title: John Ruffo

text: Ruffo tried to avoid suspicion by making timely interest payments on the loans. However, in 1996 a bank executive at the Long-Term Credit Bank of Japan noticed an irregularity on one of the forged documents. After he contacted Phillip Morris and then the FBI, the scheme began to unravel. Reiners was arrested by FBI agents who set up a sting operation on March 19, 1996, and an arrest warrant was issued for Ruffo two weeks later. All told the scheme generated over US $350 million in secured loans (equivalent to $ million in ), although much of it was squandered in poor stock market speculation and exorbitant spending habits on the part of the conspirators. US$21 million (equivalent to $ million in ) was, however, never accounted for by federal authorities.


title: John Ruffo

text: Ruffo faced a 150-count indictment charging him with bank fraud, money laundering, wire fraud, and conspiracy. His bail was set at an unusually high $10 million as he was considered a flight risk. As nearly all of Ruffo's known assets and accounts were frozen by the FBI, most of his immediate family put up their homes as collateral to secure his pre-trial release. Ruffo was found guilty on all counts and was sentenced to 17 years in prison.


title: John Ruffo

text: In November 1998, Ruffo failed to turn himself over to the U.S. Marshals Service to begin serving his sentence. His image was captured on CCTV cameras taking money out of an ATM (pictured) on the afternoon he was to report, but he has not been seen nor heard from since. In his wife's last communication with him on the morning of his disappearance, he told her he was meeting with a parole officer but never returned. His car was later recovered by the FBI abandoned at JFK Airport. Three months after Ruffo's disappearance, the homes of his wife, mother, mother-in-law, and others were seized by the government as a forfeiture of bond collateral, effectively making them all homeless.


title: John Ruffo

text: In April 2001, Ruffo was sighted in Duncan, Oklahoma, apparently visiting several community banks in an attempt to open an account so he could receive US$250 million of wire transfers from Nigeria. But when authorities went to capture him in Duncan, Ruffo had already left town. Later that year, his wife Linda filed for divorce, citing spousal abandonment, which was granted.


title: John Ruffo

text: Authorities believe Ruffo still has access to substantial overseas financial resources, which could be aiding him in his ability to stay off-the-grid and assume a new identity. Chief Deputy US Marshal John Bolen commented in 2013, "Having been sentenced to 220 months of incarceration and not serving a single day of that kind of sticks in the craw of those of us in this profession. His actions are a mockery to our justice system. We are the best in the world at this. He just has to make one mistake. We can make many but he just has to make one. We'll catch him". Ruffo's last attorney, Jeffery Lichtman, offered the following when asked if he thought authorities would ever capture his former client: "I think if I had to be a betting man, I'd put my money on John Ruffo. Because from what I can see so far, he is smarter than the people looking for him."


title: John Ruffo

text: Ruffo's cousin, Carmine Pascale, believed that he spotted Ruffo in the stands in Dodger Stadium while watching a Los Angeles Dodgers game on television on August 5, 2016. He froze his screen and contacted police. With the help of the Dodgers, police found the seat number and tracked down the ticket holder. However, the holder had given the ticket away. It had changed hands many times and the man who attended the game could not be found. After months of no new leads, the information was made publicly available in October 2021. An image of the man suspected of being Ruffo was released shortly afterwards. Investigator Danielle Shimchick said that the person in the image closely resembles Ruffo, and Pascale remained convinced that it was him. After the image was released, law enforcement got a tip and were able to track down the man seen in the images. Through fingerprints and a swift background check, they confirmed the man seen at the game was not Ruffo.


title: John Ruffo

text: Ruffo remains at large. The U.S. Marshals Service is offering a $25,000 reward for information that leads to the capture of John Ruffo.


title: Senidah

text: Senida Hajdarpašić (; born 9 April 1985), known by her stage name Senidah (pronounced ), is a Slovenian singer-songwriter. Often dubbed the "Balkan Trap Diva" by the media, she was born in Ljubljana and rose to prominence as the lead singer of the Slovenian band Muff. She achieved fame across the former Yugoslavia with the release of her single "Slađana" in March 2018.


title: Senidah

text: At the 2019 Music Awards Ceremony, "Slađana" won the Hip-Hop/Rap Song of the Year Award. It served as the lead single off her debut studio album "Bez Tebe", released in March 2019 for the Belgrade-based label Bassivity. The album was followed by a string of commercially successful singles, including "Mišići", "Kamikaza", "100%" and "Replay". Her sophomore album "Za Tebe" was released in November 2022. It was preceded by singles "Behute", "Jadnaja" and "Dva prsta".


title: Senidah

text: Senidah's singing talent was discovered by her sister, who would record her singing and post it on the internet.


title: Senidah

text: In February 2011, Senidah released her debut R&B-influenced single "Pustinjom" ("Through a Desert"), but soon after joined electro soul-pop band Muff as the lead singer. Their first single "Naj sije v očeh" ("Keep the Glow in the Eye") was awarded the song of the year in Slovenia. In March 2014, Muff took part in the preselection contest for Slovenia's representative at the Eurovision Song Contest 2014 with "Let Me Be (Myself)", finishing as the runner-ups to Tinkara Kovač and "Round and Round". Their debut eponymous album, released in November, was then declared the album of the year.


title: Senidah

text: In March 2018, Senidah released her solo trap single "Slađana" in Serbian to lackluster success. However, after being discovered by Serbian rappers and producers Reksona and Coby from the Belgrade-based hip-hop label Bassivity Digital, she accepted their offer to re-upload the music video to their official YouTube channel. Soon, "Slađana" went viral and has accumulated more than sixty million views. Senidah successfully continued collaborating with Bassivity, through which she released her following single "Belo" ("White") in June. She was also featured on "4 strane sveta" ("4 Sides of the World") by Coby as part of the soundtrack to Serbian film "South Wind". At the last day of the year she released two more singles, titled "Bez tebe" ("Without You") and "Nisi bio tu" ("You Weren't Here").


title: Senidah

text: In January the following year, Senidah won the Hip-Hop/Rap Song of the Year Award with "Slađana" at the 2019 Music Awards Ceremony. In March, she released a single in English, titled "Ride", under Universal Serbia, which had been recorded a couple of years prior. Her debut album, "Bez Tebe", was eventually released on 25 March, entirely in Serbian.


title: Senidah

text: On 21 April, Senidah performed at the Bassivity Showcase event at the Belgrade Sports Hall, alongside Bassivity Digital collective. Senidah released "Mišići" ("Muscles") and "Sve bih" ("I Want Everything") featuring Atlas Erotika for FCKN A! in April and May, respectively. The former one saw great success, counting more than 75 million views on YouTube. That summer as a part of her tour, she also performed at Exit Gang and the Sea Dance Festival. In July, she co-wrote Đogani's single "Dodiri" ("Touches"). On 9 August, she released "202", again in English. In mid August, media started a rumour that Senidah was internally selected to represent Slovenia in the Eurovision Song Contest 2020; however, the rumour turned out to be false. She would later state that she would participate in the Eurovision Song Contest only if she would be able to represent the entire former Yugoslavia.


title: Senidah

text: On 15 August, a new single "Kamikaza" ("Kamikaze") by Bosnian rappers Jala Brat and Buba Corelli was released, featuring Senidah. The single was a great commercial success, charting on the Ö3 Austria Top 40. On 26 September, Austrian rapper RAF Camora posted a snippet of his upcoming collaboration with Senidah on his Instagram story. The song, titled "100%", was released on 28 November, alongside the music video that was shot in Barcelona, Spain. It peaked at number three in Austria and debuted at number 28 on the Official German Charts on 6 December, becoming the first song in Serbo-Croatian to enter the chart.


title: Senidah

text: As of January 2020, Senidah is the first musician from the region to reach 700,000 monthly listeners on Spotify. On 27 January 2020, she performed "Mišići" live at the 2020 Music Awards Ceremony, as well as presented Oliver Mandić with the Career Achievement Award. Later in the night she won two awards herself, the Trap Song of the Year Award for "Mišići", presented to her by Jelena Karleuša, and a special Golden MAC for Authenticity Award that was awarded to her by the organizers' choice.


title: Senidah

text: Despite the fact she denied it at the Music Awards Ceremony a month before, "Telegraf" reported in late February that Senidah collaborated with Bosnian musician Dino Merlin on a song. According to the media, Merlin wrote the song and they shot a music video in Istanbul. However, Senidah denied the rumours once again on Instagram Live. On 1 March, Senidah released the music video for "Samo uživaj" ("Just Enjoy"), shot at the Faculty of Pharmacy at the University of Belgrade. On 12 May, she released the music video for "Ko je" ("Who Is It"), directed and produced by the singer herself. The video was shot at the streets of Ljubljana, deserted due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Three days later, she released her new single "Piješ" ("You're Drinking"). In August 2020, she released new single "Viva Mahalla" ("Long Live the Mahallah").


title: Senidah

text: Senidah started her 2021 by releasing "Dođi" ("Come"), her highly anticipated duet with Dino Merlin. On 12 February, Senidah released a collaboration with her long-time collaborator and friend, producer Cazzafura, entitled "Deca techna" ("Children of Techno"). On 12 May, she released "Replay" in collaboration with the Italian fashion brand of the same name. The song represented a significant change in Senidah's sound, a switch from her usual trap sound to jazz-rock. The music video, released the same day, surpassed a million views within the first day. On 3 July, Senidah performed at the 20th annual Zagreb Pride in Ribnjak.


title: Senidah

text: Senidah started her 2022 by releasing her new single "Behute" ("Haze") on 28 January. "Behute" entered Austrian and Swiss charts, becoming her third and second entry on the former and the latter, respectively. On 15 February 2022, "Behute" became the first song to top "Billboard"'s newly introduced Croatia Songs chart, while debuting and peaking at number five on the Austria Songs chart. "Behute" was succeeded by singles "Jadnaja" ("Poorme"), "Druga strana" ("Other Side"), and "Play With Heart"—the lattermost of which served as the official anthem of Women's EHF Euro 2022—all within the first half of the year. In early July, it was confirmed that Senidah and Konstrakta would co-headline that year's EuroPride, held in Belgrade.


title: Senidah

text: On 17 November 2022, Senidah took to Instagram to reveal the title, cover art and tracklist of her sophomore studio album "Za Tebe" ("For You"). It featured "Behute", "Jadnaja" and the third single "Dva prsta" ("Two Fingers"), which had been released on 2 November. The album was released a day later, on 18 November.


title: Senidah

text: Senidah is notable for her rapid rise to fame and critical acclaim in the former Yugoslavia. She is known for her specific vocals and singing style, with "Novosti"'s Lujo Parežanin dubbing her a "terrificly convincing singer, so [convincing] that the majority of regional pop scene seems like a group of amateur singers after her"; as well as for her extravagant and androgynous appearance. Her fame in the former Yugoslavia led Red Bull's Vojkan Bećir to characterize her as "what once were Brena or Čola". Furthermore, due to her biographical "Yugoslav-Balkan arc: a Slovenian musician whose parents are Montenegrin Bosniaks, and whose music is released by [Belgrade-based] Bassivity", Parežanin stated that "she is not just a performer who happens to be extremely popular in the region [...] – this destroyed and tortured region of ours "belongs" to her."


title: Senidah

text: When asked about who would be her American counterpart, Senidah named Alicia Keys "because of her emotion" and Mary J. Blige "because of her aggression", as well as Chris Brown "because of his stage presence". Senidah is also notable for blending R&B with Balkan folk music. She expressed her love of sevdah—stating that her favorite is "Zapjevala sojka ptica" ("Jay Bird Had Sung"), and adding that she loves her stage name because it reminds her of the word—as well as her fascination with Bosnian sevdah musician Božo Vrećo. She also named Dino Merlin her influence, pointing out that he "gave her a lot both as a musician and a soul she can feel". She credited her late mother as her main songwriting inspiration.


title: Senidah

text: Senidah was born in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Her parents are Bosniaks from Bihor near Bijelo Polje, Montenegro and she lives between Ljubljana and Belgrade.


title: Senidah

text: When she was a guest in a show "Nešto drugačije" and was answering fans' questions, she was asked about her sexuality to which she replied: "I love people. I don't look at who they are or what they are. It is only important that I find you okay and that's it. I love good people. Uncorrupted people." The response sparked debates about the singer's possible bisexuality. In an interview with the Serbian edition of "Hello!" she said that rumours about her sexuality do not bother her and that "she's in a[n emotional] relationship with music".


title: Senidah

text: On 15 May 2021, amidst the 2021 Israel–Palestine crisis, Senidah criticized the Government of Slovenia on Instagram for expressing support to Israel by hanging its flag on the Government Building alongside the flags of Slovenia and the European Union, stating that she was ashamed to be a Slovenian citizen.


title: Whitney Museum

text: The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is an art museum in the Meatpacking District and West Village neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875–1942), a wealthy and prominent American socialite, sculptor, and art patron after whom it is named.


title: Whitney Museum

text: The Whitney focuses on 20th- and 21st-century American art. Its permanent collection, spanning the late-19th century to the present, comprises more than 25,000 paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints, photographs, films, videos, and artifacts of new media by more than 3,500 artists. It places particular emphasis on exhibiting the work of living artists as well as maintaining an extensive permanent collection of important pieces from the first half of the last century. The museum's Annual and Biennial exhibitions have long been a venue for younger and lesser-known artists whose work is showcased there.


title: Whitney Museum

text: From 1966 to 2014, the Whitney was at 945 Madison Avenue on Manhattan's Upper East Side in a building designed by Marcel Breuer and Hamilton P. Smith. The museum closed in October 2014 to relocate to its current building, which was designed by Renzo Piano at 99 Gansevoort Street and opened on May 1, 2015.


title: Whitney Museum

text: Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, the museum's namesake and founder, was a well-regarded sculptor and serious art collector. As a patron of the arts, she began acquiring art in 1905, and had already achieved some success with the Whitney Studio and Whitney Studio Club, New York–based exhibition spaces she operated from 1914 to 1928 to promote the works of "avant garde" and unrecognized American artists. Whitney favored the radical art of the American artists of the Ashcan School such as John French Sloan, George Luks, and Everett Shinn, as well as others such as Edward Hopper, Stuart Davis, Charles Demuth, Charles Sheeler, and Max Weber.


title: Whitney Museum

text: With the aid of her assistant, Juliana R. Force, Whitney collected nearly 700 works of American art. In 1929, she offered to donate over 500 to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but the museum declined the gift. This, along with the apparent preference for European modernism at the recently opened Museum of Modern Art, led Whitney to start her own museum, exclusively for American art, in 1929.


title: Whitney Museum

text: Whitney Library archives from 1928 reveal that during this time, the Studio Club used the gallery space of Wilhelmina Weber Furlong of the Art Students League to exhibit traveling shows featuring modernist work. The Whitney Museum of American Art was founded in 1930; at this time architect Noel L. Miller was converting three row houses on West 8th Street in Greenwich Village—one of which, 8 West 8th Street had been the location of the Studio Club—to be the museum's home, as well as a residence for Whitney. The new museum opened in 1931. Force became the museum's first director, and under her guidance, it concentrated on displaying the works of new and contemporary American artists.


title: Whitney Museum

text: In 1954, the museum left its original location and moved to a small structure on 54th Street connected to and behind the Museum of Modern Art on 53rd Street. On April 15, 1958, a fire on MOMA's second floor that killed one person forced the evacuation of paintings and staff on MOMA's upper floors to the Whitney. Among the paintings evacuated was "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte", which was on loan from the Art Institute of Chicago.


title: Whitney Museum

text: In 1961, the Whitney began seeking a site for a larger building. In 1966, it settled at the southeast corner of Madison Avenue and 75th Street on Manhattan's Upper East Side. The building, planned and built 1963–1966 by Marcel Breuer and Hamilton P. Smith in a distinctively modern style, is easily distinguished from the neighboring townhouses by its staircase façade made of granite stones and its trapezoidal windows. In 1967, Mauricio Lasansky showed "The Nazi Drawings". The exhibition traveled to the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, where it appeared with shows by Louise Nevelson and Andrew Wyeth as the first exhibits in the new museum.


title: Whitney Museum

text: The institution grappled with space problems for decades. In 1967, the museum opened a satellite space called the Art Resources Center (ARC). Originally intended to be located in the South Bronx, the ARC opened on Cherry Street on the Lower East Side. From 1973 to 1983, the Whitney operated a branch at 55 Water Street, a building owned by Harold Uris, who gave the museum a lease for $1 a year. In 1983, Philip Morris International installed a Whitney branch in the lobby of its Park Avenue headquarters. In 1981, the museum opened an exhibition space in Stamford, Connecticut, housed at Champion International. In the late 1980s, the Whitney entered into arrangements with Park Tower Realty, IBM, and the Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States, setting up satellite museums with rotating exhibitions in their buildings' lobbies. Each museum had its own director, with all plans approved by a Whitney committee.


title: Whitney Museum

text: The institution attempted to expand its landmark building in 1978, commissioning UK architects Derek Walker and Norman Foster to design a tall tower alongside it, the first of several proposals from leading architects, but each time, the effort was abandoned, because of the cost, the design, or both. To secure additional space for the museum's collections, then-director Thomas N. Armstrong III developed plans for a 10-story, $37.5 million addition to the main building. The proposed addition, designed by Michael Graves and announced in 1985, drew immediate opposition. Graves had proposed demolishing the flanking brownstones down to the East 74th Street corner for a complementary addition. The project gradually lost the support of the museum's trustees, and the plans were dropped in 1989. Between 1995 and 1998, the building underwent a renovation and expansion by Richard Gluckman. In 2001, Rem Koolhaas was commissioned to submit two designs for a $200 million expansion. Those plans were dropped in 2003, causing director Maxwell L. Anderson to resign. New York restaurateur Danny Meyer opened Untitled, a restaurant in the museum, in March 2011. The space was designed by the Rockwell Group.


title: Whitney Museum

text: The Whitney developed a new main building, designed by Renzo Piano, in the West Village and Meatpacking District in lower Manhattan. The new museum, at the intersection of Gansevoort and Washington Streets, was built on a previously city-owned site and marks the southern entrance to the High Line park. Construction began in 2010 and was completed in 2015. It cost $422 million. Robert Silman Associates was the structural engineer; Jaros, Baum & Bolles provided MEP services; Ove Arup & Partners was the lighting/daylighting engineer; and Turner Construction LLC served as construction manager.


title: Whitney Museum

text: The new structure spans and eight stories that include the city's largest column-free art gallery spaces, an education center, theater, a conservation laboratory, and a library and reading rooms. Two of the floors are fully devoted to the museum's permanent collection. The only permanent artwork commissioned for the site—its four main elevators—were conceived by Richard Artschwager. The new building's collection comprises over 600 works by over 400 artists. Observation decks on the floors five through eight are linked by an outdoor staircase.


title: Whitney Museum

text: The new building is much more expansive and open than the old ones. As one "New York Times" review described the building:


title: Whitney Museum

text: The museum needed to raise $760 million for the building and its endowment. In May 2011, the Metropolitan Museum of Art announced it had entered into an agreement to occupy the Madison Avenue building for at least eight years starting in 2015, easing the Whitney's burden of having to finance two large museum spaces. The occupation of the old space was later postponed to 2016.


title: Whitney Museum

text: After an April 30, 2015, ceremonial ribbon-cutting attended by Michelle Obama and Bill de Blasio, the new building opened on May 1, 2015.


title: Whitney Museum

text: The museum displays paintings, drawings, prints, sculptures, installation art, video, and photography.


title: Whitney Museum

text: The original 600 works in the permanent collection grew to about 1,300 with the opening of the second building in 1954. This number grew to around 2,000 following its move to the Breuer building on Madison Avenue in 1966. It began collecting photography in 1991. Today, spanning the late 19th century to the present, the collection contains more than 25,000 artworks by upwards of 3,500 artists. Artists represented include Josef Albers, Joe Andoe, Edmund Archer, Donald Baechler, Thomas Hart Benton, Lucile Blanch, Jonathan Borofsky, Louise Bourgeois, Sonia Gordon Brown, Charles Burchfield, Alexander Calder, Suzanne Caporael, Norman Carton, Carolina Caycedo, Ching Ho Cheng, Talia Chetrit, Ann Craven, Anna Craycroft, Dan Christensen, Greg Colson, Susan Crocker, Ronald Davis, Stuart Davis, Mira Dancy, Lindsey Decker, Martha Diamond, Richard Diebenkorn, Daniella Dooling, Arthur Dove, Loretta Dunkelman, William Eggleston, Helen Frankenthaler, Georgia O'Keeffe, Arshile Gorky, Keith Haring, Grace Hartigan, Marsden Hartley, Robert Henri, Carmen Herrera, Eva Hesse, Hans Hofmann, Edward Hopper, Richard Hunt, Jasper Johns, Corita Kent, Franz Kline, Terence Koh, Willem de Kooning, Lee Krasner, Ronnie Landfield, John Marin, Knox Martin, John McCracken, John McLaughlin, Robert Motherwell, Bruce Nauman, Louise Nevelson, Barnett Newman, Kenneth Noland, Paul Pfeiffer, Jackson Pollock, Larry Poons, Maurice Prendergast, Kenneth Price, Robert Rauschenberg, Man Ray, Mark Rothko, Morgan Russell, Albert Pinkham Ryder, Cindy Sherman, John Sloan, Frank Stella, Andy Warhol, and hundreds of others.


title: Whitney Museum

text: Every two years, the museum hosts the Whitney Biennial, an international art show which displays many lesser-known artists new to the American art scene. It has displayed works by many notable artists, and has featured unconventional works, such as a 1976 exhibit of live body builders, featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger.


title: Whitney Museum

text: In addition to its traditional collection, the Whitney has a website, Artport, that features "Net Art" that changes regularly. The Whitney will not sell any work by a living artist because it could damage that artist's career, but it will trade a living artist's work for another piece by the same artist.


title: Whitney Museum

text: The Frances Mulhall Achilles Library is a research library originally built on the collections of books and papers of founder Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, and the Whitney Museum's first director, Juliana Force. The library operates in the West Chelsea area of New York City. It contains Special Collections and the Whitney Museum Archives. The archives contain the Institutional Archives, Research Collections, and Manuscript Collections. The Special Collections consist of artists' books, portfolios, photographs, titles in the Whitney Fellows Artist and Writers Series (1982–2001), posters, and valuable ephemera that relate to the permanent collection. The Institutional Archives include exhibition records, photographs, curatorial research notes, artist's correspondence, audio and video recordings, and trustees' papers from 1912 to the present.


title: Whitney Museum

text: The Whitney Independent Study Program (ISP) was founded in 1968 by Ron Clark. The Whitney ISP has helped start the careers of artists, critics, and curators including Jenny Holzer, Andrea Fraser, Julian Schnabel, Kathryn Bigelow, Roberta Smith, and Félix González-Torres, as well as many other well-known cultural producers. The program includes both art history and studio programs. Each year, the ISP selects 14 students for the Studio Program (artists), four for the Curatorial Program (curators) and six for the Critical Studies Program (researchers). It is a one-year program that includes both visiting and hired artists, art historians, and critics, and involves the reading of theory. Clark remains its director.


title: Whitney Museum

text: As of March 2011, the Whitney's endowment was $207 million; the museum expected to raise $625 million from its capital campaign by 2015. As of June 2016, the endowment had grown to $308 million.


title: Whitney Museum

text: Historically, the operating performance has been essentially breakeven. The museum restricts the use of its endowment fund for yearly operating expenses to 5% of the fund's value. The Whitney has historically depended on private collectors and donors for acquisitions of new art. In 2008, Leonard A. Lauder gave the museum $131 million, the biggest donation in the Whitney's history. Donations for new purchases dropped to $1.3 million in 2010 from $2.7 million in 2006.


title: Whitney Museum

text: The museum's director is Adam D. Weinberg (since 2003). Former directors include Maxwell L. Anderson (1998–2003), David A. Ross (1991–1997), Thomas Armstrong III (1974–1990), and Juliana Rieser Force (1931–1948).


title: Whitney Museum

text: For years, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney supported the museum single-handedly, as did her daughter, Flora Whitney Miller, after her, and until 1961, its board was largely family-run. Flora Payne Whitney served as a museum trustee, then as vice president. From 1942 to 1974, she was the museum's president and chair, after which she served as honorary chair until her death in 1986. Her daughter Flora Miller Biddle served as president until 1995. Her book "The Whitney Women and the Museum They Made" was published in 1999.


title: Whitney Museum

text: In 1961, the need for outside support finally forced the board to add outside trustees, including bankers Roy Neuberger and Arthur Altschul. David Solinger became the Whitney's first outside president in 1966.


title: Whitney Museum

text: The Board of Trustees has come under criticism since November 2018 by groups including Decolonize This Place, the Chinatown Art Brigade, and W.A.G.E., for vice chair Warren B. Kanders' ownership of the company Safariland, which manufactured tear gas used against the late-2018 migrant caravans; 120 scholars and critics published an open letter to the Whitney Museum asking for the removal of Kanders from the museum board; additional signatories after the letter's initial posting included almost 50 artists who have been selected for the 2019 Whitney Biennial. A series of nine weeks of protest by Decolonize This Place highlighted the use of Safariland weapons against protestors and others in Palestine and other places.


title: Whitney Museum

text: On July 17, 2019, calls for Kanders's resignation were renewed following Artforum's publication of an essay, "The Tear Gas Biennial", by Hannah Black, Ciarán Finlayson, and Tobi Haslett. On July 19, four artists (Korakrit Arunanondchai, Meriem Bennani, Nicole Eisenman, and Nicholas Galanin) published a letter, also in Artforum, asking their work to be withdrawn from the exhibition. (The first artist to withdraw was Michael Rakowitz, who withdrew his work before the Biennial opened.) A day later, a second wave of artists (Eddie Arroyo, Christine Sun Kim, Agustina Woodgate, and Forensic Architecture) also withdrew.


title: Whitney Museum

text: On July 25, 2019, Warren B. Kanders announced his resignation from the Board of Trustees of the Whitney Museum. Kanders cited no wish to play a role in the museum's demise and urged fellow trustees to step up and assume leadership of the Whitney.


title: Amorphophallus paeoniifolius

text: Amorphophallus paeoniifolius, the elephant foot yam or whitespot giant arum, is a tropical tuber crop grown primarily in Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia and the tropical Pacific islands. Because of its production potential and popularity as a vegetable in various cuisines, it can be raised as a cash crop.


title: Amorphophallus paeoniifolius

text: The elephant foot yam is used as food in Island Southeast Asia, Mainland Southeast Asia, South Asia, New Guinea, Oceania, and Madagascar. Its origin and center of domestication was formerly considered to be India, where it is most widely utilized as a food resource. But a genetic study in 2017 have shown that Indian populations of elephant foot yams have lower genetic diversity than those in Island Southeast Asia, therefore it is now believed that elephant foot yams originated from Island Southeast Asia and spread westwards into Thailand and India, resulting in three independent domestication events. From Island Southeast Asia, they were also spread even further west into Madagascar, and eastwards to coastal New Guinea and Oceania by the Austronesian migrations, though they may have spread south into Australia without human intervention.


title: Amorphophallus paeoniifolius

text: The plant blooms annually around the beginning of the rainy season. The flower bud emerges from the corm as a purple shoot, and later blooms as a purple inflorescence. The pistillate (female) and staminate (male) flowers are on the same plant and are crowded in cylindrical masses as an inflorescence. The top part is responsible for secreting mucus that gives off a putrid, pungent smell that is used to attract pollinating insects, the middle part of the inflorescence contains staminate, and the base of the inflorescence contains pistillate. The stigmas of the female flowers will be receptive on the first day of the bloom, when the pungent smell draws pollinating insects inside, and the inflorescence closes, trapping them for a night to allow the pollen deposited on the insect to be transferred to the stigmas.


title: Amorphophallus paeoniifolius

text: Later in the second day, the female flower is no longer receptive to pollens, the male flowers start to bloom, and the inflorescence opens again. This allows the pollen to be deposited on the emerging insects to pollinate other flowers, while preventing the pollen from the same inflorescence fertilising itself, preventing inbreeding.


title: Amorphophallus paeoniifolius

text: In 24–36 hours, after the first bloom of the inflorescence, the inflorescence's female flowers start developing into berries bright red fruiting bodies, and other parts of the inflorescence start wilting away. The berries are red when ripe and are not quite round, being or .


title: Amorphophallus paeoniifolius

text: In Indian state of West Bengal, Assam and in neighbouring country Bangladesh, it is called "Ol" (ওল/ওল কচু). It is usually eaten as mashed or fried or added to curries and, more rarely used in pickle or to make "Ol" chips. In some households, the green leaves and stems are also cooked as green vegetables.


title: Amorphophallus paeoniifolius

text: In Bihar, it is used in oal curry (i.e. Elephant Foot curry), oal bharta or chokha, pickles and chutney. Oal chutney is also called "Barabar chutney" as it has mango, ginger and oal in equal quantities, hence the name barabar (meaning "in equal amount").


title: Amorphophallus paeoniifolius

text: In Chhattisgarh, it is called "Zimmikanda". It is eaten as curry and is a delicacy among people of Chhattisgarh.


title: Amorphophallus paeoniifolius

text: In Tripura, it is called "Batema" and prepared by making a paste with sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) and water to remove its raphides (calcium oxalate needles). The paste is shaped into buns and boiled with water containing baking soda, after which the water is discarded. The buns are then cut into pieces and combined with fresh garlic paste and mosdeng (a spicy paste of dried fish/shrimp and chili). Also, the leaves and stems are eaten by chopping them into pieces and frying.


title: Amorphophallus paeoniifolius

text: In Southern India, especially Kerala, it is known as "Chena" (ചേന), the tuber has been a part of people's diet for centuries. In Tamil it is called kaaraa karanai kizangu(காறாக்கரணைக் கிழங்கு), chénaikkizangu (சேனைக்கிழங்கு). It is mainly served as steamed pieces (പുഴുക്ക്) along with traditional chutney made of green chilli, coconut oil, shallots and garlic although the curry preparation is also common as a side dish for rice. It is made into a thick chutney (masiyal, மசியல்), typically eaten as an accompaniment with a rice dish. It has served as the main source of carbohydrates especially during the famine-stricken days of the region in the past along with the more popular tapioca. The flower bud before it blooms is also used for making curry. All parts of the flower can be used for making different types of side dishes.


title: Amorphophallus paeoniifolius

text: In Nepal, it is called oal, kaan or suran and is grown mainly in the southern plains of the country. Its curry is consumed in Jitiya and Deepawali festivals.


title: Amorphophallus paeoniifolius

text: In the Philippines, it is known as "pongapong". The young leaves, stems, and corms are as vegetables or turned into desserts. They are thoroughly cooked to destroy the stinging oxalate crystals.


title: Amorphophallus paeoniifolius

text: The elephant-foot yam is widely used in Indian medicine and is recommended as a remedy in all three of the major Indian medicinal systems: Ayurveda, Siddha and Unani. The corm is prescribed in those systems for a variety of ailments. The tuber is reported to be useful in treatment of piles.


title: Ignorance

text: Ignorance is a lack of knowledge and understanding. The word "ignorant" is an adjective that describes a person in the state of being unaware, or even cognitive dissonance and other cognitive relation, and can describe individuals who are unaware of important information or facts. Ignorance can appear in three different types: factual ignorance (absence of knowledge of some fact), object ignorance (unacquaintance with some object), and technical ignorance (absence of knowledge of how to do something).


title: Ignorance

text: Ignorance can have negative effects on individuals and societies, but can also benefit them by creating within them the desire to know more. For example, ignorance within science opens the opportunity to seek knowledge and make discoveries by asking new questions. Though this can only take place if the individual possesses a curious mind.


title: Ignorance

text: Studies suggest that adults with an adequate education who perform enriching and challenging jobs are happier, and more in control of their environment. The confidence that adults obtain through the sense of control that education provides allows those adults to go for more leadership positions and seek for power throughout their lives.


title: Ignorance

text: Another effect of ignorance is characterized by the Dunning-Kruger effect, named after the scientists David Dunning and Justin Kruger in 1999. This theory centralizes the behavior of subjects regarding their intellectual capabilities and social behaviors. The limited information or competence of people that possess the Dunning-Kruger translates into a feeling of intellectual superiority.


title: Tong Wars

text: The Tong Wars were a series of violent disputes beginning in the late 19th century among rival Chinese Tong factions centered in the Chinatowns of various American cities, in particular San Francisco. Tong wars could be triggered by a variety of inter-gang grievances, from the public besmirching of another Tong's honor, to failure to make full payment for a "slave girl", to the murder of a rival Tong member. Each Tong had salaried soldiers, known as "boo how doy", who fought in .


title: Tong Wars

text: In San Francisco's Chinatown district, the Tong Wars lasted until 1921, with the various criminal Tongs estimated between nineteen and as many as thirty at the peak of the conflict, though the actual number is uncertain, with frequent splintering and mergers between the various Tongs. While a loose alliance, consisting of the Chinatown police, Donaldina Cameron, the courts, and the Chinese community itself tried to stem the tide of the fighting Tongs, it was the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and subsequent fires caused by the earthquake that was the death knell for the Tongs in San Francisco, as it destroyed the brothels, gambling dens, and opium houses that the criminal organizations had used for the majority of their revenue. Recovery was slow for most Tongs, so they abandoned the old Chinatown.


title: Tong Wars

text: While numerous, tongs had some similarities. Most tongs did not require new members to be from a specific clan, birthplace, or economic status, since tong members seem to have come from all different aspects of society. Also, while most tong members were Chinese, membership was not limited on the basis of nationality. Japanese, Filipino, and even Caucasians were known, albeit rarely, to join a tong organization. All tongs had harmless and peaceful sounding names, such as The Society of Pure Upright Spirits and the Peace and Benevolence Society, possibly because many of these organizations' original intentions and goals were good. Many of the "traditional" tongs were formed to protect their countrymen from discrimination by others, as well as criminals in general.


title: Tong Wars

text: The criminal elements of the tongs eventually either found it more profitable to participate in illicit activities, or the criminal elements of the tong wrestled power away. Tongs attempted to corner the market on criminal activities, especially anything that would bring in a nice profit, such as prostitution, opium, gambling, and forcing Chinese merchants to pay protection fees. One interesting aspect of the tongs was that each organization had two to three fluent English speakers, who served a variety of functions for the tong such as skimming local newspapers for mentions of their group, so they could inform their fellow members. They also dealt with the "foreigner" lawyers and Americans if the need arose. Membership numbers varied from as few as 50 to as many as 1,500 members in 1887. It was common for a tong to splinter when it accumulated too many members. One problem that was common throughout the period that would aid in the breakout of wars between the tongs was that some members could be a member of six tongs at any one time, so that if that member was killed by another tong in a war, one of the other tongs he was a member of would, and sometimes did, seek revenge by declaring war.


title: Tong Wars

text: Only the Hip Sing Tong is known to have established their tong on the East coast, making it the only known bi-coastal tong. A unique aspect of the Chee Kung Tong was that their members used many euphemisms to direct their members, for example to order a kill on somebody was to "wash his body" (i.e. in his own blood), a rifle was called a "dog" and a pistol was suitably nicknamed a "puppy" while bullets and ammo were called "dog feed." When the leader wished for his men to fire, he shouted "let the dogs bark!" Usually, one tong specialized in a specific illegal activity, such as gambling, although some even had legitimate businesses, and some had both, such as the Bo Sin Seer Tong, which ran many gambling dens but also had grocery stores under their ownership. The Wah Ting San Fong Tong and the On Yick Tong were said to specialize in the brothels, with the Kwong Duck Tong and On Leong Tong specializing in sex trafficking of women. Gambling dens was left to the Hip Sing Tong. Most initiation ceremonies were not as elaborate as the first known tong organizations had, as the Chee Kung Tong was quite traditional in this aspect, with accounts stating that the group still used many Triad symbols and signs. While uncertain as to whether or not other tongs adhered to this characteristic as well, but the Chee Kung Tong headquarters would not observe any traditional Chinese holidays, and would only fly their flag full mast when it was a tong holiday, or when war was on the horizon.


title: Tong Wars

text: The hatchet men, also known to outsiders of the Chinatown as "highbinders" (so called as they would bind their queue on top of their heads to prevent them from being grabbed by an opponent), were the salaried soldiers of the tongs. These soldiers most likely were from the Chinese lower classes, as many were uneducated and less "motivated" to become a law-abiding citizen of any country. Allegedly, 20% of each of the tong's membership population was said to be the professional soldiers. Known to Chinese as the "boo how doy", these men formed the professional toughs of the tong, and usually carried out their missions with precision and fearlessness. It is said that many hatchet men just prior to an assassination mission or battle with a rival tong would consume wildcat meat, in hopes that they would temporarily acquire the reflexes and sight of the animal.


title: Tong Wars

text: The "boo how doy" used a variety of weapons to accomplish their bloody deeds, ranging from small knives to hatchets (by far their favorite melee weapon) in the close quarter department, and they seem to have taken a particular fondness to the Colt .45 revolver for their longer range needs. The hatchet that the highbinders used was somewhat modified from what one usually thinks of a hatchet, as they would cut much of the handle off just enough to have a good grip, and cut a hole into it. The hatchet men were also known to use many different materials as body armor, with varying success.


title: Tong Wars

text: San Francisco's Chinatown prior to the Tong Wars of the 1880s was relatively peaceful. Chinatown's boundaries ran from Broadway, California, Kearny, and Stockton Streets with about a dozen blocks making up the Chinatown Quarter. In the early 1850s, the state of California probably never had a population of more than 25,000 Chinese on any given day. The majority of Chinese held that their stay in America was temporary, solely to acquire money. They were termed sojourners, as most who made the journey were males, either with a family back in the old country awaiting their return, or young Chinese looking to make their fortune and retire easy back home.


title: Tong Wars

text: In the 1850s and the decade succeeding it, the criminal class in Chinatown was very small, with virtually no major type of crimes such as murder, rape, armed robbery, or assault. Petty crime was frequent in the Chinese block, and could be divided into four categories: lotteries and gambling, opium smoking, prostitution, and minor thievery. The trade in slave-girls was not "big business" during these times, but it was present. Opium was brought to San Francisco on the clipper "Ocean Pearl" in 1861, and use of the depressant increased gradually, with estimates ranging from 16%-40% of the total Chinese population being opium users, and 10%-20% of the total Chinese population being termed "far gone addicts."


title: Tong Wars

text: Anti-Asian sentiment began in the early 1860s, and lasted until the late 1870s. Prior to this, the Chinese were generally tolerated within society, and some groups even formed to protect them. One such group was called the Chinese Protective Society, a group that protected Asians from hoodlums, and in its first and only year of operation, it spent about six thousand dollars doing its duty. But many Chinese were unsure and cautious, and only donated what would amount to about a tenth of their first year operation costs, and it was quickly forced to dissolve due to lack of funds. But during the Anti-Asian movement in California during the '60s and '70s much of this previous tolerance was cast off and Chinese found themselves scapegoats. The first real fires were ignited by groups such as the Knights of Labor, who believed that the Chinese were being used as cheap alternative labor, and began marching to demand the expulsion of Chinese from American soil.


title: Tong Wars

text: The Depression of 1873 intensified Anti-Asian feeling with various groups of hoodlums vandalizing Chinese-run facilities, and 1873 was also the year of the Queue Ordinance, where if one was arrested for any crime, the authorities would then cut off the offender's queue. This did not affect the Chinese population as much as the Disinterment Ordinance did. This ordinance slapped on a heavy penalty for shipping the remains of the dead back to China, anywhere from $100–$150 per offense. It was not only parties and groups of marauding hoodlums who took advantage of the vulnerable Chinese, as even many politicians, to increase their public audience, joined in. Two scares also occurred in the 1870s pertaining to Chinatown, both dealing with the false rumor of leprosy and then smallpox epidemics breaking out within the block. Anti-Asian parties began to spring up, with the inception of the People's Protective Alliance, People's Reform Party, and the straightforward Anti-Chinese Party during this period. People with anti-Asian tendencies also liked to point out the increasing prostitution in Chinatown. The problem was that the ratio of Chinese men to Chinese women throughout this period was vastly disproportionate, with even moderate estimates of the population stating that nine out of every 10 people in the Quarter were male. The tongs would use this social dilemma to make an immense amount of money through prostitution.


title: Tong Wars

text: The Six Companies, representing practically all Chinese in California, tried to work with local governments in attempts to quell the movements against Asians. The Six Companies were formed to help the Chinese come from and return to China, to take care of the sick and the starving, and to return corpses to China for burial. Later, they tried to protect their people from the abuses San Francisco's Chinese suffered at the hands of racist hoodlums. They were run by the richer and better educated among the immigrants, in the paternalistic manner typical of 19th-century Chinese society. While the Six Companies was preoccupied with the Anti-Asian movements being forced upon them, the fighting tongs were rapidly growing. With the Six Companies busy fighting against the groups who wished for their people to be kicked out of the country, the Chinatown police squad, after many years of little to no violence, had grown quite lax, and lulled them into failure to act upon the creation of the tongs and their subsequent rise.


title: Tong Wars

text: The first tong known to be created was the Chee Kung Tong, the founder of which was Low Yet, a Cantonese leader in the Reds Turban Rebellion (1854–1856) who had to flee China before the rebellion was crushed, and went on to create the Chee Kungs. Quickly the Chee Kung Tong had reaped the rewards of its activities, so much so that it was able to remove the unhappy portions of their membership base. Many of those members who left came to form the tongs that would rival that of their previous one. One reason previously theorized as to why the Tong Wars did not begin earlier was in the 1850s and 1860s there were not enough soldiers for them to fight and run the tong the way it was in the later years, and because most of the Chinese gangs founded in the United States were full-fledged ABCs (American-Born Chinese). An interesting note to the Chee Kung Tong was that in June, 1885, they welcomed an eighteen-year-old Chinese to their headquarters during his three-month stay in the United States. This man, named Sun Tai Cheon, better known as Sun Yat-Sen (Sun Zhongshan (孫中山)), the founder of the Chinese Republic, learned of the American democratic system as well as accepted the first part of the Chee Kung Tong's "Down with the Manchus!" and set about to bring these ideals to China.


title: Tong Wars

text: By 1854, three tongs had begun to flourish in the San Francisco area those being the Chee Kung, Hip Yee, and the Kwong Duck. The Hip Yee and Kwong Duck Tongs were both reported to have had a morally decent and good organization, with the Hip Yee tong starting out to protect slave-girls from criminal activities (although the Hip Yee highbinders were said to have started the organized slave-girl importation in 1852 as well), and the Kwong Duck tong's creation was motivated by originally good men to fight the illegal activities of the Hip Yee Tong. Regardless, both tongs and for that matter every tong created during this period eventually turned to criminal activities. The major markets that brought such a rapid rise in the tongs were, as mentioned before, the fan-tan gambling halls and lotteries, opium dens, and the most important to the tongs, the slave-girl (prostitution) houses. The tongs were said to have collected a tax of forty cents per prostitute upon their importation to the country and two cents per week from each slave-girl after that. It is quite understandable how the prostitution business was so profitable by the mere overview of the Chinese population throughout the period, with 30,360 males and only 1,385 females (with perhaps as much as 50% of the women being prostitutes) in the Chinatown in 1884. There were also minor cash markets in the form of protection money from the various Chinese merchants, store owners and shopkeepers in the Chinese Quarter.


title: Tong Wars

text: The Six Companies attempted to fight the rising power of the tongs with little overall success, but held them in check until the 1880s. One incident in which the Six Companies met with success in occurred in 1862. They fought against illegal prostitution and made efforts to send abandoned slave-girls back to the old country. Their success was noticed and praised by the state legislature. But attempts to send back these girls sometimes were thwarted by American businessmen with vested interests in the Chinatown Red Light District. In such failure, they tried on numerous occasions for the United States and China to work on an extradition treaty that would send many of the criminal "boo how doy" back to China upon criminal offense, which would have caused illegal activities in the Quarter to drop, was denied by the United States. Many politicians in California viewed the Six Companies with dissatisfaction, believing that they had despotic powers which they did not, and that they usurped some of the very powers of the local government, such as the belief that the Six Companies held their own trials, had control in some of the less criminal activities such as gambling, as well as affected their own punishments against those who their courts deemed guilty.


title: Tong Wars

text: The Six Companies battled the tongs for fifty years, and while moderately successful from 1850 to the 1870s, the criminal elements began to grow exponentially around 1880. The Six Companies was a paternal order that set up the rules and regulations of their society without consenting to the will of their people, in exchange for security and protection. They grouped together to be able to form a single cohesive group to fight against the cases of bigotry, violence, or decrees they deemed infringing upon their rights. The Six Companies were at first known as the Kong Chow Company. The six were: the Sam Yup Company, See Yup Company, Ning Yuen Company, Yeung Wo Company, Hop Wo Company, and Hip Kat Company. The Six Companies could be divided into two groups based on dialects as well. The Sam Yups spoke the Cantonese dialect; the more numerous See Yups, spoke the more common tongue of Dupont Gai.


title: Tong Wars

text: By the 1890s, the leaders of the Companies only served a single term, as prior to the term limit to one term there was an unlimited amount of time one could serve, and corruption had slowly found its way in. Many times, both the police and politicians put unwarranted blame on the Six Companies, as the organization to outsiders was shrouded in mystery. One such instance was in 1876, when the state legislature put total blame on the Six Companies after an investigation mistakenly blamed them for controlling the criminal elements of their society, including the fighting tong. But the Six Companies truthfully had no power over the tongs, and attempted to end the tongs criminal acts at every opportunity, even posting the information of delinquents and offering rewards for more information as to their whereabouts leading to their capture. The one true power the Six Companies had was the exit visa power. The exit visa tax was a receipt, which was proof that they had repaid all their debts, and they could go home. This was later taken away by Chief of Police Patrick Crowley, who instead of focusing on the warring tongs, aided in the promulgation of the Felton Act, which removed the power of the exit visa from the Companies.


title: Tong Wars

text: The collapse of the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association came about when the Geary Act passed as it was the one true occasion when the Companies pressured the whole community to protest it by not registering, as well as donating a dollar each for the employment of lawyers to fight for their rights. The leader of the opposition to the Geary Act was Chun Ti Chu, and when the Six Companies lost the battle against the Act and many U.S. officials pointed out that the Six Companies had informed their members to violate the laws of the United States, both Chun Ti Chu and the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association had taken a huge loss of face to their society. Quickly, the tongs published that they would pay $300 for Chun's head. Chun Ti Chu was not deterred, and continued his fight against the tongs. Immediately after the severe loss of face and prestige for the Six Companies in their protest of the Geary Act in 1893–1894, the criminal element of the Chinese finally burst its seams and the tong wars erupted onto the streets and alleys of Chinatown, as well as the newspapers of the country. The Tong Wars flourished during this period. But one more blow to the Six Companies would come, after the death of Fung Jing Toy, also known as Little Pete.


title: Tong Wars

text: The last major blow to the Six Companies was a boycott of See Yup products and stores after the murder of Fung Jing Toy (Little Pete) in January 1897, which ground the economy of the whole Quarter to a halt. A neutral Chinese Consul General, Ho Yow, who knew that the boycott was a serious feature in the strength of the tongs, attempted to bring the two sides to the peace table and nearly succeeded. Ho persistently sought an end to the boycott, and throughout his Consulship fought the tongs. The internal fighting between the two major groups of the Six Companies would last until 1899 at least, with various tongs encouraging the fight so that the Companies would remain weak. Many people, in the face of the escalating tong wars, emigrated away from San Francisco and the United States altogether after the Six Companies was defeated.


title: Tong Wars

text: Tong wars were fought not only on the streets and alleys of the Chinatown, but also on the rooftops in a deadly guerrilla warfare. Often, a tong war began over a woman, whether the failure of one tong to fully pay another tong for a slave-girl (as in the case of the Bing On Tong–Wah Sin San Fan Tong War) or simply because of limited number of Chinese women in the area during the time (Hop Sing Tong–Suey Sing Tong War). Other tong wars started due to issues from defamation of a rival tong's "face" to attempting to take another tong's business. The Bing On Tong–Wah Sin San Fan Tong War was caused when Bing On sold the girl to a Wah Ting member but he did not pay the full amount specified, and the Bing Ons demanded that the bill be paid. The Wah Tings replied that the girl was not even worth $500 and if they wanted to do something about it they were welcome to try at their own risk.


title: Tong Wars

text: The Hop Sing Tong–Suey Sing Tong War was particularly bloody. By the time a truce was signed, four Hop Sings lay dead and four more were wounded compared to the Suey Sings' two dead, one wounded. This ongoing war was particularly bloody, as even though the truce was signed, they went back to war for a two more times, one time being of a three-month duration in 1900, which produced even deadlier results (seven dead in total, eight wounded and not a single murderer captured by police). The other each killed one member of the other group, and the Hop Sings attempted to dynamite their rivals' headquarters.


title: Tong Wars

text: In other cases, the tongs went to war with one another and brought their allies with them. Such was the case in the Bo Leong Tong–Bo On Tong War, with the Bo Leong's supporters being the On Yick Tong and Hop Sing Tong, to do battle against the Bo On as well as their supporters, the Suey Sing Tong and Hip Sing Tong. Another example would be the Wah Ting San Fong Tong and the Sen Suey Ying Tong allying with the Hop Sings to fight the Suey Sing Tong. The Chinese population of the San Francisco Chinatown and of the United States dropped dramatically during this turbulent era, from as many as 25,000 to only 14,000 by the beginning of 1900, with the Chinese U.S. population dropping by 16% during this time.


title: Tong Wars

text: Some officials and scholars began to attempt to rank the tongs in terms of who was the bloodiest. One study came out with the Do On Tong and the Suey Sing Tong on top, while another stated by a Chinatown officer was that the top tongs were the Bing On and the Gee Sin Seer, led by Little Pete. But it should be said that never throughout the Tong Wars did a single tong gain supremacy over all others.


title: Tong Wars

text: As stated previously, there were cases of a war between two tongs widening due to the fact that any member could be a part of up to six tongs. An example was the Hip Sing Tong–Hop Sing Tong War, in which a Hop Sing killed a member of the Hip Sings, but he also turned out to be a prominent member of the Sen Suey Ying Tong, so they then joined the fray. Later in that same war, a Sen Suey Ying member went to go curse a Hop Sing member, then was ambushed in a temple and mortally wounded, which then brought the Chee Kung Tong into the mix as that man was a member of their tong as well.


title: Tong Wars

text: These forces, consisting of a militant style police force, Donaldina Cameron, and a Chinese community finally united against the tongs along with the 1906 San Francisco earthquake that brought the end of the tongs and the Tong Wars. Legislation was passed enforcing stricter control of the opium dens and brothels in the 1890s were a factor as well. The Presbyterian and Methodist Missions, led by Donaldina Cameron, had saved at least eighteen slave girls. The Chinese Consul General, Ho Yow, repeatedly attacked the tongs and their activities through posters, and Chun Ti Chu, while leader of the Six Companies, forbid any tong member from joining the Company. William B. Farwell's report of 1885 on Chinatown detailed a building by building survey of Chinatown, color-coded to show the geography of crime in Chinatown. This report, coupled with Officer Price's transformation of the Chinatown squad into a flying squad (flying squads usually dealt with riots), earned Price the name of "White Devil" to the tongs, as he used the squad to raid tong headquarters, and immediately went on the offensive and destroyed the Bing On and Suey On tong headquarters in the early 1890s, and would continue to do so until his retirement in 1905, on the eve of the earthquake.


title: Tong Wars

text: The earthquake, on April 18, 1906, killed about 3,000 people, and its subsequent fires destroyed the Chinatown ghettos, gambling halls, and brothels. This was the death knell for the warring tongs, as many of their staple sources of income never were able to come back. Recovery was slow, most tongs just simply went away with the old Chinatown. The Kwong Duck tong, boasted its one-member after the earthquake, Wong Sing, who held the tong seal, books, flag, and all offices.


title: Tong Wars

text: The hatchet men were already aging by this time. Some of the "boo how doy" were extradited, some were dead, and some left for other cities such as Chicago, New York, Seattle, Portland, Oakland, and Los Angeles. The ones in New York City and Chicago kept up the Tong Wars for another ten to twenty years, with a little bit of Chicago-style gangsterism, but they too died down. There were a few Tong Wars after 1906, but Inspector Jack Manion, leader of the Chinatown squad forced the last six tongs (Hop Sings, Suey Sings, Suey Dongs, Sen Suey Yings, Jun Yings and Bing Kong) to form a Peace Committee in 1913. Afterwards, the San Francisco Chinatown had quieted down, with its last tong related murder in 1921, and by 1925 the last of the slave-girl raids occurred.


title: Tong Wars

text: In New York City, the Fourth Tong War ended only in 1933, although for the last decade the conflicts had been unofficial.


title: Discipline (Janet Jackson album)

text: Discipline is the tenth studio album by American singer-songwriter Janet Jackson. It was released on February 22, 2008 by Island Records. It is her only album released with the record label after her five-album deal with Virgin Records was fulfilled with the release of "20 Y.O." (2006). Jackson worked with producers such as Darkchild, Ne-Yo, Shea Taylor, Stargate, Johntá Austin, Jermaine Dupri, Tricky Stewart, and The-Dream on the album. Jackson's long-time producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis did not contribute to the project. The album was executive produced by Island Urban president Dupri and Jackson. The album experimented with the electropop, house, and dance-pop genres and also contained R&B and hip hop-oriented tracks.


title: Discipline (Janet Jackson album)

text: The album received generally positive reviews, with critics arguing that it was an improvement on Jackson's two previous albums. It debuted at number one on the US "Billboard" 200, becoming her sixth to top the chart, and her first number-one album since "All for You" (2001). However, sales of the album quickly fell, and by June, the album's promotion had officially ended. Jackson started her Rock Witchu Tour—with the support of Live Nation—in early September to positive reviews, but by the end of that month, Jackson parted with her record label due to the album's commercial failure. Four singles were released from the album: the lead single "Feedback" reached number nineteen on the US "Billboard" Hot 100, becoming Jackson's best charting single since 2001's "Someone to Call My Lover", while the following singles–"Rock with U", "Luv" and "Can't B Good"–did not match the success of "Feedback".


title: Discipline (Janet Jackson album)

text: In July 2007, it was announced that Jackson had signed a recording contract with Island Records, after her five-album deal with Virgin Records was fulfilled with the release of her album "20 Y.O." Originally, Jackson wanted to go on a tour in support of "20 Y.O." in 2007; however, Island Records executives asked her to record a new album, which would become "Discipline", instead. Jackson stated: "I was supposed to go on tour with the last album [...] We were actually in full-blown tour rehearsals at that point ... learning numbers, getting everything together, set designs [...] I had to kind of shut everything down and go into the studio."


title: Discipline (Janet Jackson album)

text: The album was recorded during a six-month period at locations in Burbank, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Edina, Detroit, New York City, East Orange, Atlantic City, Atlanta and Miami. Jackson worked with producers such as Rodney Jerkins (who produced the lead single "Feedback" alongside D'Mile), Jermaine Dupri, Ne-Yo, Shea Taylor, Stargate, Johntá Austin, Tricky Stewart, and The-Dream. Jackson's long-time producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, did not contribute to the project. The album was executive produced by Island Urban president Jermaine Dupri and Jackson. She did not write or co-write any songs on the album, a departure from her usual practice of co-writing and producing all of the songs on her albums. The song "So Much Betta" contains sampled portions of the track "Daftendirekt" by the French house music duo Daft Punk.


title: Discipline (Janet Jackson album)

text: The deluxe edition of "Discipline" included a DVD entitled "The Making of Discipline", split into five chapters which document the production of the album, its promotion, and the "Feedback" music video. The first chapter, entitled "Photo Shoots", shows Jackson creating a new image for the album and adopting different looks for different markets. She spent two days working on photos for the cover and credit booklet, revealing that she still feels uncomfortable in front of the camera despite two decades in the music industry. In the second chapter, "The Studio", Jackson expressed her opinion on recording work, stating that although she usually enjoyed the experience, it was, at times, tedious. She discusses further how her songs are built up in layers and parts, from melodies and background vocals or sounds. The third chapter, "Rehearsals", shows the rehearsals of the dance routine for the "Feedback" music video. The DVD reveals that the eight dancers had been practicing for over a week before they started working with Jackson. The dancers then had three days to rehearse with Jackson and a further two days to complete the video. Jackson described the video as a metaphor for sexual tension. The fourth chapter, "Behind the Video", shows the making of the video itself. Jackson told the director that she wanted a futuristic, moody concept, and he came up with the idea of jumping between planets. The final chapter is the lead music video in its entirety.


title: Discipline (Janet Jackson album)

text: "Discipline" is a pop, electronic and R&B album with some house and hip hop-oriented songs. Lyrically, it explores erotic themes such as sexual fetishism and sadomasochism, along with other themes such as love and relationships. Throughout the album, Jackson interacts with a fictional DJ-robot Kyoko.


title: Discipline (Janet Jackson album)

text: The album opens with a 48-second spoken-word intro "I.D.", which is followed by the lead single "Feedback". "Feedback" is an electropop and dance-pop song which incorporates elements of Eurodance and hip hop. Its lyrical composition is based on Jackson's sexual bravado, questioning the listener while responding with a chant of "sexy, sexy". The song's chorus compares her body to instruments such as a guitar and amplifier, using metaphors to demonstrate sexual climax. It's followed by "Luv", an electro-R&B song described as a "feel-good" clap-and-bounce track, in which Jackson relates a car crash to falling in love. "Rollercoaster", an electro-funk song, sees Jackson comparing feelings caused by her love interest to a rollercoaster. "Rock with U" is a pop, Euro disco, and house song recorded with the gay community in mind, as Jackson felt the necessity to do something for her gay fans, as well as the wider community members. Jackson said: "It's still classic me but with a different twist to it – a modern twist". Jim Farber from "New York Daily News" noted the song's riffs, which he considered greater when they first appeared in Madonna's song "Into the Groove" (1985). The song was compared to Jackson's brother Michael Jackson's "Rock with You" (1979), due to its disco themes. "Rock with U" also contains vocodered whispers and murmured vocals. On "2nite", Jackson is asking her partner to sexually please her.


title: Discipline (Janet Jackson album)

text: "Can't B Good" is a soulful, "jazzy" R&B song about Jackson's relationship with Jermaine Dupri. "Never Letchu Go" was described by Andy Kellman from AllMusic as "a sweet, glistening ballad". Its lyrics see Jackson not wanting to end her relationship because she feels like her partner is "the one". "Greatest X" is an R&B ballad which, as its title suggests, is an open letter to Jackson's "greatest ex ever". "So Much Betta" samples "Daftendirekt" (1997) by Daft Punk and sees Jackson "tired of being number two" and trying to prove a man she's better for him than her rival. The song also contains vocodered vocals. Like "So Much Betta", "The 1" sees Jackson trying to convince her love interest she's "the one" for him. It features rapper Missy Elliott. "What's Ur Name" is an up-tempo electro-R&B song on which Jackson sings about meeting a man for the first time. After discussing the meaning of the term "discipline" in the interlude "The Meaning", Jackson begs her partner to "punish" her in "Discipline"; its lyrical themes include masturbation and sadomasochism. The album closes with "Curtains", an R&B song which sees Jackson putting on a show for her lover in the form of foreplay and filming it.


title: Discipline (Janet Jackson album)

text: The album was titled "Discipline" as an acknowledgment of Jackson's commitment, focus, and dedication to her career. Jackson stated: "I wanted to name the album "Discipline" because it has a lot of different meanings for me, but the most important would be work — to have done this for as long as I have ... And to have had the success that I've had — not excluding God by any means — but it takes a great deal of focus." However, in the album's title track, the title has a different meaning, as its lyrics see the protagonist asking her partner to discipline her for "being bad".


title: Discipline (Janet Jackson album)

text: The cover artwork for "Discipline" was shot by Singaporean fashion photography duo Chuando + Frey and features Jackson as a dominatrix, wearing long black latex gloves with "Discipline" and "Janet" ("Janet Jackson" on some editions) written on them.


title: Discipline (Janet Jackson album)

text: "Discipline" was released on February 26, 2008 by Island Records; its deluxe edition, which included a bonus DVD, was released simultaneously. Jackson promoted the album through televised performances on "Good Morning America", "The Ellen DeGeneres Show" and MTV's "Total Request Live". Her performance on "Total Request Live" was her first MTV appearance in six years, following her being blacklisted by the network due to the Super Bowl halftime show incident in 2004. She was also scheduled to perform on "Saturday Night Live" but cancelled it due to illness. Performances on "Jimmy Kimmel Live" and at the London nightclub G-A-Y were also initially planned. The album was also promoted during an appearance on "Larry King Live". On March 31, 2008, an edition of "Discipline" in environmentally-friendly packaging was released exclusively in Walmart as a part of a "green" promotion. Island Records officially ended the promotion of the album by June 2008. Later, Jackson performed "Luv" in a medley with "Rhythm Nation" on the ABC special "America United: In Support of Our Troops" on September 7.


title: Discipline (Janet Jackson album)

text: Although the album promotion stopped in June, Jackson's fifth concert tour—the North American Rock Witchu Tour, with the support of Live Nation—began on September 10, 2008. Amy O'Brian of "The Vancouver Sun" described Jackson's stage show at the GM Place as a "high-voltage performance". According to O'Brian, "[w]ith an ear-piercing blast of pyrotechnics, a fog of thick cloud and dancers that popped up out of the stage and runway, Jackson proved within the first minutes that she didn't choose the low-budget route for her Rock Witchu Tour." Similarly, Jim Harrington of "The Oakland Tribune" offered a positive review, stating: "Like Jackson's previous tours, 'Rock Witchu' was a flashy, high-budget extravaganza built on well-choreographed dance routines and plenty of theatrics." The initial response to the tour was very good, with sold-out shows in Los Angeles and Las Vegas. Supporting acts for the show included LL Cool J and Donnie Klang. Jackson had to reschedule nine dates on the first leg of the tour due to vestibular migraines. However, on November 4, 2008, Jackson canceled seven of the nine shows which had been rescheduled, citing schedule conflicts as the main reason. On November 19, it was announced on Japanese newspapers and websites that Jackson will bring the tour to Japan for a series of five shows in Saitama, Nagoya, Osaka, and Fukuoka in February 2009. However, all five dates were canceled.


title: Discipline (Janet Jackson album)

text: The album's lead single "Feedback", was released for digital download in December 2007. In the United States, the song reached number nineteen on the "Billboard" Hot 100, number thirty-nine on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs, and number twenty-three on the Pop 100, becoming Jackson's best charting single since "Someone to Call My Lover" (2001). The song was also successful in Canada and South Africa where it peaked at numbers three and eight, respectively. Due to a rushed release and no international promotion, the song failed to chart highly in European countries, peaking at number thirty-six in France and thirty-two in Ireland, but reaching the top five in Greece.


title: Discipline (Janet Jackson album)

text: Subsequent singles were promoted and released primarily in the US. "Rock with U", the second single, was released on February 5, 2008. A music video was released, with the song peaking at number twenty on the Dance Club Songs chart and at number four on the UK R&B Singles Chart. Two more singles–"Luv" and "Can't B Good"–were issued to select radio formats. "Luv" was released on February 11, 2008 and peaked at number thirty-four on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs. "Can't B Good", was serviced to urban contemporary radio on March 18, 2008. The song "2nite", although not released as a single, was featured on the second part of the soundtrack to the film "Sex and the City" (2008), entitled "".


title: Discipline (Janet Jackson album)

text: "Discipline" received mixed to positive reviews from most music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 61, based on 14 reviews, which indicates "generally favorable reviews".


title: Discipline (Janet Jackson album)

text: Music critic Keith Harris of "Rolling Stone" wrote, "Janet Jackson has abandoned the plastic R&B of 2006's "20 Y.O." for a sexier brand of digitized megapop [...] you can dismiss any images of the abusive Jackson clan that flit into your mind. Just lie back and enjoy the sensations as pure aural auto-eroticism." Andy Kellman of AllMusic gave a four-out-of-five star rating, noting several tracks were "as innocent, universal, and inviting as anything else in Janet's past", and called the songs "Rock with U" and "2Nite" "irresistible, grade-A dance floor tracks". Sal Cinquemani of "Slant Magazine" described it as Jackson's "most cohesive album in a while", giving three-out-of-five stars. Dan Gennoe of Yahoo! Music UK gave it seven out of ten stars saying "Still, if not perfect, there's plenty to like on "Discipline," and while none of it is exactly vintage Janet, there's enough here to keep the Jackson name on pop's A-list for a little while longer."


title: Discipline (Janet Jackson album)

text: Carol Cooper of "The Village Voice" called "Discipline" "the most cohesive deep-groove album from La Jackson since "Control"." "NOW" Magazine reviewer Bryan Borzykowski called it "her most modern and club friendly" album, and commented saying "Jackson wouldn't want us to call it a comeback, but it sure sounds like one." Ann Powers of the "Los Angeles Times" gave it a three out of four rating, saying "Its 22 tracks should be two albums: The first, a club-directed missile helmed by "Darkchild" Rodney Jerkins and Jackson's beau, Jermaine Dupri, could reassert Jackson's primacy among glamazon hit makers; the second, a bedroom bound ladies' favorite co-authored by soul dauphin Ne-Yo, would remind fans of Jackson's gift for creating truly tender smut."


title: Discipline (Janet Jackson album)

text: "The Boston Globe" music critic Joan Anderman criticized the album, saying "Jackson's decision to recycle the nympho routine one more time is just boring [...] A quarter century into her career, it was Jackson's moment to take a breath, dig a little deeper, and make a bold - or at least a different - statement. Instead, she has trussed herself up in vinyl to coo another batch of digitized porn." On a better note, she called the tracks "Rollercoaster" and "Luv" "engaging tracks", describing them as a "sassy-sweet side" and "a plump, crackling confection", respectively.


title: Discipline (Janet Jackson album)

text: "New York Times" music critic Kelefa Sanneh commented, saying, "If anything, "Discipline" may be too subtle: a pretty, smartly produced collection that sometimes sounds like background music." Michael Arceneaux of "PopMatters" called the album the "same old from her", adding, "These days her look and sound seem nothing more than a continuation of 2001's "All for You"." "Entertainment Weekly"'s Margeaux Watson wrote that Jackson's lyrics "sound like the cheesy text messages of a lovesick adolescent" and gave a C− rating. Nick Levine of "Digital Spy" wrote that "Jackson's attempts to play the uber-nympho are beginning to sound very, very desperate" with "embarrassingly lewd lyrics" and gave the record 2 out of 5 stars. Caroline Sullivan of "The Guardian" described most tracks on the album as either boring or unmemorable. Robert Christgau gave the album a "dud" score as he had done with her previous album "20 Y.O." ().


title: Discipline (Janet Jackson album)

text: "Discipline" debuted at number one on the "Billboard" 200 for the issue dated ending March 15, 2008, with 181,000 copies sold. While this was a higher chart position than Jackson's two previous releases, it was a lower first week sales total compared to "Damita Jo" which opened with sales of 381,000 and "20 Y.O." with sales of 296,000. Paul Grein of Yahoo! Music observed that with six number one studio albums, Jackson had "surpasse[d] her brother Michael Jackson, who has amassed five [number-one] albums." With six number one albums, Jackson is now tied with Mariah Carey and Britney Spears in the US for the third most number-one albums for a female artist, behind Madonna with eight and Barbra Streisand's ten chart-toppers. In its second week, the album fell to number three with 57,000 copies sold. In its third week, the album fell to number eight with sales of 38,000 copies. In its fourth week, the album fell to number seventeen with sales of 34,000 copies, achieving total first-month sales of 310,000 copies. It has sold 456,000 copies in the United States to date.


title: Discipline (Janet Jackson album)

text: The album achieved moderate success in other countries, reaching number three in Canada (with 6,000 copies sold during its first week), and number nine in Switzerland, but had low sales in most European markets. By June 2008, Island stopped promoting "Discipline". The singer expressed open dissatisfaction with the promotion of the album, explaining that there would be no further single releases. The album was a commercial failure in the United Kingdom, spending only one week on the UK Albums Chart and peaking at number 63 with 3,914 copies sold, but it did manage to peak at number five on the UK R&B Album Chart. It has sold 9,312 copies in the country. In France, "Discipline" debuted at number 43 with just 3,000 copies sold. In Japan, the album debuted at number nine with 19,839 copies sold. It has been certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of Japan (RIAJ) and has sold over 100,000 copies in the country.


title: Discipline (Janet Jackson album)

text: On September 22, 2008—while on the Live Nation-supported tour of North America—Jackson parted company with her recording label Island; their 14-month relationship was dissolved per a request by Jackson. The singer had previously expressed dissatisfaction with the label, first telling SOHH.com that they "stopped all promotion whatsoever on the album" after releasing the first single, "Feedback". In early September she had stated, "I can't say if we'll be working with them in the future. I don't know what the future holds between the two of us." A spokesperson for Jackson added, "[Jackson] will have autonomy over her career, without the restrictions of a label system... Always known to break new ground and set trends, Janet's departure from Island Records makes her one of the first superstar artists to have the individual freedom to promote their work through a variety of avenues such as iTunes, mobile carriers and other diverse and innovative channels".<ref name="Billboard - Janet/label split"></ref>


title: Discipline (Janet Jackson album)

text: Jackson told "Sister 2 Sister" magazine, "There were some people who didn't like the direction I took with this album. I love doing dance songs and I think my fans expect that of me. I have been getting more behind the scenes with film and television. I will probably continue to do music – and acting is still a strong passion of mine – but I really have been loving behind-the-scenes work: producing, directing and all the technical stuff". A few months before the split, a spokesperson for the label told "Billboard", "Unfortunately we haven't experienced the results we would have liked with this new album. But we respect and support Janet".


title: Historic site

text: A historic site or heritage site is an official location where pieces of political, military, cultural, or social history have been preserved due to their cultural heritage value. Historic sites are usually protected by law, and many have been recognized with the official national historic site status. A historic site may be any building, landscape, site or structure that is of local, regional, or national significance. Usually this also means the site must be at least 50 years or older.


title: Historic site

text: The U.S. National Park Service defines a historic site as the "location of a significant event, a prehistoric or historic occupation or activity, or a building or structure, whether standing, ruined, or vanished, where the location itself possesses historic, cultural, or archeological value regardless of the value of any existing structure".


title: Historic site

text: Historic sites can also mark public crimes, such as Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum in Phnom Penh, Cambodia or Robben Island, South Africa. Similar to museums focused on public crimes, museums attached to memorials of public crimes often contain a history component, as is the case at the Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum.


title: Historic site

text: Historic sites and heritage sites are often maintained for members of the public to be able to visit. Visitors may come out of a sense of nostalgia for bygone eras, out of wishing to learn about their cultural heritage, or general interest in learning about the historical context of the site. Many sites offer guided tours for visitors, conducted by site staff who have been trained to offer an interpretation of life at the time the site represents. A site may also have a visitor center with more modern architecture and facilities, which serves as a gateway between the outside world and the historic site, and allows visitors to learn some of the historical aspects of the site without excessively exposing locations that may require delicate treatment.


title: Ad Fontes Media

text: Ad Fontes Media, Inc. is a Colorado-based media watchdog organization primarily known for its Media Bias Chart, which rates media sources in terms of political bias and reliability. The organization was founded in 2018 by patent attorney Vanessa Otero with the goal of combating political polarization and media bias. Ad Fontes Media uses a panel of analysts across the political spectrum to evaluate articles for the Chart.


title: Ad Fontes Media

text: Ad Fontes Media has its origins in a blog called "All Generalizations are False" which was written by patent attorney Vanessa Otero from Denver, Colorado. Otero first published the Media Bias Chart, a graphic which helped viewers visualize media bias in the United States, on the blog. The Media Bias Chart became a viral phenomenon on the Imgur image sharing service in December 2016, and Otero founded Ad Fontes Media to serve as the publisher of the chart. One of Otero's reasons for creating the organization was that "many sources people consider to be 'news sources' are actually dominated by analysis and opinion pieces," and that "extreme sources play on people's worst instincts, like fear and tribalism, and take advantage of people's confirmation biases." In an interview with Newsy, she stated that "If people understood that the sources they are consuming are actively making them angrier and polarizing them, then they might choose to consume less of that."


title: Ad Fontes Media

text: In 2018, Ad Fontes successfully launched a crowdfunding campaign to improve the technology behind the chart, increase the number of analysts, and make the site's methodology more transparent. As of September 2020, the organization had a team of around twenty, most of whom were independent contractors, working as analysts of various news sources.


title: Ad Fontes Media

text: Otero chose the name "Ad Fontes" because it is Latin for "to the source"; her method is to go to a media source itself and rate its bias and reliability "by analyzing the source and its actual content."


title: Ad Fontes Media

text: The Media Bias Chart by Ad Fontes Media rates various media sources on two different scales: political bias (left to right) on the horizontal axis and reliability on the vertical axis. On the chart, sources are concentrated in an "inverted-U" shape as media sources with a neutral bias are generally reliable in their original fact reporting, while sources with an extreme bias on either side often contain factually inaccurate information and propaganda.


title: Ad Fontes Media

text: Ad Fontes is non-partisan. During the September 2020 media bias project, nearly 1800 individual articles and TV news shows were rated by at least three analysts with different political views (left, right and center). There were 120 analysts, each reviewed about 370 articles and about 17 TV shows. Each analyst rated approximately three articles from each of the over 100 news sources available for viewing on the Chart. As a result, there were nearly 7,000 individual ratings.


title: Ad Fontes Media

text: Otero sees the Media Bias Chart as an "anchor" that counteracts political polarization in news media, and aspires for Ad Fontes to become a ""Consumer Reports" for media ratings". She compared low-quality news sources to junk food, and described sources with extreme bias as "very toxic and damaging to the country".


title: Ad Fontes Media

text: The chart has been criticized by people on the left and the right. According to Otero, "A lot of people on the left will call us neoliberal shills, and then a bunch of people that are on the right are like, 'Oh, you guys are a bunch of leftists yourselves.'"


title: Ad Fontes Media

text: In 2018, a "Columbia Journalism Review" article questioned the thoroughness of the Media Bias Chart and similar initiatives, stating that "the five to 20 stories typically judged on these sites represent but a drop of mainstream news outlets' production".


title: Ad Fontes Media

text: In 2021, an article on the Association of College and Research Libraries' blog argued that the Media Bias Chart is detrimental to media literacy efforts because it "promotes a false equivalency between left and right, lionizes a political 'center' as being without bias, and reinforces harmful perceptions about what constitutes 'news' in our media ecosystem, and is ignored by anyone that doesn't already hold a comparable view of the media landscape."


title: Ad Fontes Media

text: News sources that were rated poorly on the Media Bias Chart have been critical of the chart. Alex Jones, the founder of right-wing conspiracy theory site "InfoWars", said Ad Fontes' chart represented the "dying dinosaur media's extreme liberal bias" after the chart classified "InfoWars" as "nonsense damaging to public discourse". "InfoWars" responded with a chart of their own, putting themselves as "independent" and representing "freedom" while labeling news sources like the Associated Press as "tyranny" and "state-run corporate/foreign influences"; "InfoWars"s chart was widely criticized by journalists on Twitter.


title: Liga II

text: The Liga 2, most often spelled as Liga II, is the second level of the Romanian football league system. The league changed its name from Divizia B just before the start of the 2006–07. It is currently sponsored by Casa Pariurilor, a betting company with the official name Liga 2 Casa Pariurilor.


title: Liga II

text: Since its inception in 1934, Liga II had between 2 and 9 parallel divisions, with clubs divided based on geographic regions.


title: Liga II

text: Generally, Seria I included eastern teams while Seria II included western sides, although clubs near the center of the country are allowed to choose in which series they will compete.


title: Liga II

text: The first six teams from each series participate in a play-off for potential promotion to Liga I. The teams placed from 7th to 12th will play a relegation play-off, where the last two teams are relegated to Liga III. The first team in each series will be promoted at the end of the season to the Liga I, and the teams in 12th place will play another match to decide the 5th team relegated to Liga III.


title: Liga II

text: Until the 2012–13 season, Liga II had 2 groups of 16 teams each. At the end of 2012–13 and 2013–14 seasons, the last five teams were relegated.


title: Daisaku Ikeda

text: Ikeda was born in Tokyo, Japan, in 1928, to a family of seaweed farmers. He survived the devastation of World War II as a teenager, which he said left an indelible mark on his life and fueled his quest to solve the fundamental causes of human conflict. At age 19, Ikeda began practicing Nichiren Buddhism and joined a youth group of the Soka Gakkai, which led to his lifelong work developing the global peace movement of SGI and founding dozens of institutions dedicated to fostering peace, culture and education. His accomplishments are honored internationally; in Japan he has been described as a "controversial figure" over several decades through the 1990s in relation to the political party Kōmeitō, which he founded, and has been the subject of libelous accusations in Japanese media.


title: Daisaku Ikeda

text: In the 1960s, Ikeda worked to reopen Japan's national relations with China and also to establish the Soka education network of schools from kindergartens through university levels, while beginning to write what would become his multi-volume historical novel, "The Human Revolution", about the Soka Gakkai's development during his mentor Josei Toda's tenure. In 1975, he established the Soka Gakkai International, and throughout the 1970s initiated a series of citizen diplomacy efforts through international educational and cultural exchanges for peace. Since the 1980s, in his annual peace proposals marking the anniversary of the SGI's founding, he has increasingly called for nuclear disarmament. Ikeda's vision for the SGI was described in 2010 by Olivier Urbain, then director of the Toda Peace Institute founded by Ikeda, as a "borderless Buddhist humanism that emphasizes free thinking and personal development based on respect for all life."


title: Daisaku Ikeda

text: By 2015, Ikeda had published more than 50 dialogues with scholars, peace activists and leading world figures. In his role as SGI president, Ikeda has visited 55 nations and spoken on subjects including peace, environmentalism, economics, women's rights, interfaith dialogue and Buddhism and science.


title: Daisaku Ikeda

text: Ikeda was born in Ōta, Tokyo, Japan, on 2 January 1928. Ikeda had four older brothers, two younger brothers, and a younger sister. His parents later adopted two more children, for a total of 10 children. Since the mid-nineteenth century, the Ikeda family had successfully farmed "nori", edible seaweed, in Tokyo Bay. By the turn of the twentieth century, the Ikeda family business was the largest producer of "nori" in Tokyo. The devastation of the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake left the family's enterprise in ruins; by the time Ikeda was born, his family was financially struggling.


title: Daisaku Ikeda

text: In 1937, the Second Sino-Japanese War erupted, and Ikeda's eldest brother, Kiichi, was drafted into military service. Within a few years, Ikeda's three other elder brothers were drafted as well. In 1942, while all of his older brothers were overseas in the South-East Asian theatre of World War II, Ikeda's father, Nenokichi, fell ill and was bedridden for two years. To help to support his family, at the age of 14, Ikeda began working in the Niigata Steelworks munitions factory as part of Japan's wartime youth labor corps.


title: Daisaku Ikeda

text: In May 1945, Ikeda's home was destroyed by fire during an Allied air raid, and his family was forced to move to the Ōmori area of Tokyo. In May 1947, after having received no word from his eldest brother, Kiichi, for several years, the Ikeda family, particularly his mother, was informed by the Japanese government that he had been killed in action in Burma (now Myanmar).


title: Daisaku Ikeda

text: In August 1947, at the age of 19, Ikeda was invited by an old friend to attend a Buddhist discussion meeting. It was there that he met Josei Toda, the second president of Japan's Soka Gakkai Buddhist organization. As a result of this encounter, Ikeda began practicing Nichiren Buddhism and joined the Soka Gakkai. He regarded Toda as his spiritual mentor and became a charter member of the group's youth division, later recounting that Toda influenced him through "the profound compassion that characterized each of his interactions."


title: Daisaku Ikeda

text: Shortly after the end of World War II, in January 1946, Ikeda gained employment with the Shobundo Printing Company in Tokyo. In March 1948, Ikeda graduated from Toyo Trade School and the following month entered the night school extension of Taisei Gakuin (present-day Tokyo Fuji University) where he majored in political science. During this time, he worked as an editor of the children's magazine "Shonen Nihon" (Boy's Life Japan), which was published by one of Josei Toda's companies. Over the next several years, between 1948 and 1953, Ikeda worked for various Toda-owned enterprises, including the Nihon Shogakkan publishing company, the Tokyo Construction Trust credit association, and the Okura Shoji trading company.


title: Daisaku Ikeda

text: In 1953, at the age of 25, Ikeda was appointed as one of the Soka Gakkai's youth leaders. The following year, he was appointed as director of the Soka Gakkai's public relations bureau, and later became its chief of staff.


title: Daisaku Ikeda

text: In April 1957, a group of young Soka Gakkai members in Osaka were arrested for allegedly distributing money, cigarettes and candies to support the political campaign of a local electoral candidate (who was also a Soka Gakkai member). Ikeda was later arrested and detained in jail for two weeks, charged with allegedly overseeing these activities. Ikeda's arrest came at a time when Soka Gakkai Buddhist candidates were achieving success at both national and local levels. With the growing influence of this liberal grassroots movement, factions of the conservative political establishment initiated a series of media attacks on the Soka Gakkai, culminating in Ikeda's arrest. After a lengthy court case that lasted until 1962, Ikeda was cleared of all charges. The Soka Gakkai characterized this as a triumph over corrupt tyranny, which galvanized its movement.


title: Daisaku Ikeda

text: In May 1960, two years after Toda's death, Ikeda, then 32 years old, succeeded him as president of the Soka Gakkai. Later that year, Ikeda began to travel overseas to build connections between Soka Gakkai members living abroad and expand the movement globally. This was, in Ikeda's words, "Toda's will for the future." While the Soka Gakkai saw its most dramatic growth in Japan after World War II under Toda's leadership, Ikeda led its international expansion into what became the largest, most diverse international lay Buddhist association in the world.