Wikileaks is an international organization, based in Sweden, which publishes anonymous submissions and leaks of otherwise unavailable documents while preserving the anonymity of sources. Its website, launched in 2006, is run by The Sunshine Press.[1] The organization has described itself as having been founded by Chinese dissidents, as well as journalists, mathematicians, and start-up company technologists from the U.S., Taiwan, Europe, Australia and South Africa.[1] Newspaper articles and The New Yorker magazine (June 7, 2010) describe Julian Assange, an Australian journalist and Internet activist, as its director.Within a year of its launch, the site claimed a database that had grown to more than 1.2 million documents.
In April 2010, video posted on a website called Collateral Murder established Wikileaks as a prime portal for unauthorized, accurate accounts, documents and video from distant battlefields.[5][6] In July of the same year, Wikileaks released Afghan War Diary, a compilation of more than 90,000 documents about the War in Afghanistan not previously available for public review.
History
Wikileaks first appeared on the Internet in January 2007.The site states that it was “founded by Chinese dissidents, journalists, mathematicians and start-up company technologists, from the US, Taiwan, Europe, Australia and South Africa”.The creators of Wikileaks have not been formally identified.[9] It has been represented in public since January 2007 by Julian Assange and others. Assange describes himself as a member of Wikileaks’ advisory board News reports in The Australian have called Assange the “founder of Wikileaks”.As of June 2009[update], the site had over 1,200 registered volunteers and listed an advisory board comprising Assange, Phillip Adams, Wang Dan, C. J. Hinke, Ben Laurie, Tashi Namgyal Khamsitsang, Xiao Qiang, Chico Whitaker and Wang Youcai.Despite appearing on the list, when contacted by Mother Jones magazine in 2010, Khamsitsang said that while he received an e-mail from Wikileaks, he had never agreed to be an advisor.
Wikileaks states that its “primary interest is in exposing oppressive regimes in Asia, the former Soviet bloc, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, but we also expect to be of assistance to people of all regions who wish to reveal unethical behavior in their governments and corporations.”
In January 2007, the website stated that it had over 1.2 million leaked documents that it was preparing to publish.[15] An article in The New Yorker said
One of the WikiLeaks activists owned a server that was being used as a node for the Tor network. Millions of secret transmissions passed through it. The activist noticed that hackers from China were using the network to gather foreign governments’ information, and began to record this traffic. Only a small fraction has ever been posted on WikiLeaks, but the initial tranche served as the site’s foundation, and Assange was able to say, “[w]e have received over one million documents from thirteen countries.”
Assange responded to the suggestion that eavesdropping on Chinese hackers played a crucial part in the early days of Wikileaks by saying “the imputation is incorrect. The facts concern a 2006 investigation into Chinese espionage one of our contacts were involved in. Somewhere between none and handful of those documents were ever released on WikiLeaks. Non-government targets of the Chinese espionage, such as Tibetan associations were informed (by us)”.The group has subsequently released a number of other significant documents which have become front-page news items, ranging from documentation of equipment expenditures and holdings in the Afghanistan war to corruption in Kenya.
Their stated goal is to ensure that whistle-blowers and journalists are not jailed for emailing sensitive or classified documents, as happened to Chinese journalist Shi Tao, who was sentenced to 10 years in 2005 after publicising an email from Chinese officials about the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.
The project has drawn comparisons to Daniel Ellsberg’s leaking of the Pentagon Papers in 1971.[20] In the United States, the leaking of some documents may be legally protected. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the Constitution guarantees anonymity, at least in the area of political discourse.Author and journalist Whitley Strieber has spoken about the benefits of the Wikileaks project, noting that “Leaking a government document can mean jail, but jail sentences for this can be fairly short. However, there are many places where it means long incarceration or even death, such as China and parts of Africa and the Middle East.”
The site has won a number of awards, including the 2008 Economist magazine New Media Award,[22] and in June 2009, Wikileaks and Julian Assange won Amnesty International UK’s Media Award 2009 (in the category “New Media”) for the 2008 publication of “Kenya: The Cry of Blood – Extra Judicial Killings and Disappearances”,[23] a report by the Kenyan National Commission on Human Rights about police killings in Kenya. In May 2010 it was rated number 1 of “websites that could totally change the news”.
Funding
On 24 December 2009, Wikileaks announced that it was experiencing a shortage of funds mand suspended all access to its website except for a form to submit new material. Material that was previously published was no longer available, although some could still be accessed on unofficial mirrors.Wikileaks stated on its website that it would resume full operation once the operational costs were covered.Wikileaks saw this as a kind of strike “to ensure that everyone who is involved stops normal work and actually spends time raising revenue”. While it was initially hoped that funds could be secured by 6 January 2010, it was only on 3 February 2010 that Wikileaks announced that its minimum fundraising goal had been achieved.
On 22 January 2010, PayPal suspended Wikileaks’ donation account and froze its assets. Wikileaks said that this had happened before, and was done for “no obvious reason”.The account was restored on 25 January 2010.
On May 18, 2010, Wikileaks announced that its website and archive were back up.
As of June 2010, Wikileaks was a finalist for a grant of more than half a million dollars from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation,but did not make the cut.Wikileaks commented, “Wikileaks was highest rated project in the Knight challenge, strongly recommended to the board but gets no funding. Go figure”. Wikileaks said that the Knight foundation announced the award to “‘12 Grantees who will impact future of news’ – but not WikiLeaks” and questioned whether Knight foundation was “really looking for impact”.A spokesman of the Knight Foundation disputed parts of Wikileaks’ statement, saying “WikiLeaks was not recommended by Knight staff to the board.”
However, he declined to say whether Wikileaks was the project rated highest by the Knight advisory panel, which consists of non-staffers, among them journalist Jennifer 8. Lee, who has done PR work for Wikileaks with the press and on social networking sites.
On July 17, Jacob Appelbaum spoke on behalf of Wikileaks at the 2010 Hackers on Planet Earth conference in New York City, replacing Assange due to the presence of federal agents at the conference.He announced that the Wikileaks submission system was again up and running, after it had been temporarily suspended.Assange was a surprise speaker at a TED conference on 19 July 2010 in Oxford, and confirmed that Wikileaks was now accepting submissions again.
Administration
According to a January 2010 interview, the Wikileaks team then consisted of five people working full-time and about 800 people who worked occasionally, none of whom were compensated.[30] Wikileaks has no official headquarters. The expenses per year are about €200,000, mainly for servers and bureaucracy, but would reach €600,000 if work currently done by volunteers were paid for. Wikileaks does not pay for lawyers, as hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal support have been donated by media organisations such as the Associated Press, The Los Angeles Times, and the National Newspaper Publishers Association.Its only revenue stream is donations, but Wikileaks is planning to add an auction model to sell early access to documents.According to the Wau Holland Foundation, Wikileaks receives no money for personnel costs, only for hardware, travelling and bandwidth.An article in TechEYE.net wrote
As a charity accountable under German law, donations for Wikileaks can be made to the foundation. Funds are held in escrow and are given to Wikileaks after the whistleblower website files an application containing a statement with proof of payment. The foundation does not pay any sort of salary nor give any renumeration [sic] to Wikileaks’ personnel, corroborating the statement of the site’s German representative Daniel Schmitt on national television that all personnel works voluntarily, even its speakers.
Hosting
Wikileaks describes itself as “an uncensorable system for untraceable mass document leaking”. Wikileaks is hosted by PRQ, a Sweden-based company providing “highly secure, no-questions-asked hosting services.” PRQ is said to have “almost no information about its clientele and maintains few if any of its own logs.” PRQ is owned by Gottfrid Svartholm and Fredrik Neij who, through their involvement in The Pirate Bay, have significant experience in withstanding legal challenges from authorities. Being hosted by PRQ makes it difficult to take Wikileaks offline. Furthermore, “Wikileaks maintains its own servers at undisclosed locations, keeps no logs and uses military-grade encryption to protect sources and other confidential information.” Such arrangements have been called “bulletproof hosting.”
Technology
The “about” page originally read: “To the user, Wikileaks will look very much like Wikipedia. Anybody can post to it, anybody can edit it. No technical knowledge is required. Leakers can post documents anonymously and untraceably. Users can publicly discuss documents and analyze their credibility and veracity. Users can discuss interpretations and context and collaboratively formulate collective publications. Users can read and write explanatory articles on leaks along with background material and context. The political relevance of documents and their verisimilitude will be revealed by a cast of thousands.”
However, Wikileaks established an editorial policy that accepted only documents that were “of political, diplomatic, historical or ethical interest”. This coincided with early criticism that having no editorial policy would drive out good material with spam and promote “automated or indiscriminate publication of confidential records.”It is no longer possible for anybody to post to it or edit it, as the original FAQ promised. Instead, submissions are regulated by an internal review process and some are published, while documents not fitting the editorial criteria are rejected by anonymous Wikileaks reviewers. By 2008, the revised FAQ stated that “Anybody can post comments to it. [...] Users can publicly discuss documents and analyze their credibility and veracity.”After the 2010 relaunch, posting new comments to leaks was not possible any more.
Wikileaks is based on several software packages, including MediaWiki, Freenet, Tor, and PGP.Wikileaks strongly encouraged postings via Tor due to the strong privacy needs of its users.
Police raid on German Wikileaks domain holder’s home
The home of Theodor Reppe, registrant of the German Wikileaks domain name, Wikileaks.de, was raided on 24 March 2009 after Wikileaks released the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) censorship blacklist.The site was not affected.
Chinese censorship
The Chinese government currently attempts to censor every web site with “wikileaks” in the URL, including the primary .org site and the regional variations .cn and .uk. However, the site is still accessible from behind the Chinese firewall through one of the many alternative names used by the project, such as “secure.sunshinepress.org”. The alternate sites change frequently, and Wikileaks encourages users to search “wikileaks cover names” outside mainland China for the latest alternative names. Mainland search engines, including Baidu and Yahoo, also censor references to “wikileaks”.
Potential future Australian censorship
Wikinews has related news: Portions of Wikileaks, Wikipedia blocked in Australia
On 16 March 2009, the Australian Communications and Media Authority added Wikileaks to their proposed blacklist of sites that will be blocked for all Australians if the mandatory internet filtering censorship scheme is implemented as planned.
Harassment and surveillance
According to The Times, Wikileaks and its members have complained about continuing harassment and surveillance by law enforcement and intelligence organizations, including extended detention, seizure of computers, veiled threats, “covert following and hidden photography.”
After the release of the 2007 airstrikes video and as they prepared to release film of the Granai massacre, Julian Assange has said that his group of volunteers came under intense surveillance. In an interview and Twitter posts he said that a restaurant in Reykjavik where his group of volunteers met came under surveillance in March; there was “covert following and hidden photography” by police and foreign intelligence services; that an apparent British intelligence agent made thinly veiled threats in a Luxembourg car park; and that one of the volunteers was detained by police for 21 hours. Another volunteer posted that computers were seized, saying “If anything happens to us, you know why … and you know who is responsible.”According to the Columbia Journalism Review, “the Icelandic press took a look at Assange’s charges of being surveilled in Iceland [...] and, at best, have found nothing to substantiate them.”
Wikileaks has claimed that Facebook deleted their fan page, which had 30,000 fans.
Verification of submissions
Wikinews has news on these topics:
* Huge interest takes Wikileaks offline
* Church of Scientology’s ‘Operating Thetan’ documents leaked online
* Wikileaks spokesperson discusses recent court case with Wikinews
* Representative for ACLU tells Wikinews their opinion on lifting of Wikileaks court injunction
* Wikileaks.org restored as injunction is lifted
* Wikileaks claims ‘abuse of process’ in court case that resulted in wikileaks.org being take offline
* Rights groups: Forcing Wikileaks.org offline raises ’serious First Amendment concerns’
* ‘Wikileaks.org’ taken offline in many areas after fire, court injunction
Wikileaks states that it has never released a misattributed document. Documents are assessed before release. In response to concerns about the possibility of misleading or fraudulent leaks, Wikileaks has stated that misleading leaks “are already well-placed in the mainstream media.is of no additional assistance.”The FAQ states that: “The simplest and most effective countermeasure is a worldwide community of informed users and editors who can scrutinize and discuss leaked documents.”
According to statements by Assange in 2010, submitted documents are vetted by a group of five reviewers, with expertise in different fields such as language or programming, who also investigate the background of the leaker if his or her identity is known.In that group, Assange has the final decision about the assessment of a document.
Icelandic Modern Media Initiative
In August 2009 Kaupthing, a large bank, succeeded in obtaining a court order gagging Iceland’s national broadcaster, RUV, from broadcasting a risk analysis report showing the bank’s substantial exposure to debt default risk. This information had been leaked by a whistleblower to Wikileaks and remained available on the Wikileaks site. Citizens of Iceland felt outraged that RUV was prevented from broadcasting news of relevance.Therefore, Wikileaks has been credited with inspiring the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative, a bill meant to reclaim Iceland’s 2007 Reporters Sans Frontieres ranking as first in the world for free speech. It aims to enact a range of protections for sources, journalists, and publishers.Birgitta Jónsdóttir, a member of both Wikileaks and the Icelandic parliament, helped with passage of the bill.
Notable leaks
Pre-2009
Apparent Somali assassination order
Wikileaks posted its first document in December 2006, a decision to assassinate government officials signed by Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys.The New Yorker has reported that. Assange and the others were uncertain of its authenticity, but they thought that readers, using Wikipedia-like features of the site, would help analyze it. They published the decision with a lengthy commentary, which asked, “Is it a bold manifesto by a flamboyant Islamic militant with links to Bin Laden? Or is it a clever smear by US intelligence, designed to discredit the Union, fracture Somali alliances and manipulate China?” … The document’s authenticity was never determined, and news about WikiLeaks quickly superseded the leak itself.
The document was covertly acquired by tapping into the Tor network, which was being used by other hackers in China to gather information on foreign governments.
Daniel arap Moi family corruption
On 31 August 2007, The Guardian (Britain) featured on its front page a story about corruption by the family of the former Kenyan leader Daniel arap Moi. The newspaper stated that the source of the information was Wikileaks.
Bank Julius Baer lawsuit
Main article: Bank Julius Baer vs. Wikileaks lawsuit
In February 2008, the Wikileaks.org domain name was taken offline after the Swiss Bank Julius Baer sued Wikileaks and the wikileaks.org domain registrar, Dynadot, in a court in California, United States, and obtained a permanent injunction ordering the shutdown.Wikileaks had hosted allegations of illegal activities at the bank’s Cayman Island branch.Wikileaks’ U.S. Registrar, Dynadot, complied with the order by removing its DNS entries. However, the website remained accessible via its numeric IP address, and online activists immediately mirrored Wikileaks at dozens of alternate websites worldwide.
The American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a motion protesting the censorship of Wikileaks. The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press assembled a coalition of media and press that filed an amicus curiae brief on Wikileaks’ behalf. The coalition included major U.S. newspaper publishers and press organisations, such as: the American Society of Newspaper Editors, The Associated Press, the Citizen Media Law Project, The E.W. Scripps Company, the Gannett Company, The Hearst Corporation, the Los Angeles Times, the National Newspaper Publishers Association, the Newspaper Association of America, The Radio-Television News Directors Association, and The Society of Professional Journalists. The coalition requested to be heard as a friend of the court to call attention to relevant points of law that it believed the court had overlooked (on the grounds that Wikileaks had not appeared in court to defend itself, and that no First Amendment issues had yet been raised before the court). Amongst other things, the coalition argued that:
“Wikileaks provides a forum for dissidents and whistleblowers across the globe to post documents, but the Dynadot injunction imposes a prior restraint that drastically curtails access to Wikileaks from the Internet based on a limited number of postings challenged by Plaintiffs. The Dynadot injunction therefore violates the bedrock principle that an injunction cannot enjoin all communication by a publisher or other speaker.”
The same judge, Judge Jeffrey White, who issued the injunction vacated it on 29 February 2008, citing First Amendment concerns and questions about legal jurisdiction.Wikileaks was thus able to bring its site online again. The bank dropped the case on 5 March 2008.The judge also denied the bank’s request for an order prohibiting the website’s publication.
The Executive Director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, Lucy Dalglish, commented:
“It’s not very often a federal judge does a 180 degree turn in a case and dissolves an order. But we’re very pleased the judge recognized the constitutional implications in this prior restraint.”
Guantánamo Bay procedures
A copy of Standard Operating Procedures for Camp Delta–the protocol of the U.S. Army at the Guantánamo Bay detention camp–dated March 2003 was released on the Wikileaks website on 7 November 2007.The document, named “gitmo-sop.pdf”, is also mirrored at The Guardian. Its release revealed some of the restrictions placed over detainees at the camp, including the designation of some prisoners as off-limits to the International Committee of the Red Cross, something that the U.S. military had in the past repeatedly denied.
On 3 December 2007, Wikileaks released a copy of the 2004 edition of the manual, together with a detailed analysis of the changes.
Scientology
On 7 April 2008, Wikileaks reported receiving a letter (dated 27 March) from the Religious Technology Centre claiming ownership of several recently leaked documents pertaining to OT Levels within the Church of Scientology. These same documents were at the centre of a 1994 scandal. The email stated:
“ The Advanced Technology materials are unpublished, copyrighted works. Please be advised that your customer’s action in this regard violates United States copyright law. Accordingly, we ask for your help in removing these works immediately from your service.
Moxon and Kobrin
”
The letter continued on to request the release of the logs of the uploader, which would remove their anonymity. Wikileaks responded with a statement released on Wikinews stating: “in response to the attempted suppression, Wikileaks will release several thousand additional pages of Scientology material next week”,and did so.
In September 2008, during the 2008 United States presidential election campaigns, the contents of a Yahoo account belonging to Sarah Palin (the running mate of Republican presidential nominee John McCain) were posted on Wikileaks after being hacked into by members of Anonymous.[86] The contents of the mailbox seemed to suggest that she used the private Yahoo account to send work-related messages in order to evade public record laws.[87] The hacking of the account was widely reported in mainstream news outlets.[88][89][90] Although Wikileaks was able to conceal the hacker’s identity, the source of the Palin emails was eventually publicly identified in another way as being David Kernell, a 20-year-old economics student at the University of Tennessee and the son of Democratic Tennessee State Representative Mike Kernell from Memphis.Kernell attempted to conceal his identity by using the anonymous proxy service ctunnel.com, but, because of the illegal nature of the access, ctunnel website administrator Gabriel Ramuglia assisted the FBI in tracking down the source of the hack.
BNP membership list
After briefly appearing on a blog, the membership list of the far-right British National Party was posted to Wikileaks on 18 November 2008. The name, address, age and occupation of many of the 13,500 members were given, including several police officers, two solicitors, four ministers of religion, at least one doctor, and a number of primary and secondary school teachers. In Britain, police officers are banned from joining or promoting the BNP, and at least one officer was dismissed for being a member.The BNP was known for going to considerable lengths to conceal the identities of members. On 19 November, BNP leader Nick Griffin stated that he knew the identity of the person who initially leaked the list on 17 November, describing him as a “hardliner” senior employee who left the party in 2007.On 20 October 2009, a list of BNP members from April 2009 was leaked. This list contained 11,811 members.
2009
In January 2009, over 600 internal United Nations reports (60 of them marked “strictly confidential”) were leaked.
On 7 February 2009, Wikileaks released 6,780 Congressional Research Service reports.
In March 2009, Wikileaks published a list of contributors to the Norm Coleman senatorial campaign[101] and a set of documents belonging to Barclays Bank that had been ordered removed from the website of The Guardian.
Climatic Research Unit emails
Main article: Climatic Research Unit email controversy
In November 2009, controversial documents, including e-mail correspondence between climate scientists, were leaked from the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia to various sites; one prominent host of the full 120MB archive was Wikileaks.
Internet censorship lists
Wikileaks has published the lists of forbidden or illegal web addresses for several countries.
On 19 March 2009, Wikileaks published what was alleged to be the Australian Communications and Media Authority’s blacklist of sites to be banned under Australia’s proposed laws on Internet censorship.[106] Reactions to the publication of the list by the Australian media and politicians were varied. Particular note was made by journalistic outlets of the type of websites on the list; while the Internet censorship scheme submitted by the Australian Labor Party in 2008 was proposed with the stated intention of preventing access to child pornography and sites related to terrorism,the list leaked on Wikileaks contains a number of sites unrelated to sex crimes involving minors.When questioned about the leak, Stephen Conroy, the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy in Australia’s Rudd Labor Government, responded by claiming that the list was not the actual list, yet threatening to prosecute anyone involved in distributing it. On 20 March 2009, Wikileaks published an updated list, dated 18 March 2009; it more closely matches the claimed size of the ACMA blacklist, and contains two pages which have been independently confirmed to be blacklisted by ACMA.
Wikileaks also contains details of Internet censorship in Thailand, including lists of censored sites dating back to May 2006.
A civil case against the West Australian Police for human rights violation is currently before the Supreme Court. The plaintiff is a whistleblower (a victim of Active-Profiling who was drugged by The West Australian Police Force) who attempted to leak the details to Wikileaks. Prior to this, the plaintiff could access the secure site, but when he returned a couple days later with the leaked report, access to the secure site was blocked. Access was also denied from the local library. The plaintiff lives in Bunbury, West Australia area code 6233.
Bilderberg Group meeting reports
Since May 2009, Wikileaks has made available reports of several meetings of the Bilderberg Group.It includes the group’s history and meeting reports from the years 1955, 1956, 1957, 1958, 1960, 1962, 1963 and 1980.
2008 Peru oil scandal
On 28 January 2009, Wikileaks released 86 telephone intercept recordings of Peruvian politicians and businessmen involved in the “Petrogate” oil scandal. The release of the tapes led the front pages of five Peruvian newspapers.
Toxic dumping in Africa: The Minton report
In September 2006, commodities giant Trafigura commissioned an internal report about a toxic dumping incident in the Ivory Coast, which (according to the United Nations) affected 108,000 people. The document, called the Minton Report, names various harmful chemicals “likely to be present” in the waste — sodium hydroxide, cobalt phthalocyanine sulfonate, coker naphtha, thiols, sodium alkanethiolate, sodium hydrosulfide, sodium sulfide, dialkyl disulfides, hydrogen sulfide — and notes that some of them “may cause harm at some distance”. The report states that potential health effects include “burns to the skin, eyes and lungs, vomiting, diarrhea, loss of consciousness and death”, and suggests that the high number of reported casualties is “consistent with there having been a significant release of hydrogen sulphide gas”.
On September 11, 2009, Trafigura’s lawyers, Carter-Ruck, obtained a secret “super-injunction”against The Guardian, banning that newspaper from publishing the contents of the document. Trafigura also threatened a number of other media organizations with legal action if they published the report’s contents, including the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation and The Chemical Engineer magazine.On 14 September 2009, Wikileaks posted the report.
On 12 October, Carter-Ruck warned The Guardian against mentioning the content of a parliamentary question that was due to be asked about the report. Instead, the paper published an article stating that they were unable to report on an unspecified question and claiming that the situation appeared to “call into question privileges guaranteeing free speech established under the 1689 Bill of Rights”. The suppressed details rapidly circulated via the internet and Twitter and, amid uproar, Carter-Ruck agreed the next day to the modification of the injunction before it was challenged in court, permitting The Guardian to reveal the existence of the question and the injunction.The injunction was lifted on 16 October.
Kaupthing Bank
Wikileaks has made available an internal document[125] from Kaupthing Bank from just prior to the collapse of Iceland’s banking sector, which led to the 2008–2009 Icelandic financial crisis. The document shows that suspiciously large sums of money were loaned to various owners of the bank, and large debts written off. Kaupthing’s lawyers have threatened Wikileaks with legal action, citing banking privacy laws. The leak has caused an uproar in Iceland.Criminal charges relating to the multibillion euro loans to Exista and other major shareholders are being investigated. The bank is seeking to recover loans taken out by former bank employees before its collapse.
9/11 pager messages
On 25 November 2009, Wikileaks released 570,000 intercepts of pager messages from the day of the September 11 attacks.[128] Among the released messages are communications between Pentagon officials and New York City Police Department.Bradley Manning (see below) commented that those were obvious NSA intercepts.
2010
U.S. Intelligence report on Wikileaks
On 15 March 2010, Wikileaks released a secret 32-page U.S. Department of Defense Counterintelligence Analysis Report from March 2008. The document described some prominent reports leaked on the website which related to U.S. security interests and described potential methods of marginalizing the organization. Wikileaks editor Julian Assange said that some details in the Army report were inaccurate and its recommendations flawed, and also that the concerns of the US Army raised by the report were hypothetical.The report discussed deterring potential whistleblowers via termination of employment and criminal prosecution of any existing or former insiders, leakers or whistleblowers. Reasons for the attack include notable leaks such as U.S. equipment expenditure, human rights violations in Guantanamo Bay and the battle over the Iraqi town of Fallujah.
Baghdad airstrike video
On 5 April 2010, Wikileaks released classified U.S. military footage from a series of attacks on 12 July 2007 in Baghdad by a U.S. helicopter that killed 12, including two Reuters news staff, Saeed Chmagh and Namir Noor-Eldeen, on a website called “Collateral Murder”. The footage consisted of a 39-minute unedited version and an 18-minute version which had been edited and annotated. Analysis of the video indicates that one man was thought to have been carrying an AK-47 assault rifle and another an RPG (rocket propelled grenade), though “none were assuming a hostile posture.”
The military conducted an “informal” investigation into the incident, but has yet to release the investigative materials (such as the sworn statements of the soldiers involved or the battle damage assessment) that were used, causing the report to be criticized as “sloppy.”
In the week following the release, “Wikileaks” was the search term with the most significant growth worldwide in the last seven days as measured by Google Insights.
Arrest of Bradley Manning
A 22-year-old US Army intelligence analyst, PFC (formerly SPC) Bradley Manning has been arrested after alleged chat logs were turned in to the authorities by former hacker Adrian Lamo, in whom he had confided. Manning reportedly told Lamo he had leaked the “Collateral Murder” video, in addition to a video of the Granai airstrike and around 260,000 diplomatic cables, to Wikileaks.Wikileaks said “allegations in Wired that we have been sent 260,000 classified US embassy cables are, as far as we can tell, incorrect.”[136] Wikileaks have said that they are unable as yet to confirm whether or not Manning was actually the source of the video, stating “we never collect personal information on our sources”, but that they have nonetheless “taken steps to arrange for his protection and legal defence.”On June 21, Julian Assange told The Guardian that WikiLeaks had hired three US criminal lawyers to defend Manning but that they had not been given access to him.
Manning reportedly wrote, “Everywhere there’s a U.S. post, there’s a diplomatic scandal that will be revealed.”According to the Washington Post, he also described the cables as, “explaining how the first world exploits the third, in detail, from an internal perspective.”
Afghanistan War Logs
In July 2010, Wikileaks released to The Guardian, The New York Times, and Der Spiegel over 92,000 documents related to the war in Afghanistan between 2004 and the end of 2009. The logs detail individual incidents including friendly fire and civilian casualties.The scale of leak was described by Julian Assange as comparable to that of the Pentagon Papers in the 1970s. On July 25, 2010, the logs were released to the public.
Upcoming
Wikileaks have said they have video footage of a massacre of civilians in Afghanistan by the US military, perhaps the Granai massacre, which they are preparing to release shortly.
In an interview with Chris Anderson on July 19, Assange said that Wikileaks were “getting an enormous quantity of whistle-blower disclosures of high caliber” including much material relating to the 2010 BP oil spill, but that they have not been able to verify and release the material because they do not have enough volunteer journalists.
Criticism
The Australia Defence Association (ADA) stated that Wikileaks’ Julian Assange “could have committed a serious criminal offence in helping an enemy of the Australian Defence Force (ADF).”Neil James the executive director of ADA states: “Put bluntly, Wikileaks is not authorised in international or Australian law, nor equipped morally or operationally, to judge whether open publication of such material risks the safety, security, morale and legitimate objectives of Australian and allied troops fighting in a UN-endorsed military operation.”
Wikileaks’ recent leaking of classified US intelligence has been described by commentator of The Wall Street Journal as having “endangered the lives” of Afghan informants” and “the dozens of Afghan civilians named in the document dump as U.S. military informants. Their lives, as well as those of their entire families, are now at terrible risk of Taliban reprisal.”[147] When interviewed, Assange stated that Wikileaks has withheld some 15,000 documents that identify informants to avoid putting their lives at risk. Greg Gutfeld of Fox News described the leaking as “WikiLeaks’ Crusade Against the U.S. Military.”
A bit of bad luck has befallen Ekpe Udoh, the 6-foot-10 fuel forward out of Baylor, who was drafted 6th overall in the 2010 NBA Draft by the Golden State Warriors.
Udoh injured his wrist while working out amidst teammate Stephen Curry and Summer League teammate, Joe Ingles.
At the time, the extent of the injury was not clear, but now according to a sum of reports, Udoh just now underwent surgery to repair a torn wrist ligament suffered in the workout and will miss six months.
According to Marcus Thompson II of the Contra Costa Times, “His wrist will be immobilized for 10 weeks, followed by rehabilitation.”
Ouch.
For the 23-year-old forward, who recently signed his rookie contract with the team, Udoh’s injury will not have come at a worse time, not clearly for the rookie, which goes without saying, but also for the team.
With fellow gas forward, Brandan Wright and center, Andris Biedrins, rehabilitating their own injuries, it was thought such a Udoh could provide enduring front court minutes for the Warriors.
Now Golden State will have to wait until at least January for its 2010 primarily round pick to bring in his debut.
The FIFA World Cup (also referred to as the Football World Cup, the Soccer World Cup, or simply the World Cup) is an worldwide association football competition contested by the senior men’s national teams of the realtors of Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), the sport’s global governing body. The championship has been awarded every four years since the earliest tournament in 1930, except in 1942 and 1946 when it was not held because of the Second World War.
The current format of the tournament involves 32 teams contending for the title at venues within the duration of the host nation(s) over a cycle of about a month – this stage is often dubbed the World Cup Finals. A qualification phase, which currently takes place over the preceding 3 years, is used to determine that teams qualify for the tournament together with the host nation(s).
The 18 tournaments that experience been concluded have been won by seven weird national teams. Brazil have won the World Cup a record five times, and properties are the only team to have played in every tournament. Italy have won four titles, and Germany are coming up surrounded by three titles. The other former champions are Uruguay, winners of the inaugural tournament, and Argentina, surrounded by two titles each. England and France have won a single title each, both at home, while Spain or the Netherlands will win the first World Cup in South Africa, that will in addition be the first win for a European team in a finals tournament held outside of Europe.
The World Cup is the world’s most widely viewed sporting event; an estimated 715.1 million people watched the final match of the 2006 World Cup held in Germany.[1] The latest World Cup is being held in South Africa from 11 June to 11 July 2010, and the 2014 World Cup should be held in Brazil.
Previous international competitions
The world’s first international football equate was a challenge match played in Glasgow in 1872 between Scotland and England,with the first international tournament, the inaugural edition of the British Home Championship, taking place in 1884.At this stage the sport was rarely played outside the United Kingdom. As football grew in popularity in other parts of the world at the turn of the century, it was held as a demonstration sport with no medals awarded at the 1900 and 1904 Summer Olympics (however, the IOC has retroactively upgraded their status to official events), and at the 1906 Intercalated Games.
After FIFA was founded in 1904, it tried to arrange an international football tournament between nations outside the Olympic framework in Switzerland in 1906. These were very early days for international football, and the official history of FIFA describes the competition as having been a failure.
At the 1908 Summer Olympics in London, football became an official competition. Planned by The Football Association (FA), England’s football governing body, the event was for amateur players only and was regarded suspiciously as a show rather than a competition. Great Britain (represented by the England national amateur football team) won the gold medals. They repeated the feat in 1912 in Stockholm, where the tournament was organised by the Swedish Football Association.
With the Olympic event continuous to be contested only between amateur teams, Sir Thomas Lipton organised the Sir Thomas Lipton Trophy tournament in Turin in 1909. The Lipton tournament was a championship between precise clubs (not national teams) from different nations, each one of that represented an entire nation. The competition is sometimes described as The First World Cup,and featured the a multitude of prestigious professional club sides from Italy, Germany and Switzerland, but the FA of England refused to be associated with the competition and declined the end up with to send a professional team. Lipton invited West Auckland, an amateur portion from County Durham, to speak for England instead. West Auckland won the tournament and returned in 1911 to successfully defend their title. They were considering the trophy to stay forever, as per the rules of the competition.
In 1914, FIFA agreed to recognise the Olympic tournament as a “world football championship for amateurs”, and took responsibility for managing the event.This paved the way for the world’s first foreign football competition, at the 1920 Summer Olympics, disproved by Egypt and thirteen European teams, and won by Belgium.Uruguay won the approaching two Olympic football tournaments in 1924 and 1928.
Estadio Centenario, the location of the first World Cup final in 1930 in Montevideo, Uruguay
Due to the deed of the Olympic football tournaments, FIFA, through President Jules Rimet the driving force, again began looking at staging its own international tournament outside of the Olympics. On 28 May 1928, the FIFA Congress in Amsterdam reached the conclusion to stage a world championship organised by FIFA. With Uruguay now two-time official football world champions (as 1924 was the start of FIFA’s proficient era) and to celebrate their centenary of independence in 1930, FIFA named Uruguay as the host earth of the inaugural World Cup tournament.
The national associations of selected nations were invited to send a team, but the choice of Uruguay as a venue for the competition meant a long and pricey trip across the Atlantic Ocean for European sides. Indeed, no European country pledged to send a team until two months before the start of the competition. Rimet eventually persuaded teams based on what i read in Belgium, France, Romania, and Yugoslavia to cause the trip. In total thirteen nations took part: seven from South America, four from Europe and two from what i read in North America.
The first two World Cup matches took place simultaneously on 13 July 1930, and were won by France and USA, who defeated Mexico 4–1 and Belgium 3–0 respectively. The first task in World Cup history was scored by Lucien Laurent of France.[10] In the final, Uruguay defeated Argentina 4–2 in front of a crowd of 93,000 people in Montevideo, and in working at so became the first world to win the World Cup.
World Cups before World War II
After the creation of the World Cup, the 1932 Summer Olympics, held in Los Angeles, did not rules to include football as part of the schedule due to the low popularity of the sport in the United States, as American football had been growing in popularity. FIFA and the IOC also disagreed over the status of amateur players, and so football was moderated out of the Games.Olympic football returned at the 1936 Summer Olympics, but was now overshadowed by the more prestigious World Cup.
The issues facing the early World Cup tournaments got the issues of intercontinental travel, and war. Few South American teams got prepared to travel to Europe for the 1934 and 1938 tournaments, with Brazil the only South American collection to compete in both. The 1942 and 1946 competitions were cancelled due to World War II and its aftermath.
World Cups after World War II
The 1950 World Cup, held in Brazil, was the first to include British participants. British teams withdrew based on data from FIFA in 1920, partly out of unwillingness to play against the countries they had been at war with, and partly as a protest against foreign influence on football,[13] but rejoined in 1946 following FIFA’s invitation.[14] The tournament too saw the return of 1930 champions Uruguay, who had boycotted the earliest two World Cups. Uruguay won the tournament once again in the wake of defeating the host nation Brazil in one of the most famous matches in World Cup history, which was later called the “Maracanazo” (Portuguese: Maracanaço).
Map of countries’ best results
In the tournaments between 1934 and 1978, 16 teams competed in every tournament, except in 1938, when Austria was absorbed into Germany after qualifying, quitting the tournament with 15 teams, and in 1950, when India, Scotland and Turkey withdrew, quitting the tournament with 13 teams.[15] Most of the participating nations were based on what i read in Europe and South America, in on a minute minority from North America, Africa, Asia and Oceania. These teams were usually defeated easily by the European and South American teams. Until 1982, the only teams from outside Europe and South America to advance out of the first round were: USA, semi-finalists in 1930; Cuba, quarter-finalists in 1938; Korea DPR, quarter-finalists in 1966; and Mexico, quarter-finalists in 1970.
Expansion to 32 teams
The tournament was expanded to 24 teams in 1982,[16] and then to 32 in 1998,allowing more teams of Africa, Asia and North America to take part. In recent years, teams out of these regions own enjoyed more success, and folks who have obtained the quarter-finals include: Mexico, quarter-finalists in 1986; Cameroon, quarter-finalists in 1990; Korea Republic, finishing in fourth place in 2002; Senegal, along with USA, both quarter-finalists in 2002; and Ghana as quarter-finalists in 2010. Nevertheless, European and South American teams continue to dominate, e.g., the quarter-finalists in 1998 and 2006 were all for Europe or South America.
Two hundred teams entered the 2002 FIFA World Cup qualification rounds; 198 nations attempted to qualify for the 2006 FIFA World Cup, additonally a record 204 countries entered qualification for the 2010 FIFA World Cup.
Other FIFA tournaments
An equivalent tournament for women’s football, the FIFA Women’s World Cup, was first held in 1991 in the People’s Republic of China.[19] The women’s tournament is smaller in scale and profile than the men’s, but is growing; the number of entrants for the 2007 tournament was 120, more than double that of 1991.
Football has continued included in every Summer Olympic Games except 1896 and 1932. Unlike many other sports, the men’s football tournament at the Olympics is not a top-level tournament, and since 1992, an under-23 tournament with each team allowed three over-age players.Women’s football made its Olympic debut in 1996, and is proven false between full national sides with no age restrictions.
The FIFA Confederations Cup is a tournament held one year before the World Cup at the World Cup host nation(s) as a dress-rehearsal for the upcoming World Cup. It is contested by the winners of every of the six FIFA confederation championships, along with the FIFA World Cup champion and the host country.
FIFA also organises global tournaments for youth football (FIFA U-20 World Cup, FIFA U-17 World Cup, FIFA U-20 Women’s World Cup, FIFA U-17 Women’s World Cup), club football (FIFA Club World Cup), and football variants such as futsal (FIFA Futsal World Cup) and beach soccer (FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup)..
Trophy
From 1930 to 1970, the Jules Rimet Trophy was awarded to the World Cup winner. It was originally simply known as the World Cup or Coupe du Monde, but in 1946 it was renamed after the FIFA president Jules Rimet who set up the earliest tournament. In 1970, Brazil’s third victory in the tournament privy them to keep the trophy permanently. However, the trophy was stolen in 1983, and has never been recovered, apparently melted down by the thieves.
After 1970, a new trophy, known as the FIFA World Cup Trophy, was designed. The professionals of FIFA, next from seven multitude of countries, evaluated the 53 presented models, at length opting for the work of the Italian designer Silvio Gazzaniga. The new trophy is 36 cm (14.2 in) high, made of solid 18 carat (75%) gold and weighs 6.175 kg (13.6 lb). The base contains two layers of semi-precious malachite while the foot side of the trophy bears the engraved year and name of each FIFA World Cup winner since 1974. The description of the trophy by Gazzaniga was: “The lines spring out from the base, rising in spirals, stretching out to receive the world. From the remarkable dynamic tensions of the compact person of the sculpture inflate the figures of two athletes at the stirring second of victory.
This new trophy is not awarded to the thriving nation permanently. World Cup winners retain the trophy until the coming up tournament and are awarded a gold-plated replica rather as opposed to the solid gold original.
At the present, all workforces (players and coaches) of the top three teams receive winners’ (gold), runner-ups’ (silver), and third-place medals (bronze). Prior to the 1978 tournament, medals were merely awarded to the eleven players on the pitch at the end of the final and the third-place match. In November 2007, FIFA announced which all workers of World Cup-winning squads between 1930 and 1974 were to be retroactively awarded winners’ medals.
Format
Since the second World Cup in 1934, qualifying tournaments have been heard apprehended to thin the field for the concluding tournament.They are held through the six FIFA continental zones (Africa, Asia, North and Central America and Caribbean, South America, Oceania, and Europe), overseen by their respective confederations. For every tournament, FIFA decides the number of units awarded to each of the continental zones beforehand, generally established on the relative strength of the confederations’ teams.
The qualification procedure can start as the first part of as nearly 3 years before the final tournament and last within the duration of a two-year period. The formats of the qualification tournaments vary between confederations. Usually, one or two real estate are awarded to winners of foreign play-offs. For example, the winner of the Oceanian zone and the fifth-placed committe from the Asian zone entered a play-off for a spot in the 2010 World Cup. From the 1938 World Cup onwards, host nations obtained automatic qualification to the final tournament. This right was also granted to the defending champions between 1938 and 2002, but was withdrawn from the 2006 FIFA World Cup onward, requiring the champions to qualify. Brazil, winners in 2002, got the mainly defending champions to play in a qualifying match.
Final tournament
For the many formats used in previous tournaments, see History of the FIFA World Cup#Format of each ultimate tournament.
The current ultimate tournament features 32 countrywide teams contending over a month in the host nation(s). There are two stages: the group step tracked by the knockout stage.
In the group stage, teams compete within eight groups of four teams each. Eight teams are seeded, including the hosts, through the other seeded teams selected using a formula based on the FIFA World Rankings and/or performances in recent World Cups, and drawn to separate groups.The other teams are assigned to different “pots”, usually based on geographical criteria, and teams in every pot are drawn at random to the eight groups. Since 1998, constraints suffer been applied to the allure to ensure that no group contains greater number of as opposed to two European teams or a good deal more than one team from any further confederation.
Each group plays a round-robin tournament, in which each team is scheduled for three matches against other teams in the same group. The go on round of matches of each team is scheduled at the same time to preserve fairness among all four teams.The top two teams from each group advance to the knockout stage. Points are used to rank the teams within a group. Since 1994, 3 points have been awarded for a win, one for a appeal to and none for a reduction (before, winners received two points).
The ranking of each bunch in each group is determined as follows:
1. Greatest number of points in assembly matches
2. Greatest goal difference in group matches
3. Greatest number of goals scored in commission matches
4. If more than one team remain level after applying the above criteria, their ranking will be determined as follows:
1. Greatest number of points in head-to-head matches among those teams
2. Greatest intention difference in head-to-head matches among people teams
3. Greatest number of goals scored in head-to-head matches surrounded by persons teams
5. If any of the teams above continue rate after applying the above criteria, their ranking will be determined by the drawing of lots
The knockout evolution is a single-elimination tournament in that teams play each other in one-off matches, with supplementary time and penalty shootouts used to decide the winner if necessary. It begins with the “eigth-finals” (aka “round of 16″ or the time round) in which the winner of each team plays against the runner-up of another group. This is followed by the quarter-finals, the semi-finals, the third-place match (contested by the losing semi-finalists), and the final.
Hosts
Early World Cups were given to countries at meetings of FIFA’s congress. The choice of location gave appreciation to controversies, a consequence of the three-week boat journey between South America and Europe, the two centres of strength in football. The decision to hold the first World Cup in Uruguay, for example, led to sole four European nations competing.The next two World Cups got both held in Europe. The decision to have the second of these, the 1938 FIFA World Cup, in France was controversial, as the American countries had continued led to understand that the World Cup can rotate between the two continents. Both Argentina and Uruguay thus boycotted the tournament.
Since the 1958 FIFA World Cup, to avoid times ahead boycotts or controversy, FIFA began a pattern of alternating the hosts between the Americas and Europe, that kept on until the 1998 FIFA World Cup. The 2002 FIFA World Cup, hosted jointly by South Korea and Japan, was the first one seized in Asia, and the only tournament with multiple hosts. South Africa became the first African nation to host the World Cup in 2010. The 2014 FIFA World Cup plans to be hosted by Brazil, the first held in South America from the time of 1978, and will be the primarily occasion at which consecutive World Cups are held outside Europe.
2022 World Cups
The host country is now specific in a vote by FIFA’s Executive Committee. This is wrapped up under a single transferable vote system. The national football association of a globe desiring to host the event receives a “Hosting Agreement” from FIFA, which explains the steps and requirements that are expected from a firm bid. The bidding establishment also receives a form, the submission of which represents the official confirmation of the candidacy. After this, a FIFA designated group of inspectors visit the country to identify that the country meets the requirements needed to host the event and a projection on the country is produced. The decision on who will host the World Cup is usually made six or seven years in advance of the tournament. However, there have been occasions at which the hosts of a large amount of coming years tournaments got announced at the same time, as will be the case for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups.
For the 2010 and 2014 World Cups, the final tournament is rotated between confederations, allowing simply countries out of the selected confederation (Africa in 2010, South America in 2014) to bid to host the tournament. The rotation policy was introduced after the controversy surrounding Germany’s victory over South Africa in the vote to host the 2006 tournament. However, the policy of continental rotation will not continue past 2014, so any country, not including those belonging to confederations that hosted the two preceding tournaments, can apply as hosts for World Cups starting from 2018.This is partly to avoid a similar scenario to the bidding approach for the 2014 tournament, where Brazil was the only official bidder.
Performances
See also: Results of host nations in the FIFA World Cup
Six of the seven champions have won one of such a titles additonally playing in the own homeland, the exception being Brazil, who ended as runners-up subsequent to losing the deciding match on home soil in 1950. England (1966) and France (1998) won their merely titles while trifling as host nations. Uruguay (1930), Italy (1934) and Argentina (1978) won their first titles as host nations but suffer gone on to win again, while Germany (1974) won their time title on residential structure soil.
Other nations have additionally carried on successful when hosting the tournament. Sweden (runners-up in 1958), Chile (third place in 1962), Korea Republic (fourth place in 2002), and Mexico (quarter-finals in 1970 and 1986) all have their best possible outcome when serving as hosts. So far, South Africa (2010) was the only host nation to fail to advance beyond the first and foremost round.
Organisation and media coverage
The World Cup was first televised in 1954 and is now the most widely viewed and trailed sporting event in the world, exceeding even the Olympic Games. The cumulative audience of all matches of the 2006 World Cup is predicted to be 26.29 billion. 715.1 million lendees watched the final match of this tournament (a ninth of the entire population of the planet). The 2006 World Cup draw, that decided the distribution of teams into groups, was watched by 300 million viewers.
Each FIFA World Cup since 1966 has its own mascot or logo. World Cup Willie, the mascot for the 1966 competition, was the first World Cup mascot.[42] Recent World Cups have furthermore featured official meet balls specially intended for each World Cup.
Records
Two players share the key in for playing in the a good number of World Cups; Mexico’s Antonio Carbajal (1950–1966) and Germany’s Lothar Matthäus (1982–1998) both played in five tournaments.Matthäus has played the most World Cup matches overall, amongst 25 appearances.Brazil’s Pelé is the only player to undergo won 3 World Cup winners’ medals (1958, 1962, and 1970),[56] with 20 other players who have won two World Cup medals.Germany’s Franz Beckenbauer (1966-74) is the only player to be named to three Finals All-Star Teams, and is also the only player to collect all three sorts of medals (gold, silver, bronze).
The overall top goalscorer in World Cups is Brazil’s Ronaldo, scorer of 15 goals (1998–2006). Germany’s Miroslav Klose (2002–2010) and Gerd Müller (1970–1974) are second, amid 14 goals.[58] The fourth placed goalscorer, France’s Just Fontaine, holds the record for the most goals scored in a single World Cup, as all his 13 goals were scored in the 1958 tournament.
Brazil’s Mário Zagallo and Germany’s Franz Beckenbauer are the only those of us to date to win the World Cup as both player and operated coach. Zagallo won in 1958 and 1962 as a player and in 1970 as head coach.[60] Beckenbauer won in 1974 as captain and in 1990 as head coach.Italy’s Vittorio Pozzo is the easily head coach to ever win two World Cups (1934 and 1938).All World Cup winning head coaches were natives of the country properties coached to victory.
Among the national teams, Germany have played the numerous World Cup matches, with 99[63], while Brazil have scored the most World Cup goals, with 210.[64] The two teams hold played each other only after in the World Cup, in the 2002 final.
Ten players experience been short-listed for the Golden Ball as top player at the World Cup. Chances are it will come lowered to Wesley Sneijder of the Netherlands and Xavi Hernandez of Spain. The 5-7 midfielders are towering figures today in the uppermost game of their lives.
Xavi, whose corner kick set up Carles Puyol’s lucrative header in the 1-0 semifinal win for the duration of Germany, personifies Spain’s patient, high- purchase offense. No player at the World Cup has passed additionally often or wrapped up more passes. He has yet to score, but the Spanish attack flows with him.
Sneijder has been more spectacular. His five goals are linked for tops in the tournament, and they include game-winners against Japan in the first round, Slovakia in the second sweet and Brazil in the quarterfinals. He was voted man of the match for the 3-2 semifinal win over Uruguay, as Xavi was for Spain in the victory through Germany.
Having spent three seasons providing Real Madrid, Sneijder is a familiar foil for Xavi and Spain’s other Barcelona-based players. He left before last season for Inter Milan, where he won the Italian league and cup championships as good as the European Champions League, helping knock off Barcelona along the way. He would become the primarily player to celebrate league, domestic cup, European and World Cup titles in the same year.
Sneijder and Xavi rather still personify what we have seen from their teams in South Africa. Xavi is all grace, skill and efficiency; Sneijder is cunning, surprise and opportunism. Xavi has designed frequent patches of brilliance but can’t match Sneijder when it comes to thrills.
Against Brazil, Sneijder delivered a cross based on information from the right side that eluded goalkeeper Julio Cesar, whose path was blocked by teammate Felipe Melo, and sailed into the net. Three minutes later, he scored what he claimed was the first went goal of his life.
Today, the two difference- makers meet with a chance for each to put his imprint on this World Cup. More than one trophy may be at stake.
The FIFA World Cup (also called the Football World Cup, the Soccer World Cup, or simply the World Cup) is an international association football competition contested by the senior men’s national teams of the members of Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), the sport’s global governing body. The championship has been awarded every four years since the first tournament in 1930, except in 1942 and 1946 when it was not held because of the Second World War.
The current format of the tournament involves 32 teams competing for the title at venues within the host nation(s) over a period of about a month – this phase is often called the World Cup Finals. A qualification phase, which currently takes place over the preceding three years, is used to determine which teams qualify for the tournament together with the host nation(s).
The 18 tournaments that have been concluded have been won by seven different national teams. Brazil have won the World Cup a record five times, and they are the only team to have played in every tournament. Italy have won four titles, and Germany are next with three titles. The other former champions are Uruguay, winners of the inaugural tournament, and Argentina, with two titles each. England and France have won a single title each, both at home, while Spain or the Netherlands will win their first World Cup in South Africa, which will also be the first win for a European team in a finals tournament held outside of Europe.
The World Cup is the world’s most widely viewed sporting event; an estimated 715.1 million people watched the final match of the 2006 World Cup held in Germany.[1] The current World Cup is being held in South Africa from 11 June to 11 July 2010, and the 2014 World Cup will be held in Brazil.
Previous international competitions
The world’s first international football match was a challenge match played in Glasgow in 1872 between Scotland and England,with the first international tournament, the inaugural edition of the British Home Championship, taking place in 1884.At this stage the sport was rarely played outside the United Kingdom. As football grew in popularity in other parts of the world at the turn of the century, it was held as a demonstration sport with no medals awarded at the 1900 and 1904 Summer Olympics (however, the IOC has retroactively upgraded their status to official events), and at the 1906 Intercalated Games.
After FIFA was founded in 1904, it tried to arrange an international football tournament between nations outside the Olympic framework in Switzerland in 1906. These were very early days for international football, and the official history of FIFA describes the competition as having been a failure.
At the 1908 Summer Olympics in London, football became an official competition. Planned by The Football Association (FA), England’s football governing body, the event was for amateur players only and was regarded suspiciously as a show rather than a competition. Great Britain (represented by the England national amateur football team) won the gold medals. They repeated the feat in 1912 in Stockholm, where the tournament was organised by the Swedish Football Association.
With the Olympic event continuing to be contested only between amateur teams, Sir Thomas Lipton organised the Sir Thomas Lipton Trophy tournament in Turin in 1909. The Lipton tournament was a championship between individual clubs (not national teams) from different nations, each one of which represented an entire nation. The competition is sometimes described as The First World Cup,and featured the most prestigious professional club sides from Italy, Germany and Switzerland, but the FA of England refused to be associated with the competition and declined the offer to send a professional team. Lipton invited West Auckland, an amateur side from County Durham, to represent England instead. West Auckland won the tournament and returned in 1911 to successfully defend their title. They were given the trophy to keep forever, as per the rules of the competition.
In 1914, FIFA agreed to recognise the Olympic tournament as a “world football championship for amateurs”, and took responsibility for managing the event.This paved the way for the world’s first intercontinental football competition, at the 1920 Summer Olympics, contested by Egypt and thirteen European teams, and won by Belgium.Uruguay won the next two Olympic football tournaments in 1924 and 1928.
Estadio Centenario, the location of the first World Cup final in 1930 in Montevideo, Uruguay
Due to the success of the Olympic football tournaments, FIFA, with President Jules Rimet the driving force, again started looking at staging its own international tournament outside of the Olympics. On 28 May 1928, the FIFA Congress in Amsterdam decided to stage a world championship organised by FIFA. With Uruguay now two-time official football world champions (as 1924 was the start of FIFA’s professional era) and to celebrate their centenary of independence in 1930, FIFA named Uruguay as the host country of the inaugural World Cup tournament.
The national associations of selected nations were invited to send a team, but the choice of Uruguay as a venue for the competition meant a long and costly trip across the Atlantic Ocean for European sides. Indeed, no European country pledged to send a team until two months before the start of the competition. Rimet eventually persuaded teams from Belgium, France, Romania, and Yugoslavia to make the trip. In total thirteen nations took part: seven from South America, four from Europe and two from North America.
The first two World Cup matches took place simultaneously on 13 July 1930, and were won by France and USA, who defeated Mexico 4–1 and Belgium 3–0 respectively. The first goal in World Cup history was scored by Lucien Laurent of France.[10] In the final, Uruguay defeated Argentina 4–2 in front of a crowd of 93,000 people in Montevideo, and in doing so became the first nation to win the World Cup.
World Cups before World War II
After the creation of the World Cup, the 1932 Summer Olympics, held in Los Angeles, did not plan to include football as part of the schedule due to the low popularity of the sport in the United States, as American football had been growing in popularity. FIFA and the IOC also disagreed over the status of amateur players, and so football was dropped from the Games.Olympic football returned at the 1936 Summer Olympics, but was now overshadowed by the more prestigious World Cup.
The issues facing the early World Cup tournaments were the difficulties of intercontinental travel, and war. Few South American teams were willing to travel to Europe for the 1934 and 1938 tournaments, with Brazil the only South American team to compete in both. The 1942 and 1946 competitions were cancelled due to World War II and its aftermath.
World Cups after World War II
The 1950 World Cup, held in Brazil, was the first to include British participants. British teams withdrew from FIFA in 1920, partly out of unwillingness to play against the countries they had been at war with, and partly as a protest against foreign influence on football,[13] but rejoined in 1946 following FIFA’s invitation.[14] The tournament also saw the return of 1930 champions Uruguay, who had boycotted the previous two World Cups. Uruguay won the tournament again after defeating the host nation Brazil in one of the most famous matches in World Cup history, which was later called the “Maracanazo” (Portuguese: Maracanaço).
Map of countries’ best results
In the tournaments between 1934 and 1978, 16 teams competed in each tournament, except in 1938, when Austria was absorbed into Germany after qualifying, leaving the tournament with 15 teams, and in 1950, when India, Scotland and Turkey withdrew, leaving the tournament with 13 teams.[15] Most of the participating nations were from Europe and South America, with a small minority from North America, Africa, Asia and Oceania. These teams were usually defeated easily by the European and South American teams. Until 1982, the only teams from outside Europe and South America to advance out of the first round were: USA, semi-finalists in 1930; Cuba, quarter-finalists in 1938; Korea DPR, quarter-finalists in 1966; and Mexico, quarter-finalists in 1970.
Expansion to 32 teams
The tournament was expanded to 24 teams in 1982,[16] and then to 32 in 1998,allowing more teams from Africa, Asia and North America to take part. In recent years, teams from these regions have enjoyed more success, and those who have reached the quarter-finals include: Mexico, quarter-finalists in 1986; Cameroon, quarter-finalists in 1990; Korea Republic, finishing in fourth place in 2002; Senegal, along with USA, both quarter-finalists in 2002; and Ghana as quarter-finalists in 2010. Nevertheless, European and South American teams continue to dominate, e.g., the quarter-finalists in 1998 and 2006 were all from Europe or South America.
Two hundred teams entered the 2002 FIFA World Cup qualification rounds; 198 nations attempted to qualify for the 2006 FIFA World Cup, while a record 204 countries entered qualification for the 2010 FIFA World Cup.
Other FIFA tournaments
An equivalent tournament for women’s football, the FIFA Women’s World Cup, was first held in 1991 in the People’s Republic of China.[19] The women’s tournament is smaller in scale and profile than the men’s, but is growing; the number of entrants for the 2007 tournament was 120, more than double that of 1991.
Football has been included in every Summer Olympic Games except 1896 and 1932. Unlike many other sports, the men’s football tournament at the Olympics is not a top-level tournament, and since 1992, an under-23 tournament with each team allowed three over-age players.Women’s football made its Olympic debut in 1996, and is contested between full national sides with no age restrictions.
The FIFA Confederations Cup is a tournament held one year before the World Cup at the World Cup host nation(s) as a dress-rehearsal for the upcoming World Cup. It is contested by the winners of each of the six FIFA confederation championships, along with the FIFA World Cup champion and the host country.
FIFA also organises international tournaments for youth football (FIFA U-20 World Cup, FIFA U-17 World Cup, FIFA U-20 Women’s World Cup, FIFA U-17 Women’s World Cup), club football (FIFA Club World Cup), and football variants such as futsal (FIFA Futsal World Cup) and beach soccer (FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup)..
Trophy
From 1930 to 1970, the Jules Rimet Trophy was awarded to the World Cup winner. It was originally simply known as the World Cup or Coupe du Monde, but in 1946 it was renamed after the FIFA president Jules Rimet who set up the first tournament. In 1970, Brazil’s third victory in the tournament entitled them to keep the trophy permanently. However, the trophy was stolen in 1983, and has never been recovered, apparently melted down by the thieves.
After 1970, a new trophy, known as the FIFA World Cup Trophy, was designed. The experts of FIFA, coming from seven different countries, evaluated the 53 presented models, finally opting for the work of the Italian designer Silvio Gazzaniga. The new trophy is 36 cm (14.2 in) high, made of solid 18 carat (75%) gold and weighs 6.175 kg (13.6 lb). The base contains two layers of semi-precious malachite while the bottom side of the trophy bears the engraved year and name of each FIFA World Cup winner since 1974. The description of the trophy by Gazzaniga was: “The lines spring out from the base, rising in spirals, stretching out to receive the world. From the remarkable dynamic tensions of the compact body of the sculpture rise the figures of two athletes at the stirring moment of victory.
This new trophy is not awarded to the winning nation permanently. World Cup winners retain the trophy until the next tournament and are awarded a gold-plated replica rather than the solid gold original.
At the present, all members (players and coaches) of the top three teams receive winners’ (gold), runner-ups’ (silver), and third-place medals (bronze). Prior to the 1978 tournament, medals were only awarded to the eleven players on the pitch at the end of the final and the third-place match. In November 2007, FIFA announced that all members of World Cup-winning squads between 1930 and 1974 were to be retroactively awarded winners’ medals.
Format
Main article: FIFA World Cup qualification
Since the second World Cup in 1934, qualifying tournaments have been held to thin the field for the final tournament.They are held within the six FIFA continental zones (Africa, Asia, North and Central America and Caribbean, South America, Oceania, and Europe), overseen by their respective confederations. For each tournament, FIFA decides the number of places awarded to each of the continental zones beforehand, generally based on the relative strength of the confederations’ teams.
The qualification process can start as early as almost three years before the final tournament and last over a two-year period. The formats of the qualification tournaments differ between confederations. Usually, one or two places are awarded to winners of intercontinental play-offs. For example, the winner of the Oceanian zone and the fifth-placed team from the Asian zone entered a play-off for a spot in the 2010 World Cup. From the 1938 World Cup onwards, host nations received automatic qualification to the final tournament. This right was also granted to the defending champions between 1938 and 2002, but was withdrawn from the 2006 FIFA World Cup onward, requiring the champions to qualify. Brazil, winners in 2002, were the first defending champions to play in a qualifying match.
Final tournament
For the various formats used in previous tournaments, see History of the FIFA World Cup#Format of each final tournament.
The current final tournament features 32 national teams competing over a month in the host nation(s). There are two stages: the group stage followed by the knockout stage.
In the group stage, teams compete within eight groups of four teams each. Eight teams are seeded, including the hosts, with the other seeded teams selected using a formula based on the FIFA World Rankings and/or performances in recent World Cups, and drawn to separate groups.The other teams are assigned to different “pots”, usually based on geographical criteria, and teams in each pot are drawn at random to the eight groups. Since 1998, constraints have been applied to the draw to ensure that no group contains more than two European teams or more than one team from any other confederation.
Each group plays a round-robin tournament, in which each team is scheduled for three matches against other teams in the same group. The last round of matches of each group is scheduled at the same time to preserve fairness among all four teams.The top two teams from each group advance to the knockout stage. Points are used to rank the teams within a group. Since 1994, three points have been awarded for a win, one for a draw and none for a loss (before, winners received two points).
The FIFA World Cup (also called the Football World Cup, the Soccer World Cup, or simply the World Cup) is an international association football competition contested by the senior men’s national teams of the members of Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), the sport’s global governing body. The championship has been awarded every four years since the first tournament in 1930, except in 1942 and 1946 when it was not held because of the Second World War.
The current format of the tournament involves 32 teams competing for the title at venues within the host nation(s) over a period of about a month – this phase is often called the World Cup Finals. A qualification phase, which currently takes place over the preceding three years, is used to determine which teams qualify for the tournament together with the host nation(s).
The 18 tournaments that have been concluded have been won by seven different national teams. Brazil have won the World Cup a record five times, and they are the only team to have played in every tournament. Italy have won four titles, and Germany are next with three titles. The other former champions are Uruguay, winners of the inaugural tournament, and Argentina, with two titles each. England and France have won a single title each, both at home, while Spain or the Netherlands will win their first World Cup in South Africa, which will also be the first win for a European team in a finals tournament held outside of Europe.
The World Cup is the world’s most widely viewed sporting event; an estimated 715.1 million people watched the final match of the 2006 World Cup held in Germany.[1] The current World Cup is being held in South Africa from 11 June to 11 July 2010, and the 2014 World Cup will be held in Brazil.
Previous international competitions
The world’s first international football match was a challenge match played in Glasgow in 1872 between Scotland and England,with the first international tournament, the inaugural edition of the British Home Championship, taking place in 1884.At this stage the sport was rarely played outside the United Kingdom. As football grew in popularity in other parts of the world at the turn of the century, it was held as a demonstration sport with no medals awarded at the 1900 and 1904 Summer Olympics (however, the IOC has retroactively upgraded their status to official events), and at the 1906 Intercalated Games.
After FIFA was founded in 1904, it tried to arrange an international football tournament between nations outside the Olympic framework in Switzerland in 1906. These were very early days for international football, and the official history of FIFA describes the competition as having been a failure.
At the 1908 Summer Olympics in London, football became an official competition. Planned by The Football Association (FA), England’s football governing body, the event was for amateur players only and was regarded suspiciously as a show rather than a competition. Great Britain (represented by the England national amateur football team) won the gold medals. They repeated the feat in 1912 in Stockholm, where the tournament was organised by the Swedish Football Association.
With the Olympic event continuing to be contested only between amateur teams, Sir Thomas Lipton organised the Sir Thomas Lipton Trophy tournament in Turin in 1909. The Lipton tournament was a championship between individual clubs (not national teams) from different nations, each one of which represented an entire nation. The competition is sometimes described as The First World Cup,and featured the most prestigious professional club sides from Italy, Germany and Switzerland, but the FA of England refused to be associated with the competition and declined the offer to send a professional team. Lipton invited West Auckland, an amateur side from County Durham, to represent England instead. West Auckland won the tournament and returned in 1911 to successfully defend their title. They were given the trophy to keep forever, as per the rules of the competition.
In 1914, FIFA agreed to recognise the Olympic tournament as a “world football championship for amateurs”, and took responsibility for managing the event.This paved the way for the world’s first intercontinental football competition, at the 1920 Summer Olympics, contested by Egypt and thirteen European teams, and won by Belgium.Uruguay won the next two Olympic football tournaments in 1924 and 1928.
Estadio Centenario, the location of the first World Cup final in 1930 in Montevideo, Uruguay
Due to the success of the Olympic football tournaments, FIFA, with President Jules Rimet the driving force, again started looking at staging its own international tournament outside of the Olympics. On 28 May 1928, the FIFA Congress in Amsterdam decided to stage a world championship organised by FIFA. With Uruguay now two-time official football world champions (as 1924 was the start of FIFA’s professional era) and to celebrate their centenary of independence in 1930, FIFA named Uruguay as the host country of the inaugural World Cup tournament.
The national associations of selected nations were invited to send a team, but the choice of Uruguay as a venue for the competition meant a long and costly trip across the Atlantic Ocean for European sides. Indeed, no European country pledged to send a team until two months before the start of the competition. Rimet eventually persuaded teams from Belgium, France, Romania, and Yugoslavia to make the trip. In total thirteen nations took part: seven from South America, four from Europe and two from North America.
The first two World Cup matches took place simultaneously on 13 July 1930, and were won by France and USA, who defeated Mexico 4–1 and Belgium 3–0 respectively. The first goal in World Cup history was scored by Lucien Laurent of France.[10] In the final, Uruguay defeated Argentina 4–2 in front of a crowd of 93,000 people in Montevideo, and in doing so became the first nation to win the World Cup.
World Cups before World War II
After the creation of the World Cup, the 1932 Summer Olympics, held in Los Angeles, did not plan to include football as part of the schedule due to the low popularity of the sport in the United States, as American football had been growing in popularity. FIFA and the IOC also disagreed over the status of amateur players, and so football was dropped from the Games.Olympic football returned at the 1936 Summer Olympics, but was now overshadowed by the more prestigious World Cup.
The issues facing the early World Cup tournaments were the difficulties of intercontinental travel, and war. Few South American teams were willing to travel to Europe for the 1934 and 1938 tournaments, with Brazil the only South American team to compete in both. The 1942 and 1946 competitions were cancelled due to World War II and its aftermath.
World Cups after World War II
The 1950 World Cup, held in Brazil, was the first to include British participants. British teams withdrew from FIFA in 1920, partly out of unwillingness to play against the countries they had been at war with, and partly as a protest against foreign influence on football,[13] but rejoined in 1946 following FIFA’s invitation.[14] The tournament also saw the return of 1930 champions Uruguay, who had boycotted the previous two World Cups. Uruguay won the tournament again after defeating the host nation Brazil in one of the most famous matches in World Cup history, which was later called the “Maracanazo” (Portuguese: Maracanaço).
Map of countries’ best results
In the tournaments between 1934 and 1978, 16 teams competed in each tournament, except in 1938, when Austria was absorbed into Germany after qualifying, leaving the tournament with 15 teams, and in 1950, when India, Scotland and Turkey withdrew, leaving the tournament with 13 teams.[15] Most of the participating nations were from Europe and South America, with a small minority from North America, Africa, Asia and Oceania. These teams were usually defeated easily by the European and South American teams. Until 1982, the only teams from outside Europe and South America to advance out of the first round were: USA, semi-finalists in 1930; Cuba, quarter-finalists in 1938; Korea DPR, quarter-finalists in 1966; and Mexico, quarter-finalists in 1970.
Expansion to 32 teams
The tournament was expanded to 24 teams in 1982,[16] and then to 32 in 1998,allowing more teams from Africa, Asia and North America to take part. In recent years, teams from these regions have enjoyed more success, and those who have reached the quarter-finals include: Mexico, quarter-finalists in 1986; Cameroon, quarter-finalists in 1990; Korea Republic, finishing in fourth place in 2002; Senegal, along with USA, both quarter-finalists in 2002; and Ghana as quarter-finalists in 2010. Nevertheless, European and South American teams continue to dominate, e.g., the quarter-finalists in 1998 and 2006 were all from Europe or South America.
Two hundred teams entered the 2002 FIFA World Cup qualification rounds; 198 nations attempted to qualify for the 2006 FIFA World Cup, while a record 204 countries entered qualification for the 2010 FIFA World Cup.
Other FIFA tournaments
An equivalent tournament for women’s football, the FIFA Women’s World Cup, was first held in 1991 in the People’s Republic of China.[19] The women’s tournament is smaller in scale and profile than the men’s, but is growing; the number of entrants for the 2007 tournament was 120, more than double that of 1991.
Football has been included in every Summer Olympic Games except 1896 and 1932. Unlike many other sports, the men’s football tournament at the Olympics is not a top-level tournament, and since 1992, an under-23 tournament with each team allowed three over-age players.Women’s football made its Olympic debut in 1996, and is contested between full national sides with no age restrictions.
The FIFA Confederations Cup is a tournament held one year before the World Cup at the World Cup host nation(s) as a dress-rehearsal for the upcoming World Cup. It is contested by the winners of each of the six FIFA confederation championships, along with the FIFA World Cup champion and the host country.
FIFA also organises international tournaments for youth football (FIFA U-20 World Cup, FIFA U-17 World Cup, FIFA U-20 Women’s World Cup, FIFA U-17 Women’s World Cup), club football (FIFA Club World Cup), and football variants such as futsal (FIFA Futsal World Cup) and beach soccer (FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup)..
Trophy
From 1930 to 1970, the Jules Rimet Trophy was awarded to the World Cup winner. It was originally simply known as the World Cup or Coupe du Monde, but in 1946 it was renamed after the FIFA president Jules Rimet who set up the first tournament. In 1970, Brazil’s third victory in the tournament entitled them to keep the trophy permanently. However, the trophy was stolen in 1983, and has never been recovered, apparently melted down by the thieves.
After 1970, a new trophy, known as the FIFA World Cup Trophy, was designed. The experts of FIFA, coming from seven different countries, evaluated the 53 presented models, finally opting for the work of the Italian designer Silvio Gazzaniga. The new trophy is 36 cm (14.2 in) high, made of solid 18 carat (75%) gold and weighs 6.175 kg (13.6 lb). The base contains two layers of semi-precious malachite while the bottom side of the trophy bears the engraved year and name of each FIFA World Cup winner since 1974. The description of the trophy by Gazzaniga was: “The lines spring out from the base, rising in spirals, stretching out to receive the world. From the remarkable dynamic tensions of the compact body of the sculpture rise the figures of two athletes at the stirring moment of victory.
This new trophy is not awarded to the winning nation permanently. World Cup winners retain the trophy until the next tournament and are awarded a gold-plated replica rather than the solid gold original.
At the present, all members (players and coaches) of the top three teams receive winners’ (gold), runner-ups’ (silver), and third-place medals (bronze). Prior to the 1978 tournament, medals were only awarded to the eleven players on the pitch at the end of the final and the third-place match. In November 2007, FIFA announced that all members of World Cup-winning squads between 1930 and 1974 were to be retroactively awarded winners’ medals.
Format
Main article: FIFA World Cup qualification
Since the second World Cup in 1934, qualifying tournaments have been held to thin the field for the final tournament.They are held within the six FIFA continental zones (Africa, Asia, North and Central America and Caribbean, South America, Oceania, and Europe), overseen by their respective confederations. For each tournament, FIFA decides the number of places awarded to each of the continental zones beforehand, generally based on the relative strength of the confederations’ teams.
The qualification process can start as early as almost three years before the final tournament and last over a two-year period. The formats of the qualification tournaments differ between confederations. Usually, one or two places are awarded to winners of intercontinental play-offs. For example, the winner of the Oceanian zone and the fifth-placed team from the Asian zone entered a play-off for a spot in the 2010 World Cup. From the 1938 World Cup onwards, host nations received automatic qualification to the final tournament. This right was also granted to the defending champions between 1938 and 2002, but was withdrawn from the 2006 FIFA World Cup onward, requiring the champions to qualify. Brazil, winners in 2002, were the first defending champions to play in a qualifying match.
Final tournament
For the various formats used in previous tournaments, see History of the FIFA World Cup#Format of each final tournament.
The current final tournament features 32 national teams competing over a month in the host nation(s). There are two stages: the group stage followed by the knockout stage.
In the group stage, teams compete within eight groups of four teams each. Eight teams are seeded, including the hosts, with the other seeded teams selected using a formula based on the FIFA World Rankings and/or performances in recent World Cups, and drawn to separate groups.The other teams are assigned to different “pots”, usually based on geographical criteria, and teams in each pot are drawn at random to the eight groups. Since 1998, constraints have been applied to the draw to ensure that no group contains more than two European teams or more than one team from any other confederation.
Each group plays a round-robin tournament, in which each team is scheduled for three matches against other teams in the same group. The last round of matches of each group is scheduled at the same time to preserve fairness among all four teams.The top two teams from each group advance to the knockout stage. Points are used to rank the teams within a group. Since 1994, three points have been awarded for a win, one for a draw and none for a loss (before, winners received two points).
The ranking of each team in each group is determined as follows:
1. Greatest number of points in group matches
2. Greatest goal difference in group matches
3. Greatest number of goals scored in group matches
4. If more than one team remain level after applying the above criteria, their ranking will be determined as follows:
1. Greatest number of points in head-to-head matches among those teams
2. Greatest goal difference in head-to-head matches among those teams
3. Greatest number of goals scored in head-to-head matches among those teams
5. If any of the teams above remain level after applying the above criteria, their ranking will be determined by the drawing of lots
The knockout stage is a single-elimination tournament in which teams play each other in one-off matches, with extra time and penalty shootouts used to decide the winner if necessary. It begins with the “eigth-finals” (aka “round of 16″ or the second round) in which the winner of each group plays against the runner-up of another group. This is followed by the quarter-finals, the semi-finals, the third-place match (contested by the losing semi-finalists), and the final.
Hosts
Early World Cups were given to countries at meetings of FIFA’s congress. The choice of location gave rise to controversies, a consequence of the three-week boat journey between South America and Europe, the two centres of strength in football. The decision to hold the first World Cup in Uruguay, for example, led to only four European nations competing.The next two World Cups were both held in Europe. The decision to hold the second of these, the 1938 FIFA World Cup, in France was controversial, as the American countries had been led to understand that the World Cup would rotate between the two continents. Both Argentina and Uruguay thus boycotted the tournament.
Since the 1958 FIFA World Cup, to avoid future boycotts or controversy, FIFA began a pattern of alternating the hosts between the Americas and Europe, which continued until the 1998 FIFA World Cup. The 2002 FIFA World Cup, hosted jointly by South Korea and Japan, was the first one held in Asia, and the only tournament with multiple hosts. South Africa became the first African nation to host the World Cup in 2010. The 2014 FIFA World Cup will be hosted by Brazil, the first held in South America since 1978, and will be the first occasion where consecutive World Cups are held outside Europe.
2022 World Cups
The host country is now chosen in a vote by FIFA’s Executive Committee. This is done under a single transferable vote system. The national football association of a country desiring to host the event receives a “Hosting Agreement” from FIFA, which explains the steps and requirements that are expected from a strong bid. The bidding association also receives a form, the submission of which represents the official confirmation of the candidacy. After this, a FIFA designated group of inspectors visit the country to identify that the country meets the requirements needed to host the event and a report on the country is produced. The decision on who will host the World Cup is usually made six or seven years in advance of the tournament. However, there have been occasions where the hosts of multiple future tournaments were announced at the same time, as will be the case for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups.
For the 2010 and 2014 World Cups, the final tournament is rotated between confederations, allowing only countries from the chosen confederation (Africa in 2010, South America in 2014) to bid to host the tournament. The rotation policy was introduced after the controversy surrounding Germany’s victory over South Africa in the vote to host the 2006 tournament. However, the policy of continental rotation will not continue beyond 2014, so any country, except those belonging to confederations that hosted the two preceding tournaments, can apply as hosts for World Cups starting from 2018.This is partly to avoid a similar scenario to the bidding process for the 2014 tournament, where Brazil was the only official bidder.
Performances
See also: Results of host nations in the FIFA World Cup
Six of the seven champions have won one of their titles while playing in their own homeland, the exception being Brazil, who finished as runners-up after losing the deciding match on home soil in 1950. England (1966) and France (1998) won their only titles while playing as host nations. Uruguay (1930), Italy (1934) and Argentina (1978) won their first titles as host nations but have gone on to win again, while Germany (1974) won their second title on home soil.
Other nations have also been successful when hosting the tournament. Sweden (runners-up in 1958), Chile (third place in 1962), Korea Republic (fourth place in 2002), and Mexico (quarter-finals in 1970 and 1986) all have their best results when serving as hosts. So far, South Africa (2010) was the only host nation to fail to advance beyond the first round.
Organisation and media coverage
The World Cup was first televised in 1954 and is now the most widely viewed and followed sporting event in the world, exceeding even the Olympic Games. The cumulative audience of all matches of the 2006 World Cup is estimated to be 26.29 billion. 715.1 million individuals watched the final match of this tournament (a ninth of the entire population of the planet). The 2006 World Cup draw, which decided the distribution of teams into groups, was watched by 300 million viewers.
Each FIFA World Cup since 1966 has its own mascot or logo. World Cup Willie, the mascot for the 1966 competition, was the first World Cup mascot.[42] Recent World Cups have also featured official match balls specially designed for each World Cup.
Records
Two players share the record for playing in the most World Cups; Mexico’s Antonio Carbajal (1950–1966) and Germany’s Lothar Matthäus (1982–1998) both played in five tournaments.Matthäus has played the most World Cup matches overall, with 25 appearances.Brazil’s Pelé is the only player to have won three World Cup winners’ medals (1958, 1962, and 1970),[56] with 20 other players who have won two World Cup medals.Germany’s Franz Beckenbauer (1966-74) is the only player to be named to three Finals All-Star Teams, and is also the only player to collect all three types of medals (gold, silver, bronze).
The overall top goalscorer in World Cups is Brazil’s Ronaldo, scorer of 15 goals (1998–2006). Germany’s Miroslav Klose (2002–2010) and Gerd Müller (1970–1974) are second, with 14 goals.[58] The fourth placed goalscorer, France’s Just Fontaine, holds the record for the most goals scored in a single World Cup, as all his 13 goals were scored in the 1958 tournament.
Brazil’s Mário Zagallo and Germany’s Franz Beckenbauer are the only people to date to win the World Cup as both player and head coach. Zagallo won in 1958 and 1962 as a player and in 1970 as head coach.[60] Beckenbauer won in 1974 as captain and in 1990 as head coach.Italy’s Vittorio Pozzo is the only head coach to ever win two World Cups (1934 and 1938).All World Cup winning head coaches were natives of the country they coached to victory.
Among the national teams, Germany have played the most World Cup matches, with 99, while Brazil have scored the most World Cup goals, with 210. The two teams have played each other only once in the World Cup, in the 2002 final.
1. Greatest number of points in group matches
2. Greatest goal difference in group matches
3. Greatest number of goals scored in group matches
4. If more than one team remain level after applying the above criteria, their ranking will be determined as follows:
1. Greatest number of points in head-to-head matches among those teams
2. Greatest goal difference in head-to-head matches among those teams
3. Greatest number of goals scored in head-to-head matches among those teams
5. If any of the teams above remain level after applying the above criteria, their ranking will be determined by the drawing of lots
The knockout stage is a single-elimination tournament in which teams play each other in one-off matches, with extra time and penalty shootouts used to decide the winner if necessary. It begins with the “eigth-finals” (aka “round of 16″ or the second round) in which the winner of each group plays against the runner-up of another group. This is followed by the quarter-finals, the semi-finals, the third-place match (contested by the losing semi-finalists), and the final.
Hosts
Early World Cups were given to countries at meetings of FIFA’s congress. The choice of location gave rise to controversies, a consequence of the three-week boat journey between South America and Europe, the two centres of strength in football. The decision to hold the first World Cup in Uruguay, for example, led to only four European nations competing.The next two World Cups were both held in Europe. The decision to hold the second of these, the 1938 FIFA World Cup, in France was controversial, as the American countries had been led to understand that the World Cup would rotate between the two continents. Both Argentina and Uruguay thus boycotted the tournament.
Since the 1958 FIFA World Cup, to avoid future boycotts or controversy, FIFA began a pattern of alternating the hosts between the Americas and Europe, which continued until the 1998 FIFA World Cup. The 2002 FIFA World Cup, hosted jointly by South Korea and Japan, was the first one held in Asia, and the only tournament with multiple hosts. South Africa became the first African nation to host the World Cup in 2010. The 2014 FIFA World Cup will be hosted by Brazil, the first held in South America since 1978, and will be the first occasion where consecutive World Cups are held outside Europe.
2022 World Cups
The host country is now chosen in a vote by FIFA’s Executive Committee. This is done under a single transferable vote system. The national football association of a country desiring to host the event receives a “Hosting Agreement” from FIFA, which explains the steps and requirements that are expected from a strong bid. The bidding association also receives a form, the submission of which represents the official confirmation of the candidacy. After this, a FIFA designated group of inspectors visit the country to identify that the country meets the requirements needed to host the event and a report on the country is produced. The decision on who will host the World Cup is usually made six or seven years in advance of the tournament. However, there have been occasions where the hosts of multiple future tournaments were announced at the same time, as will be the case for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups.
For the 2010 and 2014 World Cups, the final tournament is rotated between confederations, allowing only countries from the chosen confederation (Africa in 2010, South America in 2014) to bid to host the tournament. The rotation policy was introduced after the controversy surrounding Germany’s victory over South Africa in the vote to host the 2006 tournament. However, the policy of continental rotation will not continue beyond 2014, so any country, except those belonging to confederations that hosted the two preceding tournaments, can apply as hosts for World Cups starting from 2018.This is partly to avoid a similar scenario to the bidding process for the 2014 tournament, where Brazil was the only official bidder.
Performances
Six of the seven champions have won one of their titles while playing in their own homeland, the exception being Brazil, who finished as runners-up after losing the deciding match on home soil in 1950. England (1966) and France (1998) won their only titles while playing as host nations. Uruguay (1930), Italy (1934) and Argentina (1978) won their first titles as host nations but have gone on to win again, while Germany (1974) won their second title on home soil.
Other nations have also been successful when hosting the tournament. Sweden (runners-up in 1958), Chile (third place in 1962), Korea Republic (fourth place in 2002), and Mexico (quarter-finals in 1970 and 1986) all have their best results when serving as hosts. So far, South Africa (2010) was the only host nation to fail to advance beyond the first round.
Organisation and media coverage
The World Cup was first televised in 1954 and is now the most widely viewed and followed sporting event in the world, exceeding even the Olympic Games. The cumulative audience of all matches of the 2006 World Cup is estimated to be 26.29 billion. 715.1 million individuals watched the final match of this tournament (a ninth of the entire population of the planet). The 2006 World Cup draw, which decided the distribution of teams into groups, was watched by 300 million viewers.
Each FIFA World Cup since 1966 has its own mascot or logo. World Cup Willie, the mascot for the 1966 competition, was the first World Cup mascot.Recent World Cups have also featured official match balls specially designed for each World Cup.
Records
Two players share the record for playing in the most World Cups; Mexico’s Antonio Carbajal (1950–1966) and Germany’s Lothar Matthäus (1982–1998) both played in five tournaments.Matthäus has played the most World Cup matches overall, with 25 appearances.Brazil’s Pelé is the only player to have won three World Cup winners’ medals (1958, 1962, and 1970),[56] with 20 other players who have won two World Cup medals.Germany’s Franz Beckenbauer (1966-74) is the only player to be named to three Finals All-Star Teams, and is also the only player to collect all three types of medals (gold, silver, bronze).
The overall top goalscorer in World Cups is Brazil’s Ronaldo, scorer of 15 goals (1998–2006). Germany’s Miroslav Klose (2002–2010) and Gerd Müller (1970–1974) are second, with 14 goals.[58] The fourth placed goalscorer, France’s Just Fontaine, holds the record for the most goals scored in a single World Cup, as all his 13 goals were scored in the 1958 tournament.
Brazil’s Mário Zagallo and Germany’s Franz Beckenbauer are the only people to date to win the World Cup as both player and head coach. Zagallo won in 1958 and 1962 as a player and in 1970 as head coach.[60] Beckenbauer won in 1974 as captain and in 1990 as head coach.Italy’s Vittorio Pozzo is the only head coach to ever win two World Cups (1934 and 1938).All World Cup winning head coaches were natives of the country they coached to victory.
Among the national teams, Germany have played the most World Cup matches, with 9, while Brazil have scored the most World Cup goals, with 210.The two teams have played each other only once in the World Cup, in the 2002 final.
The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (often abbreviated in print as NCLB and sometimes shortened in pronunciation to “nicklebee”) is a United States Act of Congress that was originally proposed by the administration of President George W. Bush immediately after taking office.[4] The bill, shepherded through the Senate by Senator Ted Kennedy, one of the bill’s sponsors, received overwhelming bipartisan support in Congress.[5] The House of Representatives passed the bill on May 23, 2001 (voting 384-45),[6] and United States Senate passed it on June 14, 2001 (voting 91-8). President Bush signed it into law on January 8, 2002.
NCLB is the latest federal legislation that enacts the theories of standards-based education reform, which is based on the belief that setting high standards and establishing measurable goals can improve individual outcomes in education. The Act requires states to develop assessments in basic skills to be given to all students in certain grades, if those states are to receive federal funding for schools. The Act does not assert a national achievement standard; standards are set by each individual state.
Since enactment, Congress increased federal funding of education, from $42.2 billion in 2001 to $54.4 billion in 2007. No Child Left Behind received a 40.4% increase from $17.4 billion in 2001 to $24.4 billion. The funding for reading quadrupled from $286 million in 2001 to $1.2 billion.
Favorable claims
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Support for NCLB can be organized into the following categories:
Improved test scores
The Department of Education points to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) results, released in July 2005, showing improved student achievement in reading and math:
* More progress was made by nine-year-olds in reading in the last five years than in the previous 28 years combined.
* America’s nine-year-olds posted the best scores in reading (since 1971) and math (since 1973) in the history of the report. America’s 13-year-olds earned the highest math scores the test ever recorded.
* Reading and math scores for black and Hispanic nine-year-olds reached an all-time high.
* Achievement gaps in reading and math between white and black nine-year-olds and between white and Hispanic nine-year-olds are at an all-time low.
* Forty-three states and the District of Columbia either improved academically or held steady in all categories (fourth- and eighth-grade reading and fourth- and eighth-grade math)..
Many argue that these statistics are misleading. They compare 2005 with 2000, when No Child Left Behind didn’t even take effect until 2003. They point out that the increase in scores between 2000 and 2003 was roughly the same as the increase between 2003 and 2005, which calls into question how any increase can be attributed to No Child Left Behind. They also argue that some of the subgroups are cherry-picked — that in other subgroups scores remained the same or actually fell.
Improvement over local standards
Many argue that local government had failed students, necessitating federal intervention to remedy issues like teachers teaching outside their areas of expertise, and complacency in the face of continually failing schools.[11] Some local governments, notably New York State, have voiced support for NCLB provisions, because local standards had failed to provide adequate oversight over special education, and that NCLB would allow longitudinal data to be more effectively used to monitor Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP).[12] States all over the United States have shown improvements in their progress as a result of NCLB. For example, Wisconsin ranks first of all fifty states, and the District of Columbia at ninety-eight percent of its schools, achieving the No Child Left Behind Standards.
Increased accountability
Supporters of NCLB claim the legislation encourages accountability in public schools, offers parents greater educational options for their children, and helps close the achievement gap between minority and white students.[14] NCLB aims to show achievement toward these goals through federally mandated standardized testing.
In addition to and in support of the above points, proponents claim that No Child Left Behind:
* Links State academic content standards with student outcomes.
* Measures student performance: a student’s progress in reading and math must be measured annually in grades 3 through 8 and at least once during high school via standardized tests.
* Provides information for parents by requiring states and school districts to give parents detailed report cards on schools and districts explaining the school’s AYP performance. Schools must also inform parents when their child is being taught by a teacher or para-professional who does not meet “highly qualified” requirements.
* Establishes the foundation for schools and school districts to significantly enhance parental involvement and improved administration through the use of the assessment data to drive decisions on instruction, curriculum and business practices.
Attention to minority populations
* Seeks to narrow class and racial gaps in school performance by creating common expectations for all.
* Requires schools and districts to focus their attention on the academic achievement of traditionally under-served groups of children, such as low-income students, students with disabilities, and students of “major racial and ethnic subgroups”.[15] Each state is responsible for defining major racial and ethnic subgroups itself.[15] Many previous state-created systems of accountability only measured average school performance, allowing schools to be highly rated even if they had large achievement gaps between affluent and disadvantaged students.
Quality of education
* Ideally, increases the quality of education by requiring schools to improve their performance
* Improves quality of instruction by requiring schools to implement “scientifically-based research” practices in the classroom, parent involvement programs, and professional development activities for those students that are not encouraged or expected to attend college.
* Supports early literacy through the Early Reading First initiative .
* Emphasizes reading, writing, mathematics and science achievement as “core academic subjects”.
School choice
* Gives options to students enrolled in schools failing to meet AYP. If a school fails to meet AYP targets two or more years running, the school must offer eligible children the chance to transfer to higher-performing local schools, receive free tutoring, or attend after-school programs.
* Gives school districts the opportunity to demonstrate proficiency, even for subgroups that do not meet State Minimum Achievement standards, through a process called “safe harbor,” a precursor to growth-based or value-added assessments.
Funding
As part of their support for NCLB, the administration and Congress backed massive increases in funding for elementary and secondary education funding. Title I funding to districts for disadvantaged children increased from $42.2 billion to $55.7 billion from 2001, the fiscal year before the law’s passage, to fiscal year 2004.[16] A new $1 billion Reading First program was created, distributing funds to local schools to improve the teaching of reading, and over $100 million for its companion, Early Reading First.[17] Numerous other formula programs received large increases as well. This was consistent with the administration’s position of funding formula programs, which distribute money to local schools for their use, and grant programs, where particular schools or groups apply directly to the federal government for funding. In total, federal funding for education increased 59.8% from 2000 to 2003.
Funding for school technology used in classrooms as part of NCLB, is administered by the Enhancing Education Through Technology Program (EETT). Funding sources are used for equipment, professional development and training for educators, and updated research. EETT allocates funds by formula to states. The states in turn reallocate 50% of the funds to local districts by Title I formula and 50% competitively. While districts must reserve a minimum of 25% of all EETT funds for professional development, recent studies indicate that most EETT recipients use far more than 25% of their EETT funds to train teachers to use technology and integrate it into their curricula. In fact, EETT recipients committed more than $159 million in EETT funds towards professional development during the 2004-05 school year alone. Moreover, even though EETT recipients are afforded broad discretion in their use of EETT funds, surveys show that they target EETT dollars towards improving student achievement in reading and math, engaging in data driven decision making, and launching online assessment programs.
In addition, the provisions of NCLB permitted increased flexibility for state and local agencies in the use of federal education money.
The NCLB increases were companions to another massive increase in federal education funding at that time. The Bush administration and congress passed very large increases in funding for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) at the same time as the NCLB increases. IDEA Part B, a state formula-funding program that distributes money to local districts for the education of students with disabilities, was increased from $6.3 billion in 2001 to $10.1 billion in 2004.[21] Because a district’s and state’s performance on NCLB measures depended on improved performance by students with disabilities, particularly students with learning disabilities, this 60 percent increase in funding was also an important part of the overall approach to NCLB implementation.
Public perception of public education
* Addresses widespread perceptions that public education results fall short of expectations.
Criticisms
The desirability of NCLB’s measures are hotly debated. It is very difficult to assess the effectiveness of the act per se, because it applied to all states making it difficult to infer what would have happened without the act. However, analyses of the state accountability systems that were in place before NCLB indicate that accountability for outcomes led to faster growth in achievement for the states that introduced such systems.[22] The direct analysis of state test scores before and after enactment of NCLB also supports its positive impact.[23] A primary criticism asserts that NCLB could reduce effective instruction and student learning because it may cause states to lower achievement goals and motivate teachers to “teach to the test.” A primary supportive claim asserts that systematic testing provides data that shed light on which schools are not teaching basic skills effectively, so that interventions can be made to improve outcomes for all students while reducing the achievement gap for disadvantaged and disabled students.
Critiques of NCLB can be organized into the following categories:
“Gaming” the system
The system of incentives and penalties sets up a strong motivation for schools, districts, and states to manipulate test results. For example, schools have been shown to employ “creative reclassification” of drop-outs (to reduce unfavorable statistics).
Critics argue that these and other strategies create an inflated perception of NCLB’s successes, particularly in states with high minority populations.
The incentives for an improvement also may cause states to lower their official standards. Because each state can produce its own standardized tests, a state can make its statewide tests easier to increase scores.[27] Missouri, for example, improved testing scores but openly admitted that they lowered the standards.[28] A 2007 study by the U.S. Dept. of Education indicates that the observed differences in states’ reported scores is largely due to differences in the stringency of their standards.
Problems with standardized tests
Critics have argued that the focus on standardized testing (all students in a state take the same test under the same conditions) as the means of assessment encourages teachers to teach a narrow subset of skills that will increase test performance rather than focus on deeper understanding that can readily be transferred to similar problems.[30] For example, if the teacher knows that all of the questions on a math test are simple addition equations (e.g., 2+3=5), then the teacher might not invest any class time on the practical applications of addition (e.g., story problems) so that there will be more time for the material which is assessed on the test. This is colloquially referred to as “teaching to the test.”
Moreover, many teachers who practice “teaching to the test” actually misinterpret the educational outcomes the tests are designed to measure. On two state tests (New York State and Michigan) and the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) almost two-thirds of eighth graders missed math word problems that required an application of the Pythagorean theorem to calculate the distance between two points.[31] Wiggins and McTighe blamed the low success rate on teachers who correctly anticipated the content of the tests, but incorrectly assumed each test would present rote knowledge/skill items rather than well-constructed, higher-order items.
The practice of giving all students the same test, under the same conditions, has been accused of inherent cultural bias because different cultures may value different skills. It also may conflict with the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), which states that schools must accommodate disabled students.[32] For example, it is normally acceptable for visually impaired students to be read test material aloud. However, on a NCLB-mandated test, a group of blind students had their scores invalidated (reported as zeros) because the testing protocol did not specifically allow for test readers to speak.
The practice of determining educational quality by testing students has been called into question.
Incentives against low-performing students
Because the law’s response if the school fails to make adequate progress is not only to provide additional help for students, but also to impose punitive measures on the school, the incentives are to set expectations lower rather than higher.
Incentives against gifted, talented, and high-performing students
Some local schools are only funding instruction for core subjects or for remedial special education. NCLB puts pressure on schools to guarantee that nearly all students will meet the minimum skill levels (set by each state) in reading, writing, and arithmetic, but requires nothing beyond these minimums. Programs that are not essential to achieving the mandated minimum skills are neglected or canceled by those districts. In particular, NCLB does not require any programs for gifted, talented, and other high-performing students.While federal law is silent on the requirement for funding gifted programs, the practice can violate the mandates of several states (such as Arizona, California, Virginia, and Pennsylvania) to identify gifted students and provide them with an appropriate education, including grade advancement.
State refusal to produce non-English assessments
All students who are learning English have an automatic three-year window to take assessments in their native language, after which they must normally demonstrate proficiency on an English-language assessment. However, the local education authority may grant an exception to any individual English learner for another two years’ testing in his or her native language on a case-by-case basis.
In practice, however, only 10 states choose to test any English language learners in their native language (almost entirely Spanish speakers). The vast majority of English language learners are given English language assessments.
Many schools test or assess students with limited English proficiency even when the students are exempt from NCLB-mandated reporting, because the tests may provide useful information to the teacher and school. In certain schools with large immigrant populations, this exemption comprises a majority of young students.
Narrow curriculum
NCLB’s focus on math and English language skills (and eventually science) may elevate scores on two fundamental skills while students lose the benefits of a broad education.
Surveys of public school principals indicate that since the implementation of NCLB, 71% believe instructional time has increased for reading, writing, and math (subjects tested under the law), and decreased for the arts, elementary social studies, and foreign languages.
In some places, the implementation of NCLB during a time of budget restraints has been blamed for the elimination of classes and activities which are outside of NCLB’s focus area. “It hurts me to give up art, but it hurts me even more to have kids who can’t read,” said school Principal Kathy Deck in Indianapolis, Indiana.These restraints may have affected humanities and social studies curricula as well. Common Core, a group that encourages a broad inclusive curriculum, recently found that many American high school students lack basic knowledge in history, civics, and literature. The group blamed NCLB for not including these topics in its focus.
Narrow definition of research
Some school districts and researchers object to the limitation created by the “scientifically based research standard.” Research based on case studies, ethnographies, clinical interviews, discourse analysis, grounded theory, action research, teaching experiments, design research and other forms of qualitative research are generally excluded from this category. Furthermore, the inability to employ random assignment for important educational predictors such as race and socio-economic status may exclude a large amount of quasi-experimental work that could contribute to educational knowledge.
Limitations on local control
Some conservative or libertarian critics have argued that NCLB sets a new standard for federalizing education and setting a precedent for further erosion of state and local control. Libertarians and some conservatives further argue that the federal government has no constitutional authority in education, which is why participation in NCLB is technically optional: States need not comply with NCLB, as long as they are willing to forgo the federal funding that comes with it. The states that choose not to receive funding will have their taxes used in another state instead.
Facilitates military recruitment
NCLB (In section 9528) requires public secondary schools to provide military recruiters the same access to facilities as a school provides to higher education institution recruiters. Schools are also required to provide contact information for every student to the military if requested. If the school refuses to provide the information, that school can lose all of its federal funding until it provides such information. [47] Students or parents can opt out of having their information shared, and educational institutions receiving funding under the act are required to inform parents that they have this option.[48][49] Currently, many school districts have a generic opt out form which, if filled out and turned in, withholds students’ information from college and job recruiters as well as the military. Section 9528 of the NCLB also states that military recruiters are permitted to speak to students as well as take them to various military functions, provide transportation to/from a recruiting office and to the school of the student and from school to the registered home address of the student as long as the student is of the age of 17 and the student provides consent.
Variability in student potential and 100% compliance
The Act is promoted as requiring 100% of students (including disadvantaged and special education students) within a school to reach the same state standards in reading and mathematics by 2014. Critics charge that a 100% goal is unattainable. Critics of the NCLB requirement for “one high, challenging standard” claim that some students are simply unable to perform at the level for their age, no matter how good the teacher is.[50] While statewide standards reduce the educational inequality between privileged and underprivileged districts in a state, they still impose a “one size fits all” standard on individual students. Particularly in states with high standards, schools can be punished for not being able to dramatically raise the achievement of students that have below-average capabilities, such as students with mental retardation.
In fact, the “all” in NCLB means only 95% of students, because states must report the assessment scores of 95% of students when calculating Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) scores.[51] Students who have an Individual Education Plan (IEP) and who are assessed must receive the accommodations specified in the IEP during assessment; if these accommodations do not change the nature of the assessment, then these students’ scores are counted the same as any other student’s score. Common acceptable changes include extended test time, testing in a quieter room, translation of math problems into the student’s native language, or allowing a student to type answers instead of writing them by hand.
Simply being classified as having special education needs does not automatically exempt students from assessment. Most students with mild disabilities or physical disabilities take the same test as non-disabled students.
In addition to not requiring 5% of students to be assessed at all, regulations allow schools to use alternate assessments to declare up to 1% of all students proficient for the purposes of the Act.States are given broad discretion in selecting alternate assessments. For example, a school may accept an Advanced Placement test for English in lieu of the English test written by the state, and simplified tests for students with significant cognitive disabilities. The Virginia Alternate Assessment Program (VAAP) and Virginia Grade Level Alternative (VGLA) options, for example, are portfolio assessments.
Organizations that support NCLB assessment of disabled or LEP students say that inclusion ensures that deficiencies in the education of these disadvantaged students are identified and addressed. Opponents say that testing students with disabilities violates the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) by making students with disabilities learn the same material as non-disabled students .
Funding
Several provisions of NCLB, such as a push for quality teachers and more professional development, place additional demands on local districts and state education agencies. Some critics claim that extra expenses are not fully reimbursed by increased levels of federal NCLB funding. Others note that funding for the law increased massively following passage[55] and that billions in funds previously allocated to particular uses could be reallocated to new uses. Even before the law’s passage, Secretary of Education Rod Paige noted ensuring that children are educated remained a state responsibility regardless of federal support:
Washington is willing to help [with the additional costs of federal requirements], as we’ve helped before, even before we [proposed NCLB]. But this is a part of the teaching responsibility that each state has. … Washington has offered some assistance now. In the legislation, we have … some support to pay for the development of tests. But even if that should be looked at as a gift, it is the state responsibility to do this.
Various early Democratic supporters of NCLB criticize its implementation, claiming it is not adequately funded by either the federal government or the states. Ted Kennedy, the legislation’s initial sponsor, has stated: “The tragedy is that these long overdue reforms are finally in place, but the funds are not.”[57] Susan B. Neuman, U.S. Department of Education’s former Assistant Secretary for Elementary and Secondary Education, commented about her worries of NCLB in a meeting of the International Reading Association
In [the most disadvantaged schools] in America, even the most earnest teacher has often given up because they lack every available resource that could possibly make a difference. . . . When we say all children can achieve and then not give them the additional resources … we are creating a fantasy.
Organizations have particularly criticized the unwillingness of the federal government to “fully fund” the act. Noting that appropriations bills always originate in the House of Representatives, it is true that during the Bush Administration, neither the Senate nor the White House has even requested federal funding up to the authorized levels for several of the act’s main provisions. For example, President Bush requested only $13.3 of a possible $22.75 billion in 2006.Advocacy groups note that President Bush’s 2008 budget proposal allotted $61 billion for the Education Department, cutting funding by $1.3 billion from the year before. 44 out of 50 states would receive reductions in federal funding if the budget passes as is.Specifically, funding for the Enhancing Education Through Technology Program (EETT) has continued to drop while the demand for technology in schools has increased (Technology and Learning, 2006). However, these claims focused on reallocated funds, as each of President Bush’s proposed budgets increased funding for major NCLB formula programs such as Title I, including his final 2009 budget proposal.
Members of Congress have viewed these authorized levels as spending caps, not spending promises. Some opponents argue that these funding shortfalls mean that schools faced with the system of escalating penalties for failing to meet testing targets are denied the resources necessary to remedy problems detected by testing. However, federal NCLB formula funding increased by billions during this period[62] and state and local funding increased by over $100 billion from school year 2001-02 through 2006-07.
State education budgets
According to the book, NCLB Meets School Realities, the act was put into action during a time of fiscal crisis for most states.[64] While states were being forced to make budget cuts, including in the area of education, they had to incur additional expenses to comply with the requirements of the NCLB Act. The funding they received from the federal government in support of NCLB was not enough to cover the added expense necessary to adhere to the new law.
Proposals for reform
The Joint Organizational Statement on No Child Left Behind is a proposal by more than 135 national civil rights, education, disability advocacy, civic, labor and religious groups that have signed on to a statement calling for major changes to the federal education law. The National Center for Fair & Open Testing (FairTest) initiated and chaired the meetings that produced the statement, originally released in October 2004. The statement’s central message is that “the law’s emphasis needs to shift from applying sanctions for failing to raise test scores to holding states and localities accountable for making the systemic changes that improve student achievement.” The number of organizations signing the statement has nearly quadrupled since it was launched in late 2004 and continues to grow. The goal is to influence Congress, and the broader public, as the law’s scheduled reauthorization approaches.
Education critic Alfie Kohn argues that the NCLB law is “unredeemable” and should be scrapped. He is quoted saying “[I]ts main effect has been to sentence poor children to an endless regimen of test-preparation drills”.
In February 2007, former Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson and former Georgia Governor Roy Barnes, Co-Chairs of the Aspen Commission on No Child Left Behind, announced the release of the Commission’s final recommendations for the reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act.The Commission is an independent, bipartisan effort to improve NCLB and ensure it is a more useful force in closing the achievement gap that separates disadvantaged children and their peers. After a year of hearings, analysis and research, the Commission uncovered the successes of NCLB, as well as provisions which need to be changed or significantly modified.
The Commission’s goals are summarized as follows:
* Effective Teachers for All Students, Effective Principals for All Communities
* Accelerating Progress and Closing Achievement Gaps Through Improved Accountability
* Moving Beyond the Status Quo to Effective School Improvement and Student Options
* Fair and Accurate Assessments of Student Progress
* High Standards for Every Student in Every State
* Ensuring High Schools Prepare Students for College and the Workplace
* Driving Progress Through Reliable, Accurate Data
* Parental involvement and empowerment
The Forum on Educational Accountability (FEA), a working group of signers of the Joint Organizational Statement on NCLB has offered an alternative proposal. It proposes to shift NCLB from applying sanctions for failing to raise test scores to supporting state and communities and holding them accountable as they make systemic changes that improve student learning.
The Nexus One is a smartphone from Google, which uses the Android mobile operating system.The device is manufactured by HTC Corporation, and became available on January 5, 2010.Features of the phone include the ability to transcribe voice to text,a native Gmail application, and voice directions while driving.
The phone comes unlocked, and is currently offered for use on the T-Mobile network in the United States; a version for use on the Verizon (US) and Vodafone (European) networks is expected in the second calendar quarter of 2010.It can be used on any GSM network worldwide, although 3G speeds will only function on certain networks.
Hardware
The Nexus One features a 3.7in AMOLED display, with a resolution 800×480. The screen has a 100,000:1 contrast ratio and a response time of 1ms. It has an illuminated trackball which can emit different colors of light based on the type of notification being received. The phone has two microphones, one on the front and one on the back, to enable noise cancellation to reduce background noise during phone conversations. A standard 3.5mm headphone jack is also provided.
The phone features a 1GHz Qualcomm 8250 processor, 512MB of RAM, a 4GB microSD card, 512MB of internal Flash storage, a 5MP auto-focus camera with LED flash and digital zoom, GPS receiver, light and proximity sensors, Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR, and 802.11b/g/n Wifi capabilities. It provides hardware decoding for H.263, H.264 and MPEG-4 video, and is capable of playing MP3, AAC+, Ogg Vorbis, WAV and MIDI audio, and displaying the JPEG, GIF, PNG and BMP image formats. It has a standard micro USB port rather than the proprietary HTC connector, and the microSD card slot allows expansion up to 32 gigabytes of card storage. Initially applications from the Android store will be limited to the 512MB of internal flash memory, although application storage on removable SD cards will be enabled once security and piracy concerns have been addressed.
The phone weighs 130 grams (4.6 oz), with a height of 119 millimetres (4.7 in), a width of 59.8 millimetres (2.35 in), and a depth of 11.5 millimetres (0.45 in). It is powered by a removable 1400mAh battery, expected to last up to 290 hours on standby, 10 hours talk time, or 5 hours while browsing the internet.
The phone’s antenna covers most major GSM providers worldwide, with the notable exception of the 850MHz and 1900MHz UMTS 3G bands used by AT&T and Rogers (of Canada). The GSM radio frequencies covered are 850, 900, 1800, and 1900 along with UMTS frequency bands 1 (2100MHz), 4 (1700MHz), and 8 (900MHz).
Software
The Nexus One runs the Google Android 2.1 operating system, codenamed ‘Eclair’.The 2.1 firmware version of the Android operating system adds a few aesthetic changes such as “Live Wallpapers” which are animated in the background and react to different user inputs. It also replaces the “Application Drawer” with a simple button which can be pressed to access the list of applications installed on the phone. This thumbnail list can be scrolled up and down and as it’s scrolled, the applications roll up into a 3D cube instead of disappearing from the screen. Once the bottom of the application thumbnail list is hit, the screen bounces off similar to the iPhone functionality.
Pinch-zooming is still not available on the 2.1 firmware of Android. However, double-tapping will zoom in. Additionally, the “Gallery” application allows the use of finger swiping to switch pictures rather than requiring use of the “Right” or “Left” arrow keys.
Pricing and release date
The Nexus One was released on January 5, 2010. The phone is sold via Google’s website, at a price of $529 unlocked, or a subsidized $179 when purchased with a T-Mobile two year contract.Only one plan is available – $79.99 per month rate, which includes 500 talk minutes with unlimited nights and weekends, unlimited texting/MMS, and web data.The $179 T-Mobile price is only for individuals who are not currently under contract with T-Mobile. If one currently has a T-Mobile contract without a data package, the price of the phone rises to $279.99. If the contract has both the voice and data package, the price of the phone again jumps to a higher price bracket, which is $379.99.By spring 2010, a Verizon version will be available in the US and a Vodafone model in Europe, with plans to expand the phone to other carriers and international markets in due course.
Google is making the phone available for delivery to the UK, Singapore and Hong Kong, although native carrier tie-ups have not been finalized for these countries, and the phone will be shipped from the US. Customers ordering from the UK are charged $20 international shipping and an optional $19.99 for an AC adaptor, with an additional 17.5% VAT and 6.5% import duty being added. Singapore applies 7% GST, while Hong Kong does not add any additional taxes.
Hacking & Modifications
Users are able to root the device by unlocking its bootloader using the fastboot command “fastboot oem unlock”.[19] Unlocking the bootloader allows the user to install other firmware images that give the user root access, and even other bootloaders. Obtaining root privileges enables a user to override protected operating system features, install arbitrary software and enable internet tethering to share the phone’s 3G network connection over Wifi among other things. Upon running the fastboot command, the user is presented with a Google-created screen stating that unlocking the bootloader will void your warranty.
History
A trademark application for the name “Nexus One” was filed by Google, Inc. on December 10, 2009.The Nexus One trademark was filed in International Trademark Class 9 for “Computer & Software Products & Electrical & Scientific Products” with description of “Mobile phones”.The trademark was filed as an Intent to Use trademark, with no use in commerce date provided, indicating that the name may be used for a future product.
On December 12, 2009, Google confirmed in a blog post that they had begun internal testing of the device.[23] Google stated that a “mobile lab device” had been given to its employees, at this time Google had not yet confirmed that a device would be sold to consumers. Wireless phone and data services for the device were not activated nor billed to Google, it was up to the employees to activate and pay for wireless service on their own.
Name
The Nexus One name is believed by some to allude to the novel (by Philip K. Dick) Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, which was later adapted into the film Blade Runner. The term android is also used in the book, but had generic broader usage that predates the book. Both the book and film are centered on a group of rogue androids called ‘replicants’ that are identified through the model designation Nexus-6.Mr Dick’s daughter Isa Hackett described Google’s usage of the Nexus One name as “a clear infringement of our intellectual-property rights” and announced the estate would be taking legal action.
Casey Johnson (September 24, 1979 – January 4, 2010) was an American socialite. She was also one of the great-great-granddaughters of Robert Wood Johnson I, co-founder of Johnson & Johnson.
Early life
Johnson’s father was Robert Wood Johnson IV, the owner of the New York Jets.Her mother was Sale Johnson. She was also the cousin of Jamie Johnson who directed the documentary Born Rich. She was diagnosed with diabetes at age 8, and her father was involved with the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, working to find a cure for the disease.
Career
At the age of 14, Johnson co-wrote a book with her father entitled Managing Your Child’s Diabetes.She appeared as herself on the television shows The Fabulous Life of… and E! True Hollywood Story. In addition she was a popular Hollywood socialite known for making outrageous headlines. Johnson was friends with other socialites such as Paris & Nicky Hilton (with whom she grew up), Nicole Richie, and several others.
Personal life
In 2006, Johnson spoke about a falling out she had with her aunt Elizabeth Ross “Libet” Johnson upon discovering through intimate e-mails that her aunt had stolen her boyfriend, John Dee.
In 2007, Johnson adopted a daughter, named Ava from Kazakhstan.Socialite Nicky Hilton is the child’s Godmother.
Johnson openly declared her sexuality as a lesbian. One of her ex-girlfriends was Courtenay Semel (whom she dated on and off during 2008–2009 and who set Johnson’s hair on fire in January of 2009, after a fight). On November 30, 2009, Johnson was arrested for allegedly stealing jewelry, shoes, 600 pages of a legal document, clothing, and underwear from Jasmine Lennard, who was tipped off by Semel (whom she was seeing at the time). Johnson allegedly left a used vibrator and wet towel as a calling card.
On December 9, 2009, Johnson and Tila Tequila announced that they were engaged.
Death
At 1:12 a.m. on Dec. 29, 2009, the 30-year old socialite Tweeted: “Sweet dreams everyone, I’m getting a new car.” Seven days later, on January 4, 2010, a maid found Johnson’s body in the bedroom of her West Hollywood home.The cause of death is yet to be determined (pending coroner’s toxicology report), however authorities reported “no evidence of foul play”. Tequila said Johnson had not answered her phone since December 29, 2009.Tequila later posted to her Twitter that Johnson was not dead, but in a coma. She later revised the statement, saying Johnson was, in fact, dead.According to TMZ, a law enforcement source claimed it appeared that Johnson had been dead for several days before her body was discovered.
Danica Sue Patrick (born March 25, 1982) is an American auto racing driver, currently competing in the IndyCar Series, as well as a model and advertising spokeswoman. Patrick was named the Rookie of the Year for both the 2005 Indianapolis 500 and the 2005 IndyCar Series season. With her win in the 2008 Indy Japan 300, Patrick became the first woman to win an Indy car race. Patrick currently drives the #7 GoDaddy.com Honda/Dallara for Andretti Autosport. In 2010, Patrick will race in the NASCAR Nationwide Series, driving the #7 GoDaddy.com Chevrolet Impala for JR Motorsports part-time. She also has an equity stake in her #7 team.[1] She placed 3rd in the 2009 Indianapolis 500, which was both a personal best for her at the track and the highest finish by a woman in the event’s history.
Early racing career
Born in Beloit, Wisconsin, Patrick grew up in Roscoe, Illinois. She began go-karting in 1992 at the age of 10,and won several World Karting Association championships. She moved to England at 16 in to advance her racing career. Patrick raced in Formula Ford and Formula Vauxhall, earning a second-place in Britain’s Formula Ford Festival, the highest finish by a woman in the event.
In 2002, Patrick started driving for Rahal Letterman Racing in the United States. After making several starts in the Barber Dodge Pro Series, she moved to the Toyota Atlantic Championship for 2003. Patrick won one pole position and was a consistent podium finisher (top three); however, she never won a race. In 2004, Patrick finished third in the Championship.
Patrick at the 2006 Indianapolis 500
After the 2004 racing season, Rahal Letterman Racing officially announced that Patrick would drive in the IRL IndyCar Series for 2005.
On May 29, 2005, Patrick became the fourth woman to compete in the Indianapolis 500, following Janet Guthrie, Lyn St. James and Sarah Fisher. After posting the fastest practice speed of the month (229.880 mph/369.956 km/h) during the morning practice session on the first day of qualifications (May 15), she made an error in the first turn of her first qualifying lap, and failed to capture the pole position, which went to Tony Kanaan. Patrick’s fourth starting position, however, was still the highest ever attained for the race by a female driver.
Patrick became the first female driver to lead the race at Indianapolis, first when acquiring it for a lap near the 125-mile (201 km) mark while cycling through pit stops, and late in the race when she stayed out one lap longer than her rivals during a set of green-flag pit stops. Patrick overcame two crucial errors to finish fourth, the same position she started in. Patrick’s car stalled in the pits about halfway through the 500-mile (800 km) race, dropping her to the middle of the field; and shortly after reclaiming a spot in the top 10, Patrick spun on a caution period just before an intended green flag leading to a four car accident. The accident caused damage to Patrick’s car that was limited to the nose and front wing. Her pit crew promptly made repairs, and due to the subsequent yellow, Patrick was able to rejoin the field having lost only one position. When the leaders pitted for fuel on lap 172, Patrick stayed out to take the lead. On lap 194, eventual race winner and 2005 series champion Dan Wheldon passed her as she was forced to slow in order to conserve fuel. Patrick was subsequently passed by both Bryan Herta and her teammate Vitor Meira. Patrick’s fourth place was the highest ever finish for a female driver at the Indy 500, besting the previous record of ninth set by Janet Guthrie in 1978. Patrick led 19 laps overall.
On July 2, 2005, Patrick won her first pole position, leading a 1-2-3 sweep by Rahal Letterman Racing at Kansas Speedway. She became the second woman to accomplish this feat in the IndyCar Series, the first being Sarah Fisher in 2002 at Kentucky Speedway. On August 13, 2005, she won her second pole at Kentucky Speedway, although this time, rain prematurely ended qualifying and position was determined by speeds achieved during practice. She took a third pole at Chicagoland Speedway which tied her with Tomas Scheckter’s record for number of pole positions earned in a rookie season.
In 2005, Patrick finished 12th in the IndyCar Series championship, with 325 points. She was named Rookie of the Year for both the 2005 Indianapolis 500 and the 2005 IndyCar Series season.
During the offseason following the 2005 racing year, Patrick competed in the Rolex 24 at Daytona along with co-driver Rusty Wallace in January 2006.
2006
Patrick competed in the 2006 IndyCar Series season giving her another chance at qualifying and racing in the Indianapolis 500. In the first race of the season, the Toyota Indy 300 at Homestead, Patrick qualified third behind the Penske Racing teammates of Helio Castroneves and Sam Hornish, Jr. However, tragedy struck as RLR teammate Paul Dana was killed in a crash during practice the morning of the race. Patrick and Buddy Rice withdrew from the race immediately. The two resumed their 2006 IndyCar campaign with the second race of the year at St. Petersburg
At the Indy 500, Patrick started eighth and finished eighth. After Watkins Glen, RLR switched to the Dallara chassis and the team struggled to adapt. Patrick struggled to remain competitive, but her fourth place finishes at Nashville and Milwaukee tied her career best IndyCar finishes. At Michigan, Patrick’s car ran out of fuel with three laps to go and she fell to 17th. She rebounded at Kentucky and Infineon to finish 8th in both races.
In her final race with RLR at Chicagoland, Patrick recorded a 12th place finish and a 9th place finish in the IndyCar Series Championship point standings, besting her 12th place points finish as a rookie.
In November, the March of Dimes awarded her the title of Sportswoman of the Year in celebration of her dedication and success [5].
2007
Danica Patrick after qualifying for the 2007 Indianapolis 500
On July 25, 2006, Patrick announced she had signed a deal to drive for Andretti Autosport, replacing Bryan Herta in the number 7 Dallara Honda car beginning in 2007.[6] Patrick’s car is sponsored by Motorola, XM radio and Go Daddy.[7][8]
In Patrick’s first race with Andretti Autosport at Homestead on March 24 she finished 14th after crashing into the pit wall on lap 154. She finished 8th at St. Pete and 11th at Japan. At Kansas she had her best finish of the year at that point, finishing 7th.
In April 2007, Patrick launched her official fan club The Danica Maniacs to help foster greater interaction between her and her fans.
Patrick ended up starting and finishing eighth in the 91st running of the Indianapolis 500. She ran as high as 2nd to Tony Kanaan after the mid-race rain delay. After a pit stop, she dropped back in the field. Patrick was working her way back to the front until the race was ended under the caution caused by Marco Andretti’s accident due to the subsequent rain on lap 166.
At Milwaukee, Patrick started second to last but moved quickly to 5th before contact with Dan Wheldon. Patrick managed to keep the car from hitting anything, but the wreck caused aerodynamic damage. She used a caution to regain the lead lap and finish 8th. After the race, she and Wheldon had a heated exchange when she tried to confront him about the wreck.
Patrick rebounded at Texas in the Bombardier Learjet 550. She ran with the lead pack through the entire race and led a race for the first time since 2005. She finished less than a second behind the winner, Sam Hornish, Jr., a then career-best third and her first “podium” finish.
She was involved in a crashes at Iowa and finished 13th. At Richmond she ran in the top 10 all night before finishing 6th.
She had an 11th place finish at Watkins Glen, before running in the top 5 all day and finishing 3rd at Nashville. At Mid-Ohio she finished 5th (her best road course finish) despite being involved in a lap 1 accident that sent her into the grass briefly.
Patrick had bad luck at Michigan International Speedway, where previous years saw her retire early due to fuel and other problems. In 2007, a flat tire late in the race forced Patrick to pit and dropped her to finish 7th.
Her bad luck continued at Kentucky, and she ran in the lead group all night and appeared headed towards another podium finish when she spun out exiting pit road with less than 50 laps to go. After restarting from that spin, a rear tire on Patrick’s car blew leading to a crash and forcing her to retire from the race.
Her luck would get a little better at Infineon as she ran in the top 10 and finished 6th. However a series of slow pit stops kept her from what could have been an even better finish.
At Belle Isle, Patrick started 11th and was involved in two accidents from which she was able to restart without damage, eventually driving to the front and leading 9 laps of the race before falling back after having to pit. On the final lap, while Patrick was running in 5th, Buddy Rice, Scott Dixon and teammate Dario Franchitti were involved in an accident immediately in front of her. Patrick was able to avoid the wreck and finish in second place, a career-high in the IndyCar Series and tying her with Dreyer & Reinbold Racing driver Sarah Fisher for best finish in IndyCar racing by a female.
At the season finale in Chicagoland Speedway, Patrick ran most of the race in the top 6, but had to make a pit stop for fuel with 7 laps to go. When entering pit lane, Patrick spun-out but avoided damage to her car. With assistance from her pit crew, Patrick was able to refire the engine, make a complete pit stop and reenter the race, finishing 11th overall.
For the 2007 season as a whole, Patrick scored her first three career podium finishes to finish with 4 top 5’s and 11 top 10’s while leading 17 laps on the season. She also scored her career best championship points finish of 7th with 424 points.
2008
Patrick won her first IRL race at the 2008 Indy Japan 300, and became first woman to win an IndyCar Series race.
To begin the 2008 season, her second with Andretti Autosport, Patrick scored her best career Homestead finish of 6th. She followed that up with another top 10 by scoring a 10th place finish at St. Petersburg.
Patrick won at Twin Ring Motegi in the Indy Japan 300 on April 20, 2008, becoming the first woman to win an IndyCar race,[1] joining the ranks of drag racer Shirley Muldowney, who won three NHRA Top Fuel Championships,[9] as a “first female” winner in the top tier of American motorsports. Patrick took the Indy Japan 300 after the race leaders were forced to pit for fuel in the final laps. She finished 5.8594 seconds ahead of the Brazilian pole-sitter Helio Castroneves, who ran out of fuel in the final turns on the 1.5-mile (2.4 km) Twin Ring Motegi oval.
Her team owner, Michael Andretti, commented, “I’m thrilled for her that the monkey is finally off of her back.”
A mechanical problem late in the race RoadRunner Turbo 300 at Kansas Speedway forced Patrick to retire early from the race.
During practice for the 2008 Indianapolis 500, Patrick’s car struck a member of Dale Coyne Racing’s pit crew when she came into the pits on May 9. During the Indianapolis 500 on May 25, 2008, she retired from the race early after a collision in the pitlane. As Ryan Briscoe exited his pitbox the two cars collided, damaging Patrick’s left rear suspension and eliminating both from the race. After being pushed back to her own pit, Patrick left her car and headed down pit road towards Briscoe’s pit at which point IMS security intervened, preventing an on-track confrontation.
Following Indy, Patrick finished 9th at Milwaukee and 10th at Texas, with both races ending under yellow flag conditions. At Iowa and Richmond she stayed out of the many crashes during these races and finished 6th in each event.
Overall, she finished the 2008 IndyCar Series season in sixth place – the highest championship finish among American drivers for the 2008 season.
During the offseason following the 2008 racing year, Patrick made her second appearance in the Rolex 24 at Daytona in January 2009
2009
Patrick’s car as it appears during the 2009 IndyCar season.
On May 24, Patrick raced at the Indianapolis 500. She finished third behind winner Helio Castroneves and second-place Dan Wheldon.It was her best finish in five attempts, one spot better than her 2005 finish, and a new record high finish for a female driver in the race. The following weekend in Milwaukee Patrick raced to 5th position at the flag. On June 6, she finished the Bombardier Learjet 550 in 6th place, dropping her to fifth place in the IndyCar Series point standings.
Patrick began the season with the Motorola sponsorship from her previous two seasons with AGR, however her car was rebranded for Boost Mobile following the Kansas race. The changes were made public with a drive down the tarmac at the Indianapolis International Airport.
In what was a difficult Honda Indy Toronto qualifying and practice for the entire Andretti Autosport team, Patrick started the race in the 18th position (her teammates also starting in the rear of the field in 17th, 20th, and 22nd). Patrick had the best finish of the Andretti Autosport team moving up 12 positions to finish 6th, putting her only three points behind Castroneves for the 4th position in the 2009 points championship.
Danica finished the season 5th overall in the point standings, her highest finish to date. This 5th place finish was not only the highest of any of the Andretti Autosport drivers, but of any non-Penske or Ganassi driver for the 2009 season.
Formula One speculations
In the end of 2008, Patrick was scheduled to test for Formula One team Honda in November 2008,however this was ultimately called off due to the Honda F1 pullout.[18] Future American F1 team Team US F1 has allegedly considered testing Patrick for 2010.However, she has stated that she has not been contacted by anyone from the new American-based Formula One team and has no plans to leave the IndyCar Series for Formula One at this time.
NASCAR/ARCA career
Patrick will drive a part-time schedule in the NASCAR Nationwide Series for JR Motorsports and her sponsor GoDaddy.com.Her first competitive stock car experience will be driving the green and orange #7 Chevrolet in an ARCA race on February 6, 2010 at Daytona International Speedway.She’s marked the Feb. 20, 2010 race at California’s Auto Club Speedway for her NASCAR debut.
Critics
Some drivers have critically commented on Danica Patrick’s presence in auto racing and her success in promoting herself as a female driver.While many drivers and racing professionals have supported both her and other female drivers,[26] some have voiced hesitancy over the entry of women into the sport.Former driver Richard Petty stated, “I just don’t think it’s a sport for women, and so far, it’s proved out. It’s really not. It’s good for them to come in. It gives us a lot of publicity; it gives them publicity. But as far as being a real true racer, making a living out of it, it’s kind of tough.”After Patrick’s IRL win, she was praised by many drivers, including NASCAR driver and former IRL champion Tony Stewart, who said “I think obviously she’s got talent; she’s been successful in every form of racing she’s been in so far and I don’t see why she wouldn’t be successful here [in NASCAR].”
Patrick at the 2007 Red Dress Collection for the Heart Truth campaign.
Patrick has hosted several TV shows on Spike TV, including the “Powerblock”, and she was featured in the 2005 documentary Girl Racers. On the August 23, 2007 episode of Diggnation, hosts Alex Albrecht and Kevin Rose shot live at Infineon Raceway, where they were treated to a lap around the track in the IndyCar Safety Car driven by Patrick. On April 24, 2008, Patrick was a guest on the Late Show with David Letterman and Late Night With Conan O’Brien on April 25, 2008.
Patrick was featured on the cover of the June 6, 2005 issue of Sports Illustrated, making her the first Indianapolis 500 driver on the cover since Al Unser, in victory lane, following his upset fourth victory in 1987. After her participation in the 2005 Indianapolis 500, she was asked by Playboy to have her pictures taken to be published in a future edition of its magazine. She declined the offer, but she did participate in a “20 Questions” interview with Jason Buhrmester for the magazine’s July 2007 issue.[31] She had also previously posed for FHM, appearing in the April 2003 issue. She was on the cover of the September/October 2006 issue of travelgirl magazine and the October 2006 issue of American Libraries. Patrick appears in the February 15, 2008 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue. She is featured in a 4-page photo spread.
She appeared in commercials for Secret deodorant in 2005 and 2006 until she was replaced by Rihanna in 2007. She also appeared in Jay-Z’s music video “Show Me What You Got,” where she drives a Pagani Zonda Roadster. A spot for the Honda Civic Coupe features Patrick trying to avoid a speeding ticket.
Patrick on Pole Day at Indy, 2007.
Patrick was featured in an ESPN “This Is SportsCenter” commercial, which showed then-anchor Dan Patrick towing her IndyCar due to a reserved space misunderstanding (the space in question being reserved for “D. Patrick”). She can also be seen in award winning corporate training videos Four Weeks In May and T.E.A.M.W.O.R.K. In May 2006, she published her autobiography, Danica: Crossing the Line.
During testing at Phoenix International Raceway, GoDaddy filmed a commercial with Patrick that has also aired nationally. During the same test, at the invitation of GoDaddy, Patrick met with Paul Teutul, Sr. and Mikey Teutul, and subsequently appeared on an episode of American Chopper. Patrick was also in a 2008 “inspirational, feel-good” Go Daddy commercial called “Kart” that features a young girl who aspires to be like Patrick.[33] On February 1, 2009, Patrick appeared in two GoDaddy.com commercials advertised during Super Bowl XLIII. The Most Watched Super Bowl commercial of 2009, according to TiVo, was Patrick’s “Enhancement” ad for GoDaddy.com.
Recently she was voted sexiest athlete in Victoria’s Secret “What is Sexy” list. Patrick also was voted #42 in 2006 and #85 in 2007 in FHM’s 100 sexiest women in the world.
Patrick made a second appearance in the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue in February 2009, posing with a Shelby Cobra 427.
Patrick is represented by IMG talent agency.
Recently starred in a Boost Mobile commercial to advertise their prepaid unlimited telephone plans.
Personal life
Patrick’s parents, T.J. and Bev Patrick, met on a blind date at a snowmobile event in the 1970s when Bev was a mechanic for a friend’s snowmobile.[36][37] T.J. raced snowmobiles, motocross, and midget cars. They have owned a Java Hut and a plate glass company.
Prior to getting into auto racing, she was a cheerleader at Hononegah Community High School near Beloit in 1996.[38] She dropped out of high school and attained a GED.
Currently, T.J. helps his daughter by driving her motor coach and managing her Web site and merchandise trailer and Bev handles Patrick’s business affairs. Patrick is married to Paul Edward Hospenthal, who had previously been her physical therapist while she was recovering from a yoga injury.[40] She converted to Roman Catholicism upon marrying Hospenthal in 2005.
She won the 2008 Kids Choice Award for favorite female athlete.
She has received two speeding tickets in her hometown of Scottsdale, Arizona. The first, in 2007, was for driving 57 mph (92 km/h) in a 40 mph (64 km/h) zone, for which she was ordered to attend traffic school; the second, in 2008, was for going 54 mph (87 km/h) in a 35 mph (56 km/h) zone, and she paid a $196 fine.
ISLAMABAD — A pair of bombings on Sunday killed at least 10 people, including a government official, and wounded scores more, Pakistani authorities said.
The first blast hit the home of a local official in the Kurram area of Pakistan’s semiautonomous tribal region, killing Sarfaraz Khan, his 13-year-old son and three of his young nephews, an official said. The Associated Press reported that Khan’s wife was also killed in the attack, but that could not be independently confirmed.
Some observers speculated that Khan’s killing was in retaliation for his cooperation with security forces targeting Islamist extremists in the region. Khan had been “vocal and helpful to the security agencies,” Syed Azfal, a political activist in Khan’s home town of Sadda, said in a telephone interview.
In a second attack, a suicide bomber in the capital of the Pakistani-controlled portion of Kashmir detonated his explosives outside a prayer hall packed with worshipers marking Ashura, a Shiite Muslim holiday. The bomb killed at least five people and injured more than 80, authorities said.
There was no claim of responsibility for either attack.
The violence, on the two-year anniversary of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto’s assassination, underscored the volatility now challenging the increasingly weak civilian government led by her husband, President Asif Ali Zardari. Zardari has faced calls to resign since the Supreme Court earlier this month struck down an amnesty that shielded him and other officials from corruption charges. Zardari is still protected by a clause in the constitution giving the president immunity from prosecution, but opponents say they plan to file court petitions contesting his eligibility for the office.
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On Sunday, Zardari lashed out at his opponents for the first time since the court decision, telling a crowd near Bhutto’s tomb in southern Pakistan that the demands for his resignation were rooted in “evil intentions” that pose a threat to the nation’s fragile democracy.
The military is battling Pakistani Taliban insurgents based in the rugged tribal region bordering Afghanistan, including Kurram. Militants have stepped up attacks nationwide since the army opened a major offensive in the tribal area of South Waziristan this fall. Many of the attacks have targeted security forces and installations.
10 killed in Pakistan bombings on anniversary of Bhutto assassination
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