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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Indian_Premier_League_final | 2015 Indian Premier League final | The 2015 Indian Premier League final was a day/night Twenty20 cricket match between the Mumbai Indians and the Chennai Super Kings, played on 24 May 2015, at Eden Gardens, Kolkata. It was held to determine the winner of the 2015 season of the Indian Premier League, the annual professional Twenty20 tournament in India. It was the third time these two teams met in the final, having previously played each other in the 2010 and 2013 finals.
Mumbai defeated Chennai by 41 runs to win their second IPL title, playing in their third IPL final. Their previous IPL victory had come at the same venue against the same opposition in 2013. Chennai were playing their sixth IPL final, attempting to win their third title. Mumbai captain Rohit Sharma was awarded man of the match for his innings of 50. The final was sold out, with a final attendance of around 67,000 people.
== Road to the final ==
=== Group stage ===
Chennai and Mumbai were ranked first and second respectively on the league table. Apart from a defeat to the Rajasthan Royals, Chennai had a successful first half of the league stage, having won six out of seven matches. They suffered a loss of form in the remaining seven games of the second half in which they managed three wins and finished at the top of the table with 18 points. During the league stage, Chennai successfully defended low totals like 150, 134 and 148. Chennai bowlers Dwayne Bravo and Ashish Nehra produced consistent bowling performances throughout the tournament, with the former holding on to the Purple Cap for most wickets during the season. Chennai's most prolific batsman of the season Brendon McCullum had to depart for England on national duty at the conclusion of the league stage.
Mumbai began the season with five defeats in their first six matches, including four on the trot at the start of the season. At this time, their opener Aaron Finch was ruled out of the tournament with an injury, after which Mumbai found success with their new opening combination of Parthiv Patel and Lendl Simmons. They averaged more than 50 for the first wicket, making them the best opening pair of the tournament. Mitchell McClenaghan replaced national teammate Corey Anderson in the playing eleven, after the latter suffered a tournament-ending injury, and formed a formidable bowling attack with Lasith Malinga and Harbhajan Singh. Mumbai went on to win seven of their last eight matches, including five wins in succession, to take the second spot on the league table.
==== Group stage series ====
In the two group stage matches between Mumbai and Chennai, both teams lost at home. In the first meeting at Mumbai, Mumbai initially struggled and were 57 for 4 in the tenth over before captain Rohit Sharma and Kieron Pollard scored half-centuries and shared a partnership of 75 runs in 33 balls to lift the team to a total of 183 for 7. Chennai started strongly in the run-chase with a 109-run opening stand between McCullum and Dwayne Smith. McCullum was dismissed for 46 and soon Smith followed with 62. Suresh Raina then came up with an unbeaten 43 to take Chennai to a six-wicket win. In their second encounter, Chennai could put up a total of 158 for 5 mainly due Pawan Negi's innings of 36 off 17 balls and an unbeaten 39 by captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni. Mumbai were at a strong position of 84 for no loss at the end of their first 10 overs, but were reduced to 86 for 3 after 12. They lost Rohit Sharma in the 18th over and were left with 30 runs to score from the last two overs. Hardik Pandya struck three sixes in the 19th over which yielded 25 runs. Mumbai then sealed the win six wickets and four balls to spare. This was Mumbai's fifth consecutive win of the season and Chennai's first defeat at the Chepauk since 2013.
=== Playoff stage ===
The playoff stage is played according to the page playoff system and provided Chennai and Mumbai, being the top- and second-ranked teams, with two ways of qualifying for the Final. They first faced each other in Qualifier 1 where the winners would qualify for the Final. The losers of Qualifier 1 would play against the winners of the Eliminator in Qualifier 2, the winners of which would also qualify for the Final.
In Qualifier 1, Mumbai won the toss and chose to bat first. Mumbai captain Rohit Sharma said the track looked good to bat first and get runs on board, while Dhoni said he wished to bowl first and believed his team could chase down totals. Mumbai's innings began steady with a 90-run opening partnership between Patel and Simmons which ended when Patel was dismissed for 35. After Simmons fell for a 51-ball 65 in the 14th over, Pollard arrived at the crease with the score reading 113 for 2. Even as wickets were falling at the other end, Pollard struck one four and five sixes in his innings of 41 which came off just 17 balls. Mumbai posted a total of 187 for 6 in their 20 overs. Chennai's run-chase started with Smith being dismissed for a duck by Malinga in the first over. They lost the wicket of Michael Hussey in the sixth over and the score read 46/2. Raina and Faf du Plessis then steadied the innings taking Chennai past 80 in the tenth over. In the 11th over, Harbhajan Singh dismissed Raina and Dhoni off consecutive balls. Following this, Chennai started losing wickets at regular intervals and were eventually bowled out for 162.
Qualifier 2 was played between Chennai and the Royal Challengers Bangalore. Dhoni won the toss and elected to bowl first expecting dew to play a part in the latter stages of the match, while Bangalore captain Virat Kohli wanted to bat first on what he believed was a dry pitch. Bangalore innings started off slowly and R Ashwin was introduced into the attack early with Chris Gayle at the crease. Nehra struck twice in the fifth over picking up the wickets of Kohli and AB de Villiers. After losing another wicket, Bangalore steadied the innings with a 44-run partnership between Gayle and Dinesh Karthik. In the 14th over, Gayle struck two consecutive sixes but, was dismissed caught and bowled by Raina, trying to hit a third. Sarfaraz Khan then played a useful innings of 31 from 21 balls and lifted Bangalore's total to 139 for 8 in 20 overs. In reply, Chennai lost the wicket of Smith early in their innings. In the tenth over, Yuzvendra Chahal claimed the wickets of du Plessis and Raina and the score read 61 for 3. Dhoni then joined Hussey at the crease and the pair put on 47 runs for the fourth wicket, before Hussey was dismissed for 56. Towards the end, Chennai lost three wickets within six balls, but managed to win the match off the penultimate ball of the innings with a single from Ashwin.
== Match ==
=== Background ===
The Final was played at the neutral venue of Eden Gardens, Kolkata. The 2013 Final between these two teams was also played at this venue where Mumbai had defeated Chennai by 23 runs to win their first IPL title. This was the seventh encounter between these two teams in the knockout/playoff stage of IPL, with Chennai leading 4–2 in such matches prior to this game.
Chennai had the tournament's leading wicket-taker Dwayne Bravo in their ranks but were without their best batsman of the season Brendon McCullum, who was playing for New Zealand in England. Mumbai's leading run-scorer Lendl Simmons was 90 runs behind the Orange Cap holder, while their leading bowler Lasith Malinga was two wickets behind Bravo on the Purple Cap list.
=== Report ===
The toss was won by Chennai who chose to bowl first. Their captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni described the pitch as being dry and predicted it would stay the same throughout the match. Mumbai captain Rohit Sharma said he wanted to bat first and post a good total to defend. Both teams were unchanged from their respective previous matches.
Mumbai's innings began with opener Parthiv Patel being dismissed run out for a duck in the first over. Rohit Sharma then joined Lendl Simmons at the crease and started aggressively, scoring 16 runs from the second over by Mohit Sharma. The duo of Simmons and Sharma continued to attack the Super Kings bowlers with the former reaching his sixth half-century of the season. Dwayne Bravo was introduced into the attack in the 12th over and Sharma was dismissed soon after completing his fifty which had come off just 24 balls. Dwayne Smith then claimed the wicket of Simmons in the first ball of the following over, which was also Smith's first ball of the season. Mumbai were at 120 for 3 in the 13th over, before Kieron Pollard and Ambati Rayudu struck boundaries at regular intervals, with the former striking three sixes and a four in the 17th over by Ashish Nehra. Their partnership had reached 71 runs in less than seven overs before Mohit Sharma dismissed Pollard off the final ball of the 19th over. Mumbai lost Hardik Pandya for a duck in the final over, but were able to post 202 for 5 by the end of their innings. This was the second 200-plus total in an IPL final.
Chennai's run-chase got off to a slow start as Smith was struggling to time the ball. Mitchell McClenaghan dismissed Michael Hussey in the fifth over for 4. Suresh Raina then arrived at the crease and Smith started to score boundaries. Their partnership had reached 66 runs and was broken when Harbhajan Singh dismissed Smith for 57 in the 12th over. Harbhajan got the wicket Raina in his next over, after which Chennai lost a wicket in each of their following five overs with the required run rate increasing after every over. McClenaghan and Lasith Malinga bowled economically in each of their four overs and had figures of 3 for 25 and 2 for 25 respectively. Ravindra Jadeja and Mohit Sharma added 24 runs for the ninth wicket but their 20 overs ended 41 runs short of the target.
=== Summary ===
It was Mumbai's second IPL title, making them the third team after the Super Kings and Kolkata Knight Riders to have won the IPL title more than once. Rohit Sharma was awarded man of the match for his 26-ball 50. With 26 wickets in the tournament, Bravo finished as the leading wicket-taker and won the Purple Cap for the second time after the 2013 season. Mumbai won a prize money of ₹15 crore for becoming the champions, while runners-up Chennai were awarded ₹10 crore. Chennai also won the Fair Play Award, while Mumbai were at the bottom of this table.
== Scorecard ==
Toss: Chennai Super Kings won the toss and elected to field.
Fall of wickets: 1–1 (Patel, 0.5 ov), 2–120 (Sharma, 11.6 ov), 3–120 (Simmons, 12.1 ov), 4–191 (Pollard, 18.5 ov), 5–191 (Pandya, 19.2 ov)
Fall of wickets: 1–22 (Hussey, 4.4 ov), 2–88 (Smith, 11.5 ov), 3–99 (Raina, 13.3 ov), 4–108 (Bravo, 14.3 ov), 5–124 (Dhoni, 15.5 ov), 6–125 (du Plessis, 16.2 ov), 7–134 (Negi, 17.3 ov), 8–137 (Ashwin, 18.2 ov)
== See also ==
Chennai Super Kings–Mumbai Indians rivalry
== References ==
== External links ==
Match scorecard on official IPL website |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Association_for_Engineering_Geology_and_the_Environment | International Association for Engineering Geology and the Environment | The International Association for Engineering Geology and the Environment (IAEG) (French: Association Internationale de Géologie de I'lngénieur et de l'Environnement), formerly International Association for Engineering Geology, is an international scientific society that was founded in 1964. It is affiliated with the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS) and has 3,798 members spread across 59 national groups around the world.
The association operates with three goals in mind: encourage the advancement of engineering geology; improve teaching and training within the field; and work globally to collect, evaluate, and disseminate the results of geological engineering activities. Together with Springer Science+Business Media, it publishes the Bulletin of Engineering Geology and the Environment.
The first president of the IAEG was Asher Shadmon, who held the office from 1964 to 1968. The current president is Rafig Azzam from Aachen University of Technology.
Every two years, the IAEG awards the Hans Cloos medal to an engineering geologist of outstanding merit. Every four years, the IAEG organizes an international congress, during which a general meeting of the association takes place, and the board for the subsequent four years is elected. The XII IAEG Congress was held in Turin (Italy) in September 2014. The XIII IAEG Congress will be held in San Francisco (California, USA), in September 2018, and will also serve as the 61st annual meeting of the Association of Environmental & Engineering Geologists.
IAEG is a member of the Federation of International Geo-Engineering Societies (FedIGS).
== History ==
=== The birth of the IAEG ===
During the XXII International Geological Congress (IGS) in New Delhi, on 12 December 1964, the Israeli geologist Asher Shadmon remarked that quarry materials and mineral products used in engineering were not being properly discussed, and proposed the IUGS create and fund an international permanent commission dedicated to the topic. Other geologists at the congress suggested that the commission also examine the relationship between the materials in their natural place and the work of engineers.
On 17 December the assembly voted the following motion unanimously: "It is recommended that a distinct Commission of "Engineering Geology" should be established in the context of International Geological Congresses.[…] The objective of the Commission and its Sub-commissions would be to promote the knowledge and dissemination of appropriate information, gather ´case-histories´, prepare literature reviews and relevant catalogues, provide information on completed or ongoing research, gather statistical geological data on the industries, and determine the list of further research required".
On 19 December the interest in engineering geology was high, but due to scarcity of resources they were unable to support a new permanent commission. The executive committee of the IUGS proposed to create a small committee, headed by Shadmon, in charge of producing and presenting a report on the state of the situation by contacting the International Society for Soil Mechanics and the International Society for Rock Mechanics, as well as existing national societies of engineering geology.
However, on 21 December the delegates decided to immediately hold a new session during which the International Association for Engineering Geology (IAEG) was unanimously created. Besides Asher Shadmon, the founding members were Marcel Arnould (France), G. Bain (USA), M.S. Balasundaram (India), L.M.C. Calembert (Belgium), R.S. Chaturvedi (India), G.C. Chowdhary (India), E. Beneo (Italy), K. Erguvanli (Turkey), A. Hamza (India), M.S. Jain (India), L.E. Kent (South Africa), V.S. Krishnaswamy (India), J.D.S. Lakshmaman (France), A.R. Mahendra (India), M. Manfredi (Italy), V. Prasad (India), B. Ramchandran (India), J.Th. Rosenqvist (Norway), B. Sanatkumar (India), P.B. Srinivasan (India), L.S. Srivastava (India) and M. Zapata (Spain). They elected a provisional committee to steer the initial activity.
=== The first years ===
At the beginning, the association worked on enhancing the provisional committee to gain full international representation. By the end of 1966, the committee was composed as follows: Asher Shadmon (Israel), as president; Marcel Arnould (France), as Secretary; E. Beneo (Italy); V.S. Krishnaswamy, R.S. Mithal and M.S. Balasundaram (India); K. Erguvanli (Turkey); A.M. Hull (USA), president of the American Association of Engineering Geologist; E.M. Sergeev and N.V. Kolomenskij (USSR); Quido Záruba (Czechoslovakia); M.D. Ruiz (Brazil); G. Champetier de Ribes (France), as Treasurer. Discussions to join the IAEG were still ongoing with representatives from Australia, Japan and Mexico.
During the first two years the first statutes were established and a program of the activities was defined. The purposes and goals of the association were defined as follows: Article 1: "The scope of engineering geology covers the applications of earth sciences to engineering, planning, construction, prospecting, testing and processing of related materials"; Article 2: "The aims of the IAEG are to encourage research, training and dissemination of knowledge by developing the international cooperation in its relation to engineering".
At the 1967 meeting of the IUGS, a request for affiliation of the IAEG to the IUGS was presented and accepted by the executive committee. The decision was ratified unanimously by the general assembly of the IUGS on 23 August 1968 in Prague.
=== The first general assembly ===
The input from the Czechoslovakian engineering geologists had been noticeable in the first years, especially that of Quido Záruba and Jaroslav Pasek. They were together responsible for organizing a section on engineering geology at the XXIII International Geological Congress (IGC) in Prague in 1968, at which they shared the aims of the IAEG. They also organised the first scientific symposium of the IAEG in Brno (Czechoslovakia), from 26 to 27 April 1968 and a second symposium during the IGC on "Engineering geology and land planning".
The first general assembly was held on 23 August 1968 in Prague during the XXIII IGC. At the time of the congress, the country was deeply affected by the movement of soviet troops. Nevertheless, the general assembly went ahead, the statutes were ratified and an executive committee was elected for a period of four years to replace the provisional committee.
The new committee was composed as follows: Quido Záruba (Czechoslovakia), President; Marcel Arnould (France), Secretary General; G. Champetier de Ribes (France), Treasurer; Asher Shadmon (Israel), Past President; L. Calembert (Belgium), Vice-president for Europe; L. Cluff (USA), Vice-president for North America; M.D. Ruiz (Brazil), Vice-president for South America; L. Oborn (New Zealand), vice president for Australasia; H. Tanaka (Japan), Vice-president for Asia; a representative from Ghana as vice-president for Africa. Other members: N.V. Kolomenskij (USSR); A Nemock (Czechoslovakia); J. Janjic (Yugoslavia); R. Glossop (United Kingdom); A. Drucker (Federal Republic of Germany); J.M. Crepeau (Canada).
In addition to the executive committee, three "working groups" were established:
Landslides, under the responsibility of J. Pasek (Czechoslovakia);
Soluble rocks, under the responsibility of F. Reuter (East Germany) and K. Erguvanli (Turkey);
Geotechnical mapping, under the responsibility of M. Matula (Czechoslovakia).
Lastly, it was decided to organize future congresses specifically for the IAEG. These were to be held alternately with the International Geological Congresses, allowing the IAEG to hold a general assembly every two years. They also added a scientific symposia for the years in between.
The first congresses with general assemblies were as follows:
New Delhi (India) XXII IGC in 1964
Prague (Czechoslovakia) XXIII IGC in 1968;
Paris (France) 1st IAEG congress in 1970.
=== The Bulletin of the IAEG ===
The first elected executive committee decided in their second meeting at the UNESCO Palace in Paris (May 1969) to create a journal of the IAEG. This was to be edited and published by the Association and called the Bulletin of the IAEG (full name: "Bulletin of the International Association of Engineering Geology - Bulletin de l'Association Internationale de Géologie de l'Ingénieur").
The first edition of the Bulletin was distributed during the first IAEG congress in September 1970 in Paris. This was possible thanks to the personal efforts of Quido Záruba, the IAEG president, J. Pasek, Marcel Arnould and several other staff from the Paris School of Mines. Starting as a simple artisanal publication, the Bulletin became a scientific reference among the most respected journals in the fields of engineering geology, the environment and other geosciences. It is now published by Springer Science+Business Media and edited by the Association. It is known under the title Bulletin of Engineering Geology and the Environment.
=== The second statutes ===
As the field continued to grow there became increased involvement among engineering geologists. They assisted in the consultation, design, construction and supervision of large projects and in the assessment and remediation of environmental issues. Due to this expansion an update of the first statutes of the association was deemed necessary. The second statutes were approved by the general assembly in Kyoto (Japan) in 1992.
A new definition of engineering geology was given to reflected the advancements of the field during the previous 25 years. It reads as follows: "Engineering geology is a science devoted to the investigation, study and solution of engineering and environmental problems which may arise as the result of the interaction between geology and the works and activities of man as well as to the prediction of and the development of measures for prevention or remediation of geologic hazards. Engineering geology embraces: the definition of geomorphology, structure, stratigraphy, lithology and groundwater conditions of geological formations; the characterization of the mineralogical, physico-geomechanical, chemical and hydraulic properties of all earth materials involved in construction, resource recovery and environmental change; the assessment of the mechanical and hydrologic behaviour of soil and rock masses; the prediction of changes to the above properties with time; the determination of the parameters to be considered in the stability analysis of engineering works and of earth masses; and the improvement and maintenance of the environmental condition and of the properties of the terrain".
== Members ==
As of December 2024, the IAEG has 4,857 members divided as follows:
North America - 204 members;
South America - 102 members;
Europe - 1848 members;
Africa - 172 members;
Asia - 798 members;
Australasia - 684 members.
The IAEG has 68 national groups (+1 for the territory of Chinese Taipei):
== Congresses ==
Following is a list of the international congresses of the IAEG, which are held every four years. Since 1998, the congresses have had a main theme, which is reflected in the denomination of the event.
1970 Paris, 1st IAEG Congress
1974 São Paulo, 2nd IAEG Congress
1978 Madrid, 3rd IAEG Congress
1982 New Delhi, 4th IAEG Congress
1986 Buenos Aires, 5th IAEG Congress
1990 Amsterdam, 6th IAEG Congress
1994 Lisbon, 7th IAEG Congress
1998 Vancouver, 8th IAEG Congress, "A global view from the Pacific Rim"
2002 Durban, 9th IAEG Congress, "Engineering geology for developing countries"
2006 Nottingham, 10th IAEG Congress, "Engineering geology for tomorrow's cities"
2010 Auckland, 11th IAEG Congress, "Geologically active"
2014 Turin, 12th IAEG Congress, "Engineering geology for society and territory"
2018 San Francisco, 13th IAEG Congress, "Engineering geology for a sustainable world"
2023, Chengdu, 14th IAEG Congress
The IAEG also organizes regional conferences. So far, Asian regional conferences, South American and European regional conferences have been held.
=== European regional conferences ===
2004 Liège, 1st European regional conference, "Professional practices and engineering geological methods"
2008 Madrid, 2nd European regional conference, "Cities and their underground environment"
2021 Athens, 3rd European regional conference, "Leading to Innovative Engineering Geology Practices"
=== Asian regional conferences ===
1997 Tokyo, 1st Asian regional conference, "Dam geology"
1999 Bangi, 2nd Asian regional conference, "Engineering geology: Planning for sustainable development"
2001 Yogyakarta, 3rd Asian regional conference, "Natural resources management for regional development in tropical area"
2004 Hong Kong, 4th Asian regional conference, "Engineering geology for sustainable development in mountainous areas"
2005 Kathmandu,5th Asian regional conference, "Engineering geology, hydrology, and natural disasters"
2007 Seoul, 6th Asian regional conference, "Geohazard in engineering geology"
2009 Chengdu, 7th Asian regional conference, "Geological engineering problems in major construction projects"
2011 Bangalore, 8th Asian regional conference, "Underground space technology"
2013 Beijing, 9th Asian regional conference, "Global view of engineering geology and the environment"
2015 Kyoto, 10th Asian regional conference, "Geohazards and engineering geology"
2017 Kathmandu, 11th Asian regional conference, "Engineering geology for geodisaster management'
2019 Jeju, 12th Asian regional conference
=== South American regional conferences ===
2022 Argentina,
2024 Chile,
== References ==
== External links ==
Official website of the International Association for Engineering Geology and the Environment
The Bulletin of Engineering Geology and the Environment
Federation of International Geo-Engineering Societies |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dengue_vaccine#:~:text=In%20March%202021%2C%20the%20European,the%20world%20to%20approve%20Qdenga. | Dengue vaccine | Dengue vaccine is a vaccine used to prevent dengue fever in humans. Development of dengue vaccines began in the 1920s but was hindered by the need to create immunity against all four dengue serotypes. As of 2023, there are two commercially available vaccines, sold under the brand names Dengvaxia and Qdenga.
Dengvaxia is only recommended in those who have previously had dengue fever or populations in which most people have been previously infected due to a phenomenon known as antibody-dependent enhancement. The value of Dengvaxia is limited by the fact that it may increase the risk of severe dengue in those who have not previously been infected. In 2017, more than 733,000 children and more than 50,000 adult volunteers were vaccinated with Dengvaxia regardless of serostatus, which led to a controversy. Qdenga is designated for people not previously infected.
There are other vaccine candidates in development including live attenuated, inactivated, DNA and subunit vaccines.
== History ==
In December 2018, Dengvaxia was approved in the European Union.
In May 2019, Dengvaxia was approved in the United States as the first vaccine approved for the prevention of dengue disease caused by all dengue virus serotypes (1, 2, 3, and 4) in people ages nine through 16 who have laboratory-confirmed previous dengue infection and who live in endemic areas. Dengue is endemic in the US territories of American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Islands.
The safety and effectiveness of the vaccine were determined in three randomized, placebo-controlled studies involving approximately 35,000 individuals in dengue-endemic areas, including Puerto Rico, Latin America, and the Asia Pacific region. The vaccine was determined to be approximately 76 percent effective in preventing symptomatic, laboratory-confirmed dengue disease in individuals 9 through 16 years of age who previously had laboratory-confirmed dengue disease.
In March 2021, the European Medicines Agency accepted the filing package for TAK-003 (Qdenga) intended for markets outside of the EU.
In August 2022, the Indonesian FDA approved Qdenga for use in individuals six years to 45 years of age and became the first authority in the world to approve Qdenga. Qdenga was approved in the European Union in December 2022.
== CYD-TDV (Dengvaxia) ==
CYD-TDV, sold under the brand name Dengvaxia and made by Sanofi Pasteur, is a live attenuated tetravalent vaccine that is administered as three separate injections, with the initial dose followed by two additional shots given six and twelve months later. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted the application for Dengvaxia priority review designation and a tropical disease priority review voucher. The approval of Dengvaxia was granted to Sanofi Pasteur.
The vaccine has been approved in 19 countries and the European Union, but it is not approved in the US for use in individuals not previously infected by any dengue virus serotype or for whom this information is unknown.
Dengvaxia is a chimeric vaccine made using recombinant DNA technology by replacing the PrM (pre-membrane) and E (envelope) structural genes of the yellow fever attenuated 17D strain vaccine with those from the four dengue serotypes. Evidence indicates that CYD-TDV is partially effective in preventing infection, but may lead to a higher risk of severe disease in those who have not been previously infected and then do go on to contract the disease. It is not clear why the vaccinated seronegative population had more serious adverse outcomes. A plausible hypothesis is the phenomenon of antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE). American virologist Scott Halstead was one of the first researchers to identify the ADE phenomenon. Dr. Halstead and his colleague Dr. Phillip Russell proposed that the vaccine only be used after antibody testing, to check for prior dengue exposure and avoid vaccination of sero-negative individuals.
Common side effects include headache, pain at the site of injection, and general muscle pains. Severe side effects may include anaphylaxis. Use is not recommended in people with poor immune function. Safety of use during pregnancy is unclear. Dengvaxia is a weakened but live vaccine and works by triggering an immune response against four types of dengue virus.
Dengvaxia became commercially available in 2016 in 11 countries: Mexico, the Philippines, Indonesia, Brazil, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Paraguay, Guatemala, Peru, Thailand, and Singapore. In 2019 it was approved for medical use in the United States. It is on the World Health Organization's List of Essential Medicines.
In 2017, the manufacturer recommended that the vaccine only be used in people who have previously had a dengue infection, as outcomes may be worsened in those who have not been previously infected due to antibody-dependent enhancement. This led to a controversy in the Philippines where more than 733,000 children and more than 50,000 adult volunteers were vaccinated regardless of serostatus.
The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends that countries should consider vaccination with the dengue vaccine CYD-TDV only if the risk of severe dengue in seronegative individuals can be minimized either through pre-vaccination screening or recent documentation of high seroprevalence rates in the area (at least 80% by age nine years).
The WHO updated its recommendations regarding the use of Dengvaxia in 2018, based on long-term safety data stratified by serostatus on 29 November 2017. Seronegative vaccine recipients have an excess risk of severe dengue compared to unvaccinated seronegative individuals. For every 13 hospitalizations prevented in seropositive vaccinees, there would be 1 excess hospitalization in seronegative vaccinees per 1,000 vaccinees. WHO recommends serological testing for past dengue infection
In 2017, the manufacturer recommended that the vaccine only be used in people who have previously had a dengue infection as otherwise there was evidence it may worsen subsequent infections. The initial protocol did not require baseline blood samples before vaccination to establish an understanding of increased risk of severe dengue in participants who had not been previously exposed. In November 2017, Sanofi acknowledged that some participants were put at risk of severe dengue if they had no prior exposure to the infection; subsequently, the Philippine government suspended the mass immunization program with the backing of the WHO which began a review of the safety data.
Phase III trials in Latin America and Asia involved over 31,000 children between the ages of two and 14 years. In the first reports from the trials, vaccine efficacy was 56.5% in the Asian study and 64.7% in the Latin American study in patients who received at least one injection of the vaccine. Efficacy varied by serotype. In both trials vaccine reduced by about 80% the number of severe dengue cases. An analysis of both the Latin American and Asian studies at the 3rd year of follow-up showed that the efficacy of the vaccine was 65.6% in preventing hospitalization in children older than nine years of age, but considerably greater (81.9%) for seropositive children (indicating previous dengue infection) at baseline. The vaccination series consists of three injections at 0, 6 and 12 months.
The vaccine was approved in Mexico, the Philippines, and Brazil in December 2015, and in El Salvador, Costa Rica, Paraguay, Guatemala, Peru, Indonesia, Thailand, and Singapore in 2016. Under the brand name Dengvaxia, it is approved for use for those aged nine years of age and older and can prevent all four serotypes. As of February 2025, Sanofi announced that Dengvaxia has been "definitely discontinued" in Brazil due to low demand, which may have been caused by Qdenga being the first choice locally as its safer for individuals with unknown dengue serostatus.
== TAK-003 (Qdenga) ==
TAK-003 or DENVax, sold under the brand name Qdenga and made by Takeda, is a recombinant chimeric attenuated vaccine with DENV1, DENV3, and DENV4 components on a dengue virus type 2 (DENV2) backbone originally developed at Mahidol University in Bangkok and now funded by Inviragen (DENVax) and (TAK-003). Phase I and II trials were conducted in the United States, Colombia, Puerto Rico, Singapore and Thailand. The 18-month data published in the journal Lancet Infectious Diseases, indicate that TAK-003 produced sustained antibody responses against all four virus strains, regardless of previous dengue exposure and dosing schedule.
Data from the phase III trial, which began in September 2016, show that TAK-003 was efficacious against symptomatic dengue. TAK-003 appears to not lack efficacy in seronegative people or potentially cause them harm, unlike CYD-TDV. The data appear to show only moderate efficacy in other dengue serotypes than DENV2.
In February 2024, a clinical trial involving 20,099 healthy children aged 4 to 16 in eight dengue-endemic countries reported that, over 4.5 years, the vaccine was approximately 79% effective in preventing hospitalization and 54% effective against confirmed dengue in individuals with no prior exposure to the virus (seronegative). For all participants combined (seronegative and seropositive), the efficacy was approximately 84% against hospitalization and 61% against confirmed dengue. It protected against all four serotypes in seropositive participants. For seronegative participants, it protected against DENV-1 and DENV-2, but not against DENV-3, and there were too few cases of DENV-4 to allow conclusions.
Qdenga received approval for use in the European Union in 2022 for people aged 4 and above, and is also approved in the United Kingdom, Brazil, Argentina, Indonesia, and Thailand. Takeda voluntarily withdrew their application for the vaccination's approval in the United States in July 2023 after the FDA sought further data from the firm, which the company stated could not be provided during the current review cycle.
== In development ==
=== TV-003/005 ===
TV-003/005 is an attenuated vaccine consisting of a tetravalent admixture of monovalent vaccines, that was developed by NIAID, that were tested separately for safety and immunogenicity. The vaccine passed phase I trials and phase II studies in the US, Thailand, Bangladesh, India, and Brazil.
The National Institutes of Health has conducted phase I and phase II studies in over 1,000 participants in the US. It has also conducted human challenge studies while having conducted NHP model studies successfully.
NIH has licensed their technology for further development and commercial scale manufacturing to Panacea Biotec, Serum Institute of India, Instituto Butantan, Vabiotech, Merck, and Medigen.
In Brazil, phase III studies are being conducted by Instituto Butantan in collaboration with NIH. Panacea Biotec has conducted phase II clinical studies in India. 2024 data from the double-blind, Phase 3 clinical trial has shown 75.3% efficacy in seronegative patients and 89.2% efficacy in seropositive patients, although hospitalization was not assess. The vaccine has demonstrated long-term efficacy in all 4 DENV serotypes in previously exposed individuals but was only effective against types 1 and 2 for those who have never been infected by dengue.
A company in Vietnam (Vabiotech) is conducting safety tests and developing a clinical trial plan. All four companies are involved in studies of a TetraVax-DV vaccine in conjunction with the US NIH.
India is nearing completion of Phase III clinical trials for its first indigenous one-shot dengue vaccine, DengiAll, developed by Panacea Biotec in collaboration with the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR). Over 10,000 participants are being enrolled across 20 centres, with 8,000 already dosed. The vaccine, based on the NIH-developed tetravalent strain (TV003/TV005), aims to offer protection against all four dengue serotypes—an essential yet complex goal due to low cross-immunity. Early trial results report no safety concerns, and the vaccine's long-term efficacy is now under two-year evaluation.
=== TDENV PIV ===
TDENV PIV (tetravalent dengue virus purified inactivated vaccine) is undergoing phase I trials as part of a collaboration between GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR). A synergistic formulation with another live attenuated candidate vaccine (prime-boost strategy) is also being evaluated in a phase II study. In prime-boosting, one type of vaccine is followed by a boost with another type in an attempt to improve immunogenicity.
=== V180 ===
Merck is studying recombinant subunit vaccines expressed in Drosophila cells. As of 2019, it had completed phase I stage and found V180 formulations to be generally well tolerated.
=== DNA vaccines ===
In 2011, the Naval Medical Research Center attempted to develop a monovalent DNA plasmid vaccine, but early results showed it to be only moderately immunogenic.
== Society and culture ==
=== Legal status ===
On 13 October 2022, the Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP) of the European Medicines Agency (EMA) adopted a positive opinion, recommending the granting of a marketing authorization for the medicinal product Qdenga, intended for prophylaxis against dengue disease. The applicant for this medicinal product is Takeda GmbH. The active substance of Qdenga is dengue tetravalent vaccine (live, attenuated), a viral vaccine containing live attenuated dengue viruses which replicate locally and elicit humoral and cellular immune responses against the four dengue virus serotypes. Qdenga was approved for medical use in the European Union in December 2022.
In February 2023, Qdenga was approved by the UK Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) for people aged four years and older.
In April 2023, the Argentina's National Administration of Drugs, Food and Medical Technology (ANMAT) gave the green light to the use of the tetravalent vaccine TAK-003 known as Qdenga, developed by the Japanese laboratory Takeda Pharmaceutical Company, making it the only vaccine approved to date. to combat dengue in Argentina. It has been used in the 2024 dengue epidemic.
In July 2023, Takeda withdrew its application for Qdenga before the FDA, citing the FDA's requirement for additional data not captured in the phase III studies.
=== Economics ===
In Indonesia, Dengvaxia costs about US$207 for the recommended three doses as of 2016. Indonesia was the first country to approve Qdenga, in late 2022.
=== Controversies ===
==== Philippines ====
The 2017 dengue vaccine controversy in the Philippines involved a vaccination program run by the Philippines Department of Health (DOH). The DOH vaccinated schoolchildren with Sanofi Pasteur's CYD-TDV (Dengvaxia) dengue vaccine. Some of the children who received the vaccine had never been infected by the dengue virus before. The program was stopped when Sanofi Pasteur advised the government that the vaccine could put previously uninfected people at a somewhat higher risk of a severe case of dengue fever. A political controversy erupted over whether the program was run with sufficient care and who should be held responsible for the alleged harm to the vaccinated children.
== References ==
== External links ==
"Dengue Vaccine Vaccine Information Statement". U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). December 2021.
Dengue Vaccines at the U.S. National Library of Medicine Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Yao | Andrew Yao | Andrew Chi-Chih Yao (Chinese: 姚期智; pinyin: Yáo Qīzhì; born December 24, 1946) is a Chinese computer scientist, theoretical physicist, and computational theorist. He is currently a professor and the dean of Institute for Interdisciplinary Information Sciences (IIIS) at Tsinghua University. Yao used the minimax theorem to prove what is now known as Yao's principle.
After graduating from National Taiwan University, Yao earned a doctorate in physics from Harvard University in 1972 and a second doctorate in computer science from the University of Illinois in 1975 before teaching mathematics and computer science as a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, and the University of California, Berkeley. In 1986, he became the William and Edna Macaleer Professor of Engineering and Applied Science at Princeton University. He won the 2000 ACM Turing Award.
Yao was a naturalized U.S. citizen, and worked for many years in the U.S. In 2015, together with Yang Chen-Ning, he renounced his U.S. citizenship and became an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
== Early life and education ==
Yao was born in Shanghai (then a part of the Republic of China) on December 24, 1946. His parents later moved to Hong Kong and then Taiwan, where Yao was raised.
After attending Taipei Municipal Chien Kuo High School, Yao graduated from National Taiwan University with his Bachelor of Science (B.S.) in physics in 1967 and pursued graduate studies in the United States at Harvard University, where he earned his Master of Arts (M.A.) degree in physics in 1969 and then his Ph.D. in theoretical physics in 1972. His doctoral thesis, completed under Nobel Prize laureate Sheldon Glashow, was titled, "Internal Symmetries and Positivity".
In 1975, after only two years of study, Yao completed a second Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign as a fellow of the National Science Foundation. His second doctoral dissertation, "A Study of Concrete Computational Complexity," was supervised by Taiwanese computer scientist Chung Laung Liu.
== Academic career ==
Yao was an assistant professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1975–1976), assistant professor at Stanford University (1976–1981), and professor at the University of California, Berkeley (1981–1982). From 1982 to 1986, he was a full professor at Stanford University. From 1986 to 2004, Yao was the William and Edna Macaleer Professor of Engineering and Applied Science at Princeton University, where he continued to work on algorithms and complexity. In 2004, Yao became a professor of the Center for Advanced Study, Tsinghua University (CASTU) and the director of the Institute for Theoretical Computer Science (ITCS), Tsinghua University in Beijing. Since 2010, he has served as the Dean of Institute for Interdisciplinary Information Sciences (IIIS) in Tsinghua University. In 2010, he initiated the Conference on Innovations in Theoretical Computer Science (ITCS). Yao is also the Distinguished Professor-at-Large in the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
In May 2024, Yao joined fellow AI researchers Yoshua Bengio, Geoffrey Hinton, and others in publishing an expert consensus paper describing the extreme risks posed by AI. The authors warned that AI safety research is lagging, and outlined "proactive, adaptive governance mechanisms" for policymakers ahead of the AI Seoul Summit.
== Awards ==
In 1996, Yao was awarded the Knuth Prize. Yao also received the Turing Award in 2000, considered the "Nobel Prize" of computer science, "in recognition of his fundamental contributions to the theory of computation, including the complexity-based theory of pseudorandom number generation, cryptography, and communication complexity". In 2021, Yao received the Kyoto Prize in Advanced Technology. In 2022, he was listed on the Asian Scientist 100.
Yao is a member of U.S. National Academy of Sciences, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery, and an academician of Chinese Academy of Sciences. His wife, Frances Yao, is also a theoretical computer scientist.
== See also ==
Communication complexity
List of pioneers in computer science
== References ==
== External links ==
Andrew Yao (in Chinese) at CASTU |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Protection_Directive | Data Protection Directive | The Data Protection Directive, officially Directive 95/46/EC, enacted in October 1995, was a European Union directive which regulated the processing of personal data within the European Union (EU) and the free movement of such data. The Data Protection Directive was an important component of EU privacy and human rights law.
The principles set out in the Data Protection Directive were aimed at the protection of fundamental rights and freedoms in the processing of personal data. The General Data Protection Regulation, adopted in April 2016, superseded the Data Protection Directive and became enforceable on 25 May 2018.
== Context ==
The right to privacy is a highly developed area of law in Europe. All the member states of the Council of Europe (CoE) are also signatories of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). Article 8 of the ECHR provides a right to respect for one's "private and family life, his home and his correspondence", subject to certain restrictions. The European Court of Human Rights has given this article a very broad interpretation in its jurisprudence.
In 1973, American scholar Willis Ware published Records, Computers, and the Rights of Citizens, a report that was to be influential on the directions these laws would take.
In 1980, in an effort to create a comprehensive data protection system throughout Europe, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) issued its "Recommendations of the Council Concerning Guidelines Governing the Protection of Privacy and Trans-Border Flows of Personal Data". The seven principles governing the OECD's recommendations for protection of personal data were:
Notice—data subjects should be given notice when their data is being collected;
Purpose—data should only be used for the purpose stated and not for any other purposes;
Consent—data should not be disclosed without the data subject's consent;
Security—collected data should be kept secure from any potential abuses;
Disclosure—data subjects should be informed as to who is collecting their data;
Access—data subjects should be allowed to access their data and make corrections to any inaccurate data
Accountability—data subjects should have a method available to them to hold data collectors accountable for not following the above principles.
The OECD Guidelines, however, were non-binding, and data privacy laws still varied widely across Europe. The United States, meanwhile, while endorsing the OECD's recommendations, did nothing to implement them within the United States. However, the first six principles were incorporated into the EU Directive.
In 1981, the Members States of the Council of Europe adopted the Convention for the Protection of Individuals with regard to Automatic Processing of Personal Data (Convention 108) to implement Article 8 of the ECHR. Convention 108 obliges the signatories to enact legislation concerning the automatic processing of personal data, and was modernised and reinforced in 2018 to become "Convention 108+".
In 1989 with German reunification, the data the East German secret police (Stasi) collected became well known, increasing the demand for privacy in Germany. At the time West Germany already had privacy laws since 1977 (Bundesdatenschutzgesetz). The European Commission realized that diverging data protection legislation amongst EU member states impeded the free flow of data within the EU and accordingly proposed the Data Protection Directive.
== Content ==
The directive regulates the processing of personal data regardless of whether such processing is automated or not.
=== Scope ===
Personal data are defined as "any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person ('data subject'); an identifiable person is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly, in particular by reference to an identification number or to one or more factors specific to his physical, physiological, mental, economic, cultural or social identity" (art. 2 a).
This definition is meant to be very broad. Data are "personal data" when someone is able to link the information to a person, even if the person holding the data cannot make this link. Some examples of "personal data" are: address, credit card number, bank statements, criminal record, etc.
The notion processing means "any operation or set of operations which is performed upon personal data, whether or not by automatic means, such as collection, recording, organization, storage, adaptation or alteration, retrieval, consultation, use, disclosure by transmission, dissemination or otherwise making available, alignment or combination, blocking, erasure or destruction" (art. 2 b).
The responsibility for compliance rests on the shoulders of the "controller", meaning the natural or artificial person, public authority, agency or any other body which alone or jointly with others determines the purposes and means of the processing of personal data (art. 2 d).
The data protection rules are applicable not only when the controller is established within the EU, but whenever the controller uses equipment situated within the EU in order to process data. (art. 4) Controllers from outside the EU, processing data in the EU, will have to follow data protection regulation. In principle, any online business trading with EU residents would process some personal data and would be using equipment in the EU to process the data (i.e. the customer's computer). As a consequence, the website operator would have to comply with the European data protection rules. The directive was written before the breakthrough of the Internet, and to date there is little jurisprudence on this subject.
=== Principles ===
Personal data should not be processed at all, except when certain conditions are met. These conditions fall into three categories: transparency, legitimate purpose, and proportionality.
==== Transparency ====
The data subject has the right to be informed when his personal data is being processed. The controller must provide his name and address, the purpose of processing, the recipients of the data and all other information required to ensure the processing is fair. (art. 10 and 11)
Data may be processed only if at least one of the following is true (art. 7):
when the data subject has given his consent.
when the processing is necessary for the performance of or the entering into a contract.
when processing is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation.
when processing is necessary in order to protect the vital interests of the data subject.
processing is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority vested in the controller or in a third party to whom the data are disclosed.
processing is necessary for the purposes of the legitimate interests pursued by the controller or by the third party or parties to whom the data are disclosed, except where such interests are over-ridden by the interests for fundamental rights and freedoms of the data subject. The data subject has the right to access all data processed about him. The data subject even has the right to demand the rectification, deletion or blocking of data that is incomplete, inaccurate or not being processed in compliance with the data protection rules. (art. 12)
==== Legitimate purpose ====
Personal data can only be processed for specified explicit and legitimate purposes and may not be processed further in a way incompatible with those purposes. (art. 6 b) The personal data must have protection from misuse and respect for the "certain rights of the data owners which are guaranteed by EU law".
==== Proportionality ====
Personal data may be processed only insofar as it is adequate, relevant and not excessive in relation to the purposes for which they are collected and/or further processed.
The data must be accurate and, where necessary, kept up to date; every reasonable step must be taken to ensure that data which are inaccurate or incomplete, having regard to the purposes for which they were collected or for which they are further processed, are erased or rectified;
The data shouldn't be kept in a form which permits identification of data subjects for longer than is necessary for the purposes for which the data were collected or for which they are further processed. Member States shall lay down appropriate safeguards for personal data stored for longer periods for historical, statistical or scientific use. (art. 6).
When sensitive personal data (can be: religious beliefs, political opinions, health, sexual orientation, race, membership of past organisations) are being processed, extra restrictions apply. (art. 8).
The data subject may object at any time to the processing of personal data for the purpose of direct marketing. (art. 14)
An algorithmic-based decision which produces legal effects or significantly affects the data subject may not be based solely on automated processing of data. (art. 15) A form of appeal should be provided when automatic decision making processes are used.
=== Supervisory authority and the public register of processing operations ===
Each member state must set up a supervisory authority, an independent body that will monitor the data protection level in that member state, give advice to the government about administrative measures and regulations, and start legal proceedings when data protection regulation has been violated. (art. 28) Individuals may lodge complaints about violations to the supervisory authority or in a court of law.
The controller must notify the supervisory authority before he starts to process data. The notification contains at least the following information (art. 19):
the name and address of the controller and of his representative, if any;
the purpose or purposes of the processing;
a description of the category or categories of data subject and of the data or categories of data relating to them;
the recipients or categories of recipient to whom the data might be disclosed;
proposed transfers of data to third countries;
a general description of the measures taken to ensure security of processing.
This information is kept in a public register.
=== Transfer of personal data to third countries ===
Third countries is the term used in legislation to designate countries outside the European Union.
Personal data may only be transferred to a third country if that country provides an adequate level of protection of the data. Some exceptions to this rule are provided, for instance when the controller himself can guarantee that the recipient will comply with the data protection rules.
The Directive's Article 29 created the "Working party on the Protection of Individuals with regard to the Processing of Personal Data", commonly known as the "Article 29 Working Party". The Working Party gives advice about the level of protection in the European Union and third countries.
The Working Party negotiated with United States representatives about the protection of personal data, the Safe Harbour Principles were the result. According to critics the Safe Harbour Principles do not provide for an adequate level of protection, because they contain fewer obligations for the controller and allow the contractual waiver of certain rights.
In October 2015 the European Court of Justice ruled that the Safe Harbour regime was invalid as a result of an action brought by an Austrian privacy campaigner in relation to the export of subscribers' data by Facebook's European business to Facebook in the United States. The US and European Authorities worked on a replacement for Safe Harbour and an agreement was reached in February 2016, leading to the European Commission adopting the EU–US Privacy Shield framework on 12 July 2016. This was likewise found invalid in 2020 and replaced with the EU–US Data Privacy Framework in 2023.
In July 2007, a new, controversial, passenger name record (PNR) agreement between the US and the EU was undersigned.
In February 2008, Jonathan Faull, the head of the EU's Commission of Home Affairs, complained about the United States bilateral policy concerning PNR. The US had signed in February 2008 a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Czech Republic in exchange of a visa waiver scheme, without first consulting Brussels. The tensions between Washington and Brussels are mainly caused by the lower level of data protection in the US, especially since foreigners do not benefit from the US Privacy Act of 1974. Other countries approached for bilateral Memoranda of Understanding included the United Kingdom, Estonia, (Germany) and Greece.
== Implementation by the member states ==
EU directives are addressed to the member states, and are not legally binding for individuals in principle. The member states must transpose the directive into internal law.
Directive 95/46/EC on the protection of personal data had to be transposed by the end of 1998. All member states had enacted their own data protection legislation.
== Replacement by the General Data Protection Regulation ==
On 25 January 2012, the European Commission (EC) announced it would be unifying data protection law across a unified European Union via legislation called the "General Data Protection Regulation." The EC's objectives with this legislation included:
the harmonisation of 27 national data protection regulations into one unified regulation;
the improvement of corporate data transfer rules outside the European Union; and
the improvement of user control over personal identifying data.
The original proposal also dictated that the legislation would in theory "apply for all non-EU companies without any establishment in the EU, provided that the processing of data is directed at EU residents," one of the biggest changes with the new legislation. This change carried on through to the legislation's final approval on 14 April 2016, affecting entities around the world. "The Regulation applies to processing outside the EU that relates to the offering of goods or services to data subjects (individuals) in the EU or the monitoring of their behavior," according to W. Scott Blackmer of the InfoLawGroup, though he added "[i]t is questionable whether European supervisory authorities or consumers would actually try to sue US-based operators over violations of the Regulation." Additional changes include stricter conditions for consent, broader definition of sensitive data, new provisions on protecting children's privacy, and the inclusion of "rights to be forgotten."
The EC then set a compliance date of 25 May 2018, giving businesses around the world a chance to prepare for compliance, review data protection language in contracts, consider transition to international standards, update privacy policies, and review marketing plans.
== Comparison with other jurisdictions ==
=== Comparison with United States data protection law ===
As of 2003, the United States has no single data protection law comparable to the EU's Data Protection Directive.
United States privacy legislation tends to be adopted on an ad hoc basis, with legislation arising when certain sectors and circumstances require (e.g., the Video Privacy Protection Act of 1988, the Cable Television Protection and Competition Act of 1992, the Fair Credit Reporting Act, and the 1996 Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, HIPAA (US)). Therefore, while certain sectors may already satisfy parts of the EU Directive most do not. The United States prefers what it calls a 'sectoral' approach to data protection legislation, which relies on a combination of legislation, regulation, and self-regulation, rather than governmental regulation alone. Former US President Bill Clinton and former Vice-President Al Gore explicitly recommended in their "Framework for Global Electronic Commerce" that the private sector should lead, and companies should implement self-regulation in reaction to issues brought on by Internet technology.
The reasoning behind this approach has as much to do with American laissez-faire economics as with different social perspectives. The First Amendment of the United States Constitution guarantees the right to free speech. While free speech is an explicit right guaranteed by the United States Constitution, privacy is an implicit right guaranteed by the Constitution as interpreted by the United States Supreme Court, although it is often an explicit right in many state constitutions.
Europe's extensive privacy regulation is justified with reference to experiences under World War II-era fascist governments and post-War Communist regimes, where there was widespread unchecked use of personal information. World War II and the post-War period was a time in Europe when disclosure of race or ethnicity led to secret denunciations and seizures that sent friends and neighbours to work camps and concentration camps. In the age of computers, Europeans' guardedness of secret government files has translated into a distrust of corporate databases, and governments in Europe took decided steps to protect personal information from abuses in the years following World War II. (Germany) and France, in particular, set forth comprehensive data protection laws.
Critics of Europe's data policies, however, have said that they have impeded Europe's ability to monetize the data of users on the internet and are the primary reason why there are no Big Tech companies in Europe, with most of them instead being in the United States. Furthermore, with Alibaba and Tencent joining the ranks of the world's 10 most valuable tech companies in recent years, even China is moving ahead of Europe in the performance of its digital economy, which was valued at $5.09 trillion in 2019 (35.8 trillion yuan).
Meanwhile, Europe's preoccupation with the US is likely misplaced in the first place, as China and Russia are increasingly identified by European policymakers as "hybrid threat" aggressors, using a combination of propaganda on social media and hacking to intentionally undermine the functioning of European institutions.
In addition to governmental and institutional measures, independent research and educational platforms have emerged to promote stronger data-protection awareness and responsible digital practices across regions. More recently, jurisdictions outside Europe and the United States have begun adopting hybrid data-protection models that blend the rights-based approach of the GDPR with the sectoral and regulatory flexibility of American law. For example, Nigeria’s Nigeria Data Protection Act (NDPA) develops a unified legislative framework inspired by the GDPR but tailored to the market realities of emerging economies. A detailed comparative analysis on Privacy Needle(2025) explores key differences such as territorial scope, consent and lawful-basis models, cross-border data-flow regulation, and enforcement regimes. Sites such as Privacy Needle publish comparative analyses of global privacy frameworks—including the EU’s GDPR, Nigeria’s NDPA, and U.S. sectoral laws—helping policymakers, professionals, and the public understand evolving data-governance trends. These initiatives contribute to informed discussions on the balance between innovation, privacy rights, and cybersecurity in the modern digital economy.
== See also ==
== References ==
== External links ==
Directive 95/46/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 24 October 1995 on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data
EU data protection page. The European Commission provides elaborate information on its website. The following subjects are covered:
Legislative documents
Transposition and implementation of Directive 95/46/EC
European Data Protection Supervisor
National Data Protection Commissioners
Art. 29 Data protection Working Party
Adequacy of protection in third countries and model contracts for the transfer of personal data to third countries
2000/520/EC: Commission Decision of 26 July 2000 pursuant to Directive 95/46/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council on the adequacy of the protection provided by the safe harbour privacy principles and related frequently asked questions issued by the US Department of Commerce (notified under document number C(2000) 2441) (Safe harbour principle)
Directive 2002/58/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 12 July 2002 concerning the processing of personal data and the protection of privacy in the electronic communications sector (Directive on privacy and electronic communications)
Procedure 2012/0011/COD Procedure for the proposed revised legal framework (General Data Protection Regulation) |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_von_Bennigsen | Rudolf von Bennigsen | Karl Wilhelm Rudolf von Bennigsen (10 July 1824, Lüneburg – 7 August 1902, Bennigsen near Springe) was a German politician descended from an old Hanoverian family.
== Biography ==
Bennigsen was born at Lüneburg on 10 July 1824. He was descended from an old Hanoverian family, his father, Karl von Bennigsen, was an officer in the Hanoverian Army who rose to the rank of general and also held diplomatic appointments. The anthropologist Moritz von Leonhardi was his nephew.
After studying at the University of Göttingen, where he became a member of the Corps Hannovera, Bennigsen entered the Hanoverian civil service. In 1855, he was elected a member of the second chamber, and because the government refused to allow him leave of absence from his official duties, he resigned his post in the public service. He at once became the recognized leader of the Liberal opposition to the reactionary government, but should be distinguished from Alexander Levin, Count of Bennigsen, a member of the same family and son of the distinguished Russian General Bennigsen, who was also one of the parliamentary leaders at the time, serving as Hanover's minister-president between 1848 and 1850 and afterwards as president first of the first chamber, then of the second chamber of the Estates Assembly of the Kingdom of Hanover (parliament).
What gave Bennigsen his importance not only in Hanover, but throughout the whole of Germany, was the foundation of the German National Association, which was due to him, and of which he was president. This society, which arose out of the public excitement created by the Austro-Sardinian War, had for its object the formation of a national party which should strive for the unity and the constitutional liberty of the whole Fatherland. It united the moderate Liberals throughout Germany, and at once became a great political power, notwithstanding all the efforts of the governments, and especially of King George V of Hanover to suppress it. Bennigsen was also one of the founders of the Protestantenverein in 1863.
In 1866 Bennigsen, then leader of the liberal opposition in the second chamber of the Estates Assembly, used all his influence to keep Hanover neutral in the Austro-Prussian War, but in vain. He took no part in the war, but his brother, who was an officer in the Prussian Army, was killed in Bohemia. In May of this year he had an important interview with Bismarck, who wished to secure his support for the reform of the German Confederation, and after the war was over at once accepted the position of a Prussian subject, taking his seat in the diet (parliament) of the North German Confederation and in the Prussian House of Representatives. He used his influence to procure as much autonomy as possible for the province of Hanover, but was a strong opponent of the Guelph Party. He was one of the three Hanoverians, Ludwig Windthorst and Johann von Miquel being the other two, who at once won for the representatives of the conquered province the lead in both the Prussian and North German parliaments. The Nationalverein, its work being done, was now dissolved; but Bennigsen was chiefly instrumental in founding a new political party, the National Liberals, who, while they supported Bismarck's national policy, hoped to secure the constitutional development of the country.
For the next thirty years Bennigsen was president of the party, and was the most influential of the parliamentary leaders. It was chiefly owing to him that the building up of the internal institutions of the empire was carried on without the open breach between Bismarck and the parliament, which was often imminent. Many amendments suggested by him were introduced in the debates on the constitution; in 1870 he undertook a mission to Southern Germany to strengthen the national party there, and was consulted by Bismarck while at Versailles. It was he who brought about the compromise on the military bill in 1874. In 1877 he was offered the post of vice-chancellor with a seat in the Prussian ministry, but refused it because Bismarck or the king would not agree to his conditions. From this time his relations with the government were less friendly, and in 1878 he brought about the rejection of the first Socialist Bill.
In 1883 he resigned his seat in parliament owing to the reactionary measures of the government, which made it impossible for him to continue his former co-operation with Bismarck, but returned in 1887 to support the coalition of national parties. One of the first acts of the Emperor Wilhelm II was to appoint him upper president of the Province of Hanover. In 1897 he resigned this post and retired from public life. He died on 7 August 1902.
== Notes ==
== References ==
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Bennigsen, Rudolf von". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 3 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 742–743. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dangui_Oduber#:~:text=Oduber%20was%20born%20on%20July,siblings%2C%20Glenson%20and%20Nelson%20Jr. | Dangui Oduber | Danguillaume Pierino Oduber (born July 13, 1978) is an Aruban politician serving as Minister of Tourism and Public Health in the second Wever-Croes Cabinet. He previously served as a member of Parliament
== Early life ==
Oduber was born on July 13, 1978, in Oranjestad, Aruba, to Nelson Oduber - the former Prime Minister of Aruba - and Glenda Croes. He has two siblings, Glenson and Nelson Jr.
He attended Bon Bini Primary school and after, attended La Salle Secondary School. After finishing secondary school, Oduber attended Colegio Arubano and graduated with his HAVO diploma. following his graduation, Oduber moved to the Netherlands where he graduated from the Inholland University of Applied Sciences with a Bachelor's Degree in Economics.
After returning home, Oduber started working for the telecommunications service provider, SETAR.
== Politics ==
Oduber joined the People's Electoral Movement (MEP) and formally started his political career in 2013. In his first election, The 2013 Aruban general election, he scored 1749 votes. The election was won by the Aruban People's Party (AVP) but Oduber secured a seat in the Estates of Aruba.
In the 2017 Aruban General Election, the People's Electoral Movement (MEP) won 2 seats with 37.61% of the vote, resulting in a tie between the two major parties. On November 17, 2017, The coalition cabinet between the People's Electoral Movement (MEP), Network of Electoral Democracy and Pueblo Orguyoso y Respeta (POR) was formed and was sworn in. Oduber was then named The Minister of Tourism, Public Health and Sport.
Oduber has initiated various projects that benefit his respective fields which included signing a proposition that allows students from countries that are not allowed to practice medicine in Aruba (Including locals studying medicine in countries not recognized by the law) to practice their craft. ARUBIG was officially put in place in October 2021.
Following the 2021 Aruban general election, Oduber's party secured 9 seats with 35.32% of the vote. On August 19 following the appointment of the formateur, MEP reached an agreement with RAIZ to form a government, becoming Aruba's third minority coalition government. Oduber was sworn in as Minister of Tourism & Public Health on September 20, 2021.
== References ==
== External links ==
Official website
== External links ==
Media related to Dangui Oduber at Wikimedia Commons |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arshad_Sauleh | Arshad Sauleh | Arshad Sauleh (Urdu: ارشر صالح) is an artist and a radio broadcaster born in a Muslim family at Srinagar in the summer capital of Kashmir who has remained host/judge of several noted art exhibitions besides he is teaching art at Government College of Education in Srinagar.
== Contribution and awards ==
Arshid Sauleh represented India in the 2002 International Exhibition of Quranic paintings in Iran. He was honored by Ministry of Heritage and Islamic Guidance, Government of Iran to the tenth International Exhibition on Quranic Paintings. During Kashmir conflict
2011-Merit Award by State Academy of Art Culture and Language Srinagar.
== See also ==
M F Husain
== References == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_P._Snyder_(admiral) | Charles P. Snyder (admiral) | Charles Philip Snyder (July 10, 1879 – December 3, 1964) was a four-star admiral in the United States Navy who served as the U.S. Navy's first Naval Inspector General during World War II.
== Early career ==
Born in Charleston, West Virginia in Kanawha County to future West Virginia Congressman Charles P. Snyder and Jane Goshorn, he attended Washington and Lee University for one year before entering the U.S. Naval Academy in 1896. Graduating fourth in his class in 1900, he served the standard two years at sea as a passed cadet before being commissioned ensign in 1902 and assigned to the battleship Alabama.
Promoted to lieutenant, he reported to the Naval Academy on August 16, 1905 as an instructor in navigation and mechanics. In February 1906, he was called before a Congressional subcommittee to testify about his role as the disciplinary officer in charge during a notorious hazing incident that had resulted in an upper class man being acquitted at court-martial for the injury of a fourth class man on the grounds that he and other upper class men had understood Snyder to have tacitly encouraged the hazing.
During World War I, he commanded the battleship Oregon, flagship of the Pacific Fleet; the cruiser Minneapolis; and the transport Mongolia. He graduated from the Naval War College in 1925. Promoted to captain, he served as commandant of midshipmen at the Naval Academy, on staff at the Naval War College, and as manager of the Portsmouth Navy Yard.
== Flag officer ==
He was promoted to rear admiral with date of rank March 1, 1933 while serving as chief of staff to Admiral David F. Sellers, who was Commander Battleships, Battle Force, U.S. Fleet from 1932 to 1933 and Commander in Chief, U.S. Fleet from 1933 to 1934. Snyder was commandant of the Portsmouth Navy Yard from 1934 to 1935, then commanded a heavy cruiser division of the Scouting Force, followed by a battleship division of the Battle Force, before serving as President of the Naval War College from January 2, 1937 to May 27, 1939. He returned to sea in 1939 as Commander Battleships, Battle Force, with the temporary rank of vice admiral.
On January 6, 1940, he hoisted his four-star flag on board the battleship California as Commander Battle Force with the temporary rank of admiral. As commander of the Battle Force, he was second in command of the U.S. Fleet, under Admiral James O. Richardson. In January 1941, Richardson was relieved over a dispute about fleet basing and replaced by Husband E. Kimmel, a junior rear admiral. Simultaneously, the fleet was reorganized and the position of Commander Battle Force was downgraded to three stars, a change scheduled to take effect upon the completion of Snyder's tour that summer. For reasons of his own, Snyder had no desire to serve under Kimmel, and asked to be relieved immediately.
He was succeeded by Vice Admiral William S. Pye on January 31, 1941, one day before Kimmel ascended to command and eleven months before most of the Battle Force's battleships were sunk at anchor during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
== World War II ==
Upon relinquishing command of the Battle Force, he reverted to his permanent rank of rear admiral and became a member of the General Board with additional duty as the president of the Board for Inspection of Military Readiness in Naval Districts. As a member of the General Board, Snyder participated in the debate over the role of African American sailors in the Navy. The Navy's policy was to confine black sailors to menial duties as stewards and messmen, excluding them from general service on the grounds that they were unable to maintain discipline among white subordinates and therefore had to be segregated, which was impractical at sea.
When the General Board convened on January 23, 1942, Snyder suggested expanding black enlistment in rigidly segregated support roles outside the service branches: in the Aviation Branch, following the Army's lead; aboard auxiliaries and minor vessels, especially transports; or in the Musician's Branch, because "the colored race is very musical and they are versed in all forms of rhythm."
From May 1942 until April 1946, he served as the first Naval Inspector General. The Naval Inspector General was used as a troubleshooter during World War II, inspecting shore facilities and investigating misconduct. As but one of 24 inspection authorities concerned with Navy procurement and administration of activities ashore, he was instructed to keep the organization small and to rely on augmentation from the Fleet. He retired in August 1943 upon reaching the statutory age, and was advanced to admiral on the retired list as the highest rank in which he had served, but remained on active duty as inspector general until the end of the war. In early 1946, he investigated the sinking of the heavy cruiser Indianapolis in his official capacity as inspector general, but agreed to curtail his investigation so that Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King and Navy Secretary James V. Forrestal could immediately court-martial Indianapolis's commanding officer, Captain Charles B. McVay III. Snyder was decorated with Navy Distinguished Service Medal for his service during World War II.
== Personal life ==
He married the former Cornelia Lee Wolcott on July 10, 1902, and had three children: Elizabeth; Philip, who retired from the Navy as a rear admiral; and Jane. He died at the Naval Hospital in Bethesda, Maryland in 1964. He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
He married Edith Hanlon Christian in 1949.
His decorations include the Navy Cross for eminent and conspicuous service in World War I, and a special letter of commendation from the War Department. He received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree (LL.D.) from Washington and Lee College on January 24, 1943, and the Sigma Chi fraternity distinguished medal for conspicuous public service in 1940.
His great-granddaughter is actress Elizabeth McGovern.
== References ==
Sixteen boxes of Snyder's personal papers are located in the Naval Historical Collection, Naval War College.
== External links ==
Media related to Charles P. Snyder (admiral) at Wikimedia Commons |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juneteenth#:~:text=North%20Dakota%20approved%20recognition%20of%20Juneteenth%20as%20a%20state%2Drecognized%20annual%20holiday%20on%20April%2013%2C%202021%2C%5B107%5D%20with%20Hawaii%20becoming%20the%2049th%20state%20to%20recognize%20the%20holiday%20on%20June%2016%2C%202021 | Juneteenth | Juneteenth, officially Juneteenth National Independence Day, is a federal holiday in the United States. It is celebrated annually on June 19 to commemorate the end of slavery in the United States. The holiday's name, first used in the 1890s, is a portmanteau of June and nineteenth, referring to June 19, 1865, the day when Major General Gordon Granger ordered the enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation in Texas at the end of the American Civil War.
In the Civil War period, slavery came to an end in various areas of the United States at different times. Many enslaved Southerners escaped, demanded wages, stopped work, or took up arms against the Confederacy of slave states. In January 1865, Congress proposed the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution for the national abolition of slavery. By June 1865, almost all of the enslaved population had been freed by the victorious Union Army or by state abolition laws. When the national abolition amendment was ratified in December, the remaining enslaved people in Delaware and in Kentucky were freed.
Early Juneteenth celebrations date back to 1866, at first involving church-centered community gatherings in Texas. They spread across the South among newly freed African-Americans and their descendants and became more commercialized in the 1920s and 1930s, often centering on a food festival. Participants in the Great Migration brought these celebrations to the rest of the country. During the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, Juneteenth celebrations were eclipsed by the nonviolent determination to achieve civil rights, but they grew in popularity again in the 1970s, with a focus on African-American freedom and African-American arts. Beginning with Texas by proclamation in 1938, and by legislation in 1979, every U.S. state and the District of Columbia has formally recognized the holiday in some way.
The day was recognized as a federal holiday in 2021, when the 117th U.S. Congress enacted and President Joe Biden signed the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act into law. Juneteenth became the first new federal holiday since Martin Luther King Jr. Day was adopted in 1983. Juneteenth is also celebrated by the Mascogos, descendants of Black Seminoles who escaped from slavery in 1852 and settled in Coahuila, Mexico.
== Celebrations and traditions ==
The holiday is considered the "longest-running African-American holiday" and has been called "America's second Independence Day". Juneteenth falls on June 19 and has often been celebrated on the third Saturday in June. Historian Mitch Kachun notes that celebrations of the end of slavery have three goals: "to celebrate, to educate, and to agitate."
Early celebrations consisted of baseball, fishing, and rodeos. African Americans were often prohibited from using public facilities for their celebrations, so instead they were typically held at churches or outdoors near bodies of water. Celebrations were characterized by elaborate large meals and people wearing their best clothing. It was common for formerly enslaved people and their descendants to make a pilgrimage to Galveston, Texas, where the announcement of emancipation had originally taken place. News coverage of early festivals, Janice Hume and Noah Arceneaux state, "served to assimilate African-American memories within the dominant 'American story'".
Modern observance is primarily in local celebrations. In many places, Juneteenth has become a multicultural holiday. Traditions include public readings of the Emancipation Proclamation which promised freedom, singing traditional songs such as "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" and "Lift Every Voice and Sing", and reading of works by noted African-American writers, such as Ralph Ellison and Maya Angelou. Celebrations include picnics, rodeos, street fairs, cookouts, family reunions, park parties, historical reenactments, blues festivals, and Miss Juneteenth contests. Red food and drinks are traditionally served during the celebrations, including red velvet cake and strawberry soda, with red meant to represent resilience and joy.
Juneteenth celebrations often include lectures and exhibitions on African-American culture. The modern holiday places much emphasis on teaching about African-American heritage. Karen M. Thomas writes in Emerge that "community leaders have latched on to [Juneteenth] to help instill a sense of heritage and pride in black youth." Celebrations are commonly accompanied by voter registration efforts, the performing of plays, and retelling stories. The holiday is also a celebration of soul food and other cuisine with African-American influences. In Tourism Review International, Anne Donovan and Karen DeBres write that "Barbecue is the centerpiece of most Juneteenth celebrations." Major news networks host specials and marathons on national outlets featuring prominent Black voices.
The Black Seminoles of Nacimiento in Mexico hold a festival and reunion known as el Día de los Negros on June 19.
Many former British colonies celebrate Emancipation Day on August 1, commemorating the Slavery Abolition Act 1833.
Since 2021, the United Nations has designated August 31 as the International Day for People of African Descent.
== History ==
On September 22, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln announced that the Emancipation Proclamation would go into effect on January 1, 1863, promising freedom to enslaved people in all of the rebellious parts of Southern states of the Confederacy including Texas. Enforcement of the Proclamation generally relied upon the advance of Union troops. Texas, as the most remote state of the former Confederacy, had seen an expansion of slavery because the presence of Union troops was low as the American Civil War ended; thus, the enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation had been slow and inconsistent there prior to Granger's order. In all June 19, 1865, was 900 days after the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect, 71 days after Robert E. Lee surrendered to the Union on April 9, 1865, and 24 days after the disbanding of the Confederate military department covering Texas on May 26, 1865.
=== Early history ===
==== The Civil War and celebrations of emancipation ====
During the American Civil War (1861–1865), emancipation came at different times in different parts of the Southern United States. Large celebrations of emancipation, often called Jubilees (recalling the biblical Jubilee, in which enslaved people were freed), took place on September 22, January 1, July 4, August 1, April 6, and November 1, among other dates. When emancipation finally came to Texas, on June 19, 1865, as the southern rebellion collapsed, celebration was widespread. While that date did not actually mark the unequivocal end of slavery, even in Texas, June 19 came to be a day of shared commemoration across the United States – created, preserved, and spread by ordinary African Americans – of slavery's wartime demise.
==== End of slavery in Texas ====
Lincoln issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation in the midst of the Civil War on September 22, 1862, declaring that if the rebels did not end the fighting and rejoin the Union, all enslaved people in the Confederacy would be freed on the first day of the year. On January 1, 1863, Lincoln issued the final Emancipation Proclamation, declaring that all enslaved people in the Confederate States of America in rebellion and not in Union hands were freed.
Planters and other slaveholders from eastern states had migrated into Texas to escape the fighting, and many brought enslaved people with them, increasing by the thousands the enslaved population in the state at the end of the Civil War. Although most lived in rural areas, more than 1,000 resided in Galveston or Houston by 1860, with several hundred in other large towns. By 1865, there were an estimated 250,000 enslaved people in Texas.
Despite the surrender of Confederate General-in-Chief Robert E. Lee at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865, the western Confederate Army of the Trans-Mississippi did not formally surrender until June 2. On the morning of June 19, 1865, Union Major General Gordon Granger arrived on the island of Galveston to take command of the more than 2,000 federal troops recently landed in the department of Texas to enforce the emancipation of its enslaved population and oversee Reconstruction, nullifying all laws passed within Texas during the war by Confederate lawmakers. The order informed all Texans that, in accordance with a Proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all enslaved people were free:
The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor. The freedmen are advised to remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere.
Longstanding urban legend places a historic reading of General Order No. 3 at Ashton Villa; but no historical evidence supports this claim. There is no evidence that Granger or any of his troops proclaimed the Ordinance by reading it aloud. All indications are that copies of the Ordinance were posted in public places, including the Negro Church on Broadway, since renamed Reedy Chapel A.M.E. Church.
On June 21, 2014, the Galveston Historical Foundation and Texas Historical Commission erected a Juneteenth plaque where the Osterman Building once stood signifying the location of Major General Granger's Union Headquarters believed to be where he issued his general orders.
Although this event commemorates the end of slavery, emancipation for the remaining enslaved population in two Union border states, Delaware and Kentucky, would not come until December 6, 1865, when the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified. The federal amendment also put a definitive end to chattel slavery and indentured servitude in New Jersey, freeing approximately 16 elderly individuals. Furthermore, thousands of black slaves were not freed until after the Reconstruction Treaties of late 1866, when the Cherokee, Creek, Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Seminole tribes were forced to sign new treaties that required them to free their slaves.
The freedom of formerly enslaved people in Texas was given state law status in a series of Texas Supreme Court decisions between 1868 and 1874.
==== Early Juneteenth celebrations ====
Formerly enslaved people in Galveston rejoiced after General Order No. 3. One year later, on June 19, 1866, freedmen in Texas organized the first of what became annual commemorations of "Jubilee Day". Early celebrations were used as political rallies to give voting instructions to newly freed African Americans. Other independence observances occurred on January 1 or 4.
In some cities, Black people were barred from using public parks because of state-sponsored segregation of facilities. Across parts of Texas, freed people pooled their funds to purchase land to hold their celebrations. The day was first celebrated in Austin in 1867 under the auspices of the Freedmen's Bureau, and it had been listed on a "calendar of public events" by 1872. That year, Black leaders in Texas raised $1,000 for the purchase of 10 acres (4 ha) of land, today known as Houston's Emancipation Park, to celebrate Juneteenth.
The observation was soon drawing thousands of attendees across Texas. In Limestone County, an estimated 30,000 Black people celebrated at Booker T. Washington Park, established in 1898 for Juneteenth celebrations. The Black community began using the word Juneteenth for Jubilee Day early in the 1890s. The word Juneteenth appeared in print in the Brenham Weekly Banner, a white newspaper from Brenham, Texas, as early as 1891. Mentions of Juneteenth celebrations outside of Texas appeared as early as 1909 in Shreveport, Louisiana.
==== Decline of celebrations during the Jim Crow era ====
In the early 20th century, economic and political forces led to a decline in Juneteenth celebrations. From 1890 to 1908, Texas and all former Confederate states passed new constitutions or amendments that effectively disenfranchised Black people, excluding them from the political process. White-dominated state legislatures passed Jim Crow laws imposing second-class status. Gladys L. Knight writes the decline in celebration was in part because "upwardly mobile blacks ... were ashamed of their slave past and aspired to assimilate into mainstream culture. Younger generations of blacks, becoming further removed from slavery were occupied with school ... and other pursuits." Others who migrated to the Northern United States could not take time off or simply dropped the celebration.
The Great Depression forced many Black people off farms and into the cities to find work, where they had difficulty taking the day off to celebrate. From 1936 to 1951, the Texas State Fair served as a destination for celebrating the holiday, contributing to its revival. In 1936, an estimated 150,000 to 200,000 people joined the holiday's celebration in Dallas. In 1938, Governor of Texas James Allred issued a proclamation stating in part:
Whereas, the Negroes in the State of Texas observe June 19 as the official day for the celebration of Emancipation from slavery; and
Whereas, June 19, 1865, was the date when General [Gordon] Granger, who had command of the Military District of Texas, issued a proclamation notifying the Negroes of Texas that they were free; and
Whereas, since that time, Texas Negroes have observed this day with suitable holiday ceremony, except during such years when the day comes on a Sunday; when the Governor of the State is asked to proclaim the following day as the holiday for State observance by Negroes; and
Whereas, June 19, 1938, this year falls on Sunday;
NOW, THEREFORE, I, JAMES V. ALLRED, Governor of the State of Texas, do set aside and proclaim the day of June 20, 1938, as the date for observance of
EMANCIPATION DAY
in Texas, and do urge all members of the Negro race in Texas to observe the day in a manner appropriate to its importance to them.
Seventy thousand people attended a "Juneteenth Jamboree" in 1951. From 1940 through 1970, in the second wave of the Great Migration, more than five million Black people left Texas, Louisiana and other parts of the South for the North and the West Coast. As historian Isabel Wilkerson writes, "The people from Texas took Juneteenth Day to Los Angeles, Oakland, Seattle, and other places they went." In 1945, Juneteenth was introduced in San Francisco by a migrant from Texas, Wesley Johnson.
During the 1950s and 1960s, the Civil Rights Movement focused the attention of African Americans on expanding freedom and integrating. As a result, observations of the holiday declined again, though it was still celebrated in Texas.
=== Revival of celebrations ===
==== 1960s–1980s ====
Juneteenth soon saw a revival as Black people began tying their struggle to that of ending slavery. In Atlanta, some campaigners for equality wore Juneteenth buttons. During the 1968 Poor People's Campaign to Washington, DC, called by Rev. Ralph Abernathy, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference made June 19 the "Solidarity Day of the Poor People's Campaign". In the subsequent revival, large celebrations in Minneapolis and Milwaukee emerged, as well as across the Eastern United States.
In 1974, Houston began holding large-scale celebrations again, and Fort Worth, Texas, followed the next year. Around 30,000 people attended festivities at Sycamore Park in Fort Worth the following year. The 1978 Milwaukee celebration was described as drawing more than 100,000 attendees. In 1979, the Texas Legislature made the occasion a state holiday. In the late 1980s, there were major celebrations of Juneteenth in California, Wisconsin, Illinois, Georgia, and Washington, D.C.
==== Prayer breakfast and commemorative celebrations ====
In 1979, Democratic State Representative Al Edwards of Houston successfully sponsored legislation to make Juneteenth a paid Texas state holiday. The same year, he hosted the inaugural Al Edwards prayer breakfast and commemorative celebration on the grounds of the 1859 home, Ashton Villa. As one of the few existing buildings from the Civil War era and popular in local myth and legend as the location of Major General Granger's order, Edwards's annual celebration includes a local historian dressed as the Union general reading General Order No. 3 from the second-story balcony of the home. The Emancipation Proclamation is also read and speeches are made. Representative Al Edwards died of natural causes April 29, 2020, at the age of 83, but the annual prayer breakfast and commemorative celebration continued at Ashton Villa, with the late legislator's son Jason Edwards speaking in his father's place.
==== Official statewide recognitions ====
In the late 1970s, when the Texas Legislature declared Juneteenth a "holiday of significance ... particularly to the blacks of Texas", it became the first state to establish Juneteenth as a state holiday. The bill passed through the Texas Legislature in 1979 and was officially made a state holiday on January 1, 1980. During the 1980s and 1990s, the holiday became more widely celebrated among African-American communities across the country and received increasing mainstream attention. Before 2000, three more U.S. states officially observed the day, and over the next two decades it was recognized as an official observance in all states, except South Dakota, until becoming a federal holiday.
==== Juneteenth in pop culture and the mass media ====
Ralph Ellison's 1965 short story "Juneteenth" in the Quarterly Review of Literature, an excerpt from his novel in progress of the same name, brought the holiday to more widespread attention. In 1991, there was an exhibition by the Anacostia Community Museum (part of the Smithsonian Institution) called "Juneteenth '91, Freedom Revisited". In 1994, a group of community leaders gathered at Christian Unity Baptist Church in New Orleans to work for greater national celebration of Juneteenth. International awareness arose as expatriates and U.S. military bases overseas celebrated Juneteenth in cities abroad, such as Paris. In 1999, Ralph Ellison's novel Juneteenth was posthumously published, increasing recognition of the holiday. By 2006, at least 200 cities across the United States celebrated the day.
The holiday gained mainstream awareness outside African-American communities through depictions in media, such as episodes of TV series Atlanta (2016) and Black-ish (2017), the latter of which featured musical numbers about the holiday by Aloe Blacc, The Roots, and Fonzworth Bentley.
In 2018, Apple added Juneteenth to its calendars in iOS under official U.S. holidays. Private companies began to adopt Juneteenth as a paid day off for employees, while others officially marked the day in ceremonial ways, such as holding a moment of silence. In 2020, additional American corporations and educational institutions, including Twitter, the National Football League, Nike, began treating Juneteenth as a company holiday, providing a paid day off to their workers, and Google Calendar added Juneteenth to its U.S. Holidays calendar. Also in 2020, a number of major universities formally recognized Juneteenth, either as a "day of reflection" or as a university holiday with paid time off for faculty and staff.
The 2020 mother-daughter film on the holiday's pageant culture, Miss Juneteenth, featured African-American women "determined to stand on their own" while confronting sexist tendencies within their community.
==== Becoming a federal holiday ====
In 1996, the first federal legislation to recognize "Juneteenth Independence Day" was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives, H.J. Res. 195, sponsored by Barbara-Rose Collins (D-MI). In 1997, Congress recognized the day through Senate Joint Resolution 11 and House Joint Resolution 56. In 2013, the U.S. Senate passed Senate Resolution 175, acknowledging Lula Briggs Galloway (late president of the National Association of Juneteenth Lineage), who "successfully worked to bring national recognition to Juneteenth Independence Day", and the continued leadership of the National Juneteenth Observance Foundation.
In the 2000s and 2010s, activists continued a long process to push Congress towards official recognition of Juneteenth. Organizations such as the National Juneteenth Observance Foundation sought a Congressional designation of Juneteenth as a national day of observance. By 2016, 45 states were recognizing the occasion. Activist Opal Lee, often referred to as the "grandmother of Juneteenth", campaigned for decades to make Juneteenth a federal holiday, leading walks in many states to promote the idea. In 2016–17 at the age of 89, she led a symbolic walk from Fort Worth, Texas to Washington D.C. to advocate for the federal holiday. When it was officially made a federal holiday on June 17, 2021, she was standing beside President Joe Biden as he signed the bill.
Juneteenth became one of five date-specific federal holidays along with New Year's Day (January 1), Independence Day (July 4), Veterans Day (November 11), and Christmas Day (December 25). Juneteenth is the first new federal holiday since Martin Luther King Jr. Day was declared a holiday in 1986. Juneteenth also falls within the statutory Honor America Days period, which lasts for 21 days from Flag Day (June 14) to Independence Day (July 4).
== The Juneteenth Flag ==
In 1997, activist Ben Haith created the Juneteenth flag, which was further refined by illustrator Lisa Jeanne Graf. In 2000, the flag was first hoisted at the Roxbury Heritage State Park in Boston by Haith. The star at the center represents Texas and the extension of freedom for all African Americans throughout the whole nation. The burst around the star represents a nova and the red curve represents a horizon, standing for a new era for African Americans. The red, white, and blue colors represent the American flag, which shows that African Americans and their enslaved ancestors are Americans, and the national belief in liberty and justice for all citizens.
== Legal observance ==
=== State and local holiday ===
Texas was the first state to recognize the date by enacted law, in 1980. By 2002, eight states officially recognized Juneteenth and four years later 15 states recognized the holiday. By 2008, just over half of the states recognized Juneteenth in some way. By 2019, 47 states and the District of Columbia recognized Juneteenth, although as of 2020 only Texas had adopted the holiday as a paid holiday for state employees.
In June 2019, Governor of Pennsylvania Tom Wolf recognized Juneteenth as a holiday in the state. In the yearlong aftermath of the murder of George Floyd that occurred on May 25, 2020, nine states designated Juneteenth a paid holiday, including New York, Washington, and Virginia. In 2020, Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker issued a proclamation that the day would be marked as "Juneteenth Independence Day". This followed the filing of bills by both the House and Senate to make Juneteenth a state holiday. Baker did not comment on these bills specifically but promised to grant the observance of Juneteenth greater importance. On June 16, 2021, Illinois adopted a law changing its ceremonial holiday to a paid state holiday.
Some cities and counties have also recognized Juneteenth through proclamation. In 2020, Juneteenth was formally recognized by New York City (as an annual official city holiday and public school holiday, starting in 2021). Cook County, Illinois, adopted an ordinance to make Juneteenth a paid county holiday. The City and County of Honolulu recognizes it as an "annual day of honor and reflection", and Portland, Oregon (as a day of remembrance and action and a paid holiday for city employees).
North Dakota approved recognition of Juneteenth as a state-recognized annual holiday on April 13, 2021, with Hawaii becoming the 49th state to recognize the holiday on June 16, 2021. On June 16, 2020, South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem proclaimed that the following June 19, 2020, was to be Juneteenth Day for that year only, spurning calls for it to be recognized annually, rather than just for 2020. In February 2022, South Dakota became the last state to recognize Juneteenth as an annual state holiday or observance. Its law provided for following the federal law even before it was official. On May 2, 2022, Colorado Governor Jared Polis signed a bill changing the state's ceremonial observance to a state holiday and it is now the 11th state holiday in Colorado.
As of 2024, 27 states and the District of Columbia have made Juneteenth an annualized paid holiday for state employees, with the remainder maintaining at least a ceremonial observance (New Mexico's personnel board declared it a paid worker holiday, although it is not a statutory holiday in New Mexico). Additional states may observe it as a paid holiday for state workers but rely on a decision, often of the governor, in each year, instead of perpetual by statute, which may or may not occur again the next year. Local governments including counties and municipalities also may close their offices and pay their workers time-off. The table below only includes the states with perpetual, annual, paid holiday laws identified by the Congressional Research Service in 2023 or subsequent sources:
=== Federal holiday ===
Juneteenth is a federal holiday in the United States. For decades, activists and congress members (led by many African Americans) proposed legislation, advocated for, and built support for state and national observances. During his campaign for president in June 2020, Joe Biden publicly celebrated the holiday. President Donald Trump, during his 2020 campaign for reelection, added making the day a national holiday part of his "Platinum Plan for Black America". Spurred on by Opal Lee, the racial justice movement and the Congressional Black Caucus, on June 15, 2021, the Senate unanimously passed the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act, establishing Juneteenth as a federal holiday. It passed through the House of Representatives by a 415–14 vote on June 16.
President Joe Biden signed the bill (Pub. L. 117–17 (text) (PDF)) on June 17, 2021, making Juneteenth the eleventh American federal holiday and the first to obtain legal observance as a federal holiday since Martin Luther King Jr. Day was designated in 1983. According to the bill, federal government employees will now get to take the day off every year on June 19, or should the date fall on a Saturday or Sunday, they will get the Friday or Monday closest to the Saturday or Sunday on which the date falls. Juneteenth is observed with the closure of post offices, banks, the NYSE and Nasdaq stock exchanges and other financial markets, most government offices, and many schools, universities, and private businesses.
In January 2025, President Donald Trump issued an executive order banning diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in federal agencies that has been interpreted by various agencies as eliminating in-agency observance planning for a number of cultural remembrance events, including Juneteenth, Black History Month, and several others. Nonetheless, for February 2025, Trump issued the traditional presidential proclamation calling on officials to commemorate Black History Month. In December 2025 however, free entry to national parks on MLK Day and Juneteenth was ended; and replaced by free entry on Flag Day, which is also Donald Trump's birthday.
== See also ==
History of African Americans in Texas
Independence Day (United States)
List of African-American holidays
Negro Election Day
Public holidays in the United States
== Explanatory notes ==
== Citations ==
== General and cited references ==
Barr, Alwyn (1996). Black Texans: A History of African Americans in Texas, 1528–1995. University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN 978-0806128788.
Blanck, Emily. "Galveston on San Francisco Bay: Juneteenth in the Fillmore District, 1945–2016." Western Historical Quarterly 50.2 (2019): 85–112. Galveston on San Francisco Bay: Juneteenth in the Fillmore District, 1945–2016
Cromartie, J. Vern. "Freedom Came at Different Times: A Comparative Analysis of Emancipation Day and Juneteenth Celebrations." NAAAS Conference Proceedings. National Association of African American Studies, (2014) online.
Donovan, Anne, and Karen De Bres. "Foods of freedom: Juneteenth as a culinary tourist attraction." Tourism Review International 9.4 (2006): 379–389. link
Gordon-Reed, Annette (2021). On Juneteenth, New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation. ISBN 978-1631498831. OCLC 1196176524
Guzzio, Tracie Church (1999). "Juneteenth". In Samuels, Wilford D. (ed.). Encyclopedia of African-American Literature. Facts on File.
Hume, Noah; Arceneaux, Janice (2008). "Public Memory, Cultural Legacy, and Press Coverage of the Juneteenth Revival". Journalism History. 34 (3): 155–162. doi:10.1080/00947679.2008.12062768. S2CID 142605823.
Jaynes, Gerald David (2005). "Juneteenth". Encyclopedia of African American Society. Vol. 1. Sage Publications. pp. 481–482. ISBN 9781452265414.
Knight, Gladys L. (2011). "Juneteenth". Encyclopedia of African American Popular Culture. Greenwood. pp. 798–801. OCLC 694734649.
Mustakeem, Sowandé (2007). "Juneteenth". In Rodriguez, Junius (ed.). Encyclopedia of Emancipation and Abolition in the Transatlantic World. Routledge.
Taylor, Charles A. (2002). Juneteenth: A Celebration of Freedom. Open Hand Pub Llc. ISBN 978-0940880689.
Turner, E. H. "Juneteenth: The Evolution of an Emancipation Celebration." European Contributions to American Studies. 65 (2006): 69–81.
Wiggins Jr, William H. "They Closed the Town Up, Man! Reflections on the Civic and Political Dimensions of Juneteenth." in Celebration: Studies in Festivity and Ritual, ed. Victor Turner (1982): 284–295.
Wilson, Charles R. (2006). The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture: Volume 4: Myth, Manners, and Memory. University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 978-0807830291. JSTOR 10.5149/9781469616704_wilson.
Wynn, Linda T. (2009). "Juneteenth". In Carney Smith, Jessica (ed.). Freedom Facts and Firsts: 400 Years of the African American Civil Rights Experience. Credo Reference.
== Further reading ==
Cotham, Edward T. Jr. (2021). Juneteenth: The Story Behind the Celebration. State House Press. ISBN 978-1649670007.
== External links ==
Juneteenth: Fact Sheet Congressional Research Service (updated July 1, 2022)
Juneteenth World Wide Celebration, website for 150th anniversary celebration
Juneteenth Historical Marker, Juneteenth historical marker at 2201 Strand, Galveston, TX
2022 Holidays, United States Office of Personal Management
Celebrating Freedom: Juneteenth and Emancipation Day Commemorations, Richmond, Va., Social Welfare History Project, Virginia Commonwealth University Libraries |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Chazy#:~:text=In%201922%20Chazy%20was%20awarded%20the%20Valz%20Prize%20from%20the%20French%20Academy%20of%20Sciences%20for%20his%20papers%20on%20the%20three%2Dbody%20problem | Jean Chazy | Jean François Chazy (15 August 1882, Villefranche-sur-Saône – 9 March 1955, Paris) was a French mathematician and astronomer.
== Life ==
Chazy was the son of a small provincial manufacturer and studied mathematics at the École Normale Supérieure with completion of the agrégation in 1905. He received his doctorate in 1910 with thesis Équations différentielles du troisième ordre et d’ordre supérieur don't l’intégrale générale a ses points critiques fixes. In 1911 he was maître de conférences for mechanics in Grenoble and then in Lille. In World War I he served in the artillery and became famous for accurately predicting the location of the German siege gun which bombarded Paris. After the war he was again professor in the Faculté des Sciences de Lille (which later became the Lille University of Science and Technology). Simultaneously he taught at the Institut industriel du Nord (École Centrale de Lille). In 1923 he was maître de conférences at the École centrale des arts et manufactures in Paris (as well as examiner at the École polytechnique). In 1924 he became professor for mechanics and later for celestial mechanics at the Sorbonne, where he retired in 1953 as professor emeritus.
== Work ==
He worked on celestial mechanics and especially on the three-body problem and the perihelion precession of Mercury's orbit. The problem of explaining Mercury's orbit was solved by Albert Einstein's general relativity theory.
== Honors ==
In 1922 Chazy was awarded the Valz Prize from the French Academy of Sciences for his papers on the three-body problem. He was an Invited Speaker of the ICM in 1924 at Toronto and in 1928 at Bologna. In 1937 he was elected to the Académie des Sciences in the Astronomie section. He was also a member of the Romanian Academy of Sciences and a member of the Belgian Academy of Sciences. In 1934 he was president of the Société Mathématique de France. Since 1952 he was an official member of the Bureau des Longitudes. He was made a commander of the Légion d'honneur.
== Selected works ==
La théorie de la relativité et la mécanique céleste, vol. 1, 1928, vol. 2, 1930, Gauthier-Villars, Paris
Cours de mécanique rationnelle, 2 vols., Gauthier-Villars 1933, new edns, 1941/42, 1948, 1952
Mécanique céleste: équations canoniques et variation des constantes, Presses Universitaires de France, Coll. Euclide, Paris 1953
== See also ==
Chazy equation
== References ==
O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "Jean Chazy", MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive, University of St Andrews
== Further reading ==
Georges Darmois, Notice sur la vie et les travaux de Jean Chazy (1882-1955), Paris: Gauthier-Villars, 1964 |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Guinea | New Guinea | New Guinea (Tok Pisin: Niugini; Hiri Motu: Niu Gini; Indonesian: Papua, fossilized Nugini, also known as Papua or historically Irian) is the world's second-largest island, with an area of 785,753 km2 (303,381 sq mi). It has the third-largest remaining rainforest globally, and the highest plant biodiversity of any island. Located in Melanesia in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, the island is separated from Australia by the 150-kilometre (81-nautical-mile; 93-mile) wide Torres Strait, though both landmasses lie on the same continental shelf, and were united during episodes of low sea level in the Pleistocene glaciations as the combined landmass of Sahul. Numerous smaller islands are located to the west and east. The island's name was given by Spanish explorer Yñigo Ortiz de Retez during his maritime expedition of 1545 because of the perceived resemblance of the indigenous peoples of the island to those in the African region of Guinea.
The eastern half of the island is the major land mass of the nation of Papua New Guinea. The western half, known as Western New Guinea, forms a part of Indonesia and is organized as the provinces of Papua, Central Papua, Highland Papua, South Papua, Southwest Papua, and West Papua. The two major cities on the island are Port Moresby and Jayapura.
== Names ==
The island has been known by various names:
The name Papua was used to refer to parts of the island before contact with the West. Its etymology is unclear; one theory states that it derived from Tidore, the language used by the Sultanate of Tidore. An expedition by the Sultan of Tidore, together with Sahmardan, the Sangaji of Patani, and the Papuan Gurabesi, managed to conquer some areas in New Guinea, which was then reorganised to form Korano Ngaruha ("Four Kings") or Raja Ampat, Papoua Gam Sio (lit. "The Papua Nine Negeri"), and Mafor Soa Raha (lit. The Mafor "Four Soa"). The name comes from the words papo ("to unite") and ua (negation), which means "not united", i.e. an outlying possession of Tidore.
Anton Ploeg reports that the word papua is often said to be derived from the Malay word papua or pua-pua, meaning "frizzly-haired", referring to the very curly hair of the island's inhabitants. However Sollewijn Gelpke in 1993 considered this unlikely as it had been used earlier, and he instead derived it from the Biak phrase sup i babwa, which means "the land below [the sunset]", and refers to the Raja Ampat Islands.
When Portuguese and Spanish explorers arrived via the Spice Islands, they also used the name Papua. However, Westerners, beginning with Spanish explorer Yñigo Ortiz de Retez in 1545, used the name New Guinea, due to the resemblance between the indigenous peoples of the island and Africans of the Guinea region. The name is one of several toponyms sharing similar etymologies, ultimately meaning "land of the blacks" or similar meanings.
The Dutch, who arrived later under Jacob Le Maire and Willem Schouten, called it Schouten island. They later used this name only to refer to islands off the north coast of Papua proper, the Schouten Islands or Biak Island. When the Dutch colonized the main island as part of the Dutch East Indies, they called it Nieuw Guinea.
The name Irian was used in the Indonesian language to refer to the island and Indonesian province, as Irian Barat (West Irian) Province and later Irian Jaya Province. The name Irian was suggested during a tribal committee meeting in Tobati, Jayapura, formed by Soegoro Atmoprasodjo under governor J. P. van Eechoed, to decide on a new name because of the negative association of Papua. Frans Kaisiepo, the committee leader, suggested the name from Mansren Koreri myths, Iri-an from the Biak language of Biak Island, meaning "hot land" (referring to the climate), but also from Iryan which means heated process as a metaphor for a land that is entering a new era. In Serui Iri-an (lit. "land-nation") means "pillar of nation", while in Merauke Iri-an (lit. "placed higher-nation") means "rising spirit" or "to rise". The name was promoted in 1945 by Marcus Kaisiepo, brother of Frans Kaisiepo. The name was politicized later by Corinus Krey, Marthen Indey, Silas Papare, and others with the Indonesian backronym Ikut Republik Indonesia Anti Nederland ("Join the Republic of Indonesia Oppose the Netherlands"). Irian was used somewhat in 1972. The name was used until 2001, when Papua was again used for the island and the province. The name Irian, which was originally favored by natives, is now considered to be a name imposed by the Indonesian government.
== Geography ==
New Guinea is an island to the north of the Australian mainland, south of the equator. It is isolated by the Arafura Sea to the west, and the Torres Strait and Coral Sea to the east. Sometimes considered to be the easternmost island of the Indonesian archipelago, it lies north of Australia's Top End, the Gulf of Carpentaria and Cape York Peninsula, and west of the Bismarck Archipelago and the Solomon Islands archipelago.
Politically, the western half of the island comprises six provinces of Indonesia: Papua, Central Papua, Highland Papua, South Papua, West Papua and Southwest Papua. The eastern half forms the mainland of the country of Papua New Guinea.
The shape of New Guinea is often compared to that of a bird-of-paradise (indigenous to the island), and this results in the usual names for the two extremes of the island: the Bird's Head Peninsula in the northwest (Vogelkop in Dutch, Kepala Burung in Indonesian; also known as the Doberai Peninsula), and the Bird's Tail Peninsula in the southeast (also known as the Papuan Peninsula).
A spine of east–west mountains, the New Guinea Highlands, dominates the geography of New Guinea, stretching over 1,600 km (1,000 mi) across the island, with many mountains over 4,000 m (13,100 ft). The western half of the island contains the highest mountains in Oceania, with its highest point, Puncak Jaya, reaching an elevation of 4,884 m (16,023 ft). The tree line is around 4,000 m (13,100 ft) elevation, and the tallest peaks contain equatorial glaciers—which have been retreating since at least 1936. Various other smaller mountain ranges occur both north and west of the central ranges. Except in high elevations, most areas possess a warm humid climate throughout the year, with some seasonal variation associated with the northeast monsoon season.
Another major habitat feature is the vast southern and northern lowlands. Stretching for hundreds of kilometres, these include lowland rainforests, extensive wetlands, savanna grasslands, and some of the largest expanses of mangrove forest in the world. The southern lowlands are the site of Lorentz National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The northern lowlands are drained principally by the Mamberamo River and its tributaries on the western side, and by the Sepik on the eastern side. The more extensive southern lowlands are drained by a larger number of rivers, principally the Digul in the west and the Fly in the east. The largest island offshore, Dolak, lies near the Digul estuary, separated by a strait so narrow it has been named a "creek".
New Guinea contains many of the world's ecosystem types: glacial, alpine tundra, savanna, montane and lowland rainforest, mangroves, wetlands, lake and river ecosystems, seagrasses, and some of the richest coral reefs on the planet.
The entire length of the New Guinea Highlands system passes through New Guinea as a vast watershed. The northern rivers flow into the Pacific Ocean, the southern rivers into the Arafura Sea and the Gulf of Papua. On the north side, the largest rivers are the Mamberamo, Sepik and Ramu.
Mamberamo was born from the confluence of two large inland rivers. Tariku comes from the west to the east and Taritatu from the east. These rivers meander through swamps with huge internal descents and then merge. The Mamberamo thus formed reaches the ocean by breaking through the Coastal Mountains. Mamberamo River is navigable to Marine Falls. The Sepik is a much more important river. Similarly, it collects water from a spacious pool. It is 1,100 kilometers from the Victor Emanuel Range to the estuary, making it the longest river in New Guinea. The winding, muddy, sluggish river can be navigated for 500 km. Ramu is a 650 km long river. Its lower section is navigable, but its upper flow is high-falling, fast-flowing. The energy of the river is used by a power plant near the city of Kainantu.
On the south side, the most significant rivers are Pulau, Digul, Fly, Kikori and Purari. The largest river in the western part of the island is Digul. It originates from the Star Mountains, which rise to an altitude of 4,700 m. The coastal plain is bordered by a swamp world hundreds of kilometers wide. Digul is the main transport route to the fertile hills and mountains within the island. The river Fly is born near the eastern branches of the Digul. It is named after one of the ships of the English Royal Fleet, which first sailed into the mouth of the river in 1845. The total length of the river is 1,050 km. Smaller boats can sail 900 km on the river. The estuary section, which decomposes into islands, is 70 km wide. The tide of the sea can have an effect of up to 300 kilometers. Strickland, a tributary of the Fly, reaches the Papuan Plain through wild gorges. Fly and Strickland together form the largest river in New Guinea. The many rivers flowing into the Gulf of Papua form a single delta complex. The rivers of the island are extremely rich in water due to the annual rainfall of 2,000–10,000 mm. According to a modest calculation, the New Guinea River carries about 1,500 km3/a (48,000 m3/s) of water into the sea. Fly alone carries more water 238 km3/a (7,500 m3/s) than all the rivers in Australia combined.
== Relation to surroundings ==
The island of New Guinea lies to the east of the Malay Archipelago, with which it is sometimes included as part of a greater Indo-Australian Archipelago. Geologically it is a part of the same tectonic plate as Australia. When world sea levels were low, the two shared shorelines (which now lie 100 to 140 metres below sea level), and combined with lands now inundated into the tectonic continent of Sahul, also known as Greater Australia. The two landmasses became separated when the area now known as the Torres Strait flooded after the end of the last glacial period.
Anthropologically, New Guinea is considered part of Melanesia.
New Guinea is differentiated from its drier, flatter, and less fertile southern counterpart, Australia, by its much higher rainfall and its active volcanic geology. Yet the two land masses share a similar animal fauna, with marsupials, including wallabies and possums, and the egg-laying monotreme, the echidna. Other than bats and some two dozen indigenous rodent genera, there are no pre-human indigenous placental mammals. Pigs, several additional species of rats, and the ancestor of the New Guinea singing dog were introduced with human colonization.
Prior to the 1970s, archaeologists called the single Pleistocene landmass by the name Australasia, although this word is most often used for a wider region that includes lands, such as New Zealand, which are not on the same continental shelf. In the early 1970s, they introduced the term Greater Australia for the Pleistocene continent. Then, at a 1975 conference and consequent publication, they extended the name Sahul from its previous use for just the Sahul Shelf to cover the continent.
== Political divisions ==
The island of New Guinea is divided politically into roughly equal halves across a north–south line:
The western portion of the island located west of 141°E longitude (except for a small section of territory to the east of the Fly River which belongs to Papua New Guinea) was formerly a Dutch colony, part of the Dutch East Indies. After the West New Guinea dispute it is now six Indonesian provinces:
West Papua with Manokwari as its capital.
Papua with the city of Jayapura as its capital.
Highland Papua with Jayawijaya Regency as its capital.
Central Papua with Nabire Regency as its capital.
South Papua with Merauke Regency as its capital.
Southwest Papua with Sorong as its capital
The eastern part forms the mainland of Papua New Guinea, which has been an independent country since 1975. It was formerly the Territory of Papua and New Guinea governed by Australia, consisting of the Trust Territory of New Guinea (northeastern quarter, formerly German New Guinea), and the Territory of Papua (southeastern quarter). Three of Papua New Guinea's four regions are parts of New Guinea island:
Southern, consisting of Western, Gulf, Central, Oro (Northern) and Milne Bay provinces.
Highlands, consisting of Southern Highlands, Hela Province, Jiwaka Province, Enga Province, Western Highlands, Simbu and Eastern Highlands provinces.
Momase, consisting of Morobe, Madang, East Sepik and Sandaun (West Sepik) provinces.
== Demographics ==
=== 10 largest cities and towns in New Guinea (Papua) by population ===
=== People ===
The current population of the island of New Guinea is about fifteen million. Archaeological evidence indicates that humans may have inhabited the island continuously since 50,000 BCE, and first settlement possibly dating back to 60,000 years ago has been proposed. The island is presently populated by almost a thousand different tribal groups and a near-equivalent number of separate languages, which makes New Guinea the most linguistically diverse area in the world. Ethnologue's 14th edition lists 826 languages of Papua New Guinea and 257 languages of Western New Guinea, total 1073 languages, with 12 languages overlapping. They can be divided into two groups, the Austronesian languages, and all the others placed in the catch-all category of Papuan languages, most of which are unrelated.
The separation is not merely linguistic; warfare among societies was a factor in the evolution of the men's house: separate housing for groups of adult men, away from the single-family houses of women and children. Pig-based trade between groups and pig-based feasts form a common tradition with the other peoples of southeast Asia and Oceania. Most Papuan societies practice agriculture, supplemented by hunting and gathering.
Current evidence indicates that the Papuans (who constitute the majority of the island's peoples) are descended from the earliest human inhabitants of New Guinea. These original inhabitants first arrived in New Guinea during the Last Glacial Period when the island was connected to the Australian continent via a land bridge, forming the landmass of Sahul. These peoples had made the (shortened) sea-crossing from the islands of Wallacea and Sundaland (the present Malay Archipelago) by at least 40,000 years ago.
The ancestral Austronesian peoples are believed to have arrived considerably later, approximately 3,500 years ago, as part of a gradual seafaring migration from Southeast Asia, possibly originating in Taiwan. Austronesian-speaking peoples colonized many of the offshore islands to the north and east of New Guinea, such as New Ireland and New Britain, with settlements also on the coastal fringes of the main island in places. Human habitation of New Guinea over tens of thousands of years has led to a great deal of diversity, which was further increased by the later arrival of the Austronesians and the more recent history of European and Asian settlement through events like transmigration.
In addition to Christianity and traditional belief systems, Islamic communities in parts of New Guinea, particularly in areas such as Fakfak and Sorong, have been noted for encouraging interfaith cooperation and maintaining traditions of peace and tolerance.
Large areas of New Guinea are yet to be explored by scientists and anthropologists. The Indonesian province of West Papua is home to an estimated 44 uncontacted tribal groups.
== Biodiversity and ecology ==
With some 786,000 km2 of tropical land—less than one-half of one percent (0.5%) of the Earth's surface—New Guinea has an immense biodiversity, containing between 5 and 10 percent of the total species on the planet. This percentage is about the same amount as that found in the United States or Australia. A high percentage of New Guinea's species are endemic, and thousands are still unknown to science: probably well over 200,000 species of insect, between 11,000 and 20,000 plant species, and over 650 resident bird species. Most of these species are shared, at least in their origin, with the continent of Australia, which was until fairly recent geological times part of the same landmass (see Australia-New Guinea for an overview). The island is so large that it is considered 'nearly a continent' in terms of its biological distinctiveness.
In the period from 1998 to 2008, conservationists identified 1,060 new species in New Guinea, including 218 plants, 43 reptiles, 12 mammals, 580 invertebrates, 134 amphibians, 2 birds and 71 fish. Between 2011 and 2017, researchers described 465 previously undocumented plant species in New Guinea. As of 2019, the Indonesian portion of New Guinea and the Maluku Islands is estimated to have 9,518 species of vascular plants, of which 4,380 are endemic. In 2020, an international study conducted by a team of 99 experts cataloged 13,634 species representing 1,742 genera and 264 families of vascular plants for New Guinea and its associated islands (Aru Islands, Bismarck Archipelago, D'Entrecasteaux Islands, Louisiade Archipelago), making it the world's most floristically diverse island, surpassing Madagascar (11,488), Borneo (11,165), Java (4,598), and the Philippines (9,432).
Biogeographically, New Guinea is part of Australasia rather than the Indomalayan realm, although New Guinea's flora has many more affinities with Asia than its fauna, which is overwhelmingly Australian. Botanically, New Guinea is considered part of Malesia, a floristic region that extends from the Malay Peninsula across Indonesia to New Guinea and the East Melanesian Islands. The flora of New Guinea is a mixture of many tropical rainforest species with origins in Asia, together with typically Australasian flora. Typical Southern Hemisphere flora include the conifers Podocarpus and the rainforest emergents Araucaria and Agathis, as well as tree ferns and several species of Eucalyptus.
New Guinea has 284 species and six orders of mammals: monotremes, three orders of marsupials, rodents and bats; 195 of the mammal species (69%) are endemic. New Guinea has 578 species of breeding birds, of which 324 species are endemic. The island's frogs are one of the most poorly known vertebrate groups, totalling 282 species, but this number is expected to double or even triple when all species have been documented. New Guinea has a rich diversity of coral life and 1,200 species of fish have been found. Also about 600 species of reef-building coral—the latter equal to 75 percent of the world's known total. The entire coral area covers 18 million hectares off a peninsula in northwest New Guinea.
As of 2020, the Western portion of New Guinea, Papua and West Papua, accounts for 54% of the island's primary forest and about 51% of the island's total tree cover, according to satellite data.
=== Ecoregions ===
==== Terrestrial ====
According to the WWF, New Guinea can be divided into twelve terrestrial ecoregions:
Central Range montane rain forests
Central Range sub-alpine grasslands
Huon Peninsula montane rain forests
New Guinea mangroves
Northern New Guinea lowland rain and freshwater swamp forests
Northern New Guinea montane rain forests
Southeastern Papuan rain forests
Southern New Guinea freshwater swamp forests
Southern New Guinea lowland rain forests
Trans-Fly savanna and grasslands
Vogelkop montane rain forests
Vogelkop-Aru lowland rain forests
==== Freshwater ====
The WWF and Nature Conservancy divide New Guinea into five freshwater ecoregions:
Vogelkop–Bomberai
New Guinea North Coast
New Guinea Central Mountains
Southwest New Guinea–Trans-Fly Lowland
Papuan Peninsula
==== Marine ====
The WWF and Nature Conservancy identify several marine ecoregions in the seas bordering New Guinea:
Papua
Arafura Sea
Bismarck Sea
Solomon Sea
Southeast Papua New Guinea
Gulf of Papua
== History ==
=== Early history ===
Archaeological evidence indicates that humans arrived on New Guinea perhaps 60,000 years ago, although this is under debate. They came probably by sea from Southeast Asia during the Last Glacial Period, when the sea was lower and distances between islands shorter.
The first inhabitants, Indigenous people of New Guinea, from whom the Papuan people are probably descended, adapted to the range of ecologies and, in time, developed one of the earliest known agricultures. Remains of this agricultural system, in the form of ancient irrigation systems in the highlands of Papua New Guinea, are being studied by archaeologists. Research indicates that the highlands were an early and independent center of agriculture, with evidence of irrigation going back at least 10,000 years. Sugarcane was cultivated in New Guinea around 6000 BCE.
The gardens of the New Guinea Highlands are ancient, intensive permacultures, adapted to high population densities, very high rainfalls (as high as 10,000 mm per year (400 in/yr)), earthquakes, hilly land, and occasional frost. Complex mulches, crop rotations and tillages are used in rotation on terraces with complex irrigation systems. Western agronomists still do not understand all of the practices, and it has been noted that native gardeners are as, or even more, successful than most scientific farmers in raising certain crops. There is evidence that New Guinea gardeners invented crop rotation well before western Europeans. A unique feature of New Guinea permaculture is the silviculture of Casuarina oligodon, a tall, sturdy native ironwood tree, suited to use for timber and fuel, with root nodules that fix nitrogen. Pollen studies show that it was adopted during an ancient period of extreme deforestation.
In more recent millennia, another wave of people arrived on the shores of New Guinea. These were the Austronesian people, who had spread down from Taiwan, through the South-east Asian archipelago, colonising many of the islands on the way. The Austronesian people had technology and skills extremely well adapted to ocean voyaging and Austronesian language speaking people are present along much of the coastal areas and islands of New Guinea. They also introduced pigs and dogs. These Austronesian migrants are considered the ancestors of most people in insular Southeast Asia, from Sumatra and Java to Borneo and Sulawesi, as well as coastal new Guinea.
=== Precolonial history ===
The western part of the island was in contact with kingdoms in other parts of modern-day Indonesia. The Negarakertagama mentioned the region of Wanin and Sran, in eastern Nusantara as part of Majapahit's tributary. This 'Wanin' has been identified with the Onin Peninsula, part of the Bomberai Peninsula near the city of Fakfak. while 'Sran' had been identified as region of Kowiai, just south of Onin peninsula. The sultans of Tidore, in the Maluku Islands, claimed sovereignty over various coastal parts of the island. During Tidore's rule, the main exports of the island during this period were resins, spices, slaves and the highly priced feathers of the bird-of-paradise. In a period of constant conflict called 'hongi wars', in which rival villages or kingdoms would invoke the name of Tidore Sultan, rightly, for punitive expeditions for not fulfilling their tributary obligations, or opportunitively for competitions over resources and prestige. Sultan Nuku, one of the most famous Tidore sultans who rebelled against Dutch colonization, called himself "Sultan of Tidore and Papua", during his revolt in 1780s. He commanded loyalty from both Moluccan and Papuan chiefs, especially those of Raja Ampat Islands, from his base in Gebe. Following Tidore's subjugation as Dutch tributary, much of the territory it claimed in western part of New Guinea came under Dutch rule as part of Dutch East Indies.
=== European contact ===
The first known European contact with New Guinea was by Portuguese and Spanish sailors in the 16th century. In 1526–27, Portuguese explorer Jorge de Menezes saw the western tip of New Guinea and named it ilhas dos Papuas. In 1528, the Spanish navigator Álvaro de Saavedra also recorded its sighting when trying to return from Tidore to New Spain. In 1545, Spaniard Íñigo Ortíz de Retes sailed along the north coast of New Guinea as far as the Mamberamo River, near which he landed on 20 June, naming the island 'Nueva Guinea'. The first known map of the island was made by F. Hoeiu in 1600 and shows it as 'Nova Guinea'. In 1606, Luís Vaz de Torres explored the southern coast of New Guinea from Milne Bay to the Gulf of Papua including Orangerie Bay, which he named Bahía de San Lorenzo. His expedition also discovered Basilaki Island naming it Tierra de San Buenaventura, which he claimed for Spain in July 1606. On 18 October, his expedition reached the western part of the island in present-day Indonesia, and also claimed the territory for the King of Spain.
A successive European claim occurred in 1828, when the Netherlands formally claimed the western half of the island as Netherlands New Guinea. Dutch colonial authority built Fort Du Bus an administrative and trading post established near Lobo, Triton Bay, but by 1835 had been abandoned. Considering that New Guinea had little economic value for them, the Dutch promoted Tidore as suzerain of Papua. By 1849, Tidore's borders had been extended to the proximity of the current international border between Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, as it formed extensive trade pact and custom of Uli-Siwa ( federation of nine ).
In 1883, following a short-lived French annexation of New Ireland, the British colony of Queensland annexed south-eastern New Guinea. However, the Queensland government's superiors in the United Kingdom revoked the claim, and (formally) assumed direct responsibility in 1884, when Germany claimed north-eastern New Guinea as the protectorate of German New Guinea (also called Kaiser-Wilhelmsland).
The first Dutch government posts were established in 1898 and in 1902: Manokwari on the north coast, Fak-Fak in the west and Merauke in the south at the border with British New Guinea. The German, Dutch and British colonial administrators each attempted to suppress the still-widespread practices of inter-village warfare and headhunting within their respective territories.
On 18 March 1902, the British government transferred some administrative responsibility over southeast New Guinea to Australia (which renamed the area "Territory of Papua"); and, in 1906, transferred all remaining responsibility to Australia. During World War I, Australian forces seized German New Guinea, which in 1920 became the Territory of New Guinea, to be administered by Australia under a League of Nations mandate. The territories under Australian administration became collectively known as The Territories of Papua and New Guinea (until February 1942).
Before about 1930, European maps showed the highlands as uninhabited forests. When first flown over by aircraft, numerous settlements with agricultural terraces and stockades were observed. The most startling discovery took place on 4 August 1938, when Richard Archbold discovered the Grand Valley of the Baliem River, which had 50,000 yet-undiscovered Stone Age farmers living in orderly villages. The people, known as the Dani, were the last society of its size to make first contact with the rest of the world. A 1930 expedition led by the prospector Michael Lehay also encountered an indigenous group in the highlands. The inhabitants, believing themselves to be the only people in the world and, having never seen Europeans before, initially believed the explorers to be spirits of the dead due to the local belief that a person's skin turned white when they died and crossed into the land of the dead.
=== World War II ===
Netherlands New Guinea and the Australian territories (the eastern half ) were invaded in 1942 by the Japanese. The Netherlands were defeated by that stage and did not put up a fight, and the western section was not of any strategic value to either side, so they did not battle there. The Japanese invaded the north shore of the Australia territories and were aiming to move south and take the southern shore too. The highlands, northern and eastern parts of the island became key battlefields in the South West Pacific Theatre of World War II. Notable battles were for Port Moresby (the naval battle is known as the Battle of the Coral Sea), Milne Bay and for the Kokoda track. Papuans often gave vital assistance to the Allies, fighting alongside Australian troops, and carrying equipment and injured men across New Guinea. Approximately 216,000 Japanese, Australian and U.S. soldiers, sailors and airmen died during the New Guinea Campaign.
=== Since World War II ===
Following the return to civil administration after World War II, the Australian section was known as the Territory of Papua-New Guinea from 1945 to 1949 and then as Territory of Papua and New Guinea. Although the rest of the Dutch East Indies achieved independence as Indonesia on 27 December 1949, the Netherlands regained control of western New Guinea.
During the 1950s, the Dutch government began to prepare Netherlands New Guinea for full independence and allowed elections in 1959; the partial elected New Guinea Council took office on 5 April 1961. The Council decided on the name of West Papua (Papua Barat) for the territory, along with an emblem, flag, and anthem to complement those of the Netherlands. On 1 October 1962, after some military interventions and negotiations, the Dutch handed over the territory to the United Nations Temporary Executive Authority, until 1 May 1963, when Indonesia took control. The territory was renamed West Irian (Irian Barat) and then Irian Jaya. In 1969, Indonesia, under the 1962 New York Agreement, organised a referendum named the Act of Free Choice, in which the military hand picked Papuan tribal elders to vote for integration with Indonesia.
There has been significant reported resistance to Indonesian integration and occupation, both through civil disobedience (such as publicly raising the Morning Star flag) and via the formation of the Organisasi Papua Merdeka (OPM, or Free Papua Movement) in 1965. Amnesty International has estimated more than 100,000 Papuans, one-sixth of the population, have died as a result of government-sponsored violence against West Papuans. Reports published by TRT World and De Gruyter Oldenbourg have put the number of killed Papuans since the start of the conflict at roughly 500,000.
From 1971, the name Papua New Guinea was used for the Australian territory. On 16 September 1975, Australia granted full independence to Papua New Guinea. In 2000, Irian Jaya was formally renamed "The Province of Papua" and a Law on Special Autonomy was passed in 2001. The Law established a Papuan People's Assembly (MRP) with representatives of the different indigenous cultures of Papua. The MRP was empowered to protect the rights of Papuans, raise the status of women in Papua, and to ease religious tensions in Papua; block grants were given for the implementation of the Law as much as $266 million in 2004. The Indonesian courts' enforcement of the Law on Special Autonomy blocked further creation of subdivisions of Papua: although President Megawati Sukarnoputri was able to create a separate West Papua province in 2003 as a fait accompli, plans for a third province on western New Guinea were blocked by the courts. Critics argue that the Indonesian government has been reluctant to establish or issue various government implementing regulations so that the legal provisions of special autonomy could be put into practice, and as a result special autonomy in Papua has "failed".
In 2022, the Indonesian government split Papua Province into four provinces. In addition to Papua Province proper (capital Jayapura), the three new provinces are South Papua (capital Merauke), Central Papua (capital Nabire) and Highland Papua (capital Jayawijaya). Furthermore, Southwest Papua (capital Sorong) was split from West Papua (capital Manokwari).
The culture of inter-tribal warfare and animosity between the neighboring tribes are still present in New Guinea.
== Notes ==
== References ==
== Further reading ==
Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs and Steel: A Short History of Everybody for the last 13,000 Years, 1997.
"New Guinea savannas and grasslands". WWF.
== External links ==
Facsimile of material from "The Discovery of New Guinea" by George Collingridge
Scientists hail discovery of hundreds of new species in remote New Guinea
PapuaWeb official website Archived 16 January 2021 at the Wayback Machine
Detailed map of New Guinea
"New Guinea" . The New Student's Reference Work . 1914. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Croft_(linguist) | William Croft (linguist) | William Croft (born November 13, 1956) is an American professor of linguistics at the University of New Mexico, United States. From 1994 to 2005 he was successively research fellow, lecturer, reader and professor in Linguistics at the University of Manchester, UK.
He is the inventor of and advocate for radical construction grammar, which among other things uses box-diagrams to compare and contrast the grammatical features of different natural languages.
William Croft is a member of Save the Redwoods League's Board of Councillors.
== Partial bibliography ==
—— (1991). Syntactic Categories and Grammatical Relations: The Cognitive Organization of Information. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-12090-4.
—— (2001). Explaining language change: an evolutionary approach. Harlow: Longman. ISBN 978-0-582-35677-1.
—— (2001). Radical Construction Grammar: Syntactic theory in typological perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-829954-7.
—— (2003). Typology and Universals. Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics (2nd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-00499-2.
—— (1990). Typology and Universals. Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics (1st ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-36583-3.
——; Cruse, D. A. (2004). Cognitive Linguistics. Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics. ISBN 978-0-521-66770-8.
—— (2012). Verbs: aspect and causal structure. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-924858-2.
== References ==
== External links ==
Faculty page at the University of New Mexico |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosario_Crocetta | Rosario Crocetta | Rosario Crocetta (born 8 February 1951) is an Italian politician. He was the first openly gay mayor in Italy when he became Mayor of Gela in 2003, a post he held until 2009.
A prominent figure in the fight against the Sicilian Mafia, in 2009 he was elected as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP). He was President of Sicily between 2012 and 2017 following the 2012 Sicilian regional election, thus becoming the second openly gay head of a regional government in Italy after Nichi Vendola.
== Biography ==
Born in Gela, Sicily, in 1951, Crocetta is the son of a water-worker and a seamstress. His older brother is former PCI senator Salvatore Crocetta. After having received his diploma he worked for ENI in Gela.
He says he speaks four languages: Italian, Arabic, English and French and has been heard speaking and has posted on social media in the Sicilian language.
== Political career ==
Crocetta started his political career in the 1980s within the Italian Communist Party (dissolved in 1991), later joining the Communist Refoundation Party. In 1998, he was appointed as Councillor for Culture in the City Council of Gela with the Federation of the Greens, and was engaged in cultural projects shared between Mediterranean countries. In 2000, he joined the Party of Italian Communists. In 2001-2002 he worked as a Councillor for Public Education in Gela.
In May 2002, he contested the mayoral elections for Gela as a center-left coalition candidate. At first, right-wing candidate Giovanni Scaglione was declared elected, with a narrow margin of 197 votes. But in 2003, the Administrative Court of Sicily established that electoral frauds took place in town elections and subsequently proclaimed Crocetta as mayor. Telephone tappings revealed that a local Mafia boss ordered a returning officer to "move heaven and earth in order to avoid the communist faggot to win". Since then, being the first openly gay mayor of Italy, he became for many a symbol of the fight against obscurantism and organized crime in Sicily. In 2007, he was re-elected mayor of Gela with 64.4 percent of the vote.
In 2008, he joined the Democratic Party. In the 2009 European elections, he was elected as a member of the European Parliament for the Italian Islands constituency with 150,091 votes. In 2012, Crocetta ran as gubernatorial candidate against Sebastiano "Nello" Musumeci of Berlusconi's PDL party and eight other minor party candidates. Crocetta ran in Sicily on the ticket of La Rivoluzione è Già Iniziata (The Revolution Has Already Started) and obtained 30.5 percent of the votes, becoming the first left-wing governor of Sicily since 1947.
From 2013 to 2017, he was also a member of the Committee of the Regions.
On 19 July 2017, Rosario Crocetta announced his candidacy to the presidency at the November regional elections, with the list The Megaphone – Crocetta List, without the support of the Democratic Party. After the decision of the Democratic Party to nominate the rector of the University of Palermo Fabrizio Micari, on 3 September 2017 Crocetta withdrew from the race, and instead supporting Micari with his list.
== Fight against Mafia and assassination attempts ==
Throughout his political career, Crocetta has been a forthright proponent of the fight against organized crime in Sicily. Consequently, he has been the target of several Mafia attacks.
In 2003, a plot to kill Crocetta during the patronal feast of the Immaculate Conception involving a Lithuanian killer was thwarted by the local Carabinieri. After that episode, Crocetta was placed under security.
In 2008, a failed plan to kill Crocetta was made public by the district attorney of Caltanissetta; as a result, Crocetta was immediately placed under tighter security.
In 2010, a new assassination plot against Crocetta was thwarted, and five people affiliated with the local Mafia were arrested.
== Personal life ==
Crocetta is openly gay. He was the first openly gay mayor in Italy when he became Mayor of Gela in 2003 till 2009. He is also the second openly gay head of a regional government in Italy after Nichi Vendola when he was the President of Sicily between 2012 and 2017.
== See also ==
List of openly LGBT heads of government
Politics of Italy
== References == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sopore#:~:text=Bourne%20in%201864-,Demographics,2%20(3.82%20sq%20mi). | Sopore | Sopore (Urdu pronunciation: [soːpoːr] ; Kashmiri pronunciation: [soːpoːr]) is a city in the Baramulla district of Jammu and Kashmir, India. It is 45 km (28 mi) north-west of Srinagar, and 16 km (10 mi) north-east of Baramulla.
Sopore is one of the largest subdivisions in Jammu and Kashmir, consisting of seven tehsils and the state's oldest existing subdivision. Recognized as an urban area right from the 1911 census. Sopore has long been a central business hub in North Kashmir. Its historical significance, coupled with its economic role, underscores its prominent position in the region.
Sopore features Asia's second-largest fruit mandi, located at Nowpora Kalan Sopore , approximately 2 km away from the main town, boasting an annual turnover of over ₹3000 crore. This mandi facilitates around 40 percent of the apple production and sales in the Kashmir Valley, which has led to Sopore being known as the 'Apple Town of Kashmir'. Additionally, Wular Lake, one of Asia's largest freshwater lakes, lies between Sopore and the Bandipore district. Wular Lake is a major source of fish for the Kashmir Valley and is also distinguished for its production of water chestnuts, enhancing the region's economic and ecological significance.
Municipal Council Sopore is a local urban body that administers the city of Sopore. There are 21 wards in Sopore M.Cl (Municipal Council) and two OG's (Outgrowths), as Amargarh and Nowpora Kalan.
Old Sopur is settled on both banks of the Jhelum River, lending it a picturesque and historically rich setting. This historic area is known for its densely packed network of 30-35 mohallas. Some Notable mohallas include Hatishah, Jamia Qadeem, Khanqah, Chankhan, Untoo Hamam, Sofi Hamam, Now Hamam, Batpora, Ashpeer, Khushal Matoo, Muslim Peer, Kralteng, Sangrampora, Maharajpora, Arampora, Teliyan, and Takyabal. Each mohalla has its unique character and history, together forming a diverse and culturally significant part of Old Sopur.
New Sopore began to take shape in the mid-20th century, starting with its first planned colony, New Colony. Over time, this development expanded to include a variety of other colonies, such as Noor Bagh, Iqbal Nagar, Badam Bagh, Baba Raza, Siddiq Colony, Model Town, Shah Kirman Colony, Krankshivan Colony and New Light Colony, among others. Each of these neighborhoods was designed with modern infrastructure and amenities, reflecting the region's growth and enhancement of urban living standards.
Sopore division encompasses the city of Sopore, several nearby villages such as Tarzoo, Wagub, Adipora, Seer Jagir, and others, along with a historically notable region known as the Zaingair belt. This belt comprises numerous villages such as Dangerpora, Dooru, Mundji, Hardshiva, Warpora, Botingoo, Hathlangoo, Wadoora, Tujar Sharif, Brath Kalan, Bomai, Seelo, Logripora, Zaloora, and many more. Each of these villages plays a vital role in supporting and sustaining the economy of the Sopore region.
== Markets and Commercial Centers ==
Old Sopore is home to a historic marketplace that has been a central hub for trade and commerce for over a century. This marketplace is locally known as Bada Bazar, which serves as the main market of Sopore. Running parallel to Bada Bazar is its counterpart, the narrower Chota Bazar. Together, these markets host a diverse range of retail and wholesale establishments, including general stores, grocery shops, cloth merchants, readymade garment shops, copper shops, goldsmiths, and various other shops. Chota Bazar is also renowned for its prominent fish market, often referred to as Gaade Bazar.
Main Chowk Sopore, often referred to as Samad Talkies Chowk due to the historic Samad Talkies Cinema that once stood there, serves as the central hub of the town. This bustling intersection links four key markets: Bada Bazar and Chota Bazar on one side, Iqbal Market on the opposite side, and Super Bazar and Tehsil Road on the remaining sides. This bustling intersection is truly the heart of Sopore, linking its vibrant commercial centers.
Since 1947, the town's market has expanded at least fivefold. A major development in this expansion was the emergence of Iqbal Market, which quickly became the heart of commercial activities. Iqbal Market is renowned for its bustling Sunday Market, where vendors gather to sell their goods. Additionally, Iqbal Market connects seamlessly with Shah Faisal Market and the General Bus Stand Market, creating a vibrant and well-integrated commercial area.
Other significant markets in Sopore include Chankhan Market, Downtown, and Tehsil Road, which is commonly referred to as Bugu. The New Colony area, located near the General Bus Stand, has grown from Sopore's first planned colony into a major commercial hub. Additionally, Amargarh and the Sopore Bypass are rapidly developing into prominent commercial zones, further enhancing the city's economic landscape.
== History ==
Sopore was earlier known as "Suyyapura" in Antiquity. Suyyapura, founded by a reputed Kashmiri engineer Suyya during the reign of Raja Awantivarma (855-883 A.D.) and commemorating his name, is undoubtedly the town known now as Sopore.
J.P. Ferguson, in his book entitled 'Kashmir', remarks, "Suyya stands out as a person hundreds of years in advance of his time". It is because of the technical intelligence and real skill he possessed and applied for draining off the flood water, which could find no outlet and had made the cultivation of land impossible, with the result that famine-like conditions prevailed in the whole of the valley. That is why, in the light of the results achieved by this great engineer, he has been regarded as an incarnation of the Lord of Food himself by the great historian Kalhana in his book 'Rajatarangini'. Suyya's reputation attracted many persons who also settled at the place he resided, and which eventually came to be known as Suyyapura, meaning the place where Suyya settled. With the passage of time and constant use, the pronunciation of the name was distorted into Sopore, by which it is known at present.
M.A. Stein, the English translator of Kalhanas 'Rajatarangini' in his book 'Memoir on maps illustrating the Ancient Geography of Kashmir' published in 1899, (p. 208) while writing about Sopore town, remarks: Sopore, which lies a short distance below the point where the Vitasta leaves the Wular, has retained its importance to this day and is still a town of over 8,000 inhabitants. It has, during recent times, been the official headquarters for the whole of Kamraj. From a passage of Srivara, it appears that this had been the case already at an earlier period. Relating a great conflagration which destroyed Suyyapura in Zain-ul-Abidin's time, this chronicle tells us that in it perished the whole of the official archives relating to Kamarajya. The royal residence, however, escaped, and the town itself was again built up by the King in great splendour. Of this, however, nothing has remained; nor does the town now show older remains of any interest." As will be clear from the history of the town narrated above, there is no trace left of any historical buildings or ancient monuments that could throw some light on the past. It is quite likely that the ancient remains might have been destroyed in the conflagration that broke out during the reign of Zain-ul-Abdin (1420-1470 A.D.).
=== Kashmir Sultanate era ===
In 1459, Sopur was attacked by Adam Khan, son of the sultan Zain-ul-Abidin, during a rebellion against his father. The town's governor resisted, but he was defeated and killed, and Adam had the town destroyed. Zain-ul-Abidin responded by sending an army to Sopur, and they routed Adam's forces in a pitched battle. While Adam and his followers were fleeing across the Jhelum at Sopur, the bridge collapsed and 300 of his followers drowned in the river.
At some point late in Zain-ul-Abidin's reign, the town of Sopur was destroyed by fire (this might be a duplicate reference to Adam Khan's destruction of Sopur; the source isn't clear about this). Sometime after this happened, Zain-ul-Abidin built a new palace at Sopur; another palace at Baramula was demolished at this point, and its materials were used to build the new palace at Sopur. Zain-ul-Abidin also had a swinging bridge constructed at Sopur during his reign.
The swinging bridge continued to be the sole communication link across the river until 1955, when it was discarded in favour of an R.C.C. bridge constructed about half a mile downstream. Lately the old bridge has also been reconstructed and thrown open to traffic.
== Demographics ==
As of the 2011 India census, Sopore urban area had a population of 71,292 and an area of 18.9 km2 (7.3 sq mi). The urban area consisted of the city, which had a municipal council and some outgrowths. In the 2011 census, the city had a population of 61,098 and an area of 9.90 km2 (3.82 sq mi). In the urban area, there were 37,570 males (53%) and 33,722 females (47%). Of the population, 9,329 (13.1%) were age 0-6: 5,042 males (54%) and 4,287 females (46%). The literacy rate for people over six was 70.8% (males 78.6%, females 62.3%).
== Administration ==
Sh. Shabir Ahmad Raina is serving as the ADC (Additional Deputy Commissioner) Sopore, and Iftkhar Talib (JKPS) as SP (Superintendent of Police) Sopore.
== Education ==
The main public educational institutions in Sopore are:
Government Degree College, Sopore
Government Degree College for Women, Sopore
Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences and Technology Wadoora, Sopore.
Sopore Law College
== Notable people ==
Atiqa Bano, educationist
Syed Ali Shah Geelani, politician
Afzal Guru, Freedom fighter
Ghulam Rasool Kar, politician
Rahim Sopori Sufi Saint and Poet
Saifi Sopori, poet and teacher
Abdul Ahad Vakil, politician
Baba Shukur ud-Din Wali Sufi Saint from the Rishi Order Lived here on Sharikot Hill near Wular Lake in the 15th C.E
== References == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Holwell_Carr | William Holwell Carr | The Reverend William Holwell Carr, (1758–1830) was an English priest, art dealer, art collector and painter. His bequest of paintings was an important early addition to the collection of the National Gallery in London.
== Life ==
He was born William Holwell in Exeter, Devon, the son of Edward Holwell, an apothecary, and educated from 1776 at Exeter College, Oxford, where he graduated BA in 1783, MA in 1784 and BD in 1790, remaining as a Fellow until 1793, though apparently devoting most of his time on art.
In 1781 he was "allowed to travel" and went to Italy where he studied art and began the picture-buying which was to become his lifelong passion. In 1791 the rich benefice of Menheniot in Cornwall, in the gift of the Dean of Exeter College and only available to Fellows, fell vacant and he hastily took holy orders. He never lived there, paying a curate £100 per year to fulfil his duties for him, but his income from the living helped fund his art collecting. He lived at Devonshire Place at the top of Wimpole Street in London.
In 1797 he married Lady Charlotte Hay, daughter of James Hay, 15th Earl of Erroll and his wife Isabella, daughter of Sir William Carr of Etal. Charlotte inherited her maternal grandfather's property in Etal and the couple took the name Carr by royal consent. They had one son who died young.
Holwell Carr was a founding member of the British Institution in 1805 and of the Athenaeum Club. He practised landscape painting as an amateur and exhibited twelve untraced landscapes at the Royal Academy from 1804 and 1821 as an "Honorary Exhibitor", a designation used for gentleman amateurs. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1806. He was sometimes accused of touching up paintings that passed through his hands. For a while he was part of a consortium organized by William Buchanan, and may have been in a partnership with the retired admiral William Waldegrave, 1st Baron Radstock. He seems to have been a difficult and rather unpopular figure, not beyond some rather sharp practice in his dealings, and "possessing the dreadful gift of total recall for past prices of works of art".
He died at Withycombe Raleigh, near Exmouth.
== Bequest ==
He bequeathed his entire collection of paintings to the nation. Shortly after his death the collection of thirty-five paintings was delivered to the National Gallery, London, then still housed in the Angerstein house in Pall Mall. Most of the works were Italian or French, including Saint George and the Dragon by Tintoretto, the Holy Family with a Shepherd by Titian, the Dead Christ Mourned by Two Angels by Guercino, and paintings by Guido Reni, Annibale Carracci, Canaletto, Rubens and many others; the bequest also included Carr's own portrait by Jackson. As with most collections of this date, not all the contemporary attributions are still accepted; in Carr's time the masterwork of the collection was thought to be the Christ Among the Doctors, which had long been called a Leonardo da Vinci, but is now attributed to Bernardino Luini, although the composition may be by Leonardo. He also left £500 to the poor of Menheniot. It was arguably the Holwell Carr Bequest that finally made it clear that the Government would have to build a more adequate home for the National Gallery.
Paintings in the Holwell Carr Bequest
== Notes ==
== References ==
Egerton, Judy, National Gallery Catalogues (new series): The British School, 1998, ISBN 1-85709-170-1
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Bryan, Michael (1886). "Carr, Rev. William Holwell". In Graves, Robert Edmund (ed.). Bryan's Dictionary of Painters and Engravers (A–K). Vol. I (3rd ed.). London: George Bell & Sons. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_William_McBride | Edward William McBride | Edward William McBride (ca 1791 – September 3, 1834) was a businessman and political figure in Upper Canada.
He was born in Newark (Niagara-on-the-Lake) around 1791, the son of a United Empire Loyalist. He served in the local militia during the War of 1812. He was assistant to King's Printer John Cameron and took over this function from the time when Cameron became ill in April 1815 until February 1816, several months after Cameron's death. After that, he ran an inn at Niagara. In 1824, he was elected to the Legislative Assembly of Upper Canada for the town of Niagara as a Reformer. He supported government funding for the Welland Canal and defended those who supported Robert Gourlay. For a time, with Bartemas Ferguson, he published the Niagara Herald, a newspaper owned by John Crooks. As a freemason, he was accused of being associated with the kidnapping and presumed murder of Captain William Morgan, who is said to have revealed secrets of the order. Although McBride denied these accusations, this contributed to his defeat in the 1828 election.
He died in Niagara in 1834.
== External links ==
Moogk, Peter N. (1987). "McBride, Edward William". In Halpenny, Francess G. (ed.). Dictionary of Canadian Biography. Vol. VI (1821–1835) (online ed.). University of Toronto Press. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nauru | Nauru | Nauru, officially the Republic of Nauru, formerly known as Pleasant Island, is an island country and microstate in the South Pacific Ocean. It lies within the Micronesia subregion of Oceania, with its nearest neighbour being Banaba (part of Kiribati) about 300 kilometres (190 mi) to the east.
With an area of only 21 square kilometres (8.1 sq mi; 2,100 ha; 5,200 acres), Nauru is the third-smallest country in the world, larger than only Vatican City and Monaco, making it the smallest republic and island state, as well as the smallest member state of the Commonwealth of Nations by both area and population. Its population of about 10,800 is the world's third-smallest (not including colonies or overseas territories). Nauru is a member of the United Nations, the Commonwealth of Nations, and the Organisation of African, Caribbean and Pacific States.
Settled by Micronesians circa 1000 BCE, Nauru was annexed and claimed as a colony by the German Empire in the late 19th century. After World War I, Nauru became a League of Nations mandate administered by Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. During World War II, Nauru was occupied by Japanese troops and was bypassed by the Allied advance across the Pacific. After the war ended, the country entered into United Nations trusteeship. Nauru gained its independence in 1968. At various points since 2001, it has accepted aid from the Australian Government in exchange for hosting the Nauru Regional Processing Centre, a controversial offshore Australian immigration detention facility. As a result of heavy dependence on Australia, some sources have identified Nauru as a client state of Australia.
Nauru is a phosphate-rock island with rich deposits near the surface, which allowed easy strip mining operations for over a century. However, this has seriously harmed the country's environment, causing it to suffer from what is often referred to as the "resource curse". The phosphate was exhausted in the 1990s, and the remaining reserves are not economically viable for extraction. A trust established to manage the island's accumulated mining wealth, set up for the day the reserves would be exhausted, has diminished in value. To earn income, Nauru briefly became a tax haven and illegal money laundering centre.
== History ==
Nauru was first settled by Micronesians at least 3,000 years ago, and there is evidence of possible Polynesian influence. Comparatively little is known of Nauruan prehistory, although the island is believed to have had a long period of isolation, which accounts for the distinct language that developed among the inhabitants. There were traditionally twelve clans or tribes on Nauru, which are represented in the twelve-pointed star on the country's flag. Traditionally, Nauruans traced their descent matrilineally. Inhabitants practised aquaculture: they caught juvenile milkfish (known as ibija in Nauruan), acclimatised them to freshwater, and raised them in Buada Lagoon, providing a reliable food source. The other locally grown components of their diet included coconuts and pandanus fruit. The name "Nauru" may derive from the Nauruan word Anáoero, which means 'I go to the beach.'
In 1798, the British sea captain John Fearn, on his trading ship Hunter (300 tons), became the first Westerner to report sighting Nauru, calling it "Pleasant Island" because of its attractive appearance. From at least 1826, Nauruans had regular contact with Europeans on whaling and trading ships who called for provisions and fresh drinking water. The last whaler to call during the Age of Sail visited in 1904.
Around this time, deserters from European ships began to live on the island. The islanders traded food for alcoholic palm wine and firearms. The firearms were used during the 10-year Nauruan Civil War that began in 1878.
After an agreement with Great Britain, Germany annexed Nauru in 1888 and incorporated it into the Marshall Islands Protectorate for administrative purposes. The arrival of the Germans ended the civil war, and kings were established as rulers of the island. King Auweyida was the most widely known. Christian missionaries from the Gilbert Islands arrived in 1888. The German settlers called the island "Nawodo" or "Onawero". The Germans ruled Nauru for almost three decades. Robert Rasch, a German trader who married a 15-year-old Nauruan girl, was the first administrator, appointed in 1890.
In 1900, phosphate was discovered on Nauru by the prospector Albert Fuller Ellis. The Pacific Phosphate Company began to exploit the reserves in 1906 by agreement with Germany, exporting its first shipment in 1907. In 1914, following the outbreak of World War I, Nauru was captured by Australian troops. In 1919, it was agreed by the Allied and Associated Powers that George V of the United Kingdom should be the administering authority under a League of Nations mandate. The Nauru Island Agreement forged in 1919 among the governments of the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand provided for the administration of the island and extraction of the phosphate deposits by an intergovernmental British Phosphate Commission (BPC). The terms of the League of Nations mandate were drawn up in 1920.
The island experienced an influenza epidemic and ongoing colonial strife through the early 20th century, with a mortality rate of 18 per cent among native Nauruans. In 1923, the League of Nations gave Australia a trustee mandate over Nauru, with the United Kingdom and New Zealand as co-trustees. On 6 and 7 December 1940, the German auxiliary cruisers Komet and Orion sank five supply ships in the vicinity of Nauru. Komet then shelled Nauru's phosphate mining areas, oil storage depots, and the shiploading cantilever.
Japanese troops occupied Nauru on 25 August 1942. The Japanese built two airfields which were bombed for the first time on 25 March 1943, preventing food supplies from being flown to Nauru. The Japanese deported 1,200 Nauruans to work as labourers in the Chuuk Islands, which were also occupied by Japan. Nauru was finally taken back from the Japanese on 13 September 1945, when commander Hisayaki Soeda surrendered the island to the Australian Army and the Royal Australian Navy. The surrender was accepted by Brigadier J. R. Stevenson, who represented Lieutenant General Vernon Sturdee, the commander of the First Australian Army, aboard the warship HMAS Diamantina. Arrangements were made to repatriate from Chuuk the 745 Nauruans who survived Japanese captivity there. They were returned to Nauru by the BPC ship Trienza in January 1946.
In 1947, a trusteeship was established by the United Nations, with Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom as trustees. Under those arrangements, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand were a joint administering authority. The Nauru Island Agreement provided for the first administrator to be appointed by Australia for five years, leaving subsequent appointments to be decided by the three governments. In practice, administrative power was exercised by Australia alone.
The 1948 Nauru riots occurred when Chinese guano mining workers went on strike over pay and conditions. The Australian administration imposed a state of emergency with Native Police and armed volunteers of locals and Australian officials being mobilised. This force, using sub-machine guns and other firearms, opened fire on the Chinese workers, killing two and wounding sixteen. Around 50 of the workers were arrested; two of them were bayoneted to death while in custody. The trooper who bayoneted the prisoners was charged but later acquitted on grounds that the wounds were "accidentally received." The governments of the Soviet Union and China made official complaints against Australia at the United Nations over this incident.
In 1964, it was proposed to relocate the population of Nauru to Curtis Island off the coast of Queensland, Australia. By that time, Nauru had been extensively mined for phosphate by companies from Australia, Britain, and New Zealand, damaging the landscape so much that it was thought the island would be uninhabitable by the 1990s. Rehabilitating the island was seen as financially impossible. In 1962, Australian Prime Minister Robert Menzies said that the three countries involved in the mining had an obligation to provide a solution for the Nauruan people, and proposed finding a new island for them. In 1963, the Australian Government proposed to acquire all the land on Curtis Island (which was considerably larger than Nauru) and then offer the Nauruans freehold title over the island and that the Nauruans would become Australian citizens. The cost of resettling the Nauruans on Curtis Island was estimated to be £10 million (A$649 million in 2022), which included housing and infrastructure and the establishment of pastoral, agricultural, and fishing industries. However, the Nauruan people did not wish to become Australian citizens and wanted to be given sovereignty over Curtis Island to establish themselves as an independent state; Australia would not agree. The Nauruans chose instead to become a sovereign state operating its own mines on the island of Nauru.
In January 1966, Nauru became self-governing, and following a two-year constitutional convention, it became independent on 31 January 1968 under founding president Hammer DeRoburt. In 1967, the new government of Nauru purchased the assets of the British Phosphate Commissioners, and in June 1970, control passed to the locally owned Nauru Phosphate Corporation (NPC). Income from the mines made Nauruans among the richest people in the world. In 1989, Nauru took legal action against Australia in the International Court of Justice over Australia's administration of the island, particularly Australia's failure to remedy the environmental damage caused by phosphate mining. Certain Phosphate Lands: Nauru v. Australia led to an out-of-court settlement to rehabilitate the mined-out areas of Nauru.
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, a state of emergency was declared in Nauru on 17 March 2020.
== Geography ==
Nauru is a 21 km2 (8.1 sq mi), oval-shaped island in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. The island is surrounded by a fringing coral reef, which is exposed at low tide and dotted with pinnacles. The presence of the reef has prevented the establishment of a seaport, although channels in the reef allow small boats access to the island. A fertile coastal strip 150 to 300 m (490 to 980 ft) wide lies inland from the beach.
Coral cliffs surround Nauru's central plateau. The highest point of the plateau, Command Ridge, is 71 m (233 ft) above sea level.
The only fertile areas on Nauru are on the narrow coastal belt, where coconut palms flourish. The land around Buada Lagoon supports bananas, pineapples, vegetables, pandanus trees, and indigenous hardwoods, such as the tamanu tree.
Nauru was one of three great phosphate rock islands in the Pacific Ocean, along with Banaba (Ocean Island), in Kiribati, and Makatea, in French Polynesia. The phosphate reserves on Nauru are now almost entirely depleted. Phosphate mining in the central plateau has left a barren terrain of jagged limestone pinnacles up to 15 m (49 ft) high. Mining has stripped and devastated about 80 per cent of Nauru's land area, leaving it uninhabitable, and has also affected the surrounding exclusive economic zone; Forty per cent of marine life is estimated to have been killed by silt and phosphate runoff.
The island has no rivers.
=== Climate ===
Nauru's climate is hot and very humid year-round because of its proximity to the equator and the ocean. Nauru is hit by monsoon rains between November and February. Annual rainfall is highly variable and is influenced by the El Niño–Southern Oscillation, with several significant recorded droughts. The temperature on Nauru ranges between 30 and 35 °C (86 and 95 °F) during the day and is stable at around 25 °C (77 °F) at night.
Streams and rivers do not exist in Nauru. Water is gathered from roof catchment systems or brought to Nauru as ballast on ships returning for loads of phosphate.
=== Ecology ===
Fauna is sparse on the island because of a lack of vegetation and the consequences of phosphate mining. Many indigenous birds have disappeared or become rare owing to the destruction of their habitat. There are about 60 recorded vascular plant species native to the island, none of which are endemic. Coconut farming, mining, and introduced species have seriously disturbed the native vegetation.
Although it has no native land mammals, Nauru does have native insects, land crabs, and birds, including the endemic Nauru reed warbler. The Polynesian rat, cats, dogs, pigs, and chickens have been introduced to Nauru from ships.
== Politics ==
The president of Nauru is David Adeang, who heads a 19-member unicameral parliament. The country is a member of the United Nations, the Commonwealth of Nations, and the Asian Development Bank. Nauru also participates in the Commonwealth and Olympic Games. Recently, Nauru became a member country of the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA). The Republic of Nauru became the 189th member of the International Monetary Fund in April 2016.
Nauru is a republic with a parliamentary system of government. The president is both head of state and head of government and is dependent on parliamentary confidence to remain president. All 19 parliament seats are elected every three years.
The parliament elects the president from its members, and the president appoints a cabinet of five to six members. As a result of a referendum in 2021, naturalised citizens and their descendants are barred from becoming parliamentarians.
Nauru lacks any formal structure for political parties, and candidates typically stand for office as independents; 15 of the 19 members of the current parliament are independents. The four parties that have currently been active in Nauruan politics are the Nauru Party, the Democratic Party, the Nauru First party, and the Centre Party. Alliances within the government are often formed, however, based on extended family ties rather than party affiliation.
From 1992 to 1999, Nauru had a local government system known as the Nauru Island Council (NIC). It was a successor to the Nauru Local Government Council, established in 1951. This nine-member council was designed to provide municipal services. The NIC was dissolved in 1999 and all assets and liabilities became vested in the national government. Land tenure on Nauru is unusual: all Nauruans have certain rights to all land on the island, which is owned by individuals and family groups. Government and corporate entities do not own any land, and they must enter into a lease arrangement with landowners to use land. Non-Nauruans cannot own land on the island.
Nauru's Supreme Court, headed by the Chief Justice, is paramount on constitutional issues. Other cases can be appealed to the two-judge Appellate Court. Parliament cannot overturn court decisions. Historically, Appellate Court rulings could be appealed to the High Court of Australia, though this happened only rarely and the Australian court's appellate jurisdiction ended entirely on 12 March 2018 after the Government of Nauru unilaterally ended the arrangement. Lower courts consist of the District Court and the Family Court, both of which are headed by a Resident Magistrate, who also is the Registrar of the Supreme Court. There are two other quasi-courts: the Public Service Appeal Board and the Police Appeal Board, both of which are presided over by the Chief Justice.
=== Foreign relations ===
Following independence in 1968, Nauru joined the Commonwealth of Nations as a Special Member; it became a full member in 1999. The country was admitted to the Asian Development Bank in 1991 and the United Nations in 1999. Nauru is a member of the South Pacific Regional Environment Programme, the Pacific Community, and the South Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission. In February 2021, Nauru announced it would be formally withdrawing from the Pacific Islands Forum in a joint statement with Marshall Islands, Kiribati, and the Federated States of Micronesia after a dispute regarding Henry Puna's election as the Forum's secretary-general.
Nauru has no armed forces, although a small police force operates under civilian control. Australia is responsible for Nauru's defence under an informal agreement between the two countries. The September 2005 memorandum of understanding between Australia and Nauru provides the latter with financial aid and technical assistance, including a Secretary of Finance to prepare the budget, and advisers on health and education. This aid is in return for Nauru's housing of asylum seekers while their applications for entry into Australia are processed. Nauru uses the Australian dollar as its official currency.
Nauru has used its position as a member of the United Nations to gain financial support from both Taiwan (officially the Republic of China or ROC) and China (officially the People's Republic of China or PRC) by changing its recognition from one to the other under the One-China policy. On 21 July 2002, Nauru signed an agreement to establish diplomatic relations with the PRC, accepting US$130 million from the PRC for this action (US$216 million in 2024). In response, the ROC severed diplomatic relations with Nauru two days later. Nauru later re-established links with the ROC on 14 May 2005, and diplomatic ties with the PRC were officially severed on 31 May 2005. On 15 Jan 2024, Nauru severed ties with the ROC and re-established diplomatic ties with the PRC.
In 2008, Nauru recognised Kosovo as an independent country, and in 2009 Nauru became the fourth country, after Russia, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, to recognise Abkhazia and South Ossetia, two breakaway autonomous republics of Georgia. Russia was reported to be giving Nauru US$50 million in humanitarian aid as a result of this recognition (US$71.3 million in 2024). On 15 July 2008, the Nauruan government announced a port refurbishment programme, financed with US$9 million of development aid received from Russia (US$12.8 million in 2024). The Nauru government claimed this aid is not related to its recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
The US Atmospheric Radiation Measurement program operates a climate-monitoring facility on the island.
A significant portion of Nauru's income has been in the form of aid from Australia. In 2001, the MV Tampa, a Norwegian ship that had rescued 438 refugees from a stranded boat, was seeking to dock in Australia. In what became known as the Tampa affair, the ship was refused entry and boarded by Australian troops. The refugees were eventually taken to Nauru to be held in detention facilities which later became part of the Howard government's Pacific Solution. Nauru operated two detention centres known as State House and Topside for these refugees in exchange for Australian aid. By November 2005, only two refugees remained on Nauru from those first sent there in 2001. The Australian government sent further groups of asylum-seekers to Nauru in late 2006 and early 2007. The refugee centre was closed in 2008, but, following the Australian government's re-adoption of the Pacific Solution in August 2012, it has re-opened it. Amnesty International has since described the conditions of the refugees of war living in Nauru as a "horror", with reports of children as young as eight attempting suicide and engaging in acts of self-harm. In 2018, the situation gained attention as a "mental health crisis", with an estimated thirty children suffering from traumatic withdrawal syndrome, also known as resignation syndrome. By the middle of 2023, the camp was finally totally emptied for the first time since it opened, with 4183 people having been detained there since it opened in 2012. In 2024 a few dozen refugees were again being held there while their claims are being processed.
=== Administrative divisions ===
Nauru is divided into fourteen administrative districts, which are grouped into eight electoral constituencies and are further divided into villages. The most populous district is Denigomodu, with 1,804 residents, of which 1,497 reside in a Republic of Nauru Phosphate Corporation settlement called "Location". The following table shows population by district according to the 2011 census.
== Economy ==
Before a resurgence in the 2010s, the Nauruan economy was strongest in the 1970s, with GDP peaking in 1981. This trend came from phosphate mining, which accounted for a majority of its economic output. Mining declined starting in the early 1980s. There are few other resources, and most necessities are imported. Small-scale mining is still conducted by RONPhos, formerly known as the Nauru Phosphate Corporation. The government places a percentage of RONPhos's earnings into the Nauru Phosphate Royalties Trust. The trust manages long-term investments, which were intended to support the citizens after the phosphate reserves were exhausted.
Because of mismanagement, the trust's fixed and current assets were reduced considerably and may never fully recover. The failed investments included financing Leonardo the Musical in 1993. The Mercure Hotel in Sydney, Australia, and Nauru House in Melbourne, Australia, were sold in 2004 to finance debts and Air Nauru's only Boeing 737 was repossessed in December 2005. Normal air service resumed after the aircraft was replaced with a Boeing 737-300 airliner in June 2006. In 2005, the corporation sold its remaining real estate in Melbourne, the vacant Savoy Tavern site, for A$7.5 million (US$11.5 million in 2024).
The value of the trust is estimated to have shrunk from A$1.3 billion in 1991 to A$138 million in 2002 (A$2.79 billion to A$229 million in 2022 dollars). Nauru currently lacks money to perform many of the basic functions of government; for example, the National Bank of Nauru is insolvent. The CIA World Factbook estimated a GDP per capita of US$5,000 in 2005. The Asian Development Bank 2007 economic report on Nauru estimated GDP per capita at US$2,400 to US$2,715.
Nauru does not levy any personal taxes. The unemployment rate is estimated to be 23% and the government employs 95% of those who have jobs. The Asian Development Bank notes that, although the administration has a strong public mandate to implement economic reforms, in the absence of an alternative to phosphate mining, the medium-term outlook is for continued dependence on external assistance. Tourism is not a major contributor to the economy.
In the 1990s, Nauru became a tax haven and offered passports to foreign nationals for a fee. The inter-governmental Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering (FATF) identified Nauru as one of 15 "non-cooperative" countries in its fight against money laundering. During the 1990s, it was possible to establish a licensed bank in Nauru for only US$25,000 (US$43,144 in 2024) with no other requirements. Under pressure from FATF, Nauru introduced anti-avoidance legislation in 2003, after which foreign hot money left the country. In October 2005, after satisfactory results from the legislation and its enforcement, FATF lifted the non-cooperative designation.
From 2001 to 2007, the Nauru detention centre provided a significant source of income for the country. Nauruan authorities reacted with concern to its closure by Australia. In February 2008, Foreign Affairs Minister Kieren Keke, stated that the closure would result in 100 Nauruans losing their jobs, and would affect 10% of the island's population directly or indirectly: "We have got a huge number of families that are suddenly going to be without any income. We are looking at ways we can try and provide some welfare assistance but our capacity to do that is very limited. Literally we have got a major unemployment crisis in front of us." The detention centre was re-opened in August 2012.
In July 2017, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) upgraded its rating of Nauru's standards of tax transparency. Nauru had previously been listed alongside fourteen other countries that had failed to show that they could comply with international tax transparency standards and regulations. The OECD subsequently put Nauru through a fast-tracked compliance process and the country was given a "largely compliant" rating.
The Nauru 2017–2018 budget, delivered by Minister of Finance David Adeang, forecast A$128.7 million in revenues and A$128.6 million in expenditures and projected modest economic growth for the country over the next two years. In 2018, the Nauru government partnered with the deep sea mining company DeepGreen, now Nauru Ocean Resources Inc (NORI), a wholly owned subsidiary of Canadian The Metals Company. They planned to harvest manganese nodules whose minerals and metals can be used in the development of sustainable energy technology.
In March 2025, Nauru announced a "golden passport" initiative with the aim of raising money to relocate 90% of the island's population to a new community on higher ground. Citizenship will cost a minimum of $105,000 and does not require residency.
== Demographics ==
Nauru had 12,511 residents as of July 2021. The population was previously larger, but in 2006 the island saw 1,500 people leave during a repatriation of immigrant workers from Kiribati and Tuvalu. The repatriation was motivated by significant layoffs in phosphate mining.
Nauru is one of the most densely populated Westernized countries in the South Pacific.
The official languages of Nauru are Nauruan and English. Nauruan is a distinct Micronesian language, which is spoken by 96% of ethnic Nauruans at home. English is widely spoken and is the language of government and commerce.
The main religion practised on the island is Christianity: the main denominations are Nauru Congregational Church (35.71%), Catholic Church (32.96%), Assemblies of God (12.98%), and Baptist (1.48%).
Although the Constitution provides for freedom of religion, the government has restricted the religious practices of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the Jehovah's Witnesses, most of whom are foreign workers employed by the government-owned Nauru Phosphate Corporation.
The Catholics are pastorally served by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Tarawa and Nauru, with see at Tarawa in Kiribati.
== Public services ==
=== Education ===
Literacy on Nauru is 96%. Education is compulsory for children from six to sixteen years old, and two more non-compulsory years are offered (years 11 and 12). The island has three primary schools and two secondary schools. The secondary schools are Nauru Secondary School and Nauru College. There is a campus of the University of the South Pacific on Nauru. Before this campus was built in 1987, students would study either by distance or abroad. Since 2011, the University of New England, Australia has established a presence on the island with around 30 Nauruan teachers studying for an associate degree in education. These students will continue on to the degree to complete their studies.
The previous community public library was destroyed in a fire. As of 1999, a new one had not yet been built, and no bookmobile services were available as of that year. Sites with libraries include the University of the South Pacific campus, Nauru Secondary, Kayser College, and Aiwo Primary.
The Nauru Community Library is in the new University of the South Pacific Nauru Campus building, which officially opened in May 2018.
=== Health ===
Nauru has one of the highest child mortality rates in the Pacific Island Countries and Territories (PICTs) region at 2.9% in 2020, according to a UNICEF study.
In 2009, life expectancy, which averages in child mortality, in Nauru was 60.6 years for males and 68.0 years for females.
By measure of mean body mass index (BMI), Nauruans are the most overweight people in the world; 97% of men and 93% of women are overweight or obese. In 2012, the obesity rate was 71.7%. Obesity on the Pacific islands is common.
Nauru has the world's highest level of type 2 diabetes, with more than 40% of the population affected. Other significant dietary-related problems on Nauru include kidney disease and heart disease.
Nauru has the world's highest tobacco smoking rate (48.3% in 2022).
== Transport ==
The island is solely served by Nauru International Airport. Passenger service is provided by Nauru Airlines. Flights operate four days a week to Brisbane, Australia, with limited service to other destinations including Nadi (Fiji) and Bonriki (Kiribati).
The island has about 30 km (19 mi) of road, and it has about 4 km (2.5 mi) of railway that was built for mining use a century ago. Nauru is accessible by sea via the Nauru International Port. The modernization and expansion project of the former Aiwo Boat Harbor was expected to be completed in 2021 but has been delayed due to technical and logistics issues caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
== Effects of mining ==
== Food, farming, and diet ==
=== Plants and farming ===
Historically, Indigenous Nauruans kept household gardens that provided much of the food that they needed through subsistence farming, with the most common food plants including coconuts, breadfruit, bananas, pandanus, papaya, and guavas.
Because of the large immigrant population that worked in the phosphate mines, many types of fruits and vegetables were grown that were staples in those countries as well. The soil in Nauru was very rich on what citizens call the "Topside", the raised phosphate plateau where the phosphate is mined from, and it was extremely fertile. However, the area where most Nauruans live now, on the coastal ring on the island that has not been mined, the soil quality is among the poorest in the world, as it is shallow, alkaline, and has the coarse texture of the coral that surrounds it. In 2011, just 13% of households maintained a garden or were involved in growing crops.
Most of the soil that was on Nauru is now gone because of phosphate-mining activities, leaving people to import the soil that they need. Ethnobotanical studies have indicated that the reduction in the types of plants that can be grown due to phosphate mining has significantly affected the connection that Indigenous Nauruans feel to the land, as plants are a large part of their cultural identity and have many uses in their lives, with each plant having an average of seven uses in Pacific Island cultures.
=== Food ===
For Nauru residents today, all food must also be imported because of the loss of 90% of arable land due to phosphate mining, leaving people with a diet of mainly processed foods, such as rice and sugar. Though residents are trying to salvage the soil that they can, some researchers speculate that there will be no regeneration of soils even after the mining ceases. The country's dependence on processed and imported foods along with "cultural, historical, and social factors" have greatly affected the health of its citizens. Despite having all food imported, the Household and Income Expenditure Survey (HIES) conducted for the year of 2012–2013 found that Nauruans have a food poverty incidence rate of 0, based on the Food Poverty Line (FPL) which "includes a daily intake of 2,100 calories per adult per day".
=== Non-food basic needs ===
While the HIES found that Nauru is doing well in terms of food poverty, 24% of the population and 16.8% of households are below the basic needs (clothing, shelter, education, transport, communication, water, sanitation and health services) poverty line. This is the worst poverty index of all Pacific nations. In 2017, half of Nauruans were living on US$9,000 a year (approx. A$11,700 a year). Water resources are extremely limited, with the island supplying enough for 32 liters of freshwater per person per day despite the WHO's recommendation of 50 liters per person per day. Much of the groundwater has been contaminated by mining runoff, toilets, and dumping of other commercial and household wastes, causing Nauruans to rely on imported water, the price of which can vary as it is closely tied to fuel prices for its delivery, and rainfall storage. Access to sanitation facilities is restricted with just 66% of residents having access to reliable toilets, and open defecation is still practiced by 3% of the population. Schools are frequently forced to close because they do not have reliable toilets or drinking water for students to use. There is a long-standing truancy problem, and accessibility of education for refugee and asylum-seeking children, as well as for disabled children, remain areas of concern for Nauru's education sector.
== Culture ==
Angam Day, held on 26 October, celebrates the recovery of the Nauruan population after the two world wars and the 1920 influenza epidemic. Colonial and contemporary Western influence has largely displaced the indigenous culture. Few older customs have been preserved, but some forms of traditional music, arts and crafts, and fishing are still practised.
=== Music ===
Nauruan folk songs existed as of 1970; "Oh Bwio Eben Bwio" remains a noticeable folk song. Rhythmic singing and traditional reigen are performed particularly at celebrations. A historical form of a Nauruan dance called "fish dance" in English was recorded in a form of photographs. Known contemporary dances are the frigate bird dance and the dogoropa.
The national anthem of Nauru is "Nauru Bwiema" ("Song of Nauru").
=== Media ===
Nauru has no daily news publications, but it does have a fortnightly publication, Mwinen Ko. A state-owned television station, Nauru Television (NTV), broadcasts programs from New Zealand and Australia, and a state-owned non-commercial radio station, Radio Nauru, carries programs from Radio Australia and the BBC.
=== Sport ===
Australian rules football is the most popular sport in Nauru; it is considered the country's national team sport. There is an Australian rules football league with eight teams. Nauru has several national Australian rules teams that consistently rank among the top eight teams in the world.
Other sports popular in Nauru include weightlifting (considered a national pastime), volleyball, netball, fishing and tennis. Nauru participates in the Commonwealth Games and has participated in the Summer Olympic Games in weightlifting and judo.
Nauru's national basketball team competed at the 1969 Pacific Games, where it defeated Solomon Islands and Fiji.
Rugby union in Nauru has a growing following. The Nauru national rugby sevens team made its international debut at the 2015 Pacific Games. Nauru competed in the 2015 Oceania Sevens Championship in New Zealand.
Soccer in Nauru is a minor sport which has long been dormant in due to the popularity of Australian rules football; however, a Nauru national soccer team was in formation as of 2024.
== See also ==
Index of Nauru-related articles
Outline of Nauru
== Notes ==
== References ==
=== Citations ===
=== Sources ===
== Further reading ==
Gowdy, John M.; McDaniel, Carl N. (2000). Paradise for Sale: A Parable of Nature. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-22229-8.
Morris, J. (2023). Asylum and Extraction in the Republic of Nauru. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Storr, C. (2020). International Status in the Shadow of Empire: Nauru and the Histories of International Law. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Storr, Cait (2020). International Status in the Shadow of Empire: Nauru and the Histories of International Law. Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/9781108682602. ISBN 9781108682602.
Williams, Maslyn; Macdonald, Barrie (1985). The Phosphateers. Melbourne University Press. ISBN 0-522-84302-6.
== External links ==
Government of Nauru
Government of Nauru (archived site)
Nauru. The World Factbook. Central Intelligence Agency.
Wikimedia Atlas of Nauru
Nauru from UCB Libraries GovPubs
Nauru profile from the BBC News Online |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anselm_Kiefer#Studios | Anselm Kiefer | Anselm Kiefer (born 8 March 1945) is a German painter and sculptor. He studied with Peter Dreher and Horst Antes at the end of the 1960s. His works incorporate materials such as straw, ash, clay, lead, and shellac. The poems of Paul Celan have played a role in developing Kiefer's themes of German history and the horrors of the Holocaust, as have the spiritual concepts of Kabbalah.
When he was 18, Kieffer set out on a year-long tour to visit places in The Netherlands, Belgium and France which had associations with Van Gogh. Excerpts from the diary that he kept indicate how strongly he was influenced by Van Gogh.
In his entire body of work, Kiefer argues with the past and addresses taboo and controversial issues from recent history. Themes from Nazi rule are particularly reflected in his work; for instance, the painting Margarete (oil and straw on canvas) was inspired by Celan's well-known poem "Todesfuge" ("Death Fugue").
His works are characterised by an unflinching willingness to confront his culture's dark past, and unrealised potential, in works that are often done on a large, confrontational scale well suited to the subjects. It is also characteristic of his work to find signatures and names of people of historical importance, legendary figures or historical places. All of these are encoded sigils through which Kiefer seeks to process the past; this has resulted in his work being linked with the movements New Symbolism and Neo–Expressionism.
Kiefer has lived and worked in France since 1992. Since 2008, he has lived and worked primarily in Paris. In 2018, he was awarded Austrian citizenship.
== Personal life and career ==
The son of a German art teacher, Kiefer was born in Donaueschingen a few months before the end of World War II. His city having been heavily bombed, Kiefer grew up surrounded by the devastation of the war. In 1951, his family moved to Ottersdorf, and he attended public school in Rastatt, graduating high school in 1965. He studied pre-law and Romance languages at the University of Freiburg. However, after three semesters he switched to art, studying at art academies in Freiburg and Karlsruhe. In Karlsruhe, he studied under Peter Dreher, a realist and figurative painter. He received an art degree in 1969.
In 1971 Kiefer moved to Hornbach (Walldürn) and established a studio. He remained in the Neckar-Odenwald-Kreis until 1992; his output during this first creative time is known as The German Years. In 1992 he relocated to France.
Kiefer left his first wife and children in Germany on his move to Barjac in 1992. From 2008 he lived in Paris, in a large house in the Marais district, with his second wife, the Austrian photographer Renate Graf, and their two children. Kiefer and Graf divorced in 2014.
In 2017, Kiefer was ranked one of the richest 1,001 individuals and families in Germany by the monthly business publication Manager Magazin.
Kiefer is the subject of the 3D documentary film Anselm (2023), directed by Wim Wenders.
== Artistic process ==
Generally, Kiefer attributes traditional mythology, books, and libraries as his main subjects and sources of inspiration. In his middle years, his inspiration came from literary figures, namely Paul Celan and Ingeborg Bachmann. His later works incorporate themes from Judeo-Christian, ancient Egyptian, and Oriental cultures, which he combines with other motifs. Cosmogony is also a large focus in his works. In all, Kiefer searches for the meaning of existence and "representation of the incomprehensible and the non-representational."
=== Philosophy ===
Kiefer values a "spiritual connection" with the materials he works with, "extracting the spirit that already lives within [them]." In doing so, he transforms his materials with acid baths and physical blows with sticks and axes, among other processes.
He often chooses materials for their alchemical properties—lead in particular. Kiefer's initial attraction to lead arose when he had to repair aging pipes in the first house he owned. Eventually, he came to admire its physical and sensory qualities and began to discover more about its connection to alchemy. Physically, Kiefer specifically likes how the metal looks during the heating and melting process when he sees many colors, especially gold, which he associates to the symbolic gold sought by alchemists.
Kiefer's use of straw in his work represents energy. He claims this is due to straw's physical qualities, including the color gold and its release of energy and heat when burned. The resulting ash makes way for new creation, thus echoing the motifs of transformation and the cycle of life.
Kiefer also values the balance between order and chaos in his work, stating, "[I]f there is too much order, [the piece] is dead; or if there is much chaos, it doesn't cohere." In addition, he cares deeply about the space in which his works reside. He states that his works "lose their power completely" if put in the wrong spaces.
== Work ==
=== Photography ===
Kiefer began his career creating performances and documenting them in photographs titled Occupations and Heroische Sinnbilder (Heroic Symbols). Dressed in his father's Wehrmacht uniform, Kiefer mimicked the Nazi salute in various locations in France, Switzerland and Italy. He asked Germans to remember and to acknowledge the loss to their culture through the mad xenophobia of the Third Reich. In 1969, at Galerie am Kaiserplatz, Karlsruhe, he presented his first single exhibition "Besetzungen (Occupations)" with a series of photographs of controversial political actions.
=== Painting and sculpture ===
Kiefer is best known for his paintings, which have grown increasingly large in scale with additions of lead, broken glass, and dried flowers or plants. This results in encrusted surfaces and thick layers of impasto.
By 1970, while studying informally under Joseph Beuys at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, his stylistic leanings resembled Georg Baselitz's approach. He worked with glass, straw, wood and plant parts. The use of these materials meant that his art works became temporary and fragile, as Kiefer himself was well aware; he also wanted to showcase the materials in such a way that they were not disguised and could be represented in their natural form. The fragility of his work contrasts with the stark subject matter in his paintings. This use of familiar materials to express ideas was influenced by Beuys, who used fat and carpet felt in his works. It is also typical of the Neo-Expressionist style.
Kiefer returned to the area of his birthplace in 1971. In the years that followed, he incorporated German mythology in particular in his work, and in the next decade he studied the Kabbalah, as well as Qabalists like Robert Fludd. He went on extended journeys throughout Europe, the US and the Middle East; the latter two journeys further influenced his work. Besides paintings, Kiefer created sculptures, watercolors, photographs, and woodcuts, using woodcuts in particular to create a repertoire of figures he could reuse repeatedly in all media over the next decades, lending his work its knotty thematic coherence.
Throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, Kiefer made numerous paintings, watercolors, woodcuts, and books on themes interpreted by Richard Wagner in his four-opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung). In the early 1980s, he created more than thirty paintings, painted photographs, and watercolors that refer in their titles and inscriptions to the Romanian Jewish writer Paul Celan's poem "Todesfuge" ("Death Fugue").
A series of paintings which Kiefer executed between 1980 and 1983 depict looming stone edifices, referring to famous examples of National Socialist architecture, particularly buildings designed by Albert Speer and Wilhelm Kreis. The grand plaza in To the Unknown Painter (1983) specifically refers to the outdoor courtyard of Hitler's Chancellery in Berlin, designed by Speer in 1938 in honor of the Unknown Soldier. Between 1984 and 1985, he made a series of works on paper incorporating manipulated black-and-white photographs of desolate landscapes with utility poles and power lines. Such works, like Heavy Cloud (1985), were an indirect response to the controversy in West Germany in the early 1980s about NATO's stationing of tactical nuclear missiles on German soil and the placement of nuclear fuel processing facilities.
By the mid-1980s, Kiefer's themes widened from a focus on Germany's role in civilization to the fate of art and culture in general. His work became more sculptural and involved not only national identity and collective memory, but also occult symbolism, theology and mysticism. The theme of all the work is the trauma experienced by entire societies, and the continual rebirth and renewal in life. During the 1980s his paintings became more physical, and featured unusual textures and materials. The range of his themes broadened to include references to ancient Hebrew and Egyptian history, as in the large painting Osiris and Isis (1985–87). His paintings of the 1990s, in particular, explore the universal myths of existence and meaning rather than those of national identity. From 1995 to 2001, he produced a cycle of large paintings of the cosmos.
Over the years Kiefer has made many unusual works, but one work stands out among the rest as particularly bizarre—that work being his 20 Years of Solitude piece. Taking over 20 years to create (1971–1991), 20 Years of Solitude is a ceiling-high stack of hundreds of white-painted ledgers and handmade books, strewn with dirt and dried vegetation, whose pages are stained with the artist's semen. The word solitude in the title references the artists frequent masturbation onto paper during the 20 years it took to create. He asked American art critic Peter Schjeldahl to write a text for a catalog of the masturbation books. Schjeldahl attempted to oblige but ultimately failed in his endeavor. No other critic would take on the task, so the work has largely faded into obscurity.
He would shock the art world yet again at a dinner party in May 1993. Kiefer and his second wife, Renate Graf, decorated a candlelit commercial loft in New York with white muslin and skinned animals hanging on hooks above a floor carpeted with white sand, and staffed it with waiters dressed as mimes with white-face. A handful of art world elite, such as the likes of Sherrie Levine, were served several courses of arcane organ meats, such as pancreas, that were mostly white in color. Not surprisingly, the guests did not find the meal to be particularly appetizing. A group of NYC nightlife performers including Johanna Constantine, Lavinia Coop, Armen Ra and Flotilla DeBarge were hired to dress in white and mill about the West Village venue, Industria, and Anohni was hired to sing for Kiefer's guests.
Since 2002, Kiefer has worked with concrete, creating the towers destined for the Pirelli warehouses in Milan, the series of tributes to Velimir Khlebnikov (paintings of the sea, with boats and an array of leaden objects, 2004–5), a return to the work of Paul Celan with a series of paintings featuring rune motifs (2004–06), and other sculptures. In 2003, he held his first solo show at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Salzburg Villa Katz, Anselm Kiefer: Am Anfang dedicated to a series of new works, centered on the recurring themes of history and myths. In 2005, he held his second exhibition in Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac's Salzburg location, Für Paul Celan which focused on Kiefer's preoccupation with the book, linking references to Germanic mythology with the poetry of Paul Celan, a German-speaking Jew from Czernowitz. The exhibition featured eleven works on canvas, a series of bound books shown in display cases, and five sculptures, including one powerful, monumental outdoor sculpture of reinforced concrete and lead elements, two leaden piles of books combined with bronze sunflowers, lead ships and wedges, and two monumental leaden books from the series The Secret Life of Plants. The exhibition toured to Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris and Galerie Yvon Lambert, Paris, the following year.
In 2006, Kiefer's exhibition, Velimir Chlebnikov, was first shown in a small studio near Barjac, then moved to White Cube in London, then finishing in the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Connecticut. The work consists of 30 large (2 × 3 meters) paintings, hanging in two banks of 15 on facing walls of an expressly constructed corrugated steel building that mimics the studio in which they were created. The work refers to the eccentric theories of the Russian futurist philosopher/poet Velimir Chlebnikov, who invented a "language of the future" called "Zaum", and who postulated that cataclysmic sea battles shift the course of history once every 317 years. In his paintings, Kiefer's toy-like battleships—misshapen, battered, rusted and hanging by twisted wires—are cast about by paint and plaster waves. The work's recurrent color notes are black, white, gray, and rust; and their surfaces are rough and slathered with paint, plaster, mud and clay.
In 2007, he became the first artist to be commissioned to install a permanent work at the Louvre, Paris, since Georges Braque some 50 years earlier. The same year, he inaugurated the Monumenta exhibitions series at the Grand Palais in Paris, with works paying special tribute to the poets Paul Celan and Ingeborg Bachmann.
In 2009 Kiefer mounted two exhibitions at the White Cube gallery in London. A series of forest diptychs and triptychs enclosed in glass vitrines, many filled with dense Moroccan thorns, was titled Karfunkelfee, a term from German Romanticism stemming from a poem by the post-war Austrian writer Ingeborg Bachmann. In The Fertile Crescent, Kiefer presented a group of epic paintings inspired by a trip to India fifteen years earlier where he first encountered rural brick factories. Over the past decade, the photographs that Kiefer took in India "reverberated" in his mind to suggest a vast array of cultural and historical references, reaching from the first human civilization of Mesopotamia to the ruins of Germany in the aftermath of the Second World War, where he played as a boy. "Anyone in search of a resonant meditation on the instability of built grandeur", wrote the historian Simon Schama in his catalogue essay, "would do well to look hard at Kiefer's The Fertile Crescent".
In Morgenthau Plan (2012), the gallery is filled with a sculpture of a golden wheat field, enclosed in a five-meter-high steel cage. That same year, Kiefer inaugurated Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac's gallery space in Pantin, with an exhibition of monumental new works, Die Ungeborenen. The exhibition was accompanied by a publication with a letter by Anselm Kiefer and essays by Alexander Kluge and Emmanuel Daydé. He continues to be represented by the gallery and participates in group and solo exhibitions at their various locations.
=== Books ===
In 1969 Kiefer began to design books. Early examples are typically worked-over photographs; his more recent books consist of sheets of lead layered with paint, minerals, or dried plant matter. For example, he assembled numerous lead books on steel shelves in libraries, as symbols of the stored, discarded knowledge of history. The book Rhine (1981) comprises a sequence of 25 woodcuts that suggest a journey along the Rhine River; the river is central to Germany's geographical and historical development, acquiring an almost mythic significance in works such as Wagner's Ring of the Nibelungs. Scenes of the unspoiled river are interrupted by dark, swirling pages that represent the sinking of the battleship Bismarck in 1941, during an Atlantic sortie codenamed Rhine Exercise.
=== Studios ===
Kiefer's first large studio was in the attic of his home, a former schoolhouse in Hornbach. Years later he installed his studio in a factory building in Buchen, near Hornbach. In 1988, Kiefer transformed a former brick factory in Höpfingen (also near Buchen) into an extensive artwork including numerous installations and sculptures. In 1991, after twenty years of working in the Odenwald, the artist left Germany to travel around the world—to India, Mexico, Japan, Thailand, Indonesia, Australia, and the United States. In 1992 he established himself in Barjac, France, where he transformed his 35-hectare studio compound La Ribaute into a Gesamtkunstwerk. A derelict silk factory, his studio is enormous and in many ways is a comment on industrialization. He created an extensive system of glass buildings, archives, installations, storerooms for materials and paintings, subterranean chambers and corridors.
Sophie Fiennes filmed Kiefer's studio complex in Barjac for her documentary study Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow (2010), which recorded both the environment and the artist at work. One critic wrote of the film: "Building almost from the ground up in a derelict silk factory, Kiefer devised an artistic project extending over acres: miles of corridors, huge studio spaces with ambitious landscape paintings and sculptures that correspond to monumental constructions in the surrounding woodland, and serpentine excavated labyrinths with great earthy columns that resemble stalagmites or termite mounds. Nowhere is it clear where the finished product definitively stands; perhaps it is all work in progress, a monumental concept-art organism."
During 2008, Kiefer left his studio complex at Barjac and moved to Paris. A fleet of 110 lorries transported his work to a 35,000 sq ft (3,300 m2) warehouse in Croissy-Beaubourg, outside of Paris, that had once been the depository for the La Samaritaine department store. A journalist wrote of Kiefer's abandoned studio complex: "He left behind the great work of Barjac – the art and buildings. A caretaker looks after it. Uninhabited, it quietly waits for nature to take over, because, as we know, over our cities grass will grow". Kiefer spent the summer of 2019 living and working at Barjac."
== Works ==
Source:
The Second Sinful Fall of Parmenides (Der zweite Sündenfall des Parmenides), 1969. Oil on canvas, 82 5/8 x 98 3/8" (210x250 cm), Private Collection.
You're a Painter (Du bist Maler), 1969. Bound book, 9 7/8 × 7 1/2 x 3/8" (25 x 19 x 1 cm), Private Collection.
Plate I, German Line of Spiritual Salvation, 1975, Deutsche Heilsline, Watercolor on paper, 9 7/16 x 13 3/8" (24 X 34 cm), Private Collection.
Pages from "Occupations" ("Besetzungen"), 1969. From Interfunktionen (Cologne), no. 12 (1975).
Plate 2, Every Human Being Stands beneath His Own Dome of Heaven (Jeder Mensch steht unter seinem Himmelskugel), 1970, Watercolor and pencil on paper, 15 3/4 x 18 7/8", (40 x 48 cm), Private Collection.
Double-page photographic image with foldout from The Flooding of Heidelberg (Die Überschwemmung Heidelbergs), 1969, 11 7/8 × 8 1/2 x 7/8" (30.2 x 21.7 x 2.3 cm) (bound volume), Private Collection.
Double-page photographic images from The Flooding of Heidelberg (Die Überschwemmung Heidelbergs), 1969.
Untitled (Ohne Titel), 1971, Oil on canvas (in two parts), each 86 5/8 x 39 3/8" (220 x 100 cm), Collection of Dr. Gunther Gercken, Lutjensee, West Germany.
Plate 3, Winter Landscape (Winterlandschaft), 1970, Watercolor on paper, 16 15/16 x 14 3/16" (43 x 36 cm), Private Collection.
Plate 4, Reclining Man with Branch (Liegender Mann mit Zweig), 1971, Watercolor on paper, 9 7/16 x 11" (24 x 28 cm), Private Collection.
Plate 5, Fulia, 1971, Watercolor and pencil on paper, 18 11/16 x 14 3/16" (47.5 x 36 cm), Private Collection.
Quaternity (Quaternität), 1973, Charcoal and oil on burlap, 118 1/8 x 171 1/4" (300 x 435 cm), Collection of George Baselitz, Derneburg, West Germany.
Father, Son, Holy Ghost (Vater, Sohn, heiliger Geist), 1973, Oil on burlap, 65 x 61 1/2" (165 x 156 cm), Collection of Dr. Gunther Gerken, Lutjensee, West Germany.
Faith, Hope, Love (Glaube, Hoffnung, Liebe), 1973, Charcoal on burlap, with cardboard, 117 3/8 x 110 5/8" (298 x 281 cm). Staatsgalerie Stuttgart.
Plate 6, Man in the Forest (Mann im Wald), 1971, Oil on muslin, 68 1/2 x 74 7/16" (174 x 189 cm), Private Collection.
Plate 7, Resurrexit, 1973, oil, acrylic and charcoal on burlap, 114 3/16 x 70 7/8" (290 x 180 cm). Collection Sanders, Amsterdam.
Plate 8, Nothung (Notung), 1973, oil and charcoal on burlap, with oil and charcoal on cardboard, 118 1/8 x 170" (300 x 432 cm). Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, Rotterdam.
Plate 10, Germany's Spiritual Heroes (Deutschlands Geisteshelden), 1973, oil and charcoal on burlap, mounted on canvas, 120 7/8 x 268 1/2" (307 x 682 cm). Collection of Barbara and Eugene Schwartz, New York.
Double-page from Heroic Allegories (Heroische Sinnbilder), 1969, photography on cardboard, with pastel and pencil, 26 x 19 5/8 x 4" ( 66 x 50 x 10 cm), Private Collection.
Operation Winter Storm (Unternehmen "Wintergewitter"), 1975, oil on burlap, 47 1/4 x 59" (120 x 150 cm), Private Collection.
The Lake of Gennesaret (See Genezareth), 1974, oil emulsion, and shellac on burlap, 41 1/4 x 67" (105 x 170 cm), Private Collection.
Plate 11, Landscape with Head (Landschaft mit Kopf), 1973, oil, distemper, and charcoal on cardboard, 82 11/16 x 94 1/2" (210 x 240 cm), Private Collection.
Plate 12, Cockchafer Fly (Maikäfer flieg), 1974, oil on burlap, 86 5/8 x 118 1/8" (220 x 300 cm), Saatchi Collection, London.
Plate 13, March Heath (Märkische Heide), oil, acrylic and shellac on burlap, 46 1/2 x 100" (118 x 254 cm), Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, The Netherlands.
There is Peace upon Every Mountain Peak (Über allen Gipfeln ist Ruh!), 1973, watercolor on paper, 12 3/8 x 18 7/8" (31.5 x 48 cm), Private Collection.
Plate 14, Operation Sea Lion I (Unternehmen "Seelöwe"), 1975, oil on canvas, 86 5/8 x 118 1/8" (220 x 300 cm), Collection of Norman and Irma Braman, Miami Beach.
Plate 15, Piet Mondrian- Operation Sea Lion (Piet Mondrian- Unternehmen "Seelöwe"), 1975, thirty-four double-page photographic images, mounted on cardboard and bound, 22 7/16 x 16 1/2 x 2" (57 x 42 5 cm) (bound volume), Collection of Marian Goodman, New York.
Plate 16, March Sand V (Märkischer Sand V), 1977, twenty-five double page photographic images, with sand, oil, and glue, mounted on cardboard and bound, 24 3/8 x 16 5/8 × 3 3/8" (62 x 42 x 8.5 cm) (bound volume), Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Andrew Saul, New York.
Double-page photographic images from Hoffmann von Fallersleben auf Helgoland, 1978 (Groningen, 1980), 11 7/8 × 8 1/2 x 1/2" (30.2 x 21.6 x 1.3 cm) (bound volume), Private Collection.
Plate 17, Varus, 1976, oil and acrylic on burlap, 78 3/4 x 106 5/16" (200 x 270 cm), Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, The Netherlands.
Double-page from Germany's Facial Type (Charcoal for 2000 Years) (Das deutsche Volksgesicht [Kohle fur 2000 Jahre]), 1974, charcoal on paper, with woodcut, 22 7/16 x 17 3/4 × 2 3/8" (57 x 45 x 6 cm) (bound volume), Private Collection.
Heliogabalus (Heliogabal), 1974, watercolor on paper, 11 3/4 x 15 3/4" (30 x 40 cm), Collection of Fredrik Roos, Switzerland.
Plate 18, Ways of Worldly Wisdom (Wege der Weltweisheit), 1976–77, oil, acrylic, and shellac on burlap, mounted on canvas, 120 x 196 7/8" (305 x 500 cm), Collection Sanders, Amsterdam.
Plate 19, Ways of Worldly Wisdom- Arminius's Battle (Wege der Weltweisheit-die Hermanns-Schlacht), 1978–80, woodcut, with acrylic and shellac, mounted on canvas, 126 x 196 7/8" (320 x 500 cm), The Art Institute of Chicago.
Plate 20, Stefan!, 1975, watercolor and ball point pen on paper, 8 1/16 x 11 1/4" (20.5 x 28.5 cm), Collection of Johannes Gachenang, Bern.
Siegfried Forgets Brunhilde (Siegfried vergisst Brunhilde), 1975, oil on canvas, 51 1/8 x 67" (130 x 170 cm), Family H. de Groot Collection, Groningen, The Netherlands.
== Exhibitions ==
In 1969, Kiefer had his first solo exhibition, at Galerie am Kaiserplatz in Karlsruhe. Along with Georg Baselitz, he represented Germany at the Venice Biennale in 1980. He was also featured in the 1997 Venice Biennale with a one-man show held at the Museo Correr, concentrating on paintings and books.
Comprehensive solo exhibitions of Kiefer's work have been organized by the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf (1984); Art Institute of Chicago (1987); Sezon Museum of Art in Tokyo (1993); Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin (1991); Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (1998); Fondation Beyeler in Basel (2001); the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth (2005); the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington D.C. (2006); the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao (2007). In 2007, the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao presented an extensive survey of recent work. Several of his works were exhibited in 2009 for the first time in the Balearic Islands, in the museum Es Baluard in Palma de Mallorca. In 2012, the Art Gallery of Hamilton presented some of his paintings. London's Royal Academy of Arts mounted the first British retrospective of the artist's work in September 2014.
In 2007 Kiefer was commissioned to create a huge site-specific installation of sculptures and paintings for the inaugural "Monumenta" at the Grand Palais, Paris. With the unveiling of a triptych – the mural Athanor and the two sculptures Danae and Hortus Conclusus – at the Louvre in 2007, Kiefer became the first living artist to create a permanent site-specific installation in the museum since Georges Braque in 1953.
In 2008, Kiefer installed Palmsonntag (Palm Sunday) (2006), a monumental palm tree and 36 steel-and-glass reliquary tablets in the auditorium-gym of the First Baptist Church of Los Angeles, an enormous Spanish Gothic edifice built in 1927. The room was reconfigured to accommodate the work. Floors were sanded to remove the basketball court's markings, and the wall for the reliquary paintings was constructed inside the space. In 2010 the piece was installed at the Art Gallery of Ontario museum in Toronto, where Kiefer created eight new panels specifically for the AGO's exhibition of this work.
In 2009, the Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibited Broken Flowers and Grass: Nature and Landscape in the Drawings of Anselm Kiefer, displaying Kiefer’s landscape paintings.
In Next Year in Jerusalem (2010) at Gagosian Gallery, Kiefer explained that each of the works was a reaction to a personal "shock" initiated by something he had recently heard of.
In September 2013, The Hall Art Foundation, in partnership with the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, opened a long-term installation of sculpture and paintings in a specifically repurposed, 10,000 square-foot building on the MASS MoCA campus. In 2014, the Foundation landscaped the area surrounding this building in order to present long-term installations of outdoor sculpture. The long-term exhibition—includes Étroits sont les Vaisseaux (Narrow are the Vessels) (2002), an 82-foot long, undulating wave-like sculpture made of cast concrete, exposed rebar, and lead; The Women of the Revolution (Les Femmes de la Revolution) (1992), composed of more than twenty lead beds with photographs and wall text; Velimir Chlebnikov (2004), a steel pavilion containing 30 paintings dealing with nautical warfare and inspired by the quixotic theories of the Russian mathematical experimentalist Velimir Chlebnikov; and a new, large-format photograph on lead created by the artist for the installation at MASS MoCA.
In 2015, the Centre Pompidou, the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, and the Museum der bildenden Künste in Leipzig hosted a retrospective exhibition in honor of Kiefer's 70th birthday.
In 2016 the Albertina in Vienna dedicated an exhibition to his woodcuts, showing 35 made between 1977 and 2015, with an accompanying catalogue.
In 2017, the Met Breuer presented Provocations: Anselm Kiefer at The Met Breuer, an exhibit of works that spanned his career.
He unveiled his first public art commission in the United States in May 2018, at Rockefeller Center. The Uraeus sculpture was inspired in part by the religious symbols of Egypt and Thus Spoke Zarathustra. It was put on view until 22 July.
From October 18, 2025–January 25, 2026, the Saint Louis Art Museum exhibited Anselm Kiefer: Becoming the Sea, a retrospective of Kiefer’s 60 year career. A catalog accompanied the exhibit.
== Recognition ==
In 1990, Kiefer was awarded the Wolf Prize. In 1999 the Japan Art Association awarded him the Praemium Imperiale for his lifetime achievements. In the explanatory statement it reads:
"A complex critical engagement with history runs through Anselm Kiefer's work. His paintings as well as the sculptures of Georg Baselitz created an uproar at the 1980 Venice Biennale: the viewers had to decide whether the apparent Nazi motifs were meant ironically or whether the works were meant to convey actual fascist ideas. Kiefer worked with the conviction that art could heal a traumatized nation and a vexed, divided world. He created epic paintings on giant canvases that called up the history of German culture with the help of depictions of figures such as Richard Wagner or Goethe, thus continuing the historical tradition of painting as a medium of addressing the world. Only a few contemporary artists have such a pronounced sense of art's duty to engage the past and the ethical questions of the present, and are in the position to express the possibility of the absolution of guilt through human effort."
In 2008, Kiefer was awarded the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, given for the first time to a visual artist. Art historian Werner Spies said in his speech that Kiefer is a passionate reader who takes impulses from literature for his work. In 2011 Kiefer was appointed to the chair of creativity in art at the Collège de France.
== Materials ==
Due to the spontaneous nature of his creative process, many of his works have issues regarding stability—a concern shared by collectors, dealers, and curators alike. He acknowledges the issue, but says change is part of the process and that their essence will ultimately stay the same. This idea of transformation has a kind of appeal for Kiefer and thus is featured in many of his works. This fascination for the process may have stemmed from the artist's keen interest in alchemy. He often chooses materials for their alchemical properties—lead in particular being chief among them. In the case of lead, he specifically likes how the metal looks during the heating and melting process when he would see many colors—especially that of gold—which he thought of in a symbolic sense as the gold sought by alchemists. He is also particularly fond of the oxidation of white on lead. He would often try to induce oxidation artificially with the use of acid to speed up the process. Lead was also associated with the alchemical concepts of magic numbers and represented the planet Saturn.
Shellac, another material popular in his work, corresponded to lead in terms of how he felt about its color and energy possibilities. He also liked that while being polished it takes on energy and becomes warm to the touch.
The use of straw in his work is also in part the result of this common theme of energy. Straw again features the color gold and gives off energy, heat, and warmth when burned. This would make way for new creation thus continuing the cycle of life through the transformation process.
== Art market ==
The best selling painting for the artist was The Fertile Crescent (2009), which sold for $3,997,103 at the China Guardian action house, on 3 June 2019. The previous record belonged to the painting To the Unknown Painter (1983), sold by $3,554,500 at Christie's New York, on 11 May 2011, to an American private collector. Previously, it was held by Let a Thousand Flowers Bloom (1999), who had sold by $3,549,350 at Christie's London, on 8 February 2007.
== Collections ==
Kiefer's works are included in numerous public collections, including the Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin; the Museum of Modern Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit; the Tate Modern, London; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; the North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh; the High Museum of Art, Atlanta; the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; the Tel Aviv Museum of Art; and the Albertina, Vienna. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York owns 20 of the artist's rare watercolors. Notable private collectors include Eli Broad and Andrew J. Hall.
== See also ==
Holocaust memorial landscapes in Germany
== Bibliography ==
Lauterwein, Andréa (2007). Anselm Kiefer/Paul Celan. London: Thames & Hudson. ISBN 978-0-500-23836-3.
Kiefer, Anselm; Auping, Michael (2005). Anselm Kiefer. Fort Worth, Tex: Prestel Publishing. ISBN 978-3-7913-3387-8.
Biro, Matthew (1998). Anselm Kiefer and the Philosophy of Martin Heidegger. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press. ISBN 978-0-521-59170-6.
Biro, Matthew (5 March 2013). Anselm Kiefer. London [u.a]: Phaidon Press. ISBN 978-0-7148-6143-2.
Danto, Arthur C. (1 January 1997). "Anselm Kiefer". Encounters & Reflections. Berkeley, Calif. London: Univ of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-20846-9.
Fiennes, Sophie (2011), Over your cities grass will grow, London: Artificial Eye, OCLC 1043105151
Hoerschelmann, Antonia (2016). Anselm Kiefer. Vienna Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz Verlag. ISBN 978-3-7757-4101-9.
Stewart, Garrett (2010). "Bookwork as Demediation". Critical Inquiry. 36 (3): 410–457. doi:10.1086/653407. ISSN 0093-1896. S2CID 162264154.
== References ==
== External links ==
AnseIm Kiefer Site includes articles, interviews, bibliography and gallery of exhibitions posters. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_intelligence | Artificial intelligence | Artificial intelligence (AI) is the capability of computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making. It is a field of research in computer science that develops and studies methods and software that enable machines to perceive their environment and use learning and intelligence to take actions that maximize their chances of achieving defined goals.
High-profile applications of AI include advanced web search engines (e.g., Google Search); recommendation systems (used by YouTube, Amazon, and Netflix); virtual assistants (e.g., Google Assistant, Siri, and Alexa); autonomous vehicles (e.g., Waymo); generative and creative tools (e.g., language models and AI art); and superhuman play and analysis in strategy games (e.g., chess and Go). However, many AI applications are not perceived as AI: "A lot of cutting edge AI has filtered into general applications, often without being called AI because once something becomes useful enough and common enough it's not labeled AI anymore."
Various subfields of AI research are centered around particular goals and the use of particular tools. The traditional goals of AI research include learning, reasoning, knowledge representation, planning, natural language processing, perception, and support for robotics. To reach these goals, AI researchers have adapted and integrated a wide range of techniques, including search and mathematical optimization, formal logic, artificial neural networks, and methods based on statistics, operations research, and economics. AI also draws upon psychology, linguistics, philosophy, neuroscience, and other fields. Some companies, such as OpenAI, Google DeepMind and Meta, aim to create artificial general intelligence (AGI) – AI that can complete virtually any cognitive task at least as well as a human.
Artificial intelligence was founded as an academic discipline in 1956, and the field went through multiple cycles of optimism throughout its history, followed by periods of disappointment and loss of funding, known as AI winters. Funding and interest vastly increased after 2012 when graphics processing units started being used to accelerate neural networks, and deep learning outperformed previous AI techniques. This growth accelerated further after 2017 with the transformer architecture. In the 2020s, an ongoing period of rapid progress in advanced generative AI became known as the AI boom. Generative AI's ability to create and modify content has led to several unintended consequences and harms. Ethical concerns have been raised about AI's long-term effects and potential existential risks, prompting discussions about regulatory policies to ensure the safety and benefits of the technology.
== Goals ==
The general problem of simulating (or creating) intelligence has been broken into subproblems. These consist of particular traits or capabilities that researchers expect an intelligent system to display. The traits described below have received the most attention and cover the scope of AI research.
=== Reasoning and problem-solving ===
Early researchers developed algorithms that imitated step-by-step reasoning that humans use when they solve puzzles or make logical deductions. By the late 1980s and 1990s, methods were developed for dealing with uncertain or incomplete information, employing concepts from probability and economics.
Many of these algorithms are insufficient for solving large reasoning problems because they experience a "combinatorial explosion": They become exponentially slower as the problems grow. Even humans rarely use the step-by-step deduction that early AI research could model. They solve most of their problems using fast, intuitive judgments. Accurate and efficient reasoning is an unsolved problem.
=== Knowledge representation ===
Knowledge representation and knowledge engineering allow AI programs to answer questions intelligently and make deductions about real-world facts. Formal knowledge representations are used in content-based indexing and retrieval, scene interpretation, clinical decision support, knowledge discovery (mining "interesting" and actionable inferences from large databases), and other areas.
A knowledge base is a body of knowledge represented in a form that can be used by a program. An ontology is the set of objects, relations, concepts, and properties used by a particular domain of knowledge. Knowledge bases need to represent things such as objects, properties, categories, and relations between objects; situations, events, states, and time; causes and effects; knowledge about knowledge (what we know about what other people know); default reasoning (things that humans assume are true until they are told differently and will remain true even when other facts are changing); and many other aspects and domains of knowledge.
Among the most difficult problems in knowledge representation are the breadth of commonsense knowledge (the set of atomic facts that the average person knows is enormous); and the sub-symbolic form of most commonsense knowledge (much of what people know is not represented as "facts" or "statements" that they could express verbally). There is also the difficulty of knowledge acquisition, the problem of obtaining knowledge for AI applications.
=== Planning and decision-making ===
An "agent" is anything that perceives and takes actions in the world. A rational agent has goals or preferences and takes actions to make them happen. In automated planning, the agent has a specific goal. In automated decision-making, the agent has preferences—there are some situations it would prefer to be in, and some situations it is trying to avoid. The decision-making agent assigns a number to each situation (called the "utility") that measures how much the agent prefers it. For each possible action, it can calculate the "expected utility": the utility of all possible outcomes of the action, weighted by the probability that the outcome will occur. It can then choose the action with the maximum expected utility.
In classical planning, the agent knows exactly what the effect of any action will be. In most real-world problems, however, the agent may not be certain about the situation they are in (it is "unknown" or "unobservable") and it may not know for certain what will happen after each possible action (it is not "deterministic"). It must choose an action by making a probabilistic guess and then reassess the situation to see if the action worked.
In some problems, the agent's preferences may be uncertain, especially if there are other agents or humans involved. These can be learned (e.g., with inverse reinforcement learning), or the agent can seek information to improve its preferences. Information value theory can be used to weigh the value of exploratory or experimental actions. The space of possible future actions and situations is typically intractably large, so the agents must take actions and evaluate situations while being uncertain of what the outcome will be.
A Markov decision process has a transition model that describes the probability that a particular action will change the state in a particular way and a reward function that supplies the utility of each state and the cost of each action. A policy associates a decision with each possible state. The policy could be calculated (e.g., by iteration), be heuristic, or it can be learned.
Game theory describes the rational behavior of multiple interacting agents and is used in AI programs that make decisions that involve other agents.
=== Learning ===
Machine learning is the study of programs that can improve their performance on a given task automatically. It has been a part of AI from the beginning.
There are several kinds of machine learning. Unsupervised learning analyzes a stream of data and finds patterns and makes predictions without any other guidance. Supervised learning requires labeling the training data with the expected answers, and comes in two main varieties: classification (where the program must learn to predict what category the input belongs in) and regression (where the program must deduce a numeric function based on numeric input).
In reinforcement learning, the agent is rewarded for good responses and punished for bad ones. The agent learns to choose responses that are classified as "good". Transfer learning is when the knowledge gained from one problem is applied to a new problem. Deep learning is a type of machine learning that runs inputs through biologically inspired artificial neural networks for all of these types of learning.
Computational learning theory can assess learners by computational complexity, by sample complexity (how much data is required), or by other notions of optimization.
=== Natural language processing ===
Natural language processing (NLP) allows programs to read, write and communicate in human languages. Specific problems include speech recognition, speech synthesis, machine translation, information extraction, information retrieval and question answering.
Early work, based on Noam Chomsky's generative grammar and semantic networks, had difficulty with word-sense disambiguation unless restricted to small domains called "micro-worlds" (due to the common sense knowledge problem). Margaret Masterman believed that it was meaning and not grammar that was the key to understanding languages, and that thesauri and not dictionaries should be the basis of computational language structure.
Modern deep learning techniques for NLP include word embedding (representing words, typically as vectors encoding their meaning), transformers (a deep learning architecture using an attention mechanism), and others. In 2019, generative pre-trained transformer (or "GPT") language models began to generate coherent text, and by 2023, these models were able to get human-level scores on the bar exam, SAT test, GRE test, and many other real-world applications.
=== Perception ===
Machine perception is the ability to use input from sensors (such as cameras, microphones, wireless signals, active lidar, sonar, radar, and tactile sensors) to deduce aspects of the world. Computer vision is the ability to analyze visual input.
The field includes speech recognition, image classification, facial recognition, object recognition, object tracking, and robotic perception.
=== Social intelligence ===
Affective computing is a field that comprises systems that recognize, interpret, process, or simulate human feeling, emotion, and mood. For example, some virtual assistants are programmed to speak conversationally or even to banter humorously; it makes them appear more sensitive to the emotional dynamics of human interaction, or to otherwise facilitate human–computer interaction.
However, this tends to give naïve users an unrealistic conception of the intelligence of existing computer agents. Moderate successes related to affective computing include textual sentiment analysis and, more recently, multimodal sentiment analysis, wherein AI classifies the effects displayed by a videotaped subject.
=== General intelligence ===
A machine with artificial general intelligence would be able to solve a wide variety of problems with breadth and versatility similar to human intelligence.
== Techniques ==
AI research uses a wide variety of techniques to accomplish the goals above.
=== Search and optimization ===
AI can solve many problems by intelligently searching through many possible solutions. There are two very different kinds of search used in AI: state space search and local search.
==== State space search ====
State space search searches through a tree of possible states to try to find a goal state. For example, planning algorithms search through trees of goals and subgoals, attempting to find a path to a target goal, a process called means-ends analysis.
Simple exhaustive searches are rarely sufficient for most real-world problems: the search space (the number of places to search) quickly grows to astronomical numbers. The result is a search that is too slow or never completes. "Heuristics" or "rules of thumb" can help prioritize choices that are more likely to reach a goal.
Adversarial search is used for game-playing programs, such as chess or Go. It searches through a tree of possible moves and countermoves, looking for a winning position.
==== Local search ====
Local search uses mathematical optimization to find a solution to a problem. It begins with some form of guess and refines it incrementally.
Gradient descent is a type of local search that optimizes a set of numerical parameters by incrementally adjusting them to minimize a loss function. Variants of gradient descent are commonly used to train neural networks, through the backpropagation algorithm.
Another type of local search is evolutionary computation, which aims to iteratively improve a set of candidate solutions by "mutating" and "recombining" them, selecting only the fittest to survive each generation.
Distributed search processes can coordinate via swarm intelligence algorithms. Two popular swarm algorithms used in search are particle swarm optimization (inspired by bird flocking) and ant colony optimization (inspired by ant trails).
=== Logic ===
Formal logic is used for reasoning and knowledge representation.
Formal logic comes in two main forms: propositional logic (which operates on statements that are true or false and uses logical connectives such as "and", "or", "not" and "implies") and predicate logic (which also operates on objects, predicates and relations and uses quantifiers such as "Every X is a Y" and "There are some Xs that are Ys").
Deductive reasoning in logic is the process of proving a new statement (conclusion) from other statements that are given and assumed to be true (the premises). Proofs can be structured as proof trees, in which nodes are labelled by sentences, and children nodes are connected to parent nodes by inference rules.
Given a problem and a set of premises, problem-solving reduces to searching for a proof tree whose root node is labelled by a solution of the problem and whose leaf nodes are labelled by premises or axioms. In the case of Horn clauses, problem-solving search can be performed by reasoning forwards from the premises or backwards from the problem. In the more general case of the clausal form of first-order logic, resolution is a single, axiom-free rule of inference, in which a problem is solved by proving a contradiction from premises that include the negation of the problem to be solved.
Inference in both Horn clause logic and first-order logic is undecidable, and therefore intractable. However, backward reasoning with Horn clauses, which underpins computation in the logic programming language Prolog, is Turing complete. Moreover, its efficiency is competitive with computation in other symbolic programming languages.
Fuzzy logic assigns a "degree of truth" between 0 and 1. It can therefore handle propositions that are vague and partially true.
Non-monotonic logics, including logic programming with negation as failure, are designed to handle default reasoning. Other specialized versions of logic have been developed to describe many complex domains.
=== Probabilistic methods for uncertain reasoning ===
Many problems in AI (including reasoning, planning, learning, perception, and robotics) require the agent to operate with incomplete or uncertain information. AI researchers have devised a number of tools to solve these problems using methods from probability theory and economics. Precise mathematical tools have been developed that analyze how an agent can make choices and plan, using decision theory, decision analysis, and information value theory. These tools include models such as Markov decision processes, dynamic decision networks, game theory and mechanism design.
Bayesian networks are a tool that can be used for reasoning (using the Bayesian inference algorithm), learning (using the expectation–maximization algorithm), planning (using decision networks) and perception (using dynamic Bayesian networks).
Probabilistic algorithms can also be used for filtering, prediction, smoothing, and finding explanations for streams of data, thus helping perception systems analyze processes that occur over time (e.g., hidden Markov models or Kalman filters).
=== Classifiers and statistical learning methods ===
The simplest AI applications can be divided into two types: classifiers (e.g., "if shiny then diamond"), on one hand, and controllers (e.g., "if diamond then pick up"), on the other hand. Classifiers are functions that use pattern matching to determine the closest match. They can be fine-tuned based on chosen examples using supervised learning. Each pattern (also called an "observation") is labeled with a certain predefined class. All the observations combined with their class labels are known as a data set. When a new observation is received, that observation is classified based on previous experience.
There are many kinds of classifiers in use. The decision tree is the simplest and most widely used symbolic machine learning algorithm. K-nearest neighbor algorithm was the most widely used analogical AI until the mid-1990s, and Kernel methods such as the support vector machine (SVM) displaced k-nearest neighbor in the 1990s.
The naive Bayes classifier is reportedly the "most widely used learner" at Google, due in part to its scalability.
Neural networks are also used as classifiers.
=== Artificial neural networks ===
An artificial neural network is based on a collection of nodes also known as artificial neurons, which loosely model the neurons in a biological brain. It is trained to recognise patterns; once trained, it can recognise those patterns in fresh data. There is an input, at least one hidden layer of nodes and an output. Each node applies a function and once the weight crosses its specified threshold, the data is transmitted to the next layer. A network is typically called a deep neural network if it has at least 2 hidden layers.
Learning algorithms for neural networks use local search to choose the weights that will get the right output for each input during training. The most common training technique is the backpropagation algorithm. Neural networks learn to model complex relationships between inputs and outputs and find patterns in data. In theory, a neural network can learn any function.
In feedforward neural networks the signal passes in only one direction. The term perceptron typically refers to a single-layer neural network. In contrast, deep learning uses many layers. Recurrent neural networks (RNNs) feed the output signal back into the input, which allows short-term memories of previous input events. Long short-term memory networks (LSTMs) are recurrent neural networks that better preserve longterm dependencies and are less sensitive to the vanishing gradient problem. Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) use layers of kernels to more efficiently process local patterns. This local processing is especially important in image processing, where the early CNN layers typically identify simple local patterns such as edges and curves, with subsequent layers detecting more complex patterns like textures, and eventually whole objects.
=== Deep learning ===
Deep learning uses several layers of neurons between the network's inputs and outputs. The multiple layers can progressively extract higher-level features from the raw input. For example, in image processing, lower layers may identify edges, while higher layers may identify the concepts relevant to a human such as digits, letters, or faces.
Deep learning has profoundly improved the performance of programs in many important subfields of artificial intelligence, including computer vision, speech recognition, natural language processing, image classification, and others. The reason that deep learning performs so well in so many applications is not known as of 2021. The sudden success of deep learning in 2012–2015 did not occur because of some new discovery or theoretical breakthrough (deep neural networks and backpropagation had been described by many people, as far back as the 1950s) but because of two factors: the incredible increase in computer power (including the hundred-fold increase in speed by switching to GPUs) and the availability of vast amounts of training data, especially the giant curated datasets used for benchmark testing, such as ImageNet.
=== GPT ===
Generative pre-trained transformers (GPT) are large language models (LLMs) that generate text based on the semantic relationships between words in sentences. Text-based GPT models are pre-trained on a large corpus of text that can be from the Internet. The pretraining consists of predicting the next token (a token being usually a word, subword, or punctuation). Throughout this pretraining, GPT models accumulate knowledge about the world and can then generate human-like text by repeatedly predicting the next token. Typically, a subsequent training phase makes the model more truthful, useful, and harmless, usually with a technique called reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF). Current GPT models are prone to generating falsehoods called "hallucinations". These can be reduced with RLHF and quality data, but the problem has been getting worse for reasoning systems. Such systems are used in chatbots, which allow people to ask a question or request a task in simple text.
Current models and services include ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Copilot, and Meta AI. Multimodal GPT models can process different types of data (modalities) such as images, videos, sound, and text.
=== Hardware and software ===
In the late 2010s, graphics processing units (GPUs) that were increasingly designed with AI-specific enhancements and used with specialized TensorFlow software had replaced previously used central processing unit (CPUs) as the dominant means for large-scale (commercial and academic) machine learning models' training. Specialized programming languages such as Prolog were used in early AI research, but general-purpose programming languages like Python have become predominant.
The transistor density in integrated circuits has been observed to roughly double every 18 months—a trend known as Moore's law, named after the Intel co-founder Gordon Moore, who first identified it. Improvements in GPUs have been even faster, a trend sometimes called Huang's law, named after Nvidia co-founder and CEO Jensen Huang.
== Applications ==
AI and machine learning technology is used in most of the essential applications of the 2020s, including: search engines (such as Google Search), targeting online advertisements, recommendation systems (offered by Netflix, YouTube or Amazon), driving internet traffic, targeted advertising (AdSense, Facebook), virtual assistants (such as Siri or Alexa), autonomous vehicles (including drones, ADAS and self-driving cars), automatic language translation (Microsoft Translator, Google Translate), facial recognition (Apple's FaceID or Microsoft's DeepFace and Google's FaceNet) and image labeling (used by Facebook, Apple's Photos and TikTok). The deployment of AI may be overseen by a chief automation officer (CAO).
=== Health and medicine ===
It has been suggested that AI can overcome discrepancies in funding allocated to different fields of research.
AlphaFold 2 (2021) demonstrated the ability to approximate, in hours rather than months, the 3D structure of a protein. In 2023, it was reported that AI-guided drug discovery helped find a class of antibiotics capable of killing two different types of drug-resistant bacteria. In 2024, researchers used machine learning to accelerate the search for Parkinson's disease drug treatments. Their aim was to identify compounds that block the clumping, or aggregation, of alpha-synuclein (the protein that characterises Parkinson's disease). They were able to speed up the initial screening process ten-fold and reduce the cost by a thousand-fold.
=== Games ===
Game playing programs have been used since the 1950s to demonstrate and test AI's most advanced techniques. Deep Blue became the first computer chess-playing system to beat a reigning world chess champion, Garry Kasparov, on 11 May 1997. In 2011, in a Jeopardy! quiz show exhibition match, IBM's question answering system, Watson, defeated the two greatest Jeopardy! champions, Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings, by a significant margin. In March 2016, AlphaGo won 4 out of 5 games of Go in a match with Go champion Lee Sedol, becoming the first computer Go-playing system to beat a professional Go player without handicaps. Then, in 2017, it defeated Ke Jie, who was the best Go player in the world. Other programs handle imperfect-information games, such as the poker-playing program Pluribus. DeepMind developed increasingly generalistic reinforcement learning models, such as with MuZero, which could be trained to play chess, Go, or Atari games. In 2019, DeepMind's AlphaStar achieved grandmaster level in StarCraft II, a particularly challenging real-time strategy game that involves incomplete knowledge of what happens on the map. In 2021, an AI agent competed in a PlayStation Gran Turismo competition, winning against four of the world's best Gran Turismo drivers using deep reinforcement learning. In 2024, Google DeepMind introduced SIMA, a type of AI capable of autonomously playing nine previously unseen open-world video games by observing screen output, as well as executing short, specific tasks in response to natural language instructions.
=== Mathematics ===
Large language models, such as GPT-4, Gemini, Claude, Llama or Mistral, are increasingly used in mathematics. These probabilistic models are versatile, but can also produce wrong answers in the form of hallucinations. They sometimes need a large database of mathematical problems to learn from, but also methods such as supervised fine-tuning or trained classifiers with human-annotated data to improve answers for new problems and learn from corrections. A February 2024 study showed that the performance of some language models for reasoning capabilities in solving math problems not included in their training data was low, even for problems with only minor deviations from trained data. One technique to improve their performance involves training the models to produce correct reasoning steps, rather than just the correct result. The Alibaba Group developed a version of its Qwen models called Qwen2-Math, that achieved state-of-the-art performance on several mathematical benchmarks, including 84% accuracy on the MATH dataset of competition mathematics problems. In January 2025, Microsoft proposed the technique rStar-Math that leverages Monte Carlo tree search and step-by-step reasoning, enabling a relatively small language model like Qwen-7B to solve 53% of the AIME 2024 and 90% of the MATH benchmark problems.
Alternatively, dedicated models for mathematical problem solving with higher precision for the outcome including proof of theorems have been developed such as AlphaTensor, AlphaGeometry, AlphaProof and AlphaEvolve all from Google DeepMind, Llemma from EleutherAI or Julius.
When natural language is used to describe mathematical problems, converters can transform such prompts into a formal language such as Lean to define mathematical tasks. The experimental model Gemini Deep Think accepts natural language prompts directly and achieved gold medal results in the International Math Olympiad of 2025.
Some models have been developed to solve challenging problems and reach good results in benchmark tests, others to serve as educational tools in mathematics.
Topological deep learning integrates various topological approaches.
=== Finance ===
Finance is one of the fastest growing sectors where applied AI tools are being deployed: from retail online banking to investment advice and insurance, where automated "robot advisers" have been in use for some years.
According to Nicolas Firzli, director of the World Pensions & Investments Forum, it may be too early to see the emergence of highly innovative AI-informed financial products and services. He argues that "the deployment of AI tools will simply further automatise things: destroying tens of thousands of jobs in banking, financial planning, and pension advice in the process, but I'm not sure it will unleash a new wave of [e.g., sophisticated] pension innovation."
=== Military ===
Various countries are deploying AI military applications. The main applications enhance command and control, communications, sensors, integration and interoperability. Research is targeting intelligence collection and analysis, logistics, cyber operations, information operations, and semiautonomous and autonomous vehicles. AI technologies enable coordination of sensors and effectors, threat detection and identification, marking of enemy positions, target acquisition, coordination and deconfliction of distributed Joint Fires between networked combat vehicles, both human-operated and autonomous.
AI has been used in military operations in Iraq, Syria, Israel and Ukraine.
=== Generative AI ===
=== Agents ===
AI agents are software entities designed to perceive their environment, make decisions, and take actions autonomously to achieve specific goals. These agents can interact with users, their environment, or other agents. AI agents are used in various applications, including virtual assistants, chatbots, autonomous vehicles, game-playing systems, and industrial robotics. AI agents operate within the constraints of their programming, available computational resources, and hardware limitations. This means they are restricted to performing tasks within their defined scope and have finite memory and processing capabilities. In real-world applications, AI agents often face time constraints for decision-making and action execution. Many AI agents incorporate learning algorithms, enabling them to improve their performance over time through experience or training. Using machine learning, AI agents can adapt to new situations and optimise their behaviour for their designated tasks.
=== Web search ===
Microsoft introduced Copilot Search in February 2023 under the name Bing Chat, as a built-in feature for Microsoft Edge and Bing mobile app. Copilot Search provides AI-generated summaries and step-by-step reasoning based of information from web publishers, ranked in Bing Search.
For safety, Copilot uses AI-based classifiers and filters to reduce potentially harmful content.
Google officially pushed its AI Search at its Google I/O event on 20 May 2025. It keeps people looking at Google instead of clicking on a search result. AI Overviews uses Gemini 2.5 to provide contextual answers to user queries based on web content.
=== Sexuality ===
Applications of AI in this domain include AI-enabled menstruation and fertility trackers that analyze user data to offer predictions, AI-integrated sex toys (e.g., teledildonics), AI-generated sexual education content, and AI agents that simulate sexual and romantic partners (e.g., Replika). AI is also used for the production of non-consensual deepfake pornography, raising significant ethical and legal concerns.
AI technologies have also been used to attempt to identify online gender-based violence and online sexual grooming of minors.
=== Other industry-specific tasks ===
There are also thousands of successful AI applications used to solve specific problems for specific industries or institutions. In a 2017 survey, one in five companies reported having incorporated "AI" in some offerings or processes. A few examples are energy storage, medical diagnosis, military logistics, applications that predict the result of judicial decisions, foreign policy, or supply chain management.
AI applications for evacuation and disaster management are growing. AI has been used to investigate patterns in large-scale and small-scale evacuations using historical data from GPS, videos or social media. Furthermore, AI can provide real-time information on the evacuation conditions.
In agriculture, AI has helped farmers to increase yield and identify areas that need irrigation, fertilization, pesticide treatments. Agronomists use AI to conduct research and development. AI has been used to predict the ripening time for crops such as tomatoes, monitor soil moisture, operate agricultural robots, conduct predictive analytics, classify livestock pig call emotions, automate greenhouses, detect diseases and pests, and save water.
Artificial intelligence is used in astronomy to analyze increasing amounts of available data and applications, mainly for "classification, regression, clustering, forecasting, generation, discovery, and the development of new scientific insights." For example, it is used for discovering exoplanets, forecasting solar activity, and distinguishing between signals and instrumental effects in gravitational wave astronomy. Additionally, it could be used for activities in space, such as space exploration, including the analysis of data from space missions, real-time science decisions of spacecraft, space debris avoidance, and more autonomous operation.
During the 2024 Indian elections, US$50 million was spent on authorized AI-generated content, notably by creating deepfakes of allied (including sometimes deceased) politicians to better engage with voters, and by translating speeches to various local languages.
== Ethics ==
AI has potential benefits and potential risks. AI may be able to advance science and find solutions for serious problems: Demis Hassabis of DeepMind hopes to "solve intelligence, and then use that to solve everything else". However, as the use of AI has become widespread, several unintended consequences and risks have been identified. In-production systems can sometimes not factor ethics and bias into their AI training processes, especially when the AI algorithms are inherently unexplainable in deep learning.
=== Risks and harm ===
==== Privacy and copyright ====
Machine learning algorithms require large amounts of data. The techniques used to acquire this data have raised concerns about privacy, surveillance and copyright.
AI-powered devices and services, such as virtual assistants and IoT products, continuously collect personal information, raising concerns about intrusive data gathering and unauthorized access by third parties. The loss of privacy is further exacerbated by AI's ability to process and combine vast amounts of data, potentially leading to a surveillance society where individual activities are constantly monitored and analyzed without adequate safeguards or transparency.
Sensitive user data collected may include online activity records, geolocation data, video, or audio. For example, in order to build speech recognition algorithms, Amazon has recorded millions of private conversations and allowed temporary workers to listen to and transcribe some of them. Opinions about this widespread surveillance range from those who see it as a necessary evil to those for whom it is clearly unethical and a violation of the right to privacy.
AI developers argue that this is the only way to deliver valuable applications and have developed several techniques that attempt to preserve privacy while still obtaining the data, such as data aggregation, de-identification and differential privacy. Since 2016, some privacy experts, such as Cynthia Dwork, have begun to view privacy in terms of fairness. Brian Christian wrote that experts have pivoted "from the question of 'what they know' to the question of 'what they're doing with it'."
Generative AI is often trained on unlicensed copyrighted works, including in domains such as images or computer code; the output is then used under the rationale of "fair use". Experts disagree about how well and under what circumstances this rationale will hold up in courts of law; relevant factors may include "the purpose and character of the use of the copyrighted work" and "the effect upon the potential market for the copyrighted work". Website owners can indicate that they do not want their content scraped via a "robots.txt" file. However, some companies will scrape content regardless because the robots.txt file has no real authority. In 2023, leading authors (including John Grisham and Jonathan Franzen) sued AI companies for using their work to train generative AI. Another discussed approach is to envision a separate sui generis system of protection for creations generated by AI to ensure fair attribution and compensation for human authors.
==== Dominance by tech giants ====
The commercial AI scene is dominated by Big Tech companies such as Alphabet Inc., Amazon, Apple Inc., Meta Platforms, and Microsoft. Some of these players already own the vast majority of existing cloud infrastructure and computing power from data centers, allowing them to entrench further in the marketplace.
==== Power needs and environmental impacts ====
In January 2024, the International Energy Agency (IEA) released Electricity 2024, Analysis and Forecast to 2026, forecasting electric power use. This is the first IEA report to make projections for data centers and power consumption for artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency. The report states that power demand for these uses might double by 2026, with additional electric power usage equal to electricity used by the whole Japanese nation.
Prodigious power consumption by AI is responsible for the growth of fossil fuel use, and might delay closings of obsolete, carbon-emitting coal energy facilities. There is a feverish rise in the construction of data centers throughout the US, making large technology firms (e.g., Microsoft, Meta, Google, Amazon) into voracious consumers of electric power. Projected electric consumption is so immense that there is concern that it will be fulfilled no matter the source. A ChatGPT search involves the use of 10 times the electrical energy as a Google search. The large firms are in haste to find power sources – from nuclear energy to geothermal to fusion. The tech firms argue that – in the long view – AI will be eventually kinder to the environment, but they need the energy now. AI makes the power grid more efficient and "intelligent", will assist in the growth of nuclear power, and track overall carbon emissions, according to technology firms.
A 2024 Goldman Sachs Research Paper, AI Data Centers and the Coming US Power Demand Surge, found "US power demand (is) likely to experience growth not seen in a generation...." and forecasts that, by 2030, US data centers will consume 8% of US power, as opposed to 3% in 2022, presaging growth for the electrical power generation industry by a variety of means. Data centers' need for more and more electrical power is such that they might max out the electrical grid. The Big Tech companies counter that AI can be used to maximize the utilization of the grid by all.
In 2024, the Wall Street Journal reported that big AI companies have begun negotiations with the US nuclear power providers to provide electricity to the data centers. In March 2024 Amazon purchased a Pennsylvania nuclear-powered data center for US$650 million. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said nuclear power is a good option for the data centers.
In September 2024, Microsoft announced an agreement with Constellation Energy to re-open the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant to provide Microsoft with 100% of all electric power produced by the plant for 20 years. Reopening the plant, which suffered a partial nuclear meltdown of its Unit 2 reactor in 1979, will require Constellation to get through strict regulatory processes which will include extensive safety scrutiny from the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission. If approved (this will be the first ever US re-commissioning of a nuclear plant), over 835 megawatts of power – enough for 800,000 homes – of energy will be produced. The cost for re-opening and upgrading is estimated at US$1.6 billion and is dependent on tax breaks for nuclear power contained in the 2022 US Inflation Reduction Act. The US government and the state of Michigan are investing almost US$2 billion to reopen the Palisades Nuclear reactor on Lake Michigan. Closed since 2022, the plant is planned to be reopened in October 2025. The Three Mile Island facility will be renamed the Crane Clean Energy Center after Chris Crane, a nuclear proponent and former CEO of Exelon who was responsible for Exelon's spinoff of Constellation.
After the last approval in September 2023, Taiwan suspended the approval of data centers north of Taoyuan with a capacity of more than 5 MW in 2024, due to power supply shortages. Taiwan aims to phase out nuclear power by 2025. On the other hand, Singapore imposed a ban on the opening of data centers in 2019 due to electric power, but in 2022, lifted this ban.
Although most nuclear plants in Japan have been shut down after the 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident, according to an October 2024 Bloomberg article in Japanese, cloud gaming services company Ubitus, in which Nvidia has a stake, is looking for land in Japan near a nuclear power plant for a new data center for generative AI. Ubitus CEO Wesley Kuo said nuclear power plants are the most efficient, cheap and stable power for AI.
On 1 November 2024, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) rejected an application submitted by Talen Energy for approval to supply some electricity from the nuclear power station Susquehanna to Amazon's data center.
According to the Commission Chairman Willie L. Phillips, it is a burden on the electricity grid as well as a significant cost shifting concern to households and other business sectors.
In 2025, a report prepared by the International Energy Agency estimated the greenhouse gas emissions from the energy consumption of AI at 180 million tons. By 2035, these emissions could rise to 300–500 million tonnes depending on what measures will be taken. This is below 1.5% of the energy sector emissions. The emissions reduction potential of AI was estimated at 5% of the energy sector emissions, but rebound effects (for example if people switch from public transport to autonomous cars) can reduce it.
==== Misinformation ====
YouTube, Facebook and others use recommender systems to guide users to more content. These AI programs were given the goal of maximizing user engagement (that is, the only goal was to keep people watching). The AI learned that users tended to choose misinformation, conspiracy theories, and extreme partisan content, and, to keep them watching, the AI recommended more of it. Users also tended to watch more content on the same subject, so the AI led people into filter bubbles where they received multiple versions of the same misinformation. This convinced many users that the misinformation was true, and ultimately undermined trust in institutions, the media and the government. The AI program had correctly learned to maximize its goal, but the result was harmful to society. After the U.S. election in 2016, major technology companies took some steps to mitigate the problem.
In the early 2020s, generative AI began to create images, audio, and texts that are virtually indistinguishable from real photographs, recordings, or human writing, while realistic AI-generated videos became feasible in the mid-2020s. It is possible for bad actors to use this technology to create massive amounts of misinformation or propaganda; one such potential malicious use is deepfakes for computational propaganda. AI pioneer Geoffrey Hinton expressed concern about AI enabling "authoritarian leaders to manipulate their electorates" on a large scale, among other risks. The ability to influence electorates has been proved in at least one study. This same study shows more inaccurate statements from the models when they advocate for candidates of the political right.
AI researchers at Microsoft, OpenAI, universities and other organisations have suggested using "personhood credentials" as a way to overcome online deception enabled by AI models.
==== Algorithmic bias and fairness ====
Machine learning applications can be biased if they learn from biased data. The developers may not be aware that the bias exists. Discriminatory behavior by some LLMs can be observed in their output. Bias can be introduced by the way training data is selected and by the way a model is deployed. If a biased algorithm is used to make decisions that can seriously harm people (as it can in medicine, finance, recruitment, housing or policing) then the algorithm may cause discrimination. The field of fairness studies how to prevent harms from algorithmic biases.
On 28 June 2015, Google Photos's new image labeling feature mistakenly identified Jacky Alcine and a friend as "gorillas" because they were black. The system was trained on a dataset that contained very few images of black people, a problem called "sample size disparity". Google "fixed" this problem by preventing the system from labelling anything as a "gorilla". Eight years later, in 2023, Google Photos still could not identify a gorilla, and neither could similar products from Apple, Facebook, Microsoft and Amazon.
COMPAS is a commercial program widely used by U.S. courts to assess the likelihood of a defendant becoming a recidivist. In 2016, Julia Angwin at ProPublica discovered that COMPAS exhibited racial bias, despite the fact that the program was not told the races of the defendants. Although the error rate for both whites and blacks was calibrated equal at exactly 61%, the errors for each race were different—the system consistently overestimated the chance that a black person would re-offend and would underestimate the chance that a white person would not re-offend. In 2017, several researchers showed that it was mathematically impossible for COMPAS to accommodate all possible measures of fairness when the base rates of re-offense were different for whites and blacks in the data.
A program can make biased decisions even if the data does not explicitly mention a problematic feature (such as "race" or "gender"). The feature will correlate with other features (like "address", "shopping history" or "first name"), and the program will make the same decisions based on these features as it would on "race" or "gender". Moritz Hardt said "the most robust fact in this research area is that fairness through blindness doesn't work."
Criticism of COMPAS highlighted that machine learning models are designed to make "predictions" that are only valid if we assume that the future will resemble the past. If they are trained on data that includes the results of racist decisions in the past, machine learning models must predict that racist decisions will be made in the future. If an application then uses these predictions as recommendations, some of these "recommendations" will likely be racist. Thus, machine learning is not well suited to help make decisions in areas where there is hope that the future will be better than the past. It is descriptive rather than prescriptive.
Bias and unfairness may go undetected because the developers are overwhelmingly white and male: among AI engineers, about 4% are black and 20% are women.
There are various conflicting definitions and mathematical models of fairness. These notions depend on ethical assumptions, and are influenced by beliefs about society. One broad category is distributive fairness, which focuses on the outcomes, often identifying groups and seeking to compensate for statistical disparities. Representational fairness tries to ensure that AI systems do not reinforce negative stereotypes or render certain groups invisible. Procedural fairness focuses on the decision process rather than the outcome. The most relevant notions of fairness may depend on the context, notably the type of AI application and the stakeholders. The subjectivity in the notions of bias and fairness makes it difficult for companies to operationalize them. Having access to sensitive attributes such as race or gender is also considered by many AI ethicists to be necessary in order to compensate for biases, but it may conflict with anti-discrimination laws.
At its 2022 Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (ACM FAccT 2022), the Association for Computing Machinery, in Seoul, South Korea, presented and published findings that recommend that until AI and robotics systems are demonstrated to be free of bias mistakes, they are unsafe, and the use of self-learning neural networks trained on vast, unregulated sources of flawed internet data should be curtailed.
==== Lack of transparency ====
Many AI systems are so complex that their designers cannot explain how they reach their decisions. Particularly with deep neural networks, in which there are many non-linear relationships between inputs and outputs. But some popular explainability techniques exist.
It is impossible to be certain that a program is operating correctly if no one knows how exactly it works. There have been many cases where a machine learning program passed rigorous tests, but nevertheless learned something different than what the programmers intended. For example, a system that could identify skin diseases better than medical professionals was found to actually have a strong tendency to classify images with a ruler as "cancerous", because pictures of malignancies typically include a ruler to show the scale. Another machine learning system designed to help effectively allocate medical resources was found to classify patients with asthma as being at "low risk" of dying from pneumonia. Having asthma is actually a severe risk factor, but since the patients having asthma would usually get much more medical care, they were relatively unlikely to die according to the training data. The correlation between asthma and low risk of dying from pneumonia was real, but misleading.
People who have been harmed by an algorithm's decision have a right to an explanation. Doctors, for example, are expected to clearly and completely explain to their colleagues the reasoning behind any decision they make. Early drafts of the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation in 2016 included an explicit statement that this right exists. Industry experts noted that this is an unsolved problem with no solution in sight. Regulators argued that nevertheless the harm is real: if the problem has no solution, the tools should not be used.
DARPA established the XAI ("Explainable Artificial Intelligence") program in 2014 to try to solve these problems.
Several approaches aim to address the transparency problem. SHAP enables to visualise the contribution of each feature to the output. LIME can locally approximate a model's outputs with a simpler, interpretable model. Multitask learning provides a large number of outputs in addition to the target classification. These other outputs can help developers deduce what the network has learned. Deconvolution, DeepDream and other generative methods can allow developers to see what different layers of a deep network for computer vision have learned, and produce output that can suggest what the network is learning. For generative pre-trained transformers, Anthropic developed a technique based on dictionary learning that associates patterns of neuron activations with human-understandable concepts.
==== Bad actors and weaponized AI ====
Artificial intelligence provides a number of tools that are useful to bad actors, such as authoritarian governments, terrorists, criminals or rogue states.
A lethal autonomous weapon is a machine that locates, selects and engages human targets without human supervision. Widely available AI tools can be used by bad actors to develop inexpensive autonomous weapons and, if produced at scale, they are potentially weapons of mass destruction. Even when used in conventional warfare, they currently cannot reliably choose targets and could potentially kill an innocent person. In 2014, 30 nations (including China) supported a ban on autonomous weapons under the United Nations' Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, however the United States and others disagreed. By 2015, over fifty countries were reported to be researching battlefield robots.
AI tools make it easier for authoritarian governments to efficiently control their citizens in several ways. Face and voice recognition allow widespread surveillance. Machine learning, operating this data, can classify potential enemies of the state and prevent them from hiding. Recommendation systems can precisely target propaganda and misinformation for maximum effect. Deepfakes and generative AI aid in producing misinformation. Advanced AI can make authoritarian centralized decision-making more competitive than liberal and decentralized systems such as markets. It lowers the cost and difficulty of digital warfare and advanced spyware. All these technologies have been available since 2020 or earlier—AI facial recognition systems are already being used for mass surveillance in China.
There are many other ways in which AI is expected to help bad actors, some of which can not be foreseen. For example, machine-learning AI is able to design tens of thousands of toxic molecules in a matter of hours.
==== Technological unemployment ====
Economists have frequently highlighted the risks of redundancies from AI, and speculated about unemployment if there is no adequate social policy for full employment.
In the past, technology has tended to increase rather than reduce total employment, but economists acknowledge that "we're in uncharted territory" with AI. A survey of economists showed disagreement about whether the increasing use of robots and AI will cause a substantial increase in long-term unemployment, but they generally agree that it could be a net benefit if productivity gains are redistributed. Risk estimates vary; for example, in the 2010s, Michael Osborne and Carl Benedikt Frey estimated 47% of U.S. jobs are at "high risk" of potential automation, while an OECD report classified only 9% of U.S. jobs as "high risk". The methodology of speculating about future employment levels has been criticised as lacking evidential foundation, and for implying that technology, rather than social policy, creates unemployment, as opposed to redundancies. In April 2023, it was reported that 70% of the jobs for Chinese video game illustrators had been eliminated by generative artificial intelligence.
Unlike previous waves of automation, many middle-class jobs may be eliminated by artificial intelligence; The Economist stated in 2015 that "the worry that AI could do to white-collar jobs what steam power did to blue-collar ones during the Industrial Revolution" is "worth taking seriously". Jobs at extreme risk range from paralegals to fast food cooks, while job demand is likely to increase for care-related professions ranging from personal healthcare to the clergy. In July 2025, Ford CEO Jim Farley predicted that "artificial intelligence is going to replace literally half of all white-collar workers in the U.S."
From the early days of the development of artificial intelligence, there have been arguments, for example, those put forward by Joseph Weizenbaum, about whether tasks that can be done by computers actually should be done by them, given the difference between computers and humans, and between quantitative calculation and qualitative, value-based judgement.
==== Existential risk ====
It has been argued AI will become so powerful that humanity may irreversibly lose control of it. This could, as physicist Stephen Hawking stated, "spell the end of the human race". This scenario has been common in science fiction, when a computer or robot suddenly develops a human-like "self-awareness" (or "sentience" or "consciousness") and becomes a malevolent character. These sci-fi scenarios are misleading in several ways.
First, AI does not require human-like sentience to be an existential risk. Modern AI programs are given specific goals and use learning and intelligence to achieve them. Philosopher Nick Bostrom argued that if one gives almost any goal to a sufficiently powerful AI, it may choose to destroy humanity to achieve it (he used the example of an automated paperclip factory that destroys the world to get more iron for paperclips). Stuart Russell gives the example of household robot that tries to find a way to kill its owner to prevent it from being unplugged, reasoning that "you can't fetch the coffee if you're dead." In order to be safe for humanity, a superintelligence would have to be genuinely aligned with humanity's morality and values so that it is "fundamentally on our side".
Second, Yuval Noah Harari argues that AI does not require a robot body or physical control to pose an existential risk. The essential parts of civilization are not physical. Things like ideologies, law, government, money and the economy are built on language; they exist because there are stories that billions of people believe. The current prevalence of misinformation suggests that an AI could use language to convince people to believe anything, even to take actions that are destructive. Geoffrey Hinton said in 2025 that modern AI is particularly "good at persuasion" and getting better all the time. He asks "Suppose you wanted to invade the capital of the US. Do you have to go there and do it yourself? No. You just have to be good at persuasion."
The opinions amongst experts and industry insiders are mixed, with sizable fractions both concerned and unconcerned by risk from eventual superintelligent AI. Personalities such as Stephen Hawking, Bill Gates, and Elon Musk, as well as AI pioneers such as Yoshua Bengio, Stuart Russell, Demis Hassabis, and Sam Altman, have expressed concerns about existential risk from AI.
In May 2023, Geoffrey Hinton announced his resignation from Google in order to be able to "freely speak out about the risks of AI" without "considering how this impacts Google". He notably mentioned risks of an AI takeover, and stressed that in order to avoid the worst outcomes, establishing safety guidelines will require cooperation among those competing in use of AI.
In 2023, many leading AI experts endorsed the joint statement that "Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war".
Some other researchers were more optimistic. AI pioneer Jürgen Schmidhuber did not sign the joint statement, emphasising that in 95% of all cases, AI research is about making "human lives longer and healthier and easier." While the tools that are now being used to improve lives can also be used by bad actors, "they can also be used against the bad actors." Andrew Ng also argued that "it's a mistake to fall for the doomsday hype on AI—and that regulators who do will only benefit vested interests." Yann LeCun "scoffs at his peers' dystopian scenarios of supercharged misinformation and even, eventually, human extinction." In the early 2010s, experts argued that the risks are too distant in the future to warrant research or that humans will be valuable from the perspective of a superintelligent machine. However, after 2016, the study of current and future risks and possible solutions became a serious area of research.
=== Ethical machines and alignment ===
Friendly AI are machines that have been designed from the beginning to minimize risks and to make choices that benefit humans. Eliezer Yudkowsky, who coined the term, argues that developing friendly AI should be a higher research priority: it may require a large investment and it must be completed before AI becomes an existential risk.
Machines with intelligence have the potential to use their intelligence to make ethical decisions. The field of machine ethics provides machines with ethical principles and procedures for resolving ethical dilemmas.
The field of machine ethics is also called computational morality,
and was founded at an AAAI symposium in 2005.
Other approaches include Wendell Wallach's "artificial moral agents" and Stuart J. Russell's three principles for developing provably beneficial machines.
=== Open source ===
Active organizations in the AI open-source community include Hugging Face, Google, EleutherAI and Meta. Various AI models, such as Llama 2, Mistral or Stable Diffusion, have been made open-weight, meaning that their architecture and trained parameters (the "weights") are publicly available. Open-weight models can be freely fine-tuned, which allows companies to specialize them with their own data and for their own use-case. Open-weight models are useful for research and innovation but can also be misused. Since they can be fine-tuned, any built-in security measure, such as objecting to harmful requests, can be trained away until it becomes ineffective. Some researchers warn that future AI models may develop dangerous capabilities (such as the potential to drastically facilitate bioterrorism) and that once released on the Internet, they cannot be deleted everywhere if needed. They recommend pre-release audits and cost-benefit analyses.
=== Frameworks ===
Artificial intelligence projects can be guided by ethical considerations during the design, development, and implementation of an AI system. An AI framework such as the Care and Act Framework, developed by the Alan Turing Institute and based on the SUM values, outlines four main ethical dimensions, defined as follows:
Respect the dignity of individual people
Connect with other people sincerely, openly, and inclusively
Care for the wellbeing of everyone
Protect social values, justice, and the public interest
Other developments in ethical frameworks include those decided upon during the Asilomar Conference, the Montreal Declaration for Responsible AI, and the IEEE's Ethics of Autonomous Systems initiative, among others; however, these principles are not without criticism, especially regarding the people chosen to contribute to these frameworks.
Promotion of the wellbeing of the people and communities that these technologies affect requires consideration of the social and ethical implications at all stages of AI system design, development and implementation, and collaboration between job roles such as data scientists, product managers, data engineers, domain experts, and delivery managers.
The UK AI Safety Institute released in 2024 a testing toolset called 'Inspect' for AI safety evaluations available under an MIT open-source licence which is freely available on GitHub and can be improved with third-party packages. It can be used to evaluate AI models in a range of areas including core knowledge, ability to reason, and autonomous capabilities.
=== Regulation ===
The regulation of artificial intelligence is the development of public sector policies and laws for promoting and regulating AI; it is therefore related to the broader regulation of algorithms. The regulatory and policy landscape for AI is an emerging issue in jurisdictions globally. According to AI Index at Stanford, the annual number of AI-related laws passed in the 127 survey countries jumped from one passed in 2016 to 37 passed in 2022 alone. Between 2016 and 2020, more than 30 countries adopted dedicated strategies for AI. Most EU member states had released national AI strategies, as had Canada, China, India, Japan, Mauritius, the Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, U.S., and Vietnam. Others were in the process of elaborating their own AI strategy, including Bangladesh, Malaysia and Tunisia. The Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence was launched in June 2020, stating a need for AI to be developed in accordance with human rights and democratic values, to ensure public confidence and trust in the technology. Henry Kissinger, Eric Schmidt, and Daniel Huttenlocher published a joint statement in November 2021 calling for a government commission to regulate AI. In 2023, OpenAI leaders published recommendations for the governance of superintelligence, which they believe may happen in less than 10 years. In 2023, the United Nations also launched an advisory body to provide recommendations on AI governance; the body comprises technology company executives, government officials and academics. On 1 August 2024, the EU Artificial Intelligence Act entered into force, establishing the first comprehensive EU-wide AI regulation. In 2024, the Council of Europe created the first international legally binding treaty on AI, called the "Framework Convention on Artificial Intelligence and Human Rights, Democracy and the Rule of Law". It was adopted by the European Union, the United States, the United Kingdom, and other signatories.
In a 2022 Ipsos survey, attitudes towards AI varied greatly by country; 78% of Chinese citizens, but only 35% of Americans, agreed that "products and services using AI have more benefits than drawbacks". A 2023 Reuters/Ipsos poll found that 61% of Americans agree, and 22% disagree, that AI poses risks to humanity. In a 2023 Fox News poll, 35% of Americans thought it "very important", and an additional 41% thought it "somewhat important", for the federal government to regulate AI, versus 13% responding "not very important" and 8% responding "not at all important".
In November 2023, the first global AI Safety Summit was held in Bletchley Park in the UK to discuss the near and far term risks of AI and the possibility of mandatory and voluntary regulatory frameworks. 28 countries including the United States, China, and the European Union issued a declaration at the start of the summit, calling for international co-operation to manage the challenges and risks of artificial intelligence. In May 2024 at the AI Seoul Summit, 16 global AI tech companies agreed to safety commitments on the development of AI.
== History ==
The study of mechanical or "formal" reasoning began with philosophers and mathematicians in antiquity. The study of logic led directly to Alan Turing's theory of computation, which suggested that a machine, by shuffling symbols as simple as "0" and "1", could simulate any conceivable form of mathematical reasoning. This, along with concurrent discoveries in cybernetics, information theory and neurobiology, led researchers to consider the possibility of building an "electronic brain". They developed several areas of research that would become part of AI, such as McCulloch and Pitts design for "artificial neurons" in 1943, and Turing's influential 1950 paper 'Computing Machinery and Intelligence', which introduced the Turing test and showed that "machine intelligence" was plausible.
The field of AI research was founded at a workshop at Dartmouth College in 1956. The attendees became the leaders of AI research in the 1960s. They and their students produced programs that the press described as "astonishing": computers were learning checkers strategies, solving word problems in algebra, proving logical theorems and speaking English. Artificial intelligence laboratories were set up at a number of British and U.S. universities in the latter 1950s and early 1960s.
Researchers in the 1960s and the 1970s were convinced that their methods would eventually succeed in creating a machine with general intelligence and considered this the goal of their field. In 1965 Herbert Simon predicted, "machines will be capable, within twenty years, of doing any work a man can do". In 1967 Marvin Minsky agreed, writing that "within a generation ... the problem of creating 'artificial intelligence' will substantially be solved". They had, however, underestimated the difficulty of the problem. In 1974, both the U.S. and British governments cut off exploratory research in response to the criticism of Sir James Lighthill and ongoing pressure from the U.S. Congress to fund more productive projects. Minsky and Papert's book Perceptrons was understood as proving that artificial neural networks would never be useful for solving real-world tasks, thus discrediting the approach altogether. The "AI winter", a period when obtaining funding for AI projects was difficult, followed.
In the early 1980s, AI research was revived by the commercial success of expert systems, a form of AI program that simulated the knowledge and analytical skills of human experts. By 1985, the market for AI had reached over a billion dollars. At the same time, Japan's fifth generation computer project inspired the U.S. and British governments to restore funding for academic research. However, beginning with the collapse of the Lisp Machine market in 1987, AI once again fell into disrepute, and a second, longer-lasting winter began.
Up to this point, most of AI's funding had gone to projects that used high-level symbols to represent mental objects like plans, goals, beliefs, and known facts. In the 1980s, some researchers began to doubt that this approach would be able to imitate all the processes of human cognition, especially perception, robotics, learning and pattern recognition, and began to look into "sub-symbolic" approaches. Rodney Brooks rejected "representation" in general and focussed directly on engineering machines that move and survive. Judea Pearl, Lotfi Zadeh, and others developed methods that handled incomplete and uncertain information by making reasonable guesses rather than precise logic. But the most important development was the revival of "connectionism", including neural network research, by Geoffrey Hinton and others. In 1990, Yann LeCun successfully showed that convolutional neural networks can recognize handwritten digits, the first of many successful applications of neural networks.
AI gradually restored its reputation in the late 1990s and early 21st century by exploiting formal mathematical methods and by finding specific solutions to specific problems. This "narrow" and "formal" focus allowed researchers to produce verifiable results and collaborate with other fields (such as statistics, economics and mathematics). By 2000, solutions developed by AI researchers were being widely used, although in the 1990s they were rarely described as "artificial intelligence" (a tendency known as the AI effect).
However, several academic researchers became concerned that AI was no longer pursuing its original goal of creating versatile, fully intelligent machines. Beginning around 2002, they founded the subfield of artificial general intelligence (or "AGI"), which had several well-funded institutions by the 2010s.
Deep learning began to dominate industry benchmarks in 2012 and was adopted throughout the field.
For many specific tasks, other methods were abandoned.
Deep learning's success was based on both hardware improvements (faster computers, graphics processing units, cloud computing) and access to large amounts of data (including curated datasets, such as ImageNet). Deep learning's success led to an enormous increase in interest and funding in AI. The amount of machine learning research (measured by total publications) increased by 50% in the years 2015–2019.
In 2016, issues of fairness and the misuse of technology were catapulted into center stage at machine learning conferences, publications vastly increased, funding became available, and many researchers re-focussed their careers on these issues. The alignment problem became a serious field of academic study.
In the late 2010s and early 2020s, AGI companies began to deliver programs that created enormous interest. In 2015, AlphaGo, developed by DeepMind, beat the world champion Go player. The program taught only the game's rules and developed a strategy by itself. GPT-3 is a large language model that was released in 2020 by OpenAI and is capable of generating high-quality human-like text. ChatGPT, launched on 30 November 2022, became the fastest-growing consumer software application in history, gaining over 100 million users in two months. It marked what is widely regarded as AI's breakout year, bringing it into the public consciousness. These programs, and others, inspired an aggressive AI boom, where large companies began investing billions of dollars in AI research. According to AI Impacts, about US$50 billion annually was invested in "AI" around 2022 in the U.S. alone and about 20% of the new U.S. Computer Science PhD graduates have specialized in "AI". About 800,000 "AI"-related U.S. job openings existed in 2022. According to PitchBook research, 22% of newly funded startups in 2024 claimed to be AI companies.
== Philosophy ==
Philosophical debates have historically sought to determine the nature of intelligence and how to make intelligent machines. Another major focus has been whether machines can be conscious, and the associated ethical implications. Many other topics in philosophy are relevant to AI, such as epistemology and free will. Rapid advancements have intensified public discussions on the philosophy and ethics of AI.
=== Defining artificial intelligence ===
Alan Turing wrote in 1950 "I propose to consider the question 'can machines think'?" He advised changing the question from whether a machine "thinks", to "whether or not it is possible for machinery to show intelligent behaviour". He devised the Turing test, which measures the ability of a machine to simulate human conversation. Since we can only observe the behavior of the machine, it does not matter if it is "actually" thinking or literally has a "mind". Turing notes that we can not determine these things about other people but "it is usual to have a polite convention that everyone thinks."
Russell and Norvig agree with Turing that intelligence must be defined in terms of external behavior, not internal structure. However, they are critical that the test requires the machine to imitate humans. "Aeronautical engineering texts", they wrote, "do not define the goal of their field as making 'machines that fly so exactly like pigeons that they can fool other pigeons.'" AI founder John McCarthy agreed, writing that "Artificial intelligence is not, by definition, simulation of human intelligence".
McCarthy defines intelligence as "the computational part of the ability to achieve goals in the world". Another AI founder, Marvin Minsky, similarly describes it as "the ability to solve hard problems". The leading AI textbook defines it as the study of agents that perceive their environment and take actions that maximize their chances of achieving defined goals. These definitions view intelligence in terms of well-defined problems with well-defined solutions, where both the difficulty of the problem and the performance of the program are direct measures of the "intelligence" of the machine – and no other philosophical discussion is required, or may not even be possible.
Another definition has been adopted by Google, a major practitioner in the field of AI. This definition stipulates the ability of systems to synthesize information as the manifestation of intelligence, similar to the way it is defined in biological intelligence.
As a result of the many circulating definitions scholars have started to critically analyze and order the AI discourse itself including discussing the many AI narratives and myths to be found within societal, political and academic discourses. Similarly, in practice, some authors have suggested that the term 'AI' is often used too broadly and vaguely. This raises the question of where the line should be drawn between AI and classical algorithms, with many companies during the early 2020s AI boom using the term as a marketing buzzword, often even if they did "not actually use AI in a material way".
There has been debate over whether large language models exhibit genuine intelligence or merely simulate it by imitating human text.
=== Evaluating approaches to AI ===
No established unifying theory or paradigm has guided AI research for most of its history. The unprecedented success of statistical machine learning in the 2010s eclipsed all other approaches (so much so that some sources, especially in the business world, use the term "artificial intelligence" to mean "machine learning with neural networks"). This approach is mostly sub-symbolic, soft and narrow. Critics argue that these questions may have to be revisited by future generations of AI researchers.
==== Symbolic AI and its limits ====
Symbolic AI (or "GOFAI") simulated the high-level conscious reasoning that people use when they solve puzzles, express legal reasoning and do mathematics. They were highly successful at "intelligent" tasks such as algebra or IQ tests. In the 1960s, Newell and Simon proposed the physical symbol systems hypothesis: "A physical symbol system has the necessary and sufficient means of general intelligent action."
However, the symbolic approach failed on many tasks that humans solve easily, such as learning, recognizing an object or commonsense reasoning. Moravec's paradox is the discovery that high-level "intelligent" tasks were easy for AI, but low level "instinctive" tasks were extremely difficult. Philosopher Hubert Dreyfus had argued since the 1960s that human expertise depends on unconscious instinct rather than conscious symbol manipulation, and on having a "feel" for the situation, rather than explicit symbolic knowledge. Although his arguments had been ridiculed and ignored when they were first presented, eventually, AI research came to agree with him.
The issue is not resolved: sub-symbolic reasoning can make many of the same inscrutable mistakes that human intuition does, such as algorithmic bias. Critics such as Noam Chomsky argue continuing research into symbolic AI will still be necessary to attain general intelligence, in part because sub-symbolic AI is a move away from explainable AI: it can be difficult or impossible to understand why a modern statistical AI program made a particular decision. The emerging field of neuro-symbolic artificial intelligence attempts to bridge the two approaches.
==== Neat vs. scruffy ====
"Neats" hope that intelligent behavior is described using simple, elegant principles (such as logic, optimization, or neural networks). "Scruffies" expect that it necessarily requires solving a large number of unrelated problems. Neats defend their programs with theoretical rigor, scruffies rely mainly on incremental testing to see if they work. This issue was actively discussed in the 1970s and 1980s, but eventually was seen as irrelevant. Modern AI has elements of both.
==== Soft vs. hard computing ====
Finding a provably correct or optimal solution is intractable for many important problems. Soft computing is a set of techniques, including genetic algorithms, fuzzy logic and neural networks, that are tolerant of imprecision, uncertainty, partial truth and approximation. Soft computing was introduced in the late 1980s and most successful AI programs in the 21st century are examples of soft computing with neural networks.
==== Narrow vs. general AI ====
AI researchers are divided as to whether to pursue the goals of artificial general intelligence and superintelligence directly or to solve as many specific problems as possible (narrow AI) in hopes these solutions will lead indirectly to the field's long-term goals. General intelligence is difficult to define and difficult to measure, and modern AI has had more verifiable successes by focusing on specific problems with specific solutions. The sub-field of artificial general intelligence studies this area exclusively.
=== Machine consciousness, sentience, and mind ===
There is no settled consensus in philosophy of mind on whether a machine can have a mind, consciousness and mental states in the same sense that human beings do. This issue considers the internal experiences of the machine, rather than its external behavior. Mainstream AI research considers this issue irrelevant because it does not affect the goals of the field: to build machines that can solve problems using intelligence. Russell and Norvig add that "[t]he additional project of making a machine conscious in exactly the way humans are is not one that we are equipped to take on." However, the question has become central to the philosophy of mind. It is also typically the central question at issue in artificial intelligence in fiction.
==== Consciousness ====
David Chalmers identified two problems in understanding the mind, which he named the "hard" and "easy" problems of consciousness. The easy problem is understanding how the brain processes signals, makes plans and controls behavior. The hard problem is explaining how this feels or why it should feel like anything at all, assuming we are right in thinking that it truly does feel like something (Dennett's consciousness illusionism says this is an illusion). While human information processing is easy to explain, human subjective experience is difficult to explain. For example, it is easy to imagine a color-blind person who has learned to identify which objects in their field of view are red, but it is not clear what would be required for the person to know what red looks like.
==== Computationalism and functionalism ====
Computationalism is the position in the philosophy of mind that the human mind is an information processing system and that thinking is a form of computing. Computationalism argues that the relationship between mind and body is similar or identical to the relationship between software and hardware and thus may be a solution to the mind–body problem. This philosophical position was inspired by the work of AI researchers and cognitive scientists in the 1960s and was originally proposed by philosophers Jerry Fodor and Hilary Putnam.
Philosopher John Searle characterized this position as "strong AI": "The appropriately programmed computer with the right inputs and outputs would thereby have a mind in exactly the same sense human beings have minds." Searle challenges this claim with his Chinese room argument, which attempts to show that even a computer capable of perfectly simulating human behavior would not have a mind.
==== AI welfare and rights ====
It is difficult or impossible to reliably evaluate whether an advanced AI is sentient (has the ability to feel), and if so, to what degree. But if there is a significant chance that a given machine can feel and suffer, then it may be entitled to certain rights or welfare protection measures, similarly to animals. Sapience (a set of capacities related to high intelligence, such as discernment or self-awareness) may provide another moral basis for AI rights. Robot rights are also sometimes proposed as a practical way to integrate autonomous agents into society.
In 2017, the European Union considered granting "electronic personhood" to some of the most capable AI systems. Similarly to the legal status of companies, it would have conferred rights but also responsibilities. Critics argued in 2018 that granting rights to AI systems would downplay the importance of human rights, and that legislation should focus on user needs rather than speculative futuristic scenarios. They also noted that robots lacked the autonomy to take part in society on their own.
Progress in AI increased interest in the topic. Proponents of AI welfare and rights often argue that AI sentience, if it emerges, would be particularly easy to deny. They warn that this may be a moral blind spot analogous to slavery or factory farming, which could lead to large-scale suffering if sentient AI is created and carelessly exploited.
== Future ==
=== Superintelligence and the singularity ===
A superintelligence is a hypothetical agent that would possess intelligence far surpassing that of the brightest and most gifted human mind. If research into artificial general intelligence produced sufficiently intelligent software, it might be able to reprogram and improve itself. The improved software would be even better at improving itself, leading to what I. J. Good called an "intelligence explosion" and Vernor Vinge called a "singularity".
However, technologies cannot improve exponentially indefinitely, and typically follow an S-shaped curve, slowing when they reach the physical limits of what the technology can do.
=== Transhumanism ===
Robot designer Hans Moravec, cyberneticist Kevin Warwick and inventor Ray Kurzweil have predicted that humans and machines may merge in the future into cyborgs that are more capable and powerful than either. This idea, called transhumanism, has roots in the writings of Aldous Huxley and Robert Ettinger.
Edward Fredkin argues that "artificial intelligence is the next step in evolution", an idea first proposed by Samuel Butler's "Darwin among the Machines" as far back as 1863, and expanded upon by George Dyson in his 1998 book Darwin Among the Machines: The Evolution of Global Intelligence.
== In fiction ==
Thought-capable artificial beings have appeared as storytelling devices since antiquity, and have been a persistent theme in science fiction.
A common trope in these works began with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, where a human creation becomes a threat to its masters. This includes such works as Arthur C. Clarke's and Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (both 1968), with HAL 9000, the murderous computer in charge of the Discovery One spaceship, as well as The Terminator (1984) and The Matrix (1999). In contrast, the rare loyal robots such as Gort from The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) and Bishop from Aliens (1986) are less prominent in popular culture.
Isaac Asimov introduced the Three Laws of Robotics in many stories, most notably with the "Multivac" super-intelligent computer. Asimov's laws are often brought up during lay discussions of machine ethics; while almost all artificial intelligence researchers are familiar with Asimov's laws through popular culture, they generally consider the laws useless for many reasons, one of which is their ambiguity.
Several works use AI to force us to confront the fundamental question of what makes us human, showing us artificial beings that have the ability to feel, and thus to suffer. This appears in Karel Čapek's R.U.R., the films A.I. Artificial Intelligence and Ex Machina, as well as the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, by Philip K. Dick. Dick considers the idea that our understanding of human subjectivity is altered by technology created with artificial intelligence.
== See also ==
Artificial consciousness – Field in cognitive science
Artificial intelligence and elections – Impact of AI on political elections
Artificial intelligence content detection – Software to detect AI-generated content
Artificial intelligence in Wikimedia projects – Use of artificial intelligence to develop Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects
Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI)
Behavior selection algorithm – Algorithm that selects actions for intelligent agents
Business process automation – Automation of business processes
Case-based reasoning – Process of solving new problems based on the solutions of similar past problems
Computational intelligence – Ability of a computer to learn a specific task from data or experimental observation
DARWIN EU – A European Union initiative coordinated by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) to generate and utilize real-world evidence (RWE) to support the evaluation and supervision of medicines across the EU
Digital immortality – Hypothetical concept of storing a personality in digital form
Emergent algorithm – Algorithm exhibiting emergent behavior
Female gendering of AI technologies – Gender biases in digital technologyPages displaying short descriptions of redirect targets
Glossary of artificial intelligence – List of concepts in artificial intelligence
Intelligence amplification – Use of information technology to augment human intelligence
Intelligent agent – Software agent which acts autonomously
Intelligent automation – Software process that combines robotic process automation and artificial intelligence
List of artificial intelligence books
List of artificial intelligence journals
List of artificial intelligence projects
Mind uploading – Hypothetical process of digitally emulating a brain
Organoid intelligence – Use of brain cells and brain organoids for intelligent computing
Pseudorandomness – Appearing random but actually being generated by a deterministic, causal process
Robotic process automation – Form of business process automation technology
The Last Day – 1967 Welsh science fiction novel
Wetware computer – Computer composed of organic material
== Explanatory notes ==
== References ==
=== AI textbooks ===
The two most widely used textbooks in 2023 (see the Open Syllabus):
Russell, Stuart J.; Norvig, Peter (2021). Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach (4th ed.). Hoboken: Pearson. ISBN 978-0-1346-1099-3. LCCN 20190474.
Rich, Elaine; Knight, Kevin; Nair, Shivashankar (2010). Artificial Intelligence (3rd ed.). New Delhi: Tata McGraw Hill India. ISBN 978-0-0700-8770-5.
The four most widely used AI textbooks in 2008:
Other textbooks:
Ertel, Wolfgang (2017). Introduction to Artificial Intelligence (2nd ed.). Springer. ISBN 978-3-3195-8486-7.
Ciaramella, Alberto; Ciaramella, Marco (2024). Introduction to Artificial Intelligence: from data analysis to generative AI (1st ed.). Intellisemantic Editions. ISBN 978-8-8947-8760-3.
=== History of AI ===
=== Other sources ===
== Further reading ==
== External links ==
Hauser, Larry. "Artificial Intelligence". In Fieser, James; Dowden, Bradley (eds.). Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. ISSN 2161-0002. OCLC 37741658. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/83_Beatrix | 83 Beatrix | 83 Beatrix is a fairly large asteroid orbiting in the inner part of the main asteroid belt. It was discovered by Annibale de Gasparis on April 26, 1865. It was his last asteroid discovery. A diameter of at least 68 kilometres (42 mi) was determined from the Beatrician stellar occultation observed on June 15, 1983. It is named for Beatrice Portinari, beloved of Dante Alighieri and immortalized by him in La Vita Nuova and The Divine Comedy.
On February 16, 2001, an occultation of a magnitude +9.09 star by this asteroid was observed from three locations. The resulting chords matched an elliptical profile with a mean radius of 35.9 km. The observers noted some dimming and flickering at the beginning of the event, which may indicate the star was binary or the asteroid has an irregular shape. Previous occultations had been observed in 1983 and 1990, which produced a much larger size estimate of 81.4 km.
== References ==
== External links ==
83 Beatrix at AstDyS-2, Asteroids—Dynamic Site
Ephemeris · Observation prediction · Orbital info · Proper elements · Observational info
83 Beatrix at the JPL Small-Body Database |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaughan_Jones | Vaughan Jones | Sir Vaughan Frederick Randal Jones (31 December 1952 – 6 September 2020) was a New Zealand mathematician known for his work on von Neumann algebras and knot polynomials. He was awarded a Fields Medal in 1990.
== Early life ==
Jones was born in Gisborne, New Zealand, on 31 December 1952. He was brought up in Cambridge, New Zealand, where he attended St Peter's School. He subsequently transferred to Auckland Grammar School after winning the Gillies Scholarship, and graduated in 1969 from Auckland Grammar. He went on to complete his undergraduate studies at the University of Auckland, obtaining a BSc in 1972 and an MSc in 1973. For his graduate studies, he went to Switzerland where he completed his PhD at the University of Geneva in 1979. His thesis, titled Actions of finite groups on the hyperfinite II1 factor, was written under the supervision of André Haefliger, and won him the Vacheron Constantin Prize.
== Career ==
Jones moved to the United States in 1980. There, he taught at the University of California, Los Angeles (1980–1981), and the University of Pennsylvania (1981–1985), before being appointed as professor of mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley. His work on knot polynomials, with the discovery of what is now called the Jones polynomial, was from an unexpected direction with origins in the theory of von Neumann algebras, an area of analysis already much developed by Alain Connes. It led to the solution of a number of classical problems of knot theory, to increased interest in low-dimensional topology, and the development of quantum topology.
Jones taught at Vanderbilt University as Stevenson Distinguished Professor of mathematics from 2011 until his death. He remained Professor Emeritus at University of California, Berkeley, where he had been on the faculty from 1985 to 2011 and was a Distinguished Alumni Professor at the University of Auckland.
Jones was made an honorary vice-president for life of the International Guild of Knot Tyers in 1992. The Jones Medal, created by the Royal Society of New Zealand in 2010, is named after him.
== Personal life ==
Jones met his wife, Martha Myers, during a ski camp for foreign students while they were studying in Switzerland. She was there as a Fulbright scholar, and subsequently became an associate professor of medicine, health and society. Together, they have three children.
Jones died on 6 September 2020 at age 67 from health complications resulting from a severe ear infection.
Jones was a certified barista.
== Honours and awards ==
1990 – awarded the Fields Medal
1990 – elected Fellow of the Royal Society
1991 – awarded the Rutherford Medal by the Royal Society of New Zealand
1991 – awarded the degree of Doctor of Science by the University of Auckland
1991 – elected Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand
1992 – elected to the Australian Academy of Science as a Corresponding Fellow
1992 – awarded a Miller Professorship at the University of California Berkeley
2002 – appointed Distinguished Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit (DCNZM) in the 2002 Queen's Birthday and Golden Jubilee Honours, for services to mathematics
2009 – his DCNZM redesignated to a Knight Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit in the 2009 Special Honours
2012 – elected a Fellow of the American Mathematical Society
== Publications ==
Jones, Vaughan F. R. (1980). "Actions of finite groups on the hyperfinite type II1 factor". Memoirs of the American Mathematical Society. doi:10.1090/memo/0237.
Jones, Vaughan F. R. (1983). "Index for subfactors". Inventiones Mathematicae. 72 (1): 1–25. Bibcode:1983InMat..72....1J. doi:10.1007/BF01389127. MR 0696688. S2CID 121577421.
Jones, Vaughan F. R. (1985). "A polynomial invariant for knots via von Neumann algebra". Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society. (N.S.). 12: 103–111. doi:10.1090/s0273-0979-1985-15304-2. MR 0766964.
Jones, Vaughan F. R. (1987). "Hecke algebra representations of braid groups and link polynomials". Annals of Mathematics. (2). 126 (2): 335–388. doi:10.2307/1971403. JSTOR 1971403. MR 0908150.
Goodman, Frederick M.; de la Harpe, Pierre; Jones, Vaughan F. R. (1989). Coxeter graphs and towers of algebras. Mathematical Sciences Research Institute Publications. Vol. 14. Springer-Verlag. doi:10.1007/978-1-4613-9641-3. ISBN 978-1-4613-9643-7. MR 0999799.
Jones, Vaughan F. R. (1991). Subfactors and knots. CBMS Regional Conference Series in Mathematics. Vol. 80. Providence, RI: American Mathematical Society. doi:10.1090/cbms/080. ISBN 9780821807293. MR 1134131.
Jones, Vaughan F. R.; Sunder, Viakalathur Shankar (1997). Introduction to subfactors. London Mathematical Society Lecture Note Series. Vol. 234. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511566219. ISBN 0-521-58420-5. MR 1473221.
== See also ==
Aharonov–Jones–Landau algorithm
Planar algebra
Subfactor
== References ==
== External links ==
O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "Vaughan Jones", MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive, University of St Andrews
Vaughan Jones at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
Jones' home page
Career profile page at the University of Auckland
Joan S. Birman: The Work of Vaughan F. R. Jones in Ichirō Satake (ed.): Proceedings of the International Congress of Mathematicians, 21–29 August 1990, Kyoto, Japan, Springer, 1991 (Laudatio for Fields-Medal 1990; online Archived 11 September 2014 at the Wayback Machine) |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zika_virus | Zika virus | Zika virus (ZIKV; pronounced or ) is an arbovirus which is a member of the virus family Flaviviridae. It is spread by daytime-active Aedes mosquitoes, such as A. aegypti and A. albopictus. Its name comes from the Ziika Forest of Uganda, where the virus was first isolated in 1947. Zika virus shares a genus with the dengue, yellow fever, Japanese encephalitis, and West Nile viruses. Since the 1950s, it has been known to occur within a narrow equatorial belt. From 2007 to 2016, the virus spread westward, across the Pacific Ocean to the Americas, leading to the 2015–2016 Zika virus epidemic.
The infection, known as Zika fever or Zika virus disease, often causes no or only mild symptoms, similar to a very mild form of dengue fever. There is no treatment for the disease as of 2025, but paracetamol (acetaminophen) and rest may help with the symptoms. As of April 2019, no vaccines have been approved for clinical use, however a number of vaccines are currently in clinical trials. Zika can spread from a pregnant woman to her baby. This can result in microcephaly, severe brain malformations, and other birth defects. Zika infections in adults may rarely cause Guillain–Barré syndrome.
In January 2016, the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued travel guidance on affected countries, including the use of enhanced precautions, and guidelines for pregnant women including considering postponing travel. Other governments or health agencies also issued similar travel warnings, while Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Ecuador, El Salvador, and Jamaica advised women to postpone becoming pregnant until more is known about the risks.
== Virology ==
Zika virus belongs to the family Flaviviridae and the genus Flavivirus, thus is related to the dengue, yellow fever, Japanese encephalitis, and West Nile viruses. Like other flaviviruses, Zika virus is enveloped and icosahedral and has a nonsegmented, single-stranded, 10 kilobase, positive-sense RNA genome. It is most closely related to the Spondweni virus and is one of the two known viruses in the Spondweni virus clade.
A positive-sense RNA genome can be directly translated into viral proteins. As in other flaviviruses, such as the similarly sized West Nile virus, the RNA genome encodes seven nonstructural proteins and three structural proteins in the form of a single polyprotein (Q32ZE1). One of the structural proteins encapsulates the virus. This protein is the flavivirus envelope glycoprotein, that binds to the endosomal membrane of the host cell to initiate endocytosis. The RNA genome forms a nucleocapsid along with copies of the 12-kDa capsid protein. The nucleocapsid, in turn, is enveloped within a host-derived membrane modified with two viral glycoproteins. Viral genome replication depends on the making of double-stranded RNA from the single-stranded, positive-sense RNA (ssRNA(+)) genome followed by transcription and replication to provide viral mRNAs and new ssRNA(+) genomes.
A longitudinal study shows that 6 hours after cells are infected with Zika virus, the vacuoles and mitochondria in the cells begin to swell. This swelling becomes so severe, it results in cell death, also known as paraptosis. This form of programmed cell death requires gene expression. IFITM3 is a trans-membrane protein in a cell that is able to protect it from viral infection by blocking virus attachment. Cells are most susceptible to Zika infection when levels of IFITM3 are low. Once the cell has been infected, the virus restructures the endoplasmic reticulum, forming the large vacuoles, resulting in cell death.
There are two Zika lineages: the African lineage and the Asian lineage. Phylogenetic studies indicate that the virus spreading in the Americas is 89% identical to African genotypes, but is most closely related to the Asian strain that circulated in French Polynesia during the 2013–2014 outbreak.
The Asian strain appears to have first evolved around 1928.
== Transmission ==
The vertebrate hosts of the virus were primarily monkeys in a so-called enzootic mosquito-monkey-mosquito cycle, with only occasional transmission to humans. Before 2007, Zika "rarely caused recognized 'spillover' infections in humans, even in highly enzootic areas". Infrequently, however, other arboviruses have become established as a human disease and spread in a mosquito–human–mosquito cycle, like the yellow fever virus and the dengue fever virus (both flaviviruses), and the chikungunya virus (a togavirus). Though the reason for the pandemic is unknown, dengue, a related arbovirus that infects the same species of mosquito vectors, is known in particular to be intensified by urbanization and globalization. Zika is primarily spread by Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, and can also be transmitted through sexual contact or blood transfusions. The basic reproduction number (R0, a measure of transmissibility) of Zika virus has been estimated to be between 1.4 and 6.6 .
In 2015, news reports drew attention to the rapid spread of Zika in Latin America and the Caribbean. At that time, the Pan American Health Organization published a list of countries and territories that experienced "local Zika virus transmission" comprising Barbados, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Martinique, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Puerto Rico, Saint Martin, Suriname, and Venezuela. By August 2016, more than 50 countries had experienced active (local) transmission of Zika virus.
=== Mosquito ===
Zika is primarily spread by the female Aedes aegypti mosquito, which is active mostly in the daytime. The mosquitos must feed on blood to lay eggs. The virus has also been isolated from a number of arboreal mosquito species in the genus Aedes, such as A. africanus, A. apicoargenteus, A. furcifer, A. hensilli, A. luteocephalus, and A. vittatus, with an extrinsic incubation period in mosquitoes around 10 days.
Zika has been detected in many more species of Aedes, along with Anopheles coustani, Mansonia uniformis, and Culex perfuscus, although this alone does not incriminate them as vectors. To detect the presence of the virus usually requires genetic material to be analysed in a lab using the technique RT-PCR. A much cheaper and faster method involves shining a light at the head and thorax of the mosquito, and detecting chemical compounds characteristic of the virus using near-infrared spectroscopy.
Transmission by A. albopictus, the tiger mosquito, was reported from a 2007 urban outbreak in Gabon, where it had newly invaded the country and become the primary vector for the concomitant chikungunya and dengue virus outbreaks. New outbreaks can occur if a person carrying the virus travels to another region where A. albopictus is common.
The potential societal risk of Zika can be delimited by the distribution of the mosquito species that transmit it. The global distribution of the most cited carrier of Zika, A. aegypti, is expanding due to global trade and travel. A. aegypti distribution is now the most extensive ever recorded – on parts of all continents except Antarctica, including North America and even the European periphery (Madeira, the Netherlands, and the northeastern Black Sea coast). A mosquito population capable of carrying Zika has been found in a Capitol Hill neighborhood of Washington, DC, and genetic evidence suggests they survived at least four consecutive winters in the region. The study authors conclude that mosquitos are adapting for persistence in a northern climate. Zika virus appears to be contagious via mosquitoes for around a week after infection. The virus is thought to be infectious for a longer period of time after infection (at least 2 weeks) when transmitted via semen.
Research into its ecological niche suggests that Zika may be influenced to a greater degree by changes in precipitation and temperature than dengue, making it more likely to be confined to tropical areas. However, rising global temperatures would allow for the disease vector to expand its range further north, allowing Zika to follow.
=== Sexual ===
Zika can be transmitted from men and women to their sexual partners; most known cases involve transmission from symptomatic men to women. As of 2016, sexual transmission of Zika had been documented in six countries – Argentina, Australia, France, Italy, New Zealand, and the United States – during the 2015 outbreak. ZIKV can persist in semen for several months, with viral RNA detected up to one year. The virus replicates in the human testis, where it infects several cell types including testicular macrophages, peritubular cells and germ cells, the spermatozoa precursors. Semen parameters can be altered in patients for several weeks post-symptoms onset, and spermatozoa can be infectious. Since October 2016, the CDC has advised men who have traveled to an area with Zika should use condoms or not have sex for at least six months after their return as the virus is still transmissible even if symptoms never develop.
=== Pregnancy ===
Zika virus can spread by vertical (or "mother-to-child") transmission, during pregnancy or at delivery. An infection during pregnancy has been linked to changes in neuronal development of the unborn child. Severe progressions of infection have been linked to the development of microcephaly in the unborn child, while mild infections potentially can lead to neurocognitive disorders later in life. Congenital brain abnormalities other than microcephaly have also been reported after a Zika outbreak. Studies in mice have suggested that maternal immunity to dengue virus may enhance fetal infection with Zika, worsen the microcephaly phenotype and/or enhance damage during pregnancy, but it is unknown whether this occurs in humans. It is also not known if the virus can pass through a mother's breast milk to the child.
=== Blood transfusion ===
As of April 2016, two cases of Zika transmission through blood transfusions have been reported globally, both from Brazil, after which the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recommended screening blood donors and deferring high-risk donors for 4 weeks. A potential risk had been suspected based on a blood-donor screening study during the French Polynesian Zika outbreak, in which 2.8% (42) of donors from November 2013 and February 2014 tested positive for Zika RNA and were all asymptomatic at the time of blood donation. Eleven of the positive donors reported symptoms of Zika fever after their donation, but only three of 34 samples grew in culture.
== Pathogenesis ==
Zika virus replicates in the mosquito's midgut epithelial cells and then its salivary gland cells. After 5–10 days, the virus can be found in the mosquito's saliva. If the mosquito's saliva is inoculated into human skin, the virus can infect epidermal keratinocytes, skin fibroblasts in the skin and the Langerhans cells. The pathogenesis of the virus is hypothesized to continue with a spread to lymph nodes and the bloodstream. Flaviviruses replicate in the cytoplasm, but Zika antigens have been found in infected cell nuclei.
The viral protein numbered NS4A may lead to small head size (microcephaly) because it disrupts brain growth by hijacking a pathway which regulates growth of new neurons. Specifically, Link et al. reported in 2019 that NS4A disrupted the asymmetric division of neuronal precursors by the third larval instar in Drosophila fruit flies, and that these defects could be suppressed by heterologous expression of human ANKLE2, which NS4A interacts with, or by reducing expression of the VRK1 homologue Bällchen or the LLGL1 homologue lethal (2) giant larvae. Additionally, in fruit flies, both NS4A and the neighboring NS4B restrict eye growth.
== Zika fever ==
Zika fever (also known as Zika virus disease) is an illness caused by Zika virus. Around 80% of cases are estimated to be asymptomatic, though the accuracy of this figure is hindered by the wide variance in data quality, and figures from different outbreaks can vary significantly. Symptomatic cases are usually mild and can resemble dengue fever. Symptoms may include fever, red eyes, joint pain, headache, and a maculopapular rash. Symptoms generally last less than seven days. It has not caused any reported deaths during the initial infection. Infection during pregnancy causes microcephaly and other brain malformations in some babies. Infection in adults has been linked to Guillain–Barré syndrome (GBS) and Zika virus has been shown to infect human Schwann cells.
=== Diagnosis ===
Diagnosis is by testing the blood, urine, or saliva for the presence of Zika virus RNA when the person is sick. In 2019, an improved diagnostic test, based on research from Washington University in St. Louis, that detects Zika infection in serum was granted market authorization by the FDA.
=== Prevention ===
Prevention involves decreasing mosquito bites in areas where the disease occurs, and proper use of condoms. This highlights the importance of sexual health education and safe sex practices in areas like these. Efforts to prevent bites include the use of DEET or picaridin - based insect repellent, covering much of the body with clothing, mosquito nets, and getting rid of standing water where mosquitoes reproduce. As of 2025 there is no vaccine. Health officials recommended that women in areas affected by the 2015–2016 Zika outbreak consider putting off pregnancy and that pregnant women not travel to these areas. Although unavailable to people of impoverished areas, using house screens, air-conditioning and removing yard/house debris help with prevention.
==== Genetically modified mosquitoes ====
There has been an innovation of genetically modified Ae. aegypti mosquitoes containing an anti-Zika virus transgene. This transgene contains a group of small synthethic RNAs that are used to target the genome of Zika virus. The use of this modification has been found to reduce viral infection, dissemination and also transmission rates of this virus. There have been trials conducted using these mosquitoes in countries like the Cayman Islands, Malaysia and Brazil. A company called Oxitec Ltd, which genetically engineered this mosquito, set up a field study in Brazil in 2018 that resulted in suppression of up to 96% of disease-transmitting mosquitoes.
=== Treatment ===
While as of 2025 there is no treatment for the disease, paracetamol (acetaminophen) and rest may help with the symptoms. Admission to a hospital is rarely necessary.
Treatment of Zika includes getting plenty of rest, drinking a lot of fluids to stay hydrated, and over-the-counter medicines such as acetaminophen to relieve fever and pain. It is not recommended to take aspirin or other non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs until after dengue infection is ruled out. If the patient is taking treatment for another medical condition the attending physician can advise about any other drug or additional treatment.
=== Vaccine development ===
The World Health Organization has suggested that priority should be given to developing inactivated vaccines and other non-live vaccines, which are safe for pregnant women to use.
As of March 2016, 18 companies and institutions were developing vaccines against Zika, but they stated that a vaccine was unlikely to be widely available for about 10 years; there was none as of 2025.
In June 2016, the FDA granted the first approval for a human clinical trial for a Zika vaccine. In March 2017, a DNA vaccine was approved for phase-2 clinical trials. This vaccine consists of a small, circular piece of DNA, known as a plasmid, that expresses the genes for the Zika virus envelope proteins. As the vaccine does not contain the full sequence of the virus, it cannot cause infection. Since 2022, this DNA vaccine sponsored by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases has completed phase 2.
As of April 2017, both subunit and inactivated vaccines have entered clinical trials. However, for epidemics that appear sporadically and unpredictably such as caused by Zika and several other arboviruses, precautionary vaccination of large populations may be prohibitively expensive, but distribution of vaccine in response to a sudden explosive epidemic may be too slow.
=== Complications ===
Although Zika virus is mostly known for its association with birth defects such as microcephaly, it can also cause other pregnancy issues such as fetal loss, stillbirth and preterm birth. Furthermore, it has also been linked to a neurological disorder called Guillain-Barré syndrome. This disorder results in damage to nerve cells that may cause muscle weakness and even paralysis. Although these symptoms last temporarily and most people fully recover, some people affected may end up with permanent damage. Additionally, it is known that Zika viruses can rarely cause encephalitis, meningitis, or myelitis. It may also rarely result in a blood disorder which can affect clotting time and cause increased bleeding.
== History ==
=== Virus isolation in monkeys and mosquitoes, 1947 ===
The virus was first isolated in April 1947 from a rhesus macaque monkey placed in a cage in the Ziika Forest of Uganda, near Lake Victoria, by the scientists of the Yellow Fever Research Institute. A second isolation from the mosquito A. africanus followed at the same site in January 1948. When the monkey developed a fever, researchers isolated from its serum a "filterable transmissible agent" which was named Zika in 1948.
=== First evidence of human infection, 1952 ===
Zika was first known to infect humans from the results of a serological survey in Uganda, published in 1952. Of 99 human blood samples tested, 6.1% had neutralizing antibodies. As part of a 1954 outbreak investigation of jaundice suspected to be yellow fever, researchers reported isolation of the virus from a patient, but the pathogen was later shown to be the closely related Spondweni virus. Spondweni was also determined to be the cause of a self-inflicted infection in a researcher reported in 1956.
=== Spread in equatorial Africa and to Asia, 1951–present ===
Subsequent serological studies in several African and Asian countries indicated the virus had been widespread within human populations in these regions. The first true case of human infection was identified by Simpson in 1964, who was himself infected while isolating the virus from mosquitoes. From then until 2007, there were only 13 further confirmed human cases of Zika infection from Africa and Southeast Asia. A study published in 2017 showed that the Zika virus, despite only a few cases were reported, has been silently circulated in West Africa for the last two decades when blood samples collected between 1992 and 2016 were tested for the ZIKV IgM antibodies.
In 2017, Angola reported two cases of Zika fever. Zika was also occurring in Tanzania as of 2016.
=== Micronesia, 2007 ===
In April 2007, the first outbreak outside of Africa and Asia occurred on the island of Yap in the Federated States of Micronesia, characterized by rash, conjunctivitis, and arthralgia, which was initially thought to be dengue, chikungunya, or Ross River disease. Serum samples from patients in the acute phase of illness contained RNA of Zika. There were 49 confirmed cases, 59 unconfirmed cases, no hospitalizations, and no deaths.
=== 2013–2014 ===
After October 2013 Oceania's first outbreak showed an estimated 11% population infected for French Polynesia that also presented with Guillain–Barre syndrome (GBS). The spread of ZIKV continued to New Caledonia, Easter Island, and the Cook Islands and where 1385 cases were confirmed by January 2014. During the same year, Easter Island acknowledged 51 cases. Australia began seeing cases in 2012. Research showed it was brought by travelers returning from Indonesia and other infected countries. New Zealand also experienced infections rate increases through returning foreign travelers. Oceania countries experiencing Zika today are New Caledonia, Vanuatu, Solomon Islands, Marshall Islands, American Samoa, Samoa, and Tonga.
Between 2013 and 2014, further epidemics occurred in French Polynesia, Easter Island, the Cook Islands, and New Caledonia.
=== Americas, 2015–present ===
There was an epidemic in 2015 and 2016 in the Americas. The outbreak began in April 2015 in Brazil, and spread to other countries in South America, Central America, North America, and the Caribbean. In January 2016, the WHO said the virus was likely to spread throughout most of the Americas by the end of the year; and in February 2016, the WHO declared the cluster of microcephaly and Guillain–Barré syndrome cases reported in Brazil – strongly suspected to be associated with the Zika outbreak – a Public Health Emergency of International Concern. It was estimated that 1.5 million people were infected by Zika in Brazil, with over 3,500 cases of microcephaly reported between October 2015 and January 2016.
A number of countries issued travel warnings, and the outbreak was expected to significantly impact the tourism industry. Several countries took the unusual step of advising their citizens to delay pregnancy until more was known about the virus and its impact on fetal development. With the 2016 Summer Olympics hosted in Rio de Janeiro, health officials worldwide voiced concerns over a potential crisis, both in Brazil and when international athletes and tourists returned home and possibly would spread the virus. Some researchers speculated that only one or two tourists might be infected during the three-week period, or approximately 3.2 infections per 100,000 tourists. In November 2016, the World Health Organization declared that Zika virus was no longer a global emergency while noting that the virus still represents "a highly significant and a long-term problem".
As of August 2017 the number of new Zika virus cases in the Americas had fallen dramatically.
=== India, Bangladesh ===
On 22 March 2016, Reuters reported that Zika was isolated from a 2014 blood sample of an elderly man in Chittagong in Bangladesh as part of a retrospective study.
On May 15, 2017, three cases of Zika virus infection in India were reported in the state of Gujarat. By late 2018, there had been at least 159 cases in Rajasthan and 127 in Madhya Pradesh.
In July 2021, the first case of Zika virus infection in the Indian state of Kerala was reported. After the first confirmed case, 19 other people who had previously presented symptoms were tested, and 13 of those had positive results, showing that Zika had been circulating in Kerala since at least May 2021. By August 6th 2021, there had been 65 reported cases in Kerala.
On October 22, 2021, an officer in the Indian Air Force in Kanpur tested positive for Zika virus, making it the first reported case in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.
=== East Asia ===
Between August and November 2016, 455 cases of Zika virus infection were confirmed in Singapore.
In 2023, 722 Zika virus cases were reported in Thailand. From 2019-2022 the Robert Koch-Institut reported 29 imported Zikavirus cases imported into Germany. Of the altogether 16 imported Zika virus cases in 2023, 10 were diagnosed after a trip to Thailand with 62% of all Zika virus cases a significant relative and absolute increase.
== One Health and Zika Virus ==
In order to understand and effectively respond to the spread of Zika virus, it is important to consider a One Health approach. This approach includes strategies produced through the collaboration of experts in different disciplines.
Specifically, the integrated surveillance of human, animal, and environmental factors can help mitigate Zika virus. A One Health perspective recognizes that human health is greatly impacted by the health of their environment around them, enforcing a multidisciplinary approach to disease prevention and control.
In August 2016, Singapore had an increase in cases of Zika virus causing rapid intervention by public health officials. Some researchers at that time endorsed that taking on a One Health approach is the best way to come up with ethical and effective solutions to contain the spread.
== See also ==
Wolbachia
World mosquito program
== References ==
This article incorporates public domain material from websites or documents of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
== External links == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maulana_Azad#:~:text=Azad%20was%20born%20on%2011,come%20to%20India%20from%20Herat. | Maulana Azad | Abul Kalam Ghulam Muhiyuddin (11 November 1888 – 22 February 1958), better known as Maulana Azad and sometimes referred as Abul Kalam Azad, was an Indian writer, activist of the Indian independence movement and statesman. A senior leader of the Indian National Congress, following India's independence, he became the first Minister of Education in the Indian government. His contribution to establishing the education foundation in India is recognised by celebrating his birthday as National Education Day across India.
As a young man, Azad composed poetry in Urdu, as well as treatises on religion and philosophy. He rose to prominence through his work as a journalist, publishing works critical of the British Raj and espousing the causes of Indian nationalism. Azad became the leader of the Khilafat Movement, during which he came into close contact with the Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi. After the failure of the Khilafat Movement, he became closer to the Congress. Azad became an enthusiastic supporter of Gandhi's ideas of non-violent civil disobedience, and worked to organise the non-co-operation movement in protest of the 1919 Rowlatt Acts. Azad committed himself to Gandhi's ideals, including promoting Swadeshi (indigenous) products and the cause of Swaraj (Self-rule) for India. In 1923, at an age of 35, he became the youngest person to serve as the President of the Indian National Congress.
In October 1920, Azad was elected as a member of foundation committee to establish Jamia Millia Islamia at Aligarh in U. P. without taking help from British colonial government. He assisted in shifting the campus of the university from Aligarh to New Delhi in 1934. The main gate (Gate No. 7) to the main campus of the university is named after him.
Azad was one of the main organizers of the Dharasana Satyagraha in 1931, and emerged as one of the most important national leaders of the time, prominently leading the causes of Hindu–Muslim unity as well as espousing secularism and socialism. He served as Congress president from 1940 to 1945, during which the Quit India rebellion was launched. Azad was imprisoned, together with the entire Congress leadership. He also worked for Hindu–Muslim unity through the Al-Hilal newspaper.
== Biography ==
=== Early life ===
Azad was born on 11 November 1888 in Mecca, then a part of the Ottoman Empire, now a part of Saudi Arabia. His real name was Abul Kalam Ghulam Muhiyuddin, but he eventually became known as Maulana Abul Kalam Azad. Azad's forefathers had come to India from Herat. His father was a Muslim scholar who lived in Delhi with his maternal grandfather, as his father had died at a very young age. During the Indian Rebellion of 1857, he left India and settled in Mecca. His father Muhammad Khairuddin bin Ahmed Al Hussaini wrote twelve books, had thousands of disciples, and claimed noble ancestry, while his mother was Sheikha Alia bint Mohammad, the daughter of Sheikh Mohammad bin Zaher AlWatri, himself a reputed scholar from Medina who had a reputation that extended even outside of Arabia.
Azad settled in Calcutta with his family in 1890.
=== Education and influences ===
Azad was home-schooled by the teachers hired by his family. Following fluency in Arabic as a first language, Azad began to master several other languages including Bengali, Hindustani, Persian, and English. He was also trained in the Madhabs of Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i and Hanbali fiqh, Shariat, mathematics, philosophy, world history, and science by tutors hired by his family. An avid and determined student, the precocious Azad was running a library, a reading room, and a debating society before he was twelve; wanted to write on the life of Al-Ghazali at twelve; was contributing learned articles to Makhzan (a literary magazine) at fourteen; was teaching a class of students, most of whom were twice his age, when he was fifteen; and completed the traditional course of study at the age of sixteen, nine years ahead of his contemporaries, and brought out a magazine at the same age. At the age of thirteen, he was married to a young Muslim girl, Zulaikha Begum. Azad compiled many treatises interpreting the Qur'an, the Hadis, and the principles of Fiqh and Kalam.
=== Early journalistic career ===
Azad began his journalistic endeavours at an early age. In 1899 at the age of eleven he started publishing a poetical journal Nairang-e-Aalam at Calcutta and was already an editor of a weekly Al-Misbah in 1900. He contributed articles to Urdu magazines and journals such as Makhzan, Ahsanul Akhbar, and Khadang e Nazar.
In 1903, he brought out a monthly journal, Lissan-us-Sidq. It was published between December 1903 to May 1905 until its closure due to shortage of funds. He then joined Al-Nadwa, the Islamic theological journal of the Nadwatu l-Ulama on Shibli Nomani's invitation. He worked as editor of Vakil, a newspaper from Amritsar from April 1906 to November 1906. He shifted to Calcutta for a brief period where he was associated with Dar-ul-Saltunat. He returned to Amritsar after few months and resumed the editorship of Vakil, continuing to work there until July 1908.
=== Struggle for Indian Independence ===
In 1908, he took a trip of Egypt, Syria, Turkey and France where he came into contact with several revolutionaries such as followers of Kamal Mustafa Pasha, members of Young Turk Movement and Iranian revolutionaries. Azad developed political views considered radical for most Muslims of the time and became a full-fledged Indian nationalist. In his writing, Azad proved to be a fierce critic of both the British government and Muslim politicians; the former for its racial discrimination and refusal to provide for the needs of the Indian public, and the later for focusing on communal issues before matter of common-self interest (Azad pointedly rejected the All-India Muslim League's communal separatism). However, his views changed considerably when he met ethnically oriented Sunni revolutionary activists in Iraq and was influenced by their fervent anti-imperialism and Arab nationalism. Against common Muslim opinion of the time, Azad opposed the partition of Bengal in 1905 and became increasingly active in revolutionary activities, to which he was introduced by the prominent Hindu revolutionaries Aurobindo Ghosh and Shyam Sundar Chakravarty. Azad initially evoked surprise from other revolutionaries, but Azad won their praise and confidence by working secretly to organise revolutionaries activities and meetings in Bengal, Bihar and Bombay (now called Mumbai).
==== Al-Hilal and Khilafat movement ====
He established an Urdu weekly newspaper in 1912 called Al-Hilal from Calcutta, and openly attacked British policies while exploring the challenges facing common people. Espousing the ideals of Indian nationalism, Azad's publications were aimed at encouraging young Muslims into fighting for independence and Hindu-Muslim unity. With the onset of World War I, the British stiffened censorship and restrictions on political activity. Azad's Al-Hilal was consequently banned in 1914 under the Press Act.
In 1913, he was founding member of the Anjuman-i-Ulama-i-Bangala, which would become the Jamiat Ulema-e-Bangala branch of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind in 1921. His work helped improve the relationship between Hindus and Muslims in Bengal, which had been soured by the controversy surrounding the partition of Bengal and the issue of separate communal electorates.
In this period Azad also became active in his support for the Khilafat agitation to protect the position of the Sultan of Ottoman Turkey, who was considered the Caliph or Khalifa for Muslims worldwide. The Sultan had sided against the British in the war and the continuity of his rule came under serious threat, causing distress amongst Muslim conservatives. Azad saw an opportunity to energise Indian Muslims and achieve major political and social reform through the struggle.
Azad started a new journal, the Al-Balagh, which also got banned in 1916 under the Defence of India Regulations Act and he was arrested. The governments of the Bombay Presidency, United Provinces, Punjab and Delhi prohibited his entry into the provinces and Azad was moved to a jail in Ranchi, where he was incarcerated until 1 January 1920.
==== Non-co-operation Movement ====
Upon his release, Azad returned to a political atmosphere charged with sentiments of outrage and rebellion against British rule. The Indian public had been angered by the passage of the Rowlatt Acts in 1919, which severely restricted civil liberties and individual rights. Consequently, thousands of political activists had been arrested and many publications banned. The killing of unarmed civilians at Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar on 13 April 1919 had provoked intense outrage all over India, alienating most Indians, including long-time British supporters, from the authorities. The Khilafat struggle had also peaked with the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I and the raging Turkish War of Independence, which had made the caliphate's position precarious. India's main political party, the Indian National Congress came under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi, who had aroused excitement all over India when he led the farmers of Champaran and Kheda in a successful revolt against British authorities in 1918. Gandhi organised the people of the region and pioneered the art of Satyagraha— combining mass civil disobedience with complete non-violence and self-reliance.
Taking charge of the Congress, Gandhi also reached out to support the Khilafat struggle, helping to bridge Hindu-Muslim political divides. Azad and the Ali brothers – Maulana Mohammad Ali and Shaukat Ali – warmly welcomed Congress support and began working together on a programme of non-co-operation by asking all Indians to boycott British-run schools, colleges, courts, public services, the civil service, police and military. Non-violence and Hindu-Muslim unity were universally emphasised, while the boycott of foreign goods, especially clothes were organised. Azad joined the Congress and was also elected president of the All India Khilafat Committee. Although Azad and other leaders were soon arrested, the movement drew out millions of people in peaceful processions, strikes and protests.
This period marked a transformation in Azad's own life. Along with fellow Khilafat leaders Mukhtar Ahmad Ansari, Hakim Ajmal Khan and others, Azad grew personally close to Gandhi and his philosophy. The three men founded the Jamia Millia Islamia in Delhi as an institution of higher education managed entirely by Indians without any British support or control. Both Azad and Gandhi shared a deep passion for religion and Azad developed a close friendship with him. He adopted the Islamic prophet Muhammad's ideas by living simply, rejecting material possessions and pleasures. Becoming deeply committed to ahimsa (non-violence) himself, Azad grew close to fellow nationalists like Jawaharlal Nehru, Chittaranjan Das and Subhas Chandra Bose. He strongly criticised the continuing suspicion of the Congress amongst the Muslim intellectuals from the Aligarh Muslim University and the Muslim League.
In 1921, he started the weekly Paigham which was also banned by December 1921. He along with the editor of Paigham, Abdul Razzak Mahilabadi was arrested by the government and sentenced to one year imprisonment.
During the course of 1922, both the Khilafat and the non cooperation movement suffered blow while Azad and other leaders like the Ali brothers were in jail. The movement had a sudden decline with rising incidences of violence; a nationalist mob killed 22 policemen in Chauri Chaura in 1922. Fearing degeneration into violence, Gandhi asked Indians to suspend the revolt and undertook a five-day fast to repent and encourage others to stop the rebellion. Although the movement stopped all over India, several Congress leaders and activists were disillusioned with Gandhi. By 1923, Ali brothers grew distant and critical of Gandhi and the Congress. Azad's close friend Chittaranjan Das co-founded the Swaraj Party, breaking from Gandhi's leadership. Despite the circumstances, Azad remained firmly committed to Gandhi's ideals and leadership.
In 1923, he became the youngest man to be elected Congress president. Azad led efforts to organise the Flag Satyagraha in Nagpur. Azad served as president of the 1924 Unity Conference in Delhi, using his position to work to re-unite the Swarajists and the Khilafat leaders under the common banner of the Congress. In the years following the movement, Azad travelled across India, working extensively to promote Gandhi's vision, education and social reform.
==== Congress leader ====
Azad served on the Congress Working Committee and in the offices of general secretary and president many times. The political environment in India re-energised in 1928 with nationalist outrage against the Simon Commission appointed to propose constitutional reforms. The commission included no Indian members and did not even consult Indian leaders and experts. In response, the Congress and other political parties appointed a commission under Motilal Nehru to propose constitutional reforms from Indian opinions. In 1928, Azad endorsed the Nehru Report, which was criticised by the Ali brothers and Muslim League politician Muhammad Ali Jinnah. Azad endorsed the ending of separate electorates based on religion, and called for an independent India to be committed to secularism. At the 1928 Congress session in Guwahati, Azad endorsed Gandhi's call for dominion status for India within a year. If not granted, the Congress would adopt the goal of complete political independence for India. Despite his affinity for Gandhi, Azad also drew close to the young radical leaders Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhash Bose, who had criticised the delay in demanding full independence. Azad developed a close friendship with Nehru and began espousing socialism as the means to fight inequality, poverty and other national challenges. Azad decided the name of Muslim political party Majlis-e-Ahrar-ul-Islam. He was also a friend of Syed Ata Ullah Shah Bukhari, founder of All India Majlis-e-Ahrar. When Gandhi embarked on the Dandi Salt March that inaugurated the Salt Satyagraha in 1930, Azad organised and led the nationalist raid, albeit non-violent on the Dharasana salt works to protest the salt tax and restriction of its production and sale. The biggest nationalist upheaval in a decade, Azad was imprisoned along with millions of people, and would frequently be jailed from 1930 to 1934 for long periods of time. Following the Gandhi–Irwin Pact in 1931, Azad was amongst millions of political prisoners released. When elections were called under the Government of India Act 1935, Azad was appointed to organise the Congress election campaign, raising funds, selecting candidates and organising volunteers and rallies across India. Azad had criticised the Act for including a high proportion of un-elected members in the central legislature, and did not himself contest a seat. He again declined to contest elections in 1937, and helped head the party's efforts to organise elections and preserve co-ordination and unity amongst the Congress governments elected in different provinces.
At the 1936 Congress session in Lucknow, Azad was drawn into a dispute with Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, Dr. Rajendra Prasad and C. Rajagopalachari regarding the espousal of socialism as the Congress goal. Azad had backed the election of Nehru as Congress president, and supported the resolution endorsing socialism. In doing so, he aligned with Congress socialists like Nehru, Subhash Bose and Jayaprakash Narayan. Azad also supported Nehru's re-election in 1937, at the consternation of many conservative Congressmen. Azad supported dialogue with Jinnah and the Muslim League between 1935 and 1937 over a Congress-League coalition and broader political co-operation. Less inclined to brand the League as obstructive, Azad nevertheless joined the Congress's vehement rejection of Jinnah's demand that the League be seen exclusively as the representative of Indian Muslims.
==== Quit India Movement ====
In 1938, Azad served as an intermediary between the supporters of and the Congress faction led by Congress president Subhash Bose, who criticised Gandhi for not launching another rebellion against the British and sought to move the Congress away from Gandhi's leadership. Azad stood by Gandhi with most other Congress leaders, but reluctantly endorsed the Congress's exit from the assemblies in 1939 following the inclusion of India in World War II. Nationalists were infuriated that Viceroy Lord Linlithgow had entered India into the war without consulting national leaders. Although willing to support the British effort in return for independence, Azad sided with Gandhi when the British ignored the Congress overtures. Azad's criticism of Jinnah and the League intensified as Jinnah called Congress rule in the provinces as "Hindu Raj", calling the resignation of the Congress ministries as a "Day of Deliverance" for Muslims. Jinnah and the League's separatist agenda was gaining popular support amongst Muslims. Muslim religious and political leaders criticised Azad as being too close to the Congress and placing politics before Muslim welfare. As the Muslim League adopted a resolution calling for a separate Muslim state (Pakistan) in its session in Lahore in 1940, Azad was elected Congress president in its session in Ramgarh. Speaking vehemently against Jinnah's Two-Nation Theory—the notion that Hindus and Muslims were distinct nations—Azad lambasted religious separatism and exhorted all Muslims to preserve a united India, as all Hindus and Muslims were Indians who shared deep bonds of brotherhood and nationhood. In his presidential address, Azad said:
"Full eleven centuries have passed by since then. Islam has now as great a claim on the soil of India as Hinduism. If Hinduism has been the religion of the people here for several thousands of years, Islam also has been their religion for a thousand years. Just as a Hindu can say with pride that he is an Indian and follows Hinduism, so also we can say with equal pride that we are Indians and follow Islam. I shall enlarge this orbit still further. The Indian Christian is equally entitled to say with pride that he is an Indian and is following a religion of India, namely Christianity."
In face of increasing popular disenchantment with the British across India, Gandhi and Patel advocated an all-out rebellion demanding immediate independence. Azad was wary and sceptical of the idea, aware that India's Muslims were increasingly looking to Jinnah and had supported the war. Feeling that a struggle would not force a British exit, Azad and Nehru warned that such a campaign would divide India and make the war situation even more precarious. Intensive and emotional debates took place between Azad, Nehru, Gandhi and Patel in the Congress Working Committee's meetings in May and June 1942. In the end, Azad became convinced that decisive action in one form or another had to be taken, as the Congress had to provide leadership to India's people and would lose its standing if it did not.
Supporting the call for the British to "Quit India", Azad began exhorting thousands of people in rallies across the nation to prepare for a definitive, all-out struggle. As Congress president, Azad travelled across India and met with local and provincial Congress leaders and grass-roots activists, delivering speeches and planning the rebellion. Despite their previous differences, Azad worked closely with Patel and Dr. Rajendra Prasad to make the rebellion as effective as possible. On 7 August 1942 at the Gowalia Tank in Mumbai, Congress president Azad inaugurated the struggle with a vociferous speech exhorting Indians into action. Just two days later, the British arrested Azad and the entire Congress leadership. While Gandhi was incarcerated at the Aga Khan Palace in Pune, Azad and the Congress Working Committee were imprisoned at a fort in Ahmednagar, where they would remain under isolation and intense security for nearly four years. Outside news and communication had been largely prohibited and completely censored. Although frustrated at their incarceration and isolation, Azad and his companions attested to feeling a deep satisfaction at having done their duty to their country and people.
Azad occupied the time playing bridge and acting as the referee in tennis matches played by his colleagues. In the early mornings, Azad began working on his classic Urdu work, the Ghubhar-i-Khatir. Sharing daily chores, Azad also taught the Persian and Urdu languages, as well as Indian and world history to several of his companions. The leaders would generally avoid talking of politics, unwilling to cause any arguments that could exacerbate the pain of their imprisonment. However, each year on 26 January, which was then considered Poorna Swaraj (Complete Independence) Day, the leaders would gather to remember their cause and pray together. Azad, Nehru and Patel would briefly speak about the nation and the future. Azad and Nehru proposed an initiative to forge an agreement with the British in 1943. Arguing that the rebellion had been mistimed, Azad attempted to convince his colleagues that the Congress should agree to negotiate with the British and call for the suspension of disobedience if the British agreed to transfer power. Although his proposal was overwhelmingly rejected, Azad and a few others agreed that Gandhi and the Congress had not done enough. When they learnt of Gandhi holding talks with Jinnah in Mumbai in 1944, Azad criticised Gandhi's move as counter-productive and ill-advised.
==== Partition of India ====
With the end of the war, the British agreed to transfer power to Indian hands. All political prisoners were released in 1946 and Azad led the Congress in the elections for the new Constituent Assembly of India, which would draft India's constitution. He headed the delegation to negotiate with the British Cabinet Mission, in his sixth year as Congress president. While attacking Jinnah's demand for Pakistan and the mission's proposal of 16 June 1946 that envisaged the partition of India, Azad became a strong proponent of the mission's earlier proposal of 16 May. The proposal advocated a federal system with a limited central government and autonomy for the provinces. The central government would have Defence, Foreign Affairs and Communication while the provinces would win all other subjects unless they voluntarily relinquished selected subjects to the Central Government. Additionally, the proposal called for the "grouping" of provinces on religious lines, which would informally band together the Muslim-majority provinces in the West as Group B, Muslim-majority provinces of Bengal and Assam as Group C and the rest of India as Group A. While Gandhi and others expressed scepticism of this clause, Azad argued that Jinnah's demand for Pakistan would be buried and the concerns of the Muslim community would be assuaged. Under Azad and Patel's backing, the Working Committee approved the resolution against Gandhi's advice. Azad also managed to win Jinnah's agreement to the proposal citing the greater good of all Indian Muslims.
Azad had been the Congress president since 1939, so he volunteered to resign in 1946. He nominated Nehru, who replaced him as Congress president and led the Congress into the interim government. Azad was appointed to head the Department of Education. However, Jinnah's Direct Action Day agitation for Pakistan, launched on 16 August sparked communal violence across India. Thousands of people were killed as Azad travelled across Bengal and Bihar to calm the tensions and heal relations between Muslims and Hindus. Despite Azad's call for Hindu-Muslim unity, Jinnah's popularity amongst Muslims soared and the League entered a coalition with the Congress in December, but continued to boycott the constituent assembly. Later in his autobiography, Azad indicated Patel having become more pro-partition than the Muslim League, largely due to the League's not co-operating with the Congress in the provisional government on any issue.
Azad had grown increasingly hostile to Jinnah, who had described him as the "Muslim Lord Haw-Haw" and a "Congress Showboy." Muslim League politicians accused Azad of allowing Muslims to be culturally and politically dominated by the Hindu community. Azad continued to proclaim his faith in Hindu-Muslim unity:
"I am proud of being an Indian. I am part of the indivisible unity that is Indian nationality. I am indispensable to this noble edifice and without me this splendid structure is incomplete. I am an essential element, which has gone to build India. I can never surrender this claim."
Amidst more incidences of violence in early 1947, the Congress-League coalition struggled to function. The provinces of Bengal and Punjab were to be partitioned on religious lines, and on 3 June 1947 the British announced a proposal to partition India on religious lines, with the princely states free to choose between either dominion. The proposal was hotly debated in the All India Congress Committee, with Muslim leaders Saifuddin Kitchlew and Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan expressing fierce opposition. Azad privately discussed the proposal with Gandhi, Patel and Nehru, but despite his opposition was unable to deny the popularity of the League and the unworkability of any coalition with the League. Faced with the serious possibility of a civil war, Azad abstained from voting on the resolution, remaining silent and not speaking throughout the AICC session, which ultimately approved the plan.
Azad, committed to a united India until his last attempt, was condemned by the advocates of Pakistan, especially the Muslim League.
=== Post-Independence career ===
India's partition and independence on 15 August 1947 brought with it a scourge of violence that swept the Punjab, Bihar, Bengal, Delhi and many other parts of India. Millions of Hindus and Sikhs fled the newly created Pakistan for India, and millions of Muslims fled for West Pakistan and East Pakistan, created out of East Bengal. Violence claimed the lives of an estimated one million people, almost entirely in Punjab. Azad took up responsibility for the safety of Muslims in India, touring affected areas in Bengal, Bihar, Assam and the Punjab, guiding the organisation of refugee camps, supplies and security. Azad gave speeches to large crowds encouraging peace and calm in the border areas and encouraging Muslims across the country to remain in India and not fear for their safety and security. Focusing on bringing the capital of Delhi back to peace, Azad organised security and relief efforts, but was drawn into a dispute with the Deputy prime minister and Home Minister Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel when he demanded the dismissal of Delhi's police commissioner, who was a Sikh accused by Muslims of overlooking attacks and neglecting their safety. Patel argued that the commissioner was not biased, and if his dismissal was forced it would provoke anger amongst Hindus and Sikhs and divide the city police. In Cabinet meetings and discussions with Gandhi, Patel and Azad clashed over security issues in Delhi and Punjab, as well as the allocation of resources for relief and rehabilitation. Patel opposed Azad and Nehru's proposal to reserve the houses vacated by Muslims who had departed for Pakistan for Muslims in India displaced by the violence. Patel argued that a secular government could not offer preferential treatment for any religious community, while Azad remained anxious to assure the rehabilitation of Muslims in India, secularism, religious freedom and equality for all Indians. He supported provisions for Muslim citizens to make avail of Muslim personal law in courts.
Azad remained a close confidante, supporter and advisor to prime minister Nehru, and played an important role in framing national policies. Azad masterminded the creation of national programmes of school and college construction and spreading the enrolment of children and young adults into schools, to promote universal primary education. He was elected to the lower house of the Indian Parliament, the Lok Sabha in 1952 from Rampur Lok Sabha seat. In 1957 he re-contested Rampur and also dually contested the Gurgaon Lok Sabha seat in Punjab (modern-day Haryana), where he won on both seats. Gurgaon had a significant Muslim Meo population making it a safe seat for Azad.
Azad supported Nehru's socialist economic and industrial policies, as well as the advancing social rights and economic opportunities for women and underprivileged Indians. In 1956, he served as president of the UNESCO General Conference held in Delhi. Azad spent the final years of his life focusing on writing his book India Wins Freedom, an exhaustive account of India's freedom struggle and its leaders. About 30 of the pages of this book were published about 30 years after Azad's death in 1988 as per his own wish.
As India's first Minister of Education, he emphasised on educating the rural poor and girls. As Chairman of the Central Advisory Board of Education, he gave thrust to adult literacy, universal primary education, free and compulsory for all children up to the age of 14, girl's education, and diversification of secondary education and vocational training.
Addressing the conference on All India Education on 16 January 1948, Maulana Azad emphasised,
We must not for a moment forget, it is a birthright of every individual to receive at least the basic education without which he cannot fully discharge his duties as a citizen.
He oversaw the setting up of the Central Institute of Education, Delhi, which later became the Department of Education of the University of Delhi as "a research centre for solving new educational problems of the country". Under his leadership, the Ministry of Education established the first Indian Institute of Technology in 1951 and the University Grants Commission in 1953., He also laid emphasis on the development of the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore and the Faculty of Technology of the Delhi University. He foresaw a great future in the IITs for India:I have no doubt that the establishment of this Institute will form a landmark in the progress of higher technological education and research in the country.
== Literary works ==
Azad wrote many books including India Wins Freedom, Ghubar-e-Khatir, and Tazkirah Tarjumanul Quran (Urdu تذکرہ ترجمان القُران).
=== Ghubar-e-Khatir ===
Ghubar-e-Khatir (Sallies of Mind), (Urdu: غُبارِخاطِر) is one of the most important works of Azad, written primarily during 1942 to 1946 when he was imprisoned in Ahmednagar Fort in Maharashtra by British Raj while he was in Bombay (now Mumbai) to preside over the meeting of All India Congress Working Committee.
The book is basically a collection of 24 letters he wrote addressing his close friend Maulana Habibur Rahman Khan Sherwani. These letters were never sent to him because there was no permission for that during the imprisonment and after the release in 1946, he gave all these letters to his friend Ajmal Khan who let it published for the first time in 1946.
Although the book is a collection of letters but except one or two letters, all other letters are unique and most of the letters deal with complex issues such as existence of God, the origin of religions, the origin of music and its place in religion, etc.
The book is primarily an Urdu language book; however, there are over five hundred of couplets, mostly in Persian and Arabic languages. It is because, Maulana was born in a family where Arabic and Persian were used more frequently than Urdu. He was born in Mekkah, given formal education in Persian and Arabic languages but he was never taught Urdu.
It is often said that his book India Wins Freedom is about his political life and Ghubar-e-Khatir deals with his social and spiritual life.
== Legacy and influence ==
The Ministry of Minority Affairs of the central Government of India set up the Maulana Azad Education Foundation in 1989 on the occasion of his birth centenary to promote education amongst educationally backward sections of the Society. The Ministry also provides the Maulana Abul Kalam Azad National Fellowship, an integrated five-year fellowship in the form of financial assistance to students from minority communities to pursue higher studies such as M.Phil. and PhD In 1992 government of India honoured by giving posthumously Bharat Ratna.
Numerous institutions across India have also been named in his honour. Some of them are the Maulana Azad Medical College in New Delhi, the Maulana Azad National Institute of Technology in Bhopal, the Maulana Azad National Urdu University in Hyderabad, Maulana Azad Centre for Elementary and Social Education (MACESE Delhi University), the Maulana Azad College, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad Institute of Asian Studies, and Maulana Abul Kalam Azad University of Technology in West Bengal, Maulana Azad College of Engineering and Technology in Patna, Bab – e – Maulana Abul Kalam Azad (Gate No. 7), Jamia Millia Islamia, a central (minority) university in New Delhi, the Maulana Azad Library in the Aligarh Muslim University in Aligarh and Maulana Azad Stadium in Jammu. His home housed the Maulana Abul Kalam Azad Institute of Asian Studies earlier, and is now the Maulana Azad Museum. The National Education Day, an annual observance in India to commemorate the birth anniversary of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, the first education minister of independent India, who served from 15 August 1947 until his death on 22 February 1958. The National Education Day of India is celebrated on 11 November every year in India.
He is celebrated as one of the founders and greatest patrons of the Jamia Millia Islamia. Azad's tomb is located next to the Jama Masjid in Delhi. In recent years great concern has been expressed by many in India over the poor maintenance of the tomb. On 16 November 2005 the Delhi High Court ordered that the tomb of Maulana Azad in New Delhi be renovated and restored as a major national monument. Azad's tomb is a major landmark and receives large numbers of visitors annually.
Jawaharlal Nehru referred to him as Mir-i-Karawan (the caravan leader), "a very brave and gallant gentleman, a finished product of the culture that, in these days, pertains to few". Mahatma Gandhi remarked about Azad by counting him as "a person of the calibre of Plato, Aristotle and Pythagorus".
Azad was portrayed by actor Virendra Razdan in the 1982 biographical film, Gandhi, directed by Richard Attenborough.
A television series, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, aired on DD National in the 1990s and starred Mangal Dhillon in the title role. DD Urdu aired Seher Hone Tak, a docudrama television series by Lavlin Thadani based on his life and political career, with Aamir Bashir portraying the role of Azad. It was later shortened and re-released as the film Aashiq-e-Vatan - Maulana Azad. Woh Jo Tha Ek Massiah Maulana Azad, a 2019 biographical film about Azad was directed by Rajendra Gupta Sanjay and Sanjay Singh Negi, with Linesh Fanse playing the title role.
His birthday, 11 November is celebrated as National Education Day in India.
Commemorative stamps released by India Post (by year):
== See also ==
Cyrus the Great as Dhul-Qarnayn, a theory proposed by Azad
Indian Council for Cultural Relations, international cultural promotion organization founded by Azad
== Notes ==
== References ==
== Cited sources ==
Gandhi, R (1990). Patel: A Life. Navajivan, Ahmedabad.
Pant, Vijay Prakash (2010). "MAULANA ABUL KALAM AZAD: A Critical Analysis Life and Work". The Indian Journal of Political Science. 71 (4): 1311–1323. ISSN 0019-5510. JSTOR 42748956.
Qaiyoom, Nishat (2012). "Maulana Azad's Journalistic Crusade Against Colonialism". Proceedings of the Indian History Congress. 73: 678–685. ISSN 2249-1937. JSTOR 44156263.
Douglas, Ian Henderson (1993). Abul Kalam Azad: An Intellectual and Religious Biography. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-563279-8.
== Further reading ==
== External links ==
Abul Kalam Azad at Encyclopædia Britannica
APJ Abdul Kalam Scholarship Archived 30 April 2019 at the Wayback Machine
Azad's Careers – Roads taken and roads not taken – Lineages of the Present: Ideology and Politics in Contemporary South Asia By Aijaz Ahmad
An Introduction to Abul Kalam Azad & collection of his quotes – Eminent Indian freedom fighters Vol2 Chapter 11 p. 310 By S.K. Sharma
Abu'l Kalam Azad, Chapter 44, pp. 325–333, Modernist Islam, 1840–1940: a sourcebook By Charles Kurzman
National Education Day 2012 Celebrated at Sangam University Bhilwara Rajasthan
Some Rare Speeches of Maulana Azad in the Audio Archives of Bhatkallys.com |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logic_Theorist | Logic Theorist | Logic Theorist is a computer program written in 1956 by Allen Newell, Herbert A. Simon, and Cliff Shaw. It was the first program deliberately engineered to perform automated reasoning, and has been described as "the first artificial intelligence program". Logic Theorist proved 38 of the first 52 theorems in chapter two of Whitehead and Bertrand Russell's Principia Mathematica, and found new and shorter proofs for some of them.
== History ==
In 1955, when Newell and Simon began to work on the Logic Theorist, the field of artificial intelligence did not yet exist; the term "artificial intelligence" would not be coined until the following summer.
Simon was a political scientist who had previously studied the way bureaucracies function as well as developing his theory of bounded rationality (for which he would later win the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1978). He believed the study of business organizations requires, like artificial intelligence, an insight into the nature of human problem solving and decision making. Simon has stated that when consulting at RAND Corporation in the early 1950s, he saw a printer typing out a map, using ordinary letters and punctuation as symbols. This led him to think that a machine that could manipulate symbols could simulate decision making and possibly even the process of human thought.
The program that printed the map had been written by Newell, a RAND scientist studying logistics and organization theory. For Newell, the decisive moment was in 1954 when Oliver Selfridge came to RAND to describe his work on pattern matching. Watching the presentation, Newell suddenly understood how the interaction of simple, programmable units could accomplish complex behavior, including the intelligent behavior of human beings. "It all happened in one afternoon," he would later say. It was a rare moment of scientific epiphany.
"I had such a sense of clarity that this was a new path, and one I was going to go down. I haven't had that sensation very many times. I'm pretty skeptical, and so I don't normally go off on a toot, but I did on that one. Completely absorbed in it—without existing with the two or three levels consciousness so that you're working, and aware that you're working, and aware of the consequences and implications, the normal mode of thought. No. Completely absorbed for ten to twelve hours."
Newell and Simon began to talk about the possibility of teaching machines to think. Their first project was a program that could prove mathematical theorems like the ones used in Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead's Principia Mathematica. They enlisted the help of computer programmer Cliff Shaw, also from RAND, to develop the program. (Newell says "Cliff was the genuine computer scientist of the three".)
The first version was hand-simulated: they wrote the program onto 3x5 cards and, as Simon recalled:In January 1956, we assembled my wife and three children together with some graduate students. To each member of the group, we gave one of the cards, so that each one became, in effect, a component of the computer program ... Here was nature imitating art imitating nature.
They succeeded in showing that the program could successfully prove theorems as well as a talented mathematician. Eventually Shaw was able to run the program on the computer at RAND's Santa Monica facility.
In the summer of 1956, John McCarthy, Marvin Minsky, Claude Shannon and Nathan Rochester organized a conference on the subject of what they called "artificial intelligence" (a term coined by McCarthy for the occasion). Newell and Simon proudly presented the group with the Logic Theorist. It was met with a lukewarm reception. Pamela McCorduck writes "the evidence is that nobody save Newell and Simon themselves sensed the long-range significance of what they were doing." Simon confides that "we were probably fairly arrogant about it all" and adds:
They didn't want to hear from us, and we sure didn't want to hear from them: we had something to show them! ... In a way it was ironic because we already had done the first example of what they were after; and second, they didn't pay much attention to it.
Logic Theorist soon proved 38 of the first 52 theorems in chapter 2 of the Principia Mathematica. The proof of theorem 2.85 was actually more elegant than the proof produced laboriously by hand by Russell and Whitehead. Simon was able to show the new proof to Russell himself who "responded with delight". They attempted to publish the new proof in The Journal of Symbolic Logic, but it was rejected on the grounds that a new proof of an elementary mathematical theorem was not notable, apparently overlooking the fact that one of the authors was a computer program.
Newell and Simon formed a lasting partnership, founding one of the first AI laboratories at the Carnegie Institute of Technology and developing a series of influential artificial intelligence programs and ideas, including the General Problem Solver, Soar, and their unified theory of cognition.
== Architecture ==
The Logic Theorist is a program that performs logical processes on logical expressions. The Logic Theorist operates on the following principles:
=== Expressions ===
An expression is made of elements.
There are two kinds of memories: working and storage.
Each working memory contains a single element. The Logic Theorist usually uses 1 to 3 working memories.
Each storage memory is a list representing a full expression or a set of elements. In particular, it contains all the axioms and proven logical theorems.
An expression is an abstract syntax tree, each node being an element with up to 11 attributes.
For example, the logical expression
¬
P
→
(
Q
∧
¬
P
)
{\displaystyle \neg P\to (Q\wedge \neg P)}
is represented as a tree with a root element representing
→
{\displaystyle \to }
. Among the attributes of the root element are pointers to the two elements representing the subexpressions
¬
P
{\displaystyle \neg P}
and
Q
∧
¬
P
{\displaystyle Q\wedge \neg P}
.
=== Processes ===
There are four kinds of processes, from the lowest to the highest level.
Instruction: These are similar to assembly code. They may either perform a primitive operation on an expression in working memory, or perform a conditional jump to another instruction. An example is "put the right sub-element of working-memory 1 to working-memory 2"
Elementary process: These are similar to subroutines. A sequence of instructions that can be called.
Method: A sequence of elementary processes. There are 4 methods:
substitution: given an expression, it attempts to transform it to a proven theorem or axiom by substitutions of variables and logical connectives.
detachment: given expression
B
{\displaystyle B}
, it attempts to find a proven theorem or axiom of form
A
→
B
′
{\displaystyle A\to B'}
, where
B
′
{\displaystyle B'}
yields
B
{\displaystyle B}
after substitution, then attempts to prove
A
{\displaystyle A}
by substitution.
chaining forward: given expression
A
→
C
{\displaystyle A\to C}
, it attempts to find for a proven theorem or axiom of form
A
→
B
{\displaystyle A\to B}
, then attempt to prove
B
→
C
{\displaystyle B\to C}
by substitution.
chaining backward: given expression
A
→
C
{\displaystyle A\to C}
, it attempts to find for a proven theorem or axiom of form
B
→
C
{\displaystyle B\to C}
, then attempt to prove
A
→
B
{\displaystyle A\to B}
by substitution.
executive control method: This method applies each of the 4 methods in sequence to each theorem to be proved.
== Logic Theorist's influence on AI ==
Logic Theorist introduced several concepts that would be central to AI research:
Reasoning as search
Logic Theorist explored a search tree: the root was the initial hypothesis, each branch was a deduction based on the rules of logic. Somewhere in the tree was the goal: the proposition the program intended to prove. The pathway along the branches that led to the goal was a proof – a series of statements, each deduced using the rules of logic, that led from the hypothesis to the proposition to be proved.
Heuristics
Newell and Simon realized that the search tree would grow exponentially and that they needed to "trim" some branches, using "rules of thumb" to determine which pathways were unlikely to lead to a solution. They called these ad hoc rules "heuristics", using a term introduced by George Pólya in his classic book on mathematical proof, How to Solve It. (Newell had taken courses from Pólya at Stanford). Heuristics would become an important area of research in artificial intelligence and remains an important method to overcome the intractable combinatorial explosion of exponentially growing searches.
List processing
To implement Logic Theorist on a computer, the three researchers developed a programming language, IPL, which used the same form of symbolic list processing that would later form the basis of McCarthy's Lisp programming language, an important language still used by AI researchers.
== Philosophical implications ==
Pamela McCorduck writes that the Logic Theorist was "proof positive that a machine could perform tasks heretofore considered intelligent, creative and uniquely human". And, as such, it represents a milestone in the development of artificial intelligence and our understanding of intelligence in general.
Simon told a graduate class in January 1956, "Over Christmas, Al Newell and I invented a thinking machine,"
and would write:
[We] invented a computer program capable of thinking non-numerically, and thereby solved the venerable mind-body problem, explaining how a system composed of matter can have the properties of mind.
This statement, that machines can have minds just as people do, would be later named "Strong AI" by philosopher John Searle. It remains a serious subject of debate up to the present day.
Pamela McCorduck also sees in the Logic Theorist the debut of a new theory of the mind, the information processing model (sometimes called computationalism or cognitivism). She writes that "this view would come to be central to their later work, and in their opinion, as central to understanding mind in the 20th century as Darwin's principle of natural selection had been to understanding biology in the nineteenth century." Newell and Simon would later formalize this proposal as the physical symbol systems hypothesis.
== Notes ==
== Citations ==
== References ==
Crevier, Daniel (1993). AI: The Tumultuous Search for Artificial Intelligence. New York, NY: BasicBooks. ISBN 0-465-02997-3., pp. 44–46.
McCorduck, Pamela (2004), Machines Who Think (2nd ed.), Natick, Massachusetts: A. K. Peters, ISBN 1-5688-1205-1, pp. 161–170.
Russell, Stuart J.; Norvig, Peter. (2021). Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach (4th ed.). Hoboken: Pearson. ISBN 9780134610993. LCCN 20190474.
== External links ==
Newell and Simon's RAND Corporation report on the Logic Theorist
Full length version of Newell and Simon's RAND Corporation report on the Logic Theorist
CMU Libraries: Human and Machine Minds
Source code as PDF on Github |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oesper_Award#:~:text=1988%2C%20Konrad%20E.%20Bloch | Oesper Award | The Ralph and Helen Oesper Award or Oesper Award was first given in 1981 by the University of Cincinnati and the Cincinnati Section of the American Chemical Society. The award recognizes "outstanding chemists for lifetime significant accomplishments in the field of chemistry with long-lasting impact on the chemical sciences". It was established with a bequest from Ralph E. Oesper and his wife, Helen Wilson Oesper.
== Awardees ==
2025, Melanie S. Sanford, University of Michigan
2021, James M. Tour, Rice University
2020, Nicholas A. Peppas, University of Texas at Austin
2019, R. Mark Wightman, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
2018, Devarajan (Dave) Thirumalai, University of Texas at Austin
2017, Matthew Platz, Ohio State University,
2016, Maurice Brookhart, University of Houston and University of North Carolina
2015, Karen L. Wooley, Texas A&M University
2014, Isiah M. Warner, Louisiana State University
2013, Richard Eisenberg, University of Rochester
2012, Gary M. Hieftje, Indiana University
2011, Charles P. Casey, University of Wisconsin-Madison
2010, Kurt Wüthrich, The Scripps Research Institute, (Nobel, 2002)
2009, Susan Lindquist, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
2008, Alan G. Marshall, Florida State University
2007, James P. Collman, Stanford University
2006, Richard N. Zare, Stanford University
2005, V. Adrian Parsegian, National Institutes of Health
2004, George M. Whitesides, Harvard University
2003, Alan G. MacDiarmid, University of Pennsylvania and University of Texas at Dallas (Nobel, 2000)
2002, Royce W. Murray, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
2001, Harry B. Gray, California Institute of Technology
2000, Mildred Cohn, University of Pennsylvania
1999, George S. Hammond, Bowling Green State University
1998, Jerome A. Berson, Yale University
1997, Rudolph A. Marcus, California Institute of Technology, (Nobel, 1992)
1996, Ralph N. Adams, University of Kansas
1995, Gregory R. Choppin, Florida State University
1994, Klaus Biemann, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
1993, James D. Winefordner, University of Florida
1992, Walter H. Stockmayer, Dartmouth College
1991, Derek H. R. Barton, Texas A&M University (Nobel, 1969)
1990, Herbert C. Brown, Purdue University, (Nobel, 1979)
1989, Allen J. Bard, University of Texas at Austin
1988, Konrad E. Bloch, Harvard University and Florida State University (Nobel, 1964; Medicine)
1987, George C. Pimentel, University of California, Berkeley
1986, Henry Taube, Stanford University (Nobel, 1983)
1985, Fred McLafferty, Cornell University
1984, John A. Pople, Carnegie Mellon University (Nobel, 1998)
1983, Fred Basolo, Northwestern University
1982, John C. Sheehan, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
1981, Melvin Calvin, University of California, Berkeley (Nobel, 1961)
== See also ==
List of chemistry awards
== References == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rattlestar_Ricklactica#:~:text=4%20Reception-,Plot,to%20jump%20higher%20than%20usual. | Rattlestar Ricklactica | "Rattlestar Ricklactica" is the fifth episode of the fourth season of the Adult Swim animated television series Rick and Morty. The 36th episode overall, it was written by James Siciliano and directed by Jacob Hair and was broadcast on December 15, 2019.
== Plot ==
While setting up Christmas lights, Jerry falls off the roof. Before he hits the ground, Rick zaps Jerry with a ray that renders him lighter than air for 10 hours, then makes his shoes heavier than air, thus making Jerry neutrally buoyant and enabling him to jump higher than usual. Rick and Morty depart for an adventure, but their ship breaks down in space. While repairing it outside the ship, Morty is bitten by a snake astronaut which he then kills.
Morty tries to atone for the snake's death by buying another snake from a pet store and sending her to the race war-ridden snake planet; however, the snakes quickly discover that she is not from their world. Soon, various snakes appear in growing numbers to alternately attack or protect the Smiths. Rick explains that Morty's actions caused the snakes to unite and invent time travel. Rick and Morty travel to the Snake Pentagon to resolve the war, but the snakes' time machine is incomplete. A future Rick and Morty (who sports a black eye) appear with a snake-language book full of instructions on time travel, while also insulting their past selves. Current Rick and Morty travel to 1985 and leave the book at Snake MIT.
Meanwhile, Jerry loses one of his shoes, causing him to float away helplessly. Reasoning that he will either survive unassisted or have Rick blamed if he dies, he rejects Rick and Beth's attempts to help him. With minutes left on the ray as he is high above ground, Jerry prepares to fall to his death when a jet flies by, to which he attaches himself. The plane crashes after colliding with a flying snake, but Jerry survives.
Back on present-day Earth, the large amount of time travel alerts the Time Cops from "A Rickle in Time". They travel back in time and kill the first primitive snake to use tools, thus preventing snake civilization and causing the snakes to disappear. Jerry reveals himself to be on the roof, claiming he was there the whole time, and turns on the Christmas lights before falling off and breaking his leg, which Rick heals to 50% capacity, leaving the rest of the healing up to Jerry. Rick and Morty are rudely reminded by their future selves to make the time travel notes.
In the post-credits scene, while waiting for their past selves on the snake planet, Rick reminds Morty to stay in the car next time, then punches him in the eye.
== Snake math trivia ==
Rick and Morty's travel to Snake MIT was set to a chalkboard containing mathematics appearing in quantum mechanics, called the snake equation. From the specific notation used, the board was inspired by a research paper by Christopher Wood, Jacob Biamonte, and David G. Cory which appeared in the journal Quantum Information & Computation and later in a book by Jacob Biamonte.
== Broadcast and ratings ==
The episode was broadcast by Adult Swim on December 15, 2019. According to Nielsen Media Research, "Rattlestar Ricklactica" was seen by 1.32 million household viewers in the United States and received a 0.75 rating among the 18–49 adult demographic, making it the lowest rated episode of the series (excluding the unannounced season three premiere) since season one's "M. Night Shaym-Aliens!".
== Reception ==
Zack Handlen of The A.V. Club gave the episode an A grade, feeling that the episode was: ...the best episode of the season (so far), and a pure joy from start to finish. It doesn't do anything revolutionary, it doesn't change our understanding of the characters, there's no sudden shock of emotion. But it's funny as hell, taking a basic premise at once incredibly dumb and clever as fuck, and running it straight into the ground. Good main story, and a good Jerry story, and some minor Christmas theming. I don't know as I'd say it was worth the wait, exactly, but my faith in the show is largely restored. Joe Matar of Den of Geek gave the episode a 5 out of 5, feeling that "the first half of Rick and Morty's fourth season goes out strong with this not-so-festive Christmas episode".
== References ==
== External links ==
"Rattlestar Ricklactica" at IMDb |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qinhuangdao_Beidaihe_Airport | Qinhuangdao Beidaihe Airport | Qinhuangdao Beidaihe Airport (IATA: BPE, ICAO: ZBDH) is an airport serving the city of Qinhuangdao, Hebei province, north China. It is located in Longjiadian Town, Changli County, 47 kilometres (29 mi) from the city center and 34 kilometres (21 mi) from Beidaihe.
== History ==
The Beidaihe Airport project was started in 2004, and received approval from the State Council in July 2009. The construction feasibility report was approved in May 2011, and construction officially began in April 2012. The airport was opened on 31 March 2016, replacing the old Shanhaiguan Airport, which was shared with the military, as Qinhuangdao's main airport. Shanhaiguan Airport reverted to sole military use.
== Facilities ==
The airport occupies an area of 2,195 mu. It has a runway that is 2,600 meters long and 60 meters wide, and a 10,592-square-metre (114,010 sq ft) terminal building. It is designed to handle 500,000 passengers and 1,200 tons of cargo annually.
== Airlines and destinations ==
== See also ==
List of airports in China
List of the busiest airports in China
== References == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Suozzi#:~:text=His%20mother%2C%20Marguerite%20(n%C3%A9e%20Holmes,Chaminade%20High%20School%20in%201980. | Tom Suozzi | Thomas Richard Suozzi ( SWOZ-ee; born August 31, 1962) is an American politician serving as the U.S. representative for New York's 3rd congressional district since 2024 and previously from 2017 to 2023. A member of the Democratic Party, he was the county executive of Nassau County on Long Island from 2002 to 2009 and served before then as the mayor of Glen Cove for eight years. His district, which is largely suburban, includes northern Nassau County and parts of northeastern Queens.
In 2006, he ran unsuccessfully against Eliot Spitzer for the Democratic nomination for governor of New York. Suozzi was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2016 and reelected in 2018 and 2020. He retired from Congress to run again for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination in 2022, losing to incumbent governor Kathy Hochul.
In October 2023, Suozzi announced that he would run for his old congressional seat in 2024. After Congress expelled George Santos that December, a special election to fill the remainder of the term was scheduled for February 13, 2024. Suozzi was selected as the Democratic nominee, and then won the special election, reclaiming the seat for Democrats.
== Early life and education ==
Suozzi was born on August 31, 1962, in Glen Cove, New York, the youngest of five siblings. His father, Joseph A. Suozzi, was an attorney and served as Glen Cove's mayor from 1956 to 1960. Originally from Ruvo del Monte, Italy, Joseph immigrated to the United States as a child. Suozzi's mother, Marguerite (née Holmes), was of Irish and English descent and worked as an operating room nurse at Glen Cove Hospital.
Suozzi graduated from Chaminade High School in 1980 before attending Boston College, where he earned a Bachelor of Science degree in accounting in 1984. After working as a certified public accountant for two years, he pursued a legal career, and earned a Juris Doctor degree from Fordham University School of Law in 1989.
== Professional career ==
Suozzi began his career as an accountant at Arthur Andersen before attending law school. He then served as a law clerk for Thomas Collier Platt Jr. of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York. Following his clerkship, he worked as a commercial litigator at Shearman & Sterling until 1993.
After being in public office, Suozzi worked in the private sector as an attorney of counsel at Harris Beach and as a consultant for Cablevision and Lazard until 2016. Later after leaving Congress, he joined Actum as a co-chair in 2023.
== Early political career ==
=== Mayor of Glen Cove ===
In 1993, Suozzi was elected mayor of Glen Cove, New York. He served as mayor for four terms. His father, Joseph A. Suozzi, his uncle, Vincent Suozzi, and cousin, Ralph were also mayors of Glen Cove. Joseph served from 1956 to 1960, Vincent served from 1984 to 1987 and Ralph served from 2006 to 2013.
As mayor, Suozzi focused on environmental cleanup of commercial and industrial sites, and redeveloping brownfield and superfund sites. In 1994, the Glen Cove incinerator was permanently closed and dismantled. In 1998, the city demolished and redeveloped the defunct Li Tungsten Refinery grounds, a federal superfund site.
=== Nassau County executive ===
Suozzi was elected Nassau County executive in 2001, becoming the first Democrat elected to the position in traditionally Republican Nassau in 30 years. He assumed office amid a fiscal crisis. By 1999, Nassau was on the brink of financial collapse: the county faced a $300 million annual deficit, was billions of dollars in debt, and its credit rating had sunk to one level above junk status. According to the New York Times, he "earned high marks from independent institutions for his signature achievement, the resuscitation of Nassau's finances."
While in office, Suozzi cut spending and reduced borrowing and debt. He also oversaw 11 county bond upgrades over two years, eliminated deficits in Nassau, and accumulated surpluses. In 2005, Governing Magazine named him one of its Public Officials of the Year, calling him "the man who spearheaded Nassau County, New York's, remarkable turnaround from the brink of fiscal disaster." According to the New York Times, he garnered praise for social services like his "no wrong door" program, which centralized access to social services.
Suozzi narrowly lost the 2009 county executive election to Ed Mangano. After working in the private sector as an attorney, he announced that he would seek a rematch against Mangano in 2013. He attacked Mangano for "presiding over a decline in the county" while also emphasizing eight years of balanced budgets and reduced crime while he was county executive. In November 2013, Mangano defeated Suozzi by a much wider margin of 59% to 41%.
=== Gubernatorial campaigns ===
==== 2006 ====
Suozzi declared his candidacy for governor of New York in the Democratic primary against Eliot Spitzer on February 25, 2006. Few prominent Democrats apart from Nassau County Democratic Party chairman Jay Jacobs supported his bid; most of New York's Democratic legislators and mayors campaigned for Spitzer. One of Suozzi's biggest supporters was Victor Rodriguez, founder of the now disbanded Voter Rights Party. Rodriguez eventually became the lead field organizer for his Albany campaign office. The campaign was funded in part by Home Depot co-founder Kenneth Langone, former NYSE CEO Richard Grasso, vice chairman of the MTA David Mack, and many people on Wall Street whom Spitzer had investigated and prosecuted.
On June 13, 2006, Suozzi spoke before the New York State Conference of Mayors along with Spitzer and John Faso. He received a standing ovation from the crowd of mayors. On July 6, he announced to his followers that he had collected enough petitions to place himself on the primary ballot. During a debate, he said he had presidential aspirations. On August 7, after much speculation, he announced that he would not seek an independent line were he to lose the primary.
Spitzer defeated Suozzi in the Democratic primary with 82% of the vote to Suozzi's 18%.
==== 2022 ====
On November 29, 2021, Suozzi announced his candidacy for governor of New York in the 2022 election. He strongly opposed a proposal by Governor Kathy Hochul to permit homeowners to add an accessory dwelling unit (such as an extra apartment and backyard cottage) on lots zoned for single-family housing. The proposal was intended to alleviate New York's housing shortage and make housing more affordable. He said that he supported efforts to tackle housing problems, but that he was against "ending single-family housing".
Suozzi placed third in the Democratic primary with 12% of the vote, behind Hochul and Jumaane Williams.
== U.S. House of Representatives ==
=== Elections ===
==== 2016 ====
In June 2016, Suozzi won a five-way Democratic primary in New York's 3rd congressional district. He was endorsed by The New York Times, Newsday, and The Island Now. He defeated Republican state senator Jack Martins in the general election on November 8, 53% to 47% and began representing New York's 3rd congressional district in the 115th United States Congress in January 2017.
==== 2018 ====
In June 2018, Suozzi won the Democratic primary unopposed. In the general election, he defeated Republican nominee Dan DeBono 59% to 41%.
==== 2020 ====
In June 2020, Suozzi won a three-way Democratic primary in New York's 3rd congressional district with 66.5% of the votes. In the general election, he defeated Republican nominee George Santos 56% to 43%.
==== 2024 ====
Suozzi announced his candidacy for New York's 3rd congressional district in the November 2023 election. After Congress expelled Representative George Santos, Suozzi also declared his candidacy for the special election. He was selected as the Democratic nominee on December 7, 2023, and defeated Republican nominee Mazi Melesa Pilip, a member of the Nassau County Legislature representing the 10th district, in the special election on February 13, 2024 by a margin of 54% to 46%.
As the winner of the special election, Suozzi served out the remainder of Santos's term in the House, which expired in January 2025. According to a December 2023 Politico article, solidarity with Israel in response to the October Hamas-led terrorist attack was a top priority for the district, and both Suozzi and Pilip were "staunch supporters of Israel". Suozzi and Pilip primarily campaigned on the issue of an influx of migrants into the United States.
Suozzi was re-elected in November 2024, defeating Republican Mike LiPetri in the general election.
=== Tenure ===
In Congress, Suozzi prioritized tax policy. He authored legislation to restore the state and local tax (SALT) deduction, which was capped at $10,000 in 2017. He led efforts within the New York congressional delegation to eliminate the cap, though the initiative was unsuccessful.
In 2021, the Campaign Legal Center filed an ethics complaint against him, alleging he failed to report nearly 300 stock transactions worth between $3.2 million and $11 million, as required by the STOCK Act. During a congressional deposition, Suozzi defended the omissions, stating, "ethics is a big priority for me, but some of the formalities are not necessarily something I make a priority of." In July 2022, the House Ethics Committee ruled his violations were not "knowing or willful" and dismissed the case.
Suozzi voted in favor of military aid packages for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan in 2024, aligning with most Democrats. Following Kamala Harris's defeat in the 2024 presidential election, he criticized the Democratic Party's stance on transgender participation in girls' sports and what he described as a "general attack on traditional values," provoking political backlash.
On January 1, 2025, Suozzi wrote an op-ed in The New York Times calling for Democrats to work with the incoming Trump administration and advocating for political compromise on parts of Trump's agenda.
In January 2025, Suozzi was elected Democratic co-chair of the Problem Solvers Caucus. Later that month, he was one of 46 House Democrats who joined Republicans to vote for the Laken Riley Act.
On March 6, 2025, Suozzi was one of ten Democrats in Congress who joined all of their Republican colleagues in voting to censure Democratic congressman Al Green for interrupting President Donald Trump's State of the Union Address. Suozzi opposed a potential New York redistricting effort in response to Trump pushing Republicans to draw out Democratic districts in Texas for the 2026 midterm elections.
=== Committee assignments ===
For the 119th Congress:
Committee on Ways and Means
Subcommittee on Oversight
Subcommittee on Tax
=== Caucus memberships ===
Suozzi's caucus memberships include:
Problem Solvers Caucus (co-chair)
New Democrat Coalition
SALT Caucus (co-chair)
Quiet Skies Caucus (vice chair)
International Conservation Caucus
Uyghur Caucus (co-founder and co-chair)
Democrats for Border Security Task Force (co-chair)
Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus
== Personal life ==
Suozzi and his wife Helene (née Wrotniak) married in 1993. They live in Glen Cove and have three children. His son Joe is a minor league baseball player who has played in the New York Mets organization. Suozzi is Catholic.
== Electoral history ==
=== Governor ===
=== U.S. House ===
== See also ==
List of United States representatives from New York
United States congressional delegations from New York
== Notes ==
== References ==
== External links ==
Congressman Thomas Suozzi official U.S. House website
Suozzi for Congress campaign website
Biography at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
Financial information (federal office) at the Federal Election Commission
Legislation sponsored at the Library of Congress
Profile at Vote Smart
Appearances on C-SPAN |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wular_Lake | Wular Lake | Wular Lake (Urdu pronunciation: [ʋʊlər]), also known as Wolar (Kashmiri pronunciation: [ʋɔlar]) in Kashmiri, is one of the largest freshwater lakes in the Indian subcontinent. It is located near Bandipora town in the Bandipora district of Jammu and Kashmir, India. The lake basin was formed as a result of tectonic activity and is fed by the Jhelum River and the streams Madhumati and Arin.
The lake's size varies seasonally from 30 to 189 square kilometres. In addition, much of the lake has been drained as a result of willow plantations being built on the shore in the 1950s.
== Background ==
=== Etymology ===
In ancient times, Wular Lake was also called Mahapadmasar (Sanskrit: महापद्मसरः). Nilamata Purana also mentions it as Mahapadmasaras. The lake, with its big dimensions and the extent of water, gives rise to high leaping waves in the afternoons, called Ullola in Sanskrit, meaning "stormy leaping, high rising waves". Therefore, it was also called Ullola. It is believed to have gotten corrupted over the centuries to Wulor or Wular. The origin may also be attributed to a Kashmiri word 'Wul', which means a gap or a fissure, an appellation that must have come also during this period. The word Wul (gap or fissure) is also an indicator of its origin from a fissure or gap created.
=== History ===
The Kashmiri sultan Zain-ul-Abidin is reputed to have ordered the construction of the artificial island of Zaina Lank in the middle of the lake in 1444.
According to the traditional beliefs in the vicinity of Wular Lake, there once stood a city whose king was Raja Sudrasen. By the reason of the enormity of his crimes, the waters of the lake rose and drowned him and his subjects. It was said that during the winter months, at low water, the ruins of the submerged idol temple might be seen rising from the lake. Zayn Ul Aabidin constructed a spacious barge which he sank in the lake and upon which he laid a foundation of bricks and stones till it rose high enough to be at level as the water. Upon this, he erected a Mosque and other buildings and gave the islet the name of Lanka. The expense of this work was defrayed by the fortunate discovery of two idols of solid gold, which had been brought up from the lake by divers.
== Ecology ==
=== Fish ===
Wular Lake is an important fish habitat, the main species being the common carp (Cyprinus carpio), rosy barb (Barbus conchonius), mosquitofish (Gambusia affinis), Nemacheilus species, Crossocheilus latius, and various snowtrout species in the genera Schizopyge and Schizothorax. Snowtrout species identified in the lake include the Sattar snowtrout (Schizopyge curvifrons), Chirruh snowtrout (Schizopyge esocinus), Schizothorax planifrons, Schizothorax macropogon, Schizothorax longipinus and Chush snowtrout (Schizopyge niger).
=== Birds ===
The lake sustains a rich population of birds. Terrestrial birds observed around the lake include the black-eared kite, Eurasian sparrowhawk, short-toed eagle, Himalayan golden eagle, Himalayan monal, chukar partridge, koklass pheasant, rock dove, common cuckoo, alpine swift, Indian roller, Himalayan woodpecker, hoopoe, barn swallow, golden oriole, and others.
== Economy ==
=== Aquatic greens ===
Many other families harvest the aquatic plants, such as the grass Phragmites and the waterlily-like Nymphoides, from the lake for human consumption and animal fodder.
=== Fishing ===
Fish from Wular Lake make up a significant part of the diet for many thousands of people living on its shores and elsewhere in the Kashmir Valley. More than eight thousand fishermen earn their livelihood from the lake, primarily fishing for the endemic Schizothorax species and the non-native carp. Their catch comprises about 60 percent of the total yield of fish in Kashmir. Hundreds of other local villagers are employed by cooperative societies that trade the fish catch..
=== Tourism ===
Boating, water sports, and water skiing have been launched by the Government of India Tourism in collaboration with Kerala Tourism and J&K Tourism. The contract for the operation of the site was awarded in September 2011.
== Issues ==
=== Environmental threats ===
The lake is one of the 80 Indian wetlands designated as a Ramsar site. However, it faces environmental threats including the conversion of large parts of the lake's catchment areas into agricultural land, pollution from fertilizers and animal wastes, hunting of waterfowl and migratory birds, and weed infestation in the lake itself.
=== Lake degradation ===
The shores of Wular Lake, one of the biggest freshwater lakes in South Asia, are now filled with trash. Waste has piled up along the lake's edges and in the water, endangering the lake's fish and plants. Parts of the lake have become shallow, and areas that used to be wide open water are now covered in mud and garbage. This buildup of waste and mud has made the lake smaller and shallower.
== Conservation ==
=== Recognition ===
In recognition of its biological, hydrological, and socio-economic values, the lake was included in 1986 as a Wetland of National Importance under the Wetlands Programme of the Ministry of Environment and Forests, Government of India, for intensive conservation and management purposes. Subsequently, in 1990, it was designated as a Wetland of International Importance under the Ramsar Convention. Against the Ramsar Convention, the lake area is being used for garbage dumping.
=== Restoration ===
Amongst other developments, two million trees will be cut to restore Wular Lake under the National Lake Conservation Programme. The Environment Ministry of India approved Rs 4 billion for the restoration project for the lake that will take 5 to 10 years, and was, after long delays, scheduled to start in December 2011.
The partner organisation, South Asian Voluntary Association of Environmentalists (SAVE), is a joint initiative of individuals to protect the ecology and to conserve nature at Wular Lake.
=== Tulbul Lock Project ===
The Tulbul Lock Project (Tulbul Barrage), is an under-construction "river navigation lock-cum-water level control lock structure" at the mouth of Wular Lake the barrage structure of which is designed to be 439 feet (134 m) long and 40 feet (12 m) wide with maximum storage capacity of 300,000 acre⋅ft (370×10^6 m3) of water. The project aims to regulate the release of water from the natural storage in the lake to maintain a minimum draught of 4.5 feet (1.4 m) in the river up to Baramulla during the lean winter months. The lean season water inflows into the Wular Lake are enhanced from the Kishanganga river by the Kishanganga Hydroelectric Plant after generating electricity.
Other lakes, such as Manasbal Lake, Anchar Lake, Dal Lake, etc., which are not located on the Jhelum Main river, can be used similarly to Wular Lake to impound flood waters for flood protection in downstream areas, hydro electricity generation, navigation throughout the year, irrigation, municipal and industrial uses.
==== History ====
===== 1980: Conception =====
The project was conceived in the early 1980s, and work began in 1984. The average annual inflows or outflows from the lake are nearly 7 billion cubic meters.
===== 1987-2025: Work stopped due to IWT dispute =====
There was an ongoing dispute between India and Pakistan over the Tulbul Project between 1987 and 2025 (when India put the IWT in abeyance). In 1987, when Pakistan objected to the Tulbul construction project by stating that it violated the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty (IWT), India stopped the construction work on the project that year, but has since attempted to restart construction. The Jhelum River passing through the Kashmir valley below Wular Lake, which is a connecting lake as per IWT, provides an important means of transport for goods and people. To sustain navigation throughout the year, a minimum depth of water is needed. India contends that the Tulbul Project is permissible per paragraphs 7 (c) and 9 of Annexure E, IWT, while Pakistan maintains that the project is a violation of the treaty if the storage is above 10,000 acre-feet (12×10^6 m3) for non-power generation purposes. India hold the position that the suspension of work harmed the interests of the people of Jammu and Kashmir and also deprived irrigation and power benefits to the people of Pakistan that may accrue from regulated water releases. In 2025, India put the IWT in abayance under which Pakistan was blocking the construction of Wular Barrage, thus paving the way for India to revive the Wular Barrage construction project.
===== 2025: Project revived =====
In 2025, India suspended the IWT, and decided to expedite the work on the Tulbul project, construction of new CRBS (200 km long Chenab-Ravi-Beas-Sutlej Link Canal with 12 tunnels to link the Chenab, Ravi, Beas, and Sutlej rivers to bring their water to the Indira Gandhi Canal at Harike Barrage), work on increasing the capacity of major dams in Indus basin (such as Uri, Dulhasti, Salal, Baglihar, Nimu Bajgo, and Chutak) and the work on new major dams (Kishanganga, Ratle, and Pakal Dul.
==== Details ====
The lake storage capacity will be increased per IWT to 300,000 acre feet or more, up to 1580 m MSL, by considering it as a reservoir for a run-of-the-river (RoR) hydro power plant, by envisaging a low-head (nearly 8 meters rated head) power plant. The available deepened river bed level at the toe of the dam will be below 1,570 m (5,151 ft) MSL for a 4,000 cusecs flow.
==== Benefits ====
The project offers several benefits.
Construction of a RoR power plant with sufficient sluice gates would also flush the sediment from the lake area to preserve the lake.
The enlarged lake will also meet the downstream navigational requirements fully during the lean flow season.
The regulated buffer/surcharge water storage in the Wular lake would substantially enhance the power generation from the downstream Lower Jhelum (105 MW), Uri (720 MW), proposed 1124 MW Kohala (in PaK), proposed 720 MW Azad Pattan (in PaK), 590-MW Mahl hydropower project (in PaK), and proposed 720 MW Karot (in PaKistan) RoR hydel projects, though its own power plant's generation is marginal.
==== Current status ====
2025 Jun: In the context of India putting the IWT in abeyance, the revised DPR was being prepared by India for the construction of the Tulbul barrage.
== See also ==
General
Dams on Jhelum river
Hathlangoo, village nearby
2014 India–Pakistan floods
Other lakes in J&K
Anchar Lake
Dal Lake
Gangbal Lake
Khanpursar
Manasbal Lake
== References ==
== Further reading ==
Wetlands International, 2007. Comprehensive Management Action Plan for Wular Lake, Kashmir. jkwildlife.org. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comair_(South_Africa) | Comair (South Africa) | Comair Limited was an airline based in South Africa that operated scheduled services on domestic routes as a British Airways franchisee (and an affiliate member of the Oneworld airline alliance). It also operated as a low-cost carrier under its own kulula.com brand. Its main base was O. R. Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg, while focus cities were Cape Town International Airport in Cape Town, and King Shaka International Airport in Durban. Its headquarters were near OR Tambo in the Bonaero Park area of Kempton Park, Ekurhuleni, Gauteng.
== History ==
The idea for the airline came out of discussion of two second world war pilots based in Egypt, J.M.S. Martin and A.L. Zoubert, they gained another partner Leon Zimmerman and Commercial Air Services was formed in 1943 on their return to South Africa. The company began charter operations on 15 June 1946 using Fairchild F-24 Argus and Douglas DC-3 aircraft. Scheduled services between Rand Airport, Johannesburg and Durban began on 1 July 1948, using a Cessna 195.
In 1978, Donald (Dave) Novick negotiated a management buyout of Comair's aviation assets. A lengthy legal battle ensued between Novick and the Pickard Group. On 5 June 1978, Justice George Colman rendered a 291-page document in favour of Novick. In doing so, Colman established 12 precedents in South African corporate law; the litigation is now considered to be a landmark case.
When Novick joined Comair in 1961, the company had some 50 employees and operated two Douglas DC-3 aircraft. Under his direction, the company expanded its fleet into jet aircraft after the de-regulation of South African airline routes in 1991.
Novick pioneered a strong relationship with British Airways plc and a partnership through a franchise arrangement. British Airways later took a shareholding in Comair.
In 2001 kulula.com was established, by co-founders Gidon Novick and Erik Venter, as the first low-cost airline in South Africa. The airline maintained its lead in this segment of the market, serving leisure business customers. As part of a R3.5 billion investment in fleet upgrade, Comair ordered eight Boeing 737-800s to update its fleet in 2013.
In March 2014, Comair announced a R9 billion order for eight Boeing 737 MAX. The aircraft were due to be delivered from 2019 to 2022.
The government of the British Overseas Territories Saint Helena and the United Kingdom's Department for International Development (DFID) announced in March 2015 that it had reached agreement with Comair for the provision of weekly air services from Johannesburg, to commence in 2016, when the Atlantic island's airport was due to open for revenue service. Comair withdrew from the agreement before the introduction of scheduled flights, due to severe wind shear on the initial test flights. A scheduled service provided by Airlink started in 2017.
In August 2016, Imperial Air Cargo, a cargo airline in which Comair owned a 30 percent stake, started operations.
The company entered into voluntary business rescue proceedings on 5 May 2020, due to the impact of the coronavirus pandemic. Operations were suspended on 31 May 2022. On 9 June 2022 the business rescue practitioners announced that there was no reasonable prospect of rescue and that the company be placed into liquidation.
== Corporate affairs ==
=== Ownership and structure ===
Comair Limited was a public company listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE: COM), but after going into business rescue on 5 May 2020, the company was delisted from the Johannesburg Stock Exchange on 7 April 2021; this gave it access to ZAR100 million rand (USD6.8 million) under the COVID-19 Loan Guarantee Scheme put in place between the South African Reserve Bank and large commercial banks.
The group had a number of subsidiary activities, including Comair Catering Proprietary Limited, trading under the Food Directions brand, that provided on-board catering and retail services to the group’s flights, and health and other food products to South African retailers, and also had a 56% shareholding in The Highly Nutritious Food Company Proprietary Limited, trading as Eatrite, that distributes its products to retailers in South Africa.
=== Business trends ===
The published key trends for the Comair group (which includes activities under the British Airways and kulula.com brands) are shown below, as at years ending 30 June.
Comair entered into voluntary business rescue proceedings on 5 May 2020, due to the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, and no annual accounts for the fiscal year ending 30 June 2020 have therefore been published. The figures for 2020 shown below are from the Management Accounts set out in the Business Rescue Plan:
=== Headquarters ===
The Group’s headquarters were based at 1 Marignane Drive, Bonaero Park, Kempton Park.
== Destinations ==
=== British Airways franchisee ===
Comair offered flights to and from the following destinations, operating under the British Airways brand:
Mauritius
Port Louis – Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam International Airport
Namibia
Windhoek – Hosea Kutako International Airport
South Africa
Cape Town – Cape Town International Airport (focus city)
Durban – King Shaka International Airport (focus city)
Gqeberha – Chief Dawid Stuurman International Airport
East London - King Phalo Airport
Johannesburg – O. R. Tambo International Airport (hub)
Zambia
Livingstone – Livingstone Airport
Zimbabwe
Harare – Harare International Airport
Victoria Falls – Victoria Falls Airport
=== kulula.com ===
Comair offered flights to and from the following destinations, operating under the kulula.com brand:
South Africa
Cape Town – Cape Town International Airport (focus city)
Durban – King Shaka International Airport (focus city)
George – George Airport
Johannesburg
Lanseria International Airport
O. R. Tambo International Airport (hub)
== Codeshares ==
Comair codeshared with the following airlines:
Air France
Cathay Pacific
Etihad Airways
Kenya Airways
KLM
Qatar Airways
== Fleet ==
As of December 2021, Comair fleet included the following aircraft operated as British Airways franchise:
== Incidents and accidents ==
On 12 October 1982, Douglas C-47A ZS-EJK was written off when it crashed into a mountain near Graskop in the Eastern Transvaal, 36 nautical miles (67 km) from Hoedspruit when attempting to divert to that airport. The weather was instrument meteorological conditions. All 30 people on board survived.
On 1 March 1988, Comair Flight 206, an Embraer 110 Bandeirante, crashed in Johannesburg, killing all 17 occupants. One source suggests that this incident was caused by an explosive device, carried by a passenger employed as a mineworker who had recently taken out a substantial insurance policy.
On 26 October 2015, Comair Flight BA6234 (ZS-OAA), a Boeing 737-400 operated by Comair on behalf of British Airways, crashed and was damaged beyond repair at OR Tambo International Airport. The crash was suspected to be caused by an early flare and fast touch down causing the left landing gear to collapse. No-one was killed or injured.
== See also ==
Airlines of Africa
== References ==
== Further reading ==
Van Dyke, Capt Donald L. 'Fortune Favours the Bold: An African Aviation Odyssey. Philadelphia: Xlibris, 2008. ISBN 978-1-4363-9314-0.
== External links ==
Media related to Comair Limited at Wikimedia Commons
Official website |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valencia_Bioparc | Valencia Bioparc | Bioparc Valencia is a 10-hectare (25-acre) zoo park in Valencia, Spain. The zoo is owned by the City Council of Valencia and designed and managed by Rainforest (a private Spanish company devoted to building and managing zoos). It has a large collection of African fauna.
Located in Valencia's Turia riverbed, most of the animals moved to the new Bioparc facilities from the old city's zoo when the park opened in 2008.
The concept of the zoo, called Zooimersion in Spanish, consists of immersing visitors into the animals' habitat and not vice versa. This is achieved by not using the traditional railings and cages that are common in many zoos, using instead rivers, ponds, streams and rocks to separate visitors from the animals. Also, great care has been taken in reproducing the eco-systems, including an important collection of African flora.
The zoo is the birthplace of Makena, the first elephant born in the Valencian Community.
== Exhibits ==
As of 2022:
Sabana
Selva Ecuatorial
Humedales
African spoonbill
Golden mantella
Hippopotamus
Nile crocodile
Pink-backed pelican
Madagascar
Black-and-white ruffed lemur
Fossa
Great white pelican
Greater flamingo
Mongoose lemur
Red-bellied lemur
Red-fronted lemur
Red ruffed lemur
Ring-tailed lemur
== Gallery ==
== References ==
== External links ==
Official website |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shenandoah_National_Park | Shenandoah National Park | Shenandoah National Park (often ) is a national park of the United States that encompasses part of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia. The park is long and narrow, with the Shenandoah River and its broad valley to the west, and the rolling hills of the Virginia Piedmont to the east. Skyline Drive is the main park road, generally traversing along the ridgeline of the mountains. Almost 40% of the park's land—79,579 acres (124 sq mi; 322 km2)—has been designated as wilderness areas and is protected as part of the National Wilderness Preservation System. The highest peak is Hawksbill Mountain at 4,051 feet (1,235 m).
== Park purpose ==
As stated in the foundation document:
Shenandoah National Park preserves and protects nationally significant natural and cultural resources, scenic beauty, and congressionally designated wilderness within Virginia’s northern Blue Ridge Mountains, and provides a broad range of opportunities for public enjoyment, recreation, inspiration, and stewardship.
== Geography ==
The park encompasses parts of eight counties. On the west side of Skyline Drive they are, from northeast to southwest, Warren, Page, Rockingham, and Augusta counties. On the east side of Skyline Drive they are Rappahannock, Madison, Greene, and Albemarle counties. The park stretches for 105 miles (169 km) along Skyline Drive from near the town of Front Royal in the northeast to near the city of Waynesboro in the southwest. The park headquarters are located in Luray.
== Geology ==
Shenandoah National Park lies along the Blue Ridge Mountains in north-central Virginia. These mountains form a distinct highland rising to elevations above 4,000 feet (1,200 m). Local topographic relief between the Blue Ridge Mountains and Shenandoah Valley exceeds 3,000 feet (900 m) at some locations. The crest of the range divides the Shenandoah River drainage basin, part of the Potomac River drainage, on the west side, from the James and Rappahannock River drainage basins on the east side.
Some of the rocks exposed in the park date to over one billion years in age, making them among the oldest in Virginia. Bedrock in the park includes Grenville-age granitic basement rocks (1.2–1.0 billion years old) and a cover sequence of metamorphosed Neoproterozoic (570–550 million years old) sedimentary and volcanic rocks of the Swift Run and Catoctin formations. Columns of Catoctin Formation metamorphosed basalt can be seen at Compton Peak. Clastic rocks of the Chilhowee Group are of early Cambrian age (542–520 million years old). Quaternary surficial deposits are common and cover much of the bedrock throughout the park.
The park is located along the western part of the Blue Ridge anticlinorium, a regional-scale Paleozoic structure at the eastern margin of the Appalachian fold and thrust belt. Rocks within the park were folded, faulted, distorted, and metamorphosed during the late Paleozoic Alleghanian orogeny (325 to 260 million years ago). The rugged topography of Blue Ridge Mountains is a result of differential erosion during the Cenozoic, although some post-Paleozoic tectonic activity occurred in the region.
== History ==
=== Creation of the park ===
Legislation to create a national park in the Appalachian mountains was first introduced by freshman Virginia congressman Henry D. Flood in 1901, but despite the support of President Theodore Roosevelt, failed to pass. The first national park was Yellowstone, in Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho. It was signed into law in 1872. Yosemite National Park was created in 1890. When Congress created the National Park Service (NPS) in 1916, additional parks had maintained the western pattern (Crater Lake in 1902, Wind Cave in 1903, Mesa Verde in 1906, then Denali in 1917). Grand Canyon, Zion and Acadia were all created in 1919 during the administration of Virginia-born president Woodrow Wilson. Acadia finally broke the western mold, becoming the first eastern national park. It was also based on donations from wealthy private landowners. Stephen Mather, the first NPS director, saw a need for a national park in the southern states, and solicited proposals in his 1923 year-end report. In May 1926, Congress and President Calvin Coolidge authorized the NPS to acquire a minimum of 250,000 acres (390.6 sq mi; 1,011.7 km2) and a maximum of 521,000 acres (814.1 sq mi; 2,108.4 km2) to form Shenandoah National Park, and also authorized creation of Great Smoky Mountains National Park. However, the legislation also required that no federal funds would be used to acquire the land. Thus, Virginia needed to raise private funds, and could also authorize state funds and use its eminent domain (condemnation) power to acquire the land to create Shenandoah National Park.
Virginia's Democratic gubernatorial candidate (and the late Congressman Flood's nephew), Harry F. Byrd supported the creation of Shenandoah National Park, as did his friend William E. Carson, a businessman who had become Virginia's first chairman of the Commission on Conservation and Development. Development of the western national parks had assisted tourism, which produced jobs, which Byrd and local politicians supported. The land that became Shenandoah park was scenic, mountainous, and had also lost about half of its trees to the Chestnut blight (which was incurable and affected trees as they reached maturity). However, it had been held as private property for over a century, so many farms and orchards existed. After Byrd became governor and convinced the legislature to appropriate $1 million for land acquisition and other work, Carson and his teams (including surveyors and his brother Kit who was Byrd's law partner) tried to figure out who owned the land. They found that it consisted of more than 5,000 parcels, some of them inhabited by tenant farmers or squatters (who were ineligible to receive compensation). Some landowners, including wealthy resort owner George Freeman Pollock and Luray Realtor and developer L. Ferdinand Zerkel, had long wanted the park created and had formed the Northern Virginia Park Association to win over the national park selection committee. However, many local families who had lived in the area for generations (especially people over 60 years old) did not want to sell their land, and some refused to sell at any price. Carson promised that if they sold to the commonwealth, they could still live on their homesteads for the rest of their lives. Carson also lobbied the new president, Herbert Hoover, who bought land to establish a vacation fishing camp near the headwaters of the Rapidan River (and would ultimately donate it to the park as he left office; it remains as Rapidan Camp).
The commonwealth of Virginia slowly acquired the land through eminent domain, eventually giving it to the U.S. federal government to establish the national park. Carson's brother suggested that Virginia's legislature authorize condemnation by counties (followed by arbitration for individual parcels) rather than condemn each parcel. Some families accepted the payments because they needed the money and wanted to escape the subsistence lifestyle. Nearly 90 percent of the inhabitants worked the land for a living: selling timber, charcoal, or crops. They had previously been able to earn money to buy supplies by harvesting the now-rare chestnuts, by working during the apple and peach harvest season (but the drought of 1930 devastated those crops and killed many fruit trees), or by selling handmade textiles and crafts (displaced by factories) and moonshine (illegal after Prohibition started).
However, Carson and the politicians did not seek citizen input early in the process, nor convince residents that they could live better in a tourist economy. Instead, they started with an advertising campaign to raise the funds, and courthouse property evaluations and surveys. Upon Mather's death in 1929, the new NPS director, Horace M. Albright also decided that the federal agency would only accept vacant land, so even elderly residents would be forced to leave. Thus, many families and entire communities were forced to vacate portions of the Blue Ridge Mountains in eight Virginia counties. Although the Skyline Drive right-of-way was purchased from owners without condemnation, the costs of the acreage purchased trebled over initial estimates and the acreage decreased to what Carson called a "fish-bone" shape and others a "shoestring". Although Byrd and Carson convinced Congress to reduce the minimum size of Shenandoah Park to just over 160,000 acres (250.0 sq mi; 647.5 km2) to eliminate some high-priced lands, in 1933 newly elected President Franklin D. Roosevelt decided to also create the Blue Ridge Parkway to connect to then-under-construction Skyline Drive on the Shenandoah National Park ridgeline, which required additional condemnations.
When many families continued to refuse to sell their land in 1932 and 1933, proponents changed tactics. Freeman hired social worker Miriam Sizer to teach at a summer school he had set up near one of his workers' communities and asked her to write a report about the conditions in which they lived. Although later discredited, the report depicted the local population as very poor and inbred and was soon used to support forcible evictions and burning of former cabins so residents would not sneak back. University of Chicago sociologists Fay-Cooper Cole and Mandel Sherman described how the small valley communities or hollows had existed "without contact with law or government" for centuries, which some analogized to a popular comic strip Li'l Abner and his fictional community, Dogpatch. In 1933, Sherman and journalist Thomas Henry published Hollow Folk drawing pitying eyes to local conditions and "hillbillies." As in many rural areas of the time, most remote homesteads in the Shenandoah lacked electricity and often running water, as well as access to schools and health facilities during many months. However, Hoover had hired experienced rural teacher Christine Vest to teach near his summer home (and who believed the other reports exaggerated, as did Episcopal missionary teachers in other Blue Ridge areas).
Carson had had ambitions to become governor in 1929 and 1933, but Byrd instead selected George C. Peery of Virginia's southwestern region to succeed easterner Pollard. After winning the election, Peery and Carson's successor would establish Virginia's state park system, although plans to relocate reluctant residents kept changing and basically failed. Carson had hoped to head that new state agency but was not selected because of his growing differences with Byrd, over fees owed his brother and especially over the evictions that began in late 1933 against his advice but pursuant to new federal policies and that garnered much negative publicity.
Most of the reluctant families came from the park's central counties (Madison, Page, and Rappahannock), not the northern counties nearest Byrd's and Carson's bases, or from the southern end where residents could see tourism's benefits at Thomas Jefferson's Monticello since the 1920s, as well as the jobs available in the Shenandoah and new Blue Ridge projects. In 1931 and 1932, residents were allowed to petition the state agency to stay another year to gather crops, etc. However, some refused to cooperate to any extent, others wanted to continue to use resources now protected (including timber or homes and gardens vacated by others), and many found the permit process arbitrary. Businessman Robert H. Via filed suit against the condemnations in 1934 but did not prevail (and ended up moving to Pennsylvania and never cashed his condemnation check).
Carson announced his resignation from his unpaid job effective in December 1934. As one of his final acts, Carson wrote the new NPS director, Arno B. Cammerer, urging that 60 people over 60 years of age whose plots were not visible from the new Skyline Drive not be evicted. When evictions kept creating negative publicity in 1935, photographer Arthur Rothstein coordinated with the Hollow Folk authors and then went to document the conditions they claimed.
The creation of the park had immediate benefits to some Virginians. During the Great Depression, many young men received training and jobs through the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). The first CCC camp in Virginia was established in the George Washington National Forest near Luray, and Governor Pollard quickly filled his initial quota of 5,000 workers. About 1,000 men and boys worked on Skyline Drive, and about 100,000 worked in Virginia during the agency's existence. In Shenandoah Park, CCC crews removed many of the dead chestnut trees whose skeletons marred views in the new park, as well as constructed trails and facilities. Tourism revenues also skyrocketed. On the other hand, CCC crews were assigned to burn and destroy some cabins in the park, to prevent residents from coming back. Also, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes who had jurisdiction over the NPS and partial jurisdiction over the CCC, tried to use his authority to force Byrd to cooperate on other New Deal projects.
Shenandoah National Park was finally established on December 26, 1935, and soon construction began on the Blue Ridge Parkway that Byrd wanted. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt formally opened Shenandoah National Park on July 3, 1936. Eventually, about 40 people (on the "Ickes list") were allowed to live out their lives on land that became the park. One of them was George Freeman Pollock, whose residence Killahevlin was later listed on the National Register, and whose Skyland Resort reopened under a concessionaire in 1937. Carson also donated significant land; a mountain in the park is now named in his honor and signs acknowledge his contributions. The last grandmother resident was Annie Lee Bradley Shenk. NPS employees had watched and cared for her since 1950; she died in 1979 at age 92. Most others left quietly. 85-year-old Hezekiah Lam explained, "I ain't so crazy about leavin' these hills but I never believed in bein' ag'in (against) the Government. I signed everythin' they asked me."
=== Segregation and desegregation ===
In the early 1930s, the National Park Service began planning the park facilities and envisioned separate provisions for blacks and whites. At that time, in Jim Crow Virginia, racial segregation was the order of the day. In its transfer of the parkland to the federal government, Virginia initially attempted to ban African Americans entirely from the park but settled for enforcing its segregation laws in the park's facilities.
By the 1930s, there were several concessions operated by private firms within the area that would become the park, some going back to the late 19th century. These early private facilities at Skyland Resort, Panorama Resort, and Swift Run Gap were operated only for whites. By 1937, the Park Service accepted a bid from Virginia Sky-Line Company to take over the existing facilities and add new lodges, cabins, and other amenities, including Big Meadows Lodge. Under their plan, all the sites in the parks, save one, were for "whites only". Their plan included a separate facility for African Americans at Lewis Mountain—a picnic ground, a smaller lodge, cabins and a campground. The site opened in 1939, and it was substantially inferior to the other park facilities. By then, however, the Interior Department was increasingly anxious to eliminate segregation from all parks. Pinnacles picnic ground was selected to be the initial integrated site in the Shenandoah, but Virginia Sky-Line Company continued to balk, and distributed maps showing Lewis Mountain as the only site for African Americans. During World War II, concessions closed, and park usage plunged. But once the War ended, in December 1945, the NPS mandated that all concessions in all national parks were to be desegregated. In October 1947 the dining rooms of Lewis Mountain and Panorama were integrated and by early 1950, the mandate was fully accomplished.
=== Social history ===
Particularly after the 1960s, park operations broadened from nature-focused to include social history. The Potomac Appalachian Trail Club had restored some cabins beginning in the 1940s and made them available to overnight hikers. Some displaced residents (and their descendants) created the Children of the Shenandoah to lobby for more balanced presentations.
In the 1990s, the park hired cultural resource specialists and conducted an archeological inventory of existing structures, the Survey of Rural Mountain Settlement. Eventually, the park's new focus on cultural resources coincided with agitation from a descendant's organization known as the Children of Shenandoah, which resulted in the removal of questionable interpretive displays. Hikes and tours that explained the social history of the displaced mountain people began.
== Attractions ==
=== Skyline Drive ===
The park is best known for Skyline Drive, a 105-mile (169 km) road that runs the length of the park along the ridge of the mountains. 101 miles (163 km) of the Appalachian Trail are also in the park. In total, there are over 500 miles (800 km) of trails within the park. There is also horseback riding, camping, bicycling, and a number of waterfalls. The Skyline Drive is the first National Park Service road east of the Mississippi River listed as a National Historic Landmark on the National Register of Historic Places. It is also designated as a National Scenic Byway.
=== Backcountry camping ===
Shenandoah National Park offers 196,000 acres (306.2 sq mi; 793.2 km2) of backcountry and wilderness camping. While in the backcountry, campers must use a "Leave No Trace" policy that includes burying excrement and not building campfires.
Backcountry campers must also be careful of wildlife such as bears and venomous snakes. Campers must suspend their food from trees while not in use in "bear bags" or park-approved bear canisters to prevent unintentionally feeding the bears, who then become habituated to humans and their food and therefore dangerous. All animals are protected by federal law.
=== Lodging ===
==== Campgrounds and cabins ====
Most of the campgrounds are open from April to October–November. There are five major campgrounds:
Mathews Arm Campground
Big Meadows Campground
Lewis Mountain Campground
Loft Mountain Campground
Dundo Group Campground
==== Lodges ====
There are several lodges/cabins in the park:
Skyland Resort
Big Meadows
Lewis Mountain Cabins
Potomac Appalachian Trail Club public use cabins
Lodges are located at Skyland and Big Meadows. The park's Harry F. Byrd Visitor Center is also located at Big Meadows. Another visitor center is located at Dickey Ridge. Campgrounds are located at Mathews Arm, Big Meadows, Lewis Mountain, and Loft Mountain.
Rapidan Camp, the restored presidential fishing retreat Herbert Hoover built on the Rapidan River in 1929, is accessed by a 4.1-mile (6.6 km) round-trip hike on Mill Prong Trail, which begins on the Skyline Drive at Milam Gap (Mile 52.8). The NPS also offers guided van trips that leave from the Byrd Center at Big Meadows.
Shenandoah National Park is one of the most dog-friendly in the national park system. The campgrounds all allow dogs, and dogs are allowed on almost all of the trails including the Appalachian Trail, if kept on leash (6 feet or shorter). Dogs are not allowed on ten trails: Fox Hollow Trail, Stony Man Trail, Limberlost Trail, Post Office Junction to Old Rag Shelter, Old Rag Ridge Trail, Old Rag Saddle Trail, Dark Hollow Falls Trail, Story of the Forest Trail, Bearfence Mountain Trail, Frazier Discovery Trail. These ten trails fall short of a total of 20 miles of the 500 miles of trails of the Shenandoah National Park.
Streams and rivers in the park are very popular with fly fisherman for native brook trout.
=== Waterfalls ===
Many waterfalls are located within the park boundaries. Below is a list of significant falls.
=== Hiking trails ===
==== Dark Hollow Falls Trail ====
Beginning at mile 50.7 of the Skyline Drive near the Byrd Visitor Center, Dark Hollow Falls Trail leads downhill beside Hogcamp Branch to Dark Hollow Falls, a 70 ft (21 m) cascade. The distance from the trailhead to the base of the falls is 0.7 mi (1.1 km), although the trail continues beyond that point, crossing the creek and connecting with the Rose River fire road. Various fauna can be viewed along the trail, including occasional sightings of black bears and timber rattlesnakes. While the trail is relatively short, parts of it are steep and may prove challenging to some visitors. There is no view from the brink of the falls, and slippery rocks make it inadvisable to leave the trail.
== Climate ==
According to the Köppen climate classification system, Shenandoah National Park has a humid continental climate with warm summers and no dry season (Dfb). According to the United States Department of Agriculture, the plant hardiness zone at Big Meadows Visitor Center (3514 ft / 1071 m) is 6a with an average annual extreme minimum temperature of -7.1 °F (-21.7 °C).
== Ecology ==
The climate of the park and its flora and fauna are typical for mountainous regions of the eastern Mid-Atlantic woodland, while a large portion of common species are also typical of ecosystems at lower altitudes. A. W. Kuchler's potential natural vegetation type for the park is Appalachian oak (104) within an eastern hardwood forest vegetation form (25), also known as a temperate broadleaf and mixed forest.
Pines predominate on the southwestern faces of some of the southernmost hillsides, where an occasional prickly pear cactus may also grow naturally. In contrast, some of the northeastern aspects are most likely to have small but dense stands of moisture loving hemlocks and mosses in abundance. Other commonly found plants include oak, hickory, chestnut, maple, tulip poplar, mountain laurel, milkweed, daisies, and many species of ferns. The once predominant American chestnut tree was effectively brought to extinction by a fungus known as the chestnut blight during the 1930s; though the tree continues to grow in the park, it does not reach maturity and dies back before it can reproduce. Various species of oaks superseded the chestnuts and became the dominant tree species. Gypsy moth infestations beginning in the early 1990s began to erode the dominance of the oak forests as the moths would primarily consume the leaves of oak trees. Though the gypsy moths seem to have abated, they continue to affect the forest and have destroyed almost ten percent of the oak groves.
== Wildlife ==
Mammals include black bear, coyote, striped skunk, spotted skunk, raccoon, beaver, river otter, opossum, woodchuck, bobcat, two species of foxes, white-tailed deer, and eastern cottontail rabbit. Though unsubstantiated, there have been some reported sightings of cougar in remote areas of the park. Over 200 species of birds make their home in the park for at least part of the year. About thirty live in the park year-round, including the barred owl, Carolina chickadee, red-tailed hawk, and wild turkey. The peregrine falcon was reintroduced into the park in the mid-1990s and by the end of the 20th century there were numerous nesting pairs in the park. Thirty-two species of fish have been documented in the park, including brook trout, longnose and eastern blacknose dace, and the bluehead chub.
== Ranger programs ==
Park rangers organize several programs from spring to fall. These include ranger-led hikes, as well as discussions of the history, flora, and fauna. Shenandoah Live is an online series where listeners may chat live with rangers and learn about some of the park's features. Rangers discuss a wide range of topics while answering questions and talking with experts from the field.
== Artist-in-Residence Program ==
In 2014, under the leadership of Superintendent Jim Northup, Shenandoah National Park established an Artist-in-Residence Program that is administered by the Shenandoah National Park Trust, the park's philanthropic partner. Photographer Sandy Long was selected as the park's first artist-in-residence. The results of Long's residency were featured in the photography exhibit "Wild Beauty: The Artful Nature of Shenandoah National Park" held at the Looking Glass Art Gallery in the historic Hawley Silk Mill, in Hawley, Pennsylvania.
== See also ==
List of amphibians of Shenandoah National Park
List of birds of Shenandoah National Park
List of national parks of the United States
== References ==
== External links ==
Official website of the National Park Service
Shenandoah National Park— When Past is Present: Archaeology of the Displaced in Shenandoah National Park
NASA Earth Observatory Satellite images of Shenandoah National Park and park's vicinity
United States Geological Survey: Geologic Map of the Shenandoah National Park Region, Virginia
Henry Heatwole's Guide to Shenandoah National Park and Skyline Drive
Interactive Virtual Tours of Shenandoah National Park
The Ground Beneath Our Feet online exhibit of the Virginia Historical Society regarding creation of the Shenandoah National Park
A Guide to the Shenandoah Valley Oral History Project, 2005–2006 |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saqqara#Site_looting_during_2011_protests | Saqqara | Saqqara (Arabic: سقارة : saqqāra[t], Egyptian Arabic pronunciation: [sɑʔːɑːɾɑ]), also spelled Sakkara or Saccara in English , is an Egyptian village in the markaz (county) of Badrashin in the Giza Governorate, that contains ancient burial grounds of Egyptian royalty, serving as the necropolis for the ancient Egyptian capital, Memphis. Saqqara contains numerous pyramids, including the Pyramid of Djoser, sometimes referred to as the Step Pyramid, and a number of mastaba tombs. Located some 30 km (19 mi) south of modern-day Cairo, Saqqara covers an area of around 7 by 1.5 km (4.3 by 0.9 mi).
Saqqara contains the oldest complete stone building complex known in history, the Pyramid of Djoser, built during the Third Dynasty. Another sixteen Egyptian kings built pyramids at Saqqara, which are now in various states of preservation. High officials added private funeral monuments to this necropolis during the entire Pharaonic period. It remained an important complex for non-royal burials and cult ceremonies for more than 3,000 years, well into Ptolemaic and Roman times.
North of the Saqqara site lies the Abusir pyramid complex, and to its south lies the Dahshur pyramid complex, which together with the Giza Pyramid complex to the far north comprise the Pyramid Fields of Memphis, or the Memphite Necropolis, which was designated as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1979.
Some scholars believe that the name Saqqara is not derived from the ancient Egyptian funerary deity, Sokar, but from a local Berber tribe called the Beni Saqqar, even though a tribe of this name is not documented anywhere. Medieval authors also refer to the village as Ard as-Sadr (Arabic: ارض السدر, lit. 'land of the buckthorn').
== History ==
=== Early Dynastic ===
The earliest burials of nobles can be traced back to the First Dynasty, at the northern side of the Saqqara plateau. During this time, the royal burial ground was at Abydos. The first royal burials at Saqqara, comprising underground galleries, date to the early Second Dynasty reigns of Hotepsekhemwy, Raneb and Nynetjer. This is followed by a hiatus, with Seth-Peribsen and Khasekhemwy, the last Second Dynasty king, both buried in Abydos. Khasekhemwy may nonetheless also have built a funerary monument at Saqqara consisting of a large rectangular enclosure, known as Gisr el-Mudir, although this enclosure could also belong to Nynetjer. It probably inspired the monumental enclosure wall around the Step Pyramid complex. Djoser's funerary complex, built by the royal architect Imhotep, further comprises a large number of dummy buildings and a secondary mastaba (the so-called 'Southern Tomb'). French architect and Egyptologist Jean-Philippe Lauer spent the greater part of his life excavating and restoring Djoser's funerary complex.
==== Early Dynastic monuments ====
Tomb of king Hotepsekhemwy and Raneb
Tomb of king Nynetjer
Buried Pyramid, funerary complex of king Sekhemkhet
Gisr el-Mudir, funerary complex of a Second Dynasty king, possibly Nynetjer or Khasekhemwy
Step Pyramid, funerary complex of king Djoser
=== Old Kingdom ===
Nearly all Fourth Dynasty kings chose a different location for their pyramids. During the second half of the Old Kingdom, under the Fifth and Sixth Dynasties, Saqqara was again the royal burial ground. The Fifth and Sixth Dynasty pyramids are not built wholly of massive stone blocks, but instead with a core consisting of rubble. Consequently, they are less well preserved than the world-famous pyramids built by the Fourth Dynasty kings at Giza. Unas, the last ruler of the Fifth Dynasty, was the first king to adorn the chambers in his pyramid with Pyramid Texts. During the Old Kingdom, it was customary for courtiers to be buried in mastaba tombs close to the pyramid of their king. Thus, clusters of private tombs were formed in Saqqara around the pyramid complexes of Unas and Teti.
==== Old Kingdom monuments ====
Pyramid of Djoser (Dynasty Three)
Mastabat al-Fir'aun, tomb of king Shepseskaf (Dynasty Four)
Pyramid of Userkaf of the Fifth Dynasty
Pyramid of Djedkare Isesi
Pyramid of king Menkauhor
Mastaba of Ti
Mastaba of Khnumhotep and Niankhkhnum
Pyramid of Unas
Mastaba of Ptahhotep
Pyramid of Teti (Dynasty Six)
Mastaba of Mereruka
Mastaba of Kagemni
Mastaba of Akhethetep
Pyramid of Pepi I
Pyramid of Merenre
Pyramid complex of king Pepi II Neferkare
Tomb of Perneb (now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York)
==== First Intermediate Period monuments ====
Pyramid of king Ibi (Dynasty Eight)
=== Middle Kingdom ===
From the Middle Kingdom onward, Memphis was no longer the capital of the country, and kings built their funerary complexes elsewhere. Few private monuments from this period have been found at Saqqara.
==== Second Intermediate Period monuments ====
Pyramid of king Khendjer (Dynasty Thirteen)
Pyramid of an unknown king
=== New Kingdom ===
During the New Kingdom, Memphis was an important administrative and military centre, being the capital after the Amarna Period. From the Eighteenth Dynasty onward, many high officials built tombs at Saqqara. While still a general, Horemheb built a large tomb here, although he later was buried as pharaoh in the Valley of the Kings at Thebes. Other important tombs belong to the vizier Aperel, the vizier Neferronpet, the artist Thutmose, the priest Bakenhori and the wet-nurse of Tutankhamun, Maia.
Many monuments from earlier periods were still standing, but dilapidated by this period. Prince Khaemweset, son of Pharaoh Ramesses II, made repairs to buildings at Saqqara. Among other things, he restored the Pyramid of Unas and added an inscription to its south face to commemorate the restoration. He enlarged the Serapeum, the burial site of the mummified Apis bulls, and was later buried in the catacombs. The Serapeum, containing one undisturbed interment of an Apis bull and the tomb of Khaemweset, were rediscovered by the French Egyptologist Auguste Mariette in 1851.
==== New Kingdom monuments ====
Several clusters of tombs of high officials, among which the tombs of Horemheb and of Maya and Merit. Reliefs and statues from these two tombs are on display in the National Museum of Antiquities at Leiden, the Netherlands, and in the British Museum, London.
=== After the New Kingdom ===
During the periods after the New Kingdom, when several cities in the Delta served as capital of Egypt, Saqqara remained in use as a burial ground for nobles. Moreover, the area became an important destination for pilgrims to a number of cult centres. Activities sprang up around the Serapeum, and extensive underground galleries were cut into the rock as burial sites for large numbers of mummified ibises, baboons, cats, dogs, and falcons.
==== Monuments of the Late Period, the Graeco-Roman and later periods ====
Several shaft tombs of officials of the Late Period
Serapeum (the larger part dating to the Ptolemaic Period)
The so-called 'Philosophers circle', a monument to important Greek thinkers and poets, consisting of statues of Hesiod, Homer, Pindar, Plato, and others (Ptolemaic)
Several Coptic monasteries, among which the Monastery of Apa Jeremiah (Byzantine and Early Islamic Periods)
== Site looting during 2011 protests ==
Saqqara and the surrounding areas of Abusir and Dahshur suffered damage by looters during the 2011 Egyptian protests. Store rooms were broken into, but the monuments were mostly unharmed.
== Archaeology ==
In 1842 and 1843, as part of a Prusian expedition, Karl Richard Lepsius studied, mapped, and reported on the
remains at Saqqara.The expedition was the first to systematically number the monuments at Saqqara.
From 1851 until 1855 Auguste Mariette excavated at Saqqara, discovering the Serapeum.
He returned to Egypt as Director of Antiquities in 1858 and worked periodically at Saqqara until his
death in 1881. Under the remaining Directors in the 1900s, Gaston Maspero and Jacques de Morgan the focus at Saqqara, as in the rest of Egypt, was on uncovering monuments in support of tourism.
Alessandro Barsanti excavated here between 1899 and 1901.
Saqqara was excavated between 1905 and 1914 by James Edward Quibell. One of the excavation reports was delayed until 1927. Cecil Mallaby Firth, collaborating with Quibell, excavated at the site in the 1920s until his death.
The Egypt Exploration Society worked at Saqqara, primarily in North Saqqara, in the 1950s and 1960s with excavations led by Walter B. Emery, Geoffrey T. Martin, and Harry Smith.
== Recent Discoveries ==
=== 2010s ===
During routine excavations in 2011 at the dog catacomb in Saqqara necropolis, an excavation team led by Salima Ikram and an international team of researchers led by Paul Nicholson of Cardiff University uncovered almost eight million animal mummies at the burial site next to the sacred temple of Anubis. It is thought that the mummified animals, mostly dogs, were intended to pass on the prayers of their owners to their deities.
In July 2018, a German-Egyptian research team headed by Ramadan Badry Hussein of the University of Tübingen reported the discovery of an extremely rare gilded burial mask that probably dates from the Saite-Persian period in a partly damaged wooden coffin. The last time a similar mask was found was in 1939. The eyes were covered with obsidian, calcite, and black hued gemstone possibly onyx. "The finding of this mask could be called a sensation. Very few masks of precious metal have been preserved to the present day, because the tombs of most Ancient Egyptian dignitaries were looted in ancient times." said Hussein.
In September 2018, several dozen cache of mummies dating 2,000 years back were found by a team of Polish archaeologists led by Kamil Kuraszkiewicz from the Faculty of Oriental Studies of the University of Warsaw. The Polish-Egyptian expedition works under the auspices of the Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology University of Warsaw. Investigations were carried out for over two decades in the area to the west of the Djoser Pyramid. The most important discoveries include the tomb of vizier Merefnebef with a funerary chapel decorated with multi-colored reliefs, which was uncovered in 1997. as well as the tomb of courtier Nyankhnefertem uncovered in 2003. The expedition also explored two necropoles. Archaeologists revealed several dozen graves of noblemen from the period of the 6th Dynasty, dating to the 24th–21st century BC, and 500 graves of indigent people dating approximately to the 6th century BC – 1st century AD. Most of the bodies were poorly preserved and all organic materials, including the wooden caskets, had decayed. The tombs discovered most recently (in 2018) form part of the younger, so-called Upper Necropolis.
Most of the mummies we discovered last season were very modest, they were only subjected to basic embalming treatments, wrapped in bandages and placed directly in pits dug in the sand
The research of the Polish-Egyptian expedition also focuses on the interpretation of the so-called Dry Moat, a vast trench hewn around the Djoser Pyramid. The most recent discoveries confirm the hypothesis that the Dry Moat was a model of the pharaoh's journey to the netherworld, a road the deceased ruler had to follow to attain eternal life.
In November 2018, an Egyptian archaeological mission located seven ancient Egyptian tombs at the ancient necropolis of Saqqara. Three of the tombs were used for cats, some dating back to the Fifth and Sixth Dynasties, while one of four other sarcophagi was unsealed. Among the dozens of cat mummies were 100 wooden and gilded statues of cats and one in bronze dedicated to the cat goddess Bastet, and funerary items dating back to the 12th Dynasty. Another of the seven tombs belongs to Khufu-Imhat, the overseer of buildings in the royal palace.
Also in November 2018, a collection of rare mummified scarab beetles was unearthed in two sarcophagi, one of which was decorated with paintings of large black beetles.
Also in November 2018, the Egyptian government announced the discovery at Saqqara of a previously unknown 4,400-year-old tomb. It belongs to Wahtye, a high-ranking priest who served under King Neferirkare Kakai during the Fifth Dynasty, and his wife, four children and mother. The tomb is about 33 feet (10 meters) long by 10 feet (3.0 meters) wide and has five burial shafts and a basement. It contains more than fifty sculptures, and is painted with scenes of the family, wine and pottery making, musical performances, sailing, hunting, and furniture making.
On 13 April 2019, an expedition led by a member of the Czech Institute of Egyptology, Mohamed Megahed, discovered a 4,000-year-old tomb near Egypt's Saqqara Necropolis. Archaeologists confirmed that the tomb belonged to an influential person named Khuwy, who lived in Egypt during the 5th Dynasty. "The L-shaped Khuwy tomb starts with a small corridor heading downwards into an antechamber and from there a larger chamber with painted reliefs depicting the tomb owner seated at an offerings table", reported Megahed. Some paintings maintained their brightness over a long time in the tomb. Mainly made of white limestone bricks, the tomb had a tunnel entrance generally typical for pyramids. Archaeologists say that there might be a connection between Khuwy and pharaoh because the mausoleum was found near the pyramid of Egyptian Pharaoh Djedkare Isesi, who ruled during that time.
In October 2019, a cache of 30 coffins with mummies was discovered, at the time Egypt's largest in more than a century and the first cache to be discovered by a solely Egyptian mission. The coffins were stacked on top of each other and arranged in two rows about three feet below the sandy surface. The first coffin's head was partially exposed in the sand, which led to the cache's discovery. Two of the coffins belonged to children, a rare occurrence in archeology. Mostafa Waziri, secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, explained that one could identify the mummy's gender by the shape of the hands on the coffin, open hands being female and hands balled into fists being male. The colors of the coffin inscriptions---made from limestone, red oak, turquoise, and other natural stones mixed with eggwhites—stayed intact, and the mixture of egg yolk and candle wax spread over the coffins to make them shine was still visible, making this a unique find.
=== 2020s ===
On April 28, 2020, archeologists announced they had found a 30-foot-deep (9 meter) burial shaft containing five limestone sarcophagi, four wooden coffins with human mummies, and an array of other artifacts. Among them were 365 faience ushabti and a small wooden obelisk about 40 centimeters tall that had been painted with depictions of Horus, Isis and Nepthys.
In September 2020, a 36-foot (11-meter) deep burial shaft revealed almost 30 sarcophagi that had remained completely sealed since their interment.
On 3 October 2020, Khalid el-Anany, Egypt's tourism and antiquities minister announced the discovery of at least 59 sealed sarcophagi with mummies more than 2,600 years old. Archaeologists also revealed the 20 statues of Ptah-Soker and a carved 35-centimeter tall bronze statue of god Nefertem.
On 19 October 2020, the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities announced the discovery of gilded, wooden statues and more than 80 coffins in three burial shafts. Officials believed the coffins contain senior officials and priests from the 26th Dynasty.
In November 2020, archaeologists unearthed more than 100 delicately painted wooden coffins dating to the 26th Dynasty and 40 statues of the local goddess Ptah Soker. Other artifacts discovered include funeral masks, canopic jars and 1,000 ceramic amulets. “This discovery is very important because it proves that Saqqara was the main burial of the 26th Dynasty,” said Zahi Hawass, an Egyptologist and Egypt's former Minister of State for Antiquities Affairs.
In January 2021, the tourism and antiquities ministry announced the discovery of more than 50 wooden sarcophagi in 52 burial shafts which date back to the New Kingdom period, each around 30 to 40 feet deep, and a 13 ft-long papyrus that contains texts from Chapter 17 of the Book of the Dead. The papyrus scroll belonged to a man named Bu-Khaa-Af, whose name is written on it, on his sarcophagus, and on four ushabtis. Excerpts from the Book of the Dead were also painted onto the surface of other coffins. Also found in the shafts were wooden funerary masks, board games, a shrine dedicated to god of the dead Anubis, bird-shaped artifacts and a bronze axe. A limestone stelae dated to the reign of Ramesses II was found in one of the shafts, depicting the overseer of the king's military chariot Kha-Ptah and his wife Mwt-em-wia worshipping Osiris and sitting with six of their children.
Also in January 2021, a team of archaeologists led by Zahi Hawass found the funerary temple of Naert or Narat and three warehouses made of bricks attached to the southeastern side for storage of temple provisions, offerings and tools. Researchers also revealed that Narat's name was engraved on a fallen obelisk near the main entrance. Previously unknown to researchers, Naert was a wife of Teti, the first king of the sixth dynasty.
In November 2021, archeologists from Cairo University discovered several tombs, including that of Batah-M-Woya, chief treasurer during the reign of Ramesses II, and of a military leader named Hor Mohib.
In March 2022, five 4000-year-old tombs belonging to senior officials from the Old Kingdom and First Intermediary Period were discovered. On 30 May 2022, 250 sarcophagi and 150 statuettes were displayed at Saqqara, dated back to the Late Period more than 2,500 years ago, in addition to a 9-meter-long papyrus scroll which could be a depiction of a chapter of the Book of the Dead.
In May 2022, the discovery of the nearly 4,300-year-old tomb of an ancient Egyptian high-ranked person who handled royal, sealed documents of pharaoh was announced. According to University of Warsaw’s Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology, the elaborately decorated tomb belonged to a man named Mehtjetju who served as a priest and an inspector of the royal property. Kamil O. Kuraszkiewicz, expedition director stated that Mehtjetju most likely lived at about the same time, at some point during the reigns of the first three rulers of the Sixth Dynasty: Teti, Userkare and Pepy I.
In January 2023, Zahi Hawass announced the discovery of four tombs at Saqqara including a 4,300-year-old mummy to a man named Hekashepes covered with gold, in addition to finds date back to the 5th and 6th dynasties, such as a priest inspector named Khnumdjedef, secret keeper called Meri and a judge and writer named Fetek.
In April 2024, a rock-cut tomb dating back to the Second Dynasty was uncovered in Saqqara by a team of Japanese and Egyptian archaeologists. The tomb contained artifacts from various periods, spanning over the Late Period, the Ptolemaic period, and the 18th Dynasty. Among the findings were remains of an adult with a colored mask and a small child, in addition to two terracotta statues depicting Isis and Harpocrates.
In April 2025, archaeologists led by Dr. Zahi Hawass uncovered the tomb of Prince Waser-If-Re, son of Userkaf, the founder of Egypt's Fifth Dynasty. The tomb features a pink granite false door, measuring 4.5 meters in height and 1.15 meters in width, inscribed with the prince's titles, including "Hereditary Prince," "Royal Scribe," "Vizier," and "Chanting Priest". According to the archaeologists, this is the first discovery of such a large pink granite false door at Saqqara, signifying the prince's high status.
== See also ==
Bubasteum
List of Egyptian pyramids
Saqqara Bird
Saqqara Tablet
Secrets of the Saqqara Tomb, 2020 documentary
== References ==
== External links ==
Information on Saqqara
Saqqara.nl (Friends of Saqqara Foundation)
Discoveries on the site from February 2007
University of Pennsylvania Museum excavations at Saqqara
Saqqara Information - Historvius Archived 2016-08-19 at the Wayback Machine |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bassmaster_Classic | Bassmaster Classic | The Bassmaster Classic (known as the Bass Pro Shops Bassmaster Classic for sponsorship reasons) is a tournament in the sport of professional bass fishing, organized by the Bass Anglers Sportsman Society. It was first held in 1971 on Lake Mead, Nevada. Originally it was a fall event, (1971-1983) but it switched to a summer event in 1984 and then to a late winter event in 2006.
Rick Clunn and Kevin VanDam have each won the event four times. Jordan Lee, Bobby Murray, Hank Parker, George Cochran and Hank Cherry have each won twice.
First-place money has grown from $10,000 in 1971 to $500,000 in 2006; it was reduced to $300,000 in 2014.
== History ==
In 1968, Ray Scott officially formed and incorporated the Bass Anglers Sportsman Society (B.A.S.S.). Don Butler from Oklahoma would become the first B.A.S.S. member after paying Ray Scott $100 for a lifetime membership. The first ever Bassmaster Magazine would also be published in the same year.
== Rules and procedures ==
The field has ranged from 24 to 61 anglers. The 2009 competition included women for the first time. 2010 was the last year for women to be given a specific Classic spot. As in previous years, they now have to earn a spot via the Opens or, qualify for the Bassmaster Elite Series and have enough success to gain a spot to the Classic. The Bassmaster College Series, B.A.S.S. Nation and the Team Championship also offer paths to the Classic.
The Bassmaster Classic takes place over three days. All fish are caught under catch-and-release rules, must measure at least 12 inches (or as that state law requires), and must be alive at the time they are presented for weigh-in or a penalty will be assessed. There is a cut after the second day, in which only the 25 top anglers, based on total weight, advance to the third day. The highest total weight after three days wins the competition.
Contestants can only fish in specified areas at the competition venue. This is usually a lake, but the 1980 Classic was held on the Saint Lawrence River out of Alexandria Bay, NY, the 2005 competition was held at Three Rivers (Allegheny River and Monongahela River which forms the Ohio River) in Pittsburgh, with some competitors using tributaries such as the Beaver River and Youghiogheny River miles from the confluence. In 2009 and 2012 the Classic used a 100-mile stretch of the Red River in Shreveport, Louisiana. In 2011, the Classic was held on the Louisiana Delta. The Classic venue continues to change from year to year, but tends to revisit prior Classic sites as well.
From its inception to 1976, the Classic was held at a "mystery lake," unknown to competitors until they were aboard an aircraft bound for the site. Founder Ray Scott changed the practice for the 1977 Classic, announcing the site in advance so that fans of the sport could plan ahead to attend.
== Live Scope ==
The debate of the tool known as "Live Scope" has been a controversial topic since its introduction. Up until 2015, anglers would have to use traditional sonar, local charts, and traditional fishing methods such as 'flippin' and pitching to locate and catch fish. In 2015 however, Garmin, an American technology company, developed the first live scanning sonar. This new technology, known as live scope, would sweep the bass fishing world by storm allowing anglers to watch the fish strike their bait in real time. Live scope made sonar, underwater charts, and traditional fishing methods obsolete as you could watch everything happing underwater on a high resolution screen.
In 2021, live scope was used in the Bassmaster Classic for the first time. The anglers who used it would go on to consistently be top performers at the event. Bassmaster angler Jason Christie would go on to say "It was the easiest fishing I’d ever had in my life". The success of live scope would go on to spark many debates on whether contestants should be allowed to use such a tool. Many anglers advocate for it, but just as many hope it will be banned.
Before the 2025 season, B.A.S.S was pressured into making a decision on the application of live scope. On September 4th, B.A.S.S released a statement explaining that live scope would not be banned. Instead, all anglers participating in the Bassmaster Elite Series and contenders for the Bass Pro Shops Bassmaster Classic, would be forced to follow equipment standardization rules. These rules would implement significant guidelines on what and how much technology can be used in the event.
== Past editions ==
== Record Book ==
Largest Bass Caught: 11-10, Preston Clark, Toho, FL 2006
Heaviest Venue Total Weight: 76-15, Easton Fothergill, Lake Ray Roberts, TX 2025
Heaviest Total Weight: 76-15, Easton Fothergill, Lake Ray Roberts, Fort Worth, TX, 2025
Lowest Total Winning Weight: 12-15. Kevin Van Dam, Three Rivers, PA 2005
Heaviest Single Day Weight: 32-3, Paul Mueller, Guntersville, AL 2014
Most Bassmaster Classic Wins: 4, Rick Clunn, 1976, 1977, 1984, 1990 / 4, Kevin VanDam, 2001, 2005, 2010, 2011
Most Top 5 Classic Finishes: 11, Rick Clunn
Most Consecutive Classic Appearances: 28, Rick Clunn, 1974-2001
Most Second Place Finishes: 4, Aaron Martens, 2002, 2004, 2005, 2011
Largest Final Day Comeback: 13-14 deficit, Jordan Lee, Conroe, TX 2017
== Note ==
== References ==
== External links ==
[1]
Bassmaster Classic 2008 Update Venue
BASS official site
About.com Archived 2009-06-08 at the Wayback Machine
2007 Classic qualifiers
2008 Classic update
2008 Classic update
2008 Classic update
Bassmaster Classic Timeline |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Garbarino | Andrew Garbarino | Andrew Reed Garbarino ( GAR-bə-REE-noh; born September 27, 1984) is an American attorney and politician serving as the U.S. representative for New York's 2nd congressional district since 2021. A member of the Republican Party, he served as the New York State Assemblyman for the 7th district from 2013 to 2020.
A moderate Republican, Garbarino is known for frequently breaking with his party on high-profile issues. In 2021, he voted with Democrats to help pass the Bipartisan Background Checks Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, and supported the creation of a commission to investigate the January 6 Capitol attack. In 2022, he voted in favor of the Respect for Marriage Act. In 2023, he was one of 18 Republicans who voted against Jim Jordan's nomination for Speaker of the House all three times.
In July 2025, he became the Chair of the House Homeland Security Committee following the resignation of Mark Green.
== Early life and education ==
Garbarino was born and raised in Sayville, New York. He graduated from Sayville High School and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in history and classical humanities from George Washington University. He then earned a Juris Doctor from Hofstra University School of Law.
== Career ==
After graduating from law school, Garbarino worked at his family law firm in Sayville. His family also owns numerous small businesses in communities from Bay Shore to Patchogue.
=== New York State Assembly ===
In 2012, Phil Boyle vacated his New York Assembly seat to run for the New York Senate. The New York Republican Party nominated Garbarino to replace him, and he was elected with 56% of the vote. He was reelected three times, in 2014, 2016, and 2018. Garbarino was a member of the New York Conference of Italian-American State Legislators as an assemblyman.
==== Election history ====
== U.S. House of Representatives ==
=== Elections ===
==== 2020 ====
Following the announcement that 14-term incumbent Representative Peter T. King would not run for reelection in 2020, Garbarino announced his candidacy for Congress in New York's 2nd congressional district. He ran in the June 23 Republican Party primary, and was endorsed by King, as well as the Nassau County and Suffolk County Republican Parties. He defeated Assemblyman Mike LiPetri, 65% to 35%.
In the general election, Garbarino was the candidate of the Republican, Conservative, and Libertarian parties, and the Serve America Movement. He defeated Suffolk County legislator Jackie Gordon, the nominee of the Democratic, Working Families, and Independence parties, 53% to 46%.
==== 2022 ====
Garbarino won the Republican primary with 53.7% of the vote against primary challengers Robert Cornicelli and Mike Rakebrandt.
In a rematch against 2020 Democratic nominee Jackie Gordon, Garbarino again defeated Gordon, 60.7% to 39.3%.
==== 2024 ====
Garbino won the general election with 59.8% of the vote against Democratic nominee Rob Lubin, who won 40.2% of the vote.
=== Tenure ===
Garbarino was sworn in on January 3, 2021. He is regarded as a moderate Republican, and he has often broken with his party on high-profile issues.
On January 6, 2021, Garbarino did not object to the Electoral College results, saying:The role of Congress is not to overturn the election or to take actions that silence voters. The Constitution is clear, the votes must be counted and certified by the states and Congress has the constitutional obligation to accept those electors and certify each states’ elections. All 50 states have certified their elections and the majority of electors have cast their votes for President-Elect Joe Biden. While I join many Long Islanders in wishing the results were different, Congress does not have the constitutional authority to overturn the election.In March 2021, Garbarino was one of 8 Republicans to vote for the Bipartisan Background Checks Act of 2021.
Garbarino voted against the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, as did every congressional Republican.
On May 19, 2021, Garbarino was one of 35 Republicans who joined all Democrats in voting to approve legislation to establish the January 6, 2021 commission meant to investigate the storming of the U.S. Capitol.
On November 5, 2021, Garbarino was one of 13 Republicans who voted with a majority of Democrats in favor of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. Trump excoriated House Republicans who voted for the bill.
In October 2023, Garbarino was one of 18 Republicans who voted against the nomination of Jim Jordan for Speaker of the House all three times.
During passage of President Trump's budget called the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" on May 22, 2025, Garbarino "fell asleep" and missed the vote.
==== Agriculture ====
In October 2023, Garbarino led a letter to the House Agriculture Committee by 16 House Republicans opposing the inclusion of the Ending Agricultural Trade Suppression (EATS) Act in the 2023 farm bill, which would have overturned California's Proposition 12 and other state and local animal welfare laws restricting the sale of agricultural goods from animals raised in battery cages, gestation crates, and veal crates. Garbarino led an additional letter in 2025 by 14 House Republicans opposing an updated version of the law, the Save Our Bacon Act. He has received an award from the agricultural advocacy groups Organization for Competitive Markets and Competitive Markets Action for opposing federal preemption of state and local agricultural laws.
In September 2024, Garbarino led a letter by 11 House Republicans to Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines requesting an analysis of Chinese biotechnology and cultivated meat developments and soliciting recommendations for the United States to outcompete China in alternative proteins research and development.
==== LGBT rights ====
In 2021, Garbarino co-sponsored the Fairness for All Act, a Republican alternative to the Equality Act. The bill would prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity, and protect the free exercise of religion.
On July 19, 2022, Garbarino was one of 46 Republicans who voted for the Respect for Marriage Act, codifying the right to same-sex marriage in federal law.
=== Committee assignments ===
For the 119th Congress:
Committee on Ethics
Committee on Financial Services
Subcommittee on Capital Markets (Vice Chairman)
Subcommittee on Housing and Insurance
Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations
Committee on Homeland Security (Chair)
=== Caucus memberships ===
Climate Solutions Caucus
Problem Solvers Caucus
Republican Main Street Partnership
Republican Governance Group
== Personal life ==
Garbarino is Catholic. He resides in Bayport.
== References ==
== External links ==
Representative Andrew Garbarino official U.S. House website
The New York Assembly: Andrew R. Garbarino
Campaign website
Biography at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
Financial information (federal office) at the Federal Election Commission
Legislation sponsored at the Library of Congress
Profile at Vote Smart
Appearances on C-SPAN |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zofia_Kielan-Jaworowska | Zofia Kielan-Jaworowska | Zofia Emilia Kielan-Jaworowska (25 April 1925 – 13 March 2015) was a Polish paleobiologist. In the mid-1960s, she led a series of Polish-Mongolian paleontological expeditions to the Gobi Desert. She was the first woman to serve on the executive committee of the International Union of Geological Sciences. The most notable dinosaur species she discovered include: Deinocheirus and Gallimimus while Kielanodon and Zofiabaatar were named in her honour.
In her obituary in Nature, Richard L. Cifelli wrote that "Much of what we know about the origin and early evolution of mammals stems, directly or indirectly, from [her work]".
== Early life and education ==
Zofia Kielan-Jaworowska was born in Sokołów Podlaski, Poland, on April 25, 1925. In 1928, her father, Franciszek Kielan, was offered a job for the Association of Agriculture and Trade Cooperatives in Warsaw, to which her family moved for five years. Zofia and family returned to Warsaw in 1934 and lived in Żoliborz - a borough of Warsaw. She began her studies in Warsaw, following the destruction after the war when the Nazis had attempted to completely destroy the city, resulting in the Department of Geology joining the ruins. She attended lectures given instead by the Polish paleontologist, Roman Kozłowski, in his own home. This is where her passion began. She subsequently earned a master's degree in zoology and a paleontology doctorate at Warsaw University, where she later became a professor. 15 years later, she organized the first Polish-Mongolian paleontological quest to the Gobi Desert, and returned seven times. She became the first woman to serve on the committee of the International Union of Geological Sciences. Her findings remain arguably unmatched by any living expert.
During World War II, together with her family, she helped to hide two Jewish women.
== Career and research ==
She was employed by the Institute of Paleobiology of the Polish Academy of Sciences. She held a number of functions in professional organizations in Poland and the United States.
Her work included the study of Devonian and Ordovician trilobites from Central Europe (Poland and Czech Republic), leading several Polish-Mongolian paleontological expeditions to the Gobi Desert, and the discovery of new species of crocodiles, lizards, turtles, dinosaurs (notably Deinocheirus), birds and multituberculates. She is the author of the book Hunting for Dinosaurs, and a co-author of the book Mammals from the Age of Dinosaurs.
Her work was published widely in peer reviewed scientific journals, books and monographs.
While at the University of Warsaw, she started her master's research. This allowed her to join expeditions with other paleontologists and make various contributions. Kielan-Jaworowska participated in her first paleontological excavation in 1947 along with a group of researchers from the Museum of Earth and the National Geological Institute. The excavations, led by the geologist Jan Czarnocki, took place in Poland's Świętokrzyskie Mountains in exposures of Middle Devonian strata. The group's work involved digging for soft rock and rinsing away the sediment, consisting of yellow marl, in running water while using a sieve to collect any fossils that were present. Kielan-Jaworowska spent two months with the group and specifically sought trilobite fossils, which became the focus of her master's thesis. She returned to specific sites in the Świętokrzyskie Mountains over the next three summers to continue developing her collection, which grew to over one hundred trilobite specimens.
Kielan-Jaworowska was awarded her master's degree in 1949. She had been employed as an assistant in the University of Warsaw's Department of Paleontology since fall 1948. She worked there until 1952, teaching classes in paleontology for biology and geology students.
During her expeditions from 1963 to 1971 to the Gobi Desert, she unearthed many dinosaurs and mammals from the Cretaceous and early Tertiary. Her findings were so extensive that, in 1965, her team had shipped over 20 tons of fossils back to Poland. One of her most notable finds was in 1971, when she discovered a Protoceratops and a young Velociraptor tangled in a struggle. The fossilization process of how these two remained intact in this position is still debated. Although her findings were mainly dinosaurs, she did not focus all her research on them. From 1949 to 1963, she concentrated on Paleozoic invertebrates, especially trilobites. They were among the oldest fossils commonly found. This led her to shift her focus on researching Mesozoic mammals in 1963.
Kielan-Jaworowska has added a great deal of contribution to monographs that detail findings of fossils and wrote her own book, Hunting for Dinosaurs, which give brief descriptions of her paleontological endeavors in the Gobi Desert. The book was written in Polish and translated to English and published in 1969. The book notes her exchange with the Mongolian people, as well as the hardships she faced to achieve success in her life's work. In her research, she explored the asteroid theory regarding the mass extinction of dinosaurs. Kielan-Jaworowska concluded the book with noting how the research of the mass extinctions could promote awareness for future decades. Kielan-Jaworowska and her book gained international attention and fame.
From 1960 to 1982, she was the director of the Institute of Paleobiology. In 1982, she stepped down from her position to undertake a visiting professorship at the Musée national d’Histoire naturelle in Paris, which lasted for two years. Soon after her return to Warsaw, she was appointed Professor of Paleontology at the University of Oslo, which lasted from 1986 to 1995 when she was appointed Professor Emerita in the institute of Paleobiology.
== Awards and honours ==
In 1988, she was awarded the Walter Granger Memorial Award.
In 1999, Kielan-Jaworowska received the Righteous Among the Nations Medal.
She was awarded the Romer-Simpson Medal in 1996, becoming the 8th recipient of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology's award, which honors sustained and outstanding scholarly excellence in the discipline of vertebrate paleontology. In 2002, she also became the recipient of the Commander's Cross with Star of the Order of Polonia Restituta. Her book, Mammals from the Age of Dinosaurs, won her the prestigious Prize of the Foundation for Polish Science in 2005. Her work was recognized "for a creative synthesis of research on the Mesozoic evolution of mammals".
Kielan-Jaworowska's co-author, Zhe-Xi Lou, describes her contribution to paleontology as unmatched by any living experts, and that "in the whole of Mesozoic mammalian studies for the last 100 years, only the late American paleontologist George Gaylord Simpson would be her equal". "She is the rarest among the rare – she has been a leader in making important scientific contributions, and also a gregarious and charismatic figure, both of which have made paleontology a better science, and paleontologists worldwide a better community."
She was a member of the Polish Geological Society, Academia Europaea, Palaeontological Association, Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, Norwegian Paleontological Society, Polish Academy of Sciences as well as an honorary member of the Linnean Society of London, Polish Copernicus Society of Naturalists and the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology. She worked at Harvard University (1973–74), Paris Diderot University (1982–84), University of Oslo (1987–95) and the Polish Academy of Sciences.
A number of extinct animals have been named in her honour including Kielanodon, Zofiabaatar, Kielantherium, Zofiagale as well as Indobaatar zofiae.
== Personal life ==
She married Zbigniew Jaworowski, a professor of radiobiology, in 1958.
== Books ==
Kielan-Jaworowska, Z. (1974). Hunting for dinosaurs. Cambridge: MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-61007-0.
Lillegraven, Jason A.; Kielan-Jaworowska, Zofia; Clemens, William A., eds. (1979). Mesozoic mammals : the first two-thirds of mammalian history. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-03951-3.
Kielan-Jaworowska, Zofia; Cifelli, Richard L.; Luo, Zhe-Xi (2004). Mammals from the age of dinosaurs : origins, evolution, and structure. Columbia University Press. ISBN 0-231-11918-6.
Kielan-Jaworowska, Z. (2013). In pursuit of early mammals. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0-253-00817-6.
== References ==
== External links ==
Professor Kielan-Jaworowska's Web-page on PAN Server Archived 2017-05-27 at the Wayback Machine
In memoriam: Zofia Kielan-Jaworowska (1925–2015), obituary in Acta Palaeontologica Polonica |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluto | Pluto | Pluto (minor-planet designation: 134340 Pluto) is a dwarf planet in the Kuiper belt, a ring of bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune. It is the ninth-largest and tenth-most-massive known object to directly orbit the Sun. It is the largest known trans-Neptunian object by volume by a small margin, but is less massive than Eris. Like other Kuiper belt objects, Pluto is made primarily of ice and rock and is much smaller than the inner planets. Pluto has roughly one-sixth the mass of the Moon and one-third of its volume. Originally considered a planet, its status was changed when astronomers adopted a new definition of the word with new criteria.
Pluto has a moderately eccentric and inclined orbit, ranging from 30 to 49 astronomical units (4.5 to 7.3 billion kilometres; 2.8 to 4.6 billion miles) from the Sun. Light from the Sun takes 5.5 hours to reach Pluto at its orbital distance of 39.5 AU (5.91 billion km; 3.67 billion mi). Pluto's eccentric orbit periodically brings it closer to the Sun than Neptune, but a stable orbital resonance prevents them from colliding.
Pluto has five known moons: Charon, the largest, whose diameter is just over half that of Pluto; Styx; Nix; Kerberos; and Hydra. Pluto and Charon are sometimes considered a binary system because the barycenter of their orbits does not lie within either body, and they are tidally locked. New Horizons was the first spacecraft to visit Pluto and its moons, making a flyby on July 14, 2015, and taking detailed measurements and observations.
Pluto was discovered in 1930 by Clyde W. Tombaugh, making it the first known object in the Kuiper belt. It was immediately hailed as the ninth planet. However, its planetary status was questioned when it was found to be much smaller than expected. These doubts increased following the discovery of additional objects in the Kuiper belt starting in the 1990s, particularly the more massive scattered disk object Eris in 2005. In 2006, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) formally redefined the term planet to exclude dwarf planets such as Pluto. Many planetary astronomers, however, continue to consider Pluto and other dwarf planets to be planets.
== History ==
=== Discovery ===
In the 1840s, Urbain Le Verrier used Newtonian mechanics to predict the position of the then-undiscovered planet Neptune after analyzing perturbations in the orbit of Uranus. Subsequent observations of Neptune in the late 19th century led astronomers to speculate that Uranus's orbit was being disturbed by another planet besides Neptune.
In 1906, Percival Lowell—a wealthy Bostonian who had founded Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, in 1894—started an extensive project in search of a possible ninth planet, which he termed "Planet X". In 1909, Lowell and William H. Pickering suggested several possible celestial coordinates for such a planet. Lowell and his observatory conducted his search, using mathematical calculations made by Elizabeth Williams, until his death in 1916, but to no avail. Unknown to Lowell, his surveys had captured two faint images of Pluto on March 19 and April 7, 1915, but they were not recognized for what they were. There are fourteen other known precovery observations, with the earliest made by the Yerkes Observatory on August 20, 1909.
Percival's widow, Constance Lowell, entered into a ten-year legal battle with the Lowell Observatory over her husband's legacy, and the search for Planet X did not resume until 1929. Vesto Melvin Slipher, the observatory director, gave the job of locating Planet X to 23-year-old Clyde Tombaugh, who had just arrived at the observatory after Slipher had been impressed by a sample of his astronomical drawings.
Tombaugh's task was to systematically image the night sky in pairs of photographs, then examine each pair and determine whether any objects had shifted position. Using a blink comparator, he rapidly shifted back and forth between views of each of the plates to create the illusion of movement of any objects that had changed position or appearance between photographs. On February 18, 1930, after nearly a year of searching, Tombaugh discovered a possible moving object on photographic plates taken on January 23 and 29. A lesser-quality photograph taken on January 21 helped confirm the movement. After the observatory obtained further confirmatory photographs, news of the discovery was telegraphed to the Harvard College Observatory on March 13, 1930.
One Plutonian year corresponds to 247.94 Earth years; thus, in 2178, Pluto will complete its first orbit since its discovery.
=== Name ===
The name Pluto came from the Roman god of the underworld; and it is also an epithet for Hades (the Greek equivalent of Pluto).
Upon the announcement of the discovery, Lowell Observatory received over a thousand suggestions for names. Three names topped the list: Minerva, Pluto and Cronus. 'Minerva' was the Lowell staff's first choice but was rejected because it had already been used for an asteroid; Cronus was disfavored because it was promoted by an unpopular and egocentric astronomer, Thomas Jefferson Jackson See. A vote was then taken and 'Pluto' was the unanimous choice. To make sure the name stuck, and that the planet would not suffer changes in its name as Uranus had, Lowell Observatory proposed the name to the American Astronomical Society and the Royal Astronomical Society; both approved it unanimously. The name was published on May 1, 1930.
The name Pluto had received some 150 nominations among the letters and telegrams sent to Lowell. The first had been from Venetia Burney (1918–2009), an eleven-year-old schoolgirl in Oxford, England, who was interested in classical mythology. She had suggested it to her grandfather Falconer Madan when he read the news of Pluto's discovery to his family over breakfast; Madan passed the suggestion to astronomy professor Herbert Hall Turner, who cabled it to colleagues at Lowell on March 16, three days after the announcement.
The name 'Pluto' was mythologically appropriate: the god Pluto was one of six surviving children of Saturn, and the others had already all been chosen as names of major or minor planets (his brothers Jupiter and Neptune, and his sisters Ceres, Juno and Vesta). Both the god and the planet inhabited "gloomy" regions, and the god was able to make himself invisible, as the planet had been for so long.
The choice was further helped by the fact that the first two letters of Pluto were the initials of Percival Lowell; indeed, 'Percival' had been one of the more popular suggestions for a name for the new planet.
=== Symbol ===
Once named, Pluto's planetary symbol ⟨⟩ was then created as a monogram of the letters "PL". This symbol is rarely used in astronomy anymore, though it is still common in astrology. However, the most common astrological symbol for Pluto, occasionally used in astronomy as well, is an orb (possibly representing Pluto's invisibility cap) over Pluto's bident ⟨⟩, which dates to the early 1930s.
The name 'Pluto' was soon embraced by wider culture. In 1930, Walt Disney was apparently inspired by it when he introduced for Mickey Mouse a canine companion named Pluto, although Disney animator Ben Sharpsteen could not confirm why the name was given. In 1941, Glenn T. Seaborg named the newly created element plutonium after Pluto, in keeping with the tradition of naming elements after newly discovered planets, following uranium, which was named after Uranus, and neptunium, which was named after Neptune.
Most languages use the name "Pluto" in various transliterations. In Japanese, Houei Nojiri suggested the calque Meiōsei (冥王星, "Star of the King (God) of the Underworld"), and this was borrowed into Chinese and Korean. Some languages of India use the name Pluto, but others, such as Hindi, use the name of Yama, the God of Death in Hinduism. Polynesian languages also tend to use the indigenous god of the underworld, as in Māori Whiro.
Vietnamese does not follow the Chinese usage due to a phonological constraint: the Sino-Vietnamese word 冥 minh "dark" is homophonous with 明 minh "bright". Instead, Vietnamese uses Yama, which is also a Buddhist deity, in the form of Sao Diêm Vương 星閻王 "Yama's Star", derived from Chinese 閻王 Yán Wáng / Yìhm Wòhng "King Yama".
=== Planet X disproved ===
Once Pluto was found, its faintness and lack of a viewable disc cast doubt on the idea that it was Lowell's Planet X. Estimates of Pluto's mass were revised downward throughout the 20th century.
Astronomers initially calculated its mass based on its presumed effect on Neptune and Uranus. In 1931, Pluto was calculated to be roughly the mass of Earth, with further calculations in 1948 bringing the mass down to roughly that of Mars. In 1976, Dale Cruikshank, Carl Pilcher and David Morrison of the University of Hawaiʻi calculated Pluto's albedo for the first time, finding that it matched that for methane ice; this meant Pluto had to be exceptionally luminous for its size and therefore could not be more than 1 percent the mass of Earth. (Pluto's albedo is 1.4–1.9 times that of Earth.)
In 1978, the discovery of Pluto's moon Charon allowed the measurement of Pluto's mass for the first time: roughly 0.2% that of Earth, and far too small to account for the discrepancies in the orbit of Uranus. Subsequent searches for an alternative Planet X, notably by Robert Sutton Harrington, failed. In 1992, Myles Standish used data from Voyager 2's flyby of Neptune in 1989, which had revised the estimates of Neptune's mass downward by 0.5%—an amount comparable to the mass of Mars—to recalculate its gravitational effect on Uranus. With the new figures added in, the discrepancies, and with them the need for a Planet X, vanished.
As of 2000 the majority of scientists agree that Planet X, as Lowell defined it, does not exist. Lowell had made a prediction of Planet X's orbit and position in 1915 that was fairly close to Pluto's actual orbit and its position at that time. Ernest W. Brown concluded soon after Pluto's discovery that this was a coincidence.
=== Classification ===
From 1992 onward, many bodies were discovered orbiting in the same volume as Pluto, showing that Pluto is part of a population of objects called the Kuiper belt. This made its official status as a planet controversial, with many questioning whether Pluto should be considered together with or separately from its surrounding population. Museum and planetarium directors occasionally created controversy by omitting Pluto from planetary models of the Solar System. In February 2000 the Hayden Planetarium in New York City displayed a Solar System model of only eight planets, which made headlines almost a year later.
Ceres, Pallas, Juno and Vesta lost their planet status among most astronomers after the discovery of many other asteroids in the 1840s. On the other hand, planetary geologists often regarded Ceres, and less often Pallas and Vesta, as being different from smaller asteroids because they were large enough to have undergone geological evolution. Although the first Kuiper belt objects discovered were quite small, objects increasingly closer in size to Pluto were soon discovered, some large enough (like Pluto itself) to satisfy geological but not dynamical ideas of planethood.
In 1998, Brian G. Marsden of Harvard University's Minor Planet Center suggested that Pluto be given the minor planet number 10000 while still retaining its official position as a planet. The prospect of Pluto's "demotion" created a public outcry, and in response the International Astronomical Union clarified that it was not at that time proposing to remove Pluto from the planet list.
In the early 2000's, astronomers at Caltech led by Michael E. Brown undertook a wide survey of the skies using digital detection technology, finding numerous Trans-Neptunian objects. Many of these objects were initially measured as larger than or equal in size to Pluto, igniting a debate over whether or not to consider them planets. Later, estimates were revised down due to higher than expected albedos.
The debate became unavoidable when, in July 2005, these astronomers announced the discovery of a new object, Eris, which was substantially more massive than Pluto and the most massive object discovered in the Solar System since Triton in 1846. The press initially called it the tenth planet, although there was no official consensus at the time on whether to call it a planet. Others in the astronomical community considered the discovery the strongest argument for reclassifying Pluto as a minor planet.
==== IAU classification ====
The debate came to a head in August 2006 during the triennial meeting of the IAU, when Uruguayan astronomers Julio Ángel Fernández and Gonzalo Tancredi first proposed the new definition for the term "planet". According to their proposal, there are three conditions for an object in the Solar System to be considered a planet:
The object must be in orbit around the Sun.
The object must be massive enough to be rounded by its own gravity. More specifically, its own gravity should pull it into a shape defined by hydrostatic equilibrium.
It must have cleared the neighborhood around its orbit.
Pluto fails to meet the third condition. Its mass is substantially less than the combined mass of the other objects in its orbit: 0.07 times, in contrast to Earth, which is 1.7 million times the remaining mass in its orbit (excluding the moon). The IAU further decided that bodies that, like Pluto, meet criteria 1 and 2, but do not meet criterion 3 would be called dwarf planets. In September 2006, the IAU included Pluto, and Eris and its moon Dysnomia, in their Minor Planet Catalogue, giving them the official minor-planet designations "(134340) Pluto", "(136199) Eris", and "(136199) Eris I Dysnomia". Had Pluto been included upon its discovery in 1930, it would have likely been designated 1164, following 1163 Saga, which was discovered a month earlier.
There has been some resistance within the astronomical community toward the reclassification, and in particular planetary scientists often continue to reject it, considering Pluto, Charon, and Eris to be planets for the same reason they do so for Ceres. In effect, this amounts to accepting only the second clause of the IAU definition. Alan Stern, principal investigator with NASA's New Horizons mission to Pluto, derided the IAU resolution. He also stated that because less than five percent of astronomers voted for it, the decision was not representative of the entire astronomical community. Marc W. Buie, then at the Lowell Observatory, petitioned against the definition. Others have supported the IAU, for example Mike Brown, the astronomer who discovered Eris.
Public reception to the IAU decision was mixed. A resolution introduced in the California State Assembly facetiously called the IAU decision a "scientific heresy". The New Mexico House of Representatives passed a resolution in honor of Clyde Tombaugh, the discoverer of Pluto and a longtime resident of that state, that declared that Pluto will always be considered a planet while in New Mexican skies and that March 13, 2007, was Pluto Planet Day. The Illinois Senate passed a similar resolution in 2009 on the basis that Tombaugh was born in Illinois. The resolution asserted that Pluto was "unfairly downgraded to a 'dwarf' planet" by the IAU."
Some members of the public have also rejected the change, citing the disagreement within the scientific community on the issue, or for sentimental reasons, maintaining that they have always known Pluto as a planet and will continue to do so regardless of the IAU decision. In 2006, in its 17th annual words-of-the-year vote, the American Dialect Society voted plutoed as the word of the year. To "pluto" is to "demote or devalue someone or something". In April 2024, Arizona (where Pluto was first discovered in 1930) passed a law naming Pluto as the official state planet.
Researchers on both sides of the debate gathered in August 2008, at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory for a conference that included back-to-back talks on the IAU definition of a planet. Entitled "The Great Planet Debate", the conference published a post-conference press release indicating that scientists could not come to a consensus about the definition of planet. In June 2008, the IAU had announced in a press release that the term "plutoid" would henceforth be used to refer to Pluto and other planetary-mass objects that have an orbital semi-major axis greater than that of Neptune, though the term has not seen significant use.
== Orbit ==
Pluto's orbital period is about 248 years. Its orbital characteristics are substantially different from those of the planets, which follow nearly circular orbits around the Sun close to a flat reference plane called the ecliptic. In contrast, Pluto's orbit is moderately inclined relative to the ecliptic (over 17°) and moderately eccentric (elliptical). This eccentricity means a small region of Pluto's orbit lies closer to the Sun than Neptune's. The Pluto–Charon barycenter came to perihelion on September 5, 1989, and was last closer to the Sun than Neptune between February 7, 1979, and February 11, 1999.
Although the 3:2 resonance with Neptune (see below) is maintained, Pluto's inclination and eccentricity behave in a chaotic manner. Computer simulations can be used to predict its position for several million years (both forward and backward in time), but after intervals much longer than the Lyapunov time of 10–20 million years, calculations become unreliable: Pluto is sensitive to immeasurably small details of the Solar System, hard-to-predict factors that will gradually change Pluto's position in its orbit.
The semi-major axis of Pluto's orbit varies between about 39.3 and 39.6 AU with a period of about 19,951 years, corresponding to an orbital period varying between 246 and 249 years. The semi-major axis and period are presently getting longer.
=== Relationship with Neptune ===
Despite Pluto's orbit appearing to cross that of Neptune when viewed from north or south of the Solar System, the two objects' orbits do not intersect. When Pluto is closest to the Sun, and close to Neptune's orbit as viewed from such a position, it is also the farthest north of Neptune's path. Pluto's orbit passes about 8 AU north of that of Neptune, preventing a collision.
This alone is not enough to protect Pluto; perturbations from the planets (especially Neptune) could alter Pluto's orbit (such as its orbital precession) over millions of years so that a collision could happen. However, Pluto is also protected by its 2:3 orbital resonance with Neptune: for every two orbits that Pluto makes around the Sun, Neptune makes three, in a frame of reference that rotates at the rate that Pluto's perihelion precesses (about 0.97×10−4 degrees per year).
Each cycle lasts about 495 years. There are many other objects in this same resonance, called plutinos. At present, in each 495-year cycle, the first time Pluto is at perihelion (such as in 1989), Neptune is 57° ahead of Pluto. By Pluto's second passage through perihelion, Neptune will have completed a further one and a half of its own orbits, and will be 123° behind Pluto. Pluto and Neptune's minimum separation is over 17 AU, which is greater than Pluto's minimum separation from Uranus (11 AU). The minimum separation between Pluto and Neptune actually occurs near the time of Pluto's aphelion.
The 2:3 resonance between the two bodies is highly stable and has been preserved over millions of years. This prevents their orbits from changing relative to one another, so the two bodies can never pass near each other. Even if Pluto's orbit were not inclined, the two bodies could never collide.
When Pluto's period is slightly different from 3/2 of Neptune's, the pattern of its distance from Neptune will drift. Near perihelion Pluto moves interior to Neptune's orbit and is therefore moving faster, so during the first of two orbits in the 495-year cycle, it is approaching Neptune from behind. At present it remains between 50° and 65° behind Neptune for 100 years (e.g. 1937–2036).
The gravitational pull between the two causes angular momentum to be transferred to Pluto. This situation moves Pluto into a slightly larger orbit, where it has a slightly longer period, according to Kepler's third law. After several such repetitions, Pluto is sufficiently delayed that at the second perihelion of each cycle it will not be far ahead of Neptune coming behind it, and Neptune will start to decrease Pluto's period again. The whole cycle takes about 20,000 years to complete.
==== Other factors ====
Numerical studies have shown that over millions of years, the general nature of the alignment between the orbits of Pluto and Neptune does not change. There are several other resonances and interactions that enhance Pluto's stability. These arise principally from two additional mechanisms (besides the 2:3 mean-motion resonance).
First, Pluto's argument of perihelion, the angle between the point where it crosses the ecliptic (or the invariant plane) and the point where it is closest to the Sun, librates around 90°. This means that when Pluto is closest to the Sun, it is at its farthest north of the plane of the Solar System, preventing encounters with Neptune. This is a consequence of the Kozai mechanism, which relates the eccentricity of an orbit to its inclination to a larger perturbing body—in this case, Neptune. Relative to Neptune, the amplitude of libration is 38°, and so the angular separation of Pluto's perihelion to the orbit of Neptune is always greater than 52° (90°–38°). The closest such angular separation occurs every 10,000 years.
Second, the longitudes of ascending nodes of the two bodies—the points where they cross the invariant plane—are in near-resonance with the above libration. When the two longitudes are the same—that is, when one could draw a straight line through both nodes and the Sun—Pluto's perihelion lies exactly at 90°, and hence it comes closest to the Sun when it is furthest north of Neptune's orbit. This is known as the 1:1 superresonance. All the Jovian planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune) play a role in the creation of the superresonance.
== Rotation ==
Pluto's rotation period, its day, is equal to 6.387 Earth days. Like Uranus and 2 Pallas, Pluto rotates on its "side" in its orbital plane, with an axial tilt of 120°, and so its seasonal variation is extreme; at its solstices, one-fourth of its surface is in continuous daylight, whereas another fourth is in continuous darkness. The reason for this unusual orientation has been debated. Research from the University of Arizona has suggested that it may be due to the way that a body's spin will always adjust to minimize energy. This could mean a body reorienting itself to put extraneous mass near the equator and regions lacking mass tend towards the poles. This is called polar wander.
According to a paper released from the University of Arizona, this could be caused by masses of frozen nitrogen building up in shadowed areas of the dwarf planet. These masses would cause the body to reorient itself, leading to its unusual axial tilt of 120°. The buildup of nitrogen is due to Pluto's vast distance from the Sun. At the equator, temperatures can drop to −240 °C (−400.0 °F; 33.1 K), causing nitrogen to freeze as water would freeze on Earth. The same polar wandering effect seen on Pluto would be observed on Earth were the Antarctic ice sheet several times larger.
== Geology ==
=== Surface ===
The plains on Pluto's surface are composed of more than 98 percent nitrogen ice, with traces of methane and carbon monoxide. Nitrogen and carbon monoxide are most abundant on the anti-Charon face of Pluto (around 180° longitude, where Tombaugh Regio's western lobe, Sputnik Planitia, is located), whereas methane is most abundant near 300° east. The mountains are made of water ice. Pluto's surface is quite varied, with large differences in both brightness and color.
Pluto is one of the most contrastive bodies in the Solar System, with as much contrast as Saturn's moon Iapetus. The color varies from charcoal black, to dark orange and white. Pluto's color is more similar to that of Io with slightly more orange and significantly less red than Mars. Notable geographical features include Tombaugh Regio, or the "Heart" (a large bright area on the side opposite Charon), Belton Regio, or the "Whale" (a large dark area on the trailing hemisphere), and the "Brass Knuckles" (a series of equatorial dark areas on the leading hemisphere).
Sputnik Planitia, the western lobe of the "Heart", is a 1,000 km-wide basin of frozen nitrogen and carbon monoxide ices, divided into polygonal cells, which are interpreted as convection cells that carry floating blocks of water ice crust and sublimation pits towards their margins; there are obvious signs of glacial flows both into and out of the basin. It has no craters that were visible to New Horizons, indicating that its surface is less than 10 million years old. Latest studies have shown that the surface has an age of 180000+90000−40000 years.
The New Horizons science team summarized initial findings as "Pluto displays a surprisingly wide variety of geological landforms, including those resulting from glaciological and surface–atmosphere interactions as well as impact, tectonic, possible cryovolcanic, and mass-wasting processes."
In Western parts of Sputnik Planitia there are fields of transverse dunes formed by the winds blowing from the center of Sputnik Planitia in the direction of surrounding mountains. The dune wavelengths are in the range of 0.4–1 km and likely consist of methane particles 200–300 μm in size.
=== Internal structure ===
Pluto's density is 1.853±0.004 g/cm3. Because the decay of radioactive elements would eventually heat the ices enough for the rock to separate from them, scientists expect that Pluto's internal structure is differentiated, with the rocky material having settled into a dense core surrounded by a mantle of water ice. The pre–New Horizons estimate for the diameter of the core is 1700 km, 70% of Pluto's diameter.
It is possible that such heating continues, creating a subsurface ocean of liquid water 100 to 180 km thick at the core–mantle boundary. In September 2016, scientists at Brown University simulated the impact thought to have formed Sputnik Planitia, and showed that it might have been the result of liquid water upweling from below after the collision, implying the existence of a subsurface ocean at least 100 km deep.
In June 2020, astronomers reported evidence that Pluto may have had a subsurface ocean, and consequently may have been habitable, when it was first formed. In March 2022, a team of researchers proposed that the mountains Wright Mons and Piccard Mons are actually a merger of many smaller cryovolcanic domes, suggesting a source of heat on the body at levels previously thought not possible.
== Mass and size ==
Pluto's diameter is 2,376.6±3.2 km and its mass is (1.303±0.003)×1022 kg, 17.7% that of the Moon (0.22% that of Earth). Its surface area is 1.774443×107 km2, or just slightly bigger than Russia or Antarctica (particularly including the Antarctic sea ice during winter). Its surface gravity is 0.063 g (compared to 1 g for Earth and 0.17 g for the Moon). This gives Pluto an escape velocity of 4,363.2 km per hour / 2,711.167 miles per hour (as compared to Earth's 40,270 km per hour / 25,020 miles per hour). Pluto is more than twice the diameter and a dozen times the mass of Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt. It is less massive than the dwarf planet Eris, a trans-Neptunian object discovered in 2005, though Pluto has a larger diameter of 2,376.6 km compared to Eris's approximate diameter of 2,326 km.
With less than 0.2 lunar masses, Pluto is much less massive than the terrestrial planets, and also less massive than seven moons: Ganymede, Titan, Callisto, Io, the Moon, Europa, and Triton. The mass is much less than thought before Charon was discovered.
The discovery of Pluto's satellite Charon in 1978 enabled a determination of the mass of the Pluto–Charon system by application of Newton's formulation of Kepler's third law. Observations of Pluto in occultation with Charon allowed scientists to establish Pluto's diameter more accurately, whereas the invention of adaptive optics allowed them to determine its shape more accurately.
Determinations of Pluto's size have been complicated by its atmosphere and hydrocarbon haze. In March 2014, Lellouch, de Bergh et al. published findings regarding methane mixing ratios in Pluto's atmosphere consistent with a Plutonian diameter greater than 2,360 km, with a "best guess" of 2,368 km. On July 13, 2015, images from NASA's New Horizons mission Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI), along with data from the other instruments, determined Pluto's diameter to be 2,370 km (1,473 mi), which was later revised to be 2,372 km (1,474 mi) on July 24, and later to 2374±8 km. Using radio occultation data from the New Horizons Radio Science Experiment (REX), the diameter was found to be 2,376.6±3.2 km.
== Atmosphere ==
Pluto has a tenuous atmosphere consisting of nitrogen (N2), methane (CH4), and carbon monoxide (CO), which are in equilibrium with their ices on Pluto's surface. According to the measurements by New Horizons, the surface pressure is about 1 Pa (10 μbar), roughly one million to 100,000 times less than Earth's atmospheric pressure. It was initially thought that, as Pluto moves away from the Sun, its atmosphere should gradually freeze onto the surface; studies of New Horizons data and ground-based occultations show that Pluto's atmospheric density increases, and that it likely remains gaseous throughout Pluto's orbit.
New Horizons observations showed that atmospheric escape of nitrogen to be 10,000 times less than expected. Alan Stern has contended that even a small increase in Pluto's surface temperature can lead to exponential increases in Pluto's atmospheric density; from 18 hPa to as much as 280 hPa (three times that of Mars to a quarter that of the Earth). At such densities, nitrogen could flow across the surface as liquid. Just like sweat cools the body as it evaporates from the skin, the sublimation of Pluto's atmosphere cools its surface. Pluto has no or almost no troposphere; observations by New Horizons suggest only a thin tropospheric boundary layer. Its thickness in the place of measurement was 4 km, and the temperature was 37±3 K. The layer is not continuous.
In July 2019, an occultation by Pluto showed that its atmospheric pressure, against expectations, had fallen by 20% since 2016. In 2021, astronomers at the Southwest Research Institute confirmed the result using data from an occultation in 2018, which showed that light was appearing less gradually from behind Pluto's disc, indicating a thinning atmosphere.
The presence of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, in Pluto's atmosphere creates a temperature inversion, with the average temperature of its atmosphere tens of degrees warmer than its surface, though observations by New Horizons have revealed Pluto's upper atmosphere to be far colder than expected (70 K, as opposed to about 100 K). Pluto's atmosphere is divided into roughly 20 regularly spaced haze layers up to 150 km high, thought to be the result of pressure waves created by airflow across Pluto's mountains.
== Natural satellites ==
Pluto has five known natural satellites. The largest and closest to Pluto is Charon. First identified in 1978 by astronomer James Christy, Charon is the only moon of Pluto that may be in hydrostatic equilibrium. Charon's mass is sufficient to cause the barycenter of the Pluto–Charon system to be outside Pluto. Beyond Charon there are four much smaller circumbinary moons. In order of distance from Pluto they are Styx, Nix, Kerberos, and Hydra. Nix and Hydra were both discovered in 2005, Kerberos was discovered in 2011, and Styx was discovered in 2012. The satellites' orbits are circular (eccentricity < 0.006) and coplanar with Pluto's equator (inclination < 1°), and therefore tilted approximately 120° relative to Pluto's orbit. The Plutonian system is highly compact: the five known satellites orbit within the inner 3% of the region where prograde orbits would be stable.
The orbital periods of all Pluto's moons are linked in a system of orbital resonances and near-resonances. When precession is accounted for, the orbital periods of Styx, Nix, and Hydra are in an exact 18:22:33 ratio. There is a sequence of approximate ratios, 3:4:5:6, between the periods of Styx, Nix, Kerberos, and Hydra with that of Charon; the ratios become closer to being exact the further out the moons are.
The Pluto–Charon system is one of the few in the Solar System whose barycenter lies outside the primary body; the Patroclus–Menoetius system is a smaller example, and the Sun–Jupiter system is the only larger one. The similarity in size of Charon and Pluto has prompted some astronomers to call it a double dwarf planet. The system is also unusual among planetary systems in that each is tidally locked to the other, which means that Pluto and Charon always have the same hemisphere facing each other — a property shared by only one other known system, Eris and Dysnomia. From any position on either body, the other is always at the same position in the sky, or always obscured. This also means that the rotation period of each is equal to the time it takes the entire system to rotate around its barycenter.
Pluto's moons are hypothesized to have been formed by a collision between Pluto and a similar-sized body, early in the history of the Solar System. The collision released material that consolidated into the moons around Pluto.
=== Quasi-satellite ===
In 2012, it was calculated that 15810 Arawn could be a quasi-satellite of Pluto, a specific type of co-orbital configuration. According to the calculations, the object would be a quasi-satellite of Pluto for about 350,000 years out of every two-million-year period. Measurements made by the New Horizons spacecraft in 2015 made it possible to calculate the orbit of Arawn more accurately, and confirmed the earlier ones. However, it is not agreed upon among astronomers whether Arawn should be classified as a quasi-satellite of Pluto based on its orbital dynamics, since its orbit is primarily controlled by Neptune with only occasional perturbations by Pluto.
== Origin ==
Pluto's origin and identity had long puzzled astronomers. One early hypothesis was that Pluto was an escaped moon of Neptune knocked out of orbit by Neptune's largest moon, Triton. This idea was eventually rejected after dynamical studies showed it to be impossible because Pluto never approaches Neptune in its orbit.
Pluto's true place in the Solar System began to reveal itself only in 1992, when astronomers began to find small icy objects beyond Neptune that were similar to Pluto not only in orbit but also in size and composition. This trans-Neptunian population is thought to be the source of many short-period comets. Pluto is the largest member of the Kuiper belt, a stable belt of objects located between 30 and 50 AU from the Sun. As of 2011, surveys of the Kuiper belt to magnitude 21 were nearly complete and any remaining Pluto-sized objects are expected to be beyond 100 AU from the Sun.
Like other Kuiper-belt objects (KBOs), Pluto shares features with comets; for example, the solar wind is gradually blowing Pluto's surface into space. It has been claimed that if Pluto were placed as near to the Sun as Earth, it would develop a tail, as comets do. This claim has been disputed with the argument that Pluto's escape velocity is too high for this to happen. It has been proposed that Pluto may have formed as a result of the agglomeration of numerous comets and Kuiper-belt objects.
Though Pluto is the largest Kuiper belt object discovered, Neptune's moon Triton, which is larger than Pluto, is similar to it both geologically and atmospherically, and is thought to be a captured Kuiper belt object. Eris (see above) is about the same size as Pluto (though more massive) but is not strictly considered a member of the Kuiper belt population. Rather, it is considered a member of a linked population called the scattered disc.
Like other members of the Kuiper belt, Pluto is thought to be a residual planetesimal; a component of the original protoplanetary disc around the Sun that failed to fully coalesce into a full-fledged planet. Most astronomers agree that Pluto owes its position to a sudden migration undergone by Neptune early in the Solar System's formation. As Neptune migrated outward, it approached the objects in the proto-Kuiper belt, setting one in orbit around itself (Triton), locking others into resonances, and knocking others into chaotic orbits. The objects in the scattered disc, a dynamically unstable region overlapping the Kuiper belt, are thought to have been placed in their positions by interactions with Neptune's migrating resonances.
A 2004 computer model by Alessandro Morbidelli of the Observatoire de la Côte d'Azur in Nice suggested that the migration of Neptune into the Kuiper belt may have been triggered by the formation of a 1:2 resonance between Jupiter and Saturn, which created a gravitational push that propelled both Uranus and Neptune into higher orbits and caused them to switch places, ultimately doubling Neptune's distance from the Sun. The resultant expulsion of objects from the proto-Kuiper belt could also explain the Late Heavy Bombardment 600 million years after the Solar System's formation and the origin of the Jupiter trojans. It is possible that Pluto had a near-circular orbit about 33 AU from the Sun before Neptune's migration perturbed it into a resonant capture. The Nice model requires that there were about a thousand Pluto-sized bodies in the original planetesimal disk, which included Triton and Eris.
== Observation and exploration ==
=== Observation ===
Pluto's distance from Earth makes its in-depth study and exploration difficult. Pluto's visual apparent magnitude averages 15.1, brightening to 13.65 at perihelion. To see it, a telescope is required; around 30 cm (12 in) aperture being desirable. It looks star-like and without a visible disk even in large telescopes, because its angular diameter is maximum 0.11".
The earliest maps of Pluto, made in the late 1980s, were brightness maps created from close observations of eclipses by its largest moon, Charon. Observations were made of the change in the total average brightness of the Pluto–Charon system during the eclipses. For example, eclipsing a bright spot on Pluto makes a bigger total brightness change than eclipsing a dark spot. Computer processing of many such observations can be used to create a brightness map. This method can also track changes in brightness over time.
Better maps were produced from images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), which offered higher resolution, and showed considerably more detail, resolving variations several hundred kilometers across, including polar regions and large bright spots. These maps were produced by complex computer processing, which finds the best-fit projected maps for the few pixels of the Hubble images. These remained the most detailed maps of Pluto until the flyby of New Horizons in July 2015, because the two cameras on the HST used for these maps were no longer in service.
=== Exploration ===
The New Horizons spacecraft, which flew by Pluto in July 2015, is the first and so far only attempt to explore Pluto directly. Launched in 2006, it captured its first (distant) images of Pluto in late September 2006 during a test of the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager. The images, taken from a distance of approximately 4.2 billion kilometers, confirmed the spacecraft's ability to track distant targets, critical for maneuvering toward Pluto and other Kuiper belt objects. In early 2007 the craft made use of a gravity assist from Jupiter.
New Horizons made its closest approach to Pluto on July 14, 2015, after a 3,462-day journey across the Solar System. Scientific observations of Pluto began five months before the closest approach and continued for at least a month after the encounter. Observations were conducted using a remote sensing package that included imaging instruments and a radio science investigation tool, as well as spectroscopic and other experiments. The scientific goals of New Horizons were to characterize the global geology and morphology of Pluto and its moon Charon, map their surface composition, and analyze Pluto's neutral atmosphere and its escape rate. On October 25, 2016, at 05:48 pm ET, the last bit of data (of a total of 50 billion bits of data; or 6.25 gigabytes) was received from New Horizons from its close encounter with Pluto.
Since the New Horizons flyby, scientists have advocated for an orbiter mission that would return to Pluto to fulfill new science objectives. They include mapping the surface at 9.1 m (30 ft) per pixel, observations of Pluto's smaller satellites, observations of how Pluto changes as it rotates on its axis, investigations of a possible subsurface ocean, and topographic mapping of Pluto's regions that are covered in long-term darkness due to its axial tilt. The last objective could be accomplished using laser pulses to generate a complete topographic map of Pluto.
New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern has advocated for a Cassini-style orbiter that would launch around 2030 (the 100th anniversary of Pluto's discovery) and use Charon's gravity to adjust its orbit as needed to fulfill science objectives after arriving at the Pluto system. The orbiter could then use Charon's gravity to leave the Pluto system and study more KBOs after all Pluto science objectives are completed. A conceptual study funded by the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program describes a fusion-enabled Pluto orbiter and lander based on the Princeton field-reversed configuration reactor.
New Horizons imaged all of Pluto's northern hemisphere, and the equatorial regions down to about 30° South. Higher southern latitudes have only been observed, at very low resolution, from Earth. Images from the Hubble Space Telescope in 1996 cover 85% of Pluto and show large albedo features down to about 75° South. This is enough to show the extent of the temperate-zone maculae. Later images had slightly better resolution, due to minor improvements in Hubble instrumentation. The equatorial region of the sub-Charon hemisphere of Pluto has only been imaged at low resolution, as New Horizons made its closest approach to the anti-Charon hemisphere.
Some albedo variations in the higher southern latitudes could be detected by New Horizons using Charon-shine (light reflected off Charon). The south polar region seems to be darker than the north polar region, but there is a high-albedo region in the southern hemisphere that may be a regional nitrogen or methane ice deposit.
== See also ==
== Notes ==
== References ==
== Further reading ==
== External links == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_UCI_Cyclo-cross_World_Championships_%E2%80%93_Men%27s_junior_race | 2009 UCI Cyclo-cross World Championships – Men's junior race | This event was held on Saturday 31 January 2009 as part of the 2009 UCI Cyclo-cross World Championships in Hoogerheide, Netherlands.
== Ranking ==
== Notes ==
== External links ==
Union Cycliste Internationale |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somnath_Bharti | Somnath Bharti | Somnath Bharti (born 10 May 1974) is an Indian politician and lawyer.
As a member of the Aam Aadmi Party, Bharti served as a Member of Legislative Assembly (MLA) of Delhi from Malviya Nagar constituency. He has previously served as minister of Law, Tourism, Administrative Reforms, Art & Culture in the Government of Delhi, from December 2013 to February 2014 in the first Arvind Kejriwal government.
He is a practicing lawyer in the Supreme Court of India and Delhi High Court. He had represented the Malviya Nagar constituency in the Delhi Legislative Assembly from 2013 till 2025.
== Early life ==
Bharti was born in Baranwal Bania family at Hisua Bazar in Nawada. He was educated firstly at a local school and went to Patna for intermediate education. After completing his post-graduate M.Sc. Mathematics from IIT Delhi, Bharti pursued a degree in law at Delhi University. He served IIT Delhi Alumni Association as its Secretary for 2007-08 and 2011–12, as a President of IIT DAA in 2012-13 and as IIT Delhi Senator in 2008.
== Career ==
=== Business ===
In the 2000s, Somnath Bharti ran a Delhi-based IT firm Madgen Solutions. The Spamhaus Project accused him of spamming on behalf of TopSites LLC, naming him in Register of Known Spam Operations (ROKSO) as one of the top spam operators in the world. According to Bharti, he was listed in ROKSO after an Open Directory Project editor Conrad Longmore ran a story on him. Responding to a PCQuest investigation in 2005, he insisted that all the e-mails sent by his company complied with the laws and regulations. PCQuest found that he had been sued in a California Superior Court for spamming by Daniel Balsam. Balsam's attorney Timothy Walton revealed that in 2004, Bharti and two others had paid Balsam in damages apart from making a court declaration agreeing to use only confirmed opt-in e-mail addresses when sending commercial e-mails. Bharti defended himself by saying that he chose to settle because defending the case in the United States would have been costlier for him. Bharti also claimed that he was in touch with SpamHaus, but the SpamHaus CEO Steve Linford denied this to PCQuest.
=== Legal ===
In 2009 Bharti represented Vikram Buddhi. He led a movement against the abeyance of sentencing of Buddhi in the USA.
In 2013, Delhi High Court quashed the FIR and released 8 accused falsely charges in the Constable Tomar's death during the Nirbhaya protests. Advocate He has sought the quashing of the FIR against the eight accused on the grounds that they have been falsely implicated by the Delhi Police for offences during the public protests that erupted after the Delhi gangrape.
Advocate Somnath Bharti, appearing for the accused, told the court that according to the video footage of news channels and two witnesses, the accused were innocent.
=== Activism ===
In June 2012, Bharti was involved in a campaign against the alleged interference of the then Minister of Human Resources and Development, Kapil Sibal, in the Joint Entrance Examination process for admission to Indian Institutes of Technology.
In 2010–2013, he appeared in news for defending the rights of homeschooled children and subscribers of alternate education system in view of the binding provision of the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act through Public Interest Litigations filed in Delhi High Court thrice. In response to his PILs, the Ministry of Human Resources and Development, through an affidavit, clarified that they are not against homeschooling.
=== Political career ===
Bharti was the Aam Aadmi Party candidate for the Malviya Nagar constituency in the Delhi state assembly elections, 2013. Bharti won the seat, defeating Arti Mehra of the Bharatiya Janata Party and the incumbent Kiran Walia of the Indian National Congress. Walia had won the seat in 1999, 2003, and 2008 and had been education minister in the earlier government, while Mehra, who has represented the neighbouring Hauz Khas constituency for many years, had been Mayor of Delhi in 2007–2009. In contrast, Bharti was new to politics.
He served as Chairman, Committee on Privileges of Delhi Legislative Assembly for the year 2016–17. On 10 August 2018, Delhi Legislative Assembly appointed him as chairman, Committee to examine the Stray Dog and Monkey Menace in Delhi. He won the 2020 Delhi Elections by 18,144 votes. By Delhi Legislative Assembly he was appointed Chairman, Public Accounts Committee (one of the three most important Committees of a legislative assembly or Indian Parliament viz. Public Accounts Committee, Committee on Govt Undertakings and Committee on Estimates), Chairman, House Committee on Violation of Protocol Norms and Contemptuous Behaviour By Government Officers with MLAs, Members of Standing Committee on Education (Education; Higher Education; Training & Technical Education; Art, Culture and Language; Sports) and Committee on Govt Undertakings.
Bharti was briefly Minister of Law, Tourism, Administrative Reforms, Art & Culture in the Government of Delhi. He was appointed on 28 December 2013 and left office on 14 February 2014 when the government of which he was a part resigned due a failure to enact a Jan Lokpal bill.
The government's resignation, led by Arvind Kejriwal, pre-empted a personal resignation by Bharti in response to accusations of vigilantism.
He was elected again by the people of Malviya Nagar constituency in Feb 2015 by double the margin than the last time when Delhi gave mandate of 67 out of 70 seats in Delhi assembly to AAP. He was sent to Delhi Development Authority as a member of the Board which controls Land and development of Delhi. His work can be gauged from the fact that his efforts and continuous efforts made DDA claim their unclaimed and open to encroachers over 65000 pieces of lands across Delhi.
He was appointed Vice Chairman of Delhi Jal Board in March 2023.
Bharti started a direct dialogue program using the term "mohalla groups" on WhatsApp after being elected as MLA from Malviya Nagar constituency.
In 2025 Delhi Legislative Assembly election, he lost from his seat Malviya Nagar by a margin of 2,131 votes to BJP candidate Satish Upadhyay
== Electoral performance ==
=== 2025 ===
== Controversies ==
=== Evidence tampering ===
Patiala House Court had in 2013 indicted Bharti for "tampering with evidence" along with his client, Pawan Kumar, in a corruption case. He was asked by the Bar Council of Delhi to explain why he should not be debarred.
=== Khirki Extension raid ===
In January 2014, less than a month after being elected, Bharti mobilized his supporters and television camera crews to lead a vigilante raid in his constituency's Khirki Extension area. He had been tipped off about a drug and prostitution racket involving some African nationals operating in the area. He quarrelled with the Station House Officer, who refused to raid a house, citing a lack of a warrant. The group allegedly caught four women and forced them to undergo urine tests. The tests, conducted at AIIMS, did not find any drug traces in their system. The women alleged that they had been threatened and molested by the mob.
Protests were held against Bharti and AAP's attack on African Nationals. The BJP and CPM condemned Bharti's actions as racist and criticized the mob for violating the women. AAP supported Bharti, calling the women's allegations false and stating that his actions were not racist, adding that residents had long complained of criminal activities in the area. Kejriwal demanded the suspension of the police officers who had refused to conduct the raid. A court directed the police to lodge a First Information Report against the mob, and the Delhi Commission for Women also opened an investigation into the matter. Kejriwal's government came under increasing political pressure to act against Bharti in the hours before its resignation. An independent judicial inquiry ordered by the Lieutenant Governor of Delhi announced on 28 February 2014 that the police had been correct not to comply with Bharti's demands and that Bharti should not have taken the law into his own hands by leading the raid.
Around two years later, The Hindu reported that the raid led to an "exodus" of African nationals from the area, and emboldened the locals to abuse and taunt the remaining ones more freely.
=== Domestic violence case ===
In June 2015, Bharti's wife filed a complaint against him with the Delhi Commission for Women alleging domestic violence. On 10 September 2015, Bharti surrendered at the Dwarka Police Station late at night on 29 September 2015 under directions from the Supreme Court and obtained conditional bail. Bharti told a Delhi court that the couple had resolved the matrimonial dispute through mediation, however the court charged him with harassment, cheating and criminal intimidation. In May 2019, the FIR was quashed by Delhi High Court which noted that the couple are living happily together.
=== Unlawful assembly at AIIMS ===
In 2021, he was sentenced to two years in prison for leading a mob into AIIMS Delhi. Bharti claimed that there was no evidence and the case was based on a fabricated story. Subsequently, the Delhi High Court stayed the judgment and granted him bail.
== References ==
== External links ==
Media related to Somnath Bharti at Wikimedia Commons |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_eclipse_of_June_21,_2001#:~:text=A%20total%20solar%20eclipse%20occurred,eclipse%20of%20the%2021st%20century. | Solar eclipse of June 21, 2001 | A total solar eclipse occurred at the Moon's ascending node of orbit on Thursday, June 21, 2001, with a magnitude of 1.0495. It was the first solar eclipse of the 21st century. A solar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes between Earth and the Sun, thereby totally or partly obscuring the image of the Sun for a viewer on Earth. A total
solar eclipse occurs when the Moon's apparent diameter is larger than the Sun's, blocking all direct sunlight, turning day into darkness. Totality occurs in a narrow path across Earth's surface, with the partial solar eclipse visible over a surrounding region thousands of kilometres wide. Occurring about 2.25 days before perigee (on June 23, 2001, at 18:20 UTC), the Moon's apparent diameter was larger.
Many people traveled to Africa to watch the eclipse; the Daily Telegraph reported that "while some tribesmen watch a celestial crocodile eating the sun, the modern African will be counting the cash brought in by thousands of visitors".
== Visibility ==
It was visible from a narrow corridor in the southern Atlantic Ocean and southern Africa, including Angola, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, the southern tip of Malawi, and Madagascar. A partial eclipse was seen from the much broader path of the Moon's penumbra, including eastern South America and most of Africa.
== Observations ==
Within the path of totality, Angola got the best conditions with the highest solar zenith angle, longest duration and largest chance of clear weather. Sumbe, capital of Cuanza Sul Province, where the path first touched land, was the best in Angola with 4 minutes and 34 seconds of totality. However, the Angolan Civil War prevented many from traveling to the county, and only about 500 people observed the eclipse there. Besides tourists, there were also scientists from the United States, France, Brazil, South Africa, the Czech Republic, Portugal and Hungary.
Zambia, though inferior to its neighbouring country Angola in the chance of clear weather, attracted many scientists and tourists due to its stable political situation and also the fact that its capital city Lusaka was also located within the path of totality. The Zambian government made it a national holiday with one day off, and ZamPost also issues special postage stamps and first-day covers. Scientists from the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, South Korea and China observed it in Zambia. The Chinese Academy of Sciences sent a team of 6 people, carrying 3 gravimeters, 2 nuclear gyromagnetometers, 4 digital acquisition systems and recording systems to study the gravity anomalies recorded by Indian scientists during the total solar eclipse of October 24, 1995, and by Chinese scientists during the total solar eclipse of March 9, 1997, in Mohe County. With continuous observation for more than 10 years after that, China obtained the first observational evidence that the gravity field propagates at the speed of light.
== Coincidence ==
Besides the eclipse, the day was also the June solstice (winter solstice in the Southern Hemisphere where the path of totality passed) when the sun was at the northernmost limit. It was also the closest approach of Mars since 1988.
== Eclipse timing ==
=== Places experiencing total eclipse ===
=== Places experiencing partial eclipse ===
== Eclipse details ==
Shown below are two tables displaying details about this particular solar eclipse. The first table outlines times at which the Moon's penumbra or umbra attains the specific parameter, and the second table describes various other parameters pertaining to this eclipse.
== Eclipse season ==
This eclipse is part of an eclipse season, a period, roughly every six months, when eclipses occur. Only two (or occasionally three) eclipse seasons occur each year, and each season lasts about 35 days and repeats just short of six months (173 days) later; thus two full eclipse seasons always occur each year. Either two or three eclipses happen each eclipse season. In the sequence below, each eclipse is separated by a fortnight.
== Related eclipses ==
=== Eclipses in 2001 ===
A total lunar eclipse on January 9.
A total solar eclipse on June 21.
A partial lunar eclipse on July 5.
An annular solar eclipse on December 14.
A penumbral lunar eclipse on December 30.
=== Metonic ===
Preceded by: Solar eclipse of September 2, 1997
Followed by: Solar eclipse of April 8, 2005
=== Tzolkinex ===
Preceded by: Solar eclipse of May 10, 1994
Followed by: Solar eclipse of August 1, 2008
=== Half-Saros ===
Preceded by: Lunar eclipse of June 15, 1992
Followed by: Lunar eclipse of June 26, 2010
=== Tritos ===
Preceded by: Solar eclipse of July 22, 1990
Followed by: Solar eclipse of May 20, 2012
=== Solar Saros 127 ===
Preceded by: Solar eclipse of June 11, 1983
Followed by: Solar eclipse of July 2, 2019
=== Inex ===
Preceded by: Solar eclipse of July 10, 1972
Followed by: Solar eclipse of June 1, 2030
=== Triad ===
Preceded by: Solar eclipse of August 21, 1914
Followed by: Solar eclipse of April 21, 2088
=== Solar eclipses of 2000–2003 ===
This eclipse is a member of a semester series. An eclipse in a semester series of solar eclipses repeats approximately every 177 days and 4 hours (a semester) at alternating nodes of the Moon's orbit.
The partial solar eclipses on February 5, 2000 and July 31, 2000 occur in the previous lunar year eclipse set.
=== Saros 127 ===
This eclipse is a part of Saros series 127, repeating every 18 years, 11 days, and containing 82 events. The series started with a partial solar eclipse on October 10, 991 AD. It contains total eclipses from May 14, 1352 through August 15, 2091. There are no annular or hybrid eclipses in this set. The series ends at member 82 as a partial eclipse on March 21, 2452. Its eclipses are tabulated in three columns; every third eclipse in the same column is one exeligmos apart, so they all cast shadows over approximately the same parts of the Earth.
The longest duration of totality was produced by member 31 at 5 minutes, 40 seconds on August 30, 1532. All eclipses in this series occur at the Moon’s ascending node of orbit.
=== Metonic series ===
The metonic series repeats eclipses every 19 years (6939.69 days), lasting about 5 cycles. Eclipses occur in nearly the same calendar date. In addition, the octon subseries repeats 1/5 of that or every 3.8 years (1387.94 days). All eclipses in this table occur at the Moon's ascending node.
=== Tritos series ===
This eclipse is a part of a tritos cycle, repeating at alternating nodes every 135 synodic months (≈ 3986.63 days, or 11 years minus 1 month). Their appearance and longitude are irregular due to a lack of synchronization with the anomalistic month (period of perigee), but groupings of 3 tritos cycles (≈ 33 years minus 3 months) come close (≈ 434.044 anomalistic months), so eclipses are similar in these groupings.
=== Inex series ===
This eclipse is a part of the long period inex cycle, repeating at alternating nodes, every 358 synodic months (≈ 10,571.95 days, or 29 years minus 20 days). Their appearance and longitude are irregular due to a lack of synchronization with the anomalistic month (period of perigee). However, groupings of 3 inex cycles (≈ 87 years minus 2 months) comes close (≈ 1,151.02 anomalistic months), so eclipses are similar in these groupings.
== Notes ==
== References ==
Fred Espenak and Jay Anderson. "Total Solar Eclipse of 2001 June 21". NASA, November 2004.
Earth visibility chart and eclipse statistics Eclipse Predictions by Fred Espenak, NASA/GSFC
Google interactive map
Besselian elements
Map Google
Photos:
Spaceweather.com solar eclipse gallery
Prof. Druckmüller's eclipse photography site. Zambia
Prof. Druckmüller's eclipse photography site. Angola
KryssTal - Eclipse in Zimbabwe - in a school by the Ruya River.
Images from Zimbabwe by Crayford Manor House Astronomical Society Archived 2009-07-26 at the Wayback Machine
Eclipse in African Skies, APOD 6/22/2001, totality from Lusaka, Zambia
Bakasa Eclipse Sequence, APOD 7/6/2001, totality from Bakasa, Zimbabwe
A Total Eclipse Over Africa, APOD 7/11/2001, totality from Malambanyama, Zambia
Madagascar Totality, APOD 7/26/2001, from southern Madagascar
Eclipse Over Acacia, APOD 12/3/2002, from Chisamba, Zambia
Moon AND Sun, APOD 11/22/2003, totality from Chisamba, Zambia |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachid_Lousteque#:~:text=In%20December%202019%2C%20following%20the%20sacking%20of%20Rachid%20Taoussi%2C%20Lousteque%20was%20named%20as%20interim%20manager%20of%20Olympique%20de%20Khouribga%20after%20previously%20working%20as%20an%20assistant%20coach%20under%20Taoussi. | Rachid Lousteque | Rachid Lousteque is a Moroccan professional football manager, who was last the head coach of the Somalia national team.
== Managerial career ==
In December 2019, following the sacking of Rachid Taoussi, Lousteque was named as interim manager of Olympique de Khouribga after previously working as an assistant coach under Taoussi. On 5 July 2022, Lousteque was appointed as manager of Somalia.
== References == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_7030_Stretch | IBM 7030 Stretch | The IBM 7030, also known as Stretch, was IBM's first transistorized supercomputer. It was the fastest computer in the world from 1961 until the first CDC 6600 became operational in 1964.
Originally designed to meet a requirement formulated by Edward Teller at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the first example was delivered to Los Alamos National Laboratory in 1961, and a second customized version, the IBM 7950 Harvest, to the National Security Agency in 1962. The Stretch at the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Aldermaston, England was heavily used by researchers there and at AERE Harwell, but only after the development of the S2 Fortran compiler which was the first to add dynamic arrays, and which was later ported to the Ferranti Atlas of Atlas Computer Laboratory at Chilton.
The 7030 was much slower than expected and failed to meet its aggressive performance goals. IBM was forced to drop its price from $13.5 million to only $7.78 million and withdrew the 7030 from sales to customers beyond those having already negotiated contracts. PC World magazine named Stretch one of the biggest project management failures in IT history.
Within IBM, being eclipsed by the smaller Control Data Corporation seemed hard to accept. The project lead, Stephen W. Dunwell, was initially made a scapegoat for his role in the "failure" but, after the success of the IBM System/360 became obvious, he received an official apology, and in 1966 was made an IBM Fellow.
In spite of the failure of Stretch to meet IBM's performance goals, it served as the basis for many of the design features of the successful IBM System/360, which was announced in 1964 and first shipped in 1965.
== Development history ==
In early 1955, Dr. Edward Teller of the University of California Radiation Laboratory wanted a new scientific computing system for three-dimensional hydrodynamic calculations. Proposals were requested from IBM and UNIVAC for this new system, to be called Livermore Automatic Reaction Calculator or LARC. According to IBM executive Cuthbert Hurd, such a system would cost roughly $2.5 million and would run at one to two MIPS. Delivery was to be two to three years after the contract was signed.
At IBM, a small team at Poughkeepsie including John Griffith and Gene Amdahl worked on the design proposal. Just after they finished and were about to present the proposal, Ralph Palmer stopped them and said, "It's a mistake." The proposed design would have been built with either point-contact transistors or surface-barrier transistors, both likely to be soon outperformed by the then newly invented diffusion transistor.
IBM returned to Livermore and stated that they were withdrawing from the contract, and instead proposed a dramatically better system, "We are not going to build that machine for you; we want to build something better! We do not know precisely what it will take but we think it will be another million dollars and another year, and we do not know how fast it will run but we would like to shoot for ten million instructions per second." Livermore was not impressed, and in May 1955 they announced that UNIVAC had won the LARC contract, now called the Livermore Automatic Research Computer. LARC would eventually be delivered in June 1960.
In September 1955, fearing that Los Alamos National Laboratory might also order a LARC, IBM submitted a preliminary proposal for a high-performance binary computer based on the improved version of the design that Livermore had rejected, which they received with interest. In January 1956, Project Stretch was formally initiated. In November 1956, IBM won the contract with the aggressive performance goal of a "speed at least 100 times the IBM 704" (i.e. 4 MIPS). Delivery was slated for 1960.
During design, it proved necessary to reduce the clock speeds, making it clear that Stretch could not meet its aggressive performance goals, but estimates of performance ranged from 60 to 100 times the IBM 704. In 1960, the price of $13.5 million was set for the IBM 7030. In 1961, actual benchmarks indicated that the performance of the IBM 7030 was only about 30 times the IBM 704 (i.e. 1.2 MIPS), causing considerable embarrassment for IBM. In May 1961, Thomas J. Watson Jr. announced a price cut of all 7030s under negotiation to $7.78 million and immediate withdrawal of the product from further sales.
Its floating-point addition time is 1.38–1.50 microseconds, multiplication time is 2.48–2.70 microseconds, and division time is 9.00–9.90 microseconds.
== Technical impact ==
While the IBM 7030 was not considered successful, it spawned many technologies incorporated in future machines that were highly successful. The Standard Modular System (SMS) transistor logic was the basis for the IBM 7090 line of scientific computers, the IBM 7070 and 7080 business computers, the IBM 7040 and IBM 1400 lines, and the IBM 1620 small scientific computer; the 7030 used about 170,000 transistors. The IBM 7302 Model I Core Storage units were also used in the IBM 7090, IBM 7070 and IBM 7080. Multiprogramming, memory protection, generalized interrupts, the eight-bit byte for I/O
were all concepts later incorporated in the IBM System/360 line of computers as well as most later central processing units (CPU).
Stephen Dunwell, the project manager who became a scapegoat when Stretch failed commercially, pointed out soon after the phenomenally successful 1964 launch of System/360 that most of its core concepts were pioneered by Stretch. By 1966, he had received an apology and been made an IBM Fellow, a high honor that carried with it resources and authority to pursue one's desired research.
Instruction pipelining, prefetch and decoding, and memory interleaving were used in later supercomputer designs such as the IBM System/360 Models 91, 95 and 195, and the IBM 3090 series as well as computers from other manufacturers. As of 2021, these techniques are still used in most advanced microprocessors, starting with the 1990s generation that included the Intel Pentium and the Motorola/IBM PowerPC, as well as in many embedded microprocessors and microcontrollers from various manufacturers.
== Hardware implementation ==
The 7030 CPU uses emitter-coupled logic (originally called current-steering logic) on 18 types of Standard Modular System cards. It uses 4,025 double cards (as shown) and 18,747 single cards, holding 169,100 transistors, requiring a total of 21 kW power. It uses high-speed NPN and PNP germanium drift transistors, with cut-off frequency over 100 MHz, and using ~50 mW each. Some third level circuits use a third voltage level. Each logic level has a delay of about 20 ns. To gain speed in critical areas emitter-follower logic is used to reduce the delay to about 10 ns.
It uses the same core memory as the IBM 7090.
== Installations ==
Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory (LASL) in April 1961, accepted in May 1961, and used until June 21, 1971.
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, California delivered November 1961.
U.S. National Security Agency in February 1962 as the main CPU of the IBM 7950 Harvest system, used until 1976, when the IBM 7955 Tractor tape system developed problems due to worn cams that could not be replaced.
Atomic Weapons Establishment, Aldermaston, England, delivered February 1962
U.S. Weather Bureau Washington D.C., delivered June/July 1962.
MITRE Corporation, delivered December 1962. and used until August 1971. In the spring of 1972, it was sold to Brigham Young University, where it was used by the physics department until scrapped in 1982.
U.S. Navy Dahlgren Naval Proving Ground, delivered Sep/Oct 1962.
Commissariat à l'énergie atomique, France, delivered November 1963.
IBM.
The Lawrence Livermore Laboratory's IBM 7030 (except for its core memory) and portions of the MITRE Corporation/Brigham Young University IBM 7030 now reside in the Computer History Museum collection, in Mountain View, California.
== Architecture ==
=== Data formats ===
Fixed-point numbers are variable in length, stored in either binary (1 to 64 bits) or decimal (1 to 16 digits) and either unsigned format or sign/magnitude format. Fields may straddle word boundaries. In decimal format, digits are variable length bytes (four to eight bits).
Floating-point numbers have a 1-bit exponent flag, a 10-bit exponent, a 1-bit exponent sign, a 48-bit magnitude, and a 4-bit sign byte in sign/magnitude format.
Alphanumeric characters are variable length and can use any character code of 8 bits or less.
Bytes are variable length (one to eight bits).
=== Instruction format ===
Instructions are either 32-bit or 64-bit.
=== Registers ===
The registers overlay the first 32 addresses of memory as shown.
The accumulator and index registers operate in sign-and-magnitude format.
=== Memory ===
Main memory is 16K to 256K 64-bit binary words, in banks of 16K.
The memory was immersion oil-heated/cooled to stabilize its operating characteristics.
== Software ==
STRETCH Assembly Program (STRAP)
MCP (not to be confused with the Burroughs MCP)
COLASL and IVY programming languages
FORTRAN programming language
SOS (Stretch Operating System) Written at the BYU Scientific Computing Center as an upgrade to MCP, along with an updated variant of FORTRAN.
== See also ==
IBM 608, the first commercially available transistorized computing device
ILLIAC II, a transistorized super computer from The University of Illinois that competed with Stretch.
== Notes ==
== References ==
== Further reading ==
Brooks, Frederick (2010). "Stretch-ing Is Great Exercise— It Gets You in Shape to Win". IEEE Annals of the History of Computing. 32: 4–9. doi:10.1109/MAHC.2010.26. S2CID 43480009.
== External links ==
Oral history interview with Gene Amdahl Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Amdahl discusses his role in the design of several computers for IBM including the STRETCH, IBM 701, 701A, and IBM 704. He discusses his work with Nathaniel Rochester and IBM's management of the design process for computers.
IBM Stretch Collections @ Computer History Museum
Collection index page
The IBM 7030 FORTRAN System
7030 Data Processing System (IBM Archives)
IBM Stretch (aka IBM 7030 Data Processing System)
Organization Sketch of IBM Stretch
BRL report on the IBM Stretch
Planning a Computer System – Project Stretch, 1962 book.
Scan of copy autographed by several of the contributors
Searchable PDF file
IBM 7030 documents at Bitsavers.org (PDF files) |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_state_highways_in_Tamil_Nadu#SH201_to_SH234 | List of state highways in Tamil Nadu | State Highways in India are stretches with heavy traffic intensity of more than 10,000 Passenger Car Units (PCUs) but less than 30,000 PCUs which connects district headquarters, important towns and the National Highways in the state and neighboring states. The Construction & Maintenance wing of the Highways Department manages construction and maintenance of all the State Highways (SH), major district roads (MDR), and other district roads (ODR). The Tamil Nadu State Highways Network has eight circles: Chennai, Villupuram, Madurai, Salem, Tiruchirappalli, Coimbatore, Tiruppur and Tirunelveli.
The state has a total of 286 state highways, 161 state highways urban (SH-U) stretches and 905 major district roads (MDRs), apart from other district roads (ODRs).
== List of state highways ==
This is a list of state highways in Tamil Nadu (as of March 2019).
=== SH1 to SH50 ===
=== SH51 to SH100 ===
=== SH 101 to SH 150 ===
=== SH151 to SH200 ===
=== SH201 to SH234 ===
== List of state highways urban ==
This is a list of state highways urban stretches in Tamil Nadu (as of March 2019).
=== SHU to SHU50 ===
=== SHU51 to SHU100 ===
=== SHU101 to SHU150 ===
=== SHU151 to SHU223 ===
== See also ==
National Highways Authority of India
List of major district roads in Tamil Nadu
National highways of India
List of national highways in India
Road network in Tamil Nadu
Chennai bypass
Coimbatore bypass
== References ==
== External links ==
Government of Tamil Nadu – Highways Department
Tamil Nadu Highways – Right to information (Chapter-02)
Maps of TN state highways
Government of Tamil Nadu – Annual Plan 2008–09 |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camille_Clifford | Camille Clifford | Camilla Antoinette Clifford (29 June 1885 – 28 June 1971), known professionally as Camille Clifford, was a Belgian-born stage actress whose short theatrical career was highlighted by her performance as "Miss New York" in the Henry W. Savage production of The Prince of Pilsen, a role in which she impersonated a "Gibson Girl"-like woman. While her towering coiffure and hourglass figure were representative of the Gibson Girl style, she only played the part of a Gibson Girl on the stage, and never actually modeled for any of Charles Dana Gibson's illustrations.
== Early life ==
Clifford was born on 29 June 1885 in Antwerp, Belgium, to Reynold Clifford and Matilda Ottersen. Camille was raised in Sweden, Norway and Boston.
== Career ==
On August 31, 1903, Clifford made her debut as Mazie Manhattan, the New York Girl in "The Song of the Cities," in a new Henry W. Savage production of The Prince of Pilsen at the Tremont Theatre in Boston. The role called for a young woman to walk across the stage in the style and manner of one of Charles Dana Gibson's famous female illustrations. This has led to the misconception that Clifford was a Gibson model, when in fact it is the reverse: she imitated his work on stage, but never posed for the illustrations themselves. In early 1904 the Savage company signed a contract with George Musgrove and Frank McKee for a European tour of The Prince of Pilsen and other repertoire productions, and to make up this touring company, a contest was held to determine which of the many actresses who had played the role of Mazie Manhattan over the years should be sent with this new "London Company" to represent the New York Girl to London and European audiences. Clifford won the contest, and the company set sail in late April 1904.
Clifford became an actress, performing in the United States from 1902 and in England from 1904. She returned from London to Boston on 3 July 1906. While generally playing walk-on, non-speaking roles, Clifford became famous nonetheless: not for her talent, but for her beauty, and in the musical show The Catch of the Season which opened at London's Vaudeville Theatre on 9 Sept 1904 she sang a song, "Sylvia, the Gibson Girl". Her trademark style was a long, elegant gown wrapped around her tightly corseted, eighteen-inch wasp waist.
She retired from the stage upon her marriage in 1906. She made a brief return to the stage after the death of her first husband in 1914.
== Personal life ==
In 1906, she was married to Captain the Hon. Henry Lyndhurst Bruce (1881–1914), the eldest son and heir apparent of Henry Bruce, 2nd Baron Aberdare. They had one child, Margaret, but the child died five days after birth. Her first husband was killed during the Great War in 1914 and his younger brother, Clarence, succeeded to the barony upon their father's death.
In 1917, she married Captain John Meredyth Jones Evans. After the war she left the stage for good and later owned a stable of successful racehorses. Together, they were the parents of:
Capt. Robert Victor John Evans, who married Hon. Cicilie Carol Paget (1928–2013), a daughter of Almeric Paget, 1st Baron Queenborough and the former Edith Starr Miller, in 1926.
Her second husband died in 1957. She died on 28 June 1971.
== Legacy ==
Despite her reputation as "the quintessential Gibson Girl", she was by no means the only person to imitate the popular character on the stage or screen.
Photographs of her taken by Lizzie Caswall Smith in 1905 often appear in historical fashion books and on websites to illustrate the Edwardian style.
== References ==
== Further reading ==
== External links == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Day | Third Day | Third Day is a Christian rock band formed in Marietta, Georgia in 1991. The band was founded by lead singer Mac Powell, guitarist Mark Lee (the only constant members) and Billy Wilkins. The band's name is a reference to the biblical accounts of the resurrection of Jesus on the third day following his crucifixion. The band was inducted into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame on September 19, 2009. They have sold over 7 million albums in the United States and had 28 number one Christian album chart radio hits. Their fans are known as "Gomers" after a song on their second album about Gomer. Though they dissolved in 2018 following a farewell tour, they reunited in 2025 for a limited 30th anniversary tour to take place in 2026.
== History ==
=== Forming years and independent recordings (1991–1994) ===
In 1991, high-schoolers Mac Powell and Mark Lee formed Third Day as a Christian music group with pianist Billy Wilkins. At a 1992 event at Lee's Church, Third Day performed alongside a band called the Bullard Family Singers, which featured David Carr and Tai Anderson. Third Day invited Carr and Anderson to join them shortly after.
In 1993, the band started playing more frequently in the Atlanta region in order to make money to record an album. Wilkins left the group in order to pursue his teaching career. Third Day recorded at Furies Studios in Atlanta and with the production help of Carr, Long Time Forgotten was released in 1993, producing and selling 2,000 copies.
In 1994 the band brought on a second guitarist, August McCoy on electric guitar. That same year, the band's second album, Contagious, was self-financed for $3,000 and recorded at Furies Studios. 1,000 CDs and cassette copies of the demo were released. Later that year, August McCoy exited the band to go to college. Also, later that year, while playing in Marietta, at the Strand Theatre, the owners offered the band a contract to sign with new independent record label Gray Dot Records. The band released the album Third Day, which sold 20,000 copies. Shortly after, Reunion Records bought out their Gray Dot contract and signed the band to a multi-album deal.
=== Recording contract with Reunion Records (1995–1997) ===
In 1995, the band started looking for another second guitarist. After hearing Brad Avery play with singer Chris Carder, Avery was asked to audition. After playing Consuming Fire during the first rehearsal, Avery was officially asked to join the band.
Reunion Records released the now official version of Third Day, which has sold over 300,000 copies and was well received by critics. The album also yielded their only mainstream rock radio hit in the U.S., "Nothing at All", which peaked at No. 34 on the Billboard rock charts. Later in 1995, Christian music headliner Newsboys asked Third Day to open for them at five West Coast shows. The band also launched their own 65-city tour with All Star United and Seven Day Jesus opening for them.
In 1996, the band was nominated for a Dove Award in the category of New Artist of the Year and their video for Consuming Fire directed by Chris Metzler and Jeff Springer won a Billboard Music Award in the category of Best Christian Video. The video was shot on location in Bombay Beach, California and other places around the Salton Sea. This experience and discovering Leonard Knight's Salvation Mountain nearby later inspired the album artwork for the band's album Revelation.
In 1997, the band started working on their second album, Conspiracy No. 5. The album was produced by Sam Taylor, who had previously worked with King's X and other Christian bands. The album was nominated for a Grammy and won Dove Awards for Rock Album of the Year and Rock Song of the Year ("Alien"). The following year, the band toured around the United States, both alone and again opening for Newsboys. Also in 1998, the band recorded a cover of Michael W. Smith's "Agnus Dei" for his Dove Award-winning compilation project Exodus.
=== Mainstream and international success (1998–2006) ===
In 1998, the band started working on Time with Monroe Jones as the producer. Time was nominated for a Grammy Award and won another Dove Award for the band. Some of the songs that were recorded for possible inclusion in the album, but left out during production, are on the EP Southern Tracks. During the band's live shows they included a significant portion of worship music, prompting the band to release an album made up exclusively of worship songs. The subsequent album Offerings: A Worship Album took about a week to record. In 2000, to support both Time and Offerings, Third Day went on tour alongside Jennifer Knapp. Later in the same year, the band collaborated on the project City on a Hill: Songs of Worship and Praise with FFH, Caedmon's Call, SonicFlood, Jars of Clay, and others.
In 2001, the band played in Australia and New Zealand on the heels of the success of the Offerings album. While touring in the US, Third Day recorded a concert attended by 15,000 fans at the HiFi Buys Amphitheatre in Atlanta to be released as their first DVD, The Offerings Experience. That same year, the band won five Dove Awards as well as their first Grammy. They closed the year with the release of their fifth studio album, Come Together, which won two Dove Awards and a Grammy. The album was certified gold the next year, along with Time. The band appeared in the 2002 film Joshua, the movie version of the story of Joseph Girzone. The Third Day song My Hope is You was included in the Joshua soundtrack album. In 2003, the band released a follow-up to their hit worship CD Offerings entitled Offerings II: All I Have to Give.
In 2004, the band released their seventh album, Wire, and toured the States with tobyMac and Warren Barfield. In June of the same year, they traveled to Europe for a two-week tour. Upon returning the band recorded a concert at Louisville and released it as the live album, Live Wire. During the same year, they collaborated on the soundtrack for Mel Gibson's film, The Passion of the Christ, played at the Republican National Convention and were featured on 60 Minutes. In January 2007, the band played one night each in Melbourne, Brisbane, and Sydney, Australia.
The band's next album, Wherever You Are, debuted on the Billboard 200 at No. 8. It also won the band their third Grammy Award.
=== Christmas and compilation albums (2006–2008) ===
The band recorded and released its first Christmas-themed album, Christmas Offerings, in 2006. In 2007, they released their first compilations of hits, Chronology.
On February 28, 2008, Third Day released a statement announcing Brad Avery's departure from the band after 13 years and over 1,000 concerts. According to the official press release, Avery left the band to pursue solo projects and Third Day would not replace him, continuing on as a quartet. Following Avery's departure, the band performed at the April 2008 Papal Youth Rally at St. Joseph's Seminary in Yonkers, N.Y.
=== Revelation and Live Revelations (2008–2010) ===
Supporting the July 29, 2008, release of their new album Revelation, the band appeared on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno where they performed the album's first single Call My Name and on November 20, 2008, they appeared on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson performing the album's title track. The song "This Is Who I Am" also appears in EA Sports NASCAR video game NASCAR 09, though the album was released over a month after the game. "Call My Name" hit No. 1 and was the fifth most-played song on R&R magazine's Christian CHR chart for 2008.
In April 2009, the band released a live version of the album Revelation under the title Live Revelations as a CD/DVD combination. Third Day was inducted into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame on September 19, 2009. In December 2009, Third Day was nominated for three Grammy Awards, with Live Revelations winning Best Rock or Rap Gospel Album, their fourth career Grammy, and receiving nominations for "Born Again" in the two categories Best Gospel Performance and Best Gospel Song. Live Revelations achieved Gold status in its month of release, becoming the band's eighth album to do so.
=== Move (2010) ===
Third Day was featured on Winter Jam 2010, touring alongside a variety of contemporary Christian groups including the Newsboys, Fireflight, and Tenth Avenue North. After releasing the single, "Lift Up Your Face" in July 2010, Third Day released their tenth studio album, Move, on October 19, 2010. On October 30 they finished the World Vision-sponsored tour Make a Difference Tour 2010 with TobyMac, Michael W. Smith, Jason Gray, and Max Lucado in Fayetteville, NC. The group's song "Follow Me There" from Move is featured as the theme song to the TLC Television show Sarah Palin's Alaska which debuted in 2010.
=== Miracle and Lead Us Back: Songs of Worship (2012–2017) ===
Third Day released Miracle on November 6, 2012. The band toured Miracle on the Miracle Tour with artists Colton Dixon and Josh Wilson as their opening acts, commencing on February 21, 2013, in Fairfax, Virginia and concluding on May 19, 2014, in Orlando.
Third Day released the worship album Lead Us Back: Songs of Worship on March 3, 2015. The album, produced by The Sound Kids (Jonny Macintosh and JT Daly) as a worship experience with Third Day at the center of a "friend choir", peaked at No. 20 on the Billboard 200, No. 1 on the Christian Albums chart, No. 5 on the Top Rock Albums chart and No. 13 on the Digital Albums chart. The album has had one single, "Soul on Fire", that spent 19 weeks on the Billboard charts, peaking at No. 2 on Hot Christian Songs and No. 3 on Christian Digital Songs. In 2015, bassist Tai Anderson announced he would take "a break from the upcoming touring season with Third Day" after serving with the band for 23 years.
=== Revival and farewell (2017–2018) ===
To celebrate their 25th anniversary, Third Day released their thirteenth and final album, Revival, on August 4, 2017, recorded at FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. The album saw the band go back to their roots, reuniting with producer Monroe Jones, who had worked with Third Day on six previous albums including Time, Offerings I and II, and Come Together.
On March 2, 2018, Third Day announced their farewell with 12 shows as a last chance to see them live. The farewell tour eventually expanded to 20 concerts. June 27, 2018, in Denver was the final show added.
=== Reunion and 30th Anniversary Tour (2025-present) ===
In June 2025, the band announced that they would reunite with the lineup of Powell, Lee, Carr, and Anderson to celebrate their 30th anniversary with a short tour to begin in spring 2026.
== Members ==
=== Current ===
Mac Powell – lead vocals, guitar, tambourine (1991–2018, 2025–present)
Mark Lee – guitar, backing vocals (1991–2018, 2025–present)
David Carr – drums, percussion (1992–2018, 2025–present)
Tai Anderson – bass, backing vocals (1992–2015, 2025–present)
=== Former members ===
Brad Avery – guitar (1995–2008)
Billy Wilkins – keyboards (1991–1994)
August McCoy – guitar (1991–1992)
=== Touring members ===
Geof Barkley – keyboards, backing vocals (1993)
Scotty Wilbanks – keyboards, backing vocals (2005–2017)
Jason Hoard – mandolin, banjo, guitar, backing vocals (2010–2012, 2017)
Brian Bunn – guitar, harmonica (2012–2016)
Tim Gibson – bass guitar (2015–2017)
Trevor Morgan – mandolin, banjo, guitar, backing vocals (2016)
Boone Daughdrill – drums (2017)
Timeline
== Discography ==
== Awards ==
As of 2020 the group has received 4 Grammy Awards and 25 Dove Awards.
=== American Music Awards ===
=== Grammy Awards ===
=== Gospel Music Awards ===
=== Billboard magazine best of the 2000s ===
No. 3 Christian Albums Artist of the Decade
No. 5 Christian Songs Artist of the Decade
No. 15 Christian Song of the Decade: "Cry Out to Jesus"
No. 27 Christian Song of the Decade: "Call My Name"
No. 39 Christian Song of the Decade: "You Are So Good to Me"
No. 43 Christian Song of the Decade: "Mountain of God"
No. 28 Christian Album of the Decade: "Wherever You Are"
No. 33 Christian Album of the Decade: "Come Together"
No. 37 Christian Album of the Decade: "Offerings: A Worship Album"
No. 39 Christian Album of the Decade: "Offerings II: All I Have to Give"
== References ==
== External links ==
Official website
Interview with Third Day at Premier.tv Archived January 6, 2008, at the Wayback Machine
Third Day discography at MusicBrainz
2018 Farewell Tour |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Circle_(American_TV_series)_season_3#:~:text=On%20September%2029%2C%202021%2C%20the,Favorite%20award%20and%20US%2410%2C000. | The Circle (American TV series) season 3 | The third season of the American reality competition streaming series The Circle began on Netflix on September 8, 2021, and concluded on September 29, 2021. The season was announced in March 2020 when Netflix renewed The Circle for a second and third season. Michelle Buteau returned as host.
Like the previous seasons, players compete against each other to become the most popular, but do not actually meet their competitors. Instead, they communicate through a specially designed app and are able to portray themselves in any way they choose. In August 2021 ahead of the season premiere, the series was renewed for a fourth and fifth season.
On September 29, 2021, the season was won by James Andre Jefferson Jr., who had played the game as himself, and won the US$100,000 prize that came along with it. Matthew Pappadia as "Ashley" was the runner-up. Keisha "Kai" Ghost won the Fan Favorite award and US$10,000.
== Format ==
The contestants, or "players", move into the same apartment building. However, the contestants do not meet face-to-face during the course of the competition, as they each live in their own individual apartment. They communicate solely using their profiles on a specially designed social media app that gives them the ability to portray themselves in any way they choose. Players can thus opt to present themselves as a completely different personality to the other players, a tactic otherwise known as catfishing.
Throughout the series, the contestants "rate" one another from first to last place. At the end of the ratings, their average ratings are revealed to one another from lowest to highest. Normally, the two highest-rated players become "Influencers", while the remaining players will be at risk of being "blocked" by the Influencers. However, occasionally there may be a twist to the blocking process – varying from the lowest rating players being instantly blocked, the identity of the Influencers being a secret, or multiple players being blocked at one time. Blocked players are eliminated from the game, but are given the opportunity to meet one player still in the game in-person. A video message is shown to the remaining players to reveal if they were real or fake the day after.
During the finale, the contestants rate each other one final time, where the highest rated player wins the game and US$100,000. Also, fans of The Circle are able to vote for their favorite player. The player that receives the most votes is known as the Fan Favorite and receives US$10,000.
== Players ==
=== Future appearances ===
==== Perfect Match ====
In 2023, Calvin Crooks and Nick Uhlenhuth competed on the first season of Perfect Match Crooks was eliminated in Episode Two. Uhlenhuth finished as a finalist alongside LC Chamblin.
==== Battle Camp ====
Nick Uhlenhuth competed on the first season of Battle Camp. He was eliminated tenth.
==== Other ====
Rachel Ward appeared on the comedy game show Game Changer, appearing as a suitor in a Bachelor-themed episode.
== Episodes ==
== Results and elimination ==
Color key
The contestant was blocked.
The contestant was an influencer.
The contestant was immune from being blocked.
The player was at risk of being blocked following a twist
This player was blocked, but returned under a different profile
=== Notes ===
^Note 1 : After the ratings were revealed, the players were alerted that Kai would be the sole influencer and must block someone by herself. She ended up choosing Ava.
^Note 2 : After Ava was blocked, Ava and Chanel were given a second chance to play but had to clone another player, and ended up choosing to clone Michelle.
^Note 3 : Both Michelle's were at risk of being blocked. The other players were tasked with voting one to be blocked, and the Michelle with the most votes was blocked from The Circle.
^Note 4 : After being blocked in Episode 7, Calvin had to choose one player to give a secret advantage to. Calvin chose Nick, giving him the power of a second profile known as "Vince", although he still kept his original profile.
^Note 5 : In Episode 9, "Vince" was revealed to be the second profile of an existing player and removed from the game.
^Note 6 : The players' ratings were not revealed, instead the top two players would become secret influencers. James & Nick both placed the highest.
^Note 7 : The players made their final ratings.
== References == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationale_for_the_Iraq_War | Rationale for the Iraq War | There are various rationales that have been used to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the Iraq War, and subsequent hostilities.
The George W. Bush administration began actively pressing for military intervention in Iraq in late 2001. The primary rationalization for the Iraq War was articulated by a joint resolution of the United States Congress known as the Iraq Resolution. The United States intent was to "disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, to end Saddam Hussein's support for terrorism, and to free the Iraqi people".
In the lead-up to the invasion, the United States and the United Kingdom falsely claimed that Saddam Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction, covertly supporting al-Qaeda, and that he presented a threat to Iraq's neighbors and to the world community. According to the Center for Public Integrity, eight senior-level officials in the Bush administration issued at least 935 false statements in the two years leading up to the war. The US stated, "On 8 November 2002; the UN Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 1441. All 15 members of the Security Council agreed to give Iraq a final opportunity to comply with its obligations and disarm or face the serious consequences of failing to disarm. The resolution strengthened the mandate of the UN Monitoring and Verification Commission (UNMOVIC) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), giving them the authority to go anywhere, at any time, and talk to anyone in order to verify Iraq's disarmament."
From late 2001 to early 2003, the Bush administration worked to build a case for invading Iraq, culminating in then-Secretary of State Colin Powell's February 2003 address to the Security Council. Shortly after the invasion, the Central Intelligence Agency, Defense Intelligence Agency, and other intelligence agencies put forward information which discredited evidence related to Iraqi weapons as well as alleged links to al-Qaeda. The Bush and Blair administrations provided secondary rationales for the war, such as the Saddam Hussein government's human rights record and promoting democracy in Iraq.
Opinion polling showed that people of nearly all countries opposed a war without a UN mandate. Similar polling showed that the perception of the United States as a danger to world peace had significantly increased. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan described the war as illegal, saying in a September 2004 interview that it was "not in conformity with the Security Council". The US led the effort for "the redirection of former Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD) scientists, technicians, and engineers to civilian employment and discourage emigration of this community from Iraq".
The US officially declared the end of its combat role in Iraq on the 31 August 2010. Several thousand troops remained in the country until all American troops were withdrawn from Iraq by December 2011. In June 2014, US forces returned to Iraq due to an escalation of instability in the region. In June 2015 the number of American ground troops totaled 3,550. Between December 2011 and June 2014, Department of Defense officials estimated that there were 200 to 300 personnel based at the US embassy in Baghdad.
== Background ==
The Gulf War had never officially ended due to the lack of an armistice to formally end it. As a result, relations between the United States, the United Nations, and Iraq remained strained. Saddam Hussein issued formal statements renouncing his invasion of Kuwait and made reparation payments following the Gulf War. The US and the United Nations maintained a policy of "containment" towards Iraq, which involved economic sanctions, Iraqi no-fly zones enforced by the United States, United Kingdom, and France (until it ended its no-fly zone operations in 1998) and ongoing inspections of Iraqi weapons programs. In 2002, the UN Security Council unanimously passed Resolution 1441 demanding that Iraq "comply with its disarmament obligations" and allow weapon inspections. Iraq war critics such as former weapons inspector Scott Ritter claimed that these sanctions and weapon inspection policies, supported by both the Bush and Clinton administrations, were actually intended to foster regime change in Iraq.
US policy shifted in 1998 when the Iraq Liberation Act was passed in the United States Congress and signed by President Bill Clinton. The bill was proposed after Iraq terminated its cooperation with UN weapons inspectors in the preceding August. The act made it official US policy to "support efforts to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein from power", although it also made clear that "nothing in this Act shall be construed to authorize or otherwise speak to the use of United States Armed Forces". This legislation contrasted with the terms set out in United Nations Security Council Resolution 687, which made no mention of regime change.
One month after the passage of the "Iraq Liberation Act", the US and UK launched a bombardment of Iraq named Operation Desert Fox. The stated rationale of this campaign was to hamper the Saddam Hussein government's ability to produce chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons. US National Security personnel also reportedly hoped it would help weaken Saddam Hussein's grip on power.
The Republican Party's 2000 campaign platform called for the 'full implementation' of the Iraq Liberation Act and the removal of Saddam Hussein. Key Bush advisers, including Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and Rumsfeld's deputy Paul Wolfowitz, were longtime advocates of an invasion of Iraq. They contributed to a September 2000 report from the Project for the New American Century, which argued that an invasion of Iraq would enable the US to 'play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security.'. After leaving the administration, former Bush treasury secretary Paul O'Neill said that "contingency planning" for an attack on Iraq had been undergoing since the inauguration and that the first National Security Council meeting discussed an invasion. Retired Army General Hugh Shelton, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he saw nothing to indicate the United States was close to attacking Iraq early in Bush's term. Despite key Bush advisers' stated interest in invading Iraq, little formal movement towards an invasion occurred until the 11 September 2001 attacks.
Following the 11 September 2001 attacks, the Bush administration national security team actively considered an invasion of Iraq. According to aides accompanying Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in the National Military Command Center on 11 September, Rumsfeld asked for: "best info fast. Judge whether good enough hit Saddam Hussein at same time. Not only Osama bin Laden." On the evening of 12 September, President Bush ordered White House counter-terrorism coordinator Richard A. Clarke to investigate possible Iraqi involvement in the 9/11 attacks. The administration believed that an attack as devastating as 9/11 involved a state sponsor. Clarke and the US intelligence community were of the opinion that Iraq had no major ties to Al-Qaeda or to the attacks, and that what few contacts existed were Iraq's attempts to monitor the group.
Vice President Cheney and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld expressed skepticism towards the CIA's intelligence. They questioned whether the CIA were competent enough to produce accurate information as the agency underestimated threats and failed to accurately predict events such as the Iranian Revolution, the Iraqi Invasion of Kuwait, and the collapse of the Soviet Union. Further, concerns were also raised by General Tommy Franks, regarding the lack of Human Intelligence (HUMINT) in the CENTCOM region. They instead preferred outside analysis and intelligence supplied by the Iraqi National Congress (INC), headed by Iraqi exile Ahmed Chalabi, as well as unvetted pieces of intelligence. This information claimed that Iraq had ties to Al-Qaeda via Iraqi intelligence, as well as jointly pursuing WMD development with them.
A memo written by Secretary Rumsfeld, dated 27 November 2001, considers a US–Iraq war. One section of the memo lists multiple possible justifications for a US–Iraq War. The administration decided to defer an invasion of Iraq in favor of an invasion of Afghanistan. President Bush, in a January 2002 State of the Union address, decried Iraq was a member of the Axis of Evil stating "The United States of America will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons." Over the next year, the Bush administration began pushing for international support for an invasion of Iraq. This campaign culminated in Secretary of State Colin Powell's 5 February 2003 presentation to the United Nations Security Council. Prior to this campaign, the Bush Administration were informed by the intelligence community that Iraq had no nuclear weapons, that there was no information about whether Iraq had biological weapons, and that Iraq had no ties to Al-Qaeda.
After failing to gain UN support for an additional UN authorization, the US, together with the UK and small contingents from Australia, Poland, and Denmark, launched an invasion on 20 March 2003 under the authority of UN Security Council Resolution 660 and United Nations Security Council Resolution 678. A 2008 study conducted by the Center for Public Integrity and Foundation for Independent Journalism revealed that between September 2001 and September 2003, George W. Bush and seven senior officials in his administration issued explicit statements on at least 532 occasions claiming that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction or had established covert alliances with Al-Qaeda, or both. The study concluded that these statements were issued by the American government as part of an "orchestrated campaign" to generate jingoistic attitudes in the United States for the purpose of initiating a war based on "false pretenses".
=== Iraq War Resolution ===
In its Iraq War Resolution issued on October 2002, the U.S. congress articulated several allegations and justifications for the invasion of Iraq:
Iraq's noncompliance with the conditions of the 1991 ceasefire agreement, including interference with UN weapons inspectors.
Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction, and programs to develop such weapons, posed a "threat to the national security of the United States and international peace and security in the Persian Gulf region".
Iraq's "brutal repression of its civilian population".
Iraq's "capability and willingness to use weapons of mass destruction against other nations and its own people".
Iraq's hostility towards the United States as demonstrated by the 1993 assassination attempt on former President George H. W. Bush and firing on coalition aircraft enforcing the no-fly zones following the 1991 Gulf War.
Iraq's harboring of members of al-Qaeda, an organization bearing responsibility for attacks on the United States, its citizens, and interests, including the attacks that occurred on 11 September 2001.
Iraq's "continuing to aid and harbor other international terrorist organizations", including anti-United States terrorist organizations.
Iraq's alleged plans to launch attacks against United States using weapons of mass destruction.
Iraq's alleged plans to transfer weapons of mass destruction to terrorist organizations.
Iraq allegedly paying bounties to families of suicide bombers.
The efforts by the Congress and the President to fight terrorists, including the 11 September 2001 terrorists and those who aided or harbored them.
The authorization by the Constitution and the Congress for the President to fight anti-United States terrorism.
The concerns of governments in Turkey, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia regarding Saddam Hussein and their desire for his removal from power.
The Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, a resolution which reiterated that it should be the policy of the United States to remove the Saddam Hussein regime and promote a democratic replacement.
The Iraq War Resolution required President Bush's diplomatic efforts at the UN Security Council to "obtain prompt and decisive action by the Security Council to ensure that Iraq abandons its strategy of delay, evasion, and noncompliance and promptly and strictly complies with all relevant Security Council resolutions". The resolution authorized the United States to use military force to "defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq; and enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council Resolutions regarding Iraq".
== Weapons of mass destruction ==
The US government's belief that Iraq was developing weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) in the form of nuclear weapons was based upon intelligence which the CIA argued could not be trusted. The CIA was overruled on its opinion on nuclear weapons as the administration sought outside information from Ahmed Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress (INC). Declassified CIA reports from 2002 suggested Iraq had begun production of other forms of WMDs in the form of chemical warfare agents such as mustard gas, sarin, Cyclosarin, and VX.
George Bush, speaking in October 2002, said that "The stated policy of the United States is regime change … However, if [Saddam Hussein] were to meet all the conditions of the United Nations, the conditions that I have described very clearly in terms that everybody can understand, that in itself will signal the regime has changed." Similarly, in September 2002, Tony Blair stated, in an answer to a parliamentary question, that "Regime change in Iraq would be a wonderful thing. That is not the purpose of our action; our purpose is to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction". In November of that year, Blair further stated that "So far as our objective, it is disarmament, not regime change – that is our objective. Now I happen to believe the regime of Saddam is a very brutal and repressive regime; I think it does enormous damage to the Iraqi people … so I have got no doubt Saddam is very bad for Iraq, but on the other hand I have got no doubt either that the purpose of our challenge from the United Nations is disarmament of weapons of mass destruction; it is not regime change."
Between September 2002 and May 2003, Bush administration began attempting to mix its "war on terror" rhetoric with weapons of mass destruction allegations, in addition to espousing allegations of Iraqi support to al-Qaeda. In his 2003 State of the Union address delivered on 28 January 2003, George W. Bush insinuated about hypothetical scenarios wherein Ba'athist Iraq was plotting to perpetrate mass-casualty attacks using chemical weapons: "Before September the 11, many in the world believed that Saddam Hussein could be contained. But chemical agents, lethal viruses and shadowy terrorist networks are not easily contained. Imagine those 19 hijackers with other weapons and other plans— this time armed by Saddam Hussein. It would take one vial, one canister, one crate slipped into this country to bring a day of horror like none we have ever known. We will do everything in our power to make sure that that day never comes."
At a press conference on 31 January 2003, George Bush stated: "Saddam Hussein must understand that if he does not disarm, for the sake of peace, we, along with others, will go disarm Saddam Hussein." As late as 25 February 2003, Tony Blair said in the House of Commons: "I detest his regime. But even now he can save it by complying with the UN's demand. Even now, we are prepared to go the extra step to achieve disarmament peacefully."
Secretary of State Powell said in his 5 February 2003 presentation to the UN Security Council: the first National Security Council meeting discussed of an invasion "the facts and Iraq's behavior show that Saddam Hussein and his regime are concealing their efforts to produce more weapons of mass destruction". During the same presentation, Powell also claimed that al-Qaeda was attempting to build weapons of mass destruction with Iraqi support:
"Al-Qaida continues to have a deep interest in acquiring weapons of mass destruction. As with the story of Zarqawi and his network, I can trace the story of a senior terrorist operative telling how Iraq provided training in these weapons to al-Qaida. Fortunately, this operative is now detained and he has told his story. ... The support that this detainee describes included Iraq offering chemical or biological weapons training for two al-Qaida associates beginning in December 2000. He says that a militant known as Abdallah al-Iraqi had been sent to Iraq several times between 1997 and 2000 for help in acquiring poisons and gasses. Abdallah al-Iraqi characterized the relationship he forged with Iraqi officials as successful."
On 11 February 2003, FBI Director Robert Mueller testified to Congress that "Iraq has moved to the top of my list. As we previously briefed this Committee, Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program poses a clear threat to our national security, a threat that will certainly increase in the event of future military action against Iraq. Baghdad has the capability and, we presume, the will to use biological, chemical, or radiological weapons against US domestic targets in the event of a US invasion."
In a radio speech delivered on 8 March 2003, George W. Bush said: “The attacks of September 11, 2001, showed what the enemies of America did with four airplanes. We will not wait to see what terrorists or terror states could do with weapons of mass destruction.”
On 10 April 2003, White House press secretary Ari Fleischer reiterated "...we have high confidence that they have weapons of mass destruction. That is what this war was about, and it is about. And we have high confidence it will be found." Despite the Bush administration's consistent assertion that Iraqi weapons programs justified an invasion, former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz later cast doubt on the administration's conviction behind this rationale by saying in a May 2003 interview: "For bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one issue – weapons of mass destruction – because it was the one reason everyone could agree on."
After the invasion, despite an exhaustive search led by the Iraq Survey Group involving a more than 1,400-member team, no evidence of Iraqi weapons programs was found. The investigation concluded that Iraq had destroyed all major stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction and ceased production in 1991 when sanctions were imposed. The failure to find evidence of Iraqi weapons programs following the invasion led to considerable controversy in the United States and worldwide, including claims by critics of the war that the Bush and Blair administrations deliberately manipulated and misused intelligence to push for an invasion.
=== UN inspections before the invasion ===
Between 1991 and 1998, the United Nations Security Council tasked the United Nations Special Commission on Disarmament (UNSCOM) with finding and destroying Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. In 1996, UNSCOM discovered evidence of continued biological weapons research and supervised destruction of the Al Hakum biological weapons production site – allegedly converted to a chicken feed plant, but retaining its barbed wire fences and anti-aircraft defenses. In 1998, Scott Ritter, leader of a UNSCOM inspection team, found gaps in the prisoner records of Abu Ghraib when investigating allegations that prisoners had been used to test anthrax weapons. Asked to explain the missing documents, the Iraqi government charged that Ritter was working for the CIA and refused to cooperate further with UNSCOM.
On 26 August 1998, approximately two months before the US ordered United Nations inspectors withdraw from Iraq, Scott Ritter resigned from his position rather than participate in what he called the "illusion of arms control". In his resignation letter to Ambassador Richard Butler, He wrote: "The sad truth is that Iraq today is not disarmed. ... UNSCOM has good reason to believe that there are significant numbers of proscribed weapons and related components and the means to manufacture such weapons unaccounted for in Iraq today … Iraq has lied to the Special Commission and the world since day one concerning the true scope and nature of its proscribed programs and weapons systems." On 7 September 1998, Ritter testified before the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committee. During his testimony, John McCain (R, AZ) asked him whether UNSCOM had intelligence suggesting that Iraq had assembled the components for three nuclear weapons and all that it lacked was the fissile material. Ritter replied: "The Special Commission has intelligence information, which suggests that components necessary for three nuclear weapons exists, lacking the fissile material. Yes, sir."
On 8 November 2002, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 1441, giving Iraq "a final opportunity to comply with its disarmament obligations" including unrestricted inspections by the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC), and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Saddam Hussein accepted the resolution on 13 November and inspectors returned to Iraq under the direction of UNMOVIC chairman Hans Blix and IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei. Between that time and the time of the invasion, the IAEA "found no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapons programme in Iraq"; the IAEA concluded that certain items which could have been used in nuclear enrichment – centrifuges, such as aluminum tubes, were in fact intended for other uses. UNMOVIC "did not find evidence of the continuation or resumption of programs of weapons of mass destruction" or significant quantities of proscribed items. UNMOVIC did supervise the destruction of a small number of empty chemical rocket warheads, 50 liters of mustard gas that had been declared by Iraq and sealed by UNSCOM in 1998, and laboratory quantities of a mustard gas precursor, along with about 50 Al-Samoud missiles of a design that Iraq claimed did not exceed the permitted 150 km range, but which had traveled up to 183 km in tests. Shortly before the invasion, UNMOVIC stated that it would take "months" to verify Iraqi compliance with resolution 1441.
=== Formal search after the invasion ===
After the invasion, the Iraq Survey Group (ISG), headed by American David Kay, was tasked with searching for weapons of mass destruction. The survey ultimately concluded that Iraqi production of weapons of mass destruction ceased, and all major stockpiles were destroyed, in 1991 when economic sanctions were imposed but that the expertise to restart production once sanctions were lifted was preserved. The group also concluded that Iraq continued developing long-range missiles proscribed by the UN until just before the 2003 invasion.
In an interim report on 3 October 2003, Kay reported that the group had "not yet found stocks of weapons", but had discovered "dozens of weapons of mass destruction-related program activities" including clandestine laboratories "suitable for continuing CBW [chemical and biological warfare] research", a prison laboratory complex "possibly used in human testing of BW agents", a vial of live C. botulinum Okra B bacteria kept in one scientist's home, small parts and twelve-year-old documents "that would have been useful in resuming uranium enrichment", partially-declared UAVs and undeclared fuel for Scud missiles with ranges beyond the 150 km UN limits, "plans and advanced design work for new long-range missiles with ranges up to at least 1,000 km", attempts to acquire long-range missile technology from North Korea, and document destruction in headquarters buildings in Baghdad. None of the weapons of mass destruction programs involved active production; they instead appeared to be targeted at retaining the expertise needed to resume work once sanctions were dropped. Iraqi personnel involved with much of this work indicated they had orders to conceal it from UN weapons inspectors.
After Charles Duelfer took over from Kay in January 2004, Kay said at a Senate hearing that "we were almost all wrong" about Iraq having stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, but that the other ISG findings made Iraq potentially "more dangerous" than was thought before the war. In an interview, Kay said that "a lot" of the former Iraqi government's weapons of mass destruction program had been moved to Syria shortly before the 2003 invasion, albeit not including large stockpiles of weapons.
On 30 September 2004, the ISG, under Charles Duelfer, issued a comprehensive report. The report stated that "Iraq's weapons of mass destruction capability ... was essentially destroyed in 1991" and that Saddam Hussein subsequently focused on ending the sanctions and "preserving the capability to reconstitute his weapons of mass destruction (WMD) when sanctions were lifted". No evidence was found for continued active production of weapons of mass destruction subsequent to the imposition of sanctions in 1991, though "[b]y 2000–2001, Saddam had managed to mitigate many of the effects of sanctions".
The report concluded in its Key Findings that: "Saddam [Hussein] so dominated the Iraqi Regime that its strategic intent was his alone ... The former Regime had no formal written strategy or plan for the revival of weapons of mass destruction after sanctions. Neither was there an identifiable group of weapons of mass destruction policy makers or planners separate from Saddam. Instead, his lieutenants understood weapons of mass destruction revival was his goal from their long association with Saddam and his infrequent, but firm, verbal comments and directions to them." The report also noted that "Iran was the pre-eminent motivator of [Iraq's weapons of mass destruction revival] policy. ... The wish to balance Israel and acquire status and influence in the Arab world were also considerations, but secondary." A March 2005 addendum to the report stated that "based on the evidence available at present, ISG judged that it was unlikely that an official transfer of weapons of mass destruction material from Iraq to Syria took place. However, ISG was unable to rule out unofficial movement of limited weapons of mass destruction-related materials".
On 12 January 2005, US military forces abandoned the formal search. Transcripts from high level meetings within Saddam Hussein's government before the invasion are consistent with the ISG conclusion that he destroyed his stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction but maintained the expertise to restart production.
=== Discovery of degraded chemical weapons ===
In the post-invasion search for weapons of mass destruction, US and Polish forces found decayed chemical weapons from the Iran–Iraq War. These chemical weapons led former senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) and representative Peter Hoekstra (R-MI) to say that the US had indeed found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
These assertions were directly contradicted by weapons experts David Kay, the original director of the Iraq Survey Group, and his successor Charles Duelfer. Both Kay and Duelfer stated that the chemical weapons found were not the "weapons of mass destruction" that the US was looking for. Kay added that experts on Iraq's chemical weapons are in "almost 100 percent agreement" that sarin nerve agent produced in the 1980s would no longer be dangerous and that the chemical weapons found were "less toxic than most things that Americans have under their kitchen sink at this point". In reply, Hoekstra said "I am 100 percent sure if David Kay had the opportunity to look at the reports ... he would agree ... these things are lethal and deadly". Discussing the findings on NPR's Talk of the Nation, Charles Duelfer described such residual chemical munitions as hazardous but not deadly.
What we found, both as UN and later when I was with the Iraq Survey Group, is that some of these rounds would have highly degraded agent, but it is still dangerous. You know, it can be a local hazard. If an insurgent got it and wanted to create a local hazard, it could be exploded. When I was running the ISG – the Iraq Survey Group – we had a couple of them that had been turned into these IEDs, the improvised explosive devices. But they are local hazards. They are not a major, you know, weapon of mass destruction.
The degraded chemical weapons were first discovered in May 2004, when a binary sarin nerve gas shell was used in an improvised explosive device (roadside bomb) in Iraq. The device exploded before it could be disarmed, and two soldiers displayed symptoms of minor sarin exposure. The 155 mm shell was unmarked and rigged as if it were a normal high-explosive shell, indicating that the insurgents who placed the device did not know it contained nerve gas. Earlier in the month, a shell containing mustard gas was found abandoned in the median of a road in Baghdad.
In July 2004, Polish troops discovered insurgents trying to purchase cyclosarin in gas warheads produced during the Iran–Iraq War. Cyclosarin is an extremely toxic substance which is an organophosphate nerve agent like its predecessor, sarin. To thwart these insurgents, Polish troops purchased two rockets on 23 June 2004. The US military later determined that the two rockets had only traces of sarin, small and deteriorated and virtually harmless, with "limited to no impact if used by insurgents against coalition forces".
=== 'Dodgy dossier' ===
The 'Dodgy Dossier' was an article written by Ibrahim al-Marashi which was plagiarized by the British government in a 2003 briefing document entitled Iraq: Its Infrastructure of Concealment, Deception and Intimidation. This document was a follow-up to the earlier September Dossier, both of which concerned Iraq and weapons of mass destruction and were ultimately used by the government to justify its involvement in the 2003 Invasion of Iraq. Large portions of al-Marashi's paper were quoted verbatim by the United States Secretary of State Colin Powell to the UN General Assembly. The most frequently quoted section was the allegation that Saddam had WMDs that could be launched within 45 minutes.
The material plagiarized from Marashi's work and copied nearly verbatim into the "Dodgy Dossier" was six paragraphs from his article Iraq's Security & Intelligence Network: A Guide & Analysis, which was published in the September 2002 issue of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (or MERIA). Tony Blair's office ultimately apologized to Marashi for its actions, but not to the MERIA journal.
=== Conclusions ===
The failure to find stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq caused considerable controversy, particularly in the United States. US President George W. Bush and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Tony Blair defended their decision to go to war, alleging that many nations, even those opposed to war, believed that the Saddam Hussein government was actively developing weapons of mass destruction.
Critics such as Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean charged that the Bush and Blair administrations deliberately falsified evidence to build a case for war. Critics claims were supported by the fact that the Bush administration's preferred outside analysis with intelligence provided by Ahmed Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress was largely proven to be false and that Chalabi was subsequently denounced as a fabricator. Criticisms were further strengthened with the 2005 release of the so-called Downing Street memo, written in July 2002, in which the former head of British Military Intelligence wrote that "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy" of removing Saddam Hussein from power.
While the Downing Street memo and the yellowcake uranium scandal lent credence to claims that intelligence was manipulated, two bipartisan investigations, one by the Senate Intelligence Committee and the other by a specially-appointed Iraq Intelligence Commission chaired by Charles Robb and Laurence Silberman, found no evidence of political pressure applied to intelligence analysts. An independent assessment by the Annenberg Public Policy Center found that Bush administration officials did misuse intelligence in their public communications. For example, Vice President Dick Cheney's September 2002 statement on Meet the Press that "we do know, with absolute certainty, that he (Saddam) is using his procurement system to acquire the equipment he needs in order to enrich uranium to build a nuclear weapon", was inconsistent with the views of the intelligence community at the time.
A study co-authored by the Center for Public Integrity found that in the two years after September 11, 2001, the president and top administration officials had made 935 false statements, in an orchestrated public relations campaign to galvanize public opinion for the war, and that the press was largely complicit in its uncritical coverage of the reasons adduced for going to war. PBS commentator Bill Moyers had made similar points throughout the lead-up to the Iraq War, and prior to a national press conference on the Iraq War Moyers correctly predicted "at least a dozen times during this press conference he [the President] will invoke 9/11 and al-Qaeda to justify a preemptive attack on a country that has not attacked America. But the White House press corps will ask no hard questions tonight about those claims." Moyers later also denounced the complicity of the press in the administration's campaign for the war, saying that the media "surrendered its independence and skepticism to join with [the US] government in marching to war", and that the administration "needed a compliant press, to pass on their propaganda as news and cheer them on".
Many in the US intelligence community expressed sincere regret over the flawed predictions about Iraqi weapons programs. Testifying before Congress in January 2004, David Kay, the original director of the Iraq Survey Group, said unequivocally that "It turns out that we were all wrong, probably in my judgment, and that is most disturbing." He later added in an interview that the intelligence community owed the President an apology.
In the aftermath of the invasion, much attention was also paid to the role of the press in promoting government claims concerning weapons of mass destruction production in Iraq. Between 1998 and 2003, The New York Times and other influential US newspapers published numerous articles about suspected Iraqi rearmament programs with headlines like "Iraqi Work Toward A-Bomb Reported" and "Iraq Suspected of Secret Germ War Effort". It later turned out that many of the sources for these articles were unreliable, and that some were tied to Ahmed Chalabi.
Some controversy also exists regarding whether the invasion increased or decreased the potential for nuclear proliferation. For example, hundreds of tons of dual-use high explosives that could be used to detonate fissile material in a nuclear weapon were sealed by the IAEA at the Al Qa'qaa site in January 2003. Immediately before the invasion, UN Inspectors had checked the locked bunker doors, but not the actual contents; the bunkers also had large ventilation shafts that were not sealed. By October, the material was no longer present. The IAEA expressed concerns that the material might have been looted after the invasion, posing a nuclear proliferation threat. The US released satellite photographs from March 17, showing trucks at the site large enough to remove substantial amounts of material before US forces reached the area in April. Ultimately, Major Austin Pearson of Task Force Bullet, a task force charged with securing and destroying Iraqi ammunition after the invasion, stated that the task force had removed about 250 tons of material from the site and had detonated it or used it to detonate other munitions. Similar concerns were raised about other dual use materials, such as high strength aluminum; before the invasion, the US cited them as evidence for an Iraqi nuclear weapons program, while the IAEA was satisfied that they were being used for permitted industrial uses; after the war, the IAEA emphasized the proliferation concern, while the Duelfer report mentioned the material's use as scrap. Possible chemical weapons laboratories have also been found which were built subsequent to the 2003 invasion, apparently by insurgent forces.
On 2 August 2004, President Bush stated "Knowing what I know today we still would have gone on into Iraq. ... The decision I made is the right decision. The world is better off without Saddam Hussein in power."
== Allegations of Iraqi sponsorship of terrorism ==
Along with Iraq's alleged development of weapons of mass destruction, another justification for invasion was the purported link between Saddam Hussein's government and terrorist organizations, in particular al-Qaeda. In that sense, the Bush administration cast the Iraq war as part of the broader war on terrorism. U.S President George W. Bush regularly described the Iraq War as the "central front in the war on terror". In a press conference held on 6 March 2003, Bush argued:"Iraq is a part of the war on terror. Iraq is a country that has got terrorist ties, it's a country with wealth, it's a country that trains terrorists, a country that could arm terrorists. And our fellow Americans must understand, in this new war against terror, that we not only must chase down al Qaeda terrorists, we must deal with weapons of mass destruction as well."On 11 February 2003, FBI Director Robert Mueller testified to Congress that "seven countries designated as State Sponsors of Terrorism – Iran, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Libya, Cuba, and North Korea – remain active in the US and continue to support terrorist groups that have targeted Americans".
In October 2002, according to Pew Research Center, 66% of Americans believed that "Saddam Hussein helped the terrorists in the September 11th attacks"; and 21% said he was not involved in 9/11. A poll published by The Washington Post in September 2003 estimated that nearly seven-tenths of Americans continued to the hold the perception that Ba'athist Iraq had a role in the September 11 attacks. The poll further revealed that approximately 80% of Americans suspected Saddam Hussein of providing material support to al-Qaeda.
=== Al-Qaeda ===
The U.S. government alleged that a highly secretive relationship existed between Saddam and al-Qaeda from 1992, specifically through a series of meetings reportedly involving the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS).
The U.S. claimed that in April 2001, lead 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta met with an Iraqi intelligence agent in Prague, Czech Republic. In an interview with NBC's Meet the Press on December 9, 2001, Vice President Dick Cheney said:It's been pretty well confirmed that (Atta) did go to Prague, and he did meet with a senior official of the Iraqi intelligence service in (the Czech Republic) last April, several months before the attack.Cheney repeated these allegations in 2002 and 2003.
The U.S. also claimed that Saddam Hussein was harboring Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, whom U.S. Secretary of State Powell called a "collaborator of Osama bin Laden". During his February 2003 presentation in the UN Security Council, Powell claimed:
"... the Zarqawi network helped establish another poison and explosive training center camp, and this camp is located in northeastern Iraq...
Those helping to run this camp are Zarqawi lieutenants operating in northern Kurdish areas outside Saddam Hussein's controlled Iraq. But Baghdad has an agent in the most senior levels of the radical organization Ansar al-Islam that controls this corner of Iraq. In 2000, this agent offered al-Qaida safe haven in the region. ...
Going back to the early and mid-1990s when bin Laden was based in Sudan, ... Saddam and bin Laden reached an understanding that al-Qaida would no longer support activities against Baghdad. Early al-Qaida ties were forged by secret high-level intelligence service contacts with al-Qaida, secret Iraqi intelligence high-level contacts with al-Qaida. ...
Saddam was also impressed by al-Qaida's attacks on the USS Cole in Yemen in October 2000.
Iraqis continue to visit bin Laden in his new home in Afghanistan. A senior defector, one of Saddam's former intelligence chiefs in Europe, says Saddam sent his agents to Afghanistan sometime in the mid-1990s to provide training to al-Qaida members on document forgery.
From the late 1990s until 2001, the Iraqi Embassy in Pakistan played the role of liaison to the al-Qaida organization."
Powell further claimed that al-Qaeda sought WMD from the Iraqis, noting:
"Al-Qaida continues to have a deep interest in acquiring weapons of mass destruction. As with the story of Zarqawi and his network, I can trace the story of a senior terrorist operative telling how Iraq provided training in these weapons to al-Qaida. Fortunately, this operative is now detained and he has told his story.
... The support that this detainee describes included Iraq offering chemical or biological weapons training for two al-Qaida associates beginning in December 2000. He says that a militant known as Abdallah al-Iraqi had been sent to Iraq several times between 1997 and 2000 for help in acquiring poisons and gasses. Abdallah al-Iraqi characterized the relationship he forged with Iraqi officials as successful."
=== Other terrorist organizations ===
In making its case for the invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration also referenced Saddam Hussein's relationships with terrorist organizations other than al-Qaeda. Saddam Hussein provided financial assistance to the families of Palestinians killed in the conflict – including as much as $25,000 to the families of suicide bombers, some of whom were working with militant organizations in the Middle East such as Hamas. In his presentation to the UN Security Council on 5 February 2003, Colin Powell claimed:
"... the record of Saddam Hussein's cooperation with other Islamist terrorist organizations is clear. Hamas, for example, opened an office in Baghdad in 1999 and Iraq has hosted conferences attended by Palestine Islamic Jihad. These groups are at the forefront of sponsoring suicide attacks against Israel."
Following the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, Iraqi-American suspect Abdul Rahman Yasin fled to Iraq after being initially detained by the FBI. Shortly after, the FBI discovered evidence linking him to the bomb. It was alleged that Yasin's involvement signified Iraqi involvement in the bombings. This allegation was popularized by Dr. Laurie Mylroie of the American Enterprise Institute and former associate professor of the U.S. Naval War College. Mylorie developed a connection with fellow neoconservative Paul Wolfowitz, who also subscribed to that view.
Yasin is on the FBI's most wanted terrorists list, and is still at large.
=== Conclusions ===
Evidence of ties between Iraq and al-Qaeda was discredited by multiple US intelligence agencies, including the Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the Defense Department's Inspector General's Office even prior to the 2003 invasion. A 21 September 2001 President's Daily Brief (prepared at Bush's request) indicated that the U.S. intelligence community had no evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the 9/11 attacks and there was "scant credible evidence that Iraq had any significant collaborative ties with Al Qaeda." The PDB wrote off the few contacts that existed between Saddam's government and al-Qaeda as attempts to monitor the group, not work with it. The CIA also expressed skepticism about the alleged meeting between Atta and Iraqi intelligence. A CIA report in early October 2004 "found no clear evidence of Iraq harboring Abu Musab al-Zarqawi". More broadly, the CIA's Kerr Group summarized in 2004 that despite "a 'purposely aggressive approach' in conducting exhaustive and repetitive searches for such links ... [the US] Intelligence Community remained firm in its assessment that no operational or collaborative relationship existed". Documents recovered from Iraq confirmed that no relationship ever existed between al-Qaeda and Iraq.
Allegations of Iraqi involvement in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing was also discredited. Neil Herman, who headed the FBI investigation into the bombings noted that Yasin's presence in Baghdad does not mean Iraq sponsored the attack: "We looked at that rather extensively. There were no ties to the Iraqi government." CNN terrorism reporter Peter L. Bergen writes, "In sum, by the mid-'90s, the Joint Terrorism Task Force in New York, the F.B.I., the U.S. Attorney's office in the Southern District of New York, the C.I.A., the N.S.C., and the State Department had all found no evidence implicating the Iraqi government in the first Trade Center attack." Bergen later stated that Mylorie was a "crackpot" who claimed that "Saddam was not only behind the '93 Trade Center attack, but also every anti-American terrorist incident of the past decade, from the bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania to the leveling of the federal building in Oklahoma City bombing to September 11 itself." Daniel Benjamin, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, writes: "The most knowledgeable analysts and investigators at the CIA and at the FBI believe that their work conclusively disproves Mylroie's claims."
Despite these findings, the Bush administration continued to assert that a link existed between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, which drew substantial criticism from members of the intelligence community and leading Democrats when it turned out no connection ever existed. At the time of the invasion, the State Department listed 45 countries, including the United States, where al-Qaeda was active. Iraq was not one of them. The information that alleged a connection between Saddam and al-Qaeda was supplied by Ahmed Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress. Outside analysis with INC intelligence was preferred by Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and fellow neoconservatives as they had skepticism towards the CIA's interpreting of intelligence. Most of the information supplied by the INC proved to be false, and Chalabi was subsequently denounced as a fabricator.
Furthermore, an April 2007 report by Acting Inspector General Thomas F. Gimble, found that the Defense Department's Office of Special Plans – run by then-Undersecretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith, a close ally of Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld – purposely manipulated evidence to further strengthen the case for war. These claims were supported by the July 2005 release of the so-called Downing Street memo, in which Richard Dearlove (then head of British foreign intelligence service MI6) wrote that "the intelligence and facts were being fixed [by the US] around the policy" of removing Saddam Hussein from power.
A study published in 2005 by American political scientists Amy Gershkoff and Shana Kushner Gadarian, which analyzed George Bush's speeches and polling data between September 2001 and May 2003, found that it was the American public's views about Saddam Hussein's perceived connections with al-Qaeda and the September 11 attacks that became the major catalyst behind the rise in support of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq among Americans. According to the findings of the study:"2003 war in Iraq received high levels of public support because the Bush administration successfully framed the conflict as an extension of the war on terror, which was a response to the September 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Our analysis of Bush's speeches reveals that the administration consistently connected Iraq with 9/11. New York Times coverage of the president's speeches featured almost no debate over the framing of the Iraq conflict as part of the war on terror. This assertion had tremendous influence on public attitudes, as indicated by polling data from several sources."Intelligence experts argued that the Iraq War increased terrorism, even though no acts of terrorism occurred in the US. London's conservative International Institute for Strategic Studies concluded in 2004 that the occupation of Iraq had become "a potent global recruitment pretext" for jihadists and that the invasion "galvanized" al-Qaeda and "perversely inspired insurgent violence" there. Counter-terrorism expert Rohan Gunaratna called the invasion of Iraq a "fatal mistake" that greatly increased terrorism in the Middle East. The US National Intelligence Council concluded in a January 2005 report that the war in Iraq had encouraged a new generation of terrorists; David B. Low, the national intelligence officer for transnational threats, indicated that the report concluded that the war in Iraq provided terrorists with "a training ground, a recruitment ground, the opportunity for enhancing technical skills ... There is even, under the best scenario, over time, the likelihood that some of the jihadists who are not killed there will, in a sense, go home, wherever home is, and will therefore disperse to various other countries." The Council's Chairman Robert L. Hutchings said, "At the moment, Iraq is a magnet for international terrorist activity." And the 2006 National Intelligence Estimate outlined the considered judgment of all 16 US intelligence agencies, held that "The Iraq conflict has become the 'cause celebre' for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of US involvement in the Muslim world and cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement."
Al-Qaeda leaders also publicly cited the Iraq War as a boon to their recruiting and operational efforts, providing both evidence to jihadists worldwide that America is at war with Islam, and the training ground for a new generation of jihadists to practice attacks on American forces. In October 2003, Osama bin Laden announced: "Be glad of the good news: America is mired in the swamps of the Tigris and Euphrates. Bush is, through Iraq and its oil, easy prey. Here is he now, thank God, in an embarrassing situation and here is America today being ruined before the eyes of the whole world." Echoing this sentiment, al-Qaeda commander Saif al-Adl gloated about the war in Iraq, indicating, "The Americans took the bait and fell into our trap." A letter thought to be from al-Qaeda leader Atiyah Abd al-Rahman found in Iraq among the rubble where al-Zarqawi was killed and released by the US military in October 2006, indicated that al-Qaeda perceived the war as beneficial to its goals: "The most important thing is that the jihad continues with steadfastness ... indeed, prolonging the war is in our interest."
== Human rights ==
The US cited the United Nations condemnation of Saddam Hussein's human rights abuses as one of several reasons for the Iraq invasion.
As evidence supporting US and British claims about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction weakened, the Bush administration began to focus more upon the other issues that Congress had articulated within the Iraq Resolution, such as human rights violations of the Saddam Hussein government as justification for military intervention. The Saddam Hussein government consistently and violently violated the human rights of its people is in little doubt. During his more than two decades of rule, Saddam Hussein tortured and killed thousands of Iraqi citizens, including gassing and killing thousands of Kurds in northern Iraq during the mid-1980s, brutally repressing Shia and Kurdish uprisings following the 1991 Gulf War, and a fifteen-year campaign of repression and displacement of the Marsh Arabs in Southern Iraq. In the 2003 State of the Union Address, President Bush mentioned Saddam's government practices of obtaining confessions by torturing children while their parents are made to watch, electric shock, burning with hot irons, dripping acid on the skin, mutilation with electric drills, cutting out tongues, and rape.
Many critics have argued, despite its repeated mention in the Joint Resolution, that human rights was never a principal justification for the war, and that it became prominent only after evidence concerning weapons of mass destruction and Saddam Hussein's links to terrorism became discredited. For example, during a July 29, 2003, hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, then Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz spent the majority of his testimony discussing Saddam Hussein's human rights record, causing Senator Lincoln Chafee (R-RI) to complain that "in the months leading up to the war it was a steady drum beat of weapons of mass destruction, weapons of mass destruction, weapons of mass destruction. And, Secretary Wolfowitz, in your almost hour-long testimony here this morning, once – only once did you mention weapons of mass destruction, and that was an ad lib."
Leading human rights groups such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International further argued that even in the case that human rights concerns been a central rationale for the invasion, military intervention would not have been justifiable on humanitarian grounds. Ken Roth Executive Director of Human Rights Watch wrote in 2004, despite Saddam Hussein's horrific human rights record, "the killing in Iraq at the time was not of the exceptional nature that would justify such intervention".
More broadly, war critics have argued that the US and Europe supported the Saddam Hussein regime during the 1980s, a period of some of his worst human rights abuses, thus casting doubt on the sincerity of claims that military intervention was for humanitarian purposes. The US and Europe provided considerable military and financial support during the Iran–Iraq war with full knowledge that the Saddam Hussein government was regularly using chemical weapons on Iranian soldiers and Kurdish insurgents. US aid was aimed primarily to prevent Iraqi defeat after 1983. Following along this line, critics of the use of human rights as a rationale, such as Columbia University Law Professor Michael Dorf, have pointed out that during his first campaign for president Bush was highly critical of using US military might for humanitarian ends.
Others questioned why military intervention for humanitarian reasons would supposedly have been justified in Iraq but not in other countries with even worse human rights violations, such as Darfur.
=== United Nations ===
By article 1 of the UN Charter, the United Nations has the responsibility: "To achieve international co-operation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character, and in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion". By UN Charter article 39, the responsibility for this determination lies with the Security Council.
=== Ending sanctions ===
US Vice President Dick Cheney, who called the sanctions "the most intrusive system of arms control in history", cited the breakdown of the sanctions as one rationale for the Iraq war. Accepting a controversial large estimate of casualties due to sanctions, Walter Russell Mead argued on behalf of such a war as a better alternative than continuing the sanctions regime, since "Each year of containment is a new Gulf War." However, economist Michael Spagat "argue[s] that the contention that sanctions had caused the deaths of more than half a million children is [as were weapons of mass destruction claims] very likely to be wrong".
== Oil ==
=== Statements indicating oil as a rationale ===
Bush's Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill said that Bush's first two National Security Council meetings discussed invading Iraq. He was given briefing materials entitled "Plan for post-Saddam Iraq", which envisioned dividing up Iraq's oil wealth. A Pentagon document dated March 5, 2001, was titled "Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield contracts", and included a map of potential areas for exploration.
In July 2003, Polish foreign minister, Włodzimierz Cimoszewicz, said "We have never hidden our desire for Polish oil companies to finally have access to sources of commodities." This remark came after a group of Polish firms had signed a deal with Kellogg, Brown and Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton. Cimoszewicz stated that access to Iraq's oilfields "is our ultimate objective".
One report by BBC journalist Gregory Palast citing unnamed "insiders" alleged that the US "called for the sell-off of all of Iraq's oil fields" and planned for a coup d'état in Iraq long before September 11. Palast also wrote that the "new plan was crafted by neo-conservatives intent on using Iraq's oil to destroy the OPEC cartel through massive increases in production above OPEC quotas", but Iraq oil production decreased following the Iraq War.
General John Abizaid, CENTCOM commander from 2003 to 2007, said of the Iraq war: "first of all I think it's really important to understand the dynamics that are going on in the Middle East, and of course it's about oil, it's very much about oil and we can't really deny that".
2008 Republican Presidential Candidate John McCain was forced to clarify his comments suggesting the Iraq war involved US reliance on foreign oil. "My friends, I will have an energy policy that we will be talking about, which will eliminate our dependence on oil from the Middle East that will prevent us from having ever to send our young men and women into conflict again in the Middle East", McCain said. To clarify his comments, McCain explained that "the word 'again' was misconstrued; I want us to remove our dependency on foreign oil for national security reasons, and that's all I mean."
Many critics have focused upon administration officials' past relationships with energy corporations. Both George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were formerly CEOs of oil and oil-related companies such as Arbusto, Harken Energy, Spectrum 7, and Halliburton. Before the 2003 invasion of Iraq and even before the war on terror, the administration had prompted anxiety over whether the private sector ties of cabinet members (including National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, former director of Chevron, and Commerce Secretary Donald Evans, former head of Tom Brown Inc.) would affect their judgment on energy policy.
Prior to the war, the CIA saw Iraqi oil production and illicit oil sales as Iraq's key method of financing. The CIA's October 2002 unclassified white paper on "Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction Programs" states on page one under the "Key Judgments, Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction Programs" heading that "Iraq's growing ability to sell oil illicitly increases Baghdad's capabilities to finance weapons of mass destruction programs".
==== Private oil business ====
Iraq holds the world's fifth-largest proven oil reserves at 141 billion barrels (2.24×1010 m3), with increasing exploration expected to enlarge them beyond 200 billion barrels (3.2×1010 m3). For comparison, Venezuela – the largest proven source of oil in the world – has 298 billion barrels (4.74×1010 m3) of proven oil reserves.
Organizations such as the Global Policy Forum (GPF) asserted that Iraq's oil is "the central feature of the political landscape" there, and that as a result of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, "'friendly' companies expect to gain most of the lucrative oil deals that will be worth hundreds of billions of dollars in profits in the coming decades". According to the GPF, US influence over the 2005 Constitution of Iraq has made sure it "contains language that guarantees a major role for foreign companies".
==== Strategic importance of oil ====
Oil exerts tremendous economic and political influence worldwide, although the line between political and economic influence is not always distinct. The importance of oil to national security is unlike that of any other commodity:
Modern warfare particularly depends on oil, because virtually all weapons systems rely on oil-based fuel – tanks, trucks, armored vehicles, self-propelled artillery pieces, airplanes, and naval ships. For this reason, the governments and general staff of powerful nations seek to ensure a steady supply of oil during wartime, to fuel oil-hungry military forces in far-flung operational theaters. Such governments view their companies' global interests as synonymous with the national interest and they readily support their companies' efforts to control new production sources, to overwhelm foreign rivals, and to gain the most favorable pipeline routes and other transportation and distribution channels.
Critics of the Iraq War contend that US officials and representatives from the private sector were planning just this kind of mutually supportive relationship as early as 2001, when the James Baker III Institute for Public Policy and the Council on Foreign Relations produced "Strategic Energy Policy: Challenges for the 21st Century", a report describing the long-term threat of energy crises such as blackouts and rising fuel prices then playing havoc with the state of California. The report recommended a comprehensive review of US military, energy, economic, and political policy toward Iraq "with the aim to lowering anti-Americanism in the Middle East and elsewhere, and set the groundwork to eventually ease Iraqi oil-field investment restrictions". The report's urgent tone stood in contrast to the relatively calm speech Chevron CEO Kenneth T. Derr had given the Commonwealth Club of California two years earlier, before the California electricity crisis, where he said, "It might surprise you to learn that even though Iraq possesses huge reserves of oil and gas – reserves I'd love Chevron to have access to – I fully agree with the sanctions we have imposed on Iraq."
==== Oil and foreign relations ====
Post-Iraq invasion opinion polls conducted in Jordan, Morocco, Pakistan, and Turkey showed that the majority of each country's population tended to "doubt the sincerity of the war on terrorism".
Although there has been disagreement about where the alleged will to control and dominate originates, skeptics of the war on terror have pointed early and often to the Project for a New American Century, a neoconservative think tank established in 1997 by William Kristol and Robert Kagan. The organization made plain its position on oil, territory, and the use of force in series of publications, including:
a 1998 letter to President Bill Clinton:
It hardly needs to be added that if Saddam does acquire the capability to deliver weapons of mass destruction, as he is almost certain to do if we continue along the present course, the safety of American troops in the region, of our friends and allies like Israel and the moderate Arab states, and a significant portion of the world's supply of oil will all be put at hazard. ... The only acceptable strategy is one that eliminates the possibility that Iraq will be able to use or threaten to use weapons of mass destruction. In the near-term, this means a willingness to undertake military action as diplomacy is clearly failing.
a September 2000 report on foreign policy:
American forces, along with British and French units ... represent the long-term commitment of the United States and its major allies to a region of vital importance. Indeed, the United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.
a May 2001 call to "Liberate Iraq":
Twice since 1980, Saddam has tried to dominate the Middle East by waging wars against neighbors that could have given him control of the region's oil wealth and the identity of the Arab world.
a 2004 justification:
His [Saddam Hussein's] clear and unwavering ambition, an ambition nurtured and acted upon across three decades, was to dominate the Middle East, both economically and militarily, by attempting to acquire the lion's share of the region's oil and by intimidating or destroying anyone who stood in his way. This, too, was a sufficient reason to remove him from power.
Of 18 signatories to the 1998 PNAC letter, 11 would later occupy positions in President Bush's administration:
Elliott Abrams,
Richard Armitage,
John R. Bolton,
Paula Dobriansky,
Francis Fukuyama,
Zalmay Khalilzad,
Richard Perle,
Peter W. Rodman,
Donald Rumsfeld,
Paul Wolfowitz, and
Robert B. Zoellick.
Administration officials Dick Cheney, Eliot A. Cohen, and Lewis Libby signed the 1997 PNAC "Statement of Principles".
In an article in The Guardian in April 2003, a former senior CIA official claimed that a powerful section of the people now driving the war in Iraq to safeguard Israel's energy supply as well as that of the United States, with plans to reconstruct the Kirkuk–Haifa oil pipeline, inactive since the end of the British mandate in Palestine in 1948. The revival of the pipeline was first discussed openly by the Israeli Minister for National Infrastructures, Joseph Paritzky. Paritzky was quoted as saying that the pipeline would cut Israel's energy bill drastically by more than 25 per cent since the country is currently largely dependent on expensive imports from Russia. Sources at the State Department also stated that concluding a peace treaty with Israel is to be 'top of the agenda' for a new Iraqi government, and Ahmed Chalabi is known to have discussed Iraq's recognition of the state of Israel. The U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia James E. Akins also stated that former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger had envisioned piping oil west from Iraq to Israel and even made plans to run an oil pipeline from Iraq to Aqaba in Jordan, opposite the Israeli port of Eilat, back when Saddam Hussein was a key U.S. ally in the 1980s.
==== Wolfowitz Cabal ====
Just after the US invasion of Afghanistan, The Guardian reported plans to invade Iraq and seize its oil reserves around Basra and use the proceeds to finance Iraqi oppositions in the south and the north. Later the US intelligence community called these claims as not credible and said that they had no plan to attack Iraq. On October 14, 2001, The Guardian reported:
The group, which some in the State Department and on Capitol Hill refer to as the "Wolfowitz cabal", after Deputy Secretary of Defence Paul Wolfowitz, was yesterday laying the ground for a strategy that envisions the use of air support and the occupation of southern Iraq with American ground troops to install an Iraqi opposition group based in London at the helm of a new government. Under the plan, American troops would also seize the oil fields around Basra, in south-eastern Iraq, and sell the oil to finance the Iraqi opposition in the south and the Kurds in the north, one senior official said.The Guardian later retracted statements which referred to the Iraq war as being premised on the control and extraction of Oil. The Guardian editors writing in a correction "The sense was clearly that the US had no economic options by means of which to achieve its objectives, not that the economic value of the oil motivated the war. The report appeared only on the website and has now been removed." In this correction Wolfowitz was noted as saying "The ... difference between North Korea and Iraq is that we had virtually no economic options with Iraq because the country floats on a sea of oil. In the case of North Korea, the country is teetering on the edge of economic collapse and that I believe is a major point of leverage whereas the military picture with North Korea is very different from that with Iraq."
==== Petrodollar warfare ====
The term petrodollar warfare refers to the idea that the international use of the United States dollar as the standard means of settling oil transactions is a kind of economic imperialism enforced by violent military interventions against countries like Iraq, Iran, and Venezuela, and is a key driver of world politics. The term was coined by William R. Clark, who has written a book with the same title. The phrase oil currency war is sometimes used with the same meaning. In reality, the use of dollars in international oil transactions increases overall U.S. dollar demand by only a tiny fraction, and the dollar's overall status as the major international reserve currency has relatively few tangible benefits for the United States economy as well as some drawbacks.
=== Statements against oil as a rationale ===
The New York Times reported that in February 2003, Saddam Hussein had offered, through a clandestine backchannel, to give the United States first priority as it related to Iraq oil rights, as part of a deal to avert an impending invasion. The overtures intrigued the Bush administration but were ultimately rebuffed.
In 2002, responding to a question about coveting oil fields, George W. Bush said "Those are the wrong impressions. I have a deep desire for peace. That's what I have a desire for. And freedom for the Iraqi people. See, I don't like a system where people are repressed through torture and murder in order to keep a dictator in place. That troubles me deeply. And so the Iraqi people must hear this loud and clear, that this country never has any intention to conquer anybody."
Tony Blair stated that the hypothesis that the Iraq invasion had "some[thing] to do with oil" was a "conspiracy theory": "Let me first deal with the conspiracy theory that this is somehow to do with oil ... The very reason why we are taking the action that we are taking is nothing to do with oil or any of the other conspiracy theories put forward."
Then Australian Prime Minister John Howard has dismissed on multiple occasions the role of oil in the Iraq Invasion: "We didn't go there because of oil and we don't remain there because of oil." In early 2003 John Howard stated, "No criticism is more outrageous than the claim that United States behavior is driven by a wish to take control of Iraq's oil reserves."
Economist Gary S. Becker stated in 2003 that "if oil were the driving force behind the Bush Administration's hard line on Iraq, avoiding war would be the most appropriate policy".
According to economist Ismael Hossein-Zadeh (2006): "there is no evidence that, at least in the case of the current invasion of Iraq, oil companies pushed for or supported the war. On the contrary, there is strong evidence that, in fact, oil companies did not welcome the war because they prefer stability and predictability to periodic oil spikes that follow war and political convulsion".
Political scientist John S. Duffield wrote in 2012 that "no compelling evidence, either in the form of declassified documents or participants' memoirs, has yet emerged indicating that oil was a prominent factor or constant consideration in the thinking of decision makers within the Bush administration".
Political scientist Jeff Colgan wrote in 2013 that "Even years after the 2003 Iraq War, there is still no consensus on the degree to which oil played a role in that war." Colgan said that the fact that oil contracts were awarded to non-American companies, including Russian and Chinese corporations, is evidence against the view that the war was for oil.
Journalist Muhammad Idrees Ahmad wrote in 2014 that:
Inferring oil as the war's presiding motive from the fact that US forces showed extraordinary solicitude towards Iraq's energy infrastructure assumes that if the war was not for oil then the invaders would not care about it. Gulf energy resources have always been a vital US interest. On no other occasion has the US had to occupy a country to secure them. Regardless of why Iraq was invaded, it is reasonable to assume that an occupier would exploit rather than destroy its assets. Indeed, the neoconservatives used oil both as an incentive to get the energy industry onside and as a disincentive against dissent, threatening exclusion from future oil contracts. Oil may have played a part in the thinking of some policy makers – as Juan Cole argues it had in Dick Cheney's – but even Cole admits that Iraq was invaded only because the Israel lobby was blocking all other means of access to it. If oil were indeed the overriding concern, it is likelier that we would have US boots on Venezuelan ground. After all, nowhere were US interests more threatened than in Latin America, and few governments had a more provocative attitude towards the US than Hugo Chavez's. Yet, the US was able to do little when the Venezuelan government rewrote laws to claim 30 per cent (up from 16 per cent) of the oil profits for the national oil company.
== Other rationales ==
=== Bringing democracy to the Middle East ===
One of the rationales that the Bush administration employed periodically during the lead-up to the Iraq war was that deposing Saddam Hussein and installing a democratic government in Iraq would promote democracy in other Middle Eastern countries. The United States also proclaimed that the monarchies in Jordan and Saudi Arabia, and the military government of Pakistan were American allies, despite the human rights abuses and subversion of democracy attributed to them respectively. As Vice President Cheney argued in an August 2002 speech to the annual Veterans of Foreign Wars convention, "When the gravest of threats are eliminated, the freedom-loving peoples of the region will have a chance to promote the values that can bring lasting peace."
At a 2003 Veterans Day address, President Bush stated:
Our mission in Iraq and Afghanistan is clear to our service members – and clear to our enemies. Our men and women are fighting to secure the freedom of more than 50 million people who recently lived under two of the cruelest dictatorships on earth. Our men and women are fighting to help democracy and peace and justice rise in a troubled and violent region. Our men and women are fighting terrorist enemies thousands of miles away in the heart and center of their power, so that we do not face those enemies in the heart of America.
=== Establishing long-term Middle East military presence ===
US General Jay Garner, who was in charge of planning and administering post-war reconstruction in Iraq, compared the US occupation of Iraq to the Philippine model in a 2004 interview in National Journal: "Look back on the Philippines around the turn of the 20th century: they were a coaling station for the navy, and that allowed us to keep a great presence in the Pacific. That's what Iraq is for the next few decades: our coaling station that gives us great presence in the Middle East", "One of the most important things we can do right now is start getting basing rights with (the Iraqi authorities)", "I hope they're there a long time ... And I think we'll have basing rights in the north and basing rights in the south ... we'd want to keep at least a brigade", Garner added.
Also, the House report accompanying the emergency spending legislation said the money was "of a magnitude normally associated with permanent bases".
=== Other allegations ===
Nabil Shaath told the BBC that according to minutes of a conference with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, Bush said, "God inspired me to hit al Qaeda, and so I hit it. And I had the inspiration to hit Saddam, and so I hit him." Haaretz provided a similar translation of the minutes. When an Arabist at the Washington Post translated the same transcript, Bush was said to have indicated that God inspired him to "end the tyranny in Iraq" instead.
In a 2003 interview, Jacques Chirac, President of France at that time, affirmed that President George W. Bush asked him to send troops to Iraq to stop Gog and Magog, the "Bible's satanic agents of the Apocalypse". According to Chirac, the American leader appealed to their "common faith" (Christianity) and told him: "Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East ... The biblical prophecies are being fulfilled ... This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people's enemies before a New Age begins."
=== Purported Iraqi plots ===
David Harrison claimed in the Telegraph to have found secret documents that purported to show Russian President Vladimir Putin offering the use of assassins to Saddam's Iraqi regime to kill Western targets on November 27, 2000. Fox News claimed that evidence found in Iraq after the invasion was used to stop the attempted assassination of the Pakistani ambassador in New York with a shoulder-fired rocket. US government officials claimed that after the invasion, Yemen and Jordan stopped Iraqi terrorist attacks against Western targets in those nations. US intelligence also warned 10 other countries that small groups of Iraqi intelligence agents might be readying similar attacks. After the Beslan school hostage crisis, public school layouts and crisis plans were retrieved on a disk recovered during an Iraqi raid; this caused concerns in the United States. The information on the disks was "all publicly available on the Internet" and US officials "said it was unclear who downloaded the information and stressed there is no evidence of any specific threats involving the schools".
=== Pressuring Saudi Arabia ===
According to this hypothesis, the operations in Iraq occurred as a result of the US attempting to put pressure on Saudi Arabia. Much of the funding for al-Qaeda came from sources in Saudi Arabia through channels left over from the Afghan War. The US, wanting to staunch such financial support, pressured the Saudi leadership to cooperate with the West. The Saudis in power, fearing an Islamic backlash if they cooperated with the US which could push them from power, refused. In order to put pressure on Saudi Arabia to cooperate, the invasion of Iraq was conceived. Such an action would demonstrate the power of the US military, put US troops near to Saudi Arabia, and demonstrate that the US did not need Saudi allies to project itself in the Middle East.
=== Display of US military power to assert US global supremacy ===
Ahsan Butt argues that the invasion of Iraq was partially motivated by a desire of American policymakers to reassert American prestige and status following 9/11. Butt argues that prior to 9/11 the United States was recognized internationally as the undisputed world superpower and hegemon, but the 9/11 attacks called this status into question. Butt argues that invading Iraq was a means of allowing the United States to demonstrate that it was and intended to remain a global hegemon. Since Afghanistan was too weak a nation to demonstrate American power, Iraq was also invaded. Butt argues that Saddam had also damaged American prestige as he remained defiant following the Gulf War. A 2012 poll found that "Assert dominance in a New American Century" was viewed as the most important motivation for Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and neoconservatives by international relations experts.
== Criticisms ==
Despite these efforts to sway public opinion, the invasion of Iraq was seen by some, including Kofi Annan, the United Nations Secretary-General, Lord Goldsmith, the British Attorney General, and Human Rights Watch, as a violation of international law, breaking the UN Charter, especially since the US failed to secure UN support for an invasion of Iraq. In 41 countries the majority of the populace did not support an invasion of Iraq without UN sanction and half said an invasion should not occur under any circumstances. 73 percent of the population of the United States supported an invasion. To build international support the United States formed a "Coalition of the Willing" with the United Kingdom, Italy, Poland, Australia and several other countries despite a majority of citizens in these countries opposing the invasion. Massive protests of the war occurred in the US and elsewhere. At the time of the invasion, UNMOVIC inspectors were ordered out by the United Nations. The inspectors requested more time because "disarmament, and at any rate verification, cannot be instant".
Following the invasion, no stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction were found, although about 500 abandoned chemical munitions, mostly degraded and left over from Iraq's Iran–Iraq war, were collected from around the country. The Kelly Affair highlighted a possible attempt by the British government to cover-up fabrications in British intelligence, the exposure of which would have undermined Tony Blair's original rationale for involvement in the war. The US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence found no substantial evidence of links between Iraq and al-Qaeda. President George W. Bush has since admitted that "much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong". The Iraq Survey Group's final report of September 2004 stated, "While a small number of old, abandoned chemical munitions have been discovered, ISG judges that Iraq unilaterally destroyed its undeclared chemical weapons stockpile in 1991. There are no credible indications that Baghdad resumed production of chemical munitions thereafter, a policy ISG attributes to Baghdad's desire to see sanctions lifted, or rendered ineffectual, or its fear of force against it should weapons of mass destruction be discovered."
In the March 2005 Addendum to the Report, the Special Advisor furthermore went on to state that "ISG assesses that Iraq and Coalition Forces will continue to discover small numbers of degraded chemical weapons, which the former Regime mislaid or improperly destroyed prior to 1991. ISG believes the bulk of these weapons were likely abandoned, forgotten and lost during the Iran–Iraq war because tens of thousands of CW munitions were forward-deployed along frequently and rapidly shifting battlefronts." (For comparison, the US Department of Defense itself was famously unable in 1998 to report the locations of "56 airplanes, 32 tanks and 36 Javelin command launch units".) ISG also believed that Saddam did not want to verifiably disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, as required by UN resolutions, for fear of looking weak to his enemies.
After the Iraq War became a civil war with an ongoing insurgency against the US-led occupation, James Baker, Brent Scowcroft, and Colin Powell all noted in interviews released in 2008 that while they were frequently asked in interviews and during public appearances following the Gulf War about why Saddam Hussein was not removed from power during that conflict, they were no longer being asked the question. Scowcroft stated in a 2001 interview that removing Hussein from power was not an objective of any United Nations Security Council resolution related to the Gulf War or the 1991 Iraq AUMF Resolution, and that it was a fundamental interest of the United States to maintain a unified Iraq and to keep a balance in the region. Powell also stated in his 2008 interview that the decision to not remove Hussein from power during the Gulf War was made in light of the Iran–Iraq War, while Scowcroft noted in his 2008 interview that the United States engaging in military action beyond what was authorized by the UN Security Council resolutions would have set a bad precedent and that any occupation would have likely resulted in a hostile reaction from the Iraqi population and would have had no clear exit strategy.
Two months before the passage of the 2002 Iraq AUMF Resolution, The Wall Street Journal published an op-ed written by Scowcroft that argued against any imminent military action to remove Hussein from power because it would likely require a long-term and large-scale occupation of Iraq following any military campaign that would indefinitely divert and seriously jeopardize the efforts of the United States in the global war on terrorism; that the intelligence linking Hussein with Al-Qaeda, other terrorist organizations, or the September 11 attacks was too limited to prove that the alleged relationships existed or the alleged involvement occurred; that Hussein's attempts to acquire WMDs was to deter the United States from blocking his efforts to dominate the Persian Gulf region rather than attacking the United States; and that Hussein did not have any incentive to give WMDs to terrorist organizations because the long-term goals of such terrorist organizations were not aligned with his and that Hussein's usage of WMDs in such a way or threats to do so would be met with severe military action from the United States. Instead, Scowcroft argued that the United States should pursue a UN Security Council resolution authorizing an effective no-notice WMD inspection policy for Iraq, which if Hussein refused to agree to or comply with would provide a more persuasive casus belli than allegations that Hussein had secretly continued or reactivated his WMD program.
Clare Short claims that in July 2002, UK government ministers were warned that Britain was committed to participating in a US invasion of Iraq, and a further allegation was that "the decision by Blair's government to participate in the US invasion of Iraq bypassed proper government procedures and ignored opposition to the war from Britain's intelligence quarters". Tony Blair agreed to back military action to oust Saddam Hussein with an assessment regarding weapons of mass destruction, at a summit at President George W. Bush's Texas ranch. Also present at the meeting were three other British officials – Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) head Sir Richard Dearlove.
In Europe the peace movement was very strong, especially in Germany, where three-quarters of the population were opposed to the war. Ten NATO member countries did not join the coalition with the US, and their leaders made public statements in opposition to the invasion of Iraq. These leaders included Gerhard Schröder of Germany, Jacques Chirac of France, Guy Verhofstadt of Belgium, and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey. Public perceptions of the US changed dramatically as a consequence of the invasion. China and Russia also expressed their opposition to the invasion of Iraq.
Other possible US objectives, denied by the US government but acknowledged by retired US General Jay Garner, included the establishment of permanent US military bases in Iraq as a way of projecting power (creating a credible threat of US military intervention) to the oil-rich Persian Gulf region and the Middle East generally. In February 2004, Jay Garner, who was in charge of planning and administering post-war reconstruction in Iraq, explained that the US occupation of Iraq was comparable to the Philippine model: "Look back on the Philippines around the turn of the 20th century: they were a coaling station for the navy, and that allowed us to keep a great presence in the Pacific. That's what Iraq is for the next few decades: our coaling station that gives us great presence in the Middle East"; (see also Philippine–American War). Garner was replaced by Paul Bremer after reports came out of his position in SY Coleman, a division of defense contractor L-3 Communications, specializing in missile-defense systems. It was believed his role in the company was in contention with his role in Iraq. The House Appropriations Committee said the report accompanying the emergency spending legislation was "of a magnitude normally associated with permanent bases". However, the United States House of Representatives voted in 2006 not to fund any permanent bases in Iraq.
== See also ==
== References ==
== Further reading ==
Coletta, Giovanni. "Politicising intelligence: what went wrong with the UK and US assessments on Iraqi WMD in 2002" Journal of Intelligence History (2018) 17#1 pp 65–78 is a scholarly analysis.
Cornish, Paul, ed. The conflict in Iraq, 2003 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), articles by scholars..
Isikoff, Michael. and David Corn. Hubris: The inside story of spin, scandal, and the selling of the Iraq War (2006) is journalistic.
Jervis, Robert. 2010. Why Intelligence Fails Lessons from the Iranian Revolution and the Iraq War. Cornell University Press.
Lake, David A. "Two cheers for bargaining theory: Assessing rationalist explanations of the Iraq War." International Security 35.3 (2010): 7–52.
Rapport, Aaron. "The Long and Short of It: Cognitive Constraints on Leaders' Assessments of “Postwar” Iraq." International Security 37.3 (2013): 133–171.
Robben, Antonius C.G.M., ed. (2010). Iraq at a Distance: What Anthropologists Can Teach Us About the War. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 978-0-8122-4203-4.
Rosen, Gary, ed. The Right War?: The Conservative Debate on Iraq (2005).
Cramer, J., & Thrall, A.T. (eds.). (2012). Why Did the United States Invade Iraq? (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203804568
Stieb, Joseph. Why Did the United States Invade Iraq? The Debate at 20 Years (2023)
== External links ==
Tony Blair tells George W Bush they can create 'post-cold war world order' in 2003 note
'The U.S. and Europe, 1945 to Today' by Immanuel Wallerstein
U.S. Gaining World's Respect From Wars, Rumsfeld Asserts by Ann Scott Tyson
'The Bush Turn and The Drive for Primacy' by Peter Gowan
'The War Lobby: Iraq and the Pursuit of U.S. Primacy' by Edward Duggan
Norman Finkelstein on Iraq War, conversation with Chris Hedges
Scarier Than a Neoconserative by Jeet Heer
Why Did Bush Go to War in Iraq? by Ahsan I Butt
"The War Behind Closed Doors". Frontline. Season 21. Episode 6. 20 February 2003. PBS. WGBH. Retrieved 18 April 2024.
"Truth, War, and Consequences". Frontline. Season 21. Episode 15. 9 October 2003. PBS. WGBH. Retrieved 18 April 2024.
"Beyond Baghdad". Frontline. Season 22. Episode 3. 12 February 2004. PBS. WGBH. Retrieved 19 April 2024.
"The Dark Side". Frontline. Season 24. Episode 8. 20 June 2006. PBS. WGBH. Retrieved 18 April 2024.
"News War: Secrets, Sources & Spin, Part I". Frontline. Season 25. Episode 9. 13 February 2007. PBS. WGBH. Retrieved 28 August 2021.
Buying the War on YouTube, April 25, 2007 episode of Bill Moyers Journal
"Bush's War". Frontline. Season 26. Episode 5–6. 24–25 March 2008. PBS. WGBH. Retrieved 18 April 2024.
"Losing Iraq". Frontline. Season 32. Episode 13. 29 July 2014. PBS. WGBH. Retrieved 19 April 2024.
"Once Upon a Time in Iraq". Frontline. Season 38. Episode 22. 14 July 2020. PBS. WGBH. Retrieved 19 April 2024.
"America After 9/11". Frontline. Season 40. Episode 1. 7 September 2021. PBS. WGBH. Retrieved 18 April 2024. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paymaster_of_the_Forces | Paymaster of the Forces | The Paymaster of the Forces was a position in the British government. The office was established in 1661, one year after the Restoration of the Monarchy to Charles II of England, and was responsible for part of the financing of the British Army, in the improved form created by Oliver Cromwell during the Commonwealth. The full title was Paymaster-General of His Majesty's Forces. It was abolished in 1836, near the end of the reign of William IV, and was replaced by the new post of Paymaster General.
== History ==
The first to hold the office was Sir Stephen Fox (1627–1716), an exceptionally able administrator who had remained a member of the household of King Charles II during his exile in France. Before his time, and before the Civil War, there was no standing army and it had been the custom to appoint treasurers-at-war, ad hoc, for campaigns. Within a generation of the Restoration, the status of the paymastership began to change. In 1692 the then paymaster, Richard Jones, 1st Earl of Ranelagh, was made a member of the Privy Council; and thereafter every paymaster, or when there were two paymasters at least one of them, joined the Privy Council if not already a member. From the accession of Queen Anne the paymaster tended to change with the government. By the 18th century the office had become a political prize and potentially the most lucrative that a parliamentary career could obtain. Appointments to the office were therefore made often not due to merit alone, but also to political affiliation. It was occasionally a cabinet-level post in the 18th and early 19th centuries, and many future prime ministers served as paymaster.
Before the development of the banking system, the duty of the paymaster was to act as the personal sole domestic banker of the army. He received, mainly from the Exchequer, the sums voted by Parliament for military expenditure. Other sums were also received, for example from the sale of old stores. He disbursed these sums, by his own hands or by deputy paymasters, under the authority of sign-manual warrants for ordinary expenses of the army, and under Treasury warrants for extraordinary expenses (expenses unforeseen and unprovided for by Parliament).
During the whole time in which public money was in his hands, from the day of receipt until the receipt of his final discharge (the quietus of the Pipe Office), he assumed unlimited personal liability for the funds, thus his private estate was liable for the money in his hands. Failing the quietus this liability remained without limit of time, passing on his death to his heirs and legal representatives.
Appointments were made by the Crown by letters patent under the Great Seal. The patent salary was £400 from 1661 to 1680 and 20 shillings a day thereafter, except for the years 1702–07 when it was fixed at 10 shillings a day.
The office of Paymaster of the Forces was abolished in 1836 and superseded with the formation of the post of Paymaster General.
== List of Paymasters of the Forces ==
Office merged into that of Paymaster General, 1836.
== Paymaster of the Forces Abroad ==
From 1702 to 1714, during the War of the Spanish Succession, there was a distinct Paymaster of the Forces Abroad, appointed in the same manner as the Paymaster. These were appointed to a special office to oversee the pay of Queen Anne's army in the Low Countries, and are not in the regular succession of Paymasters of the Forces. The salary of the position was 10 shillings a day. Colonel Thomas Moore was paymaster of the land forces in Minorca and in the garrisons of Dunkirk and Gibraltar and is not always counted among the Paymasters of the Forces Abroad.
Charles Fox (23 December 1702 – 10 May 1705)
James Brydges (10 May 1705 – 4 September 1713)
Col. Thomas Moore (4 September 1713 – 3 October 1714)
== See also ==
Master-General of the Ordnance
British Army
Paymaster General
== Notes and references ==
Notes
References |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Manekshaw#Legacy_and_assessment | Sam Manekshaw | Field Marshal Sam Hormusji Framji Jamshedji Manekshaw (3 April 1914 – 27 June 2008), also known as Sam Bahadur ("the Brave"), was an Indian Army general officer who was the Chief of the army staff during the Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971, and the first Indian army officer to be promoted to the rank of field marshal. His active military career spanned four decades, beginning with service in World War II.
Manekshaw joined the first intake of the Indian Military Academy at Dehradun in 1932. He was commissioned into the 4th Battalion, 12th Frontier Force Regiment. In World War II, he was awarded the Military Cross for gallantry. Following the Partition of India in 1947, he was reassigned to the 8th Gorkha Rifles. Manekshaw was seconded to a planning role during the 1947 Indo-Pakistani War and the Hyderabad crisis, and as a result, he never commanded an infantry battalion. He was promoted to the rank of brigadier while serving at the Military Operations Directorate. He became the commander of 167 Infantry Brigade in 1952 and served in this position until 1954 when he took over as the director of military training at the Army Headquarters.
After completing the higher command course at the Imperial Defence College, he was appointed the general officer commanding of the 26th Infantry Division. He also served as the commandant of the Defence Services Staff College. In 1962, he was accused in a politically motivated treason trial, he was eventually found innocent but thus could not serve in the 1962 war. In 1963, Manekshaw was promoted to the rank of army commander and took over Western Command, then was transferred in 1964 to Eastern Command. In this role, in 1967, he was involved in the first Indian victory against a Chinese offensive during the Nathu La and Cho La clashes.
Manekshaw was awarded the Padma Bhushan, the third highest Indian civilian award, in 1968 for responding to the insurgencies in Nagaland and Mizoram. Manekshaw became the seventh chief of army staff in 1969. Under his command, Indian forces providing them with arms and ammunitions to fight against the strong regular army of Pakistan in the Bangladesh-Pakistani War of 1971, which led to the Independence of Bangladesh in December 1971. He was awarded the Padma Vibhushan, the second highest civilian award of India, in 1972 for his services to the nation. Manekshaw was promoted to the rank of field marshal in January 1973, the first of the only two officers to be ever promoted to the post, second being K.M. Carriappa. He retired on 15 January 1973 (also celebrated as Army Day). He died on 27 June 2008, at the age of 94, due to respiratory problems.
== Early life and family ==
Sam Manekshaw was born on 3 April 1914
in Amritsar to Hormizd (1871–1964), a doctor, and Hilla, née Mehta (1885–1970). Both of his parents were Parsis who had moved to Amritsar from the city of Valsad in coastal Gujarat. Manekshaw's parents had left Mumbai in 1903 for Lahore, where his father was going to start practising medicine. However, when their train halted at Amritsar station, Hilla found it impossible to travel any further due to her advanced pregnancy. After Hilla had recovered from child birth, the couple decided to stay in Amritsar, where Hormizd soon set up a clinic and pharmacy. The couple had four sons (Fali, Jan, Sam and Jami) and two daughters (Cilla and Sheru). Manekshaw was their fifth child and third son.
During World War II, Hormizd had served in the British Indian Army as a captain in the Indian Medical Service (now the Army Medical Corps).
== Education ==
Manekshaw completed his primary schooling in Punjab, and then joined Sherwood College, Nainital for 8 years. In 1931, he passed his senior high school examinations with distinction. He then asked his father to send him to London to study medicine, but his father refused as he was not old enough. His father was already supporting Sam's elder brothers who were studying engineering in London. Manekshaw instead enrolled at the Hindu Sabha College (now the Hindu College, Amritsar) and graduated in April 1932.
A formal notification for the entrance examination to enrol in the newly established Indian Military Academy (IMA) was issued in the early months of 1932. Examinations were scheduled for June or July. In an act of rebellion against his father's refusal to send him to London, Manekshaw applied for a place and sat for the entrance exams in Delhi. On 1 October 1932, he was one of the fifteen cadets to be selected through an open competition, and placed sixth in the order of merit.
=== Indian Military Academy ===
Manekshaw was part of the first batch of cadets at the IMA. Called "The Pioneers", this batch also included Smith Dun and Muhammad Musa Khan, the future commanders-in-chief of Burma and Pakistan, respectively. Although the academy was inaugurated on 10 December 1932, the cadets' military training commenced on 1 October 1932. As an IMA cadet, Manekshaw went on to achieve a number of distinctions: the only one to attain the rank of field marshal. The commandant of the Academy during this period was Brigadier Lionel Peter Collins. Manekshaw was almost suspended from the Academy when he went to Mussoorie for a holiday with Kumar Jit Singh (the Maharaja of Kapurthala) and Haji Iftikhar Ahmed, and did not return in time for the morning drills.
Of the 40 cadets inducted into the IMA, only 22 completed the course; they were commissioned as second lieutenants on 1 February 1935. Some of his batchmates were Dewan Ranjit Rai; Mohan Singh, the founder of the Indian National Army; Melville de Mellow, a famous radio presenter; and two generals of the Pakistani Army, Mirza Hamid Hussain and Habibullah Khan Khattak. Many of Manekshaw's batchmates were captured by Japan during World War II and would fight in the Indian National Army, which mostly drew its troops from Indian prisoners of war in Axis camps. Tikka Khan, who would later join the Pakistani Army during the Partition, was Manekshaw's junior at the IMA by five years and also his boxing partner.
== Military career ==
When Manekshaw was commissioned, it was standard practice for newly commissioned Indian officers to be initially assigned to a British regiment before being sent to an Indian unit. Manekshaw thus joined the 2nd Battalion, Royal Scots, stationed at Lahore. He was later posted to the 4th Battalion, 12th Frontier Force Regiment (4/12 FF), stationed in Burma. On 1 May 1938, he was appointed quartermaster of his company. Already fluent in Punjabi, Hindi, Urdu, English and his native language Gujarati, in October 1938 Manekshaw qualified as a Higher Standard army interpreter in Pashto.
=== World War II ===
There was a shortage of qualified officers at the outbreak of the war, officers were thus promoted without having served for the minimum period required for a promotion. Therefore, for the first two years of the conflict, Manekshaw was temporarily appointed to the ranks of captain and major before being promoted to the substantive rank of captain on 4 February 1942.
==== Battle of Pagoda Hill ====
Manekshaw saw action in Burma during the 1942 campaign at the Sittang River with 4/12 FF, and was recognised for his bravery in the battle. During the fighting around Pagoda Hill, a key position on the left of the Sittang bridgehead, he led his company in a counter-attack against the invading Imperial Japanese Army. Despite suffering 30% casualties, the company managed to achieve its objective, partly because of the aid received from Captain John Niel Randle's company. After capturing the hill, Manekshaw was hit by a burst of light machine gun fire, and was severely wounded in the stomach. While observing the battle, Major General David Tennant Cowan, General Officer Commanding of the 17th Infantry Division, spotted the wounded Manekshaw and awarded him the Military Cross. This award was made official with the publication of the notification in a supplement to the London Gazette. The citation reads:
This officer was in command of the 'A' Company of his battalion when ordered to counter-attack the Pagoda Hill position, the key hill on the left of the Sittang Bridgehead, which had been captured by the enemy. The counterattack was successful despite 30% casualties, and this was largely due to the excellent leadership and bearing of Captain Manekshaw. This officer was wounded after the position had been captured.
Manekshaw was evacuated from the battlefield by Sher Singh, his orderly, who took him to an Australian surgeon. The surgeon initially declined to treat Manekshaw, saying that he had been too badly wounded. Manekshaw's chances of survival were low, but Sher Singh persuaded the doctor to treat him. Manekshaw regained consciousness, and when the surgeon asked what had happened to him, he replied that he had been "kicked by a mule". Impressed by Manekshaw's sense of humour, the surgeon treated him, removing the bullets from his lungs, liver, and kidneys. Most of his intestines were also removed, Manekshaw survived and recovered from his wounds.
Manekshaw attended the eighth staff course at the Command and Staff College in Quetta between 23 August and 22 December 1943. On completion, he was posted as the brigade major of the Razmak Brigade. He served in that post until 22 October 1944, after which he joined the 9th Battalion, 12th Frontier Force Regiment, part of the 14th Army commanded by General William Slim. On 30 October 1944, he received the temporary rank of lieutenant colonel. By the end of the war, he was appointed as a staff officer to the general officer commanding of the 20th Indian Infantry Division, Major General Douglas Gracey. During the Japanese surrender, Manekshaw was appointed to supervise the disarmament of over 10,000 Japanese prisoners of war (POWs). No cases of indiscipline or escape attempts were reported from the camp Manekshaw was in charge of. He was promoted to the acting rank of lieutenant colonel on 5 May 1946, and completed a six-month lecture tour of Australia. From 1945 to 1946, Manekshaw and Yahya Khan were two of the staff officers of Field Marshal Sir Claude Auchinleck. Manekshaw was promoted to the substantive rank of major on 4 February 1947, and on his return from Australia was appointed a Grade 1 General Staff Officer (GSO1) in the Military Operations (MO) Directorate.
=== Post-independence ===
Due to the Partition of India in 1947, Manekshaw's unit, the 4th Battalion, 12th Frontier Force Regiment, became part of the Pakistan army. Manekshaw was therefore reassigned to the 8th Gorkha Rifles. Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Pakistan's first Governor General, also considered the founder of that nation, had reportedly asked Manekshaw to join the Pakistani Army, but Manekshaw had refused.
In October 1947, Manekshaw was posted as the commanding officer of the 3rd Battalion, 5 Gorkha Rifles (Frontier Force) (3/5 GR (FF)). Before he had moved on to his new appointment, on 22 October, Pakistani forces infiltrated the Kashmir region, capturing Domel and Muzaffarabad. The following day, the ruler of the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir, Maharaja Hari Singh, appealed to India for help. On 25 October, Manekshaw accompanied V. P. Menon to Srinagar, where he carried out an aerial survey of the situation in Kashmir. On the same day, they flew back to Delhi, where Lord Mountbatten and Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru were briefed. On the morning of 27 October, Indian troops were sent to Kashmir to defend Srinagar from the Pakistani forces, who had reached the city's outskirts. Manekshaw's assignment as the commander of 3/5 GR (FF) was cancelled, and he was posted to the MO Directorate. As a consequence of the Kashmir dispute and the annexation of Hyderabad (whose events he briefed Sardar Patel on), Manekshaw never commanded a battalion. During his term at the MO Directorate, he was promoted to colonel, then brigadier. He was then appointed the director of military operations (DMO).
Manekshaw was one of the three army officers who represented India at the 1949 Karachi Conference. The Conference resulted in the Karachi Agreement and the Ceasefire Line (which evolved into the Line of Control). The other two army officers at the conference were Lt. Gen. S. M. Shrinagesh and Maj. Gen. KS Thimayya, while the two civilian officers were Vishnu Sahay and HM Patel.
Manekshaw was promoted to the rank of colonel on 4 February 1952, and in April was appointed the commander of 167 Infantry Brigade, headquartered at Firozpur. On 9 April 1954, he was appointed the director of military training at Army Headquarters. He was appointed the commandant of the Infantry School at Mhow on 14 January 1955, and also became the colonel of both the 8th Gorkha Rifles and the 61st Cavalry. During his tenure as the commandant of the Infantry School, he discovered that the training manuals were outdated, and was instrumental in revamping them to be consistent with the tactics employed by the Indian Army. He was promoted to the substantive rank of brigadier on 4 February 1957.
=== General officer ===
In 1957, he went to the Imperial Defence College, London, to attend a year long higher command course. On his return, he was appointed the general officer commanding (GOC) 26th Infantry Division on 20 December 1957, with the acting rank of major general. When he commanded the division, Gen. K. S. Thimayya was the chief of the army staff (COAS), and Krishna Menon the defence minister. During a visit to Manekshaw's division, Menon asked him what he thought of Thimayya. Manekshaw replied that it was improper to evaluate his superior, and told Menon not to ask anybody again. This annoyed Menon, and he told Manekshaw that if he wanted to, he could sack Thimayya, to which Manekshaw replied, "You can get rid of him. But then I will get another."
Manekshaw was promoted to substantive major general on 1 March 1959. On 1 October, he was appointed the Commandant of the Defence Services Staff College, Wellington, where he was caught up in a controversy that almost ended his career. In May 1961, Thimayya resigned as the COAS, and was succeeded by General Pran Nath Thapar. Earlier in the year, Major General Brij Mohan Kaul had been promoted to lieutenant general and appointed the Quarter Master General by Menon. The appointment was made against the recommendation of Thimayya, who resigned as a result. Kaul was made the chief of general staff (CGS), the second highest appointment at Army Headquarters after the COAS. Kaul cultivated a close relationship with Nehru and Menon and became even more powerful than the COAS. This was met with disapproval by senior army officials, including Manekshaw, who argued against the interference of the political leadership in the administration of the army. This led him to be marked as an anti-national.
Kaul sent informers to spy on Manekshaw who, as a result of the information gathered, was charged with sedition, and subjected to a court of inquiry. The charges against him were that he was more loyal to the Queen and the Crown than to India, because he had not removed portraits of the Queen and British military and civilian officers from the College and his office. The court, presided over by the general officer commanding-in-chief (GOC-in-C) of Western Command, Lt. Gen. Daulet Singh, exonerated Manekshaw as no evidence against him was found. Before a formal 'no case to answer' could be announced, the Sino-Indian War broke out; Manekshaw was not able to participate because of the court proceedings. The Indian Army was defeated in the war, for which Kaul and Menon were held primarily responsible, both were sacked. In November 1962, Nehru asked Manekshaw to take over the command of IV Corps. Manekshaw told Nehru that the court action against him was a conspiracy, and that his promotion had been due for almost eighteen months; Nehru apologised. Shortly after, on 2 December 1962, Manekshaw was promoted to acting lieutenant general and appointed the GOC of IV Corps at Tezpur.
Soon after taking charge, Manekshaw reached the conclusion that poor leadership had been a significant factor in IV Corps' failure in the war with China. He felt the first course of action was to improve the morale of his soldiers. Manekshaw identified the root cause of the low morale to be panicked withdrawals, ordered without allowing the soldiers to fight back. He ordered there to be no more retreats without his written permission. The next task Manekshaw took up was to reorganise the troops in the North-East Frontier Agency (NEFA), where he alleviated the shortages of equipment, accommodation and clothing. Analyst Srinath Raghavan noted that Corps Commander Manekshaw and COAS Jayanto Nath Chaudhuri had delayed moving into the NEFA region until the end of 1963, in order to avoid provoking a new Chinese offensive.
Promoted to substantive lieutenant general on 20 July 1963, Manekshaw was appointed an army commander on 5 December, taking command of Western Command as the GOC-in-C. Defence analyst Ajai Shukla, citing Anit Mukherjee, states that Western Command troops were reported to be moving from Punjab to Delhi after Nehru's death. This movement was seen as the precursor to a coup by the civilian establishment, while the army said it was moving in troops to manage the large crowds expected at Nehru's funeral. As a result, on 16 November 1964, Manekshaw was transferred from Shimla to Calcutta as the GOC-in-C Eastern Command. There he responded to the insurgencies in Nagaland and Mizoram, for which he was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 1968.
=== Nathu La and Cho La clashes ===
In 1967, five years after the War of 1962, China decided to capture four critical posts in Sikkim: Nathu La, Jelep La, Sebu La and Cho La. These posts were strategically valuable, as they oversaw the Chicken's Neck, the small strip of land which provides access to Northeast India. Major General Sagat Singh decided not to retreat following the Chinese attack. Manekshaw endorsed this initiative by Singh and remarked: "I am afraid they are enacting Hamlet without the Prince. I will now tell you how I intend to deal with this." The conflict ended in Indian victory following the Chinese withdrawal from the area.
=== Chief of army staff ===
Gen. P. P. Kumaramangalam retired as the chief of army staff (COAS) in June 1969. Manekshaw was appointed as the eighth chief of the army staff on 8 June 1969. During his tenure, he was instrumental in stopping a plan to reserve quotas in the army for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. Though he was a Parsi, a minority in India, Manekshaw felt reservation would compromise the ethos of the army and believed all must be given an equal chance.
In his capacity as the COAS, Manekshaw once visited a battalion of the 8 Gorkha Rifles in July 1969. He asked an orderly if he knew the name of his chief. The orderly replied that he did, and on being asked to name the chief, he said "Sam Bahadur" (lit. 'Sam the Brave'). This eventually became Manekshaw's nickname. During this period, there were suspicions that Manekshaw would lead a coup and impose martial law. Indira Gandhi had asked him if he intended to coup, Manekshaw had denied. Once, an American diplomat, in the presence of Kenneth Keating, the US ambassador to India, had asked Manekshaw when he was going to stage a coup. Manekshaw reportedly said, "As soon as General Westmoreland takes over your country".
==== Bangladesh Liberation War 1971 ====
The Indo-Pakistani War of 1971 was sparked by the Bangladesh Liberation war, a conflict between the traditionally dominant West Pakistanis and the East Pakistanis who were a majority of the population but lacked representation. In 1970, East Pakistanis called for Bengali autonomy, but the Pakistani government failed to meet these demands. In early 1971, opinion shifted towards secession in East Pakistan. In March, the Pakistan Armed Forces launched a fierce campaign to curb the secessionists, whose members included soldiers and police from East Pakistan. Thousands of East Pakistanis died, and nearly ten million refugees fled to West Bengal, an adjacent Indian state. In April, India decided to intervene militarily to create Bangladesh.
During a cabinet meeting towards the end of April, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi asked Manekshaw if he was prepared to go to war with Pakistan. He replied that most of his armoured and infantry divisions were deployed elsewhere, only twelve of his tanks were combat-ready, and they would be competing for rail carriages with the grain harvest. He also pointed out that the Himalayan passes would soon open up with the forthcoming monsoon, which would result in heavy flooding. After the cabinet had left the room, Manekshaw offered to resign; Gandhi declined and instead sought his advice. He said he could guarantee victory if she would allow him to handle the conflict on his own terms, and set a date for its initiation; Gandhi agreed.
Following the strategy planned by Manekshaw, the army launched several preparatory operations in East Pakistan, including training and equipping the Mukti Bahini, a local militia group of Bengali nationalists. About three brigades of regular Bangladeshi troops were trained, and 75,000 guerrillas were trained and equipped with arms and ammunition. These forces were used to harass the Pakistani Army forces stationed in East Pakistan in the lead-up to the war.
The war started officially on 3 December 1971, when Pakistani aircraft bombed Indian Air Force bases in western India. The Army Headquarters under Manekshaw's leadership formulated the following strategy: II Corps commanded by Lt. Gen. Tapishwar Narain Raina would enter from the west; IV Corps commanded by Lt. Gen. Sagat Singh would enter from the east; XXXIII Corps commanded by Lt. Gen. Mohan L. Thapan would enter from the north; and the 101 Communication Zone Area commanded by Maj. Gen. Gurbax Singh would provide support from the northeast. This strategy was to be executed by Eastern Command under Lt. Gen. Jagjit Singh Aurora. Manekshaw instructed Lt. Gen. J.F.R. Jacob, chief of staff, Eastern Command, to inform the Indian prime minister that orders were being issued for the movement of troops from Eastern Command. The following day, the Indian Navy and Air Force also initiated full-scale operations on both the eastern and western fronts.
As the war progressed, India captured most of the strategic positions and isolated the Pakistani forces, who started to surrender or withdraw. The UN Security Council assembled on 4 December 1971 to discuss the situation. After lengthy discussions on 7 December, the United States put forward a resolution for an "immediate cease-fire and withdrawal of troops". While supported by the majority, the USSR vetoed it twice, and because of Pakistani atrocities in Bengal, the United Kingdom and France abstained. On 8 December, a C141 American cargo plane was seen unloading arms and other equipment at Karachi. Manekshaw prevented any further supplies by summoning the military attache at the US embassy in India and asking him to stop the drops which were in contravention of US public policy.
Indian forces have surrounded you. Your Air Force is destroyed. You have no hope of any help from them. Chittagong, Chalna and Mangla ports are blocked. Nobody can reach you from the sea. Your fate is sealed. The Mukti Bahini and the people are all prepared to take revenge for the atrocities and cruelties you have committed...Why waste lives? Don't you want to go home and be with your children? Do not lose time; there is no disgrace in laying down your arms to a soldier. We will give you the treatment befitting a soldier[.]
Manekshaw addressed the Pakistani troops by radio broadcast on 9, 11 and 15 December, assuring them that they would receive honourable treatment from the Indian troops if they surrendered. The last two broadcasts were delivered as replies to messages from the Pakistani commanders Maj. Gen. Rao Farman Ali and Lt. Gen. Amir Abdullah Khan Niazi to their troops. These broadcasts had a demoralising effect; they convinced the Pakistani troops of the futility of further resistance and led to their decision to surrender.
On 11 December, Ali messaged the United Nations requesting a ceasefire, but it was not authorised by President Yahya Khan, and the fighting continued. Following several discussions and consultations, and subsequent attacks by the Indian forces, Khan decided to stop the war in order to avoid any additional Pakistani casualties. The actual decision to surrender was taken by Niazi on 15 December and was conveyed to Manekshaw through the United States Consul General in Dhaka via Washington. Manekshaw replied that he would stop the war only if the Pakistani troops surrendered to their Indian counterparts by 9 AM on 16 December. The deadline was extended to 3 PM on the same day at Niazi's request, and the instrument of surrender was formally signed on 16 December 1971 by Lt. Gen. Amir Abdullah Khan Niazi.
When the prime minister asked Manekshaw to go to Dhaka and accept the surrender of Pakistani forces, he declined, saying that the honour should go to the GOC-in-C Eastern Command, Lt. Gen. Jagjit Singh Aurora. Concerned about maintaining discipline in the aftermath of the conflict, Manekshaw issued strict instructions forbidding looting and rape and stressed the need to respect and stay away from women. As a result, according to Singh, cases of looting and rape were negligible. While addressing his troops on the matter, Manekshaw was quoted as saying: "When you see a Begum (Muslim woman), keep your hands in your pockets, and think of Sam."
The war lasted 12 days and saw 93,000 Pakistani soldiers taken prisoner. It ended with the unconditional surrender of East Pakistan and resulted in the creation of Bangladesh. In addition to the prisoners of war (POWs), Pakistan suffered 6,000 casualties against India's 2,000. After the war, Manekshaw ensured good conditions for the POWs, but was criticised for treating them like "sons in law" by the cabinet. Singh recounts that in some cases he addressed them personally and talked to them privately, with just his aide-de-camp for company, while they shared a cup of tea. He made provisions for the prisoners to be supplied with the copies of the Quran, and allowed them to celebrate festivals and receive letters and parcels from their loved ones. However, he did not want them to be returned to Pakistan until a peace agreement was concluded, as the POWs numbered about four divisions of soldiers and could be deployed for another war. The Pakistani POWs remained in captivity for several years, used as leverage for Pakistan officially recognizing Bangladesh.
Manekshaw was India's official representative for the negotiations held on 28 November 1972 to demarcate the Line of Control in Kashmir after the war. Pakistan's representative was General Tikka Khan. The talks broke down due to disagreements on control over parts of Thako Chak and Kaiyan (located in Pakistan's Chicken's Neck), Chhamb and Tortuk. The second round of talks held from 5 to 7 December managed to resolve these issues.
=== Promotion to field marshal ===
After the war, Indira Gandhi decided to promote Manekshaw to the rank of field marshal and appoint him as the chief of defence staff (CDS). However, after several objections from the commanders of the navy and the air force, the appointment was dropped. Because Manekshaw was from the army, there were concerns that the comparatively smaller forces of the navy and air force would be neglected. Moreover, the bureaucrats felt that the appointment might reduce their influence over defence issues. Though Manekshaw was to retire in June 1972, his term was extended by a period of six months, and "in recognition of outstanding services to the Armed Forces and the nation," he was promoted to the rank of field marshal on 1 January 1973. The first Indian Army officer to be so promoted, he was formally conferred with the rank in a ceremony held at the Rashtrapati Bhavan (President's Residence) on 3 January.
== Honours and post-retirement ==
For his service to India, the President of India, VV Giri, awarded Manekshaw the Padma Vibhushan in 1972. Manekshaw retired from active service on 15 January 1973 (celebrated as Army Day in India) after a career of nearly four decades. He moved with his family to Coonoor, the civilian town next to Wellington Cantonment, where he had served as commandant of the Defence Services Staff College early on in his career. Popular with Gorkha soldiers, Nepal fêted Manekshaw as an honorary general of the Nepalese Army in 1972. In 1977, he was awarded the Order of Tri Shakti Patta First Class, an order of knighthood of the Kingdom of Nepal by King Birendra. Following his service in the Indian Army, Manekshaw served as an independent director on the board and, in a few cases, as the chairman of several companies, like Bombay Burmah Trading Corporation, Britannia Industries and Escorts Limited.
In May 2007, Gohar Ayub, the son of the Pakistani Field Marshal Ayub Khan, claimed that Manekshaw had sold Indian Army secrets to Pakistan during the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965 for 20,000 rupees, but his accusations were dismissed by the Indian defence establishment.
Although Manekshaw was conferred the rank of field marshal in 1973, it was reported that he was not given the complete allowances he was entitled to. He did not receive these until 2007, when President A. P. J. Abdul Kalam met him in Wellington, and presented him with a cheque for ₹1.3 crore (equivalent to ₹3.9 crore or US$460,000 in 2023)—his arrears of pay for over 30 years. Manekshaw was critical of politicians and civilian bureaucrats, and frequently mocked them, asking for example, "whether those of our political masters who have been put in charge of the defence of the country can distinguish a mortar from a motor; a gun from a howitzer; a guerrilla from a gorilla – although a great many in the past have resembled the latter.”
Manekshaw visited hospitalised soldiers during the Kargil War and was cited by COAS Ved Prakash Malik, the commander during the war, as his icon.
== Personal life and death ==
Manekshaw married Silloo Bode on 22 April 1939 in Bombay. The couple had two daughters. Manekshaw died of complications from pneumonia at the Military Hospital in Wellington, Tamil Nadu, at 12:30 a.m. on 27 June 2008 at the age of 94. Reportedly, his last words were "I'm okay!" He was buried at the Parsi cemetery in Udhagamandalam (Ooty), Tamil Nadu, with military honours, adjacent to his wife's grave. His funeral lacked governmental representation, which the media argued was a result of the civilian establishment's apathy towards the military, who feared that the military would stage a coup if it became too popular with the citizenry. A national day of mourning was not declared. While this was not a breach of protocol, such commemoration is customary for a leader of national importance. Bangladesh, however, did pay tribute to Manekshaw on his death. He was survived by two daughters and three grandchildren.
=== Character ===
Manekshaw was charismatic and known to be capable of charm. He was often described as a gentleman. Like others of his generation, his background in the British army gave him a fondness for some English habits, such as drinking whisky and wearing his handlebar moustache. His background as a Parsi is sometimes attributed as a factor in his ambition and success. He commanded great loyalty from his troops, particularly the Gorkhas, due to his reputation for personal bravery, fairness and his avoidance of punishments. He came into conflict with politicians, however, because he stood up to their often unreasonable or unethical demands. They also disliked his popularity as they feared the possibility of a military coup. He dealt with politicians' demands through sarcasm, which however was recognised by figures such as Indira Gandhi. Manekshaw also did not hesitate from advocating for better strategies than those developed by the civilian establishment, a trait rarely found in the military brass today, according to Admiral Arun Prakash.
== Honours and decorations ==
Throughout his military career he was awarded the Military Cross
in 1942 for his display of gallantry in Burma during World War II against the Japanese at the battle of Pagoda Hill. He was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 1968, and the Padma Vibhushan in 1972 for his exceptional service.
== Legacy and assessment ==
Vijay Diwas (lit. Victory Day) is celebrated on 16 December every year in honor of the victory achieved under Manekshaw's leadership in 1971. On 16 December 2008, a postage stamp depicting Manekshaw in his field marshal's uniform was released by then President Pratibha Patil.
The Manekshaw Centre in the Delhi Cantonment is named for the field marshal. The centre was inaugurated by the President of India on 21 October 2010. The biannual Army Commanders' conference takes place at the centre. The Manekshaw parade ground in Bengaluru is also named after him. The Republic Day celebrations in Karnataka are held at this ground every year. A flyover bridge in Ahmedabad's Shivranjeeni area was named after him in 2008 by the then Chief Minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi. In 2014, a granite statue was erected in his honour at Wellington, in the Nilgiris district, close to the Manekshaw Bridge on the Ooty–Coonoor road, which had been named after him in 2009. His statue is also on the Maneckji Mehta Road in Pune Cantonment. The Centre for Land Warfare Studies, an Indian military think tank, publishes its research papers in a collection called the Manekshaw Papers as a tribute to the field marshal.
Manekshaw has been portrayed in film and fiction. Vicky Kaushal played the role of Manekshaw in the 2023 biopic Sam Bahadur. He is also featured conversing with his Pakistani adversary and former Burma war colleague Tiger Niazi in Salman Rushdie's novel Midnight's Children, in the chapter entitled "Sam and the Tiger".
=== Soldiers' pay ===
In 1970, the Armed Forces and the Army in particular had the opportunity for the first time to get their pay determined by the Pay Commission, which set the pay levels for all other government employees. Armed Forces personnel had not been considered for the 1st and 2nd Pay Commissions but were to be considered for the 3rd Pay Commission. Manekshaw convinced the government to apply the 3rd Pay Commission's recommendations for military personnel and set pay scales for them proportionate to their service conditions (termed hazard pay), a practice which continues to this day.
=== Strategy and doctrine ===
Manekshaw's strategies during the 1971 war have been considered by analysts to be the precursor to the Indian Cold Start military doctrine, which calls for integrated offensive attacks. Formulated along with his deputies Aurora and Singh, Manekshaw's shock and awe tactic of deploying IV Corps, which was geographically disadvantaged, contributed significantly to the military victory. Analysts consider Manekshaw and Aurora to have created a Blitzkrieg style of warfare which was even more rapid.
Defence analyst Robert M. Citino noted that the speed of the 1971 campaign had been impressive, but it had taken too much time to mobilise the units involved; its logistics had been rather crude; and it could have run into problems if there had been an air force in East Pakistan. Manekshaw said the following about the campaign: "To say that it was something like what Rommel did would be ridiculous".
General André Beaufre, a French military theorist, had been invited by Manekshaw to analyse the 1971 war. Beaufre had previously observed the Battles of Chumb and Basantar from the Pakistani side. Beaufre concluded that the Indian operations on the Eastern Front were maneuver warfare but the operations in and around the Shakargarh bulge had been too slow.
On 12 October 1966, while on a flight from Delhi to Kolkata, Manekshaw was a co-passenger with William K. Hitchcock, the Consul General of the USA in Kolkata. On the flight, Manekshaw talked to Hitchcock about the need for more military involvement in Kashmir and criticized COAS Chaudhuri's decision to not deploy the 300,000 Indian soldiers of Eastern Command in the 1965 War due to fear of a Chinese offensive. Manekshaw also expressed his worries over India's dependence on Soviet defence equipment, and said he would have advocated for India taking a more American friendly stance on the Vietnam War if he had had more power.
=== Procurement ===
Manekshaw was an advocate for a strong domestic defence industrial base and procurement reforms, which he believed could shorten the long order and delivery cycles of the Indian Armed Forces. He was also a critic of defence equipment imports and over reliance on the Soviet Union and its successor state, Russia. During the 1971 War, Manekshaw managed to urgently procure equipment to achieve numerical superiority and raise new divisions. However, he could not make any lasting reforms to the procurement process.
=== Special operations ===
After being convinced by Brigadier Bhawani Singh on the need for special operations, Manekshaw approved the plans for the Chachro Raid, which the brigadier had drawn up himself. The raid resulted in the capture of 13,000 square kilometres (5,000 sq mi) of Pakistani territory up to Umerkot in Sindh province, and is considered by analysts to be the most successful operation by an Indian special operations unit.
=== Counter insurgency ===
While responding to the insurgency in Mizoram in 1966, Manekshaw implemented the policy of merging small villages (termed spatialisation) as a counter insurgency tool. The intended effect was to prevent insurgents from hiding in sparsely populated villages, and to enable safer civilian and military operations. By forcing insurgents to operate out of uninhabited areas, they were denied access to food and supplies; the army also had to patrol a smaller area and did not have to engage in high casualty urban warfare as a result of the policy.
== See also ==
Field Marshal K.M. Cariappa
Marshal of the Indian Air Force Arjan Singh
== Notes ==
== References ==
== Bibliography ==
=== Books ===
=== News articles ===
== External links ==
Sam Manekshaw at the Indian Army's website
Lecture and Q&A by Sam Manekshaw at the DSSC, hosted by the Indian Defence Review |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nepal_Tourism_Board | Nepal Tourism Board | Nepal Tourism Board' (NTB) is the official national tourism organization of Nepal which works towards establishing Nepal as a premier holiday destination to the world. The Board provides platform for vision-drawn leadership for Nepal's tourism sector by integrating Government commitment with the dynamism of private sector. NTB is promoting Nepal in the domestic and international market and is working toward repositioning the image of the country. It also aims to regulate product development activities. The Board chaired by the Secretary at the Ministry of Tourism and Civil Aviation consists of 11 board members with five government representatives, five private sector representatives and the Chief Executive Officer. The current CEO of Nepal Tourism Board is Deepak Raj Joshi.
== History ==
Nepal Tourism Board is a national organization established in 1998 by an act of Parliament in the form of partnership between the Government of Nepal and private sector tourism industry to develop and market Nepal as an attractive tourist destination. Therefore, making it a pioneer organization made using the PPP model (Public, Private, Partnership).
== Tourism Brand ==
"Nepal: Lifetime Experiences" is the slogan of the tourism board. The phrase aims at the redefining the scope of international tourism in Nepal, as a destination for unique and unmatched experience for tourists who visit the country as a holiday destination.
== See also ==
Hotel association of Nepal
Trekking Agencies Association of Nepal
Nepal Mountaineering Association
List of world records from Nepal
== References == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardiolipin | Cardiolipin | Cardiolipin (IUPAC name 1,3-bis(sn-3’-phosphatidyl)-sn-glycerol, "sn" designating stereospecific numbering) is an important component of the inner mitochondrial membrane, where it constitutes about 20% of the total lipid composition. It can also be found in the membranes of most bacteria. The name "cardiolipin" is derived from the fact that it was first found in animal hearts. It was first isolated from the beef heart in the early 1940s by Mary C. Pangborn. In mammalian cells, but also in plant cells, cardiolipin (CL) is found almost exclusively in the inner mitochondrial membrane, where it is essential for the optimal function of numerous enzymes that are involved in mitochondrial energy metabolism.
== Structure ==
Cardiolipin (CL) is a kind of diphosphatidylglycerol lipid. Two phosphatidic acid moieties connect with a glycerol backbone in the center to form a dimeric structure. So it has four alkyl groups and potentially carries two negative charges. As there are four distinct alkyl chains in cardiolipin, the potential for complexity of this molecule species is enormous. However, in most animal tissues, cardiolipin contains 18-carbon fatty alkyl chains with 2 unsaturated bonds on each of them. It has been proposed that the (18:2)4 acyl chain configuration is an important structural requirement for the high affinity of CL to inner membrane proteins in mammalian mitochondria. However, studies with isolated enzyme preparations indicate that its importance may vary depending on the protein examined. In vitro experiments have shown that CL has high affinity for curved membrane regions.
Since there are two phosphates in the molecule, each of them can bond with one proton. Although it has a symmetric structure, ionizing one phosphate happens at a very different levels of acidity than ionizing both: pK1 = 3 and pK2 > 7.5. So under normal physiological conditions (wherein pH is around 7), the molecule may carry only one negative charge. The hydroxyl groups (–OH and –O−) on phosphate would form a stable intramolecular hydrogen bond with the centered glycerol's hydroxyl group, thus forming a bicyclic resonance structure. This structure traps one proton, which is quite helpful for oxidative phosphorylation.
As the head group forms such compact bicycle structure, the head group area is quite small relative to the big tail region consisting of 4 acyl chains. Based on this special structure, the fluorescent mitochondrial indicator, nonyl acridine orange (NAO) was introduced in 1982, and was later found to target mitochondria by binding to CL. NAO has a very large head and small tail structure which can compensate with cardiolipin's small head and large tail structure, and arrange in a highly ordered way. Several studies were published utilizing NAO both as a quantitative mitochondrial indicator and an indicator of CL content in mitochondria. However, NAO is influenced by membrane potential and/or the spatial arrangement of CL, so it's not proper to use NAO for CL or mitochondria quantitative studies of intact respiring mitochondria. But NAO still represents a simple method of assessing CL content.
=== Methods to quantify and detect cardiolipin ===
The detection, quantification, and localisation of CL species is a valuable tool to investigate mitochondrial dysfunction and the pathophysiological mechanisms underpinning several human disorders. CL is measured using liquid chromatography, usually combined with mass spectrometry, mass spectrometry imaging, shotgun lipidomics, ion mobility spectrometry, fluorometry, and radiolabelling. Therefore, the choice of the analytical method depends on the experimental question, level of detail, and sensitivity required.
== Metabolism and catabolism ==
=== Metabolism ===
==== Eukaryotic pathway ====
In eukaryotes such as yeasts, plants and animals, the synthesis processes are believed to happen in mitochondria. The first step is the acylation of glycerol-3-phosphate by a glycerol-3-phosphate acyltransferase. Then acylglycerol-3-phosphate can be once more acylated to form a phosphatidic acid (PA). With the help of the enzyme CDP-DAG synthase (CDS) (phosphatidate cytidylyltransferase), PA is converted into cytidinediphosphate-diacylglycerol (CDP-DAG). The following step is conversion of CDP-DAG to phosphatidylglycerol phosphate (PGP) by the enzyme PGP synthase, followed by dephosphorylation by PTPMT1 to form PG. Finally, a molecule of CDP-DAG is bound to PG to form one molecule of cardiolipin, catalyzed by the mitochondria-localized enzyme cardiolipin synthase (CLS).
==== Prokaryotic pathway ====
In prokaryotes such as bacteria, diphosphatidylglycerol synthase catalyses a transfer of the phosphatidyl moiety of one phosphatidylglycerol to the free 3'-hydroxyl group of another, with the elimination of one molecule of glycerol, via the action of an enzyme related to phospholipase D. The enzyme can operate in reverse under some physiological conditions to remove cardiolipin.
=== Catabolism ===
Catabolism of cardiolipin may happen by the catalysis of phospholipase A2 (PLA) to remove fatty acyl groups. Phospholipase D (PLD) in the mitochondrion hydrolyses cardiolipin to phosphatidic acid.
== Functions ==
=== Regulates aggregate structures ===
Because of cardiolipin's unique structure, a change in pH and the presence of divalent cations can induce a structural change. CL shows a great variety of forms of aggregates. It is found that in the presence of Ca2+ or other divalent cations, CL can be induced to have a lamellar-to-hexagonal (La-HII) phase transition. And it is believed to have a close connection with membrane fusion.
=== Facilitates the quaternary structure ===
The enzyme cytochrome c oxidase, also known as Complex IV, is a large transmembrane protein complex found in mitochondria and bacteria. It is the last enzyme in the respiratory electron transport chain located in the inner mitochondrial or bacterial membrane. It receives an electron from each of four cytochrome c molecules, and transfers them to one oxygen molecule, converting molecular oxygen to two molecules of water. Complex IV has been shown to require two associated CL molecules in order to maintain its full enzymatic function.
Cytochrome bc1 (Complex III) also needs cardiolipin to maintain its quaternary structure and functional role. Complex V of the oxidative phosphorylation machinery also displays high binding affinity for CL, binding four molecules of CL per molecule of complex V.
=== Triggers apoptosis ===
Cardiolipin distribution to the outer mitochondrial membrane would lead to apoptosis of the cells, as evidenced by cytochrome c (cyt c) release, Caspase-8 activation, MOMP induction and NLRP3 inflammasome activation. During apoptosis, cyt c is released from the intermembrane spaces of mitochondria
into the cytosol. Cyt c can then bind to the IP3 receptor on endoplasmic reticulum, stimulating calcium release, which then reacts back to cause the release of cyt c. When the calcium concentration reaches a toxic level, this causes cell death. Cytochrome c is thought to play a role in apoptosis via the release of apoptotic factors from the mitochondria.
A cardiolipin-specific oxygenase produces CL hydroperoxides which can result in the conformation change of the lipid. The oxidized CL transfers from the inner membrane to the outer membrane, and then helps to form a permeable pore which releases cyt c.
=== Serves as proton trap for oxidative phosphorylation ===
During the oxidative phosphorylation process catalyzed by Complex IV, large quantities of protons are transferred from one side of the membrane to another side causing a large pH change. CL is suggested to function as a proton trap within the mitochondrial membranes, thereby strictly localizing the proton pool and minimizing the changes in pH in the mitochondrial intermembrane space.
This function is due to CL's unique structure. As stated above, CL can trap a proton within the bicyclic structure while carrying a negative charge. Thus, this bicyclic structure can serve as an electron buffer pool to release or absorb protons to maintain the pH near the membranes.
=== Other functions ===
Cholesterol translocation from outer to the inner mitochondrial membrane
Activates mitochondrial cholesterol side-chain cleavage
Import protein into mitochondrial matrix
Anticoagulant function
Modulates α-synuclein - malfunction of this process is thought to be a cause of Parkinson's disease.
== Clinical significance ==
Increasing evidence links aberrant CL metabolism and content to human disease. Human conditions include neurological disorders, cancer, and cardiovascular and metabolic disorders (a full list can be found at). As the number of human diseases with CL profile abnormalities has exponentially grown, the use of qualitative and quantitative diagnostics has emerged as a necessity.
=== Metabolic diseases ===
==== Barth syndrome ====
Barth syndrome is a rare genetic disorder that was recognised in the 1970s to cause infantile death. It has a mutation in the gene coding for tafazzin, an enzyme involved in the biosynthesis of cardiolipin. Tafazzin is an indispensable enzyme to synthesize cardiolipin in eukaryotes involved in the remodeling of CL acyl chains by transferring linoleic acid from PC to monolysocardiolipin. Mutation of tafazzin would cause insufficient cardiolipin remodeling. However, it appears that cells compensate and ATP production is similar or higher than normal cells.
Females heterozygous for the trait are unaffected. Sufferers of this condition have mitochondria that are abnormal. Cardiomyopathy and general weakness is common to these patients.
==== Combined malonic and methylmalonic aciduria (CMAMMA) ====
In the metabolic disease combined malonic and methylmalonic aciduria (CMAMMA) due to ACSF3 deficiency, there is an altered composition of complex lipids as a result of impaired mitochondrial fatty acid synthesis (mtFAS), so for example the content of cardiolipins is strongly increased.
==== Tangier disease ====
Tangier disease is also linked to CL abnormalities. Tangier disease is characterized by very low blood plasma levels of HDL cholesterol, accumulation of cholesteryl esters in tissues, and an increased risk for developing cardiovascular disease. Unlike Barth syndrome, Tangier disease is mainly caused by abnormal enhanced production of CL. Studies show that there are three to fivefold increase of CL level in Tangier disease. Because increased CL levels would enhance cholesterol oxidation, and then the formation of oxysterols would consequently increase cholesterol efflux. This process could function as an escape mechanism to remove excess cholesterol from the cell.
=== Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease ===
Oxidative stress and lipid peroxidation are believed to be contributing factors leading to neuronal loss and mitochondrial dysfunction in the substantia nigra in Parkinson's disease, and may play an early role in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease. It is reported that CL content in the brain decreases with aging, and a recent study on rat brain shows it results from lipid peroxidation in mitochondria exposed to free radical stress. Another study shows that the CL biosynthesis pathway may be selectively impaired, causing 20% reduction and composition change of the CL content. It is also associated with a 15% reduction in linked complex I/III activity of the electron transport chain, which is thought to be a critical factor in the development of Parkinson's disease.
=== Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease and heart failure ===
Recently, it is reported that in non-alcoholic fatty liver disease and heart failure, decreased CL levels and change in acyl chain composition are also observed in the mitochondrial dysfunction. However, the role of CL in aging and ischemia/reperfusion is still controversial.
=== Diabetes ===
Heart disease is twice as common in people with diabetes. In diabetics, cardiovascular complications occur at an earlier age and often result in premature death, making heart disease the major killer of diabetic people. Cardiolipin has been found to be deficient in the heart at the earliest stages of diabetes, possibly due to a lipid-digesting enzyme that becomes more active in diabetic heart muscle.
=== Syphilis ===
Cardiolipin from a cow heart is used as an antigen in the Wassermann test for syphilis. Anti-cardiolipin antibodies can also be increased in numerous other conditions, including systemic lupus erythematosus, malaria and tuberculosis, so this test is not specific.
=== HIV-1 ===
Human immunodeficiency virus-1 (HIV-1) has infected more than 60 million people worldwide. HIV-1 envelope glycoprotein contains at least four sites for neutralizing antibodies. Among these sites, the membrane-proximal region (MPR) is particularly attractive as an antibody target because it facilitates viral entry into T cells and is highly conserved among viral strains. However, it is found that two antibodies directed against 2F5, 4E10 in MPR react with self-antigens, including cardiolipin. Thus, it's difficult for such antibodies to be elicited by vaccination.
=== Cancer ===
It was first proposed by Otto Heinrich Warburg that cancer originated from irreversible injury to mitochondrial respiration, but the structural basis for this injury has remained elusive. Since cardiolipin is an important phospholipid found almost exclusively in the inner mitochondrial membrane and very essential in maintaining mitochondrial function, it is suggested that abnormalities in CL can impair mitochondrial function and bioenergetics. A study published in 2008 on mouse brain tumors supporting Warburg's cancer theory shows major abnormalities in CL content or composition in all tumors.
=== Antiphospholipid syndrome ===
Patients with anti-cardiolipin antibodies (Antiphospholipid syndrome) can have recurrent thrombotic events even early in their mid- to late-teen years. These events can occur in vessels in which thrombosis may be relatively uncommon, such as the hepatic or renal veins. These antibodies are usually picked up in young women with recurrent spontaneous abortions.
In anti-cardiolipin-mediated autoimmune disease, there is a dependency on the apolipoprotein H for recognition.
=== Additional anti-cardiolipin diseases ===
==== Chronic fatigue syndrome ====
Chronic fatigue syndrome is debilitating illness of unknown cause that often follows an acute viral infection. According to one research study, 95% of CFS patients have anti-cardiolipin antibodies.
== See also ==
Phosphatidylglycerol
== References ==
== External links ==
Cardiolipin at the U.S. National Library of Medicine Medical Subject Headings (MeSH)
Cardiolipin (Diphosphatidylglycerol) |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_Age#: | Stone Age | The Stone Age was a broad prehistoric period during which stone was widely used to make stone tools with an edge, a point, or a percussion surface. The period lasted for roughly 3.4 million years and ended between 4000 BC and 2000 BC, with the advent of metalworking. Because of its enormous timescale, it encompasses 99% of human history.
Though some simple metalworking of malleable metals, particularly the use of gold and copper for purposes of ornamentation, was known in the Stone Age, it is the melting and smelting of copper that marks the end of the Stone Age. In Western Asia, this occurred by about 3000 BC, when bronze became widespread. The term Bronze Age is used to describe the period that followed the Stone Age, as well as to describe cultures that had developed techniques and technologies for working copper alloys (bronze: originally copper and arsenic, later copper and tin) into tools, supplanting stone in many uses.
Stone Age artifacts that have been discovered include tools used by modern humans, by their predecessor species in the genus Homo, and possibly by the earlier partly contemporaneous genera Australopithecus and Paranthropus. Bone tools have been discovered that were used during this period as well but these are rarely preserved in the archaeological record. The Stone Age is further subdivided by the types of stone tools in use.
The Stone Age is the first period in the three-age system frequently used in archaeology to divide the timeline of human technological prehistory (especially in Europe and western Asia) into functional periods, with the next two being the Bronze Age and the Iron Age, respectively. The Stone Age is also commonly divided into three distinct periods: the earliest and most primitive being the Paleolithic era; a transitional period with finer tools known as the Mesolithic era; and the final stage known as the Neolithic era. Neolithic peoples were the first to transition away from hunter-gatherer societies into the settled lifestyle of inhabiting towns and villages as agriculture became widespread. In the chronology of prehistory, the Neolithic era usually overlaps with the Chalcolithic ("Copper") era preceding the Bronze Age.
The Archaeology of the Americas uses different markers to assign five periods which have different dates in different areas; the oldest period is the similarly named Lithic stage.
== Historical significance ==
The Stone Age is contemporaneous with the evolution of the genus Homo, with the possible exception of the early Stone Age, when species prior to Homo may have manufactured tools. According to the age and location of the current evidence, the cradle of the genus is the East African Rift System, especially toward the north in Ethiopia, where it is bordered by grasslands. The closest relative among the other living primates, the genus Pan, represents a branch that continued on in the deep forest, where the primates evolved. The rift served as a conduit for movement into southern Africa and also north down the Nile into North Africa and through the continuation of the rift in the Levant to the vast grasslands of Asia.
Starting from about 4 million years ago (mya) a single biome established itself from South Africa through the rift, North Africa, and across Asia to modern China. This has been called "transcontinental 'savannahstan'" recently. Starting in the grasslands of the rift, Homo erectus, the predecessor of modern humans, found an ecological niche as a tool-maker and developed a dependence on it, becoming a "tool-equipped savanna dweller".
== Stone Age in archaeology ==
=== Beginning of the Stone Age ===
The oldest indirect evidence found of stone tool use is fossilised animal bones with tool marks; these are 3.4 million years old and were found in the Lower Awash Valley in Ethiopia. Archaeological discoveries in Kenya in 2015, identifying what may be the oldest evidence of hominin use of tools known to date, have indicated that Kenyanthropus platyops (a 3.2 to 3.5-million-year-old Pliocene hominin fossil discovered in Lake Turkana, Kenya, in 1999) may have been the earliest tool-users known.
The oldest stone tools were excavated from the site of Lomekwi 3 in West Turkana, northwestern Kenya, and date to 3.3 million years old. Prior to the discovery of these "Lomekwian" tools, the oldest known stone tools had been found at several sites at Gona, Ethiopia, on sediments of the paleo-Awash River, which serve to date them. All the tools come from the Busidama Formation, which lies above a disconformity, or missing layer, which would have been from 2.9 to 2.7 mya. The oldest sites discovered to contain tools are dated to 2.6–2.55 mya. One of the most striking circumstances about these sites is that they are from the Late Pliocene, where prior to their discovery tools were thought to have evolved only in the Pleistocene. Excavators at the locality point out that:
... the earliest stone tool makers were skilled flintknappers ... The possible reasons behind this seeming abrupt transition from the absence of stone tools to the presence thereof include ... gaps in the geological record.
The species that made the Pliocene tools remains unknown. Fragments of Australopithecus garhi, Australopithecus aethiopicus, and Homo, possibly Homo habilis, have been found in sites near the age of the Gona tools.
In July 2018, scientists reported the discovery in China of what may possibly be, if confirmed, the oldest known stone tools outside Africa, estimated at 2.12 million years old.
=== End of the Stone Age ===
Innovation in the technique of smelting ore is regarded as the end of the Stone Age and the beginning of the Bronze Age. The first highly significant metal manufactured was bronze, an alloy of copper and tin or arsenic, each of which was smelted separately. The transition from the Stone Age to the Bronze Age was a period during which modern people could smelt copper, but did not yet manufacture bronze, a time known as the Copper Age (or more technically the Chalcolithic or Eneolithic, both meaning 'copper–stone'). The Chalcolithic by convention is the initial period of the Bronze Age. The Bronze Age was followed by the Iron Age.
The transition out of the Stone Age occurred between 6000 and 2500 BC for much of humanity living in North Africa and Eurasia.
The first evidence of human metallurgy dates to between the 6th and 5th millennia BC in the archaeological sites of the Vinča culture, including Majdanpek, Jarmovac, Pločnik, Rudna Glava in modern-day Serbia.
Ötzi the Iceman, a mummy from about 3300 BC, carried with him a copper axe and a flint knife.
In some regions, such as Sub-Saharan Africa, the Stone Age was followed directly by the Iron Age. The Middle East and Southeast Asian regions progressed past Stone Age technology around 6000 BC. Europe, and the rest of Asia became post-Stone Age societies by about 4000 BC. The proto-Inca cultures of South America continued at a Stone Age level until around 2000 BC, when gold, copper, and silver made their entrance. The peoples of the Americas notably did not develop a widespread behavior of smelting bronze or iron after the Stone Age period, although the technology existed. Stone tool manufacture continued even after the Stone Age ended in a given area. In Europe and North America, millstones were in use until well into the 20th century, and still are in many parts of the world.
=== Concept of the Stone Age ===
The terms "Stone Age", "Bronze Age", and "Iron Age" are not intended to suggest that advancements and time periods in prehistory are only measured by the type of tool material, rather than, for example, social organization, food sources exploited, adaptation to climate, adoption of agriculture, cooking, settlement, and religion. Like pottery, the typology of the stone tools combined with the relative sequence of the types in various regions provide a chronological framework for the evolution of humanity and society. They serve as diagnostics of date, rather than characterizing the people or the society.
Lithic analysis is a major and specialised form of archaeological investigation. It involves the measurement of stone tools to determine their typology, function and technologies involved. It includes the scientific study of the lithic reduction of the raw materials and methods used to make the prehistoric artifacts that are discovered. Much of this study takes place in the laboratory in the presence of various specialists. In experimental archaeology, researchers attempt to create replica tools, to understand how they were made. Flintknappers are craftsmen who use sharp tools to reduce flintstone to flint tool.
In addition to lithic analysis, field prehistorians use a wide range of techniques derived from multiple fields. The work of archaeologists in determining the paleocontext and relative sequence of the layers is supplemented by the efforts of geologic specialists in identifying layers of rock developed or deposited over geologic time; of paleontological specialists in identifying bones and animals; of palynologists in discovering and identifying pollen, spores and plant species; of physicists and chemists in laboratories determining ages of materials by carbon-14, potassium-argon and other methods. The study of the Stone Age has never been limited to stone tools and archaeology, even though they are important forms of evidence. The chief focus of study has always been on the society and the living people who belonged to it.
Useful as it has been, the concept of the Stone Age has its limitations. The date range of this period is ambiguous, disputed, and variable, depending upon the region in question. While it is possible to speak of a general 'Stone Age' period for the whole of humanity, some groups never developed metal-smelting technology, and so remained in the so-called 'Stone Age' until they encountered technologically developed cultures. The term was innovated to describe the archaeological cultures of Europe. It may not always be the best in relation to regions such as some parts of the Indies and Oceania, where farmers or hunter-gatherers used stone for tools until European colonisation began.
Archaeologists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries CE, who adapted the three-age system to their ideas, hoped to combine cultural anthropology and archaeology in such a way that a specific contemporaneous tribe could be used to illustrate the way of life and beliefs of the people exercising a particular Stone-Age technology. As a description of people living today, the term Stone Age is controversial. The Association of Social Anthropologists discourages this use, asserting:To describe any living group as 'primitive' or 'Stone Age' inevitably implies that they are living representatives of some earlier stage of human development that the majority of humankind has left behind.
=== Three-stage system ===
In the 1920s, South African archaeologists organizing the stone tool collections of that country observed that they did not fit the newly detailed Three-Age System. In the words of J. Desmond Clark:
It was early realized that the threefold division of culture into Stone, Bronze and Iron Ages adopted in the nineteenth century for Europe had no validity in Africa outside the Nile valley.
Consequently, they proposed a new system for Africa, the Three-stage System. Clark regarded the Three-age System as valid for North Africa; in sub-Saharan Africa, the Three-stage System was best. In practice, the failure of African archaeologists either to keep this distinction in mind, or to explain which one they mean, contributes to the considerable equivocation already present in the literature. There are in effect two Stone Ages, one part of the Three-age and the other constituting the Three-stage. They refer to one and the same artifacts and the same technologies, but vary by locality and time.
The three-stage system was proposed in 1929 by Astley John Hilary Goodwin, a professional archaeologist, and Clarence van Riet Lowe, a civil engineer and amateur archaeologist, in an article titled "Stone Age Cultures of South Africa" in the journal Annals of the South African Museum. By then, the dates of the Early Stone Age, or Paleolithic, and Late Stone Age, or Neolithic (neo = new), were fairly solid and were regarded by Goodwin as absolute. He therefore proposed a relative chronology of periods with floating dates, to be called the Earlier and Later Stone Age. The Middle Stone Age would not change its name, but it would not mean Mesolithic.
The duo thus reinvented the Stone Age. In Sub-Saharan Africa, however, iron-working technologies were either invented independently or came across the Sahara from the north (see iron metallurgy in Africa). The Neolithic was characterized primarily by herding societies rather than large agricultural societies, and although there was copper metallurgy in Africa as well as bronze smelting, archaeologists do not currently recognize a separate Copper Age or Bronze Age. Moreover, the technologies included in those 'stages', as Goodwin called them, were not exactly the same. Since then, the original relative terms have become identified with the technologies of the Paleolithic and Mesolithic, so that they are no longer relative. Moreover, there has been a tendency to drop the comparative degree in favor of the positive: resulting in two sets of Early, Middle and Late Stone Ages of quite different content and chronologies.
By voluntary agreement, archaeologists respect the decisions of the Pan-African Congress on Prehistory, which meets every four years to resolve the archaeological business brought before it. Delegates are actually international; the organization takes its name from the topic. Louis Leakey hosted the first one in Nairobi in 1947. It adopted Goodwin and Lowe's 3-stage system at that time, the stages to be called Early, Middle and Later.
=== Problem of the transitions ===
The problem of the transitions in archaeology is a branch of the general philosophic continuity problem, which examines how discrete objects of any sort that are contiguous in any way can be presumed to have a relationship of any sort. In archaeology, the relationship is one of causality. If Period B can be presumed to descend from Period A, there must be a boundary between A and B, the A–B boundary. The problem is in the nature of this boundary. If there is no distinct boundary, then the population of A suddenly stopped using the customs characteristic of A and suddenly started using those of B, an unlikely scenario in the process of evolution. More realistically, a distinct border period, the A/B transition, existed, in which the customs of A were gradually dropped and those of B acquired. If transitions do not exist, then there is no proof of any continuity between A and B.
The Stone Age of Europe is characteristically in deficit of known transitions. The 19th and early 20th-century innovators of the modern three-age system recognized the problem of the initial transition, the "gap" between the Paleolithic and the Neolithic. Louis Leakey provided something of an answer by proving that man evolved in Africa. The Stone Age must have begun there to be carried repeatedly to Europe by migrant populations. The different phases of the Stone Age thus could appear there without transitions. The burden on African archaeologists became all the greater, because now they must find the missing transitions in Africa. The problem is difficult and ongoing.
After its adoption by the First Pan African Congress in 1947, the Three-Stage Chronology was amended by the Third Congress in 1955 to include a First Intermediate Period between Early and Middle, to encompass the Fauresmith and Sangoan technologies, and the Second Intermediate Period between Middle and Later, to encompass the Magosian technology and others. The chronologic basis for the definition was entirely relative. With the arrival of scientific means of finding an absolute chronology, the two intermediates turned out to be will-of-the-wisps. They were in fact Middle and Lower Paleolithic. Fauresmith is now considered to be a facies of Acheulean, while Sangoan is a facies of Lupemban. Magosian is "an artificial mix of two different periods".
Once seriously questioned, the intermediates did not wait for the next Pan African Congress two years hence, but were officially rejected in 1965 (again on an advisory basis) by Burg Wartenstein Conference #29, Systematic Investigation of the African Later Tertiary and Quaternary, a conference in anthropology held by the Wenner-Gren Foundation, at Burg Wartenstein Castle, which it then owned in Austria, attended by the same scholars that attended the Pan African Congress, including Louis Leakey and Mary Leakey, who was delivering a pilot presentation of her typological analysis of Early Stone Age tools, to be included in her 1971 contribution to Olduvai Gorge, "Excavations in Beds I and II, 1960–1963."
However, although the intermediate periods were gone, the search for the transitions continued.
== Chronology ==
In 1859 Jens Jacob Worsaae first proposed a division of the Stone Age into older and younger parts based on his work with Danish kitchen middens that began in 1851. In the subsequent decades this simple distinction developed into the archaeological periods of today. The major subdivisions of the Three-age Stone Age cross two epoch boundaries on the geologic time scale:
The geologic Pliocene–Pleistocene boundary (highly glaciated climate)
The Paleolithic period of archaeology
The geologic Pleistocene–Holocene boundary (modern climate)
Mesolithic or Epipaleolithic period of archaeology
Neolithic period of archaeology
The succession of these phases varies enormously from one region (and culture) to another.
=== Three-age chronology ===
The Paleolithic or Palaeolithic (from Greek: παλαιός, palaios, "old"; and λίθος, lithos, "stone" lit. "old stone", coined by archaeologist John Lubbock and published in 1865) is the earliest division of the Stone Age. It covers the greatest portion of humanity's time (roughly 99% of "human technological history", where "human" and "humanity" are interpreted to mean the genus Homo), extending from 2.5 or 2.6 million years ago, with the first documented use of stone tools by hominins such as Homo habilis, to the end of the Pleistocene around 10,000 BC. The Paleolithic era ended with the Mesolithic, or in areas with an early Neolithisation, the Epipaleolithic.
==== Lower Paleolithic ====
At sites dating from the Lower Paleolithic Period (about 2,500,000 to 200,000 years ago), simple pebble tools have been found in association with the remains of what may have been the earliest human ancestors. A somewhat more sophisticated Lower Paleolithic tradition, known as the Chopper chopping tool industry, is widely distributed in the Eastern Hemisphere. This tradition is thought to have been the work of the hominin species named Homo erectus. Although no such fossil tools have yet been found, it is believed that H. erectus probably made tools of wood and bone as well as stone.
About 700,000 years ago, a new Lower Paleolithic tool, the hand axe, appeared. The earliest European hand axes are assigned to the Abbevillian industry, which developed in northern France in the valley of the Somme River; a later, more refined hand-axe tradition is seen in the Acheulian industry, evidence of which has been found in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. Some of the earliest known hand axes were found at Olduvai Gorge (Tanzania) in association with remains of H. erectus. Alongside the hand-axe tradition, there developed a distinct and very different stone-tool industry, based on flakes of stone: special tools were made from worked (carefully shaped) flakes of flint. In Europe, the Clactonian industry is one example of a flake tradition. The early flake industries probably contributed to the development of the Middle Paleolithic flake tools of the Mousterian industry, which is associated with the remains of Neanderthal man.
===== Oldowan in Africa =====
The earliest documented stone tools have been found in eastern Africa, manufacturers unknown, at the 3.3 million-year-old site of Lomekwi 3 in Kenya. Better known are the later tools belonging to an industry known as Oldowan, after the type site of Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania.
The tools were formed by knocking pieces off a river pebble, or stones like it, with a hammerstone to obtain large and small pieces with one or more sharp edges. Typically, but not necessarily, small pieces are detached from a larger piece, in which case the larger piece may be called the core and the smaller pieces the flakes. The prevalent usage, however, is to call all the results flakes, which can be confusing. A split in half is called bipolar flaking.
Consequently, the method is often called "core-and-flake". More recently, the tradition has been called "small flake" since the flakes were small compared to subsequent Acheulean tools.
The essence of the Oldowan is the making and often immediate use of small flakes.
Another naming scheme is "Pebble Core Technology (PBC)":
Pebble cores are ... artifacts that have been shaped by varying amounts of hard-hammer percussion.
Various refinements in the shape have been called choppers, discoids, polyhedrons, subspheroid, etc. To date no reasons for the variants have been ascertained:
From a functional standpoint, pebble cores seem designed for no specific purpose.
However, they would not have been manufactured for no purpose:
Pebble cores can be useful in many cutting, scraping or chopping tasks, but ... they are not particularly more efficient in such tasks than a sharp-edged rock.
The whole point of their utility is that each is a "sharp-edged rock" in locations where nature has not provided any. There is additional evidence that Oldowan, or Mode 1, tools were used in "percussion technology"; that is, they were designed to be gripped at the blunt end and strike something with the edge, from which use they were given the name of choppers. Modern science has been able to detect mammalian blood cells on Mode 1 tools at Sterkfontein, Member 5 East, in South Africa. As the blood must have come from a fresh kill, the tool users are likely to have done the killing and used the tools for butchering. Plant residues bonded to the silicon of some tools confirm the use to chop plants.
Although the exact species authoring the tools remains unknown, Mode 1 tools in Africa were manufactured and used predominantly by Homo habilis. They cannot be said to have developed these tools or to have contributed the tradition to technology. They continued a tradition of yet unknown origin. As chimpanzees sometimes naturally use percussion to extract or prepare food in the wild, and may use either unmodified stones or stones that they have split, creating an Oldowan tool, the tradition may well be far older than its current record.
Towards the end of Oldowan in Africa the new species Homo erectus appeared over the range of Homo habilis. The earliest "unambiguous" evidence is a whole cranium, KNM-ER 3733 (a find identifier) from Koobi Fora in Kenya, dated to 1.78 mya. An early skull fragment, KNM-ER 2598, dated to 1.9 mya, is considered a good candidate also. Transitions in paleoanthropology are always hard to find, if not impossible, but based on the "long-legged" limb morphology shared by H. habilis and H. rudolfensis in East Africa, an evolution from one of those two has been suggested.
The most immediate cause of the new adjustments appears to have been an increasing aridity in the region and consequent contraction of parkland savanna, interspersed with trees and groves, in favor of open grassland, dated 1.8–1.7 mya. During that transitional period the percentage of grazers among the fossil species increased from around 15–25% to 45%, dispersing the food supply and requiring a facility among the hunters to travel longer distances comfortably, which H. erectus obviously had. The ultimate proof is the "dispersal" of H. erectus "across much of Africa and Asia, substantially before the development of the Mode 2 technology and use of fire". H. erectus carried Mode 1 tools over Eurasia.
According to the current evidence (which may change at any time) Mode 1 tools are documented from about 2.6 mya to about 1.5 mya in Africa, and to 0.5 mya outside of it. The genus Homo is known from H. habilis and H. rudolfensis from 2.3 to 2.0 mya, with the latest habilis being an upper jaw from Koobi Fora, Kenya, from 1.4 mya. H. erectus is dated 1.8–0.6 mya.
According to this chronology Mode 1 was inherited by Homo from unknown Hominans, probably Australopithecus and Paranthropus, who must have continued on with Mode 1 and then with Mode 2 until their extinction no later than 1.1 mya. Meanwhile, living contemporaneously in the same regions H. habilis inherited the tools around 2.3 mya. At about 1.9 mya H. erectus came on stage and lived contemporaneously with the others. Mode 1 was now being shared by a number of Hominans over the same ranges, presumably subsisting in different niches, but the archaeology is not precise enough to say which.
===== Oldowan out of Africa =====
Tools of the Oldowan tradition first came to archaeological attention in Europe, where, being intrusive and not well defined, compared to the Acheulean, they were puzzling to archaeologists. The mystery would be elucidated by African archaeology at Olduvai, but meanwhile, in the early 20th century, the term "Pre-Acheulean" came into use in climatology. C. E. P. Brooks, a British climatologist working in the United States, used the term to describe a "chalky boulder clay" underlying a layer of gravel at Hoxne, central England, where Acheulean tools had been found. Whether any tools would be found in it and what type was not known. Hugo Obermaier, a contemporary German archaeologist working in Spain, stated:
Unfortunately, the stage of human industry which corresponds to these deposits cannot be positively identified. All we can say is that it is pre-Acheulean.
This uncertainty was clarified by the subsequent excavations at Olduvai; nevertheless, the term is still in use for pre-Acheulean contexts, mainly across Eurasia, that are yet unspecified or uncertain but with the understanding that they are or will turn out to be pebble-tool.
There are ample associations of Mode 2 with H. erectus in Eurasia. H. erectus – Mode 1 associations are scantier but they do exist, especially in the Far East. One strong piece of evidence prevents the conclusion that only H. erectus reached Eurasia: at Yiron, Israel, Mode 1 tools have been found dating to 2.4 mya, about 0.5 my earlier than the known H. erectus finds. If the date is correct, either another Hominan preceded H. erectus out of Africa or the earliest H. erectus has yet to be found.
After the initial appearance at Gona in Ethiopia at 2.7 mya, pebble tools date from 2.0 mya at Sterkfontein, Member 5, South Africa, and from 1.8 mya at El Kherba, Algeria, North Africa. The manufacturers had already left pebble tools at Yiron, Israel, at 2.4 mya, Riwat, Pakistan, at 2.0 mya, and Renzidong, South China, at over 2 mya. The identification of a fossil skull at Mojokerta, Pernung Peninsula on Java, dated to 1.8 mya, as H. erectus, suggests that the African finds are not the earliest to be found in Africa, or that, in fact, erectus did not originate in Africa after all but on the plains of Asia. The outcome of the issue waits for more substantial evidence. Erectus was found also at Dmanisi, Georgia, from 1.75 mya in association with pebble tools.
Pebble tools are found the latest first in southern Europe and then in northern Europe. They begin in the open areas of Italy and Spain, the earliest dated to 1.6 mya at Pirro Nord, Italy. The mountains of Italy are rising at a rapid rate in the framework of geologic time; at 1.6 mya they were lower and covered with grassland (as much of the highlands still are). Europe was otherwise mountainous and covered over with dense forest, a formidable terrain for warm-weather savanna dwellers. Similarly there is no evidence that the Mediterranean was passable at Gibraltar or anywhere else to H. erectus or earlier hominins. They might have reached Italy and Spain along the coasts.
In northern Europe, pebble tools are found earliest at Happisburgh, United Kingdom, from 0.8 mya. The last traces are from Kent's Cavern, dated 0.5 mya. By that time H. erectus is regarded as having been extinct; however, a more modern version apparently had evolved, Homo heidelbergensis, who must have inherited the tools. He also explains the last of the Acheulean in Germany at 0.4 mya.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, archaeologists worked on the assumption that a succession of hominins and cultures prevailed, that one replaced another. Today the presence of multiple hominins living contemporaneously near each other for long periods is accepted as proven true; moreover, by the time the previously assumed "earliest" culture arrived in northern Europe, the rest of Africa and Eurasia had progressed to the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic, so that across the earth all three were for a time contemporaneous. In any given region there was a progression from Oldowan to Acheulean, Lower to Upper, no doubt.
===== Acheulean in Africa =====
The end of Oldowan in Africa was brought on by the appearance of Acheulean, or Mode 2, stone tools. The earliest known instances are in the 1.7–1.6 mya layer at Kokiselei, West Turkana, Kenya. At Sterkfontein, South Africa, they are in Member 5 West, 1.7–1.4 mya. The 1.7 is a fairly certain, fairly standard date. Mode 2 is often found in association with H. erectus. It makes sense that the most advanced tools should have been innovated by the most advanced hominin; consequently, they are typically given credit for the innovation.
A Mode 2 tool is a biface consisting of two concave surfaces intersecting to form a cutting edge all the way around, except in the case of tools intended to feature a point. More work and planning go into the manufacture of a Mode 2 tool. The manufacturer hits a slab off a larger rock to use as a blank. Then large flakes are struck off the blank and worked into bifaces by hard-hammer percussion on an anvil stone. Finally the edge is retouched: small flakes are hit off with a bone or wood soft hammer to sharpen or resharpen it. The core can be either the blank or another flake. Blanks are ported for manufacturing supply in places where nature has provided no suitable stone.
Although most Mode 2 tools are easily distinguished from Mode 1, there is a close similarity of some Oldowan and some Acheulean, which can lead to confusion. Some Oldowan tools are more carefully prepared to form a more regular edge. One distinguishing criterion is the size of the flakes. In contrast to the Oldowan "small flake" tradition, Acheulean is "large flake": "The primary technological distinction remaining between Oldowan and the Acheulean is the preference for large flakes (>10 cm) as blanks for making large cutting tools (handaxes and cleavers) in the Acheulean." "Large Cutting Tool" (LCT) has become part of the standard terminology as well.
In North Africa, the presence of Mode 2 remains a mystery, as the oldest finds are from Thomas Quarry in Morocco at 0.9 mya. Archaeological attention, however, shifts to the Jordan Rift Valley, an extension of the East African Rift Valley (the east bank of the Jordan is slowly sliding northward as East Africa is thrust away from Africa). Evidence of use of the Nile Valley is in deficit, but Hominans could easily have reached the palaeo-Jordan River from Ethiopia along the shores of the Red Sea, one side or the other. A crossing would not have been necessary, but it is more likely there than over a theoretical but unproven land bridge through either Gibraltar or Sicily.
Meanwhile, Acheulean went on in Africa past the 1.0 mya mark and also past the extinction of H. erectus there. The last Acheulean in East Africa is at Olorgesailie, Kenya, dated to about 0.9 mya. Its owner was still H. erectus, but in South Africa, Acheulean at Elandsfontein, 1.0–0.6 mya, is associated with Saldanha man, classified as H. heidelbergensis, a more advanced, but not yet modern, descendant most likely of H. erectus. The Thoman Quarry Hominans in Morocco similarly are most likely Homo rhodesiensis, in the same evolutionary status as H. heidelbergensis.
===== Acheulean out of Africa =====
Mode 2 is first known out of Africa at 'Ubeidiya, Israel, a site now on the Jordan River, then frequented over the long term (hundreds of thousands of years) by Homo on the shore of a variable-level palaeo-lake, long since vanished. The geology was created by successive "transgression and regression" of the lake resulting in four cycles of layers. The tools are located in the first two, Cycles Li (Limnic Inferior) and Fi (Fluviatile Inferior), but mostly in Fi. The cycles represent different ecologies and therefore different cross-sections of fauna, which makes it possible to date them. They appear to be the same faunal assemblages as the Ferenta Faunal Unit in Italy, known from excavations at Selvella and Pieterfitta, dated to 1.6–1.2 mya.
At 'Ubeidiya the marks on the bones of the animal species found there indicate that the manufacturers of the tools butchered the kills of large predators, an activity that has been termed "scavenging". There are no living floors, nor did they process bones to obtain the marrow. These activities cannot be understood therefore as the only or even the typical economic activity of Hominans. Their interests were selective: they were primarily harvesting the meat of Cervids, which is estimated to have been available without spoiling for up to four days after the kill.
The majority of the animals at the site were of "Palaearctic biogeographic origin". However, these overlapped in range on 30–60% of "African biogeographic origin". The biome was Mediterranean, not savanna. The animals were not passing through; there was simply an overlap of normal ranges. Of the Hominans, H. erectus left several cranial fragments. Teeth of undetermined species may have been H. ergaster. The tools are classified as "Lower Acheulean" and "Developed Oldowan". The latter is a disputed classification created by Mary Leakey to describe an Acheulean-like tradition in Bed II at Olduvai. It is dated 1.53–1.27 mya. The date of the tools therefore probably does not exceed 1.5 mya; 1.4 is often given as a date. This chronology, which is definitely later than in Kenya, supports the "out of Africa" hypothesis for Acheulean, if not for the Hominans.
From Southwest Asia, as the Levant is now called, the Acheulean extended itself more slowly eastward, arriving at Isampur, India, about 1.2 mya. It does not appear in China and Korea until after 1mya and not at all in Indonesia. There is a discernible boundary marking the furthest extent of the Acheulean eastward before 1 mya, called the Movius Line, after its proposer, Hallam L. Movius. On the east side of the line the small flake tradition continues, but the tools are additionally worked Mode 1, with flaking down the sides. In Athirampakkam at Chennai in Tamil Nadu the Acheulean age started at 1.51 mya and it is also prior than North India and Europe.
The cause of the Movius Line remains speculative, whether it represents a real change in technology or a limitation of archeology, but after 1 mya evidence not available to Movius indicates the prevalence of Acheulean. For example, the Acheulean site at Bose, China, is dated 0.803±3K mya. The authors of this chronologically later East Asian Acheulean remain unknown, as does whether it evolved in the region or was brought in.
There is no named boundary line between Mode 1 and Mode 2 on the west; nevertheless, Mode 2 is equally late in Europe as it is in the Far East. The earliest comes from a rock shelter at Estrecho de Quípar in Spain, dated to greater than 0.9 mya. Teeth from an undetermined Hominan were found there also. The last Mode 2 in Southern Europe is from a deposit at Fontana Ranuccio near Anagni in Italy dated to 0.45 mya, which is generally linked to Homo cepranensis, a "late variant of H. erectus", a fragment of whose skull was found at Ceprano nearby, dated 0.46 mya.
==== Middle Paleolithic ====
This period is best known as the era during which the Neanderthals lived in Europe and the Near East (c. 300,000–28,000 years ago). Their technology is mainly the Mousterian, but Neanderthal physical characteristics have been found also in ambiguous association with the more recent Châtelperronian archeological culture in Western Europe and several local industries like the Szeletian in Eastern Europe/Eurasia. There is no evidence for Neanderthals in Africa, Australia or the Americas.
Neanderthals nursed their elderly and practised ritual burial indicating an organised society. The earliest evidence (Mungo Man) of settlement in Australia dates to around 40,000 years ago when modern humans likely crossed from Asia by island-hopping. Evidence for symbolic behavior such as body ornamentation and burial is ambiguous for the Middle Paleolithic and still subject to debate. The Bhimbetka rock shelters exhibit the earliest traces of human life in India, some of which are approximately 30,000 years old.
==== Upper Paleolithic ====
From 50,000 to 10,000 years ago in Europe, the Upper Paleolithic ends with the end of the Pleistocene and onset of the Holocene era (the end of the Last Glacial Period). Modern humans spread out further across the Earth during the period known as the Upper Paleolithic.
The Upper Paleolithic is marked by a relatively rapid succession of often complex stone artifact technologies and a large increase in the creation of art and personal ornaments. During period between 35 and 10 kya evolved: from 38 to 30 kya Châtelperronian, 40–28 Aurignacian, 28–22 Gravettian, 22–17 Solutrean, and 18–10 Magdalenian. All of these industries except the Châtelperronian are associated with anatomically modern humans. Authorship of the Châtelperronian is still the subject of much debate.
Most scholars date the arrival of humans in Australia at 40,000 to 50,000 years ago, with a possible range of up to 125,000 years ago. The earliest anatomically modern human remains found in Australia (and outside of Africa) are those of Mungo Man; they have been dated at 42,000 years old.
The Americas were colonised via the Bering land bridge which was exposed during this period by lower sea levels. These people are called the Paleo-Indians, and the earliest accepted dates are those of the Clovis culture sites, some 13,500 years ago. Globally, societies were hunter-gatherers but evidence of regional identities begins to appear in the wide variety of stone tool types being developed to suit very different environments.
==== Epipaleolithic/Mesolithic ====
The period starting from the end of the last ice age, 10,000 years ago, to around 6,000 years ago was characterized by rising sea levels and a need to adapt to a changing environment and find new food sources. The development of Mode 5 (microlith) tools began in response to these changes. They were derived from the previous Paleolithic tools, hence the term Epipaleolithic, or were intermediate between the Paleolithic and the Neolithic, hence the term Mesolithic (Middle Stone Age), used for parts of Eurasia, but not outside it. The choice of a word depends on exact circumstances and the inclination of the archaeologists excavating the site. Microliths were used in the manufacture of more efficient composite tools, resulting in an intensification of hunting and fishing and with increasing social activity the development of more complex settlements, such as Lepenski Vir. Domestication of the dog as a hunting companion probably dates to this period.
The earliest known battle occurred during the Mesolithic period at a site in Egypt known as Cemetery 117.
==== Neolithic ====
The Neolithic, or New Stone Age, was approximately characterized by the adoption of agriculture. The shift from food gathering to food producing, in itself one of the most revolutionary changes in human history, was accompanied by the so-called Neolithic Revolution: the development of pottery, polished stone tools, and construction of more complex, larger settlements such as Göbekli Tepe and Çatalhöyük. Some of these features began in certain localities even earlier, in the transitional Mesolithic. The first Neolithic cultures started around 7000 BC in the Fertile Crescent and spread concentrically to other areas of the world; however, the Near East was probably not the only nucleus of agriculture, the cultivation of maize in Meso-America and of rice in the Far East being others.
Due to the increased need to harvest and process plants, ground stone and polished stone artifacts became much more widespread, including tools for grinding, cutting, and chopping. Skara Brae, located in Orkney, Scotland, is one of Europe's best examples of a Neolithic village. The community contains stone beds, shelves and even an indoor toilet linked to a stream. The first large-scale constructions were built, including settlement towers and walls, e.g., Jericho (Tell es-Sultan) and ceremonial sites, e.g. Stonehenge. The Ġgantija temples of Gozo in the Maltese archipelago are the oldest surviving free-standing structures in the world, erected c. 3600–2500 BC. The earliest evidence for established trade exists in the Neolithic with newly settled people importing exotic goods over distances of many hundreds of miles.
These facts show that there were sufficient resources and co-operation to enable large groups to work on these projects. To what extent this was a basis for the development of elites and social hierarchies is a matter of ongoing debate. Although some late Neolithic societies formed complex stratified chiefdoms similar to Polynesian societies such as the Ancient Hawaiians, based on the societies of modern tribesmen at an equivalent technological level, most Neolithic societies were relatively simple and egalitarian. A comparison of art in the two ages leads some theorists to conclude that Neolithic cultures were noticeably more hierarchical than the Paleolithic cultures that preceded them.
=== African chronology ===
==== Early Stone Age (ESA) ====
The Early Stone Age in Africa is not to be identified with "Old Stone Age", a translation of Paleolithic, or with Paleolithic, or with the "Earlier Stone Age" that originally meant what became the Paleolithic and Mesolithic. In the initial decades of its definition by the Pan-African Congress of Prehistory, it was parallel in Africa to the Upper and Middle Paleolithic. However, since then Radiocarbon dating has shown that the Middle Stone Age is in fact contemporaneous with the Middle Paleolithic. The Early Stone Age therefore is contemporaneous with the Lower Paleolithic and happens to include the same main technologies, Oldowan and Acheulean, which produced Mode 1 and Mode 2 stone tools respectively. A distinct regional term is warranted, however, by the location and chronology of the sites and the exact typology.
==== Middle Stone Age (MSA) ====
The Middle Stone Age was a period of African prehistory between Early Stone Age and Late Stone Age. It began around 300,000 years ago and ended around 50,000 years ago. It is considered as an equivalent of European Middle Paleolithic. It is associated with anatomically modern or almost modern Homo sapiens. Early physical evidence comes from Omo and Herto, both in Ethiopia and dated respectively at c. 195 ka and at c. 160 ka.
==== Later Stone Age (LSA) ====
The Later Stone Age (LSA, sometimes also called the Late Stone Age) refers to a period in African prehistory. Its beginnings are roughly contemporaneous with the European Upper Paleolithic. It lasts until historical times and this includes cultures corresponding to Mesolithic and Neolithic in other regions.
== Material culture ==
=== Tools ===
Stone tools were made from a variety of stones. For example, flint and chert were shaped (or chipped) for use as cutting tools and weapons, while basalt and sandstone were used for ground stone tools, such as quern-stones. Wood, bone, shell, antler (deer) and other materials were widely used, as well. During the most recent part of the period, sediments (such as clay) were used to make pottery. Agriculture was developed and certain animals were domesticated as well.
Some species of non-primates are able to use stone tools, such as the sea otter, which breaks abalone shells with them. Primates can both use and manufacture stone tools. This combination of abilities is more marked in apes and humans, but only humans, or more generally hominins, depend on tool use for survival. The key anatomical and behavioral features required for tool manufacture, which are possessed only by hominins, are the larger thumb and the ability to hold by means of an assortment of grips.
=== Food and drink ===
Food sources of the Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers were wild plants and animals harvested from the environment. They liked animal organ meats, including the livers, kidneys and brains. Large seeded legumes were part of the human diet long before the agricultural revolution, as is evident from archaeobotanical finds from the Mousterian layers of Kebara Cave, in Israel. Moreover, recent evidence indicates that humans processed and consumed wild cereal grains as far back as 23,000 years ago in the Upper Paleolithic.
Near the end of the Wisconsin glaciation, 15,000 to 9,000 years ago, mass extinction of Megafauna such as the woolly mammoth occurred in Asia, Europe, North America and Australia. This was the first Holocene extinction event. It possibly forced modification in the dietary habits of the humans of that age and with the emergence of agricultural practices, plant-based foods also became a regular part of the diet. A number of factors have been suggested for the extinction: certainly over-hunting, but also deforestation and climate change. The net effect was to fragment the vast ranges required by the large animals and extinguish them piecemeal in each fragment.
=== Shelter and habitat ===
Around 2 million years ago, Homo habilis is believed to have constructed the first man-made structure in East Africa, consisting of simple arrangements of stones to hold branches of trees in position. A similar stone circular arrangement believed to be around 380,000 years old was discovered at Terra Amata, near Nice, France. (Concerns about the dating have been raised: see Terra Amata.) Several human habitats dating back to the Stone Age have been discovered around the globe, including:
A tent-like structure inside a cave near the Grotte du Lazaret, Nice, France.
A structure with a roof supported with timber, discovered in Dolní Věstonice, the Czech Republic, dates to around 23,000 BC. The walls were made of packed clay blocks and stones.
Many huts made of mammoth bones have been found in East-Central Europe and Siberia. The people who made these huts were expert mammoth hunters. Examples have been found along the Dniepr river valley of Ukraine, including near Chernihiv, in Moravia, Czech Republic and in southern Poland.
An animal hide tent dated to around 15000 to 10000 BC, in the Magdalenian, was discovered at Plateau Parain, France.
=== Art ===
Prehistoric art is visible in the artifacts. Prehistoric music is inferred from found instruments, while parietal art can be found on rocks of any kind. The latter are petroglyphs and rock paintings. The art may or may not have had a religious function.
==== Petroglyphs ====
Petroglyphs appeared in the Neolithic. A Petroglyph is an intaglio abstract or symbolic image engraved on natural stone by various methods, usually by prehistoric peoples. They were a dominant form of pre-writing symbols. Petroglyphs have been discovered in different parts of the world, including Australia (Sydney rock engravings), Asia (Bhimbetka, India), North America (Death Valley National Park), South America (Cumbe Mayo, Peru), and Europe (Finnmark, Norway).
==== Rock paintings ====
In Paleolithic times, mostly animals were painted, in theory ones that were used as food or represented strength, such as the rhinoceros or large cats (as in the Chauvet Cave). Signs such as dots were sometimes drawn. Rare human representations include handprints and half-human/half-animal figures. The Cave of Chauvet in the Ardèche department, France, contains the most important cave paintings of the Paleolithic era, dating from about 36,000 BC. The Altamira cave paintings in Spain were done 14,000 to 12,000 BC and show, among others, bisons. The hall of bulls in Lascaux, Dordogne, France, dates from about 15,000 to 10,000 BC.
The meaning of many of these paintings remains unknown. They may have been used for seasonal rituals. The animals are accompanied by signs that suggest a possible magic use. Arrow-like symbols in Lascaux are sometimes interpreted as calendar or almanac use, but the evidence remains interpretative.
Some scenes of the Mesolithic, however, can be typed and therefore, judging from their various modifications, are fairly clear. One of these is the battle scene between organized bands of archers. For example, "the marching warriors", a rock painting at Cingle de la Mola, Castellón in Spain, dated to about 7,000–4,000 BC, depicts about 50 bowmen in two groups marching or running in step toward each other, each man carrying a bow in one hand and a fistful of arrows in the other. A file of five men leads one band, one of whom is a figure with a "high crowned hat".
In other scenes elsewhere, the men wear head-dresses and knee ornaments but otherwise fight nude. Some scenes depict the dead and wounded, bristling with arrows. One is reminded of Ötzi the Iceman, a Copper Age mummy revealed by an Alpine melting glacier, who collapsed from loss of blood due to an arrow wound in the back.
=== Stone Age rituals and beliefs ===
Modern studies and the in-depth analysis of finds dating from the Stone Age indicate certain rituals and beliefs of the people in those prehistoric times. It is now believed that activities of the Stone Age humans went beyond the immediate requirements of procuring food, body coverings, and shelters. Specific rites relating to death and burial were practiced, though certainly differing in style and execution between cultures. Megalithic tombs, multichambered, and dolmens, single-chambered, were graves with a huge stone slab stacked over other similarly large stone slabs; they have been discovered all across Europe and Asia and were built in the Neolithic and the Bronze Age.
== Modern popular culture ==
The image of the caveman is commonly associated with the Stone Age. For example, a 2003 documentary series showing the evolution of humans through the Stone Age was called Walking with Cavemen, but only the last programme showed humans living in caves. While the idea that human beings and dinosaurs coexisted is sometimes portrayed in popular culture in cartoons, films and computer games, such as The Flintstones, One Million Years B.C. and Chuck Rock, the notion of hominids and non-avian dinosaurs co-existing is not supported by any scientific evidence.
Other depictions of the Stone Age include the best-selling Earth's Children series of books by Jean M. Auel, which are set in the Paleolithic and are loosely based on archaeological and anthropological findings.
The 1981 film Quest for Fire by Jean-Jacques Annaud tells the story of a group of early homo sapiens searching for their lost fire. A 21st-century series, Chronicles of Ancient Darkness by Michelle Paver tells of two New Stone Age children fighting to fulfil a prophecy and save their clan.
== See also ==
List of Stone Age art
Prehistoric warfare
Timeline of prehistory
== Notes ==
== References ==
== Further reading ==
== External links ==
The Stone Age in North America Vol. 1 of 2, Warren K. Moorehead 1910, Boston: Houghton Mifflin company
The Stone Age Robert A. Giusepi, 2000. History World International
Kowalski, D.R. "Stone Age Hand-axes". AerobiologicalEngineering.com. Archived from the original on 17 March 2011. Retrieved 22 February 2011.
Kowalski, D.R. "Stone Age Habitats". AerobiologicalEngineering.com. Archived from the original on 17 March 2011. Retrieved 22 February 2011.
"PanAfrican Archaeological Association". Retrieved 28 February 2011.
"Society of Africanist Archaeologists". Archived from the original on 17 April 2015. Retrieved 3 March 2011.
"The ASA". Association of Social Anthropologists of the UK and Commonwealth.
Human Timeline (Interactive) – Smithsonian, National Museum of Natural History (August 2016). |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigeen_Lake | Nigeen Lake | Nigeen Lake (alternatively spelled as Nageen Lake) is a lake located in Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir, India. It is mildly eutrophic, a term that refers to a body of water rich in nutrients, which cause excessive growth of aquatic plants like algae, resulting in bacteria that consume nearly all the oxygen. It is sometimes considered a part of Dal Lake and is connected to it via a narrow strait. It is also connected to the Khushal Sar and Gil Sar lakes via a channel known as Nallah Amir Khan.
== Etymology ==
The Nigeen lake is surrounded by a large number of willow and poplar trees. Hence, it has come to be referred as a "nageena", which means "the jewel in the ring". The word "nigeen" is a local variant of the same word.
== Location ==
The lake is located adjacent to the Hari Parbat hillock, to the west of the Dal lake.
To its north and west, lie the localities of Baghwanpora and Lal Bazar while to its north east lies the locality of Hazratbal, which is known for the Hazratbal Shrine.
== Present status ==
The lake is a major tourist attraction in Srinagar, known for its relatively pristine waters as compared to the Dal lake. Houseboats and shikaras are common. It is also used for swimming. The colonial era Nigeen Club is situated on the eastern shore.
As with other water bodies in the Kashmir Valley the lake suffers from encroachments which are deteriorating its water quality and also increasing the risk of floods. The government of Jammu and Kashmir is taking steps to help improve the condition of the lake and restore it to its original condition.
== References == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vedaant_Madhavan#:~:text=Vedaant%20Madhavan%20(born%2021%20August,freestyle%20within%2016%3A01.73%20seconds. | Vedaant Madhavan | Vedaant Madhavan (born 21 August 2005) is an Indian freestyle swimmer. He is a 5-time gold medalist at the Malaysian Open, a gold and silver medalist at the Danish Open, as well as a bronze medalist at the Latvian and Thailand Open. Madhavan finished 5th at the Commonwealth Youth Games.
== Early life ==
Madhavan was born on 21 August 2005 in Mumbai to fashion designer Sarita Birje and actor R. Madhavan. As he was attending school, he joined the Goregaon Sports Club to learn swimming professionally.
He shifted to Glenmark Aquatic Foundation in 2017 and started participating in national level meets. He finished his schooling at Universal American School of Dubai. He majored in marketing from Virginia Tech and was a part of the swimming team Virginia Tech Hokies. Madhavan has also studied at the West Virginia University.
== Career ==
Madhavan's first international level test was Thailand Open 2018, where he clinched the bronze medal in 1500m freestyle. He won silver in the 4 × 100 m freestyle relay at the Asian Age Group Championships 2019. In 2021, he won the bronze medal in the 1500m freestyle at the Latvia Open. He then won the silver in the 1500m and the gold in the 800m events at the Danish Open 2022.
He next participated at the World Junior Championships 2022 where he finished with his best-ever lap at 52.83s in 100m freestyle. Madhavan won five gold medals in the 50m, 100m, 200m, 400m and 1500m events at the 2023 Malaysia Open. He also set two new personal bests during the tournament.
While he has won several national medals, his most noteworthy performance at the level was during the 2023 Khelo India Youth Games where he won 7 medals including 5 gold and 2 silver. He finished 5th in 1500 m freestyle at the 2023 Commonwealth Youth Games and was the flag bearer of the Indian contingent.
== Achievements ==
== References ==
== See also ==
Swimming in India
== External links ==
Vedaant Madhavan at World Aquatics
Vedaant Madhavan on Swim Cloud |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013%E2%80%9314_CEV_Challenge_Cup | 2013–14 CEV Challenge Cup | The 2013–14 CEV Challenge Cup was the 34th edition of the European Challenge Cup volleyball club tournament, the former CEV Cup.
Turkish club Fenerbahçe Grundig beat Italian Andreoli Latina in the final and achieved their first CEV Challenge Cup trophy. Serbian opposite Ivan Miljković was the Most Valuable Player of the final tournament.
== Participating teams ==
== Qualification phase ==
=== 1st round ===
1st leg 19–20 October 2013
2nd leg 26–27 October 2013
=== 2nd round ===
1st leg 5–7 November 2013
2nd leg 26–28 November 2013
== Main phase ==
=== 16th finals ===
1st leg 10–12 December 2013
2nd leg 17–19 December 2013
=== 8th finals ===
1st leg 14–15 January 2014
2nd leg 21–23 January 2014
=== 4th finals ===
1st leg 4– 5 February 2014
2nd leg 12–13 February 2014
== Final phase ==
=== Semi-finals ===
==== First leg ====
==== Second leg ====
=== Final ===
==== First leg ====
==== Second leg ====
== Final standing ==
== References ==
== External links ==
Official site |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_of_India | Geography of India | India is situated north of the equator between 8°4' north (the mainland) to 37°6' north latitude and 68°7' east to 97°25' east longitude. It is the seventh-largest country in the world, with a total area of 3,287,263 square kilometres (1,269,219 sq mi). India measures 3,214 km (1,997 mi) from north to south and 2,933 km (1,822 mi) from east to west. It has a land frontier of 15,200 km (9,445 mi) and a coastline of 7,516.6 km (4,671 mi).
On the south, India projects into and is bounded by the Indian Ocean—in particular, by the Arabian Sea on the west, the Lakshadweep Sea to the southwest, the Bay of Bengal on the east, and the Indian Ocean proper to the south. The Palk Strait and Gulf of Mannar separate India from Sri Lanka to its immediate southeast, and the Maldives are some 125 kilometres (78 mi) to the south of India's Lakshadweep Islands across the Eight Degree Channel. India's Andaman and Nicobar Islands, some 1,200 kilometres (750 mi) southeast of the mainland, share maritime borders with Myanmar, Thailand and Indonesia. The southernmost tip of the Indian mainland (8°4′38″N, 77°31′56″E) is just south of Kanyakumari, while the southernmost point in India is Indira Point on Great Nicobar Island. The northernmost point which is under Indian administration is Indira Col, Siachen Glacier. India's territorial waters extend into the sea to a distance of 12 nautical miles (13.8 mi; 22.2 km) from the coast baseline. India has the 18th largest Exclusive Economic Zone of 2,305,143 km2 (890,021 sq mi).
The northern frontiers of India are defined largely by the Himalayan mountain range, where the country borders China, Bhutan, and Nepal. Its western border with Pakistan lies in the Karakoram and Western Himalayan ranges, Punjab Plains, the Thar Desert and the Rann of Kutch salt marshes. In the far northeast, the Chin Hills and Kachin Hills, deeply forested mountainous regions, separate India from Burma. On the east, its border with Bangladesh is largely defined by the Khasi Hills and Mizo Hills, and the watershed region of the Indo-Gangetic Plain.
The Ganges is the longest river originating in India. The Ganges–Brahmaputra system occupies most of northern, central, and eastern India, while the Deccan Plateau occupies most of southern India. Kangchenjunga, in the Indian state of Sikkim, is the highest point in India at 8,586 m (28,169 ft) and the world's third highest peak. The climate across India ranges from equatorial in the far south, to alpine and tundra in the upper regions of the Himalayas. Geologically, India lies on the Indian Plate, the northern part of the Indo-Australian Plate.
== Geological development ==
India is situated entirely on the Indian Plate, a major tectonic plate that was formed when it split off from the ancient continent Gondwanaland (ancient landmass, consisting of the southern part of the supercontinent of Pangea). The Indo-Australian plate is subdivided into the Indian and Australian plates. About 90 million years ago, during the late Cretaceous Period, the Indian Plate began moving north at about 15 cm/year (6 in/yr). About 50 to 55 million years ago, in the Eocene Epoch of the Cenozoic Era, the plate collided with Asia after covering a distance of 2,000 to 3,000 km (1,243 to 1,864 mi), having moved faster than any other known plate. In 2007, German geologists determined that the Indian Plate was able to move so quickly because it is only half as thick as the other plates which formerly constituted Gondwanaland. The collision with the Eurasian Plate along the modern border between India and Nepal formed the orogenic belt that created the Tibetan Plateau and the Himalayas. As of 2009, the Indian Plate is moving northeast at 5 cm/yr (2 in/yr), while the Eurasian Plate is moving north at only 2 cm/yr (0.8 in/yr). India is thus referred to as the "fastest continent". This is causing the Eurasian Plate to deform, and the Indian Plate to compress at a rate of 4 cm/yr (1.6 in/yr).
== Political geography ==
India is divided into 28 States (further subdivided into districts) and 8 union territories including the National capital territory (i.e., Delhi).
India's borders run a total length of 15,200 km (9,400 mi).
Its borders with Pakistan and Bangladesh were delineated according to the Radcliffe Line, which was created in 1947 during Partition of India. Its western border with Pakistan extends up to 3,323 km (2,065 mi), dividing the Punjab region and running along the boundaries of the Thar Desert and the Rann of Kutch. This border runs along the Indian states and union territories of Ladakh, Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Rajasthan, and Gujarat. Both nations delineated a Line of Control (LoC) to serve as the informal boundary between the Indian and Pakistan-administered areas of the Kashmir region. India claims the whole of the former princely state of Jammu and Kashmir, which includes areas now administered by Pakistan and China, which according to India are illegally occupied areas.
India's border with Bangladesh runs 4,096.70 km (2,545.57 mi). West Bengal, Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura and Mizoram are the states which share the border with Bangladesh. Before 2015, there were 92 enclaves of Bangladesh on Indian soil and 106 enclaves of India were on Bangladeshi soil. These enclaves were eventually exchanged in order to simplify the border. After the exchange, India lost roughly 40 km2 (9,900 acres) to Bangladesh.
The Line of Actual Control (LAC) is the effective border between India and the People's Republic of China. It traverses 4,057 km along the Indian states and union territories of Ladakh, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh. The border with Burma (Myanmar) extends up to 1,643 km (1,021 mi) along the eastern borders of India's northeastern states viz. Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Manipur and Mizoram. Located amidst the Himalayan range, India's border with Bhutan runs 699 km (434 mi). Sikkim, West Bengal, Assam and Arunachal Pradesh are the states which share the border with Bhutan. The border with Nepal runs 1,751 km (1,088 mi) along the foothills of the Himalayas in northern India. Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal and Sikkim are the states which share the border with Nepal. The Siliguri Corridor, narrowed sharply by the borders of Bhutan, Nepal and Bangladesh, connects peninsular India with the northeastern states.
== Physiographic regions ==
=== Regions ===
India can be divided into six physiographic regions. They are:
Northern Mountains: Himalayas
Peninsular Plateau: contains mountain ranges (Aravalli, Vindhayachal and Satpura ranges), ghats (Eastern Ghats and Western Ghats) and plateaus (Malwa Plateau, Chhota Nagpur Plateau, Southern Garanulite terrain, Deccan Plateau and Kutch Kathiawar plateau).
Indo-Gangetic Plain or The Northern Plains
Thar Desert
Coastal Plains: Eastern Ghat folds and Western Ghats folds
Islands- The Andaman and Nicobar islands and the Lakshadweep islands.
=== The Himalayas ===
An arc of mountains consisting of the Himalayas, Hindu Kush, and Patkai ranges define the northern frontiers of the Indian subcontinent. These were formed by the ongoing tectonic plates collision of the Indian and Eurasian plates. The mountains in these ranges include some of the world's tallest mountains which act as a barrier to cold polar winds. They also facilitate the monsoon winds which in turn influence the climate in India. Rivers originating in these mountains flow through the fertile Indo–Gangetic plains. These mountains form the boundary between two biogeographic realms: the temperate Palearctic realm that covers most of Eurasia, and the tropical and subtropical Indomalayan realm which includes South Asia, Southeast Asia and Indonesia.
The Himalayas in India extend from Ladakh in the north to the state of Arunachal Pradesh in the east. Several Himalayan peaks in India rise above 7,000 m (23,000 ft), including Kanchenjunga (8,598 m (28,209 ft)) on the Sikkim–Nepal border, and Nanda Devi (7,816 m (25,643 ft)) in the Garhwal Himalayas of Uttarakhand. The snow line ranges between 6,000 m (20,000 ft) in Sikkim to around 3,000 m (9,800 ft) in Ladakh. The Himalayas act as a barrier to the frigid katabatic winds flowing down from Central Asia. Thus, northern India is kept warm or only mildly cooled during winter; in summer, the same phenomenon makes India relatively hot.
The Karakoram range runs through Ladakh. The range is about 500 km (310 mi) in length and the most heavily glaciated part of the world outside of the polar regions. The Siachen Glacier at 76 km (47 mi) ranks as the world's second longest glacier outside the polar regions. The southern boundary of the Karakoram is formed by the Indus and Shyok rivers, which separate the range from the northwestern end of the Himalayas.
The Patkai, or Purvanchal, are situated near India's eastern border with Burma. They were created by the same tectonic processes which led to the formation of the Himalayas. The physical features of the Patkai mountains are conical peaks, steep slopes and deep valleys. The Patkai ranges are not as rugged or tall as the Himalayas. There are three hill ranges that come under the Patkai: the Patkai–Bum, the Garo–Khasi–Jaintia and the Lushai hills. The Garo–Khasi range lies in Meghalaya. Mawsynram, a village near Cherrapunji lying on the windward side of these hills, has the distinction of being the wettest place in the world, receiving the highest annual rainfall.
=== The Peninsular Plateau ===
This is a large region of the Indian subcontinent located between the Western Ghats and the Eastern Ghats, and is loosely defined as the peninsular region between these ranges that is south of the Narmada River.Having once constituted a segment of the ancient continent of Gondwanaland, this land is the oldest and most stable in India.
Mountain ranges (clockwise from top-left)
Aravali Range is the oldest mountain range in India, running across Rajasthan from northeast to southwest direction, extending approximately 800 km (500 mi). The northern end of the range continues as isolated hills and rocky ridges into Haryana, ending near Delhi. The highest peak in this range is Guru Shikhar at Mount Abu, rising to 1,722 m (5,650 ft), lying near the border with Gujarat. The Aravali Range is the eroded stub of an ancient fold mountain system. The range rose in a Precambrian event called the Aravali–Delhi orogen. The range joins two of the ancient segments that make up the Indian craton, the Marwar segment to the northwest of the range, and the Bundelkhand segment to the southeast.
Vindhya range, lies north of Satpura range and east of Aravali range, runs across most of central India, extending 1,050 km (650 mi). The average elevation of these hills is from 300 to 600 m (980 to 1,970 ft) and rarely goes above 700 metres (2,300 ft). They are believed to have been formed by the wastes created by the weathering of the ancient Aravali mountains. Geographically, it separates Northern India from Southern India. The western end of the range lies in eastern Gujarat, near its border with Madhya Pradesh, and runs east and north, almost meeting the Ganges at Mirzapur.
Satpura Range, lies south of Vindhya range and east of Aravali range, begins in eastern Gujarat near the Arabian Sea coast and runs east across Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. It extends 900 km (560 mi) with many peaks rising above 1,000 m (3,300 ft). It is triangular in shape, with its apex at Ratnapuri and the two sides being parallel to the Tapti and Narmada rivers. It runs parallel to the Vindhya Range, which lies to the north, and these two east–west ranges divide the Indo–Gangetic plain from the Deccan Plateau located north of River Narmada.
Plateaus (clockwise from top-left)
Malwa Plateau is spread across Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat. The average elevation of the Malwa plateau is 500 metres, and the landscape generally slopes towards the north. Most of the region is drained by the Chambal River and its tributaries; the western part is drained by the upper reaches of the Mahi River.
Chhota Nagpur Plateau is situated in eastern India, covering much of Jharkhand and adjacent parts of Odisha, Bihar and Chhattisgarh. Its total area is approximately 65,000 km2 (25,000 sq mi) and is made up of three smaller plateaus—the Ranchi, Hazaribagh, and Kodarma plateaus. The Ranchi plateau is the largest, with an average elevation of 700 m (2,300 ft). Much of the plateau is forested, covered by the Chhota Nagpur dry deciduous forests. Vast reserves of metal ores and coal have been found in the Chota Nagpur plateau. Southern Garanulite terrain: Covers South India especially Tamil Nadu excluding western and eastern ghats.
Deccan Plateau, also called Deccan Trapps, is a large triangular plateau, bounded by the Vindhyas to the north and flanked by the Eastern and Western Ghats. The Deccan covers a total area of 1.9 million km2 (730,000 sq mi). It is mostly flat, with elevations ranging from 300 to 600 m (980 to 1,970 ft). The average elevation of the plateau is 2,000 feet (610 m) above sea level. The surface slopes from 3,000 feet (910 m) in the west to 1,500 feet (460 m) in the east. It slopes gently from west to east and gives rise to several peninsular rivers such as the Godavari, the Krishna, the Kaveri and the Mahanadi which drain into the Bay of Bengal. This region is mostly semi-arid as it lies on the leeward side of both Ghats. Much of the Deccan is covered by thorn scrub forest scattered with small regions of deciduous broadleaf forest. Climate in the Deccan ranges from hot summers to mild winters.
Kutch Kathiawar plateau is located in Gujarat state. The Kathiawar peninsula in western Gujarat is bounded by the Gulf of Kutch and the Gulf of Khambat. The natural vegetation in most of the peninsula is xeric scrub, part of the Northwestern thorn scrub forests ecoregion.
==== Ghats ====
The word ghati (Hindi: घाटी) means valley. In Marathi, Hindi, Gujarati and Kannada, ghat is a term used to identify a difficult passage over a mountain. One such passage is the Bhor Ghat that connects the towns Khopoli and Khandala, on NH 4 about 80 kilometres (50 mi) north of Mumbai. Charmadi Ghat of Karnataka is also notable. In many cases, the term is used to refer to a mountain range itself, as in the Western Ghats and Eastern Ghats. 'Ghattam' in Malayalam also refers to mountain ranges when used with the name of the ranges being addressed (e.g., paschima ghattam for Western Ghats), while the passage road would be called a 'churam'. Eastern Ghats on the east coast of India and Western Ghats on the west coast of India are the largest ghats in pensular India.
Western Ghats also known as Sahyadri (Benevolent Mountains) run along the western edge of India's Deccan Plateau and separate it from a narrow coastal plain along the Arabian Sea. The range covers an area of 140,000 km2 in a stretch of 1,600 km (990 mi) parallel to the western coast of the Indian peninsula, from south of the Tapti River near the Gujarat–Maharashtra border and across Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Goa, Maharashtra and Gujarat. to the southern tip of the Deccan peninsula. The average elevation is around 1,000 m (3,300 ft). Anai Mudi in the Anaimalai Hills 2,695 m (8,842 ft) in Kerala is the highest peak in the Western Ghats. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and is one of the eight "hottest hot-spots" of biological diversity in the world. It is sometimes called the Great Escarpment of India. It is a biodiversity hotspot that contains a large proportion of the country's flora and fauna; many of which are only found here and nowhere else in the world. According to UNESCO, Western Ghats are older than Himalayan mountains. It also influences Indian monsoon weather patterns by intercepting the rain-laden monsoon winds that sweep in from the south-west during late summer. A total of thirty-nine properties including national parks, wildlife sanctuaries and reserve forests were designated as world heritage sites - twenty in Kerala, ten in Karnataka, five in Tamil Nadu and four in Maharashtra. Ghati people, literally means the people of hills or ghats (valleys), is an exonym used for the marathi people specially those from the villages in Western Ghats, often in pejorative terms.
Eastern Ghats are a discontinuous range of mountains along India's eastern coast, which have been eroded and quadrisected by the four major rivers of southern India, the Mahanadi, Godavari, Krishna, and Kaveri. These mountains extend from West Bengal to Odisha through Andhra Pradesh to Tamil Nadu in the south passing some parts of Karnataka and in the Wayanad region of Kerala. Parts of the coastal plains, including the Coromandel Coast region, lie between the Eastern Ghats and the Bay of Bengal.Though not as tall as the Western Ghats, some of its peaks are over 1,000 m (3,300 ft) in height. The Nilgiri hills in Tamil Nadu lies at the junction of the Eastern and Western Ghats. Arma Konda (1,690 m (5,540 ft)) in Andhra Pradesh is the tallest peak in Eastern Ghats. The Eastern Ghats are older than the Western Ghats, and have a complex geologic history related to the assembly and breakup of the ancient supercontinent of Rodinia and the assembly of the Gondwana supercontinent. The Eastern Ghats are made up of charnockites, granite gneiss, khondalites, metamorphic gneisses and quartzite rock formations. The structure of the Eastern Ghats includes thrusts and strike-slip faults all along its range. Limestone, bauxite and iron ore are found in the Eastern Ghats hill ranges.
=== Indo-Gangetic plain ===
The Indo-Gangetic plains, also known as the Great Plains are large alluvial plains dominated by three main rivers, the Indus, Ganges, and Brahmaputra. They run parallel to the Himalayas, from Jammu and Kashmir in the west to Assam in the east, drain most of northern and eastern India and extend into Pakistan. The plains encompass an area of 700,000 km2 (270,000 sq mi). The major rivers in this region are the Ganges, Indus, and Brahmaputra along with their main tributaries—Yamuna, Chambal, Gomti, Ghaghara, Kosi, Sutlej, Ravi, Beas, Chenab, and Tista—as well as the rivers of the Ganges Delta, such as the Meghna.
The great plains are sometimes classified into four divisions:
The Bhabar belt is adjacent to the foothills of the Himalayas and consists of boulders and pebbles which have been carried down by streams. As the porosity of this belt is very high, the streams flow underground. The Bhabar is generally narrow with its width varying between 6 and 15 km (3.7 and 9.3 mi).
The Tarai belt lies south of the adjacent Bhabar region and is composed of newer alluvium. The underground streams reappear in this region. The region is excessively moist and thickly forested. It also receives heavy rainfall throughout the year and is populated with a variety of wildlife.
The Bangar belt consists of older alluvium and forms the alluvial terrace of the flood plains. In the Gangetic plains, it has a low upland covered by laterite deposits.
The Khadar belt lies in lowland areas after the Bangar belt. It is made up of fresh newer alluvium which is deposited by the rivers flowing down the plain.
The Indo-Gangetic belt is the world's most extensive expanse of uninterrupted alluvium formed by the deposition of silt by the numerous rivers. The plains are flat making it conducive for irrigation through canals. The area is also rich in ground water sources. The plains are one of the world's most intensely farmed areas. The main crops grown are rice and wheat, which are grown in rotation. Other important crops grown in the region include maize, sugarcane and cotton. The Indo-Gangetic plains rank among the world's most densely populated areas.
=== Thar Desert ===
The Thar Desert (also known as the deserts) is by some calculations the world's seventh largest desert, by some others the tenth. It forms a significant portion of western India and covers an area of 200,000 to 238,700 km2 (77,200 to 92,200 sq mi). The desert continues into Pakistan as the Cholistan Desert. Most of the Thar Desert is situated in Rajasthan, covering 61% of its geographic area.
About 10 percent of this region consists of sand dunes, and the remaining 90 percent consist of craggy rock forms, compacted salt-lake bottoms, and interdunal and fixed dune areas. Annual temperatures can range from 0 °C (32 °F) in the winter to over 50 °C (122 °F) during the summer. Most of the rainfall received in this region is associated with the short July–September southwest monsoon that brings 100 to 500 mm (3.9 to 19.7 in) of precipitation. Water is scarce and occurs at great depths, ranging from 30 to 120 metres (98 to 394 ft) below the ground level. Rainfall is precarious and erratic, ranging from below 120 mm (4.7 in) in the extreme west to 375 mm (14.8 in) eastward. The only river in this region is Luni. The soils of the arid region are generally sandy to sandy-loam in texture. The consistency and depth vary as per the topographical features. The low-lying loams are heavier may have a hard pan of clay, calcium carbonate or gypsum.
In western India, the Kutch region in Gujarat and Koyna in Maharashtra are classified as a Zone IV region (high risk) for earthquakes. The Kutch city of Bhuj was the epicentre of the 2001 Gujarat earthquake, which claimed the lives of more than 1,337 people and injured 166,836 while destroying or damaging near a million homes. The 1993 Latur earthquake in Maharashtra killed 7,928 people and injured 30,000. Other areas have a moderate to low risk of an earthquake occurring.
=== Coastal plains ===
The Eastern Coastal Plain is a wide stretch of land lying between the Eastern Ghats and the oceanic boundary of India. It stretches from Tamil Nadu in the south to West Bengal in the east. The Mahanadi, Godavari, Kaveri, and Krishna rivers drain these plains. The temperature in the coastal regions often exceeds 30 °C (86 °F), and is coupled with high levels of humidity. The region receives both the northeast monsoon and southwest monsoon rains. The southwest monsoon splits into two branches, the Bay of Bengal branch and the Arabian Sea branch. The Bay of Bengal branch moves northwards crossing northeast India in early June. The Arabian Sea branch moves northwards and discharges much of its rain on the windward side of Western Ghats. Annual rainfall in this region averages between 1,000 and 3,000 mm (39 and 118 in). The width of the plains varies between 100 and 130 km (62 and 81 mi). The plains are divided into six regions—the Mahanadi delta, the southern Andhra Pradesh plain, the Krishna-Godavari deltas, the Kanyakumari coast, the Coromandel Coast, and sandy coastal.
The Western Coastal Plain is a narrow strip of land sandwiched between the Western Ghats and the Arabian Sea, ranging from 50 to 100 km (31 to 62 mi) in width. It extends from Gujarat in the north and extends through Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka, and Kerala. Numerous rivers and backwaters inundate the region. Mostly originating in the Western Ghats, the rivers are fast-flowing, usually perennial, and empty into estuaries. Major rivers flowing into the sea are the Tapti, Narmada, Mandovi and Zuari. Vegetation is mostly deciduous, but the Malabar Coast moist forests constitute a unique ecoregion. The Western Coastal Plain can be divided into two parts, the Konkan and the Malabar Coast.
=== Islands ===
The Lakshadweep and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands are India's two major island formations and are classified as union territories.
The Lakshadweep Islands lie 200 to 440 km (120 to 270 mi) off the coast of Kerala in the Arabian sea with an area of 32 km2 (12 sq mi). They consist of twelve atolls, three reefs, and five submerged banks, with a total of about 35 islands and islets.
The Andaman and Nicobar Islands are located between 6° and 14° north latitude and 92° and 94° east longitude. They consist of 572 islands, lying in the Bay of Bengal near the Myanmar coast running in a north–south axis for approximately 910 km. They are located 1,255 km (780 mi) from Kolkata (Calcutta) and 193 km (120 mi) from Cape Negrais in Burma. The territory consists of two island groups, the Andaman Islands and the Nicobar Islands. The Andaman and Nicobar Islands consist of 572 islands which run in a north–south axis for around 910 km. The Andaman group has 325 islands which cover an area of 6,170 km2 (2,380 sq mi) while the Nicobar group has only 247 islands with an area of 1,765 km2 (681 sq mi). India's only active volcano, Barren Island is situated here. It last erupted in 2017. The Narcondum is a dormant volcano and there is a mud volcano at Baratang. Indira Point, India's southernmost land point, is situated in the Nicobar islands at 6°45’10″N and 93°49’36″E, and lies just 189 km (117 mi) from the Indonesian island of Sumatra, to the southeast. The highest point is Mount Thullier at 642 m (2,106 ft).
Other significant islands in India include Diu, a former Portuguese colony; Majuli, a river island of the Brahmaputra; Elephanta in Bombay Harbour; and Sriharikota, a barrier island in Andhra Pradesh. Salsette Island is India's most populous island on which the city of Mumbai (Bombay) is located. Forty-two islands in the Gulf of Kutch constitute the Marine National Park.
== Natural resources ==
Major resource-based industries of India are fisheries, agriculture, mining, and petroleum products . India has the 18th-largest exclusive economic zone (EEZ) in the world with a total size of 2,305,143 km2 (890,021 sq mi). It includes the Lakshadweep island group in the Laccadive Sea off the southwestern coast of India and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea.
=== Ecological resources ===
India was ranked seventh among the list of countries most affected by climate change in 2019. Temperature rises on the Tibetan Plateau are causing Himalayan glaciers to retreat, threatening the flow rate of the Ganges, Brahmaputra, Indus, Yamuna and other major rivers. A 2007 World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) report states that the Indus River may run dry for the same reason. Severe landslides and floods are projected to become increasingly common in such states as Assam. Temperatures in India have risen by 0.7 °C (1.3 °F) between 1901 and 2018. According to some current projections, the number and severity of droughts in India will have markedly increased by the end of the present century. Ecological disasters, such as a 1998 coral bleaching event that killed off more than 70% of corals in the reef ecosystems off Lakshadweep and the Andamans and was brought on by elevated ocean temperatures tied to global warming, are also projected to become increasingly common.
==== Water bodies ====
India has around 14,500 km of inland navigable waterways. There are twelve rivers which are classified as major rivers, with the total catchment area exceeding 2,528,000 km2 (976,000 sq mi). All major rivers of India originate from one of the three main watersheds:
The Himalaya and the Karakoram ranges
Vindhya and Satpura range in central India
Sahyadri or Western Ghats in western India
The Himalayan river networks are snow-fed and have a perennial supply throughout the year. The other two river systems are dependent on the monsoons and shrink into rivulets during the dry season. The Himalayan rivers that flow westward into Punjab are the Indus, Jhelum, Chenab, Ravi, Beas, and Sutlej.
The Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghana system has the largest catchment area of about 1,600,000 km2 (620,000 sq mi). The Ganges Basin alone has a catchment of about 1,100,000 km2 (420,000 sq mi). The Ganges originates from the Gangotri Glacier in Uttarakhand. It flows southeast, draining into the Bay of Bengal. (The Yamuna and Gomti rivers also arise in the western Himalayas and join the Ganges in the plains. The Brahmaputra originates in Tibet, China, where it is known as the Yarlung Tsangpo River) (or "Tsangpo"). It enters India in the far-eastern state of Arunachal Pradesh, then flows west through Assam. The Brahmaputra merges with the Ganges in Bangladesh, where it is known as the Jamuna River.
The Chambal, another tributary of the Ganges, via the Yamuna, originates from the Vindhya-Satpura watershed. The river flows eastward. Westward-flowing rivers from this watershed are the Narmada and Tapi, which drain into the Arabian Sea in Gujarat. The river network that flows from east to west constitutes 10% of the total outflow.
(The Western Ghats are the source of all Deccan rivers, which include the through Godavari River, Krishna River and Kaveri River, all draining into the Bay of Bengal. These rivers constitute 20% of India's total outflow).
The heavy southwest monsoon rains cause the Brahmaputra and other rivers to distend their banks, often flooding surrounding areas. Though they provide rice paddy farmers with a largely dependable source of natural irrigation and fertilisation, such floods have killed thousands of people and tend to cause displacements of people in such areas.
Major gulfs include the Gulf of Cambay, Gulf of Kutch, and the Gulf of Mannar. Straits include the Palk Strait, which separates India from Sri Lanka; the Ten Degree Channel, which separates the Andamans from the Nicobar Islands; and the Eight Degree Channel, which separates the Laccadive and Amindivi Islands from the Minicoy Island to the south. Important capes include the Kanyakumari (formerly called Cape Comorin), the southern tip of mainland India; Indira Point, the southernmost point in India (on Great Nicobar Island); Rama's Bridge, and Point Calimere. The Arabian Sea lies to the west of India, the Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean lie to the east and south, respectively. Smaller seas include the Laccadive Sea and the Andaman Sea. There are four coral reefs in India, located in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, the Gulf of Mannar, Lakshadweep, and the Gulf of Kutch. Important lakes include Sambhar Lake, the country's largest saltwater lake in Rajasthan, Vembanad Lake in Kerala, Kolleru Lake in Andhra Pradesh, Loktak Lake in Manipur, Dal Lake in Kashmir, Chilka Lake (lagoon lake) in Odisha, and Sasthamkotta Lake in Kerala.
==== Wetlands ====
India's wetland ecosystem is widely distributed from the cold and arid located in the Ladakh region of Jammu and Kashmir, and those with the wet and humid climate of peninsular India. Most of the wetlands are directly or indirectly linked to river networks. The Indian government has identified a total of 71 wetlands for conservation and are part of sanctuaries and national parks. Mangrove forests are present all along the Indian coastline in sheltered estuaries, creeks, backwaters, salt marshes and mudflats. The mangrove area covers a total of 4,461 km2 (1,722 sq mi), which comprises 7% of the world's total mangrove cover. Prominent mangrove covers are located in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, the Sundarbans delta, the Gulf of Kutch and the deltas of the Mahanadi, Godavari and Krishna rivers. Parts of Maharashtra, Karnataka and Kerala also have large mangrove covers.
The Sundarbans delta is home to the largest mangrove forest in the world. It lies at the mouth of the Ganges and spreads across areas of Bangladesh and West Bengal. The Sundarbans is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, but is identified separately as the Sundarbans (Bangladesh) and the Sundarbans National Park (India). The Sundarbans are intersected by a complex network of tidal waterways, mudflats and small islands of salt-tolerant mangrove forests. The area is known for its diverse fauna, being home to a large variety of species of birds, spotted deer, crocodiles and snakes. Its most famous inhabitant is the Bengal tiger. It is estimated that there are now 400 Bengal tigers and about 30,000 spotted deer in the area.
The Rann of Kutch is a marshy region located in northwestern Gujarat and the bordering Sindh province of Pakistan. It occupies a total area of 27,900 km2 (10,800 sq mi). The region was originally a part of the Arabian Sea. Geologic forces such as earthquakes resulted in the damming up of the region, turning it into a large saltwater lagoon. This area gradually filled with silt thus turning it into a seasonal salt marsh. During the monsoons, the area turn into a shallow marsh, often flooding to knee-depth. After the monsoons, the region turns dry and becomes parched.
==== Arable land ====
India's arable land area of 1,597,000 km2 (394.6 million acres) is the second largest in the world, after the United States. Its gross irrigated crop area of 826,000 km2 (215.6 million acres) is the largest in the world, followed by US and China. Of the 160 million hectares of cultivated land in India, about 39 million hectare can be irrigated by groundwater wells and an additional 22 million hectares by irrigation canals. In 2010, only about 35% of agricultural land in India was reliably irrigated. About 2/3rd cultivated land in India is dependent on monsoons.
=== Economic resources ===
==== Minerals and ores ====
India is the world's biggest producer of mica blocks and mica splittings. India ranks second amongst the world's largest producers of barite and chromite. The Pleistocene system is rich in minerals. India is the third-largest coal producer in the world and ranks fourth in the production of iron ore. It is the fifth-largest producer of bauxite, second largest of crude steel as of February 2018 replacing Japan, the seventh-largest of manganese ore and the eighth-largest of aluminium. India has significant sources of titanium ore, diamonds and limestone. India possesses 24% of the world's known and economically viable thorium, which is mined along shores of Kerala. Gold had been mined in the now-defunct Kolar Gold Fields in Karnataka.
==== Renewable water ====
India's total renewable water resources are estimated at 1,907.8 km3 a year. Its annual supply of usable and replenishable groundwater amounts to 350 billion cubic metres. Only 35% of groundwater resources are being utilised. About 44 million tonnes of cargo is moved annually through the country's major rivers and waterways. Groundwater supplies 40% of water in India's irrigation canals. 56% of the land is arable and used for agriculture. Black soils are moisture-retentive and are preferred for dry farming and growing cotton, linseed, etc. Forest soils are used for tea and coffee plantations. Red soils have a wide diffusion of iron content.
==== Energy ====
Most of India's estimated 5.4 billion barrels (860,000,000 m3) in oil reserves are located in the Mumbai High, upper Assam, Cambay, the Krishna-Godavari and Cauvery basins. India possesses about seventeen trillion cubic feet of natural gas in Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat and Odisha. Uranium is mined in Andhra Pradesh. India has 400 medium-to-high enthalpy thermal springs for producing geothermal energy in seven areas—the Himalayas, Sohana, Cambay, the Narmada-Tapti delta, the Godavari delta and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands (specifically the volcanic Barren Island.)
== Climate ==
Based on the Köppen system, India hosts six major climatic subtypes, ranging from arid desert in the west, alpine tundra and glaciers in the north, and humid tropical regions supporting rainforests in the southwest and the island territories. The nation has four seasons: winter (January–February), summer (March–May), a monsoon (rainy) season (June–September) and a post-monsoon period (October–December).
The Himalayas act as a barrier to the frigid katabatic winds flowing down from Central Asia. Thus, northern India is kept warm or only mildly cooled during winter; in summer, the same phenomenon makes India relatively hot. Although the Tropic of Cancer—the boundary between the tropics and subtropics—passes through the middle of India, the whole country is considered to be tropical.
Summer lasts between March and June in most parts of India. Temperatures can exceed 40 °C (104 °F) during the day. The coastal regions exceed 30 °C (86 °F) coupled with high levels of humidity. In the Thar desert area temperatures can exceed 45 °C (113 °F). The rain-bearing monsoon clouds are attracted to the low-pressure system created by the Thar Desert. The southwest monsoon splits into two arms, the Bay of Bengal arm and the Arabian Sea arm. The Bay of Bengal arm moves northwards crossing northeast India in early June. The Arabian Sea arm moves northwards and deposits much of its rain on the windward side of Western Ghats. Winters in peninsula India see mild to warm days and cool nights. Further north the temperature is cooler. Temperatures in some parts of the Indian plains sometimes fall below freezing. Most of northern India is plagued by fog during this season. The highest temperature recorded in India was 51 °C (124 °F) in Phalodi, Rajasthan. And the lowest was −60 °C (−76 °F) in Dras, Jammu and Kashmir.
== Geology ==
India's geological features are classified based on their era of formation. The Precambrian formations of Cudappah and Vindhyan systems are spread out over the eastern and southern states. A small part of this period is spread over western and central India. The Paleozoic formations from the Cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian and Devonian system are found in the Western Himalaya region in Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh. The Mesozoic Deccan Traps formation is seen over most of the northern Deccan; they are believed to be the result of sub-aerial volcanic activity. The Trap soil is black in colour and conducive to agriculture. The Carboniferous system, Permian System and Triassic systems are seen in the western Himalayas. The Jurassic system is seen in the western Himalayas and Rajasthan.
Tertiary imprints are seen in parts of Manipur, Nagaland, Arunachal Pradesh and along the Himalayan belt. The Cretaceous system is seen in central India in the Vindhyas and part of the Indo-Gangetic plains. The Gondwana system is seen in the Narmada River area in the Vindhyas and Satpuras. The Eocene system is seen in the western Himalayas and Assam. Oligocene formations are seen in Kutch and Assam. The Pleistocene system is found over central India. The Andaman and Nicobar Island are thought to have been formed in this era by volcanoes. The Himalayas were formed by the convergence and deformation of the Indo-Australian and Eurasian Plates. Their continued convergence raises the height of the Himalayas by one centimetre each year.
Soils in India can be classified into eight categories: alluvial, black, red, laterite, forest, arid and desert, saline and alkaline and peaty and organic soils. Alluvial soil constitute the largest soil group in India, constituting 80% of the total land surface. It is derived from the deposition of silt carried by rivers and are found in the Great Northern plains from Punjab to the Assam valley. Alluvial soil are generally fertile but they lack nitrogen and tend to be phosphoric. National Disaster Management Authority says that 60% of Indian landmass is prone to earthquakes and 8% susceptible to cyclone risks.
Black soil are well developed in the Deccan lava region of Maharashtra, Gujarat, and Madhya Pradesh. These contain high percentage of clay and are moisture retentive. Red soils are found in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka plateau, Andhra plateau, Chota Nagpur plateau and the Aravallis. These are deficient in nitrogen, phosphorus and humus. Laterite soils are formed in tropical regions with heavy rainfall. Heavy rainfall results in leaching out all soluble material of top layer of soil. These are generally found in Western ghats, Eastern ghats and hilly areas of northeastern states that receive heavy rainfall. Forest soils occur on the slopes of mountains and hills in Himalayas, Western Ghats and Eastern Ghats. These generally consist of large amounts of dead leaves and other organic matter called humus.
=== Cratons ===
Cratons are a specific kind of continental crust made up of a top layer called platform and an older layer called basement. A shield is the part of a craton where basement rock crops out of the ground, and it is relatively the older and more stable section, unaffected by plate tectonics.
The Indian Craton can be divided into five major cratons as such:
Aravalli Craton (Marwar-Mewar Craton or Western Indian Craton): Covers Rajasthan as well as western and southern Haryana. It comprises Mewar Craton in the east and Marwar Craton in the west. It is limited by the Great Boundary Fault in the east, sandy Thar Desert in the Thar desert in the west, Indo-ganetic alluvium in the north, Son-Narmada-Tapti in the south. It mainly has quartzite, marble, pelite, greywacke and extinct volcanos exposed in Aravalli-Delhi Orogen. Malani Igneous Suite is the largest in India and third largest igneous suite in the world.
Bundelkand Craton, covers 26,00 km2 in the Bundelkhand region of Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh and forms the basis of the Malwa Plateau. It is limited by the Aravalli in the west, Narmada river and Satpura range in the south, and Indo-Gantetic alluvium in the north. It is similar to the Aravali Craton, which used to be a single craton before being divided into two with the evolution of Hindoli and Mahakoshal belts at the margins of two cratons.
Dharwar Craton (Karnataka Craton), 3.4 - 2.6 Ga, granite-greenstone terrain covers the state of Karnataka and parts of eastern and southern Maharashtra state, and forms the basis of the southern end of the Deccan Plateau. In 1886 it was divided into two tectonic blocks, namely Eastern Dharwar Craton (EDC) and Western Dharwar Craton (WDC).
Singhbhum Craton, 4,000 km2 area which primarily covers Jharkhand as well as parts of Odisha, northern Andhra Pradesh, northern Telangana and eastern Maharashtra. It is limited by the Chhota Nagpur Plateau to the north, Eastern Ghats to the southeast, Bastar Craton to southwest and alluvium plain to the east.
Bastar Craton (Bastar-Bhandara Craton), primarily covers Chhattisgarh and forms the basis of the Chhota Nagpur Plateau. It is a remnant of 3.4-3.0 Ga old TTG gneisses of five types. It is subdivided into Kotri-Dongagarh Orogen and the Rest of Bastar Craton. It is limited by three rifts, Godavari rift in southwest, Narmada rift in northwest and Mahanadi rift in northeast.
== See also ==
Geology of India
Borders of India
Climate change in India
Disputed territories of India
List of extreme points of India
Exclusive economic zone of India
List of disputed territories of India
Outline of India
Category:Lists of villages in India
== References ==
== Bibliography ==
India Yearbook 2007. Publications Division, Ministry of Information & Broadcasting, Govt. Of India. 2007. ISBN 978-81-230-1423-4.
== Further reading == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Meat_Inspection_Act | Federal Meat Inspection Act | The Federal Meat Inspection Act of 1906 (FMIA) is an American law that makes it illegal to adulterate or misbrand meat and meat products being sold as food, and ensures that meat and meat products are slaughtered and processed under strictly regulated sanitary conditions. These requirements also apply to imported meat products, which must be inspected under equivalent foreign standards. United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) inspection of poultry was added by the Poultry Products Inspection Act of 1957 (PPIA). The Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act authorizes the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to provide inspection services for all livestock and poultry species not listed in the FMIA or PPIA, including venison and buffalo. The Agricultural Marketing Act authorizes the USDA to offer voluntary, fee-for-service inspection services for these same species.
== Historical motivation for enactment ==
The original 1906 Act authorized the Secretary of Agriculture to inspect and condemn any meat product found unfit for human consumption. Unlike previous laws ordering meat inspections, which were enforced to assure European nations from banning pork trade, this law was strongly motivated to protect the American diet. All labels on any type of food had to be accurate (although not all ingredients were provided on the label). Even though all harmful food was banned, many warnings were still provided on the container. The production date for canned meats was a requirement in the legislation that Senator Albert Beveridge introduced but it was later removed in the House bill that was passed and became law. The law was partly a response to the publication of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, an exposé of the Chicago meat packing industry, as well as to other Progressive Era muckraking publications of the day. While Sinclair's dramatized account was intended to bring attention to the terrible working conditions in Chicago, the public was more horrified by the prospect of bad meat.
The book's assertions were confirmed in the Neill-Reynolds report, commissioned by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1906. Roosevelt was suspicious of Sinclair's socialist attitude and conclusions in The Jungle, so he sent labor commissioner Charles P. Neill and social worker James Bronson Reynolds, men whose honesty and reliability he trusted, to Chicago to make surprise visits to meat packing facilities.
Despite betrayal of the secret to the meat packers, who worked three shifts a day for three weeks to thwart the inspection, Neill and Reynolds were still revolted by the conditions at the factories and at the lack of concern by plant managers (though neither had much experience in the field). Following their report, Roosevelt became a supporter of regulation of the meat packing industry, and, on June 30, signed the Meat Inspection Act of 1906.
The FMIA mandated the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) inspection of meat processing plants that conducted business across state lines. The Pure Food and Drug Act, enacted on the same day (June 30, 1906), also gave the government broad jurisdiction over food in interstate commerce.
The four primary requirements of the Meat Inspection Act of 1906 were:
Mandatory inspection of livestock before slaughter (cattle, sheep, goats, equines, and swine);
Mandatory postmortem inspection of every carcass;
Sanitary standards established for slaughterhouses and meat processing plants; and
Authorized U.S. Department of Agriculture ongoing monitoring and inspection of slaughter and processing operations.
After 1906, many additional laws that further standardized the meat industry and its inspection were passed.
== Preemption of state law ==
In 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in National Meat Assn. v. Harris, that the FMIA preempts a California law regulating the treatment of non-ambulatory livestock.
== Amendments to 1907 Act ==
Chronological legislation relative to U.S. Congressional revisions concerning the Federal Meat Inspection Act.
== See also ==
Humane Slaughter Act
Packers and Stockyards Act
Pure Food and Drug Act
== References ==
== Further reading ==
Coppin, Clayton and Jack High. The Politics of Purity: Harvey Washington Wiley and the Origins of Federal Food Policy (University of Michigan Press, 1999).
Goodwin, Lorine S. The Pure Food, Drink, and Drug Crusaders, 1879–1914 (McFarland, 1999).
Law, Marc. "History of Food and Drug Regulation in the United States". EH.Net Encyclopedia, edited by Robert Whaples. 2004. online
Law, Marc T. "The Origins of State Pure Food Regulation." Journal of Economic History 63#4 (2003): 1103–1130.
Libecap, Gary D. "The rise of the Chicago packers and the origins of meat inspection and antitrust." Economic Inquiry 30.2 (1992): 242–262. Emphasizes the role of the big packers and passage of the law that protected them against unsanitary local packing houses.
Young, James H. Pure Food: Securing the Federal Food and Drugs Act of 1906 (Princeton University Press. 1986).
Young, James Harvey. "The Pig that Fell into the Privy: Upton Sinclair's The Jungle and the meat inspection amendments of 1906." Bulletin of the History of Medicine Vol. 59, no. 4 (Winter 1985): 467–480.
== External links ==
Federal Meat Inspection Act, U.S. Food and Drug Administration |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infanterikanonvagn_72 | Infanterikanonvagn 72 | The Infanterikanonvagn 72 (Ikv 72) is a light assault gun vehicle developed by Swedish firm AB Landsverk in the early 1950s.
== History ==
In early 1949, the Swedish Army initiated a project for an assault gun was to provide direct fire support for infantry attacks. The vehicle was intended to replace towed artillery in the infantry support role. Requirements for the new vehicle included low cost so that many vehicles can be constructed and small, lightweight design with a limit of 6 tons.
In 1952, Landsverk took part in this project.
From 1953 to 1954, 36 Ikv 72s were delivered to the Swedish Army.
== Description ==
The Ikv 72 has a casemate design with an open top superstructure at the front of the vehicle, and an engine and gearbox at the rear. An unusual feature of the Ikv 72 is that the drive wheels were placed at the rear. The weight of the vehicle was 8 tons. The Ikv 72 had a crew of four.
The gun was mounted at the front of the vehicle and gun traverse was limited to 5 degrees. Although gun caliber for the Ikv 72 was supposed to be at least 105 mm, no 105 mm gun was available then. Thus, the vehicle was armed with the 75 mm m/41 gun L/34 of the Stridsvagn m/42 as a temporary measure. The Ikv 72 fires high explosive (HE) shells.
== Variants ==
=== Infanterikanonvagn 102 ===
From 1956 to 1958, Ikv 72 was modified to Infanterikanonvagn 102 (Ikv 102). Armour hatches were attached to the top of superstructure so as to protect the crew from shrapnel and sniper fire.The 75 mm gun was replaced by 105 mm gun with a muzzle brake developed by Bofors. The weight of the vehicle was increased to 8.80 tons. In the 1960s, the Ikv 102 was given high-explosive anti-tank (HEAT) shells for defense against other armoured fighting vehicles in addition to HE shells.
=== Infanterikanonvagn 103 ===
Infanterikanonvagn 103 (Ikv 103) was a minor improvement of the Ikv 102. The Ikv 103 still retained the 105 mm gun. It received an engine upgrade and was equipped with the B42 horizontally opposed four-cylinder engine developed by Volvo Aero. Air intake was not via the crew compartment anymore, but via grills on the rear of the vehicle. The weight of the vehicle still remained at 8.80 tons.
There were attempts to export the Ikv 103 design to India and other countries. In the early 1980s, Ikv 103 was converted to Pansarvärnsrobotbandvagn 551 and Luftvärnsrobotvagn 701.
== References == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ana_Figuero#Biography | Ana Figuero | Ana Figueroa (June 19, 1907 - 1970) was a Chilean educator, feminist, political activist, and government official.
== Biography ==
Figuero was born in Santiago on 19 June 1907 as the daughter of Miguel Figueroa Rebolledo and Ana Gajardo Infante. She studied at the University of Chile and graduated in 1928. She became a professor of English in 1928. She then worked as Director of the Liceo San Felipe in 1938 and the Liceo de Temuco during 1939. She then continued her further studies in USA at the Columbia University Teachers College in 1946 and in the Colorado State College (Greely) in 1946.
From 1947 until 1949, she was the general supervisor for Chile's high school system. She promoted universal suffrage in 1948 in the capacity of president of the Chilean Federation of Women's institutions (Federación Chilena de Instituciones Femeninas), which was achieved gradually between 1931 and 1952. From 1949 to 1950, she was head of the Women's Bureau of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
She taught psychology in the University school for social workers. She was also a journalist in Social Periodistica del Sur.
Between 1950 and 1952 she represented Chile as "Minister plenipotentiary" to the Third General Assembly of the United Nations. She was envoy on the Commissions on Human Rights. She was also president of the Social, Cultural and Humanitarian Committee. In 1952, she attended the UN Security Council. Then, she was represented on several key positions at the UN, which included looking into issues related to refugees from all regions of the world. ) In 1952 she also attended the UN Security Council. In 1952, she joined as Assistant Director General of the International Labour Organization devolved with duties related to women's issues. She also worked in ILO as Assistant Secretary General of several sessions of the Annual Conference and attended many regional conferences.
Figuero was the first women to chair a United Nations committee of the General Assembly; the first woman on the United Nations Security Council and United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs; and the first woman to hold the position of assistant director general of the International Labour Organization.
Figuero took retirement from ILO in later half of 1967 due to reasons of poor health. She died in 1970. After her retirement, at the Governing Body session and subsequent to her death many of her colleagues paid rich tributes to her. Some of the tributes are:
"Anita Figuero knew how to arrange her work. She acted in defense of freedom for more than 25 years. Dedicated also to the creative work of the ILO she won the affection of all those who encountered her there."
"In expressing our condolences on the death of this great lady, it only remains for me on behalf of the workers of America, to undertake to honour her memory by defending while we live the noble ideals of justice which always inspired her actions and her personality."
"She has a unique place in the hearts of us all. She has the gift of speaking like Chilean wine. She is for all of us the beloved symbol of the grace and charm, of the warmth and gaiety of Latin America."
== Memberships ==
Figuero was a Member of Social de Profesores, Federaciaon Chilena de Instituiciones Femeninans, Sindicato de Profesores Chilenos, Ateneo (Temuco), and Honorary member of the Society of Cultural Interamericanea (Buenos Aires).
== Publications ==
Figuero authored a book titled Educacion sexual (1934).
== Notes ==
== References ==
== Bibliography ==
Bizzarro, Salvatore (20 April 2005). Historical Dictionary of Chile. Scarecrow Press. ISBN 978-0-8108-6542-6.
Editors of the American Heritage Dictionaries (2005). The Riverside Dictionary of Biography. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. ISBN 0-618-49337-9.
Hilton, Ronald (1947). Who's Who in Latin America: Part IV, Bolivia, Chile and Peru. Stanford University Press. ISBN 978-0-8047-0737-4. {{cite book}}: ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)
Kinnear, Karen L. (22 July 2011). Women in Developing Countries: A Reference Handbook: A Reference Handbook. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 978-1-59884-426-9.
Lubin, Carol Riegelman; Winslow, Anne (1990). Social Justice for Women: The International Labor Organization and Women. Duke University Press. p. 201. ISBN 0-8223-1062-7.
Olsen, Kirstin (1 January 1994). Chronology of Women's History. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 273. ISBN 978-0-313-28803-6. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIVB_Women%27s_Volleyball_Nations_League | FIVB Women's Volleyball Nations League | The FIVB Women's Volleyball Nations League is an international volleyball competition contested by the senior women's national teams of the members of the Fédération Internationale de Volleyball (FIVB), the sport's global governing body. The first tournament took place between May and July 2018, with the final round matches taking place in Nanjing, China. United States won the inaugural edition, defeating Turkey in the final.
In July 2018, the FIVB announced that China would host the next three editions of the women's Volleyball Nations League Finals, from 2019–2021, but on March 13, 2020, the Federation decided to postpone the Nations League until after the 2020 Summer Olympics due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Finally, the FIVB canceled the 2020 edition and confirmed Italy as the host of the final stage of the 2021 VNL.
In February 2024, the FIVB announced that the competition will be expanded to 18 teams from the 2025 edition onwards, and that along with this format reform will be the abolition of the core and challenge teams' statuses.
The creation of the tournament was announced in October 2017 (alongside the announcement of the Challenger Cup) as a joint project of the FIVB, the IMG and 21 national federations. The Women's VNL replaced the World Grand Prix, a former annual women's international event that ran between 1993 and 2017.
A corresponding tournament for men's national teams is the FIVB Men's Volleyball Nations League.
== History ==
=== Adoption ===
In June 2017, Argentinian website Voley Plus reported that the FIVB would drastically change the format for both the 2018 World League and World Grand Prix. According to the reports, starting from 2018, the World League and the World Grand Prix would have only one Group (no more Groups 1, 2 and 3) of 16 national teams.
In October 2017, the FIVB announced, via a press release, the creation of the men's and women's Volleyball Nations League, confirming the tournaments as a replacement for the World League and World Grand Prix.
== Marketing ==
The International Volleyball Federation has partnered with global brand strategy and design firm Landor Associates to create the Volleyball Nations League branding. Landor has also contributed with in-stadium and on-screen television graphics, staff uniforms, designs for the World Volleyball app, medals and the winning trophy.
=== Digital ===
Microsoft, the multinational technology company, has signed an agreement with the FIVB that the international federation vows will change the way the sport of volleyball is consumed while heightening the fan experience during match days as well as in the digital space. Under the tie-up, the 'Microsoft Sports Digital Platform' has been created to create new digital services and deliver personalised content on demand in order to boost the FIVB global audience and improve fan engagement.
== Prize money ==
According to the FIVB, the prize money is equal for both the men's and women's VNL as per the FIVB's gender equality policy.
=== Team awards ===
At the preliminary round, the winning team is awarded US$9,500 for every win and the losing team is awarded US$4,250.
Prize money allocated to teams based on their final place in the final round:
Champions: US$1,000,000
Runners-up: US$500,000
3rd place: US$300,000
4th place: US$180,000
5th place: US$130,000
6th place: US$85,000
7th place: US$65,000
8th place: US$40,000
Fair Play Award:
Admissions by athletes before the Challenge is thrown will be evaluated to avoid time wasting, a green card will be awarded in this case. The team with the most green cards will receive a cash prize of $30,000. In case of a tie, the best-ranked team will be awarded.
=== Individual awards ===
The players selected into Dream Team will receive US$10,000 each while the MVP will be given US$30,000.
== Market performance ==
The FIVB announced that the 2019 Volleyball Nations League (both men's and women's) attracted a cumulative global audience of more than 1.5 billion. This number was an increase of 200 million from the 2018 VNL. In total, more than 600,000 tickets were sold in the 2019 VNL.
== Format ==
=== First format ===
As in the former World Grand Prix, the competition will be divided in two phases, albeit with changes in the competition formula: a preliminary round (known as preliminary round), with a system of rotating host cities, and a final round played in a pre-selected host city.
The preliminary round is held over five weeks, versus three in the World Grand Prix. Each week, the participating teams are organized in pools, and each team plays one match against all other teams in its pool. All games in a pool take place over a weekend in the same city.
When all matches of the preliminary round have been played, the top five teams in the overall standings qualify for the final round, and the remaining ones leave the competition. The host nation automatically qualifies for the final round.
16 national teams will compete in the inaugural edition of the tournament; 12 core teams, which are always qualified, and 4 challenger teams, which can face relegation.
Preliminary round
The 16 teams compete in round-robin tournament, with every core team hosting a pool al least once. The teams are divided into 4 pools of 4 teams in each week and compete five weeks long, with a total of 120 matches. The top five teams after the round-robin tournament join the hosts in the final round. The relegation will consider the four challenger teams and the last ranked challenger team will be excluded from next edition. The winners of the Challenger Cup would qualify for next edition as a challenger team.
Final round
The six qualified teams play in 2 pools of 3 teams in a round-robin format. The top 2 teams of each pool qualify for the semifinals. The first ranked teams play against the second ranked teams in this round. The winners of the semifinals advance to compete for the Nations League title.
=== Current format ===
The current format is applied since the 2022 edition. The whole competition still be divided into two phases: The pool phase and the Finals.
Pool phase
The 16 teams will be divided into 2 groups of eight. Each team will play with 12 matches during the three weeks of the preliminary round. Two pools of eight teams will compete in four matches of six days of competition (Tuesday – Sunday). The new competition format allows for a one-week gap between events. The total number of matches in the pool phase will be 96.
The finals
The Finals will see the eight strongest teams moving directly to the knockout phase which will consist of eight matches in total: four quarterfinals, two semi-finals and the bronze and gold medal matches. The total number of matches in the final phase will be 8.
=== Third reform from 2025 ===
The VNL will expand to 18 teams from 2025 alongside format changes that will elevate the VNL experience for athletes, fans, and all stakeholders. To facilitate the reform, there will be no relegation for the 2024 participating teams, while the winner of the 2024 Volleyball Challenger Cup, plus the top ranked not-yet-qualified team as per the senior Volleyball World Ranking, will join the participating teams of the 2025 VNL.
As of the 2025 edition, the core team status shall be abolished with the last team in the competition's final standing relegated, and the top team not yet qualified as per the Senior Volleyball World Ranking promoted into the following edition of the VNL.
== Challenger Cup ==
Until the 2024 edition, the FIVB Volleyball Challenger Cup is a competition for national teams which will run in concurrence with the Volleyball Nations League. The Challenger Cup consist of the best non-participating in the current edition of the Volleyball Nations League and featured feature one host team and five to seven teams from the five continental confederations as follows:
The Continental Confederations, responsible for determining the teams that will qualify for the FIVB Challenger Cup, are free to organise their Continental Qualification Tournament or use an existing competition to define the qualified team(s).
The FIVB Challenger Cup is held before the FIVB Volleyball Nations League Finals (in 2018 and 2019 editions) but changed it in 2022 edition and the winners will qualify for the next year's VNL as a challenger team.
=== New VNL qualification system ===
Starting in 2025 edition, the lowest ranked Challenger team of the current edition of the VNL will play the Volleyball Challenger Cup (VCC) held after the VNL. The winner of the current edition of the VCC shall be promoted and compete in the next edition of the VNL.
== Hosts ==
List of hosts by number of final round championships hosted.
== Appearance ==
Table current through the end of the 2025 edition
== Results summary ==
== Medals summary ==
== MVP by edition ==
2018 – Michelle Bartsch-Hackley
2019 – Andrea Drews
2021 – Michelle Bartsch-Hackley (2)
2022 – Paola Egonu
2023 – Melissa Vargas
2024 – Paola Egonu (2)
2025 – Monica De Gennaro
== Team performances by season ==
Legend
1st – Champions
2nd – Runners-up
3rd – Third place
4th – Fourth place
– No movement for challenger teams
– Promoted to the next year's VNL
– Relegated for challenger teams (2018–2024)/Excluded to the next year's VNL (2025–present)
Table current through the end of the 2025 edition
== See also ==
FIVB Men's Volleyball Nations League
FIVB Volleyball World Grand Prix
FIVB Women's Volleyball Challenger Cup
List of indoor volleyball world medalists
== Notes ==
== References ==
== External links ==
Fédération Internationale de Volleyball – official website
Volleyball Nations League – official website |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Frederic_Watts | George Frederic Watts | George Frederic Watts (23 February 1817 – 1 July 1904) was a British painter and sculptor associated with the Symbolist movement. Watts became famous in his lifetime for his allegorical works, such as Hope and Love and Life. These paintings were intended to form part of an epic symbolic cycle called the "House of Life", in which the emotions and aspirations of life would all be represented in a universal symbolic language.
== Early life and education ==
Watts was born in Marylebone in central London on the birthday of George Frederic Handel (after whom he was named), to the second wife of a poor piano-maker. Delicate in health and with his mother dying while he was still young, he was home-schooled by his father in a conservative interpretation of Christianity as well as via the classics such as the Iliad. The former put him off conventional religion for life, while the latter was a continual influence on his art. He showed artistic promise very early, learning sculpture from the age of 10 with William Behnes, starting to study devotedly the Elgin Marbles (later writing "It was from them alone that I learned") and then enrolling as a student at the Royal Academy Schools at the age of 18.
== Career ==
=== First exhibitions ===
He first exhibited at the Royal Academy Exhibition of 1837, with a picture of "The Wounded Heron" and two portraits, but his attendance at the Academy was short-lived, and his further art education was confined to personal experiment and endeavour, guided by a constant appeal to the standard of ancient Greek sculpture. He also began his portraiture career, receiving patronage from his close contemporary Alexander Constantine Ionides, who later came to be a close friend.
=== Westminster mural prize ===
He came to the public eye with a drawing entitled Caractacus, which was entered for a competition to design murals for the new Houses of Parliament at Westminster in 1843. Watts won a first prize in the competition, which was intended to promote narrative paintings on patriotic subjects, appropriate to the nation's legislature, securing a prize of £300. In the end Watts made little contribution to the Westminster decorations, but from it he conceived his vision of a building covered with murals representing the spiritual and social evolution of humanity.
=== Italian travels ===
The prize from the Westminster competition did, however, fund a long visit to Italy from 1843 onwards, where Watts stayed and became friends with the British ambassador Henry Fox, 4th Baron Holland and his wife Augusta at their homes in Casa Feroni and the Villa Careggi in Tuscany. For them he painted a portrait of Lady Holland, exhibited in 1848, and in the villa a fresco, after making some experimental studies in that medium. Also while in Italy Watts began producing landscapes and was inspired by Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel and Giotto's Scrovegni Chapel. In 1847, while still in Italy, Watts entered a new competition for the Houses of Parliament with his image of Alfred the Great, Alfred Inciting the Saxons to Prevent the Landing of the Danes by Encountering them at Sea, on a patriotic subject but using Phidean inspiration.
=== Return to Britain ===
Leaving Florence in April 1847 for what was intended to be a brief return to London, he ended up staying. After obtaining a first-class prize of £500, his winning painting at the exhibition in Westminster Hall was purchased by the government, and was hung in one of the committee rooms of the House of Commons. It led, moreover, to a commission for the fresco of "St George overcomes the Dragon," which, begun in 1848 and finished in 1853, formed part of the decorations of the Hall of the Poets in the Houses of Parliament.
Back in Britain he was unable to obtain a building in which to carry out his plan of a grand fresco based on his Italian experiences, though he did produce a 45 ft by 40 ft fresco on the upper part of the east wall of the Great Hall of Lincoln's Inn entitled Justice, A Hemicycle of Lawgivers (completed 1859), inspired by Raphael's The School of Athens. In consequence most of his major works are conventional oil paintings, some of which were intended as studies for the House of Life.
=== Prinsep circle ===
In his studio he met Henry Thoby Prinsep (for 16 years a member of the Council of India) and his wife Sara (née Pattle). Watts thus joined the Prinsep circle of bohemians, including Sara's seven sisters (including Virginia, with whom Watts fell in love but who married Charles, Viscount Eastnor in 1850), and Julia Margaret Cameron. Previously staying at 48 Cambridge Street, and then in Mayfair, in 1850 he helped the Prinseps into a 21-year lease on Little Holland House, and stayed there with them and their salon for the next 21 years. (The building was the dower house on the Hollands' London estate in Kensington, near the house of Lord Leighton.)
=== Productive painting period ===
While the Lincoln's Inn undertaking was still in progress, Watts was working steadily at pictures and portraits. In 1849 the first two of the allegorical compositions which form the most characteristic of the artist's productions were exhibited—"Life's Illusions," an elaborate presentment of the vanity of human desires, and "The people that sat in darkness," turning eagerly towards the growing dawn. In 1850 he first gave public expression to his intense longing to improve the condition of humanity in the picture of "The Good Samaritan" bending over the wounded traveller; this, as recorded in the catalogue of the Royal Academy, was "painted as an expression of the artist's admiration and respect for the noble philanthropy of Thomas Wright, of Manchester," and to that city he presented the work. From the late 1840s onward he painted many portraits in France and England, some of which are described below. Notable pictures of the same period are "Sir Galahad" (1862), "Ariadne in Naxos" (1863), "Time and Oblivion" (1864), originally designed for sculpture to be carried out "in divers materials after the manner of Pheidias," and "Thetis" (1866).
=== Teaching, further travels ===
One of only two pupils Watts ever accepted was Henry's son Valentine Cameron Prinsep; the other was John Roddam Spencer Stanhope — both remained friends, but neither became a major artist. While living as tenant at Little Holland House, Watts's epic paintings were exhibited in Whitechapel by his friend the social reformer Canon Samuel Barnett, and he finally received a commission for the Houses of Parliament, completing his The Triumph of the Red Cross Knight (from The Faerie Queene) in 1852–53. He also took a short trip back to Italy in 1853 (including Venice, where Titian became yet more of an inspiration) and with Charles Thomas Newton to excavate Halicarnassus in 1856–57, via Constantinople and the Greek islands. In 1856 Watts paid a visit to Lord Holland at Paris, where he was then ambassador, and through him made the acquaintance and painted the portraits of Adolphe Thiers, Jérôme Bonaparte and other famous Frenchmen. Apart from some visits to Italy, Greece and Egypt, the greater part of his subsequent life was passed in the seclusion of his home studios.
=== Brief marriage ===
In the 1860s, Watts's work shows the influence of Rossetti, often emphasising sensuous pleasure and rich colour. Among these paintings is a portrait of his young wife, the actress Ellen Terry, who was 30 years his junior – having been introduced by mutual friend Tom Taylor, they married on 20 February 1864, just seven days short of her 17th birthday. They separated within a year of the wedding; Watts did not immediately divorce her, but made her allowance (paid to her father) conditional on her never returning to the stage.
=== Later influences ===
Watts's association with Rossetti and the Aesthetic movement altered during the 1870s, as his work increasingly combined Classical traditions with a deliberately agitated and troubled surface, to suggest the dynamic energies of life and evolution, as well as the tentative and transitory qualities of life. These works formed part of a revised version of the House of Life, influenced by the ideas of Max Müller, the founder of comparative religion. Watts hoped to trace the evolving "mythologies of the races [of the world]" in a grand synthesis of spiritual ideas with modern science, especially Darwinian evolution.
=== Later life ===
With the lease on Little Holland House nearing its end and the building soon to be demolished, in the early 1870s he commissioned a new London home nearby from F. P. Cockerell: New Little Holland House (backing onto the estate of Lord Leighton), and acquired a house at Freshwater, Isle of Wight – his friends Julia Margaret Cameron and Lord Tennyson already had homes on the island. To maintain his friendship with the Prinsep family as their children began leaving home, he built The Briary for them near Freshwater, and adopted their relative Blanche Clogstoun. In 1877, his decree nisi from Ellen Terry finally came through, and the Grosvenor Gallery was opened by his friend Coutts Lindsay. This was to prove his ideal venue for the next ten years.
In 1886, at the age of 69, Watts remarried, to Mary Fraser Tytler, a Scottish designer and potter, then aged 36. In 1891 he bought land near Compton, south of Guildford, in Surrey. The couple named the house "Limnerslease" (combining the words "limner" or artist with "leasen" or glean) and built the Watts Gallery nearby, a museum dedicated to his work – the first (and now the only) purpose-built gallery in Britain devoted to a single artist – which opened in April 1904, shortly before his death, and received a major expansion between 2006 and 2011.
=== Watts Mortuary Chapel ===
Watts's wife Mary had designed the nearby earlier Watts Mortuary Chapel, which Watts paid for; he also painted a version of The All-Pervading for the altar only three months before he died. Both Limnerslease and the chapel are now maintained, and the house owned, by the Watts Gallery. In 2016 Watts's studio in the house re-opened, restored as far as possible using photographs from Watts's lifetime, as part of the Watts Gallery, and the main residential section can be visited on a guided tour.
=== Collections ===
Many of his paintings are owned by Tate Britain – he donated 18 of his symbolic paintings to Tate in 1897, and three more in 1900. Some of these have been loaned to the Watts Gallery in recent years, and are on display there.
=== Awards and honours ===
Refusing the baronetcy twice offered him by Queen Victoria, he was finally elected as an Academician to the Royal Academy in 1867 and accepted to be one of the original members of the new Order of Merit (OM) in 1902 — in his own words, on behalf of all English artists. The order was announced in the 1902 Coronation Honours list published on 26 June 1902, and he received the insignia from King Edward VII at Buckingham Palace on 8 August 1902.
=== Late paintings ===
In his late paintings, Watts's creative aspirations mutate into mystical images such as The Sower of the Systems, in which Watts seems to anticipate abstract art. This painting depicts God as a barely visible shape in an energised pattern of stars and nebulae. Some of Watts's other late works also seem to anticipate the paintings of Picasso's Blue Period.
=== Portraiture ===
He was also admired as a portrait painter. His portraits were of the most important men and women of the day, intended to form a "House of Fame". In his portraits Watts sought to create a tension between disciplined stability and the power of action. He was also notable for emphasising the signs of strain and wear on his sitter's faces. Of his British subjects many are now in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery: 17 were donated in 1895, with more than 30 more added subsequently. Some who sat for him from the late 1840s were François Guizot (1848), Sir Henry Rawlinson, Sir Henry Taylor and Thomas Wright (1851), Lord John Russell (1852), Tennyson (1856, and again in 1859), John Lothrop Motley the historian (1859), the Duke of Argyll (1860), Lord Lawrence and Lord Lyndhurst (1862), James Parke, 1st Baron Wensleydale (1864), Gladstone (1858 and 1865), Sir William Bowman and Swinburne (1865), Anthony Panizzi (1866) and Dean Stanley in 1867. Other sitters included Charles Dilke, Thomas Carlyle, James Martineau, and William Morris.
=== Physical Energy ===
Although best known as a painter, Watts was also a sculptor. After completing a commission for the Duke of Westminster for an equestrian monument to commemorate his ancestor, Hugh Lupus, Watts set to work on a new plaster model of another horse and rider, without specific reference to any individual, in 1883. Seeking to reinvigorate the rhetoric of the equestrian monument for the modern age, he was still working on it at the time of his death in 1904. The plaster model was part of the artist's bequest to Watts Gallery, and, also in 1904, the first bronze cast of the work (made in 1902 at the Parlanti Foundry) became the artist's last submission to the Royal Academy's summer exhibition. It marked a new prominence for the courtyard of Burlington House as a site for dramatic contemporary sculpture (a role continued today by the Annenberg Courtyard). Physical Energy then travelled to Cape Town to form part of a memorial to the founder of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), Cecil Rhodes. In 1907, a posthumous cast was made and sited in Kensington Gardens, London, fulfilling the artist's intention to gift the work to the British Government, insisting that it should be "for the nation" and displayed "somewhere in London". A third cast, created in 1959, is situated in the grounds of the National Archives of Zimbabwe in Harare.
The culmination of Watts's ambition in the field of public sculpture, Physical Energy is an allegory of human vitality and humanity's ceaseless struggle for betterment; he said it was "a symbol of that restless physical impulse to seek the still unachieved in the domain of material things". It also embodied the artist's belief that access to great art would bring immense benefits to the country at large.
=== Memorial to Heroic Self-Sacrifice ===
An admirer of royalty – he had painted Prince de Joinville and Edward, Prince of Wales – Watts proposed, in 1887, to commemorate the Golden Jubilee of Queen Victoria by creating a Memorial to Heroic Self-Sacrifice to commemorate ordinary people who had died saving the lives of others, and who might otherwise have been forgotten. The scheme was not accepted at that time, but in 1898 Watts was approached by Henry Gamble, the vicar of St Botolph's Aldersgate church. He suggested the memorial could be created in Postman's Park in the City of London.
The memorial was unveiled in an unfinished state in 1900, consisting of a 50-foot (15 m) wooden loggia designed by Ernest George, sheltering a wall with space for 120 ceramic memorial tiles to be designed and made by William De Morgan. At the time of opening, only four of the memorial tiles were in place. Watts died in 1904, and his widow Mary Watts took over the running of the project.
== Reception ==
Several reverent biographies of Watts were written shortly after his death; and one (by G. K. Chesterton) earlier in the year of his death. With the emergence of Modernism, however, his reputation declined. Virginia Woolf's comic play Freshwater portrays him in a satirical manner, an approach also adopted by Wilfred Blunt, former curator of the Watts Gallery, in his irreverent 1975 biography England's Michelangelo. In his 1988 book on Ruskin, the art critic Peter Fuller emphasised Watts's spiritual and stylistic importance, also noting that late post-symbolist works such as The Sower of the Systems "stretched beyond the brink of abstraction". On the centenary of his death Veronica Franklin Gould published G. F. Watts: The Last Great Victorian, a positive study of his life and work.
The composer Charles Villiers Stanford wrote his Sixth Symphony "In Memoriam G. F. Watts". It was composed in 1905 and first performed on 18 January 1906 in London under Stanford's direction. The four movements, although not having a detailed programme, are inspired by several works of art by Watts.
Literary references to Watts and his work include Elizabeth Taylor's 1953 novel Angel, where a picture by Watts is donated to a provincial museum by the protagonist, and mention of Watts's painting Progress in Bella Donna by Robert Hichens (1909, p. 34). Watts features (not altogether favourably) as a character in Lynne Truss's comic novel Tennyson's Gift (1996).
== Gallery ==
== References ==
== Bibliography ==
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Bell, Malcolm (1911). "Watts, George Frederick". In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 28 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 420–422. This includes a longer list of his portraits and an extended critical summary of his art.
England's Michelangelo: A Biography of George Frederic Watts (1975) by Wilfrid Blunt, Hamish Hamilton.
Discovering the Sculptures of George Frederick Watts O.M., R.A. (1994) by Elizabeth Hutchings, Hunnyhill. ISBN 0-9521939-6-5
The Laurel and the Thorn; A Study of G. F. Watts (1945) by Ronald Chapman, Faber and Faber Ltd.
The Art of G. F. Watts (2017) by Nicholas Tromans, Paul Holberton Publishing. ISBN 1-9113000-7-5
G. F. Watts Portraits: Fame and Beauty in Victorian Society (2004) by Barbara Bryant, NPG. ISBN 1-8551434-7-X
G. F. Watts: The Last Great Victorian (2004) by Veronica Franklin Gould, Yale University Press. ISBN 0-3001057-7-0
== External links ==
Media related to George Frederic Watts at Wikimedia Commons
Quotations related to George Frederic Watts at Wikiquote
495 artworks by or after George Frederic Watts at the Art UK site
The works of G.F. Watts, R.A. (1886)
"Watts, George Frederic". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/36781. (Subscription, Wikipedia Library access or UK public library membership required.)
BBC Restoration Appeal for the Watts Gallery
The Watts Gallery, Compton
georgefredericwatts.org, 392 works by George Frederic Watts
Watts (1817–1904) by William Loftus Hare at Project Gutenberg, with eight reproductions in colour. (by William Loftus Hare)
Watts – 5 works in focus at Tate Online
G.F. Watts: Portraits, Fame & Beauty in Victorian Society Archived 6 October 2008 at the Wayback Machine, 2004–05 exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Dhanoa | Dan Dhanoa | Dan Dhanoa (born Inderpreet Singh Dhanoa; 28 February 1959) is an Indian former film actor and a sailor (master mariner) in the Merchant Navy.
He is known mostly for portraying cult villainous roles in Hindi cinema in the 1980s and 1990s, in about 100 films, such as Mard (1984), Karma (1986), Tridev (1989), Sanam Bewafa (1991) and Vishwatma (1992).
He was brought into the film industry by actor/director Feroz Khan, but made his debut in the Manmohan Desai film Mard as the main antagonist, opposite Amitabh Bachchan.
== Personal life ==
In 1986, he was first married to Nikii Waalia. Their son Gobind Singh Dhanoa (a.k.a. Tarzan) was born in 1987. Tarzan is a Cinematographer by profession.
Later in 2007, he married an actor and classical dancer (Kathak from Jaipur Gharana), Nandita Puri.
He is an alumnus of The Doon School in Dehradun (1974 batch). An avid traveller, he is now settled in Chandigarh where he indulges in his passion for gardening, collecting art & artifacts.
== Filmography ==
== References ==
== External links ==
Dan Dhanoa at IMDb
Dan Dhanoa at Bollywood Hungama (archived) |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Lumia_550 | Microsoft Lumia 550 | Microsoft Lumia 550 is a budget smartphone manufactured by Microsoft Mobile as part of its Lumia family of Windows-based mobile computing products. It was introduced along with the Lumia 950 and the Lumia 950 XL on 6 October 2015 at a press event held in New York City.
The Lumia 550 was released in December 2015 with Windows 10 Mobile version 1511. Windows 10 Mobile version 1607, Anniversary Update was released in August 2016. Windows 10 Mobile version 1709, Fall Creators Update, was the final software update.
== Specifications ==
=== Hardware ===
The Lumia 550 has a 4.7-inch IPS LCD display, quad-core 1.1 GHz Cortex-A7 Qualcomm Snapdragon 210 processor, 1 GB of RAM and 8 GB of internal storage that can be expanded using microSD cards up to 256 GB. The phone has a 2100 mAh Li-ion battery, 5 MP rear camera and 2 MP front-facing camera. It is available in black and white.
=== Software ===
The Lumia 550 ships with Windows 10 Mobile.
== Reception ==
Michael Allison of MSPoweruser criticized the Lumia 550 for having lower specs than its predecessor, such as an inferior 5 MP camera that lacks a wide angle lens, missing functionality and a shorter battery life, making it uncompetitive with similar phones in its price range.
Sean Cameron of Techradar gave the Lumia 550 3 stars out of 5, praising its screen, camera and speakers, but criticizing the battery life and performance and calling the Windows 10 Mobile operating system "unfinished".
== References ==
== External links ==
Official website |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igbo-Ukwu | Igbo-Ukwu | Igbo-Ukwu (English: Great Igbo) is a town in the Nigerian state of Anambra in the south-central part of the country. The town comprises three quarters namely Obiuno, Ngo, and Ihite (an agglomeration of 4 quarters) with several villages within each quarter and thirty-six (36) administrative wards. It is also bordered by Ora-eri, Ichida, Azigbo, Ezinifite, Amichi, Isuofia, Ikenga and some other towns.
== History ==
Igbo-Ukwu, originally known as Igbo-Nkwo, was the capital of the Kingdom of Nri beginning in the 8th or 9th century CE. It was the center of an extensive trade system linking the town with Gao on the Niger bend and, through there, to Egypt and North Africa. It was also a prominent center of lost-wax casting in bronze, one of the earliest in Africa.
The modern town saw an outbreak of vigilante violence in 2013.
=== Archaeological significance ===
Igbo-Ukwu is notable for three archaeological sites, where excavations have found bronze artifacts from a highly sophisticated bronze metal-working culture dating to 9th century AD, centuries before other known bronzes of the region.
The first, called Igbo Isaiah, was uncovered in 1938 by Isaiah Anozie, a local villager, who found the bronze works while digging beside his home. Five bronze artifacts from the original excavation are now in the British Museum's collection. They include a small staff, a head of a ram, a large manilla, an intricately designed crescent-shaped vessel and a small pendant in the shape of a local chief's head with scarification (ichi) marks on the face.
Formal excavations by the archaeologist Thurstan Shaw in 1959 at the request of the Nigerian government, resulted in the discovery of two other sites, Igbo Richard and Igbo Jonah, containing the remains of an ancient culture. Later, these were excavated as well. Artifacts have included jewelry, ceramics, a corpse adorned in what appears to be regalia, and many assorted bronze, copper, and iron objects. Some of these contain materials that are evidence of a long-distance trading system extending to Egypt.
Radiocarbon dating placed the sites to 850 AD, which would make the Igbo-Ukwu culture the earliest-known example of bronze casting in the region. The archaeological sites in southeastern Nigeria are associated with the Nri-Igbo. The three sites include Igbo Isaiah (a shrine), Igbo Richard (a burial chamber), and Igbo Jonah (a cache). Artifacts found in these sites have shown that by the 9th century AD, the Igbo-Ukwu people had established a complex religious system and an economy based on agriculture and trade with other African peoples as far as the Nile valley.
=== Gallery ===
== Climate ==
In Igbo-Ukwu, the dry season is muggy and partially cloudy, and the climate is warm all year round. The wet season is oppressive and overcast. The average annual temperature fluctuates between 64°F and 85°F, rarely falling below 56°F or rising over 88°F.
The difference in temperature in Igbo-Ukwu is so little throughout the year that talking about hot and cold seasons isn't really helpful.
== See also ==
Kingdom of Nri
== References ==
=== Sources ===
Ehret, Christopher (2002). The civilizations of Africa: a history to 1800. James Currey Publishers. ISBN 0-85255-475-3. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACM_Software_System_Award | ACM Software System Award | The ACM Software System Award is an annual award that honors people or an organization "for developing a software system that has had a lasting influence, reflected in contributions to concepts, in commercial acceptance, or both". It is awarded by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) since 1983, with a cash prize sponsored by IBM of currently $35,000.
== Recipients ==
The following is a list of recipients of the ACM Software System Award:
== See also ==
Software system
List of computer science awards
== References ==
== External links ==
Software System Award — ACM Awards |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_Honeycomb#:~:text=Unsupported%2C%20Google%20Play%20Services%20support%20dropped%20since%20January%202017 | Android Honeycomb | Android Honeycomb is the codename for the third major version of Android, designed for devices with larger screen sizes, particularly tablets; however, it has also been unofficially ported to the Nexus One. It is the eighth version of Android and is no longer supported, as of November 14, 2016. Android Honeycomb debuted with the Motorola Xoom in February 2011. Besides the addition of new features, Android Honeycomb introduced a new so-called "holographic" user interface theme and an interaction model that built on the main features of Android, such as multitasking, notifications, and widgets.
== Features ==
New features introduced in Honeycomb include the following:
The Email and Contacts apps use a two-pane UI.
The Gallery app now lets users view albums and other collections in full-screen mode, with access to thumbnails for other photos in a collection.
The Browser app replaces browser windows with tabs, adds an incognito mode for anonymous browsing, and presents bookmarks and history in a unified view, among other features.
A redesigned keyboard to make entering text easier on large-screen devices such as tablet computers.
A Recent Apps view for multitasking.
Customizable home screens (up to five).
== See also ==
Android version history
iOS 4
Mac OS X Snow Leopard
Windows Phone 7
Windows 7
== References ==
== External links ==
Media related to Android Honeycomb at Wikimedia Commons
Official website |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloria_Niemeyer_Francke | Gloria Niemeyer Francke | Gloria Niemeyer Francke (April 28, 1922 – August 3, 2008) was an American pharmacist. She became assistant director of the American Pharmacists Association (APhA) Division of Hospital Pharmacy (1946–1956); executive secretary of the American Society of Hospital Pharmacists (1949–1960); and research associate for the Audit of Pharmaceutical Service in Hospitals (1956–1964).
A native of Dillsboro, Indiana, Gloria Niemeyer earned her B.S. degree in Pharmacy from Purdue University in 1942 and her Pharm.D in 1971 from the University of Cincinnati.
She then served as a drug literature specialist at the National Library of Medicine (1965–1967); as a clinical pharmacy teaching coordinator for the Veterans Administration Hospital in Cincinnati (1967–1971); as secretary of the American Institute of the History of Pharmacy (1968–1978); and as Chief of the program evaluation branch in the Alcohol and Drug Dependence Service, Veterans Administration (1971–1975).
She rejoined the APhA staff (1975–1985) and was elected Honorary President in 1986 and received the Remington Honor Medal in 1987.
She served as a member of the APhA Foundation Advisory Committee. The society's Gloria Niemeyer Francke Leadership Mentor Award is named for her.
Francke became the first executive secretary of the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists [ASHP] in 1949 and was Associate Editor of the American Journal of Hospital Pharmacy from 1944 to 1964.
In 1995, Francke was awarded the Donald Francke Medal by the American Society of Hospital Pharmacists for "significant international contributions to advance pharmacy practice."
== Journalism and publications ==
Francke's journalistic achievements include:
Assistant editor of the Journal of the American Pharmaceutical Association, 1946–1947
Associate editor of the American Journal of Hospital Pharmacy, 1944–1964
Co-author of Mirror to Hospital Pharmacy (1964) and Perspectives in Clinical Pharmacy (1972)
== Marriage ==
She was married to Donald E. Francke, who founded Drug Intelligence (now Annals of Pharmacotherapy). Following his death in 1978, she became the owner of Drug Intelligence Publications.
== References ==
== External links ==
Biodata |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gangabal_Lake#:~:text=The%20lake%20has%20a%20maximum,1%20kilometre%20(0.62%20mi). | Gangabal Lake | Gangabal Lake (lit. 'place of Ganga'), also called Haramukh Ganga, is an alpine high-altitude oligotrophic lake situated at the foot of Mount Harmukh in Ganderbal district of Jammu and Kashmir, India. The lake has a maximum length of 2.5 kilometres (1.6 mi) and a maximum width of 1 kilometre (0.62 mi). It is fed by precipitation, glaciers, and springs, and is home to many species of fish, including the brown trout. Water from the lake flows into the nearby Nundkol Lake and then into Sind River, of which it is considered the source per tradition, via Wangath Nallah. This lake is considered sacred in Hinduism as one of the abodes of Shiva, is a site of Hindu pilgrimage and used by Kashmiri Hindus to perform ancestral and death rites.
== History ==
Gangabal has been mentioned in several ancient Hindu Sanskrit texts, where it is referred to as Uttaramanasa and Uttara ganga (lit. 'northern Ganga'). It is mentioned in the Mahabharata as a place of pilgrimage, along with the Kalodaka or Nandikunda lake (Nundkol). The Vishnu Smriti mentions the lake as a place of pilgrimage for performing Śrāddha. It is also mentioned as a place of pilgrimage in other Hindu texts, such as the Nilamata Purana, as well as in chronicles such as the Rajatarangini. In 1519, approximately 10,000 Kashmiri Brahmins died, possibly due to landslides and early snowstorms near Mahlish Meadow during their pilgrimage to Gangabal while immersing the ashes of Kashmiri Hindus who were killed by Mir Shams-ud-Din Araqi on the day of Ashura. British authors such as Walter Roper Lawrence, Cecil Tyndale-Biscoe, and Francis Younghusband, who visited Kashmir during British colonial rule in India, also mentioned Gangabal Lake and its association with Hindu rites. In 1943, Vikram Sarabhai, along with a team, measured cosmic rays near the lake.
== Religious significance ==
Gangabal Lake is sacred for Hindus, who consider it a manifestation of Ganga and the region to be an abode of Shiva. Kashmiri Hindus immerse the ashes of their dead after cremation in the lake, and consider it equivalent to the river Ganga and Haridwar for performing ancestral rites. An annual pilgrimage, called Harmukh-Gangabal Yatra, starts from the 8th-century Wangath Temple complex at Naranag. The lake is also invoked during the rituals of Kaw Punim, a Kashmiri Hindu festival. It is considered the traditional source of the Sind River.
== Access ==
Gangbal Lake is approached from Srinagar, 45 kilometers by road via Ganderbal up to Naranag, and then a trek of 15 kilometers upslope leads to the lake, which can be covered by a horse ride or on foot. The Gujjar shepherds can be seen during the trek with their flocks of sheep and goats. Another trek (25 kilometers long) leads to the lake site from Sonamarg via the Vishansar Lake, crossing three mountain passes, Nichnai pass, Gadsar pass, and Zajibal pass of an average elevation of 4100 meters. It can also be accessed through a trek from Bandipore via Arin and from Gurez via Tilel. The trek to the lake Gangabal takes place in an alpine environment, (cut crossing) with meadows, (cut from) and huts of Gujjars with their herds crossing through two passes over 4,000 m to get to the lake Gangabal.
== Gallery ==
== References ==
== Bibliography ==
Ahmed, Rayees; Rawat, Manish; Wani, Gowhar Farooq; Ahmad, Syed Towseef; Jain, Sanjay Kumar; Meraj, Gowhar; Mir, Riyaz Ahmad; Rather, Abid Farooq; Farooq, Majid (24 November 2022). "Glacial Lake Outburst Flood Hazard and Risk Assessment of Gangabal Lake in the Upper Jhelum Basin of Kashmir Himalaya Using Geospatial Technology and Hydrodynamic Modeling". Remote Sensing. 14 (23): 5957. Bibcode:2022RemS...14.5957A. doi:10.3390/rs14235957.
Inden, Ronald (2008), "Kashmir as Paradise on Earth", in Rao, Aparna (ed.), The Valley of Kashmir: The Making and Unmaking of a Composite Culture, Manohar, pp. 523–562, ISBN 978-81-7304-751-0 |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kristin_Otto#:~:text=At%20the%201988%20Seoul%20Olympic%20Games%20she%20once%20again%20was,retired%20from%20swimming%20in%201989. | Kristin Otto | Kristin Otto (German pronunciation: [ˈkʁɪstɪn ˈʔɔtoː] ; born 7 February 1966) is a former East German swimmer, becoming Olympic, World and European champion, multiple times. She is most famous for being the first woman to win six gold medals at a single Olympic Games, doing so at the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games. In long course, she held the world records in the 100 meter and 200 meter freestyle events. Otto was also the first woman to swim the short course 100 meter backstroke in under a minute, doing so at an international short course meet at Indiana University in 1983.
== Career ==
Otto was born in Leipzig, Bezirk Leipzig (present-day Sachsen), East Germany, and began swimming at the age of 11, training in an East German sports academy. At sixteen, she participated in her first world championships, the 1982 World Aquatics Championships, winning the gold medal in the 100 meter backstroke as well as two additional gold medals in the 4×100 m relays with the East German team.
After 1982, Otto changed coaches and began concentrating on other speed strokes. At the following European Championships in 1983, Otto finished second in the 100 meter freestyle, following her fellow East German, Birgit Meineke.
In 1984, Otto set a world record in the 200 meter freestyle. She was expected to win gold medals at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games, but was unable to compete due to the boycott by 14 Eastern Bloc countries, including East Germany. In 1985 she fractured a vertebra, keeping her from competing for most of the year or to go to the European Championships.
Otto returned to competitive swimming at the 1986 World Championships in Madrid, where she won 4 gold medals (100 m freestyle, 200 m individual medley, 4×100 m medley relay and 4×100 m freestyle relay) and 2 silver medals (50 m freestyle, 100 m butterfly). Her success continued the following year at the 1987 European Championships where she won 5 gold medals.
At the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games she once again was expected to win Olympic gold. She won six gold medals, as well as setting Olympic records in the 50 m freestyle and 100 m butterfly.
Otto retired from swimming in 1989. She currently works as a sports reporter for German television.
She was named the Female World Swimmer of the Year in 1984, 1986 and 1988 by Swimming World. In October 1986, she was awarded a Star of People's Friendship in gold (second class) for her sporting success.
Otto's career was marred by the revelations of widespread performance-enhancing drugs used by East German athletes: former teammate Petra Schneider openly admitted that she had used banned substances. However, Otto stated that she was not aware that she was being doped and she passed all the doping tests during competition, saying: "The medals are the only reminder of how hard I worked. It was not all drugs."
== See also ==
List of members of the International Swimming Hall of Fame
List of Olympic medalists in swimming (women)
List of World Aquatics Championships medalists in swimming (women)
List of multiple Olympic gold medalists at a single Games
List of multiple Olympic gold medalists
== References ==
== External links == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danh_V%C3%B5 | Danh Võ | Danh Võ (born Võ Trung Kỳ Danh, August 5, 1975) is a contemporary artist of Vietnamese descent. He lives and works in Berlin and Mexico City.
== Early life ==
Danh Võ was born in Vũng Tàu, Vietnam. After the Communists' victory and the fall of Saigon, the Võ family and 20,000 other South Vietnamese were brought in 1975 to the island of Phú Quốc. in 1979, when he was 4 years old, his family fled South Vietnam in a homemade boat and was rescued at sea by a freighter belonging to the Danish Maersk shipping company. The family members settled in Denmark. Their assimilation into European culture and the events that led up to their flight from Vietnam are reflected in Võ's art, which juxtaposes the historical and the personal. When Danh Võ and his family were registered by the Danish authorities, the family name Võ was placed last. His middle name, Trung Kỳ, was recorded as his first name.
Võ moved to Berlin in 2005, after finishing school at Städelschule in Frankfurt, where he went after quitting painting at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen. He had residencies at the Villa Aurora in Los Angeles (2006), Kadist Art Foundation in Paris (2009) and Villa Medici in Rome (2013). He lives in both Berlin and Mexico City.
== Work ==
Võ's installations, which are composed of documents, photos and appropriations of works of other artists, often address the issues of identity and belonging.
The conceptual work Vo Rosasco Rasmussen (2002–) involves the artist's marriage to and immediate divorce from a growing list of important people in his life; after each marriage, Võ retains the last name of his former spouse. His official name is now Trung Kỳ Danh Võ Rosasco Rasmussen. Oma Totem (2009), a stacked sculpture of his grandmother's welcome gifts from a relief program on her arrival in Germany in the 1980s, displays her television set, washing machine, and refrigerator (adorned with her own crucifix), among other items.
For 2.02.1861 (2009–), the artist asked his father Phung Võ to transcribe the last communication from the French Catholic Saint Théophane Vénard to his own father before he was decapitated in 1861 in Võ's native Vietnam; although multiple copies of the transcribed letter exist (1200 as of 2017), the total number will remain undefined until Phung Võ's death.
In Autoerotic Asphyxiation (2010), Võ presents documentary pictures of young Asian men taken by Joseph Carrier, an American anthropologist and counterinsurgency specialist who worked in Vietnam for the RAND Corporation from 1962 to 1973. While in Vietnam, Carrier privately documented the casual interactions he observed, intimate without necessarily being homoerotic, between local men; he produced a substantial photographic archive, which he subsequently bequeathed to Danh Võ.
For his project We the People, created between 2010 and 2012, Võ enlisted a Shanghai fabricator to recast a life-size Statue of Liberty from 30 tons of copper sheets the width of just two pennies. Rather than assemble the approximately 300 sections, the artist shipped the giant elements to some 15 sites around the world after they rolled off the production line in China. From mid May to early December 2014 We the People was shown in New York City under the auspices of the Public Art Fund, with its assembly of parts shared between City Hall Park in Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridge Park in the borough of Brooklyn. While the work was being installed in City Hall Park, a few of its pieces – replicas of the chain links found at the feet of the original Statue of Liberty – were stolen. Today, parts of We the People (2011–2013) can still be found in the permanent holdings of several museum collections in the United States and abroad, such as at the Pérez Art Museum Miami. It was named Frieze named the work No.5 of "The 25 Best Works of the 21st Century".
For a 2013 show at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Võ conceived a homage to the artist Martin Wong. The installation consists of nearly 4,000 frequently small artworks, artifacts and tchotchkes that once belonged to Wong, crowded into a specially designed gallery lined with laminated plywood shelves. The show's title—I am you and you are too—appeared on Wong's business cards and stamps.
Another 2013 show at New York's Marian Goodman Gallery focused on the personal effects of the late U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, the architect of the Vietnam War. Looking to open up a dialogue about shared and private histories, Võ displayed or modified 14 items acquired at a Sotheby's auction—including the pen used to sign the Gulf of Tonkin memo and a 1944 photograph by Ansel Adams.
In 2016, rankled by rising rents in Berlin, Võ and a group of friends – including the artists Rirkrit Tiravanija, Nairy Baghramian, and Haegue Yang – went in search of studio and storage space outside the city and found the 5,000 m2 (54,000 sq ft) Güldenhof, a former pig farm in Stechlin, Brandenburg with a set of stone barns that had remained intact since the eighteenth century. Originally meant to be a collaborative compound, the property eventually fell to Võ, who eventually transformed it into his studio from 2017 to 2020.
== Recognition ==
Võ won the 2012 Hugo Boss Prize, the BlauOrange Kunstpreis of Berlin's Deutschen Volksbanken und Raiffeisenbanken in 2007, and was a nominee for the Preis der Nationalgalerie für junge Kunst in 2009.
== Exhibitions ==
Võ had his first solo exhibition in 2005, at the Galerie Klosterfelde in Berlin.
Võ participated in the Venice Biennale in 2013. His work has been exhibited at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis; the Art Institute of Chicago; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York; and the Musée d'art moderne de la Ville de Paris, Kunsthaus Bregenz, Austria, the Kunsthalle Mainz, Germany, among other institutions.
In 2014 Võ shared an exhibition with Carol Rama at the Nottingham Contemporary. On November 14, 2014, his exhibition "الحجارة وادي" (Wād al-ḥaŷara) opened at Museo Jumex in Mexico City. From February 9 through May 9, 2018, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum is presenting Danh Vo: Take My Breath Away, the first comprehensive survey of the artist's work in the United States.
M+ in partnership with the Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum organized an exhibition of Isamu Noguchi and Danh Võ. (M+ Story) Noguchi for Danh Vo: Counterpoint (16 Nov 2018 - 22 Apr 2019). The exhibition take place in the M+ Pavilion, Hongkong.
Other recent exhibitions include: CAPC, Bordeaux (2018); National Museum of Art Osaka (2020); Secession, Vienna (2021); Mudam Luxembourg (2021); Bourse de Commerce, Paris (2023) and Xavier Hufkens (2023). He was awarded the Blau Orange Kunstpreis der Deutschen Volksbanken und Raiffeisenbanken (2007) and the Hugo Boss Prize (2012).
=== 2015 lawsuit ===
In 2014, Dutch collector and entrepreneur Bert Kreuk filed a suit against Võ, claiming that the artist agreed in January 2013 to produce one or more new works for Kreuk's exhibition, Transforming the Known, at the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, and that the work would be acquired by the collector after the show. Before the exhibition opened in June 2013, Võ sent an existing work, Fiat Veritas (2013), a cardboard box marked with gold leaf. However, Kreuk said the agreement had been for Võ to create a new work for his collection, expressing a preference for the artist's large-scale Budweiser and American Flag series. In June 2015, a Rotterdam court upheld Kreuk's claim and ordered the artist to create new artwork for the collector within a year. In July 2015, Võ proposed to answer the court ruling by producing a site-specific wall work, as large as Kreuk wished, with the text "Shove it up your ass, you faggot"; subsequently, his legal team reached a settlement and the collector dropped the suit.
== Personal life ==
Vō lives in Berlin and Brandenburg. In 2014, he also renovated a century-old home in Mexico City’s Roma Norte neighborhood. He is in a relationship with the photographer Heinz Peter Knes.
== References ==
== External links ==
Danh Vo at Xavier Hufkens
Danh Vo at Guggenheim
Danh Vo at Galerie Buchholz
Danh Vo: The Refined Complexity of Things Archived 2013-06-15 at archive.today, Art Press, May 2013
Living History, by Michele Robecchi, Art in America, October 2012
Danh Vo Channels Martin Wong at the Guggenheim, by Brian Boucher, Art in America, March 2013
Vô Danh at Kunsthaus Bregenz 2012, Ausstellungskatalog 2012 Archived 2020-12-01 at the Wayback Machine (in German, transl. Sonja Finck)
Danh Vo at Ocula |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umlesh_Yadav#:~:text=In%20her%20election%20affidavit%20of,are%20worth%20%E2%82%B97.95%20crores. | Umlesh Yadav | Umlesh Yadav (born 1958) is an Indian politician from Sarfabad village in Noida, Uttar Pradesh. She is the first politician to be disqualified by the Election Commission of India in 2011 for a period of 3 years for suppression of her election expenses incurred when she was elected as an MLA. Umlesh was MLA representing Bisauli constituency from 2007 to 2012.
Umlesh Yadav is married to D. P. Yadav, a former Member of Parliament of Sambhal (1996–98).
== Personal life ==
She is the wife of the politician D. P. Yadav. The Yadav family, who became wealthy through the liquor business, may be the richest political family in Uttar Pradesh, with declared net assets of ₹260 million (₹26 crores) as of 2007.
In her election affidavit of 2017, she has mentioned that her assets are worth ₹55.10 crores and liabilities are worth ₹7.95 crores.
== Family ==
She has 2 sons: Vikas Yadav and Kunal Singh Yadav and 2 daughters including Bharti Yadav.
Kunal Singh contested the Sahaswan seat in 2022 on Rashtriya Parivartan Dal ticket but he lost the election to a Samajwadi Party candidate.
Vikas Yadav is a convicted murderer of Nitish Katara, and convicted in the Jessica Lal murder case. The murder of Katara was perpetrated because her daughter Bharti Yadav had fallen in love with Nitish. Bharti Yadav got married on 1 November 2009 to a Gurgaon-based businessman Yatin Rao, who is a son of a Haryana government officer.
== Paid News ==
In October 2011, the Election Commission of India disqualified Yadav, the sitting MLA from Bisauli in Uttar Pradesh, under Section 10-A of the Representation of the People Act 1951 for a period of three years for failing to provide a "true and correct account" of her election expenses. She had failed to include in her official poll accounts the amount she spent on advertisements, dressed up as news, in two Hindi dailies, Dainik Jagran and Amar Ujala, during her 2007 election campaign.
The case arose out of an adjudication by the Press Council of India on the complaint of a losing candidate against the two dailies for publishing paid news. After holding the newspapers "guilty of ethical violations" and issuing a caution to them, the Council sent its adjudication to the ECI "for such action as deemed fit by them".
No sitting MP or MLA before Umlesh Yadav, wife of a liquor baron and strongman (D. P. Yadav), has ever been disqualified by the ECI on grounds of excessive expenditure – and certainly none on account of paid news. This is also the first verdict in the paid news saga – a scandal that has hurt the credibility of the Indian news media and demoralised journalists. In its 23-page order, the ECI made the wider and vital observation that "by suppressing expenditure on 'paid news' and filing an incorrect or false account, the candidate involved is guilty of not merely circumventing the law relating to election expenses but also of resorting to false propaganda by projecting a wrong picture and defrauding the electorate".
== References == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taz_Russky | Taz Russky | Taz Russky (Russian: Таз Русский) is a rural locality (a selo) in Klyapovskoye Rural Settlement, Beryozovsky District, Perm Krai, Russia. The population was 175 as of 2010. There are 6 streets.
== Geography ==
It is located on the Taz River, 13 km southeast of Beryozovka (the district's administrative centre) by road. Taz Tatarsky is the nearest rural locality.
== References == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9on_Gambetta | Léon Gambetta | Léon Gambetta (French: [leɔ̃ ɡɑ̃bɛta]; 2 April 1838 – 31 December 1882) was a French lawyer and republican politician who proclaimed the French Third Republic in 1870 and played a prominent role in its early government.
== Early life and education ==
Born in Cahors, Gambetta is said to have inherited his vigour and eloquence from his father, a Genoese grocer who had married a Frenchwoman named Massabie. At the age of fifteen, Gambetta lost the sight of his right eye in an accident, and it eventually had to be removed. Despite this disability, he distinguished himself at school in Cahors. He then worked at his father's grocery shop in Cahors, the Bazar génois ("Genoese bazaar"), and in 1857 went to study at the Faculty of Law of Paris. His temperament gave him great influence among the students of the Quartier latin, and he was soon known as an inveterate enemy of the imperial government.
== Career ==
Gambetta was called to the bar in 1859.
He was admitted to the Conférence Molé in 1861 and wrote to his father, "It is no mere lawyers club, but a veritable political assembly with a left, a right, a center; legislative proposals are the sole subject of discussion. It is there that are formed all the political men of France; it is a veritable training ground for the tribune."
Gambetta, like many other French orators, learned the art of public speaking at the Molé.
However, although he contributed to a Liberal review edited by Challemel-Lacour, Gambetta did not make much of an impression until, on 17 November 1868, he was selected to defend the journalist Delescluze. Delescluze was being prosecuted for having promoted a monument to the representative Baudin, who had been killed while resisting the coup d'état of 1851, and Gambetta seized his opportunity to attack both the coup d'état and the government with a vigour which made him immediately famous.
In May 1869, he was elected to the Assembly, both by a district in Paris and another in Marseille, defeating Hippolyte Carnot for the former constituency and Adolphe Thiers and Ferdinand de Lesseps for the latter. He chose to sit for Marseille, and lost no opportunity of attacking the Empire in the Assembly. Early in his political career, Gambetta was influenced by Le Programme de Belleville, the seventeen statutes that defined the radical program in French politics throughout the Third Republic.
This made him the leading defender of the lower classes in the Corps Législatif. On 17 January 1870, he spoke out against naming a new Imperial Lord Privy Seal, putting him into direct conflict with the regime's de facto prime minister, Émile Ollivier. (see Reinach, J., Discours et plaidoyers politiques de M. Gambetta, I.102 – 113) His powerful oratory caused a complete breakdown of order in the Corps. The Monarchist Right continually tried to interrupt his speech, only to have Gambetta's supporters on the Left attack them. The disagreement reached a high point when M. le Président Schneider asked him to bring his supporters back into order. Gambetta responded, thundering, "l'indignation exclut le calme!" ("indignation excludes calm!") (Reinach, Discours et plaidoyers politiques de M. Gambetta, I.112)
It was also in 1869 that Gambetta was initiated into Freemasonry at "La Réforme" lodge in Paris, sponsored by Louis-Antoine Garnier-Pagès. In this lodge he met Gustave Naquet and Maurice Rouvier.
=== Proclamation of the Republic ===
Gambetta opposed the declaration of the Franco-Prussian War. He did not, however, like some of his colleagues, refuse to vote for funds for the army. On 2 September 1870, the French Army suffered a disastrous defeat at the Battle of Sedan, in which the emperor Napoleon III surrendered and was taken prisoner. The news arrived in Paris on the night of 3 September, and early on 4 September large-scale protests began in the capital.
Parisians broke into the Palais Bourbon, meeting place of the Chamber of Deputies, interrupting a session and calling for a Republic. Later that day, from the Hôtel de Ville, Gambetta proclaimed the French Republic to a large crowd gathered in the Place de l'Hôtel-de-Ville:
Frenchmen!
The people has forestalled the Chamber which was wavering.
To save the Nation in danger, it has asked for the Republic.
It has put its representatives not in power, but in peril.
The Republic was victorious against the invasion of 1792: the Republic is proclaimed.
The Revolution has been carried in the name of the right of public safety.
Citizens, watch over the City which is entrusted to you, tomorrow, along with the army, you shall avenge the Nation!
=== Government of National Defense ===
Gambetta was one of the first members of the new Government of National Defense, becoming Minister of the Interior. He advised his colleagues to leave Paris and run the government from some provincial city.
This advice was rejected because of fear of another revolution in Paris, and a delegation to organize resistance in the provinces was dispatched to Tours, but when this was seen to be ineffective, Gambetta himself left Paris 7 October with Eugène Spuller in a coal gas-filled balloon—the "Armand-Barbès"—and upon arriving at Tours took control as minister of the interior and of war. Aided by Freycinet, a young officer of engineers, as his assistant secretary of war, he quickly organized an army, which might have relieved Paris if Metz had held out, but Bazaine's surrender brought the army of the Prussian prince Friederich Karl back into the field, and success was impossible. After the French defeat near Orléans early in December the seat of government was transferred to Bordeaux.
== Self-exile to San Sebastián ==
Gambetta had hoped for a republican majority in the general elections on 8 February 1871. These hopes vanished when the conservatives and Monarchists won nearly 2/3 of the six hundred Assembly seats. He had won elections in eight different départements, but the ultimate victor was the Orléanist Adolphe Thiers, winner of twenty-three elections. Thiers's conservative and bourgeois intentions clashed with the growing expectations of political power by the lower classes. Hoping to continue his policy of "guerre à outrance" against the Prussian invaders, he tried in vain to rally the Assembly to the war cause. However, Thiers' peace treaty on 1 March 1871 ended the conflict. Gambetta, disgusted with the Assembly's unwillingness to fight, resigned and quit France for San Sebastián in Spain.
Meanwhile, the Paris Commune had taken control of the city. Despite his earlier career, Gambetta voiced his opposition to the Commune in a letter to Antonin Proust, his former secretary while Minister of the Interior, in which he referred to the Commune as "les horribles aventures dans lesquelles s'engage ce qui reste de cette malheureuse France" or "the ghastly madness blighting what remains of our poor France".
Gambetta's stance has been explained by reference to his status as a republican lawyer, who fought from the bar instead of the barricade and also to his father having been a grocer in Marseille. As a small-scale producer during the decades of the Second Industrial Revolution in France, Joseph Gambetta was nearly ruined by the competition of new chain-store food shops. This sort of "big business" made the hard-working middle-class - "petite bourgeoisie" - very resentful, not only of bourgeois industrial capitalism, but also of the working class, which now held the status of backbone of the French economy, rather than the class of small, independent shopkeepers. This resentment may have been passed down from father to son, and manifested itself in an unwillingness to support the lower-class Communards in their usurpation of what the "petite bourgeoisie" had won a certain hegemony over.
=== Return ===
On 24 June 1871, a letter was sent by Gambetta to his Parisian confidant, Dr. Édouard Fieuzal:
Je veux déjouer l'intrigue de parti de ceux qui vont répétant que je refuse toute candidature à Paris. Non. J'accepte au contraire avec fierté et reconnaissance les suffrages de la démocratie Parisienne si elle veut m'honorer de son choix. Je suis prêt.
There is no truth in the rumours being spread that I am refusing to stand for election in Paris. No. I accept, to the contrary, with pride and gratitude the Parisians' votes, if they would do me the honor of choosing me. I am prepared.
(Lettres de Gambetta, no. 122)
Gambetta returned to the political stage and won on three separate ballots. On 5 November 1871 he established a journal, La Republique française, which soon became the most influential in France. His public speeches were more effective than those delivered in the Assembly, especially the one at Bordeaux. His turn towards moderate republicanism first became apparent in Firminy, a small coal-mining town along the Loire River. There, he boldly proclaimed the radical republic he once supported to be "avoided like the plague" (se tenir éloignés comme de la peste) (Discours, III.5). From there, he went to Grenoble. On 26 September 1872, he proclaimed the future of the Republic to be in the hands of "a new social level" (une couche sociale nouvelle) (Discours, III.101), ostensibly the petite bourgeoisie to which his father belonged.
When Adolphe Thiers resigned in May 1873, and a Royalist, Marshal MacMahon, was placed at the head of the government, Gambetta urged his friends to a moderate course. By his tact, parliamentary dexterity and eloquence, he was instrumental in voting in the French Constitutional Laws of 1875 in February 1875. He gave this policy the appropriate name of "opportunism," and became one of the leader of the "Opportunist Republicans." On 4 May 1877, he denounced "clericalism" as the enemy. During the 16 May 1877 crisis, Gambetta, in a speech at Lille on 15 August called on President MacMahon se soumettre ou se démettre, to submit to parliament's majority or to resign. Gambetta then campaigned to rouse the republican party throughout France, which culminated in a speech at Romans (18 September 1878) formulating its programme. MacMahon, unwilling both to resign and to provoke civil war, had no choice but to dismiss his advisers and form a moderate republican ministry under the premiership of Dufaure.
When the downfall of the Dufaure cabinet brought about MacMahon's resignation, Gambetta declined to become a candidate for the presidency, but supported Jules Grévy; nor did he attempt to form a ministry, but accepted the office of president of the chamber of deputies in January 1879. This position did not prevent his occasionally descending from the presidential chair to make speeches, one of which, advocating an amnesty to the communards, was especially memorable. Although he directed the policy of the various ministries from behind the scenes, he evidently thought that the time was not ripe for asserting openly his direction of the policy of the Republic, and seemed inclined to observe a neutral attitude as far as possible. However, events hurried him on, and early in 1881 he headed off a movement for restoring scrutin de liste, or the system by which deputies are returned by the entire department which they represent, so that each elector votes for several representatives at once, in place of scrutin d'arrondissement, the system of small constituencies, giving one member to each district and one for vote to each elector. A bill to re-establish scrutin de liste was passed by the Assembly on 19 May 1881, but rejected by the Senate on 19 June.
This personal rebuff could not alter the fact that his name was on the lips of voters at the election. His supporters won a large majority, and Jules Ferry's cabinet quickly resigned. Gambetta was unwillingly asked by Grévy on 24 November 1881 to form a ministry, known as Le Grand Ministère. Many suspected him of desiring a dictatorship; unjust attacks were directed against him from all sides, and his cabinet fell on 26 January 1882, after only sixty-six days. Had he remained in office, he would have cultivated the British alliance and cooperated with Britain in Egypt; and when the succeeding Freycinet government shrank from that enterprise only to see it undertaken with signal success by Britain alone, Gambetta's foresight was quickly justified.
On 31 December 1882, at his house in Ville d'Avray, near Sèvres, he died from intestine or stomach cancer. Even though he was wounded a month earlier from an accidental revolver discharge, the injury had not been life-threatening. Five artists, Jules Bastien-Lepage, a realist painter, Antonin Proust, defender of the vanguard who Gambetta had named Minister of Fine Arts, Léon Bonnat, an academic painter, Alexandre Falguière, who did his mortuary mask, and his personal photographer Étienne Carjat all sat at his death-bed, making five widely different representations of him which were each published by the press the following day. His public funeral was on 6 January 1883.
== Personal life ==
The love of his life was his connection with Léonie Léon, the full details of which were not known to the public until her death in 1906. She was the daughter of a creole French artillery officer. Gambetta fell in love with her in 1871. She became his mistress, and the liaison lasted until he died. Gambetta constantly urged her to marry him during this period, but she always refused, fearing to compromise his career; she remained, however, his confidante and intimate adviser in all his political plans. It seems she had just consented to become his wife, and the date of the marriage had been fixed, when the accident which caused his death occurred in her presence. Contradictory accounts of this fatal episode exist, but it was certainly accidental, and not suicide. Her influence on Gambetta was absorbing, both as lover and as politician, and the correspondence which has been published shows how much he depended upon her.
However, some of her later recollections are untrustworthy. For example, she claimed that a meeting took place in 1878 between Gambetta and Bismarck. That Gambetta after 1875 felt strongly that relations between France and Germany might be improved, and that he made it his object, by travelling incognito, to become better acquainted with Germany and the adjoining states, may be accepted, but M. Laur appears to have exaggerated the extent to which any actual negotiations took place. On the other hand, the increased knowledge of Gambetta's attitude towards European politics which later information has supplied confirms the view that when he died, France had prematurely lost a clear thinker whom she could ill spare. In April 1905 a monument by Dalou to his memory at Bordeaux was unveiled by President Loubet.
== Legacy ==
Gambetta rendered France three inestimable services: by preserving her self-respect through the gallantry of the resistance he organized during the Franco-Prussian War, by his tact in persuading extreme partisans to accept a moderate Republic, and by his energy in overcoming the usurpation attempted by the advisers of Marshal MacMahon. His death at forty-four cut short a career which had given promise of still greater things, for he had real statesmanship in his conceptions of the future of his country, and he had an eloquence which would have been potent in the education of his supporters.
Gambetta proclamation of the Republic and call for a Levée en masse left a lasting impact on Germany in the decades following. Future Field Marshall Colmar Freiherr von der Goltz wrote in 1877:
Should it come to pass that...our German fatherland suffers a defeat like that of the French at Sedan, I would wish a man emerges who knows how to inspire the sort of absolute resistance Gambetta tried to organize.
In October 1918, when Germany was on the verge of defeat during the First World War, industrialist Walther Rathenau called for a German Levée en masse to reverse the deteriorating situation. Conservative Revolutionary Edgar Jung was also inspired by Gambetta. Adolf Hitler favorably contrasted Gambetta's actions with that of the post-revolutionary leaders of the Weimar Republic:
With the collapse of France at Sedan, the people rose in revolution to save the fallen tricolor! The war continued with new energy! The revolutionaries bravely fought countless battles. The will to defend the state created the French Republic in 1870. It was a symbol not of dishonor but of the upstanding will to preserve the nation. French national honor was revived by the Third Republic. What a contrast to our republic!
A tall monument to Léon Gambetta was planned in 1884 and erected in 1888 in the central space of the Louvre Palace, now Cour Napoléon. That initiative carried heavy political symbolism, since Gambetta was widely viewed as the founder of the Third Republic, and his outsized celebration in the middle of Napoleon III's Louvre expansion thus affirmed the final victory of republicanism over monarchism nearly a century after the French Revolution – in the same vein, the Gambetta monument visually overpowered Napoleon's comparatively diminutive Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel. Most of the monument's sculptures were in bronze and in 1941 were melted for military use by German occupying forces. What remained of the Gambetta Monument was dismantled in 1954.
A stone urn containing Gambetta's heart was placed in 1920 in the monumental staircase leading to the crypt of the Panthéon in Paris. The Russian red quartzite stone that was used for the urn was part of the same shipment that was used for Napoleon's tomb at Les Invalides.
== Gambetta's Ministry, 14 November 1881 – 26 January 1882 ==
Léon Gambetta – President of the Council and Minister of Foreign Affairs
Jean-Baptiste Campenon – Minister of War
Pierre Waldeck-Rousseau – Minister of the Interior
François Allain-Targé – Minister of Finance
Jules Cazot – Minister of Justice
Maurice Rouvier – Minister of the Colonies and of Commerce
Auguste Gougeard – Minister of Marine
Paul Bert – Minister of Public Instruction and Worship
Antonin Proust – Minister of the Arts
Paul Devès – Minister of Agriculture
David Raynal – Minister of Public Works
Adolphe Cochery – Minister of Posts and Telegraphs
== See also ==
List of works by Alexandre Falguière
== References ==
== Sources and further reading ==
Bury, J. P. T. Gambetta and the Making of the Third Republic (Longman, 1973).
Bury, J. P. T. "Gambetta and the Revolution of 4 September 1870." Cambridge Historical Journal 4#3 (1934): 263–282. online.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh (1911). "Gambetta, Léon". In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 11 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 435–436.
Everdell, William R. The End of Kings: A History of Republics and Republicans. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. ISBN 978-0226224824
Foley, Susan, and Charles Sowerwine. A Political Romance: Léon Gambetta, Léonie Léon and the Making of the French Republic, 1872–82 (Springer, 2012).
Foley, Susan. "'Your letter is divine, irresistible, infernally seductive': Léon Gambetta, Léonie Léon, and Nineteenth-Century Epistolary Culture." French Historical Studies 30.2 (2007): 237–267 online.
Lehning, James R. "Gossiping about Gambetta: Contested Memories in the Early Third Republic." French Historical Studies (1993): 237–254 online.
Marzials, Frank Thomas. Life of Léon Gambetta (WH Allen, 1890) online.
=== Primary sources ===
Gambetta, Léon, and Violette M. Montagu. Gambetta: Life and Letters (T. Fisher Unwin, 1910).
Gambetta. Discours et plaidoyers politiques de M. Gambetta, published by J. Reinach in 11 vols. (Paris, 1881–1886)
Gambetta. Dépêches, circulaires, décrets... in 2 vols. (Paris, 1886–1891)
F Laur Le Coeur de Gambetta (1907, Eng. trans., 1908) contains the correspondence with Léonie Leon
Caricatures de Léon Gambetta Caricatures et Caricature |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucas_Radebe | Lucas Radebe | Lucas Valeriu Ntuba Radebe OIS (born 12 April 1969) is a South African former professional footballer who played as a centre back.
He began playing in the than known Bophuthatswana Soccer league (BOPSOL) playing for Stocks Birds in Lehurutshe closer to Zeerust(North West Provence) before being scouted by Kaizer Chiefs in South Africa, before transferring to Leeds United, where he played 262 matches for the Yorkshire side. During his spells at these clubs, he picked up the nicknames "Rhoo" and "The Chief". He became captain of Leeds United and also of the South African national team, most notably at 2002 FIFA World Cup. Nelson Mandela said of Radebe: "This is my hero." He also captained Kaizer Chiefs during his time at Chiefs.
== Early life ==
Radebe was born to Emily and Johannes Radebe in the Diepkloof section of Soweto, near Johannesburg, as one of 11 children. He attended the local Bopasenatla Secondary School until he was 15 years old. His parents sent him to one of the former homelands in Grade 10, Bophuthatswana, as a way to keep him safe from the violent neighbourhood of Diepkloof Zone Four in Soweto. There he attended Ngotwane High School near Zeerust.
== Club career ==
=== Kaizer Chiefs ===
After playing for amateur side ICL Birds in the now-defunct Bophuthatswana Soccer League, and was spotted by Patrick Ntsoelengoe who recruited him to one of South Africa's top clubs, the Kaizer Chiefs, in 1989. Radebe originally started his career with the Kaizer Chiefs as a goalkeeper, and then switched positions to central midfield and then finally to central defence.
=== Leeds United ===
In 1994, Radebe and another South African player, Philemon "Chippa" Masinga, moved to Leeds United for a transfer fee of £250,000. Radebe was only included in the deal to keep Masinga happy; as it turned out, he became the more valuable investment.
Initially the move was not a success; Radebe did not agree with then Leeds manager Howard Wilkinson, and suffered injuries which prevented him for earning a regular first team place.
Radebe returned to the goalkeeper position in March 1996, replacing John Lukic in the position after he suffered an injury in the second half of a defeat to Middlesbrough. Radebe would again play in the goalkeeper position the following month when goalkeeper Mark Beeney was sent off for handling the ball outside his area in the 17th minute against Manchester United. Radebe was brought on as a substitute in place of Mark Ford, and despite Leeds losing 1–0, Radebe earned 'cult-hero' status at the club due to his performance.
However, when Wilkinson was replaced by George Graham, his career flourished and Radebe was made captain of the team for the 1998–99 season. Whilst he was captain, Leeds enjoyed a period of relative success; in the 1998–99 season, they finished fourth in the FA Premier League, qualifying for the UEFA Cup. During the 1999–2000 season, Leeds finished third in the Premier League and qualified for the following season's Champions League, where they eventually reached the semi-finals. During this time, Radebe turned down the chance to move to Manchester United, AC Milan and Roma. Alex Ferguson commented at the time, "Everyone should be interested in Lucas."
In 2000, he was awarded the FIFA Fair Play Award.
However, in 2000 Radebe sustained serious knee and ankle injuries, which kept him out of the game for almost two years, and subsequently found it difficult to regain his form and his place in the team.
== International career ==
Following the end of apartheid, Radebe made his debut for South African national team in their first international match on 7 July 1992 against Cameroon.
Having recently recovered from a long-term knee injury, he was a member of the South African team that won the 1996 African Cup of Nations.
Radebe was also the captain of the South African national football team during both the 1998 FIFA World Cup and the 2002 FIFA World Cup. South Africa failed to reach the knockout stages on both occasions; however Radebe did get on the score sheet in 2002.
He earned 70 caps for South Africa and scored two goals during his international career, with his last match being against England on 22 May 2003.
After retiring, Radebe was influential in South Africa's successful bid to host the 2010 World Cup. He could also be seen working as a pundit for South African television, and during ITV's coverage of the tournament.
== Style of play ==
Thebe Mabanga, a Mail & Guardian journalist, wrote that South African fans remember Radebe in his Kaizer Chiefs days as "a lanky, flamboyant central midfielder who switched to central defence with ease, snuffing out any opposition threat with exquisite, acrobatic scissor kicks and diving headers, and man-marking the most lethal strikers into silence".
== Post-playing career ==
At the end of the 2005 season, Radebe retired from professional football. Leeds held a testimonial for Radebe at Elland Road on 2 May 2005 attended by a crowd of over 37,886. Radebe also held a retirement match in Durban, South Africa between a South African Invitation XI and Lucas Radebe All Stars at Kings Park Soccer Stadium. The proceeds from both of these matches were combined with other money raised and donated to charity.
On 28 August 2006, Radebe announced that he was going back to Leeds after failing to secure a job with the World Cup hosts to be involved in the set-up of Bafana Bafana. He said he was "tired of waiting for unreliable people" who had allegedly promised him a role in the national team set up as the South African Football Association prepared to host the next World Cup in 2010.
In 2008, a local Leeds brewery asked for suggestions for a new beer; the most popular suggestion was Radebeer, showing the Leeds fans' admiration of Radebe.
On 8 October 2009, The English Football Association announced Radebe as an ambassador to help boost the 2018 World Cup bid.
A biography, Lucas: From the Streets of Soweto to Soccer Superstar by Richard Coomber was published in 2010.
In May 2010 he won the PFA Merit Award for his contribution to football.
During the 2010 FIFA World Cup, Radebe was a pundit for ITV's match coverage and also a columnist for The Daily Telegraph.
Radebe revealed in September 2010 that he would like to manage Leeds United in the future and also manage the South African national side. He said both jobs were the only coaching jobs that he would consider. In July 2012, it was announced that Radebe had accepted a position as team manager with the South African national side.
In October 2013, Radebe announced that he was set for another emotional return to the Elland Road ground at Leeds, to be presented to the crowd on Sunday, 30 October 2013.
On 23 January, it was confirmed that Boxer Josh Warrington would fight IBF world champion Lee Selby (26–1) in his first world title fight on 19 May at Elland Road with Radebe joining Warrington for the ringwalk. On 19 May, Warrington secured a split-decision victory over Selby to claim the title. With Radebe as part of Warrington's ringwalk and band Kaiser Chiefs also played songs at the event.
== Personal life ==
In 1991, he was shot whilst driving with his brother Lazarus to buy drinks for his mother but was not critically wounded. When Leeds United confirmed their interest in 1994, Radebe's decision influenced in part by an incident that had taken place three years previously.
Radebe was shopping for his mother, accompanied by his brothers, one of his sisters and her baby. While walking, they heard a gunshot, but didn't pay it much attention because, says Radebe: "In Soweto you heard shots all the time". He felt a pain in his back and he was bleeding, and his left leg went limp.
Radebe was rushed to hospital but nothing vital had been damaged. The bullet had entered his back and exited halfway down his thigh. The culprit is still unknown, it is suspected that someone was hired to shoot him rather than allow him to switch clubs.
He was voted 54th in the Top 100 Great South Africans in 2004.
His wife Feziwe died of cancer in October 2008. In December 2008, Radebe was treated for a heart complaint after collapsing while at the gym. Radebe married his second wife at the end of 2015.
== Legacy ==
Kaiser Chiefs, a British indie/britpop band, whose members are all Leeds United supporters, chose this name because Radebe is a former player of Kaizer Chiefs.
Radebe has been an ambassador of FIFA for SOS Children's Villages; he also received the FIFA Fair Play Award in December 2000 for his contribution in ridding soccer of racism as well as for his work with children in South Africa.
In April 2003, for recognition of his efforts both on an off the field, Radebe was given the Contribution to the Community Award in the Premier League 10 Seasons Awards.
On an official visit to Leeds, Nelson Mandela said of Radebe: "This is my hero."
== Career statistics ==
Sources: Soccerbase
lucasradebe.com
=== International ===
Scores and results list South Africa's goal tally first.
== Honours ==
Kaizer Chiefs
National Soccer League: 1989, 1991, 1992
Leeds United
Football League Cup runner-up: 1995–96
South Africa
African Cup of Nations: 1996
== References ==
== Further reading ==
Graeme Friedman Madiba's Boys: The Stories of Lucas Radebe and Mark Fish Comerford & Miller, United Kingdom ISBN 978-1-871204-22-3. Foreword by Nelson Mandela
== External links ==
Lucas Radebe at National-Football-Teams.com
A short documentary following Lucas back to his home town in Umlazi Township |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yo-Yo_Ma#:~:text=In%202010%2C%20President%20Obama%20announced,of%20the%20Chicago%20Symphony%20Orchestra. | Yo-Yo Ma | Yo-Yo Ma (born October 7, 1955) is an American cellist. Born to Chinese parents in Paris, he was regarded as a child prodigy, and began to study the cello with his father at age four. At the age of seven, Ma moved with his family to Boston and later to New York City, where he continued his cello studies at the Juilliard School before pursuing a liberal arts education at Harvard University. He has performed as a soloist with orchestras around the world, recorded more than 92 albums, and received 19 Grammy Awards.
In addition to recordings of the standard classical repertoire, Ma has recorded a wide variety of folk music, such as American bluegrass music, traditional Chinese melodies, the tangos of Argentine composer Astor Piazzolla, and Brazilian music. He has also collaborated with artists from a diverse range of genres, including Bobby McFerrin, Carlos Santana, Chris Botti, Diana Krall, James Taylor, Miley Cyrus, Zakir Hussain, and Sting.
Ma has been a United Nations Messenger of Peace since 2006. He has received numerous awards, including the Avery Fisher Prize in 1978, The Glenn Gould Prize in 1999, the National Medal of Arts in 2001, the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2011, Kennedy Center Honors in 2011, the Polar Music Prize in 2012, and the Birgit Nilsson Prize in 2022. He was named as one of Time's 100 Most Influential People of 2020.
Ma's primary performance instrument is the Davidov cello, made in 1712 by Antonio Stradivari.
== Early life and education ==
Ma's mother, Marina Lu, was a singer, and his father, Hiao-Tsiun Ma, was a violinist, composer and professor of music at Nanjing National Central University (now relocated in Taoyuan, Taiwan; predecessor of the present-day Nanjing University and Southeast University). They both migrated from the Republic of China to France during the Chinese Civil War. Ma's sister, Yeou-Cheng, played the violin and piano professionally before obtaining a medical degree from Harvard Medical School and becoming a pediatrician. The family moved to Boston when Ma was seven.
From the age of three, Ma played the drums, violin, piano, and later viola, but settled on the cello in 1960 at age four. When three-year-old Yo-Yo said he wanted a big instrument, his father went to see Étienne Vatelot, a foremost violin maker in Paris who, after a chat, lent him a 1/16th cello. He jokes that his first choice was the double bass due to its large size, but he compromised and took up the cello instead. While Hiao-Tsiun handled much of his son's early music education, he eventually conceded that Yo-Yo required a more skilled teacher, and signed his son up for cello lessons with the renowned Michelle Lepinte. He began performing before audiences at age five and played for presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy when he was seven. At age eight, he appeared on American television with his sister in an event introduced by Leonard Bernstein. In 1964, Isaac Stern introduced them on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, and they performed the Sonata of Sammartini. After moving to New York, Ma enrolled at the Juilliard School, where he studied under renowned cellist Leonard Rose, and attended Trinity School in New York but transferred to the Professional Children's School, where he graduated at age 15. He appeared as a soloist with the Harvard Radcliffe Orchestra in a performance of Tchaikovsky's Rococo Variations.
Ma attended Columbia University, but dropped out. He later enrolled at Harvard College. Prior to entering Harvard, Ma played in the Marlboro Festival Orchestra under the direction of cellist, conductor and Ma's childhood hero Pablo Casals. He spent four summers at the Marlboro Music Festival after meeting and falling in love with Mount Holyoke College sophomore and festival administrator Jill Hornor during his first summer there in 1972.
Even before that time, Ma gained fame and performed with many of the world's major orchestras. He has also played chamber music, often with pianist Emanuel Ax, with whom he has a close friendship from their days at Juilliard. Ma received his bachelor's degree in anthropology from Harvard in 1976, and in 1991 received an honorary doctorate from Harvard.
== Career ==
Ma was featured on John Williams's soundtrack to the Hollywood film Seven Years in Tibet (1997). He was heard on the soundtrack of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), and Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003). He collaborated with Williams again on the score for Memoirs of a Geisha (2005). He has also worked with Italian composer Ennio Morricone and has recorded Morricone's compositions of the Dollars Trilogy, including The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, as well as Once Upon a Time in America, The Mission, and The Untouchables. He has recorded over 90 albums, 19 of which are Grammy Award winners. He received the Award of Excellence from New York's International Center.
In addition to his prolific musical career, Ma collaborated in 1999 with landscape architects to design a Bach-inspired garden. Known as the Music Garden, it interprets Bach's Suite No. 1 in G major, with the garden's sections designed to correspond to the suite's dance movements. Toronto enthusiastically embraced the design, originally planned for Boston, and it was subsequently built in the Harbourfront neighborhood.
Ma was named Peace Ambassador by then-UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in January 2006. He is a founding member of the influential Chinese-American Committee of 100, which addresses the concerns of Americans of Chinese heritage.
On November 3, 2009, President Barack Obama appointed Ma to serve on the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities. His music was featured in the 2010 documentary Jews and Baseball: An American Love Story, narrated by Academy Award winner Dustin Hoffman. In 2010, President Obama announced that he would recognize Ma with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which Ma received in February 2011.
In 2010, Ma was named Judson and Joyce Green Creative Consultant of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. He launched the Citizen Musician initiative partnership in partnership with the orchestra's music director, Riccardo Muti. Also in 2010, he appeared on a solo album by guitarist Carlos Santana, Guitar Heaven: The Greatest Guitar Classics of All Time, playing alongside Santana and singer India Arie on the Beatles classic "While My Guitar Gently Weeps".
In 2015, Ma performed with singer-songwriter and guitarist James Taylor on three tracks of Taylor's chart-topping album Before This World. In 2019, Ma directed the orchestra at the annual Youth Music Culture Guangdong. Ma is represented by the independent artist management firm Opus 3 Artists. Ma contributed to the charity tribute album The Metallica Blacklist, released in September 2021, backing Miley Cyrus on a cover of the Metallica song "Nothing Else Matters".
Ma serves on the Board of Trustees of the World Economic Forum.
=== Silk Road Ensemble ===
Ma formed his own collective, the Silk Road Ensemble, named after the route across Asia which for more than 2,000 years was used for trade between Europe and China. His goal was to bring together musicians from diverse countries that were historically linked via the Silk Road. The ensemble's recordings are issued on the Sony Classical label. He also founded the Silk Road Connect, an educational pilot program for children from middle schools in the United States, including New York City.
== Playing style ==
Yo-Yo Ma has been referred to by critics as "omnivorous" and possesses an eclectic repertoire. In addition to numerous recordings of the standard classical repertoire, he has recorded Baroque pieces using period instruments; American bluegrass music; traditional Chinese melodies, including the soundtrack to the film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; the tangos of Argentinian composer Astor Piazzolla; Brazilian music, recording traditional and contemporary songs composed by Antônio Carlos Jobim and Pixinguinha; a collaboration with Bobby McFerrin (where Ma admitted to being terrified by McFerrin's improvisation); and the music of modern minimalist Philip Glass, in such works as the 2002 Naqoyqatsi.
Ma is known for his smooth, rich tone, soulful lyricism, and virtuosity. He released a cello recording of Niccolò Paganini's Caprice No. 24 for solo violin and Zoltán Kodály's Solo Sonata.
== Instruments ==
Ma's primary performance instrument is the Davidov cello, made in 1712 by Antonio Stradivari. It was previously owned by Jacqueline du Pré, who bequeathed it to him. Du Pré voiced her frustration with the cello's "unpredictability", but Ma attributed du Pré's sentiment to her impassioned style of playing, adding that the Stradivarius cello must be "coaxed" by the player. Prior to the Davidov, he performed on a 1722 Matteo Gofriller cello which he used for much of his early career. The instrument was previously in the possession of the French cellist Pierre Fournier.
Ma also plays on a 1733 Domenico Montagnana cello, named the "Petunia". In 2005, it was valued at US$2.5 million (US$4 million in 2024 prices). A student approached Ma after one of his classes in Salt Lake City and asked if the cello had a nickname. Ma replied, "No, but if I play for you, will you name it?" The student chose Petunia, and it stuck. In 1999, Ma inadvertently left the cello in a taxicab in New York City, but it was quickly returned undamaged. That year, when its neck was damaged during X-ray baggage inspection, he borrowed the Pawle Stradivarius cello from the Chimei Museum for a concert in Taiwan. The damage was repaired in time, but Ma played both Petunia and Pawle in the concert nonetheless.
Ma also owns a modern cello made by Peter and Wendela Moes of Warrenton, Virginia, one of carbon fiber by the Luis and Clark company of Boston, and a Samuel Zygmuntowicz cello. According to Zygmuntowicz, he "wants to give (Ma) a reason to leave his Montagnana at home."
== Notable performances ==
On July 5, 1986, Ma performed in the New York Philharmonic's tribute to the 100th anniversary of the Statue of Liberty, which was televised live on ABC Television. The orchestra, with conductor Zubin Mehta, performed in Central Park.
Ma performed a duet with Condoleezza Rice at the presentation of the 2001 National Medal of Arts and National Humanities Medal Awards. He was the first performer on September 11, 2002, at the site of the World Trade Center, while the first of the names of the dead were read on the first anniversary of the attack on the WTC; he played the Sarabande from Bach's Cello Suite No. 5 in C minor. He performed a special arrangement of Sting's "Fragile" with Sting and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir in the opening ceremonies of the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Utah. He also appeared as a Pennington Great Performers series artist with the Baton Rouge Symphony Orchestra in 2005.
He performed John Williams's Air and Simple Gifts at the first inauguration of Barack Obama on January 20, 2009, along with Itzhak Perlman (violin), Gabriela Montero (piano), and Anthony McGill (clarinet). While the quartet played live, the music, played simultaneously over speakers and on television, was a recording made two days prior due to concerns over the cold weather damaging the instruments. Ma said, "A broken string was not an option. It was wicked cold."
On May 3, 2009, Ma performed the world premiere of Bruce Adolphe's "Self Comes to Mind" for solo cello and two percussionists with John Ferrari and Ayano Kataoka at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. The work is based on a poetic description written for the composer of the evolution of brain into mind by neuroscientist Antonio Damasio. A film of brain scans provided by Hanna Damasio, and other images, were coordinated with the performance.
On August 29, 2009, Ma performed at the funeral mass for Senator Edward M. Kennedy. Pieces he performed included the Sarabande movement from Bach's Cello Suite No. 6 in D major and Franck's "Panis angelicus" with Plácido Domingo.
On October 3, 2009, Ma appeared with Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper at the National Arts Centre gala in Ottawa. Harper, a fan of The Beatles, played the piano and sang a rendition of "With a Little Help from My Friends" while Ma accompanied him on cello. On October 16, 2011, Ma performed at the memorial of Steve Jobs at Stanford University's Memorial Church.
In 2011, Ma performed with American dancer Charles "Lil Buck" Riley in the United States and in China at the U.S.-China Forum on the Arts and Culture.
On April 18, 2013, he performed at an interfaith service to honor the victims of the Boston Marathon bombing, held at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross, where he played the Sarabande from Bach's Cello Suite No. 5. He and other musicians also accompanied members of the Boston Children's Chorus in a hymn.
On September 9, 2015, Ma performed all six of Bach's cello suites at the Royal Albert Hall (London) as part of the BBC Proms season.
On September 12, 2017, Ma performed all six of Bach's cello suites at the Hollywood Bowl (Los Angeles). After the first three suites, there was a "ten-minute pause" (as the Bowl video screen described it). The audience of around 17,000 also heard him play an encore, a tribute to "cellist Pablo Casals, who as a 13-year-old in 1890 discovered an old copy of the Bach suites in a secondhand music store, bringing them to modern attention. Ma's memorable last words were, "If there are any 13-year-olds here—don't throw anything away."
On November 11, 2018, Ma performed at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, with violinist Renaud Capuçon, in front of a crowd of world leaders during a ceremony marking the centenary of the armistice that ended World War I.
On May 1, 2019, he performed at Paranal Observatory in the Atacama desert. He said that his interest in astronomy motivated him to visit and perform there.
On June 20, 2019, Ma performed Bach's Cello Suites at Jay Pritzker Pavilion in Chicago, Illinois. The free performance attracted what might have been his largest audience, with a pavilion capacity of 11,000, and many thousands more listening from surrounding Millennium Park.
On January 20, 2021, Ma's performance of "Amazing Grace"—pre-recorded due to the COVID-19 pandemic—was played during the inauguration of Joe Biden. In March 2021, Ma played "Ave Maria" in an impromptu waiting room concert, after receiving his second dose of a COVID-19 vaccine at Berkshire Community College in Massachusetts.
On September 14, 2021, Ma again performed Bach's six cello suites at the Hollywood Bowl, this time without intermission, pausing only briefly for applause between suites, and to announce his dedications for two of them.
On December 7, 2024, on the Reopening of Notre-Dame in Paris, Ma performed the prelude of the First Cello Suite from Bach.
== Media appearances ==
Ma appeared as himself in an episode ("My Music Rules") of the animated children's television series Arthur, and on The West Wing (the episode "Noël"), where he played the prelude to Bach's Cello Suite No.1 at a Congressional Christmas party. He made five appearances on Sesame Street, all of which first aired during the show's 17th season in 1986. He appeared in The Simpsons episode "Puffless", where he played a serenade and theme music. Ma's likeness appeared in another Simpsons episode, "Missionary: Impossible", but he was played by regular Simpsons cast member Hank Azaria rather than Ma himself. Ma appeared twice on Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, developed a friendship with creator and host Fred Rogers, and later received the inaugural Fred Rogers Legacy Award.
Ma was often invited to press events by Apple Inc. and Pixar CEO Steve Jobs, performed during the company's major events, and appeared in a commercial for the Macintosh computer. Ma's Bach recordings were used in a memorial video released by Apple on the first anniversary of Jobs's death.
Ma was a guest on the "Not My Job" segment of Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! on April 7, 2007, where he won for listener Thad Moore.
On October 27, 2008, Ma appeared as a guest and performer on The Colbert Report. He was also one of the show's guests on November 1, 2011, where he performed songs from the album The Goat Rodeo Sessions with musicians Stuart Duncan, Edgar Meyer and Chris Thile. He also performed several of Bach's cello suites for the 2012 film Bill W. On October 5, 2015, he appeared on Colbert's new program, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, in support of ballerina Misty Copeland, and prematurely celebrating his 60th birthday.
In August 2018, Ma appeared on NPR's Tiny Desk Concerts.
On June 19, 2020, the same group of musicians who recorded The Goat Rodeo Sessions released a second album, Not Our First Goat Rodeo. On September 1, 2020, the same group performed a virtual concert of some songs from Not Our First Goat Rodeo on NPR's Tiny Desk Concerts.
On June 13, 2021, Ma was the guest on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs. His musical choices included "Tin Tin Deo" by the Oscar Peterson Trio and "Podmoskovnye Vechera – Moscow Nights" by Vasily Solovyov-Sedoi. He selected as his book the 24 volumes of the Encyclopædia Britannica, and as his luxury item a Swiss Army knife. He revealed that his career in music felt like a "gift" after scoliosis threatened his ability to play in his 20s.
In 2022, Ma made a cameo appearance as himself in the Netflix film Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery.
== Personal life ==
Since 1978, Ma has been married to Jill Hornor, an arts consultant. They have two children, Nicholas and Emily. Although he personally considers it the "worst epithet he's ever faced," he was "tagged" in 2001 as "Sexiest Classical Musician" by People. He has continued to receive such accolades over the years, including from AARP in 2012, when Ma was named one of the "21 sexiest men over 50".
According to research presented by Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. for the PBS series Faces of America, a relative hid the Ma family genealogy in his home in China to save it from destruction during the Cultural Revolution. Ma's paternal ancestry can be traced back 18 generations to the year 1217. The genealogy was compiled in the 18th century by an ancestor, tracing everyone with the surname Ma, through the paternal line, back to one common ancestor in the 3rd century BC. Ma's generation name, Yo, was decided by his fourth great grand-uncle, Ma Ji Cang, in 1755. DNA research revealed that Ma is distantly related to actress Eva Longoria.
Aside from English, Ma is fluent in Mandarin Chinese and French.
== Discography ==
Ma's albums include recordings of cello concertos, sonatas for cello and piano, works for solo cello, and a variety of chamber music. He has also recorded in non-classical styles, notably in collaboration with artists such as Bobby McFerrin, Carlos Santana, Chris Botti, Chris Thile, Diana Krall, James Taylor, Miley Cyrus and Sting.
== Awards and recognition ==
Grammy Award
Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music Performance:
1986: Brahms: Cello and Piano Sonatas in E Minor Op. 38, and F Op. 99
1987: Beethoven: Cello and Piano Sonata No. 4 in C & Variations
1992: Brahms: Piano Quartets Op. 25, Op. 26
1993: Brahms: Sonatas for Cello & Piano
1996: Brahms/Beethoven/Mozart: Clarinet Trios
Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Soloist(s) Performance:
1990: Barber: Cello Concerto, Op. 22/Britten: Symphony for Cello and Orchestra, Op. 68
1993: Prokofiev: Sinfonia Concertante/Tchaikovsky: Variations on a Rococo Theme
1995: The New York Album – Works of Albert, Bartók & Bloch
1998: Yo-Yo Ma Premieres – Danielpour, Kirchner, Rouse
Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Soloist Performance:
1985: Bach: The Unaccompanied Cello Suites
Grammy Award for Best Classical Contemporary Composition:
1995: The New York Album, Stephen Albert: Cello Concerto
Grammy Award for Best Classical Album:
1998: Yo-Yo Ma Premieres – Danielpour, Kirchner, Rouse
Grammy Award for Best Classical Crossover Album:
1999: Soul of the Tango – The Music of Astor Piazzolla
2001: Appalachian Journey
2004: Obrigado Brazil
2009: Songs of Joy & Peace
Grammy Award for Best Folk Album:
2012: The Goat Rodeo Sessions w/ Stuart Duncan, Edgar Meyer & Chris Thile
Grammy Award for Best World Music Album:
2017: Sing Me Home – Yo-Yo Ma & The Silk Road Ensemble
Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance:
2022: Beethoven: Cello Sonatas - Hope and Tears – Yo-Yo Ma & Emanuel Ax
=== Honorary doctorates ===
1991: Honorary Doctor of Music, Harvard University
2005: Honorary Doctor of Musical Arts, Princeton University
2019: Honorary Doctor of Music, University of Oxford
2019: Honorary Doctor of Arts, Dartmouth College
2021: Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts, Mount Holyoke College
2022: Honorary Doctor of Music, Stony Brook University
2022: Honorary Doctor of Music, Columbia University
Others
1978: Avery Fisher Prize
1993: Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
1999: The Glenn Gould Prize
1999: Member of the American Philosophical Society
2001: National Medal of Arts
2004: Harvard Arts Medal
2004: Latin Grammy for Best Instrumental Album at the Latin Grammy Awards for Obrigado Brazil
2006: Dan David Prize
2006: Léonie Sonning Music Prize
2011: Kennedy Center Honor
2011: Presidential Medal of Freedom
2012: Polar Music Prize
2012: Songlines Music Awards - Best Cross-Cultural Collaboration for The Goat Rodeo Sessions
2013: Gramophone Hall of Fame inductee
2013: Vilcek Prize in Contemporary Music
2014: Fred Rogers Legacy Award - Inaugural Recipient. Upon reception of the award, Ma stated, "This is perhaps the greatest honor I've ever received."
2016: Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters
2020: Asia Game Changer Award from the Asia Society
2021: Praemium Imperiale
2022: Birgit Nilsson Prize
2024: Royal Philharmonic Society Gold Medal
== Notes ==
== References ==
== External links ==
Quotations related to Yo-Yo Ma at Wikiquote
Official website
Yo-Yo Ma at Sony Classical
Yo-Yo Ma's gear at Gearboard
Yo-Yo Ma at AllMusic
Appearances on C-SPAN
Yo-Yo Ma discography at Discogs
Leonard Bernstein presents 7-year-old Yo-Yo Ma's high-profile debut for President John F. Kennedy. on YouTube. Duration: 8 min 01 sec. Yo-Yo Ma, violoncello, and his sister Yeou-Cheng Ma, piano, perform the First movement of Concertino No. 3 in A major by Jean-Baptiste Bréval (1753-1823) on 29 November 1962. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Retrieved April 10, 2023.
"Yo-Yo Ma Real Name: 馬友友 - Mǎ Yǒuyǒu. [Yo-Yo Ma discography with 216 entries]". discogs.com. Discogs. 2023. Retrieved April 10, 2023.
"Santana - Guitar Heaven: The Greatest Guitar Classics Of All Time". discogs.com. Discogs. 2010. Retrieved April 10, 2023. Entry: CD04 While My Guitar Gently Weeps, Featuring – India.Arie, Yo-Yo Ma. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamia_Millia_Islamia#:~:text=The%20foundation%20stone%20was%20laid,his%20student%20Shabbir%20Ahmad%20Usmani. | Jamia Millia Islamia | Jamia Millia Islamia is a public and research university located in Delhi, India. Originally established at Aligarh, United Provinces (present-day Uttar Pradesh, India) during the British Raj in 1920, it moved to its current location in New Delhi, Okhla in 1935. It was given the deemed status by the University Grants Commission in 1962. Jamia Millia Islamia became a central university by an act of the Indian parliament which was passed on 26 December 1988.
The university was founded by Mohammad Ali Jauhar, Hakim Ajmal Khan, Mahmud Hasan Deobandi, Mukhtar Ahmed Ansari, Abdul Majeed Khwaja, Zakir Hussain, Mahatma Gandhi and Maulana Azad. Its foundation stone was laid by Mahmud Hasan Deobandi, the leader of Silk Letter Movement and the first student of Darul Uloom Deoband along with his fellow Mohammed Ali Jauhar, Hakim Ajmal Khan, Mukhtar Ahmad Ansari, and Abdul Majid Khwaja.
Jauhar served as its first vice-chancellor from 1920 to 1923, and Khan served as the first chancellor from 1920 to 1927. On 26 May 2017, Najma Heptulla became 11th and the first woman Chancellor of the university, and Najma Akhtar became the first woman to hold the post of Vice Chancellor in April 2019 and served until 12 November 2023. On 13 March 2023, Mufaddal Saifuddin was elected the 12th Chancellor of the university.
In 2020, Jamia Millia Islamia was ranked 1st among all central universities in the country in rankings released by Ministry of Education of India. In December 2021, the university received an 'A++' ranking by National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC).
== History ==
Jamia Millia Islamia was established in Aligarh on 29 October 1920 by nationalist leaders and students of Aligarh Muslim University.
Maulana Mohammad Ali Jauhar, Hakim Ajmal Khan, Dr. Mukhtar Ahmad Ansari, and Abdul Majeed Khwaja were its founding members. It was established in response to demands by a group of students and teachers from the Aligarh Muslim University for a new National Muslim University which would be free from government influence as they perceived the administration of Aligarh Muslim University to be pro-British.
=== Foundation ===
The founding members included Muhammad Ali Jauhar, Hakim Ajmal Khan and Mukhtar Ahmed Ansari. The foundation stone of the university was laid by Mahmud Hasan Deobandi, an Islamic scholar and activist of the Indian independence movement who was invited to Aligarh to preside over the ceremony. His speech was prepared and read aloud by his student Shabbir Ahmad Usmani. Its subsequent makers included Abdul Majeed Khwaja, Abid Hussain, Mohammad Mujeeb and Zakir Hussain.
The foundation committee of Jamia included Kifayatullah Dehlawi, Hussain Ahmad Madani, Syed Sulaiman Nadwi, Abdul Haq, Abdul Bari Firangi Mahali, Shabbir Ahmad Usmani, Sanaullah Amritsari, Syed Mahmud, and Saifuddin Kitchlew.
It was conceived as a national institution that would offer progressive education and an emphasis on Indian nationalism to students from all communities, particularly Muslims. Hussain described “the movement of Jamia Millia Islamia as a struggle for education and cultural renaissance that aims to prepare a blueprint for Indian Muslims which may focus on Islam but simultaneously evolve a national culture for common Indian.” The emergence of Jamia was supported by Mahatma Gandhi, who felt that Jamia Millia Islamia could shape lives of students on the basis of a shared culture and worldview, so Gandhi sent his youngest son Devdas Gandhi to teach Hindi in Jamia.
In 1925, Jamia Millia Islamia moved from Aligarh to Karol Bagh, New Delhi. On 1 March 1935, the foundation stone for a school building was laid at Okhla, then a nondescript village in the southern outskirts of Delhi. In 1936, all institutions of Jamia Millia Islamia except Jamia Press, the Maktaba, and the library moved to the new campus.
The University Grants Commission gave Jamia Millia Islamia the deemed status in 1962. Subsequently, on 26 December 1988, it attained the status of a central university through an act of the Indian parliament.
In 2006, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia paid a visit to the university and donated ₹130 crore(US$30 million) for the construction of a library and a research center.
=== 2019 Jamia Millia Islamia attack ===
In 2019, the university emerged as a center of the Citizenship Amendment Act protests after the act was passed by the Parliament. On 13 December 2019, Delhi Police tried to forcefully dismiss the protest of students and threw tear gas inside the campus on students to control their agitation. On 15 December 2019, police entered the campus on the pretext of trying to catch the mob that destroyed public peace outside the university campus. Many students sustained injuries because of the police brutality and it sparked protests in several other universities.
== Campus ==
The campus is distributed over a large area in the Okhla area of Delhi. The university's cricket ground, Nawab Mansoor Ali Khan Pataudi Sports Complex, has hosted tournaments and Indian women's cricket matches. This ground also hosted the University Cricket Championship in 2013. Jamia has centers of learning and research, including the Anwar Jamal Kidwai Mass Communication Research Centre (MCRC), Faculty of Engineering & Technology, Faculty of Fine Arts, Centre for Theoretical Physics and the Maulana Mohammad Ali Jauhar Academy of International Studies. Jamia Millia Islamia joined the green campaign and installed 2,250-kilowatt solar panels on the campus. To commemorate 100 years of existence, the existing Gate No. 13 of the university was remodelled and named Centenary Gate, which was inaugurated on university's 103rd foundation day.
Former Vice-Chancellor, Najma Akhtar, at centenary convocation on 23 July 2023 announced that the university has obtained approval from the Central government to establish a medical college.
=== Sports ===
Jamia won its first gold and silver medal in wrestling in 1977 at the All India Inter University Championship.
Ranji Trophy and Vijaya Trophy matches are an annual event at the Nawab Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi Sports Complex. In the past, Jamia has hosted Women's Cricket Test matches, Women's World Cup matches and Blind's Cricket World Cup matches. The facilities were used as practice ground for Commonwealth Games as well.
The ground within its periphery also consists of a central indoor games stadium. The sports complex has facilities for: Cricket, Football, Lawn Tennis Court, Volleyball Court, Badminton, Basketball, Jogging Track, Athletics, Table Tennis, Yoga, Snooker Room and Hockey. The Complex is equipped with gymnasium and sports equipment.
=== Library ===
The University Library System, consisting of a centralized and departmental libraries and archives, has over 600,000 and approximately 143,000 subject-specific books, Urdu book collections; 5000 rare books; and 2230 rare manuscripts. The library subscribes to open access to videos; e-resources; eBooks; e-journals; other academic materials; databases; MOOCs courses. The Digital Resource Centre has 100 workstations as a gateway for online resources and 200 computers for students. The library is open to all students of Jamia Millia Islamia. Besides this, there are subject collection in libraries of some faculties and centres.
=== Health facilities ===
The university provides free medical facilities for students, teaching and non-teaching staff through Ansari Healthcare Centre, Faculty of Dentistry, Centre for Physiotherapy and Rehabilitation Services and Unani Pharmacy.
=== Mosques ===
The campus contains the Central Mosque which is located opposite to the central library and has a capacity of over 1000 people. This mosque is situated on Maulana Mohammad Ali Jauhar Marg, Delhi.
== Organisation and administration ==
=== Governance ===
The governing officials of the university include the Amir-i-Jamia (chancellor), the Shaikh-ul-Jamia (vice-chancellor), the Naib Shaikh-ul-Jamia (Pro-Vice-Chancellor) and the Musajjil (Registrar). The President of India is the Visitor of the university. The Anjuman or University Court is the supreme authority of the university and has the power to review the acts of the Majlis-i-Muntazimah (Executive Council) the Majlis-i-Talimi (Academic Council) and the Majlis-i-Maliyat (Finance Committee). The Executive Council is the highest executive body of the university. The Academic Council is the highest academic body of the university and is responsible for the maintenance of standards of instruction, education and examination within the university.
In 2017, Najma Heptulla was appointed as the Chancellor of Jamia Millia Islamia. In 2019, Najma Akhtar was appointed as the first woman vice-chancellor and served till 12 November 2023. In 2023, Syedna Mufaddal Saifuddin succeeded Najma Heptulla and was appointed as the Chancellor. In 2024, Jawaharlal Nehru University professor Mazhar Asif was appointed as the Vice Chancellor of the university.
=== Faculties ===
Jamia Millia Islamia has eleven faculties under which it offers academic and extension programs.
==== Faculty of Law ====
Established in 1989, the Faculty of Law offered only the three-year LL.B. course until the early 2000s, but started additionally offering the integrated 5 Years B.A. LL.B(Hons.) course for UG students from the academic year 2002–2003. The faculty offers apart from a five-year integrated B.A. LL.B (Hons.) programme, a two-year post-graduate programme (LLM) in three specialised streams (personal law, corporate law and criminal law) and a Ph.D. programme. It also offers two-year Executive LL.M programme for working professionals. JMI offers two Post Graduate Diploma Programmes are PG Diploma in Air Space Law and PG Diploma in Labour Law. The faculty secured the 6th rank among law schools in India as per NIRF Ranking 2024.
==== Faculty of Engineering and Technology ====
The Faculty of Engineering and Technology (FET) was established in 1985. It has several departments offering programmes in PhD, M.Tech., M.Sc., B.Tech. and B.Sc. including Civil Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Electronics & Communication Engineering, Computer Engineering, Aeronautics, Applied Sciences & Humanities and Environmental Science. They also provide specialization courses for master's degrees such as Artificial Intelligence, Data Sciences, VLSI Design and Technology, Solid State Technology, Environmental Science and Engineering, Earthquake Engineering, Machine Design, Thermal Engineering, Production and Industrial Engineering, Electrical Power Management System, Control & Instrumental System, Electronics, Energy Science and Management, Energy Science and Technology, Environmental Health Risk and Safety Management. In the Times Higher Education Subject Ranking-2024, JMI ranked 401–500 in Engineering and Technology. Within India its rank is 11 among all higher education institutions while among universities it is 2nd position. JMI was placed at 501–600 in computer science, while among Indian Institutions it has been ranked at 16th position and at 7th among Indian universities.
==== Faculty of Architecture and Ekistics ====
Jamia Millia Islamia is the only Central university with a Faculty of Architecture & Ekistics. The architecture program was started in 2001–2002. This Faculty has three departments- Department of Architecture, Department of Planning and Department of Design and Innovation. This faculty which offers two- bachelor degree courses in Bachelor of Architecture (B.Arch) and Bachelor of Design (B.Des), Nine Masters courses, one PG Diploma and PhD. The courses include undergraduate, postgraduate and doctoral studies in subjects such as Architecture, Architecture Pedagogy, Healthcare Architecture, Building Services, Recreational Architecture, Urban Regeneration, Ekistics, Master of Planning (M.Plan) and Master of Design (M.Des). P.G. Diploma in Fire Safety, Lifts and Plumbing Services
==== Faculty of Humanities and Languages ====
This Faculty has nine departments offering programmes in PhD, M Phil (pre-PhD), Postgraduate, Undergraduate, Diploma and Certificate courses.
The faculty has departments for Bachelors, Masters and PhD including Arabic, English, Hindi, History and Culture, Islamic Studies, Persian, Iranology, Urdu, Sanskrit and Foreign Languages such as Korean, Japanese, Turkish, German, French and Spanish & Latin American. Sanskrit Department also offers two certificate programmes are Sanskrit and Yoga. Foreign Language Department also offers Certificate, Diploma and Advanced Diploma courses in Pashto, Persian, French, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Portuguese, Turkish, Chinese, Korean and Uzbek. Islamic Studies has been a subject at Jamia Millia Islamia since its inception. It was instituted as a separate department in 1988. The department has been headed by Zayn al-Abidin Sajjad Meerthi. The department publishes an annual magazine, Sada e Jauhar.
==== Faculty of Fine Arts ====
This Faculty has six departments offering programmes in PhD, Master of Fine Arts (MFA), Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA), diploma and certificate courses. The subjects taught include Painting, Sculpture, Applied Arts, Art Education, Graphic Art, Art History & Art Appreciation, Curatorial Practices, Art Management and Conceptual Art Practice. Certificate programmes are Design and Innovation, Textile Design, Creative Photography, Calligraphy, Art Appreciation & Art Writing, Art & Aesthetics, and Graphic Art (Print Making) The campus has an art gallery named after the Indian painter M. F. Hussain.
==== Faculty of Social Sciences ====
The Faculty of Social Sciences consists of nine departments. These include the departments for Social Sciences, Psychology, Economics, Political Science, Sociology, Social Work, Adult Continuing Education and Extension, Commerce and Business Studies, Library and Information Science.
The Faculty of Social Sciences is based around Gulistan-e-Ghalib and is commonly referred to as the Main Campus.
==== Faculty of Sciences ====
The Faculty of Sciences consists of five departments, Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics, Geography and Computer Science. In addition, there are three associated centres namely FTK- Centre for Information Technology, Centre for Theoretical Physics and Centre for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology.
==== Faculty of Life Sciences ====
The faculty of Life Sciences, based in Srinivasa Ramanujan Block at Mujeeb Bagh Campus, consists of two departments, Biosciences and Biotechnology, which offers courses in Ph.D., postgraduate, undergraduate and diploma in Unani Pharmacy and Ph.D. Unani Medicine.
==== Faculty of Education ====
The Teachers’ Training Institute was established in 1938 under the inspiring leadership of Hussain for the purpose of training teachers for Basic Schools according to the scheme of Basic Education. Later, it was renamed as Teachers’ College. The college initiated Teacher Education Programme for Art and Craft Teachers and in Art Education. The Faculty of Education, through its two departments namely Educational Studies and Institute of Advanced Studies in Education, formerly known as the department of Teacher Training and Non-Formal Education runs 12 different programmes including B.Ed., M.Ed., M.A. The Faculty also offers diploma, M.Phil. and Doctoral programme in Education.
==== Faculty of Dentistry ====
This faculty offers B. D. S. programs.
==== Faculty of Management Studies ====
The faculty consists of three departments for Management Studies, Hospital Management & Hospice Studies, and Tourism & Hospitality Management.
=== Centers ===
==== AJK Mass Communication Research Center ====
The Mass Communication Research Centre was established in 1982 by Anwar Jamal Kidwai, then vice-chancellor (later chancellor) of Jamia Millia Islamia. The centers offers postgraduate courses in Mass Communication. The FTK-Centre for Information Technology provides internet facility for the faculty members, staff, research scholars, and students.
The centre offers courses including Master of Arts courses in Mass Communication, Convergent Journalism, Development Communication, Visual Effect and Animation as well as postgraduate diplomas in, Still Photography and Visual Communication, Acting and Broadcast Technology.
==== Centre for Physiotherapy and Rehabilitation Sciences ====
The centre offers courses including, (B.P.T) Bachelor of Physiotherapy, M.P.T. (Sports), M.P.T. (Orthopaedics), M.P.T. (Neurology), M.P.T. (Cardiopulmonary) and the doctorate in philosophy.
==== Centre for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology ====
The centre aims to promote research in the fields of nanoscience and nanotechnology, with potential applications towards fulfilling national strategic needs. The main research focus of the centre includes nano-fabrication and nano-device, nano-materials and nano-structures, nano-biotechnology and nano-medicine, nano-structure characterization and measurements. Its offers PhD and M.Tech. (Nanotechnology) courses.
==== Centre for Spanish and Latin American Studies ====
The centre offers part-time Certificate, Diploma and Advanced Diploma courses in five languages: French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and Russian. It also offers M.Phil/PhD in European Studies and Latin American Studies.
==== MMAJ Academy of International Studies ====
Formerly Academy of Third World Studies, MMAJ Academy of International Studies was established in 1988 under the initiative of then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi to conduct inter-disciplinary research on social, political and economic issues pertaining to the developing countries. Subsequently, it was renamed after one of the co-founders of Jamia Millia Islamia, Maulana Mohamad Ali Jauhar.
The academy offers M.Phil. and Ph.D. programmes in International Studies, postgraduate courses (Politics: International and Area Studies) and language courses in Uzbek and Chinese. It also has its own library and documentation centre, named after Abid Husain.
=== Other centers ===
Jamia's other academic and non-academic centers include Dr. Zakir Husain Institute of Islamic Studies, Centre for Distance and Open Learning, Nelson Mandela Centre for Peace and Conflict Resolution, Multidisciplinary Centre for Advance Research and Studies (MCARS), Centre for Theoretical Physics, FTK-Centre For Information Technology, Centre for Jawaharlal Nehru Studies, Centre for Comparative Religions and Civilizations, Centre for West Asian Studies, Dr. K.R. Narayanan Centre for Dalit and Minorities Studies, Academy of Professional Development of Urdu Medium Teachers, Centre for North East Studies and Policy Research, India – Arab Cultural Centre, Centre for Culture Media & Governance, Centre for the Study of Social Exclusion and Inclusive Policy, UGC-Human Resource Development Centre, Centre for Coaching and Career Planning, Jamia's Premchand Archives & Literary Centre, Deen Dayal Upadhyay Kaushal Kendra, Sarojini Naidu Centre for Women's Studies, University Counseling & Guidance Centre, Centre for Early Childhood Development and Research and Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE).
=== Schools ===
Jamia Millia Islamia also imparts education from nursery to senior secondary level. Its schools include:
Balak Mata Centre
Gerda Philipsborn Day Care Centre
Mushir Fatma Jamia Nursery School
Jamia Middle School
Jamia Senior Secondary School
Jamia Girls Senior Secondary School
Syed Abid Husain Senior Secondary School
== Rankings ==
Internationally, Jamia Millia Islamia was ranked 851–900 in the QS World University Rankings of 2025 and 206 in Asia in 2024. It was ranked 501–600 in the world by the London-based Times Higher Education World University Rankings of 2024, 148 in Asia in 2024 and 172 among emerging economies in 2022. In 2024, Jamia Millia Islamia was ranked 256 out of 1169 universities worldwide in the Moscow-based Round University Ranking. According to U.S. News & World Report 2024-2025, Jamia Millia Islamia is ranked 718 in Best Global Universities and 205 in Asia and 8 in India.
Jamia Millia Islamia (JMI) was ranked 13th in India overall by the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) in 2024, 6th in law ranking, 7th in architecture ranking, 8th in the dental ranking, 24th in the engineering ranking, 19th in research institutes and 25th in the management ranking.
JMI was ranked third among universities in the country by the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) in 2024.
== Cultural Festival ==
Jamia Millia Islamia organizes various cultural festivals including the annual festival. The university organises Talimi Mela on its Foundation Day of 29 to 30 October every year.
Jamia has also the legacy of celebrating national cultural festival called MiRAAS. It was initiated by Dean Students of Welfare where various cultural and competitive events were organised by the students. It was not being organised after 2017.
== Alumni ==
Since its inception, Jamia Millia Islamia has produced alumni across various disciplines, including, Shah Rukh Khan, Kabir Khan, Mouni Roy, Arfa Khanum Sherwani, Barkha Dutt, Anjana Om Kashyap, Ampareen Lyngdoh, Kunwar Danish Ali, Tabish Mehdi, Virendar Sehwag, Imran Raza Ansari, Danish Siddiqui and Mohammad Najeeb Qasmi.
== See also ==
Distance Education Council
Education in Delhi
Education in India
List of universities in India
Universities and colleges in India
== Notes ==
== References ==
== External links ==
Official website |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Belding | Elizabeth Belding | Elizabeth Michelle Belding is a computer scientist specializing in mobile computing and wireless networks.
She is a professor of computer science at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
== Education and career ==
Belding graduated from Florida State University in 1996 with two degrees: one in computer science and a second in applied mathematics. Both degrees were Summa Cum Laude with Honors.
She went to the University of California, Santa Barbara on a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship, and
completed her Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering in 2000. Her dissertation, under the name Elizabeth Michelle Royer, was Routing in Ad hoc Mobile Networks: On-Demand and Hierarchical Strategies, and was jointly supervised by P. Michael Melliar-Smith and Louise Moser.
She has been a member of the computer science faculty at the University of California, Santa Barbara since 2000.
== Recognition ==
Belding was named Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) in 2014 for "contributions to mobile and wireless networking and communication protocols".
She was elected as an ACM Fellow in 2018 for "contributions to communication in mobile networks and their deployment in developing regions".
One of her publications, on Ad hoc On-Demand Distance Vector Routing in mobile networks, was selected for the SIGMOBILE Test of Time Award in 2018.
== References ==
== External links ==
Official website
Elizabeth Belding publications indexed by Google Scholar |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endometriosis | Endometriosis | Endometriosis is a disease in which tissue similar to the lining of the uterus grows elsewhere in the body. The tissue most often grows on or around the ovaries and fallopian tubes, on the outside surface of the uterus, or the tissues surrounding the uterus and the ovaries. It can also appear on the bowel, or bladder, or, rarely, on the lungs and skin.
Symptoms vary widely between individuals. Some have no symptoms, while for others it can be a debilitating disease. Common symptoms include pelvic pain, heavy and painful periods, pain with bowel movements, painful urination, pain during sexual intercourse, and infertility. Beyond physical symptoms, endometriosis can affect a person's mental health and social life.
Diagnosis is usually based on symptoms and medical imaging; however, a definitive diagnosis is made through laparoscopy (keyhole surgery). Other causes of similar symptoms include adenomyosis, uterine fibroids, irritable bowel syndrome, and interstitial cystitis. Endometriosis is often misdiagnosed and many patients report being incorrectly told their symptoms are trivial or normal. On average, it takes 5–12 years from the start of symptoms to receive a diagnosis.
Worldwide, around 10% of the female population of reproductive age (190 million women) are affected by endometriosis. Asian women are more likely than White women to be diagnosed with endometriosis. The exact cause of endometriosis is not known. Possible causes include backwards menstrual period flow, genetic factors, hormones, and problems with the immune system.
While there is no cure for endometriosis, several treatments may improve symptoms. This includes pain medication, hormonal treatments or surgery. The recommended pain medication is usually a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID), such as naproxen. Taking the birth control pill continuously or using a hormonal IUD (coil) is another first-line treatment. Other types of hormonal treatment can be tried if the pill or IUD are not effective. Surgical removal of endometriosis may be used to treat those whose symptoms are not manageable with other treatments, or to treat infertility.
== Subtypes ==
Endometriosis can be subdivided into four categories:
Superficial peritoneal endometriosis
Small spots of endometriosis grow on the surface layer that covers the organs inside the abdomen or pelvis (the peritoneum)
Deep infiltrating endometriosis
Lesions grow into the tissue beneath the lining of the pelvis or into the muscle layers of pelvic organs like the bowel, bladder, or ureter
Endometriomas (ovarian)
Cysts that grow in the ovaries.
Extrapelvic endometriosis
Lesions outside of the pelvic region, such as in the lungs or diaphragm
Endometriosis most commonly affects the ovaries, the fallopian tubes between the ovaries and the uterus, the outer surface of the uterus and the tissues that hold the uterus in place. Less common pelvic sites are the rectum, bladder, bowel, vulva, vagina and cervix. Endometriomas appear dark brown, giving rise to the name "chocolate cysts", and are filled with old menstrual blood among other material. When lesions grow more than 5 mm beneath the peritoneal surface, they are classified as deep infiltrating endometriosis. It can infiltrate the muscles around organs. Deep endometriosis often appears as nodules, and can include fibrosis and adhesions.
Rarely, endometriosis appears on the lungs (thoracic endometriosis), brain, and skin. Diaphragmatic endometriosis forms almost always on the right hemidiaphragm, and may cause the cyclic pain of the right shoulder or neck during a menstrual period. Scar endometriosis can rarely form on the abdominal wall as a complication of surgery, most often following a ceasarean section or other pelvic surgery.
== Signs and symptoms ==
Endometriosis is often associated with pain and infertility. Some women with endometriosis do not have any symptoms, while for others the pain is life-altering. The amount of pain relates poorly to the anatomical extent of endometriosis. Those with 'minimal' endometriosis may have significant pain, while those with 'severe' endometriosis might have few symptoms.
The most frequent symptom of endometriosis is pelvic pain, which includes:
Painful periods (dysmenorrhea) in 60% to 75% of people with endometriosis. Severe period pain may interfere with daily activities.
Heavy menstrual bleeding.
Chronic pelvic pain that can interfere with school, work and social activities
Painful sexual intercourse (dyspareunia)
Painful urination or bowel movements, especially during periods.
Women with endometriosis are about twice as likely to experience infertility compared to other women. Between 16% and 40% of women with endometriosis experience difficulty conceiving. In those going through assisted reproductive treatment, endometriosis is found in about 30% to 50% of women. The World Health Organization estimates that endometriosis is the ultimate cause of female infertility in 4.8% of cases.
Endometriosis can involve symptoms like constipation, diarrhea, nausea, bloating, rectal or abdominal pain. This is sometimes caused by endometriosis on the bowels, but often due to co-occuring irritable bowel syndrome. People with endometriosis often experience fatigue, which is linked to insomnia, depression and anxiety.
Thoracic endometriosis occurs when endometrium-like tissue implants in the lungs or pleura around the lungs. It is rare. When it occurs in the lungs, common signs and symptoms are blood discharge from the lungs during menstruation and nodules which become bigger during menstruation. When it is found in the pleura, symptoms may be a collapsed lung during or outside of menstruation and bleeding into the pleural space. Further symptoms are a cyclical cough and cyclical shoulder pain. Most often, the endometriosis is found in the right lung. Blood in urine may point to endometriosis in the bladder or in the ureter. Sciatic endometriosis is a rare form in which endometrial tissue involves the sciatic nerve, causing cyclic nerve pain in the leg.
=== Complications ===
Endometriosis may be associated with complications during pregnancy. Women with endometriosis have a three-fold increased risk of a placenta previa, in which the placenta partially or completely covers the cervical opening. Preterm delivery was almost 50% more likely. Other complications are stillbirth, gestational hypertension, pre-eclampsia, and placental abruption.
Cardiovascular disease is also associated with endometriosis, in particular in those who have had a surgical removal of the uterus (hysterectomy) and ovaries. Cohort studies have found associations with strokes, heart attacks (myocardial infarction), high blood pressure and arrhythmia. Endometriosis increases the risk of developing ovarian and thyroid cancers compared to women without the condition, and slightly increases the risk of breast cancer.
Depression and anxiety are more common in endometriosis compared to healthy controls, but occur at the same rate as with other chronic pain conditions. It is unclear how much this is caused by shared underlying mechanisms, the impact of severe symptoms, stigma, the related diagnostic delays or the ineffectiveness of treatment.
== Risk factors ==
=== Genetics ===
Inheritance is significant but not the sole risk factor for endometriosis. Studies attribute 50% of the risk to genetics, the other 50% to environmental factors. Overall, 42 different loci (regions on a chromosome) have been associated with endometriosis risk. The genes linked to endometriosis risk help control cancer-related processes, sex-hormone signals, womb development, molecules related to inflammation and adhesions, and the growth of new blood vessels.
There is significant overlap between the genetic basis of endometriosis, other pain conditions and inflammationary conditions. For instance, endometriosis shares a genetic underpinning with migraine and neck, shoulder and back pain. Among inflammatory conditions, it shares variants with asthma and osteoarthritis.
=== Reproductive and environmental factors ===
Girls whose menstrual outflow is obstructed are at risk of developing endometriosis. This could be because of an imperforate hymen (a birth defect where the vagina is completely blocked), or a double uterus with a blocked hemivagina. Other risk factors are having a first period before age 12, a menstrual cycle of fewer than 28 days, a low BMI, and not having had children.
Little is known about environmental risk factors. Night work and red meat consumption seems to raise risk, as does exposure to some classes of environmental pollutants. The most studied of these are endocrine disruptors—chemicals that interfere with hormones, such as estrogen. They include dioxins, phthalates, bisphenol A and polychlorinated biphenyl. Based on epidemiological and experimental data, it is possible exposure to some of them increases the risk of endometriosis.
=== Autoimmune and autoinflammatory conditions ===
Endometriosis patients show a significantly increased risk of autoimmune, autoinflammatory, and mixed-pattern psoriatic diseases, with two studies in 2025 pointing to the connection. One of the studies suggested that the chances of receiving a diagnosis of at least one of the autoimmune conditions for those with endometriosis was around twice that of a control cohort. The linked conditions include rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, coeliac disease, osteoarthritis, and psoriasis. This reinforces the view that there is a genetic correlation between endometriosis and osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, and multiple sclerosis (MS), and a potential causal link to rheumatoid arthritis. The work suggests a shared biological basis between endometriosis on one side, and autoimmune and autoinflammatory diseases, on the other. This suggests that certain autoimmune treatment pathways could be repurposed to provided alternative therapy options for those with endometriosis.
== Mechanism ==
Endometriosis is an inflammatory disease dependent on estrogen. The lesions promote local inflammation and immune system dysregulation. They also trigger the formation of adhesions (fibrous bands that form between tissues and organs) and fibrosis (excess connective tissue from healing). It is not well understood how endometriosis causes infertility and pain.
=== Formation ===
==== Origin of endometriosis cells ====
The main theories for the formation of the endometrium-like tissue outside the womb are backward flow of menstrual blood, metastasis via the lymphatic or the circulatory system and local transformation of peritoneal cells into endometrial-like cells (coelomic metaplasia).
During menstruation, some menstrual blood, tissue, and fluid can flow backward through the fallopian tubes into the pelvic area (the peritoneal cavity). This backward flow (called retrograde menstruation) is thought to be the main reason why endometriosis develops inside the pelvic cavity. However, this explanation alone is not enough, because almost all women have some backward flow of menstrual fluid, but only some of them develop endometriosis.
Evidence supporting the theory comes from retrospective epidemiological studies and DNA analysis. Furthermore, only animals with a menstrual cycle such as rhesus monkeys and baboons develop endometriosis. In contrast, animals like rodents and non-human primates with an estrous cycle in which the endometrium is reabsorbed rather than shed do not develop the disease.
Endometriosis has been diagnosed in people who have never experienced menstruation including men, female fetuses, and prepubescent girls. One explanation for endometriosis in girls before puberty is coelomic metaplasia: the theory that certain cells in the peritoneum may undergo metaplasia (transformation) into endometrium-like cells. Müllerian remnants, cells that normally disappear during male embryonic development, may explain rare cases of endometriosis in men. Metastasis via the lymphatic or the circulatory system may explain endometriosis outside of the pelvic region.
Stem cells may contribute to the formation of endometriosis. Stems cells in the basal layer of the endometrium play a role in renewing the tissue after menstruation. In women with endometriosis, more tissue is shed from this layer during menstruation, allowing more stem cells to flow back into the periteneum with retrograde menstruation, and form lesions. Stem cells from bone marrow may drive the further growth of lesions, and also explain the establishment of endometriosis outside of the pelvic region.
==== Other factors ====
Most women with retrograde menstruation do not develop endometriosis, so other factors are needed to explain the formation. For endometriosis to develop, as is done by some cancerous tumors, its cells must evade the immune system, attach to a surface, and promote the formation of new blood vessels. Endometriotic lesions differ in their biochemistry, hormonal response, immunology, and inflammatory response compared to the endometrium.
Estrogen is needed for the growth of endometriosis lesions. This is produced both by lesions locally and in other parts of the body. Progesterone resistance in lesions make them less responsive to the hormone, and allows the lesions to grow outside of the womb.
Immune dysfunction could be involved in the disease in various ways: it may lead to a decrease in clearance of endometrial cells outside the womb, a local inflammatory environment may make it more likely that the cells attach to a surface, and may reduce programmed cell death (apoptosis).
Angiogenesis, the formation of new blood vessels, plays a key role in the maintenance of endometriotic lesions. Gene expression around angiogenesis expressed in the endometrium of women with endometriosis are different from those without. In addition, cells in the periteneum of women with endometriosis release more growth factors that stimulate angiogenesis.
=== Pain ===
There are multiple causes of pain. Endometriosis involves the formation of new blood vessels and nerves in a process known as neuroangiogenesis. The inflammation and fibrosis around the lesions gives rise to nociceptive pain. Neuropathic pain can arise from damage to nerves. In rare cases, endometriosis can infiltrate or compress nerves, and damage to nerves might also occur due to surgery. Estrogens can increase communication between immune cells and nerves in lesions, which may contribute to further pain. Finally, there may be systemic (body-wide) inflammation, involving white blood cells. This can lead to nociplastic pain, which amplifies pain signals and reduces pain inhibition. Nociplastic pain also cause poor sleep, memory problems and fatigue.
=== Infertility ===
The infertility associated with endometriosis likely has multiple causes. Inflammation and hormonal dysfunction explain some instances. The ovarian reserve, the amount of viable egg cells in the ovaries, is typically lower in those with endometriosis. In particular, endometriomas may reduce ovarian reserve in affected ovaries. There is contradictory evidence on whether endometriosis causes reduced ovulation. Anatomical distortions, for instance from adhesions, can explain further instances of infertility, and in severe cases, sperm or egg cells may be fully blocked. Pain during sex may lead couples to avoid it, leading to fewer opportunities for natural conception.
== Diagnosis ==
A health history and a physical examination can lead the health care practitioner to suspect endometriosis. Symptoms in combination with ultrasound or MRI imaging can lead to a presumed diagnosis of endometriosis. The gold standard for definite diagnosis is via surgery and a biopsy, but there is a shift away from requiring surgical confirmation before starting treatment to prevent delays.
Diagnosis takes an average of five to twelve years from the onset of symptoms. This diagnostic delay has remained persistent. On average, it takes between one and four years before women seek medical help, which might be explained by the normalisation of symptoms, the lack of awareness, and lack of access to healthcare. It then takes up to nine years to get a diagnosis. This delay might be explained by a normalisation of symptoms, lack of expertise and tools, and general inefficiencies in healthcare.
Endometriosis can be classified into four different stages. The American Society of Reproductive Medicine's scale, revised in 1996, gives higher scores to deep, thick lesions or intrusions on the ovaries and dense, enveloping adhesions on the ovaries or fallopian tubes.
=== Physical examination ===
A trauma-informed framework is recommended for a physical examination, where the health practitioner validates pain and fosters trust. The examination focuses on assessing both general symptoms and those linked to deep endometriosis or endometriosis outside the pelvis. Risk factors are also reviewed. The physical examination can include an abdominal exam, a single digit exam of the vagina and pelvic floor, a bimanual exam and examination with a speculum.
=== Ultrasound ===
Vaginal ultrasound can be used to diagnose endometriosis or to localize an endometrioma before surgery. This can be used to identify the spread of disease in individuals with well-established clinical suspicion of endometriosis. Vaginal ultrasound is inexpensive, easily accessible, has no contraindications, and requires no preparation. By extending the ultrasound assessment into the posterior and anterior pelvic compartments, a sonographer can evaluate structural mobility and look for deep infiltrating endometriotic nodules. Better sonographic detection of deep infiltrating endometriosis could reduce the number of diagnostic laparoscopies, as well as guide disease management and enhance patient quality of life.
Ultrasounds cannot be used to exclude a diagnosis of endometriosis. If a transvaginal ultrasound is not suitable or declined, an alternative is an ultrasound via the lower abdomen.
=== Magnetic resonance imaging ===
MRI is another means of detecting lesions in a non-invasive manner. MRI is not widely used due to its cost and limited availability. It can reliably detect endometriomas and deep infiltrating endemetriosis. It is sometimes used for planning surgery, for instance if an ultrasound is unclear, or for diagnosis if a transvaginal ultrasound is not appropriate or is declined. The field of view is larger in an MRI compared to an ultrasound, which allows a larger part of the bowel to be assessed.
=== Laparoscopy ===
Laparoscopy (keyhole surgery) is a surgical procedure where a camera is used to look inside the abdominal cavity. Laparoscopy with a biopsy is the most accurate way to diagnose endometriosis. It can be used when endometriosis is suspected, but not visible via medical imaging. An alternative after negative imaging is to try out treatment and give a presumed diagnosis if that improves symptoms ('empirical treatment').
Surgery for diagnosis also allows for surgical treatment of endometriosis at the same time. In nearly 40% of cases, no cause for pelvic pain is discovered during laparoscopy.
The lesions of superficial endometriosis often appear dark blue or black. In the earlier stages of disease, they may be white, red or yellow-brown. Ovarian cysts are typically dark brown. Adhesions are made up of fibrous scar tissue. Deep endometriosis looks like multiple distinct nodules.
A biopsy may be negative even when endometriosis is present, particularly in younger women. As such, it cannot be used to exclude a diagnosis of endometriosis. For confirmation, biopsy samples should show at least two of the following features:
Endometrial type stroma
Endometrial epithelium with glands
Evidence of chronic hemorrhage, such as hemosiderin deposits
=== Stages ===
There are three staging or classification systems commonly used. Fertility is assessed with the Endometriosis Fertility Index (EFI). Endometriosis can be classified as stage I–IV by the revised American Society of Reproductive Medicine (rASRM) staging system. The stages range from minimal (stage I) to severe (stage IV). The scale uses a point system that assesses lesions and adhesions during surgery. The ENZIAN system focuses more on deep endometriosis compared to rASRM. The rASRM and ENZIAN systems correlate poorly with how much pain women have.
The American Association of Gynecologic Laparoscopists (AAGL) endometriosis staging system, introduced in 2021, was designed to correlate well with complexity of surgery. Like rASRM, it divides endometriosis into four stages.
=== Differential diagnosis ===
Various conditions exhibit similar symptoms to endometriosis. Adenomyosis, the growth of endometrium-like tissue in the muscles of the uterus, is one example. It sometimes shows characteristics on an MRI that can distinguish it from endometriosis. Interstitial cystitis is mainly characterized by painful urination, but also cause more diffuse pain. It can be distinguished from endometriosis with a cystoscopy, which shows pinpoint hemorrhages in interstitial cystitis. Irritable bowel syndrome can sometimes be distinguished from endometriosis via the presence of diarrhea or constipation, and can be diagnosed in the absence of endometriosis via imaging or surgery. Other conditions with overlapping symptoms are uterine fibroids, cervical stenosis and pelvic floor myofascial pain.
== Prevention ==
According to the World Health Organization, there is no known way to prevent endometriosis. There are associations between some risk factors and endometriosis: women with endometriosis tend to consume more red meat, trans fats, alcohol and caffeine. Physical activity does not seem to prevent endometriosis, but can lessen pain. It is unclear whether these links are causative.
== Management ==
While there is no cure for endometriosis, there are treatments for pain and endometriosis-associated infertility. Pain can be treated with hormones, painkillers, or, in severe cases, surgery. The goal of management is to provide pain relief, to restrict the progression of the process, and to restore or preserve fertility where needed.
Treatment with medication for pain management can be initiated based on the presence of symptoms, examination, and ultrasound findings that rule out other potential causes. The UK National Institute for Health and Care Excellence recommends starting initial medication for those with suspected endometriosis, at the same time as referral for investigations such as ultrasound.
In general, the diagnosis of endometriosis is confirmed during surgery, at which time removal can be performed. Further steps depend on circumstances: someone without infertility can manage symptoms with pain medication and hormonal medication that suppresses the natural cycle, while an infertile individual may be treated expectantly after surgery, with fertility medication, or with in vitro fertilization (IVF).
=== Hormonal medications ===
Progestin-only hormonal suppression (progestogen) is a first-line therapy. It come in different forms and includes the hormonal coil (intrauterine device), the oral dienogest, an injection of medroxyprogesterone acetate every three months or an implant under the skin. Dienogest, which may better than injections, is not available on its own in the US. Oral progestins likely reduce overall pain and period pain compared to placebo, and may also help with pelvic pain. It is unclear how well they work compared to other hormonal therapies.
Combined estrogren-progestin birth control pills are another first-line treatment. The recommendation is to use the pills continuously to stop periods. A 2018 Cochrane systematic review found that there is insufficient evidence to make a judgement on the effectiveness of the combined oral contraceptive pill compared with placebo or other medical treatment for managing pain associated with endometriosis partly because of lack of included studies for data analysis (only two for COCP vs placebo).
Gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) modulators are second-line treatments: These drugs include GnRH agonists such as leuprorelin, and GnRH antagonists such as elagolix and decrease estrogen levels. GnRH agonists mimic the effects of menopause, and seem more effective than placebo or oral progestin at reducing pain. They come with side effects of hot flashes and decreased bone density. GnRHs can be prescribed with hormonal 'add-back' therapy or with calcium-regulating agents to reduce the amount of bone loss.
Aromatase inhibitors are third-line treatments and block estrogen production throughout the body. Examples of aromatase inhibitors include anastrozole and letrozole. Common side effects are hot flashes, night sweats and functional cysts. In premenopausal women, these should be taken with other hormones (such as the combined pill) to prevent ovarian stimulation and to prevent menopause symptoms. They can be a option for post-menopausal women who still have endometriosis symptoms, as their action is not limited to suppressing estrogen from ovaries. Evidence is limited.
Progesterone receptor modulators like mifepristone and gestrinone have the potential (based on only one randomized controlled trial each) to be used as a treatment to manage pain caused by endometriosis.
=== Pain medication ===
NSAIDs like naproxen are anti-inflammatory medications commonly used for endometriosis pain. Evidence for their effectiveness is limited, with only one small study conducted. NSAIDs can have side effects, predominantly gastrointestinal, but they are generally safe to try.
=== Surgery ===
Clinical guidelines recommend surgery when medical treatment does not work sufficiently, has unacceptable side effects or is contraindicated. Large endometriomas can only effectively be treated with surgery. Surgery is also recommended when deep endometriosis causes problems in the bowels or urinary tract, such as obstruction. It is unclear what the effect of surgery is for pain relief in cases of superficial periteneal endometriosis.
Laparoscopy (keyhole surgery) is the standard surgical approach. Treatment consists of the removal of endometriosis and the restoration of pelvic anatomy via the division of adhesions. The removal takes place via excision (cutting out) or electrosurgery (coagulation or ablation/vaporisation). With laparoscopic surgery, small instruments are inserted through incisions to remove the endometriosis tissue and adhesions. After surgery, people can usually return home the same day.
Two literature reviews have compared excision to ablation. A 2017 literature review found that excision improved some outcomes over ablation for endometriosis in general. A 2021 literature review on minimal to mild endometriosis found no difference. For deep endometriosis, excision is the standard therapy, as ablation does not allow the surgeon to see if all endometriosis is removed. In the United States, some specialists trained in excision for endometriosis do not accept health insurance because insurance companies do not reimburse the higher costs of this procedure over ablation.
Endometriomas are usually excised (removed completely). Compared to drainage and coagulation of the cyst, excision makes it less likely the cysts and pain symptoms come back. However, excision may damage fertility, as it can affect the ovarian reserve, the amount of egg cells that can be fertilized.
For deep endometriosis, surgery improves quality of life and pain symptoms. However, the procedure can be complicated, especially if the lesions are in or near the bowel, ureter of the urinary system or the chest, and requires a interdisciplinary surgical team in those cases. For instance, for rectovaginal endometriosis, 7% of surgeries had complications. Sometimes, a part of the bowel or bladder is removed.
For women who still have significant pain after hormonal treatment and other surgery, and do not want to become pregnant, a hysterectomy (removal of the womb) can be offered. This is done in combination with removal of endometriosis lesions. Removal of the womb may be beneficial if the uterus itself is affected by adenomyosis. When the ovaries are removed too, women will experience early menopause and may need hormone replacement therapy. Removal of the ovaries comes with cardiovascular, metabolic and mental health risks.
==== Recurrence and postoperative hormonal suppression ====
In an analysis with a medium follow-up of 24 months pain after surgery recurred in about 16% of women. Endometriosis recurrence following surgery is estimated as 21.5% at 2 years and 40–50% at 5 years. Hormonal therapy before surgery has little effect on recurrence, but treatment afterwards reduces the risk. At a median follow-up of 18 months, endometriosis recurred in 26% of women without postoperative hormonal suppression, compared with 10% of women who received it. The risk of recurrence is higher in younger women and in those with a less aggressive surgery.
=== Comparison of interventions ===
A 2021 meta-analysis found that GnRH analogs and combined hormonal contraceptives were the best treatment for reducing dyspareunia and menstrual and non-menstrual pelvic pain. A 2018 Swedish systematic review found several studies but a general lack of scientific evidence for most treatments. There was only one study of sufficient quality and relevance comparing the effect of surgery and non-surgery. Cohort studies indicate that surgery is effective in decreasing pain. Most complications occurred in cases of low intestinal anastomosis, while the risk of fistula occurred in cases of combined abdominal or vaginal surgery, and urinary tract problems were common in intestinal surgery. The evidence was found to be insufficient regarding surgical intervention.
=== Treatment of infertility ===
Infertility can be treated with assistive reproductive technology (ART) such as in vitro fertilization (IVF) or surgery. IVF procedures are effective in improving fertility in many individuals with endometriosis. IVF is increasingly recommended over surgery for older women or for those where there might be multiple reasons why they struggle to conceive. It does not increase recurrence of endometriosis. The Endometriosis Fertility Index can help guide decisions on treatment of infertility. Surgery is typically not recommended before starting ART.
In terms of surgery, endometriomas can be cut out (a cystectomy), or drained and destroyed (ablation). The ablation technique may be better able to preserve the number of remaining viable eggs (the ovarian reserve), compared to cutting out the endometrioma. On the other hand, cutting out the endometrioma may help more with pain. Surgery likely also helps with infertility in the case of superficial peritoneal endometriosis. Receiving hormonal suppression therapy after surgery might be help with endometriosis recurrence and pregnancy. but evidence for pregnancy outcomes is mixed and the both NICE and the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology recommend against hormonal suppression to improve fertility.
== Prognosis ==
Endometriosis is often a long-term condition, with symptoms typically emerging during adolescence and easing after menopause. For some women, pain persists after menopause. Treatments, whether medical or surgical, can alleviate symptoms but do not provide a definitive cure. The disease does not always worsen over time; in repeat surgeries, endometriosis became worse in 29%, improved in 42% and stayed the same in 29%.
The likelihood of symptoms returning after surgery is highly variable, with studies reporting recurrence rates anywhere between 6% and 67%. For some, endometriosis becomes associated with persistent, complex pain, possibly linked to changes in the nervous system, as part of a constellation of chronic pain disorders.
== Epidemiology ==
Endometriosis is commonly reported to affect approximately 10% of women of reproductive age. Worldwide, an estimated 176–190 million girls and women are affected, with around 22 million having a diagnosis confirmed surgically as of 2021. It is diffucult to determine an exact prevalence, given the large delays in diagnosis and the need for a surgical confirmation for a definite diagnosis. The prevalence depends on the population studied and the way endometriosis is diagnosed (imaging, surgery). Of women with pelvic pain undergoing laparoscopy, 28% are diagnosed with endometriosis. Of those with infertility undergoing laparoscopy, 25% are diagnosed.
It is most diagnosed when women are in their 30s, but symptoms typically start in early 20s or in adolescence. People can develop endometriosis symptoms before their first period and in menopause too. Ethnic differences in endometriosis have been observed. The condition is more common in women of East Asian and Southeast Asian descent than in White women.
== History ==
The earliest references to what is now known as endometriosis might be from Ancient Egypt, nearly 4,000 years ago. In Ancient Greece, the Hippocratic Corpus outlines symptoms similar to endometriosis, including uterine ulcers, adhesions, and infertility. Dioscorides, a prominent physician of the time, described 'strangulation of the uterus', associated with pelvic pain and sometimes leading to collapse. He regarded menstrual pain as organic. Women with dysmenorrhea were encouraged to marry and have children at a young age.
During the Middle Ages, there was a shift into believing that women with pelvic pain were mad, immoral, imagining the pain, or simply misbehaving. The symptoms of inexplicable chronic pelvic pain were often attributed to imagined madness, female weakness, promiscuity, or hysteria.
Endometriosis proper was first defined between the end of the 19th century and the start of the 20th. Some attribute the first description to Carl von Rokitansky in 1860, even though some authors consider it more likely he was describing malignent tissue. Around 1896, Thomas Cullen and others described endometriosis and adenomyosis under the single name adenomyomas. Between 1903 and 1920, Cullen showed that the tissue in adenomyomas was endometrial. John A. Sampson gave endometriosis its name. He studied the pathogenesis of the disease and formulated the theory of retrograde menstruation as a cause of endometriosis.
One early recommendation to prevent and treat endometriosis was pregnancy. For older women, another approach was surgery, involving oophorectomy (removal of the ovaries) and hysterectomy (removal of the uterus). In the 1940s, the only available hormonal therapies for endometriosis were high-dose testosterone and high-dose estrogen therapy. Success of high-dose estrogen therapy with diethylstilbestrol for endometriosis was first reported by Karnaky in 1948, but was associated with severe risks upon withdrawal.
Pseudopregnancy (high-dose estrogen–progestogen therapy) for endometriosis was first described by Kistner and Andrews in the late 1950s, and become widely employed. Danazol, was first described for endometriosis in 1971. It was used for some 40 years, but had masculising side effects, including weight gain, excessive hair growth and breast atrophy. In the 1980s, GnRH agonists gained prominence for the treatment of endometriosis and by the 1990s had become the most widely used therapy. Oral GnRH antagonists such as elagolix were introduced for the treatment of endometriosis in 2018.
== Society and culture ==
=== Economic burden ===
The economic burden of endometriosis is widespread and multifaceted. Endometriosis is a chronic disease that has direct and indirect costs, which include loss of work days, direct costs of treatment, symptom management, and treatment of other associated conditions such as depression or chronic pain. One factor that seems to be associated with especially high costs is the delay between the onset of symptoms and diagnosis.
Costs vary greatly between countries. Two factors that contribute to the economic burden include healthcare costs and losses in productivity. A Swedish study of 400 endometriosis patients found "Absence from work was reported by 32% of the women, while 36% reported reduced time at work because of endometriosis". An additional cross sectional study with Puerto Rican women, "found that endometriosis-related and coexisting symptoms disrupted all aspects of women's daily lives, including physical limitations that affected doing household chores and paid employment. The majority of women (85%) experienced a decrease in the quality of their work; 20% reported being unable to work because of pain, and over two-thirds of the sample continued to work despite their pain." A study published in the UK in 2025 found that after women received a diagnosis of endometriosis in an English NHS hospital their earnings were on average £56 per month less in the four to five years after diagnosis than they were in the two years before. There was also a reduction in the proportion of women in employment.
=== Medical culture ===
There are many barriers that those affected face in receiving a diagnosis and treatment for endometriosis. Some of these include outdated standards for laparoscopic evaluation, stigma about discussing menstruation and sex, lack of understanding of the disease, primary-care physicians' lack of knowledge, and assumptions about typical menstrual pain. On average, those later diagnosed with endometriosis waited 2.3 years after the onset of symptoms before seeking treatment, and nearly three-quarters of women receive a misdiagnosis before endometriosis. Self-help groups say practitioners delay making the diagnosis, often because they do not consider it a possibility. There is a typical delay of 7–12 years from symptom onset in affected individuals to professional diagnosis. There is a general lack of knowledge about endometriosis among primary care physicians. Half of the general health care providers surveyed in a 2013 study could not name three symptoms of endometriosis. Healthcare providers are also likely to dismiss described symptoms as normal menstruation. Younger patients may also feel uncomfortable discussing symptoms with a physician.
=== Race and ethnicity ===
Race and ethnicity may impact how endometriosis affects one's life. Endometriosis is less thoroughly studied among Black people, and the research that has been done is outdated.
Cultural differences among ethnic groups also contribute to attitudes toward and treatment of endometriosis, especially in Hispanic or Latino communities. A study done in Puerto Rico in 2020 found that health care and interactions with friends and family related to discussing endometriosis were affected by stigma. The most common finding was a referral to those expressing pain related to endometriosis as "changuería" or "changas", terms used in Puerto Rico to describe pointless whining and complaining, often directed at children.
=== Stigma ===
The existing stigma surrounding women's health, specifically endometriosis, can lead to patients not seeking diagnoses, lower quality of healthcare, increased barriers to care and treatment, and negative reception from members of society. Additionally, menstrual stigma significantly contributes to the broader issue of endometriosis stigma, creating an interconnected challenge that extends beyond reproductive health.
Widespread awareness campaigns, developments, and implementations aimed at multilevel anti-stigma organizational and structural changes, as well as more qualitative studies of the endometriosis stigma, help to overcome the harm of the phenomenon.
== Research directions ==
A priority area of research is the search for endometriosis biomarkers, which can help with earlier diagnoses. Studies have examined potential biomarkers such as microRNAs, glycoproteins, and immune markers in blood, menstrual and urine samples, but none have shown the high accurarcy needed for clinical use yet. CA-125, a tumor marker, has been studied extensively. It is elevated in endometriosis, but also in many other conditions, and cannot be used on its own. MicroRNAs might be most promosing, but the high diversity in expression makes them a challenging target.
Medical management of endometriosis is typically based on hormonal therapy, but these treatments can produce undesirable side effects, driving the search for alternatives. Emerging strategies target endometriosis as an inflammatory, metabolic, or pain disorder. Anti-inflammatory approaches include anakinra, a drug used in rheumatoid arthritis. Pain-focused treatments under investigation include cannabinoid extracts, migraine medications, and therapies directed at affected nerves. Additionally, the cancer drug dichloroacetic acid is being explored for its potential metabolic effects in endometriosis.
== Further reading ==
Clark L (22 September 2025). "A deeper understanding of endometriosis is suggesting new treatments". New Scientist (3562). London. ISSN 0262-4079. Archived from the original on 27 September 2025. Retrieved 29 September 2025.
Wilson M (28 March 2025). ""Endometriosis Stole My Life": What It's Really Like to Live With the Condition". Glamour. Retrieved 6 December 2025.
Fearn H (21 January 2024). "'Gaslit by doctors': UK women with endometriosis told it is 'all in their head'". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 6 December 2025.
== References ==
=== Cited sources ===
Solnik MJ, Sanders A (2025). BMJ Best Practice: Endometriosis. BMJ Publishing Group.
NICE (11 November 2024). Recommendations | Endometriosis: diagnosis and management | Guidance | NICE. National Institute for Health and Care Excellence. Retrieved 28 October 2025.
ESHRE (2022). Endometriosis: Guideline of European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology. European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology.
World Health Organization (2025). Guideline for the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of infertility. Geneva. ISBN 978-92-4-011577-4.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
This article incorporates text in the public domain as a Swedish government "utterance" by URL§9
== External links == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Strauss | Leo Strauss | Leo Strauss (September 20, 1899 – October 18, 1973) was a German-American political philosopher and historian of philosophy whose work greatly influenced twentieth-century political theory in the United States and the study of classical political thought. He is known best for his interpretation of ancient and medieval philosophy, his account of classical natural right, and his claim that philosophers often wrote esoterically, presenting different teachings to general and specialist readers. Strauss argued that the modern turn in philosophy, beginning with Niccolò Machiavelli and culminating in historicism and relativism, marked a decisive break with the classical understanding of politics and the good life. His work sought to recover the questions and methods of ancient political philosophy as a corrective to the perceived crisis of modern thought.
Strauss's scholarship ranges from studies of Plato, Aristotle, and Xenophon to examinations of Thomas Hobbes, Baruch Spinoza, Friedrich Nietzsche, and the medieval Islamic and Jewish philosophical traditions, particularly Al-Farabi and Maimonides. Central to his writings is the tension between reason and revelation, the nature of political prudence, and the relationship between philosophy and political authority. His methodological emphasis on close textual reading, the pedagogical value of classical texts, and the critique of modernity formed the basis of what came to be known as "Straussian" approaches to political theory.
Born in Germany to Jewish parents, he emigrated to the United States in 1937, going on to hold positions at the New School for Social Research and later at the University of Chicago, where he taught from 1949 to 1969. His seminars shaped several generations of political theorists, many of whom became influential scholars in their own right at major American universities. Strauss's students and interlocutors played significant roles in the development of political philosophy in the postwar United States, particularly in the neoconservative movement, and his ideas have been taken up and debated within fields including political theory, classics, intellectual history, and religious studies. His major works include Natural Right and History (1953), Persecution and the Art of Writing (1952), The City and Man (1964), and On Tyranny (1948). Strauss's work has also been the subject of debate, including disputes over his interpretations of ancient texts and discussions of the political influence of some of his students, though these issues remain contested within academic scholarship.
== Biography ==
=== Early life and education ===
Leo Strauss was born on September 20, 1899, in the small town of Kirchhain in Hesse-Nassau, a province of the Kingdom of Prussia (part of the German Empire), to Jennie Strauss (née David) and Hugo Strauss. According to Allan Bloom's 1974 obituary in Political Theory, Strauss "was raised as an Orthodox Jew", but the family does not appear to have completely embraced Orthodox practice. Strauss himself noted that he came from a "conservative, even orthodox Jewish home", but one which knew little about Judaism except strict adherence to ceremonial laws. His father and uncle operated a farm supply and livestock business that they inherited from their father, Meyer (1835–1919), a leading member of the local Jewish community.
After attending the Kirchhain Volksschule and the Protestant Rektoratsschule, Leo Strauss was enrolled at the Gymnasium Philippinum (affiliated with the University of Marburg) in nearby Marburg (from which Johannes Althusius and Carl Joachim Friedrich also graduated) in 1912, graduating in 1917. He boarded with the Marburg cantor Strauss (no relation), whose residence served as a meeting place for followers of the neo-Kantian philosopher Hermann Cohen. Strauss served in the German army during World War I from July 5, 1917, to December 1918.
Strauss subsequently enrolled in the University of Hamburg, where he received his doctorate in 1921; his thesis, On the Problem of Knowledge in the Philosophical Doctrine of F. H. Jacobi (Das Erkenntnisproblem in der philosophischen Lehre Fr. H. Jacobis), was supervised by Ernst Cassirer. He also attended courses at the Universities of Freiburg and Marburg, including some taught by Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. Strauss joined a Jewish fraternity and worked for the German Zionist movement, which introduced him to various German Jewish intellectuals, such as Norbert Elias, Leo Löwenthal, Hannah Arendt and Walter Benjamin. Benjamin was and remained an admirer of Strauss and his work throughout his life.
Strauss's closest friend was Jacob Klein but he also was intellectually engaged with Gerhard Krüger—and also Karl Löwith, Julius Guttmann, Hans-Georg Gadamer, and Franz Rosenzweig (to whom Strauss dedicated his first book), as well as Gershom Scholem, Alexander Altmann, and the Arabist Paul Kraus, who married Strauss's sister Bettina (Strauss and his wife later adopted Paul and Bettina Kraus's child when both parents died in the Middle East). With several of these friends, Strauss carried on vigorous epistolary exchanges later in life, many of which are published in the Gesammelte Schriften (Collected Writings), some in translation from the German. Strauss had also been engaged in a discourse with Carl Schmitt. However, after Strauss left Germany, he broke off the discourse when Schmitt failed to respond to his letters.
=== Career ===
After receiving a Rockefeller Fellowship in 1932, Strauss left his position at the Higher Institute for Jewish Studies in Berlin for Paris. He returned to Germany only once, for a few short days twenty years later. In Paris, he married Marie (Miriam) Bernsohn, a widow with a young child, whom he had known previously in Germany. He adopted his wife's son, Thomas, and later his sister's child, Jenny Strauss Clay (later a professor of classics at the University of Virginia); he and Miriam had no biological children of their own. At his death, he was survived by Thomas, Jenny Strauss Clay, and three grandchildren. Strauss became a lifelong friend of Alexandre Kojève and was on friendly terms with Raymond Aron and Étienne Gilson. Because of the Nazis' rise to power, he chose not to return to his native country. Strauss found shelter, after some vicissitudes, in England, where, in 1935 he gained temporary employment at the University of Cambridge with the help of his in-law David Daube, who was affiliated with Gonville and Caius College. While in England, he became a close friend of R. H. Tawney and was on less friendly terms with Isaiah Berlin.
Unable to find permanent employment in England, Strauss moved to the United States in 1937, under the patronage of Harold Laski, who made introductions and helped him obtain a brief lectureship. After a short stint as a research fellow in the Department of History at Columbia University, Strauss secured a position at The New School, where, between 1938 and 1948, he worked in the political science faculty and also took on adjunct jobs. In 1939, he served for a short term as a visiting professor at Hamilton College. He became a U.S. citizen in 1944, and in 1949 became a professor of political science at the University of Chicago, holding the Robert Maynard Hutchins Distinguished Service Professorship until he left in 1969.
In 1953, Strauss coined the phrase reductio ad Hitlerum, a play on reductio ad absurdum, suggesting that comparing an argument to one of Hitler's, or "playing the Nazi card", is often a fallacy of irrelevance.
In 1954, he met Karl Löwith and Hans-Georg Gadamer in Heidelberg and delivered a public speech on Socrates. He had received a call for a temporary lectureship in Hamburg in 1965 (which he declined for health reasons) and received and accepted an honorary doctorate from the University of Hamburg and the German Order of Merit via the German representative in Chicago. In 1969, Strauss moved to Claremont McKenna College (formerly Claremont Men's College) in California for a year, and then to St. John's College, Annapolis in 1970, where he was the Scott Buchanan Distinguished Scholar in Residence until his death from pneumonia in 1973. He was buried in Annapolis Hebrew Cemetery, with his wife Miriam Bernsohn Strauss, who died in 1985. Psalm 114 was read in the funeral service at the request of family and friends.
== Thought ==
Strauss's thought can be characterized by two main themes: the critique of modernity and the recovery of classical political philosophy. He argued that modernity, which emerged among the 15th century Italian city states particularly in the writings of Niccolò Machiavelli, was a radical break from the tradition of Western civilization, and that it led to a crisis of nihilism, relativism, historicism, and scientism. He claimed that modern political and social sciences, which were based on empirical observation and rational analysis, failed to grasp the essential questions of human nature, morality, and justice, and that they reduced human beings to mere objects of manipulation and calculation. He also criticized modern liberalism, which he saw as a product of modernity, for its lack of moral and spiritual foundations, and for its tendency to undermine the authority of religion, tradition, and natural law.
To overcome the crisis of modernity, Strauss proposed a return to the classical political philosophy of the ancient Greeks and the medieval thinkers, who he believed had a deeper and more comprehensive understanding of human nature and society. He advocated a careful and respectful reading of the classical texts, arguing that their authors wrote in an esoteric manner, which he called "the art of writing". He suggested that the classical authors hid their true teachings behind a surface layer of conventional opinions, in order to avoid persecution and to educate only the few who were capable of grasping them, and that they engaged in a dialogue with each other across the ages. Strauss called this dialogue "the great conversation", and invited his readers to join it.
Strauss's interpretation of the classical political philosophy was influenced by his own Jewish background and his encounter with Islamic and Jewish medieval philosophy, especially the works of Al-Farabi and Maimonides. He argued that these philosophers, who lived under the rule of Islam, faced similar challenges as the ancient Greeks. He also claimed that these philosophers, who were both faithful to their revealed religions and loyal to the rational pursuit of philosophy, offered a model of how to reconcile reason and revelation, philosophy and theology, Athens and Jerusalem.
== Views ==
=== Philosophy ===
For Strauss, politics and philosophy were necessarily intertwined. He regarded the trial and death of Socrates as the moment when political philosophy came into existence. Strauss considered one of the most important moments in the history of philosophy Socrates' argument that philosophers could not study nature without considering their own human nature, which, in the words of Aristotle, is that of "a political animal." However, he also held that the ends of politics and philosophy were inherently irreconcilable and irreducible to one another.
Strauss distinguished "scholars" from "great thinkers," identifying himself as a scholar. He wrote that most self-described philosophers are in actuality scholars, cautious and methodical. Great thinkers, in contrast, boldly and creatively address big problems. Scholars deal with these problems only indirectly by reasoning about the great thinkers' differences.
In Natural Right and History, Strauss begins with a critique of Max Weber's epistemology, briefly engages the relativism of Martin Heidegger (who goes unnamed) and continues with a discussion of the evolution of natural rights via an analysis of the thought of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. He concludes by critiquing Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Edmund Burke. At the heart of the book are excerpts from Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero. Much of his philosophy is a reaction to the works of Heidegger. Indeed, Strauss wrote that Heidegger's thinking must be understood and confronted before any complete formulation of modern political theory is possible, and this means that political thought has to engage with issues of ontology and the history of metaphysics.
Strauss wrote that Friedrich Nietzsche was the first philosopher to properly understand historicism, an idea grounded in a general acceptance of Hegelian philosophy of history. Heidegger, in Strauss's view, sanitized and politicized Nietzsche, whereas Nietzsche believed "our own principles, including the belief in progress, will become as unconvincing and alien as all earlier principles (essences) had shown themselves to be" and "the only way out seems to be ... that one voluntarily choose life-giving delusion instead of deadly truth, that one fabricate a myth." Heidegger believed that the tragic nihilism of Nietzsche was itself a "myth" guided by a defective Western conception of Being that Heidegger traced to Plato. In his published correspondence with Alexandre Kojève, Strauss wrote that Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was correct when he postulated that an end of history implies an end to philosophy as understood by classical political philosophy.
=== On reading ===
In the late 1930s, Strauss called for the first time for a reconsideration of the "distinction between exoteric (or public) and esoteric (or secret) teaching." In 1952 he published Persecution and the Art of Writing, arguing that serious writers write esoterically, that is, with multiple or layered meanings, often disguised within irony or paradox, obscure references, even deliberate self-contradiction. Esoteric writing serves several purposes: protecting the philosopher from the retribution of the regime, and protecting the regime from the corrosion of philosophy; it attracts the right kind of reader and repels the wrong kind; and ferreting out the interior message is in itself an exercise of philosophic reasoning.
Taking his bearings from his study of Maimonides and Al-Farabi, and pointing further back to Plato's discussion of writing as contained in the Phaedrus, Strauss proposed that the classical and medieval art of esoteric writing is the proper medium for philosophic learning: rather than displaying philosophers' thoughts superficially, classical and medieval philosophical texts guide their readers in thinking and learning independently of imparted knowledge. Thus, Strauss agrees with the Socrates of the Phaedrus, where the Greek indicates that, insofar as writing does not respond when questioned, good writing provokes questions in the reader—questions that orient the reader towards an understanding of problems the author thought about with utmost seriousness. Strauss thus, in Persecution and the Art of Writing, presents Maimonides "as a closet nonbeliever obfuscating his message for political reasons".
Strauss' hermeneutical argument—rearticulated throughout his subsequent writings (most notably in The City and Man [1964])—is that, before the 19th century, Western scholars commonly understood that philosophical writing is not at home in any polity, no matter how liberal. Insofar as it questions conventional wisdom at its roots, philosophy must guard itself especially against those readers who believe themselves authoritative, wise, and liberal defenders of the status quo. In questioning established opinions, or in investigating the principles of morality, philosophers of old found it necessary to convey their messages in an oblique manner. Their "art of writing" was the art of esoteric communication. This was especially apparent in medieval times when heterodox political thinkers wrote under the threat of the Inquisition or comparably obtuse tribunals.
Strauss's argument is not that the medieval writers he studies reserved one exoteric meaning for the many (hoi polloi) and an esoteric, hidden one for the few (hoi oligoi), but that, through rhetorical stratagems including self-contradiction and hyperboles, these writers succeeded in conveying their proper meaning at the tacit heart of their writings—a heart or message irreducible to "the letter" or historical dimension of texts.
Explicitly following Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's lead, Strauss indicates that medieval political philosophers, no less than their ancient counterparts, carefully adapted their wording to the dominant moral views of their time, lest their writings be condemned as heretical or unjust, not by "the many" (who did not read), but by those "few" whom the many regarded as the most righteous guardians of morality. It was precisely these righteous personalities who would be most inclined to persecute/ostracize anyone who was in the business of exposing the noble or great lie upon which the authority of the few over the many stands or falls.
=== On politics ===
According to Strauss, modern social science is flawed because it assumes the fact–value distinction, a concept which Strauss found dubious. He traced its roots in Enlightenment philosophy to Max Weber, a thinker whom Strauss described as a "serious and noble mind". Weber wanted to separate values from science but, according to Strauss, was really a derivative thinker, deeply influenced by Nietzsche's relativism. Strauss treated politics as something that could not be studied from afar. A political scientist examining politics with a value-free scientific eye, for Strauss, was self-deluded. Positivism, the heir to both Auguste Comte and Weber in the quest to make purportedly value-free judgments, failed to justify its own existence, which would require a value judgment.
While modern-era liberalism had stressed the pursuit of individual liberty as its highest goal, Strauss felt that there should be a greater interest in the problem of human excellence and political virtue. Through his writings, Strauss constantly raised the question of how, and to what extent, freedom and excellence can coexist. Strauss refused to provide any straightforward answer to the Socratic question: What is the good for the city and man?
=== Encounters with Carl Schmitt and Alexandre Kojève ===
Two significant political-philosophical dialogues Strauss had with living thinkers were those he held with Carl Schmitt and Alexandre Kojève. Schmitt, who would later become, for a short time, the chief jurist of Nazi Germany, was one of the first important German academics to review Strauss's early work positively. Schmitt's positive reference for, and approval of, Strauss's work on Hobbes was instrumental in winning Strauss the scholarship funding that allowed him to leave Germany.
According to Heinrich Meier's interpretation, Strauss's critique and clarifications of The Concept of the Political led Schmitt to make significant emendations in its second edition. Writing to Schmitt in 1932, Strauss summarised Schmitt's political theology that "because man is by nature evil, he, therefore, needs dominion. But dominion can be established, that is, men can be unified only in a unity against—against other men. Every association of men is necessarily a separation from other men ... the political thus understood is not the constitutive principle of the state, of order, but a condition of the state." But Robert Howse argues that there is no clear evidence to support these claims and that the relationship between them was merely professional.
Strauss, however, directly opposed Schmitt's position. For Strauss, Schmitt and his return to Hobbes helpfully clarified the nature of our political existence and our modern self-understanding. Schmitt's position was therefore symptomatic of the modern-era liberal self-understanding. Strauss believed that such an analysis, as in Hobbes's time, served as a useful "preparatory action," revealing our contemporary orientation towards the eternal problems of politics (social existence). However, Strauss believed that Schmitt's reification of our modern self-understanding of the problem of politics into a political theology was not an adequate solution. Strauss instead advocated a return to a broader classical understanding of human nature and a tentative return to political philosophy, in the tradition of the ancient philosophers.
With Kojève, Strauss had a close and lifelong philosophical friendship. They had first met as students in Berlin. The two thinkers shared boundless philosophical respect for each other. Kojève would later write that, without befriending Strauss, "I never would have known ... what philosophy is". The political-philosophical dispute between Kojève and Strauss centered on the role that philosophy should and can be allowed to play in politics.
Kojève, a senior civil servant in the French government, was instrumental in the creation of the European Economic Community. He argued that philosophers should have an active role in shaping political events. Strauss, on the contrary, believed that philosophers should play a role in politics only to the extent that they can ensure that philosophy, which he saw as mankind's highest activity, can be free from political intervention.
=== Liberalism and nihilism ===
Strauss argued that liberalism in its modern form (which is oriented toward universal freedom as opposed to "ancient liberalism" which is oriented toward human excellence), contained within it an intrinsic tendency towards extreme relativism, which in turn led to two types of nihilism:
The first was a "brutal" nihilism, expressed in Nazi and Bolshevik regimes. In On Tyranny, he wrote that these ideologies, both descendants of Enlightenment thought, tried to destroy all traditions, history, ethics, and moral standards and replace them by force under which nature and mankind are subjugated and conquered.
The second type—the "gentle" nihilism expressed in Western liberal democracies—was a kind of value-free aimlessness and a hedonistic "permissive egalitarianism," which he saw as permeating the fabric of contemporary American society.
In the belief that 20th-century relativism, scientism, historicism, and nihilism were all implicated in the deterioration of modern society and philosophy, Strauss sought to uncover the philosophical pathways that had led to this situation. The resultant study led him to advocate a tentative return to classical political philosophy as a starting point for judging political action.
=== Strauss's interpretation of Plato's Republic ===
According to Strauss, the Republic by Plato is not "a blueprint for regime reform" (a play on words from Karl Popper's The Open Society and Its Enemies, which attacks The Republic for being just that). Strauss quotes Cicero: "The Republic does not bring to light the best possible regime but rather the nature of political things—the nature of the city."
Strauss argued that the city-in-speech was unnatural, precisely because "it is rendered possible by the abstraction from eros". Though skeptical of "progress," Strauss was equally skeptical about political agendas of "return"—that is, going backward instead of forward. In fact, he was consistently suspicious of anything claiming to be a solution to an old political or philosophical problem. He spoke of the danger in trying finally to resolve the debate between rationalism and traditionalism in politics. In particular, along with many in the pre-World War II German Right, he feared people trying to force a world state to come into being in the future, thinking that it would inevitably become a tyranny. Hence he kept his distance from the two totalitarianisms that he denounced in his century, both fascists and communists.
=== Strauss and Karl Popper ===
Strauss rejected Karl Popper's views as illogical. He agreed with a letter of response to his request of Eric Voegelin to look into the issue. In the response, Voegelin wrote that studying Popper's views was a waste of precious time, and "an annoyance". Specifically about The Open Society and Its Enemies and Popper's understanding of Plato's The Republic, after giving some examples, Voegelin wrote:
Popper is philosophically so uncultured, so fully a primitive ideological brawler, that he is not able even approximately to reproduce correctly the contents of one page of Plato. Reading is of no use to him; he is too lacking in knowledge to understand what the author says.
Strauss proceeded to show this letter to Kurt Riezler, who used his influence in order to oppose Popper's appointment at the University of Chicago.
=== Ancients and Moderns ===
Strauss constantly stressed the importance of two dichotomies in political philosophy, namely Athens and Jerusalem (reason and revelation) and Ancient versus Modern. The "Ancients" were the Socratic philosophers and their intellectual heirs; the "Moderns" start with Niccolò Machiavelli. The contrast between Ancients and Moderns was understood to be related to the unresolvable tension between Reason and Revelation. The Socratics, reacting to the first Greek philosophers, brought philosophy back to earth, and hence back to the marketplace, making it more political.
The Moderns reacted to the dominance of revelation in medieval society by promoting the possibilities of Reason. They objected to Aquinas's merger of natural right and natural theology, for it made natural right vulnerable to sideshow theological disputes. Thomas Hobbes, under the influence of Francis Bacon, re-oriented political thought to what was most solid but also most low in man—his physical hopes and fears—setting a precedent for John Locke and the later economic approach to political thought, as in David Hume and Adam Smith.
=== Strauss and Zionism ===
As a youth, Strauss belonged to the German Zionist youth group, along with his friends Gershom Scholem and Walter Benjamin. Both were admirers of Strauss and would continue to be throughout their lives. When he was 17, as he said, he was "converted" to political Zionism as a follower of Ze'ev Jabotinsky. He wrote several essays about its controversies but left these activities behind by his early twenties. While Strauss maintained a sympathetic interest in Zionism, he later came to refer to Zionism as "problematic" and became disillusioned with some of its aims.
Strauss taught at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem during the 1954–55 academic year. In his letter to a National Review editor, Strauss asked why Israel had been called a racist state by one of their writers. He argued that the author did not provide enough proof for his argument. He ended his essay with this statement: "Political Zionism is problematic for obvious reasons. But I can never forget what it achieved as a moral force in an era of complete dissolution. It helped to stem the tide of 'progressive' leveling of venerable, ancestral differences; it fulfilled a conservative function."
=== Religious belief ===
Although Strauss accepted the utility of religious belief, there is some question about his religious views. He was openly disdainful of atheism and disapproved of contemporary "dogmatic disbelief", which he considered intemperate and irrational. However, like Thomas Aquinas, he felt that revelation must be subject to examination by reason. At the end of The City and Man, Strauss invites the reader to "be open to ... the question quid sit deus ["What is God?"]" (p. 241). Edward Feser writes that "Strauss was not himself an orthodox believer, neither was he a convinced atheist. Since whether or not to accept a purported divine revelation is itself one of the 'permanent' questions, orthodoxy must always remain an option equally as defensible as unbelief."
In Natural Right and History, Strauss distinguishes a Socratic (Platonic, Ciceronian, Aristotelian) from a conventionalist (materialistic, Epicurean) reading of divinity, and argues that "the question of religion" (what is religion?) is inseparable from the question of the nature of civil society and civil authority. Throughout the volume he argues for the Socratic reading of civil authority and rejects the conventionalist reading (of which atheism is an essential component). This is incompatible with interpretations by Shadia Drury and other scholars who argue that Strauss viewed religion purely instrumentally.
== Reception and legacy ==
=== Reception by contemporaries ===
Strauss's works were read and admired by thinkers as diverse as the philosophers Gershom Scholem, Walter Benjamin, Hans-Georg Gadamer, and Alexandre Kojève, and the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. Benjamin had become acquainted with Strauss as a student in Berlin, and expressed admiration for Strauss throughout his life. Gadamer stated that he 'largely agreed' with Strauss's interpretations.
=== The Straussian school ===
Straussianism is the name given "to denote the research methods, common concepts, theoretical presuppositions, central questions, and pedagogic style (teaching style) characteristic of the large number of conservatives who have been influenced by the thought and teaching of Leo Strauss". While it "is particularly influential among university professors of historical political theory ... it also sometimes serves as a common intellectual framework more generally among conservative activists, think tank professionals, and public intellectuals". Harvey Mansfield, Steven B. Smith and Steven Berg, though never students of Strauss, are "Straussians" (as some followers of Strauss identify themselves). Mansfield has argued that there is no such thing as "Straussianism" yet there are Straussians and a school of Straussians. Mansfield describes the school as "open to the whole of philosophy" and without any definite doctrines that one has to believe in order to belong to it.
Within the discipline of political theory, the method calls for its practitioners to use "a 'close reading' of the 'Great Books' of political thought; they strive to understand a thinker 'as he understood himself'; they are unconcerned with questions about the historical context of, or historical influences on, a given author" and strive to be open to the idea that they may find something timelessly true in a great book. The approach "resembles in important ways the old New Criticism in literary studies."
There is some controversy in the approach over what distinguishes a great book from lesser works. Great books are held to be written by authors/philosophers "of such sovereign critical self-knowledge and intellectual power that they can in no way be reduced to the general thought of their time and place," with other works "understood as epiphenomenal to the original insights of a thinker of the first rank." This approach is seen as a counter "to the historicist presuppositions of the mid-twentieth century, which read the history of political thought in a progressivist way, with past philosophies forever cut off from us in a superseded past." Straussianism puts forward the possibility that past thinkers may have "hold of the truth—and that more recent thinkers are therefore wrong."
=== The Chinese Straussians ===
Almost the entirety of Strauss's writings has been translated into Chinese. There even is a school of Straussians in China, the most prominent being Liu Xiaofeng (Renmin University) and Gan Yang. "Chinese Straussians" (who often are also fascinated by Carl Schmitt) represent an example of the hybridization of Western political theory in a non-Western context. As the editors of a recent volume write, "the reception of Schmitt and Strauss in the Chinese-speaking world (and especially in the People's Republic of China) not only says much about how Schmitt and Strauss can be read today, but also provides important clues about the deeper contradictions of Western modernity and the dilemmas of non-liberal societies in our increasingly contentious world."
== Criticism ==
=== Conservatism ===
Some critics of Strauss have accused him of being elitist, illiberal and anti-democratic. Journalists such as Seymour Hersh have opined that Strauss endorsed noble lies, "myths used by political leaders seeking to maintain a cohesive society". In The City and Man, Strauss discusses the myths outlined in Plato's Republic that are required for all governments. These include a belief that the state's land belongs to it even though it may have been acquired illegitimately and that citizenship is rooted in something more than accidents of birth.
Shadia Drury, in Leo Strauss and the American Right (1999), claimed that Strauss inculcated an elitist strain in American political leaders linked to imperialist militarism, neoconservatism and Christian fundamentalism. Drury argues that Strauss teaches that "perpetual deception of the citizens by those in power is critical because they need to be led, and they need strong rulers to tell them what's good for them".
=== Anti-historicism ===
Strauss has also been criticized by some conservatives. According to Claes G. Ryn, Strauss's anti-historicist thinking creates an artificial contrast between moral universality and "the conventional", "the ancestral", and "the historical". Strauss, Ryn argues, wrongly and reductively assumes that respect for tradition must undermine reason and universality. Contrary to Strauss's criticism of Edmund Burke, the historical sense may be indispensable to an adequate apprehension of universality. Strauss's abstract, ahistorical conception of natural right distorts genuine universality, Ryn contends. Strauss does not consider the possibility that real universality becomes known to human beings in a concretized, particular form. Strauss and the Straussians have paradoxically taught philosophically unsuspecting American conservatives, not least Catholic intellectuals, to reject tradition in favor of ahistorical theorizing, a bias that flies in the face of the central Christian notion of the Incarnation, which represents a synthesis of the universal and the historical. According to Ryn, the propagation of a purely abstract idea of universality has contributed to the neoconservative advocacy of allegedly universal American principles, which neoconservatives see as justification for American intervention around the world—bringing the blessings of the "West" to the benighted "rest". Strauss's anti-historical thinking connects him and his followers with the French Jacobins, who also regarded tradition as incompatible with virtue and rationality.
What Ryn calls the "new Jacobinism" of the "neoconservative" philosophy is, writes Paul Gottfried, also the rhetoric of Louis Antoine de Saint-Just and Leon Trotsky, which the philosophically impoverished American Right has taken over with mindless alacrity; Republican operators and think tanks apparently believe they can carry the electorate by appealing to yesterday's leftist clichés.
=== Response to criticism ===
In his 2009 book Straussophobia, Peter Minowitz provides a detailed critique of Drury, Xenos, and other critics of Strauss whom he accuses of "bigotry and buffoonery".
In Reading Leo Strauss, Steven B. Smith rejects the link between Strauss and neoconservative thought, arguing that Strauss was never personally active in politics, never endorsed imperialism, and questioned the utility of political philosophy for the practice of politics. In particular, Strauss argued that Plato's myth of the philosopher king should be read as a reductio ad absurdum, and that philosophers should understand politics not in order to influence policy but to ensure philosophy's autonomy from politics. In his review of Reading Leo Strauss, Robert Alter writes that Smith "persuasively sets the record straight on Strauss's political views and on what his writing is really about".
Strauss's daughter, Jenny Strauss Clay, defended him against the charge that he was the "mastermind behind the neoconservative ideologues who control United States foreign policy." "He was a conservative", she says, "insofar as he did not think change is necessarily change for the better." Since contemporary academia "leaned to the left", with its "unquestioned faith in progress and science combined with a queasiness regarding any kind of moral judgment", Strauss stood outside of the academic consensus. Had academia leaned to the right, he would have questioned it, too—and on certain occasions did question the tenets of the right.
Mark Lilla has argued that the attribution to Strauss of neoconservative views contradicts a careful reading of Strauss' actual texts, in particular On Tyranny. Lilla summarizes Strauss as follows:
Philosophy must always be aware of the dangers of tyranny, as a threat to both political decency and the philosophical life. It must understand enough about politics to defend its own autonomy, without falling into the error of thinking that philosophy can shape the political world according to its own lights.
Responding to charges that Strauss's teachings fostered the neoconservative foreign policy of the administration of George W. Bush, such as "unrealistic hopes for the spread of liberal democracy through military conquest", Nathan Tarcov, director of the Leo Strauss Center at the University of Chicago, asserts that Strauss as a political philosopher was essentially non-political. After an exegesis of the very limited practical political views to be gleaned from Strauss's writings, Tarcov concludes that "Strauss can remind us of the permanent problems, but we have only ourselves to blame for our faulty solutions to the problems of today."
== Bibliography ==
Books and articles
Gesammelte Schriften. Ed. Heinrich Meier. Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler, 1996. Four vols. published to date: Vol. 1, Die Religionskritik Spinozas und zugehörige Schriften (rev. ed. 2001); vol. 2, Philosophie und Gesetz, Frühe Schriften (1997); Vol. 3, Hobbes' politische Wissenschaft und zugehörige Schrifte – Briefe (2001); Vol. 4, Politische Philosophie. Studien zum theologisch-politischen Problem (2010). The full series will also include Vol. 5, Über Tyrannis (2013) and Vol. 6, Gedanken über Machiavelli. Deutsche Erstübersetzung (2014).
Leo Strauss: The Early Writings (1921–1932). (Trans. from parts of Gesammelte Schriften). Trans. Michael Zank. Albany: SUNY Press, 2002.
Die Religionskritik Spinozas als Grundlage seiner Bibelwissenschaft: Untersuchungen zu Spinozas Theologisch-politischem Traktat. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1930.
Spinoza's Critique of Religion. (English trans. by Elsa M. Sinclair of Die Religionskritik Spinozas, 1930.) With a new English preface and a trans. of Strauss's 1932 German essay on Carl Schmitt. New York: Schocken, 1965. Reissued without that essay, Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1997.
"Anmerkungen zu Carl Schmitt, Der Begriff des Politischen". Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik 67, no. 6 (August–September 1932): 732–49.
"Comments on Carl Schmitt's Begriff des Politischen". (English trans. by Elsa M. Sinclair of "Anmerkungen zu Carl Schmitt", 1932.) 331–51 in Spinoza's Critique of Religion, 1965. Reprinted in Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, ed. and trans. George Schwab. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers U Press, 1976.
"Notes on Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political". (English trans. by J. Harvey Lomax of "Anmerkungen zu Carl Schmitt", 1932.) In Heinrich Meier, Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss: The Hidden Dialogue, trans. J. Harvey Lomax. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1995. Reprinted in Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, ed. and trans. George Schwab. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1996, 2007.
Philosophie und Gesetz: Beiträge zum Verständnis Maimunis und seiner Vorläufer. Berlin: Schocken, 1935.
Philosophy and Law: Essays Toward the Understanding of Maimonides and His Predecessors. (English trans. by Fred Baumann of Philosophie und Gesetz, 1935.) Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1987.
Philosophy and Law: Contributions to the Understanding of Maimonides and His Predecessors. (English trans. with introd. by Eve Adler of Philosophie und Gesetz, 1935.) Albany: SUNY Press, 1995.
The Political Philosophy of Hobbes: Its Basis and Its Genesis. (English trans. by Elsa M. Sinclair from German manuscript.) Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1936. Reissued with new preface, Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1952.
Hobbes' politische Wissenschaft in ihrer Genesis. (1935 German original of The Political Philosophy of Hobbes, 1936.) Neuwied am Rhein: Hermann Luchterhand, 1965.
"The Spirit of Sparta or the Taste of Xenophon". Social Research 6, no. 4 (Winter 1939): 502–36.
"On German Nihilism" (1999, originally a 1941 lecture), Interpretation 26, no. 3 edited by David Janssens and Daniel Tanguay.
"Farabi's Plato" American Academy for Jewish Research, Louis Ginzberg Jubilee Volume, 1945. 45 pp.
"On a New Interpretation of Plato's Political Philosophy". Social Research 13, no. 3 (Fall 1946): 326–67.
"On the Intention of Rousseau". Social Research 14, no. 4 (Winter 1947): 455–87.
On Tyranny: An Interpretation of Xenophon's Hiero. Foreword by Alvin Johnson. New York: Political Science Classics, 1948. Reissued Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Press, 1950.
De la tyrannie. (French trans. of On Tyranny, 1948, with "Restatement on Xenophon's Hiero" and Alexandre Kojève's "Tyranny and Wisdom".) Paris: Librairie Gallimard, 1954.
On Tyranny. (English edition of De la tyrannie, 1954.) Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1963.
On Tyranny. (Revised and expanded edition of On Tyranny, 1963.) Includes Strauss–Kojève correspondence. Ed. Victor Gourevitch and Michael S. Roth. New York: The Free Press, 1991.
"On Collingwood's Philosophy of History". Review of Metaphysics 5, no. 4 (June 1952): 559–86.
Persecution and the Art of Writing. Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Press, 1952. Reissued Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1988.
Natural Right and History. (Based on the 1949 Walgreen lectures.) Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1953. Reprinted with new preface, 1971. ISBN 978-0-226-77694-1.
"Existentialism" (1956), a public lecture on Martin Heidegger's thought, published in Interpretation, Spring 1995, Vol.22 No. 3: 303–18.
Seminar on Plato's Republic, (1957 Lecture), (1961 Lecture). University of Chicago.
Thoughts on Machiavelli. Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Press, 1958. Reissued Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1978.
What Is Political Philosophy? and Other Studies. Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Press, 1959. Reissued Chicago: U of Chicago Press, 1988.
On Plato's Symposium [1959]. Ed. Seth Benardete. (Edited transcript of 1959 lectures.) Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2001.
"'Relativism'". 135–57 in Helmut Schoeck and James W. Wiggins, eds., Relativism and the Study of Man. Princeton: D. Van Nostrand, 1961. Partial reprint, 13–26 in The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism, 1989.
History of Political Philosophy. Co-editor with Joseph Cropsey. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1963 (1st ed.), 1972 (2nd ed.), 1987 (3rd ed.).
"The Crisis of Our Time", 41–54, and "The Crisis of Political Philosophy", 91–103, in Howard Spaeth, ed., The Predicament of Modern Politics. Detroit: U of Detroit P, 1964.
"Political Philosophy and the Crisis of Our Time". (Adaptation of the two essays in Howard Spaeth, ed., The Predicament of Modern Politics, 1964.) 217–42 in George J. Graham, Jr., and George W. Carey, eds., The Post-Behavioral Era: Perspectives on Political Science. New York: David McKay, 1972.
The City and Man. (Based on the 1962 Page-Barbour lectures.) Chicago: Rand McNally, 1964.
Socrates and Aristophanes. New York: Basic Books, 1966. Reissued Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1980.
Liberalism Ancient and Modern. New York: Basic Books, 1968. Reissued with foreword by Allan Bloom, 1989. Reissued Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1995.
Xenophon's Socratic Discourse: An Interpretation of the Oeconomicus. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1970.
Note on the Plan of Nietzsche's "Beyond Good & Evil". St. John's College, 1971.
Xenophon's Socrates. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1972.
The Argument and the Action of Plato's Laws. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1975.
Political Philosophy: Six Essays by Leo Strauss. Ed. Hilail Gilden. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1975.
An Introduction to Political Philosophy: Ten Essays by Leo Strauss. (Expanded version of Political Philosophy: Six Essays by Leo Strauss, 1975.) Ed. Hilail Gilden. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1989.
Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy. Introd. by Thomas L. Pangle. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1983.
The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism: An Introduction to the Thought of Leo Strauss – Essays and Lectures by Leo Strauss. Ed. Thomas L. Pangle. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1989.
Faith and Political Philosophy: the Correspondence Between Leo Strauss and Eric Voegelin, 1934–1964. Ed. Peter Emberley and Barry Cooper. Introd. by Thomas L. Pangle. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State UP, 1993.
Hobbes's Critique of Religion and Related Writings. Ed. and trans. Gabriel Bartlett and Svetozar Minkov. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2011. (Trans. of materials first published in the Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. 3, including an unfinished manuscript by Leo Strauss of a book on Hobbes, written in 1933–1934, and some shorter related writings.)
Leo Strauss on Moses Mendelssohn. Edited and translated by Martin D. Yaffe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012. (Annotated translation of ten introductions written by Strauss to a multi-volume critical edition of Mendelssohn's work.)
"Exoteric Teaching" (Critical Edition by Hannes Kerber). In Reorientation: Leo Strauss in the 1930s. Edited by Martin D. Yaffe and Richard S. Ruderman. New York: Palgrave, 2014, pp. 275–86.
"Lecture Notes for 'Persecution and the Art of Writing'" (Critical Edition by Hannes Kerber). In Reorientation: Leo Strauss in the 1930s. Edited by Martin D. Yaffe and Richard S. Ruderman. New York: Palgrave, 2014, pp. 293–304.
Leo Strauss on Nietzsche's "Thus Spoke Zarathustra". Edited by Richard L. Velkley. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017.
Leo Strauss on Political Philosophy: Responding to the Challenge of Positivism and Historicism. Edited by Catherine H. Zuckert. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018.
Leo Strauss on Hegel. Edited by Paul Franco. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019.
Writings about Maimonides and Jewish philosophy
Spinoza's Critique of Religion (see above, 1930).
Philosophy and Law (see above, 1935).
"Quelques remarques sur la science politique de Maïmonide et de Farabi". Revue des études juives 100 (1936): 1–37.
"Der Ort der Vorsehungslehre nach der Ansicht Maimunis". Monatschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums 81 (1936): 448–56.
"The Literary Character of The Guide for the Perplexed" [1941]. 38–94 in Persecution and the Art of Writing. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1952.
[1944] "How to Study Medieval Philosophy" [. Interpretation 23, no. 3 (Spring 1996): 319–338. Previously published, less annotations and fifth paragraph, as "How to Begin to Study Medieval Philosophy" in Pangle (ed.), The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism, 1989 (see above).
[1952]. Modern Judaism 1, no. 1 (May 1981): 17–45. Reprinted Chap. 1 (I–II) in Jewish Philosophy and the Crisis of Modernity, 1997 (see below).
[1952]. Independent Journal of Philosophy 3 (1979), 111–18. Reprinted Chap. 1 (III) in Jewish Philosophy and the Crisis of Modernity, 1997 (see below).
"Maimonides' Statement on Political Science". Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 22 (1953): 115–30.
[1957]. L'Homme 21, n° 1 (janvier–mars 1981): 5–20. Reprinted Chap. 8 in Jewish Philosophy and the Crisis of Modernity, 1997 (see below).
"How to Begin to Study The Guide of the Perplexed". In The Guide of the Perplexed, Volume One. Trans. Shlomo Pines. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1963.
[1965] "On the Plan of the Guide of the Perplexed" . Harry Austryn Wolfson Jubilee. Volume (Jerusalem: American Academy for Jewish Research), pp. 775–91.
"Notes on Maimonides' Book of Knowledge". 269–83 in Studies in Mysticism and Religion Presented to G. G. Scholem. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1967.
Jewish Philosophy and the Crisis of Modernity: Essays and Lectures in Modern Jewish Thought. Ed. Kenneth Hart Green. Albany: SUNY P, 1997.
Leo Strauss on Maimonides: The Complete Writings. Edited by Kenneth Hart Green. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013.
== See also ==
American philosophy
List of American philosophers
Neoconservatism, often referred to as inspired by the work of Strauss
Lev Shestov
Allan Bloom
Seth Benardete
Jacob Klein
== Notes ==
== References ==
== Further reading ==
Altman, William H. F., The German Stranger: Leo Strauss and National Socialism. Lexington Books, 2011
Andreacchio, Marco. "Philosophy and Religion in Leo Strauss : Critical Review of Menon's Interpretation". Interpretation: A Journal of Political Philosophy 46, no. 2 (Spring 2020): 383–98.
Batnitzky, Leora, Leo Strauss and Emmanuel Levinas : philosophy and the politics of revelation, Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2006.
Behnegar, Nasser, Leo Strauss, Max Weber, And The Scientific Study Of Politics. University of Chicago Press, 2005.
Benardete, Seth. Encounters and Reflections: Conversations with Seth Benardete. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2002.
Bloom, Allan. "Leo Strauss". 235–55 in Giants and Dwarfs: Essays 1960–1990. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990.
Bluhm, Harald. Die Ordnung der Ordnung : das politische Philosophieren von Leo Strauss. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 2002.
Brague, Rémi. "Leo Strauss and Maimonides". 93–114 in Leo Strauss's Thought. Ed. Alan Udoff. Boulder: Lynne Reiner, 1991.
Brittain, Christopher Craig. "Leo Strauss and Resourceful Odysseus: Rhetorical Violence and the Holy Middle". Canadian Review of American Studies 38, no. 1 (2008): 147–63.
Bruell, Christopher. "A Return to Classical Political Philosophy and the Understanding of the American Founding". Review of Politics 53, no. 1 (Winter 1991): 173–86.
Chivilò, Giampiero and Menon, Marco (eds). Tirannide e filosofia: Con un saggio di Leo Strauss ed un inedito di Gaston Fessard sj. Venezia: Edizioni Ca' Foscari, 2015. ISBN 978-88-6969-032-7.
Colen, Jose. Facts and values. London: Plusprint, 2012.
Deutsch, Kenneth L. and John A. Murley, eds. Leo Strauss, the Straussians, and the American Regime. New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999. ISBN 978-0-8476-8692-6.
Drury, Shadia B. Leo Strauss and the American Right. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1999.
Drury, Shadia B. The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1988.
Ghibellini, Alberto Marco. Leo Strauss and the Recovery of "Natural Philosophizing". State University of New York Press, 2025.
Gottfried, Paul. Leo Strauss and the Conservative Movement in America: A Critical Appraisal (Cambridge University Press; 2011)
Gourevitch, Victor. "Philosophy and Politics I–II". Review of Metaphysics 22, nos. 1–2 (September–December 1968): 58–84, 281–328.
Green, Kenneth. Jew and Philosopher: The Return to Maimonides in the Jewish Thought of Leo Strauss. Albany: SUNY Press, 1993.
"A Giving of Accounts: Jacob Kelin and Leo Strauss". In Jewish Philosophy and the Crisis of Modernity: Essays and Lectures in Modern Jewish Thought. Ed. Kenneth H. Green. Albany: SUNY Press, 1997.
Havers, Grant N. Leo Strauss and Anglo-American Democracy: A Conservative Critique. DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 2013.
Holmes, Stephen. The Anatomy of Antiliberalism. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1996. ISBN 978-0-674-03185-2.
Howse, Robert. Leo Strauss, Man of Peace, Cambridge University Press, 2014]
Ivry, Alfred L. "Leo Strauss on Maimonides". 75–91 in Leo Strauss's Thought. Ed. Alan Udoff. Boulder: Lynne Reiner, 1991.
Janssens, David. Between Athens and Jerusalem. Philosophy, Prophecy, and Politics in Leo Strauss's Early Thought. Albany: SUNY Press, 2008.
Kartheininger, Markus. "Heterogenität. Politische Philosophie im Frühwerk von Leo Strauss". München: Fink, 2006. ISBN 978-3-7705-4378-6.
Kartheininger, Markus. "Aristokratisierung des Geistes". In: Kartheininger, Markus/ Hutter, Axel (ed.). "Bildung als Mittel und Selbstzweck". Freiburg: Alber, 2009, pp. 157–208. ISBN 978-3-495-48393-0.
Kerber, Hannes. "Strauss and Schleiermacher. An Introduction to 'Exoteric Teaching". In Reorientation: Leo Strauss in the 1930s. Ed. Yaffe/Ruderman. New York: Palgrave, 2014, pp. 203–14.
Kerber, Hannes. "Leo Strauss on Exoteric Writing". Interpretation. 46, no. 1 (2019): 3–25.
Kinzel, Till. Platonische Kulturkritik in Amerika. Studien zu Allan Blooms The Closing of the American Mind. Berlin: Duncker und Humblot, 2002.
Kochin, Michael S. "Morality, Nature, and Esotericism in Leo Strauss's Persecution and the Art of Writing". Review of Politics 64, no. 2 (Spring 2002): 261–83.
Lampert, Laurence. Leo Strauss and Nietzsche. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1996.
Lutz, Mark J. "Living the Theologico-Political Problem: Leo Strauss on the Common Ground of Philosophy and Theology." The European Legacy. 2018. Vol. 23. No. 8. pp. 1–25.
Macpherson, C. B. "Hobbes's Bourgeois Man". In Democratic Theory: Essays in Retrieval. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972.
Major, Rafael (ed.). Leo Strauss's Defense of the Philosophic Life: Reading "What is Political Philosophy?". University of Chicago Press, 2013. ISBN 978-0-226-92420-5 (cloth)
Marchal, Kai, Shaw, Carl K.Y. Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss in the Chinese-speaking World: Reorienting the Political. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2017.
McAllister, Ted V. Revolt Against Modernity: Leo Strauss, Eric Voegelin & the Search for Postliberal Order. Lawrence, KS: UP of Kansas. 1996.
McWilliams, Wilson Carey. "Leo Strauss and the Dignity of American Political Thought". Review of Politics 60, no. 2 (Spring 1998): 231–46.
Meier, Heinrich. Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss: The Hidden Dialogue, Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1995.
Meier, Heinrich. "Editor's Introduction[s]". Gesammelte Schriften. Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler, 1996. 3 vols.
Meier, Heinrich. Leo Strauss and the Theologico-Political Problem. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2006.
Meier, Heinrich. How Strauss Became Strauss". 363–82 in Enlightening Revolutions: Essays in Honor of Ralph Lerner. Ed. Svetozar Minkov. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2006.
Melzer, Arthur. "Esotericism and the Critique of Historicism". American Political Science Review 100 (2006): 279–95.
Minowitz, Peter. "Machiavellianism Come of Age? Leo Strauss on Modernity and Economics". The Political Science Reviewer 22 (1993): 157–97.
Minowitz, Peter. Straussophobia: Defending Leo Strauss and Straussians against Shadia Drury and Other Accusers. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2009.
Momigliano, Arnaldo. "Hermeneutics and Classical Political Thought in Leo Strauss", 178–89 in Essays on Ancient and Modern Judaism. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1994.
Moyn, Samuel. "From experience to law: Leo Strauss and the Weimar crisis of the philosophy of religion." History of European Ideas 33, (2007): 174–94.
Neumann, Harry. Liberalism. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic P, 1991.
Norton, Anne. Leo Strauss and the Politics of American Empire. New Haven & London: Yale UP, 2004.
Pangle, Thomas L. "The Epistolary Dialogue Between Leo Strauss and Eric Voegelin". Review of Politics 53, no. 1 (Winter 1991): 100–25.
Minowitz, Peter. "Leo Strauss's Perspective on Modern Politics". Perspectives on Political Science 33, no. 4 (Fall 2004): 197–203.
Minowitz, Peter. Leo Strauss: An Introduction to His Thought and Intellectual Legacy. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2006.
Pelluchon, Corine. Leo Strauss and the Crisis of Rationalism: Another Reason, Another Enlightenment, Robert Howse (tr.), SUNY Press, 2014.
Piccinini, Irene Abigail. Una guida fedele. L'influenza di Hermann Cohen sul pensiero di Leo Strauss. Torino: Trauben, 2007. ISBN 978-88-89909-31-7.
Rosen, Stanley. "Hermeneutics as Politics". 87–140 in Hermeneutics as Politics, New York: Oxford UP, 1987.
Sheppard, Eugene R. Leo Strauss and the Politics of Exile: The Making of a Political Philosopher. Waltham, MA: Brandeis UP, 2006. ISBN 978-1-58465-600-5.
Shorris, Earl. "Ignoble Liars: Leo Strauss, George Bush, and the Philosophy of Mass Deception". Harper's Magazine 308, issue 1849 (June 2004): 65–71.
Smith, Steven B. Reading Leo Strauss: Politics, Philosophy, Judaism. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2006. ISBN 978-0-226-76402-3. (Introd: "Why Strauss, Why Now?", online posting, press.uchicago.edu.)
Smith, Steven B. (editor). The Cambridge Companion to Leo Strauss. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2009. ISBN 978-0-521-70399-4.
Steiner, Stephan: Weimar in Amerika. Leo Strauss' Politische Philosophie, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck 2013.
Strong, Tracy B. "Leo Strauss and the Demos," The European Legacy (October, 2012)
Tanguay, Daniel. Leo Strauss: une biographie intellectuelle. Paris, 2005. ISBN 978-2-253-13067-3.
Tarcov, Nathan. "On a Certain Critique of 'Straussianism' ". Review of Politics 53, no. 1 (Winter 1991): 3–18.
Tarcov, Nathan. "Philosophy and History: Tradition and Interpretation in the Work of Leo Strauss". Polity 16, no. 1 (Autumn 1983): 5–29.
Tarcov, Nathan and Thomas L. Pangle, "Epilogue: Leo Strauss and the History of Political Philosophy". 907–38 in History of Political Philosophy. Ed. Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey. 3rd ed. 1963; Chicago and London, U of Chicago P, 1987.
Tepper, Aryeh. "Progressive Minds, Conservative Politics: Leo Strauss' Later Writings on Maimonides." SUNY: 2013.
Thompson, Bradley C. (with Yaron Brook). Neoconservatism. An Obituary for an Idea. Boulder/London: Paradigm Publishers, 2010. pp. 55–131. ISBN 978-1-59451-831-7.
Velkley, Richard. Heidegger, Strauss, and the Premises of Philosophy: On Original Forgetting. University of Chicago Press, 2011.
Weinstein, David and Zakai, Avihu, Jewish exiles and European thought in the shadow of the Third Reich : Baron, Popper, Strauss, Auerbach. Cambridge, United Kingdom : Cambridge University Press, 2017.
West, Thomas G. "Jaffa Versus Mansfield: Does America Have a Constitutional or a "Declaration of Independence" Soul?" Perspectives on Political Science 31, no. 4 (Fall 2002): 35–46.
Xenos, Nicholas. Cloaked in virtue: Unveiling Leo Strauss and the Rhetoric of American Foreign Policy. New York, Routledge Press, 2008.
Zuckert, Catherine H. Postmodern Platos. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1996.
Zuckert, Catherine H., and Michael Zuckert. The Truth about Leo Strauss. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2006.
Robertson, Neil G. (June 2021). Leo Strauss: An Introduction. Key Contemporary Thinkers. Cambridge: Polity Press. ISBN 9781509516315.
=== Strauss family ===
Lüders, Joachim and Ariane Wehner. Mittelhessen – eine Heimat für Juden? Das Schicksal der Familie Strauss aus Kirchhain. Marburg: Gymnasium Philippinum, 1989. (In German; English translation: Central Hesse – a Homeland for Jews? The Fate of the Strauss Family from Kirchhain.)
== External links ==
The Leo Strauss Center
The Leo Strauss Foundation
Guide to the Leo Strauss Papers circa 1930–1997 at the University of Chicago Special Collections Research Center
Works by or about Leo Strauss at the Internet Archive
Leora Batnitzky. "Leo Strauss". In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marilyn_Butler | Marilyn Butler | Marilyn Speers Butler, Lady Butler, FRSA, FRSL, FBA (née Evans; 11 February 1937 – 11 March 2014) was a British literary critic. She was King Edward VII Professor of English Literature at the University of Cambridge from 1986 to 1993, and Rector of Exeter College, Oxford, from 1993 to 2004. She was the first female head of a formerly all-male Oxford or Cambridge college. She won the British Academy's Rose Mary Crawshay Prize in 1973.
== Biography ==
Marilyn Speers Evans was born in Coombe, Kingston upon Thames, on 11 February 1937. Her father, Sir Trevor Maldwyn Evans was a journalist and her mother was Margaret Speers "Madge" Evans (née Gribbin). At the age of two, she was evacuated with her mother and elder brother to New Quay in Wales, where she remained until the end of World War II. She was educated at Wimbledon High School and St Hilda's College, Oxford, graduating with a first-class degree in English in 1958. She became a school teacher, but in 1960 joined the BBC as a journalist. On 3 March 1962, she married David Butler; the couple had three sons.
After she was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in 2004, Butler's health declined and she died at Headington Care Home, Oxford, on 11 March 2014 as a result of a respiratory tract infection.
== Career ==
In the early 1960s, Butler left journalism, and returned to academia, completing her doctoral thesis in 1966 in Oxford. She received a research fellowship at St Hilda's College, Oxford. Her published works include Romantics, Rebels and Reactionaries (1982) and Jane Austen and the War of Ideas (1975). Much of her work was devoted to the career of the Anglo-Irish Romantic novelist Maria Edgeworth, a relative of her husband, including a classic literary biography and an important edition of her collected works for Pickering & Chatto. Butler collaborated with her sister-in-law Christina Colvin on Maria Edgeworth, resulting in two books for which they each won the Rose Mary Crawshay Prize in 1973.
In June 2003, Butler was awarded an honorary degree from the Open University as Doctor of the University. She was a Fellow of the British Academy.
== Works ==
=== Books ===
Maria Edgeworth: A Literary Biography (1972)
Jane Austen and the War of Ideas (1975)
Peacock Displayed: A Satirist in His Context (1979)
Romantics, Rebels, and Reactionaries: English Literature and Its Background, 1760–1830 (1982)
Mapping Mythologies: Countercurrents in Eighteenth-Century British Poetry and Cultural History (2015)
=== Edited books ===
Frankenstein: 1818 text (Oxford World's Classics, 1994, rpt 1998, 2008)
== References ==
== External links ==
"Professor Marilyn Butler - obituary", The Daily Telegraph, 10 June 2014.
Profile - British Academy |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Baker_Asvat#:~:text=He%20was%20awarded%20the%20Order%20of%20Luthuli%20in%20Silver%20by%20President%20Cyril%20Ramaphosa%20in%202021. | Abu Baker Asvat | Abu Baker Asvat (/ɑsfat/) (23 February 1943 – 27 January 1989), also known as Abu Asvat
or Abu nicknamed Hurley was a South African medical doctor who practised in Soweto in the 1970s and 1980s. A founding member of Azapo, Asvat was the head of its health secretariat, and involved in initiatives aimed at improving the health of rural black South Africans during Apartheid.
In 1989, Asvat was shot dead in his clinic, and he died in the arms of his nurse, Albertina Sisulu. His death has been linked to that of Stompie Seipei four weeks earlier, with allegations that Winnie Mandela (whose personal physician Asvat was) paid for his murder as part of a cover-up of Seipei's killing, being presented to South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
== Early life and family ==
Asvat was born in Fietas into Gujarati Indian family. His father was a migrant shopkeeper, and he had two brothers. After attending the local high school, Asvat travelled to South Asia for his tertiary education, spending time in East Pakistan and West Pakistan, completing his medical studies in Karachi. While in Karachi, Asvat was involved in the student politics, founded a student organisation affiliated to the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania (PAC), and hosted its cadres en route to China.
Asvat married his wife Zorah in 1977, and they had three children.
== Soweto surgery ==
After returning to South Africa when he completed his studies, Asvat obtained a post at Johannesburg's Coronation Hospital (now Rahima Moosa Mother and Child Hospital). He became increasingly politicised when observing the racism of the white senior staff, segregated facilities, and racially unequal pay and conditions. He was fired after he confronted a white pharmaceutical representative who refused to speak to black doctors.
Asvat took over a small surgery in Soweto from his brother, and soon established a thriving practice, often treating more than 100 patients a day, often on a pro bono basis. During the 1976 Soweto Uprising, Asvat treated numerous children who were shot by the police, and his surgery was guarded by residents of a nearby squatter camp. His activities made him known in political circles, and he soon came to be called "the people's doctor" in Soweto. Asvat also opened a creche and soup kitchen for residents of Soweto's informal settlements. In contrast to other township doctors, Asvat projected a humble image, and insisted on patients calling him "Abu". He used the methods of the Brazilian radical educationalist Paolo Freire to guide his work with grassroots communities.
== Black consciousness movement ==
Asvat was drawn to the black consciousness movement in the aftermath of the 1976 uprising, which represented the only above-ground resistance movement in Soweto, at the time, and he was attracted to Steve Biko's conception of blackness. He was an important link between Lenasia, the Indian township that he lived in, and neighbouring Soweto, discarding the racial and social taboos of the time. Asvat was beaten, and had his life threatened by a Special Branch policeman in 1978, as part of an ongoing campaign of harassment. Although committed to the Black Consciousness movement he was known to be non-sectarian and worked with a wide range of anti-apartheid forces.
Asvat received the first annual human rights award from The Indicator, a newspaper based in Lenasia. He emphasized in his speech, "Let us have social mingling. Let Soweto swarm Lenasia. Let Eldorado Park swarm Lenasia. Let Lenasia swarm Eldorado Park. Let Lenasia swarm Soweto. Then we will have put into practice what we preach. We can't wait until liberation because once liberation is on it is not going to be easy to mend the injustice and the oppression that this harsh system has done to the people in this country. We've got to start now in practical terms."
== Cricket ==
Asvat, a keen cricketer, was involved in the desegregation of the sport in the Transvaal. He played for a team called The Crescents in Lenasia.
He initially embraced an attempt by Ali Bacher in the late 1970s to allow black teams to compete at white grounds ("Normal Cricket"), however, he became disillusioned after realising that facilities at white cricket venues remained racially segregated. He co-founded the Transvaal Cricket Board (TCB), which rejected Bacher's "multi-racial" approach to the sport, which the TCB saw as perpetuating the racial divisions of apartheid, and instead embraced a "non-racial" vision, which rejected Apartheid racial divisions. The TCB organised successful boycotts against Normal Cricket initiatives, and the TCB league grew under Asvat's leadership.
Asvat voluntarily stepped down as leader of the TCB in 1981, but remained a cricketer for the rest of his life, playing for the Crescents, and organising a junior league in the late 1980s.
== Azapo Health Secretariat ==
In 1982, Azapo created the Community Health Awareness Project (Chap). As part of this initiative, Asvat and others would travel throughout South Africa on weekends, towing medically equipped caravans funded by Asvat, providing healthcare to neglected non-urban areas, sometimes treating between 150 and 500 patients in a weekend, and providing health lectures to groups of up to 6 000 people.
In 1984, as part of this project, he compiled a 20 page manual on basic healthcare. Thousands of copies were distributed, in English, Sotho, Northern Sotho and Zulu. He also worked with the Black Allied Mining and Construction Workers Union (BAMWCU) to expose conditions in South Africa's asbestos mining towns, where children played in exposed mine dumps, and asbestosis was common in mineworkers.
Asvat and his associates also traveled to the Vaal Triangle during unrest in there in 1984, to treat those hurt in the violence, and to document injuries inflicted by the apartheid security forces.
By the mid-1980s, Asvat was commonly quoted in major newspapers, and became a prominent voice in the anti-apartheid movement on health issues. In 1988, he criticised the apartheid government's handling of the emerging AIDS epidemic. He also had a regular column in The Sowetan where he answered readers' health questions.
== 1980s ==
Asvat hired anti-apartheid activist Albertina Sisulu to work as his nurse, in 1984. Sisulu was the wife of then-imprisoned ANC leader Walter Sisulu and a co-president of the United Democratic Front (UDF). Sisulu was unable to practice as a nurse due to banning orders placed on her by the apartheid government, however Asvat employed her, paid her when she was detained by the apartheid security forces, and allowed her to visit her husband at Robben Island frequently. Despite sharp political differences between the UDF and AZAPO, that erupted into violence-resulting in many deaths and injuries-Albertina Sisulu and Asvat continued working together, and treated casualties from both sides of the conflict.
Asvat became involved in the plight of Soweto squatters, and would rush into Soweto at night in order to assist those whose shacks were under threat by the Soweto Town Council (a structure created by the apartheid government), and the West Rand Administration Board (WRAB). His actions brought him into increasing conflict with these bodies. He would often arrange emergency alternative shelter in Lenasia, and would, occasionally feed or house displaced persons in his own home.
Asvat was elected president of the newly formed Lenasia-based People’s Education Committee (PEC), despite his Black Consciousness ideology differing from the pro-ANC views of the rest of the organisation. The PEC aimed to enable black youths to be educated after township schooling was severely disrupted in the aftermath of the 1976 riots. Among the programmes of the PEC, was a campaign to get black African children admitted to House of Delegates-run segregated Indian schools. This campaign attained some success, and by 1990, 15% of students in Lenasia came from the surrounding African areas.
During the 1986 State of Emergency in South Africa, and with Asvat underground, an attempt was made by unknown forces to fire-bomb his home in Lenasia. Eight months later, Asvat survived an attempted stabbing by two assailants at his surgery, where he was slightly wounded in the face. Albertina Sisulu raised the alarm with neighbours, while Asvat fended an assailant off. Asvat's wife was also routinely harassed by special branch police at home.
In 1988, a gunman pulled a weapon on Asvat, but fled when a patient entered the room. Also in 1988, the authorities decided to develop the squatter camp where Asvat's practice was situated in the "Chicken Farm" area of Soweto. However, Asvat refused to move, unless alternative accommodations were provided for his practice. He and Albertina Sisulu continued working in the practice, even when the authorities cut power to his surgery. Asvat eventually moved his practice to Rockville in Soweto, where he continued to be harassed by the Security Police.
== Murder ==
On the afternoon of 27 January 1989, two men arrived at Asvat's surgery, claiming to need treatment. Once admitted to the surgery by Albertina Sisulu, they drew a firearm and shot Asvat twice, killing him. Sisulu sat next to him as he died, as she waited for an ambulance, later telling Asvat's relatives that "My son died in my hands".
In the period immediately before the murder, Asvat became uncharacteristically fearful, and the night before his death, he drove home on a flat tyre, telling his wife that he thought that an unspecified 'they' were trying to set him up for attack. He appeared to be extremely distracted the night before his death, and made two attempts to see his lawyers the next morning.
Investigations into Asvat's murder led to two suspects, Zakhele Mbatha and Thulani Dlamini. They were sentenced to death, with the motive being described as robbery (the sentences were commuted following the abolition of the death penalty in South Africa). However, Asvat's family found that no money had been taken, and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission found that the police were negligent in hastily ascribing a motive of robbery to the attack, and for failing to thoroughly investigate the attack.
Within days of Asvat's killing, rumours began to circulate linking his death to Winnie Mandela. Asvat and Winnie Mandela had first made contact during one of Asvat's rural clinics in Brandfort, where she had been banished by the apartheid government. Asvat and Winnie Mandela established a soup kitchen and clinic, and he assumed responsibility for her care, with Asvat sometimes driving to Brandfort in the middle of the night to treat her. Mandela would regularly dine with the Asvat family after she returned to Soweto from Brandfort, and attended parties at the Asvat home.
Soon after Asvat's murder, Winnie Mandela gave an interview to a Sunday newspaper claiming that he was killed because he could corroborate (baseless) allegations that Methodist minister Paul Verryn had molested Stompie Seipei. However, media sources soon began to report on rumours that Asvat had been killed at the behest of Winnie Mandela, as he had examined the boy, and insisted that he be taken to hospital due to the severity of his injuries following the assaults by Mandela's security detail, thus making Asvat's death part of an alleged cover-up orchestrated by Winnie Mandela. In 2018 a new biography of Winnie Mandela by Fred Bridgland argued that she was behind the murder of Asvat.
The reasoning behind the Paul Verryn allegations allegedly came about after Kenny Kgase, one of four boys taken from minister Paul Verryn's manse and brought to Winnie Mandela's Diepkloof house by her Mandela United Football Club, escaped from Mandela's home in the absence of a guard and fled to the Methodist Church regional headquarters in Johannesburg. Once minister Paul Verryn arrived, he took Kgase to see a doctor, Martin Connell, who after treating extensive injuries, sheltered Kgase for a few weeks. Kgase told Verryn of the horrible state he had seen Stompie and how he had vanished from Winnie Mandela's house.
Thabiso Mono, another one of the kidnapped boys, said that Winnie Mandela had accused him and the others of allowing Paul Verryn to sleep with them, as well as accused Stompie Seipei of being a police informant. He recounted being beaten by Winnie and the United Football Club Guard.
Winnie Mandela ordered Katiza Cebekhulu to file a police report accusing Paul Verryn of molesting the kidnapped boys. In order to officially file a report, a certificate from a doctor who examined the boys was required. At Dr. Asvat's clinic, Cebekhulu stated "I made out Winnie shouting: ‘If you don’t cooperate, I’ll deal with you!" Cebekhulu and Winnie left without Dr. Asvat providing a medical certificate, which Cebekhulu said angered Winnie.
Years after the police report, Cebekhulu said he was ordered to show two youths, Zakhele Cyril Mbatha and Thulani Nicholas Dlamini, the location of Dr. Asvat's workplace.
=== Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) ===
One of Winnie Mandela's supporters, Katiza Cebekhulu, testified at the TRC that he had witnessed a "volcanic row" between Mandela and Asvat, after Asvat refused to back Mandela's (baseless) charges that Verryn had sodomised boys. The hearings were later adjourned amid claims by TRC lawyers that witnesses were intimidated on Winnie Mandela's orders.
Mbatha and Dlamini both claimed in testimony to the TRC that Winnie Mandela had paid them R20,000 (equivalent to $8,000 at the time), and that she provided them with a gun to kill Asvat. Both also claimed to have been intimidated by Mandela prior to testifying at the TRC. Mbatha also claimed that he had immediately implicated Mandela in the murder, but was forced by police to change his confession to the attack being a robbery, due to torture. It emerged that Dlamini's 1989 confession implicated Winnie Mandela, but it was not presented by the police to the court trying Mbatha and Dlamini, with the police justifying the suppression by arguing that the confession was "at odds" with their investigation. A group of men in combat fatigues associated with Winnie Mandela were accused by Mbata's lawyers of attempting to intimidate his family during a TRC hearing. Winnie Mandela's lawyer exposed inconsistencies in their testimony.
When Albertina Sisulu testified, she failed to corroborate an appointment card that would have placed Winnie Mandela at the surgery on the morning of the killing, claiming to have forgotten much about the day of the murder. When it was hinted at by a TRC commissioner that Sisulu did not want to be remembered in history as having implicated a comrade, she denied this.
One of the kidnapped boys, Thabiso Mono, when asked if he knew that Winnie Mandela had claimed to be in Brandfort on the day of the assaults on the boys, stated "I saw her. She was the person assaulting us with fists and hitting us with sjamboks."
During her own testimony to the commission, Madikizela-Mandela denied the allegations.
The final report of the TRC stated that the Commission was unable to verify the allegations implicating Winnie Mandela in the murder of Asvat, and criticised the police for too quickly jumping to the conclusion that the motive for the murder was robbery, and for not investigating the apparent connection between Cebekhulu and Dlamini's accounts of the killings, and it referred to Mbatha and Dlamini's (the murderers) testimonies as not being credible.
=== Subsequent developments ===
In January 2018, prior to Winnie Mandela's death, ANC MP Mandla Mandela, Nelson Mandela's grandson by his first wife, Evelyn Mase, called for Winnie Mandela's role in the Asvat and Sepei murders to be probed.
== Funeral ==
Asvat was buried in accordance with Muslim rites the day after he was murdered. Thousands of people, both African, and Indian, attended his funeral at Avalon Cemetery, and marchers in the funeral procession toyi-toyied and had sung struggle songs on arrival at his home prior to the funeral procession. Apartheid police who attempted to seize Azapo banners were driven off by Lenasia residents, and many women were present at his burial.
== Legacy ==
The section of the R554 road linking Soweto to Lenasia was renamed Abu Baker Asvat Drive by the post-apartheid government. A junior cricket tournament was instituted in Asvat's memory, in 2002. He was awarded the Order of Luthuli in Silver by President Cyril Ramaphosa in 2021.
== References ==
== External links ==
Winnie Mandela and the people's doctor
'Winnie hired me to kill Dr Asvat'
Transcript of TRC testimony of Ebrahim Asvat and Albertina Sisulu |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idrottsf%C3%B6reningen_Kamraterna#:~:text=IFK%20was%20founded%20in%20Stockholm,or%20other%20larger%20associations%20existed. | Idrottsföreningen Kamraterna | Idrottsföreningen Kamraterna (English: Sporting Society Comrades), usually abbreviated IFK, is a central organisation for many sports clubs in Sweden. There are also eight IFK clubs in Finland but they are organised separately. The Swedish IFK was founded 1 February 1895 and has 164 member clubs with around 100,000 members as of 2004. The best known IFK club in football is probably the one in Gothenburg, IFK Göteborg, which won the UEFA Cup twice in the 1980s. In ice hockey, the most successful IFK club is IFK Helsingfors from Helsinki, which have won the Finnish championship seven times.
== History ==
IFK was founded in Stockholm by two young students (Louis Zettersten and Pehr Ehnemark) that wanted to create a sports association, consisting of a main club in Stockholm with smaller clubs in other parts of the country. This was in a time when no nationwide sports organization or other larger associations existed. An advertisement in the youth paper Kamraten (The Comrade) that was published 1 February 1895 called forth all sports interested boys and girls in Sweden to join the society. Less than two months later, clubs in Luleå, Härnösand, Uppsala, Jönköping, Gothenburg and Västerås had been founded, aside the main club in Stockholm. It was decided to name the society after the paper that made the creation possible.
The society grew fast and the administration was too heavy for IFK Stockholm to handle, so a central organisation was created in 1901. Championships and other activities for IFK clubs were arranged and were big tournaments in a time when there existed no central Swedish sports administration to handle nationwide events. Some of these Comrade championships died out as national championships were arranged, but in some sports they live on, for example in Bowling. Other member associations started their own competitions, the most notable being Vasaloppet arranged by IFK Mora and Lidingöloppet arranged by IFK Lidingö.
Aside from the IFK members in Sweden and the separately organised IFK members in Finland, there did also exist IFK associations in Denmark and Norway. The last active member in Denmark was IFK Aalborg that ceased to exist in the early 1990s, while the Norwegian member in Kristiania (Oslo) ended its activities early in the 20th century.
== Symbols and colours ==
IFK's colours are blue and white. They are used by almost all member clubs, and those clubs that do not use them have special permits from the central organisation for using other colours, like IFK Malmö that uses yellow and white or IFK Stockholm's blue and red kits. The colours are believed to symbolise innocence and loyalty as written, by the IFK society master, in Kamraten in 1899. Symbols used by IFK include the four-pointed star in blue or white, the blue shield with white stripe and the characteristically formed top with two rounded parts between three peaks which can be seen in most of the member clubs' badges, although some use other styles. The IFK flag is described as a blue and white Scandinavian cross on white background with a blue four-pointed star in the canton.
== Noted clubs ==
=== Sweden ===
IFK Åmål
IFK Arvidsjaur
IFK Aspudden-Tellus
IFK Berga
IFK Björkö
IFK Borgholm
IFK Eskilstuna
IFK Falköping
IFK Fjärås
IFK Göteborg
IFK Hallsberg
IFK Haninge
IFK Hässleholm
IFK Hjo
IFK Kalix
IFK Kalmar
IFK Karlshamn
IFK Klagshamn
IFK Kristianstad
IFK Kumla
IFK Lammhult
IFK Lidingö
IFK Luleå
IFK Malmö
IFK Mariestad
IFK Motala
IFK Mora
IFK Norrköping
IFK Nyköping
IFK Ölme
IFK Örebro
IFK Osby
IFK Oskarshamn
IFK Östersund
IFK Simrishamn
IFK Skoghall
IFK Skövde
IFK Stockholm
IFK Stocksund
IFK Strömsund
IFK Sundsvall
IFK Sunne
IFK Tidaholm
IFK Timrå
IFK Trelleborg
IFK Trollhättan
IFK Tumba
IFK Uddevalla
IFK Umeå
IFK Uppsala
IFK Valla
IFK Vänersborg
IFK Värnamo
IFK Värsås
IFK Västerås
IFK Västervik
IFK Vaxholm
IFK Växjö
IFK Viksjö
IFK Visby
IFK Ystad
Ulricehamns IFK
=== Finland ===
Helsingfors IFK (commonly known as HIFK)
IFK Mariehamn
Vasa IFK (commonly known as VIFK)
Åbo IFK (commonly known as ÅIFK)
Grankulla IFK (commonly known as GrIFK)
IFK Uleåborg (commonly known as UIFK)
IFK Lepplax
Viipurin IFK (1896–1927)
IFK Björneborg (1919–2017)
== Achievements ==
Swedish football championships: 31
IFK Göteborg 18
IFK Norrköping 13
IFK Eskilstuna 1
Finnish Football Championships: 14
IFK Helsingfors 7
IFK Åbo 3
IFK Vasa 3
IFK Mariehamn 1
UEFA Cup championships: 2
IFK Göteborg 2
Finnish Ice Hockey Championships: 7
IFK Helsingfors 7
Swedish Handball Championships: 9
IFK Kristianstad 8
IFK Lidingö 1
Finnish Handball Championships: 11
IFK Helsingfors 10
IFK Grankulla 1
Swedish Bandy Championships: 12
IFK Uppsala 11
IFK Motala 1
Finnish Bandy Championships: 17
IFK Helsingfors 17
== External links ==
IFK Centralstyrelse - official site
== Citations ==
== Sources ==
IFK's historik
Josephson, Åke; Jönsson, Ingemar, eds. (2004). IFK Göteborg 1904–2004: en hundraårig blåvit historia genom elva epoker (in Swedish). Göteborg: IFK Göteborg. ISBN 91-631-4659-2. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milet_(singer)#Promotional_singles | Milet (singer) | Milet (ミレイ, Mirei) is a Japanese singer and songwriter. She made her major debut in 2019 with Inside You EP. The EP peaked at number 16 on the Oricon Albums Chart. After releasing five EPs, she released first studio album Eyes in 2020. The album hit number one on both Oricon and Japan's Billboard chart, certified Gold by the Recording Industry Association of Japan for sales of 100,000.
== Career ==
Milet is a Tokyo-based Japanese singer-songwriter. She started her career in 2018.
On March 6, 2019, her first live show, Milet Special Show Case @Billboard-Live Tokyo, was held at Billboard Live Tokyo. In that same year, several of her songs were featured in various media. Her songs "Us" and "Again and Again" were used as the openings for Japanese TV dramas Gisou Furin and Joker x Face respectively, while her songs "Drown", and "Prover"/"Tell me" were used as the second ending for the anime adaptation of Vinland Saga and the second ending of anime series Fate/Grand Order - Absolute Demonic Front: Babylonia, respectively.
On June 3, 2020, Milet released her debut album Eyes, which hit number one on Oricon Albums Chart. She collaborated on the album with guitarist Toru of One OK Rock and Man with a Mission member Kamikaze Boy.
Starting from October 4, 2020, Milet became a DJ host for the radio series Music Freaks, streaming every Sunday from 22:00 to 24:00 (JST) on the Osaka radio station FM802 from a studio in Minami-morimachi. The radio broadcasts are stated to last one year.
Her single "Ordinary Days" was used as the ending theme for the live-action drama adaptation of Police in a Pod, which aired from July 7 to September 15, 2021.
On November 12, 2020, the song "Who I Am" premiered on YouTube and was subsequently featured as the title track of her sixth mini-album, which released on December 2, 2020. "Who I Am" and the song "The Hardest" were both respectively used as the opening and ending themes of the Japanese television drama Shichinin no Hisho.
Milet debut in the popular annual TV music show, 71st NHK Kōhaku Uta Gassen, on 31 December 2020 with the song "Inside You".
On August 8, 2021, she performed at the closing ceremony of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. She covered the song "Hymne à l'amour", originally sung by Edith Piaf. On November 18, 2021, she represented Japan in the 10th Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union (ABU) TV Song Festival, performing her first big hit "Inside You" remotely. On December 31, 2021, she participated in the "NHK Kōhaku Uta Gassen" for the second consecutive year, performing "Fly High."
On April 22, 2022, Milet released a teaser lyric video for a new single entitled "Walkin' in My Lane", which serves as the theme song to the live-action drama adaptation of the manga Yangotonaki Ichizoku. It was pre-released on streaming services on April 29, and was fully released on May 25, 2022, along with "Love When I Cry" and "My Dreams Are Made of Hell."
In 2025, she made her film debut in the remake of the French-Belgian film Love at Second Sight, titled My Beloved Stranger.
== Discography ==
=== Studio albums ===
=== Extended plays ===
=== Live albums ===
=== Singles ===
==== As lead artist ====
==== As featured artist ====
==== Promotional singles ====
=== Other charted songs ===
== Filmography ==
=== Film ===
== Awards ==
== References ==
== External links ==
Official website
Official website (SME Records)
Official website (Sony Music Artists)
Milet at Anime News Network's encyclopedia |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creflo_Dollar | Creflo Dollar | Creflo Augustus Dollar Jr. (born January 28, 1962) is an American pastor, televangelist, and the founder of the non-denominational World Changers Church International (WCCI), based in College Park, Georgia. He is the head of Creflo Dollar Ministries and the Creflo Dollar Ministerial Association.
For much of his career, Dollar has been a prominent figure in the Word of Faith movement, known for teaching prosperity theology. However, in the 2010s, his ministry shifted focus toward what he terms the "Gospel of Grace." In 2022, Dollar garnered significant public attention for formally retracting his long-held teachings on mandatory tithing, stating that the practice is not required for New Testament believers.
Dollar's ministry has a global reach through his television program, Changing Your World. He has frequently been the subject of public scrutiny and criticism regarding his personal wealth and the financial transparency of his ministry.
== Ministry career ==
Dollar began his ministry in 1986, holding the first worship service of World Changers Ministries Christian Center in the cafeteria of Kathleen Mitchell Elementary School in College Park, Georgia, with eight people in attendance. The congregation grew rapidly, eventually renamed World Changers Church International (WCCI).
In December 1995, the ministry moved into its current headquarters, the "World Dome," an 8,500-seat facility which the church states was built for nearly $20 million without bank financing. As of 2007, the congregation reported approximately 30,000 members. In October 2012, the ministry expanded to New York, leasing the Loews Paradise Theater in The Bronx for a satellite location.
Dollar’s teachings are disseminated globally through his daily television broadcast, Changing Your World, and various publishing ventures under Arrow Records and Creflo Dollar Ministries.
== Personal life ==
Dollar and his wife Taffi have five children and reside in Atlanta, Georgia.
In June 2012, Dollar was arrested for an alleged attack on his fifteen-year-old daughter, according to the Fayette County, Georgia, Sheriff's Office.
Dollar was accused of choking and punching the girl, a story corroborated by Dollar's older daughter, and Fayette County police released details of a subsequent 911 call. The charges were dropped in January 2013 after he attended anger management classes.
== Controversies and public scrutiny ==
=== Financial transparency and lifestyle ===
Dollar has frequently been criticized for living a lavish lifestyle while leading a tax-exempt religious organization. He owns multiple high-end properties, including real estate in Atlanta and New Jersey. He previously owned a Manhattan apartment, purchased for $2.5 million in 2006 and sold for $3.75 million in 2012. He has also been criticized for the ownership of luxury vehicles, including two Rolls-Royces.
Ministry Watch, an independent organization that reviews Christian ministries, previously awarded Creflo Dollar Ministries an "F" grade for financial transparency because the ministry declined to disclose financial information to independent audit.
=== 2007 Senate Finance Committee investigation ===
In 2007, Dollar was one of six televangelists investigated by U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley of the Senate Finance Committee regarding the personal use of church-owned assets. Dollar contested the probe, arguing that the IRS, not the Senate Committee, was the proper entity to examine religious groups. He was among the pastors who did not cooperate fully with the committee. The investigation concluded in 2011 with no penalties or charges filed, though the committee issued a report criticizing the lack of financial accountability in the ministries.
=== 2015 private jet campaign ===
In May 2015, Dollar faced backlash after his ministry launched a fundraising campaign for a Gulfstream G650 private jet, estimated to cost $65 million. The campaign was launched after his previous jet was involved in a runway accident in London in 2014. In response to critics, Dollar stated in a sermon, "If I want to believe God for a $65 million plane, you cannot stop me." The project drew widespread media criticism regarding the necessity of such an expensive aircraft for ministry work.
=== 2012 arrest and dismissal ===
In June 2012, Dollar was arrested by the Fayette County, Georgia, Sheriff's Office following an alleged domestic dispute with his then-15-year-old daughter. He was accused of simple battery and cruelty to children. Dollar denied the allegations. The charges were dismissed in January 2013 after Dollar successfully completed a court-ordered anger management program.
== Theology and teachings ==
Dollar's theological focus has evolved significantly over his career. He is widely recognized as a proponent of the Word of Faith movement and prosperity theology, which teaches that financial blessing and physical well-being are the will of God for Christians and that faith, positive speech, and donations to religious causes can increase one's material wealth.
=== "Gospel of Grace" ===
In the 2010s, Dollar began emphasizing a theology he refers to as the "Gospel of Grace". This teaching focuses on the "finished work of Christ", arguing that righteousness is a gift from God rather than a result of human works or adherence to religious law.
=== Retraction of tithing views ===
For decades, Dollar taught that tithing (giving 10% of one's income) was a mandatory obligation for Christians, often linking the practice to financial blessing. However, in a June 26, 2022, sermon titled "The Great Misunderstanding", Dollar publicly renounced these teachings. He stated, "I want to start off by saying to you, I’m still growing, and the teachings that I’ve shared in times past on the subject of tithing were not correct." He argued that tithing is an Old Testament law that is not binding on believers under the New Covenant, instead advocating for giving based on the believer's heart and ability. He advised his congregation to "throw away every book, every tape, and every video I ever did on the subject of tithing".
== Selected bibliography ==
Dollar has authored numerous books, including:
Uprooting the Spirit of Fear (1994) ISBN 978-0892746866
The Anointing to Live (1997) ISBN 978-1885072108
Understanding God's Purpose for the Anointing (2001) ISBN 978-0963478108
The Holy Spirit, Your Financial Advisor (2013) ASIN B00ELLC9NK
Overcoming Fear (2018) ISBN 978-1599442396
== References ==
== External links ==
Official website
World Changers Church International |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azusa_Street_Revival#:~:text=Discarded%20lumber%20and%20plaster%20littered%20the%20large%2C%20barn%2Dlike%20room%20on%20the%20ground%20floor.%5B22%5D%5B23%5D%20Nonetheless%2C%20it%20was%20secured%20and%20cleaned%20in%20preparation%20for%20services.%20They%20held%20their%20first%20meeting%20on%20April%2014%2C%201906. | Azusa Street Revival | The Azusa Street Revival was a historic series of revival meetings that took place in Los Angeles, California. It was led by William J. Seymour, an African-American preacher. The revival began on April 9, 1906, and continued until roughly 1915.
Seymour was invited to Los Angeles for a one-month engagement at a local church, but found himself barred due to his controversial views on baptism with the Holy Ghost after his first Sunday. He continued his ministry in the homes of sympathetic parishioners, and on the night of April 9, 1906, first one, then six others in his meeting began to speak in tongues and shout out loud praising God, so loudly that the neighborhood was alerted. The news quickly spread; the city was stirred; crowds gathered; services were moved outside to accommodate the crowds who came from all around; people fell down as they approached, and attributed it to God; people were baptized in the Holy Spirit and the sick were healed.
The testimony of those who attended the Azusa Street Revival was "I am saved, sanctified, and filled with the Holy Ghost" in reference to the three works of grace of Holiness Pentecostals, the original branch of Pentecostalism. To further accommodate the crowds, an old dilapidated, two-story frame building at 312 Azusa Street in the industrial section of the city was secured. This building, originally built for an African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church, had more recently been used as a livery stable, storage building and tenement house. In this humble Azusa Street mission, a continuous three-year revival occurred and became known around the world. Stanley H. Frodsham, in his book, With Signs Following, quotes an eye-witness description of the scene: The revival was characterized by spiritual experiences accompanied with testimonies of physical healing miracles, worship services, and speaking in tongues. The participants were criticized by some secular media and Christian theologians for behaviors considered to be outrageous and unorthodox, especially at the time.
Today, the revival is considered by historians to be the primary catalyst for the spread of Pentecostalism in the 20th century.
== Background ==
=== Los Angeles ===
In 1905, William J. Seymour, a 34-year-old son of freed slaves, was a student of well-known Pentecostal preacher Charles Parham and an interim pastor for a small holiness church in Topeka, Kansas. Seymour inherited from Parham the belief that baptism with the Holy Spirit was the third work of grace, following the new birth (first work of grace) and entire sanctification (second work of grace). Neely Terry, an African American woman who attended a small holiness church pastored by Julia Hutchins in Los Angeles, made a trip to visit family in Houston late in 1905. While in Houston, she visited Seymour's church, where he preached on receiving the Holy Spirit with the evidence of speaking in other tongues, and though he had not experienced this personally, Terry was impressed with his character and message. Once home in California, Terry suggested that Seymour be invited to speak at the local church. Seymour received and accepted the invitation in February 1906, and he received financial help and a blessing from Parham for his planned one-month visit.
Seymour arrived in Los Angeles in 1906, and within two days was preaching at Julia Hutchins' church at the corner of Ninth Street and Santa Fe Avenue. During his first sermon, he preached that speaking in tongues was the first biblical evidence of the inevitable infilling in the Holy Spirit. On the following Sunday, March 4, he returned to the church and found that Hutchins had padlocked the door. Elders of the church rejected Seymour's teaching, primarily because he had not yet experienced the blessing about which he was preaching. Condemnation of his message also came from the Holiness Church Association of Southern California with which the church had affiliation. However, not all members of Hutchins' church rejected Seymour's preaching. He was invited to stay in the home of congregation member Edward S. Lee, and he began to hold Bible studies and prayer meetings there.
=== North Bonnie Brae Street ===
Seymour and his small group of new followers soon relocated to the home of Richard and Ruth Asberry at 216 North Bonnie Brae Street. White families from local holiness churches began to attend as well. The group would get together regularly and pray to receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit. On April 9, 1906, after five weeks of Seymour's preaching and prayer, and three days into an intended 10-day fast, Edward S. Lee spoke in tongues for the first time. At the next meeting, Seymour shared Lee's testimony and preached a sermon on Acts 2:4 and soon six others began to speak in tongues as well, including Jennie Moore, who would later become Seymour's wife. A few days later, on April 12, Seymour spoke in tongues for the first time after praying all night long.
News of the events at North Bonnie Brae St. quickly circulated among the African American, Latino and white residents of the city, and for several nights, various speakers would preach to the crowds of curious and interested onlookers from the front porch of the Asberry home. Members of the audience included people from a broad spectrum of income levels and religious backgrounds. Hutchins eventually spoke in tongues as her whole congregation began to attend the meetings. Soon the crowds became very large and were full of people speaking in tongues, shouting, singing and moaning. Finally, the front porch collapsed, forcing the group to begin looking for a new meeting place. A resident of the neighborhood described the happenings at 216 North Bonnie Brae with the following words:
They shouted three days and three nights. It was Easter season. The people came from everywhere. By the next morning there was no way of getting near the house. As people came in they would fall under God's power; and the whole city was stirred. They shouted until the foundation of the house gave way, but no one was hurt.
== Azusa Street ==
=== Conditions ===
The group from Bonnie Brae Street eventually discovered an available building at 312 Azusa Street (34.0483797°N 118.2411076°W / 34.0483797; -118.2411076) in downtown Los Angeles, which had originally been constructed as an African Methodist Episcopal Church in what was then an impoverished part of town. The rent was $8.00 per month. A newspaper referred to the downtown Los Angeles building as a "tumble down shack". Since the church had moved out, the building had served as a wholesale house, a warehouse, a lumberyard, stockyards, a tombstone shop, and had most recently been used as a stable with rooms for rent upstairs. It was a small, rectangular, flat-roofed building, approximately 60 feet (18 m) long and 40 feet (12 m) wide, totaling 2,400 square feet (220 m2), sided with weathered whitewashed clapboards. The only sign that it had once been a house of God was a single Gothic-style window over the main entrance.
Discarded lumber and plaster littered the large, barn-like room on the ground floor. Nonetheless, it was secured and cleaned in preparation for services. They held their first meeting on April 14, 1906. Church services were held on the first floor where the benches were placed in a rectangular pattern. Some of the benches were simply planks put on top of empty nail kegs. There was no elevated platform, as the ceiling was only eight feet high. Initially there was no pulpit. Frank Bartleman, an early participant in the revival, recalled that "Brother Seymour generally sat behind two empty shoe boxes, one on top of the other. He usually kept his head inside the top one during the meeting, in prayer. There was no pride there.... In that old building, with its low rafters and bare floors..."
The second floor at the now-named Apostolic Faith Mission housed an office and rooms for several residents including Seymour and his new wife, Jennie. It also had a large prayer room to handle the overflow from the altar services below. The prayer room was furnished with chairs and benches made from California Redwood planks, laid end to end on backless chairs.
By mid-May 1906, anywhere from 300 to 1,500 people would attempt to fit into the building. Since horses had very recently been the residents of the building, flies constantly bothered the attendees. People from a diversity of backgrounds came together to worship: men, women, children, Black, White, Asian, Native American, immigrants, rich, poor, illiterate, and educated. People of all ages flocked to Los Angeles with both skepticism and a desire to participate. The intermingling of races and the group's encouragement of women in leadership was remarkable, as 1906 was the height of the "Jim Crow" era of racial segregation, and fourteen years prior to women receiving suffrage in the United States.
=== Services and worship ===
Worship at 312 Azusa Street was frequent and spontaneous with services going almost around the clock. Among those attracted to the revival were not only members of the Holiness Movement, but also Baptists, Mennonites, Quakers, and Presbyterians. An observer at one of the services wrote these words:
No instruments of music are used. None are needed. No choir – the angels have been heard by some in the spirit. No collections are taken. No bills have been posted to advertise the meetings. No church organization is back of it. All who are in touch with God realize as soon as they enter the meetings that the Holy Ghost is the leader.
The Los Angeles Times was not so kind in its description:
Meetings are held in a tumble-down shack on Azusa Street, and the devotees of the weird doctrine practice the most fanatical rites, preach the wildest theories and work themselves into a state of mad excitement in their peculiar zeal. Colored people and a sprinkling of whites compose the congregation, and night is made hideous in the neighborhood by the howlings of the worshippers, who spend hours swaying forth and back in a nerve racking attitude of prayer and supplication. They claim to have the "gift of tongues" and be able to understand the babel.
The first edition of the Apostolic Faith publication claimed a common reaction to the revival from visitors:
Proud, well-dressed preachers came to "investigate". Soon their high looks were replaced with wonder, then conviction comes, and very often you will find them in a short time wallowing on the dirty floor, asking God to forgive them and make them as little children.
Among first-hand accounts were reports of the blind having their sight restored, diseases cured instantly, and immigrants speaking in German, Yiddish, and Spanish all being spoken to in their native language by uneducated black members, who translated the languages into English by "supernatural ability".
Singing was sporadic and in a cappella or occasionally there would be singing in tongues. There were periods of extended silence. Attenders were occasionally slain in the Spirit. Visitors gave their testimony, and members read aloud testimonies that were sent to the mission by mail. There was prayer for the gift of tongues. There was prayer in tongues for the sick, for missionaries, and whatever requests were given by attenders or mailed in. There was spontaneous preaching and altar calls for salvation, sanctification and baptism of the Holy Spirit. Lawrence Catley, whose family attended the revival, said that in most services preaching consisted of Seymour opening a Bible and worshippers coming forward to preach or testify as they were led by the Holy Spirit. Many people would continually shout throughout the meetings. The members of the mission never took an offering, but there was a receptacle near the door for anyone who wanted to support the revival. The core membership of the Azusa Street Mission was never many more than 50–60 individuals, with hundreds if not thousands of people visiting or staying temporarily over the years.
=== Charles Parham ===
By October 1906, Charles Parham was invited to speak for a series of meetings at Azusa Street but was quickly un-invited.
Arriving at Azusa Street, [Parham] recoiled in disgust at the racial intermingling. He was aghast that black people were not in their "place," and simply could not abide "white people imitating unintelligent, crude negroisms of the Southland, and laying it on the Holy Ghost." Parham made his way through the crowd, stood at the pulpit, and delivered a stinging rebuke: "God is sick at his stomach!" He proceeded to explain that God would not stand for such "animalism." When it was clear that the majority of the Azusa Street Mission would not accept Parham's leadership, Parham left with an estimated two to three hundred followers and opened a rival campaign at a nearby Women's Christian Temperance Union building.
=== Criticism ===
In a skeptical front-page story titled "Weird Babel of Tongues", a Los Angeles Times reporter attempted to describe what would soon be known as the Azusa Street Revival. "Breathing strange utterances and mouthing a creed which it would seem no sane mortal could understand", the story began, "the newest religious sect has started in Los Angeles". Another local paper reporter in September 1906 described the happenings with the following words:
disgraceful intermingling of the races...they cry and make howling noises all day and into the night. They run, jump, shake all over, shout to the top of their voice, spin around in circles, fall out on the sawdust blanketed floor jerking, kicking and rolling all over it. Some of them pass out and do not move for hours as though they were dead. These people appear to be mad, mentally deranged or under a spell. They claim to be filled with the spirit. They have a one eyed, illiterate, Negro as their preacher who stays on his knees much of the time with his head hidden between the wooden milk crates. He doesn't talk very much but at times he can be heard shouting, "Repent," and he's supposed to be running the thing... They repeatedly sing the same song, "The Comforter Has Come."
The attendees were often described as "Holy Rollers", "Holy Jumpers", "Tangled Tonguers" and "Holy Ghosters". Reports were published throughout the U.S. and the world of the strange happenings in Los Angeles.
Christians from many traditions were critical, saying the movement was hyper-emotional, misused Scripture and lost focus on Christ by overemphasizing the Holy Spirit. Within a short time ministers were warning their congregations to stay away from the Azusa Street Mission. Some called the police and tried to get the building shut down.
=== Apostolic Faith publication ===
Also starting in September 1906 was the publication of the revival's own newsletter, the Apostolic Faith. Issues were published occasionally up until May 1908, mostly through the work of Seymour and a white woman named Clara Lum, a member of the Apostolic Faith Mission. The Apostolic Faith was distributed without charge, and thousands of laypersons and ministers received copies worldwide. Five thousand copies of the first edition were printed, and by 1907 the press run reached over 40,000.
The Apostolic Faith publication reported the happenings at the Azusa Street Mission to the world. Its first issue's lead story was titled "Pentecost has Come". It contained a letter from Charles Parham, an article on Pentecost from Acts, and a series of anecdotes of people's experience within the revival. One edition in 1907 wrote, "One token of the Lord's coming is that He is melting all races and nations together, and they are filled with the power and glory of God. He is baptizing by one spirit into one body and making up a people that will be ready to meet Him when He comes". The Apostolic Faith brought increasing attention to the happenings at Azusa Street and the fledgling movement that was emerging from the revival.
== Legacy ==
By 1913, the revival at Azusa Street had lost momentum, and most of the media attention and crowds had left by 1915. Seymour remained there with his wife, Jennie, for the rest of their lives as pastors of the small African American congregation, though he often made short trips to help establish other smaller revivals later in life. After Seymour died of a heart attack on September 28, 1922, Jennie led the church until 1931, when the congregation lost the building.
=== Sending of missionaries ===
As The Apostolic Faith and many secular reports advertised the events of the Azusa Street Revival internationally, thousands of individuals visited the mission in order to witness it firsthand. At the same time, thousands of people were leaving Azusa Street with intentions of evangelizing abroad. Reverend K. E. M. Spooner visited the revival in 1909 and became one of the Pentecostal Holiness Church's most effective missionaries in Africa, working among the Tswana people of Botswana.
A. G. Garr and his wife were sent from Azusa Street as missionaries to Calcutta, India, where they managed to start a small revival. Speaking in tongues in India did not enable them to speak the native language, Bengali. The Garrs later traveled to China where they arrived in Hong Kong and began to spread Pentecostalism in mainland China. They did this by working through other Protestant churches and organizations that had already been established. Garr significantly contributed to early Pentecostalism through his later work in redefining the "biblical evidence" doctrine and changing the doctrine from a belief that speaking in tongues was explicitly for evangelism to a belief that speaking in tongues was a gift for "spiritual empowerment".
Missionary Bernt Bernsten traveled to the area from North China to investigate the happenings after hearing that the biblical prophecy of Acts 2:4 was being fulfilled. Other visitors left the revival to become missionaries in remote areas all over the world. So many missionaries went out from Azusa (some thirty-eight left in October 1906) that within two years the movement had spread to over fifty nations, including Britain, Scandinavia, Germany, Holland, Egypt, Syria, Palestine, South Africa, Hong Kong, China, Ceylon and India. Christian leaders visited from all over the world.
=== Birth of Pentecostal movement ===
By the end of 1906, most leaders from Azusa Street had spun off to form other congregations, such as the Apostolic Faith Church, 51st Street Apostolic Faith Mission, the Spanish AFM, and the Italian Pentecostal Mission. These missions were largely composed of immigrant or ethnic groups. The Southeast United States was a particularly prolific area of growth for the movement, since Seymour's approach gave a useful explanation for a charismatic spiritual climate that had already been taking root in those areas. Other new missions were based on preachers who had charisma and energy. Nearly all of these new churches were founded among immigrants and the poor.
Many existing Wesleyan-holiness denominations adopted the Pentecostal message, such as the Church of God in Christ and the Pentecostal Holiness Church, and are now Holiness Pentecostal denominations. Holiness Pentecostals, such as the Apostolic Faith Church, affirm three works of grace: (1) New Birth, (2) entire sanctification, and (3) Baptism with the Holy Ghost. The formation of new denominations also occurred, motivated by doctrinal differences between Holiness Pentecostals and their Finished Work Pentecostal counterparts, such as the Assemblies of God formed in 1914 and the Pentecostal Church of God formed in 1919—these represent Finished Work Pentecostal denominations. An early doctrinal controversy led to a split between Trinitarian and Oneness Pentecostals, the latter founded the Pentecostal Assemblies of the World in 1916 and the United Pentecostal Church in 1945.
Today, there are more than 500 million Pentecostal and charismatic believers across the globe, and it [was] the fastest-growing form of Christianity today [in 1978]. The Azusa Street Revival is commonly regarded as the beginning of the modern-day Pentecostal Movement.
== References ==
=== Citations ===
=== Cited sources ===
Robeck Jr., Cecil M (2006). The Azusa Street Mission And Revival: The Birth Of The Global Pentecostal Movement. Thomas Nelson. ISBN 9780785216933.
== Further reading ==
Campbell, Marne L. (2010). "'The Newest Religious Sect Has Started in Los Angeles': Race, Class, Ethnicity, and the Origins of the Pentecostal Movement 1906–1913". The Journal of African American History. 95 (1): 1–25. doi:10.5323/jafriamerhist.95.1.0001. JSTOR 10.5323/jafriamerhist.95.1.0001. S2CID 141225024.
== External links ==
Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center digital archive of The Apostolic Faith newspaper |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Bomb#DC_Comics | Human Bomb | The Human Bomb is a superhero appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics. He first appeared in Police Comics #1 (August 1941), and was created by writer and artist Paul Gustavson.
== Publication history ==
The Human Bomb was first published by Quality Comics in the 1940s, and decades later by DC Comics after it acquired Quality's characters. Police Comics #1 also featured the first appearances of Plastic Man and the Phantom Lady, among others.
== Fictional character biography ==
=== Roy Lincoln ===
==== Quality Comics ====
Roy Lincoln is originally a scientist working with his father on a special explosive chemical called "27-QRX". When Nazi spies invade his lab and kill his father, he ingests the chemical to prevent it from falling into their hands. As a result, Lincoln gains the ability to cause explosions in any object he touches, particularly through his hands. He can only control his abilities using special asbestos gloves, which were retconned into "Fibro-wax" gloves after asbestos was discovered to be harmful. Donning a containment suit to prevent accidental explosions, Lincoln becomes the "Human Bomb", removing his gloves only to expose his explosive powers against Nazi and Japanese enemies, as well as ordinary criminals. He also fights the invisible Mr. Chameleon, the pied piper of destruction Herman Stingmayer, and Yarboe, who has the Human Bomb's explosive ability.
He later gains enough control over his powers to be able to remove the containment suit, though the gloves are always necessary.
In 1943, the Bomb briefly has a comedy sidekick, Hustace Throckmorton, who has similar powers to him but only on the soles of his feet. Following this, Lincoln shares his formula with three friends — Swordo the Sword Swallower, Montague McGurx, and Red Rogers. They become "the Bombardiers", and work behind enemy lines for a few issues targeting Japanese and German soldiers. The Human Bomb drops his new team soon after and returned to the States alone.
A Human Bomb feature continued in Police Comics through issue #58, published in September 1946.
==== DC Comics ====
After Quality Comics went out of business in 1956, DC Comics acquired the rights to the Human Bomb, among other Quality Comics properties. The Human Bomb remained unpublished until he and several other former Quality properties were re-launched in Justice League of America #107 (October 1973) as the Freedom Fighters. As was done with many other characters DC had acquired from other publishers or that were holdovers from Golden Age titles, the Freedom Fighters were located on "Earth-X", an alternate universe where Nazi Germany won World War II. The team were featured in their own series for fifteen issues (1976–1978), in which the team temporarily left Earth-X for "Earth-1" (where most DC titles were set). The Human Bomb was then an occasional guest star of All-Star Squadron, a superhero team title that was set on "Earth-2", the locale for DC's WWII-era superheroes, at a time prior to when he and the other Freedom Fighters were supposed to have left for Earth-X.
The character then appeared in Crisis on Infinite Earths, a story that was intended to eliminate the similarly confusing histories that DC had attached to its characters by retroactively merging the various parallel worlds into one. This erased the Human Bomb's Earth-X days and merged the character's All-Star Squadron and Freedom Fighter histories so that the Freedom Fighters were merely a splinter group of the Squadron.
Lincoln was shown as retired and frail in several issues of Damage in the mid-1990s, but appears as the Human Bomb in several issues of JSA in 2003. In Infinite Crisis #1 (October 2005), he is killed by Bizarro.
In later stories, Lincoln is temporarily resurrected as a Black Lantern in Blackest Night and permanently resurrected in Dark Nights: Death Metal. "The New Golden Age" storyline reveals that he had a sidekick named Cherry Bomb, who was later kidnapped by the Time Masters.
=== Andy Franklin ===
Crisis Aftermath: The Battle For Blüdhaven #1, introduces a character named Andy Franklin, a former scientist who was caught in the blast that destroyed Blüdhaven and held in secret internment camps. In issue #2, he becomes the new Human Bomb. Andy is highly emotional, and is hurt deeply because his teammates refer to him as a freak because of his destructive powers. He has a higher sense of morality than his teammates, but has shown that he will use lethal force when he sees his friends hurt. Andy's condition requires him to take special medication developed by S.H.A.D.E., otherwise he will involuntarily explode.
=== Michael Taylor ===
In 2011, "The New 52" rebooted the DC universe. A four-issue mini-series helmed by Battle for Bludhaven creators Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti introduces a new Human Bomb. Michael Taylor is an ex-Marine and veteran who uncovers a plot to use "human bombs" to destroy the United States.
== Powers and abilities ==
Lincoln could generate a biochemical explosion with just a touch. If he increased the kinetic force by hitting the object harder, the explosive force was also increased. Lincoln was also a fine hand-to-hand combatant and a talented chemist. The changes to his body chemistry seemed to have prolonged his life. Lincoln wore from head to toe, a containment suit made of "Fibro wax", which inhibited his biochemical explosive reaction. When he wanted to use his powers, he simply removed his gloves.
== Other versions ==
The Human Bomb makes a minor appearance in Kingdom Come #2.
An alternate universe variant of Roy Lincoln / Human Bomb from Earth-10 appears in 52 #52.
An alternate universe variant of Roy Lincoln / Human Bomb appears in Multiversity: Mastermen.
== In other media ==
The Roy Lincoln incarnation of Human Bomb makes a non-speaking appearance in the Batman: The Brave and the Bold episode "Cry Freedom Fighters!".
The Human Bomb appears in Justice League Unlimited #17.
== References == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_Circle_(House)#:~:text=House%20created%20the%20sculpture%20out,that%20he%20cut%20and%20welded. | Family Circle (House) | Family Circle is a public artwork by the American artist Herbert House, located at the intersection of 18th and Harvard Streets NW in the Adams Morgan neighborhood of Washington, D.C., United States. Family Circle was dedicated in 1991. It was surveyed as part of the Smithsonian's Save Outdoor Sculpture! survey in 1994.
== Description ==
Four nude figures of a male, female and two children dance in a circle. The figures are highly polished steel and have no facial features, feet or hands. House created the sculpture out of car bumpers that he cut and welded. The dancing figures are on top of a red circular tilted platform.
== Herbert House ==
Herbert House grew up in Washington, D.C. He graduated from Illinois State University and has been credited with creating over 500 works. House resides in Chicago, Illinois. His work is seen in the collections of Illinois State and numerous private collections.
== Condition ==
This sculpture was surveyed in 1994 for its condition, and it was described as "well maintained." In 2017, the sculpture was vandalized when two of the figures were torn off the platform. In 2018, the city hired House to repair the piece, and it went back on display.
== References ==
== External links ==
"Who made the shiny car-bumper sculpture in an Adams" from The Washington Post
The Dr. Robert H. Derden Collection: A Black Collector's Odyssey in Contemporary Art Archived 2010-12-29 at the Wayback Machine
"Abstract" by House |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Columbia_(1880) | SS Columbia (1880) | SS Columbia (1880–1907) was a cargo and passenger steamship that was owned by the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company and later the San Francisco and Portland Steamship Company. Columbia was constructed in 1880 by the John Roach & Sons shipyard in Chester, Pennsylvania for the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company.
Columbia was the first ship to carry a dynamo powering electric lights instead of oil lamps and the first commercial use of electric light bulbs outside of Thomas Edison's Menlo Park, New Jersey laboratory. Due to this, a detailed article and composite illustration of Columbia was featured in the May 1880 issue of Scientific American magazine.
Columbia was lost on 21 July 1907 after a collision with the lumber schooner San Pedro off Shelter Cove, California, with the loss of 88 lives.
== History ==
=== Construction and outfitting ===
After attending Thomas Edison's New Year's Eve lighting demonstration in Menlo Park, New Jersey, Henry Villard, president of the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company became enthusiastic of Edison's work. Villard subsequently ordered an Edison Lighting System to be installed on his company's new passenger steamer, Columbia. Although met with hesitation by Edison himself, the project moved forward, making the installation onboard Columbia Edison's first commercial order for the light bulb. Columbia would also be the first ship to utilize a dynamo. The success of Columbia's experimental dynamo system led to the system being retrofitted on to other vessels.
Columbia herself was ordered in July 1879 as Hull No. 193 at the John Roach & Sons Delaware River Iron Ship Building and Engine Works in Chester, Pennsylvania originally by the Oregon Steamship Company. That same year, the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company had bought and merged the Oregon Steamship Company into its own operations. Construction of Columbia began in September 1879. Columbia was launched at 11:40 am on February 24, 1880. Both the Bureau Veritas and American Shipmasters' Association oversaw her construction. Roach himself refused to install the incandescent light bulbs on board Columbia in fear of a possible fire breaking out. In May 1880, Columbia sailed to New York City, where Edison's personnel installed the new lighting systems. The light bulbs were carried aboard in a shopping basket by Francis R. Upton, a chief assistant of Edison. The first lighting of the ship took place on May 2, 1880.
=== Maiden voyage ===
Columbia finished her sea trials and sailed around Cape Horn to San Francisco, California loaded with 13 locomotives, 200 railroad cars and other railroad supplies. Columbia made a stop in Rio de Janeiro to replenish her coal supply and was exhibited to Emperor Pedro II of Brazil, who had a fascination with electricity. While passing through the Straits of Magellan, the propeller shaft and rudder were checked using light bulbs attached to a tallow covered cable.
After arriving in San Francisco without incident, the original carbon paper filament bulbs were replaced by a shipment of newer bamboo filament bulbs, sent by Edison himself. The chief engineers of Columbia sent a letter of satisfaction to Edison complimenting the superior performance of the light system, stating that none of the lights gave out after 415 hours and 45 minutes of constant use. Columbia safely arrived in Portland on August 24, 1880. Despite this, insurance companies were reluctant at first to underwrite the brand new vessel.
=== Subsequent operations ===
Columbia ran a regular service between Portland and San Francisco.
When the paddle steamer Alaskan was sunk by a storm in 1889, Columbia carried its captain and crew to Astoria.
The success of the Edison lighting systems onboard Columbia eventually convinced other shipping companies to install similar systems in their vessels, including the British Cunard Line. The next year, Cunard's SS Servia became the first major ocean liner to be lit up by the incandescent light bulb. In service, the Columbia was greatly appreciated for its reliability.
The Columbia's record on the Portland and San Francisco route is remarkable, as only once in fifteen years has she been longer than one night at sea on the down trip between two cities.~E.W. Wright – Lewis and Dryden's Marine History of the Pacific Northwest – 1895
During a major overhaul in July 1895, the original Edison generators were removed in favor of modern counterparts. The dynamos were donated to the Smithsonian Institution and The Henry Ford in Dearborn, Michigan. Three years later, the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company was taken over by the Union Pacific Railroad.
On January 30, 1898, the Columbia broke the speed record between San Francisco and Portland. Under the leadership of Captain Conway, she left her San Francisco dock at 10:09 am on January 28 and began travelling on a relatively calm ocean at a fast pace. On January 30 at 1:25 am, the Columbia passed the Columbia River lightship, but was delayed for 12 minutes due to fog. After the fog lifted, the Columbia reached Astoria at 3:20 am and arrived in Portland at 10:27 am. It had taken barely two days for Columbia to travel between Portland and San Francisco. Although the Columbia was delayed by one hour due to stopping a few times, she was able to shave one hour off the previous speed record.
Following the sale of its steamship, the Oregon in 1899, the Oregon Railroad and Navigation Company considered placing the Columbia and its fellow steamer, the State of California, into Alaskan service to Nome. On October 3, 1900, the Columbia was steaming slowly towards its dock in San Francisco, while the ferryboat Berkeley was preparing to leave her slip. Captain Peter A. Doran of the Columbia and Captain "Jim" Blaker of the Berkeley mis-interpreted each other's signals, which led to the Columbia colliding with the Berkeley, destroying one of the ferry's lifeboats and badly damaging the Columbia's bow. Both ships were taken out of service to be repaired following this incident. Another screw steamer owned by the Oregon Railroad and Navigation Company, the George W. Elder, temporarily took over the Columbia's route. On September 14, 1902, the Columbia ran aground near Astoria due to low tide. She was subsequently refloated at high tide and returned to Portland the following night. In 1904, the Columbia and the George W. Elder transferred to a new Union Pacific subsidiary called the San Francisco and Portland Steamship Company. By this time, the Columbia was considered to be an outdated vessel.
In 1905, the new company was plagued by two unfortunate events. The George W. Elder struck a rock in the Columbia River and sank. She was later refloated and purchased by the North Pacific Steamship Company after being abandoned by her owners. The same year, the Columbia collided with a wood barge in the Columbia River, resulting in the ship being badly damaged. Although spared from a similar fate to the George W. Elder, she needed to be repaired in San Francisco. On February 1, 1906, the Columbia collided with a log raft on the Columbia River in dense fog. Luckily, the Columbia was not damaged in the incident. The fog however worsened enough to cause Captain Peter A. Doran to anchor the ship until the fog lifted.
Columbia was undergoing a refit at the Union Iron Works dock, when the 1906 San Francisco earthquake occurred. The quake caused Columbia to knock off its supports, roll on her starboard side and hit the dock. The ship's large iron hull was damaged filling it partially full of water. It took two months to make the temporary repairs to the vessel. Unfortunately, the hydraulic drydock being used by the Columbia had taken irreparable damage from the liner's iron hull. The drydock had been of great use to the shipyard. Columbia was sent to Hunter's Point for permanent repairs. Along the way, the crew abandoned ship after a steam pipe exploded. Columbia eventually made it to dry dock and repairs were finally done. During her absence, the Columbia was temporarily replaced by the steamer Costa Rica (also owned by the San Francisco and Portland Navigation Company) and the steamer Barracouta, which was being leased from the Pacific Mail Steamship Company. Columbia was returned to service in January 1907. Soon after returning to service on January 17, 1907, the Columbia became trapped in an ice pack on the Columbia River for four days near St. Helens, Oregon. The steamship Aragonia attempted to break through the pack ice and free the Columbia on January 18. The efforts by the Aragonia were successful and allowed Columbia to steam free of the ice via the path Aragonia had cut for her. When Columbia returned to San Francisco, the ship appeared visibly unscathed.
== Design and accommodations ==
Columbia, designed by shipwright Edward Faron, was about 300 feet (91 m) long with about 310 feet (94 m) visible above the waterline. She had a beam of 38 feet 6 inches (11.73 m) and a depth of 23 feet (7.0 m). She had two compound condensing steam engines with a 42.5 in (1,080 mm) and 82 in (2,100 mm) by 54 in (1,400 mm) stroke driving a single Hirsch four-bladed propeller with a diameter of 16 feet (4.9 m). The propeller had a mean pitch of 27 feet (8.2 m) and could do 65 revolutions per minute. The blades of the propeller were able to be removed individually or all at once. Powering the engine were six boilers with a diameter of 12 feet (3.7 m) and a length of 12 feet 6 inches (3.81 m) each. Each boiler had a working pressure of 80 pounds per square inch (550 kPa). Columbia was a coal-powered steamship, able to carry a maximum of 300 tons of coal within her bunkers. She had an estimated top speed of 16 knots (30 km/h; 18 mph). She also carried a single donkey boiler and an auxiliary steam engine which powered the bilge and could supply water to the boilers should the fires break out of control. A second auxiliary steam engine powered the ship's electricity. Columbia had an auxiliary Brigantine rig sail plan with over 15,000 yards (14,000 m) of canvas. The sails would be rigged upon two iron masts.
Columbia had four decks, three of which were the Spar deck, Main deck and Hurricane deck. The Spar deck was completely of iron construction and the Main had a mix of wood and iron. All the decks had iron framing. Columbia had four watertight compartments. She also utilized electric fire alarms and annunciators with several hydrants in case of fire. Electric head and side lights were used for navigation. These navigational lights were powered by an auxiliary dynamo between decks. The navigational electric system was of Hiram Maxim's design, where the main electrical systems were Edison's. The bridge and engine room were able to communicate by telegraph. The cargo holds of Columbia were equipped with double steam-powered elevators.
The passenger comforts and amenities of Columbia were highly innovative and advertised as luxurious. She had a large refrigeration room in her stern for holding food items such as fresh meat. The large refrigerator was capable of keeping a constant cold temperature regardless of the outside temperature. Columbia also included ventilation and heating systems. The main saloon included a Bohemian glass shade illuminated by an electric light bulb. The remainder of the saloon's light bulbs were encased in frosted glass lamp fixtures. The main dining room boasted French walnut, Hungarian ash, mahogany and maple wooden paneling. Wooden furniture and carpeting further complimented the room's elegance. Telephones were provided in key rooms to allow easier communication between the ship's crew. The bridge was fitted with electrical indicators and monitoring equipment which would have alerted the captain the status of the engine as well as simplifying commands between the captain and engine room. Columbia had first-class staterooms for 250 individuals and could accommodate 600 steerage passengers. The first-class staterooms had paneling and furniture commonly seen on first-class Pullman rail cars on passenger trains, including folding berths in place of conventional beds. Columbia also boasted fresh-water plumbing still system.
By far the most innovative feature aboard the Columbia were her Edison incandescent light bulbs. If a passenger wanted his or her light turned off, a steward had to be summoned, who would unlock a rosewood box outside the cabin and turn the light off. All the lights were placed in the main salons and staterooms only. The passenger accommodations and luxuries aboard Columbia were designed to greatly surpass anything seen on previous liners along the Pacific coastline. Scientific American later published a large article describing the Edison lighting system aboard Columbia. All 120 light bulbs were connected via separate circuits to four 6-kilowatt Edison A Type "long legged Mary-Ann" dynamos, producing power via a belt drive connection to the main engines. The fourth dynamo was used to boost the magnetic fields of the other three and operated at a lower voltage. All four dynamos included two bipolar magnets along with lead wires that produced the multiple circuits. Each dynamo was capable of powering 60 light bulbs. Due to the lack of instrumentation, adjusting the voltage was judged by the brightness of light bulbs in the engine room. The wiring insulation was molten paraffin and cotton mix inside a rubber tube casing. The wires were also painted two separate colors to differentiate the negative and positive charges. Overall, the electrical systems aboard the Columbia held little difference from its Menlo Park counterparts. Oil lamps were readily available throughout the vessel in case of a power outage.
== Sinking ==
On 20 July 1907, Columbia departed San Francisco, California, with 251 passengers and crew for Portland, Oregon, under the leadership of Captain Peter Doran. When it became evening, Columbia became shrouded in fog about 12 miles (19 km) off Shelter Cove, but Captain Doran refused to slow the ship's speed. Even though the whistle of the steam schooner San Pedro could be heard nearby, neither Doran nor First Officer Hendricksen of San Pedro reduced the speed of either vessel. During this time, the rolling motion of the waves had caused many passengers to retire to their cabins due to seasickness. Fifteen minutes later, San Pedro was seen coming straight for Columbia. Doran finally ordered his ship to be put in full reverse, but it was too late. At 12:22 a.m. on 21 July 1907, San Pedro hit the starboard side of Columbia. Doran shouted at the other ship, "What are you doing man?" and continued his ordered reverse thrust, but the impact damaged the bow of the wooden-hulled San Pedro and holed Columbia, which started to list to starboard and sink by the bow. Passenger William L. Smith of Vancouver, Washington described the impact as being "soft", while music teacher Otilla Liedelt of San Francisco reported the impact as being severe.
Captain Doran ordered the passengers to go to the lifeboats and the lifeboats be lowered. Smith, concerned for the safety of his fellow passengers, began going from cabin to cabin and knocking on each door. Many passengers did not respond due to seasickness, while others hurriedly prepared themselves to abandon ship. Smith reported observing a small family holding hands in their cabin, rather than attempting to save themselves. As the ship was sinking, Liedelt noted that Captain Doran had tied the whistle cord down on the bridge and remained there as the ship sank, waving his hands in a final salute. After the bridge went underwater, the whistle died as well. Columbia at this point had developed a very noticeable list to starboard, allowing Lifeboat Number Four to be launched without being lowered. Eight and a half minutes after the collision, the Columbia began her final plunge. The stern of the ship rose out of the water and the ship slipped below the waves bow first in a matter of seconds. Once the ship was completely underwater, a large explosion occurred, sending many people dragged under by the Columbia back to the surface. While many survivors believed the explosion to have been caused by one of Columbia's boilers, Chief Engineer Jackson believed otherwise. He later stated, "I am quite positive that the boilers did not explode. I would have known if one did, as I stood directly above them when the ship pitched head foremost into the sea." Another theory is that a massive release of trapped air from the sinking Columbia caused the explosion. Among those now struggling in the water was 16-year-old Maybelle Watson, from Berkeley, California. Having been thrown from a lifeboat that capsized as it was lowered, the young girl found herself in the water with many others. Hearing another young woman crying for help nearby, Maybelle made her way over, finding a young schoolteacher flailing about, being repeatedly dunked forwards by her lifebelt. In the chaos, the woman had fastened it on backwards, and now this mistake threatened to drown her. Thinking quickly, Maybelle managed to force the woman upright again, continuing to hold her head above water until the lifeboat commanded by Officer Hawse pulled the two women on board.
88 passengers and crew, including all the children on board, lost their lives during the sinking of Columbia. Due to the speed of the sinking, many lifeboats were unable to be launched. After the sinking, the lifeboats of Columbia and San Pedro launched a rescue effort assisted by the steamers Roanoke and George W. Elder, the latter one of Columbia's old running mates. Although badly damaged and partially sunk with a noticeable list, the 390,000 ft (118,872 m) of redwood being carried in the San Pedro's hull kept the steam schooner afloat. Close to 80 survivors were brought on board the San Pedro. Many were forced to hold on to one another so as not to be carried away by the lapping waves which lapped across the San Pedro's semi-submerged deck. Along with transporting the survivors of the Columbia, the George W. Elder also towed the damaged San Pedro to shore.
== Aftermath of the disaster ==
In the wake of the disaster, hull inspector John K. Bulger, who had inspected the hull of Columbia eight months earlier with hull inspector O.F. Bolles (coincidentally the first captain of the Columbia), testified that the ship was up to modern safety standards as Columbia carried four watertight bulkheads where law requires three watertight bulkheads in a ship of her size. Despite this, Bulger also testified should one of Columbia's compartments be punctured by a collision, the water would cascade over the ship's bulkheads, allowing the ship to sink. A similar flooding action would occur nearly five years later, during the sinking of the RMS Titanic in 1912. Bulger later re-testified, claiming two flooded compartments onboard Columbia would lead to disaster rather than one compartment being flooded. Despite Bulger's reports, it is likely the bulkheads installed aboard Columbia did little to delay the inrush of water. In addition, an issue of the San Francisco Examiner explained:
The Columbia, an iron hull vessel, bore the brunt of the impact, and her iron plates – brittle with age – cracked and the gash, seven feet across the forward hatch, allowed the water free ingress.
Of the individuals involved in the Columbia sinking, Captain Doran of the Columbia and First Officer Hendrickson of the San Pedro were found to have the most responsibility for the collision. This led to Hendrickson's license being revoked for five years. In addition, Captain Magnus Hanson of the San Pedro was found to have given insufficient orders to his crew. He also did not come to the schooner's bridge when warned of the fog. Hanson's license was revoked for one year. Despite the errors made by both crews, the survivors and press gave praise to most of the crew members aboard Columbia and San Pedro for their courageous and lifesaving actions exhibited during the disaster.
One crew member who did not receive praise by most survivors was Third Officer Hawse of the Columbia. Hawse was reported to have shown aggressive and indifferent behavior towards injured survivors. He reportedly threatened to throw numerous survivors in his lifeboat overboard. Hawse later stated to the press, that he felt most of the men in the disaster refused to help many of the distressed women. He stated, "I would have shot them if I had a .45." Hawse even blamed Captain Hanson of the San Pedro for denying many survivors from boarding his vessel, which Hawse claimed led to the loss of many lives. Many survivors denied the truthfulness of Hawse's statement, regarding Hanson. Rumors began to spread about Hawse possibly having a morphine addiction. While at the U.S. Marine Hospital, Doctor S.B. Foster reported Hawse had requested the drug on three separate occasions. Hawse was arrested on July 29, 1907, while taking up residence in Second Officer Agerup's home in San Francisco. Hawse was reported to have shown signs of paranoia while being escorted to the Mission Street police station. He was subsequently admitted to the Central Emergency Hospital's detention ward.
After the sinking, the San Francisco and Portland Steamship Company leased the vessel City of Panama to fill the void left by Columbia. On August 8, 1907, the City of Panama was involved in a collision with the grounded steam schooner Alliance near the junction of the Willamette and Columbia Rivers. Due to the hull of Alliance being made of wood, the City of Panama received only minimal damage. The second officer of the City of Panama, Richard Agerup, had been on Columbia's bridge the night she sank. The sinking of Columbia, combined with the earlier losses of the Valencia, the Clallam and the City of Rio de Janeiro helped to extinguish public confidence in shipping lines and steamboat inspectors. Despite the severity of Columbia's sinking, some lessons were not learned from the tragedy. On August 29, 1929, over 22 years after the Columbia sank, the passenger steamer San Juan collided with the oil tanker S.C.T. Dodd in dense fog at night. San Juan sank in 3 minutes, killing 77 people. The sinking of the San Juan largely paralleled that of the Columbia. Furthermore, the Columbia and the San Juan were of a similar design, were built in the same shipyard, served similar routes, and were both outdated iron-hulled steamers. The San Pedro was repaired following the sinking and continued serving along the California coastline until being sold to foreign owners in 1920. She sank that same year. The Punta Gorda Light was established in response to the sinking. Rusting debris from Columbia including a boiler and bulkhead are still visible near the northern section of the Lost Coast Hiking Trail.
Between 1899 and 1907, at least eight other ships had met their end in the area, including the St. Paul, whose rusted boilers can still be seen in the surf at Punta Gorda. https://www.lighthousefriends.com/light.asp?ID=63
== See also ==
Clallam (steamboat)
Dix (steamboat)
Empress of Ireland
San Pedro (steam schooner)
SS Andrea Doria
SS City of Rio de Janeiro
SS Pacific
SS San Juan
SS Valencia
== Citations ==
== Further reading ==
Belyk, Robert C. Great Shipwrecks of the Pacific Coast. New York: Wiley, 2001. ISBN 0-471-38420-8
== External links ==
SS Columbia the first "electric" ship Archived March 4, 2016, at the Wayback Machine Washington (state) Rural Heritage.
Marine Engineering, Marine Publishing Company, Volume 8, 1903
SS Columbia – The Lost Ship Who Lit The World, article on Shipwreck World.com
Lighting a Revolution, webpage by the Smithsonian Institution
Edison Dynamo used on S.S. Columbia, item in the collection of the Henry Ford in Dearborn, Michigan |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irving_Langmuir_Award | Irving Langmuir Award | The Irving Langmuir Prize in Chemical Physics is awarded annually, in even years by the American Chemical Society and in odd years by the American Physical Society. The award is meant to recognize and encourage outstanding interdisciplinary research in chemistry and physics, in the spirit of Irving Langmuir. A nominee must have made an outstanding contribution to chemical physics or physical chemistry within the 10 years preceding the year in which the award is made. The award will be granted without restriction, except that the recipient must be a resident of the United States.
The award was established in 1931 by Dr. A.C. Langmuir, brother of Nobel Prize-winning chemist Irving Langmuir, to recognize the best young chemist in the United States. A $10,000 prize was to be awarded annually by the American Chemical Society. The first recipient was Linus Pauling. In 1964, the General Electric Foundation took over the financial backing of the prize, which was renamed the Irving Langmuir Award and the modern selection process was created. In 2006 the GE Global Research took over sponsorship of the award, and since 2009 the award has been co-sponsored between GE Global Research and the ACS Division of Physical Chemistry.
== Past recipients ==
Source: American Physical Society and American Chemical Society
== See also ==
List of physics awards
List of chemistry awards
== References ==
== External links ==
Irving Langmuir Page at the American Chemical Society Site
Irving Langmuir Page at the American Physical Society Site |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanessa_Hudgens# | Vanessa Hudgens | Vanessa Anne Hudgens ( HUJ-ənz; born December 14, 1988) is an American actress and singer. After making her feature film debut in Thirteen (2003), Hudgens rose to fame portraying Gabriella Montez in the High School Musical film series (2006–2008), which brought her mainstream recognition. Through Hollywood Records she released two albums, V (2006) and Identified (2008).
Hudgens appeared in the films Bandslam (2009), Beastly, Sucker Punch (both 2011), Journey 2: The Mysterious Island, Spring Breakers (both 2012), Second Act (2018), Bad Boys for Life (2020), and Tick, Tick...Boom! (2021). She starred in the Netflix Christmas movies The Princess Switch (2018) and its sequels (2020 and 2021), and The Knight Before Christmas (2019), and she co-produced the latter three.
Hudgens played the role of Emily Locke in the NBC series Powerless (2017). She made her Broadway stage debut playing Gigi in the musical revival of Gigi (2015) and had roles in two of Fox's live musical productions: Rizzo in Grease Live! (2016) and Maureen Johnson in Rent: Live (2019). In 2022, Hudgens co-hosted the Met Gala in Manhattan.
== Early life ==
Vanessa Anne Hudgens was born in Salinas, California, and was raised in various locations along the West Coast, from Oregon to Southern California. Her mother, Gina (née Guangco), held a succession of office jobs, and her father, Gregory Hudgens, was a firefighter. She has a younger sister, Stella, who is also an actress. She was raised as a Catholic. Her father, who died of cancer in February 2016, was of mostly English descent, and her mother is Filipina and grew up in Mindanao. All of her grandparents were musicians.
== Career ==
=== 1998–2004: Early roles ===
Starting in 1998, Hudgens performed in musical theater as a singer, and appeared in local productions of Carousel, The Wizard of Oz, The King and I, The Music Man, and Cinderella, among others. Two years later, she began auditioning for commercials and television shows, and her family moved to Los Angeles after she appeared in a television commercial. She began her acting career at age 15, and she briefly attended Orange County High School of the Arts, followed by homeschooling with tutors.
Hudgens had her first acting role in an episode of the sitcom Still Standing, airing on CBS in 2002, in which she portrayed Tiffany. Later that year, she appeared in an episode of the series Robbery Homicide Division, airing on CBS. Hudgens made her film debut in the 2003 drama movie Thirteen, in the supporting role of Noel. The film grossed $10 million worldwide and received positive critical reviews. USA Today called Thirteen the most "powerful of all recent wayward-youth sagas". Hudgens subsequently landed a role in the 2004 science fiction-adventure film Thunderbirds, based on the 1960s television series. Hudgens portrayed the character of Tin-tin. The film was a commercial failure and was strongly criticized for "abandoning the original concepts".
=== 2005–2008: High School Musical and music ===
In January 2006, Hudgens played Gabriella Montez, one of the lead roles in the Disney Channel Original Movie High School Musical. The film saw Hudgens portraying the new girl at high school who falls for the captain of the basketball team. The two later reveal a passion for singing, and audition for the school play together. Hudgens starred alongside Zac Efron and Ashley Tisdale, the former of which she was partnered up with during the auditioning process due to their "chemistry". It was Disney Channel's most-watched film that year with 7.7 million viewers in its premiere broadcast in the US, until August's premiere of The Cheetah Girls 2, which achieved 8.1 million viewers.
For the film, Hudgens recorded numerous songs which had commercial success. The song "Breaking Free", a duet with Efron, became Hudgens' highest peak on the US Billboard Hot 100 at number 4, and number 9 in the UK. Following the success of the film, Hudgens released her debut studio album, V, on September 26, 2006. It sold 34,000 copies in its first week, and debuted at number 24 on the US Billboard 200 chart. In February 2007, the album was certified Gold by the Recording Industry Association of America. By August 2009, the album had sold 570,000 copies in the US. It was preceded by two singles, "Come Back to Me" and "Say OK", both of which were moderately successful in several countries.
In 2007, Hudgens reprised her role as Gabriella in High School Musical 2, released on August 17. The show was watched by over 17.2 million viewers in the US, almost 10 million more than its predecessor, making it the most-watched Disney Channel Original Movie of all time. Disney Channel aired a weekly program called Road to High School Musical 2, beginning on June 8, and leading up to the premiere of High School Musical 2 in August. The show offered viewers a behind-the-scenes look into the production of the movie. The opening number "What Time Is It" was first broadcast on Radio Disney on May 25, 2007, and "You Are the Music in Me" was introduced on July 13, 2007. The film was generally well received by critics. USA Today's Robert Bianco awarded the film three stars out of four, stating that High School Musical 2 was "sweet, smart, bursting with talent and energy, and awash in innocence". While critics enjoyed the film, they noted that the timing of its premiere seemed odd, premiering just when school was about to resume again whereas the film's plot involved the gang going on summer vacation.
Her second studio album, Identified, was released on July 1, 2008, in the United States. It sold 22,000 copies in its first week, 12,000 less than V. Despite the drop in sales, the album debuted at number 23 on the Billboard 200, one spot higher than V. The album was preceded by one single, "Sneakernight", which peaked at number 88 on the Billboard Hot 100. Hudgens reprised her role in High School Musical 3: Senior Year, the first film from the franchise to be released theatrically. It opened at number one at the North American box office in October 2008, earning $42 million in its first weekend, which broke the record previously held by Mamma Mia! for the biggest opening by a musical. The film finished with $252 million worldwide, which exceeded Disney's expectations.
=== 2009–2017: Mainstream film and television ===
Following the completion of the High School Musical series, Hudgens said that she was taking a break from her music career to focus more on acting. She played a supporting role in a musical comedy Bandslam, which was released theatrically on August 14, 2009. Hudgens played "Sa5m", a 15-year-old awkward freshman with untapped talents. Although Bandslam was commercially unsuccessful, Hudgens' performance received praise from critics. David Waddington of the North Wales Pioneer noted that Hudgens "outshines the rest of the cast, failing to fit in with the outcast narrative and making the inevitable climactic ending all the more expected".
In 2010, Hudgens starred in the musical Rent as Mimi during August 6–8, 2010, at the Hollywood Bowl. Her involvement in the production drew negative comments, but director Neil Patrick Harris defended his decision with casting Hudgens by saying, "Vanessa is awesome. She's a friend. I asked her to come in and sing to make sure she had the chops for it. And she was very committed and seemed great."
In 2011, Hudgens starred with Alex Pettyfer in the film Beastly, based on Alex Flinn's 2007 novel Beastly. She played one of the main characters, Linda Taylor, and described her as "the 'beauty' of the story but not the stereotypical beauty everyone thinks of." Hudgens and Pettyfer were described as ShoWest Stars of Tomorrow. Beastly was released on March 4, 2011, to mostly negative reviews. The film was screened at ShoWest and drew enthusiastic reactions from the luncheon crowd of exhibition officials. The film went on to make $28 million worldwide as of 2012. Hudgens also starred as one of the five female leads in the action film Sucker Punch, directed by Zack Snyder. She played Blondie, an institutionalized girl in an asylum. The film was released in March 2011, and grossed $19 million in its first weekend at the North American box office, opening at number two. By the end of its run, Sucker Punch totaled $89 million worldwide.
In 2012, Hudgens starred alongside Dwayne Johnson and Josh Hutcherson in the science fantasy action-adventure film Journey 2: The Mysterious Island (2012), the sequel to the 2008 film Journey to the Center of the Earth, playing Hutcherson's love interest. The film earned $325 million worldwide during its theatrical run, which outperformed its predecessor. It received generally mixed to negative reviews from critics.
In 2013, Hudgens starred alongside Selena Gomez, Ashley Benson, Rachel Korine and James Franco in the film Spring Breakers. The story followed four college-aged girls who decide to rob a fast food restaurant in order to pay for their spring break. It was released theatrically in March 2013, receiving generally positive reviews. The film featured mature themes such as drug use, violence, and sexual escapades. To coincide with the film, Hudgens released the dubstep-influenced song "$$$ex", with a music video featuring clips from the film. The song features guest vocals from YLA, and was produced by Rock Mafia. Hudgens later expressed her discomfort with a sex scene: "It was very nerve-racking for me. I told my agent that I never want to do it ever again." Later that year, Hudgens played Cindy Paulson in The Frozen Ground, a film based on the Robert Hansen serial murder case, with Hudgens portraying Hansen's only known victim to escape. She co-starred with John Cusack and Nicolas Cage. She also starred in the action film Machete Kills, based on the character Machete from the Spy Kids franchise. The film was directed by Robert Rodriguez. By the end of the year, Hudgens starred alongside Michael Shannon, Joel Marsh Garland, Dree Hemingway, and Nick Lashaway in Spike Jonze's short comedy-drama film Choose You. The cast performed the film live as a skit at the first YouTube Music Awards, to the music of Avicii.
In 2014, Hudgens starred as a pregnant teenage runaway girl in the drama film Gimme Shelter with Brendan Fraser, written and directed by Ron Krauss.
In 2015, Hudgens starred in the Columbia Pictures' comedy horror film Freaks of Nature. That same year, she took on the title role in a production of Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe's Gigi, which opened at the Kennedy Center from January 16 to February 12, before transferring to Broadway on April 8. The production closed on June 21.
On January 31, 2016, Hudgens starred in the role of Rizzo in Grease Live!, Fox's live broadcast based on the original Broadway musical. Hudgens dedicated her performance to her father, who died from cancer one day before the special aired.
In 2017, Hudgens played Emily Locke on NBC's comedy series Powerless, which was based on DC Comics characters. It was cancelled after one season. That same year, Hudgens was featured on Shawn Hook's single "Reminding Me" and starred in the music video. She hosted the 2017 Billboard Music Awards with rapper Ludacris, which premiered on May 21. Hudgens also served as a judge alongside Nigel Lythgoe and Mary Murphy on the 14th season of the American reality dance show So You Think You Can Dance.
=== 2018–present: Career expansion ===
In 2018, Hudgens starred in the romantic comedy film Dog Days, alongside Finn Wolfhard and Nina Dobrev. She collaborated with electronic dance music duo Phantoms on the single "Lay With Me", released in September 2018. She starred in the Netflix film The Princess Switch in November 2018, in which she portrayed both a European duchess and a pastry chef from Chicago, who temporarily switch roles. In December 2018, she co-starred opposite Jennifer Lopez in the comedy film Second Act, directed by Peter Segal. Hudgens returned for the 15th season of So You Think You Can Dance, as part of the panel of judges. The same year, she essayed the role of Vanessa Morales in a production by Kennedy Center of Lin-Manuel Miranda's original musical In the Heights.
In January 2019, Hudgens starred in another Fox live musical presentation, Rent: Live, as Maureen Johnson. Hudgens also co-starred with Mads Mikkelsen in Polar, the Netflix film adaptation of Víctor Santos's 2013 graphic novel Polar: Came From the Cold. In November 2019, she starred in and served as a producer on the Netflix film The Knight Before Christmas.
In 2020, Hudgens appeared in the third entry in the Bad Boys franchise, Bad Boys for Life, which grossed over $426 million worldwide. In November that year, she starred in and produced the Netflix film The Princess Switch's sequel, The Princess Switch: Switched Again. By the end of the year, Hudgens hosted the MTV Movie & TV Awards: Greatest of All Time television special, which highlighted the greatest moments of film and television since the 1980s, as well as moments from past editions of the award ceremony.
In 2021, she voiced the lead character, Sunny Starscout, in the animated Netflix film My Little Pony: A New Generation. In November 2021, Hudgens appeared in Netflix's biographical film Tick, Tick... Boom!, adapted from the musical Tick, Tick... Boom!, with Hudgens portraying playwright Jonathan Larson's friend Karessa Johnson, directed by Lin-Manuel Miranda. Hudgens lent her voice to songs on the film's soundtrack. Later that month, she appeared in the third installment of Netflix's The Princess Switch film series, The Princess Switch 3: Romancing the Star, directed by Michael Rohl. Hudgens reprised her three roles from earlier, and also served as a producer.
In 2022, Hudgens starred alongside Alexandra Shipp, Kiersey Clemons, and Ezra Miller in the Paramount Pictures' action thriller film, Asking for It. The film released in theaters, digitally, and on Blu-ray on March 4. Later that month, she co-hosted the 94th Academy Awards' red carpet pre-show with Terrence J, Sofia Carson, and Brandon Maxwell. In May 2022, Hudgens co-hosted the Met Gala red carpet livestream for Vogue with actress and television personality La La Anthony, and the magazine's editor-at-large Hamish Bowles. In June 2022, she co-hosted the 30th MTV Movie & TV Awards with Tayshia Adams, with Hudgens hosting the first half of the ceremony for film and scripted television. Hudgens starred in Hamish Linklater and Lily Rabe's film Downtown Owl, alongside Rabe, Ed Harris, Finn Wittrock, Jack Dylan Grazer, and August Blanco Rosenstein, produced by Sony Pictures' production label Stage 6 Films.
In 2024, Hudgens competed in season eleven of The Masked Singer as "Goldfish". She won the season with Scott Porter as "Gumball" finishing in second place. Both of them made references to their work in Bandslam.
== Personal life ==
Hudgens was raised Catholic but now identifies as a non-denominational Christian. She attends the Los Angeles affiliate church of Hillsong Church.
In 2005, Hudgens began dating her High School Musical co-star Zac Efron. Their relationship was highly publicized until their breakup in 2010. From 2011 to 2019, Hudgens dated actor Austin Butler. In 2020, Hudgens began dating Major League Baseball shortstop Cole Tucker. Hudgens and Tucker married on December 2, 2023, in Tulum, Mexico. The couple have two children, born in late June or early July 2024 and November 2025.
In May 2016, Hudgens paid $1,000 in restitution for damage of U.S. Forest Service property by carving initials within a heart on a rock in the Coconino National Forest and displaying it on her personal Instagram feed.
In March 2020, Hudgens posted an Instagram video where she stated that it is "inevitable" that people will die from the COVID-19 pandemic. The video caused controversy as critics accused her of minimizing the impact of the disease and the need for preventive measures. She subsequently apologized for her "insensitive" remarks.
In October 2021, Hudgens was shown by Architectural Digest to be living in the "Little DeMille" house, which director Cecil B. DeMille built for his mistress.
=== Leaked photos ===
On September 6, 2007, photos allegedly stolen from Hudgens were leaked online, one showing her posing in lingerie and another showing her nude. A statement from her publicist said that the photo was taken privately and it was unfortunate that they were released on the Internet. Hudgens later apologized, saying that she was "embarrassed over the situation" and regretted having "taken [those] photos". In January 2008, Hudgens released a statement indicating that she declined to comment further on the subject. In October 2007, OK! magazine speculated that Hudgens would be dropped from High School Musical 3 as a result of the explicit images, but The Walt Disney Company denied this, stating, "Vanessa has apologized for what was obviously a lapse in judgment. We hope she's learned a valuable lesson."
In August 2009, another set of images showing Hudgens topless emerged on the Internet. Hudgens' representatives did not comment, though her lawyers requested the removal of the pictures. In late 2009, Hudgens sued www.moejackson.com for posting nude "self-portrait photographs" of her taken on a mobile phone in a private home. Hudgens later commented on the photos' impact on her career in the October issue of Allure, stating, "Whenever anybody asks me, would I do nudity in a film, if I say that it's something I'm not comfortable with, they're like, 'Bullshit, you've already done it.' If anything, it makes it more embarrassing, because that was a private thing. It's screwed up that someone screwed me over like that. At least some people are learning from my mistake." According to Us Weekly, additional nude images were released on the Internet on March 15, 2011.
== Public image ==
Hudgens was represented by William Morris Agency but signed on to Creative Artists Agency in 2011. In 2006, Hudgens' earnings were estimated to be $2 million. Hudgens was included in Forbes richest list in early 2007, and the Forbes article noted that she was included in Young Hollywood's Top Earning-Stars. On December 12, 2008, Hudgens was ranked No. 20 in the list of Forbes "High Earners Under 30", having reported to have an estimated earnings of $3 million in 2008. She was number 62 at FHM's 100 Sexiest Women 2008 and number 42 in the 2009 list. Hudgens is also featured in Maxim's lists. She was included in People's annual "100 Most Beautiful People" 2008 and 2009 lists.
Hudgens promotes Neutrogena and was the 2008 featured celebrity for Sears' back-to school campaign. In 2007, she became a spokesperson for Marc Eckō products but ended the contract after two years. Hudgens regularly volunteers for charitable activities, including those for Best Buddies International, Lollipop Theater Network, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital and the VH1 Save The Music Foundation. Hudgens is also featured in A Very Special Christmas Vol.7 disc which benefits the Special Olympics. Hudgens is also part of the "Stand Up to Cancer (SU2C): Change The Odds" along with other Hollywood stars including Zac Efron, Dakota Fanning, Kristen Bell, and others.
Brian Schall sued Hudgens in 2007 for an alleged "breach of contract"; according to the suit, Schall claims he advanced costs and expenses on Hudgens' behalf for her songwriting and recording career. Schall claims Hudgens owed him $150,000 after helping her earn more than $5 million for her music career. Hudgens argued that she was a 16-year-old minor when she signed the contract in October 2005, and therefore too young to do so. She subsequently disaffirmed it on October 9, 2008. Papers filed in court by her lawyer say California's Family Code "provides that the contract of a minor is voidable and may be disaffirmed before (age 18) or within a reasonable time afterward." In 2008, Hudgens was sued by Johnny Vieira, who claims he was owed a share of Hudgens' advances, royalties and merchandising revenue in exchange for his management services. Vieira accuses Hudgens of abandoning her talent team as soon as she became a commercial name. In early May 2009, the case was settled.
Hudgens is a frequent attendee of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. She has been unofficially called the "Queen of Coachella". She is known for her boho-chic fashion style, occasionally going barefoot at the festival as well.
In March 2023, Hudgens was named as a global tourism ambassador by the Philippine government.
== Filmography ==
Hudgens has over 80 credits to her name within film, television, and on stage.
== Discography ==
V (2006)
Identified (2008)
== Tours ==
Headlining
Identified Summer Tour (2008)
Co-headlining
High School Musical: The Concert (2006–07)
Opening act
The Cheetah Girls – The Party's Just Begun Tour (2006)
== Awards and nominations ==
== See also ==
Filipinos in the New York City metropolitan region
List of Filipino Americans
== References ==
== External links ==
Vanessa Hudgens at IMDb
Vanessa Hudgens at the Internet Broadway Database
Vanessa Hudgens at AllMusic |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erling_Norvik | Erling Norvik | Erling Norvik (9 April 1928 – 31 December 1998) was a Norwegian politician from the Conservative Party.
Norvik was born in Vadsø, the son of Erling Johannes Norvik, who served in the Norwegian parliament (Stortinget) from 1949 to 1961. The younger Norvik started his professional career as a journalist for the regional paper Finnmarken when he was 12 years old and was elected to Stortinget in 1961 from his native county, Finnmark, succeeding his father.
Norvik was seated in the legislature for three successive periods, from 1961 to 1973 and then resigned to become the leader of the Conservative Party, a post he held from 1974–1980 and 1984–1986. He turned down a ministerial post in 1981, choosing instead to work in the prime minister office's of his party colleague Kåre Willoch.
In 1986 he was appointed Governor ("Fylkesmann") of Østfold county, as which he served for 12 years.
== References ==
"Erling Norvik" (in Norwegian). Storting. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_EGOT_winners | List of EGOT winners | EGOT, an acronym for the Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony Awards, is the designation given to people who have won all four of the major performing art awards in the United States. Respectively, these awards honor outstanding achievements in television, audio recording/music, film, and theatre. Achieving the EGOT has been referred to as the "grand slam" of American show business. Including those with honorary or special awards, 27 people have achieved this status. Only one person, Robert Lopez, has won all four awards twice.
== Background ==
The EGOT acronym was coined by actor Philip Michael Thomas in late 1984. While starring in Miami Vice, he stated a desire to achieve the EGOT within five years. The acronym gained wider recognition following a 2009 episode of 30 Rock that introduced EGOT status as a recurring plotline. There is some debate over whether only the Primetime Emmy Award should count towards an EGOT, as some (including Thomas himself) distinguish the other types of Emmy competitions as subordinate to the Primetime honor.
Starting in 2016, the Daytime Emmy Awards had a category for Outstanding Musical Performance in a Daytime Program, which was removed after the 2019 ceremony because three of the four winners were Broadway ensembles, which between them included five people (Cynthia Erivo, Rachel Bay Jones, Katrina Lenk, Ben Platt, and Ari'el Stachel) who had already won Tony and Grammy awards for the shows they were in, and with their Daytime Emmy wins only needed Oscars to complete their EGOT status.
In 2023, TheaterMania writer Zachary Stewart criticized the practice of "selling" producer credits for shows favored to win a Tony as a "shortcut" to EGOT status. He drew a distinction between the producers who actually do the work of organizing the production of a show and investing producers who merely help finance it, often late in the award season.
== EGOT winners ==
=== Competitive EGOT ===
=== Non-competitive EGOT ===
Notes
== Competitive EGOT awardees ==
=== Richard Rodgers ===
American composer Richard Rodgers (1902–1979) received his fourth distinct award in 1962. Between 1946 and 1979, Rodgers received a total of 10 competitive awards. He was the first person to win all four and was primarily a composer.
Academy Awards:
1946: Best Song – "It Might as Well Be Spring" (from State Fair)
Primetime Emmy Awards:
1962: Outstanding Achievement in Original Music Composed for Television – Winston Churchill: The Valiant Years
Grammy Awards:
1961: Best Show Album (Original Cast) – The Sound of Music
1963: Best Original Cast Show Album – No Strings
Tony Awards:
1950: Best Musical – South Pacific
1950: Producers (Musical) – South Pacific
1950: Best Score – South Pacific
1952: Best Musical – The King and I
1960: Best Musical – The Sound of Music
1962: Best Composer – No Strings
Special Awards:
1962: Special Tony Award "for all he has done for young people in the theatre and for taking the men of the orchestra out of the pit and putting them onstage in No Strings"
1972: Special Tony Award
1979: Special Tony Award, Lawrence Langner Memorial Award for Distinguished Lifetime Achievement in the American Theatre
=== Helen Hayes ===
American actress Helen Hayes (1900–1993) received her fourth distinct award in 1977. Between 1932 and 1980, Hayes received a total of six competitive awards. She was the first woman and the first performer to win all four. Hayes was also the first EGOT recipient to win the Triple Crown of Acting (with individual acting wins in each of the Emmy, Oscar, and Tony awards). Counting only the first award of each type, she also has the longest interval (45 years) between her first and fourth award of any EGOT winner.
Academy Awards:
1932: Best Actress in a Leading Role – The Sin of Madelon Claudet
1971: Best Actress in a Supporting Role – Airport
Primetime Emmy Awards:
1953: Best Actress – Schlitz Playhouse of Stars (Episode: "Not a Chance")
Grammy Awards:
1977: Best Spoken Word Recording – Great American Documents
Tony Awards:
1947: Best Actress in a Play – Happy Birthday
1958: Best Leading Actress in a Play – Time Remembered
Special Awards:
1980: Special Tony Award, Lawrence Langner Memorial Award for Distinguished Lifetime Achievement in the American Theatre
=== Rita Moreno ===
Puerto Rican actress, dancer, and singer Rita Moreno (born 1931) received her fourth distinct award in 1977. Between 1961 and 1978, Moreno received a total of five awards. She is also the first Latina winner and the first winner to win a Grammy as their second award (both previous winners won Tonys as their second award). In addition, she became a Kennedy Center Honoree in 2015 and a Peabody Award winner in 2019. Moreno is also the second EGOT recipient and the first Hispanic actress to win the Triple Crown of Acting.
Academy Awards:
1962: Best Actress in a Supporting Role – West Side Story
Primetime Emmy Awards:
1977: Outstanding Continuing or Single Performance by a Supporting Actress in Variety or Music – The Muppet Show (Episode: "Rita Moreno")
1978: Outstanding Lead Actress for a Single Appearance in a Drama or Comedy Series – The Rockford Files (Episode: "The Paper Palace")
Grammy Awards:
1973: Best Recording for Children – The Electric Company
Tony Awards:
1975: Best Supporting or Featured Actress in a Play – The Ritz
=== John Gielgud ===
English actor and theatre director John Gielgud (1904–2000) received his fourth distinct award in 1991. Between 1948 and 1991, Gielgud received a total of five competitive awards. Gielgud was the first winner to win any award other than the Oscar as their first award (his first award was a Tony). At age 87 when he won his Emmy, he also became the oldest winner, the first male performer, the first LGBTQ winner, and the first non-American.
Academy Awards:
1982: Best Actor in a Supporting Role – Arthur
Primetime Emmy Awards:
1991: Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries or a Special – Summer's Lease
Grammy Awards:
1980: Best Spoken Word, Documentary or Drama Recording – Ages of Man
Tony Awards:
1948: Outstanding Foreign Company – The Importance of Being Earnest
1961: Best Director of a Drama – Big Fish, Little Fish
Special Awards:
1959: Special Tony Award "for contribution to theatre for his extraordinary insight into the writings of Shakespeare as demonstrated in his one-man play Ages of Man"
=== Audrey Hepburn ===
British actress and humanitarian Audrey Hepburn (1929–1993) received her fourth distinct award posthumously in 1994. Between 1954 and 1994, Hepburn received a total of four competitive awards. She was the fifth person to complete the feat and the first to do so posthumously. She was also the first winner to win two of their awards in consecutive awards shows (the 1994 Grammys were the first Grammys since her posthumous win at the 1993 Emmys). She is the only EGOT winner to not win multiple awards in any of the four award fields.
Academy Awards:
1954: Best Actress in a Leading Role – Roman Holiday
Primetime Emmy Awards:
1993: Outstanding Individual Achievement – Informational Programming – Gardens of the World with Audrey Hepburn (Episode: "Flower Gardens")
Grammy Awards:
1994: Best Spoken Word Album for Children – Audrey Hepburn's Enchanted Tales
Tony Awards:
1954: Distinguished Dramatic Actress – Ondine
Special Awards:
1968: Special Tony Award
1993: Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award
=== Marvin Hamlisch ===
American composer and conductor Marvin Hamlisch (1944–2012) received his fourth distinct award in 1995. Between 1974 and 2001, Hamlisch received a total of 12 competitive awards. Before Alan Menken joined the group in 2020, Hamlisch had the most Oscars of any EGOT winner (three - all won in the same year). In 1974 he would win "General Field" Grammys, taking Song of the Year and Best New Artist, making him first EGOT to have this distinction. Hamlisch was also the first EGOT winner to have won multiple, qualifying awards for the same work – both an Oscar and a Grammy for the song "The Way We Were".
Academy Awards:
1974: Best Original Dramatic Score – The Way We Were
1974: Best Scoring: Original Song Score and Adaptation or Scoring: Adaptation – The Sting
1974: Best Song – "The Way We Were" (from The Way We Were)
Primetime Emmy Awards:
1995: Outstanding Individual Achievement in Music Direction – Barbra: The Concert
1995: Outstanding Individual Achievement in Music and Lyrics – "Ordinary Miracles" (from Barbra: The Concert)
1999: Outstanding Music and Lyrics – "A Ticket to Dream" (from AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies)
2001: Outstanding Music Direction – Timeless: Live in Concert
Grammy Awards:
1975: Best New Artist
1975: Song of the Year – "The Way We Were"
1975: Best Pop Instrumental Performance – "The Entertainer"
1975: Album of Best Original Score Written for a Motion Picture or a Television Special – The Way We Were: Original Soundtrack Recording
Tony Awards:
1976: Best Musical Score – A Chorus Line
=== Jonathan Tunick ===
American orchestrator, musical director, and composer Jonathan Tunick (born 1938) received his fourth distinct award in 1997. Between 1977 and 2024, Tunick received a total of five awards. Tunick is the first EGOT winner to have won an Emmy as their second award as well as the first to win the Tony as their fourth award.
Academy Awards:
1978: Best Original Song Score and Its Adaptation or Adaptation Score – A Little Night Music
Primetime Emmy Awards:
1982: Outstanding Achievement in Music Direction – Night of 100 Stars
Grammy Awards:
1989: Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Vocal(s) – "No One is Alone" (vocals by Cleo Laine)
Tony Awards:
1997: Best Orchestrations – Titanic
2024: Best Orchestrations – Merrily We Roll Along
=== Mel Brooks ===
American actor, comedian, and filmmaker Mel Brooks (born 1926) received his fourth distinct award in June 2001. Between 1968 and 2002, Brooks received a total of 11 awards. Brooks was the first person to win the Emmy as the first award, and the first winner to have won his Oscar for screenwriting. He is the only person to have won the Triple Crown of Writing, having won an Oscar, an Emmy and a Tony in writing categories.
Academy Awards:
1969: Best Story and Screenplay – Written Directly for the Screen – The Producers
Primetime Emmy Awards:
1967: Outstanding Writing Achievement in Variety – The Sid Caesar, Imogene Coca, Carl Reiner, Howard Morris Special
1997: Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series – Mad About You (Episodes: "The Grant" and "The Penis")
1998: Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series – Mad About You (Episode: "Uncle Phil and the Coupons")
1999: Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series – Mad About You (Episode: "Uncle Phil Goes Back to High School")
Grammy Awards:
1999: Best Spoken Comedy Album – The 2000 Year Old Man in the Year 2000
2002: Best Long Form Music Video – Recording 'The Producers': A Musical Romp with Mel Brooks
2002: Best Musical Show Album – The Producers
Tony Awards:
2001: Best Musical – The Producers
2001: Best Book of a Musical – The Producers
2001: Best Original Score – The Producers
Special Awards
2023: Academy Honorary Award – "Mel Brooks lights up our hearts with his humor, and his legacy has made a lasting impact on every facet of entertainment."
Brooks is one of only two people to have two awards of each type, though unlike the other (Robert Lopez) one of Brooks's Oscars was honorary. When he appeared on the January 30, 2015 episode of Real Time with Bill Maher, Brooks called himself an EGOTAK, noting that he had also received awards from the American Film Institute and Kennedy Center.
=== Mike Nichols ===
American film and theater director, producer, actor, and comedian Mike Nichols (1931–2014) received his fourth distinct award in November 2001. Between 1961 and 2012, Nichols received a total of 15 awards. Nichols was the first EGOT winner to win the Grammy as their first award, the first winner to have won multiple awards for directing (an Oscar, several Tonys, and two Emmys) . When counting all awards won—not just the first of each type—Nichols has the longest timespan of awards among EGOT winners, at 51 years. He is one of only 2 people, the other being Bob Fosse, to achieve the Triple Crown of Directing, having won an Oscar, an Emmy and a Tony in directing categories.
Academy Awards:
1968: Best Director – The Graduate
Primetime Emmy Awards:
2001: Outstanding Made for Television Movie – Wit
2001: Outstanding Directing for a Miniseries or a Movie – Wit
2004: Outstanding Miniseries – Angels in America
2004: Outstanding Directing for a Miniseries, Movie or a Dramatic Special – Angels in America
Grammy Awards:
1962: Best Comedy Performance – An Evening with Mike Nichols and Elaine May
Tony Awards:
1964: Best Direction of a Play – Barefoot in the Park
1965: Best Direction of a Play – Luv and The Odd Couple
1968: Best Direction of a Play – Plaza Suite
1972: Best Direction of a Play – The Prisoner of Second Avenue
1977: Best Musical – Annie
1984: Best Play – The Real Thing
1984: Best Direction of a Play – The Real Thing
2005: Best Direction of a Musical – Monty Python's Spamalot
2012: Best Direction of a Play – Death of a Salesman
=== Whoopi Goldberg ===
American actress, comedian and author Whoopi Goldberg (born 1955) received her fourth distinct award in 2002. Between 1985 and 2009, she received a total of five competitive awards. Goldberg is the first African American winner, the first to win the Oscar as their second award, and the third person after Audrey Hepburn (1954) and Marvin Hamlisch (1974) to win two of their qualifying awards in the same year (she won both her Tony and her first competitive Emmy in 2002).
Academy Awards:
1991: Best Actress in a Supporting Role – Ghost
Daytime Emmy Awards:
2002: Outstanding Special Class Special – Beyond Tara: The Extraordinary Life of Hattie McDaniel
2009: Outstanding Talk Show Host – The View
Grammy Awards:
1986: Best Comedy Recording – Whoopi Goldberg: Original Broadway Show Recording
Tony Awards:
2002: Best Musical – Thoroughly Modern Millie
Special Awards:
1997: Special Emmy Award, Governors Award, for the seven Comic Relief Benefit Specials
=== Scott Rudin ===
American film, television, and theatre producer Scott Rudin (born 1958) received his fourth distinct award in 2012. Between 1984 and 2021, Rudin received a total of 21 awards, tying with Alan Menken for winning the most competitive EGOT awards. Rudin is currently the only EGOT winner who is solely a producer and did not win any of his four awards for a creative endeavor (i.e. singing, writing, acting).
Academy Awards:
2008: Best Picture – No Country for Old Men
Primetime Emmy Awards:
1984: Outstanding Children's Program – He Makes Me Feel Like Dancin'
Grammy Awards:
2012: Best Musical Theater Album – The Book of Mormon: Original Broadway Cast Recording
Tony Awards:
1994: Best Musical – Passion
2000: Best Play – Copenhagen
2002: Best Play – The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia?
2005: Best Play – Doubt
2006: Best Play – The History Boys
2009: Best Play – God of Carnage
2010: Best Revival of a Play – Fences
2011: Best Musical – The Book of Mormon
2012: Best Revival of a Play – Death of a Salesman
2014: Best Revival of a Play – A Raisin in the Sun
2015: Best Play – The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
2015: Best Revival of a Play – Skylight
2016: Best Play – The Humans
2016: Best Revival of a Play – A View From the Bridge
2017: Best Revival of a Musical – Hello, Dolly!
2019: Best Play – The Ferryman
2019: Best Revival of a Play – The Boys in the Band
2021: Best Play – The Inheritance
=== Robert Lopez ===
American songwriter Robert Lopez (born 1975) received his fourth distinct award in 2014. Between 2004 and 2022, he received a total of 12 awards. He is the first Filipino and Asian to achieve this feat. He is the youngest winner (39 years, 8 days) to receive all four awards in competitive categories, as well as, at the time, the fastest to complete his qualifying run of EGOT wins (9 years, 8 months). His second series of wins set a new shortest interval of 7 years, 8 months (June 27, 2010 Emmy through March 4th, 2018 Academy Award) until 2024 when both Benj Pasek and Justin Paul topped this record with a qualifying run of 7 years and 7 months.
Lopez is the first person to win each EGOT award twice. As of 2025, he is one Oscar away from becoming the first triple EGOT winner as well. He is currently the only winner to have two of each EGOT award in competitive categories, as Mel Brooks' second Oscar in 2023 was a special award. His first two Emmys were Daytime Emmys, followed by a Primetime Emmy in 2021 for WandaVision. He is the only EGOT recipient to follow a Daytime Emmy win with a subsequent Primetime Emmy win.
Lopez received his Grammy Award for The Book of Mormon in collaboration with fellow EGOT winner Scott Rudin (among others), making them the first pair of EGOT winners to co-win the same award. Lopez is also the first person to have won the Oscar last, a prize he shared then, and again in 2018, with his wife Kristen Anderson-Lopez. As of 2024, Kristen Anderson-Lopez lacks only a Tony to achieve EGOT status in her own right.
Academy Awards:
2014: Best Original Song – "Let It Go" (from Frozen)
2018: Best Original Song – "Remember Me" (from Coco)
Primetime Emmy Awards:
2021: Outstanding Original Music and Lyrics – "Agatha All Along" (from WandaVision — Episode: "Breaking the Fourth Wall")
Daytime Emmy Awards:
2008: Outstanding Music Direction and Composition – Wonder Pets!
2010: Outstanding Music Direction and Composition – Wonder Pets!
Children's and Family Emmy Awards:
2022: Outstanding Short Form Program – We the People
Grammy Awards:
2012: Best Musical Theater Album – The Book of Mormon: Original Broadway Cast Recording
2015: Best Compilation Soundtrack for Visual Media – Frozen
2015: Best Song Written for Visual Media – "Let It Go" (from Frozen)
Tony Awards:
2004: Best Original Score – Avenue Q
2011: Best Book of a Musical – The Book of Mormon
2011: Best Original Score – The Book of Mormon
=== Andrew Lloyd Webber ===
English composer and impresario of musical theatre Andrew Lloyd Webber, Baron Lloyd-Webber (born 1948) received his fourth distinct award in 2018. Between 1980 and 2025, Lloyd Webber received a total of 12 competitive awards. On September 9, 2018, Lloyd Webber, John Legend, and Tim Rice all simultaneously became EGOTs when they were collectively awarded the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Variety Special (Live) for Jesus Christ Superstar Live in Concert.
Academy Awards:
1997: Best Original Song – "You Must Love Me" (from Evita)
Primetime Emmy Awards:
2018: Outstanding Variety Special (Live) – Jesus Christ Superstar Live in Concert
Grammy Awards:
1981: Best Cast Show Album – Evita: Premier American Recording
1984: Best Cast Show Album – Cats: Complete Original Broadway Cast Recording
1986: Best Contemporary Composition – Lloyd Webber: Requiem
Tony Awards:
1980: Best Original Score – Evita
1983: Best Musical – Cats
1983: Best Original Score – Cats
1988: Best Musical – The Phantom of the Opera
1995: Best Musical – Sunset Boulevard
1995: Best Original Score – Sunset Boulevard
2025: Best Revival of a Musical – Sunset Boulevard
Special Awards:
1990: Grammy Legend Award
2018: Special Tony Award
=== Tim Rice ===
English lyricist and librettist Tim Rice (born 1944) received his fourth distinct award in 2018. Between 1980 and 2018, Rice received a total of 12 awards, and shares all of his awards with fellow EGOTs Elton John, John Legend, Andrew Lloyd Webber, and Alan Menken. On September 9, 2018, Lloyd Webber, Legend, and Rice all simultaneously became EGOTs when they were collectively awarded the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Variety Special (Live) for Jesus Christ Superstar Live in Concert.
Academy Awards:
1993: Best Original Song – "A Whole New World" (from Aladdin)
1995: Best Original Song – "Can You Feel the Love Tonight" (from The Lion King)
1997: Best Original Song – "You Must Love Me" (from Evita)
Primetime Emmy Awards:
2018: Outstanding Variety Special (Live) – Jesus Christ Superstar Live in Concert
Grammy Awards:
1981: Best Cast Show Album – Evita: Premier American Recording
1994: Song of the Year – "A Whole New World (Aladdin's Theme)"
1994: Best Musical Album for Children – Aladdin: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
1994: Best Song Written Specifically for a Motion Picture or Television – "A Whole New World (Aladdin's Theme)" (from Aladdin)
2001: Best Musical Show Album – Elton John and Tim Rice's Aida
Tony Awards:
1980: Best Book of a Musical – Evita
1980: Best Original Score – Evita
2000: Best Original Score – Aida
=== John Legend ===
American singer, songwriter, pianist, and record producer John Legend (born 1978) received his fourth distinct award in 2018. Between 2006 and 2025, Legend received a total of 21 awards. Legend has won the most Grammy Awards, 12, of any competitive EGOT recipient. In addition to being the first African American man to achieve EGOT status, Legend is the first person to receive the four awards in four consecutive years. John was also the first EGOT recipient to have won both a competitive Primetime and Daytime Emmy Award, an accomplishment matched by Robert Lopez in 2021. Legend, Andrew Lloyd Webber, and Tim Rice all simultaneously became EGOTs on September 9, 2018, when they were collectively awarded the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Variety Special (Live) for Jesus Christ Superstar Live in Concert.
Academy Awards:
2015: Best Original Song – "Glory" (from Selma)
Primetime Emmy Awards:
2018: Outstanding Variety Special (Live) – Jesus Christ Superstar Live in Concert
Daytime Emmy Awards:
2019: Outstanding Interactive Media for a Daytime Program – Crow: The Legend
2022: Outstanding Daytime Special – Shelter Me: Soul Awakened
2022: Outstanding Short Form Daytime Program – Cornerstones: Founding Voices of the Black Church
Children's and Family Emmy Awards:
2023: Outstanding Non-Fiction Program – 1000% Me: Growing Up Mixed
2025: Outstanding Non-Fiction Program – Stand Up & Shout: Songs from a Philly High School
Grammy Awards:
2006: Best New Artist
2006: Best R&B Album – Get Lifted
2006: Best Male R&B Vocal Performance – "Ordinary People"
2007: Best Male R&B Vocal Performance – "Heaven"
2007: Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals – "Family Affair"
2009: Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals – "Stay with Me (By the Sea)"
2011: Best R&B Song – "Shine"
2011: Best Traditional R&B Vocal Performance – "Hang on in There"
2011: Best R&B Album – Wake Up!
2016: Best Song Written for Visual Media – "Glory" (from Selma)
2020: Best Rap/Sung Performance – "Higher"
2021: Best R&B Album – Bigger Love
2025: Best Arrangement, Instrumental or A Cappella – "Bridge Over Troubled Water"
Tony Awards:
2017: Best Revival of a Play – Jitney
=== Alan Menken ===
American composer Alan Menken (born 1949) received his fourth distinct award in 2020. Between 1990 and 2020, Menken received a total of 21 competitive awards, tying with Scott Rudin for the most awards to individuals whose EGOT status was achieved solely by competitive wins. If Menken's special (non-competitive) Emmy Award is counted, he becomes the fully competing EGOT with the most overall awards. If EGOT status is recognized without regard to any qualifying awards being non-competitive, then Quincy Jones holds the record with his 30 fully competitive awards, including 29 Grammys. Alan Menken has the most Oscar wins (8) by an EGOT.
Academy Awards:
1990: Best Original Score – The Little Mermaid
1990: Best Original Song – "Under the Sea" (from The Little Mermaid)
1992: Best Original Score – Beauty and the Beast
1992: Best Original Song – "Beauty and the Beast" (from Beauty and the Beast)
1993: Best Original Score – Aladdin
1993: Best Original Song – "A Whole New World" (from Aladdin)
1996: Best Original Musical or Comedy Score – Pocahontas
1996: Best Original Song – "Colors of the Wind" (from Pocahontas)
Daytime Emmy Awards:
2020: Outstanding Original Song in a Children's, Young Adult or Animated Program – "Waiting in the Wings" (from Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure — Episode: "Rapunzel and the Great Tree")
Grammy Awards:
1991: Best Recording for Children – The Little Mermaid: Original Walt Disney Records Soundtrack
1991: Best Song Written Specifically for a Motion Picture or Television – "Under the Sea" (from The Little Mermaid)
1993: Best Album for Children – Beauty and the Beast: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
1993: Best Instrumental Composition Written for a Motion Picture or for Television – Beauty and the Beast: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
1993: Best Song Written Specifically for a Motion Picture or Television – "Beauty and the Beast" (from Beauty and the Beast)
1994: Song of the Year – "A Whole New World (Aladdin's Theme)" (from Aladdin)
1994: Best Musical Album for Children – Aladdin: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
1994: Best Instrumental Composition Written for a Motion Picture or for Television – Aladdin: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
1994: Best Song Written Specifically for a Motion Picture or Television – "A Whole New World (Aladdin's Theme)" (from Aladdin)
1996: Best Song Written Specifically for a Motion Picture or Television – "Colors of the Wind" (from Pocahontas)
2012: Best Song Written for Visual Media – "I See the Light" (from Tangled)
Tony Awards:
2012: Best Original Score – Newsies
Special Awards:
1990: Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Contribution to the success of the academy's anti-drug special for children – "Wonderful Ways to Say No" from the TV special Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue
=== Jennifer Hudson ===
American singer, actress, talk show host, and producer Jennifer Hudson (born 1981) received her fourth distinct award in 2022. Hudson received a total of five competitive awards between 2007 and 2022, making her the youngest competitive female EGOT to date.
Academy Awards:
2007: Best Actress in a Supporting Role – Dreamgirls
Daytime Emmy Awards:
2021: Outstanding Interactive Media for a Daytime Program – Baba Yaga
Grammy Awards:
2009: Best R&B Album – Jennifer Hudson
2017: Best Musical Theater Album – The Color Purple
Tony Awards:
2022: Best Musical – A Strange Loop
=== Viola Davis ===
American actress and producer Viola Davis (born 1965) received her fourth distinct award in 2023. Between 2001 and 2023, Davis received a total of five competitive awards becoming the eighteenth person to competitively win each of the four awards. Davis acknowledged her new EGOT status while accepting her 2023 Grammy. Davis is also the third EGOT recipient and the first African American actress to win the Triple Crown of Acting.
Academy Awards:
2017: Best Actress in a Supporting Role – Fences
Primetime Emmy Awards:
2015: Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series – How to Get Away with Murder
Grammy Awards:
2023: Best Audio Book, Narration & Storytelling Recording – Finding Me
Tony Awards
2001: Best Featured Actress in a Play – King Hedley II
2010: Best Leading Actress in a Play – Fences
=== Elton John ===
English singer, composer, pianist, and producer Elton John (born 1947) received his fourth distinct award in 2024. Between 1987 and 2024, John received a total of nine competitive awards becoming the nineteenth person to competitively win each of the four awards.
Academy Awards:
1995: Best Original Song – "Can You Feel the Love Tonight" (from The Lion King)
2020: Best Original Song – "(I'm Gonna) Love Me Again" (from Rocketman)
Primetime Emmy Awards:
2024: Outstanding Variety Special (Live) – Elton John: Farewell from Dodger Stadium
Grammy Awards:
1987: Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal – "That's What Friends Are For"
1992: Best Instrumental Composition – "Basque"
1995: Best Male Pop Vocal Performance – "Can You Feel the Love Tonight"
1998: Best Male Pop Vocal Performance – "Candle in the Wind 1997"
2001: Best Musical Show Album – Elton John and Tim Rice's Aida
Tony Awards:
2000: Best Original Score – Aida
Special Awards:
1999: Grammy Legend Award
=== Benj Pasek ===
American composer, lyricist, and producer Benj Pasek (born 1985) received his fourth distinct award in 2024. Pasek and Justin Paul set a new record for achieving EGOT status in the fastest time by winning all four awards within 7 years and 7 months. Between 2017 and 2025, Pasek received a total of seven competitive awards becoming the twentieth person to competitively win each of the four awards. Pasek shares all seven of his competitive award wins with his writing partner and fellow EGOT-recipient Justin Paul.
Academy Awards:
2017: Best Original Song – "City of Stars" (from La La Land)
Primetime Emmy Awards:
2024: Outstanding Original Music and Lyrics – "Which of the Pickwick Triplets Did It?" (from Only Murders in the Building — Episode: "Sitzprobe")
Children's and Family Emmy Awards:
2025: Outstanding Original Song for a Preschool Program – "That's Why We Love Nature" (from Sesame Street — Episode: "Tamir's Water Works")
Grammy Awards:
2018: Best Musical Theater Album – Dear Evan Hansen
2019: Best Compilation Soundtrack for Visual Media – The Greatest Showman
Tony Awards:
2017: Best Original Score – Dear Evan Hansen
2022: Best Musical – A Strange Loop
=== Justin Paul ===
American composer, lyricist, and producer Justin Paul (born 1985) received his fourth distinct award in 2024. Paul and Benj Pasek set a new record for achieving EGOT status in the fastest time by winning all four awards within 7 years and 7 months. Between 2017 and 2025, Paul received a total of seven competitive awards becoming the twenty-first person to competitively win each of the four awards. Paul shares all seven of his competitive award wins with his writing partner and fellow EGOT-recipient Benj Pasek.
Academy Awards:
2017: Best Original Song – "City of Stars" (from La La Land)
Primetime Emmy Awards:
2024: Outstanding Original Music and Lyrics – "Which of the Pickwick Triplets Did It?" (from Only Murders in the Building — Episode: "Sitzprobe")
Children's and Family Emmy Awards:
2025: Outstanding Original Song for a Preschool Program – "That's Why We Love Nature" (from Sesame Street — Episode: "Tamir's Water Works")
Grammy Awards:
2018: Best Musical Theater Album – Dear Evan Hansen
2019: Best Compilation Soundtrack for Visual Media – The Greatest Showman
Tony Awards:
2017: Best Original Score – Dear Evan Hansen
2022: Best Musical – A Strange Loop
== Non-competitive EGOT awardees ==
Six additional artists have received all four awards, though one was bestowed for an honorary or similar non-competitive distinction: Barbra Streisand does not have a competitive Tony; Liza Minnelli does not have a competitive Grammy; and Harry Belafonte, James Earl Jones, Quincy Jones, and Frank Marshall are all without a competitive Oscar.
=== Barbra Streisand ===
American singer, actress, and director Barbra Streisand (born 1942) received her fourth distinct award in 1970. Between 1963 and 2001, Streisand received a total of 18 awards, three of which were non-competitive. Having obtained her fourth award with a special Tony at age 28, she is the youngest special EGOT winner. With just six years elapsing between her first award, a 1964 Grammy, and her 1970 Tony, Streisand held the record for completing the fastest special EGOT until 2023 when Frank Marshall did so within four years.
Streisand is the only EGOT to win an Oscar in both a music and an acting category. She is the only winner to have three competitive awards for debut performances: first studio album, first feature film, and first television special. Additional distinctions include the Peabody Award, the AFI Life Achievement Award, the Kennedy Center Honor, the Cecil B. DeMille Award, the National Medal of Arts, the American Society of Cinematographers Board of Governors Award, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Academy Awards:
1969: Best Actress in a Leading Role – Funny Girl
1977: Best Original Song – "Evergreen (Love Theme from A Star Is Born)" (from A Star Is Born)
Primetime Emmy Awards:
1965: Outstanding Individual Achievements in Entertainment – Actors and Performers – My Name is Barbra
1995: Outstanding Individual Performance in a Variety or Music Program – Barbra Streisand: The Concert
1995: Outstanding Variety, Music or Comedy Special – Barbra Streisand: The Concert
2001: Outstanding Individual Performance in a Variety or Music Program – Timeless: Live in Concert
Daytime Emmy Awards:
2001: Outstanding Special Class Special – Reel Models: The First Women of Film
Grammy Awards:
1964: Best Vocal Performance, Female – The Barbra Streisand Album
1964: Album of the Year (Other Than Classical) – The Barbra Streisand Album
1965: Best Vocal Performance, Female – "People"
1966: Best Vocal Performance, Female – My Name Is Barbra
1978: Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female – "Evergreen (Love Theme from A Star Is Born)"
1978: Song of the Year – "Evergreen (Love Theme from A Star Is Born)"
1981: Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal – "Guilty" (with Barry Gibb)
1987: Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female – The Broadway Album
1992: Grammy Legend Award (non-competitive)
1995: Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award (non-competitive)
Tony Awards:
1970: Special Tony Award: Star of the Decade (non-competitive)
=== Liza Minnelli ===
American actress, singer, dancer, and choreographer Liza Minnelli (born 1946) received her fourth distinct award in 1990. Between 1965 and 2009, Minnelli received a total of seven awards, two of which were special.
Academy Awards:
1973: Best Actress in a Leading Role – Cabaret
Primetime Emmy Awards:
1973: Outstanding Single Program − Variety and Popular Music – Liza with a 'Z'. A Concert for Television
Grammy Awards:
1990: Grammy Legend Award (non-competitive)
Tony Awards:
1965: Best Leading Actress in a Musical – Flora the Red Menace
1974: Special Tony Award for "adding luster to the Broadway season" (non-competitive)
1978: Best Leading Actress in a Musical – The Act
2009: Best Special Theatrical Event – Liza's at The Palace...!
=== James Earl Jones ===
American actor James Earl Jones (1931–2024) received his fourth distinct award in 2011. Between 1969 and 2017, Jones received a total of eight awards, two of which were special.
Academy Awards:
2011: Academy Honorary Award (non-competitive)
Primetime Emmy Awards:
1991: Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series – Gabriel's Fire
1991: Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Miniseries or a Special – Heat Wave
Daytime Emmy Awards:
2000: Outstanding Performer − Children's Special – Summer's End
Grammy Awards:
1977: Best Spoken Word Recording – Great American Documents
Tony Awards:
1969: Best Leading Actor in a Play – The Great White Hope
1987: Best Leading Actor in a Play – Fences
2017: Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre (non-competitive)
=== Harry Belafonte ===
American singer, activist, and actor Harry Belafonte (1927–2023) received his fourth distinct award in 2014. Between 1954 and 2014, Belafonte received a total of six awards, including a Grammy Hall of Fame Award and the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award (six special awards).
Academy Awards:
2014: Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award (non-competitive)
Primetime Emmy Awards:
1960: Outstanding Individual Performance in a Variety or Music Program – Tonight with Belafonte – The Revlon Revue
Grammy Awards:
1961: Best Performance – Folk – Swing Dat Hammer
1966: Best Folk Performance – An Evening with Belafonte/Makeba
2000: Grammy Hall of Fame Award
Tony Awards:
1954: Distinguished Supporting or Featured Musical Actor – John Murray Anderson's Almanac
=== Quincy Jones ===
American record producer, musician, songwriter, composer, arranger, and film and television producer Quincy Jones (1933–2024) received his fourth distinct award in 2016. Between 1964 and 2024, Jones received a total of 33 awards—the highest number so far of any EGOT winner. He competed for and won 28 Grammys, one Tony, and one Emmy, also receiving a special Grammy Legend Award and two special Oscars (the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award and the Academy Honorary Award). Quincy's final qualifying award was a fully competitive 2016 Tony for The Color Purple.
Academy Awards:
1994: Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award (non-competitive)
2024: Academy Honorary Award (non-competitive)
Primetime Emmy Awards:
1977: Outstanding Achievement in Music Composition for a Series (Dramatic Underscore) – Roots: Part 1
Grammy Awards:
1964: Best Instrumental Arrangement – "I Can't Stop Loving You"
1970: Best Instrumental Jazz Performance – Large Group or Soloist with Large Group – Walking in Space
1972: Best Pop Instrumental Performance – Smackwater Jack
1974: Best Instrumental Arrangement – "Summer in the City"
1979: Best Instrumental Arrangement – "The Wiz Main Title (Overture, Part One)"
1981: Best Instrumental Arrangement – "Dinorah, Dinorah"
1982: Producer of the Year
1982: Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Vocal(s) – "Ai No Corrida" (with Jerry Hey)
1982: Best Arrangement on an Instrumental Recording – "Velas"
1982: Best Cast Show Album – Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music
1982: Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal – "The Dude"
1984: Producer of the Year (Non-Classical)
1984: Best Recording for Children – E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
1984: Album of the Year – Thriller
1984: Record of the Year – "Beat It"
1985: Best Arrangement on an Instrumental – "Grace (Gymnastics Theme)" (with Jeremy Lubbock)
1986: Best Music Video, Short Form – "We Are the World – The Video Event"
1986: Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals – "We Are the World"
1986: Record of the Year – "We Are the World"
1991: Producer of the Year (Non-Classical)
1991: Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Vocal(s) – "The Places You Find Love"
1991: Best Arrangement on an Instrumental – "Birdland"
1991: Best Jazz Fusion Performance – "Birdland"
1991: Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group – "Back on the Block"
1991: Album of the Year – Back on the Block
1992: Grammy Legend Award (non-competitive)
1994: Best Large Jazz Ensemble Performance – Miles & Quincy Live at Montreux
2002: Best Spoken Word Album – Q: The Autobiography of Quincy Jones
2019: Best Music Film – Quincy
Tony Awards:
2016: Best Revival of a Musical – The Color Purple
=== Frank Marshall ===
American film producer and director Frank Marshall (born 1946) received his fourth distinct award in 2023. Between 2019 and 2023, Marshall received a total of four awards. He is the only EGOT winner to have won a Sports Emmy Award and to have received the Irving G.Thalberg Memorial Award. With just four years elapsing between his first award (a 2019 honorary Oscar), a long format TV sports documentary, and competitive Grammy and Tony music awards, Marshall completed his EGOT collection in the shortest time of all persons to have reached this status.
Academy Awards:
2019: Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award (non-competitive)
Sports Emmy Awards:
2023: Outstanding Long Documentary – The Redeem Team
Grammy Awards:
2023: Best Music Film – Jazz Fest: A New Orleans Story
Tony Awards:
2022: Best Musical – A Strange Loop
== Three competitive awards ==
The following people have each won three out of the four major entertainment awards in competitive categories. As of July 2025, 74 living people are one award away from achieving (competitive) EGOT status.
=== Without an Emmy ===
=== Without a Grammy ===
=== Without an Oscar ===
=== Without a Tony ===
Notes
† – Person is deceased.
◊ – Person has been nominated at least once for a competitive category of the missing award but has failed to win.
NCA – Person won a non-competitive award in this category (see section above).
PA – Person has won the Peabody Award
PP – Person has won the Pulitzer Prize
TC – Person has joined EGOT winners Helen Hayes, Rita Moreno, and Viola Davis as winners of the Triple Crown of Acting, with singular (non-group/ensemble/company) acting wins in each of the Emmy, Oscar and Tony awards.
== Three, including non-competitive awards ==
In addition to the above winners, the following people have each won three out of the four major entertainment awards in either competitive categories or non-competitive special and honorary categories. As of June 2025, 12 additional living individuals are one award away from achieving EGOT status (including non-competitive awards).
Howard Ashman†, ◊ won two competitive Oscars, five competitive Grammy Awards, and a Special Emmy Award.
Fred Astaire† won three competitive Emmy Awards, a Special Academy Award, and a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.
Robert Russell Bennett† won a competitive Emmy Award, a competitive Oscar, and two Special Tony Awards.
Irving Berlin† won an Academy Award, a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, and a competitive Tony Award.
Barbara Broccoli won a competitive Emmy Award, two competitive Tony Awards, and the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award, a non-competitive Academy Award.
Carol Burnett won seven competitive Emmy Awards, one competitive Grammy award, and a Special Tony Award.
David Byrne won an Academy Award, a competitive Grammy Award, and a Special Tony Award.
Walt Disney† won 22 competitive Academy Awards, four non-competitive Academy Awards, seven competitive Emmy Awards, and a Grammy Trustees Award.
Ray Dolby† won an Academy Scientific and Technical Award, two Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards, and a Special Merit/Technical Grammy Award.
Michael J. Fox won five competitive Emmy Awards, a competitive Grammy Award, and the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, a non-competitive Academy Award.
Judy Garland†, ◊ won an Academy Juvenile Award, two competitive Grammy Awards, and a Special Tony Award.
Eileen Heckart† won a competitive Academy Award, a competitive Emmy Award, and a Special Tony Award.
Danny Kaye† won a competitive Emmy Award, a Special Tony Award, and the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, a non-competitive Academy Award.
Barry Manilow won two competitive Emmy Awards, a competitive Grammy Award, and a Special Tony Award.
Steve Martin◊ won the Honorary Academy Award, a competitive Emmy Award, and five competitive Grammy Awards.
Elaine May won the Honorary Academy Award, a competitive Tony Award, and a competitive Grammy Award.
Dolly Parton◊ won 11 competitive Grammy Awards, a competitive Emmy Award, and the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, a non-competitive Academy Award.
Stephen Schwartz won three competitive Oscars, three competitive Grammys and the Isabelle Stevenson Award, a non-competitive Tony Award.
Bruce Springsteen◊ won 20 competitive Grammys, a competitive Academy Award, and a Special Tony Award.
Thomas Stockham† won an Academy Scientific and Technical Award, a Technology & Engineering Emmy Award, and a Technical Grammy Award.
Cicely Tyson† won three competitive Emmy Awards, a competitive Tony Award, and an Academy Honorary Award.
Eli Wallach† won a competitive Tony Award, a competitive Emmy Award, and an Academy Honorary Award.
Diane Warren won a competitive Grammy Award, a competitive Emmy Award, and an Academy Honorary Award.
Oprah Winfrey won competitive Emmy Awards, a competitive Tony Award, and the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, a non-competitive Academy Award.
Notes
† – Person is deceased.
◊ – Person has been nominated at least once for a competitive category of the missing award but has failed to win.
== Four nominations ==
The following people have not won all four awards in competitive categories but have received at least one nomination for each of them:
Notes
† – Person is deceased.
== Variations ==
=== PEGOT ===
There are conflicting definitions for the PEGOT. Some say the "P" refers to the Peabody Award, others say it is the Pulitzer Prize. As of 2024, Mel Brooks, Rita Moreno, Mike Nichols, and Barbra Streisand have achieved this status by winning the Peabody while Marvin Hamlisch and Richard Rodgers have achieved it by winning the Pulitzer.
EGOT winners who also won at least one Peabody Award:
Mel Brooks
Rita Moreno
Mike Nichols†
Barbra Streisand
EGOT winners who also won at least one Pulitzer Prize:
Marvin Hamlisch†
Richard Rodgers†
People who won a Peabody, lacking only one EGOT award:
Carol Burnett (missing an Oscar)
Martin Charnin† (missing an Oscar)
Rob Epstein (missing a Tony)
Anne Garefino (missing an Oscar)
James Moll (missing a Tony)
Trey Parker (missing an Oscar)
Matt Stone (missing an Oscar)
Charles Strouse (missing an Oscar)
Lily Tomlin (missing an Oscar)
Cicely Tyson† (missing a Grammy)
Oprah Winfrey (missing a Grammy)
People who won a Pulitzer, lacking only one EGOT award:
Jerry Bock† (missing an Oscar)
Oscar Hammerstein II† (missing an Emmy)
Tom Kitt (missing an Oscar)
Frank Loesser† (missing an Emmy)
Lin-Manuel Miranda (missing an Oscar)
Stephen Sondheim† (missing an Emmy)
Notes
† – Person is deceased.
=== REGOT ===
Another variation is the REGOT, which includes being awarded a Razzie Award. Alan Menken has a REGOT due to his Razzie win (with Jack Feldman) for Worst Original Song for "High Times, Hard Times" from Newsies. With her Razzie win for Worst Actress for Rent-a-Cop and Arthur 2: On the Rocks, Liza Minnelli has a REGOT if her non-competitive Grammy Legend Award is considered.
Lady Gaga reordered the acronym as EGORT, when she hosted Saturday Night Live and poked fun at her win for Worst Screen Combo (with Joaquin Phoenix) from Joker: Folie à Deux.
Alternatively, publications such as Vulture have listed the REGOT as including an induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The only person to have such a REGOT is Elton John although Harry Belafonte and Quincy Jones would be included if counting non-competitive awards.
== Equivalent honors outside the United States ==
The Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony Awards are presided over by industry bodies based in the United States, and as of 2024, 16 out of the 21 EGOT winners were American nationals. The remaining five―John Gielgud, Audrey Hepburn, Elton John, Andrew Lloyd Webber, and Tim Rice―were British. Many countries hold their own equivalent awards ceremonies honouring their own television, music, film, and theatre industries. In some cases, commentators in other countries have derived their own acronyms for individuals who have won at all four ceremonies.
=== Canada ===
In 2018, Leah Collins of CBC Arts proposed a Canadian equivalent of the EGOT: the Canadian Screen Awards (and their predecessors, the Gemini Awards and the Genie Awards) for film and television, the Juno Awards for music, and the Dora Mavor Moore Awards for theatre. Toronto-based game show Trivia Club referred to this combination as the "Two-Can-Ju-Do". No individual has won in all four categories.
=== Australia ===
In 2019, Caitlin Welsh of Nova Entertainment proposed the "LAHA" as an Australian equivalent: the Logie Awards for television, the ARIA Music Awards for music, the Helpmann Awards for theatre, and the AACTA Awards for film. She also could not identify any winners of all four awards, although Noni Hazlehurst has received nominations in all four.
== See also ==
Academy Awards
Emmy Awards
Children's and Family Emmy Awards
Daytime Emmy Awards
International Emmy Awards
News and Documentary Emmy Awards
Primetime Emmy Awards
Sports Emmy Awards
Technology and Engineering Emmy Awards
Grammy Awards
Tony Awards
Triple Crown of Acting
British Triple Crown
== References ==
== Further reading ==
Bereznak, Alyssa (February 21, 2019). ""Who's an EGOT?" How '30 Rock' Made a Fake Award Into a Real-Life Goal". The Ringer. Retrieved October 4, 2023.
== External links ==
Entertainment Weekly: 18 stars who are EGOT winners |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Udupi#:~:text=Udupi%20is%20one%20of%20the,known%20as%20the%20temple%20city. | Udupi | Udupi (Kannada: [uɖupi]) also known as Odipu (Tulu: [oɖipu]) is a city in the Indian state of Karnataka. It is the administrative headquarters of Udupi district, and one of the fastest-growing cities in Karnataka. Udupi is one of the top tourist attractions in Karnataka and has various educational institutions. It is notable for the Krishna Temple and is also known as the temple city. It also lends its name to the popular Udupi cuisine, is also known as Parashurama Kshetra, and is famous for Kanakana kindi.
== Etymology ==
The name 'Udupi' is derived from the Tulu word "odipu", which means "emergence". It is also believed that it came from the Sanskrit word "Udupa", meaning "Moon".
== History ==
In the 13th century, Vaishnavite saint Madhvacharya founded the Sri Krishna Temple. He set up eight mathas – Ashta Mathas in Udupi to propagate the Dvaita Vedanta philosophy, and this caused a vibrant temple culture to take root in present-day Udupi district. Significant migration of Brahmins to the region took place subsequently, and they came to comprise 10 per cent of the region's population, three times higher than elsewhere in South India.
== Demographics ==
Udupi city is part of the eponymous district in Karnataka, India. As per the census in 2011, Udupi city has 33,987 households and a total population of 144,960, of which 71,614 are males and 73,346 are females. The population of scheduled castes is 8,385 while that of scheduled tribes is 6,774. The city population is growing at a rate of 14.03%.
The most spoken language in Udupi town is Tulu. Kannada and Konkani are also spoken in Udupi town.
Dakhini Urdu and Beary are spoken by Muslims in the region.
== Government and politics ==
Udupi city falls under the Udupi Chikmagalur Lok Sabha constituency and the Udupi Chikmagalur State assembly constituency and is represented by the Member of Parliament Kota Srinivas pujari and Member of Legislative Assembly, Yashpal Suvarna.
=== Civic Administration ===
Udupi, which previously had a Town Municipal Council now has a City Municipal Council which came into existence in 1995. Areas around Udupi, such as Manipal, Parkala, Malpe, Udyavara and Santhekatte were merged to form the City Municipal Council.
The city of Udupi is governed by the City Municipal Council and has 35 wards spread across an area of 75.92 km2 (29.31 sq mi). It is headed by Anand C Kallolikar, the Municipal Commissioner. The city council has departments for health, urban planning, technical division, revenue, finance, birth and death, and Day-NULM.
=== Civic Utility ===
The master plan of the city is prepared by the Udupi Urban Development Authority (UUDA) and the Directorate of Town and Country Planning.
The city receives its primary source of drinking water from water stored at Baje vented dam. The municipality also seeks to augment its water storage by pumping water accumulated in the Swarna River at Sanebettu. The city is divided into three zones with different timings for efficient water supply. It also received a loan of $75 million from the Asian Development Bank to have all round the clock water supply in 2018.
The city has both open and closed drains. The underground sewage network exists in only 20% of the city's area as of 2017, but has been proposed to increase from the present 82 kilometres to 143 kilometres. The municipality area generated 46 million litres (MLD) of sewage which is treated at a sewage treatment plant in Nittur.
== Geography and climate ==
Udupi has an elevation of 27 m (89 ft) above mean sea level. The climate in Udupi is hot in summers and pleasant in winter. During summers (from March to May) the temperature reaches up to 38 °C (100 °F) and in winters (from December to February) it is usually between 32 and 20 °C (90 and 68 °F). As it is a coastal area, there are a few beaches which are tourist attractions. Kaup beach, Malpe beach are two of the beaches in Udupi.
The monsoon period is from June to September, with rainfall averaging more than 4,000 mm (160 in) every year and heavy winds.
== Culture ==
Bhuta Kola, Aati kalenja, Karangolu, and Nagaradhane are some cultural traditions of Udupi. The residents celebrate festivals such as Makara Sankranti, Nagara Panchami, Krishna Janmashtami, Ganesh Chaturthi, Navaratri, Deepavali. Folk arts like Yakshagana are also popular.
During Krishna Janmashtami, Pili Yesa, a traditional folk dance originated in Udupi is demonstrated on the streets. "Pili Yesa" translates to Tiger.
== Cuisine ==
The origin of this cuisine is linked to Krishna Matha (Mutt). Lord Krishna is offered food of different varieties every day, and there are certain restrictions on ingredients during Chaturmasa (a four-month period during the monsoon season). These restrictions coupled with the requirement of variety led to innovation, especially in dishes incorporating seasonal and locally available materials. This cuisine was developed by Shivalli Madhwa Brahmins who cooked food for Lord Krishna, and at Krishna Matha in Udupi, the food is provided free of cost. Restaurants specialised in Udupi cuisine can be seen widely in most metropolitan and large cities around the length and breadth of India.
Although popular for its vegetarian cuisine, Udupi has its fair share of non-vegetarian dishes that are similar to Mangalorean cuisine. Some of these include Kori Roti, Kori Pulimunchi, Chicken Sukka, Fish Curry, Fish Fry and more.
== Economy ==
Udupi is becoming a major town in Karnataka. Udupi is the birthplace of the Syndicate Bank, Corporation Bank. Udupi's economy also consists of agriculture and fishing. Small-scale industries like the cashew industry, and other food industries and milk cooperatives are the most prominent. Recently, Udupi is also making its mark in the real estate industry, greatly influenced by its neighboring spearhead Mangalore.
The Karnataka government had signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Cogentrix Light and Power Industry to set up a thermal power plant in the district at Nandikur. However, because of stiff opposition from citizens and environmentalist groups, the project has been temporarily suspended. An attempt by the Nagarjuna Power Corporation to set up a similar plant at nearby Padubidri also met strong opposition. Now, the power plant has been set up, generating 1,200 MW of power under the name of Udupi Power Corporation Limited (UPCL), a subsidiary of Lanco Infra, an Andhra Pradesh-based infrastructure major. Adani Power has taken over from Lanco Infra in 2014 for a sum of Rs 6,000 crores. The opposition, however, continues.
Manipal, a suburb of Udupi, is home to the headquarters of Syndicate Bank. It is renowned as an education and medical hub. Kasturba Medical College and MIT (Manipal Institute of Technology) are situated here.
TEBMA Shipyards Ltd is located in Malpe harbour complex. It is involved in building multipurpose platform supply vessels (MPSVs), platform supply vessel, geotechnical research vessel, dredgers and tugs for Indian as well as export markets.
Udupi has a local handloom sari industry. Made of pure cotton and lightweight, the sari has art silk design on its border and pallu besides butta of art silk dotting it. Hard work, low returns, and competition from power loom has led to a drop in the number of weavers of nearly 95% over three decades. A geographical indication tag for Udupi sarees is under examination with the Geographical Indications Registry of India.
== Transport ==
National Highways NH 66 and NH 169A pass through Udupi. Other significant roads include the State Highways to Karkala, Dharmastala and Sringeri. NH 66 provides a link to Mangalore and Karwar via Kundapur and NH 169A to Hebri, Agumbe, Thirthahalli and Shivamogga. Private as well as government buses connect Udupi to all parts of Karnataka. Udupi has a railway station on the Konkan Railway. The nearest International Airport to Udupi is Mangalore International Airport, which is approx. 58.5 km away.
City and suburban transport is available for travel within Udupi and its suburbs. The buses originate from the suburban bus stand (City Bus Stand). There are private bus operators as well as KSRTC city service buses.
The nearest harbor/ port to Udupi is Malpe, which is 5 km away, and Gangolli (Byndoor), which is 36 km away. The New Mangalore Port is 50 km away from Udupi.
Udupi railway station is managed by Konkan Railways. It is in Indrali about 4 km from Udupi city bus stand and is on the Kanyakumari-Mumbai rail route. Direct trains are available to Bengaluru, Mumbai, New Delhi, Amritsar, Chandigarh, Pune, Ajmer, Jaipur, Rajkot, Ahmedabad and Okha. Cities like Mysore, Belgaum, Jodhpur, Agra, Thiruvananthapuram, Ernakulam, Kollam(Quilon), etc., are also connected to Udupi.
== See also ==
Greater Udupi
Udupi cuisine
Udupi Krishna Temple
Roman Catholic Diocese of Udupi
Mangalore
Manipal
Udupi district
== References ==
== Bibliography ==
Shivaram, Choodie (11 August 1996). "Karnataka Spiritual Centers Threatened by Development: Three 700-Year-Old Monasteries in Udupi and Scores of Temples to be Displaced by Reckless Industrial Projects". Hinduism Today.
"Conquer Vices To Sublimate The Mind". The Hindu. 29 January 1996. Archived from the original on 23 September 2015. Retrieved 12 December 2005.
"Ashtha Muth and Paryaya". Udupi temples. Retrieved 12 December 2005.
Dr.Neria H. Hebbar. "The Eight Tulu Monasteries of Udupi". Archived from the original on 6 January 2006. Retrieved 12 December 2005.
Kundali dasa. "How Krishna Came to Udupi". www.krishna.com.
Karnataka State Gazetteer 1983'. Government of Karnataka. 1983
"Udupi Railway Station Information".
"A brief life sketch of Madhwacharya". Archived from the original on 16 January 2025. Retrieved 28 January 2015.
"Janmashtami celebrations end with Vittal Pindi procession". NewsKarnataka. 6 September 2015.
Sri Udupi Kshetrada Naija Chitra Mattu Chaaritrika Hinnele [The Authentic Picture of Udupi Piligrim Center and its Historical Background]
== Further reading ==
Bhat, P. Gururaja (1969). Antiquities of South Kanara. Prabhakara Press.
Govindacharya, Bannanje (2015). KŖȘŅANA UDUPI A brief History of Udupi Kannada. Īshāvāsya-Pratistāna, Udupi.
== External links ==
Udupi City Municipality Official Website
Udupi Urban Development Authority Official Website
Sri Udupi Kshetrada Naija Chitra Mattu Chaaritrika Hinnele [The Authentic Picture of Udupi Piligrim Center and its Historical Background] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murders_of_the_Dickason_children | Murders of the Dickason children | On 16 September 2021, Lauren Anne Dickason, a South African immigrant, murdered her three daughters, 6-year-old Liané, and 2-year-old twins Maya and Karla at her home in Timaru, New Zealand. After admitting to killing her children, she went on trial, denying that it was murder, but instead pleaded insanity or infanticide. She was found guilty of murdering her three children on 16 August 2023, and was sentenced on 26 June 2024 to 18 years in prison.
== Lauren Dickason ==
=== Early life and career ===
Lauren Dickason is the daughter of Malcolm and Wendy Fawkes. Dickason attended a boarding school in Pretoria, South Africa. From the age of 15, Dickason experienced depression and anxiety. She also had post-natal depression. She later studied medicine at the University of Cape Town, completing her degree in 2004 and becoming a doctor. Dickason subsequently completed her rural health practice in Pretoria, where she met her husband Graham Dickason, an orthopaedic surgeon, in 2005. The couple married in 2006.
=== Children and mental health issues ===
Lauren Dickason experienced multiple fertility struggles. To have children, she had 17 rounds of IVF, and needed donor eggs. In 2013, she had her first child, named Sarah, who had to be born after 18 weeks of pregnancy. She died shortly after. Dickason did not return to work following Sarah's death and became a part-time surgeon assistant to Graham.
Dickason had three further children: Liané (who was six years old at the time of her death) and twins Maya and Karla (who were two years old at the time of their deaths). Liané was born in September 2014 while Karla and Maya were born in November 2018. Following the birth of the twins, the Dickasons enlisted the services of a nanny named Maria Mendy Sibanyoni, who worked for the family between November 2018 and May 2020.
Dickason was diagnosed with a "major depression order with underlying anxiety" in 2015, that was linked to postpartum depression caused by the loss of Sarah. Dickason reportedly experienced flashbacks of the loss of her child, sleep difficulties, crying, suicidal thoughts, panic attacks, restlessness, detached feelings, and intrusive thoughts. Dickason experienced anxiety and depression leading up to and following the birth of her twin daughters, which was caused by Karla's cleft palate.
In May 2019, Dickason saw a psychiatrist after experiencing homicidal thoughts towards her children. This episode had been triggered after she and her nanny struggled with putting her twins to bed. Dickason has spoken about Karla being a difficult child, saying that Karla lashed out often, slapped and bit her. Dickason said that her children were "never enough".
=== Emigration to New Zealand ===
In 2019 the Dickason family decided to emigrate to New Zealand. They had planned to move in August 2020, but their migration plans were delayed by the global COVID-19 pandemic and immigration issues. Though Dickason experienced episodes of depression and suicidal thoughts during the pandemic, her mood improved between late 2020 and June 2021. The Crown claimed she experienced a remission for at least two months. Dickason also participated in a wellness programme.
Without consulting her doctor, Dickason had stopped taking her antidepressant medication in March 2021 but subsequently resumed her medication regime in August 2021. In July 2021, Dickason's mental health deteriorated during the 2021 South African unrest triggered by the imprisonment of former President Jacob Zuma. Dickason feared for the safety of her children and kept them at home. During that period, Dickason experienced thoughts about harming and killing her children. Dickason confided in her husband Graham, who reacted with anger and convinced her to resume her antidepressant medication. Dickason continued to experience homicidal thoughts following a foot surgery but did not disclose them since she feared it would affect their immigration plans. That same month, Graham's essential skills work visa was approved by Immigration New Zealand.
In July 2021, one of Dickason's friends also sent her a TikTok video where a mother recites a poem named "Mom needs a minute", about the struggles of raising her children and the "chaos inside of her brain". Dickason responded by saying "Awesome xxx, that's exactly how I feel". Over the following months, Dickason searched the Internet for different methods on how to overdose her children. In August 2021, Dickason experienced thoughts about using cable ties to asphyxiate her children after witnessing her husband and the girls playing with cable ties in the family garage. The incident occurred two weeks before the family emigrated to New Zealand. Dickason became withdrawn and communicated less, and cried frequently. During testimony, her mother Wendy recalled that Dickason's mental health had deteriorated during that period and she had experienced significant weight loss.
Following two weeks in managed isolation, the Dickason family arrived in Timaru on 11 September 2021, five days before the children died. Dickason was unhappy during her time in Timaru, taking issue with the appearance of the town's residents and describing local rental accommodation as "small, disgusting and creepy." She feared that her children would be the target of cyberbullying when they became older and likened the treatment of indigenous Māori people to Apartheid in South Africa. These issues led her to regret emigrating to New Zealand. According to defence experts, Dickason became fixated on these issues to the point that they became delusions reinforced by her depression.
== Deaths ==
The children were murdered on the night of 16 September 2021. On the day of the killings,
Karla and Maya had attended their first day at preschool while Liané had attended her second day at Timaru Christian School. After picking up her daughters on the day of the killing, Karla threw a tantrum in the car. Later, the family visited the local botanical gardens. During that trip, Dickason alleged that a group of girls had warned her that a boy in the park was photographing her children, which led her to believe that New Zealand was as dangerous as South Africa. That same day, Dickason had thoughts of "brutally killing" the children by means of sedating them and cutting their femoral arteries.
That night, Graham Dickason went out with colleagues, leaving Lauren alone with her children. During a subsequent police interview, Lauren Dickason told detectives that the children [on that night] "were being wild again, jumping on the couches, not listening to what I'm trying to tell them..." She also told police that "something just triggered me" on the night of the children's killing. According to Newshub, Dickason had told investigators that she had been triggered by an Immigration NZ request for more medical information about Kayla's cleft palate and her own mental health, as well as her feeling that she did not have the strength to make the children's school lunches.
After gathering the children in a bedroom, she told them they were going to make necklaces with cable ties and tricked them into wearing the ties around their necks. Dickason said she told her children "Mummy's very sick and is going to die. I can't leave you behind because I don't know who’s going to look after you." Dickason then asphyxiated the children, starting with Kayla and then Liané and Maya. Dickason told police officers that Kayla had been "really horrible" to her recently and that Liané had fought back. She recalled that "the oldest one was very angry and she wants to know why I'm doing this to them because I'm the best mum and she loves me."
Since the children were still breathing, Dickason then smothered them with a towel and their blankets. Afterwards, she tried to commit suicide with a knife and by pills. The bodies were discovered in their beds by Graham after coming back home from the work event. Graham also confronted a distraught Dickason, who told him it was "too late" before falling into a catatonic state.
== Police investigation and legal proceedings ==
At 10 pm on 16 September 2021, Police in Timaru responded to a call by neighbours Karen and Brad Cowper, who responded to a distraught Graham. At the house, Police found the three dead children and Lauren Dickason, who was hospitalised in stable condition. Police were also joined by Graham's work colleague Mark Cvitanich and his wife Cathy, who had responded to Graham's phone call. Cvitanich had also called the Police and emergency services. Dickason was taken to Timaru Hospital.
On 17 September, Police interviewed Dickason, who admitted to killing her three children. Later that day, Detective Inspector Scott Anderson confirmed that Police had arrested a 40-year-old woman about the deaths of the three dead children. Anderson said the children's deaths were an isolated incident and that Police were not seeking anyone else.
On 18 September, Dickason appeared in the Timaru District Court and was later remanded to a forensic psychiatric ward at Christchurch's Hillmorton Hospital. She was later placed in a hospital psychiatric unit. At Hillmorton Hospital, she was interviewed by five forensic psychiatrists and psychologists for 53 hours. Three of them, Susan Hatters-Friedman, Justin Barry-Walsh and Ghazi Metoui, believed she was severely mentally unwell and could claim a defence based on insanity or infanticide. The two others, Erik Monasterio and Simone McLeavey believed that Dickason killed her children out of anger and control, including not wanting to let another woman parent her children if she either died and Graham remarried.
On 5 October 2021, Dickason's lawyer Kerryn Beaton QC sought an extended remand for her client at Hillmorton hospital. Dickason had been scheduled to appear at the Timaru High Court that day but her appearance had been delayed due to an impending mental health assessment. On 15 October, Beaton told a court hearing in Christchurch that Dickason would plead not guilty to three charges of murder. Dickason was unable to attend the court hearing since she was ill. Beaton sought further remand for Dickason to Hillmorton hospital until her next appearance, which was not opposed by Crown prosecutor Andrew McRae. A trial date for March 2023 was set in Timaru.
== Trial ==
=== Opening arguments ===
The trial of Lauren Dickason commenced on 17 July 2023 at the Christchurch High Court. Judge Cameron Mander presided over the trial while Andrew McRae served as Crown prosecutor. McRae delivered his opening address and detailed the circumstances of the children's deaths and Dickason's attempted suicide. Defence lawyer Anne Toohey also outlined the defence's opening arguments. While the Crown has argued that Dickason murdered her children because she resented the impact they had on her marriage, Dickason has not pleaded guilty to murder due to insanity or infanticide.
=== Trial evidence ===
In addition to testimony from Graham Dickason, emergency responders, and the children's teachers, the Crown also utilised digital forensic evidence and Dickason's police interview following the children's deaths.
On 26 July, the Crown rested its case. Defence counsel Toohey delivered her opening address to the jury, arguing that the defendant's decision to kill her children was "spontaneous" because Dickason believed that her and the children's lives were not worth living and "that they were all better off dead." In addition to the defendant's mother Wendy Fawkes, the defence also relied on three expert witnesses: the forensic and reproductive psychiatrist Dr Susan Hatters-Friedman, forensic psychiatrist Dr Justin Barry-Walsh and forensic psychologist Ghazi Metoui. The prosecution also called upon two expert witnesses: Canterbury District Health Board clinical director and psychiatrist Dr Erik Monasterio and Hillmorton Hospital consultant psychiatrist Dr Simone McLeavey.
=== Closing arguments ===
On 11 August, McRae gave the closing address for the trial. The Crown said that Dickason knew that what she was doing was morally wrong (there was no altruistic motive), and that the key drivers of the killing was "anger and control". McRae said that "this is a trial by jury, not a trial by experts", stating that the defence experts who assessed Dickason did not do it during the time of the killing, whereas the Crown did. The Crown also said that defence experts ignored "crucial information". Dickason provided inconsistent accounts of what happened for explanations months apart. The Crown said that the post partum depression had remitted, and that it was at best a minimal contributor. The Crown said that the evidence provided by the defence experts should be treated with "great caution" as Dickason reported killing Karla first on multiple occasions because she had been misbehaving, such as biting and scratching her. The defence, however, said that Karla was killed first because she was the closest to Dickason. When asked whether she thinks the killings were a result of her postpartum depression, she answered "no", and that the idea for killing "just popped up", although the Crown later said "We knew the thoughts didn’t just pop into her head".
The closing address of the defence started at around 2:30 pm. The address mentioned Dickason's 16 rounds of IVF, that the family moved to New Zealand in order to provide a better life for the children and that the world was dangerous for her children, that Dickason had postpartum depression after the births of her twins, that her mental health made her very unwell, and that Dickason's husband did not understand her illness, that Dickason was "reliable and consistent" when talking to experts. They said that she was not asked by police why she killed her children, and that Dickason "didn't tell anyone that she killed them out of anger". The defence also said that Dickason's brother, sister or close family members could have given context about her life.
=== Deliberations and verdict ===
On the fifth week, Justice Mander summed up the case. He talked about the Police interview on the day after the deaths of the children, and then told the jury to not let emotion change their ideas, in particular sympathy, prejudice, and others caused by media attention. He mentioned that there were no disputes about Dickason causing the deaths of the children, and that the question is whether it was murder, infanticide or insanity due to the undisputed unbalance of Dickason's mind at the time. He also summarised the evidence given by the experts assessing Dickason's health.
On 16 August 2023, Dickason was found guilty of murdering her children in the Christchurch High Court. Following 15 hours of deliberation, the jury reached a majority verdict (11-1) to convict Dickason of three counts of murder. The majority of jurors rejected her partial defence of infanticide and defence of insanity, and accepted the Crown's argument that Dickason "acted methodically, purposefully and even clinically out of anger and control" when she killed her three children. Dickason stood motionless in the dock as the verdict was delivered. She wept as she was led out of court. Both of Dickason's lawyers and several members of the jury wept following the verdict. Justice Mander remanded her to Hillmorton Hospital until her sentencing date, stating that she was under a compulsory treatment order that made prison inappropriate. Mander has also sought expert reports on Dickason's mental state and an appropriate sentence.
Following the verdict, Dickason's parents Malcolm and Wendy Fawkes issued a statement blaming postpartum depression for taking the lives of their grandchildren Lianè, Karla and Maya. They also stated there were "no winners in this tragedy" and urged greater awareness of the effects of postpartum depression.
=== Sentencing ===
The judge asked to determine the length and type of sentence following a mental health assessment of Dickason. The Sentencing Act presumes that murder would result in life imprisonment unless it would be "manifestly unjust to do so". The decision on whether Dickason will go to jail or the psychiatric unit of Hillmorton Hospital has not yet been decided. Dickason will not be extradited to her home country of South Africa.
In early September 2023, Dickason's sentencing date was set for 19 December 2023. It was later postponed to 2024 as this date became vacated. On 14 February the date was set to 20 March. It was later rescheduled to 26 June due to delays caused by determining whether she should serve her sentence in prison or be detained as a special patient under the Mental Health (Compulsory Assessment and Treatment) Act 1992. Until 26 June, she will be staying in Hillmorton Hospital.
She was sentenced on 26 June 2024 to 18 years in prison, as three concurrent determinate sentences of 18 years. She was not given a minimum term of imprisonment, and will be kept in a mental health hospital until she is deemed mentally fit for prison. When the sentence was delivered, Dickason was silent and had no reaction. During the sentencing, victim impact statements from Dickason's family members including Graham and both paternal and maternal relatives were read.
Dickason has been served with a deportation order that will take effect upon her release from prison.
=== Appeal ===
In early August 2024, it was reported that Dickason's legal team had lodged an appeal against her conviction in the New Zealand Court of Appeal on 23 July. The grounds for the appeal have not yet been disclosed. If successful, a second trial could be held.
=== Cost ===
The New Zealand government granted $709,000 for Dickason's defence in the trial. This included $153,970 for three psychiatric or psychological reports, $71,062.50 on a forensic psychologist, $58,700.81 for expert witnesses, $39,945.78 for "other payments" or disbursements for the witnesses, $6,367.50 on a private investigator, $9,480 on computer forensics, and $3,000 on "expert legal opinion".
Dickason's legal team spent 1714.25 hours working on her defence. Crown Solicitor Andrew McRae spent 732.5 hours.
== Responses ==
=== Memorials ===
On 18 September 2021, the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) announced that it would help the Dickason family's relatives travel to New Zealand and secure a place in managed isolation per the country's COVID-19 quarantine requirements at the time. The Dickasons' former nanny Mari Sibanyoni also expressed shock and grief after learning of the children's deaths.
On 23 September 2021, a candelight vigil was held in Timaru's Queen Street in honour of the victims Lianne, Maya, and Karla Dickason. Graham also read a letter expressing forgiveness for his wife, honouring the memory of his late children, and thanking friends and family in New Zealand, South Africa, and elsewhere. A similar service was held in Pretoria in honour of the children. Graham subsequently returned to South Africa in December 2021.
The Dickasons' former Timaru neighbours Rob and Jade Whaley also built a memorial garden in honour of the Dickason children, with a tree called the Angel Dickason tree. Three white stones were also placed at the base of the tree in memory of the girls.
=== Responses to trial and verdict ===
The Independent Online's Jehran Naidoo compared Dickason to the American mother Andrea Yates, who was acquitted of murdering her five children by reason of insanity following a lengthy legal battle. Naidoo noted that both women suffered from mental illness and post-partum depression, had experienced previous miscarriages, had professionally-accomplished husbands, and killed their children while their husbands were away from home.
In mid August 2023, the jury's verdict was welcomed by Mayor of Timaru Nigel Bowen, who said "the guilty verdicts put the full stop in the story of a very dark time for the town." Bowen encouraged people to check on others in the community, stating "that mental health was something still kept in the shadows." Judge Mander also thanked the jury for their services. Lead investigator Detective Inspector Scott Anderson, local chaplan Alan Cummings, and South Canterbury Chief Medical Officer Dr Ben Pearson also extended sympathies to the victims' families and welcomed the trial verdict as a form of closure.
New Zealand current affairs bloggers David Farrar and Martyn "Bomber" Bradbury labelled the guilty verdict as justice for Dickason's deceased children.
=== Support for Lauren Dickason ===
Following her conviction, supporters of Dickason established a Facebook support group called "Support for Lauren Dickason," which attracted a thousand members including her father Malcolm Fawkes. The group was started in July 2022, has over 1,900 members from multiple countries, and is composed mostly of women, with its spokesperson saying that the verdict has caused "Women's voices [to be] silenced." These supporters have announced plans to organise a march and picnic in Christchurch in November 2023. They intend to walk from the justice precinct to the Christchurch's Botanic Gardens with T-shirts with printings reading "support not silence" and holding sunflowers, the symbol of the support group. A picnic in support of Maternal Mental Health will be held in the Christchurch Botanic Gardens following the walk. In addition, another supporter named Tanya Parker organised a petition urging Judge Mander to consider postpartum depression as a factor in sentencing Dickason, and for the legal profession to recognise postpartum depression as a public health crisis. The group also created a 370–page book of supportive letters titled 'Lauren: Our love and support'. It was sent to Lauren on the day of the second year anniversary of the children's deaths.
In early October, The Press reported that Dickason penned a letter to her supporters thanking them for "your love" during a "difficult time." The letter revealed that she had also made three teddy bears from her late daughters' clothing. In that letter, Dickason also stated that she could never forgive herself for "what happened." In response to media publicity, Hillmorton Hospital authorities restricted Dickason's communications, banning her from sending or receiving letters while awaiting sentencing for her murder convictions. They were later lifted, allowing Lauren to receive letters from her supporters again.
== References == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swami_Vivekananda_Planetarium | Swami Vivekananda Planetarium | Swami Vivekananda Planetarium, also called Pilikula Planetarium, at Pilikula Nisargadhama in Mangaluru is the first 3D planetarium in India. It is also only such planetarium in the country with hybrid modern technology innovations coupled with 3D technology of 8K digital and opto-mechanical (hybrid) projection system. It is a part of the Pilikula Nisargadhama (covering an area of 370 acres (150 ha)), which is also named Dr Shivaram Karanth Biological Park. It is planned and built to provide the best learning experience for students and enthusiasts on Zodiacal system of planets. Its creation is attributed to Pilikula Regional Science Centre.
== History ==
Swami Vivekananda Planetarium is the first state-of-the-art 3D planetarium in India. It was initiated in 2013 to mark the 150th birth anniversary of Swami Vivekananda by the then chief minister of Karnataka, Jagadish Shettar, who had laid the foundation stone to build it in two years at a cost of ₹35.69 crore (US$4.2 million). However, the project overran its schedule completion, and the planetarium could be opened only on 1 March 2018. It was set up with grants from KSTePS (Karnataka Science and Technology Promotion Society) of the Karnataka government. The planetarium's objective is intended to give the viewers (students in particular and the public) to see the stars and planetary systems in the universe. Its creation is attributed to Pilikula Regional Science Centre.
The planetarium was planned and established as the first planetarium in the country with 8K digital and opto-mechanical (hybrid) projection system. Five technical persons were initially sent to Utah, US, for training to operate the planetarium. The planetarium also has a provision of ₹1.5 crore (US$180,000) for annual maintenance.
== Technical specifications ==
The planetarium has a dome diameter of 18 m (59 ft) and a seating capacity of 170; the seats can be tilted by 15 degrees to enhance the viewing experience of the audience. It has a Megastar IIA optical projector integrated with digistar and active stereo 3D 8K digital planetarium system manufactured in US by Evans & Sutherland Computer Corporation. The projected 3 dimensional images on the screen are a part of a new level of full dome innovation. The 32 lenses of the 8K ultra-bright LED-based projector, from Ohira Tech Japan, is said to be capable of beaming "20 million stars uniformly and seamlessly over the nano-seam panels of the dome, thereby avoiding the overlapping of projected visuals."
== Programmes ==
The planetarium was inaugurated on 1 March 2018 and started the first public show on 2 March 2018. Eight shows are held daily with each show lasting 25 minutes. Some of the 3D shows screened are We are stars, Dawn of the space age and Mysteries of the unseen world. The shows cover space technology, planets, nature, environment science, history and geography, which are presented in English, Hindi and Kannada. The first inaugural show screened was We are stars which covers the story of space of billions of years from the time of the Big Bang to the modern day.
== Access ==
The planetarium is located at the Pilikula Regional Science Centre at Moodushedde, 9 kilometres (5.6 mi) away from Mangalore. which is well connected by road, rail, and air services with the rest of the country. Mangalore railway station, in the city centre, is connected to the major cities including Chennai, Mumbai and New Delhi. Mangalore International Airport is located about 7 kilometres (4.3 mi) away from the city centre. By road, it is 350 kilometres (220 mi) west of Bengaluru, the capital of Karnataka.
== Gallery ==
== See also ==
Astrotourism in India
List of planetariums
== References == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Hani | Chris Hani | Chris Hani (28 June 1942 – 10 April 1993; born Martin Thembisile Hani ) was a South African military commander, politician and revolutionary who served as the leader of the South African Communist Party (SACP) and chief of staff of uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK), the former armed wing of the African National Congress (ANC). He was a fierce opponent of the apartheid government, and was assassinated by Janusz Waluś, a Polish immigrant and sympathiser of the Conservative opposition on 10 April 1993, during the unrest preceding the transition to democracy.
== Early life ==
Martin Thembisile Hani was born on 28 June 1942 in the Xhosa village in Cofimvaba, Transkei. His father Gilbert Hani was a mine union worker and political activist who left the country to go into exile in 1962 and returned to South Africa in 1991. His mother Mary Hani was a simple person who had never attended school. He was the fifth of six children. He attended Lovedale school in 1957, to finish his last two years. He twice finished two school grades in a single year. When Hani was 12 years old, after hearing his father's explanations about apartheid and the African National Congress (ANC), he wished to join the ANC but was still too young to be accepted. In Lovedale school, Hani joined the ANC Youth League when he was 15 years old, even though political activities were not allowed at black schools under apartheid. He influenced other students to join the ANC. In an interview in 1993 with Luli Callinicos, Hani revealed that he was first involved with the Unity movement. He was influenced to align with the ANC due to the activism of the party concerning mass struggles. He mentioned writers such as Govan Mbeki who played a critical role in his political conversion.
In 1959, at the University of Fort Hare in Alice, Eastern Cape, Hani studied English, Latin and modern and classical literature. He did not participate in any sport, saying: "I would rather fight apartheid than play sport." Hani, in an interview on the Wankie campaign, mentioned that he was a Rhodes University graduate.
== Political and military career ==
At the age of 15, he joined the ANC Youth League. As a student, he was active in protests against the Bantu Education Act. He worked as a clerk for a law firm. In 1961, Hani joined a communist party led by Comrade Mbeki where he first started learning and reading about Marxism. Following his graduation, Hani joined Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), the armed wing of the ANC. He credited his commitment to the MK as a result of his exposure to the extreme side of apartheid during his upbringing. Hani said, "I didn't get involved with the workers' struggle out of theory alone. It was a combination of theory and my own class background." Following his arrest under the Suppression of Communism Act, he went into exile in Lesotho in 1963. Because of Hani's involvement with Umkhonto we Sizwe, he was forced into hiding by the South African government and changed his first name to Chris.
He received military training in the Soviet Union and served in campaigns in the Zimbabwean War of Liberation, also called the Rhodesian Bush War. They were joint operations between Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) and the Zimbabwe People's Revolutionary Army in the late 1960s. The Luthuli Detachment operation consolidated Hani's reputation as a soldier in the black army that took the field against apartheid and its allies. His role as a fighter from the earliest days of MK's exile (following the arrest of Nelson Mandela and the other internal MK leaders at Rivonia) was an important part in the fierce loyalty that Hani later enjoyed in some quarters as MK's Deputy Commander (Joe Modise was overall commander). In 1969, Hani co-signed, with six others, the "Hani Memorandum", which was strongly critical of the leadership of Joe Modise, Moses Kotane and other comrades in the leadership. This memorandum was also a cry to radicalize the anti-apartheid movement in the ANC. Hani saw the overreliance on diplomatic negotiations as inefficient and was critical of the separation between the leaders of the ANC and the fighters of the MK. Hani stressed the fact in the memorandum by saying, "the ANC is the vanguard of the revolutionary struggle in South Africa and it is strange that its leaders have not been obliged to take the M.K. oath". Hani and the signatories of the memorandum aimed to unite both parties while also holding leaders of the ANC accountable for complacency.
In Lesotho, Hani organised guerrilla operations of the MK in South Africa. By 1982, he had become prominent enough to have become the target of assassination attempts, and he eventually moved to the ANC's headquarters in Lusaka, Zambia. As head of Umkhonto we Sizwe, he was responsible for the suppression of a mutiny by dissident anti-Communist ANC members in detention camps, but denied any role in abuses including torture and murder. Many MK female operatives, such as Dipuo Mvelase, adored Chris Hani for having protected women's rights and caring about their wellbeing at military camps.
Having spent time as a clandestine organiser in South Africa in the mid-1970s, he permanently returned to South Africa following the unbanning of the ANC in 1990, and took over from Joe Slovo as head of the South African Communist Party (SACP) on 8 December 1991. He supported the suspension of the ANC's armed struggle in favour of negotiations, as well as including a multi-party political system. Hani also pushed for radical economic reform in South Africa. He put great effort in advocating for a socialist economy. Social redistribution as well as protecting labor rights were central in Hani's push to improve the South African economy post apartheid. In an interview in 1993, Hani explained how creating a socio economic restructure would be a massive job for South Africans.
== Assassination ==
Chris Hani was assassinated on 10 April 1993 outside his home in Dawn Park, a racially mixed suburb of Boksburg. He was accosted by a Polish far-right anti-communist immigrant named Janusz Waluś, who shot him as he stepped out of his car. Waluś fled the scene but was soon arrested after Margareta Harmse, a white Afrikaner housewife, saw Waluś straight after the crime as she was driving past, and called the police. A neighbour of Hani also witnessed the crime and later identified both Waluś, and the vehicle he was driving at the time. Clive Derby-Lewis, a senior South African Conservative Party MP and Shadow Minister for Economic Affairs at the time, who had lent Waluś his pistol, was also arrested for complicity in Hani's murder. The Conservative Party of South Africa had broken away from the ruling National Party out of opposition to the reforms of P. W. Botha. After the elections of 1989, it was the second-strongest party in the House of Assembly, after the National Party, and opposed F. W. de Klerk's dismantling of apartheid.
Historically, the assassination is seen as a turning point. Serious tensions followed the assassination, with fears that the country would erupt in violence. Nelson Mandela addressed the nation appealing for calm, in a speech regarded as presidential even though he was not yet president of the country:
Tonight I am reaching out to every single South African, black and white, from the very depths of my being. A white man, full of prejudice and hate, came to our country and committed a deed so foul that our whole nation now teeters on the brink of disaster. A white woman, of Afrikaner origin, risked her life so that we may know, and bring to justice, this assassin. The cold-blooded murder of Chris Hani has sent shock waves throughout the country and the world. ... Now is the time for all South Africans to stand together against those who, from any quarter, wish to destroy what Chris Hani gave his life for – the freedom of all of us.
While riots followed the assassination, both sides of the negotiation process were galvanised into action, and they soon agreed that the democratic elections should take place on 27 April 1994, just over a year after Hani's assassination.
=== Assassins' conviction and amnesty hearing ===
In October 1993, both Janusz Waluś and Clive Derby-Lewis were convicted for the murder and sentenced to death. Derby-Lewis's wife, Gaye, was acquitted. Both men's sentences were commuted to life imprisonment when the death penalty was abolished as a result of a Constitutional Court ruling in 1995.
Hani's killers appeared before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, claiming political motivation for their crimes and applying for amnesty on the basis that they had acted on the orders of the Conservative Party. The Hani family was represented by the anti-apartheid lawyer George Bizos. Their applications were denied when the TRC ruled that they had not acted under orders. Following several failed attempts, Derby-Lewis was granted medical parole in May 2015 after he had been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer; he died 18 months later, on 3 November 2016.
On 10 March 2016, the North Gauteng High Court ordered Waluś to be released on parole under bail conditions. The Department of Justice and Correctional Services lodged an appeal against the parole decision to the Supreme Court of Appeal in Bloemfontein. The Department of Home Affairs has indicated that Waluś may have his South African citizenship revoked. On 18 August 2017, the Supreme Court of Appeal in Bloemfontein overturned Waluś's parole, a decision that was welcomed by the SACP. By October 2019, Waluś was still in prison, despite his lawyer's claim that he is completely rehabilitated. On 16 March 2020, Waluś was again denied parole by Justice Minister Ronald Lamola. On 7 December 2022, Waluś was granted parole under strict conditions by Justice Minister Ronald Lamola. In 2024, the government announced that Waluś was to be deported to Poland on 6 December with the Polish government paying for the proceedings. Finnaly Walus arrived in Poland on 7 December.
=== Absence of conspiracy ===
Hani's assassination has attracted numerous conspiracy theories about outside involvement. The final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission said it "was unable to find evidence that the two murderers convicted of the killing of Chris Hani took orders from international groups, security forces or from higher up in the right-wing echelons".
== Influence ==
Hani was a charismatic leader, with significant support among the radical anti-apartheid youth. At the time of his death, he was the most popular ANC leader after his senior, Nelson Mandela. Following the legalisation of the ANC, His support for the negotiation process with the apartheid government was critical in keeping the militants in line. Despite starting off as an advocate for armed resistance, he was able to adapt to the needs of the people and moved towards peaceful political negotiations.Hani also played a critical role in deepening the alliance between the SCAP, ANC and Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU). These relationships played a big role in the success of the anti apartheid resistance movement. Chris Hani became a global figure for anti apartheid and resistance movements around the world.
In Poland the far right for years has supported Waluś and praised his racist murder. In April 2025, the Never Again Association published a report on this phenomenon.
== Honours ==
In 1993, French philosopher Jacques Derrida dedicated Spectres de Marx (1993) to Hani.
Star of South Africa (Gold) (SSAG) (posthumously)
Star for Bravery (Silver) (SBS) (posthumously)
Conspicuous Leadership Star (CLS) (posthumously)
Decoration for Merit (Gold) (DMG) (posthumously)
Merit Medal (Silver) (MMS) (posthumously)
Service Medal (Gold) (posthumously)
Service Medal (Silver) (posthumously)
Service Medal (Bronze) (posthumously)
In 1997, Baragwanath Hospital, one of the largest hospitals in the world, was renamed the Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital in his memory. In September 2004, Hani was voted 20th in the controversial Top 100 Greatest South Africans poll.
Days after his assassination, the rock group Dave Matthews Band (whose lead singer and guitarist, Dave Matthews, is from South Africa) began playing what would become "#36", with lyrics and chorus referring to Hani's shooting.
A short opera, Hani, by composer Bongani Ndodana-Breen with libretto by film producer Mfundi Vundla, was commissioned by Cape Town Opera and the University of Cape Town, premiering at the Baxter Theatre on 21 November 2010.
A District Municipality in the Eastern Cape was named the Chris Hani District Municipality. This district includes Queenstown, Cofimvaba and Lady Frere. The Thembisile Hani Local Municipality in Mpumalanga also bears his name.
In 2009, after extension of Cape Town's Central Line, the new terminus serving eastern areas of Khayelitsha was christened Chris Hani.
== Recognitions ==
Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto
Thembisile Hani Local Municipality in Mpumalanga
Chris Hani District Municipality in Eastern Cape
== References ==
== External links == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._S._Ramaiah | M. S. Ramaiah | Mathikere Sampige Ramaiah (b. 20 April 1922 – 25 December 1997) was an educationist, philanthropist, and industrialist, involved in infrastructure projects in India.
== Early life ==
Mathikere Sampangi Ramaiah was born on 20 April 1922, in Madhugiri to Sampangappa and Narasamma. He completed his primary education in Mathikere, which was then in the outskirts of Bangalore city and then moved on to agriculture due to paucity of funds. Later he went to work for the Indian Railways as a fireman for the Mysore Narrow Gauge Steam rail, for about two years.
As a contractor, he started off as a supplier of bricks for military camps in Bangalore during World War II. His immense success in the field of civil works was marked by the construction of some of the major projects in the state, such as the canals of the Ghataprabha Project, Talakalale Dam and the Dharma Project.
== Achievements ==
=== MSR Group of Institutions ===
In 1962, Ramaiah established the Gokula Education Foundation, which marked the beginning of the Ramaiah Institute of Technology (MSRIT, Bangalore). In 1979, the M. S. Ramaiah Medical College was set up and as a requisite for medical education, the M. S. Ramaiah Teaching Hospital was founded. With a vision of a multi-specialty center, the M. S. Ramaiah Institute of Nephro-urology, M. S. Ramaiah Institute of Oncology and M. S. Ramaiah Institute of Cardiology was set up; the founding of M. S. Ramaiah Medical Teaching Hospital in 1985 added on to his list of milestones.
Institutions founded by M.S. Ramaiah:
1962: M. S. Ramaiah Institute of Technology
1979: M. S. Ramaiah Medical College
1985: M. S. Ramaiah Medical Teaching Hospital
1987: M. S. Ramaiah Institute of Nursing Education & Research
1991: M. S. Ramaiah Dental College
1992: M. S. Ramaiah College of Pharmacy; M. S. Ramaiah Institute of Hotel Management
1993: M. S. Ramaiah Composite Junior College
1994: M. S. Ramaiah College of Arts, Science & Commerce; M. S. Ramaiah Vidhyaniketan
1995: M. S. Ramaiah Institute of Management
1996: M. S. Ramaiah Institute of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation; P G Course in Nursing [MSc (N)]
1997: M. S. Ramaiah Polytechnic
1999: M. S. Ramaiah School of Advanced Studies, now M S Ramaiah University of Applied Sciences
2004: M. S. Ramaiah College of Education
2006: M. S. Ramaiah International Medical School
2012: M. S. Ramaiah Advanced Learning Center; M. S. Ramaiah Institute of Neurosciences; M. S. Ramaiah Clinical Research Centre
2013: M. S. Ramaiah University of Applied Sciences
== Religion ==
M S Ramaiah was a deeply religious Hindu. He left an indelible mark in all his activities, as the President of Karnataka’s ancient shrine Kaiwara. In renovating the Ashram of Yogi Narayana Yatindra, the space provided sanctuary to a huge number of devotees along with the provision of free food every day. He organized for the giving away of alms at religious congregations, particularly Sadhu Sangama.
== Industrialisation ==
With M Vishweswariah as a role model, Ramaiah believed in industrialization and was its pioneer. The industries he promoted include:
Kvaerner John Brown (India) Pvt. Ltd
M. S. R. & Sons Investments Ltd
Indo-Malaysian Technopolis Pvt. Ltd
M. S. Ramaiah Investments and Properties Ltd
== Journalism ==
Being a multi-faceted personality with a political opinion, Ramaiah developed a deep interest in journalism. In 1956, he acquired Thainadu, then the oldest Kannada daily in Mysore State, and not only led for it to thrive, but he also started Gokula, a Kannada weekly, and Kailasa, a monthly. These became a herald of a neo-tri-colour nationalist era and are considered as model publications even today.
== Humanitarian and philanthropic initiatives ==
The setting up of M. S. Ramaiah Charities Trust led to the assistance of impecunious and meritorious students to pursue a bright career. This trust provides a scholarship of around 25 lakhs to exemplary and backward class students annually. It also supports scholarships for candidates appearing for civil service exams such as the IAS and IPS.
Realising the importance of development in any society, Ramaiah was responsible for the construction of housing facilities for poor and middle-class families to live at reasonable and affordable prices. Earlier a suburb, the locality has now turned into a modern downtown of a quarter million population.
Being the Chairman of the Reception Committee, he organised the Kannada Sahithya Sammelana at Kaiwara in 1990. This hosted the perfect suburban setting for the neoteric and literary minds of Kannada literature to convene.
== Honours and awards ==
Doctor of Letters, Honoris Causa, Tumkur University, posthumous
Doctor of Science, Visvesvaraya Technological University, Belgaum, posthumous
== References ==
== External links ==
M. S. Ramaiah official website |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jose_Maria_Sison | Jose Maria Sison | Jose Maria Canlas Sison (Tagalog: [hoˈse mɐˈɾija kɐnˈlas ˈsisɔn]; February 8, 1939 – December 16, 2022), also known as Joma, was a Filipino writer, poet, and activist who founded and led the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and added elements of Maoism to its philosophy—which would be known as National Democracy. His ideology was formed by applying Marxism–Leninism-Maoism to the history and circumstances of the Philippines.
Sison was born in Ilocos Sur to a landowning political family. He was educated in Manila, studying at Ateneo de Manila University, Colegio de San Juan de Letran, and the University of the Philippines. He then became a professor of literature, political science, and Rizal studies. During his youth, he learned about the rebellion of the communist Hukbalahap (Huk), which ended in 1954. Sison joined the Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas (PKP; "Philippine Communist Party") in 1962 and became a member of its executive committee in early 1963. In 1964 he co-founded the Kabataang Makabayan ("Patriotic Youth"). However, Sison's faction had several disagreements with the PKP leading to the First Great Rectification Movement. After Sison's faction were expelled from the PKP, he founded and became the chairman of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) in 1968. Three months later, Sison and Bernabe Buscayno, who led a faction of Huk holdouts, organized the New People's Army (NPA) to stage a proletarian revolution. Sison was captured in 1977 and was imprisoned, mostly in solitary confinement, until the People Power Revolution of 1986. The new government under President Corazon Aquino released him for the sake of "national reconciliation" and for his role in opposing the martial law regime of President Ferdinand Marcos. Nonetheless, he also criticized the Aquino administration. In 1988, while in the Netherlands as part of his international lecture tour, his passport was revoked and he was charged in the Philippines for violating the Anti-Subversion Act. From then on, he lived in the Netherlands but continued to advise the communist movement in the Philippines.
From August 2002, Sison had been classified as a "person supporting terrorism" by the United States. The European Court of First Instance ruled in September 2009 to delist him as a "person supporting terrorism" and reversed a decision by member governments to freeze his assets. Sison was charged with several counts of murder in the Philippines and the Netherlands (later dropped). He died in exile in 2022.
The CPP, NPA, and the National Democratic Front (NDF) are considered terrorist organizations by the Philippines' Anti-Terrorism Council.
== Early years ==
Jose Maria Canlas Sison was born on February 8, 1939, in Cabugao, Ilocos Sur to a prominent landowning family with ancestry from Spanish-Mexican-Malay mestizos and from Fujian, China, and with connections to other prominent clans such as the Crisólogos, Geraldinos, Vergaras, Azcuetas, Sollers, Serranos and Singsons.
Sison's father, Salustiano Sison, was a "vocally strong support of Claro Mayo Recto and had a mix of "strong feudalist orientation" and "anti-imperialist sentiment." His mother, Florentina Canlas Sison, was part of a landed family in Mexico, Pampanga. As a child, Sison's parent nicknamed him "Cheng."
His great-grandfather, Don Leandro Serrano, was the biggest landlord in northern Luzon at the end of the 19th century. His grandfather, Don Gorgonio Soller Sison, was the last gobernadorcillo of Cabugao under Spanish colonial rule, the municipal president under the Philippine revolutionary government, and the first mayor under US colonial rule. His great-uncle, Don Marcelino Crisólogo was the first governor of Ilocos Sur. His uncle, Teófilo Sison was governor of Pangasinan and the first Defense Secretary in the Commonwealth government. He was convicted in 1946 of having collaborated with the Japanese occupation forces but was amnestied in 1947.
During his childhood in Ilocos, he learned about the Huk rebellion in Central Luzon from Ilocano farm workers and from his mother. In his early high school years in Manila, he talked to his barber about Hukbalahap activities. Unlike his elder siblings, he attended a public school before entering Ateneo de Manila University and later studying at Colegio de San Juan de Letran.
Sison graduated from the University of the Philippines in 1959 with the degree of Bachelor of Arts in English literature with honors and then studied Indonesian in Indonesia before returning to the Philippines and becoming a university professor of literature and eventually Rizal Studies and Political Science. He joined the Lavaite Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas in December 1962 and became a member of its executive committee in early 1963. He was the Vice Chairman of the Lapiang Manggagawa (which eventually became the Socialist Party) and the general secretary of the Movement for the Advancement of Nationalism. In 1964, he co-founded the Kabataang Makabayan, or Patriotic Youth, with Nilo S. Tayag. This organization organized youth against the Vietnam War, Ferdinand Marcos, imperialism, bureaucrat capitalism and feudalism. The organization also spearheaded the study of Maoism as part of 'the struggle'.
== Communist activities ==
On December 26, 1968, he formed and led the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), an organization founded on Marxism–Leninism-Maoism, stemming from his experience as a youth leader and labor and land reform activist. This was known as the First Great Rectification Movement where Sison and other radical youth criticized the existing party leadership for its errors and failures since 1942. The old Communist Party had been run under a series of Moscow-leaning general secretaries from the Lava family. The reestablished CPP set its general political line as a two-stage revolution comprising national-democratic as the first stage then proceeding to the socialist revolution. During this period, Sison went by the nom de guerre of Amado Guerrero, meaning "beloved warrior", under which he published the book manifesto Philippine Society and Revolution.
After this, the old Communist Party sought to eliminate and marginalize Sison. However, the reorganized CPP had a larger base and renewed political line that attracted thousands to join its ranks.
On March 29, 1969, the CPP, along with an HMB (Huk) faction led by Bernabe Buscayno, organized the New People's Army (NPA), the guerrilla-military wing of the party, whose guerrilla fronts, numbering more than 110, are nationwide and cover substantial portions of 75 of the 81 Philippine provinces. The NPA seeks to wage a peasant-worker revolutionary war in the countryside against landlords and foreign companies by operating in rural communities and mountains as strategy for protection.
Sison was arrested on November 8, 1977, in La Union during the Marcos presidency and imprisoned for almost nine years, most of which were spent in solitary confinement. Sison wrote prolifically while incarcerated, including his Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism: A Primer, which his wife Julie de Lima smuggled out of prison in 1982.
Sison was released from military detention on March 5, 1986, after the overthrow of Marcos. He was released by the new administration of President Corazon Aquino for the sake of "national reconciliation" and for his role in opposing Marcos. The release of Sison was vehemently protested by the military. His experience in prison is described in Prison & Beyond, a book of poetry released in 1986 which won the Southeast Asia WRITE award for the Philippines.
Sison returned to teach at the University of the Philippines soon after. He then went on a global lecture tour, starting in September 1986. It is reported that upon his release, Sison and his followers actively sought to discredit the Aquino government in the European media by speaking out on Aquino's human rights violations, including the Mendiola massacre, in which members of the military were accused of firing on unarmed peasants in Manila, killing 17 people. Also in 1986, Sison embarked on a world tour. In October 1986, he accepted the Southeast Asia Writers Award for a book of his poems from the Crown Prince of Thailand in Bangkok.
In 1989, Sison was cited in journalist Gregg Jones' book Red Revolution as having coordinated the Plaza Miranda bombing in August 1971 based on interviews with members of the CPP and the NPA.
== Exile in the Netherlands ==
Since 1987, Sison had based himself in the Netherlands for his European lecture tour. While in the Netherlands in September 1988, he was informed that his passport had been revoked and that charges had been filed against him under the Anti-Subversion Law of the Philippines. The charges were ultimately dropped, including those that were subsequently filed by Philippine authorities. He applied for political asylum in the Netherlands in 1988 after his Philippine passport was cancelled by the Philippine government. His application was ultimately denied, however Dutch and European law protected him from deportation to the Philippines. Since 1992, he had lived in the Netherlands as a recognized political refugee.
The CPP has stated for over 20 years that Sison was no longer involved in operational decisions and has served from Europe in an advisory role as chief political consultant of the National Democratic Front in peace negotiations with the Manila government.
=== 2007 arrest ===
The International Crime Investigation Team of the Dutch National Criminal Investigation Department arrested Jose Maria Sison in Utrecht on August 28, 2007. Sison was arrested for his alleged involvement from the Netherlands in three assassinations that took place in the Philippines: the murder of Romulo Kintanar in 2003, and the murders of Arturo Tabara and Stephen Ong in 2006. On the day of his arrest, Sison's apartment and the apartments of his co-workers were searched by the Dutch National Criminal Investigation Department.
Some 100 left-wing activists held a demonstration for the release of Sison, marching towards the Dutch embassy in Manila on August 30, 2007. The demonstration was swiftly ended by police.
There were no plans to hold the trial in the Philippines since there was no extradition request and the crimes Sison was accused of were committed in the Netherlands. Dutch lawyer Victor Koppe said that Sison would enter a plea of not guilty during his indictment. He could have received the maximum penalty of life imprisonment.
On September 1, 2007, National Democratic Front peace panel chair Luis Jalandoni confirmed that the Dutch government was "maltreating" Sison because the court detained him in solitary confinement for several weeks without access to media, newspapers, television, radio or visitors; it also denied him the right to bring prescription medicines to his cell. The place where Sison was held was the same one used by the late former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic who was held for war crimes and corruption. Meanwhile, protests were held in Indonesia, Hong Kong, Australia, the United States, and Canada. The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) feared that Sison may be "extra-judicially" transferred to the United States. CPP spokesman Gregorio Rosal said that the U.S. may detain and subject Sison to extraordinary rendition in Guantanamo Bay or some secret facility. U.S. ambassador Kristie Ann Kenney formally announced that the U.S. will extend support to the Dutch government to prosecute Sison.
In New York City, former United States Attorney General and left-wing human rights lawyer Ramsey Clark called for Sison's release and pledged assistance by joining the latter's legal defense team headed by Belgian lawyer Jan Fermon. Clark doubted Dutch authorities' validity and competency, since the murder charges originated in the Philippines and had already been dismissed by the country's Supreme Court.
Committee DEFEND, an International group stated that the Dutch government tortured Sison at the National Penitentiary in Scheveningen. His wife, Julie De Lima, failed to see him in order to provide him with medicine and warm clothes on August 30, 2007. Meanwhile, Sison's counsel, Romeo Capulong, questioned the Dutch government's jurisdiction over the issue, alleging that the Supreme Court of the Philippines already dismissed the subject cases on July 2.
On September 7, 2007, the Dutch court heard defense arguments for Sison, and stated that it would issue the resolution next week on whether to extend the detention. Supporters outside The Hague District Court chanted slogans while the wife, Julie De Lima stated that they complained to the International Committee of the Red Cross. Luis Jalandoni, chairman of the National Democratic Front, accused the government of Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende of being "a workhorse" for Philippines President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and for the U.S. government.
The National Lawyers Guild (NLG), a progressive bar association in New York then headed by Marjorie Cohn, denounced the arrest of Sison, saying "it exposes the hand of the Arroyo administration in yet another assault on the rights of the people to dissent and organize". Sison will remain in jail until Thursday, but was provided TV, radio and medication.
On September 12, 2007, lawyers Edre Olalia and Rachel Pastores stated that Sison's lawyers will appeal the reported Dutch court's newly promulgated ruling extending Sison's detention for 90 days. The Dutch court did not extend the detention for 90 days but released him on September 13, 2007, after being held in solitary confinement for 17 days.
==== Release from detention ====
Dutch public prosecutor's office's Wim de Bruin stated that Sison was released from jail at 10:45 a.m. on September 13, 2007. The court ruled that there was insufficient evidence to detain him on murder charges, specifically, if Sison "had a Concious [sic] and close cooperation with those in the Philippines who carried out the deed".
On September 27, 2007, Sison appeared before The Hague Court of Appeal panel of 3 judges on the public prosecutor's appeal against the district court's September 13 judgment of release.
On September 28, 2007, the Dutch Ambassador to the Philippines, Robert Brinks, announced that 3 Dutch judicial officials and Dutch prosecution lawyer Wim De Bruin will visit the Philippines "later this year" to review the evidence against Jose Maria Sison. The next day, Leung Kwok Hung, a Hong Kong politician and member of the April Fifth Action vowed to support Sison. Leung was in Europe at the Inter-Parliamentary Union assembly in Geneva, Switzerland. He sits in the Hong Kong legislature as a member of the Finance and House Committees, and of the Legislative Panels on Constitutional Affairs, Housing, Manpower, Transport, and Welfare Services.
On October 3, 2007, the Dutch court dismissed the prosecution's appeal against the release Sison, confirming his freedom while the Dutch police continue to investigate: "the prosecution file lacks enough concrete clues that Sison can be directly linked to the assassinations which is needed to prosecute him as a perpetrator". However, the decision does not bar prosecution for murder. But the Dutch Public Prosecutor's Office (per spokesman Wim de Bruin) stated that it did not drop the charges against Sison yet, who remains a suspect. De Bruin said: "No, you have to separate the criminal investigation by the police from the investigation by the examining judge in The Hague. So the judge decided to finish the investigation but the police investigation will be continued and that means that Mr. Sison is still a suspect."
The Dutch court, the Dutch court on May 20, 2008, heard Sison's appeal against the Dutch Public Prosecutors Office's request to extend its investigation until December, since the investigators arrived in the Philippines in February and interviewed witnesses. At the trial, however, the new evidence showed that there were indeed attempts to kill him, in 1999 and 2000, while Kintanar's wife, Joy, directly accused Edwin Garcia in the murder of her husband. The Dutch court scheduled the promulgation on the verdict on June 10, 2008.
The Dutch District Court of The Hague on June 5, 2008, decided in camera "that the Public Prosecution Service may continue the prosecution of Jose Maria Sison for involvement in, among other matters, a number of murders committed in the Philippines in 2003 and 2004; that while the prosecution's case file still held insufficient evidence, the investigation was ongoing and should be given time to unfold". In February 2010, the Dutch Public Prosecution Service finally terminated its investigation of Sison and dropped the criminal charges against him.
== Personal life ==
Sison met his wife, Julie de Lima, when both were students at UP Diliman. Attending the same study groups, they grew closer and married first in a civil wedding in September 1959 and then in a Catholic church wedding in January 1960. The couple had four children.
His wife belonged to the prominent De Lima family of Iriga City, Camarines Sur and is the aunt of Leila de Lima, who served as Chair of the Commission on Human Rights during the presidency of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, Secretary of the Philippine Department of Justice under the administration of President Benigno S. Aquino III., and Senator during the administration of President Rodrigo Duterte.
He was the chairperson of the International League of Peoples' Struggle, and the Chief Political Consultant of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines.
== Later life and death ==
In 2017, President Rodrigo Duterte, claimed that Sison had colon cancer. Sison, while admitting he has been hospitalized at the Utrecht University Medical Center in March of that in year connection to his rheumatoid arthritis and Sweet syndrome symptoms, said that he has no serious illness including cancer. In early 2022, reports emerged that Sison had died; Sison himself refuted his supposed death. Later that year, on December 16, the Communist Party of the Philippines, alongside its news organ Ang Bayan, announced the death of Sison after having been confined in a hospital in Utrecht, Netherlands, for two weeks. NDFP executive Luis Jalandoni disclosed that Sison died due to heart failure, after almost three weeks of hospital treatment, although he did not provide more details about Sison's death.
== Controversies ==
Former Senator Jovito Salonga accused Sison of orchestrating the 1971 Plaza Miranda bombing during the Liberal Party convention to force Marcos to suspend the writ of habeas corpus and sign Proclamation No. 1081, initiating the advent of Martial Law in the Philippines. This accusation comes from former CPP members such as Victor Corpuz and others. The Philippine National Police (PNP) filed a criminal case against Sison for the Plaza Miranda bombing, but the charges were dismissed for lack of evidence, with the dismissal order citing the complainant's filing criminal charges based on speculation.
On July 4, 2008, Manila's RTC Executive Judge Reynaldo Ros assumed jurisdiction over the 1,551-page cases of multiple murder lawsuits against Sison, Bayan Muna Representative Satur Ocampo, and National Democratic Front member Luis Jalandoni after the Supreme Court's Third Division ordered a change of venue from the Hilongos, Leyte RTC Branch 18 for safety reasons. During the time when these alleged killings supposedly took place, Sison and Ocampo had long been under maximum detention of the Marcos regime. Sison, Ocampo, and other political detainees were only freed in 1986 after the first EDSA uprising of the same year.
The European Union's second highest court ruled to delist Sison and the Stichting Al-Aqsa group from the EU terror list since the 27-nation bloc failed to respect their rights when blacklisted. The Luxembourg-based Court of Justice further reversed a decision by member governments to freeze the assets of Sison and the Netherlands-based Al-Aqsa Foundation, since the EU governments failed to inform them why the assets were frozen. Dekker said that EU lawyers in Brussels can lodge any appeal. The EU was also ordered to shoulder all the litigation expenses during the five-year appeal of Sison against the Dutch government and the EU. The final judgment of the European Court of Justice to remove Sison from the EU terrorist blacklist on September 30, 2009, became final and binding on December 10, 2009, inasmuch as the EU did not make an appeal. The court's decisions and other documents pertaining to cases involving Sison in the Philippines are compiled under the section of Legal Cases in www.josemariasison.org and can be further verified in the archives of the pertinent courts.
== Legacy ==
Two biographies have been written about him: one by the German writer Dr. Rainer Werning: The Philippine Revolution: From the Leader's View Point (1989), and one by the Filipina activist Ninotchka Rosca, At Home in the World (2004). Two biographical films about Sison were produced: The Guerrilla Is a Poet (2013), directed by sisters Sari and Kiri Dalena, and Tibak (2016), written and directed by journalist Arlyn dela Cruz.
Since his death, national democratic organizations in Manila launched the Jose Maria Sison School, involving hundreds of youth, union members and activists in a re-examination of the Joma's teachings. Leftists from Berkeley to Rome followed suit.
Many activists and scholars have continued Sison's legacy in different ways. On February 15, 2025, key leaders of the national democratic movement launched The Jose Maria Sison Legacy Foundation (TJMSLF) in Utrecht, The Netherlands to preserve the legacy of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) founder.
Maybelle Guerrero has called for revolutionaries to review Sison's work and to take up his unfinished tasks, such as his repeated call to revive the armed city partisan teams to address human rights violators in the urban areas.
== Works ==
=== Selected writings 1968–1991 ===
2013. 1968-1972 Foundation for Resuming the Philippine Revolution. International Network for Philippine Studies and Aklat ng Bayan, Inc.
2013. 1969-1974 Defeating Revisionism, Reformism & and Opportunism. International Network for Philippine Studies and Aklat ng Bayan, Inc.
2013. 1972-1977 Building Strength through Struggle. International Network for Philippine Studies and Aklat ng Bayan, Inc.
2013. 1977-1986 Detention and Defiance against Dictatorship. International Network for Philippine Studies and Aklat ng Bayan, Inc.
2015. 1986-1991 Continuing the Struggle for National & Social Liberation. International Network for Philippine Studies and Aklat ng Bayan, Inc.
=== Selected writings 1991–2009 ===
2009. 1991-1994 For Justice, Socialism and Peace. Aklat ng Bayan, Inc.
2009. 1995-2001 For Democracy and Socialism Against Imperialist Globalization. Aklat ng Bayan, Inc.
2009. 2001-2006 Crisis of Imperialism and People's Resistance. Aklat ng Bayan, Inc.
2009. 2006-2009 People's Struggle Against Imperialist Plunder and Terror. Aklat ng Bayan, Inc.
=== Peoples' struggles against oppression and exploitation: selected writings 2009–2015 ===
2015. 2009-2010 Crisis Generates Resistance. International Network for Philippine Studies
2016. 2010-2011 Building People's Power. International Network for Philippine Studies
2017. 2012 Combat Neoliberal Globalization. International Network for Philippine Studies
2018. 2013 Struggle against Imperialist Plunder and Wars. International Network for Philippine Studies
2018. 2014-2015 Strengthen the People's Struggle against Imperialism and Reaction. International Network for Philippine Studies
=== Selected writings 2016–2021 ===
2018. 2016 People's Resistance to Greed and Terror. International Network for Philippine Studies
2019. 2017 Combat Tyranny and Fascism. International Network for Philippine Studies
2019. January–July 2018 Struggle against Terrorism and Tyranny Volume I. International Network for Philippine Studies
2019. August–December 2018 Struggle against Terrorism and Tyranny Volume II. International Network for Philippine Studies
2021. 2019 Resist Neoliberalism, Fascism, and Wars of Aggression. International Network for Philippine Studies
=== Other works ===
2020. Basic Principles of Marxism–Leninism: A Primer. Reprint. Paris, Foreign Languages Press
2019. Reflections on Revolution and Prospects. International Network for Philippine Studies
2017. Specific Characteristics of our People's War. Reprint. Paris, Foreign Languages Press
2003. US Terrorism and War in the Philippines. Netherlands, Papieren Tijger
1998. Philippine Economy and Politics. Co-authored by Julieta de Lima. Philippines, Aklat ng Bayan, Inc.
1989. The Philippine Revolution : The Leader's View. With Rainer Werning. New York : Crane Russak.
1984. Prison and Beyond: Selected Poems, 1958–1983. Quezon City: Free Jose Maria Sison Committee.
1971. Philippine Society and Revolution. As Amado Guerrero. Manila: Pulang Tala.
1967. Struggle for National Democracy. Quezon City, Progressive Publications
== References ==
== Further reading ==
Jones, G. R. (1989). Red Revolution: Inside The Philippine Guerrilla Movement. Westview Press. ISBN 978-0-8133-0644-5.
Rosca, Ninotchka (2004). Jose Maria Sison: At Home in the World. Open Hand Publishing.
== External links ==
Josemariasison.org
Works by or about Jose Maria Sison at the Internet Archive
Works by Jose Maria Sison at Marxists.org
The Arrest of Joma Sison (dossier of the Philippine Daily Inquirer)
A talk from Jan Fermon, lawyer for Jose Maria Sison on YouTube
comments from Jan Fermon and others on UK/EU Terror Laws on YouTube |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangabandhu_Sheikh_Mujibur_Rahman_Novo_Theatre | Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman Novo Theatre | Novo Theatre, Dhaka (formerly Bhasani Novo Theatre and Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman Novo Theatre) is a planetarium on Bijoy Sarani Avenue of Tejgaon area in Dhaka, Bangladesh.
== History ==
The Novo Theatre opened to public on 25 September 2004. It was previously named Bhashani Novo Theatre. It was made autonomous by Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman Novo Theatre Bill 2010. The space center was commissioned by the Ministry of Science and Communication Technology of the Government of Bangladesh.
On March 20, 2025, the interim government of Bangladesh, through an ordinance, changed the name of the Novo Theater from Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman Novo Theater to Novo Theater.
== Description ==
Built on 5.46 acres of land, its spaces range in size from its 21-meter dome, seating 275 people; to three-meter inflatable and portable domes where people sit on the floor.
== Design ==
The planetarium was designed by architect Ali Imam. The Planetarium dome simulates Earth and its cool blue sky. This dome-shaped theater was built with the latest equipment, enabling visitors to soar into space as well as experience the thrills of an interplanetary journey in a three-dimensional environment. The curved ceiling represents the sky and shows moving images of planets and stars through projection onto a large-screen dome at an angle of 120 degrees.
== Features ==
This planetarium features three kinds of exhibits. They Journey to Infinity presents a celestial show of stars, planets and other heavenly bodies in virtual reality. The ai amader Bangladesh features Bangabandhu Sheik Mujibur Rahman's 7 March lecture, while The Grand Canyon describes North America's settlement clan, Garikhad, which existed in The Grand Canyon four thousand years ago.
Visitors need not look up in the dome to watch the show. Instead, they feel they are watching space live, with everything around them, presented by 150 projectors. The planetarium added a new capsule simulator and smart-step floor and 3D video. In 2013 the planetarium added a Nuclear Industrial Information Centre.
== See also ==
List of planetariums
== References ==
== External links ==
Media related to Novo Theatre, Dhaka at Wikimedia Commons
Official website |
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