name	The Associated Press
logo
type	Not-for-profit cooperative
foundation
location city	New York City, New York
location country
key people	Tom Curley, President and CEO
area served	Worldwide
industry	News media
products	Wire service
revenue	$631 million USD (2010)
operating income	$14.7 million USD (2010)
net income	$8.8 million USD (2010)
num employees	4,100
homepage	ap.org }}

The Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists. Many newspapers and broadcasters outside the United States are AP subscribers, paying a fee to use AP material without being contributing members of the cooperative.

, the news collected by the AP is published and republished by more than 1,700 newspapers, in addition to more than 5,000 television and radio broadcasters. The photograph library of the AP consists of over 10 million images. The Associated Press operates 243 news bureaus, and it serves at least 120 countries, with an international staff located all over the world.

Associated Press also operates The Associated Press Radio Network, which provides newscasts twice hourly for broadcast and satellite radio and television stations. The AP Radio also offers news and public affairs features, feeds of news sound bites, and long form coverage of major events.

As part of their cooperative agreement with The Associated Press, most member news organizations grant automatic permission for the AP to distribute their local news reports. For example, on page two of every edition of ''The Washington Post'', the newspaper's masthead includes the statement, "''The Associated Press is entitled exclusively to use for re-publication of all news dispatches credited to it or not otherwise credited in this paper and all local news of spontaneous origin published herein.''"

The AP employs the "inverted pyramid formula" for writing that enables the news outlets to edit a story to fit its available publication area without losing the story's essential meaning and news information.

Cutbacks at longtime U.S. rival United Press International, most significantly in 1993, left the AP as the primary nationally oriented news service based in the United States, although United Press International still produces and distributes news stories daily. Other English-language news services, such as Reuters and the English-language service of Agence France-Presse, are based outside the United States. More recently launched internet news services, such as All Headline News (AHN) are becoming competitive to the traditional wire services like the AP.

History

Associated Press is a not-for-profit news cooperative formed in the spring of 1846 by five daily newspapers in New York City to share the cost of transmitting news of the Mexican-American War by boat, horse express, and telegraph. The venture was organized by Moses Yale Beach (1800–68), second publisher of the New York Sun, and agreed to by the Herald, Courier and Enquirer, Journal of Commerce, and the Express. Some historians believe that the Tribune joined at this time; documents show it was a member in 1849. The New York Times became a member in 1851. Initially known as the New York Associated Press (NYAP), the organization faced competition from the Western Associated Press (1862), which criticized it for monopolistic practices in gathering news and setting prices. An investigation completed in 1892 by Victor Lawson, editor and publisher of the Chicago Daily News, revealed that several principals of the NYAP had entered into a secret agreement with United Press, a rival organization, to share NYAP news and the profits of reselling it. The revelations led to the demise of the NYAP and in December 1892, the Western Associated Press was incorporated in Illinois as the Associated Press. An Illinois Supreme Court decision (Inter Ocean Publishing Co. v. Associated Press) in 1900—that the AP was a public utility and operating in restraint of trade—resulted in AP’s move from Chicago to New York City, where corporation laws were more favorable to cooperatives.

Melville Stone, who had founded the Chicago Daily News in 1875, served as AP General Manager from 1893 to 1921. He embraced the standards of accuracy, impartiality, and integrity for which AP is still known. The cooperative grew rapidly under the leadership of Kent Cooper (served 1925-48), who built up bureau staff in South America, Europe, and (after World War II), the Middle East. He introduced the “telegraph typewriter” or teletypewriter into newsrooms in 1914. In 1935, AP launched the Wirephoto network, which allowed transmission of news photographs over leased private telephone lines on the day they were taken. This gave AP a major advantage over other news media outlets. While the first network was only between New York, Chicago and San Fransisco, eventually AP had its network across the whole United States. In 1945, the Supreme Court of the United States held in ''Associated Press v. United States'' that AP had been violating the Sherman Antitrust Act by prohibiting member newspapers from selling or providing news to nonmember organizations as well as making it very difficult for nonmember newspapers to join the AP. In 1982, satellites began transmitting news photography. AP entered the broadcast field in 1941 when it began distributing news to radio stations; it created its own radio network in 1974. In 1994, it established APTV, a global video newsgathering agency. APTV merged with WorldWide Television News in 1998 to form APTN, which provides video to international broadcasters and websites. In 2009, AP had more than 240 bureaus globally. Its mission —“to gather with economy and efficiency an accurate and impartial report of the news”—has not changed since its founding, but digital technology has made the distribution of the AP news report an interactive endeavor between AP and its 1,400 U.S. newspaper members as well as broadcasters, international subscribers, and online customers. AP headquarters are at 450 W. 33rd Street in Manhattan.

The Associated Press began diversifying its news gathering capabilities, and by 2007 AP was generating only about 30% of its revenue from United States newspapers. 37% came from the global broadcast customers, 15% from online ventures, and 18% came from international newspapers and from photography.

Key dates

1849: the Harbor News Association opened the first news bureau outside the United States in Halifax, Nova Scotia, to meet ships sailing from Europe before they reached dock in New York.

1876: Mark Kellogg, a stringer, is the first AP news correspondent to be killed while reporting the news, at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. His final dispatch: "I go with (Commander George Armstrong) Custer and will be at the death."

1893: Melville E. Stone becomes the general manager of the reorganized AP, a post he holds until 1921. Under his leadership, the AP grows to be one of the world's most prominent news agencies.

1899: AP uses Guglielmo Marconi's wireless telegraph to cover the America's Cup yacht race off Sandy Hook, New Jersey, the first news test of the new technology.

1914: AP introduces the teleprinter, which transmitted directly to printers over telegraph wires. Eventually a worldwide network of 60-word-per-minute teleprinter machines is built.

1935: AP initiates WirePhoto, the world's first wire service for photographs. The first photograph to transfer over the network depicted an airplane crash in Morehouseville, New York, on New Year's Day, 1935.

1938: AP expands to new offices at 50 Rockefeller Plaza (known as "50 Rock") in the newly built Rockefeller Center in New York City, which would remain its headquarters for 66 years.

1941: AP expands from print to radio broadcast news.

1945: AP Paris bureau chief Edward Kennedy defies an Allied headquarters news blackout to report Nazi Germany’s surrender, touching off a bitter episode that leads to his eventual dismissal by the AP. Kennedy maintains that he reported only what German radio already had broadcast.

1951: AP Prague bureau chief William N. Oatis is arrested for espionage by the Communist government of Czechoslovakia. He is not released until 1953.

1994: AP launches APTV, a global video news gathering agency, headquartered in London.

2004: The AP moves its headquarters from 50 Rock to 450 W. 33rd Street, New York City.

2006: AP joined YouTube.

2008: The AP launches AP Mobile (initially known as the AP Mobile News Network), a multimedia news portal that gives users news they can choose and provides anytime access to international, national and local news. AP was the first to debut a dedicated iPhone news application in June 2008, offering AP’s own worldwide coverage of breaking news, sports, entertainment, politics and business as well as content from more than 1,000 AP members and third-party sources. 2010: AP earnings fall 65% from 2008 to just $8.8 million. The AP also announced that it would have posted a loss of $4.4 million had it not liquidated its German language news service for $13.2 million.

2011: AP lost $14.7 million in 2010 as revenue plummeted for a second consecutive year. 2010 revenue totaled $631 million, a decline of 7% from the previous year. This is despite sweeping price cuts designed to bolster revenues and help newspapers and broadcasters cope with declining revenue.

AP sports polls

The AP is known for its Associated Press polls on numerous college sports in the United States. The AP polls ranking the top 25 NCAA Division I (Football Bowl Subdivision and Football Championship Subdivision) college football and NCAA Division I men's and women's college basketball teams are the most well known. The AP composes the polls by collecting and compiling the top-25 votes of numerous designated sports journalists. The AP poll of college football was particularly notable for many years because it helped determine the ranking of teams at the end of the regular season for the collegiate Bowl Championship Series until the AP, citing conflict of interest, asked for the poll to be removed from the bowl series. Beginning in the 2005 season, the Harris Interactive College Football Poll took the AP's place in the bowl series formula. The AP poll is the longest serving national poll in college football, having begun in 1936.

AP sports awards

Baseball

In 1959, the AP began its AP Manager of the Year Award, for Major League Baseball. The award was discontinued in 2001.

Basketball

Every year on March 31, the AP releases the names of the winners of its AP College Basketball Player of the Year and AP College Basketball Coach of the Year awards.

American football

AP NFL Coach of the Year (1957)

Associated Press Television News

In 1994, London-based Associated Press Television (APTV) was founded to provide agency news material to television broadcasters. Other existing providers of such material at the time were Reuters Television and Worldwide Television News (WTN).

In 1998, AP purchased WTN, and APTV left the Associated Press building in the Central London and merged with WTN to create Associated Press Television News (APTN) in the WTN building, now the APTN building in Camden Town.

Litigation and controversies

Breach of contract and unfair competition

In November 2010 the Associated Press was sued by iCopyright. iCopyright's lawsuit asserts breach of contract and unfair competition in that the Associated Press launched a copyright-tracking registry, built upon information and business intelligence that the AP misappropriated from iCopyright.

Christopher Newton

The Associated Press fired Washington, D.C. bureau reporter Christopher Newton in September 2002, accusing him of fabricating at least 40 people and organizations since 2000. Some of the nonexistent agencies quoted in his stories included "Education Alliance," the "Institute for Crime and Punishment in Chicago," "Voice for the Disabled" and "People for Civil Rights."

Fair-use controversies

In June 2008, the AP sent numerous DMCA take down demands and threatened legal action against several blogs. The AP contended that the internet blogs were violating AP's copyright by linking to AP material and using headlines and short summaries in those links. Many bloggers and experts noted that the use of the AP news fell squarely under commonly accepted internet practices and within fair use standards. Others noted and demonstrated that AP routinely takes similar excerpts from other sources, often without attribution or licenses. AP responded that it was defining standards regarding citations of AP news.

Copyright and intellectual property

In August 2005, Ken Knight, a Louisiana photographer sued the Associated Press claiming that the AP had willfully and negligently violated Knight's copyright by distributing a photograph of celebrity Britney Spears to various media outlets including, but not limited to: truTV (formerly CourtTV), America Online and Fox News. According to court documents the AP did not have a license to publish, display or relicense the photographs. The case was settled by the parties in November 2006.

In a case filed February, 2005, McClatchey v. The Associated Press, a Pennsylvania photographer sued the Associated Press claiming that the AP had cropped a picture to remove the plaintiff's embedded title and copyright notice and later distributed it to news organizations without the plaintiff's permission or credit. According to court documents the parties settled the lawsuit.

In April 2011, Patricia Ann Lopez, a New Mexico courtroom sketch artist, sued the Associated Press claiming that the AP had violated her copyrights by reselling her images without a license and had deceptively, fraudulently and wrongfully passed off the artist's work as its own. According to court documents the AP did not have a license to resell or relicense the images.

Shepard Fairey

In March 2009, the Associated Press counter-sued artist Shepard Fairey over his famous image of Barack Obama, saying the uncredited, uncompensated use of an AP photo violated copyright laws and signaled a threat to journalism. Fairey had sued the Associated Press the previous month over his artwork, titled "Obama Hope" and "Obama Progress," arguing that he did not violate copyright law because he dramatically changed the image. The artwork, based on an April 2006 picture taken for the AP by Mannie Garcia, was a popular image during the presidential campaign and now hangs in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington. According to the AP lawsuit filed in federal court in Manhattan, Fairey knowingly "misappropriated The AP's rights in that image." The suit, which also names Fairey's companies, asks the court to award AP profits made off the image and damages. "While (Fairey and the companies) have attempted to cloak their actions in the guise of politics and art, there is no doubt that they are profiting handsomely from their misappropriation," the lawsuit says. Fairey said he looked forward to "upholding the free expression rights at stake here" and disproving the AP's accusations.

Hot News

In January 2008, the Associated Press sued competitor All Headline News (AHN) claiming that AHN allegedly infringed on its copyrights and a contentious 'quasi-property' right to facts. The AP complaint asserted that AHN reporters had copied facts from AP news reports without permission and without paying a syndication fee. After AHN moved to dismiss all but the copyright claims set forth by AP, a majority of the lawsuit was dismissed. According to court documents, the case has been dismissed and both parties have settled the lawsuit.

In June 2010 the Associated Press was accused of having unfair and hypocritical policies after it was demonstrated that AP reporters had copied Hot News, original reporting and facts from the "Search Engine Land" website without permission, attribution or credit.

Governance

The Associated Press is governed by an elected board of directors.

Web resource

The AP's multi-topic structure has lent itself well to web portals, such as Yahoo! and MSN, all of which have news sites that constantly need to be updated. Often, such portals will rely on AP and other news services as their first source for news coverage of breaking news items. Yahoo's "Top News" page gives the AP top visibility out of any news outlet. This has been of major impact to the AP's public image and role, as it gives new credence to the AP's continual mission of having staff for covering every area of news fully and promptly. The AP is also the news service used on the Nintendo Wii's News Channel. In 2007 Google announced it was paying for Associated Press content displayed in Google News, but the articles are not permanently archived. On December 24, 2009, Google stopped displaying or hosting Associated Press news content on the Google News website.

See also

Journalism scandals

References

Additional sources

External links

Associated Press website

AP photo archive

AP news

Civil Rights Greensboro

Category:Publications established in 1846 Category:News agencies based in the United States Category:New Zealand House of Representatives accredited news organisations Category:Worth Bingham Prize recipients Category:American football media Category:College football media Category:Photo archives Category:Rockefeller Center Category:Cooperatives in the United States Category:Consumers' cooperatives Category:1846 establishments in the United States

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birth name	Whitney Elizabeth Houston
background	solo_singer
birth date	August 09, 1963
birth place
death date	February 11, 2012
death place
instrument	Vocals, piano
genre	R&B;, soul, pop, dance, gospel
occupation	Singer, actress, model, film producer, record producer, songwriter
years active	1977–2012
label	Arista, RCA
associated acts	Cissy Houston, Dionne Warwick, Aretha Franklin, Jermaine Jackson, Mariah Carey, Enrique Iglesias, Bobby Brown
website	130pxWhitney Houston's Autograph }}

Whitney Elizabeth Houston (August 9, 1963 – February 11, 2012) was an American recording artist, actress, producer, and model. In 2009, the ''Guinness World Records'' cited her as the most-awarded female act of all-time. Houston was also one of the world's best-selling music artists, having sold over 170 million albums, singles and videos worldwide. She released seven studio albums and three movie soundtrack albums, all of which have diamond, multi-platinum, platinum or gold certification. Houston's crossover appeal on the popular music charts, as well as her prominence on MTV, starting with her video for "How Will I Know", influenced several African-American female artists to follow in her footsteps.

Houston is the only artist to chart seven consecutive No. 1 ''Billboard'' Hot 100 hits. She is the second artist behind Elton John and the only female artist to have two number-one ''Billboard'' 200 Album awards (formerly "Top Pop Album") on the ''Billboard'' magazine year-end charts. Houston's 1985 debut album ''Whitney Houston'' became the best-selling debut album by a female act at the time of its release. The album was named ''Rolling Stone''s best album of 1986, and was ranked at number 254 on ''Rolling Stone''s list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. Her second studio album ''Whitney'' (1987) became the first album by a female artist to debut at number one on the ''Billboard'' 200 albums chart.

Houston's first acting role was as the star of the feature film ''The Bodyguard'' (1992). The film's original soundtrack won the 1994 Grammy Award for Album of the Year. Its lead single "I Will Always Love You", became the best-selling single by a female artist in music history. With the album, Houston became the first act (solo or group, male or female) to sell more than a million copies of an album within a single week period under Nielsen SoundScan system. The album makes her the top female act in the top 10 list of the best-selling albums of all time, at number four. Houston continued to star in movies and contribute to their soundtracks, including the films ''Waiting to Exhale'' (1995) and ''The Preacher's Wife'' (1996). ''The Preacher's Wife'' soundtrack became the best-selling gospel album in history.

On February 11, 2012, Houston was found dead in her guest room at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, in Beverly Hills, California, of causes not immediately known. News of her death, the day before and after the 2012 Grammy Awards, featured prominently in American and international media.

Life and career

1963–1976: Early life

Whitney Houston was born in what was then a middle-income neighborhood in Newark, New Jersey, the second child of Army serviceman and entertainment executive John Russell Houston, Jr. (September 13, 1920 – February 2, 2003), and gospel singer Cissy Houston (née Emily Drinkard). She was of African American, Native American and Dutch descent. Her mother, along with cousins Dionne Warwick and Dee Dee Warwick, godmother Darlene Love and honorary aunt Aretha Franklin were all notable figures in the gospel, rhythm and blues, pop, and soul genres. She met her honorary aunt at age 8, or 9, when her mother took her to a recording studio. Houston was raised a Baptist, but was also exposed to the Pentecostal church. After the 1967 Newark riots, the family moved to a middle-class area in East Orange, New Jersey, when she was four.

At the age of 11, Houston began to follow in her mother's footsteps and started performing as a soloist in the junior gospel choir at the New Hope Baptist Church in Newark, where she also learned to play the piano. Her first solo performance in the church was "Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah". When Houston was a teenager, she attended Mount Saint Dominic Academy, a Catholic girls' high school in Caldwell, New Jersey, where she met her best friend Robyn Crawford, whom she described as the "sister she never had". While Houston was still in school, her mother continued to teach her how to sing. In addition to her mother, Franklin, and Warwick, Houston was also exposed to the music of Chaka Khan, Gladys Knight, and Roberta Flack, most of whom would have an impact on her as a singer and performer.

1977–1984: Early career

Houston spent some of her teenage years touring nightclubs where her mother Cissy was performing, and she would occasionally get on stage and perform with her. In 1977, at age 14, she became a backup singer on the Michael Zager Band's single "Life's a Party". In 1978, at age 15, Houston sang background vocals on Chaka Khan's hit single "I'm Every Woman", a song she would later turn into a larger hit for herself on her monster-selling ''The Bodyguard'' soundtrack album. She also sang back-up on albums by Lou Rawls and Jermaine Jackson.

In the early 1980s, Houston started working as a fashion model after a photographer saw her at Carnegie Hall singing with her mother. She appeared in ''Seventeen'' and became one of the first women of color to grace the cover of the magazine. She was also featured in layouts in the pages of ''Glamour'', ''Cosmopolitan'', ''Young Miss'', and appeared in a Canada Dry soft drink TV commercial. Her striking looks and girl-next-door charm made her one of the most sought after teen models of that time. While modeling, she continued her burgeoning recording career by working with producers Michael Beinhorn, Bill Laswell and Martin Bisi on an album they were spearheading called ''One Down'', which was credited to the group Material. For that project, Houston contributed the ballad "Memories", a cover of a song by Hugh Hopper of Soft Machine. Robert Christgau of ''The Village Voice'' called her contribution "one of the most gorgeous ballads you've ever heard". She also appeared as a lead vocalist on one track on a Paul Jabara album, entitled ''Paul Jabara and Friends'', released by Columbia Records in 1983.

Houston had previously been offered several recording agencies (Michael Zager in 1980, and Elektra Records in 1981), however her mother declined the offers stating her daughter must first complete high school. In 1983, Gerry Griffith, an A&R; representative from Arista Records, saw her performing with her mother in a New York City nightclub and was impressed. He convinced Arista's head Clive Davis to make time to see Houston perform. Davis too was impressed and offered a worldwide recording contract which Houston signed. Later that year, she made her national televised debut alongside Davis on ''The Merv Griffin Show''.

Houston signed with Arista in 1983, but did not begin work on her album immediately. The label wanted to make sure no other label signed the singer away. Davis wanted to ensure he had the right material and producers for Houston's debut album. Some producers had to pass on the project due to prior commitments. Houston first recorded a duet with Teddy Pendergrass entitled "Hold Me" which appeared on his album, ''Love Language''. The single was released in 1984 and gave Houston her first taste of success, becoming a Top 5 R&B; hit. It would also appear on her debut album in 1985.

1985–1986: Rise to international prominence

With production from Michael Masser, Kashif, Jermaine Jackson, and Narada Michael Walden, Houston's debut album ''Whitney Houston'' was released in February 1985. ''Rolling Stone'' magazine praised Houston, calling her "one of the most exciting new voices in years" while ''The New York Times'' called the album "an impressive, musically conservative showcase for an exceptional vocal talent". Arista Records promoted Houston's album with three different singles from the album in the US, UK and other European countries. In the UK, the dance-funk "Someone for Me", which failed to chart in the country, was the first single while "All at Once" was in such European countries as the Netherlands and Belgium, where the song reached the top 5 on the singles charts, respectively.

In the US, the soulful ballad "You Give Good Love" was chosen as the lead single from Houston's debut to establish her in the black marketplace first. Outside the US, the song failed to get enough attention to become a hit, but in the US, it gave the album its first major hit as it peaked at No. 3 on the US ''Billboard'' Hot 100 chart, and No. 1 on the Hot R&B; chart. As a result, the album began to sell strongly, and Houston continued promotion by touring nightclubs in the US. She also began performing on late-night television talk shows, which were not usually accessible to unestablished black acts. The jazzy ballad "Saving All My Love for You" was released next and it would become Houston's first No. 1 single in both the US and the UK. She was then an opening act for singer Jeffrey Osborne on his nationwide tour. "Thinking About You" was released as the promo single only to R&B-oriented; radio stations, which peaked at number ten on the US R&B; Chart. At the time, MTV had received harsh criticism for not playing enough videos by black, Latino, and other racial minorities while favoring white acts. The third US single, "How Will I Know", peaked at No. 1 and introduced Houston to the MTV audience thanks to its video. Houston's subsequent singles from this, and future albums, would make her the first African-American female artist to receive consistent heavy rotation on MTV.

By 1986, a year after its initial release, ''Whitney Houston'' topped the ''Billboard'' 200 albums chart and stayed there for 14 non-consecutive weeks. The final single, "Greatest Love of All", became Houston's biggest hit at the time after peaking No. 1 and remaining there for three weeks on the Hot 100 chart, which made her debut the first album by a female artist to yield three No. 1 hits. Houston was No. 1 artist of the year and ''Whitney Houston'' was the No. 1 album of the year on the 1986 ''Billboard'' year-end charts, making her the first female artist to earn that distinction. At the time, Houston released the best-selling debut album by a solo artist. Houston then embarked on her world tour, ''Greatest Love Tour''. The album had become an international success, and was certified 13× platinum (diamond) in the United States alone, and has sold a total of 25 million copies worldwide.

At the 1986 Grammy Awards, Houston was nominated for three awards including Album of the Year. She was not eligible for the Best New Artist category due to her previous hit R&B; duet recording with Teddy Pendergrass in 1984. She won her first Grammy award for Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female for "Saving All My Love for You". At the same award show, she performed that Grammy-winning hit, that performance later winning her an Emmy Award for Outstanding Individual Performance in a Variety or Music Program.

Houston won seven American Music Awards in total in 1986 and 1987, and an MTV Video Music Award. The album's popularity would also carry over to the 1987 Grammy Awards when "Greatest Love of All" would receive a Record of the Year nomination. Houston's debut album is listed as one of ''Rolling Stone''s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time and on The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame's Definitive 200 list. Houston's grand entrance into the music industry is considered one of the 25 musical milestones of the last 25 years, according to ''USA Today''. Following Houston's breakthrough, doors were opened for other African-American female artists such as Janet Jackson and Anita Baker to find notable success in popular music and on MTV.

1987–1991: ''Whitney'', ''I'm Your Baby Tonight'' and "The Star Spangled Banner"

With many expectations, Houston's second album, ''Whitney'', was released in June 1987. The album again featured production from Masser, Kashif and Walden as well as Jellybean Benitez. Many critics complained that the material was too similar to her previous album. ''Rolling Stone'' said, "the narrow channel through which this talent has been directed is frustrating". Still, the album enjoyed commercial success. Houston became the first female artist in music history to debut at number one on the ''Billboard'' 200 albums chart, and the first artist to enter the albums chart at number one in both the US and UK, while also hitting number one or top ten in dozens of other countries around the world. The album's first single, "I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)", was also a massive hit worldwide, peaking at No. 1 on the ''Billboard'' Hot 100 chart and topping the singles chart in many countries such as Australia, Germany and the UK. The next three singles, "Didn't We Almost Have It All", "So Emotional", and "Where Do Broken Hearts Go" all peaked at number one on the US Hot 100 chart, which gave her a total of seven consecutive number one hits, breaking the record of six previously shared by The Beatles and The Bee Gees. Houston became the first female artist to generate four number-one singles from one album. ''Whitney'' has been certified 9× Platinum in the US for shipments of over 9 million copies, and has sold a total of 20 million copies worldwide.

At the 30th Grammy Awards in 1988, Houston was nominated for three awards, including Album of the Year, winning her second Grammy for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance for "I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)". Houston also won two American Music Awards in 1988 and 1989, respectively, and a Soul Train Music Award. Following the release of the album, Houston embarked on the ''Moment of Truth World Tour'', which was one of the ten highest grossing concert tours of 1987. The success of the tours during 1986–87 and her two studio albums ranked Houston No. 8 for the highest earning entertainers list according to ''Forbes'' magazine. She was the highest earning African-American woman overall and the third highest entertainer after Bill Cosby and Eddie Murphy.

Houston was a supporter of Nelson Mandela and the anti-apartheid movement. During her modeling days, the singer refused to work with any agencies who did business with the then-apartheid South Africa. On June 11, 1988, during the European leg of her tour, Houston joined other musicians to perform a set at Wembley Stadium in London to celebrate a then-imprisoned Nelson Mandela's 70th birthday. Over 72,000 people attended Wembley Stadium, and over a billion people tuned in worldwide as the rock concert raised over $1 million for charities while bringing awareness to apartheid. Houston then flew back to the US for a concert at Madison Square Garden in New York City in August. The show was a benefit concert that raised a quarter of a million dollars for the United Negro College Fund. In the same year, she recorded a song for NBC's coverage of the 1988 Summer Olympics, "One Moment in Time", which became a Top 5 hit in the US, while reaching number one in the UK and Germany. With her world tour continuing overseas, Houston was still one of the top 20 highest earning entertainers for 1987–88 according to ''Forbes'' magazine.

In 1989, Houston formed The Whitney Houston Foundation For Children, a non-profit organization that has raised funds for the needs of children around the world. The organization cares for homelessness, children with cancer or AIDS, and other issues of self-empowerment. With the success of her first two albums, Houston was undoubtedly an international crossover superstar, the most prominent since Michael Jackson, appealing to all demographics. However, some black critics believed she was "selling out". They felt her singing on record lacked the soul that was present during her live concerts.

At the 1989 Soul Train Music Awards, when Houston's name was called out for a nomination, a few in the audience jeered. Houston defended herself against the criticism, stating, "If you're gonna have a long career, there's a certain way to do it, and I did it that way. I'm not ashamed of it". Houston took a more urban direction with her third studio album, ''I'm Your Baby Tonight'', released in November 1990. She produced and chose producers for this album and as a result, it featured production and collaborations with L.A. Reid and Babyface, Luther Vandross, and Stevie Wonder. The album showed Houston's versatility on a new batch of tough rhythmic grooves, soulful ballads and up-tempo dance tracks. Reviews were mixed. ''Rolling Stone'' felt it was her "best and most integrated album". while ''Entertainment Weekly'', at the time thought Houston's shift towards an urban direction was "superficial".

The album contained several hits: the first two singles, "I'm Your Baby Tonight" and "All the Man That I Need" peaked at number one on the ''Billboard'' Hot 100 chart; "Miracle" peaked at number nine; "My Name Is Not Susan" peaked in the top twenty; "I Belong to You" reached the top ten of the US R&B; chart and garnered Houston a Grammy nomination; and the sixth single, the Stevie Wonder duet "We Didn't Know", reached the R&B; top twenty. The album peaked at number three on the ''Billboard'' 200 and went on to be certified 4× platinum in the US while selling twelve million total worldwide.

In 1990, Houston was the spokesperson for a youth leadership conference hosted in Washington, D.C. She had a private audience with President George H. W. Bush in the Oval Office to discuss the associated challenges.

With America entangled in the Persian Gulf War, Houston performed "The Star Spangled Banner" at Super Bowl XXV at Tampa Stadium on January 27, 1991. Due to overwhelming response to her rendition, it was released as a commercial single and video of her performance, and reached the Top 20 on the US Hot 100, making her the only act to turn the national anthem into a pop hit of that magnitude (Jose Feliciano's version reached No. 50 in November 1968). Houston donated all her share of the proceeds to the American Red Cross Gulf Crisis Fund. As a result, the singer was named to the Red Cross Board of Governors.

Her rendition was considered the benchmark for singers and critically acclaimed. ''Rolling Stone'' commented that "her singing stirs such strong patriotism. Unforgettable", and the performance ranked No. 1 on the 25 most memorable music moments in NFL history list. VH1 listed the performance as one of the greatest moments that rocked TV. Following the attacks on 9/11, it was released again by Arista Records, all profits going towards the firefighters and victims of the attacks. This time it peaked at No. 6 in the Hot 100 and was certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America.

Later in 1991, Houston put together her ''Welcome Home Heroes'' concert with HBO for the soldiers fighting in the Persian Gulf War and their families. The free concert took place at Naval Station Norfolk in Norfolk, Virginia in front of 3,500 servicemen and women. HBO descrambled the concert so that it was free for everyone to watch. Houston's concert gave HBO its highest ratings ever. She then embarked on the ''I'm Your Baby Tonight World Tour''.

1992–1994: Marriage to Bobby Brown and ''The Bodyguard''

Throughout the 1980s, Houston was romantically linked to American football star Randall Cunningham and actor Eddie Murphy, whom she dated. She then met R&B; singer Bobby Brown at the 1989 Soul Train Music Awards. After a three-year courtship, the two were married on July 18, 1992. On March 4, 1993, Houston gave birth to their daughter Bobbi Kristina Houston Brown, her only child, and his fourth. Brown would go on to have several run-ins with the law, including some jail time.

With the commercial success of her albums, movie offers poured in, including offers to work with Robert De Niro, Quincy Jones, and Spike Lee; but Houston felt the time wasn't right. Houston's first film role was in ''The Bodyguard'', released in 1992 and co-starring Kevin Costner. Houston played Rachel Marron, a star who is stalked by a crazed fan and hires a bodyguard to protect her. ''USA Today'' listed it as one of the 25 most memorable movie moments of the last 25 years in 2007. Houston's mainstream appeal allowed people to look at the movie color-blind.

Still, controversy arose as some felt the film's advertising intentionally hid Houston's face to hide the film's interracial relationship. In an interview with ''Rolling Stone'' in 1993, the singer commented that "people know who Whitney Houston is – I'm black. You can't hide that fact." Houston received a Razzie Award nomination for Worst Actress. ''The Washington Post'' said Houston is "doing nothing more than playing Houston, comes out largely unscathed if that is possible in so cockamamie an undertaking", and ''The New York Times'' commented that she lacked passion with her co-star. Despite the film's mixed reviews, it was hugely successful at the box office, grossing more than $121 million in the U.S. and $410 million worldwide, making it one of the top 100 grossing films in film history at its time of release, though it is no longer in the top 100 due to rising ticket prices since the time the film was released.

The film's soundtrack also enjoyed big success. Houston executive produced and contributed six songs for the motion picture's adjoining soundtrack album. ''Rolling Stone'' said it is "nothing more than pleasant, tasteful and urbane". The soundtrack's lead single was "I Will Always Love You", written and originally recorded by Dolly Parton in 1974. Houston's version of the song was acclaimed by many critics, regarding it as her "signature song" or "iconic performance". ''Rolling Stone'' and ''USA Today'' called her rendition "the tour-de-force". The single peaked at number one on the ''Billboard'' Hot 100 for a then-record-breaking 14 weeks, number one on the R&B; chart for a then-record-breaking 11 weeks, and number one on the Adult Contemporary charts for five weeks, thus becoming the first single to top those three charts simultaneously for five weeks.

The single was certified 4× platinum by the RIAA, making Houston the first female artist with a single to reach that level in the RIAA history and becoming the best-selling single by a female artist in the US. The song also became a global success, hitting number-one in almost all countries, and one of the best-selling singles of all time with 12 million copies sold. The soundtrack topped the ''Billboard'' 200 chart and remained there for 20 non-consecutive weeks, the longest tenure by any album on the chart in the Nielsen SoundScan era, and became one of the fastest selling albums ever. During Christmas week of 1992, the soundtrack sold over a million copies within a week, becoming the first album to achieve that feat under Nielsen SoundScan system. With the follow-up singles "I'm Every Woman", a Chaka Khan cover, and "I Have Nothing" both reaching the top five, Houston became the first female artist to ever have three singles in the Top 11 simultaneously. The album was certified 17× platinum in the US alone, with worldwide sales of 44 million, making ''The Bodyguard'' the biggest-selling album by a female act on the list of the world's Top 10 best-selling albums, topping Shania Twain's 40 million sold for ''Come On Over''.

Houston won three Grammys for the album in 1994, including two of the Academy's highest honors, Album of the Year and Record of the Year. In addition, she won a record 8 American Music Awards at that year's ceremony including the Award of Merit, 11 Billboard Music Awards, 3 Soul Train Music Awards in 1993–94 including Sammy Davis, Jr. Award as Entertainer of the Year, 5 NAACP Image Awards including Entertainer of the Year, a record 5 World Music Awards, and a BRIT award. Following the success of the project, Houston embarked on another expansive global tour, ''The Bodyguard World Tour'', in 1993–94. Her concerts, movie, and recording grosses made her the third highest earning female entertainer of 1993–94, just behind Oprah Winfrey and Barbra Streisand according to ''Forbes'' magazine. Houston placed in the top five of ''Entertainment Weekly''s annual "Entertainer of the Year" ranking and was labeled by ''Premiere'' magazine as one of the 100 most powerful people in Hollywood.

In October 1994, Houston attended and performed at a state dinner in the White House honoring newly elected South African president Nelson Mandela. At the end of her world tour, Houston performed three concerts in South Africa to honor President Mandela, playing to over 200,000 people. This would make the singer the first major musician to visit the newly unified and apartheid free nation following Mandela's winning election. The concert was broadcast live on HBO with funds of the concerts being donated to various charities in South Africa. The event was considered the nation's "biggest media event since the inauguration of Nelson Mandela".

1995–1997: ''Waiting to Exhale'', ''The Preacher's Wife'', and ''Cinderella''

In 1995, Houston starred alongside Angela Bassett, Loretta Devine, and Lela Rochon in her second film ''Waiting to Exhale'', a motion picture about four African-American women struggling with relationships. Houston played the lead character Savannah Jackson, a TV producer in love with a married man. She chose the role because she saw the film as "a breakthrough for the image of black women because it presents them both as professionals and as caring mothers". After opening at number one and grossing $67 million in the US at the box office and $81 million worldwide, it proved that a movie primarily targeting a black audience can cross over to success, while paving the way for other all-black movies such as ''How Stella Got Her Groove Back'' and the Tyler Perry movies that have become popular in the 2000s. The film is also notable for its portrayal of black women as strong middle class citizens as opposed to stereotypes. The reviews were mainly positive for the ensemble cast. ''The New York Times'' said "Ms. Houston has shed the defensive hauteur that made her portrayal of a pop star in 'The Bodyguard' seem so distant." Houston was nominated for an NAACP Image Award for "Outstanding Actress In A Motion Picture", but lost to her co-star Bassett.

The film's accompanying soundtrack, ''Waiting to Exhale: Original Soundtrack Album'', was produced by Houston and Babyface. Though Babyface originally wanted Houston to record the entire album, she declined. Instead, she "wanted it to be an album of women with vocal distinction", and thus gathered several African-American female artists for the soundtrack, to go along with the film's strong women message. As a result, the album featured a range of contemporary R&B; female recording artists along with Houston, such as Mary J Blige, Aretha Franklin, Toni Braxton, Patti Labelle, and Brandy. Houston's "Exhale (Shoop Shoop)" peaked at No. 1, and then spent a record eleven weeks at the No. 2 spot and eight weeks on top of the R&B; Charts. "Count On Me", a duet with CeCe Winans, hit the US Top 10; and Houston's third contribution, "Why Does It Hurt So Bad", made the Top 30. The album debuted at No. 1, and was certified 7× Platinum in the United States, denoting shipments of seven million copies. The soundtrack received strong reviews as ''Entertainment Weekly'' said "the album goes down easy, just as you'd expect from a package framed by Whitney Houston tracks.... the soundtrack waits to exhale, hovering in sensuous suspense" and has since ranked it as one of the 100 Best Movie Soundtracks. Later that year, Houston's children's charity organization was awarded a VH1 Honor for all the charitable work.

In 1996, Houston starred in the holiday comedy ''The Preacher's Wife'', with Denzel Washington. She plays a gospel-singing wife of a pastor (Courtney B. Vance). It was largely an updated remake of the 1948 film "The Bishop's Wife" which starred Loretta Young, David Niven and Cary Grant. Houston earned $10 million for the role, making her one of the highest-paid actresses in Hollywood at the time and the highest earning African American actress in Hollywood. The movie, with its all African-American cast, was a moderate success, earning approximately $50 million at the U.S. box offices. The movie gave Houston her strongest reviews so far. ''The San Francisco Chronicle'' said Houston "is rather angelic herself, displaying a divine talent for being virtuous and flirtatious at the same time" and that she "exudes gentle yet spirited warmth, especially when praising the Lord in her gorgeous singing voice". Houston was again nominated for an NAACP Image Award and won for Outstanding Actress In A Motion Picture.

Houston recorded and co-produced, with Mervyn Warren, the film's accompanying gospel soundtrack. ''The Preacher's Wife: Original Soundtrack Album'' included six gospel songs with Georgia Mass Choir that were recorded at the Great Star Rising Baptist Church in Atlanta. Houston also duetted with gospel legend Shirley Caesar. The album sold six million copies worldwide and scored hit singles with "I Believe in You and Me" and "Step by Step", becoming the largest selling gospel album of all time. The album received mainly positive reviews. Some critics, such as that of ''USA Today'', noted the presence of her emotional depth, while ''The Times'' said "To hear Houston going at full throttle with the 35 piece Georgia Mass Choir struggling to keep up is to realise what her phenomenal voice was made for".

In 1997, Houston's production company changed its name to BrownHouse Productions and was joined by Debra Martin Chase. Their goal was "to show aspects of the lives of African-Americans that have not been brought to the screen before" while improving how African-Americans are portrayed in film and television. Their first project was a made-for-television remake of Rodgers & Hammerstein's ''Cinderella''. In addition to co-producing, Houston starred in the movie as the Fairy Godmother along with Brandy, Jason Alexander, Whoopi Goldberg, and Bernadette Peters. Houston was initially offered the role of Cinderella in 1993, but other projects intervened. The film is notable for its multi-racial cast and nonstereotypical message. An estimated 60 million viewers tuned into the special giving ABC its highest TV ratings in 16 years. The movie received seven Emmy nominations including Outstanding Variety, Musical or Comedy, while winning Outstanding Art Direction in a Variety, Musical or Comedy Special.

Houston and Chase then obtained the rights to the story of Dorothy Dandridge. Houston was to play Dandridge, who was the first African American actress to be nominated for an Oscar. She wanted the story told with dignity and honor. However, Halle Berry also had rights to the project and she got her version going first. Later that year, Houston paid tribute to her idols such as Aretha Franklin, Diana Ross, and Dionne Warwick by performing their hits during the three-night HBO Concert ''Classic Whitney'', live from Washington, D.C. The special raised over $300,000 for the Children's Defense Fund. Houston received The Quincy Jones Award for outstanding career achievements in the field of entertainment at the 12th Soul Train Music Awards.

1998–2000: ''My Love Is Your Love'' and ''Whitney: The Greatest Hits''

After spending much of the early and mid 1990s working on motion pictures and their soundtrack albums, Houston's first studio album in eight years, the critically acclaimed ''My Love Is Your Love'', was released in November 1998. Though originally slated to be a greatest hits album with a handful of new songs, recording sessions were so fruitful that a new full-length studio album was released. Recorded and mixed in only six weeks, it featured production from Rodney Jerkins, Wyclef Jean and Missy Elliott. The album debuted at number thirteen, its peak position, on the ''Billboard'' 200 chart. It had a funkier and edgier sound than past releases and saw Houston handling urban dance, hip hop, mid-tempo R&B;, reggae, torch songs, and ballads all with great dexterity.

From late 1998 to early 2000, the album spawned several hit singles: "When You Believe" (US No. 15, UK No. 4), a duet with Mariah Carey for 1998's ''The Prince of Egypt'' soundtrack, which also became an international hit as it peaked in the Top 10 in several countries and won an Academy Award for Best Original Song; "Heartbreak Hotel" (US No. 2, UK No. 25) featured Faith Evans and Kelly Price, received a 1999 MTV VMA nomination for Best R&B; Video, and number one on the US R&B; chart for seven weeks; "It's Not Right But It's Okay" (US No. 4, UK No. 3) won Houston her sixth Grammy Award for Best Female R&B; Vocal Performance; "My Love Is Your Love" (US No. 4, UK No. 2) with 3 million copies sold worldwide; and "I Learned from the Best" (US No. 27, UK No. 19). These singles became international hits as well, and all the singles, except "When You Believe", became number one hits on the ''Billboard'' Hot Dance/Club Play chart. The album sold four million copies in America, making it certified 4× platinum, and a total of eleven million copies worldwide.

The album gave Houston some of her strongest reviews ever. ''Rolling Stone'' said Houston was singing "with a bite in her voice" and ''The Village Voice'' called it "Whitney's sharpest and most satisfying so far". In 1999, Houston participated in VH-1's Divas Live '99, alongside Brandy, Mary J. Blige, Tina Turner, and Cher. The same year, Houston hit the road with her 70 date ''My Love Is Your Love World Tour''. The European leg of the tour was Europe's highest grossing arena tour of the year. In November 1999, Houston was named Top-selling R&B; Female Artist of the Century with certified US sales of 51 million copies at the time and ''The Bodyguard Soundtrack'' was named the Top-selling Soundtrack Album of the Century by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). She also won The Artist of the Decade, Female award for extraordinary artistic contributions during the 1990s at the 14th Soul Train Music Awards, and an MTV Europe Music Award for Best R&B;.

In May 2000, ''Whitney: The Greatest Hits'' was released worldwide. The double disc set peaked at number five in the United States, reaching number one in the United Kingdom. In addition, the album reached the Top 10 in many other countries. While ballad songs were left unchanged, the album features house/club remixes of many of Houston's up-tempo hits. Included on the album were four new songs: "Could I Have This Kiss Forever" (a duet with Enrique Iglesias), "Same Script, Different Cast" (a duet with Deborah Cox), "If I Told You That" (a duet with George Michael), and "Fine", and three hits that had never appeared on a Houston album: "One Moment in Time", "The Star Spangled Banner", and "If You Say My Eyes Are Beautiful", a duet with Jermaine Jackson from his 1986 ''Precious Moments'' album. Along with the album, an accompanying VHS and DVD was released featuring the music videos to Houston's greatest hits, as well as several hard-to-find live performances including her 1983 debut on ''The Merv Griffin Show'', and interviews. The greatest hits album was certified 3× platinum in the US, with worldwide sales of 10 million.

2000–2005: ''Just Whitney'', and personal struggles

Though Houston was seen as a "good girl" with a perfect image in the 1980s and early 1990s, by the late 1990s, her behavior changed. She was often hours late for interviews, photo shoots and rehearsals, and canceling concerts and talk-show appearances. With the missed performances and weight loss, rumors about Houston using drugs with her husband circulated. On January 11, 2000, airport security guards discovered marijuana in both Houston's and husband Bobby Brown's luggage at a Hawaii airport, but the two boarded the plane and departed before authorities could arrive. Charges were later dropped against them, but rumors of drug usage between the couple would continue to surface. Two months later, Clive Davis was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Houston had been scheduled to perform at the event, but failed to show up.

Shortly thereafter, Houston was scheduled to perform at the Academy Awards but was fired from the event by musical director and long time friend Burt Bacharach. Her publicist cited throat problems as the reason for the cancellation. In his book ''The Big Show: High Times and Dirty Dealings Backstage at the Academy Awards'', author Steve Pond revealed that "Houston's voice was shaky, she seemed distracted and jittery, and her attitude was casual, almost defiant", and that while Houston was to sing "Over the Rainbow", she would start singing a different song. Houston later admitted to having been fired. Later that year, Houston's long-time executive assistant and friend, Robyn Crawford, resigned from Houston's management company.

In August 2001, Houston signed the biggest record deal in music history with Arista/BMG. She renewed her contract for $100 million to deliver six new albums, on which she would also earn royalties. She later made an appearance on ''Michael Jackson: 30th Anniversary Special''. Her extremely thin frame further spurred rumors of drug use. Houston's publicist said, "Whitney has been under stress due to family matters, and when she is under stress she doesn't eat." The singer was scheduled for a second performance the following night but canceled. Within weeks, Houston's rendition of "The Star Spangled Banner" would be re-released after the September 11 attacks, with the proceeds donated to the New York Firefighters 9/11 Disaster Relief Fund and the New York Fraternal Order of Police. The song peaked at No. 6 this time on the US Hot 100, topping its previous position.

In 2002, Houston became involved in a legal dispute with John Houston Enterprise. Although the company was started by her father to manage her career, it was actually run by company president Kevin Skinner. Skinner filed a breach-of-contract lawsuit and sued for $100 million (but lost), stating that Houston owed the company previously unpaid compensation for helping to negotiate her $100 million contract with Arista Records and for sorting out legal matters. Houston stated that her 81-year-old father had nothing to do with the lawsuit. Although Skinner tried to claim otherwise, John Houston never appeared in court. Houston's father later died in February 2003. The lawsuit was dismissed on April 5, 2004, and Skinner was awarded nothing.

Also in 2002, Houston did an interview with Diane Sawyer to promote her then-upcoming album. The interview was the highest-rated television interview in history. During the prime-time special, Houston spoke on topics including rumored drug use and marriage. She was asked about the ongoing drug rumors and replied, "First of all, let's get one thing straight. Crack is cheap. I make too much money to ever smoke crack. Let's get that straight. Okay? We don't do crack. We don't do that. Crack is wack." The line was from Keith Haring's mural which was painted in 1986 on the handball court at 128th Street and 2nd Avenue. Houston did, however, admit to using other substances at times, including cocaine.

In December 2002, Houston released her fifth studio album, ''Just Whitney...''. The album included productions from then-husband Bobby Brown, as well as Missy Elliott and Babyface, and marked the first time that Houston did not produce with Clive Davis as Davis had been released by top management at BMG. Upon its release, ''Just Whitney...'' received mixed reviews. The album debuted at number 9 on the ''Billboard'' 200 chart and it had the highest first week sales of any album Houston had ever released. The four singles released from the album, didn't fare well on the ''Billboard'' Hot 100, but became Hot Dance Club Play hits. ''Just Whitney...'' was certified platinum in the United States, and sold approximately three million worldwide.

On a June 2003 trip to Israel, Houston said of her visit, "I've never felt like this in any other country. I feel at home, I feel wonderful."

In late 2003, Houston released her first Christmas album ''One Wish: The Holiday Album'', with a collection of traditional holiday songs. Houston produced the album with Mervyn Warren and Gordon Chambers. A single titled "One Wish (for Christmas)" reached the Top 20 on the Adult Contemporary chart, and the album was certified gold in the US. Having always been a touring artist, Houston spent most of 2004 touring and performing in Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and Russia. In September 2004, she gave a surprise performance at the World Music Awards in a tribute to long time friend Clive Davis. After the show, Davis and Houston announced plans to go into studio to work on her new album.

In early 2004, husband Bobby Brown starred in his own reality TV program, ''Being Bobby Brown'' (on the Bravo network), which provided a view into the domestic goings-on in the Brown household. Though it was Brown's vehicle, Houston was a prominent figure throughout the show, receiving as much screen time as Brown. The series aired in 2005 and featured Houston in, what some would say, not her most flattering moments. The ''Hollywood Reporter'' said it was "undoubtedly the most disgusting and execrable series ever to ooze its way onto television." Despite the perceived train-wreck nature of the show, the series gave Bravo its highest ratings in its time slot and continued Houston's successful forays into film and television. The show was not renewed for a second season after Houston stated that she would no longer appear in it, and Brown and Bravo could not come to an agreement for another season.

2006–2012: Return to music, ''I Look to You'', tour and film comeback

After years of controversy and turmoil, Houston separated from Bobby Brown in September 2006, filing for divorce the following month. On February 1, 2007, Houston asked the court to fast track their divorce. The divorce was finalized on April 24, 2007, with Houston granted custody of the couple's daughter. On May 4, Houston sold the suburban Atlanta home featured in ''Being Bobby Brown'' for $1.19 million. A few days later, Brown sued Houston in Orange County, California court in an attempt to change the terms of their custody agreement. Brown also sought child and spousal support from Houston. In the lawsuit, Brown claimed that financial and emotional problems prevented him from properly responding to Houston's divorce petition. Brown lost at his court hearing as the judge dismissed his appeal to overrule the custody terms, leaving Houston with full custody and Brown with no spousal support. In March 2007, Clive Davis of Arista Records announced that Houston would begin recording a new album. In October 2007, Arista released another compilation ''The Ultimate Collection'' outside the United States.

Houston gave her first interview in seven years in September 2009, appearing on Oprah Winfrey's season premiere. The interview was billed as "the most anticipated music interview of the decade". Whitney admitted on the show to using drugs with former husband Bobby Brown, who "laced marijuana with rock cocaine". By 1996, she told Oprah, "[doing drugs] was an everyday thing... I wasn't happy by that point in time. I was losing myself."

Houston released her new album, ''I Look to You'', in August 2009. The album's first two singles are "I Look to You" and "Million Dollar Bill". The album entered the Billboard 200 at No. 1, with Houston's best opening-week sales of 305,000 copies, marking Houston's first number one album since '' The Bodyguard'', and Houston's first studio album to reach number one since 1987's ''Whitney''. Houston also appeared on European television programs to promote the album. She performed the song "I Look to You" on the German television show ''Wetten, dass..?''. Three days later, she performed the worldwide first single from I Look To You, Million Dollar Bill, on the French television show Le Grand Journal. Houston appeared as guest mentor on ''The X Factor'' in the United Kingdom. She performed "Million Dollar Bill" on the following day's results show, completing the song even as a strap in the back of her dress popped open two minutes into the performance. She later commented that she "sang [herself] out of [her] clothes".

The performance was poorly received by the British media, and was variously described as "weird" and "ungracious", "shambolic" and a "flop". Despite this reception, "Million Dollar Bill" jumped to its peak from 14 to number 5 (her first UK top 5 for over a decade), and three weeks after release "I Look to You" went gold. Houston appeared on the Italian version of ''The X Factor'', performing the same song "Million Dollar Bill" to excellent reviews. She was awarded the Gold Certificate for achieving over 50,000 CD sales of "I Look To You" in Italy. In November, Houston performed "I Didn't Know My Own Strength" at the 2009 American Music Awards in Los Angeles, California. Two days later, Houston performed both songs on the Dancing With The Stars season 9 finale. As of December 2009, "I Look to You" has been certified platinum by the RIAA for sales of more than one million copies in the United States. On January 26, 2010, her debut album was re-released in a special edition entitled ''Whitney Houston – The Deluxe Anniversary Edition''.

Houston later embarked on a world tour, entitled the Nothing but Love World Tour. It was her first world tour in over ten years and was announced as a triumphant comeback. However, some poor reviews and rescheduled concerts brought some negative media attention. Houston canceled some concerts due to illness and received widespread negative reviews from fans who were disappointed in the quality of her voice and performance. Some fans reportedly walked out of her concerts.

In January 2010, Houston was nominated for two NAACP Image Awards, one for Best Female Artist and one for Best Music Video. She won the award for Best Music Video for her single "I Look to You". On January 16, she received The BET Honors Award for Entertainer citing her lifetime achievements spanning over 25 years in the industry. The 2010 BET Honors award was held at the Warner Theatre in Washington, D.C. and aired on February 1, 2010. Jennifer Hudson and Kim Burrell performed in honor of her, garnering positive reviews. Houston also received a nomination from the Echo Awards, Germany's version of the Grammys, for Best International Artist. In April 2010, the UK newspaper ''The Mirror'' reported that Houston was thinking about recording her eighth studio album and wanted to collaborate with will.i.am (of The Black Eyed Peas), her first choice for a collaboration.

Houston also performed the song "I Look to You" on the 2011 BET ''Celebration of Gospel'', with gospel–jazz singer Kim Burrell, held at the Staples Center, Los Angeles. The performance aired on January 30, 2011. Early in 2011, she gave an uneven performance in tribute to cousin Dionne Warwick at music mogul Clive Davis' annual pre-Grammy gala. In May 2011, Houston enrolled in a rehabilitation center again, as an out-patient, citing drug and alcohol problems. A representative for Houston said that it was a part of Houston's "longstanding recovery process".

In September 2011, ''The Hollywood Reporter'' announced that Houston would produce and star alongside Jordin Sparks and Mike Epps in the remake of the 1976 film ''Sparkle''. In the film, Houston portrays Sparks' "not-so encouraging mother". Houston will have executive producer credits on top of acting credits according to Debra Martin Chase, producer of ''Sparkle''. She stated that Houston deserved the title considering she had been there from the beginning in 2001, when Houston obtained ''Sparkle'' production rights. R&B; singer Aaliyah - originally tapped to star as Sparkle – died in a 2001 plane crash. Her death derailed production, which would have begun in 2002. Houston's remake of ''Sparkle'' was filmed in the fall of 2011, and is set for release by TriStar Pictures in August 2012.

Death

On February 9, 2012, Houston visited singers Brandy and Monica, together with Clive Davis, at their rehearsals for Davis' pre-Grammy Awards party. That same day, she made her last public performance, when she joined Kelly Price on stage at the party and sang "Jesus Loves Me".

On February 11, 2012, Houston was found dead in a suite at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, in Beverly Hills, California, submerged in the bathtub. The cause of death was not immediately known. Beverly Hills paramedics arrived at approximately 3:30 p.m. and found the singer unresponsive and performed CPR. Houston was pronounced dead at 4:00 p.m. PST. Local police said there were "no obvious signs of criminal intent."

Houston had an invitation-only memorial on Saturday, February 18, 2012, at the New Hope Baptist Church in Newark, New Jersey. The service was scheduled for two hours, but lasted for four hours. Stevie Wonder (rewritten version of "Ribbon in the Sky," and "Love's in Need of Love Today"), CeCe Winans ("Don't Cry" and "Jesus Loves Me"), Alicia Keys ("Send Me an Angel"), Kim Burrell (rewritten version of "A Change Is Gonna Come") and R. Kelly ("I Look to You") were among those who performed at the funeral, interspersed with hymns by the church choir and remarks by Clive Davis, Houston’s record producer; Kevin Costner; Ricky Minor her music director; her cousin Dionne Warwick and Ray Watson, her security guard for the past 11 years. Aretha Franklin was listed on the program and was expected to sing, but was unable to attend the service due to illness. Bobby Brown, Houston's ex-husband, was also invited to the funeral but he left before the service began. Houston was buried Sunday, February 19, 2012, in Fairview Cemetery, in Westfield, New Jersey next to her father, John Russell Houston, who died in 2003.

Reaction

The Clive Davis' pre-Grammy party that Houston was expected to attend, and that featured many of the biggest names in music and movies, went on as scheduled although it was quickly turned into a tribute to Houston. Davis spoke about Houston's death at the evening's start: "By now you have all learned of the unspeakably tragic news of our beloved Whitney's passing. I don't have to mask my emotion in front of a room full of so many dear friends. I am personally devastated by the loss of someone who has meant so much to me for so many years. Whitney was so full of life. She was so looking forward to tonight even though she wasn't scheduled to perform. Whitney was a beautiful person and a talent beyond compare. She graced this stage with her regal presence and gave so many memorable performances here over the years. Simply put, Whitney would have wanted the music to go on and her family asked that we carry on."

Tony Bennett, who had a drug addiction problem in the 1970s, spoke of Houston's death before performing at Davis' party. He said, "First, it was Michael Jackson, then Amy Winehouse, now, the magnificent Whitney Houston", tying it into his public stance in favor of legalizing drugs. Bennett sang "How Do You Keep the Music Playing?" and said of Houston, "When I first heard her, I called Clive Davis and said, 'You finally found the greatest singer I've ever heard in my life.'"

However, many people were shocked at Davis' decision to continue on the party despite the fact that a police investigation was being conducted in Houston's hotel room and her body was still in the building. Chaka Khan, in an interview with CNN's Piers Morgan on February 13, 2012, shared that she felt the party should have been canceled, saying "I thought that was complete insanity. And knowing Whitney I don't believe that she would have said 'the show must go on.' She's the kind of woman that would've said 'Stop everything! Un-unh. I'm not going to be there.' [...] I don't know what could motivate a person to have a party in a building where the person whose life he had influenced so enormously and whose life had been affected by hers. They were like... I don't understand how that party went on." Sharon Osbourne, on February 15 episode of ''The Talk'', also condemned the Davis party, declaring "I think it was disgraceful that the party went on. I don't want to be in a hotel room when there's someone you admire who's tragically lost their life four floors up. I'm not interested in being in that environment and I think when you grieve someone, you do it privately, you do it with people who understand you. I thought it was so wrong."

Several other celebrities released statements responding to Houston's death. Dolly Parton, whose song "I Will Always Love You" was covered by Houston, said, "I will always be grateful and in awe of the wonderful performance she did on my song and I can truly say from the bottom of my heart, 'Whitney, I will always love you. You will be missed'." Aretha Franklin said, "It's so stunning and unbelievable. I couldn't believe what I was reading coming across the TV screen." Mariah Carey said, "Heartbroken and in tears over the shocking death of my friend ... She will never be forgotten as one of the greatest voices to ever grace the earth." Oprah Winfrey, who did an in-depth interview with Houston in 2009, wrote on Twitter "To me Whitney was THE VOICE. We got to hear a part of God every time she sang. Heart is heavy, spirit grateful for the GIFT of her." Quincy Jones said, "I am absolutely heartbroken at the news of Whitney’s passing. Ashford & Simpson first made me aware of Whitney when she was just sixteen, and I always regretted not having had the opportunity to work with her. She was a true original and a talent beyond compare. I will miss her terribly."

Moments after news of her death emerged, CNN, MSNBC and Fox News all broke from their regularly scheduled programming to dedicate time to non-stop coverage of Houston's death. All three featured live interviews with people who knew Houston including those that have worked with her, interviewed her along with some of her peers in the music industry. ''Saturday Night Live'' displayed a still photo in silent reverence of a smiling Houston, alongside Molly Shannon, from her 1996 appearance. MTV and VH-1 interrupted their regularly scheduled programming on Sunday February 12 to air many of Houston's classic videos with MTV often airing news segments in between and featuring various reactions from fans and celebrities.

Houston's former husband, Bobby Brown, was reported to be "in and out of crying fits" since receiving the news. He did not cancel a scheduled performance and within hours of his ex-wife's sudden death, an audience in Mississippi observed as Brown blew kisses skyward, tearfully saying: "I love you, Whitney".

Ken Ehrlich, executive producer of the 54th Grammy Awards announced that Jennifer Hudson would perform a tribute to Houston at the February 12, 2012, awards. He said "event organizers believed Hudson – an Academy Award-winning actress and Grammy Award-winning artist – could perform a respectful musical tribute to Houston". Ehrlich went on to say: "It's too fresh in everyone's memory to do more at this time, but we would be remiss if we didn't recognize Whitney's remarkable contribution to music fans in general, and in particular her close ties with the Grammy telecast and her Grammy wins and nominations over the years". At the start of the awards ceremony, a footage of Houston performing "I Will Always Love You" from 1994 Grammys was shown following a prayer read by host, LL Cool J. Later in the program following a montage of photos of musicians who died in 2011 including Houston singing "Saving All My Love for You" at the 1986 Grammys, Hudson paid tribute to Houston and the other artists by performing "I Will Always Love You". New Jersey Governor Chris Christie said that all New Jersey state flags will be flown at half-staff on Tuesday, February 21 to honor Houston.

Artistry and legacy

Voice

Houston was a mezzo-soprano, and was commonly referred to as "The Voice" in reference to her exceptional vocal talent. Her vocal range extended from G below middle C (G₃) to high B-flat (B₅); she could belt out to treble F (F₅). She was third in MTV's list of 22 Greatest Voices, and sixth on ''Online Magazine COVE''s list of the 100 Best Pop Vocalists with a score of 48.5/50. In 2008, ''Rolling Stone'' listed Houston as the thirty-fourth of the 100 greatest singers of all time, stating, "Her voice is a mammoth, coruscating cry: Few vocalists could get away with opening a song with 45 unaccompanied seconds of singing, but Houston's powerhouse version of Dolly Parton's 'I Will Always Love You' is a tour de force." Matthew Perpetua from ''Rolling Stone'' also eulogized Houston's vocal, enumerating ten performances, including "How Will I Know" from the 1986 MTV VMAs and "The Star Spangled Banner" at the 1991 Super Bowl. "Whitney Houston was blessed with an astonishing vocal range and extraordinary technical skill, but what truly made her a great singer was her ability to connect with a song and drive home its drama and emotion with incredible precision," he stated. "She was a brilliant performer, and her live shows often eclipsed her studio recordings."

Jon Caramanica of ''The New York Times'' commented, "Her voice was clean and strong, with barely any grit, well suited to the songs of love and aspiration. [...] Hers was a voice of triumph and achievement, and it made for any number of stunning, time-stopping vocal performances." Mariah Carey stated, "Whitney has a really rich, strong mid-belt that very few people have. She sounds really good, really strong." While in her review of ''I Look to You'', music critic Ann Powers of the ''Los Angeles Times'' writes, "[Houston's voice] stands like monuments upon the landscape of 20th century pop, defining the architecture of their times, sheltering the dreams of millions and inspiring the climbing careers of countless imitators", adding "When she was at her best, nothing could match her huge, clean, cool mezzo-soprano".

Lauren Everitt from BBC News Magazine commented on melisma used in Houston's recording and its influence. "An early 'I' in Whitney Houston's 'I Will Always Love You' takes nearly six seconds to sing. In those seconds the former gospel singer-turned-pop star packs a series of different notes into the single syllable," stated Everitt. "The technique is repeated throughout the song, most pronouncedly on every 'I' and 'you'. The vocal technique is called melisma, and it has inspired a host of imitators. Other artists may have used it before Houston, but it was her rendition of Dolly Parton's love song that pushed the technique into the mainstream in the 90s. [...] But perhaps what Houston nailed best was moderation." Everitt said that "[i]n a climate of reality shows ripe with 'oversinging', it's easy to appreciate Houston's ability to save melisma for just the right moment".

Houston's vocal stylings have had a significant impact on the music industry. She has been called the "Queen of Pop" for her influence during the 1990s, commercially rivaling Mariah Carey and Celine Dion. Stephen Holden from ''The New York Times'', in his review of Houston's Radio City Music Hall concert on July 20, 1993, praised her attitude as a singer highly, writing, "Whitney Houston is one of the few contemporary pop stars of whom it might be said: the voice suffices. While almost every performer whose albums sell in the millions calls upon an entertainer's bag of tricks, from telling jokes to dancing to circus pyrotechnics, Ms. Houston would rather just stand there and sing." With regard to her singing style, he added: "Her [Houston's] stylistic trademarks – shivery melismas that ripple up in the middle of a song, twirling embellishments at the ends of phrases that suggest an almost breathless exhilaration – infuse her interpretations with flashes of musical and emotional lightning."

Elysa Gardner of the ''Los Angeles Times'' in her review for ''The Preacher's Wife Soundtrack'' praised Houston's vocal ability highly, commenting, "She is first and foremost a pop diva – at that, the best one we have. No other female pop star – not Mariah Carey, not Celine Dion, not Barbra Streisand – quite rivals Houston in her exquisite vocal fluidity and purity of tone, and her ability to infuse a lyric with mesmerizing melodrama."

Influence

During the 1980s, MTV was coming into its own and received harsh criticism for not playing enough videos by black artists. With Michael Jackson breaking down the color barrier for black male artists, Houston did the same for black female artists. She became the first black female artist to receive heavy rotation on the network following the success of the "How Will I Know" video. Following Houston's breakthrough, other African-American female artists, such as Janet Jackson and Anita Baker, were successful in popular music. Baker commented that "Because of what Whitney and Sade did, there was an opening for me... For radio stations, black women singers aren't taboo anymore."

Allmusic noted her contribution to the success of black artists on the pop scene, commenting, "Houston was able to handle big adult contemporary ballads, effervescent, stylish dance-pop, and slick urban contemporary soul with equal dexterity" and that "the result was an across-the-board appeal that was matched by scant few artists of her era, and helped her become one of the first black artists to find success on MTV in Michael Jackson's wake". ''The New York Times'' stated that "Houston was a major catalyst for a movement within black music that recognized the continuity of soul, pop, jazz and gospel vocal traditions". Richard Corliss of ''Time'' magazine commented on her initial success breaking various barriers:

Of her first album's ten cuts, six were ballads. This chanteuse [Houston] had to fight for air play with hard rockers. The young lady had to stand uncowed in the locker room of macho rock. The soul strutter had to seduce a music audience that anointed few black artists with superstardom. [...] She was a phenomenon waiting to happen, a canny tapping of the listener's yen for a return to the musical middle. And because every new star creates her own genre, her success has helped other blacks, other women, other smooth singers find an avid reception in the pop marketplace.

Stephen Holden of ''The New York Times'' said that Houston "revitalized the tradition of strong gospel-oriented pop-soul singing". Ann Powers of the ''Los Angeles Times'' referred to the singer as a "national treasure". Jon Caramanica, other music critic of ''The New York Times'', called Houston "R&B;'s great modernizer," adding "slowly but surely reconciling the ambition and praise of the church with the movements and needs of the body and the glow of the mainstream". He also drew comparisons between Houston's influence and other big names' on 1980s pop:

She was, alongside Michael Jackson and Madonna, one of the crucial figures to hybridize pop in the 1980s, though her strategy was far less radical than that of her peers. Jackson and Madonna were by turns lascivious and brutish and, crucially, willing to let their production speak more loudly than their voices, an option Ms. Houston never went for. Also, she was less prolific than either of them, achieving most of her renown on the strength of her first three solo albums and one soundtrack, released from 1985 to 1992. If she was less influential than they were in the years since, it was only because her gift was so rare, so impossible to mimic. Jackson and Madonna built worldviews around their voices; Ms. Houston’s voice was the worldview. She was someone more to be admired, like a museum piece, than to be emulated.

''The Independant''s music critic Andy Gill also wrote about Houston's influence on modern R&B; and singing competitions, comparing it to Michael Jackson's. "Because Whitney, more than any other single artist ― Michael Jackson included ― effectively mapped out the course of modern R&B;, setting the bar for standards of soul vocalese, and creating the original template for what we now routinely refer to as the 'soul diva'," stated Gill. "Jackson was a hugely talented icon, certainly, but he will be as well remembered (probably more so) for his presentational skills, his dazzling dance moves, as for his musical innovations. Whitney, on the other hand, just sang, and the ripples from her voice continue to dominate the pop landscape." Gill said that there "are few, if any, Jackson imitators on today's TV talent shows, but every other contestant is a Whitney wannabe, desperately attempting to emulate that wondrous combination of vocal effects – the flowing melisma, the soaring mezzo-soprano confidence, the tremulous fluttering that carried the ends of lines into realms of higher yearning".

Houston was considered by many to be a "singer's singer", who had an influence on countless other vocalists, both female and male. Similarly, Steve Huey from Allmusic wrote that the shadow of Houston's prodigious technique still looms large over nearly every pop diva and smooth urban soul singer – male or female – in her wake, and spawned a legion of imitators. ''Rolling Stone'', on her biography, stated that Houston "redefined the image of a female soul icon and inspired singers ranging from Mariah Carey to Rihanna". ''Essence'' ranked Houston the fifth on their list of 50 Most Influential R&B; Stars of all time, calling her "the diva to end all divas".

A number of artists have acknowledged Houston as an influence, including Celine Dion, Mariah Carey, Toni Braxton, Christina Aguilera, LeAnn Rimes, Jessica Simpson, Nelly Furtado, Kelly Clarkson, Britney Spears, Ciara, P!nk,Ashanti, Robin Thicke, Jennifer Hudson, Stacie Orrico, Amerie, and Destiny's Child. Mariah Carey, who was often compared to Houston, said, "Houston has been a big influence on me." She later told ''USA Today'' that "none of us would sound the same if Aretha Franklin hadn't ever put out a record, or Whitney Houston hadn't." Celine Dion who was the third member of the troika that dominated female pop singing in the 1990s, did a telephone interview with ''Good Morning America'' on February 13, 2012, telling "Whitney's been an amazing inspiration for me. I've been singing with her my whole career, actually. I wanted to have a career like hers, sing like her, look beautiful like her." Beyoncé told the ''Globe and Mail'' that Houston "inspired [her] to get up there and do what [she] did". She also wrote on her website on the day after Houston's death, "I, like every singer, always wanted to be just like [Houston]. Her voice was perfect. Strong but soothing. Soulful and classic. Her vibrato, her cadence, her control. So many of my life's memories are attached to a Whitney Houston song. She is our queen and she opened doors and provided a blueprint for all of us."

Mary J. Blige said that Houston inviting her onstage during VH1's ''Divas Live'' show in 1999 "opened doors for [her] all over the world". Brandy stated, "The first Whitney Houston CD was genius. That CD introduced the world to her angelic yet powerful voice. Without Whitney, half of this generation of singers wouldn't be singing." Kelly Rowland, in an ''Ebony'' feature article celebrating black music in June 2006, recalled that "[I] wanted to be a singer after I saw Whitney Houston on TV singing 'Greatest Love of All'. I wanted to sing like Whitney Houston in that red dress." She added that "And I have never, ever forgotten that song [Greatest Love of All]. I learned it backward, forward, sideways. The video still brings chills to me. When you wish and pray for something as a kid, you never know what blessings God will give you."

Alicia Keys, in an interview about her album ''The Element of Freedom'' with ''Billboard'' magazine, also said "Whitney is an artist who inspired me from [the time I was] a little girl". Oscar winner Jennifer Hudson cites Houston as her biggest musical influence. She told ''Newsday'' that she learned from Houston the "difference between being able to sing and knowing how to sing". Leona Lewis, who has been called "the new Whitney Houston", also cites her as an influence. Lewis stated that she idolized her as a little girl.

Awards and achievements

Houston was the most awarded female artist of all time, according to Guinness World Records, with two Emmy Awards, six Grammy Awards, 30 Billboard Music Awards, 22 American Music Awards, among a total of 415 career awards as of 2010. She held the all-time record for the most American Music Awards of any female solo artist and shared the record with Michael Jackson for the most AMAs ever won in a single year with eight wins in 1994. Houston won a record 11 Billboard Music Awards at its fourth ceremony in 1993. She also had the record for the most WMAs won in a single year, winning five awards at the 6th World Music Awards in 1994.

In May 2003, Houston placed at number three on VH1's list of "50 Greatest Women of the Video Era", behind Madonna and Janet Jackson. She was also ranked at number 116 on their list of the "200 Greatest Pop Culture Icons of All Time". In 2008, ''Billboard'' magazine released a list of the Hot 100 All-Time Top Artists to celebrate the US singles chart's 50th anniversary, ranking Houston at number nine. Similarly, she was ranked as one of the "Top 100 Greatest Artists of All Time" by VH1 in September 2010. In November 2010, ''Billboard'' released its "Top 50 R&B;/Hip-Hop Artists of the Past 25 Years" list and ranked Houston at number three whom not only went on to earn eight number one singles on the R&B;/Hip-Hop Songs chart, but also landed five number ones on R&B;/Hip-Hop Albums.

Houston's debut album is listed as one of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time by ''Rolling Stone'' magazine and is on Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's Definitive 200 list. In 2004, ''Billboard'' picked the success of her first release on the charts as one of 110 Musical Milestones in its history. Houston's entrance into the music industry is considered one of the 25 musical milestones of the last 25 years, according to ''USA Today'' in 2007. It stated that she paved the way for Mariah Carey's chart-topping vocal gymnastics. In 1997, the Franklin School in East Orange, New Jersey was renamed to The Whitney E. Houston Academy School of Creative and Performing Arts. In 2001, Houston was the first artist ever to be given a BET Lifetime Achievement Award.

Houston was also one of the world's best-selling music artists, having sold over 200 million albums and singles worldwide. Although she released relatively few albums, she was ranked as the fourth best-selling female artist in the United States by the Recording Industry Association of America, with 55 million certified albums sold in the US alone.

She held an Honorary Doctorate in Humanities from Grambling State University, Louisiana.

Discography

''Whitney Houston'' (1985)

''Whitney'' (1987)

''I'm Your Baby Tonight'' (1990)

''My Love Is Your Love'' (1998)

''Just Whitney'' (2002)

''One Wish: The Holiday Album'' (2003)

''I Look to You'' (2009)

Filmography

+ Film roles
! Year	! Title	! Role	Notes and awards
1992	''The Bodyguard''	Rachel Marron	Nominated – 1993 MTV Movie Award for Best Female PerformanceNominated – 1993 MTV Movie Award for Best Breakthrough PerformanceNominated – 1993 MTV Movie Award for Best On-Screen Duo with co-star Kevin CostnerNominated – 1992 Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Actress
1995	''Waiting to Exhale''	Savannah Jackson	Nominated – 1996 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Actress in a Motion Picture
1996	''The Preacher's Wife''	Julia Biggs
1997		Fairy Godmother	Made-for-television film, part of a revival of the ''Wonderful World of Disney''.Nominated – 1998 Emmy Award for Outstanding Variety, Music Or Comedy SpecialNominated – 1998 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Television Movie/Mini-Series
2012		Emma	Posthumous release

+ Television roles	! Year	! Title	! Network	! Role	Notes
1984	''Gimme a Break!''	NBC	Rita	"Katie's College" (Season 3, Episode 20)
1985	''Silver Spoons''	NBC	Herself	"Head Over Heels" (Season 4, Episode 1, Air date: September 15, 1985)She performed the edited version of "Saving All My Love for You", changing some of the words.
2002	''Boston Public''	Fox	Herself	She performed "Try It On My Own" from the 2002 studio album ''Just Whitney''.

+ Commercials
! Year	! Company	! Promoting	! Country	Notes
	Dr Pepper/Seven Up	Canada Dry(soft drink beverage)	United States		* Houston appeared in this commercial before debut as a professional singer and sang the praises of sugar free Canada Dry Ginger Ale.
	Coca-Cola	Diet Coke(soft drink beverage)	United States		* Houston sang the Diet Coke theme song, "Just for the taste of it".
	Coca-Cola	Diet Coke(soft drink beverage)	United States		* Houston sang the other version of the Diet Coke advertising slogan at the time, "Just for the taste of it".	* Outside the United States, the second version of advertising was released, in which "Greatest Love of All" was used as background music.	1989 MTV Video Music Awards#Video of the Year>Video of the Year winning "This Note's for You" by Neil Young, parodied parts of this advertising to criticize pop/rock stars who make commercial endorsements, most notably Michael Jackson for Pepsi and Houston for Diet Coke, using look-alikes for them.
		Electronics(the stereo, TV)	Japan		Keith Thomas (producer)>Keith Thomas. It was released as a CD single in Japan and included in Japanese edition of ''I'm Your Baby Tonight''.
	AT&T;	Telephone services	United States		* Houston sang its theme song, "True Voice".

+ Production
! Year	! Title	! Director	Notes and awards
1997		Robert Iscove	Executive producerNominated – 50th Primetime Emmy Awards
2001		[[Garry Marshall	ProducerWon – 2002 Young Artist Award for Best Family Feature Film – ComedyNominated – 2002 Broadcast Film Critics Association Award for Best Family Film (Live Action) Nominated – 2002 Phoenix Film Critics Society Award for Best Family FilmNominated – 2002 Teen Choice Award for Film – Choice Movie, Comedy
2003		Oz Scott	Producer
2004	''The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement''	Garry Marshall	Producer
2006		Kenny Ortega	Co-executive producer

Tours

;World tours

''The Greatest Love World Tour'' (1986)

''Moment of Truth World Tour'' (1987–88)

''I'm Your Baby Tonight World Tour'' (1991)

''The Bodyguard World Tour'' (1993–94)

''My Love Is Your Love World Tour'' (1999)

''Nothing But Love World Tour'' (2010)

;Regional tours

''Feels So Right Tour'' (1990)

''Pacific Rim Tour'' (1997)

''The European Tour'' (1998)

''Soul Divas Tour'' (2004)

;Televised concerts

''Nelson Mandela 70th Birthday Tribute'' (1988)

''Welcome Home Heroes with Whitney Houston'' (1991)

''The Concert for a New South Africa'' (1994)

''Classic Whitney Live from Washington, D.C.'' (1997)

See also

American Music Award nominations for Whitney Houston

Grammy nominations for Whitney Houston

Honorific nicknames in popular music

List of artists who reached number one in the United States

List of artists who reached number one on the U.S. Dance chart

List of best-selling music artists

Melisma

References

Further reading

External links

Category:1963 births Category:2012 deaths Category:American people of Dutch descent Category:American people of Native American descent Category:Actors from New Jersey Category:African American female singers Category:African American film actors Category:African American record producers Category:African-American film producers Category:American dance musicians Category:American female models Category:American gospel singers Category:American mezzo-sopranos Category:American pop singers Category:American rhythm and blues singers Category:Arista Records artists Category:Articles with inconsistent citation formats Category:Baptists from the United States Category:Death in California Category:Emmy Award winners Category:English-language singers Category:Grammy Award winners Category:Musicians from New Jersey Category:Participants in American reality television series Category:People from East Orange, New Jersey Category:People from Newark, New Jersey Category:People self-identifying as alcoholics Category:People self-identifying as substance abusers

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name	Steve Jobs
birth name	Steven Paul Jobs
birth date	February 24, 1955
birth place
death date	October 05, 2011
death place
occupation	Chairman, Apple Inc.
Boards	The Walt Disney Company, Apple, Inc.
alma mater	Reed College (one semester in 1972)
networth	$8.3 billion (2011)
religion	Buddhism
spouse	Laurene Powell Jobs(m. 1991–2011; his death)
children	4
signature	Firma de Steve Jobs.svg
relatives	Mona Simpson (sister)
website	}}

Steven Paul Jobs (February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011) was an American computer entrepreneur and inventor. He was co-founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Apple Inc. Jobs also previously served as chief executive of Pixar Animation Studios; he became a member of the board of directors of The Walt Disney Company in 2006, following the acquisition of Pixar by Disney. He was credited in ''Toy Story'' (1995) as an executive producer.

In the late 1970s, Jobs, with Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, Mike Markkula, and others, designed, developed, and marketed one of the first commercially successful lines of personal computers, the Apple II series. In the early 1980s, Jobs was among the first to see the commercial potential of Xerox PARC's mouse-driven graphical user interface, which led to the creation of the Macintosh. After losing a power struggle with the board of directors in 1985, Jobs resigned from Apple and founded NeXT, a computer platform development company specializing in the higher-education and business markets. Apple's subsequent 1996 buyout of NeXT brought Jobs back to the company he co-founded, and he served as its CEO from 1997 until 2011.

In 1986, he acquired the computer graphics division of Lucasfilm Ltd which was spun off as Pixar Animation Studios. He remained CEO and majority shareholder at 50.1 percent until its acquisition by The Walt Disney company in 2006. Consequently Jobs became Disney's largest individual shareholder at 7 percent and a member of Disney's Board of Directors.

On August 24, 2011, Jobs announced his resignation from his role as Apple's CEO. In his letter of resignation, Jobs strongly recommended that the Apple executive succession plan be followed and Tim Cook be named as his successor. Per his request, Jobs was appointed chairman of Apple's board of directors. On October 5, 2011, Apple announced that Jobs had died. He was 56 years old. His aim, to develop products that are both functional and elegant, had earned him a devoted following.

Early years

Jobs was born in San Francisco and was adopted by Paul and Clara Jobs (née Hagopian) of Mountain View, California. Paul and Clara later adopted a daughter, Patti. Jobs' biological parents – Abdulfattah John Jandali, a Syrian immigrant to the U.S. who later became a political science professor, and Joanne Schieble (later Simpson), an American graduate student who went on to become a speech language pathologist – eventually married. Together, they gave birth to and raised Jobs' biological sister, novelist Mona Simpson.

Jobs attended Cupertino Junior High and Homestead High School in Cupertino, California. He frequented after-school lectures at the Hewlett-Packard Company in Palo Alto, California and was later hired there, working with Steve Wozniak as a summer employee. Following high school graduation in 1972, Jobs enrolled at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. Although he dropped out after only one semester, he continued auditing classes at Reed, while sleeping on the floor in friends' rooms, returning Coke bottles for food money, and getting weekly free meals at the local Hare Krishna temple. Jobs later said, "If I had never dropped in on that single calligraphy course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts."

In autumn 1974, Jobs returned to California and began attending meetings of the Homebrew Computer Club with Wozniak. He took a job as a technician at Atari, a manufacturer of popular video games, with the primary intent of saving money for a spiritual retreat to India.

Jobs then traveled to India to visit the Neem Karoli Baba at his Kainchi Ashram with a Reed College friend (and, later, the first Apple employee), Daniel Kottke, in search of spiritual enlightenment. He came back a Buddhist with his head shaved and wearing traditional Indian clothing. During this time, Jobs experimented with psychedelics, calling his LSD experiences "one of the two or three most important things [he had] done in [his] life". He later said that people around him who did not share his countercultural roots could not fully relate to his thinking.

Jobs returned to his previous job at Atari and was given the task of creating a circuit board for the game ''Breakout''. According to Atari founder Nolan Bushnell, Atari had offered $100 for each chip that was eliminated in the machine. Jobs had little interest or knowledge in circuit board design and made a deal with Wozniak to split the bonus evenly between them if Wozniak could minimize the number of chips. Much to the amazement of Atari, Wozniak reduced the number of chips by 50, a design so tight that it was impossible to reproduce on an assembly line. At the time, Jobs told Wozniak that Atari had only given them $700 (instead of the actual $5,000) and that Wozniak's share was thus $350.

Career

Beginnings of Apple Computer

In 1976, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne, with later funding from a then-semi-retired Intel product-marketing manager and engineer A.C. "Mike" Markkula Jr., founded Apple. Prior to co-founding Apple, Wozniak was an electronics hacker. Jobs and Wozniak had been friends for several years, having met in 1971, when their mutual friend, Bill Fernandez, introduced 21-year-old Wozniak to 16-year-old Jobs. Steve Jobs managed to interest Wozniak in assembling a computer and selling it. As Apple continued to expand, the company began looking for an experienced executive to help manage its expansion.

In 1978, Apple recruited Mike Scott from National Semiconductor to serve as CEO for what turned out to be several turbulent years. In 1983, Steve Jobs lured John Sculley away from Pepsi-Cola to serve as Apple's CEO, asking, "Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life, or do you want to come with me and change the world?" The following year, Apple aired a Super Bowl television commercial titled "1984". At Apple's annual shareholders meeting on January 24, 1984, an emotional Jobs introduced the Macintosh to a wildly enthusiastic audience; Andy Hertzfeld described the scene as "pandemonium". The Macintosh became the first commercially successful small computer with a graphical user interface. The development of the Mac was started by Jef Raskin, and eventually taken over by Jobs.

While Jobs was a persuasive and charismatic director for Apple, some of his employees from that time had described him as an erratic and temperamental manager. An industry-wide sales slump towards the end of 1984 caused a deterioration in Jobs's working relationship with Sculley, and at the end of May 1985 – following an internal power struggle and an announcement of significant layoffs because of disappointing sales at the time – Sculley relieved Jobs of his duties as head of the Macintosh division. He later claimed that being fired from Apple was the best thing that could happen to him; "The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life."

NeXT Computer

Around the same time, Jobs founded another computer company, NeXT Computer. Like the Apple Lisa, the NeXT workstation was technologically advanced; however, it was largely dismissed by industry as cost-prohibitive. Among those who could afford it, however, the NeXT workstation garnered a strong following because of its technical strengths, chief among them its object-oriented software development system. Jobs marketed NeXT products to the scientific and academic fields because of the innovative, experimental new technologies it incorporated (such as the Mach kernel, the digital signal processor chip, and the built-in Ethernet port).

The NeXTcube was described by Jobs as an "interpersonal" computer, which he believed was the next step after "personal" computing. That is, if computers could allow people to communicate and collaborate together in an easy way, it would solve many of the problems that "personal" computing had come up against.

During a time when e-mail for most people was plain text, Jobs loved to demo the NeXT's e-mail system, NeXTMail, as an example of his "interpersonal" philosophy. NeXTMail was one of the first to support universally visible, clickable embedded graphics and audio within e-mail.

Jobs ran NeXT with an obsession for aesthetic perfection, as evidenced by such things as the NeXTcube's magnesium case. This put considerable strain on NeXT's hardware division, and in 1993, after having sold only 50,000 machines, NeXT transitioned fully to software development with the release of NeXTSTEP/Intel.

Pixar and Disney

In 1986, Jobs bought The Graphics Group (later renamed Pixar) from Lucasfilm's computer graphics division for the price of $10 million, $5 million of which was given to the company as capital.

The new company, which was originally based at Lucasfilm's Kerner Studios in San Rafael, California, but has since relocated to Emeryville, California, was initially intended to be a high-end graphics hardware developer. After years of unprofitability selling the Pixar Image Computer, it contracted with Disney to produce a number of computer-animated feature films, which Disney would co-finance and distribute.

The first film produced by the partnership, ''Toy Story'', brought fame and critical acclaim to the studio when it was released in 1995. Over the next 15 years, under Pixar's creative chief John Lasseter, the company would produce the box-office hits ''A Bug's Life'' (1998), ''Toy Story 2'' (1999), ''Monsters, Inc.'' (2001), ''Finding Nemo'' (2003), ''The Incredibles'' (2004), ''Cars'' (2006), ''Ratatouille'' (2007), ''WALL-E'' (2008), ''Up'' (2009) and ''Toy Story 3'' (2010). ''Finding Nemo'', ''The Incredibles'', ''Ratatouille'', ''WALL-E'', ''Up'' and ''Toy Story 3'' each received the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, an award introduced in 2001.

In the years 2003 and 2004, as Pixar's contract with Disney was running out, Jobs and Disney chief executive Michael Eisner tried but failed to negotiate a new partnership, and in early 2004 Jobs announced that Pixar would seek a new partner to distribute its films once its contract with Disney expired.

In October 2005, Bob Iger replaced Eisner at Disney, and Iger quickly worked to patch up relations with Jobs and Pixar. On January 24, 2006, Jobs and Iger announced that Disney had agreed to purchase Pixar in an all-stock transaction worth $7.4 billion. Once the deal closed, Jobs became The Walt Disney Company's largest single shareholder with approximately 7% of the company's stock. Jobs's holdings in Disney far exceed those of Eisner, who holds 1.7%, and of Disney family member Roy E. Disney, who until his 2009 death held about 1% of the company's stock and whose criticisms of Eisner – especially that he soured Disney's relationship with Pixar – accelerated Eisner's ousting. Jobs joined the company's board of directors upon completion of the merger. Jobs also helped oversee Disney and Pixar's combined animation businesses with a seat on a special six person steering committee.

Return to Apple

In 1996, Apple announced that it would buy NeXT for $429 million. The deal was finalized in late 1996, bringing Jobs back to the company he had co-founded. Jobs became ''de facto'' chief after then-CEO Gil Amelio was ousted in July. He was formally named interim chief executive in September 1997. In March 1998, to concentrate Apple's efforts on returning to profitability, Jobs terminated a number of projects, such as Newton, Cyberdog, and OpenDoc. In the coming months, many employees developed a fear of encountering Jobs while riding in the elevator, "afraid that they might not have a job when the doors opened. The reality was that Jobs' summary executions were rare, but a handful of victims was enough to terrorize a whole company." Jobs also changed the licensing program for Macintosh clones, making it too costly for the manufacturers to continue making machines.

With the purchase of NeXT, much of the company's technology found its way into Apple products, most notably NeXTSTEP, which evolved into Mac OS X. Under Jobs's guidance the company increased sales significantly with the introduction of the iMac and other new products; since then, appealing designs and powerful branding have worked well for Apple. At the 2000 Macworld Expo, Jobs officially dropped the "interim" modifier from his title at Apple and became permanent CEO. Jobs quipped at the time that he would be using the title 'iCEO.'

The company subsequently branched out, introducing and improving upon other digital appliances. With the introduction of the iPod portable music player, iTunes digital music software, and the iTunes Store, the company made forays into consumer electronics and music distribution. On June 29, 2007, Apple entered the cellular phone business with the introduction of the iPhone, a multi-touch display cell phone, which also included the features of an iPod and, with its own mobile browser, revolutionized the mobile browsing scene. While stimulating innovation, Jobs also reminded his employees that "real artists ship", by which he meant that delivering working products on time is as important as innovation and attractive design.

Jobs was both admired and criticized for his consummate skill at persuasion and salesmanship, which has been dubbed the "reality distortion field" and was particularly evident during his keynote speeches (colloquially known as "Stevenotes") at Macworld Expos and at Apple's own Worldwide Developers Conferences.

In 2005, Jobs responded to criticism of Apple's poor recycling programs for e-waste in the U.S. by lashing out at environmental and other advocates at Apple's Annual Meeting in Cupertino in April. However, a few weeks later, Apple announced it would take back iPods for free at its retail stores. The Computer TakeBack Campaign responded by flying a banner from a plane over the Stanford University graduation at which Jobs was the commencement speaker. The banner read "Steve — Don't be a mini-player recycle all e-waste". In 2006, he further expanded Apple's recycling programs to any U.S. customer who buys a new Mac. This program includes shipping and "environmentally friendly disposal" of their old systems.

Resignation

In August 2011, Jobs resigned as CEO of Apple, but remained at the company as chairman of the company's board. Hours after the announcement, Apple Inc. (AAPL) shares dropped 5% in after-hour trading. The relatively small drop, when considering the importance of Jobs to Apple, was associated with the fact that Jobs' health had been in the news for several years, and he was on medical leave since January 2011. It was believed, according to ''Forbes'', that the impact would be felt in a negative way beyond Apple, including at The Walt Disney Company where Jobs served as director. In after-hour trading on the day of the announcement, Walt Disney Co. (DIS) shares dropped 1.5%.

Business life

Wealth

Even though Jobs earned only $1 a year as CEO of Apple, he held 5.426 million Apple shares, as well as 138 million shares in Disney (which he had received in exchange for Disney's acquisition of Pixar). ''Forbes'' estimated his net wealth at $8.3 billion in 2010, making him the 42nd wealthiest American.

Stock options backdating issue

In 2001, Steve Jobs was granted stock options in the amount of 7.5 million shares of Apple with an exercise price of $18.30, which allegedly should have been $21.10, thereby incurring taxable income of $20,000,000 that he did not report as income. This indicated backdating. Apple overstated its earnings by that same amount. If found liable, Jobs might have faced a number of criminal charges and civil penalties. Apple claimed that the options were originally granted at a special board meeting. Furthermore, the investigation is focusing on false dating of the options resulting in a retroactive $20 million increase in the exercise price. The case is the subject of active criminal and civil government investigations, though an independent internal Apple investigation completed on December 29, 2006, found that Jobs was unaware of these issues and that the options granted to him were returned without being exercised in 2003. On July 1, 2008, a $7 billion class action suit was filed against several members of the Apple Board of Directors for revenue lost due to the alleged securities fraud.

Management style

Much was made of Jobs' aggressive and demanding personality. ''Fortune'' wrote that he was "considered one of Silicon Valley's leading egomaniacs". Commentaries on his temperamental style can be found in Mike Moritz's ''The Little Kingdom'', one of the few authorized biographies of Jobs; ''The Second Coming of Steve Jobs,'' by Alan Deutschman; and ''iCon: Steve Jobs'', by Jeffrey S. Young & William L. Simon. In 1993, Jobs made Fortune's list of America's Toughest Bosses in regard to his leadership of NeXT. Cofounder Dan'l Lewin was quoted in Fortune as saying of that period, "The highs were unbelievable . . . [b]ut the lows were unimaginable," to which Jobs's office replied that his personality had changed since then.

Jef Raskin, a former colleague, once said that Jobs "would have made an excellent king of France," alluding to Jobs' compelling and larger-than-life persona.

Jobs always aspired to position Apple and its products at the forefront of the information technology industry by foreseeing and setting trends, at least in innovation and style. He summed up that self-concept at the end of his keynote speech at the Macworld Conference and Expo in January 2007 by quoting ice hockey legend Wayne Gretzky:

Floyd Norman said that at Pixar, Jobs was a "mature, mellow individual" and never interfered with the creative process of the filmmakers.

In 2005, Steve Jobs banned all books published by John Wiley & Sons from Apple Stores in response to their publishing an unauthorized biography, ''iCon: Steve Jobs''. In its 2010 annual earnings report, Wiley said it had "closed a deal ... to make its titles available for the iPad."

Inventions

Jobs is listed as either primary inventor or co-inventor in 338 US patents or patent applications related to a range of technologies from actual computer and portable devices to user interfaces (including touch-based), speakers, keyboards, power adapters, staircases, clasps, sleeves, lanyards and packages.

Philanthropy

After Bloomberg accidentally published Jobs' obituary in 2008, Arik Hesseldahl of BusinessWeek magazine noted that "Jobs isn't widely known for his association with philanthropic causes", compared to Bill Gates' efforts. After resuming control of Apple in 1997, Jobs eliminated all corporate philanthropy programs.

Personal life

Jobs married Laurene Powell, on March 18, 1991. Presiding over the wedding was the Zen Buddhist monk Kobun Chino Otogawa. The couple have a son and two daughters. Jobs also has a daughter, Lisa Brennan-Jobs (born 1978), from his relationship with Bay Area painter Chrisann Brennan. She briefly raised their daughter on welfare when Jobs denied paternity by claiming he was sterile; he later acknowledged Lisa as his daughter.

In the unauthorized biography, ''The Second Coming of Steve Jobs,'' author Alan Deutschman reports that Jobs once dated Joan Baez. Deutschman quotes Elizabeth Holmes, a friend of Jobs from his time at Reed College, as saying she "believed that Steve became the lover of Joan Baez in large measure because Baez had been the lover of Bob Dylan." In another unauthorized biography, ''iCon: Steve Jobs'' by Jeffrey S. Young & William L. Simon, the authors suggest that Jobs might have married Baez, but her age at the time (41) meant it was unlikely the couple could have children.

Jobs was also a fan of The Beatles. He referred to them on multiple occasions at Keynotes and also was interviewed on a showing of a Paul McCartney concert. When asked about his business model on ''60 Minutes'', he replied:

In 1982, Jobs bought an apartment in The San Remo, an apartment building in New York City with a politically progressive reputation, where Demi Moore, Steven Spielberg, Steve Martin, and Princess Yasmin Aga Khan, daughter of Rita Hayworth, also had apartments. With the help of I.M. Pei, Jobs spent years renovating his apartment in the top two floors of the building's north tower, only to sell it almost two decades later to U2 singer Bono. Jobs had never moved in.

In 1984, Jobs purchased a , 14-bedroom Spanish Colonial mansion, designed by George Washington Smith, in Woodside, California (also known as Jackling House). Although it reportedly remained in an almost unfurnished state, Jobs lived in the mansion for almost ten years. According to reports, he kept an old BMW motorcycle in the living room, and let Bill Clinton use it in 1998. From the early 1990s, Jobs lived in a house in the Old Palo Alto neighborhood of Palo Alto. President Clinton dined with Jobs and 14 Silicon Valley CEOs there on August 7, 1996 on a meal catered by Greens Restaurant. Clinton returned the favor and Jobs, who was a Democratic donor, slept in the Lincoln bedroom of the White House.

Jobs allowed Jackling House to fall into a state of disrepair, planning to demolish the house and build a smaller home on the property; but he met with complaints from local preservationists over his plans. In June 2004, the Woodside Town Council gave Jobs approval to demolish the mansion, on the condition that he advertise the property for a year to see if someone would move it to another location and restore it. A number of people expressed interest, including several with experience in restoring old property, but no agreements to that effect were reached. Later that same year, a local preservationist group began seeking legal action to prevent demolition. In January 2007 Jobs was denied the right to demolish the property, by a court decision. The court decision was overturned on appeal in March 2010 and the mansion was demolished beginning February 2011.

Jobs usually wore a black long-sleeved mock turtleneck made by St. Croix, Levi's 501 blue jeans, and New Balance 991 sneakers. He was a pescetarian, one whose diet includes fish but no other meat.

His car was a silver 2008 Mercedes SL 55 AMG, which does not display its license plates.

Jobs had a public war of words with Dell Computer CEO Michael Dell, starting when Jobs first criticized Dell for making "un-innovative beige boxes". On October 6, 1997, in a Gartner Symposium, when Michael Dell was asked what he would do if he owned then-troubled Apple Computer, he said "I'd shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders." In 2006, Steve Jobs sent an email to all employees when Apple's market capitalization rose above Dell's. The email read:

Illness and death

In mid-2004, Jobs announced to his employees that he had been diagnosed with a cancerous tumor in his pancreas. The prognosis for pancreatic cancer is usually very poor; Jobs, however, stated that he had a rare, far less aggressive type known as islet cell neuroendocrine tumor. After initially resisting the idea of conventional medical intervention and embarking on a special diet to thwart the disease, Jobs underwent a pancreaticoduodenectomy (or "Whipple procedure") in July 2004 that appeared to successfully remove the tumor. Jobs apparently did not require nor receive chemotherapy or radiation therapy. During Jobs' absence, Timothy D. Cook, head of worldwide sales and operations at Apple, ran the company.

In early August 2006, Jobs delivered the keynote for Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference. His "thin, almost gaunt" appearance and unusually "listless" delivery, together with his choice to delegate significant portions of his keynote to other presenters, inspired a flurry of media and Internet speculation about his health. In contrast, according to an ''Ars Technica'' journal report, WWDC attendees who saw Jobs in person said he "looked fine". Following the keynote, an Apple spokesperson said that "Steve's health is robust."

Two years later, similar concerns followed Jobs' 2008 WWDC keynote address. Apple officials stated Jobs was victim to a "common bug" and was taking antibiotics, while others surmised his cachectic appearance was due to the Whipple procedure. During a July conference call discussing Apple earnings, participants responded to repeated questions about Steve Jobs' health by insisting that it was a "private matter". Others, however, voiced the opinion that shareholders had a right to know more, given Jobs' hands-on approach to running his company. The ''New York Times'' published an article based on an off-the-record phone conversation with Jobs, noting that "while his health issues have amounted to a good deal more than 'a common bug,' they weren't life-threatening and he doesn't have a recurrence of cancer."

On August 28, 2008, Bloomberg mistakenly published a 2500-word obituary of Jobs in its corporate news service, containing blank spaces for his age and cause of death. (News carriers customarily stockpile up-to-date obituaries to facilitate news delivery in the event of a well-known figure's untimely death.) Although the error was promptly rectified, many news carriers and blogs reported on it, intensifying rumors concerning Jobs' health. Jobs responded at Apple's September 2008 ''Let's Rock'' keynote by quoting Mark Twain: "Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated." At a subsequent media event, Jobs concluded his presentation with a slide reading "110/70", referring to his blood pressure, stating he would not address further questions about his health.

On December 16, 2008, Apple announced that marketing vice-president Phil Schiller would deliver the company's final keynote address at the Macworld Conference and Expo 2009, again reviving questions about Jobs' health. In a statement given on January 5, 2009 on Apple.com, Jobs said that he had been suffering from a "hormone imbalance" for several months. On January 14, 2009, in an internal Apple memo, Jobs wrote that in the previous week he had "learned that my health-related issues are more complex than I originally thought" and announced a six-month leave of absence until the end of June 2009 to allow him to better focus on his health. Tim Cook, who had previously acted as CEO in Jobs' 2004 absence, became acting CEO of Apple, with Jobs still involved with "major strategic decisions."

In April 2009, Jobs underwent a liver transplant at Methodist University Hospital Transplant Institute in Memphis, Tennessee. Jobs' prognosis was "excellent".

On January 17, 2011, a year and a half after Jobs returned from his liver transplant, Apple announced that he had been granted a medical leave of absence. Jobs announced his leave in a letter to employees, stating his decision was made "so he could focus on his health". As during his 2009 medical leave, Apple announced that Tim Cook would run day-to-day operations and that Jobs would continue to be involved in major strategic decisions at the company. Despite the leave, he made appearances at the iPad 2 launch event (March 2), the WWDC keynote introducing iCloud (June 6), and before the Cupertino city council (June 7).

Jobs announced his resignation from his role as Apple's CEO on August 24, 2011. In his resignation letter, Jobs wrote that he could "no longer meet [his] duties and expectations as Apple's CEO".

On October 5, 2011, his family, in a statement, said Jobs "died peacefully today surrounded by his family . . ."

Apple released a separate statement saying that Jobs had died. The statement read "We are deeply saddened to announce that Steve Jobs passed away today. Steve's brilliance, passion and energy were the source of countless innovations that enrich and improve all of our lives. The world is immeasurably better because of Steve. His greatest love was for his wife, Laurene, and his family. Our hearts go out to them and to all who were touched by his extraordinary gifts."

Also on October 5, 2011, Apple's corporate website greeted visitors with a simple page showing Jobs's name and lifespan next to his greyscale portrait. Clicking on Jobs's image led to an obituary that read "Apple has lost a visionary and creative genius, and the world has lost an amazing human being. Those of us who have been fortunate enough to know and work with Steve have lost a dear friend and an inspiring mentor. Steve leaves behind a company that only he could have built, and his spirit will forever be the foundation of Apple." An email address was also posted for the public to share their memories, condolences, and thoughts.

Jobs is survived by his wife, Laurene, to whom he was married for 20 years, their three children, and a fourth child, Lisa Brennan-Jobs, from a previous relationship.

Statements on Jobs' death

Statements reacting to Jobs' death were released by notable people in the US, including U.S. President Barack Obama, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Walt Disney Company's Bob Iger, and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Wired collected reactions and posted them in tribute on their homepage.

Excerpts from President Barack Obama's statement:

Steve was among the greatest of American innovators - brave enough to think differently, bold enough to believe he could change the world, and talented enough to do it. By building one of the planet’s most successful companies from his garage, he exemplified the spirit of American ingenuity. By making computers personal and putting the internet in our pockets, he made the information revolution not only accessible, but intuitive and fun. And by turning his talents to storytelling, he has brought joy to millions of children and grownups alike. Steve was fond of saying that he lived every day like it was his last. Because he did, he transformed our lives, redefined entire industries, and achieved one of the rarest feats in human history: he changed the way each of us sees the world.

Bill Gates released a statement saying:

I'm truly saddened to learn of Steve Jobs' death. Melinda and I extend our sincere condolences to his family and friends, and to everyone Steve has touched through his work. Steve and I first met nearly 30 years ago, and have been colleagues, competitors and friends over the course of more than half our lives. The world rarely sees someone who has had the profound impact Steve has had, the effects of which will be felt for many generations to come. For those of us lucky enough to get to work with him, it's been an insanely great honor. I will miss Steve immensely.

Walt Disney Company president Bob Iger said in regards to Jobs:

Steve Jobs was a great friend as well as a trusted advisor. His legacy will extend far beyond the products he created or the businesses he built. It will be the millions of people he inspired, the lives he changed, and the culture he defined. Steve was such an "original," with a thoroughly creative, imaginative mind that defined an era. Despite all he accomplished, it feels like he was just getting started. With his passing the world has lost a rare original, Disney has lost a member of our family, and I have lost a great friend. Our thoughts and prayers are with his wife Laurene and his children during this difficult time.

Mark Zuckerberg wrote on his Facebook page:

Steve, thank you for being a mentor and a friend. Thanks for showing that what you build can change the world. I will miss you.

American director Steven Spielberg said: "Steve Jobs was the greatest inventor since Thomas Edison. He put the world at our fingertips."

Microsoft Co-founder Paul Allen said: "We've lost a unique tech pioneer and auteur who knew how to make amazingly great products. Steve fought a long battle against tough odds in a very brave way. He kept doing amazing things in the face of all that adversity. As someone who has had his own medical challenges, I couldn't help but be encouraged by how he persevered."

Apple Co-founder Steve Wozniak said : "People sometimes have goals in life. Steve Jobs exceeded every goal he set himself."

Honors

Jobs was awarded the National Medal of Technology by President Ronald Reagan in 1984 with Steve Wozniak (among the first people to ever receive the honor), and a Jefferson Award for Public Service in the category "Greatest Public Service by an Individual 35 Years or Under" (a.k.a. the ''Samuel S. Beard Award'') in 1987. On November 27, 2007, Jobs was named the most powerful person in business by ''Fortune Magazine''. On December 5, 2007, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and First Lady Maria Shriver inducted Jobs into the California Hall of Fame, located at The California Museum for History, Women and the Arts.

In August 2009, Jobs was selected as the most admired entrepreneur among teenagers in a survey by Junior Achievement. On November 5, 2009, Jobs was named the CEO of the decade by ''Fortune Magazine''. In September 2011, Jobs was ranked No.17 on Forbes: The World's Most Powerful People. In December 2010, the ''Financial Times'' named Jobs its person of the year for 2010, ending its essay by stating, "In his autobiography, John Sculley, the former PepsiCo executive who once ran Apple, said this of the ambitions of the man he had pushed out: 'Apple was supposed to become a wonderful consumer products company. This was a lunatic plan. High-tech could not be designed and sold as a consumer product.' How wrong can you be".

In popular culture

Due to his youth, great wealth, and charisma, after Apple's founding Jobs became a symbol of his company and industry. When ''Time'' named the computer as the 1982 "Machine of the Year", it published a long profile of him as "the most famous maestro of the micro". In 2011 Jobs was voted Best Business Entrepreneur On Earth. Jobs was prominently featured in four productions about the history of the personal computing industry:

''Triumph of the Nerds'' – a 1996 three-part documentary for PBS, about the rise of the home computer/personal computer.

''Nerds 2.0.1'' – a 1998 three-part documentary for PBS, (and sequel to ''Triumph of the Nerds'') which chronicles the development of the Internet.

''Pirates of Silicon Valley'' – a 1999 docudrama which chronicles the rise of Apple and Microsoft. He was portrayed by Noah Wyle.

''The Machine that Changed the World (1992)'' – Part 3 of this 5 part documentary, called ''The Paperback Computer'', prominently featured Jobs and his role in the early days of Apple.

After his resignation as Apple's CEO, Jobs was characterized as the Thomas Edison and Henry Ford of his time.

Notes

References

Bantam Doubleday Dell. ISBN 0-385-48684-7. Chapter 28

External links

Steve Jobs' executive profile at Apple.

YouTube video of first Jobs' Macworld keynote in 1997, when he returned to Apple, where he announced partnership with Microsoft.

Jobs's commencement address at Stanford University, June 12, 2005 (YouTube video).

"Thoughts on Music" by Steve Jobs, February 6, 2007.

"Thoughts on Flash" by Steve Jobs, April, 2010.

Bloomberg Game Changers: Steve Jobs A 48 minute video on Steve Jobs by Bloomberg

Profile at ''Forbes''

Articles

"Thirty Years of Innovation at Apple: Jobs on the Job". ''Time''. 2007.

Anecdotes from Steve Jobs' early days in Apple as reported by Andy Hertzfeld. Folklore.org.

Interviews

Steve Jobs in 1994: The Rolling Stone Interview, ''Rolling Stone'' – 1994, republished January 17, 2011. Archived URL

 — April 20, 1995.

The Seed of Apple's Innovation, ''BusinessWeek'' — October 12, 2004.

How Big Can Apple Get?, ''Fortune'' — February 21, 2005.

, ''Newsweek'' — October 15, 2006.

Bill Gates and Steve Jobs (video and transcript of on stage interview), ''All Things D'' – May 30, 2007.

Videotaped Deposition of Steven P. Jobs in front of the Securities and Exchange Commission  – March 18, 2008

Interview with Abdulfattah "John" Jandali, Job's biological father, by Mohannad Al-Haj Ali, published in ''Al Hayat'' ''Ya Liban'', February 28, 2011

Category:1955 births Category:2011 deaths Category:American adoptees Category:American billionaires Category:American chief executives Category:American people of Syrian descent Category:American Zen Buddhists Category:Apple Inc. employees Category:Articles with inconsistent citation formats Category:Businesspeople from California Category:Businesspeople in software Category:Computer designers Category:Computer pioneers Category:Disney people Category:Internet pioneers Category:National Medal of Technology recipients Category:NeXT Category:Organ transplant recipients Category:People from the San Francisco Bay Area Category:Pescetarians Category:Reed College alumni

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Name	Kim Jong-il
Office	Supreme Leader of North Korea
President	Kim Yong-nam
Premier	Hong Song-namPak Pong-juKim Yong-ilChoe Yong-rim
Term start	8 July 1994
Predecessor	Kim Il-sung
Office2	Chairman of the National Defence Commission of North Korea
Deputy2	Jo Myong-rok (1993–2010) Chang Sung-taek (2010–)
Term start2	9 April 1993
Predecessor2	Position established
Office3	Supreme Commander of the Korean People's Army
Term start3	24 December 1991
Predecessor3	Kim Il-sung
Office4	General Secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea
Term start4	8 October 1997
Predecessor4	Kim Il-sung
Office5	Chairman of the Central Military Commission of Worker's Party of Korea
Term start5	8 October 1997
Predecessor5	Kim Il-sung
Birth date	February 16, 1941Vyatskoye, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union (Soviet records)February 16, 1942Baekdu Mountain, Japanese Korea (North Korean records)
Party	Workers' Party of Korea
Spouse	Kim Young-sookSong Hye-rimKo Young-heeKim Ok
Children	Kim Sul-songKim Jong-namKim Jong-chulKim Jong-un
Relations	Kim Il-sung (father, deceased)Kim Jong-suk (mother, deceased)
Alma mater	Kim Il-sung UniversityUniversity of Malta
Signature	Kim Jong-il Signature.png }}

Context	north
Hangul	김정일
Hanja
Rr	Gim Jeong(-)il
Mr	Kim Chŏngil }}

Kim Jong-il, also written as Kim Jong Il, born 16 February 1941 (Soviet records) or 16 February 1942 (North Korean records), is the leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea). He is the Chairman of the National Defense Commission, General Secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea, the ruling party since 1948, and the Supreme Commander of the Korean People's Army, the fourth largest standing army in the world. In April 2009, North Korea's constitution was amended and now implicitly refers to him as the "''Supreme Leader''". He is also referred to as the "''Dear Leader''", "''our Father''", "''the General''" and "''Generalissimo''". His son Kim Jong-un was promoted to a senior position in the ruling Worker's Party and is heir apparent.

Childhood

Birth

Soviet records show that Kim Jong-il was born in the village of Vyatskoye, near Khabarovsk, in 1941, where his father, Kim Il-sung, commanded the 1st Battalion of the Soviet 88th Brigade, made up of Chinese and Korean exiles. Kim Jong-il's mother, Kim Jong-suk, was Kim Il-sung's first wife.

Kim Jong-il's official biography states that he was born in a secret military camp on Baekdu Mountain in Japanese Korea on 16 February 1942. Official biographers claim that his birth at Baekdu Mountain was foretold by a swallow, and heralded by the appearance of a double rainbow over the mountain and a new star in the heavens.

In 1945, Kim was three or four years old (depending on his birth year) when World War II ended and Korea regained independence from Japan. His father returned to Pyongyang that September, and in late November Kim returned to Korea via a Soviet ship, landing at Sonbong (선봉군, also Unggi). The family moved into a former Japanese officer's mansion in Pyongyang, with a garden and pool. Kim Jong-il's brother, "Shura" Kim (the first Kim Jong-il, but known by his Russian nickname), drowned there in 1948. Unconfirmed reports suggest that 5 year old Kim Jong-il might have caused the accident. In 1949, his mother died in childbirth. Unconfirmed reports suggest that his mother might have been shot and left to bleed to death.

Education

According to his official biography, Kim completed the course of general education between September 1950 and August 1960. He attended Primary School No. 4 and Middle School No. 1 (Namsan Higher Middle School) in Pyongyang This is contested by foreign academics, who believe he is more likely to have received his early education in the People's Republic of China as a precaution to ensure his safety during the Korean War.

Throughout his schooling, Kim was involved in politics. He was active in the Children's Union and the Democratic Youth League (DYL), taking part in study groups of Marxist political theory and other literature. In September 1957 he became vice-chairman of his middle school's DYL branch. He pursued a programme of anti-factionalism and attempted to encourage greater ideological education among his classmates.

Kim is also said to have received English language education at the University of Malta in the early 1970s, on his infrequent holidays in Malta as guest of Prime Minister Dom Mintoff.

The elder Kim had meanwhile remarried and had another son, Kim Pyong-il (named after Kim Jong-il's drowned brother). Since 1988, Kim Pyong-il has served in a series of North Korean embassies in Europe and is currently the North Korean ambassador to Poland. Foreign commentators suspect that Kim Pyong-il was sent to these distant posts by his father in order to avoid a power struggle between his two sons.

Presidium member and party secretary (1980–1994)

By the time of the Sixth Party Congress in October 1980, Kim Jong-il's control of the Party operation was complete. He was given senior posts in the Politburo, the Military Commission and the party Secretariat. When he was made a member of the Seventh Supreme People's Assembly in February 1982, international observers deemed him the heir apparent of North Korea.

At this time Kim assumed the title "Dear Leader" (친애하는 지도자, ''chinaehaneun jidoja'') the government began building a personality cult around him patterned after that of his father, the "Great Leader". Kim Jong-il was regularly hailed by the media as the "fearless leader" and "the great successor to the revolutionary cause". He emerged as the most powerful figure behind his father in North Korea.

On 24 December 1991, Kim was also named supreme commander of the North Korean armed forces. Since the Army is the real foundation of power in North Korea, this was a vital step. Defense Minister Oh Jin-wu, one of Kim Il-sung's most loyal subordinates, engineered Kim Jong-il's acceptance by the Army as the next leader of North Korea, despite his lack of military service. The only other possible leadership candidate, Prime Minister Kim Il (no relation), was removed from his posts in 1976. In 1992, Kim Il-sung publicly stated that his son was in charge of all internal affairs in the Democratic People's Republic.

In 1992, radio broadcasts started referring to him as the "Dear Father", instead of the "Dear Leader", suggesting a promotion. His 50th birthday in February was the occasion for massive celebrations, exceeded only by those for the 80th birthday of Kim Il Sung himself on 15 April.

According to defector Hwang Jang-yop, the North Korean goverment system became even more centralized and autocratic during the 1980s and 1990s under Kim Jong-il than it had been under his father. In one example explained by Hwang, although Kim Il-sung required his ministers to be loyal to him, he nonetheless and frequently sought their advice during decision-making. In contrast, Kim Jong-il demands absolute obedience and agreement from his ministers and party officals with no advice or compromise, and he views any slight deviation from his thinking as a sign of disloyalty. According to Hwang, Kim Jong-il personally directs even minor details of state affairs, such as the size of houses for party secretaries and the delivery of gifts to his subordinates.

By the 1980s, North Korea began to experience severe economic stagnation. Kim Il-sung's policy of ''juche'' (self-reliance) cut the country off from almost all external trade, even with its traditional partners, the Soviet Union and China.

South Korea accused Kim of ordering the 1983 bombing in Rangoon, Burma (now Yangon, Myanmar), which killed 17 visiting South Korean officials, including four cabinet members, and another in 1987 which killed all 115 on board Korean Air Flight 858. A North Korean agent, Kim Hyon Hui, confessed to planting a bomb in the case of the second, saying the operation was ordered by Kim Jong-il personally.

In 1992, Kim Jong-il's voice was broadcast within North Korea for the first time during a military parade for the KPA's 60th year anniversary in Pyongyang's then Central Square (Kim Il-sung Square at present), in which Kim Il-sung attended with Kim Jong-il by his side. After Kim Il-sung's speech, his son approached the microphone at the grandstand and simply said: "Glory to the heroic soldiers of the Korean People's Army!" Everyone in the audience clapped and the parade participants at the square grounds (which included veteran soldiers and officers of the KPA) shouted "ten thousand years" three times after that.

Ruler of North Korea

On 8 July 1994, Kim Il-sung died, at the age of 82 from a heart attack. However, it took three years for Kim Jong-il to consolidate his power. He officially took the titles of General Secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea and chairman of the National Defense Commission on 8 October 1997. In 1998, his Defense Commission chairmanship was declared to be "the highest post of the state", so Kim may be regarded as North Korea's head of state from that date. Also in 1998, the Supreme People's Assembly wrote the president's post out of the constitution in memory of Kim Il-Sung, who was designated the country's "Eternal President". It can be argued, though, that he became the country's leader when he became leader of the Workers' Party; in most Communist countries the party leader is the most powerful person in the country.

Officially, Kim is part of a triumvirate heading the executive branch of the North Korean government along with Premier Choe Yong-rim and parliament chairman Kim Yong-nam (no relations). Each nominally has powers equivalent to a third of a president's powers in most other presidential systems. Kim Jong-il is commander of the armed forces, Choe Yong-rim heads the government and Kim Yong-nam handles foreign relations. In practice, however, Kim Jong-il exercises absolute control over the government and the country.

Although Kim is not required to stand for popular election to his key offices, he is unanimously elected to the Supreme People's Assembly every five years, representing a military constituency, due to his concurrent capacities as KPA Supreme Commander and Chairman of the DPRK NDC.

Economic policies

The state-controlled economy of North Korea struggled throughout the 1990s, primarily due to the loss of strategic trade arrangements with the Soviet Union and strained relations with China following China's normalization with South Korea in 1992. In addition, North Korea experienced record-breaking floods (1995 and 1996) followed by several years of equally severe drought beginning in 1997. This, compounded with only 18% arable land and an inability to import the goods necessary to sustain industry, led to an immense famine and left North Korea in economic shambles. Faced with a country in decay, Kim adopted a "Military-First" policy (선군정치, Sŏn'gun chŏngch'i) to strengthen the country and reinforce the regime. On the national scale, this policy has produced a positive growth rate for the country since 1996, and the implementation of "landmark socialist-type market economic practices" in 2002 kept the North afloat despite a continued dependency on foreign aid for food.

In the wake of the devastation of the 1990s, the government began formally approving some activity of small-scale bartering and trade. As observed by Daniel Sneider, associate director for research at the Stanford University Asia-Pacific Research Center, this flirtation with capitalism is "fairly limited, but — especially compared to the past — there are now remarkable markets that create the semblance of a free market system." In 2002, Kim Jong-il declared that "money should be capable of measuring the worth of all commodities." These gestures toward economic reform mirror similar actions taken by China's Deng Xiaoping in the late 1980s and early 90s. During a rare visit in 2006, Kim expressed admiration for China's rapid economic progress.

Foreign relations

In 1998, South Korean President Kim Dae-jung implemented the "Sunshine Policy" to improve North-South relations and to allow South Korean companies to start projects in the North. Kim Jong-il announced plans to import and develop new technologies to develop North Korea's fledgling software industry. As a result of the new policy, the Kaesong Industrial Park was constructed in 2003 just north of the de-militarized zone, with the planned participation of 250 South Korean companies, employing 100,000 North Koreans, by 2007. However, by March 2007, the Park contained only 21 companies — employing 12,000 North Korean workers. As of May 2010 the park employs over 40,000 North Korean workers.

In 1994, North Korea and the United States signed an Agreed Framework which was designed to freeze and eventually dismantle the North's nuclear weapons program in exchange for aid in producing two power-generating nuclear reactors. In 2002, Kim Jong-il's government admitted to having produced nuclear weapons since the 1994 agreement. Kim's regime argued the secret production was necessary for security purposes — citing the presence of United States-owned nuclear weapons in South Korea and the new tensions with the US under President George W. Bush. On 9 October 2006, North Korea's Korean Central News Agency announced that it had successfully conducted an underground nuclear test.

2008 health and waning power rumors

In an August 2008 issue of the Japanese newsweekly Shukan Gendai, Waseda University professor Toshimitsu Shigemura, an authority on the Korean Peninsula, claimed that Kim Jong-il died of diabetes in late 2003 and had been replaced in public appearances by one or more stand-ins previously employed to protect him from assassination attempts. In a subsequent best-selling book, ''The True Character of Kim Jong-il'', Shigemura cited apparently un-named people close to Kim's family along with Japanese and South Korean intelligence sources, claiming they confirmed Kim's diabetes took a turn for the worse early in 2000 and from then until his supposed death three and a half years later he was using a wheelchair. Shigemura moreover claimed a voiceprint analysis of Kim speaking in 2004 did not match a known earlier recording. It was also noted that Kim Jong-il did not appear in public for the Olympic torch relay in Pyongyang on 28 April 2008. The question had reportedly "baffled foreign intelligence agencies for years."

On 9 September 2008, various sources reported that after he did not show up that day for a military parade celebrating North Korea's 60th anniversary, US intelligence agencies believed Kim might be "gravely ill" after having suffered a stroke. He had last been seen in public a month earlier. A former CIA official said earlier reports of a health crisis were likely to be accurate. North Korean media remained silent on the issue. An Associated Press report said analysts believed Kim had been supporting moderates in the foreign ministry, while North Korea's powerful military was against so-called "Six-Party" negotiations with China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States aimed towards ridding North Korea of nuclear weapons. Some US officials noted that soon after rumours about Kim's health were publicized a month before, North Korea had taken a "tougher line in nuclear negotiations." In late August North Korea's official news agency reported the government would "consider soon a step to restore the nuclear facilities in Yongbyon to their original state as strongly requested by its relevant institutions." Analysts said this meant "the military may have taken the upper hand and that Kim might no longer be wielding absolute authority."

By 10 September there were conflicting reports. Unidentified South Korean government officials said Kim had undergone surgery after suffering a minor stroke and had apparently "intended to attend 9 September event in the afternoon but decided not to because of the aftermath of the surgery." High ranking North Korean official Kim Yong-nam said, "While we wanted to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the country with General Secretary Kim Jong-Il, we celebrated on our own." Song Il-Ho, North Korea's ambassador said, "We see such reports as not only worthless, but rather as a conspiracy plot." Seoul's ''Chosun Ilbo'' newspaper reported that "the South Korean embassy in Beijing had received an intelligence report that Kim collapsed on 22 August." The ''New York Times'' reported Kim was "very ill and most likely suffered a stroke a few weeks ago, but US intelligence authorities do not think his death is imminent." The BBC noted that the North Korean government denied these reports, stating that Kim's health problems were "not serious enough to threaten his life," although they did confirm that he had suffered from a stroke on 15 August.

Japan's Kyodo news agency reported on 14 September that "Kim collapsed on 14 August due to stroke or a cerebral hemorrhage, and that Beijing dispatched five military doctors at the request of Pyongyang. Kim will require a long period of rest and rehabilitation before he fully recovers and has complete command of his limbs again, as with typical stroke victims." Japan's Mainichi Shimbun said Kim occasionally lost consciousness since April. Japan's ''Tokyo Shimbun'' on 15 September added that Kim was staying at the Bongwha State Guest House. He was apparently conscious "but he needs some time to recuperate from the recent stroke, with some parts of his hands and feet paralyzed". It cited Chinese sources which claimed that one cause for the stroke could have been stress brought about by the US delay to remove North Korea from its list of state sponsors of terrorism.

On 19 October, North Korea reportedly ordered its diplomats to stay near their embassies to await “an important message”, according to Japan's Yomiuri Shimbun, setting off renewed speculation about the health of the ailing leader.

By 29 October 2008, reports stated Kim suffered a serious setback and had been taken back to hospital. The New York Times reported that Taro Aso, on 28 October 2008, stated in a parliamentary session that Kim had been hospitalized: "His condition is not so good. However, I don't think he is totally incapable of making decisions." Aso further said a French neurosurgeon was aboard a plane for Beijing, en route to North Korea. Further, Kim Sung-ho, director of South Korea's National Intelligence Service, told lawmakers in a closed parliamentary session in Seoul that "Kim appeared to be recovering quickly enough to start performing his daily duties." The Dong-a Ilbo newspaper reported "a serious problem" with Kim's health. Japan's Fuji Television Network reported that Kim's eldest son, Kim Jong Nam, traveled to Paris to hire a neurosurgeon for his father, and showed footage where the surgeon boarded flight CA121 bound for Pyongyang from Beijing on 24 October. The French weekly ''Le Point'' identified him as Francois-Xavier Roux, neurosurgery director of Paris' Sainte-Anne Hospital, but Roux himself stated he was in Beijing for several days and not North Korea.

On 5 November 2008, the North's Korean Central News Agency published 2 photos showing Kim posing with dozens of Korean People's Army (KPA) soldiers on a visit to military Unit 2200 and sub-unit of Unit 534. Shown with his usual bouffant hairstyle, with his trademark sunglasses and a white winter parka, Kim stood in front of trees with autumn foliage and a red-and-white banner. ''The Times'' questioned the authenticity of at least one of these photos.

In November 2008, Japan's TBS TV network reported that Kim had suffered a second stroke in October, which "affected the movement of his left arm and leg and also his ability to speak." However, South Korea's intelligence agency rejected this report.

In response to the rumors regarding Kim's health and supposed loss of power, in April 2009, North Korea released a video showing Kim visiting factories and other places around the country between November and December 2008. In July 2009, it was reported that Kim may be suffering from pancreatic cancer.

In 2010, documents released by Wikileaks stated that Kim suffers from epilepsy.

Successor

Kim's three sons and his son-in-law, along with O Kuk-ryol, an army general, have been noted as possible successors, but the North Korean government has been wholly silent on this matter. Kim Yong Hyun, a political expert at the Institute for North Korean Studies at Seoul's Dongguk University, has said, "Even the North Korean establishment would not advocate a continuation of the family dynasty at this point." Kim's eldest son Kim Jong-nam was earlier believed to be the designated heir but he appears to have fallen out of favor after being arrested at Narita International Airport near Tokyo in 2001 while traveling on a forged passport.

On 2 June 2009, it was reported that Kim Jong Il's youngest son, Jong Un, was to be North Korea's next leader. Like his father and grandfather, he has also been given an official sobriquet, The Brilliant Comrade. It has been reported that Kim Jong Il is expected to officially designate the son as his successor in 2012. However, there are reports that if leadership passes to one of the sons, Kim Jong Il's brother-in-law, Chang Sung-taek, could attempt to take power from him.

Re-election as DPRK leader

On 9 April 2009, Kim was re-elected as chairman of the DPRK National Defence Commission, and made an appearance at the Supreme People's Assembly. This was the first time Kim was seen in public since August 2008. He was unanimously re-elected and given a standing ovation.

2009 imprisonment and pardoning of American journalists

In March 2009, the North Korean military detained two American journalists, Euna Lee and Laura Ling, who were working for the US independent cable television network Current TV, after they allegedly crossed into North Korea from the People's Republic of China without a visa. The two reporters were found guilty of illegal entry and subsequently sentenced to twelve years of hard labor. Reporters Without Borders characterized the trial and sentencing as a "sham trial", and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton initially stated that the charges against the journalists were "baseless".

On 4 August 2009, former US President Bill Clinton met with Kim Jong-il during a "solely private mission to secure the release of Euna Lee and Laura Ling." According to the KCNA, Clinton conveyed a verbal message to Kim from President Barack Obama, a claim denied by the Obama administration. Clinton and Kim had "an exhaustive conversation" that included "a wide-ranging exchange of views on the matters of common concern," KCNA reported. KCNA also reported that the National Defence Commission of North Korea, of which the Dear Leader is the Chairman, hosted a dinner in honor of Clinton, but did not go into detail about what was discussed at the reception. In the early morning hours (UTC+9) of 5 August, KCNA announced that Kim Jong-il had issued a pardon to Lee and Ling.

2010 and 2011 foreign visits

Kim was reported to have visited the People's Republic of China in May 2010. He entered the country by his personal train on 3 May, and stayed in a hotel in Dalian. Kim travelled to China again in August 2010, this time with his son, fueling speculation that he is ready to hand over power to son Kim Jong-un. He returned to China again in May 2011, marking the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance between China and the DPRK. In late August 2011, he travelled by train to the Russian Far East to meet with President Dmitri Medvedev for unspecified talks.

Cult of personality

Kim Jong-il is the centre of an elaborate personality cult inherited from his father and founder of the DPRK, Kim Il-sung. Defectors have been quoted as saying that North Korean schools deify both father and son. He is often the centre of attention throughout ordinary life in the DPRK. On his 60th birthday (based on his official date of birth), mass celebrations occurred throughout the country on the occasion of his Hwangap. Many North Koreans believe that he has the "magical" ability to "control the weather" based on his mood. In 2010, the North Korean media reported that Kim's distinctive clothing had set worldwide fashion trends.

One point of view is that Kim Jong Il's cult of personality is solely out of respect for Kim Il-sung or out of fear of punishment for failure to pay homage. Media and government sources from outside of North Korea generally support this view, while North Korean government sources say that it is genuine hero worship. The song "No Motherland Without You", sung by the KPA State Merited Choir, was created especially for Kim in 1992 and is frequently broadcasted on the radio and from loudspeakers on the streets of Pyongyang.

Personal life

Family

There is no official information available about Kim Jong-il's marital history, but he is believed to have been officially married once and to have had three mistresses. He has four known children:

Kim Sul-song (daughter)

Kim Jong-nam (son)

Kim Jong-chul (son)

Kim Jong-un (son)

Kim's first wife, Kim Young-sook, was the daughter of a high-ranking military official. His father Kim Il-Sung handpicked her to marry his son. They had one son, Kim Jong-nam (born 1971) who is Kim Jong-il's eldest son.

His second mistress, Ko Young-hee, was a Japanese-born ethnic Korean and a dancer. She had taken over the role of First Lady until her death — reportedly of cancer — in 2004. They had two sons, Kim Jong-chul, in 1981, and Kim Jong-un (also "Jong Woon" or "Jong Woong"), in 1983.

Since Ko's death, Kim has been living with Kim Ok, his third mistress, who had served as his personal secretary since the 1980s. She "virtually acts as North Korea's first lady" and frequently accompanies Kim on his visits to military bases and in meetings with visiting foreign dignitaries. She traveled with Kim Jong Il on a secretive trip to China in January 2006, where she was received by Chinese officials as Kim's wife.

Kim Jong-il is also reported to have a younger sister, Kim Kyong-Hui (김경희).

Personality

Like his father, Kim has a fear of flying, and has always traveled by private armored train for state visits to Russia and China. The BBC reported that Konstantin Pulikovsky, a Russian emissary who traveled with Kim across Russia by train, told reporters that Kim had live lobsters air-lifted to the train every day.

Kim is said to be a huge film fan, owning a collection of more than 20,000 video tapes and DVDs. His reported favorite movie franchises include ''Friday the 13th'', ''Rambo'', ''Godzilla'', and Hong Kong action cinema, and any movie starring Elizabeth Taylor. He is the author of the book ''On the Art of the Cinema''. In 1978, on Kim's orders, South Korean film director Shin Sang-ok and his actress wife Choi Eun-hee were kidnapped in order to build a North Korean film industry. In 2006 he was involved in the production of the Juche-based movie ''Diary of a Girl Student'' – depicting the life of a girl whose parents are scientists – with a KCNA news report stating that Kim "improved its script and guided its production".

Although Kim enjoys many foreign forms of entertainment, according to former bodyguard Lee Young Kuk, he refused to consume any food or drink not produced in North Korea, with the exception of wine from France. His former sushi chef Kenji Fujimoto, however, has stated that Kim has sometimes sent him around the world to purchase a variety of foreign delicacies.

Kim reportedly also enjoys basketball. Former United States Secretary of State Madeleine Albright ended her summit with Kim by presenting him with a basketball signed by NBA legend Michael Jordan. Also an apparent golfer, North Korean state media reports that Kim routinely shoots three or four holes-in-one per round. His official biography also claims Kim has composed six operas and enjoys staging elaborate musicals. Kim also refers to himself as an Internet expert.

US Special Envoy for the Korean Peace Talks, Charles Kartman, who was involved in the 2000 Madeleine Albright summit with Kim, characterised Kim Jong-il as a reasonable man in negotiations, to the point, but with a sense of humor and personally attentive to the people he was hosting. However, psychological evaluations conclude that Kim Jong-il's antisocial features, such as his fearlessness in the face of sanctions and punishment, serve to make negotiations extraordinarily difficult.

The field of psychology has long been fascinated with the personality assessment of dictators, a notion that resulted in an extensive personality evaluation of Kim Jong-il. The report, compiled by Frederick L. Coolidge and Daniel L. Segal (with the assistance of a South Korean psychiatrist considered an expert on Kim Jong-il's behavior), concluded that the “big six” group of personality disorders shared by dictators Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Saddam Hussein (sadistic, paranoid, antisocial, narcissistic, schizoid and schizotypal) were also shared by Kim Jong-il—coinciding primarily with the profile of Saddam Hussein. The evaluation also finds that Kim Jong-il appears to pride himself on North Korea's independence, despite the extreme hardships it appears to place on the North Korean people—an attribute appearing to emanate from his antisocial personality pattern. This notion also encourages other cognitive issues, such as self-deception, as subsidiary components to Kim Jong-il's personality. Many of the stories about Kim Jong Il's eccentricities and decadent life-style are exaggerated, possibly circulated by South Korean intelligence to discredit the Northern regime. Defectors claim that Kim has 17 different palaces and residences all over North Korea, including a private resort near Baekdu Mountain, a seaside lodge in the city of Wonsan, and a palace complex northeast of Pyongyang surrounded with multiple fence lines, bunkers and anti-aircraft batteries.

Finances

According to the ''Sunday Telegraph'', Kim has US$4 billion on deposit in European banks in case he ever needs to flee North Korea. The Sunday Telegraph reported that most of the money was in banks in Luxembourg.

Official titles

Party Center of the WPK (1970's)

Vice-Chairman, WPK Central Committee (1972–80)

Dear Leader (''Chinaehanuen Jidoja'') (late 1970s-1994)

Intelligent Leader (1973–84)

Member, Presidum of the Supreme People's Assembly of the DPRK

Secretary of the Worker's Party of Korea (1980–94)

Supreme Commander of the Korean People's Army (25 December 1991-)

Marshal of the DPRK (1993-)

Chairman, National Defense Commission of North Korea (born 1993)

Great Leader (''Widehan Ryongdoja'') (July 1994-)

General Secretary, Workers Party of Korea (born 1997)

Supreme Leader of the Republic (born 2009)

See also

List of Korea-related topics

Sinuiju North Korean Leader's Residence

North Korea

Notes and references

Further reading

Jasper Becker, "Rogue Regime: Kim John Il and the Looming Threat of North Korea", Oxford University Press (October 2006), Softcover, 328 pages, ISBN 0-19-530891-3

Michael Breen, ''Kim Jong-il: North Korea's Dear Leader'', John Wiley and Sons (January 2004), hardcover, 228 pages, ISBN 0-470-82131-0

Bradley Martin, ''Under The Loving Care Of The Fatherly Leader: North Korea And The Kim Dynasty'', St. Martins (October 2004), hardcover, 868 pages, ISBN 0-312-32221-6

Kim Chol U, ''Army-Centred Politics Of Kim Jong Il'', Foreign Languages Publishing House, Pyongyang, North Korea, 2002, Softcover, 98 pages

Kim Jong Il Brief History, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Pyongyang, North Korea, 1998, Hardcover, 149 pages

Kim Jong Il Short Biography, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Pyongyang, North Korea, 2001, Hardcover, 215 pages

Pae Kyong Su, Kim Jong Il The Individual Thoughts And Leadership Vol. 1, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Pyongyang, North Korea, 1993, Softcover, 225 pages

Pae Kyong Su, Kim Jong Il The Individual Thoughts And Leadership Vol. 2, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Pyongyang, North Korea, 1995, Softcover, 164 pages

Nada Takashi, Korea In Kim Jong Il's Era, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Pyongyang, North Korea, 2000, Softcover, 163 pages

Li Il Bok, The Great Man Kim Jong Il, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Pyongyang, North Korea, 1989, Softcover, 167 pages

Ri Il Bok, The Great Man Kim Jong Il Vol. 2, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Pyongyang, North Korea, 1995, Softcover, 84 pages

Jo Song Baek, The Leadership Philosophy Of Kim Jong Il, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Pyongyang, North Korea, 1999, Softcover, 261 pages

Guiding Light General Kim Jong Il, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Pyongyang, North Korea, 1997, Softcover, 357 pages

External links

 – Foreign Languages Publishing House, Pyongyang DPR Korea (1998)

Born in the USSR – Kim Jong-il's childhood.

The many family secrets of Kim Jong Il

(also includes photos of Kim during his youth)

Kim's family tree

BBC, North Korea's secretive 'first family'

BBC, Profile: Kim Jong-il

BBC, Who will succeed N Korea's Kim Jong-il?

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Category:1941 births Category:Living people Category:Alumni of the University of Malta Category:Anti-Revisionists Category:Communist rulers Category:Current national leaders Category:Heads of state of North Korea Category:Leaders of political parties in North Korea Category:Members of the Supreme People's Assembly of North Korea Category:Military brats Category:North Korean billionaires Category:People from Khabarovsk Krai Category:People with epilepsy Category:Stroke survivors Category:Workers' Party of Korea politicians Category:Marxist theorists Category:Kim Il-sung family

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