brussels Crisis

Tensions Erupt in Brussels, and Police in 4 Countries Make Arrests

Protesters chanting far-right slogans disrupted a peaceful remembrance for terrorism victims on Sunday in central Brussels. A police spokesman said the protesters were soccer hooligans.

BRUSSELS — The police in at least four countries arrested new suspects during the weekend in the Paris and Brussels terrorist attacks, as memorials in central Brussels to the victims of Tuesday’s bombings were briefly overrun by hooligans.

Angry protesters gathered near the Brussels stock exchange on Sunday. Chanting “Belgie barst” — or “Break up Belgium,” a Flemish slogan used by one of Belgium’s nationalist far-right parties — they brandished flares and threw water bottles at peaceful demonstrators who were holding banners proclaiming unity.

This is very dangerous,” said Anne Kluyskens, 61, who lives on the outskirts of Brussels and had come to the center of the Belgian capital to show solidarity with the attack victims and other Belgian citizens. “The extreme right are as dangerous as the jihadists. They have a message of hate.”

“Perhaps their actions are not yet as violent, but it is the same message,” she added.

The police used water cannons to drive back the far-right protesters, and the square was reopened after the brief clash. The episode, however, was a reminder of the tension in the city after the terrorist attacks that killed 31 victims, and of the anger fueling far-right parties here and around Europe who want to sharply limit immigration.

Two additional victims of the attacks were identified as American citizens, a State Department official said Sunday night, though he not identify them. Two Americans had previously been identified as having been killed.

According to a Brussels police spokesman, Christian de Coninck, quoted by the Belga news agency, about 340 hooligans supporting various Belgian soccer clubs had come to Brussels from Vilvoorde, a Flemish town a 20-minute drive from the capital. Mr. de Coninck told the news agency that the men had made “fascist salutes.”

The diverse, peaceful crowd attending the informal gathering for the victims on Easter, in the square in front of the historic Brussels stock exchange, was far larger than those that had gathered earlier in the week, because many people had come to the capital for a planned March Against Fear, which was canceled a day before. Among those lighting candles and taking photos were blond, blue-eyed Belgians; Muslim women, their heads covered with the hijab; and dark-haired men from Belgium’s large Moroccan community.

Some held up flags of various countries, and one group had a banner that said, “Pas au Nom d’Islam,” meaning that the terrorist attacks had not been done in the name of Islam. Many lit candles in memory of those who had died, and some in attendance said they had friends who had been injured at the Maelbeek station on Tuesday.

Belgium cannot handle a political crisis, and needs resolute action from the government, opposition MP Hans Bonte (SP) said on Sunday.

Mr Bonte, also mayor of Vilvorde, said he would not be asking Ministers to quit following Tuesday’s attacks in Brussels.

Mr Bonte also suggested designating a Commissioner for Brussels in the government, to ‘bring order’ to the capital. This was while appearing on the VRT-television program De Zevende Dag. ‘This commissioner would closely follow anyone who has been radicalised’, the Socialist MP said. He called for ‘political serenity’. ‘Let’s give the country what he needs: efficiently follow our own rules’, Mr Bonte said.

Christian Democrat and Flemish New Alliance MPs, two major federal parties, called for changes in the legal system, in particular conditional release for some convicted defendants.

‘Maybe the Sentence Application Tribunal didn’t have all the information it should have had in the case of Ibrahim El Bakraoui (one of the three terrorists responsible for the attack at the Brussels-National airport: he went on the run after his conditional release in 2014). We think the legislation must be made tougher’, said federal MP Sophie De Wit (New Flemish Alliance). Her colleague Raf Terwingen (Christian Democrats) said toughening up the execution of sentences was planned by the Justice Minister Koen Geens. 

Julian Assange

The first two problems with the new, troubling documentary by Alex Gibney are contained in the title, We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks.

It comes as a surprise to learn, near the end of the film, that the first part is taken not from the WikiLeaks mission statement, but from an interview with Gen. Michael Hayden, the former director of the National Security Agency and later, the CIA, who is a major architect of the modern surveillance state. Hayden, who is an amiable and practiced presence throughout Gibney's film, says, "We steal secrets," as an unapologetic acknowledgment of the business of spying.

Gibney no doubt intends to be ironic here, but instead, he creates a false equivalence between the espionage activities of superpowers and the transparency advocates who would expose the secrets. It's misleading to use Hayden's remark as the title of his film, and then to follow it with the subtitle "The Story of WikiLeaks." It's certainly "a" story about WikiLeaks, but hardly "the" story. Not when his film includes no new interviews with founder Julian Assange (who refused to cooperate) or with Assange's greatest source, Pfc. Bradley Manning (who was held incommunicado for years prior to his trial, which began in February).

A third problem arises before the opening credits. The film sets the scene: Oct. 18, 1989, at the Kennedy Space Center, as the space shuttle Atlantis is preparing to launch the Galileo space probe. There's a last-minute emergency, known only to those on the inside: A computer worm has invaded NASA's computers. The spacecraft takes off anyway, but a later investigation of the bug—known as the WANK worm—led to a pair of hackers in Melbourne, Australia. These two were never named, nor were they charged. The film doesn't accuse Assange of the attack, but the implication is clear as it dissolves to a photo of the young, long-haired Aussie hacker, pouting at the camera, sporting a pinky ring and looking more than a little bit like Dr. Evil.

The result is a slippery film that has been denounced by WikiLeaks partisans, but one that's also quite worthwhile. Gibney, the prolific filmmaker behind Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room and the extraordinary-rendition doc Taxi to the Dark Side, is too professional to produce a one-sided hatchet job. Indeed, his account of WikiLeaks' first hit, the release of the video titled "Collateral Murder," is quite sympathetic. His film makes the point that the incident itself—a U.S. Apache helicopter attack on a group of men that included two Reuters journalists—was public knowledge. But what wasn't public was the shocking video, complete with gleeful commentary, that Manning supplied.

It was an astonishing coup for what really was just a few radicals with laptops—among them an Icelandic politician, a German activist and a baby-faced English journalist named James Ball. They teamed up with The New York Times, The Guardian and Der Spiegel to publish a trove of diplomatic cables. But WikiLeaks' lack of resources, and Assange's alleged journalistic negligence, soon cast a pall over the enterprise.

Assange's fall was swift and steep. Inundated by attention, he was soon wanted in Sweden on sexual assault allegations. Gibney considers the possibility of a "honey trap," but his interview subjects, including one of Assange's accusers, persuade us otherwise. Soon enough, Assange's tainted credibility began to drag down the group he founded—and considering what a shoestring operation it was, lacking the governance structures found in normal non-governmental organizations, it was inevitable. (Ball, who left the group, wrote in The Guardian of his disillusionment in more damning detail than Gibney provides.)

But just because Assange and his most fervent supporters hate this movie doesn't mean Gibney gives a pass to the status quo. President Obama makes one appearance, and it's a deeply unflattering one. At a press briefing, he's asked to respond to a statement made by P.J. Crowley, his assistant secretary of state for public affairs, who called the mistreatment of Manning by his jailers "ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid." With his eyes averted, an uncomfortable Obama stammers out a craven assurance that laws are being followed. Crowley resigned, but as he tells Gibney, he stands by his words.

Despite the absence of direct interviews with Assange and Manning, Gibney has plenty to work with. There's some wonderful private footage of Assange posing in front of an Icelandic volcano and dancing to techno in a nightclub. And Manning left behind many, many lines of instant messages—mostly to a hacker named Adrian Lamo, who would betray him—that Gibney deploys effectively throughout the film.

But the filmmaker spends too much time lingering over the personal frailties of the brilliant hackers: Assange's arrogance and narcissism, Manning's gender confusion (as well as the mentally disabled, heavily medicated Lamo). It shouldn't be surprising that it would take unusual—even disturbed—personalities to rattle the cage of the most powerful nation in the history of the planet. By conflating the often unappealing hackers with the unsavory secrets they revealed, Gibney contributes to the sense that the government, with its soothing spokespeople and media enablers, are in the right.

Meanwhile, Assange hasn't gone away. The Edward Snowden affair has brought him back into the public eye, and an essay he wrote recently about Google for The New York Times ("The Banality of 'Don't Be Evil'") is worth a read. But in the end, the agonized figure of Manning hangs over the film. Young, gifted and gay, Manning joined the Army as a way of bringing order to his life. Despite his slight stature, his emotional instability and the torments he suffered at the hands of "ignorant, trigger-happy rednecks," his facility with computers landed him in military intelligence with a security clearance.

Manning's trial is being ignored by the American media; a scan of today's NYT and CNN home pages produces no Manning references. (The Guardian, on the other hand, has a permanent "Manning trial" news tab on its website.) Still, he has some support. Recently, an eclectic cast of notables, including Maggie Gyllenhaal, Angela Davis, Russell Brand, Daniel Ellsberg and Roger Waters, recorded a video called "I am Bradley Manning."

It has close to a half-million views. Not a huge number, perhaps, but a significant show of support for transparency and democracy.

This article appeared in print with the headline "Stealing in the shadows."

Swami Vivekanand

Swami Vivekananda, known in his pre-monastic life as Narendra Nath Datta, was born in an affluent family in Kolkata on 12 January 1863. His father,Vishwanath Datta, was a successful attorney with interests in a wide range of subjects, and his mother, Bhuvaneshwari Devi, was endowed with deep devotion, strong character and other qualities. A precocious boy, Narendra excelled in music, gymnastics and studies. By the time he graduated from Calcutta University, he had acquired a vast knowledge of different subjects, especially Western philosophy and history. Born with a yogic temperament, he used to practise meditation even from his boyhood, and was associated with Brahmo Movement for some time.

With Sri Ramakrishna
At the threshold of youth Narendra had to pass through a period of spiritual crisis when he was assailed by doubts about the existence of God. It was at that time he first heard about Sri Ramakrishna from one of his English professors at college. One day in November 1881, Narendra went to meet Sri Ramakrishna who was staying at the Kali Temple in Dakshineshwar. He straightaway asked the Master a question which he had put to several others but had received no satisfactory answer: “Sir, have you seen God?” Without a moment’s hesitation, Sri Ramakrishna replied: “Yes, I have. I see Him as clearly as I see you, only in a much intenser sense.” 
Apart from removing doubts from the mind of Narendra, Sri Ramakrishna won him over through his pure, unselfish love. Thus began a guru-disciple relationship which is quite unique in the history of spiritual masters. Narendra now became a frequent visitor to Dakshineshwar and, under the guidance of the Master, made rapid strides on the spiritual path. At Dakshineshwar, Narendra also met several young men who were devoted to Sri Ramakrishna, and they all became close friends.

Difficult Situations
After a few years two events took place which caused Narendra considerable distress. One was the sudden death of his father in 1884. This left the family penniless, and Narendra had to bear the burden of supporting his mother, brothers and sisters. The second event was the illness of Sri Ramakrishna which was diagnosed to be cancer of the throat. In September 1885 Sri Ramakrishna was moved to a house at Shyampukur, and a few months later to a rented villa at Cossipore. In these two places the young disciples nursed the Master with devoted care. In spite of poverty at home and inability to find a job for himself, Narendra joined the group as its leader.


Beginnings of a Monastic Brotherhood

Sri Ramakrishna instilled in these young men the spirit of renunciation and brotherly love for one another. One day he distributed ochre robes among them and sent them out to beg food. In this way he himself laid the foundation for a new monastic order. He gave specific instructions to Narendra about the formation of the new monastic Order. In the small hours of 16 August 1886 Sri Ramakrishna gave up his mortal body.
After the Master’s passing, fifteen of his young disciples (one more joined them later) began to live together in a dilapidated building at Baranagar in North Kolkata. Under the leadership of Narendra, they formed a new monastic brotherhood, and in 1887 they took the formal vows of sannyasa, thereby assuming new names. Narendra now became Swami Vivekananda (although this name was actually assumed much later.

After establishing the new monastic order, Vivekananda hear
d the inner call for a greater mission in his life. While most of the followers of Sri Ramakrishna thought of him in relation to their own personal lives, Vivekananda thought of the Master in relation to India and the rest of the world. As the prophet of the present age, what was Sri Ramakrishna’s message to the modern world and to India in particular? This question and the awareness of his own inherent powers urged Swamiji to go out alone into the wide world. So in the middle of 1890, after receiving the blessings of Sri Sarada Devi, the divine consort of Sri Ramakrishna, known to the world as Holy Mother, who was then staying in Kolkata, Swamiji left Baranagar Math and embarked on a long journey of exploration and discovery of India.

Mahatma Gandhi

Indian nationalist leader Mohandas KaramchandGandhi, more commonly known as Mahatma Gandhi, was born on October 2, 1869, in Porbandar, Kathiawar, India, which was then part of the British Empire. His father, Karamchand Gandhi, served as a chief minister in Porbandar and other states in western India.

Mahatma Gandhi was the primary leader of India’s independence movement and also the architect of a form of non-violent civil disobedience that would influence the world.

Synopsis

Born on October 2, 1869, in Porbandar, India, Mahatma Gandhi studied law and advocated for the civil rights of Indians, both at home under British rule and in South Africa. Gandhi became a leader of India’s independence movement, organizing boycotts against British institutions in peaceful forms of civil disobedience. He was killed by a fanatic in 1948.

Early Life

Indian nationalist leader Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, more commonly known as Mahatma Gandhi, was born on October 2, 1869, in Porbandar, Kathiawar, India, which was then part of the British Empire. His father, Karamchand Gandhi, served as a chief minister in Porbandar and other states in western India. His mother, Putlibai, was a deeply religious woman who fasted regularly. Gandhi grew up worshiping the Hindu god Vishnu and following Jainism, a morally rigorous ancient Indian religion that espoused non-violence, fasting, meditation and vegetarianism. 

Young Gandhi was a shy, unremarkable student who was so timid that he slept with the lights on even as a teenager. At the age of 13, he wed Kasturba Makanji, a merchant’s daughter, in an arranged marriage. In the ensuing years, the teenager rebelled by smoking, eating meat and stealing change from household servants. 

In 1885, Gandhi endured the passing of his father and shortly after that the death of his young baby. Although Gandhi was interested in becoming a doctor, his father had hoped he would also become a government minister, so his family steered him to enter the legal profession. Shortly after the birth of the first of four surviving sons, 18-year-old Gandhi sailed for London, England, in 1888 to study law. The young Indian struggled with the transition to Western culture, and during his three-year stay in London, he became more committed to a meatless diet, joining the executive committee of the London Vegetarian Society, and started to read a variety of sacred texts to learn more about world religions. 

Upon returning to India in 1891, Gandhi learned that his mother had died just weeks earlier. Then, he struggled to gain his footing as a lawyer. In his first courtroom case, a nervous Gandhi blanked when the time came to cross-examine a witness. He immediately fled the courtroom after reimbursing his client for his legal fees. After struggling to find work in India, Gandhi obtained a one-year contract to perform legal services in South Africa. Shortly after the birth of another son, he sailed for Durban in the South African state of Natal in April 1893.

Spiritual and Political Leader

When Gandhi arrived in South Africa, he was quickly appalled by the discrimination and racial segregation faced by Indian immigrants at the hands of white British and Boer authorities. Upon his first appearance in a Durban courtroom, Gandhi was asked to remove his turban. He refused and left the court instead. The Natal Advertiser mocked him in print as “an unwelcome visitor.”

A seminal moment in Gandhi’s life occurred days later on June 7, 1893, during a train trip to Pretoria when a white man objected to his presence in the first-class railway compartment, although he had a ticket. Refusing to move to the back of the train, Gandhi was forcibly removed and thrown off the train at a station in Pietermaritzburg. His act of civil disobedience awoke in him a determination to devote himself to fighting the “deep disease of color prejudice.” He vowed that night to “try, if possible, to root out the disease and suffer hardships in the process.” From that night forward, the small, unassuming man would grow into a giant force for civil rights.

Gandhi formed the Natal Indian Congress in 1894 to fight discrimination. At the end of his year-long contract, he prepared to return to India until he learned at his farewell party of a bill before the Natal Legislative Assembly that would deprive Indians of the right to vote. Fellow immigrants convinced Gandhi to stay and lead the fight against the legislation. Although Gandhi could not prevent the law’s passage, he drew international attention to the injustice. 

After a brief trip to India in late 1896 and early 1897, Gandhi returned to South Africa with his wife and two children. Kasturba would give birth to two more sons in South Africa, one in 1897 and one in 1900. Gandhi ran a thriving legal practice, and at the outbreak of the Boer War, he raised an all-Indian ambulance corps of 1,100 volunteers to support the British cause, arguing that if Indians expected to have full rights of citizenship in the British Empire, they also needed to shoulder their responsibilities as well. 

Gandhi continued to study world religions during his years in South Africa. “The religious spirit within me became a living force,” he wrote of his time there. He immersed himself in sacred Hindu spiritual texts and adopted a life of simplicity, austerity and celibacy that was free of material goods. 

In 1906, Gandhi organized his first mass civil-disobedience campaign, which he called “Satyagraha” (“truth and firmness”), in reaction to the Transvaal government’s new restrictions on the rights of Indians, including the refusal to recognize Hindu marriages. After years of protests, the government imprisoned hundreds of Indians in 1913, including Gandhi. Under pressure, the South African government accepted a compromise negotiated by Gandhi and General Jan Christian Smuts that included recognition of Hindu marriages and the abolition of a poll tax for Indians. When Gandhi sailed from South Africa in 1914 to return home, Smuts wrote, “The saint has left our shores, I sincerely hope forever.”

Fight for Indian Liberation

After spending several months in London at the outbreak of World War I, Gandhi returned in 1915 to India, which was still under the firm control of the British, and founded an ashram in Ahmedabad open to all castes. Wearing a simple loincloth and shawl, Gandhi lived an austere life devoted to prayer, fasting and meditation. He became known as “Mahatma,” which means “great soul.”

In 1919, however, Gandhi had a political reawakening when the newly enacted Rowlatt Act authorized British authorities to imprison those suspected of sedition without trial. In response, Gandhi called for a Satyagraha campaign of peaceful protests and strikes. Violence broke out instead, which culminated on April 13, 1919, in the Massacre of Amritsar when troops led by British Brigadier General Reginald Dyer fired machine guns into a crowd of unarmed demonstrators and killed nearly 400 people. No longer able to pledge allegiance to the British government, Gandhi returned the medals he earned for his military service in South Africa and opposed Britain’s mandatory military draft of Indians to serve in World War I. 

Gandhi became a leading figure in the Indian home-rule movement. Calling for mass boycotts, he urged government officials to stop working for the Crown, students to stop attending government schools, soldiers to leave their posts and citizens to stop paying taxes and purchasing British goods. Rather than buy British-manufactured clothes, he began to use a portable spinning wheel to produce his own cloth, and the spinning wheel soon became a symbol of Indian independence and self-reliance. Gandhi assumed the leadership of the Indian National Congress and advocated a policy of non-violence and non-cooperation to achieve home rule. 

After British authorities arrested Gandhi in 1922, he pleaded guilty to three counts of sedition. Although sentenced to a six-year imprisonment, Gandhi was released in February 1924 after appendicitis surgery. He discovered upon his release that relations between India’s Hindus and Muslims had devolved during his time in jail, and when violence between the two religious groups flared again, Gandhi began a three-week fast in the autumn of 1924 to urge unity. 

The Salt March

After remaining away from active politics during much of the latter 1920s, Gandhi returned in 1930 to protest Britain’s Salt Acts, which not only prohibited Indians from collecting or selling salt—a staple of the Indian diet—but imposed a heavy tax that hit the country’s poorest particularly hard. Gandhi planned a new Satyagraha campaign that entailed a 390-kilometer/240-mile march to the Arabian Sea, where he would collect salt in symbolic defiance of the government monopoly.  

“My ambition is no less than to convert the British people through non-violence and thus make them see the wrong they have done to India,” he wrote days before the march to the British viceroy, Lord Irwin. Wearing a homespun white shawl and sandals and carrying a walking stick, Gandhi set out from his religious retreat in Sabarmati on March 12, 1930, with a few dozen followers. The ranks of the marchers swelled by the time he arrived 24 days later in the coastal town of Dandi, where he broke the law by making salt from evaporated seawater.

The Salt March sparked similar protests, and mass civil disobedience swept across India. Approximately 60,000 Indians were jailed for breaking the Salt Acts, including Gandhi, who was imprisoned in May 1930. Still, the protests against the Salt Acts elevated Gandhi into a transcendent figure around the world, and he was named Time magazine’s “Man of the Year” for 1930. 

The Road to Independence

Gandhi was released from prison in January 1931, and two months later he made an agreement with Lord Irwin to end the Salt Satyagraha in exchange for concessions that included the release of thousands of political prisoners. The agreement, however, largely kept the Salt Acts intact, but it did give those who lived on the coasts the right to harvest salt from the sea. Hoping that the agreement would be a stepping-stone to home rule, Gandhi attended the London Round Table Conference on Indian constitutional reform in August 1931 as the sole representative of the Indian National Congress. The conference, however, proved fruitless.

Gandhi returned to India to find himself imprisoned once again in January 1932 during a crackdown by India’s new viceroy, Lord Willingdon. Later that year, an incarcerated Gandhi embarked on a six-day fast to protest the British decision to segregate the “untouchables,” those on the lowest rung of India’s caste system, by allotting them separate electorates. The public outcry forced the British to amend the proposal. 

After his eventual release, Gandhi left the Indian National Congress in 1934, and leadership passed to his protégé Jawaharlal Nehru. He again stepped away from politics to focus on education, poverty and the problems afflicting India’s rural areas.

As Great Britain found itself engulfed in World War II in 1942, though, Gandhi launched the “Quit India” movement that called for the immediate British withdrawal from the country. In August 1942, the British arrested Gandhi, his wife and other leaders of the Indian National Congress and detained them in the Aga Khan Palace in present-day Pune. “I have not become the King’s First Minister in order to preside at the liquidation of the British Empire,” Prime Minister Winston Churchill told Parliament in support of the crackdown. With his health failing, Gandhi was released after a 19-month detainment, but not before his 74-year-old wife died in his arms in February 1944. 

After the Labour Party defeated Churchill’s Conservatives in the British general election of 1945, it began negotiations for Indian independence with the Indian National Congress and Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s Muslim League. Gandhi played an active role in the negotiations, but he could not prevail in his hope for a unified India. Instead, the final plan called for the partition of the subcontinent along religious lines into two independent states—predominantly Hindu India and predominantly Muslim Pakistan. 

Violence between Hindus and Muslims flared even before independence took effect on August 15, 1947. Afterwards, the killings multiplied. Gandhi toured riot-torn areas in an appeal for peace and fasted in an attempt to end the bloodshed. Some Hindus, however, increasingly viewed Gandhi as a traitor for expressing sympathy toward Muslims.

Assassination

In the late afternoon of January 30, 1948, the 78-year-old Gandhi, still weakened from repeated hunger strikes, clung to his two grandnieces as they led him from his living quarters in New Delhi’s Birla House to a prayer meeting. Hindu extremist Nathuram Godse, upset at Gandhi’s tolerance of Muslims, knelt before the Mahatma before pulling out a semiautomatic pistol and shooting him three times at point-blank range. The violent act took the life of a pacifist who spent his life preaching non-violence. Godse and a co-conspirator were executed by hanging in November 1949, while additional conspirators were sentenced to life in prison. 

Death and Legacy

Even after his death, Gandhi’s commitment to non-violence and his belief in simple living—making his own clothes, eating a vegetarian diet and using fasts for self-purification as well as a means of protest—have been a beacon of hope for oppressed and marginalized people throughout the world. Satyagraha remains one of the most potent philosophies in freedom struggles throughout the world today, and Gandhi’s actions inspired future human rights movements around the globe, including those of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. in the United States and Nelson Mandela in South Africa. 

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Bill Gates

Synopsis

Born in Seattle, Washington, in 1955, famed entrepreneur Bill Gates began to show an interest in computer programming at age 13. Through technological innovation, keen business strategy and aggressive business tactics, he and partner Paul Allen built the world's largest software business, Microsoft. In the process, Gates became one of the richest men in the world. In February 2014, Gates announced that he was stepping down as Microsoft's chairman.

Early Life

Bill Gates was born William Henry Gates III on October 28, 1955, in Seattle, Washington. Gates began to show an interest in computer programming at the age of 13 at the Lakeside School. He pursued his passion through college. Striking out on his own with his friend and business partner Paul Allen, Gates found himself at the right place at the right time. Through technological innovation, keen business strategy and aggressive business tactics, he built the world's largest software business, Microsoft. In the process, Gates became one of the richest men in the world.

Bill Gates grew up in an upper middle-class family with two sisters: Kristianne, who is older, and Libby, who is younger. Their father, William H. Gates Sr., was a promising, if somewhat shy, law student when he met his future wife, Mary Maxwell. She was an athletic, outgoing student at the University of Washington, actively involved in student affairs and leadership. The Gates family atmosphere was warm and close, and all three children were encouraged to be competitive and strive for excellence. Bill showed early signs of competitiveness when he coordinated family athletic games at their summer house on Puget Sound. He also relished in playing board games (Risk was his favorite) and excelled at Monopoly.

Bill had a very close relationship with his mother, Mary, who after a brief career as a teacher devoted her time to helping raise the children and working on civic affairs and with charities. She also served on several corporate boards, including those of the First Interstate Bank in Seattle (founded by her grandfather), the United Way and International Business Machines (IBM). She would often take Bill along when she volunteered in schools and at community organizations.

Bill was a voracious reader as a child, spending many hours poring over reference books such as the encyclopedia. Around the age of 11 or 12, Bill's parents began to have concerns about his behavior. He was doing well in school, but he seemed bored and withdrawn at times, and his parents worried he might become a loner. Though they were strong believers in public education, when Bill turned 13, they enrolled him at Seattle's exclusive preparatory Lakeside School. He blossomed in nearly all his subjects, excelling in math and science, but also doing very well in drama and English.

While at Lakeside School, a Seattle computer company offered to provide computer time for the students. The Mother's Club used proceeds from the school's rummage sale to purchase a teletype terminal for students to use. Bill Gates became entranced with what a computer could do and spent much of his free time working on the terminal. He wrote a tic-tac-toe program in BASIC computer language that allowed users to play against the computer.

It was at Lakeside School that Bill met Paul Allen

who was two years his senior. The two became fast friends, bonding over their common enthusiasm for computers, even though they were very different people. Allen was more reserved and shy. Bill was feisty and at times combative. Regardless of their differences, they both spent much of their free time together working on programs. Occasionally, they disagreed and would clash over who was right or who should run the computer lab. On one occasion, their argument escalated to the point where Allen banned Gates from the computer lab. On another occasion, Gates and Allen had their school computer privileges revoked for taking advantage of software glitches to obtain free computer time from the company that provided the computers. After their probation, they were allowed back in the computer lab when they offered to debug the program. During this time, Gates developed a payroll program for the computer company the boys hacked into and a scheduling program for the school.

In 1970, at the age of 15, Bill Gates went into business with his pal, Paul Allen. They developed "Traf-o-Data," a computer program that monitored traffic patterns in Seattle, and netted $20,000 for their efforts. Gates and Allen wanted to start their own company, but Gates's parents wanted him to finish school and go on to college where they hoped he would work to become a lawyer.

Bill Gates graduated from Lakeside in 1973. He scored 1590 out of 1600 on the college SAT test, a feat of intellectual achievement that for several years he boasted about when introducing himself to new people.

Mark Zuckerberk

Mark Elliot Zuckerberg (born May 14, 1984) is an American computer programmer and Internet entrepreneur. He is best known as one of five co-founders of the social networking site Facebook. Zuckerberg is the chairman and chief executive of Facebook, Inc.

Born and raised in New York state, he took up writing software programs as a hobby in middle school, beginning with BASIC, with help from his father and a tutor (who called him a "prodigy"). In high school, he excelled in classic literature and fencing while studying at Phillips Exeter Academy.

He later attended Harvard University, majoring in computer science and psychology. In his sophomore year, he wrote a program called Facemash as a "fun" project, letting students on the college's network vote on other students' photo attractiveness. It was shut down within days, but would become a template for his writing Facebook, a program he launched from his dormitory room. With the help of friends, he took Facebook to other campuses.

Synopsis

Born on May 14, 1984, in White Plains, New York, Mark Zuckerberg co-founded the social-networking website Facebook out of his college dorm room. He left Harvard after his sophomore year to concentrate on the site, the user base of which has grown to more than 250 million people, making Zuckerberg a billionaire. The birth of Facebook was recently portrayed in the film The Social Network.

Early Life

Mark Elliot Zuckerberg was born on May 14, 1984, in White Plains, New York, into a comfortable, well-educated family, and raised in the nearby village of Dobbs Ferry. His father, Edward Zuckerberg, ran a dental practice attached to the family's home. His mother, Karen, worked as a psychiatrist before the birth of the couple's four children—Mark, Randi, Donna and Arielle.

Zuckerberg developed an interest in computers at an early age; when he was about 12, he used Atari BASIC to create a messaging program he named "Zucknet." His father used the program in his dental office, so that the receptionist could inform him of a new patient without yelling across the room. The family also used Zucknet to communicate within the house. Together with his friends, he also created computer games just for fun. "I had a bunch of friends who were artists," he said. "They'd come over, draw stuff, and I'd build a game out of it."

To keep up with Mark's burgeoning interest in computers, his parents hired private computer tutor David Newman to come to the house once a week and work with Mark. Newman later told reporters that it was hard to stay ahead of the prodigy, who began taking graduate courses at nearby Mercy College around this same time.

Time at Harvard

After graduating from Exeter in 2002, Zuckerberg enrolled at Harvard University. By his sophomore year at the ivy league institution, he had developed a reputation as the go-to software developer on campus. It was at that time that he built a program called CourseMatch, which helped students choose their classes based on the course selections of other users. He also invented Facemash, which compared the pictures of two students on campus and allowed users to vote on which one was more attractive. The program became wildly popular, but was later shut down by the school administration after it was deemed inappropriate.

Based on the buzz of his previous projects, three of his fellow students—Divya Narendra, and twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss—sought him out to work on an idea for a social networking site they called Harvard Connection. This site was designed to use information from Harvard's student networks in order to create a dating site for the Harvard elite. Zuckerberg agreed to help with the project, but soon dropped out to work on his own social networking site with friends Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes and Eduardo Saverin.

Zuckerberg and his friends created a site that allowed users to create their own profiles, upload photos, and communicate with other users. The group ran the site—first called The Facebook—out of a dorm room at Harvard until June 2004. After his sophomore year, Zuckerberg dropped out of college to devote himself to Facebook full time, moving the company to Palo Alto, California. By the end of 2004, Facebook had 1 million users.

The Rise of Facebook

In 2005, Zuckerberg's enterprise received a huge boost from the venture capital firm Accel Partners. Accel invested $12.7 million into the network, which at the time was open only to ivy league students. Zuckerberg's company then granted access to other colleges, high school and international schools, pushing the site's membership to more than 5.5 million users by December 2005. The site then began attracting the interest of other companies, who wanted to advertize with the popular social hub. Not wanting to sell out, Zuckerberg turned down offers from companies such as Yahoo! and MTV Networks. Instead, he focused on expanding the site, opening up his project to outside developers and adding more features.

Zuckerberg seemed to be going nowhere but up, however in 2006, the business mogul faced his first big hurdle. The creators of Harvard Connection claimed that Zuckerberg stole their idea, and insisted the software developer needed to pay for their business losses. Zuckerberg maintained that the ideas were based on two very different types of social networks but, after lawyers searched Zuckerberg's records, incriminating Instant Messages revealed that Zuckerberg may have intentionally stolen the intellectual property of Harvard Connection and offered Facebook users' private information to his friends.

Zuckerberg later apologized for the incriminating messages, saying he regretted them. "If you're going to go on to build a service that is influential and that a lot of people rely on, then you need to be mature, right?" he said in an interview with The New Yorker. "I think I've grown and learned a lot."

Although an initial settlement of $65 million was reached between the two parties, the legal dispute over the matter continued well into 2011, after Narendra and the Winklevosses claimed they were misled in regards to the value of their stock.

Zuckerberg faced yet another personal challenge when the 2009 book The Accidental Billionaires, by writer Ben Mezrich, hit stores. Mezrich was heavily criticized for his re-telling of Zuckerberg's story, which used invented scenes, re-imagined dialogue and fictional characters. Regardless of how true-to-life the story was, Mezrich managed to sell the rights of the tale to screenwriter Aaron Sorkin, and the critically acclaimed film The Social Network received eight Academy Award nominations.

Zuckerberg objected strongly to the film's narrative, and later told a reporter atThe New Yorker that many of the details in the film were inaccurate. For example, Zuckerberg has been dating longtime girlfriend Priscilla Chan, a Chinese-American medical student he met at Harvard, since 2003. He also said he never had interest in joining any of the final clubs. "It's interesting what stuff they focused on getting right; like, every single shirt and fleece that I had in that movie is actually a shirt or fleece that I own," Zuckerberg told a reporter at a start-up conference in 2010. "So there's all this stuff that they got wrong and a bunch of random details that they got right."

Yet Zuckerberg and Facebook continued to succeed, in spite of the criticism.Time magazine named him Person of the Year in 2010, and Vanity Fairplaced him at the top of their New Establishment list. Forbes also ranked Zuckerberg at No. 35—beating out Apple CEO Steve Jobs—on its "400" list, estimating his net worth to be $6.9 billion.