Su Bingtian (; born 29 August 1989) is a professional Chinese track and field athlete specializing in the 100 metres event. , he is the only sprinter of non-African descent to run the 100 m with sub-9.90 and sub-9.85, and the first ever Asian-born sprinter to break the 10-second barrier. Su's personal best of 9.83 seconds makes him the 5th fastest man all-time in the history of 100 metres at the Olympics, the 15th fastest man all-time in the history of the 100m event, and the current holder of the 100 m Asian record. Su's personal best in the 60 metres of 6.42 seconds placed him within the top five all-time in the event.


title: Su Bingtian

text: At the 2020 Summer Olympics 100 m final, Su made history by becoming the first sprinter of non-African descent to enter Olympic 100 metres finals since 1980. En route to his 100 m personal best 9.83 at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, Su ran the fastest 60 m split of all-time and the fastest 60 m ever recorded under any conditions with the time of 6.29 seconds. Su was a silver medalist at the World Indoor Championships in 2018, the gold medalist at the 2018 Asian Games 100 m, a silver medalist in the relay at the World Relays in 2015, and a bronze medalist in the relay at the 2020 Summer Olympics.


title: Su Bingtian

text: Su was born on 29 August 1989, in Zhongshan village, Guangdong province, China. His parents are both poor peasants who farmed their family lands in 1980s China. Even after Su later achieved national renown, his father continued to work as a security guard and his mom worked as a nanny. Su was first exposed to track and field training in middle school, after being scouted by his PE teacher who saw him touching the basketball board with ease while being only tall. His middle school didn't have any specialized sprint coach but a PE teacher. Even so, he was a back-up sprinter doing mostly managerial preparatory work for the track team throughout and didn't get to compete until 9th grade. Despite not having formal training, he ran a time (11.72) just 0.01 seconds slower than the best sprinter in the city district. Su was passed on and deemed an untalented sprinter in numerous occassions by the coaches of the city-level track and field team.


title: Su Bingtian

text: It was also during middle school that Su met his life-long best friend and love of his life Yanfang Lin whom he later married.


title: Su Bingtian

text: Su's career started with his entry into the Guangdong provincial track and field team in China, known for its history of producing outstanding national-level Chinese short distance sprinters and warm weather year-round which is conducive to outdoor track training. His first professional track coach and mentor Yuan Guoqiang was the first Chinese 100m national record holder in the early 80s at the start of digital-timing era and was a short (5'6) sprinter himself. When Su's admittance into Guangdong Dong track and field team was met with initial resistance by other coaches, Yuan Guoqiang took special notice of Su's personality, stride frequency and stride tempo, whom other coaches easily passed on and overlooked for his supposed lack of talent due to Su's short stature at the time. According to Yuan, Su was "methodical, professional, absolutely concentrated, and an intelligent runner. Few athletes I coached was as committed as he was to the sports".


title: Su Bingtian

text: Su broke onto the continental scene with three straight wins in the 100 metres on the Asian Grand Prix series in May 2009. His first medal came in the 4×100 metres relay at the 11th Chinese Games later that year, where he helped the Guangdong team including Liang Jiahong and Wen Yongyi to the gold medal.


title: Su Bingtian

text: He also began representing China internationally that year and shortly after the national games he won the gold medal over 60 metres at the 2009 Asian Indoor Games, running a personal best of 6.65 seconds. He was selected for the relay at the 2009 Asian Athletics Championships and won a silver medal alongside Guo Fan, Liang Jiahong and Zhang Peimeng. He took the individual 100 m title at the East Asian Games, defeating Japanese rival Shintaro Kimura.


title: Su Bingtian

text: He equalled the Chinese indoor record in the 60 m in Chengdu in 2010, running 6.58 seconds. At the 2010 Asian Games he won the relay gold with a national and Games record time.


title: Su Bingtian

text: During March 2011, Su set a new Chinese national 60 metres indoor record in Chengdu with a time of 6.56 seconds. He went on to establish himself as his country's top male sprinter that year: he won the 100 m title at the 2011 Asian Athletics Championships in a personal best of 10.21 seconds, was the bronze medalist at the 2011 Summer Universiade, then competed at the 2011 World Championships in Athletics in Daegu (running in the heats of the relay). He ended the season by breaking the Chinese record to win the 100 m at the Chinese Athletics Championships with a time of 10.16 seconds, improving upon Zhou Wei and Chen Haijian's former best mark.


title: Su Bingtian

text: In 2012, Su qualified for the 2012 IAAF World Indoor Championships, marking his first participation in an indoor IAAF World Championships. Su subsequently reached the semi-final of the 60m at the 2012 IAAF World Indoor Championships. Later that year, Su also became a 100 m semi-finalist at the 2012 Summer Olympics. He ran a wind-aided (+2.9 m/s) 10.04 seconds at the start of the outdoor season and ended it by defending his national title in the 100 m. With the Chinese relay team he ran national records twice that season, timing 38.71 seconds in May and improving to 38.38 seconds with Guo Fan, Liang Jiahong and Zhang Peimeng in the heats of the Olympics.


title: Su Bingtian

text: His 2013 began with two 60 m national records in Nanjing, where he ran 6.56 seconds and then 6.55 seconds. Zhang Peimeng beat Su's 100 m national record in May 2013, but Su quickly responded with a personal best of 10.06 seconds at the IAAF World Challenge Beijing.


title: Su Bingtian

text: Later that year, Su qualified for the 2013 IAAF World Championships, marking his first participation in an outdoor IAAF World Championships in an individual event. On 10 August 2013, Su raced in the sixth heat of the first round in the 100 metres, subsequently qualifying to the semi-finals by clocking 10.16 seconds. The following day, he was drawn into the first semi-final against former world champion Justin Gatlin. Su was disqualified in the race due to his false start, thereby rendering him unable to progress to the finals. Su's compatriot Zhang Peimeng also once again replaced Su as the 100 m national record holder, by clocking a time of 10.00 seconds in the semi-finals of the 2013 IAAF World Championships.


title: Su Bingtian

text: Starting from 2014, Su Bingtian was part of the Chinese Track and Field initiative led by its national head coach Yuan Guoqiang (Su's early mentor and provincial coach in Guangdong Track and Field team) that 1）sent its top track athletes to USA for more systematic and scientific training in order to be competitive internationally 2) hired competent foreign track coaches to coach locally at China.


title: Su Bingtian

text: They trained at the IMF Academy Track & Field and Cross Country located at Florida. Su's aim was to break 10 second barrier through participating in this initiative.


title: Su Bingtian

text: It was through this initiative that Su first met his later mentor and coach Randy Huntington, who was responsible for coaching Chinese national team of long jumpers at the time in China. Their encounter was not pre-planned. It was by coincidence that Randy Huntington chanced upon Su's training nearby. Su's decision to change his starting leg was a reaction to Randy Huntington's suggestion. Randy performed a test on Su by pushing him randomly when he was not prepared, and the first step Su took in reaction to this push was taken by his right one. Randy suggested he changed his starting leg to the right one for that would fit Su's natural neurological pattern better.The aim was to change his entire 100m pace and allow him suffer from less de-acceleration after the first 60m while maintaining his advantage at explosive start in the first half of the race. At the beginning of his transition to change starting leg, Su was for a time even slower out of block than a female sprinter when he trained at IMF Academy after he returned to USA. His first 60m race after implementing the change was only 6.71 and his 100m best was 10.80.


title: Su Bingtian

text: Yuan Guoqiang said that Su was so obsessed with perfecting his start at the time that he would work on his block start even when he was taking a walk, woke up in the middle of the night and contemplated why he couldn't perform the move as well as other world class athletes, and he would proceed to discuss the matter with his teammate Xie Zhenye.


title: Su Bingtian

text: On May 30, 2015, at the Prefontaine Classic in Eugene, Oregon, Su clocked a historic 9.99 seconds in the 100 m, becoming the first Asian-born sprinter to achieve a sub-10 second clocking. Su's historic sub-10 second clocking allowed him once again to regain the 100 m national record from compatriot Zhang Peimeng, ending their national record 'tug-of-war' which had begun in 2013. Su's coach Yuan Guoqiang later stated that: "Zhang Peimeng's 10.00 national record set at the World Championships in Moscow has given him (Su) more courage; it convinced him (Su) even more that a sub-10 clocking was not an impossible mission for Chinese athletes."


title: Su Bingtian

text: Later that year, Su qualified for the 2015 IAAF World Championships which were held in his home country of China. On 22 August 2015, Su raced in the first heat of the first round of the 100 metres finishing second behind Asafa Powell in 10.03 seconds. The following day, he was drawn in the first semi-final against defending champion Usain Bolt. Su finished in fourth clocking a time of 9.986 seconds tying Jimmy Vicaut's time in the third semi-final; since they were tied for the eighth-fastest time, they were both entered into the final, marking the first-ever nine-man final in World Championship history. Su then raced in the final, finishing 9th with a time of 10.06 seconds. Su subsequently became the first ever Asian-born athlete to run in a 100 m World Championship final.


title: Su Bingtian

text: On 29 August 2015, Su raced with his teammates Mo Youxue, Xie Zhenye and Zhang Peimeng in the 4 × 100 metres relay. Running the third leg, Su aided his team to a third-place finish in the heats, qualifying them for the final with a then Asian record time of 37.92 seconds. In the final, the Chinese team crossed the line in third behind the United States and Jamaica in 38.01 seconds, giving them a Bronze Medal finish. However, subsequent disqualification of the United States due to improper baton exchange meant that the Chinese team were promoted to a Silver medal finish in the Bird's Nest Stadium; with their Bronze being awarded to Canada.


title: Su Bingtian

text: With his eyes on the 2016 Summer Olympics, Su began the year by running the 60 metres at various indoor meets in the US, ultimately qualifying for the 2016 IAAF World Indoor Championships in Portland, Oregon. On March 18, 2016, Su won his 60 metres heat at the championships with a time of 6.64 seconds. Later in the day, Su finished second in his semi-final clocking 6.50 seconds; a new personal best and equalling the Asian record. He went on to finish fifth in the final with a time of 6.54 seconds.


title: Su Bingtian

text: Outdoors, Su ran only three meets before the Olympics. He and his teammates ran and won two 4 x 100 metre relay races in his home country of China; one in Shanghai at the Shanghai Golden Grand Prix; and one in Beijing at the IAAF World Challenge Beijing. On May 26, 2016, Su finished seventh in 100 metres at the 2016 Prefontaine Classic in a wind-aided 10.04 seconds, unable to repeat the success he had on the same track the year before.


title: Su Bingtian

text: Su arrived in Rio de Janeiro for the Olympic Games, having qualified for the 100 metres and the 4 × 100 metres relay. In the 100 metres, Su finished third in his heat in 10.17 seconds, qualifying him as one of the fastest losers for the semi-final. The following day, on August 14, 2016, Su finished fourth in his semi-final in 10.08 seconds; a season's best time. However, his time was unable to qualify him for the final. 4 days later, on August 18, 2016, Su raced with his teammates Tang Xingqiang, Xie Zhenye and Zhang Peimeng in the heats of the 4 × 100 metre relay. Running the third leg, Su helped his team to a second-place finish in their heat behind the United States. Their time of 37.82 seconds set a new Asian record for the event. The following day, the Chinese team finished fourth in the final following a disqualification by team USA, narrowly missing out on an Olympic medal. Su ended his season after the Olympics.


title: Su Bingtian

text: On 27 May 2017, Su once again achieved a sub-10 second time in the 100 m at the 2017 Prefontaine Classic with a personal best 9.92 seconds. However, the tailwind (+2.4 m/s) was above the allowed limit of 2.0 m/s, invalidating the time as an official national record or personal best.


title: Su Bingtian

text: Later that year, Su qualified for the 2017 IAAF World Championships. On 4 August 2017, Su raced in the fourth heat of the first round in the 100 metres subsequently qualifying to the semi-finals by clocking 10.03 seconds. The following day, he was drawn in the second semi-final against former world champion Yohan Blake. Su finished in third clocking a time of 10.10 seconds putting him through to the final where he subsequently finished 8th with a time of 10.27 seconds.


title: Su Bingtian

text: Various stellar performances by Su Bingtian in 2018 made it a historically significant year for Chinese athletics.


title: Su Bingtian

text: On 3 March 2018, Su made history by becoming the first male Chinese sprinter to win an individual IAAF World Indoor Championships medal, as he took silver in the 2018 edition's men's 60 metres final. Su's 6.42 second performance in the event made him the current holder of the 60 m Asian record; it also places Su within the top 5 of all-time 60 metres performances.


title: Su Bingtian

text: On 22 June 2018, Su took gold in the men's 100 metres final of the 2018 IAAF World Challenge meet in Madrid with a historic 9.91 seconds; tying the Asian record previously set by Nigerian-born Qatari Femi Ogunode. Su's result of 9.91 seconds also simultaneously allowed him to regain his 100 m national record which compatriot Xie Zhenye had broken only three days earlier with a time of 9.97 seconds. One week later, Su continued his fantastic form by equalling his 9.91-second Asian record at the 2018 Meeting de Paris.


title: Su Bingtian

text: On 26 August 2018, Su won the gold medal in the men's 100 metres event at the 2018 Asian Games. He won the event with a time of 9.92 seconds breaking the Asian Games record previously set by Femi Ogunode at the 2014 Asian Games.


title: Su Bingtian

text: Representing team Asia-Pacific, Su capped of his record-breaking year with a silver medal in the 2018 IAAF Continental Cup men's 100 m final. Su finished 0.02 seconds behind team Americas representative Noah Lyles, with a time of 10.03 seconds.


title: Su Bingtian

text: Reflecting on his 2018 performances, Su remarked the following: "It is really a miraculous and amazing year for me, the most memorable one in my career. I achieved a series of good results, and most importantly, I made such results in competing with the best sprinters in the world, which was quite a boost to my confidence."


title: Su Bingtian

text: At the end of 2018, Su made it known that his sights were now set on breaking the 9.90 second barrier in the 100 m as his primary goal for 2019.


title: Su Bingtian

text: On 14 February 2019, Su started the year out strong with a 60m victory at the 2019 AIT International Grand Prix, clocking a stadium-record time of 6.52 seconds. Two days later, Su quickly followed up his good form with a resounding 60m victory at the Birmingham meet of the 2019 IAAF World Indoor Tour. The winning time was clocked at 6.47 seconds beating out rivals Reece Prescod and Mike Rodgers to the gold.


title: Su Bingtian

text: At the 2019 IAAF World Relays, Su raced with his teammates Wu Zhiqiang, Xie Zhenye and Liang Jinsheng in the 4 × 100 metres relay. Running the third leg, Su aided his teammates to a second-place finish in the heats, qualifying them for the final with a time of 38.51 seconds. In the final, the Chinese team crossed the line in a season's best 38.16 seconds, subsequently missing out on a bronze medal finish by just 0.01 seconds.


title: Su Bingtian

text: On 1 August 2021, Su clocked a time of 9.83 seconds to win his heat of the 2020 Summer Olympics men's 100 m semi-finals, thereby setting a new Asian record and becoming the second Asian sprinter to have ever qualified for a men's 100 metres Olympic final, after Takayoshi Yoshioka at the 1932 Summer Olympics and the first Asian to qualify for 100m Olympic Final since the start of the digtal timing era. Between 1980 and 2020, Su is the only sprinter of non-African descent to ever make Olympic 100m Men's Finals in a span of 40 years. In the semi-finals Su was placed ahead of eventual gold-medalist Marcell Jacobs and also achieved the fastest time ever recorded for 60m-split with 6.29 seconds, also the fastest 60m all-time under any conditions surpassing both Usain Bolt's prior record of 6.31 seconds for 60m split in his 100 m world record run and Christian Coleman's 6.34 official indoor world record. Su's 9.83 also placed him among the top 5 fastest men in the history of Olympic 100m races ranking just behind Usain Bolt, Yohan Blake, Justin Gatlin, and Marcel Jacobs. Su subsequently went on to achieve a sixth place finish in the final with 9.98 seconds. He and his teammates also qualified for the final of the men's 4×100 m relay and finished fourth in that race in 37.79 seconds, equalling the Chinese national record set in 2019. On 18 February 2022, Great Britain was stripped of its silver medal in the men's 4×100 m relay after the Court of Arbitration for Sport confirmed CJ Ujah’s doping violation. Su and his teammates were subsequently promoted to a bronze medal position.


title: Su Bingtian

text: In 2017, Su graduated with a master's degree from the International Economics and Trade from the College of Economics at Jinan University. In April 2018, Su was officially appointed as an associate professor of the School of Physical Education at Jinan University.


title: Su Bingtian

text: Su is a native of Guzhen, Guangdong, China. On October 10, 2017, Su Bingtian wed his childhood sweetheart Lin Yanfang. The wedding ceremony was held in Guzhen, Guangdong, a town close to where Su and Lin grew up. In the early morning of July 11, 2018, their son was born.


title: Su Bingtian

text: On December 20, 2017, Su was elected as one of Zhongshan City's representatives for the 13th People's Congress of Guangdong Province.


title: Su Bingtian

text: As the representative for Chinese athletes, Su attended 'The 3rd Olympic Council of Asia (OCA) Athletes’ Forum' held in Tokyo, Japan from 24–25 November 2018.


title: Su Bingtian

text: On September 19, 2015, Su led dozens of school students on Ersha Island to help with fundraising activities for the Chinese charity "Walking for Love". The money raised for "Walking For Love" was intended to be used for the promotion of children's reading skills.


title: Su Bingtian

text: On November 10, 2015, Su visited various Guangzhou Power Supply power grid substations to help conduct on-site measurements. Su also undertook power grid construction work to provide electricity to an elderly man's home. Su's visit came after a typhoon incident in Guangzhou where Guangzhou Power Supply grid workers managed to fix power grids within only 5 hours of going down. After the visit, Su commented that "the existence and construction of the power grid required the collective support of everyone".


title: Su Bingtian

text: Su Bingtian has broken the 10-second barrier in the 100 metres on 13 occasions, with 10 of those occasions being under the allowable wind velocity of +2.0 m/s for record purposes. His first sub-10 clocking was on 30 May 2015 at the Prefontaine Classic in 9.99 seconds with a legal +1.5 m/s wind reading, setting a Chinese record and making him the first athlete of either Chinese or eastern Asian descent to break the 10-second barrier. He improved his personal best and the Chinese record on 22 June 2018 at the Meeting Madrid to 9.91 seconds, equaling the Asian record set by Nigerian-born Qatari sprinter Femi Ogunode, and further improved all three of these records on 1 August 2021 by clocking 9.83 seconds to win his semifinal heat at the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo.


title: Yale Law School

text: Yale Law School (Yale Law or YLS) is the law school of Yale University, a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. It was established in 1824 and has been ranked as the best law school in the United States by "U.S. News & World Report" every year between 1990 and 2022, when Yale made a decision to voluntarily pull out of the rankings, citing issues they have with the methodology used in the rankings. One of the most selective academic institutions in the world, the 2020–21 acceptance rate was 4%, the lowest of any law school in the United States. Its yield rate of 87% is also consistently the highest of any law school in the United States.


title: Yale Law School

text: Yale Law alumni include many prominent figures in law and politics, including United States presidents Gerald Ford and Bill Clinton and former U.S. secretary of state and presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton. Alumni also include current United States Supreme Court associate justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Sonia Sotomayor and Brett Kavanaugh, as well as a number of former justices, including Abe Fortas, Potter Stewart and Byron White; several heads of state, including Karl Carstens, the fifth president of Germany, Jose P. Laurel, the third president of the Republic of the Philippines; and Peter Mutharika, the immediate former president of Malawi; five current U.S. senators; the former governor of California and immediate former governor of Rhode Island and current United States Secretary of Commerce; and the current deans of two of the top fourteen-ranked law schools in the United States: Virginia and Cornell.


title: Yale Law School

text: Each class in Yale Law's three-year J.D. program enrolls approximately 200 students. Yale's flagship law review is the "Yale Law Journal", one of the most highly cited legal publications in the United States. According to Yale Law School's ABA-required disclosures, 83% of the Class of 2019 obtained full-time, long-term, JD-required or JD-advantage employment nine months after graduation, excluding solo practitioners.


title: Yale Law School

text: The school began in the New Haven law office of Seth P. Staples in the 1800s, who began training lawyers. By 1810 he was operating a law school. He took on a former student, Samuel J. Hitchcock as a law partner, and Hitchcock became the proprietor of the New Haven Law School, joined by David Daggett in 1824. The Yale Law School shield (shown at the upper right of this page) shows staples and a rampant dog, representing Seth Staples and David Daggett. The school's affiliation with Yale began in the mid-1820s and in 1843, the school's students began receiving Yale degrees.


title: Yale Law School

text: Daggett went on to serve as mayor of New Haven, U.S. Senator, and judge on Connecticut's highest court. An opponent of education for African Americans and a supporter of colonization, he helped lead opposition to the establishment of a college for African Americans in New Haven and presided over the trial of a woman who ran a boarding school for African American girls.


title: Yale Law School

text: A special relationship or connection developed between YLS and the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Professors Clark and Frank, among others, became judges on that court. Some of the faculty members who became Second Circuit judges continued to teach courses at YLS and chose their clerks from student graduates. These judges influenced thinking in general at YLS and particularly reinforced student interest in public service, a characteristic tradition at YLS since the New Deal.


title: Yale Law School

text: The law school's 15th dean, Harold Koh (2004–2009), made human rights a focus of the law school's work, building on a tradition that had developed over the previous two decades. On March 23, 2009, the White House announced the appointment of Koh to the United States Department of State as the Legal Adviser of the Department of State. Robert C. Post was selected to replace him as dean of the law school.


title: Yale Law School

text: In 2022, two federal appeals judges, James C. Ho and Elizabeth L. Branch, stopped hiring Yale Law graduates as clerks because of concerns the school suppresses conservative views. The school responded by initiating actions to "reaffirm its commitment to free speech", which included an orientation about "free expression" and "respectful engagement", the appointment of a new dean to help law students "resolve disagreements", and a prohibition on secret recordings and disruption of campus events.


title: Yale Law School

text: The institution is known for its scholarly orientation; a relatively large number of its graduates (9%) choose careers in academia within five years of graduation, while a relatively low number (46%) choose to work in law firms five years after graduation. Another feature of Yale Law's culture since the 1930s, among both faculty and student graduates, has been an emphasis on the importance of spending at least a few years in government service. A similar emphasis has long been placed on service as a judicial law clerk upon graduation. Its 7.6:1 student-to-faculty ratio is the third lowest among U.S. law schools.


title: Yale Law School

text: Yale Law does not have a traditional grading system, a consequence of student unrest in the late 1960s. Instead, it grades first-semester first-year students on a simple Credit/No Credit system. For their remaining two-and-a-half years, students are graded on an Honors/Pass/Low Pass/Fail system. Similarly, the school does not rank its students. It is also notable for having only a single semester of required classes (plus two additional writing requirements), instead of the full year most U.S. schools require. Unusually, and as a result of unique Connecticut State court rules, Yale Law allows first-year students to represent clients through one of its numerous clinics; other law schools typically offer this opportunity only to second- and third-year students.


title: Yale Law School

text: Students publish nine law journals that, unlike those at most other schools, mostly accept student editors without a competition. The only exception is YLS's flagship journal, the "Yale Law Journal", which holds a two-part admissions competition each spring, consisting of a four or five-hour "bluebooking exam," followed by a traditional writing competition. Although the "Journal" identifies a target maximum number of members to accept each year, it is not a firm number. Other leading student-edited publications include the "Yale Journal on Regulation", the "Yale Law and Policy Review", and the "Yale Journal of International Law".


title: Yale Law School

text: In November 2013, it was announced that a $25 million donation would bring student dormitory living back onto campus, with renovations to begin in 2018.


title: Yale Law School

text: Yale Law has been ranked the number one law school in the United States by "U.S. News & World Report" between 1990 and 2022. Among U.S. law schools, Yale has the lowest acceptance rate and the highest yield rate—whereas less than 5% of applicants are admitted, about 80% of those who are accepted ultimately enroll, either in the Fall following their acceptance or after a deferral. It is currently ranked as the second best law school in U.S (behind Harvard) and fourth in the world by the 2016 QS Rankings. The school also saw a greater percentage of its students go on to become Supreme Court clerks between the 2000 and 2010 terms than any other law school, more than double the percentage of the second-highest law school (Harvard Law School). Additionally, a 2010 survey of "scholarly impact," measured by per capita citations to faculty scholarship, found Yale's faculty to be the most cited law school faculty in the United States.


title: Yale Law School

text: In November 2022, Yale made a voluntary decision to pull out of the "U.S. News & World Report" Best Law Schools rankings. Describing their methodology as "profoundly flawed," Yale claimed that the rankings discourage low-income applicants and "fail to advance the legal profession" by devaluing programs that encourage public interest profession rather than high-paying corporate jobs. Yale's decision was followed by Harvard Law School, which also withdrew from the rankings.


title: Yale Law School

text: Yale Law School enrolls about 200 new students a year, creating one of the smallest classes among top U.S. law schools. Its small class size and prestige combine to make its admissions process the most competitive in the United States. Half of the class that entered in 2015 had a GPA above 3.93 and/or an LSAT score above 173 (on a possible scale of 120 to 180) or 99th percentile.