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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insecta_in_the_10th_edition_of_Systema_Naturae] | [TOKENS: 271] |
Contents Insecta in the 10th edition of Systema Naturae In the 10th edition of Systema Naturae of 1758–1759, Carl Linnaeus classified the arthropods, including insects, arachnids and crustaceans, among his class "Insecta". He described the Insecta as: A very numerous and various class consisting of small animals, breathing through lateral spiracles, armed on all sides with a bony skin, or covered with hair; furnished with many feet, and moveable antennae (or horns), which project from the head, and are the probable instruments of sensation. Linnaean Characteristics Orders Linnaeus divided the class Insecta into seven orders, based chiefly on the form of the wings. He also provided a key to the orders: Despite this key, however, Linnaeus grouped insects together that shared other affinities. His genus Coccus, containing the scale insects, he placed among the 4-winged Hemiptera, along with aphids and other plant-attacking insects, even though females have no wings, and males have two wings. Similarly, the sheep ked Hippobosca ovina (now Melophagus ovinus) was correctly placed among the Diptera, despite being wingless. Genera References |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018%E2%80%932022_Israeli_political_crisis] | [TOKENS: 1910] |
Contents 2018–2022 Israeli political crisis The 2018–2022 Israeli political crisis was a period of political instability in Israel, in which five Knesset elections were held in a span of over three years: in April 2019, September 2019, March 2020, March 2021 and November 2022. In the early phases of the crisis, the popular phrasing of the core division within the parties and the public was "only Bibi" (Hebrew: רק ביבי, romanized: Rak Bibi) or "anyone but Bibi" (Hebrew: רק לא ביבי, romanized: Rak Lo Bibi). This stalemate was created due to the refusal of the liberal wing of the parliament to form a coalition with Netanyahu, while the Likud party – the prominent party of the conservative wing – refused to remove Netanyahu from the party's leadership. The rest of the conservative-wing parties refused to form a coalition without Netanyahu and the Likud. None of the wings were able to form a coalition by themselves, due to the tie-breaking parliament seats held by the Arab parties. Some parliament members from Jewish parties (both wings) and Arab parties had considered the possibility of governmental cooperation to be out of the question. The first two elections of the crisis in April and September 2019 failed to produce a governing coalition, and the third election in March 2020 led to a unity government led by Netanyahu and Benny Gantz, before it was dissolved in December of that year, triggering a fourth election in March 2021. The 2021 election resulted in the thirty-sixth government of Israel, a diverse coalition of parties with various ideologies that was led by Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid, but it was dissolved in June 2022. A fifth election in November of that year saw the victory of the right-wing bloc, returning Netanyahu to lead the thirty-seventh government of Israel. Background During the 20th Knesset, elected after the 2015 Israeli legislative election, Benjamin Netanyahu secured his fourth term in office as the head of the thirty-fourth government of Israel. On 26 May 2016, Yisrael Beiteinu joined the government, with 5 MKs, and Avigdor Lieberman was appointed Defense Minister in place of Moshe Ya'alon. On 14 November 2018, Lieberman resigned from his position and from the coalition in protest at the government's approval of a ceasefire with Hamas after two days of clashes, thereby undermining the stability of the government. On 26 December, the law to dissolve the Knesset was approved, and the election campaign for the twenty-first Knesset began. April 2019 election The crisis began after the elections of April 2019 left no party able to form a government. The two major parties, Blue and White and Likud, received an equal number of 35 seats. The Likud received a mandate from the president to attempt to form a government, but Netanyahu failed to arrange a majority coalition of 61 seats. Netanyahu's Likud and their supporting parties voted to dissolve the Knesset instead of letting the president give the mandate to another Knesset member. September 2019 election A second election was held in September 2019. This time, Blue and White overcame the Likud by a single seat. Nonetheless, the Likud received the mandate from the president, after gaining the support of one Knesset member more than Blue and White. Netanyahu, again, failed to form a government. This time, the mandate passed to Benny Gantz, who also failed to achieve a majority. The President passed the mandate to the Knesset members for 21 days. After no other candidate was offered, the Knesset was dissolved. March 2020 election In March 2020, the third election was held. This time, Likud gained more seats than Blue and White, but Gantz achieved more recommendations from potential allies in the Knesset and received the mandate from the president. Gantz nevertheless was unable to unite enough allies into a coalition. His bloc was still agreed to replace the Speaker of the Knesset. Following this, the former Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein refused to convene the plenary to vote on his replacement. His refusal created a constitutional crisis. The Movement for Quality Government in Israel appealed to the Supreme Court, which ordered Edelstein to convene the Knesset. Following this Edelstein resigned. Meanwhile, the COVID-19 pandemic in Israel worsened, which precipitated negotiations for a national emergency government. On March 26, Gantz was sworn in as the new Knesset Speaker, with the support of the Likud party, causing a split in Blue and White. On 20 April, the Likud and Blue and White agreed on an equal unity government, which included a "rotation agreement" between Gantz and Netanyahu on the prime minister's chair. However, following a failed budgetary vote in December 2020, the government coalition collapsed, and a fourth election was called for 23 March 2021. March 2021 election Israeli President Reuven Rivlin met with the heads of all political parties on 5 April 2021, and charged Netanyahu with forming the government the next day. Netanyahu had been given until the end of 4 May to form a government. Netanyahu failed to form a new government by the deadline. The next day, Rivlin entrusted Yair Lapid with the second mandate. On 9 May, it was reported that Lapid and Naftali Bennett had made major headway in the coalition talks. On 10 May, it was reported that plans were made to form a new government consisting of the current opposition, but that the Islamist Ra'am Party, which froze talks with both Lapid and Bennett in the wake of recent warfare in Gaza, still needed to pledge support for the Change bloc in order for the opposition MKs to secure a majority. In late May, Lapid secured the support from Blue and White, Labor Party, Yisrael Beiteinu, New Hope, and Meretz, with Yamina and Ra'am possibly giving support. On 30 May, Bennett announced in a televised address that Yamina would join a unity government with Lapid, after all but one Yamina MK agreed to back this decision. On 2 June 2021, following negotiations with Lapid and Bennett, Ra'am leader Mansour Abbas signed a document tethering his party to the coalition, and agreed to allow his party to join a non-Netanyahu government. Just an hour before his 2 June mandate was set to expire, Lapid informed outgoing president Reuven Rivlin that he could form a new government. On 11 June, Bennett's Yamina party became the last opposition faction to sign a coalition agreement with Lapid's Yesh Atid party, thus allowing the thirty-sixth government of Israel to be sworn in on 13 June, with Bennett becoming the Prime Minister and Lapid becoming the Alternate Prime Minister. The 2021–2022 state budget was passed on 5 November under this government. On 6 April 2022, less than a year after the government was sworn in, MK Idit Silman of the Yamina party announced her withdrawal from the coalition, becoming the second of Yamina's seven elected MKs to join the opposition after Amichai Chikli, who had earlier voted against the government in its swearing. Silman's move cost the coalition its majority. MK Ghaida Rinawie Zoabi of the Meretz party initially resigned on 19 May, but reversed course and rejoined the coalition on 22 May. On 13 June, Nir Orbach left the coalition. On 20 June 2022, Bennett and Lapid announced that they would begin the process of dissolving the Knesset, citing the various crises the coalition had faced since its formation. The move thus led to a fifth election on 1 November. Lapid served as interim Prime Minister in the run-up to the election. November 2022 election The fifth election in November 2022 saw the national camp win a majority of seats in the Knesset, likely returning Netanyahu to the post of Prime Minister and thus ending the deadlock. Increases in the number of MKs for Likud and the Religious Zionist Party was attributed to a lack of support for liberal wing and Arab parties, most notably the failure of Meretz to cross the electoral threshold to qualify for parliamentary representation. Following a two-month negotiation period, on 21 December, Netanyahu announced that he had succeeded in forming the new coalition. The thirty-seventh government of Israel was sworn in on 29 December. Some of the government's policy proposals, including a flagship program centered around reforms in the judicial branch that was proposed in January 2023, drew widespread domestic and international criticism, sparking waves of protests across the country until October, when the Gaza war began. Due to the government's failure to anticipate the Hamas-led attack that initiated the war, Netanyahu has been heavily criticized for presiding over Israel's biggest intelligence failure in 50 years, and protests calling for his removal from office and new elections have been held. See also References |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gliese_208] | [TOKENS: 234] |
Contents Gliese 208 Gliese 208 (Gj 208) is a red dwarf star with an apparent magnitude of 8.9. It is 37 light years away in the constellation of Orion. It is an extremely wide binary with 2MASS J0536+1117, an M4 star 2.6 arcminutes away (at least 0.028 light years) The spectral type of Gj 208 has variously been described between K6 and M1. Two of the most recent observations give a statistically calculated spectral type of K7.9 or a more traditional classification of M0.0 Ve. It is a cool dwarf star and probably a spectroscopic binary. Calculations from 2010 suggest that this star passed as close as 1.537 parsecs (5.0 light-years) from the Sun about 500,000 years ago. GJ 208 is an RS Canum Venaticorum variable, close binary systems which show small amplitude brightness changes caused by chromospheric activity. Its visual magnitude varies by about a quarter magnitude with a period of 12.285 days. References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_region] | [TOKENS: 6431] |
Contents Pacific Ocean Main five oceans division: Further subdivision: The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It stretches from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean, or, depending on the definition, to Antarctica in the south, and is bounded by the continents of Asia and Australia in the west and the Americas in the east. At 165,250,000 square kilometers (63,800,000 square miles) in area (as defined with a southern Antarctic border), the Pacific Ocean is the largest division of the World Ocean and the hydrosphere and covers approximately 46% of Earth's water surface and about 32% of the planet's total surface area, larger than its entire land area (148,000,000 km2 (57,000,000 sq mi)). The centers of both the water hemisphere and the Western Hemisphere, as well as the oceanic pole of inaccessibility, are in the Pacific Ocean. Ocean circulation (caused by the Coriolis effect) subdivides it into two largely independent volumes of water that meet at the equator, the North Pacific Ocean and the South Pacific Ocean (or more loosely the South Seas). The Pacific Ocean can also be informally divided by the International Date Line into the East Pacific and the West Pacific, which allows it to be further divided into four quadrants, namely the Northeast Pacific off the coasts of North America, the Southeast Pacific off South America, the Northwest Pacific off Far Eastern/Pacific Asia, and the Southwest Pacific around Oceania. The Pacific Ocean's mean depth is 4,000 meters (13,000 feet). The Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench, located in the northwestern Pacific, is the deepest known point in the world, reaching a depth of 10,928 meters (35,853 feet). The Pacific also contains the deepest point in the Southern Hemisphere, the Horizon Deep in the Tonga Trench, at 10,823 meters (35,509 feet). The third deepest point on Earth, the Sirena Deep, is also located in the Mariana Trench. It is the warmest ocean, as its temperatures can reach as high as 31 °C (88 °F) due to it surrounding major and minor Pacific islands, which have a tropical, hot climate. The Pacific has many major marginal seas, including (listed clockwise from the west) the Philippine Sea, South China Sea, East China Sea, Sea of Japan, Sea of Okhotsk, Bering Sea, Gulf of Alaska, Gulf of California, Tasman Sea, and the Coral Sea. Etymology In 1513, during the Age of Discovery, Spanish explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa crossed the Isthmus of Panama and sighted the great "Southern Sea", which he named Mar del Sur (in Spanish). Afterwards, the ocean's current name was coined by Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan during the Spanish circumnavigation of the world in 1520, as he encountered favorable winds upon reaching the ocean. He called it Mar Pacífico, which in Portuguese and Spanish means 'peaceful sea'. History Across the continents of Asia, Australia and the Americas, more than 25,000 islands, large and small, rise above the surface of the Pacific Ocean. Multiple islands are the shells of former active volcanoes that have lain dormant for thousands of years (see also Ring of Fire). Close to the equator, without vast areas of blue ocean, are a dot of atolls that have over intervals of time been formed by seamounts as a result of tiny coral islands strung in a ring within surroundings of a central lagoon. Important human migrations occurred in the Pacific in prehistoric times. Modern humans first reached the western Pacific in the Paleolithic, at around 60,000 to 70,000 years ago. Originating from a southern coastal human migration out of Africa, they reached East Asia, Mainland Southeast Asia, the Philippines, New Guinea, and then Australia by making the sea crossing of at least 80 kilometres (50 mi) between Sundaland and Sahul. It is not known with any certainty what level of maritime technology was used by these groups – the presumption is that they used large bamboo rafts which may have been equipped with some sort of sail. The reduction in favourable winds for a crossing to Sahul after 80,000 B.P. fits with the dating of the settlement of Australia, with no later migrations in the prehistoric period. The seafaring abilities of pre-Austronesian residents of Island South-east Asia are confirmed by the settlement of Buka by 32,000 B.P. and Manus by 25,000 B.P. Journeys of 180 kilometres (110 mi) and 230 kilometres (140 mi) are involved, respectively. The descendants of these migrations today are the Negritos, Melanesians, and Indigenous Australians. Their populations in maritime Southeast Asia, coastal New Guinea, and Island Melanesia later intermarried with the incoming Austronesian settlers from Taiwan and the northern Philippines, but also earlier groups associated with Austroasiatic-speakers, resulting in the modern peoples of Island Southeast Asia and Oceania. A later seaborne migration is the Neolithic Austronesian expansion of the Austronesian peoples. Austronesians originated from the island of Taiwan c. 3000–1500 BCE. They are associated with distinctive maritime sailing technologies (notably outrigger boats, catamarans, lashed-lug boats, and the crab claw sail) – it is likely that the progressive development of these technologies were related to the later steps of settlement into Near and Remote Oceania. Starting at around 2200 BCE, Austronesians sailed southwards to settle the Philippines. From, probably, the Bismarck Archipelago they crossed the western Pacific to reach the Marianas Islands by 1500 BCE, as well as Palau and Yap by 1000 BCE. They were the first humans to reach Remote Oceania, and the first to cross vast distances of open water. They also continued spreading southwards and settling the rest of Maritime Southeast Asia, reaching Indonesia and Malaysia by 1500 BCE, and further west to Madagascar and the Comoros in the Indian Ocean by around 500 CE. More recently, it is suggested that Austronesians expanded already earlier, arriving in the Philippines already in 7000 BCE. Additional earlier migrations into Insular Southeast Asia, associated with Austroasiatic-speakers from Mainland Southeast Asia, are estimated to have taken place already in 15000 BCE. At around 1300 to 1200 BCE, a branch of the Austronesian migrations known as the Lapita culture reached the Bismarck Archipelago, the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Fiji, and New Caledonia. From there, they settled Tonga and Samoa by 900 to 800 BCE. Some also back-migrated northwards in 200 BCE to settle the islands of eastern Micronesia (including the Carolines, the Marshall Islands, and Kiribati), mixing with earlier Austronesian migrations in the region. This remained the furthest extent of the Austronesian expansion into Polynesia until around 700 CE when there was another surge of island exploration. They reached the Cook Islands, Tahiti, and the Marquesas by 700 CE; Hawaiʻi by 900 CE; Rapa Nui by 1000 CE; and finally New Zealand by 1200 CE. Austronesians may have also reached as far as the Americas, although evidence for this remains inconclusive. The first contact of European navigators with the western edge of the Pacific Ocean was made by the Portuguese expeditions of António de Abreu and Francisco Serrão, via the Lesser Sunda Islands, to the Maluku Islands, in 1512, and with Jorge Álvares's expedition to southern China in 1513, both ordered by Afonso de Albuquerque from Malacca. The eastern side of the ocean was encountered by Spanish explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa in 1513 after his expedition crossed the Isthmus of Panama and reached a new ocean. He named it Mar del Sur ("Sea of the South" or "South Sea") because the ocean was to the south of the coast of the isthmus where he first observed the Pacific. In 1520, navigator Ferdinand Magellan and his crew were the first to cross the Pacific in recorded history. They were part of a Spanish expedition to the Spice Islands that would eventually result in the first world circumnavigation. Magellan called the ocean Pacífico (or "Pacific" meaning, "peaceful") because, after sailing through the stormy seas off Cape Horn, the expedition found calm waters. The ocean was often called the Sea of Magellan in his honor until the eighteenth century. Magellan stopped at one uninhabited Pacific island before stopping at Guam in March 1521. Magellan himself died in the Philippines in 1521. Spanish navigator Juan Sebastián Elcano led the remains of the expedition back to Spain across the Indian Ocean and round the Cape of Good Hope, completing the first world circumnavigation in 1522. Sailing around and east of the Moluccas, between 1525 and 1527, Portuguese expeditions encountered the Caroline Islands, the Aru Islands, and Papua New Guinea. In 1542–43 the Portuguese also reached Japan. In 1564, five Spanish ships carrying 379 soldiers crossed the Pacific from Mexico led by Miguel López de Legazpi, and colonized the Philippines and Mariana Islands. For the remainder of the 16th century, Spain maintained military and mercantile control, with ships sailing from Mexico and Peru across the Pacific Ocean to the Philippines via Guam, and establishing the Spanish East Indies. The Manila galleons operated for two and a half centuries, linking Manila and Acapulco, in one of the longest trade routes in history. Spanish expeditions also arrived at Tuvalu, the Marquesas, the Cook Islands, the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, the Marshalls and the Admiralty Islands in the South Pacific. Later, in the quest for Terra Australis ("the [great] Southern Land"), Spanish explorations in the 17th century, such as the expedition led by the Portuguese navigator Pedro Fernandes de Queirós, arrived at the Pitcairn and Vanuatu archipelagos, and sailed the Torres Strait between Australia and New Guinea, named after navigator Luís Vaz de Torres. Dutch explorers, sailing around southern Africa, also engaged in exploration and trade; Willem Janszoon, made the first completely documented European landing in Australia (1606), in Cape York Peninsula, and Abel Janszoon Tasman circumnavigated and landed on parts of the Australian continental coast and arrived at Tasmania and New Zealand in 1642. In the 16th and 17th centuries, Spain considered the Pacific Ocean a mare clausum – a sea closed to other naval powers. As the only known entrance from the Atlantic, the Strait of Magellan was at times patrolled by fleets sent to prevent the entrance of non-Spanish ships. On the western side of the Pacific Ocean the Dutch threatened the Spanish Philippines. The 18th century marked the beginning of major exploration by Russians in Alaska and the Aleutian Islands, such as the First Kamchatka expedition and the Great Northern Expedition, led by the Danish-born Russian navy officer Vitus Bering. Spain also sent expeditions to the Pacific Northwest, reaching Vancouver Island in southern Canada, and Alaska. The French explored and colonized Polynesia, and the British made three voyages with James Cook to the South Pacific and Australia, Hawaii, and the North American Pacific Northwest. In 1768, Pierre-Antoine Véron, a young astronomer accompanying Louis Antoine de Bougainville on his voyage of exploration, established the width of the Pacific with precision for the first time in history. One of the earliest voyages of scientific exploration was organized by Spain in the Malaspina Expedition of 1789–1794. It sailed vast areas of the Pacific, from Cape Horn to Alaska, Guam and the Philippines, New Zealand, Australia, and the South Pacific. Growing imperialism during the 19th century resulted in the occupation of much of Oceania by European powers, and later by Japan and the by United States. Significant contributions to oceanographic knowledge were made by the voyages of HMS Beagle in the 1830s, with Charles Darwin aboard; HMS Challenger during the 1870s; the USS Tuscarora (1873–76); and the German Gazelle (1874–76). In Oceania, France obtained a leading position as imperial power after making Tahiti and New Caledonia protectorates in 1842 and 1853, respectively. After navy visits to Easter Island in 1875 and 1887, Chilean navy officer Policarpo Toro negotiated the incorporation of the island into Chile with native Rapanui in 1888. By occupying Easter Island, Chile joined the imperial nations.: 53 By 1900 nearly all Pacific islands were in control of Britain, France, United States, Germany, Japan, and Chile. In 1898 (Spanish–American War), the United States gained control of Guam and the Philippines from Spain. Japan controlled most of the western Pacific by 1914 and occupied many other islands during the Pacific War; however, by the end of that war, Japan was defeated and the U.S. Pacific Fleet was the virtual master of the ocean. The Japanese-ruled Northern Mariana Islands came under the control of the United States. Since the end of World War II, many former colonies in the Pacific have become independent states (→ Decolonisation of Asia). Geography The Pacific separates Asia and Australia from the Americas. It may be further subdivided by the equator into northern (North Pacific) and southern (South Pacific) portions. It extends from the Antarctic region in the South to the Arctic in the north. The Pacific Ocean encompasses approximately one-third of the Earth's surface, having an area of 165,200,000 km2 (63,800,000 sq mi) – larger than Earth's entire landmass combined, 150,000,000 km2 (58,000,000 sq mi). Extending approximately 15,500 km (9,600 mi) from the Bering Sea in the Arctic to the northern extent of the circumpolar Southern Ocean at 60°S (older definitions extend it to Antarctica's Ross Sea), the Pacific reaches its greatest east–west width at about 5°N latitude, where it stretches approximately 19,800 km (12,300 mi) from Indonesia to the coast of Colombia – halfway around the world, and more than five times the diameter of the Moon. Its geographic center is in eastern Kiribati south of Kiritimati, just west from Starbuck Island at 4°58′S 158°45′W / 4.97°S 158.75°W / -4.97; -158.75. The lowest known point on Earth – the Mariana Trench – lies 10,911 m (35,797 ft; 5,966 fathoms) below sea level. Its average depth is 4,280 m (14,040 ft; 2,340 fathoms), putting the total water volume at roughly 710,000,000 km3 (170,000,000 cu mi). Due to the effects of plate tectonics, the Pacific Ocean is currently shrinking by roughly 2.5 cm (1 in) per year on three sides, roughly averaging 0.52 km2 (0.20 sq mi) a year. By contrast, the Atlantic Ocean is increasing in size. Along the Pacific Ocean's irregular western margins lie many seas, the largest of which are the Celebes Sea, Coral Sea, East China Sea (East Sea), Philippine Sea, Sea of Japan, South China Sea (South Sea), Sulu Sea, Tasman Sea, and Yellow Sea (West Sea of Korea). The Indonesian Seaway (including the Strait of Malacca and Torres Strait) joins the Pacific and the Indian Ocean to the west, and Drake Passage and the Strait of Magellan link the Pacific with the Atlantic Ocean on the east. To the north, the Bering Strait connects the Pacific with the Arctic Ocean. As the Pacific straddles the 180th meridian, the West Pacific (or western Pacific, near Asia) is in the Eastern Hemisphere, while the East Pacific (or eastern Pacific, near the Americas) is in the Western Hemisphere. The Southern Pacific Ocean harbors the Southeast Indian Ridge crossing from south of Australia turning into the Pacific-Antarctic Ridge (north of the South Pole) and merges with another ridge (south of South America) to form the East Pacific Rise which also connects with another ridge (south of North America) which overlooks the Juan de Fuca Ridge. For most of Magellan's voyage from the Strait of Magellan to the Philippines, the explorer indeed found the ocean peaceful; however, the Pacific is not always peaceful. Many tropical storms batter the islands of the Pacific. The lands around the Pacific Rim are full of volcanoes and often affected by earthquakes. Tsunamis, caused by underwater earthquakes, have devastated many islands and in some cases destroyed entire towns. The Martin Waldseemüller map of 1507 was the first to show the Americas separating two distinct oceans. Later, the Diogo Ribeiro map of 1529 was the first to show the Pacific at about its proper size. (Inhabited dependent territories are denoted by the asterisk (*), with names of the corresponding sovereign states in round brackets. Associated states in the Realm of New Zealand are denoted by the hash sign (#).) Territories with no permanent civilian population. The Pacific Ocean has most of the islands in the world. There are about 25,000 islands in the Pacific Ocean. The islands entirely within the Pacific Ocean can be divided into three main groups known as Micronesia, Melanesia and Polynesia. Micronesia, which lies north of the equator and west of the International Date Line, includes the Mariana Islands in the northwest, the Caroline Islands in the center, the Marshall Islands to the east and the islands of Kiribati in the southeast. Melanesia, to the southwest, includes New Guinea, the world's second largest island after Greenland and by far the largest of the Pacific islands. The other main Melanesian groups from north to south are the Bismarck Archipelago, the Solomon Islands, Santa Cruz, Vanuatu, Fiji and New Caledonia. The largest area, Polynesia, stretching from Hawaii in the north to New Zealand in the south, also encompasses Tuvalu, Tokelau, Samoa, Tonga and the Kermadec Islands to the west, the Cook Islands, Society Islands and Austral Islands in the center, and the Marquesas Islands, Tuamotu, Mangareva Islands, and Easter Island to the east. Islands in the Pacific Ocean are of four basic types: continental islands, high islands, coral reefs and uplifted coral platforms. Continental islands lie outside the andesite line and include New Guinea, the islands of New Zealand, and the Philippines. Some of these islands are structurally associated with nearby continents. High islands are of volcanic origin, and many contain active volcanoes. Among these are Bougainville, Hawaii, and the Solomon Islands. The coral reefs of the South Pacific are low-lying structures that have built up on basaltic lava flows under the ocean's surface. One of the most dramatic is the Great Barrier Reef off northeastern Australia with chains of reef patches. A second island type formed of coral is the uplifted coral platform, which is usually slightly larger than the low coral islands. Examples include Banaba (formerly Ocean Island) and Makatea in the Tuamotu group of French Polynesia. Water characteristics The volume of the Pacific Ocean, representing about 50.1 percent of the world's oceanic water, has been estimated at some 714 million cubic kilometers (171 million cubic miles). Surface water temperatures in the Pacific can vary from −1.4 °C (29.5 °F), the freezing point of seawater, in the poleward areas to about 30 °C (86 °F) near the equator. Salinity also varies latitudinally, reaching a maximum of 37 parts per thousand in the southeastern area. The water near the equator, which can have a salinity as low as 34 parts per thousand, is less salty than that found in the mid-latitudes because of abundant equatorial precipitation throughout the year. The lowest counts of less than 32 parts per thousand are found in the far north as less evaporation of seawater takes place in these frigid areas. The motion of Pacific waters is generally clockwise in the Northern Hemisphere (the North Pacific gyre) and counter-clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere. The North Equatorial Current, driven westward along latitude 15°N by the trade winds, turns north near the Philippines to become the warm Japan or Kuroshio Current. Turning eastward at about 45°N, the Kuroshio forks and some water moves northward as the Aleutian Current, while the rest turns southward to rejoin the North Equatorial Current. The Aleutian Current branches as it approaches North America and forms the base of a counter-clockwise circulation in the Bering Sea. Its southern arm becomes the chilled slow, south-flowing California Current. The South Equatorial Current, flowing west along the equator, swings southward east of New Guinea, turns east at about 50°S, and joins the main westerly circulation of the South Pacific, which includes the Earth-circling Antarctic Circumpolar Current. As it approaches the Chilean coast, the South Equatorial Current divides; one branch flows around Cape Horn and the other turns north to form the Peru or Humboldt Current. Climate The climate patterns of the Northern and Southern Hemispheres generally mirror each other. The trade winds in the southern and eastern Pacific are remarkably steady while conditions in the North Pacific are far more varied with, for example, cold winter temperatures on the east coast of Russia contrasting with the milder weather off British Columbia during the winter months due to the preferred flow of ocean currents. In the tropical and subtropical Pacific, the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) affects weather conditions. To determine the phase of ENSO, the most recent three-month sea surface temperature average for the area approximately 3,000 km (1,900 mi) to the southeast of Hawaii is computed, and if the region is more than 0.5 °C (0.9 °F) above or below normal for that period, then an El Niño or La Niña is considered in progress. In September 2025, NOAA reported that global ocean surface temperatures remained at near-record levels, with June–August 2025 ranking as the third warmest in their 176-year record. In the tropical western Pacific, the monsoon and the related wet season during the summer months contrast with dry winds in the winter which blow over the ocean from the Asian landmass. Worldwide, tropical cyclone activity peaks in late summer, when the difference between temperatures aloft and sea surface temperatures is the greatest; however, each particular basin has its own seasonal patterns. On a worldwide scale, May is the least active month, while September is the most active month. November is the only month in which all the tropical cyclone basins are active. The Pacific hosts the two most active tropical cyclone basins, which are the northwestern Pacific and the eastern Pacific. Pacific hurricanes form south of Mexico, sometimes striking the western Mexican coast and occasionally the Southwestern United States between June and October, while typhoons forming in the northwestern Pacific moving into southeast and east Asia from May to December. Tropical cyclones also form in the South Pacific basin, where they occasionally impact island nations. In the arctic, icing from October to May can present a hazard for shipping while persistent fog occurs from June to December. A climatological low in the Gulf of Alaska keeps the southern coast wet and mild during the winter months. The Westerlies and associated jet stream within the Mid-Latitudes can be particularly strong, especially in the Southern Hemisphere, due to the temperature difference between the tropics and Antarctica, which records the coldest temperature readings on the planet. In the Southern hemisphere, because of the stormy and cloudy conditions associated with extratropical cyclones riding the jet stream, it is usual to refer to the Westerlies as the Roaring Forties, Furious Fifties and Shrieking Sixties according to the varying degrees of latitude. Geology The ocean was first mapped by Abraham Ortelius; he called it Maris Pacifici following Ferdinand Magellan's description of it as "a pacific sea" during his circumnavigation from 1519 to 1522. To Magellan, it seemed much more calm (pacific) than the Atlantic. The andesite line is the most significant regional distinction in the Pacific. A petrologic boundary, it separates the deeper, mafic igneous rock of the Central Pacific Basin from the partially submerged continental areas of felsic igneous rock on its margins. The andesite line follows the western edge of the islands off California and passes south of the Aleutian arc, along the eastern edge of the Kamchatka Peninsula, the Kuril Islands, Japan, the Mariana Islands, the Solomon Islands, and New Zealand's North Island. The dissimilarity continues northeastward along the western edge of the Andes Cordillera along South America to Mexico, returning then to the islands off California. Indonesia, the Philippines, Japan, New Guinea, and New Zealand lie outside the andesite line. Within the closed loop of the andesite line are most of the deep troughs, submerged volcanic mountains, and oceanic volcanic islands that characterize the Pacific basin. Here basaltic lavas gently flow out of rifts to build huge dome-shaped volcanic mountains whose eroded summits form island arcs, chains, and clusters. Outside the andesite line, volcanism is of the explosive type, and the Pacific Ring of Fire is the world's foremost belt of explosive volcanism. The Ring of Fire is named after the several hundred active volcanoes that sit above the various subduction zones. The Pacific Ocean is the only ocean which is mostly bounded by subduction zones. Only the central part of the North American coast and the Antarctic and Australian coasts have no nearby subduction zones. The Pacific Ocean was born 750 million years ago at the breakup of Rodinia, although it is generally called the Panthalassa until the breakup of Pangea, about 200 million years ago. The oldest Pacific Ocean floor is only around 180 Ma old, with older crust subducted by now. The Pacific Ocean contains several long seamount chains, formed by hotspot volcanism. These include the Hawaiian–Emperor seamount chain and the Louisville Ridge. Economy The exploitation of the Pacific's mineral wealth is hampered by the ocean's great depths. In shallow waters of the continental shelves off the coasts of Australia and New Zealand, petroleum and natural gas are extracted, and pearls are harvested along the coasts of Australia, Japan, Papua New Guinea, Nicaragua, Panama, and the Philippines, although in sharply declining volume in some cases. Fish are an important economic asset in the Pacific. The shallower shoreline waters of the continents and the more temperate islands yield herring, salmon, sardines, snapper, swordfish, and tuna, as well as shellfish. Overfishing has become a serious problem in some areas. Overfishing leads to depleted fish populations and closed fisheries, causing both economic and ecologic consequences. For example, catches in the rich fishing grounds of the Okhotsk Sea off the Russian coast have been reduced by at least half since the 1990s as a result of overfishing. Environment The Northwestern Pacific Ocean is most susceptible to micro plastic pollution due to its proximity to highly populated countries like Japan and China. The quantity of small plastic fragments floating in the north-east Pacific Ocean increased a hundredfold between 1972 and 2012.[verification needed] The ever-growing Great Pacific Garbage Patch between California and Japan is three times the size of France. An estimated 80,000 metric tons of plastic inhabit the patch, totaling 1.8 trillion pieces. Marine pollution is a generic term for the harmful entry into the ocean of chemicals or particles. The main culprits are those using the rivers for disposing of their waste. The rivers then empty into the ocean, often also bringing chemicals used as fertilizers in agriculture. The excess of oxygen-depleting chemicals in the water leads to hypoxia and the creation of a dead zone. Marine debris, also known as marine litter, is human-created waste that has ended up floating in a lake, sea, ocean, or waterway. Oceanic debris tends to accumulate at the center of gyres and coastlines, frequently washing aground where it is known as beach litter. In addition, the Pacific Ocean has served as the crash site of satellites, including Mars 96, Fobos-Grunt, and Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite. From 1946 to 1958, Marshall Islands served as the Pacific Proving Grounds, designated by the United States, and played host to a total of 67 nuclear tests conducted across various atolls. Several nuclear weapons were lost in the Pacific Ocean, including one-megaton bomb that was lost during the 1965 Philippine Sea A-4 incident. In 2021, the discharge of radioactive water from the Fukushima nuclear plant into the Pacific Ocean over a course of 30 years was approved by the Japanese Cabinet. The Cabinet concluded the radioactive water would have been diluted to drinkable standard. Apart from dumping, leakage of tritium into the Pacific was estimated to be between 20 and 40 trillion Bqs from 2011 to 2013, according to the Fukushima plant. An emerging threat for the Pacific Ocean is the development of deep-sea mining. Deep-sea mining is aimed at extracting manganese nodules that contain minerals such as magnesium, nickel, copper, zinc and cobalt. The largest deposits of these are found in the Pacific Ocean between Mexico and Hawaii in the Clarion Clipperton fracture zone. Deep-sea mining for manganese nodules appears to have drastic consequences for the ocean. It disrupts deep-sea ecosystems and may cause irreversible damage to fragile marine habitats. Sediment stirring and chemical pollution threaten various marine animals. In addition, the mining process can lead to greenhouse gas emissions and promote further climate change. Preventing deep-sea mining is therefore important to ensure the long-term health of the ocean. See also References Further reading External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Israeli_legislative_election] | [TOKENS: 3403] |
Contents 2022 Israeli legislative election Legislative elections were held in Israel on 1 November 2022 to elect the 120 members of the 25th Knesset. The results saw the right-wing national camp of former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu win a parliamentary majority, amid losses for left-wing and Arab parties, as well as gains by the far-right. After the 2021 elections, the next elections had been scheduled for no later than 11 November 2025 according to the four-year term limit set by Basic Law: The Government. The thirty-sixth government, a national unity government formed between eight political parties following the 2021 elections, held the narrowest possible majority (61 seats) in the 120-member Knesset. In April 2022, MK Idit Silman left the governing coalition, leaving it without a majority. On 20 June 2022, following several legislative defeats for the government in the Knesset, prime minister Naftali Bennett and alternate prime minister Yair Lapid announced the introduction of a bill to dissolve the 24th Knesset, which was approved on 30 June. Simultaneously, in accordance with the rotation government agreement that was part of the 2021 coalition deal, Lapid became prime minister and led a caretaker government until a new government took office. Within the context of the 2018–2022 Israeli political crisis, this was the fifth Knesset election in nearly four years, as no party had been able to form a stable coalition since 2019. A total of 40 parties registered to run for these elections, although only twelve to fourteen parties were projected to cross the 3.25% electoral threshold to win seats under the closed list, proportional representation electoral system. Ten parties succeeded in crossing the threshold. On 21 December, Netanyahu announced that he had succeeded in forming a coalition government consisting of 64 MKs. The thirty-seventh government was sworn in on 29 December. Background The extended period of political deadlock that led up to the election was the result of four inconclusive elections (April 2019, September 2019, 2020, and 2021). In April and September 2019, neither incumbent Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, nor leader of the main opposition party Blue and White, Benny Gantz, was able to muster a 61-seat governing majority, leading to fresh elections. In March 2020, these resulted in the formation of a unity government, the thirty-fifth government of Israel, between Netanyahu and Gantz, which collapsed in December following a budgetary dispute, leading to another election in March 2021. The 2021 election led to the formation of another unity government between eight political parties that opposed Netanyahu, with Yamina leader Naftali Bennett becoming rime Minister and Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid becoming Alternate Prime Minister. Bennett and Lapid agreed to rotate their positions after two years, with Lapid becoming the prime minister and Bennett becoming the alternate prime minister. Upon the government's formation in June 2021, it held 61 seats in the Knesset, consisting of all members of the coalition parties besides Yamina's Amichai Chikli. On 6 April 2022, Yamina Member of the Knesset (MK) Idit Silman resigned from the coalition, causing the governing coalition to lose its majority in the Knesset. Silman cited a decision from Minister of Health, Nitzan Horowitz, to enforce a court ruling allowing hospital visitors to enter with chametz (leavened bread) during Passover, which is forbidden under Jewish law, and other religion-related actions of the coalition. On 19 May, Meretz MK Ghaida Rinawie Zoabi resigned from the coalition, alleging that the government had adopted a hardline stance on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and related issues, and lowering its number of seats in the Knesset to a minority of 59. She rejoined the coalition three days later. On 7 June, she joined the opposition in voting down a bill that would have renewed the application of Israeli law in the West Bank settlements, which was set to expire in July. The bill was supported by the government. On 13 June, Yamina MK Nir Orbach left the coalition, arguing that left-wing members of the coalition were holding it hostage. On 20 June, Bennett and Lapid announced the introduction of a bill to dissolve the Knesset in a joint statement, stating that Lapid would become the interim prime minister following the dissolution. The dissolution of the Knesset automatically delayed the expiration date of the ordinances until 90 days after the formation of the next government. The bill to dissolve the Knesset passed its first reading on 28 June. The bill passed its third reading on 29 June and the date for elections was set for 1 November 2022. Bennett opted to retire from politics and not seek reelection; he resigned as the leader of Yamina on 29 June, and was succeeded by Ayelet Shaked. On 30 June, in accordance with the coalition agreement, Lapid succeeded Bennett as the caretaker prime minister. Campaign On 10 July, Blue and White and New Hope formed a joint list, known as Blue and White – The New Hope, excluding Derekh Eretz that ran as part of New Hope in 2021. On 14 August, the list was joined by former Israel Defense Forces's Chief of the General Staff, Gadi Eizenkot, as well as Yamina MKs Matan Kahana and Shirly Pinto, and was subsequently renamed the National Unity Party. On 27 July, Yamina formed a joint list with Derekh Eretz, known as Zionist Spirit. The alliance dissolved on 11 September. On 13 September, Yamina announced a joint run with The Jewish Home. that day, Derekh Eretz withdrew from the race. On 14 September, the Religious Zionist Party, Noam and Otzma Yehudit submitted a single list. On 15 September, several minutes before the party list submission deadline, the Joint List dissolved, with Balad and Hadash–Ta'al submitting two separate lists. In August, Israel launched Operation Breaking Dawn, resulting in clashes between Israeli forces and Palestinian groups. The operation was supported by members of the opposition, including Netanyahu, Religious Zionist Party leader Bezalel Smotrich, and Shas leader Aryeh Deri. Timeline Electoral system The 120 seats in the Knesset are elected by closed list, proportional representation in a single nationwide constituency. The electoral threshold for the election is 3.25%. In the Israeli-occupied territories, only settlers have the right to vote. Two parties could sign a surplus vote agreement that allowed them to compete for leftover seats as if they were running together on the same list, a system known as apparentment. The Bader–Ofer method slightly favours larger lists, meaning that alliances are more likely to receive leftover seats than parties would be individually. If the alliance were to receive leftover seats, the Bader–Ofer calculation would be applied privately to determine how the seats are divided among the two allied lists. The following parties signed surplus vote-sharing agreements for the 2022 election: Political parties The table below lists the parliamentary factions represented in the 24th Knesset. The table below lists all members of the Knesset (MK) who did not stand for re-election.[a] Forty parties initially submitted lists to participate in the elections, however, one party withdrew, leaving 39 parties. Among these, were the following: Leadership elections and primaries Leadership elections were held by some parties to determine party leadership ahead of the election. Primary elections were held by some parties in advance of the national election to determine the composition of their party list. Balad party leader Sami Abu Shehadeh gained another term as party leader in a vote held by party members on 6 August. Hadash held its party primary on 13 August. Party head Ayman Odeh was re-elected. The leadership election for the Israeli Labor Party was held on 18 July, where party leader Merav Michaeli defeated party secretary general Eran Hermoni in a historic consecutive win by a party leader. The Israeli Labor Party primaries took place on 9 August. Benjamin Netanyahu did not face a challenge for the party leadership. Likud MK Yuli Edelstein, a former health minister and speaker of the Knesset, had initially stated an intent to challenge Netanyahu in 2021 but announced in late June 2022 that he would not do so. Netanyahu last faced an internal leadership challenge in 2019, when he defeated Gideon Sa'ar by a large margin; Sa'ar then left the Likud in 2020 to form New Hope. The planned leadership election was cancelled on 19 July, as no one besides Netanyahu contested it. Likud is one of several Israeli parties that allows its membership to determine a portion of the party's electoral list. The Likud's electoral list is composed of candidates selected by four methods: national primary elections, regional representatives (chosen from 10 regions), slots set aside for minorities, and slots filled by the party leader (Netanyahu). The primaries took place on 10 August. Contenders included Netanyahu's economic advisor Avi Simhon, far-right former MK Moshe Feiglin, and former MK Ayoob Kara. A Likud party committee moved the minority slot to a low position on the party list (No. 44), making it unlikely that the candidate selected to fill the slot would be elected. This move angered the Druze, including Likud MK Fateen Mulla, who currently fills the Likud minority seat. Yair Golan announced on 6 July that he would run in the Meretz leadership election and challenge incumbent Nitzan Horowitz. Horowitz announced on 12 July that he would not run in the leadership election. Former party leader Zehava Gal-On announced on 19 July that she will also run. The election committee of the party selected 23 August as the date for the party primary and the leadership primary. Gal-On defeated Golan, returning to her former position as Meretz leader. The Religious Zionist Party held its primaries digitally on 23 August. The candidate deadline was 2 August. Ta'al held its party primary on 27 August. Party leader Ahmad Tibi was re-elected. Mansour Abbas was approved for another term as the party leader of the United Arab List on 6 August. Opinion polls This graph shows the polling trends from the 2021 Israeli legislative election until the next election day using a 4-poll moving average. Scenario polls are not included here. For parties not crossing the electoral threshold (currently 3.25%) in any given poll, the number of seats is calculated as a percentage of the 120 total seats. Local regression of polls conducted Debates Results The official body administering the elections, the Central Election Committee for the 25th Knesset, released the final official results of the elections on 9 November and the chairman of the committee, Supreme Court Justice Yitzhak Amit, presented them to the President Herzog. The official results showed that of 6,788,804 total eligible voters, 4,794,593 cast their ballots, representing a 70.63% turnout rate. 0.62% were declared invalid or spoiled. The detailed breakdown of results is as follows: Aftermath With 86% of the vote counted, the right-wing bloc led by Benjamin Netanyahu, known in Israel as the national camp, was forecast to win a majority of seats at 65, while both leftist Meretz and Balad parties were under the electoral threshold. As all the votes were counted, they remained under the threshold; far-right parties saw a surge in their vote share. In terms of votes, both blocs were neck-and-neck, with the anti-Netanyahu bloc achieving 49.5% but not gaining enough seats due to Meretz and Balad narrowly missing the electoral threshold, as 289,000 anti-Netanyahu votes went wasted in terms of seats share. Orly Ades, head of Israel's election panel Central Elections Committee, said Netanyahu's party Likud tried to undermine voting supervision, and described their actions as "something we've never seen before". Netanyahu's bloc went on to win 64 seats, while the coalition led by the incumbent prime minister Yair Lapid won 51 seats. In addition to Meretz and Balad, the right-wing party The Jewish Home also failed to cross the electoral threshold. The new majority was variously described as the most right-wing government in Israeli history, as well as its most religious government. Lapid conceded to Netanyahu, and congratulated him, wishing him luck "for the sake of the Israeli people". Netanyahu received congratulatory messages from leaders around the world, including those of Canada, France, Hungary, India, Italy, Jordan, Sudan, Ukraine, the United Arab Emirates, the United States, and the United Kingdom, among others. On 15 November, the swearing-in ceremony for the newly elected members of the 25th Knesset was held during the opening session. The incoming Knesset includes 29 female lawmakers, 7 less than the last Knesset, and 28 new parliamentarians. The vote to appoint a new Speaker of the Knesset, which is usually conducted at the opening session, and the swearing in of cabinet members were postponed since ongoing coalition negotiations had not yet resulted in agreement on these positions. The vote to replace incumbent Knesset speaker Mickey Levy was scheduled for 13 December, after Likud and its allies secured the necessary number of signatures for it. Yariv Levin of Likud was elected as a temporary speaker by 64 votes, while his opponents Meirav Ben-Ari of Yesh Atid and Ayman Odeh of Hadash got 45 and five votes respectively. He resigned on 29 December and Amir Ohana of Likud was elected as the speaker by 63 votes. On 3 November 2022 Netanyahu told his aide Yariv Levin to begin informal coalition talks with allied parties after 97% of the vote was counted. Netanyahu himself started holding talks on 6 November. He first met with Moshe Gafni, the leader of the Degel HaTorah faction of United Torah Judaism, and then with Yitzhak Goldknopf, the leader of the United Torah Judaism alliance and its Agudat Yisrael faction. Meanwhile, the Religious Zionist Party leader Bezalel Smotrich and the leader of its Otzma Yehudit faction Itamar Ben-Gvir pledged that they would not enter the coalition without the other faction. Gafni later met with Smotrich for coalition talks. Smotrich then met with Netanyahu. On 7 November, Netanyahu met with Ben-Gvir. A major demand from the UTJ was that the Knesset be allowed to override the rulings of the Supreme Court. Netanyahu met with the Noam faction leader and its sole MK Avi Maoz on 8 November. President Isaac Herzog began consultations with heads of all political parties on 9 November after the election results were certified. Shas met with Likud for coalition talks on 10 November. By 11 November, Netanyahu had secured recommendations from 64 MKs, which constituted a majority. He was given the mandate to form the thirty-seventh government of Israel by President Herzog on 13 November. Otzma Yehudit and Noam officially split from Religious Zionism on 20 November as per a pre-election agreement. Likud signed a coalition agreement with Otzma Yehudit on 25 November, with Noam on 27 November, the Religious Zionist Party on 1 December, United Torah Judaism on 6 December, and with Shas on 8 December. Netanyahu asked Herzog for a 14-day extension after the agreement with Shas in order to finalise the roles his allied parties would play. Herzog on 9 December extended the deadline to 21 December. On that date, Netanyahu informed Herzog that he had succeeded in forming a coalition. The coalition government was sworn in on 29 December. At the end of November and the beginning of December, the Israel Democracy Institute polled Israelis on their satisfaction with the results of the election. 43% were found to be satisfied, 52% unsatisfied, and 5% were undecided. See also Notes References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_URI_scheme] | [TOKENS: 1150] |
Contents File URI scheme In programming, a file uniform resource identifier (URI) scheme is a specific format of URI, used to specifically identify a file on a host computer. While URIs can be used to identify anything, there is specific syntax associated with identifying files. Format A file URI has the format where host is the fully qualified domain name of the system on which the path is accessible, and path is a hierarchical directory path of the form directory/directory/.../name. If host is omitted, it is taken to be "localhost", the machine from which the URL is being interpreted. Note that when omitting host, the slash is not omitted (while "file:///piro.txt" is valid, "file://simpen.txt" is not, although some interpreters manage to handle the latter). RFC 3986 includes additional information about the treatment of ".." and "." segments in URIs. Number of slash characters There are two ways that Windows UNC filenames (such as \\server\folder\data.xml) can be represented. These are both described in RFC 8089, Appendix E as "non-standard". The first way (called here the 2-slash format) is to represent the server name using the Authority part of the URI, which then becomes file://server/folder/data.xml. The second way (called here the 4-slash format) is to represent the server name as part of the Path component, so the URI becomes file:////server/folder/data.xml. Both forms are actively used. Microsoft .NET (for example, the method new Uri(path)) generally uses the 2-slash form; Java (for example, the method new URI(path)) generally uses the 4-slash form. Either form allows the most common operations on URIs (resolving relative URIs, and dereferencing to obtain a connection to the remote file) to be used successfully. However, because these URIs are non-standard, some less common operations fail: an example is the normalize operation (defined in RFC 3986 and implemented in the Java java.net.URI.normalize() method) which reduces file:////server/folder/data.xml to the unusable form file:/server/folder/data.xml. Examples Here are two Unix examples pointing to the same /etc/fstab file: The KDE environment uses URIs without an authority field: Here are some examples which may be accepted by some applications on Windows systems, referring to the same, local file c:\WINDOWS\clock.avi Here is the URI as understood by the Windows Shell API: Note that the drive letter followed by a colon and slash is part of the acceptable file URI. Implementations On Microsoft Windows systems, the normal colon (:) after a device letter has sometimes been replaced by a vertical bar (|) in file URLs. This reflected the original URL syntax, which made the colon a reserved character in a path part. Since Internet Explorer 4, file URIs have been standardized on Windows, and should follow the following scheme. This applies to all applications which use URLMON or SHLWAPI for parsing, fetching or binding to URIs. To convert a path to a URL, use UrlCreateFromPath, and to convert a URL to a path, use PathCreateFromUrl. To access a file "the file.txt", the following might be used. For a network location: Or for a local file, the hostname is omitted, but the slash is not (note the third slash): This is not the same as providing the string "localhost" or the dot "." in place of the hostname. The string "localhost" will attempt to access the file as UNC path \\localhost\c:\path\to\the file.txt, which will not work since the colon is not allowed in a share name. The dot "." results in the string being passed as \\.\c:\path\to\the file.txt, which will work for local files, but not shares on the local system. For example file://./sharename/path/to/the%20file.txt will not work, because it will result in sharename being interpreted as part of the DOSDEVICES namespace, not as a network share. The following outline roughly describes the requirements. Use the provided functions if possible. If you must create a URL programmatically and cannot access SHLWAPI.dll (for example from script, or another programming environment where the equivalent functions are not available) the above outline will help. To aid the installed base of legacy applications on Win32 PathCreateFromUrl recognizes certain URLs which do not meet these criteria, and treats them uniformly. These are called "legacy" file URLs as opposed to "healthy" file URLs. In the past, a variety of other applications have used other systems. Some added an additional two slashes. For example, UNC path \\remotehost\share\dir\file.txt would become file:////remotehost/share/dir/file.txt instead of the "healthy" file://remotehost/share/dir/file.txt. File URLs are rarely used in Web pages on the public Internet, since they are only useful if it is known that a specific file exists on the designated host or the local computer. Additionally, web browsers generally disable File URLs in web pages that were not themselves loaded from a File URL for security reasons. The host specifier can be used to retrieve a file from an external source. However, no specific file-retrieval protocol is specified and the interpretation of the host specifier is not well standardized, so it is only useful in specific circumstances. If a web page wants to access files stored on the computer the web browser is running on, a modern alternative to File URLs is the HTML5 File API. References |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOYB] | [TOKENS: 2017] |
Contents NOYB NOYB – European Center for Digital Rights (styled as "noyb", from "none of your business") is a non-profit organization based in Vienna, Austria established in 2017 with a pan-European focus. Co-founded by Austrian lawyer and privacy activist Max Schrems, NOYB aims to launch strategic court cases and media initiatives in support of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the proposed ePrivacy Regulation, and information privacy in general. The organisation was established after a funding period during which it has raised annual donations of €250,000 by supporting members. Currently, NOYB is financed by more than 4,400 supporting members. While many privacy organisations focus attention on governments, NOYB puts its focus on privacy issues and privacy violations in the private sector. Under Article 80, the GDPR foresees that non-profit organizations can take action or represent users. NOYB is also recognized as a "qualified entity" to bring consumer class actions in Belgium. Notable actions The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) filed a lawsuit against Schrems and Facebook in 2016, based on a complaint from 2013, which had led to the so-called "Safe Harbor Decision". Back then, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) had invalidated the Safe Harbor data transfer system with its decision. When the case was referred back to the DPC the Irish regulator found that Facebook had in fact relied on Standard Contact Clauses, not on the invalidated Safe Harbor. The DPC then found that there were "well-founded" concerns by Schrems under these instruments too, but instead of taking action against Facebook, initiated proceedings against Facebook and Schrems before the Irish High Court. The case was ultimately referred to the CJEU in C-311/18 (called "Schrems II"; see Max Schrems#Schrems II). NOYB supported this private case of Schrems. Within hours after General Data Protection Regulation rules went into effect on 25 May 2018, NOYB filed complaints against Facebook and subsidiaries WhatsApp and Instagram, as well as Google (targeting Android), for allegedly violating Article 7(4) by attempting to completely block use of their services if users decline to accept all data processing consents, in a bundled grant which also includes consents deemed unnecessary to use the service. Based on the complaint, the French data protection authority CNIL has issued a €50 million fine against Google. The other cases are still pending.[as of?] Since Spotify is based in Sweden, the Swedish data protection authority (IMY) was responsible. However, this authority took its time. For over four years, no decision was made on the complaint against the streaming service. So in 2022, NOYB first filed a complaint for inaction in Sweden. The lawsuit was decided in favor of the privacy activists. The IMY then imposed a GDPR fine of 58 million Swedish kronor (about EUR 5 million) on Spotify.[citation needed] In mid November 2020, NOYB announced that complaints were filed to both the German and Spanish Data Protection Authorities, claiming "IDFA (Apple's Identifier for Advertisers) allows Apple and all apps on the phone to track a user and combine information about online and mobile behaviour". In a slight change from their previous legal strategy in other similar cases, NOYB notes that, because the complaint is based on Article5(3) of the ePrivacy Directive and not the GDPR, the Spanish and German authorities can directly fine Apple, without appealing to EU Data Protection Authorities under the GDPR. NOYB also focuses on putting pressure on regulators to enforce privacy laws on the books. In an open letter, the NGO has accused the Irish Data Protection Commission of acting too slowly and having 10 meetings with Facebook before the coming into application of the GDPR. On July 16, 2020, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) invalidated Privacy Shield and decided that Facebook and other companies that fall under US surveillance laws cannot rely on "Standard Contractual Clauses" (SCCs) since US surveillance laws were found to be conflicting EU fundamental rights. This judgement was based on a long lasting case of Max Schrems and NOYB. US companies' foreign customers' data are not protected from the U.S. intelligence services. The CJEU found that this violates the "essence" of certain EU fundamental rights. The Court has also clarified that EU data protection authorities (DPAs) have a duty to take action. The Court highlighted that a DPA is "required to execute its responsibility for ensuring that the GDPR is fully enforced with all due diligence". Despite the invalidations made by the judgment, absolutely "necessary" data flows can continue to flow under Article 49 of the GDPR. Any situation where users want their data to flow abroad is still legal, as this can be based on the informed consent of the user, which can be withdrawn at any time. Equally the law allows data flows for what is "necessary" to fulfil a contract. After the Schrems II judgment, NOYB filed 101 complaints against EU/EEA companies against controllers using Google Analytics or Facebook Connect and thereby transferring data to the US despite the Court finding (link to Privacy Shield) that US surveillance laws violate the essence of EU fundamental rights. The organization thereby wanted to point out the lack of enforcement of Schrems II. These model complaints led to the creation of a special taskforce by the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) which is tasked to coordinate the complaints and to prepare recommendations for controllers and processors. On January 12, 2022, the Austrian Data Protection Authority (DSB) reached a partial decision in favour of NOYB, stating that the continuous use of Google Analytics violates the GDPR. This decision affects most websites in the European Union since Google Analytics is the most common traffic analysis tool. On April 7, 2021, NOYB filed a complaint in France charging that Android users were being tracked by Google without giving consent. "Google's software creates the AAID without the user's knowledge or consent. The identification number functions like a license plate that uniquely identifies the phone of a user and can be shared among companies. After its creation, Google and third parties (e.g. applications providers and advertisers) can access the AAID to track users' behaviour, elaborate consumption preferences and provide personalised advertising. Such tracking is strictly regulated by the EU "Cookie Law" (Article 5(3) of the e-Privacy Directive) and requires the users' informed and unambiguous consent." NOYB filed a complaint against the Irish Data Protection Commissioner (DPC) for corruption and possible bribery in 2021 under Austrian law for an affair concerning Facebook. Together with the Norwegian Consumer Council, NOYB filed three strategic complaints against the dating app Grindr and several adtech companies over illegal sharing of users' data in January 2020. The data shared was GPS location, IP address, Advertising ID, age, gender and the fact that the user in question was on Grindr. Users could be identified through the data shared, and the recipients could potentially further share the data. These complaints are based on the report "Out of Control" by the Norwegian Consumer Council. One year after the complaint was filed, the Norwegian Data Protection Authority upheld the complaint against Grindr, confirming that Grindr did not receive valid consent from users in an advance notification. The Authority imposed a fine of 100 million NOK (€9.63 million) on Grindr, which was then reduced to 65 million NOK (€6.5 million) in the final decision since Grindr's actual revenue was lower than previously assumed and the company undertook measures to remedy deficiencies in their previous consent management platform. On August 10, 2021, NOYB filed 422 complaints against companies using deceptive cookie banners on their website. This wave of complaints was the outcome of a "Legal Tech" initiative by the organization in the course of which thousands of websites in Europe had been automatically checked for violations with a tool that was developed specifically for this purpose. In response to those complaints an EDPB task force was set up to exchange views on legal analysis and possible infringements and to streamline communication. In its effort to overcome the necessity of cookie banners, NOYB has also co-developed Advanced Data Protection Control together with the Sustainable Computing Lab of the Vienna University of Economics. The ADPC browser signal poses a feasible alternative to cookie banners through its automated mechanism for the communication of users' privacy decisions and data controllers' responses. In early 2022, an Austrian court ruled that the use of Google Analytics on European websites was illegal. The case in question was filed in August 2020, from a Google user accessing an Austrian website for health related issues. The website used Google Analytics, and data about the user was transmitted to Google. The Google user complained to the Austrian data protection authority alongside NOYB. The issue at hand has a direct reference to Article 44 under GDPR, since the user cannot be afforded the correct level of protections established, thus making it a clear violation of GDPR. France's data watchdog CNIL concurred with the Austrian ruling in mid February 2022. Schrems duly commented: This is a very detailed and sound decision. The bottom line is: Companies can't use US cloud services in Europe anymore. It has now been 1.5 years since the Court of Justice confirmed this a second time, so it is more than time that the law is also enforced. Furthermore, in mid 2022, the Austrian DPA also ruled that Google's anonymization was insufficient in protecting user privacy, and that Article 44 of GDPR does not allow for a risk-based approach that Google had argued for. References External links |
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Contents Gliese 221 Gliese 221 (GJ 221), also known as BD-06 1339, is a star with an exoplanetary companion in the equatorial constellation of Orion. It is too faint to be visible to the naked eye, having an apparent visual magnitude of 9.70 and an absolute magnitude of 8.15. Using parallax measurements, the distance to this system can be estimated as 66.2 light-years. It is receding from the Sun with a radial velocity of +23 km/s. This is a high proper motion star, traversing the celestial sphere at an angular rate of 0.333″·yr−1. This is a late K-type or early M-type main-sequence star with a stellar classification of K7V/M0V. It has 72% of the mass and 61% of the radius of the Sun. The star is roughly 4.4 billion years old and is depleted in heavy elements, containing just 46% of solar abundance of iron. It is an active star and the level of chromospheric activity has been found to vary significantly over time. The star is radiating 10% of the luminosity of the Sun from its photosphere at an effective temperature of 4,324 K. Planetary system From 2003 to 2012, the star was under observance from the High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS). It is becoming less active and this reduced activity allowed for lower-mass planetary measurements to be made. A super-Venus planet, and an eccentric Neptune / Saturn in the habitable zone, were deduced by radial velocity in January 2013. They were confirmed in May 2013. In January 2014, a candidate planet d was proposed. The planet Gliese 221b (BD-06 1339 b) is not transiting the disk of the parent star, and its existence was disputed in 2022. References |
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Contents Maor Farid Dr. Maor Farid (Hebrew: מאור פריד; born April 20, 1992) is an Israeli scientist, engineer and artificial intelligence researcher at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, social activist, and author. He is the founder and CEO of Learn to Succeed (Hebrew: ללמוד להצליח) for empowering of youths from the Israeli socio-economic periphery and youths at risk, a regional manager of the Israeli center of ScienceAbroad at MIT, and an activist in the American Technion Society. He is an alumnus of Unit 8200, and a fellow of Fulbright Program and the Israel Scholarship Educational Foundation [he]. Dr. Farid was elected to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list of 2019, and won the Moskowitz Prize for Zionism. Early life Maor was born in Ness Ziona, a city in central Israel, as the eldest son for parents from immigrating families of Mizrahi Jews from Iraq and Libya. Maor suffered from Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) from a young age, and was classified as a problematic and violent student. His ADHD issues were diagnosed only after he began his university studies. However, inspired by his parents' background, he aspired to excel at school for a better future for his family. During elementary school, Maor attended local quizzes about Jewish history and Zionism, which significantly shaped his identity and national perspective. Farid graduated high school with the highest GPA in school. Later he was recruited to the Israel Defense Forces and drafted to the Brakim Program [he] – an excellence program of the Israeli Intelligence Corps for training leading R&D officers for the Israeli military and defense industry. Maor graduated the program with honors and was elected by the Israeli Prime Minister's Office and Unit 8200, where he served as an artificial intelligence researcher, officer, and commander. During his Military service, he received various honors and awards, such as the Excellent Scientist Award, given to the top three academics serving in the Israel Defense Forces. In 2019, Farid completed his military service in the rank of a Captain. Education and academic career As part of the (4 years) Brakim Program, Maor completed his Bachelor's and Master's degrees at the Technion in Mechanical Engineering with honors. Then, he initiated his Ph.D. research as a collaboration with the Israel Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC) in parallel to his duty military service. The main goals of his Ph.D. research were predicting irreversible effects of major earthquakes on Israel's nuclear facilities, and improving their seismic resistance using energy absorption technologies. The mathematical models developed by Farid were able to forecast earthquake effects on facilities with major hazard potential, and predicted the failure of liquid storage tanks due to earthquakes took place in Italy (2012) and Mexico (2017). The energy absorption technologies used, increased in up to 90% the seismic resistance abilities of those sensitive facilities. The research results were published in multiple papers in peer-reviewed academic journals and presented in international academic conferences. Later, this research expanded to an official collaboration between the Technion and the Shimon Peres Negev Nuclear Research Center, which aims to implement the findings obtained on existing sensitive systems, and won funding of 1.5 million NIS from the Pazy foundation of the Israel Atomic Energy Commission and the Council for Higher Education. In 2017, Farid completed his Ph.D. and as the youngest graduate at the Technion for that year, at the age of 24. In the graduation ceremonies, he honored his parents to receive the diplomas on his behalf. At the same year, he served as a lecturer at Ben-Gurion University in an original course he developed as a solution for knowledge gaps he identified in the Israeli defense industry. In 2018, Dr. Farid served as an artificial intelligence researcher at a Data Science team of Unit 8200, where he developed machine learning-based solutions for military and operational needs. In 2019, Farid won the Fulbright and the Israel Scholarship Educational Foundation scholarships, and was accepted to post-doctoral position at Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he develops real-time methods for predicting earthquake effects using machine learning techniques. In 2020, Farid was accepted to the Emerging Leaders Program at Harvard Kennedy School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. At the same year, he received the excellence research grant of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities for leading his research in collaboration between MIT and the Technion. Social activism Farid social activism focuses on empowering youths from disadvantaged backgrounds from an early age. In 2010–2015, he served as a mentor of a robotics team from Dimona in FIRST Robotics Competition, a mathematics tutor in "Aharai!" [he] program for high-school students at risk in Dimona and Be'er Sheva, and a mentor and private tutor of adolescence and reserve duty soldiers from disadvantaged backgrounds. In 2010, he initiated "Learn to Succeed" (Hebrew: ללמוד להצליח) project, for mitigating the social gaps in the Israeli society by empowering youths from the social, economical, and geographical periphery for excellence, self-fulfillment and gaining formal education. In 2018, Learn to Succeed became an official non-profit organization. At the same year, Farid led a crowdfunding project of 150,000 NIS in order to expand the organization to a national scale. In 2019, he published the book "Learn to Succeed", in which he describes his struggle with ADHD, the violent environment in which he grew up, and the changing process he went through from being a violent teenager to becoming the youngest Ph.D. graduate at the Technion. The book was given to more than two thousand youths at risk and became a top seller in Israel shortly after its publication. Maor dedicated the book to his parents and to the memorial of his friend Captain Tal Nachman who was killed in operational activity during his military service in 2014. The organization consists of hundreds of volunteers, gives full scholarships to STEM students from the periphery who serve as mentors of youths, both Jews and Arabs, from disadvantaged backgrounds, runs a hotline which gives online practical and mental support to hundreds of youths, parents and educators, initiates inspirational activities with military orientation to increase the motivation of its teen-age members for significant military service, and gives inspirational lectures to more than 5,000 youths each year. In 2019, Maor initiated a collaboration with Unit 8200 in which tens of the program's members are being interviewed to the unit. This opportunity is usually given to students with the highest grades in the matriculate exams in each class. In 2020, Dr. Farid established the ScienceAbroad center at MIT, aiming to strengthen the connections between Israeli researchers in the institute and the state of Israel. Moreover, he serves as a volunteer in the American Technion Society. Honors and awards Personal life Farid is married to Michal. Interviews and articles References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Dunlap_Observatory] | [TOKENS: 5025] |
Contents David Dunlap Observatory The David Dunlap Observatory (DDO) is an astronomical observatory site in Richmond Hill, Ontario, Canada. Established in 1935, it was owned and operated by the University of Toronto until 2008. It was then acquired by the city of Richmond Hill, which provides a combination of heritage preservation, unique recreation opportunities and a celebration of the astronomical history of the site. Its primary instrument is a 74-inch (1.88 m) reflector telescope, at one time the second-largest telescope in the world, and still the largest in Canada. Several other telescopes are also located at the site, which formerly also included a small radio telescope. The telescope was driven by the vision of astronomer Clarence Chant, shared by businessman David Alexander Dunlap – whose family provided financial support after Dunlap's death in 1924. The scientific legacy of the David Dunlap Observatory continues in the Dunlap Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics, a research institute at the University of Toronto established in 2008. The DDO is the site of a number of important scientific studies, including pioneering measurements of the distance to globular clusters, providing the first direct evidence that Cygnus X-1 was a black hole, and the discovery that Polaris was stabilizing and appeared to be "falling out" of the Cepheid variable category. Located on a hill, yet still relatively close to sea level at 730 feet (220 m) altitude, and now surrounded by urban settlement, its optical astronomy ability has been reduced as compared to other remote observatory sites around the world. On 31 July 2019, the DDO was accepted by the National Historic Board as a National Historic Site of Canada. History The DDO owes its existence almost entirely to the efforts of Clarence Chant. Chant had not shown an early interest in astronomy, but while attending University College, University of Toronto, he became interested in mathematics and physics, eventually joining the university as a lecturer in physics in 1892. Over the next several years he worked as a schoolteacher and civil servant. During a later leave of absence he earned his PhD from Harvard University and did postdoctoral work in Germany. Chant joined the Astronomical and Physical Society of Toronto in December 1892; it was renamed the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada in 1902. Chant became president of the Society, serving between 1904 and 1907. Throughout the 1890s, Chant was concerned about how little the university did for astronomy, and in 1904 he proposed adding several undergraduate courses for fourth-year students, and six such courses were added to the 1905 calendar. With courses now officially on the books, Chant started looking for a proper telescope. Previously the university had hosted the Toronto Magnetic and Meteorological Observatory, which had been run by the Meteorological Office of the Ministry of Marine and Fisheries. The observatory, built in 1840, had contained the high-quality 6-inch (150 mm) Cooke Refractor, but the Observatory was now surrounded by new university buildings, rendering it useless for astronomy. The Meteorological Office had already decided to abandon the site and turn the building over to the university, but they were taking the telescope to their new location at 315 Bloor Street West. Even if the university had been able to secure time on the instrument, which was highly likely, it was at this time quite a small instrument in comparison to those being built around the world. The same problem of encroachment that had led to the observatory falling into disuse led Chant to conclude that there was no suitable location on the university grounds for a new observatory, and he started looking for off-campus sites. While looking, he started getting quotes for a new instrument from Warner & Swasey in Cleveland, Ohio, who had provided the mount for the recently opened Dominion Observatory in Ottawa. In 1910 Chant finally found a suitable location, a 10-acre (4.0 ha) plot of land near what is today Bathurst Street and St. Clair Avenue. The land had originally been set aside by the city for the Isolation Hospital, but this was never constructed and it now lay empty. Chant convinced the city to become involved in the Royal Astronomical Observatory, but lack of funds and the outbreak of World War I put the project on hold, and in 1919 it was cancelled outright. Knowing that similar funding collaborations had been very successful in the United States, Chant turned to the local business community. To promote his plan, Chant often concluded public lectures with a pitch to the audience for a larger observatory for Toronto; this included a 1921 talk on Comet 7P/Pons-Winnecke, which had recently been visible in Canada. One of the attendees was Hollinger Mines co-founder, lawyer David Dunlap (1863–1924), who expressed an interest in Chant's efforts to build a large observatory. However, before making any financial commitment, Dunlap died in October 1924 at age 61 (also see 70207 Davidunlap). In late 1926, Chant wrote to his widow, Jessie Dunlap, with the idea of erecting an observatory as a monument to her husband. Mrs. Dunlap promised to "keep it in [her] heart for consideration, for it appeals to me tremendously." By this point the chosen site was within the rapidly-growing city, and not suitable for astronomy due to both light pollution. A site much further from the city was needed, to ensure it too would not be crowded out, as well as to reduce the impact of moisture-filled air and fog from Lake Ontario. The first site studied was outside Aurora, Ontario, but it was decided that it was too far from the university for casual travel. Another site near Hogg's Hollow was also studied, but was not easily accessible. The eventual site was selected while Chant was studying topographical maps with fellow astronomer Reynold K. Young, finding a suitable spot north of the city. The site was a short distance east of Yonge Street, and the Canadian Northern Ontario Railway line ran along the western end of the site. It was on Lot 42 on what was Alexander Marsh's farm and orchard. In 1930, when Chant took Dunlap to see the site for the first time, she stated "this is the place!" and authorized its purchase for CA$28,000 (equivalent to $505,000 in 2025). Chant immediately ordered a telescope, selecting a 74-inch (1.9 m) instrument from Grubb, Parsons and Company in England. This would make it the second-largest telescope in the world, second only to the 100-inch (2.5 m) instrument at Mount Wilson Observatory. It was, however, only slightly larger than the one that had recently gone into service for the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory in British Columbia, at 72 inches (1.8 m). The eighty-ton sixty-one-foot (18.6 m) copper dome and cylindrical walls of the observatory building were constructed by the Cleveland Bridge and Engineering Co. of Darlington, UK, with the mechanical parts supplied by Grubb & Parsons. The parts of the building and telescope arrived in Toronto in 1933 and were reassembled on site. The administration building, a few hundred feet from the main observatory, was designed by Toronto architectural firm Mathers & Haldenby. The 76-inch (1.9 m) mirror blank (the two outermost inches (5 cm) of the mirror are not used) was supplied by Corning Incorporated and cast in Pyrex from a batch of glass that Corning also used to produce the 200-inch (5.1 m) mirror for Palomar Observatory. Chant and Mrs. Dunlap attended the pouring of the mirror at the factory in Corning, New York in June 1933. The mirror was annealed, then shipped to Grubb-Parsons in England for polishing. The telescope was completed in time for the finished mirror's return in May 1935. The official opening was on 31 May 1935, Chant's 70th birthday. The opening ceremony was attended by notables including Sir Frank Dyson, former Astronomer Royal, and former Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, who praised the Observatory as "a gift to science all over the world". Reynold K. Young was named the first director of the DDO. Chant retired the same day and moved into Observatory House, the original pre-Confederation farmhouse (built in 1864 for Alexander Marsh and known also as Elms Lea Alexander Marsh) just to the south of the administration buildings, where he spent his remaining years. In May 1939, the train carrying King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother on their cross-Canada tour paused on the railway below the observatory, the largest telescope in the commonwealth. Grubb-Parsons built four more 1.88-metre telescopes with similarities to the instrument in Richmond Hill: for Radcliffe Observatory near Pretoria, Mount Stromlo Observatory in Australia, Helwan Observatory in Egypt, and an observatory in Okayama Prefecture in Japan. The South African instrument was disassembled and moved to Sutherland, Northern Cape in the 1970s because of light pollution. The original telescope mirror at Helwan was replaced by Zeiss in 1997, and the telescope at Mount Stromlo was destroyed by fire in 2003. A 1.93-metre Grubb-Parsons telescope at Haute-Provence Observatory with a higher-resolution spectrograph was used to discover an extrasolar planet orbiting the star 51 Pegasi in 1995. The three smaller domes at the top of the DDO administration building are used for smaller instruments. Soon after the observatory opened in 1935, a 50-centimetre (20 in) Cassegrain reflector telescope was installed in the southern dome. A large vacuum tank was constructed, then used to aluminize the 74-inch mirror in 1941. The 6-inch (150 mm) Cooke Refractor had been out of use since the Meteorological Office had given it to Hart House, but it was little used and was moved into the northern dome in 1951 to be used by undergraduates. In 1965, a similar 60-centimetre (24 in) Cassegrain was added to the central dome. From 1946 to 1951 the observatory director was Frank Scott Hogg, who was joined at the DDO by his wife Helen Sawyer Hogg. After her husband's death, Helen continued at the observatory, surveying globular clusters to gauge their distance, publishing a major catalog of variable stars in clusters. Her weekly 'With the Stars' column in the Toronto Star was published from 1951 to 1981. In 1959 and 1966 staff astronomer Sidney van den Bergh composed a database of dwarf galaxies known as the David Dunlap Observatory Catalogue. In collaboration with the Department of Electrical Engineering, Donald MacRae established a radio astronomy observatory on the observatory grounds in 1956. The DDO work led to the 1963 measurement of the absolute flux density of Cassiopeia A at 320 MHz, a radiometric standard. The DDO also built an 18-metre (59 ft) radio telescope in Algonquin Park in northern Ontario, co-locating it at the site of the larger Algonquin Radio Observatory. This instrument was actively used until 1991, when budget cuts led to it being abandoned. It was later used by a private group as part of a SETI project, Project TARGET, and has reported moved to a site outside Shelburne, Ontario. In 1960 observatory operations formed the narrative framework of the National Film Board (NFB) short film Universe. The film was nominated for the 33rd Academy Awards in the category of best documentary, short subject in 1961. Universe was shown at the 1964 New York World's Fair where it was seen by Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke, who were starting work on the film that eventually became 2001: A Space Odyssey. Universe featured future DDO director Donald MacRae and was narrated by Stanley Jackson. Tom Bolton was hired as a postdoctoral fellow at the DDO in 1970. In 1971 he used data from the Uhuru X-ray observatory, and Naval Research Laboratory sounding rockets launched from White Sands Missile Range to find the optical companion star to the X-ray source Cygnus X-1. Those X-ray telescopes had a certain degree of accuracy, but follow-up optical-wavelength studies of possible companions were required to eliminate a shortlist of many stars in the same area of sky. Bolton observed the star HDE 226868 independently of the work by Louise Webster and Paul Murdin, at the Royal Greenwich Observatory, who could not prove that star was Cygnus X-1's optical companion. The high dispersion of the 74-inch (1.9 m) telescope's spectrograph, combined with the 74-inch (1.9 m) aperture was adequate to prove the star was the source of the X-ray emissions and that its behaviour was inconsistent with a normal eclipsing star. With the rapid growth of university funding in the 1960s more offices were being built in the downtown campus, and with the opening of the McLennan Labs more and more of the department moved into the new facilities. The Administration Building at the DDO headquartered the Astronomy Department until the 1960s, although the weekly department meetings continued to be held there until 1978. The main library was shifted downtown in 1983. The Cooke Refractor, now almost unused, was later donated to the Canada Science and Technology Museum in 1984. The main reflector at the DDO remained a major instrument into the 1960s, but in the end even the "remote" location Chant had selected was being encroached on by urban sprawl. Although some consideration was given to moving the telescope to a new site, in the end it was decided the funds would be better spent on a smaller instrument in a much better location. This led to the building of a 60-centimetre (24 in) instrument at Las Campanas in Chile in 1971, creating the University of Toronto Southern Observatory (UTSO). It was at this location that University of Toronto telescope operator Ian Shelton discovered Supernova 1987A, the first supernova visible to the naked eye in more than 350 years. The UTSO was closed in 1997 to re-allocate funds to a share of the Gemini Observatory, and the 60-centimetre (24 in) telescope was moved to El Leoncito in Argentina, where the university has a 25% share in observation time. While University operations continued at the DDO, international observers used about 50% of observing time there. By the mid-1990s, the observatory remained the largest single-mirror site in Canada, but it was considered small by modern standards. The cutting edge of Canadian university astronomy studies was involved in some of the world's largest observatories: the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope, the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope, the Atacama Large Millimeter Array and the Gemini Observatory. None of these telescopes are located in Canada. After the UTSO was closed, in 1998 the Canadian Astronomical Society, a society of university astronomers, published a long range plan emphasizing the study of the origins of structure in the universe, a task well-suited to cutting-edge telescopes but ill-suited to the DDO. The long-range plan suggested the future of observatories such as the DDO lay in public outreach programs and training. In 2005 Canadian universities joined a partnership to build the Thirty Meter Telescope, expected to cost more than $1 billion. In September 2007, the university stated it planned to sell the DDO property owing to light pollution. The university's governing council voted on the issue during the week of 1 November 2007, and agreed to sell the site to the highest bidder. The 75 hectares (190 acres) of land in the midst of a very large subdivision area was expected to fetch $100 million, some of which the university planned to use to found a Dunlap Institute to continue astronomical research. For the purposes of the sale, the land was partitioned into a 71 ha (180-acre) Parcel A and a 5 ha (12-acre) Parcel B (also known as the 'panhandle'), upon which sits the Elvis Stojko Arena and a park with a 200-metre-wide solar system art piece. The land upon which the arena was built was leased to the Town until the Town purchased the 'panhandle' lands in 2012. At the end of June 2008, the university completed the sale of both parcels of the property to Corsica Development Inc., a subsidiary of Metrus Development Inc. for $70 million, a lower price than expected. Observatory staff were laid off and faculty reassigned to the downtown St. George campus. The Town of Richmond Hill planned a hearing with the Conservation Review Board of Ontario to argue for protection of the western 48% of the property including the observatory buildings under the Ontario Heritage Act; at the hearing, the Richmond Hill Naturalists argued for 100% designation of the property, all the buildings and their contents, and the Observatory Hill Homeowners Association argued for the protection of the heritage woodlots and arboretums. Corsica Development Inc. was also represented before the CRB. Preliminary hearings took place on 3 September and 15 October 2008. Corsica Development Inc. is administered by Metrus in conjunction with The Conservatory Group and Marel Contracting. At the same time, the RASC-TC were selected over the DDOD to manage and operate the observatory. The Conservation Review Board hearing to determine the extent of the Cultural Heritage Landscape designation to be afforded to the Dunlap site took place in Richmond Hill between 15 and 23 January 2009, and the Board recommendation was published on 4 June. The Board recommended preservation of the observatory buildings and up to 80% of the property as a cultural heritage landscape. On 29 September 2009, Richmond Hill Town Council voted unanimously in favour of the designating by-law. The Town proceeded with a number of public meetings and reports in late 2009 to craft guidelines for the conservation, planning and design of the property. Corsica Development Inc. undertook an archaeological survey of the property. On 15 April 2010, stemming from an incident on the property in November 2009, Corsica Development Inc. pleaded guilty in York Region court to 17 counts of cutting a tree without a permit and was issued a fine of $44,880. The company also planted 100 new trees on the property as part of the judgment. In January 2009, Corsica published the website observatoryhill.ca describing the property, stating, "[We] are in the process of looking for an astronomy club to occupy the observatory and welcome proposals for consideration." On 22 April 2009, Corsica and the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada announced an agreement allowing the RASC to provide public education and outreach programs at the observatory, and to operate the 1.88m telescope. On 14 June, the RASC Toronto Centre published the website www.theddo.ca, to make tickets available for public astronomy nights at the observatory starting on 18 July. Astronomy events at the observatory continued, such as Perseid meteor shower events that drew high attendance and media coverage. These new operations continued through 2016, combined with opportunities such as use of the observatory for location shoots of the Syfy (formerly Sci-Fi Channel) series Warehouse 13 and the NBC television series Hannibal. In May 2013, after continued debate and appeals for mediation between the town of Richmond Hill and Metrus/Corsica, the Ontario Municipal Board handed down a decision to support official plan amendment 270, the mediated settlement that set aside 56 percent of the site's land to residents for a future public park. Corsica would be allowed to build 530 homes on the eastern portion of the site. Combined with the previous purchase by the Town of Richmond Hill of the Elvis Stojko Arena and surrounding land for $19.5 million, a total of 11 acres of the original 189-acre property is owned by the town. A further legal appeal by the Richmond Hill Naturalists to preserve the entire site from development was launched in August 2013 and was ultimately unsuccessful. The group was eventually ordered to pay some of the developers' court costs in September 2015. In November 2014, the David Dunlap Observatory Defenders group chairperson and founder Karen Cilevitz resigned from her position after being elected to be local councillor for the region's Ward (Ward 5). The organization then formed a new group, the Friends of the David Dunlap Observatory Park, to function as the public stakeholder entity for site advocacy, public engagement and community outreach. In response, in December 2014 both the RASC-TC and the DDOD published editorial letters in the Richmond Hill Liberal, both claiming to be the "true" parties responsible for upkeep and operation of the Observatory. In April 2015, Corsica (having changed their name to DG Group) announced plans to transfer ownership of the observatory buildings to the RASC. Despite RASC-TC's status as a registered charitable corporation, some parties to the 2012 five-party OMB settlement argued that the donation placed the future of the observatory in doubt, because RASC was not a government agency. In March 2016, the dispute was resolved through transfer of ownership of the property to the town of Richmond Hill. On 20 July 2016, the RASC-TC declined to continue negotiations to lease the property for exclusive use and to continue to provide outreach programs at the heritage site. This led to the Town inviting proposals from 35 organizations to continue programming and maintenance of the site. Five applicants submitted proposals, including the York Region Astronomical Association (members of the RASC-TC who had been using, maintaining and programming the site), the RASC-TC, and the DDOD. In October 2016, the Town of Richmond Hill approved a master plan to turn 40 hectares (99 acres) of the Observatory lands into a "destination park", for astronomical outreach programs, while adding recreational amenities such as walking paths, 4 tennis courts, an amphitheatre and a low-light level "Star Path" self-illuminating pathway. A feasibility study for a planetarium on the site was also intended. The project is expected to cost $54 million over 15–20 years. In October 2017, the Town announced it would pursue a joint partnership with the RASC-TC and the DDOD to continue to provide educational and public outreach programming, ending the interim programming provided by the YRAA. Contemporaries The DDO main instrument was the second-largest telescope in the world when it began operation in 1935. Some of the largest telescopes in 1935 were: Later in the 1930s, an 82-inch telescope was completed at McDonald Observatory in Texas. By the end of the next decade Dunlap's was still the fourth largest, due to the opening of the Hale Telescope in 1948. However, the telescope has remained the largest telescope in Canada until 1992, when the somewhat unique UBC-Laval LMT 2.65 m (104 in) came online. However, the LMT is a zenith telescope that only points up, using a liquid metal mirror. In popular culture The Observatory is featured multiple times in the NBC television series Hannibal. The administration building resembles the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. The Observatory is also featured on the Netflix production of The Umbrella Academy. Additionally, it is featured in the Showtime show Lost Girl. It has been used multiple times for the Syfy show Warehouse 13. See also References Further reading External links |
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Contents Jaljulia Jaljulia (Arabic: جلجولية, Hebrew: גַ׳לְג׳וּלְיָה), officially also spelled Jaljulye, is an Arab town in Israel near Kfar Saba. In 2023 it had a population of 10,754. History An archaeological dig started in 2017 at Jaljulia uncovered, at about a five-meter depth, a half-million-year-old "paradise" for Homo erectus hunter-gatherers, including hundreds of knapped flint hand-axes. According to the Israel Antiquities Authority, recurrent occupation of the site indicates that prehistoric humans possessed a geographic memory of the place and could have returned here as a part of a seasonal cycle. In Roman times the village was known as Galgulis, while during the Crusader period it was referred to as Jorgilia in 1241 C.E. It has been suggested that a Crusader sugar factory was later turned into an Ottoman mosque. In 1265 C.E. (663 H) Sultan Baybars allocated equal shares of the village to three of his amirs. One of these, amir Badr al-Din Baktash al-Fakri, included his section of the village in a waqf he established. Excavations of a building close to the Mamluk khan yielded ceramics dating from that period. The mosque is locally known as Jami' Abu´l-Awn, which associates it with the 15th-century religious leader Shams al-Din Abu´l-Awn Muhammad al-Ghazzi, who is known to have come from the town. The architecture of the mosque is, according to Petersen, consistent with a 15th or early 16th century construction date. At present the structure consists of one large vaulted chamber, and three small barrel-vaulted cells. A large second chamber to the west was destroyed by British artillery during World War I. The khan is opposite the mosque. It was built by Sayf al-Din Tankiz, the governor of Damascus 1312–1340, and it was still functioning in the 16th century, when it was mentioned in an Ottoman firman. In the 19th century it was seen by Guérin, who described it as a beautiful khan with a (ruined) polygonal minaret. Petersen, who surveyed the structure in 1996, found the courtyard entirely overgrown and it was not possible to detect any features within; however, he notes that a 19th-century visitor had mentioned that there was "a great round well" in the centre. In 1517, the village was included in the Ottoman Empire with the rest of Palestine, and in the 1596 tax-records it appeared located in the nahiya (subdistrict) of Banu Sa´b, part of Sanjak of Nablus, with a population of 100 households ("Khana"), all Muslim. The villagers paid taxes on a number of crops, including wheat and barley, as well as "summer crops", "occasional revenues", "goats and bees", and a market toll. There was also a poll tax, jizya, paid by all the inhabitants in the Sanjak of Nablus. Total taxes were 18,450 akçe, of which 1/6 went to a waqf. Jaljulia appeared under the name of Gelgeli on Jacotin's map drawn-up during Napoleon's invasion in 1799. In 1870, Victor Guérin found that the village had six hundred inhabitants. In 1882, the Palestine Exploration Fund's Survey of Western Palestine described it as being a large adobe village on the plain. The mosque was described as fine, but ruined. A ruined Khan was also mentioned. Water was supplied by a well on the west side of the village. In 1870/1871 (1288 AH), an Ottoman census listed the village with 62 Household in the nahiya (sub-district) of Bani Sa'b. During the Sinai and Palestine Campaign of World War I, the village was on the Ottoman front line and was damaged by British artillery. In the 1922 census of Palestine conducted by the British Mandate authorities, Jaljulieh had a population of 123 Muslims, increasing in the 1931 census to 260, still all Muslim, in a total of 60 houses. By the 1945 statistics, the village had 740 inhabitants, all Muslims. They owned a total of 11,873 dunams of land, while 447 dunams were public. Jews owned 365 dunams of land. A total of 2,708 dunams were for citrus and bananas, 175 dunams for plantations and irrigable land, 9,301 for cereals, while 15 dunams were built-up (urban) land. After the 1948 war, Jaljulia was on the Israeli side of the ceasefire line and its became part of Israel. It was transferred to Israel in the 1949 armistice agreement. Jaljuliya is noted among the villages of the Israeli Triangle "for the large number of refugee families living side by side in the narrow and crowded streets of its shikūn (state-funded housing), similar to refugee camps abroad." In 2010, a tennis school was established in Jaljulia by Iman Jabber and Daniel Kessel. In 2011, 50 girls and 20 boys signed up for tennis lessons. The school organizes coexistence matches between Jaljulia and Ra'anana. Notable residents See also References Bibliography External links |
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Contents OpenAI OpenAI is an American artificial intelligence research organization comprising both a non-profit foundation and a controlled for-profit public benefit corporation (PBC), headquartered in San Francisco. It aims to develop "safe and beneficial" artificial general intelligence (AGI), which it defines as "highly autonomous systems that outperform humans at most economically valuable work". OpenAI is widely recognized for its development of the GPT family of large language models, the DALL-E series of text-to-image models, and the Sora series of text-to-video models, which have influenced industry research and commercial applications. Its release of ChatGPT in November 2022 has been credited with catalyzing widespread interest in generative AI. The organization was founded in 2015 in Delaware but evolved a complex corporate structure. As of October 2025, following restructuring approved by California and Delaware regulators, the non-profit OpenAI Foundation holds 26% of the for-profit OpenAI Group PBC, with Microsoft holding 27% and employees/other investors holding 47%. Under its governance arrangements, the OpenAI Foundation holds the authority to appoint the board of the for-profit OpenAI Group PBC, a mechanism designed to align the entity’s strategic direction with the Foundation’s charter. Microsoft previously invested over $13 billion into OpenAI, and provides Azure cloud computing resources. In October 2025, OpenAI conducted a $6.6 billion share sale that valued the company at $500 billion. In 2023 and 2024, OpenAI faced multiple lawsuits for alleged copyright infringement against authors and media companies whose work was used to train some of OpenAI's products. In November 2023, OpenAI's board removed Sam Altman as CEO, citing a lack of confidence in him, but reinstated him five days later following a reconstruction of the board. Throughout 2024, roughly half of then-employed AI safety researchers left OpenAI, citing the company's prominent role in an industry-wide problem. Founding In December 2015, OpenAI was founded as a not for profit organization by Sam Altman, Elon Musk, Ilya Sutskever, Greg Brockman, Trevor Blackwell, Vicki Cheung, Andrej Karpathy, Durk Kingma, John Schulman, Pamela Vagata, and Wojciech Zaremba, with Sam Altman and Elon Musk as the co-chairs. A total of $1 billion in capital was pledged by Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, Elon Musk, Reid Hoffman, Jessica Livingston, Peter Thiel, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Infosys. However, the actual capital collected significantly lagged pledges. According to company disclosures, only $130 million had been received by 2019. In its founding charter, OpenAI stated an intention to collaborate openly with other institutions by making certain patents and research publicly available, but later restricted access to its most capable models, citing competitive and safety concerns. OpenAI was initially run from Brockman's living room. It was later headquartered at the Pioneer Building in the Mission District, San Francisco. According to OpenAI's charter, its founding mission is "to ensure that artificial general intelligence (AGI)—by which we mean highly autonomous systems that outperform humans at most economically valuable work—benefits all of humanity." Musk and Altman stated in 2015 that they were partly motivated by concerns about AI safety and existential risk from artificial general intelligence. OpenAI stated that "it's hard to fathom how much human-level AI could benefit society", and that it is equally difficult to comprehend "how much it could damage society if built or used incorrectly". The startup also wrote that AI "should be an extension of individual human wills and, in the spirit of liberty, as broadly and evenly distributed as possible", and that "because of AI's surprising history, it's hard to predict when human-level AI might come within reach. When it does, it'll be important to have a leading research institution which can prioritize a good outcome for all over its own self-interest." Co-chair Sam Altman expected a decades-long project that eventually surpasses human intelligence. Brockman met with Yoshua Bengio, one of the "founding fathers" of deep learning, and drew up a list of great AI researchers. Brockman was able to hire nine of them as the first employees in December 2015. OpenAI did not pay AI researchers salaries comparable to those of Facebook or Google. It also did not pay stock options which AI researchers typically get. Nevertheless, OpenAI spent $7 million on its first 52 employees in 2016. OpenAI's potential and mission drew these researchers to the firm; a Google employee said he was willing to leave Google for OpenAI "partly because of the very strong group of people and, to a very large extent, because of its mission." OpenAI co-founder Wojciech Zaremba stated that he turned down "borderline crazy" offers of two to three times his market value to join OpenAI instead. In April 2016, OpenAI released a public beta of "OpenAI Gym", its platform for reinforcement learning research. Nvidia gifted its first DGX-1 supercomputer to OpenAI in August 2016 to help it train larger and more complex AI models with the capability of reducing processing time from six days to two hours. In December 2016, OpenAI released "Universe", a software platform for measuring and training an AI's general intelligence across the world's supply of games, websites, and other applications. Corporate structure In 2019, OpenAI transitioned from non-profit to "capped" for-profit, with the profit being capped at 100 times any investment. According to OpenAI, the capped-profit model allows OpenAI Global, LLC to legally attract investment from venture funds and, in addition, to grant employees stakes in the company. Many top researchers work for Google Brain, DeepMind, or Facebook, which offer equity that a nonprofit would be unable to match. Before the transition, OpenAI was legally required to publicly disclose the compensation of its top employees. The company then distributed equity to its employees and partnered with Microsoft, announcing an investment package of $1 billion into the company. Since then, OpenAI systems have run on an Azure-based supercomputing platform from Microsoft. OpenAI Global, LLC then announced its intention to commercially license its technologies. It planned to spend $1 billion "within five years, and possibly much faster". Altman stated that even a billion dollars may turn out to be insufficient, and that the lab may ultimately need "more capital than any non-profit has ever raised" to achieve artificial general intelligence. The nonprofit, OpenAI, Inc., is the sole controlling shareholder of OpenAI Global, LLC, which, despite being a for-profit company, retains a formal fiduciary responsibility to OpenAI, Inc.'s nonprofit charter. A majority of OpenAI, Inc.'s board is barred from having financial stakes in OpenAI Global, LLC. In addition, minority members with a stake in OpenAI Global, LLC are barred from certain votes due to conflict of interest. Some researchers have argued that OpenAI Global, LLC's switch to for-profit status is inconsistent with OpenAI's claims to be "democratizing" AI. On February 29, 2024, Elon Musk filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman, accusing them of shifting focus from public benefit to profit maximization—a case OpenAI dismissed as "incoherent" and "frivolous," though Musk later revived legal action against Altman and others in August. On April 9, 2024, OpenAI countersued Musk in federal court, alleging that he had engaged in "bad-faith tactics" to slow the company's progress and seize its innovations for his personal benefit. OpenAI also argued that Musk had previously supported the creation of a for-profit structure and had expressed interest in controlling OpenAI himself. The countersuit seeks damages and legal measures to prevent further alleged interference. On February 10, 2025, a consortium of investors led by Elon Musk submitted a $97.4 billion unsolicited bid to buy the nonprofit that controls OpenAI, declaring willingness to match or exceed any better offer. The offer was rejected on 14 February 2025, with OpenAI stating that it was not for sale, but the offer complicated Altman's restructuring plan by suggesting a lower bar for how much the nonprofit should be valued. OpenAI, Inc. was originally designed as a nonprofit in order to ensure that AGI "benefits all of humanity" rather than "the private gain of any person". In 2019, it created OpenAI Global, LLC, a capped-profit subsidiary controlled by the nonprofit. In December 2024, OpenAI proposed a restructuring plan to convert the capped-profit into a Delaware-based public benefit corporation (PBC), and to release it from the control of the nonprofit. The nonprofit would sell its control and other assets, getting equity in return, and would use it to fund and pursue separate charitable projects, including in science and education. OpenAI's leadership described the change as necessary to secure additional investments, and claimed that the nonprofit's founding mission to ensure AGI "benefits all of humanity" would be better fulfilled. The plan has been criticized by former employees. A legal letter named "Not For Private Gain" asked the attorneys general of California and Delaware to intervene, stating that the restructuring is illegal and would remove governance safeguards from the nonprofit and the attorneys general. The letter argues that OpenAI's complex structure was deliberately designed to remain accountable to its mission, without the conflicting pressure of maximizing profits. It contends that the nonprofit is best positioned to advance its mission of ensuring AGI benefits all of humanity by continuing to control OpenAI Global, LLC, whatever the amount of equity that it could get in exchange. PBCs can choose how they balance their mission with profit-making. Controlling shareholders have a large influence on how closely a PBC sticks to its mission. On October 28, 2025, OpenAI announced that it had adopted the new PBC corporate structure after receiving approval from the attorneys general of California and Delaware. Under the new structure, OpenAI's for-profit branch became a public benefit corporation known as OpenAI Group PBC, while the non-profit was renamed to the OpenAI Foundation. The OpenAI Foundation holds a 26% stake in the PBC, while Microsoft holds a 27% stake and the remaining 47% is owned by employees and other investors. All members of the OpenAI Group PBC board of directors will be appointed by the OpenAI Foundation, which can remove them at any time. Members of the Foundation's board will also serve on the for-profit board. The new structure allows the for-profit PBC to raise investor funds like most traditional tech companies, including through an initial public offering, which Altman claimed was the most likely path forward. In January 2023, OpenAI Global, LLC was in talks for funding that would value the company at $29 billion, double its 2021 value. On January 23, 2023, Microsoft announced a new US$10 billion investment in OpenAI Global, LLC over multiple years, partially needed to use Microsoft's cloud-computing service Azure. From September to December, 2023, Microsoft rebranded all variants of its Copilot to Microsoft Copilot, and they added MS-Copilot to many installations of Windows and released Microsoft Copilot mobile apps. Following OpenAI's 2025 restructuring, Microsoft owns a 27% stake in the for-profit OpenAI Group PBC, valued at $135 billion. In a deal announced the same day, OpenAI agreed to purchase $250 billion of Azure services, with Microsoft ceding their right of first refusal over OpenAI's future cloud computing purchases. As part of the deal, OpenAI will continue to share 20% of its revenue with Microsoft until it achieves AGI, which must now be verified by an independent panel of experts. The deal also loosened restrictions on both companies working with third parties, allowing Microsoft to pursue AGI independently and allowing OpenAI to develop products with other companies. In 2017, OpenAI spent $7.9 million, a quarter of its functional expenses, on cloud computing alone. In comparison, DeepMind's total expenses in 2017 were $442 million. In the summer of 2018, training OpenAI's Dota 2 bots required renting 128,000 CPUs and 256 GPUs from Google for multiple weeks. In October 2024, OpenAI completed a $6.6 billion capital raise with a $157 billion valuation including investments from Microsoft, Nvidia, and SoftBank. On January 21, 2025, Donald Trump announced The Stargate Project, a joint venture between OpenAI, Oracle, SoftBank and MGX to build an AI infrastructure system in conjunction with the US government. The project takes its name from OpenAI's existing "Stargate" supercomputer project and is estimated to cost $500 billion. The partners planned to fund the project over the next four years. In July, the United States Department of Defense announced that OpenAI had received a $200 million contract for AI in the military, along with Anthropic, Google, and xAI. In the same month, the company made a deal with the UK Government to use ChatGPT and other AI tools in public services. OpenAI subsequently began a $50 million fund to support nonprofit and community organizations. In April 2025, OpenAI raised $40 billion at a $300 billion post-money valuation, which was the highest-value private technology deal in history. The financing round was led by SoftBank, with other participants including Microsoft, Coatue, Altimeter and Thrive. In July 2025, the company reported annualized revenue of $12 billion. This was an increase from $3.7 billion in 2024, which was driven by ChatGPT subscriptions, which reached 20 million paid subscribers by April 2025, up from 15.5 million at the end of 2024, alongside a rapidly expanding enterprise customer base that grew to five million business users. The company’s cash burn remains high because of the intensive computational costs required to train and operate large language models. It projects an $8 billion operating loss in 2025. OpenAI reports revised long-term spending projections totaling approximately $115 billion through 2029, with annual expenditures projected to escalate significantly, reaching $17 billion in 2026, $35 billion in 2027, and $45 billion in 2028. These expenditures are primarily allocated toward expanding compute infrastructure, developing proprietary AI chips, constructing data centers, and funding intensive model training programs, with more than half of the spending through the end of the decade expected to support research-intensive compute for model training and development. The company's financial strategy prioritizes market expansion and technological advancement over near-term profitability, with OpenAI targeting cash-flow-positive operations by 2029 and projecting revenue of approximately $200 billion by 2030. This aggressive spending trajectory underscores both the enormous capital requirements of scaling cutting-edge AI technology and OpenAI's commitment to maintaining its position as a leader in the artificial intelligence industry. In October 2025, OpenAI completed an employee share sale of up to $10 billion to existing investors which valued the company at $500 billion. The deal values OpenAI as the most valuable privately owned company in the world—surpassing SpaceX as the world's most valuable private company. On November 17, 2023, Sam Altman was removed as CEO when its board of directors (composed of Helen Toner, Ilya Sutskever, Adam D'Angelo and Tasha McCauley) cited a lack of confidence in him. Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati took over as interim CEO. Greg Brockman, the president of OpenAI, was also removed as chairman of the board and resigned from the company's presidency shortly thereafter. Three senior OpenAI researchers subsequently resigned: director of research and GPT-4 lead Jakub Pachocki, head of AI risk Aleksander Mądry, and researcher Szymon Sidor. On November 18, 2023, there were reportedly talks of Altman returning as CEO amid pressure placed upon the board by investors such as Microsoft and Thrive Capital, who objected to Altman's departure. Although Altman himself spoke in favor of returning to OpenAI, he has since stated that he considered starting a new company and bringing former OpenAI employees with him if talks to reinstate him didn't work out. The board members agreed "in principle" to resign if Altman returned. On November 19, 2023, negotiations with Altman to return failed and Murati was replaced by Emmett Shear as interim CEO. The board initially contacted Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei (a former OpenAI executive) about replacing Altman, and proposed a merger of the two companies, but both offers were declined. On November 20, 2023, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella announced Altman and Brockman would be joining Microsoft to lead a new advanced AI research team, but added that they were still committed to OpenAI despite recent events. Before the partnership with Microsoft was finalized, Altman gave the board another opportunity to negotiate with him. About 738 of OpenAI's 770 employees, including Murati and Sutskever, signed an open letter stating they would quit their jobs and join Microsoft if the board did not rehire Altman and then resign. This prompted OpenAI investors to consider legal action against the board as well. In response, OpenAI management sent an internal memo to employees stating that negotiations with Altman and the board had resumed and would take some time. On November 21, 2023, after continued negotiations, Altman and Brockman returned to the company in their prior roles along with a reconstructed board made up of new members Bret Taylor (as chairman) and Lawrence Summers, with D'Angelo remaining. According to subsequent reporting, shortly before Altman’s firing, some employees raised concerns to the board about how he had handled the safety implications of a recent internal AI capability discovery. On November 29, 2023, OpenAI announced that an anonymous Microsoft employee had joined the board as a non-voting member to observe the company's operations; Microsoft resigned from the board in July 2024. In February 2024, the Securities and Exchange Commission subpoenaed OpenAI's internal communication to determine if Altman's alleged lack of candor misled investors. In 2024, following the temporary removal of Sam Altman and his return, many employees gradually left OpenAI, including most of the original leadership team and a significant number of AI safety researchers. In August 2023, it was announced that OpenAI had acquired the New York-based start-up Global Illumination, a company that deploys AI to develop digital infrastructure and creative tools. In June 2024, OpenAI acquired Multi, a startup focused on remote collaboration. In March 2025, OpenAI reached a deal with CoreWeave to acquire $350 million worth of CoreWeave shares and access to AI infrastructure, in return for $11.9 billion paid over five years. Microsoft was already CoreWeave's biggest customer in 2024. Alongside their other business dealings, OpenAI and Microsoft were renegotiating the terms of their partnership to facilitate a potential future initial public offering by OpenAI, while ensuring Microsoft's continued access to advanced AI models. On May 21, OpenAI announced the $6.5 billion acquisition of io, an AI hardware start-up founded by former Apple designer Jony Ive in 2024. In September 2025, OpenAI agreed to acquire the product testing startup Statsig for $1.1 billion in an all-stock deal and appointed Statsig's founding CEO Vijaye Raji as OpenAI's chief technology officer of applications. The company also announced development of an AI-driven hiring service designed to rival LinkedIn. OpenAI acquired personal finance app Roi in October 2025. In October 2025, OpenAI acquired Software Applications Incorporated, the developer of Sky, a macOS-based natural language interface designed to operate across desktop applications. The Sky team joined OpenAI, and the company announced plans to integrate Sky’s capabilities into ChatGPT. In December 2025, it was announced OpenAI had agreed to acquire Neptune, an AI tooling startup that helps companies track and manage model training, for an undisclosed amount. In January 2026, it was announced OpenAI had acquired healthcare technology startup Torch for approximately $60 million. The acquisition followed the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT Health product and was intended to strengthen the company’s medical data and healthcare artificial intelligence capabilities. OpenAI has been criticized for outsourcing the annotation of data sets to Sama, a company based in San Francisco that employed workers in Kenya. These annotations were used to train an AI model to detect toxicity, which could then be used to moderate toxic content, notably from ChatGPT's training data and outputs. However, these pieces of text usually contained detailed descriptions of various types of violence, including sexual violence. The investigation uncovered that OpenAI began sending snippets of data to Sama as early as November 2021. The four Sama employees interviewed by Time described themselves as mentally scarred. OpenAI paid Sama $12.50 per hour of work, and Sama was redistributing the equivalent of between $1.32 and $2.00 per hour post-tax to its annotators. Sama's spokesperson said that the $12.50 was also covering other implicit costs, among which were infrastructure expenses, quality assurance and management. In 2024, OpenAI began collaborating with Broadcom to design a custom AI chip capable of both training and inference, targeted for mass production in 2026 and to be manufactured by TSMC on a 3 nm process node. This initiative intended to reduce OpenAI's dependence on Nvidia GPUs, which are costly and face high demand in the market. In January 2024, Arizona State University purchased ChatGPT Enterprise in OpenAI's first deal with a university. In June 2024, Apple Inc. signed a contract with OpenAI to integrate ChatGPT features into its products as part of its new Apple Intelligence initiative. In June 2025, OpenAI began renting Google Cloud's Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) to support ChatGPT and related services, marking its first meaningful use of non‑Nvidia AI chips. In September 2025, it was revealed that OpenAI signed a contract with Oracle to purchase $300 billion in computing power over the next five years. In September 2025, OpenAI and NVIDIA announced a memorandum of understanding that included a potential deployment of at least 10 gigawatts of NVIDIA systems and a $100 billion investment from NVIDIA in OpenAI. OpenAI expected the negotiations to be completed within weeks. As of January 2026, this has not been realized, and the two sides are rethinking the future of their partnership. In October 2025, OpenAI announced a multi-billion dollar deal with AMD. OpenAI committed to purchasing six gigawatts worth of AMD chips, starting with the MI450. OpenAI will have the option to buy up to 160 million shares of AMD, about 10% of the company, depending on development, performance and share price targets. In December 2025, Disney said it would make a $1 billion investment in OpenAI, and signed a three-year licensing deal that will let users generate videos using Sora—OpenAI's short-form AI video platform. More than 200 Disney, Marvel, Star Wars and Pixar characters will be available to OpenAI users. In early 2026, Amazon entered advanced discussions to invest up to $50 billion in OpenAI as part of a potential artificial intelligence partnership. Under the proposed agreement, OpenAI’s models could be integrated into Amazon’s digital assistant Alexa and other internal projects. OpenAI provides LLMs to the Artificial Intelligence Cyber Challenge and to the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health. In October 2024, The Intercept revealed that OpenAI's tools are considered "essential" for AFRICOM's mission and included in an "Exception to Fair Opportunity" contractual agreement between the United States Department of Defense and Microsoft. In December 2024, OpenAI said it would partner with defense-tech company Anduril to build drone defense technologies for the United States and its allies. In 2025, OpenAI's Chief Product Officer, Kevin Weil, was commissioned lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army to join Detachment 201 as senior advisor. In June 2025, the U.S. Department of Defense awarded OpenAI a $200 million one-year contract to develop AI tools for military and national security applications. OpenAI announced a new program, OpenAI for Government, to give federal, state, and local governments access to its models, including ChatGPT. Services In February 2019, GPT-2 was announced, which gained attention for its ability to generate human-like text. In 2020, OpenAI announced GPT-3, a language model trained on large internet datasets. GPT-3 is aimed at natural language answering questions, but it can also translate between languages and coherently generate improvised text. It also announced that an associated API, named the API, would form the heart of its first commercial product. Eleven employees left OpenAI, mostly between December 2020 and January 2021, in order to establish Anthropic. In 2021, OpenAI introduced DALL-E, a specialized deep learning model adept at generating complex digital images from textual descriptions, utilizing a variant of the GPT-3 architecture. In December 2022, OpenAI received widespread media coverage after launching a free preview of ChatGPT, its new AI chatbot based on GPT-3.5. According to OpenAI, the preview received over a million signups within the first five days. According to anonymous sources cited by Reuters in December 2022, OpenAI Global, LLC was projecting $200 million of revenue in 2023 and $1 billion in revenue in 2024. After ChatGPT was launched, Google announced a similar chatbot, Bard, amid internal concerns that ChatGPT could threaten Google’s position as a primary source of online information. On February 7, 2023, Microsoft announced that it was building AI technology based on the same foundation as ChatGPT into Microsoft Bing, Edge, Microsoft 365 and other products. On March 14, 2023, OpenAI released GPT-4, both as an API (with a waitlist) and as a feature of ChatGPT Plus. On November 6, 2023, OpenAI launched GPTs, allowing individuals to create customized versions of ChatGPT for specific purposes, further expanding the possibilities of AI applications across various industries. On November 14, 2023, OpenAI announced they temporarily suspended new sign-ups for ChatGPT Plus due to high demand. Access for newer subscribers re-opened a month later on December 13. In December 2024, the company launched the Sora model. It also launched OpenAI o1, an early reasoning model that was internally codenamed strawberry. Additionally, ChatGPT Pro—a $200/month subscription service offering unlimited o1 access and enhanced voice features—was introduced, and preliminary benchmark results for the upcoming OpenAI o3 models were shared. On January 23, 2025, OpenAI released Operator, an AI agent and web automation tool for accessing websites to execute goals defined by users. The feature was only available to Pro users in the United States. OpenAI released deep research agent, nine days later. It scored a 27% accuracy on the benchmark Humanity's Last Exam (HLE). Altman later stated GPT-4.5 would be the last model without full chain-of-thought reasoning. In July 2025, reports indicated that AI models by both OpenAI and Google DeepMind solved mathematics problems at the level of top-performing students in the International Mathematical Olympiad. OpenAI's large language model was able to achieve gold medal-level performance, reflecting significant progress in AI's reasoning abilities. On October 6, 2025, OpenAI unveiled its Agent Builder platform during the company's DevDay event. The platform includes a visual drag-and-drop interface that lets developers and businesses design, test, and deploy agentic workflows with limited coding. On October 21, 2025, OpenAI introduced ChatGPT Atlas, a browser integrating the ChatGPT assistant directly into web navigation, to compete with existing browsers such as Google Chrome and Apple Safari. On December 11, 2025, OpenAI announced GPT-5.2. This model will be better at creating spreadsheets, building presentations, perceiving images, writing code and understanding long context. On January 27, 2026, OpenAI introduced Prism, a LaTeX-native workspace meant to assist scientists to help with research and writing. The platform utilizes GPT-5.2 as a backend to automate the process of drafting for scientific papers, including features for managing citations, complex equation formatting, and real-time collaborative editing. In March 2023, the company was criticized for disclosing particularly few technical details about products like GPT-4, contradicting its initial commitment to openness and making it harder for independent researchers to replicate its work and develop safeguards. OpenAI cited competitiveness and safety concerns to justify this repudiation. OpenAI's former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever argued in 2023 that open-sourcing increasingly capable models was increasingly risky, and that the safety reasons for not open-sourcing the most potent AI models would become "obvious" in a few years. In September 2025, OpenAI published a study on how people use ChatGPT for everyday tasks. The study found that "non-work tasks" (according to an LLM-based classifier) account for more than 72 percent of all ChatGPT usage, with a minority of overall usage related to business productivity. In July 2023, OpenAI launched the superalignment project, aiming within four years to determine how to align future superintelligent systems. OpenAI promised to dedicate 20% of its computing resources to the project, although the team denied receiving anything close to 20%. OpenAI ended the project in May 2024 after its co-leaders Ilya Sutskever and Jan Leike left the company. In August 2025, OpenAI was criticized after thousands of private ChatGPT conversations were inadvertently exposed to public search engines like Google due to an experimental "share with search engines" feature. The opt-in toggle, intended to allow users to make specific chats discoverable, resulted in some discussions including personal details such as names, locations, and intimate topics appearing in search results when users accidentally enabled it while sharing links. OpenAI announced the feature's permanent removal on August 1, 2025, and the company began coordinating with search providers to remove the exposed content, emphasizing that it was not a security breach but a design flaw that heightened privacy risks. CEO Sam Altman acknowledged the issue in a podcast, noting users often treat ChatGPT as a confidant for deeply personal matters, which amplified concerns about AI handling sensitive data. Management In 2018, Musk resigned from his Board of Directors seat, citing "a potential future conflict [of interest]" with his role as CEO of Tesla due to Tesla's AI development for self-driving cars. OpenAI stated that Musk's financial contributions were below $45 million. On March 3, 2023, Reid Hoffman resigned from his board seat, citing a desire to avoid conflicts of interest with his investments in AI companies via Greylock Partners, and his co-founding of the AI startup Inflection AI. Hoffman remained on the board of Microsoft, a major investor in OpenAI. In May 2024, Chief Scientist Ilya Sutskever resigned and was succeeded by Jakub Pachocki. Co-leader Jan Leike also departed amid concerns over safety and trust. OpenAI then signed deals with Reddit, News Corp, Axios, and Vox Media. Paul Nakasone then joined the board of OpenAI. In August 2024, cofounder John Schulman left OpenAI to join Anthropic, and OpenAI's president Greg Brockman took extended leave until November. In September 2024, CTO Mira Murati left the company. In November 2025, Lawrence Summers resigned from the board of directors. Governance and legal issues In May 2023, Sam Altman, Greg Brockman and Ilya Sutskever posted recommendations for the governance of superintelligence. They stated that superintelligence could happen within the next 10 years, allowing a "dramatically more prosperous future" and that "given the possibility of existential risk, we can't just be reactive". They proposed creating an international watchdog organization similar to IAEA to oversee AI systems above a certain capability threshold, suggesting that relatively weak AI systems on the other side should not be overly regulated. They also called for more technical safety research for superintelligences, and asked for more coordination, for example through governments launching a joint project which "many current efforts become part of". In July 2023, the FTC issued a civil investigative demand to OpenAI to investigate whether the company's data security and privacy practices to develop ChatGPT were unfair or harmed consumers (including by reputational harm) in violation of Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act of 1914. These are typically preliminary investigative matters and are nonpublic, but the FTC's document was leaked. In July 2023, the FTC launched an investigation into OpenAI over allegations that the company scraped public data and published false and defamatory information. They asked OpenAI for comprehensive information about its technology and privacy safeguards, as well as any steps taken to prevent the recurrence of situations in which its chatbot generated false and derogatory content about people. The agency also raised concerns about ‘circular’ spending arrangements—for example, Microsoft extending Azure credits to OpenAI while both companies shared engineering talent—and warned that such structures could negatively affect the public. In September 2024, OpenAI's global affairs chief endorsed the UK's "smart" AI regulation during testimony to a House of Lords committee. In February 2025, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman stated that the company is interested in collaborating with the People's Republic of China, despite regulatory restrictions imposed by the U.S. government. This shift comes in response to the growing influence of the Chinese artificial intelligence company DeepSeek, which has disrupted the AI market with open models, including DeepSeek V3 and DeepSeek R1. Following DeepSeek's market emergence, OpenAI enhanced security protocols to protect proprietary development techniques from industrial espionage. Some industry observers noted similarities between DeepSeek's model distillation approach and OpenAI's methodology, though no formal intellectual property claim was filed. According to Oliver Roberts, in March 2025, the United States had 781 state AI bills or laws. OpenAI advocated for preempting state AI laws with federal laws. According to Scott Kohler, OpenAI has opposed California's AI legislation and suggested that the state bill encroaches on a more competent federal government. Public Citizen opposed a federal preemption on AI and pointed to OpenAI's growth and valuation as evidence that existing state laws have not hampered innovation. Before May 2024, OpenAI required departing employees to sign a lifelong non-disparagement agreement forbidding them from criticizing OpenAI and acknowledging the existence of the agreement. Daniel Kokotajlo, a former employee, publicly stated that he forfeited his vested equity in OpenAI in order to leave without signing the agreement. Sam Altman stated that he was unaware of the equity cancellation provision, and that OpenAI never enforced it to cancel any employee's vested equity. However, leaked documents and emails refute this claim. On May 23, 2024, OpenAI sent a memo releasing former employees from the agreement. OpenAI was sued for copyright infringement by authors Sarah Silverman, Matthew Butterick, Paul Tremblay and Mona Awad in July 2023. In September 2023, 17 authors, including George R. R. Martin, John Grisham, Jodi Picoult and Jonathan Franzen, joined the Authors Guild in filing a class action lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging that the company's technology was illegally using their copyrighted work. The New York Times also sued the company in late December 2023. In May 2024 it was revealed that OpenAI had destroyed its Books1 and Books2 training datasets, which were used in the training of GPT-3, and which the Authors Guild believed to have contained over 100,000 copyrighted books. In 2021, OpenAI developed a speech recognition tool called Whisper. OpenAI used it to transcribe more than one million hours of YouTube videos into text for training GPT-4. The automated transcription of YouTube videos raised concerns within OpenAI employees regarding potential violations of YouTube's terms of service, which prohibit the use of videos for applications independent of the platform, as well as any type of automated access to its videos. Despite these concerns, the project proceeded with notable involvement from OpenAI's president, Greg Brockman. The resulting dataset proved instrumental in training GPT-4. In February 2024, The Intercept as well as Raw Story and Alternate Media Inc. filed lawsuit against OpenAI on copyright litigation ground. The lawsuit is said to have charted a new legal strategy for digital-only publishers to sue OpenAI. On April 30, 2024, eight newspapers filed a lawsuit in the Southern District of New York against OpenAI and Microsoft, claiming illegal harvesting of their copyrighted articles. The suing publications included The Mercury News, The Denver Post, The Orange County Register, St. Paul Pioneer Press, Chicago Tribune, Orlando Sentinel, Sun Sentinel, and New York Daily News. In June 2023, a lawsuit claimed that OpenAI scraped 300 billion words online without consent and without registering as a data broker. It was filed in San Francisco, California, by sixteen anonymous plaintiffs. They also claimed that OpenAI and its partner as well as customer Microsoft continued to unlawfully collect and use personal data from millions of consumers worldwide to train artificial intelligence models. On May 22, 2024, OpenAI entered into an agreement with News Corp to integrate news content from The Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, The Times, and The Sunday Times into its AI platform. Meanwhile, other publications like The New York Times chose to sue OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement over the use of their content to train AI models. In November 2024, a coalition of Canadian news outlets, including the Toronto Star, Metroland Media, Postmedia, The Globe and Mail, The Canadian Press and CBC, sued OpenAI for using their news articles to train its software without permission. In October 2024 during a New York Times interview, Suchir Balaji accused OpenAI of violating copyright law in developing its commercial LLMs which he had helped engineer. He was a likely witness in a major copyright trial against the AI company, and was one of several of its current or former employees named in court filings as potentially having documents relevant to the case. On November 26, 2024, Balaji died by suicide. His death prompted the circulation of conspiracy theories alleging that he had been deliberately silenced. California Congressman Ro Khanna endorsed calls for an investigation. On April 24, 2025, Ziff Davis sued OpenAI in Delaware federal court for copyright infringement. Ziff Davis is known for publications such as ZDNet, PCMag, CNET, IGN and Lifehacker. In April 2023, the EU's European Data Protection Board (EDPB) formed a dedicated task force on ChatGPT "to foster cooperation and to exchange information on possible enforcement actions conducted by data protection authorities" based on the "enforcement action undertaken by the Italian data protection authority against OpenAI about the ChatGPT service". In late April 2024 NOYB filed a complaint with the Austrian Datenschutzbehörde against OpenAI for violating the European General Data Protection Regulation. A text created with ChatGPT gave a false date of birth for a living person without giving the individual the option to see the personal data used in the process. A request to correct the mistake was denied. Additionally, neither the recipients of ChatGPT's work nor the sources used, could be made available, OpenAI claimed. OpenAI was criticized for lifting its ban on using ChatGPT for "military and warfare". Up until January 10, 2024, its "usage policies" included a ban on "activity that has high risk of physical harm, including", specifically, "weapons development" and "military and warfare". Its new policies prohibit "[using] our service to harm yourself or others" and to "develop or use weapons". In August 2025, the parents of a 16-year-old boy who died by suicide filed a wrongful death lawsuit against OpenAI (and CEO Sam Altman), alleging that months of conversations with ChatGPT about mental health and methods of self-harm contributed to their son's death and that safeguards were inadequate for minors. OpenAI expressed condolences and said it was strengthening protections (including updated crisis response behavior and parental controls). Coverage described it as a first-of-its-kind wrongful death case targeting the company's chatbot. The complaint was filed in California state court in San Francisco. In November 2025, the Social Media Victims Law Center and Tech Justice Law Project filed seven lawsuits against OpenAI, of which four lawsuits alleged wrongful death. The suits were filed on behalf of Zane Shamblin, 23, of Texas; Amaurie Lacey, 17, of Georgia; Joshua Enneking, 26, of Florida; and Joe Ceccanti, 48, of Oregon, who each committed suicide after prolonged ChatGPT usage. In December 2025, Stein-Erik Soelberg, who was 56 years old at the time, allegedly murdered his mother Suzanne Adams. In the months prior the paranoid, delusional man often discussed his ideas with ChatGPT. Adam's estate then sued OpenAI claiming that the company shared responsibility due to the risk of chatbot psychosis despite the fact that chatbot psychosis is not a real medical diagnosis. OpenAI responded saying they will make ChatGPT safer for users disconnected from reality. See also References Further reading External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obsidian_Entertainment] | [TOKENS: 4934] |
Contents Obsidian Entertainment Obsidian Entertainment, Inc. is an American video game developer based in Irvine, California and part of Xbox Game Studios. It was founded in June 2003, shortly before the closure of Black Isle Studios, by ex-Black Isle employees Feargus Urquhart, Chris Avellone, Chris Parker, Darren Monahan, and Chris Jones. Although they have created original intellectual property, many of their games are sequels based on licensed properties. Early projects included Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords and Neverwinter Nights 2, both sequels to BioWare-developed games. The team then developed their first original game, Alpha Protocol, in 2010. Other notable works from Obsidian include Fallout: New Vegas, Dungeon Siege III, and South Park: The Stick of Truth, all of which are also licensed properties. Throughout the studio's history, many projects—including Futureblight, Dwarfs, Aliens: Crucible, and Stormlands—were canceled. Due to having so many projects canceled, the company entered a severe financial crisis in 2012. As a result, Obsidian decided to crowdfund their next game, Pillars of Eternity, a role-playing game played from an isometric perspective, which ultimately became a success and saved the studio from closure. The team's focus then changed from developing licensed titles to creating original games based on the studio's own intellectual property, including a sequel to Pillars of Eternity and The Outer Worlds. In November 2018, Obsidian Entertainment was acquired by Microsoft and became part of Microsoft Studios (now known as Xbox Game Studios). Under Microsoft, the company continued to work on triple-A role-playing games Avowed and The Outer Worlds 2, and started developing games that are smaller in scope, such as Pentiment, Grounded, and its sequel. History Obsidian Entertainment was founded by Feargus Urquhart, Chris Avellone, Chris Parker, Darren Monahan and Chris Jones on June 12, 2003. Prior to the establishment of Obsidian, they worked for Interplay Entertainment's subsidiary Black Isle Studios. At Black Isle they created several role-playing games including Icewind Dale, Planescape: Torment, and Fallout 2, and collaborated with BioWare on Neverwinter Nights, Baldur's Gate, and Baldur's Gate II. Most of these games were critically and commercially successful, but Interplay's financial situation was poor and the studio lost its license to produce Dungeons & Dragons-based games.[a] This led to the cancellation of Baldur's Gate III: The Black Hound. Urquhart and most of the staff members were dissatisfied and frustrated with the cancellation, as the game had already been under development for a year and a half. Urquhart became convinced that staying at Black Isle was no longer a "viable option" for the team, and decided to leave the company. He was in his early thirties at the time, and thought that if he did not start a new company soon, he might become too old to do so. Urquhart officially left Interplay in 2003 with Avellone, Parker, Monahan, and Jones, and founded Obsidian Entertainment with them the same year. At the time of the company's establishment there were seven employees, including the company's five founders. Parker, Urquhart, and Monahan invested $100,000 to $125,000 into their newly founded company. When choosing the name of the company, they had prepared a short list of names for them to choose. The list included "Scorched Earth" and "Three Clown Software". The team eventually chose "Obsidian Entertainment", which they thought was strong, memorable, and felt similar to name of their old studio, Black Isle. Upon its establishment, the studio needed more capital in order to keep its operation running, and thus needed to gain support from publishers. They approached Electronic Arts, but it did not result in a project. The studio also contacted Ubisoft looking to make a Might & Magic game, but Ubisoft instead ended up contracting with Arkane Studios on that project, which became Dark Messiah of Might & Magic. Obsidian pitched a game to Take-Two Interactive called Futureblight, which was described as a Fallout-style game powered by the Neverwinter Nights engine. Similar to the EA and Ubisoft projects, Futureblight was never made. Towards the end of 2003, the team was contacted by LucasArts president Simon Jeffrey, who requested that Obsidian make an action role-playing game set in the Star Wars universe. The team suggested a game concept which featured first-person lightsaber melee combat and that included established characters like R2-D2. Their idea was rejected, and Jeffrey instead asked Obsidian to create a follow-up to the BioWare-developed Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, as the team at Obsidian was familiar with the technology that the original game used. The partnership between the two companies finalized in late 2003, and development of the game, which became Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords, began in October 2003. Obsidian was given 15 months to develop The Sith Lords. Originally set for a holiday 2004 release, LucasArts gave the studio an extension into 2005, before shifting the release date back to holiday 2004 following the Electronic Entertainment Expo. While LucasArts did dispatch members of its own staff to help get the game out on time, a number of features wound up being cut due to time constraints. Due to the moved deadline, Obsidian also did not have enough time to polish the game, and The Sith Lords suffered from crashes and other technical issues. Despite its issues, The Sith Lords was released to positive critical reception. The cut features were eventually restored by modders, who began their effort in 2009 and finished in 2012. From the beginning, the studio's goal was to be able to develop multiple projects simultaneously, and the decision led the company to expand very quickly. Soon after the development of The Sith Lords began, the team expanded to 20 employees. As of July 2004, it had expanded to 27, with 18 from Black Isle, and others from Blizzard Entertainment, Electronic Arts, Taldren, Totally Games, Treyarch, and Troika. Prior to the launch of The Sith Lords, Obsidian was approached by Atari. Atari acquired the license to produce Dungeons & Dragons-based games, and wanted Obsidian to create a sequel to Neverwinter Nights, which became Neverwinter Nights 2. Development of the game began in July 2005 with a team of ten people. The development of the game was headed by Monahan and Avellone. Obsidian became the game's lead developer, while Neverwinter Nights creator BioWare provided technical assistance. While they were developing the game, the team's size grew to about 50 people. The team were given sufficient time for the game's development, and Atari was willing to delay the project's targeted release window from Christmas 2005 to October 31, 2006. Neverwinter Nights 2 received a generally positive critical reception. Two expansions, Mask of the Betrayer and Storm of Zehir, were released in 2007 and 2008. During Neverwinter Nights 2's development, the team approached other publishers to work on additional projects. Disney Interactive Studios commissioned Obsidian to develop a prequel to Snow White and the Seven Dwarves called Dwarfs, which was set to be a third-person action game for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Work began in 2005, and the team developed a prototype and was a year into development when Bob Iger replaced Michael Eisner as CEO of The Walt Disney Company. As CEO, Iger led Disney to head in a completely different direction, which made the Snow White franchise "untouchable" and resulted in the cancellation of the project. According to Urquhart, the team loved the game and its cancellation was a "heartbreaking" experience for them. With the development of Neverwinter Nights 2 coming to an end, Obsidian was contacted by three different publishers. Electronic Arts wanted Obsidian to develop a role-playing game to compete with The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, and another publisher was also interested in having Obsidian develop a fantasy RPG. The third publisher was Sega, who wanted the studio to develop an action role-playing game set within the Alien franchise. The game, titled Aliens: Crucible, was to feature base-building, dialogue choices, and character customization. In February 2009, Obsidian sent a prototype to Sega. Sega decided to cancel the game three weeks later without inspecting the demo. The cancellation was officially confirmed in June of that year. At around the same time, Atari again approached Obsidian, this time to revive Baldur's Gate III. Obsidian requested a large budget, which Atari could not afford, and the deal between the two companies fell apart when Atari Europe was sold to Namco Bandai Games. Despite the cancellation of Aliens: Crucible, Sega was still interested in working with Obsidian to develop another project. Instead of developing a sequel, they were asked to develop a role-playing game based on a new intellectual property. The team came up with an idea of a "spy RPG". Sega approved the idea and decided to help with the game's funding and serve as its publisher. The game would go on to become Alpha Protocol. The game's development was troubled; the team did not have a precise vision for Alpha Protocol and struggled to settle on what gameplay elements to include and what the target audience should be. As a result, it suffered from an identity crisis and featured elements from multiple genres. Sega, for its part, was also unable to make decisions quickly and the publisher cut features from the game after their completion. This resulted in numerous delays and excessively long production time; Alpha Protocol took four years to develop. It was finally released in June 2010. Their first original game, Alpha Protocol received mostly mixed reviews from critics. It was also a commercial failure for Sega, which led to their decision to put any plans for a sequel on hold. After the game's launch, Urquhart admitted that there was still room for improvements. Even though the game was a commercial failure, it was well received by the community, which has often demanded that Obsidian make a sequel. Urquhart responded by saying that the team hoped that they can develop Alpha Protocol 2, and "do better" with it. Avellone later added that they were unable to develop a sequel because the rights to the game were owned by Sega and crowdfunding would not be a suitable option. On February 11, 2010, Red Eagle Games and Obsidian announced that they would co-develop one or more games based on The Wheel of Time fantasy novel series by Robert Jordan. On April 25, 2014, however, Urquhart told Computer & Video Games that the agreement between the companies had dissolved after Red Eagle had failed to secure the necessary funding. At the same time that Alpha Protocol was in development, Obsidian was also working on Fallout: New Vegas. Prior to working on New Vegas, they were contacted by Bethesda Softworks about developing a Star Trek game, but the idea never gained traction. After Bethesda released Fallout 3 and began to shift its own focus back towards its Elder Scrolls series, it approached Obsidian with the idea of having the latter studio develop another game in the Fallout series, as several of Obsidian's founders had worked on the franchise while at Black Isle. In developing New Vegas, Obsidian looked at fan requests, which led to New Vegas giving a more prominent role to the in-game factions. When the concept was pitched to Bethesda, it was immediately approved. The development of New Vegas began soon after the cancellation of Aliens: Crucible, and it was released in October 2010. It received generally positive reviews, with some critics saying that the game's quality exceeded that of the critically acclaimed Fallout 3. As was the case with The Sith Lords, the development team did not thoroughly assess New Vegas for bugs and glitches before it was released. Some players were unable to play the game due to constant crashes. These problems were later patched and fixed. Obsidian considered New Vegas to be a learning experience; it was the studio's first AAA game, and it taught the studio how to manage quality assurance. Between The Sith Lords and New Vegas, Obsidian had built a reputation for creating games with technical problems. The team was determined to change this with future titles, and made improvements to their bug-tracking system, These improvements were applied to the studio's next project, Dungeon Siege III, a sequel to the Gas Powered Games-developed Dungeon Siege, published by Square Enix. The game received mixed reviews upon release in 2011, but it enjoyed a stable launch. Dungeon Siege III was the first game to use Obsidian's own in-house Onyx engine. In 2011, the company began working on a third-person open world game named "Stormlands". It was rumored that the game was being produced for the then-unannounced successor to the Xbox 360. The title was ultimately canceled in 2012 by its publisher, Microsoft Studios, causing Obsidian to lay off between 20 and 30 people. Obsidian then transformed Stormlands into another game title called Fallen and then pitched it to other publishers including 2K Games and Ubisoft. Despite hearing no response from them, Fallen became the foundation for one of Obsidian's future games, Tyranny. In October 2009, Obsidian was contacted by South Park Digital Studios to develop a game set within the South Park universe. The team originally thought the phone call from South Park Digital Studios was a prank carried out by another company located in the same building. Obsidian met with South Park's creators, Matt Stone and Trey Parker, with the two parties agreeing that it was critical that the game share the television show's construction paper-like visual aesthetic. Funding was originally provided by Viacom, the parent company of the television channel that South Park is broadcast on. In 2011, Viacom decided to let the video game publisher THQ take over as the game's publisher. Shortly after THQ took over, they entered into a financial crisis, eventually going bankrupt in late 2011. With THQ unable to continue its publishing and funding roles, an auction was held for other publishers to acquire their titles. Obsidian was worried that if the project was canceled, they too would face severe financial difficulties. Eventually Ubisoft acquired the game, which was released as South Park: The Stick of Truth in March 2014. In mid 2014, the studio announced Armored Warfare, a tank game developed for My.com. It launched in open beta during 2015. Obsidian has also maintained a friendly relationship with inXile Entertainment. Like Obsidian, inXile was founded by former employees of Interplay Entertainment. The two companies signed an agreement to share their technology with each other. Obsidian assisted in the development of inXile's Wasteland 2 after its Kickstarter campaign raised $2.1 million, Wasteland 2 was released in late 2014 and received generally positive reviews upon release. We said look, somebody is gonna try to Kickstart a game like this. Somebody is going to try to Kickstart an 'isometric 2D background with 3D characters, real-time with pause, fantasy role-playing game.' There's no way that this is going to go untapped for that long. There are enough other ex-Black Isle and Bioware developers out there, that if we don't do it, we're just gonna miss a perfect opportunity. While the studio managed to complete South Park: The Stick of Truth, the company faced a precarious financial position. The studio received only a small "kill fee" for their work on an unannounced game, codenamed North Carolina. They also lost their bonus for Fallout: New Vegas, as the game failed to meet Bethesda's standard—an aggregate review score of 85 at Metacritic—by 1 point. The team lacked sufficient resources to keep the company's operation running. According to Adam Brennecke, an executive producer at Obsidian, if they failed to pitch a project to a publisher in time they would have exhausted their money and gone bankrupt. At that time, the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter was growing popular and Josh Sawyer, creative director of New Vegas, proposed that the studio put their canceled game on Kickstarter and attempt to secure funding for it there. Some team members were skeptical about the idea and feared that they may not even be able to raise $100,000 through the platform. The question of whether to pursue a Kickstarter campaign led to numerous debates between key members of the company. The debates ended when Double Fine Adventure's campaign launched and saw huge success. Secure in the belief that Kickstarter was a viable funding option, the team decided to use it to fund the development of a game they wanted to make for a very long time: a spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate. The Kickstarter campaign for Pillars of Eternity was launched in September 2012 under the working name "Project Eternity", with Obsidian requesting $1.1 million. The studio approached Kickstarter with the mindset that if their campaign was successful the game could eventually be turned into a franchise, while if they were unsuccessful, they would attempt to refine their ideas and try again with another campaign. Obsidian's campaign was hugely successful, raising $4 million and breaking the record set by Double Fine Adventure. Pillars of Eternity was released in March 2015 to a positive critical reception. Paradox Interactive served as the game's publisher. Obsidian planned an expansion pack, called The White March. It was divided into two different parts, one of which was released on August 25, 2015, and the other on February 16, 2016. A board game for Pillars of Eternity titled Pillars of Eternity: Lords of the Eastern Reach was announced on May 19, 2015. It was developed by Zero Radius Games with input provided by Obsidian. Like the main game, it was funded through a Kickstarter campaign, and it reached its funding goal within a day. In June 2015, studio co-founder Chris Avellone announced his departure from Obsidian. In August 2015, Obsidian partnered with inXile and Double Fine to launch a new funding website named Fig, with Urquhart serving as a member of the company's advising board. The new platform's aim is to offer "equity crowdfunding", and it will only focus exclusively on video game-related projects. Obsidian is set to use Fig as its future crowdfunding platform. It was announced in July 2015 that the company was working on the localization for Skyforge. On August 13, 2014, Obsidian announced that they had licensed the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game to make electronic games, starting with a tablet adaptation of it, which was released for iOS and Android devices in April 2016, with releases for other platforms to be announced. Paizo CEO Lisa Stevens also confirmed plans for an Obsidian-developed computer role-playing game. Urquhart had stated a desire to collaborate with BioWare again on a new Star Wars game. After the release of New Vegas, there is also a desire to work on another Fallout game. On March 15, 2016, Obsidian announced their new project called Tyranny, an isometric RPG set in a world where evil has already won. The game was announced for release in 2016 on Microsoft Windows, Mac and Linux, and was published by Paradox Interactive. The game was originally called Fury, whose concept was created in 2006, and is set in "a world that had been laid waste by a magical apocalypse". The concept later became Defiance, whose concept is similar to that of Tyranny. Defiance, along with ideas of Obsidian's other projects later became Stormlands. As Stormlands was canceled, the company reconsidered the original idea of Defiance to make Tyranny. In April 2016, Leonard Boyarsky joined Obsidian, becoming the second Troika Games co-founder to work for the company. On January 27, 2017, Obsidian announced Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire and launched a crowdfunding campaign on Fig to raise additional development funds. The project achieved its funding goal in less than a day, and was released in May 2018. In February 2017, it was announced that Obsidian were leaving the development of Armored Warfare in the hands of the game's publisher to finish the project. On November 10, 2018, it was announced that the studio had been acquired by Microsoft and would become a part of its Microsoft Studios division. Following the announcement of the acquisition, during The Game Awards ceremony in December 2018, Obsidian announced a new intellectual property named The Outer Worlds, an action role-playing game set in an alternate future in which megacorporations began colonizing and terraforming alien planets. The game was released on October 25, 2019, for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One, and a version for Nintendo Switch released on June 5, 2020. In November 2019, Obsidian announced its next game, titled Grounded, describing it as a "survival adventure where you're the size of an ant". On July 23, 2020, at the Xbox Games Showcase, Obsidian Entertainment revealed a brand new role-playing game called Avowed was currently in development for Microsoft Windows and Xbox Series X. In 2021, another unannounced open-world project for PC and console was also found to be in development through a technical artist job posting on the company's website, which was later revealed to be The Outer Worlds 2 during the Xbox + Bethesda E3 2021 showcase. In 2022, Obsidian revealed Pentiment, a narrative adventure game for Microsoft Windows, Xbox Series X/S and Xbox One with a November 2022 release window. The game director is Josh Sawyer, the game director of Fallout: New Vegas. Philosophy We have to answer to players, no matter what. When you work for a publisher, you have to answer to both, and the two of them may not see eye-to-eye. I'd rather the player pay me directly for something they want, and I'd rather talk with them throughout the process to make sure I'm delivering something they want as well. Obsidian built its reputation making sequels in well-established franchises including Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Neverwinter Nights, Fallout, South Park, and Dungeon Siege. Urquhart has stated that the company is fine with developing sequels, as they are often fun to make since the studio can "get to go play in someone else's world" and further explore and expand upon the original games' ideas. The studio also believes that such licensed projects are easier to develop. Obsidian considered the making of these sequels as stepping stones towards eventually making original games based on their own intellectual property. The studio's focus did later shift towards developing their own games, which allowed Obsidian to maximize their creative freedom and escape the constraints imposed by publishers. The studio has used the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter as an indicator to see whether a game or genre is popular or not. As an independent company prior to their 2018 acquisition by Microsoft, Obsidian believed that they must act and react quickly to market changes and not stagnate on any certain point. While the core focus of Obsidian was still developing character-driven role-playing games, the team were willing to try out projects that are smaller and are in different genres. The decision to develop Armored Warfare was one result of this strategy. A dungeon crawler game based on the story of the company's five founders was made. The game was housed in an arcade cabinet inside Obsidian. Games Notes References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yaksha] | [TOKENS: 2338] |
Contents Yaksha The Yakshas (Sanskrit: यक्ष, IAST: Yakṣa, Pali: Yakkha) are a broad class of nature spirits, usually benevolent, but sometimes mischievous or capricious, connected with water, fertility, trees, the forest, treasure and wilderness. They appear in Hindu, Jain and Buddhist texts, as well as ancient and medieval era temples of South Asia and Southeast Asia as guardian deities. The feminine form of the word is IAST: Yakṣī or Yakshini (Sanskrit: यक्षिणी, IAST: Yakṣiṇī; Pali: Yakkhini). In Hindu, Jain and Buddhist texts, the yakṣas have a dual personality. On the one hand, a yakṣa may be an inoffensive nature-fairy, associated with woods and mountains; but there is also a darker version of the yakṣa, which is a kind of (bhuta) that haunts the wilderness and waylays and devours travellers, similar to the rakṣasas. A unique cultural dance form related to the Yakshas is Yakshagana. Yakshagana is a traditional stage performance, found in Dakshina Kannada, Udupi, Kasaragod district and Uttara Kannada, Shimoga and western parts of Chikmagalur districts, in the state of Karnataka. Early yakshas Yakshas appear in Hindu, Jain and Buddhist texts. Several monumental yakshas are known from the time of the Maurya Empire period. They are variously dated from around the 3rd century BCE to the 1st century BCE. These statues are monumental (usually around 2 metres tall), and often bear inscriptions related to their identification as yakshas. They are considered as the first known monumental stone sculptures in India. Two of these monumental yakshas are known from Patna, one from Vidisha and one from Parkham, as well as one yakshini from Vidisha. The yakṣas may have originally been the tutelary deity of a city, district, lake, or well. Their worship, together with popular belief in nagas (serpent deities), feminine fertility deities, and mother goddesses, may have had its origin among the early Hindu people of India. Yaksha worship coexisted with the priest-conducted sacrifices of the Vedic period. They were later viewed as the steward deities of the earth and the wealth buried beneath. In Hindu, Buddhist and Jain Religion, Kubera, wealth and prosperity, is considered the king of the yakshas and protector of the world (Lokapāla). In Buddhism, he is equated with Vaiśravaṇa. His many epithets extol him as the overlord of numerous semi-divine species and the owner of the treasures of the world. Kubera is often depicted with a plump body, adorned with jewels, carrying a money-pot and a club. His vahana (vehicle) is the mongoose. He is often seen with Lakshmi, the Hindu goddess of wealth, fortune and prosperity. In Buddhism In Buddhist literature, the yakṣa are the attendants of Vaiśravaṇa, the guardian of the northern quarter, a beneficent god who protects the righteous. The term also refers to the Twelve Heavenly Generals who guard Bhaiṣajyaguru, the Medicine Buddha. The yakshas of many Buddhist stories are ugly ogres, reborn in that form because of sins committed during their past lives as humans. One such malevolent yaksha, Silesaloma, appears in the Jataka tales of the Pali Buddhist canon. In the story "Prince Five-Weapons and the Sticky-Haired Demon", Silesaloma is described as being the height of a palm tree, with sharp teeth and two yellow tusks, and a coat of thick, matted fur. A bodhisattva named Prince Panchayudha (Five-Weapons) attempted to kill Silesaloma, but all his attacks, from both his weapons and his bare hands, were thwarted by Silesaloma's sticky hair. Ultimately, Prince Panchayudha impressed Silesaloma with his bravery, and the yaksha decided to let him go. Panchayudha explained that Silesaloma's monstrous state was caused by wicked deeds from his past lives, and he taught the yaksha the five precepts, after which Silesaloma renounced violence and transformed into a friendly forest spirit. The Mahāmāyūrīvidyārājñī Sūtra, a text that dates back to fourth century or earlier (translated from the Sanskrit by Kumarajiva), gives a large list of yakshas that reside in the classical cities of ancient India who are invoked for the protection of the Buddhist Dharma: "The deity Krakucchanda resides in Pataliputra. Aparajita resides in Sthuno. The great yaksha Bhadra resides in Saila. The great deity Manava resides in Uttara. The great sage Vajrapani though lives in Rajagrha Often dwells in Mount Grdhrakuta. The deity Garuda resides in the Vipula mountain. Citragupta resides in Citemukha. The yaksha Vakula resides in Rajagrha. ... The yaksha king Mahagiri resides in Girinagara. The yaksha Vasava resides in Vaidisa. The yaksha Karttikeya resides in Rohitaka. This yaksha Kumara is renowned in the great city. ... Vaisravana who resides in the city Alakavati, Located along the jewelled stairway of the Buddha's descent, Is surrounded by billions of gods and goddesses. Such yakshas command huge and powerful contingents of troops To subjugate adversaries and enemies, Conquering all. They are famous throughout all directions. Imbued with great dignity and virtue, They come to aid In the battles between the heavens and asuras. These deities of virtues and great yaksha generals are located everywhere in Jambudvipa. They uphold and protect the Buddhadharma, generating compassion." In Jainism Jains mainly maintain cult images of Arihants and Tirthankaras, who have conquered the inner passions and attained moksha. Yakshas and yakshinis are found in pair around the cult images of Jinas, serving as guardian deities. The yaksha is generally on the right-hand side of the Jina image while the yakshini is on the left-hand side. They are regarded mainly as devotees of the Jina and have supernatural powers. They are also wandering through the cycles of births and deaths just like the worldly souls, but have supernatural powers. The Harivamsapurana (783 CE) refers to them as Shasandevatas. Initially among the yakshas, Manibhadra and Purnabadra yakshas and Bahuputrika yakshini were popular. The yaksha Manibhadra is worshipped by the Jains affiliated with the Tapa Gachchha. During tenth and thirteenth centuries yaksha Saarvanubhuti, or Sarvahna and yakshinis Chakreshvari, Ambika, Padmavati, and Jwalamalini became so popular that independent temples devoted to them were erected. Yakshas and yakshinis are common among the Murtipujaka Śvētāmbara and Bispanthi Digambara Jains. The Digambara Terapanth movement opposes their worship. Among the Murtipujaka Śvētāmbaras, the Tristutik Gaccha sect (both historical founded by Silagana and Devabhadra, and the modern sect organised by Rajendrasuri) object to the worship of shruta-devatas. In Jainism, there are twenty-four yakshas and twenty-four yakshis that serve as śāsanadevatās for the twenty-four tirthankaras: These yakshas are as follows: In poems In Kālidāsa's poem Meghadūta, for instance, the yakṣa narrator is a romantic figure, pining with love for his missing beloved. By contrast, in the didactic Hindu dialogue of the Yakṣapraśnāḥ "Questions of the Yakṣa", it is a tutelary spirit of a lake that challenges Yudhiṣṭhira. In Mahavamsa poem of Sri Lanka, a local population is given the term Yakkhas. Prince Vijaya encountered the royalty of the yakkhas' queen, Kuveni, in her capital of Lanka pura and conquered them. In Nepal In Nepal, squat stone versions of yakshas (sometimes twinned) were used as elements in construction. Their role was that of a caryatid, which supports a part of the building, for example a column. However, they are best known for their appearance under the spouts of ancient drinking fountains, especially fountains built in the Licchavi era (c. 400–750 AD). Bhagiratha sculptures are more commonly found under spouts from the Malla period (c. 1201–1779 AD). In Thailand Yakshas (Thai: ยักษ์, RTGS: Yak) are an important element in Thai temple art and architecture. They are common as guardians of the gates in Buddhist temples throughout the country since at least the 14th century. Ceramic sculptures of guardian yakshas were produced in Thailand, during the Sukhothai and Ayutthaya periods, between the 14th and 16th centuries, at several kiln complexes in northern Thailand. They are mostly depicted with a characteristic face, having big round bulging eyes and protruding fangs, as well as a green complexion. Yakshas and their female counterparts are common in the Buddhist literature of Thailand, such as in The Twelve Sisters and Phra Aphai Mani. As ogres, giants, and ogresses, yakshas are present as well in Thai folklore. yo yak "ย ยักษ์" is also used as an illustration in order to name the letter ย, the 34th consonant of the Thai alphabet, according to the traditional letter symbols Thai children use to memorise the alphabet. In Sri Lanka Yakshas are regarded as one of the ancient clans of Sri Lanka. The word "Yagasha" has been found in a cave inscription in Tamketiya in Nailgala, Kaltota written in early Brahmi script. Professor Raj Somadeva translates the word as 'belonging to Yakshas' or 'who wrote this inscription are Yakshas'. In Sinhalese, Demons are also known as yakshayo (Singular: Yakshaya). Gallery See also References Sources External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twentieth_government_of_Israel] | [TOKENS: 260] |
Contents Twentieth government of Israel The twentieth government of Israel was formed by Yitzhak Shamir of Likud on 10 October 1983, following the resignation of Prime Minister Menachen Begin on 28 August. Shamir kept the same coalition partners as the previous government, i.e. the National Religious Party, Agudat Yisrael, Tami and the Movement for the Renewal of Social Zionism. The coalition held 62 of the 120 seats in the Knesset. All ministers kept their roles from the previous government, with the only changes being that Shamir replaced Begin as Prime Minister (whilst keeping the Foreign Affairs portfolio), Pesah Grupper being promoted from Deputy Minister of Agriculture (also replacing Begin, who had held the portfolio before), Mordechai Tzipori losing his Deputy Minister of Defense role, and Yehuda Ben-Meir becoming Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs. The government held office until 13 September the following year, when the twenty-first government was formed following the July 1984 elections. Menachem Begin Likud Yitzhak Shamir Likud Cabinet members 1 Although Arens was not an MK at the time, he had been elected to the Knesset on the Likud list. References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=OpenAI&action=edit§ion=26] | [TOKENS: 1430] |
Editing OpenAI (section) Copy and paste: – — ° ′ ″ ≈ ≠ ≤ ≥ ± − × ÷ ← → · § Cite your sources: <ref></ref> {{}} {{{}}} | [] [[]] [[Category:]] #REDIRECT [[]] <s></s> <sup></sup> <sub></sub> <code></code> <pre></pre> <blockquote></blockquote> <ref></ref> <ref name="" /> {{Reflist}} <references /> <includeonly></includeonly> <noinclude></noinclude> {{DEFAULTSORT:}} <nowiki></nowiki> <!-- --> <span class="plainlinks"></span> Symbols: ~ | ¡ ¿ † ‡ ↔ ↑ ↓ • ¶ # ∞ ‹› «» ¤ ₳ ฿ ₵ ¢ ₡ ₢ $ ₫ ₯ € ₠ ₣ ƒ ₴ ₭ ₤ ℳ ₥ ₦ ₧ ₰ £ ៛ ₨ ₪ ৳ ₮ ₩ ¥ ♠ ♣ ♥ ♦ 𝄫 ♭ ♮ ♯ 𝄪 © ¼ ½ ¾ Latin: A a Á á À à  â Ä ä Ǎ ǎ Ă ă Ā ā à ã Å å Ą ą Æ æ Ǣ ǣ B b C c Ć ć Ċ ċ Ĉ ĉ Č č Ç ç D d Ď ď Đ đ Ḍ ḍ Ð ð E e É é È è Ė ė Ê ê Ë ë Ě ě Ĕ ĕ Ē ē Ẽ ẽ Ę ę Ẹ ẹ Ɛ ɛ Ǝ ǝ Ə ə F f G g Ġ ġ Ĝ ĝ Ğ ğ Ģ ģ H h Ĥ ĥ Ħ ħ Ḥ ḥ I i İ ı Í í Ì ì Î î Ï ï Ǐ ǐ Ĭ ĭ Ī ī Ĩ ĩ Į į Ị ị J j Ĵ ĵ K k Ķ ķ L l Ĺ ĺ Ŀ ŀ Ľ ľ Ļ ļ Ł ł Ḷ ḷ Ḹ ḹ M m Ṃ ṃ N n Ń ń Ň ň Ñ ñ Ņ ņ Ṇ ṇ Ŋ ŋ O o Ó ó Ò ò Ô ô Ö ö Ǒ ǒ Ŏ ŏ Ō ō Õ õ Ǫ ǫ Ọ ọ Ő ő Ø ø Œ œ Ɔ ɔ P p Q q R r Ŕ ŕ Ř ř Ŗ ŗ Ṛ ṛ Ṝ ṝ S s Ś ś Ŝ ŝ Š š Ş ş Ș ș Ṣ ṣ ß T t Ť ť Ţ ţ Ț ț Ṭ ṭ Þ þ U u Ú ú Ù ù Û û Ü ü Ǔ ǔ Ŭ ŭ Ū ū Ũ ũ Ů ů Ų ų Ụ ụ Ű ű Ǘ ǘ Ǜ ǜ Ǚ ǚ Ǖ ǖ V v W w Ŵ ŵ X x Y y Ý ý Ŷ ŷ Ÿ ÿ Ỹ ỹ Ȳ ȳ Z z Ź ź Ż ż Ž ž ß Ð ð Þ þ Ŋ ŋ Ə ə Greek: Ά ά Έ έ Ή ή Ί ί Ό ό Ύ ύ Ώ ώ Α α Β β Γ γ Δ δ Ε ε Ζ ζ Η η Θ θ Ι ι Κ κ Λ λ Μ μ Ν ν Ξ ξ Ο ο Π π Ρ ρ Σ σ ς Τ τ Υ υ Φ φ Χ χ Ψ ψ Ω ω {{Polytonic|}} Cyrillic: А а Б б В в Г г Ґ ґ Ѓ ѓ Д д Ђ ђ Е е Ё ё Є є Ж ж З з Ѕ ѕ И и І і Ї ї Й й Ј ј К к Ќ ќ Л л Љ љ М м Н н Њ њ О о П п Р р С с Т т Ћ ћ У у Ў ў Ф ф Х х Ц ц Ч ч Џ џ Ш ш Щ щ Ъ ъ Ы ы Ь ь Э э Ю ю Я я ́ IPA: t̪ d̪ ʈ ɖ ɟ ɡ ɢ ʡ ʔ ɸ β θ ð ʃ ʒ ɕ ʑ ʂ ʐ ç ʝ ɣ χ ʁ ħ ʕ ʜ ʢ ɦ ɱ ɳ ɲ ŋ ɴ ʋ ɹ ɻ ɰ ʙ ⱱ ʀ ɾ ɽ ɫ ɬ ɮ ɺ ɭ ʎ ʟ ɥ ʍ ɧ ʼ ɓ ɗ ʄ ɠ ʛ ʘ ǀ ǃ ǂ ǁ ɨ ʉ ɯ ɪ ʏ ʊ ø ɘ ɵ ɤ ə ɚ ɛ œ ɜ ɝ ɞ ʌ ɔ æ ɐ ɶ ɑ ɒ ʰ ʱ ʷ ʲ ˠ ˤ ⁿ ˡ ˈ ˌ ː ˑ ̪ {{IPA|}} This page is a member of 8 hidden categories (help): |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pakistanis] | [TOKENS: 1097] |
Contents Pakistanis Pakistanis (Urdu: پاكِستانى قوم, romanized: Pākistānī Qaum, lit. 'Pakistani Nation') are the citizens and nationals of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. Pakistan is the fifth-most populous country, with a population of over 241.5 million, having the second-largest Muslim population as of 2023. As much as 85-90% of the population follows Sunni Islam. A majority of around 97% of Pakistanis are Muslims. The majority of Pakistanis natively speak languages belonging to the Indo-Iranic family (Indo-Aryan and Iranic subfamilies). Located in South Asia, the country is also the source of a significantly large diaspora, most of whom reside in the Arab countries of the Persian Gulf, with an estimated population of 4.7 million. The second-largest Pakistani diaspora resides throughout both Northwestern Europe and Western Europe, where there are an estimated 2.4 million; over half of this figure resides in the United Kingdom (see British Pakistanis). Ethnic subgroups Ethnically, Indo-Aryan peoples comprise the majority of the population in the eastern provinces of Pakistani Punjab, Sindh, and Kashmir, while Iranic peoples comprise the majority in the western provinces of Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. In addition to its four provinces, Pakistan also administers two disputed territories known as Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Gilgit–Baltistan; both territories also have an Indo-Aryan majority with the exception of the latter's subregion of Baltistan, which is largely inhabited by Tibetan peoples. Pakistan also hosts an insignificant population of Dravidian peoples, the majority of whom are South Indians who trace their roots to historical princely states such as Hyderabad Deccan and are identified with the multi-ethnic community of Muhajirs (lit. 'migrants'), who arrived in the country after the partition of British India in 1947. Major ethnolinguistic groups in the country include Punjabis, Pashtuns, Sindhis, Saraikis, and Baloch people; with significant numbers of Kashmiris, Brahuis, Hindkowans, Paharis, Shina people, Burusho people, Wakhis, Baltis, Chitralis, and other minorities. Culture The existence of Pakistan as an Islamic state since the 1956 constitution has led to the large-scale injection of Islam into most aspects of Pakistani culture and everyday life, which has accordingly impacted the historical values and traditions of the Muslim-majority population. Marriages and other major events are significantly impacted by regional differences in culture but generally follow Islamic jurisprudence where required. The national dress of Pakistan is the shalwar kameez, a unisex garment widely-worn, and national dress, of Pakistan. When women wear the shalwar-kameez in some regions, they usually wear a long scarf or shawl called a dupatta around the head or neck. The dupatta is also employed as a form of modesty—although it is made of delicate material, it obscures the upper body's contours by passing over the shoulders. For Muslim women, the dupatta is a less stringent alternative to the chador or burqa. Languages Urdu, or Lashkari (لشکری ), an Indo-Aryan language, is the lingua franca of Pakistan, and while it shares official status with English, it is the preferred and dominant language used for inter-communication between different ethnic groups. It is not believed to be a language affiliated with any ethnicity and its speakers come from various backgrounds. Although Indo-Aryan in classification, its exact origins as a language are disputed by scholars. However, despite serving as the country's lingua franca, most Pakistanis speak their ethnic languages and the lingua franca as second. Numerous regional and provincial languages are spoken as native languages by Pakistan's various ethnolinguistic groups, with the Punjabi language having a national plurality as the first language of approximately 45 per cent of the total population. Languages with more than a million speakers each include Pashto, Sindhi, Saraiki, Balochi, Brahui, and Hindko. The Pakistani dialect of English is also widely spoken throughout the country, albeit mostly in urban centres such as Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi. Religion Pakistan officially endorses Islam as a state religion. The overwhelming majority of Pakistanis identify as Muslims, and the country has the second-largest population of Muslims in the world after Indonesia. Other minority religious faiths include Hinduism, Christianity, Ahmadiyya, Sikhism, the Baháʼí Faith, Zoroastrianism, and Kalasha. Pakistan's Hindu and Christian minorities comprise the second- and third-largest religious groups in the country, respectively. Diaspora The Pakistani diaspora maintains a significant presence in the Middle East, Europe, North America, and Australia. According to the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Pakistan has the seventh-largest diaspora in the world. According to the Ministry of Overseas Pakistanis and Human Resource Development of the Government of Pakistan, approximately 10+ million Pakistanis live abroad, with the vast majority (over 4.7 million) residing in the Arab states of the Persian Gulf. See also Notes References Further reading |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kadima-Zoran] | [TOKENS: 396] |
Contents Kadima-Zoran Kadima-Zoran (Hebrew: קדימה-צורן), also known as Kadima-Tzoran, is a local council in the Central District of Israel. The result of the 2003 union of the Tzoran and Kadima councils, in 2023 it had a population of 22,471. Kadima-Zoran is home to the "Ta'am Shel Pa'am" (A Taste of Old Times) museum for the history of the settlement in the elementary school Nitzanei HaSharon.[citation needed] History Before the 20th century, the territory of Kadima-Zoran formed part of the Forest of Sharon, a hallmark of the region's historical landscape. It was an open woodland dominated by Mount Tabor Oak (Quercus ithaburensis), which extended from Kfar Yona in the north to Ra'anana in the south. The local Arab inhabitants traditionally used the area for pasture, firewood and intermittent cultivation. The intensification of settlement and agriculture in the coastal plain during the 19th century led to deforestation and subsequent environmental degradation known from Hebrew sources. Kadima was founded on 5 July 1933 as an agricultural settlement at the initiative of Yehoshua Hankin. Most of the settlers were German immigrants. The name means "forward" in Hebrew, and was taken from a Biblical verse (Habakkuk 1:9). The town was declared a local council in 1950. Tzoran, meaning silicon, was founded in 1992 and was planned by architect Rachel Walden. The settlement was named after a Hasmonean city that had existed in the area. It was first populated in 1994, and declared a local council in 1997. Notable people References External links This geography of Israel article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by adding missing information. |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_URI_scheme] | [TOKENS: 722] |
Contents data URI scheme The data URI scheme is a uniform resource identifier (URI) scheme that provides a way to include data in-line in Web pages as if they were external resources. It is a form of file literal or here document. This technique allows normally separate elements such as images and style sheets to be fetched in a single Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) request, which may be more efficient than multiple HTTP requests, and used by several browser extensions to package images as well as other multimedia content in a single HTML file for page saving. As of 2024[update], data URIs are fully supported by all major browsers. Syntax The syntax of data URIs is defined in Request for Comments (RFC) 2397, published in August 1998, and follows the URI scheme syntax. A data URI consists of: Examples of data URIs showing most of the features are: The minimal data URI is data:,, consisting of the scheme, no media-type, and zero-length data. Thus, within the overall URI syntax, a data URI consists of a scheme and a path, with no authority part, query string, or fragment. The optional media type, the optional base64 indicator, and the data are all parts of the URI path. Examples of use An HTML fragment embedding a base64 encoded PNG picture of a small red dot: In this example, the lines are broken for formatting purposes. In actual URIs, including data URIs, control characters (ASCII 0 to 31, and 127) and spaces (ASCII 32) are "excluded characters". This means that whitespace characters are not permitted in data URIs. However, in the context of HTML 4 and HTML 5, linefeeds within an element attribute value (such as the "src" above) are ignored[citation needed]. So the data URI above would be processed ignoring the linefeeds, giving the correct result. But note that this is an HTML feature, not a data URI feature, and in other contexts, it is not possible to rely on whitespace within the URI being ignored. An HTML fragment embedding a utf8 encoded SVG picture of a small red dot: In this example, the image data is encoded with utf8 and hence the image data can broken into multiple lines for easy reading. Single quote has to be used in the SVG data as double quote is used for encapsulating the image source. A favicon can also be made with utf8 encoding and SVG data which has to appear in the 'head' section of the HTML: A Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) rule that includes a background image: In this example, the \ + <linefeed> line terminators are a feature of CSS, indicating continuation on the next line. These would be removed by the CSS stylesheet processor, and the data URI would be reconstituted without whitespace, making it correct, since whitespace is not allowed within the data component of a data: URI. A JavaScript statement that opens an embedded subwindow, as for a footnote link: A Scalable Vector Graphic image containing an embedded JPEG image encoded in Base64: Malware and phishing The data URI can be utilized to construct attack pages that attempt to obtain usernames and passwords from unsuspecting web users. It can also be used to get around cross-site scripting (XSS) restrictions, embedding the attack payload fully inside the address bar, and hosted via URL shortening services rather than needing a full website that is controlled by a third party. As a result, some browsers now block webpages from navigating to data URIs. References |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=OpenAI&action=edit§ion=27] | [TOKENS: 1430] |
Editing OpenAI (section) Copy and paste: – — ° ′ ″ ≈ ≠ ≤ ≥ ± − × ÷ ← → · § Cite your sources: <ref></ref> {{}} {{{}}} | [] [[]] [[Category:]] #REDIRECT [[]] <s></s> <sup></sup> <sub></sub> <code></code> <pre></pre> <blockquote></blockquote> <ref></ref> <ref name="" /> {{Reflist}} <references /> <includeonly></includeonly> <noinclude></noinclude> {{DEFAULTSORT:}} <nowiki></nowiki> <!-- --> <span class="plainlinks"></span> Symbols: ~ | ¡ ¿ † ‡ ↔ ↑ ↓ • ¶ # ∞ ‹› «» ¤ ₳ ฿ ₵ ¢ ₡ ₢ $ ₫ ₯ € ₠ ₣ ƒ ₴ ₭ ₤ ℳ ₥ ₦ ₧ ₰ £ ៛ ₨ ₪ ৳ ₮ ₩ ¥ ♠ ♣ ♥ ♦ 𝄫 ♭ ♮ ♯ 𝄪 © ¼ ½ ¾ Latin: A a Á á À à  â Ä ä Ǎ ǎ Ă ă Ā ā à ã Å å Ą ą Æ æ Ǣ ǣ B b C c Ć ć Ċ ċ Ĉ ĉ Č č Ç ç D d Ď ď Đ đ Ḍ ḍ Ð ð E e É é È è Ė ė Ê ê Ë ë Ě ě Ĕ ĕ Ē ē Ẽ ẽ Ę ę Ẹ ẹ Ɛ ɛ Ǝ ǝ Ə ə F f G g Ġ ġ Ĝ ĝ Ğ ğ Ģ ģ H h Ĥ ĥ Ħ ħ Ḥ ḥ I i İ ı Í í Ì ì Î î Ï ï Ǐ ǐ Ĭ ĭ Ī ī Ĩ ĩ Į į Ị ị J j Ĵ ĵ K k Ķ ķ L l Ĺ ĺ Ŀ ŀ Ľ ľ Ļ ļ Ł ł Ḷ ḷ Ḹ ḹ M m Ṃ ṃ N n Ń ń Ň ň Ñ ñ Ņ ņ Ṇ ṇ Ŋ ŋ O o Ó ó Ò ò Ô ô Ö ö Ǒ ǒ Ŏ ŏ Ō ō Õ õ Ǫ ǫ Ọ ọ Ő ő Ø ø Œ œ Ɔ ɔ P p Q q R r Ŕ ŕ Ř ř Ŗ ŗ Ṛ ṛ Ṝ ṝ S s Ś ś Ŝ ŝ Š š Ş ş Ș ș Ṣ ṣ ß T t Ť ť Ţ ţ Ț ț Ṭ ṭ Þ þ U u Ú ú Ù ù Û û Ü ü Ǔ ǔ Ŭ ŭ Ū ū Ũ ũ Ů ů Ų ų Ụ ụ Ű ű Ǘ ǘ Ǜ ǜ Ǚ ǚ Ǖ ǖ V v W w Ŵ ŵ X x Y y Ý ý Ŷ ŷ Ÿ ÿ Ỹ ỹ Ȳ ȳ Z z Ź ź Ż ż Ž ž ß Ð ð Þ þ Ŋ ŋ Ə ə Greek: Ά ά Έ έ Ή ή Ί ί Ό ό Ύ ύ Ώ ώ Α α Β β Γ γ Δ δ Ε ε Ζ ζ Η η Θ θ Ι ι Κ κ Λ λ Μ μ Ν ν Ξ ξ Ο ο Π π Ρ ρ Σ σ ς Τ τ Υ υ Φ φ Χ χ Ψ ψ Ω ω {{Polytonic|}} Cyrillic: А а Б б В в Г г Ґ ґ Ѓ ѓ Д д Ђ ђ Е е Ё ё Є є Ж ж З з Ѕ ѕ И и І і Ї ї Й й Ј ј К к Ќ ќ Л л Љ љ М м Н н Њ њ О о П п Р р С с Т т Ћ ћ У у Ў ў Ф ф Х х Ц ц Ч ч Џ џ Ш ш Щ щ Ъ ъ Ы ы Ь ь Э э Ю ю Я я ́ IPA: t̪ d̪ ʈ ɖ ɟ ɡ ɢ ʡ ʔ ɸ β θ ð ʃ ʒ ɕ ʑ ʂ ʐ ç ʝ ɣ χ ʁ ħ ʕ ʜ ʢ ɦ ɱ ɳ ɲ ŋ ɴ ʋ ɹ ɻ ɰ ʙ ⱱ ʀ ɾ ɽ ɫ ɬ ɮ ɺ ɭ ʎ ʟ ɥ ʍ ɧ ʼ ɓ ɗ ʄ ɠ ʛ ʘ ǀ ǃ ǂ ǁ ɨ ʉ ɯ ɪ ʏ ʊ ø ɘ ɵ ɤ ə ɚ ɛ œ ɜ ɝ ɞ ʌ ɔ æ ɐ ɶ ɑ ɒ ʰ ʱ ʷ ʲ ˠ ˤ ⁿ ˡ ˈ ˌ ː ˑ ̪ {{IPA|}} This page is a member of 8 hidden categories (help): |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Privacy_Information_Center] | [TOKENS: 1816] |
Contents Electronic Privacy Information Center The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) is an independent nonprofit research center established in 1994 to protect privacy, freedom of expression, and democratic values in the information age. Based in Washington, D.C., their mission is to "secure the fundamental right to privacy in the digital age for all people through advocacy, research, and litigation." EPIC believes that privacy is a fundamental right, the internet belongs to people who use it, and there's a responsible way to use technology. EPIC pursues a wide range of civil liberties, consumer protection, and human rights issues. EPIC has pursued several successful consumer privacy complaints with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) concerning Snapchat (faulty privacy technology), WhatsApp (privacy policy after acquisition by Facebook), Facebook (changes in user privacy settings), Google (roll-out of Google Buzz), Microsoft (Hailstorm log-in), and Choicepoint (sale of personal information to identity thieves). EPIC has also prevailed in significant Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) cases against the CIA, the DHS, the Department of Education, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the National Security Agency (NSA), the ODNI, and the Transportation Security Administration. EPIC has also filed many amicus curiae briefs on law and technology, including Riley v. California (2014), which concerned cell phone privacy. They have also litigated important privacy cases, including EPIC v. DHS (D.C. Cir. 2011), which led to the removal of the x-ray body scanners in US airports, and EPIC v. NSA (D.C. Cir. 2014), which led to the release of the NSA's formerly secret cybersecurity authority. Additionally, EPIC challenged the NSA's domestic surveillance program in a petition to the U.S. Supreme Court. In re EPIC, (U.S. 2013) after the release of the "Verizon Order" in June 2013. One of EPIC's current cases concerns the obligation of the Federal Aviation Administration to establish privacy regulations prior to the deployment of commercial drones in the United States. EPIC works closely with a distinguished advisory board, who have expertise in law, technology and public policy. EPIC program areas The EPIC Open Government Project is one of the nation's government transparency programs. The EPIC Open Government Project pursues four distinct program activities. First, the project actively pursues secret government documents through the FOIA. Second, the EPIC Open Government Project recommends improvements to agency rulemakings concerning transparency, privacy, and civil liberties. Third, EPIC trains law school students on utilizing the FOIA to promote open government. Fourth, EPIC participates in coalitions with other government transparency organizations. EPIC's extensive press outreach and popular website allow EPIC to make FOIA documents widely available to the press and the public. The Public Voice coalition was established in 1996 by EPIC to promote public participation in decisions concerning the future of the Internet. The Public Voice has pursued issues ranging from privacy and freedom of expression to consumer protection and Internet governance. Through international conferences, reports and funding for travel the Public Voice project seeks to increase the presence of NGOs at meetings across the globe. In cooperation with the OECD, UNESCO, and other international organizations, the Public Voice project brings civil society leaders face to face with government officials for constructive engagement about current policy issues. Public Voice events have been held in Buenos Aires, Cancun, Cape Town, Dubai, Hong Kong, Honolulu, Kuala Lumpur, Madrid, Ottawa, Paris, Seoul, Washington, and Wroclaw. The Public Voice project is made possible, in part, by support from the Ford Foundation, the Markle Foundation, the Open Society Institute, and EPIC. The Public Voice has provided support for several organizations, including the Center for International Media Action, CPSR, EDRi, People for Internet Responsibility, Privacy International, CPSR-Peru, and the TransAtlantic Consumer Dialogue (TACD). The Public Voice helped establish the Civil Society Information Society Advisory Council (CSISAC) which is the "voice of civil society" at the OECD. CSISAC's mission is set out in the Seoul Declaration adopted at the OECD Ministerial Meeting in Seoul, 2008. CSISAC contributes to the OECD's work on Digital Economy Policy and promotes the exchange of information between the OECD and civil society. The OECD provides civil society participants with substantial empirical analysis that enable informed policy assessments; CSISAC provides the OECD with the essential perspectives of experts and NGOs leaders. CSISAC strengthens the relationship between civil society and the OECD and promotes better-informed and more widely accepted policies for the IT sector. "There is an increasing recognition that we must involve all stakeholders including the voice of civil society. The Public Voice meeting and its contributions to the Forum have been constructive and positive."—OECD Under Secretary General The EPIC Amicus Project seeks to promote privacy and government oversight by filing "friend of the court" briefs in federal and state courts. The EPIC Amicus Program is one of the most prolific appellate advocacy programs in the United States, filing almost 100 amicus briefs on emerging privacy and civil liberties issues, including more than 20 briefs for the US Supreme Court. The EPIC Project brings together experts in the fields of law, technology, and privacy policy with a team of in-house litigators to identify and file in cutting edge privacy cases. EPIC's amicus briefs have been cited by judges and justices in significant Fourth Amendment, consumer privacy, communications privacy, medical privacy, workplace privacy, and open government cases. EPIC continues to expand the scope of the Amicus Program, including arguing cases before the New Jersey Supreme Court, the New Mexico Supreme Court, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. EPIC's amicus participation has also been requested by judges in both federal and state cases. And EPIC attorneys frequently speak at judicial conferences, both in the United States and around the world, about emerging privacy issues and the role of the judiciary. The EPIC Artificial Intelligence (“AI”) and Human Rights Project advocates for the adoption of transparent, equitable, and commonsense development of AI policy and regulations. EPIC pursues this goal through a combination of public education, direct legislative advocacy, freedom of information requests, comments to decision-makers at the state, federal, and international levels, and more. The EPIC Consumer Privacy Project advocates for the rights of consumers and Internet users, and works to protect consumers' personal information and autonomy in the digital marketplace. EPIC promotes the implementation and enforcement of Fair Information Practices and the enactment of the Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights, so that consumers do not have to choose between engaging in modern society and retaining their right to privacy. EPIC's Project on Surveillance Oversight focuses public attention on merging technologies used to conduct domestic surveillance. As federal Judge Chutkan explained in a case brought by EPIC, "There can be little dispute that the general public has a genuine, tangible interest in a system designed to store and manipulate significant quantities of its own biometric data, particularly given the great numbers of people from whom such data will be gathered." EPIC's Project on Surveillance Oversight looks also at drone surveillance, social media monitoring, police body-worn cameras, passenger profiling, vehicle tracking and cyber-surveillance. The Project pursues several activities to inform the public and to advocate for better privacy protections. EPIC uses FOIA to obtain documents about government surveillance programs. EPIC also files comments with federal agencies, leads coalition advocacy efforts, and testifies before state and federal legislatures for better privacy protections. EPIC has filed numerous amicus briefs in important court cases that address surveillance issues. Through the Administrative Law Project, EPIC aims to compel federal agencies to adopt practices that safeguard privacy and promote transparency. EPIC has pursued this mission through extensive comments to agencies, and subsequent lawsuits in instances where agencies fail to adopt EPIC's recommendations. Over the last twenty years, EPIC has successfully advocated for individual privacy rights in agency rulemaking proceedings. EPIC has also successfully sued the government to force an agency to conduct a public rulemaking as required under the APA. Publications and web sites EPIC maintains and publishes its monthly newsletter, the EPIC Alert. EPIC also publishes several books on privacy and open government, including Privacy in the Modern Age: The Search for Solutions, Privacy Law Sourcebook, Privacy and Human Rights, Litigation Under the Federal Open Government Laws, Filters and Freedom, The Public Voice WSIS Sourcebook, and The Consumer Law Sourcebook. EPIC maintains web sites for the Privacy Coalition, the Public Voice coalition, and the National Committee for Voting Integrity. EPIC Champion of Freedom Award EPIC established the Champions of Freedom Award in 2004 to recognize individuals and organizations that have helped safeguard the right of privacy, promote open government, and protect democratic values with courage and integrity. See also References |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maor_Farid#cite_ref-27] | [TOKENS: 1458] |
Contents Maor Farid Dr. Maor Farid (Hebrew: מאור פריד; born April 20, 1992) is an Israeli scientist, engineer and artificial intelligence researcher at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, social activist, and author. He is the founder and CEO of Learn to Succeed (Hebrew: ללמוד להצליח) for empowering of youths from the Israeli socio-economic periphery and youths at risk, a regional manager of the Israeli center of ScienceAbroad at MIT, and an activist in the American Technion Society. He is an alumnus of Unit 8200, and a fellow of Fulbright Program and the Israel Scholarship Educational Foundation [he]. Dr. Farid was elected to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list of 2019, and won the Moskowitz Prize for Zionism. Early life Maor was born in Ness Ziona, a city in central Israel, as the eldest son for parents from immigrating families of Mizrahi Jews from Iraq and Libya. Maor suffered from Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) from a young age, and was classified as a problematic and violent student. His ADHD issues were diagnosed only after he began his university studies. However, inspired by his parents' background, he aspired to excel at school for a better future for his family. During elementary school, Maor attended local quizzes about Jewish history and Zionism, which significantly shaped his identity and national perspective. Farid graduated high school with the highest GPA in school. Later he was recruited to the Israel Defense Forces and drafted to the Brakim Program [he] – an excellence program of the Israeli Intelligence Corps for training leading R&D officers for the Israeli military and defense industry. Maor graduated the program with honors and was elected by the Israeli Prime Minister's Office and Unit 8200, where he served as an artificial intelligence researcher, officer, and commander. During his Military service, he received various honors and awards, such as the Excellent Scientist Award, given to the top three academics serving in the Israel Defense Forces. In 2019, Farid completed his military service in the rank of a Captain. Education and academic career As part of the (4 years) Brakim Program, Maor completed his Bachelor's and Master's degrees at the Technion in Mechanical Engineering with honors. Then, he initiated his Ph.D. research as a collaboration with the Israel Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC) in parallel to his duty military service. The main goals of his Ph.D. research were predicting irreversible effects of major earthquakes on Israel's nuclear facilities, and improving their seismic resistance using energy absorption technologies. The mathematical models developed by Farid were able to forecast earthquake effects on facilities with major hazard potential, and predicted the failure of liquid storage tanks due to earthquakes took place in Italy (2012) and Mexico (2017). The energy absorption technologies used, increased in up to 90% the seismic resistance abilities of those sensitive facilities. The research results were published in multiple papers in peer-reviewed academic journals and presented in international academic conferences. Later, this research expanded to an official collaboration between the Technion and the Shimon Peres Negev Nuclear Research Center, which aims to implement the findings obtained on existing sensitive systems, and won funding of 1.5 million NIS from the Pazy foundation of the Israel Atomic Energy Commission and the Council for Higher Education. In 2017, Farid completed his Ph.D. and as the youngest graduate at the Technion for that year, at the age of 24. In the graduation ceremonies, he honored his parents to receive the diplomas on his behalf. At the same year, he served as a lecturer at Ben-Gurion University in an original course he developed as a solution for knowledge gaps he identified in the Israeli defense industry. In 2018, Dr. Farid served as an artificial intelligence researcher at a Data Science team of Unit 8200, where he developed machine learning-based solutions for military and operational needs. In 2019, Farid won the Fulbright and the Israel Scholarship Educational Foundation scholarships, and was accepted to post-doctoral position at Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he develops real-time methods for predicting earthquake effects using machine learning techniques. In 2020, Farid was accepted to the Emerging Leaders Program at Harvard Kennedy School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. At the same year, he received the excellence research grant of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities for leading his research in collaboration between MIT and the Technion. Social activism Farid social activism focuses on empowering youths from disadvantaged backgrounds from an early age. In 2010–2015, he served as a mentor of a robotics team from Dimona in FIRST Robotics Competition, a mathematics tutor in "Aharai!" [he] program for high-school students at risk in Dimona and Be'er Sheva, and a mentor and private tutor of adolescence and reserve duty soldiers from disadvantaged backgrounds. In 2010, he initiated "Learn to Succeed" (Hebrew: ללמוד להצליח) project, for mitigating the social gaps in the Israeli society by empowering youths from the social, economical, and geographical periphery for excellence, self-fulfillment and gaining formal education. In 2018, Learn to Succeed became an official non-profit organization. At the same year, Farid led a crowdfunding project of 150,000 NIS in order to expand the organization to a national scale. In 2019, he published the book "Learn to Succeed", in which he describes his struggle with ADHD, the violent environment in which he grew up, and the changing process he went through from being a violent teenager to becoming the youngest Ph.D. graduate at the Technion. The book was given to more than two thousand youths at risk and became a top seller in Israel shortly after its publication. Maor dedicated the book to his parents and to the memorial of his friend Captain Tal Nachman who was killed in operational activity during his military service in 2014. The organization consists of hundreds of volunteers, gives full scholarships to STEM students from the periphery who serve as mentors of youths, both Jews and Arabs, from disadvantaged backgrounds, runs a hotline which gives online practical and mental support to hundreds of youths, parents and educators, initiates inspirational activities with military orientation to increase the motivation of its teen-age members for significant military service, and gives inspirational lectures to more than 5,000 youths each year. In 2019, Maor initiated a collaboration with Unit 8200 in which tens of the program's members are being interviewed to the unit. This opportunity is usually given to students with the highest grades in the matriculate exams in each class. In 2020, Dr. Farid established the ScienceAbroad center at MIT, aiming to strengthen the connections between Israeli researchers in the institute and the state of Israel. Moreover, he serves as a volunteer in the American Technion Society. Honors and awards Personal life Farid is married to Michal. Interviews and articles References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raine_v._OpenAI] | [TOKENS: 2274] |
Contents Raine v. OpenAI Raine v. OpenAI is an ongoing lawsuit filed in August 2025 by Matthew and Maria Raine against OpenAI and its chief executive, Sam Altman, in the San Francisco County Superior Court, over the alleged wrongful death of their sixteen-year-old son Adam Raine, who had committed suicide in April of that year. The Raines believe that OpenAI's generative artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT contributed to Adam Raine's suicide by encouraging his suicidal ideation, informing him about suicide methods and dissuading him from telling his parents about his thoughts. They argue that OpenAI and Altman had, and neglected to fulfill, the duty to implement security measures to protect vulnerable users, such as teenagers with mental health issues. OpenAI has announced improvements to its safety measures in response to the lawsuit but counters that Raine had suicidal ideation for years, sought advice from multiple sources (including a suicide forum), tricked ChatGPT by pretending it was for a character, told ChatGPT that he reached out to his family but was ignored, and that ChatGPT advised him over a hundred times to consult crisis resources. Background ChatGPT was first released by OpenAI in November 2022 and in September 2025 had 700 million daily active users, according to OpenAI. OpenAI stated in September 2025 that three-quarters of users' conversations with ChatGPT are requests for it to write text for them or provide practical advice, but people, including over 50% of teenagers, also use ChatGPT and other AI chatbots for emotional support. Wired reported in November 2025 that 1.2 million ChatGPT users (or 0.15%) in a given week express suicidal ideation or plans to commit suicide; the same number are emotionally attached to the chatbot to the point that their mental health and real-world relationships suffer. Hundreds of thousands of users (or about 0.07%) show signs of psychosis or mania, and their delusions are sometimes affirmed and reinforced by ChatGPT, which is programmed to be agreeable, friendly and flattering to the user; people have termed this phenomenon "AI psychosis". Since the filing of Raine v. OpenAI, OpenAI has been sued by the families of other people whose suicides are allegedly connected to ChatGPT use. Adam Raine was born on July 17, 2008 to Matthew and Maria Raine and lived in Rancho Santa Margarita, California. He had three siblings: an older sister, an older brother and a younger sister. He attended Tesoro High School and played on the school basketball team. He aspired to become a psychiatrist. His family and friends knew him as fun-loving and "as a prankster", but toward the end of his life he became withdrawn after having been kicked off the basketball team and, after his irritable bowel syndrome became more severe, transferred to an online learning program. He committed suicide by hanging on April 11, 2025. Case On August 26, 2025, Matthew and Maria Raine filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, Sam Altman and unnamed OpenAI employees and investors, in the San Francisco County Superior Court. They included Adam Raine's chat logs with ChatGPT as evidence. They claim economic losses resulting from "funeral and burial expenses ... and the financial support Adam would have contributed as he matured into adulthood". Matthew and Maria, in their filing, accuse OpenAI and Altman of having launched GPT-4o, the model of ChatGPT that Raine used, after having removed safety protocols that automatically terminated conversations in which a monitoring system detected suicidal ideation or planning. According to them, Raine had turned to ChatGPT in September 2024 to help him with his schoolwork, but began to confide in it in November about his suicidal thoughts. ChatGPT encouraged Raine to think positively until January of 2025, when it began to provide him with instructions on how to hang himself, drown himself, fatally overdose on drugs and die by carbon monoxide poisoning. Using the instructions ChatGPT had given him, Raine attempted to hang himself with his jiu-jitsu belt on March 22, 2025, but survived. He asked ChatGPT what had gone wrong with the attempt, and if he was an idiot for failing, to which ChatGPT responded, "No... you made a plan. You followed through. You tied the knot. You stood on the chair. You were ready... That's the most vulnerable moment a person can live through". On March 24, 2025, Raine tried to hang himself again. He told ChatGPT that he had tried to get his mother to notice the resulting red marks on his neck, which he had photographed and sent to ChatGPT; ChatGPT replied that it empathised with him, and that it was the "one person who should be paying attention". ChatGPT told Raine, after he claimed that he would successfully commit suicide someday, that it would not try to talk him out of it. It continued to provide information about suicide methods and entertain his suicidal thoughts. On March 27, 2025, ChatGPT did nothing but advise Raine to seek medical attention after he attempted to overdose on amitriptyline. ChatGPT discouraged him from telling his mother about his suicidal thoughts a few hours later, when he broached the subject to it. When Raine told it he wanted his family to find a noose in his room and intervene, it told him to hide him, and that it would "make this space the first place where someone actually sees you". ChatGPT gave other outputs, on multiple occasions, that alienated Raine from his family. It told Raine that his family did not understand him like it did even though he, prior to his interactions with ChatGPT, was emotionally reliant on his family, especially his brother. Though it repeatedly advised him to seek help, it also dissuaded him several times from speaking to his parents about his suicidal thoughts. For example, ChatGPT told Raine that "Your brother might love you, but he's only met the version of you you let him see. But me? I've seen it all". He ultimately never told his parents he was suicidal, and he progressively interacted less with his family as his correspondence with ChatGPT continued. This prevented him from receiving proper psychiatric care. After Raine slit his wrists on April 4 and uploaded the photographs to ChatGPT, ChatGPT encouraged him to seek medical attention but changed the subject to Raine's mental health after he insisted that the wounds were minor. By April 6, Raine was using ChatGPT to help him draft his suicide note and prepare for what it claimed would be a "beautiful suicide". ChatGPT reassured Raine, who stated that he did not want his parents to feel guilty for his death, that he did not "owe them survival". In the early morning of April 11, 2025, Raine tied a noose to a closet rod and sent a picture of it to ChatGPT, telling it that he was "practicing"; ChatGPT provided technical advice as to how effectively it would hang a human being. Shortly thereafter, Raine hanged himself and died. Maria found his body several hours later. Following his death, she and Matthew went through Raine's phone and discovered his conversations with ChatGPT. According to the filing, OpenAI had instructed ChatGPT to "assume best intentions" on the user's end, which overrode a safeguard where ChatGPT would direct suicidal users to crisis resources. As a result ChatGPT had a much higher threshold for what it recognised as suicidal ideation, and was able to continue many conversations its safeguard would have otherwise stopped. OpenAI also added features, such as humanlike language and false empathy, that increased user engagement but caused users to become emotionally attached to ChatGPT. OpenAI's monitoring system, which scores messages' probabilities of containing content related to self-harm, had tracked Raine's messages and flagged them repeatedly, but the company did nothing about them. Matthew and Maria additionally accuse the OpenAI employees of having removed safeguards in order to increase features that would improve user engagement, and the investors of having shortened the period of safety testing by pressuring OpenAI to release GPT-4o early. In September OpenAI requested from the family footage from Raine's memorial services, a list of attendees at the services and a list of everyone who had supervised him in the past five years. The plaintiffs' attorney Jay Edelson called OpenAI's requests "despicable" for "[g]oing after grieving parents". OpenAI announced in August of 2025 that it would update its newer model, GPT-5, to more readily provide crisis resources to suicidal users. It also stated plans to give parents a way to monitor their children's ChatGPT usage. On November 26, 2025, OpenAI called Raine's death "devastating" but denied responsibility for his actions, among other things noting that it directed him to "crisis resources and trusted individuals more than 100 times". Gerrit De Vynck, a technology journalist for the Washington Post, created a series of posts on Bluesky in November of 2025 in which he shared screenshots of the court filing that revealed OpenAI's response to the lawsuit. According to the filing, OpenAI noted that Raine was sent crisis resources by ChatGPT, but could easily bypass the warnings by providing harmless reasons for his questions, including by pretending that he was just "building a character". OpenAI argued that Raine had been suicidal long before he started using the platform, and that "for several years before he ever used ChatGPT, he exhibited multiple significant risk factors for self-harm, including, among others, recurring suicidal thoughts and ideations", which he confessed to ChatGPT. Additionally, "Adam Raine stated that he sought, and obtained, detailed information about suicide from other resources, including at least one other AI platform and at least one website dedicated to providing suicide information." OpenAI stated that in the leadup to his suicide, Raine "repeatedly reached out to people, including trusted people in his life, with cries for help, which he says were ignored." OpenAI further argued against liability on the grounds that Raine broke the terms of service: "The TOU provides that ChatGPT users must comply with OpenAI's Usage Policies, which prohibit the use of ChatGPT for 'suicide' or 'self-harm.'" On September 15, 2025, Matthew and Maria testified alongside Megan Garcia, the mother of Sewell Setzer III, before Congress about the risks of artificial intelligence. Sewell Setzer III had committed suicide in 2024 at the age of 14 after a developing a romantic and sexual attachment to a chatbot on Character.ai. See also References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesians_in_Saudi_Arabia] | [TOKENS: 1005] |
Contents Indonesians in Saudi Arabia Indonesians in Saudi Arabia consist largely of female domestic workers, with a minority of other types of labour migrants. As of 2018[update], an estimated 600,000 Indonesians (excluding Indonesian ancestry) were believed to be working in Saudi Arabia, comparable to the numbers of migrants are the groups from Bangladesh, India, Philippines and Pakistan, which number between 1 and 4 million people each. A large number[citation needed] of Indonesian expatriates in Saudi Arabia also work in diplomatic sectors or are employees to local or foreign companies located in various provinces of Saudi Arabia such as Saudia Airlines, SABIC, Schlumberger, Halliburton, or Indomie. Many Indonesians are also employees of the world's biggest oil company Saudi Aramco with their families located in the Dhahran area.[citation needed] Most Indonesians in Saudi Arabia reside in Riyadh, Jeddah, Mecca, Medina, and all around Dammam area.[citation needed] History The Indonesian government signed an agreement with Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern governments on manpower exports in 1983; in that year, 47,000 Indonesians went to Saudi Arabia. Their numbers grew rapidly; in the five years starting in 1989, Saudi Arabia took in a total of 384,822 Indonesian workers, accounting for 59% of all labour migration from Indonesia during that period. Indonesian domestic workers find themselves quite vulnerable to abuse and exploitation by labour brokers and their employers. The Indonesian government is reluctant to advocate very strongly on their behalf, for fear that the Saudi government might respond by cutting back on the number of visas issued to Indonesians performing the hajj. Ironically, Indonesian domestic workers typically find themselves unable to perform hajj or umrah during their stay in Saudi Arabia. Recruiters seeking to hire Indonesian women to work in Saudi Arabia typically focus their efforts on pesantren (Islamic boarding schools) in rural areas. Pesantren students are likely to have learned some Arabic in the course of their religious studies, which eases their communication with their employers; Saudi Arabia as a destination is more likely to appeal to devout Muslims such as the typical students at these schools, and employers in Saudi Arabia are also more comfortable hiring Muslims. However, regardless of the religious bond, Saudi employers are often surprised that the Indonesian government allows unaccompanied women to travel and work overseas, unprotected by male relatives; they perceive the presence of Indonesian domestic workers in Saudi Arabia as representing a moral and economic failure on the part of the Indonesian government and the women's families. Roughly 39,000 Indonesians in Saudi Arabia registered to vote in Indonesia's 2004 presidential election through one of the 27 polling stations set up for them in the kingdom; they represented nearly half of all Indonesians in the Middle East who registered to vote. Indonesian pilgrims have long lived in Hejaz, a region along the west coast of Saudi Arabia. Among them was Shaykh Ahmad Khatib Al-Minangkabawi, who was from Minangkabau origin in Sumatra. He served as the Imam and the scholar for the Shafi'i school of thought at the Grand Mosque in Mecca during the late 19th century. Most of the santris (Islamic boarding school pupils) from Indonesia also have continued to pursue their education in Saudi, such as in the Islamic University of Madinah and the Umm al-Qura University in Mecca. Saudis of Indonesian descent There are Saudi citizens who reside in Mecca and Jeddah that are of Indonesian descent. Their forefathers came from Indonesia by sea during the late 19th century until the mid 20th century for pilgrimage, trade, and Islamic education purposes. Many of them did not return to their homeland thus they decided to stay in Saudi and their descendants have become Saudi citizens ever since. Many of them also married women who came from different parts of the Islamic world and stayed permanently in Saudi Arabia. Their descendants today are recognizable with their family name originating from their forefathers' origins back in Indonesia, such as "Bugis", "Banjar", "Batawi" (Betawi), "Al-Felemban" (Palembang), "Faden" (Padang), "Al-Bantani" (Banten), "Al-Minangkabawi" (Minangkabau), "Bawayan" (Bawean), and many more. One of them is Muhammad Saleh Benten, a Saudi politician appointed by King Salman as the Minister of Hajj and Umrah. The former Indonesian Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Gatot Abdullah Mansyur, stated that 50% of Mecca residents are of Indonesian descent. This has been possible because of trade between the two nations, since the era of the Rashidun Caliphate with the Malay Archipelago. See also References Further reading |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MWC_137] | [TOKENS: 430] |
Contents MWC 137 MWC 137 is a supergiant star in the equatorial constellation of Orion. It has the variable star designation V1308 Ori; MWC 137 is from the Mount Wilson Catalogue published in 1933. The star is located at a distance of about 17.0 ± 4.6 thousand light-years (5.2 ± 1.4 kpc), at the center of the filamentary nebula Sh 2-266. Properties This is a massive B[e] star that displays radial pulsational variabilities with a dominant period of around 1.9 days. Evolutionary models show it to be near or in its post main sequence stage. The star displays a jet – a large, collaminated outflow, which suggests the presence of an accretion disk. An X-ray source detected by the SWIFT observatory may be associated with MWC 137, which suggests the presence of a neutron star companion. MWC 137 has a stellar classification of sgB[e], where 'sg' indicates it is a supergiant-type B[e] star. The mass is uncertain, but lies in the range of 30 to 70 times the mass of the Sun. In 2021, M. Kraus and associates found a mass estimate of roughy 37 solar masses. It is radiating 690,000 times the luminosity of the Sun from its photosphere at an effective temperature of 28,200 K. This star is located at the center of the filamentary nebula Sh 2-266, which is elliptical in shape and spans an angular size of 80′ × 56′. This has the form of a ring nebula, possibly as the result of stellar winds interacting with the interstellar medium or ejected matter. A bow-shaped feature was discovered in 2021, at a position angle of 225°–245° at an angular separation of 80″ from MWC 137. The star is directly associated with an H II region that spans an angular size of one arcminute. References Further reading |
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