Youtube comments of Stella Maris (@SuperGreatSphinx).
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Victor Davis Hanson (born September 5, 1953) is an American classicist, military historian, columnist, and farmer.
He has been a commentator on modern and ancient warfare and contemporary politics for National Review, The Washington Times and other media outlets.
He is a professor emeritus of classics at California State University, Fresno, and is currently the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow in classics and military history at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.
He chairs the Hoover working group on Military History and Contemporary Conflict as well as being the general editor of the Hoover online journal, Strategika.
He has been a visiting professor at Hillsdale College where he teaches an intensive course on world, ancient or military history in the autumn semester, as the Wayne and Marcia Buske Distinguished Fellow in History since 2004.
Hanson is the author of Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power (2001), a New York Times best-selling book.
Hanson was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2007 by President George W. Bush, and was a presidential appointee in 2007–2008 on the American Battle Monuments Commission that oversees the cemeteries and monuments of U.S. war dead abroad.
Hanson is a student of current affairs, particularly regarding the U.S. in the Middle East, national defense issues and illegal immigration.
He is also a fifth-generation landowner, growing raisin plants on a family farm in Selma, California, where he resides, and is a commentator on social trends related to farming and agrarianism.
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Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu (born 21 October 1949) is an Israeli politician serving as the 9th and current Prime Minister of Israel since 2009, previously holding the position from 1996 to 1999.
Netanyahu also currently is a member of the Knesset and the Chairman of the Likud party.
Netanyahu is the first Israeli Prime Minister born in Israel after the establishment of the state.
Born in Tel Aviv to secular Jewish parents, Netanyahu joined the Israel Defense Forces shortly after the Six-Day War in 1967, and became a team leader in the Sayeret Matkal special forces unit.
Netanyahu took part in many missions, including Operation Inferno (1968), Operation Gift (1968) and Operation Isotope (1972), during which he was shot in the shoulder.
Netanyahu fought on the front lines in the War of Attrition and the Yom Kippur War in 1973, taking part in special forces raids along the Suez Canal, and then leading a commando assault deep into Syrian territory.
Netanyahu achieved the rank of captain before being discharged.
After graduating from MIT with Bachelor of Science (SB) and Master of Science (SM) degrees, Netanyahu was recruited as an economic consultant for the Boston Consulting Group.
Netanyahu returned to Israel in 1978 to found the Yonatan Netanyahu Anti-Terror Institute, named after his brother Yonatan Netanyahu, who died leading Operation Entebbe.
Netanyahu served as the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations from 1984 to 1988.
He became the leader of Likud in 1993 and won the 1996 elections, becoming Israel's youngest ever Prime Minister, serving his first term from June 1996 to July 1999.
Netanyahu moved from the political arena to the private sector after being defeated in the 1999 election for prime minister by Ehud Barak.
Netanyahu returned to politics in 2002 as Foreign Affairs Minister (2002–2003) and Finance Minister (2003–2005) in Ariel Sharon's governments, but he departed the government over disagreements regarding the Gaza disengagement plan.
As Minister of Finance, Netanyahu engaged in a major reform of the Israeli economy, which was credited by commentators as having significantly improved Israel's subsequent economic performance.
Netanyahu retook the Likud leadership in December 2005, after Sharon left to form a new party, Kadima.
In December 2006, Netanyahu became the official Leader of the Opposition in the Knesset and Chairman of Likud.
Following the 2009 parliamentary election, in which Likud placed second and right-wing parties won a majority, Netanyahu formed a coalition government.
After the victory in the 2013 elections, he became the second person to be elected to the position of Prime Minister for a third term, after Israel's founder David Ben-Gurion.
In March 2015, Netanyahu was elected to his fourth term as prime minister.
Netanyahu has been elected Prime Minister of Israel four times, matching David Ben-Gurion's record.
Netanyahu is the only prime minister in Israel's history to have been elected three times in a row.
Netanyahu is currently the second longest-serving Prime Minister in Israel's history after David Ben-Gurion, and if his current government lasts a full term, upon its completion he will become the longest-serving Prime Minister in the history of Israel.
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Germany is the largest national economy in Europe, the fourth-largest by nominal GDP in the world, and fifth by GDP (PPP).
The country is a founding member of the European Union and the Eurozone.
The economic model of Germany is based on the concept of the social market economy.
In 2014, Germany recorded the highest trade surplus in the world worth $285 billion, making it the biggest capital exporter globally.
Germany is the third largest exporter in the world with 1.13 trillion euros ($1.28 trillion) in goods and services exported in 2014.
The service sector contributes around 70% of the total GDP, industry 29.1%, and agriculture 0.9%.
Exports account for 41% of national output.
The top 10 exports of Germany are vehicles, machineries, chemical goods, electronic products, electrical equipments, pharmaceuticals, transport equipments, basic metals, food products, and rubber and plastics.
Germany is rich in timber, iron ore, potash, salt, uranium, nickel, copper and natural gas.
Energy in Germany is sourced predominantly by fossil fuels (50%), followed by nuclear power second, then gas, wind, biomass (wood and biofuels), hydro and solar.
Germany is the first major industrialized nation to commit to the renewable energy transition called Energiewende.
Germany is the leading producer of wind turbines in the world.
Renewables now produce over 27% of electricity consumed in Germany.
99 percent of all German companies belong to the German "Mittelstand," small and medium-sized enterprises, which are mostly family-owned.
Of the world's 2000 largest publicly listed companies measured by revenue, the Fortune Global 2000, 53 are headquartered in Germany, with the Top 10 being Volkswagen, Allianz, Daimler, BMW, Siemens, BASF, Munich Re, E.ON, Bayer, and RWE.
Germany is the world's top location for trade fairs.
Around two thirds of the world's leading trade fairs take place in Germany.
The largest annual international trade fairs and congresses are held in several German cities such as Hanover, Frankfurt, Cologne and Düsseldorf.
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Christianity in China has a history going back to the 7th century during the Tang dynasty. Today, it comprises Catholics, Protestants, and a small number of Orthodox Christians. Although its lineage in China is not as ancient as the institutional religions of Taoism, Mahayana Buddhism and Confucianism, Christianity has existed in China since at least the seventh century and has gained influence over the past 200 years.
In recent years, the number of Chinese Christians has increased significantly, particularly since the easing of restrictions on religious activity during economic reforms in the late 1970s; Christians were 4 million before 1949 (3 million Catholics and 1 million Protestants), and are in the tens of millions today. Various statistical analyses have found that between 2% and 4% of the Chinese identify as Christian.
In many parts of China, the practice of religion continues to be tightly controlled by government authorities. Chinese over the age of 18 are only permitted to join officially sanctioned Christian groups registered with the government-approved Protestant Three-Self Church and China Christian Council, and Chinese Patriotic Catholic Church. On the other hand, many Christians practice in informal networks referred to as "house churches", the proliferation of which began in the 1950s when many Chinese Catholics and Protestants began to reject state-controlled structures purported to represent them. Members of such groups are said to represent the "silent majority" of Chinese Christians and represent many diverse theological traditions.
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The Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition (Spanish: Tribunal del Santo Oficio de la Inquisición), commonly known as the Spanish Inquisition (Inquisición española), was established in 1478 by Catholic Monarchs Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile.
It was intended to maintain Catholic orthodoxy in their kingdoms and to replace the Medieval Inquisition, which was under Papal control.
It became the most substantive of the three different manifestations of the wider Catholic Inquisition, along with the Roman Inquisition and Portuguese Inquisition.
The "Spanish Inquisition" may be defined broadly, operating in Spain and in all Spanish colonies and territories, which included the Canary Islands, the Spanish Netherlands, the Kingdom of Naples, and all Spanish possessions in North, Central, and South America.
According to modern estimates, around 150,000 people were prosecuted for various offenses during the three centuries of duration of the Spanish Inquisition, out of which between 3,000 and 5,000 were executed.
The Inquisition was originally intended primarily to identify heretics among those who converted from Judaism and Islam to Catholicism.
The regulation of the faith of newly converted Catholics was intensified after the royal decrees issued in 1492 and 1502 ordering Jews and Muslims to convert to Catholicism or leave Castile.
The Inquisition was not definitively abolished until 1834, during the reign of Isabella II, after a period of declining influence in the preceding century.
The Spanish Inquisition is often cited in popular literature and history as an example of religious intolerance and repression.
Some historians have come to conclude that many of the charges levied against the Inquisition are exaggerated, and are a result of the Black Legend produced by political and religious enemies of Spain, especially England.
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A health savings account (HSA) is a tax-advantaged medical savings account available to taxpayers in the United States who are enrolled in a high-deductible health plan (HDHP). The funds contributed to an account are not subject to federal income tax at the time of deposit. Unlike a flexible spending account (FSA), HSA funds roll over and accumulate year to year if they are not spent. HSAs are owned by the individual, which differentiates them from company-owned Health Reimbursement Arrangements (HRA) that are an alternate tax-deductible source of funds paired with either high-deductible health plans or standard health plans.
HSA funds may be used to pay for qualified medical expenses at any time without federal tax liability or penalty. Beginning in early 2011, over-the-counter medications could not be paid with an HSA without a doctor's prescription, although that requirement was lifted as of January 1, 2020. Withdrawals for non-medical expenses are treated very similarly to those in an individual retirement account (IRA) in that they may provide tax advantages if taken after retirement age, and they incur penalties if taken earlier. The accounts are a component of consumer-driven health care.
Proponents of HSAs believe that they are an important reform that will help reduce the growth of health care costs and increase the efficiency of the health care system. According to proponents, HSAs encourage saving for future health care expenses, allow the patient to receive needed care without a gatekeeper to determine what benefits are allowed, and make consumers more responsible for their own health care choices through the required high-deductible health plan. Opponents observe that the structure of HSAs complicates the decision of whether to obtain medical treatment, by setting it against tax liability and retirement-saving goals. There is also debate about consumer satisfaction with these plans.
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White nationalism is a type of nationalism (or pan-nationalism) which holds the belief that all white people constitute a single race, and which seeks to develop and maintain a single white national identity.
Its proponents identify with and are attached to the concept of a white nation.
White nationalists seek to ensure the survival of the white race, and the cultures of historically white states.
White nationalists hold that white people should maintain their numerical majority in majority-white countries, should maintain their political and economic dominance, and that their culture(s) should be celebrated and protected.
Many white nationalists believe that miscegenation, multiculturalism, the immigration of nonwhite people, and low birth rates among whites are threatening the existence of the white race, and some argue that all of these factors together amount to a form of white genocide.
White separatism and white supremacy are subgroups of white nationalism.
Separatists seek a white-only state; supremacists believe that white people are superior to nonwhite people, borrowing many ideas from Social Darwinism and Nazism.
Both subgroups generally avoid the term "supremacy" because it has negative connotations.
Critics argue that the term "white nationalism" and ideas such as white pride exist solely to provide a sanitized public face for white supremacy, and that most white nationalist groups promote racial violence.
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Beijing, formerly romanized as Peking, is the capital of the People's Republic of China, the world's third most populous city proper, and most populous capital city.
The city, located in northern China, is governed as a municipality under the direct administration of the central government, with 16 urban, suburban, and rural districts.
Beijing Municipality is surrounded by Hebei Province, with the exception of neighboring Tianjin Municipality to the southeast; together, the three divisions form the Jingjinji metropolitan region and the national capital region of China.
Beijing is an important world capital and global power city, and one of the world's leading centers for politics, economy and business, finance, education, culture, innovation and technology, architecture, language, and diplomacy.
A megacity, Beijing is the second largest Chinese city by urban population after Shanghai and is the nation's political, cultural, and educational center.
It is home to the headquarters of most of China's largest state-owned companies and houses the largest number of Fortune Global 500 companies in the world, as well as the world's four biggest financial institutions.
It is also a major hub for the national highway, expressway, railway, and high-speed rail networks.
The Beijing Capital International Airport has been the second busiest in the world by passenger traffic since 2010, and, as of 2016, the city's subway network is the busiest and second longest in the world.
Combining both modern and traditional architecture, Beijing is one of the oldest cities in the world, with a rich history dating back three millennia.
As the last of the Four Great Ancient Capitals of China, Beijing has been the political center of the country for most of the past eight centuries, and was the largest city in the world by population for much of the second millennium A.D.
Encyclopædia Britannica notes that "few cities in the world have served for so long as the political headquarters and cultural center of an area as immense as China."
With mountains surrounding the inland city on three sides, in addition to the old inner and outer city walls, Beijing was strategically poised and developed to be the residence of the emperor and thus was the perfect location for the imperial capital.
The city is renowned for its opulent palaces, temples, parks, gardens, tombs, walls and gates.
It has seven UNESCO World Heritage Sites — the Forbidden City, Temple of Heaven, Summer Palace, Ming Tombs, Zhoukoudian, and parts of the Great Wall and the Grand Canal — all popular locations for tourism.
Siheyuans, the city's traditional housing style, and hutongs, the narrow alleys between siheyuans, are major tourist attractions and are common in urban Beijing.
Many of Beijing's 91 universities consistently rank among the best in China, among which Peking University and Tsinghua University are ranked in the top 60 universities of the world.
Beijing CBD is a center for Beijing's economic expansion, with the ongoing or recently completed construction of multiple skyscrapers.
Beijing's Zhongguancun area is known as China's Silicon Valley and a center of innovation and technology entrepreneurship.
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Religion is a cultural system of behaviors and practices, world views, sacred texts, holy places, ethics, and societal organisation that relate humanity to what an anthropologist has called "an order of existence".
Different religions may or may not contain various elements, ranging from the "divine", "sacred things", "faith", a "supernatural being or supernatural beings" or "...some sort of ultimacy and transcendence that will provide norms and power for the rest of life."
Religious practices may include rituals, sermons, commemoration or veneration (of God or deities), sacrifices, festivals, feasts, trances, initiations, funerary services, matrimonial services, meditation, prayer, music, art, dance, public service, or other aspects of human culture.
Religions have sacred histories and narratives, which may be preserved in sacred scriptures, and symbols and holy places, that aim mostly to give a meaning to life.
Religions may contain symbolic stories, which are sometimes said by followers to be true, that have the side purpose of explaining the origin of life, the Universe, and other things.
Traditionally, faith, in addition to reason, has been considered a source of religious beliefs.
There are an estimated 10,000 distinct religions worldwide.
About 84% of the world's population is affiliated with one of the five largest religions, namely Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism or forms of folk religion.
With the onset of the modernization of and the scientific revolution in the western world, some aspects of religion have cumulatively been criticized.
Though the religiously unaffiliated, including atheism (the rejection of belief in the existence of deities) and agnosticism (the belief that the truth of certain claims – especially metaphysical and religious claims such as whether God, the divine or the supernatural exist – are unknown and perhaps unknowable), have grown globally, many of the unaffiliated still have various religious beliefs.
About 16% of the world's population is religiously unaffiliated.
The study of religion encompasses a wide variety of academic disciplines, including theology, comparative religion and social scientific studies.
Theories of religion offer various explanations for the origins and workings of religion.
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Toni Morrison (born: Chloe Ardelia Wofford) (February 18, 1931 – August 5, 2019) was an American novelist, essayist, editor, teacher and professor emeritus at Princeton University.
Morrison won the Pulitzer Prize and the American Book Award in 1988 for Beloved (1987).
The novel was adapted into a film of the same name (starring Oprah Winfrey and Danny Glover) in 1998.
Morrison was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993.
In 1996, the National Endowment for the Humanities selected her for the Jefferson Lecture, the U.S. federal government's highest honor for achievement in the humanities.
She was honored with the 1996 National Book Foundation's Medal of Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.
Morrison wrote the libretto for a new opera, Margaret Garner, first performed in 2005.
On May 29, 2012, President Barack Obama presented Morrison with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
In 2016, she received the PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction.
Morrison died after a short illness on August 5, 2019.
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Blood is a body fluid in humans and other animals that delivers necessary substances such as nutrients and oxygen to the cells and transports metabolic waste products away from those same cells.
In vertebrates, it is composed of blood cells suspended in blood plasma.
Plasma, which constitutes 55% of blood fluid, is mostly water (92% by volume), and contains proteins, glucose, mineral ions, hormones, carbon dioxide (plasma being the main medium for excretory product transportation), and blood cells themselves.
Albumin is the main protein in plasma, and it functions to regulate the colloidal osmotic pressure of blood.
The blood cells are mainly red blood cells (also called RBCs or erythrocytes), white blood cells (also called WBCs or leukocytes) and platelets (also called thrombocytes).
The most abundant cells in vertebrate blood are red blood cells.
These contain hemoglobin, an iron-containing protein, which facilitates oxygen transport by reversibly binding to this respiratory gas and greatly increasing its solubility in blood.
In contrast, carbon dioxide is mostly transported extracellularly as bicarbonate ion transported in plasma.
Vertebrate blood is bright red when its hemoglobin is oxygenated and dark red when it is deoxygenated.
Some animals, such as crustaceans and mollusks, use hemocyanin to carry oxygen, instead of hemoglobin.
Insects and some mollusks use a fluid called hemolymph instead of blood, the difference being that hemolymph is not contained in a closed circulatory system.
In most insects, this "blood" does not contain oxygen-carrying molecules such as hemoglobin because their bodies are small enough for their tracheal system to suffice for supplying oxygen.
Jawed vertebrates have an adaptive immune system, based largely on white blood cells.
White blood cells help to resist infections and parasites.
Platelets are important in the clotting of blood.
Arthropods, using hemolymph, have hemocytes as part of their immune system.
Blood is circulated around the body through blood vessels by the pumping action of the heart.
In animals with lungs, arterial blood carries oxygen from inhaled air to the tissues of the body, and venous blood carries carbon dioxide, a waste product of metabolism produced by cells, from the tissues to the lungs to be exhaled.
Medical terms related to blood often begin with hemo- or hemato- (also spelled haemo- and haemato-) from the Greek word αἷμα (haima) for "blood".
In terms of anatomy and histology, blood is considered a specialized form of connective tissue, given its origin in the bones and the presence of potential molecular fibers in the form of fibrinogen.
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Corporatism, also known as corporativism, is the sociopolitical organization of a society by major interest groups, known as corporate groups (as well as syndicates, or guilds) such as agricultural, business, ethnic, labour, military, patronage, or scientific affiliations, on the basis of their common interests.
The relevant adjective is corporatist (or corporativist), but the adjective corporate is also sometimes confusingly used, though it normally refers to the underlying interest groups (corporate groups), not their organization of society.
Corporatism is theoretically based on the interpretation of a community as an organic body, a living organism with different organs.
The term "corporatism" is based on the Latin root word corpus (plural corpora) meaning "body" or, in the case of Fascist Italy, on the word corporazione (derived from the aforementioned Latin word, with the meaning of "embodiment", "association"), the Italian name for what was known in Germanic Europe as a Medieval guild.
In 1881, Pope Leo XIII commissioned theologians and social thinkers to study corporatism and provide a definition for it.
In 1884, in Freiburg, the commission declared that corporatism was a "system of social organization that has at its base the grouping of men according to the community of their natural interests and social functions, and as true and proper organs of the state they direct and coordinate labor and capital in matters of common interest".
Corporatism is related to the sociological concept of structural functionalism.
Corporate social interaction is common within kinship groups such as families, clans and ethnicities.
In addition to humans, certain animal species like penguins exhibit strong corporate social organization.
Corporatist types of community and social interaction are common to many ideologies, including absolutism, capitalism, conservatism, fascism, liberalism, progressivism, reactionism and guild socialism.
Corporatism may also refer to economic tripartism, involving negotiations between business, labour and state interest groups to establish economic policy.
This is sometimes also referred to as neo-corporatism and is associated with social democracy.
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California is a U.S. state in the Pacific Region of the United States.
With 39.5 million residents, California is the most populous state in the United States and the third largest by area.
The state capital is Sacramento.
The Greater Los Angeles Area and the San Francisco Bay Area are the nation's second- and fifth-most populous urban regions, with 18.7 million and 8.8 million residents respectively.
Los Angeles is California's most populous city, and the country's second-most populous, after New York City.
California also has the nation's most populous county, Los Angeles County; its largest county by area, San Bernardino County; and its fifth most densely populated county, San Francisco.
California's $2.8 trillion economy is larger than that of any other state.
If it were a country, California would be the 5th largest economy in the world (larger than the U.K. or France), and the 36th most populous as of 2017.
The Greater Los Angeles Area and the San Francisco Bay Area are the nation's second- and third-largest urban economies ($1.253 trillion and $878 billion respectively as of 2017), after the New York City metropolitan area.
The San Francisco Bay Area PSA had the nation's highest GDP per capita in 2017 (~$99,000), and is home to four of the world's ten largest companies by market capitalization and four of the world's ten richest people.
California is considered a global trendsetter in popular culture, innovation, and politics.
It is considered the origin of the American film industry, the hippie counterculture, the Internet, and the personal computer, among others.
The San Francisco Bay Area and the Greater Los Angeles Area are widely seen as the centers of the global technology and entertainment industries, respectively.
California has a very diverse economy: 58% of the state's economy is centered on finance, government, real estate services, technology, and professional, scientific and technical business services.
Although it accounts for only 1.5% of the state's economy, California's agriculture industry has the highest output of any U.S. state.
California is bordered by Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and the Mexican state of Baja California to the south.
The state's diverse geography ranges from the Pacific Coast in the west to the Sierra Nevada mountain range in the east, and from the redwood–Douglas fir forests in the northwest to the Mojave Desert in the southeast.
The Central Valley, a major agricultural area, dominates the state's center.
Although California is well-known for its warm Mediterranean climate, the large size of the state results in climates that vary from moist temperate rainforest in the north to arid desert in the interior, as well as snowy alpine in the mountains.
What is now California was first settled by various Native Californian tribes before being explored by a number of European expeditions during the 16th and 17th centuries.
The Spanish Empire then claimed it as part of Alta California in their New Spain colony.
The area became a part of Mexico in 1821 following its successful war for independence but was ceded to the United States in 1848 after the Mexican–American War.
The western portion of Alta California then was organized and admitted as the 31st state on September 9, 1850.
The California Gold Rush starting in 1848 led to dramatic social and demographic changes, with large-scale emigration from the east and abroad with an accompanying economic boom.
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Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (Persian: محمدرضا پهلوی, translit. Mohammad Reza Pahlavi) (26 October 1919 – 27 July 1980), also known as Mohammad Reza Shah (محمدرضاشاه Mohamad Rezā Ŝāh), was the last Shah of Iran from 16 September 1941 until his overthrow by the Iranian Revolution on 11 February 1979.
Mohammad Reza Shah took the title Shahanshah ("King of Kings") on 26 October 1967.
He was the second and last monarch of the House of Pahlavi.
Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi held several other titles, including that of Aryamehr ("Light of the Aryans") and Bozorg Arteshtaran ("Commander-in-Chief").
His dream of what he referred to as a "Great Civilisation" (Persian: تمدن بزرگ, translit. tamadon-e bozorg) in Iran led to a rapid industrial and military modernisation, as well as economic and social reforms.
Mohammad Reza came to power during World War II after an Anglo-Soviet invasion forced the abdication of his father, Reza Shah Pahlavi.
During Mohammad Reza's reign, the Iranian oil industry was briefly nationalised, under Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh, until a US and UK-backed coup d'état deposed Mosaddegh and brought back foreign oil firms.
Under Mohammad Reza's reign, Iran marked the anniversary of 2,500 years of continuous Persian monarchy since the founding of the Achaemenid Empire by Cyrus the Great – concurrent with this celebration, Mohammad Reza changed the benchmark of the Iranian calendar from the hegira to the beginning of the First Persian Empire, measured from Cyrus the Great's coronation.
Mohammad Reza also introduced the White Revolution, a series of economic, social and political reforms with the proclaimed intention of transforming Iran into a global power and modernising the nation by nationalising certain industries and granting women suffrage.
Mohammad Reza gradually lost support from the Shi'a clergy of Iran as well as the working class, particularly due to his strong policy of modernisation, laïcité, conflict with the traditional class of merchants known as bazaari, relations with Israel, and corruption issues surrounding himself, his family, and the ruling elite.
Various additional controversial policies were enacted, including the banning of the communist Tudeh Party and a general suppression of political dissent by Iran's intelligence agency, SAVAK.
According to official statistics, Iran had as many as 2,200 political prisoners in 1978, a number which multiplied rapidly as a result of the revolution.
Several other factors contributed to strong opposition to the Shah amongst certain groups within Iran, the most significant of which were US and UK support for his regime, and clashes with leftists and Islamists.
By 1979, political unrest had transformed into a revolution which, on 17 January, forced him to leave Iran.
Soon thereafter, the Iranian monarchy was formally abolished, and Iran was declared an Islamic republic led by Ruhollah Khomeini.
Facing likely execution should he return to Iran, he died in exile in Egypt, whose president, Anwar Sadat, had granted him asylum.
Due to his status as the last Shah of Iran, he is often known as simply "The Shah".
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On 3 December 1963, US President Lyndon B. Johnson posthumously awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States' highest civilian award, in recognition of the good relationship between Pope John XXIII and the United States of America. In his speech on 6 December 1963, Johnson said: "I have also determined to confer the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously on another noble man whose death we mourned 6 months ago: His Holiness, Pope John XXIII. He was a man of simple origins, of simple faith, of simple charity. In this exalted office he was still the gentle pastor. He believed in discussion and persuasion. He profoundly respected the dignity of man. He gave the world immortal statements of the rights of man, of the obligations of men to each other, of their duty to strive for a world community in which all can live in peace and fraternal friendship. His goodness reached across temporal boundaries to warm the hearts of men of all nations and of all faiths".
The citation for the medal reads:
His Holiness Pope John XXIII, dedicated servant of God. He brought to all citizens of the planet a heightened sense of the dignity of the individual, of the brotherhood of man, and of the common duty to build an environment of peace for all human kind.
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Neoconservatism (commonly shortened to neocon when labelling its adherents) is a political movement born in the United States during the 1960s among liberal hawks who became disenchanted with the increasingly pacifist foreign policy of the Democratic Party, and the growing New Left and Counterculture, in particular the Vietnam protests.
Some also began to question their liberal beliefs regarding domestic policies such as the Great Society.
Many of its adherents became politically famous during the Republican presidential administrations of the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and 2000s as neoconservatives peaked in influence during the administration of George W. Bush, when they played a major role in promoting and planning the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Prominent neoconservatives in the George W. Bush administration included Paul Wolfowitz, Elliott Abrams, Richard Perle and Paul Bremer.
While not identifying as neoconservatives, senior officials Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld listened closely to neoconservative advisers regarding foreign policy, especially the defense of Israel and the promotion of American influence in the Middle East.
Historically speaking, the term "neoconservative" refers to those who made the ideological journey from the anti-Stalinist left to the camp of American conservatism during the 1960s and 1970s.
Neoconservatives typically advocate the promotion of democracy (and American national interests) in international affairs, including by means of military force, and are known for espousing disdain for communism, and for political radicalism.
The movement had its intellectual roots in the Jewish monthly review magazine Commentary, published by the American Jewish Committee.
They spoke out against the New Left, and, in that way, helped define the movement.
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The Jews (Hebrew: יְהוּדִים Yehudim), also known as the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group originating from the Israelites, or Hebrews, of the Ancient Near East. Jewish ethnicity, nationhood and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation, while its observance varies from strict observance to complete nonobservance.
Jews originated as a national and religious group in the Middle East during the second millennium BCE, in the part of the Levant known as the Land of Israel. The Merneptah Stele appears to confirm the existence of a people of Israel, associated with the god El, somewhere in Canaan as far back as the 13th century BCE. The Israelites, as an outgrowth of the Canaanite population, consolidated their hold with the emergence of the Kingdom of Israel, and the Kingdom of Judah. Some consider that these Canaanite sedentary Israelites melded with incoming nomadic groups known as 'Hebrews'. Though few sources in the Bible mention the exilic periods in detail, the experience of diaspora life, from the Ancient Egyptian rule over the Levant, to Assyrian Captivity and Exile, to Babylonian Captivity and Exile, to Seleucid Imperial rule, to the Roman occupation, and the historical relations between Israelites and the homeland, became a major feature of Jewish history, identity and memory.
The worldwide Jewish population reached a peak of 16.7 million prior to World War II, but approximately 6 million Jews were systematically murdered during the Holocaust. Since then the population has slowly risen again, and as of 2014 was estimated at 14.2 million by the North American Jewish Data Bank, or less than 0.2% of the total world population (roughly one in every 514 people).
According to a report published in 2014, about 43% of all Jews reside in Israel (6.1 million), and 40% in the United States (5.7 million), with most of the remainder living in Europe (1.4 million) and Canada (0.4 million). These numbers include all those who self-identified as Jews in a socio-demographic study or were identified as such by a respondent in the same household. The exact world Jewish population, however, is difficult to measure. In addition to issues with census methodology, disputes among proponents of halakhic, secular, political, and ancestral identification factors regarding who is a Jew may affect the figure considerably depending on the source.
Despite their small percentage of the world's population, Jews have significantly influenced and contributed to human progress in many fields, including philosophy, ethics, literature, finance, art and architecture, music, theatre and cinema, medicine, physics, chemistry, and mathematics, both historically and in modern times.
Israel is the only country where Jews are a majority of the population. The modern State of Israel was established as a Jewish state and defines itself as such in its Declaration of Independence and Basic Laws. Its Law of Return grants the right of citizenship to any Jew who requests it.
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A drug is any substance (other than food that provides nutritional support) that, when inhaled, injected, smoked, consumed, absorbed via a patch on the skin, or dissolved under the tongue causes a temporary physiological (and often psychological) change in the body.
In pharmacology, a pharmaceutical drug, also called a medication or medicine, is a chemical substance used to treat, cure, prevent, or diagnose a disease or to promote well-being.
Traditionally, drugs were obtained through extraction from medicinal plants, but more recently also by organic synthesis.
Pharmaceutical drugs may be used for a limited duration, or on a regular basis for chronic disorders.
Pharmaceutical drugs are often classified into drug classes—groups of related drugs that have similar chemical structures, the same mechanism of action (binding to the same biological target), a related mode of action, and that are used to treat the same disease.
The Anatomical Therapeutic Chemical Classification System (ATC), the most widely used drug classification system, assigns drugs a unique ATC code, which is an alphanumeric code that assigns it to specific drug classes within the ATC system.
Another major classification system is the Biopharmaceutics Classification System.
This classifies drugs according to their solubility and permeability or absorption properties.
Psychoactive drugs are chemical substances that affect the function of the central nervous system, altering perception, mood or consciousness.
They include alcohol, a depressant (and a stimulant in small quantities), and the stimulants nicotine and caffeine.
These three are the most widely consumed psychoactive drugs worldwide, and are also considered recreational drugs since they are used for pleasure rather than medicinal purposes.
Other recreational drugs include hallucinogens, opiates and amphetamines, and some of these are also used in spiritual or religious settings.
Some drugs can cause addiction, and all drugs can have side effects.
Excessive use of stimulants can promote stimulant psychosis.
Many recreational drugs are illicit and international treaties such as the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs exist for the purpose of their prohibition.
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Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, KG, OM, CH, TD, PC, PCc, DL, FRS, RA (30 November 1874 – 24 January 1965) was a British statesman who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1940 to 1945 and again from 1951 to 1955.
As Prime Minister, Churchill led Britain to victory over Nazi Germany during World War II.
Churchill was also an officer in the British Army, a non-academic historian, and a writer; he won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1953 for his overall, lifetime body of work.
Churchill was born into the family of the Dukes of Marlborough, a branch of the Spencer family.
His father, Lord Randolph Churchill, was a charismatic politician who served as Chancellor of the Exchequer, and his mother, Jennie Jerome, was an American socialite.
As a young army officer, Churchill saw action in British India, the Anglo–Sudan War, and the Second Boer War.
He gained fame as a war correspondent and wrote books about his campaigns.
At the forefront of politics for fifty years, he held many political and cabinet positions.
Before the First World War, he served as President of the Board of Trade, Home Secretary, and First Lord of the Admiralty as part of Asquith's Liberal government.
During the war, Churchill continued to serve as First Lord of the Admiralty until the disastrous Gallipoli Campaign caused his departure from government.
He then briefly resumed active army service on the Western Front as commander of the 6th Battalion of the Royal Scots Fusiliers.
He then returned to government under Lloyd George as Minister of Munitions, Secretary of State for War, Secretary of State for Air, then Secretary of State for the Colonies.
After two years out of Parliament, he served as Chancellor of the Exchequer in Baldwin's Conservative government of 1924–1929, controversially returning the pound sterling in 1925 to the gold standard at its pre-war parity, a move widely seen as creating deflationary pressure on the UK economy.
Out of office and politically "in the wilderness" during the 1930s because of his opposition to increased home rule for India and his resistance to the 1936 abdication of Edward VIII, Churchill took the lead in warning about Nazi Germany and in campaigning for rearmament.
At the outbreak of the Second World War, he was again appointed First Lord of the Admiralty.
Following the resignation of Neville Chamberlain on 10 May 1940, Churchill became Prime Minister.
His speeches and radio broadcasts helped inspire British resistance, especially during the difficult days of 1940–41 when the British Commonwealth and Empire stood almost alone in its active opposition to Adolf Hitler.
He led Britain as Prime Minister until after the German surrender in 1945.
After the Conservative Party suffered an unexpected defeat in the 1945 general election, he became Leader of the Opposition to the Labour Government.
He publicly warned of an "Iron Curtain" of Soviet influence in Europe and promoted European unity.
After winning the 1951 election, Churchill again became Prime Minister.
His second term was preoccupied by foreign affairs, including the Malayan Emergency, Mau Mau Uprising, Korean War, and a UK-backed coup d'état in Iran.
Domestically, his government laid great emphasis on house-building.
Churchill suffered a serious stroke in 1953 and retired as Prime Minister in 1955, although he remained a Member of Parliament until 1964.
Upon his death (aged ninety) in 1965, Elizabeth II granted him the honour of a state funeral, which saw one of the largest assemblies of world statesmen in history.
Named the Greatest Briton of all time in a 2002 poll, Churchill is among the most influential people in British history, consistently ranking well in opinion polls of Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom.
His highly complex legacy continues to stimulate intense debate amongst writers and historians.
On 9 April 1963, Churchill was the first of only eight people to be made an honorary citizen of the United States.
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Israeli law is based mostly on a common law legal system, though it also reflects the diverse history of the territory of the State of Israel throughout the last hundred years (which was at various times prior to independence under Ottoman, then British sovereignty), as well as the legal systems of its major religious communities.
The Israeli legal system is based on common law, which also incorporates facets of civil law.
The Israeli Declaration of Independence asserted that a formal constitution would be written, though it has been continuously postponed since 1950.
Instead, the Basic Laws of Israel (Hebrew: חוקי היסוד, ħuqey ha-yesod) function as the country's constitutional laws.
Statutes enacted by the Knesset, particularly the Basic Laws, provide a framework which is enriched by political precedent and jurisprudence.
Foreign and historical influences on modern-day Israeli law are varied and include the Mecelle (Hebrew: מג'לה; the civil code of the Ottoman Empire) and German civil law, religious law (Jewish Halakha and Muslim Sharia; mostly pertaining in the area of family law), and British common law.
The Israeli courts have been influenced in recent years by American Law and Canadian Law, and to a lesser extent by Continental Law (mostly from Germany).
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Coma is a state of unconsciousness in which a person cannot be awakened; fails to respond normally to painful stimuli, light, or sound; lacks a normal wake-sleep cycle; and does not initiate voluntary actions.
A person in a state of coma is described as being comatose.
A comatose state may derive from natural causes, or may be medically induced.
A comatose person exhibits a complete absence of wakefulness and is unable to consciously feel, speak, hear, or move.
Clinically, a coma can be defined as the inability to consistently follow a one-step command.
It can also be defined as a score of ≤ 8 on the Glasgow Coma Scale lasting ≥ 6 hours.
For a patient to maintain consciousness, two important neurological components must function.
The first is the cerebral cortex—the gray matter that forms the outer layer of the brain.
The other is a structure located in the brainstem, called reticular activating system (RAS).
Injury to either or both of these components is sufficient to cause a patient to experience a coma.
The cerebral cortex is a group of tight, dense, "gray matter" composed of the nuclei of the neurons whose axons then form the "white matter," and is responsible for perception, relay of the sensory input via the thalamic pathway, and many other neurological functions, including complex thinking.
RAS, on the other hand, is a more primitive structure in the brainstem which includes the reticular formation (RF).
The RAS area of the brain has two tracts, the ascending and descending tract.
Made up of a system of acetylcholine-producing neurons, the ascending track, or ascending reticular activating system (ARAS), works to arouse and wake up the brain, from the RF, through the thalamus, and then finally to the cerebral cortex.
A failure in ARAS functioning may thus lead to a coma.
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Liu Xiaobo (Chinese: 刘晓波) (28 December 1955 – 13 July 2017) was a Chinese writer, literary critic, human rights activist, philosopher and Nobel Peace Prize laureate who called for political reforms and was involved in campaigns to end communist one-party rule in China.
Some referred to him as "China's Nelson Mandela."
He was incarcerated as a political prisoner in Jinzhou, Liaoning.
On 26 June 2017, he was granted medical parole after being diagnosed with liver cancer, and he died on 13 July 2017.
Liu rose to fame in literary circles in the 1980s with his literary critiques, and he eventually became a visiting scholar at several overseas universities.
He returned to China to support the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, and was imprisoned for the first time from 1989 to 1991, again from 1995 to 1996, and yet again from 1996 to 1999 for his involvement in the democracy and human rights movement.
He served as the President of the Independent Chinese PEN Center, from 2003 to 2007.
He was also the president of Minzhu Zhongguo (Democratic China) magazine since the mid-1990s.
On 8 December 2008, Liu was detained due to his participation with the Charter 08 manifesto.
He was formally arrested on 23 June 2009 on suspicion of "inciting subversion of state power".
He was tried on the same charges on 23 December 2009, and sentenced to eleven years' imprisonment and two years' deprivation of political rights on 25 December 2009.
During his fourth prison term, Liu was awarded the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize for "his long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China."
Liu was the first Chinese citizen to be awarded a Nobel Prize of any kind while residing in China.
He was the third person to have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize while in prison or detention, after Germany's Carl von Ossietzky (1935) and Burma's Aung San Suu Kyi (1991).
He was the second person to have been denied the right to have a representative collect the Nobel Prize for him, as well as the second to die in custody, with the first being Ossietzky, who died in Westend hospital in Berlin-Charlottenburg after being detained in a Nazi concentration camp.
Berit Reiss-Andersen, chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, blamed the Chinese communist regime for his death and said that "Liu Xiaobo had contributed to the fraternity of peoples through his non-violent resistance against the oppressive actions of the Communist regime in China."
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The heart is a muscular organ in most animals, which pumps blood through the blood vessels of the circulatory system.
Blood provides the body with oxygen and nutrients, as well as assisting in the removal of metabolic wastes.
In humans, the heart is located between the lungs, in the middle compartment of the chest.
In humans, other mammals, and birds, the heart is divided into four chambers: upper left and right atria; and lower left and right ventricles.
Commonly, the right atrium and ventricle are referred to together as the right heart, and their left counterparts as the left heart.
Fish, in contrast, have two chambers, an atrium and a ventricle, while reptiles have three chambers.
In a healthy heart, blood flows one way through the heart (due to heart valves, which prevent backflow).
The heart is enclosed in a protective sac, the pericardium, which also contains a small amount of fluid.
The wall of the heart is made up of three layers: epicardium, myocardium, and endocardium.
The heart pumps blood with a rhythm determined by a group of pacemaking cells in the sinoatrial node.
These generate a current that causes contraction of the heart, traveling through the atrioventricular node and along the conduction system of the heart.
The heart receives blood low in oxygen from the systemic circulation, which enters the right atrium from the superior and inferior venae cavae, and passes to the right ventricle.
From here, it is pumped into the pulmonary circulation, through the lungs (where it receives oxygen and gives off carbon dioxide).
Oxygenated blood then returns to the left atrium, passes through the left ventricle, and is pumped out through the aorta to the systemic circulation − where the oxygen is used and metabolized to carbon dioxide.
The heart beats at a resting rate close to 72 beats per minute.
Exercise temporarily increases the rate, but lowers resting heart rate in the long term, and is good for heart health.
Cardiovascular diseases (CVD) are the most common cause of death globally (as of 2008), accounting for 30% of all deaths.
Of these, more than three quarters are a result of coronary artery disease and stroke.
Risk factors include: smoking, being overweight, little exercise, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and poorly controlled diabetes, among others.
Cardiovascular diseases frequently do not have symptoms, or may cause chest pain or shortness of breath.
Diagnosis of heart disease is often done by the taking of a medical history, listening to the heart-sounds with a stethoscope, ECG, and ultrasound.
Specialists who focus on diseases of the heart are called cardiologists, although many specialties of medicine may be involved in treatment.
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China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a unitary sovereign state in East Asia and the world's most populous country, with a population of around 1.404 billion.
Covering approximately 9,600,000 square kilometers (3,700,000 sq mi), it is the third- or fourth-largest country by total area, depending on the source consulted.
China also has the most neighbor countries in the world.
Governed by the Communist Party of China, it exercises jurisdiction over 22 provinces, five autonomous regions, four direct-controlled municipalities (Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, and Chongqing), and the special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macau.
China emerged as one of the world's earliest civilizations, in the fertile basin of the Yellow River in the North China Plain.
For millennia, China's political system was based on hereditary monarchies, or dynasties, beginning with the semi-legendary Xia dynasty in the 21st century BCE.
Since then, China has expanded, fractured, and re-unified numerous times.
In the 3rd century BCE, the Qin unified the core of China and established the first Chinese empire.
The succeeding Han dynasty saw some of the most advanced technology at that time, including papermaking and the compass, along with agricultural and medical improvements.
The invention of gunpowder and printing in the Tang dynasty completed the Four Great Inventions.
Tang culture spread widely in Asia, as the new maritime Silk Route brought traders to as far as Mesopotamia and Somalia.
Dynastic rule ended in 1912 with the Xinhai Revolution, as a republic replaced the Qing dynasty.
The Chinese Civil War led to the break up of the country in 1949, with the victorious Communist Party of China founding the People’s Republic of China on the mainland while the losing Kuomintang retreated to Taiwan, a dispute which is still unresolved.
Since the introduction of economic reforms in 1978, China's economy has been one of the world's fastest-growing.
As of 2016, it is the world's second-largest economy by nominal GDP and largest by purchasing power parity (PPP).
China is also the world's largest exporter and second-largest importer of goods.
China is a recognized nuclear weapons state and has the world's largest standing army and second-largest defense budget.
The PRC is a member of the United Nations, as it replaced the ROC as a permanent member of the UN Security Council in 1971.
China is also a member of numerous formal and informal multilateral organizations, including the WTO, APEC, BRICS, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), the BCIM and the G20.
China is a great power and a major regional power within Asia, and has been characterized as a potential superpower.
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Fascism is a form of radical authoritarian nationalism that came to prominence in early 20th-century Europe, influenced by national syndicalism.
Fascism originated in Italy during World War I and spread to other European countries.
Fascism opposes liberalism, Marxism and anarchism and is usually placed on the far-right within the traditional left–right spectrum.
Fascists saw World War I as a revolution that brought massive changes in the nature of war, society, the state, and technology.
The advent of total war and total mass mobilization of society had broken down the distinction between civilian and combatant.
A "military citizenship" arose in which all citizens were involved with the military in some manner during the war.
The war had resulted in the rise of a powerful state capable of mobilizing millions of people to serve on the front lines and providing economic production and logistics to support them, as well as having unprecedented authority to intervene in the lives of citizens.
Fascists believe that liberal democracy is obsolete, and they regard the complete mobilization of society under a totalitarian one-party state as necessary to prepare a nation for armed conflict and to respond effectively to economic difficulties.
Such a state is led by a strong leader—such as a dictator and a martial government composed of the members of the governing fascist party—to forge national unity and maintain a stable and orderly society.
Fascism rejects assertions that violence is automatically negative in nature, and views political violence, war, and imperialism as means that can achieve national rejuvenation.
Fascists advocate a mixed economy, with the principal goal of achieving autarky through protectionist and interventionist economic policies.
Since the end of World War II in 1945, few parties have openly described themselves as fascist, and the term is instead now usually used pejoratively by political opponents.
The descriptions neo-fascist or post-fascist are sometimes applied more formally to describe parties of the far right with ideologies similar to, or rooted in, 20th century fascist movements.
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The history of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people (LGBT) in Russia and its historical antecedents (i.e., the Soviet Union, the Russian Empire) has largely been influenced by the political leanings and levels of liberalism or tolerance of the rulers.
It has also been influenced by the historically prohibitive nature of Russian Orthodox religiosity regarding sexuality.
Homosexuality has been documented in Russia for centuries.
The earliest documented bans on homosexuality date to the early-mid 17th century.
Gregory Karpovich Kotoshikhin recorded during the reign of Czar Alexis Mikhailovich that male homosexuals were put to death, and also states that female homosexuals were also put to death by burning.
Government attempts at preventing homosexual practices began in the 18th century, with Tsar Peter the Great banning homosexual relations in the armed forces in 1716, as a part of his attempt to modernise the country.
In 1832 further laws were enacted criminalising certain sexual acts between two males; however, an LGBT subculture developed in Russia during that century, with many significant Russians being openly homosexual or bisexual.
In 1917, the Russian Revolution saw the overthrow of the Tsarist government, and the subsequent foundation of the Russian SFSR, the world's first socialist state, followed by the founding of the Soviet Union after the end of the civil war in 1922.
The new Communist Party government eradicated the old laws regarding sexual relations, effectively legalising homosexual activity within Russia, although it remained illegal in other former territories of the Russian Empire.
Under Lenin's leadership, openly gay people were allowed to serve in government.
In 1933, the Soviet government, under the leadership of Joseph Stalin, recriminalised homosexual activity with punishments of up to five years' hard labor.
Following Stalin's death, there was a liberalisation of attitudes toward sexual issues in the Soviet Union, but homosexual acts remained illegal.
Nonetheless, homosexual culture became increasingly visible, particularly following the glasnost policy of Mikhail Gorbachev's government in the late 1980s.
Following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the foundation of the Russian Federation in 1991, the Council of Europe pressured the new administration to legalize homosexuality, leading President Boris Yeltsin to do so in 1993.
However, there are several restrictions on activities related to homosexuality.
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Gold is a chemical element with symbol Au (from Latin: aurum) and atomic number 79.
In its purest form, it is a bright, slightly reddish yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile metal.
Chemically, gold is a transition metal and a group 11 element.
It is one of the least reactive chemical elements and is solid under standard conditions.
Gold often occurs in free elemental (native) form, as nuggets or grains, in rocks, in veins, and in alluvial deposits.
It occurs in a solid solution series with the native element silver (as electrum) and also naturally alloyed with copper and palladium.
Less commonly, it occurs in minerals as gold compounds, often with tellurium (gold tellurides).
Gold is thought to have been produced in supernova nucleosynthesis, from the collision of neutron stars, and to have been present in the dust from which the Solar System formed.
Because the Earth was molten when it was formed, almost all of the gold present in the early Earth probably sank into the planetary core.
Therefore, most of the gold that is in the Earth's crust and mantle is thought to have been delivered to Earth later, by asteroid impacts during the Late Heavy Bombardment, about 4 billion years ago.
Gold is resistant to most acids, though it does dissolve in aqua regia, a mixture of nitric acid and hydrochloric acid, which forms a soluble tetrachloroaurate anion.
Gold is insoluble in nitric acid, which dissolves silver and base metals, a property that has long been used to refine gold and to confirm the presence of gold in metallic objects, giving rise to the term acid test.
Gold also dissolves in alkaline solutions of cyanide, which are used in mining and electroplating.
Gold dissolves in mercury, forming amalgam alloys, but this is not a chemical reaction.
Historically, the value of gold was rooted in its relative rarity, easy handling and minting, easy smelting and fabrication, resistance to corrosion and other chemical reactions (nobility) and its distinctive color.
As a precious metal, gold has been used for coinage, jewelry, and other arts throughout recorded history.
In the past, a gold standard was often implemented as a monetary policy, but gold coins ceased to be minted as a circulating currency in the 1930s, and the world gold standard was abandoned for a fiat currency system after 1976.
A total of 186,700 tonnes of gold exists above ground, as of 2015.
The world consumption of new gold produced is about 50% in jewelry, 40% in investments, and 10% in industry.
Gold's high malleability, ductility, resistance to corrosion and most other chemical reactions, and conductivity of electricity have led to its continued use in corrosion resistant electrical connectors in all types of computerized devices (its chief industrial use).
Gold is also used in infrared shielding, colored-glass production, gold leafing, and tooth restoration.
Certain gold salts are still used as anti-inflammatories in medicine.
As of 2014, the world's largest gold producer by far was China with 450 tonnes.
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Korea is a region in East Asia.
Since 1948, it has been divided between two distinct sovereign states: North Korea and South Korea.
Korea consists of the Korean Peninsula, Jeju Island, and several minor islands near the peninsula.
Korea is bordered by China to the northwest, Russia to the northeast, and neighbours Japan to the east by the Korea Strait and the Sea of Japan (East Sea).
Korea emerged as a singular political entity in 676 AD, after centuries of conflict among the Three Kingdoms of Korea, which were unified as Unified Silla to the south and Balhae to the north.
Unified Silla divided into three separate states during the Later Three Kingdoms period.
Goryeo, which had succeeded Goguryeo, defeated the two other states and united the Korean Peninsula.
Around the same time, Balhae collapsed and its last crown prince fled south to Goryeo.
Goryeo (also spelled as Koryŏ), whose name developed into the modern exonym "Korea", was a highly cultured state that created the world's first metal movable type in 1234.
However, multiple invasions by the Mongol Empire during the 13th century greatly weakened the nation, which eventually agreed to become a vassal state after decades of fighting.
Following military resistance under King Gongmin which ended Mongol political influence in Goryeo, severe political strife followed, and Goryeo eventually fell to a coup led by General Yi Seong-gye, who established Joseon in 1392.
The first 200 years of Joseon were marked by relative peace.
During this period, the Korean alphabet was created by Sejong the Great in the 15th century, and there was increasing influence of Confucianism.
During the later part of the dynasty, Korea's isolationist policy earned it the Western nickname of the "Hermit Kingdom".
By the late 19th century, the country became the object of imperial design by the Empire of Japan.
After the First Sino-Japanese War, despite the Korean Empire's effort to modernize, it was annexed by Japan in 1910 and ruled by Imperial Japan until the end of World War II in August 1945.
In 1945, the Soviet Union and the United States agreed on the surrender of Japanese forces in Korea in the aftermath of World War II, leaving Korea partitioned along the 38th parallel.
The North was under Soviet occupation and the South under U.S. occupation.
These circumstances soon became the basis for the division of Korea by the two superpowers, exacerbated by their inability to agree on the terms of Korean independence.
The Communist-inspired government in the North received backing from the Soviet Union in opposition to the pro-Western government in the South, leading to Korea's division into two political entities: North Korea (officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea), and South Korea (officially the Republic of Korea).
Tensions between the two resulted in the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950.
With involvement by foreign troops, the war ended in a stalemate in 1953, but without a formalized peace treaty.
This status contributes to the high tensions that continue to divide the peninsula.
Both governments of the two Koreas claim to be the sole legitimate government of the region.
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Asia is Earth's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the Eastern and Northern Hemispheres.
It shares the continental landmass of Eurasia with the continent of Europe and the continental landmass of Afro-Eurasia with both Europe and Africa.
Asia covers an area of 44,579,000 square kilometres (17,212,000 sq mi), about 30% of Earth's total land area and 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area.
The continent, which has long been home to the majority of the human population, was the site of many of the first civilizations.
Asia is notable not only for its overall size and population, but also for large and dense human settlements, as well as vast, barely populated regions.
Its 4.5 billion people constitute roughly 60% of the world's population.
In general terms, Asia is bounded on the east by the Pacific Ocean, on the south by the Indian Ocean and on the north by the Arctic Ocean.
The western boundary with Europe is a historical and cultural construct, as there is no clear physical and geographical separation between them.
The most commonly accepted boundaries place Asia to the east of the Suez Canal, the Ural River, and the Ural Mountains, and south of the Caucasus Mountains and the Caspian and Black Seas.
China and India alternated in being the largest economies in the world from 1 to 1800 CE.
China was a major economic power for thousands of years, and attracted many explorers and traders to the east.
For many others, the legendary wealth and prosperity of the ancient culture of India personified Asia, attracting European commerce, exploration and colonialism.
The accidental discovery of America by Columbus in search for India demonstrates this deep fascination.
The Silk Road became the main East-West trading route in the Asian hinterlands, while the Straits of Malacca stood as a major sea route.
Asia has exhibited economic dynamism (particularly East Asia) as well as robust population growth during the 20th century, but overall population growth has since fallen.
Asia was the birthplace of most of the world's mainstream religions including Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism (or Daoism), Jainism, Sikhism, Zoroastranism, as well as many other religions.
Given its size and diversity, the concept of Asia—a name dating back to classical antiquity—may actually have more to do with human geography than physical geography.
Asia varies greatly across and within its regions with regard to ethnic groups, cultures, environments, economics, historical ties and government systems.
It also has a mix of many different climates, ranging from the equatorial south via the hot deserts of the Middle East, temperate areas in the east and the continental centre, to vast sub-arctic and polar areas in Siberia.
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Yemen (Arabic: ٱلْيَمَن, romanized: al-Yaman), officially the Republic of Yemen, is a country in West Asia.
It is situated on the southern end of the Arabian Peninsula, and borders Saudi Arabia to the north and Oman to the northeast, and shares maritime borders with Eritrea, Djibouti and Somalia.
Yemen is the second-largest Arab sovereign state in the Arabian Peninsula, occupying 555,000 square kilometres (214,000 square miles), with a coastline stretching about 2,000 kilometres (1,200 miles).
Its constitutionally stated capital, and largest city, is Sanaa.
As of 2023, Yemen has an estimated population of 34.2 million.
In ancient times, Yemen was the home of the Sabaeans, a trading state that included parts of modern-day Ethiopia and Eritrea.
Later, in 275 AD, the Himyarite Kingdom was influenced by Judaism.
Christianity arrived in the fourth century.
Islam spread quickly in the seventh century, and Yemenite troops were crucial in the early Islamic conquests.
Several dynasties emerged in the 9th to 16th centuries, such as the Rasulid dynasty.
The country was divided between the Ottoman and British empires in the 1800s.
The Zaydi Mutawakkilite Kingdom of Yemen was established after World War I, before the creation of the Yemen Arab Republic in 1962.
South Yemen remained a British protectorate - as the Aden Protectorate - until 1967, when it became an independent state, and later, a Marxist-Leninist state.
The two Yemeni states united to form the modern Republic of Yemen (al-Jumhūrīyah al-Yamanīyah) in 1990.
President Ali Abdullah Saleh was the first president of the new republic, until his resignation in 2012 in the wake of the Arab Spring.
Since 2011, Yemen has been in a state of political crisis, starting with street protests against poverty, unemployment, corruption, and president Saleh's plan to amend Yemen's constitution and eliminate the presidential term limit.
Since then, the country has been in a civil war (alongside the Saudi Arabian-led military intervention, aimed at restoring Hadi's government against Iran-backed Houthi rebels) with several proto-state entities claiming to govern Yemen: the government of President Hadi - which became the Presidential Leadership Council in 2022, the Houthi movement's Supreme Political Council, and the separatist Southern Movement's Southern Transitional Council.
The ongoing humanitarian crisis and conflict has received widespread criticism for having a dramatic worsening effect on Yemen's humanitarian situation, that some say has reached the level of a "humanitarian disaster" - and some have even labelled it as a genocide.
Yemen is a member of the Arab League, the United Nations, the Non-Aligned Movement and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation.
It is one of the least developed countries, referring to its numerous "severe structural impediments to sustainable development", and has been the poorest country in the MENA region in recent history.
In 2019, the United Nations reported that Yemen is the country with the most people in need of humanitarian aid, about 24 million people, or just under 75% of its population at the time.
As of 2020, the country is placed the highest in the Fragile State Index, the second worst in the Global Hunger Index, surpassed only by the Central African Republic, and has the lowest Human Development Index out of all non-African countries.
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The United States Navy (USN) is the naval warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the seven uniformed services of the United States.
The U.S. Navy is the largest, most capable navy in the world, with the highest combined battle fleet tonnage.
The U.S. Navy has the world's largest aircraft carrier fleet, with eleven in service, two in the reserve fleet, and two new carriers under construction.
The service has 322,421 personnel on active duty and 107,577 in the Navy Reserve.
It has 276 deployable combat vessels and more than 3,700 operational aircraft as of June 2017.
The U.S. Navy traces its origins to the Continental Navy, which was established during the American Revolutionary War and was effectively disbanded as a separate entity shortly thereafter.
It played a major role in the American Civil War by blockading the Confederacy and seizing control of its rivers.
It played the central role in the World War II defeat of Imperial Japan.
The 21st century U.S. Navy maintains a sizable global presence, deploying in strength in such areas as the Western Pacific, the Mediterranean, and the Indian Ocean.
It is a blue-water navy with the ability to project force onto the littoral regions of the world, engage in forward deployments during peacetime and rapidly respond to regional crises, making it a frequent actor in U.S. foreign and military policy.
The Navy is administratively managed by the Department of the Navy, which is headed by the civilian Secretary of the Navy.
The Department of the Navy is itself a division of the Department of Defense, which is headed by the Secretary of Defense.
The Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) is a four-star admiral and the senior naval officer of the Department of the Navy.
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Slavery is any system in which principles of property law are applied to people, allowing individuals to own, buy and sell other individuals, as a de jure form of property.
A slave is unable to withdraw unilaterally from such an arrangement and works without remuneration.
Many scholars now use the term chattel slavery to refer to this specific sense of legalised, de jure slavery.
In a broader sense, however, the word slavery may also refer to any situation in which an individual is de facto forced to work against their own will.
Scholars also use the more generic terms such as unfree labour or forced labour to refer to such situations.
However, and especially under slavery in broader senses of the word, slaves may have some rights and protections according to laws or customs.
Slavery began to exist before written history, in many cultures.
A person could become enslaved from the time of their birth, capture, or purchase.
While slavery was institutionally recognized by most societies, it has now been outlawed in all recognized countries, the last being Mauritania in 2007.
Nevertheless, there are an estimated 45.8 million people subject to some form of modern slavery worldwide.
The most common form of the slave trade is now commonly referred to as human trafficking.
Chattel slavery is also still practiced by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
In other areas, slavery (or unfree labour) continues through practices such as debt bondage, the most widespread form of slavery today, serfdom, domestic servants kept in captivity, certain adoptions in which children are forced to work as slaves, child soldiers, and forced marriage.
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An ethnic conflict is a conflict between two or more contending ethnic groups.
While the source of the conflict may be political, social, economic or religious, the individuals in conflict must expressly fight for their ethnic group's position within society.
This final criterion differentiates ethnic conflict from other forms of struggle.
Ethnic conflict does not necessarily have to be violent.
In a multi-ethnic society where freedom of speech is protected, ethnic conflict can be an everyday feature of plural democracies.
For example, ethnic conflict might be a non-violent struggle for resources divided among ethnic groups.
However, the subject of the confrontation must be either directly or symbolically linked with an ethnic group.
In healthy multi-ethnic democracies, these conflicts are usually institutionalized and "channeled through parliaments, assemblies and bureaucracies or through non-violent demonstrations and strikes."
While democratic countries cannot always prevent ethnic conflict flaring up into violence, institutionalized ethnic conflict does ensure that ethnic groups can articulate their demands in a peaceful manner, which reduces the likelihood of violence.
On the other hand, in authoritarian systems, ethnic minorities are often unable to express their grievances.
Grievances are instead allowed to fester which might lead to long phases of ethnic silence followed by a violent outburst.
Therefore, ethnic peace is an absence of violence, not an absence of conflict.
Another consequence is that violent ethnic rebellions often result in political rights for previously marginalized groups.
Academic explanations of ethnic conflict generally fall into one of three schools of thought: primordialist, instrumentalist or constructivist.
Recently, several political scientists have argued for either top-down or bottom-up explanations for ethnic conflict.
Intellectual debate has also focused on whether ethnic conflict has become more prevalent since the end of the Cold War, and on devising ways of managing conflicts, through instruments such as consociationalism and federalisation.
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Sexual harassment is bullying or coercion of a sexual nature and the unwelcome or inappropriate promise of rewards in exchange for sexual favors.
Sexual harassment includes a range of actions from mild transgressions to sexual abuse or assault.
A harasser may be the victim's supervisor, a supervisor in another area, a co-worker, or a client or customer.
Harassers or victims may be of any gender.
In most modern legal contexts, sexual harassment is illegal.
Laws surrounding sexual harassment generally do not prohibit simple teasing, offhand comments, or minor isolated incidents—that is due to the fact that they do not impose a "general civility code".
In the workplace, harassment may be considered illegal when it is frequent or severe thereby creating a hostile or offensive work environment or when it results in an adverse employment decision (such as the victim's demotion, firing or quitting).
The legal and social understanding of sexual harassment, however, varies by culture.
Sexual harassment by an employer is a form of illegal employment discrimination.
For many businesses or organizations, preventing sexual harassment and defending employees from sexual harassment charges have become key goals of legal decision-making.
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Sweating sickness, also known as the sweats, English sweating sickness, English sweat, or sudor anglicus in Latin, was a mysterious and contagious disease that struck England - and later continental Europe - in a series of epidemics, beginning in 1485.
Other major outbreaks of the English sweating sickness occurred in 1508, 1517, and 1528, with the last outbreak in 1551, after which the disease apparently vanished.
The onset of symptoms was sudden, with death often occurring within hours.
Sweating sickness epidemics were unique compared with other disease outbreaks of the time: whereas other epidemics were typically urban and long-lasting, cases of sweating sickness spiked and receded very quickly, and heavily affected rural populations.
Its cause remains unknown, although it has been suggested that an unknown species of hantavirus was responsible.
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Pope Paul VI (Latin: Paulus VI; Italian: Paolo VI), born Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini (26 September 1897 – 6 August 1978), reigned as Pope from 21 June 1963 to his death in 1978.
Succeeding Pope John XXIII, he continued the Second Vatican Council which he closed in 1965, implementing its numerous reforms, and fostered improved ecumenical relations with Eastern Orthodox and Protestants, which resulted in many historic meetings and agreements.
Montini served in the Vatican's Secretariat of State from 1922 to 1954.
While in the Secretariat of State, Montini and Domenico Tardini were considered as the closest and most influential colleagues of Pope Pius XII, who in 1954 named him Archbishop of Milan, the largest Italian diocese.
Montini later became the Secretary of the Italian Bishops Conference.
John XXIII elevated him to the College of Cardinals in 1958, and after the death of John XXIII, Montini was considered one of his most likely successors.
Upon his election to the papacy, Montini took the pontifical name Paul VI (the first to take the name "Paul" since 1605) to indicate a renewed worldwide mission to spread the message of Christ, following the example of the Apostle St. Paul.
He re-convened the Second Vatican Council, which was automatically closed with the death of John XXIII, and gave it priority and direction.
After the council had concluded its work, Paul VI took charge of the interpretation and implementation of its mandates, often walking a thin line between the conflicting expectations of various groups within Catholicism.
The magnitude and depth of the reforms affecting all fields of Church life during his pontificate exceeded similar reform policies of his predecessors and successors.
Paul VI was a Marian devotee, speaking repeatedly to Marian congresses and mariological meetings, visiting Marian shrines and issuing three Marian encyclicals.
Following his famous predecessor Saint Ambrose of Milan, he named Mary as the Mother of the Church during the Second Vatican Council.
Paul VI sought dialogue with the world, with other Christians, other religions, and atheists, excluding nobody.
He saw himself as a humble servant for a suffering humanity and demanded significant changes of the rich in North America and Europe in favour of the poor in the Third World.
His positions on birth control, promulgated most famously in the 1968 encyclical Humanae vitae, and other political issues, were often controversial, especially in Western Europe and North America.
Pope Benedict XVI declared that the late pontiff lived a life of heroic virtue and conferred the title of Venerable upon him.
Pope Francis beatified him on 19 October 2014 after the recognition of a miracle attributed to his intercession.
His liturgical feast is celebrated on the date of his birth on 26 September.
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The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), formerly the Bureau of Investigation (BOI), is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States, and its principal federal law enforcement agency.
Operating under the jurisdiction of the US Department of Justice, the FBI is also a member of the U.S. Intelligence Community and reports to both the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence.
A leading U.S. counter-terrorism, counterintelligence, and criminal investigative organization, the FBI has jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crimes.
Although many of the FBI's functions are unique, its activities in support of national security are comparable to those of the British MI5 and the Russian FSB.
Unlike the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which has no law enforcement authority and is focused on intelligence collection abroad, the FBI is primarily a domestic agency, maintaining 56 field offices in major cities throughout the United States, and more than 400 resident agencies in lesser cities and areas across the nation.
At an FBI field office, a senior-level FBI officer concurrently serves as the representative of the Director of National Intelligence.
Despite its domestic focus, the FBI also maintains a significant international footprint, operating 60 Legal Attache (LEGAT) offices and 15 sub-offices in US embassies and consulates across the globe.
These foreign offices exist primarily for the purpose of coordination with foreign security services and do not usually conduct unilateral operations in the host countries.
The FBI can and does at times carry out secret activities overseas, just as the CIA has a limited domestic function; these activities generally require coordination across government agencies.
The FBI was established in 1908 as the Bureau of Investigation, the BOI or BI for short.
Its name was changed to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in 1935.
The FBI headquarters is the J. Edgar Hoover Building, located in Washington, D.C.
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North Korea, officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (abbreviated as DPRK or DPR Korea), is a sovereign state in East Asia constituting the northern part of the Korean Peninsula.
Officially, its territory consists of the whole Korean Peninsula and its adjacent islands.
Pyongyang is the nation's capital and largest city.
To the north and northwest, the country is bordered by China and by Russia along the Amnok (known as the Yalu in China) and Tumen rivers; it is bordered to the south by South Korea, with the heavily fortified Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) separating the two.
Nevertheless, North Korea, like its southern counterpart, claims to be the legitimate government of the entire peninsula.
In 1910, Korea was annexed by Japan.
After the Japanese surrender at the end of World War II in 1945, Korea was divided into two zones, with the north occupied by the Soviets and the south occupied by the Americans.
Negotiations on reunification failed, and in 1948, separate governments were formed: the socialist Democratic People's Republic of Korea in the north, and the capitalist Republic of Korea in the south.
An invasion initiated by North Korea led to the Korean War (1950–1953).
The Korean Armistice Agreement brought about a ceasefire, but no peace treaty was signed.
North Korea officially describes itself as a self-reliant, socialist state and formally holds elections.
Various media outlets have called it Stalinist, particularly noting the elaborate cult of personality around Kim Il-sung and his family.
The Workers' Party of Korea (WPK), led by a member of the ruling family, holds power in the state and leads the Democratic Front for the Reunification of the Fatherland of which all political officers are required to be members.
Juche, an ideology of national self-reliance, was introduced into the constitution in 1972.
The means of production are owned by the state through state-run enterprises and collectivized farms.
Most services such as healthcare, education, housing and food production are subsidized or state-funded.
From 1994 to 1998, North Korea suffered a famine that resulted in the deaths of between 240,000 and 420,000 people, and the country continues to struggle with food production.
A sizeable amount of the population is thought to suffer from malnutrition, parasite infestations and food and waterborne diseases.
North Korea follows Songun, or "military-first" policy.
It is the country with the highest number of military and paramilitary personnel, with a total of 9,495,000 active, reserve and paramilitary personnel.
Its active duty army of 1.21 million is the fourth largest in the world, after China, the United States and India.
It possesses nuclear weapons.
North Korea is an atheist state with no official religion, and public religion is discouraged or persecuted.
Both North Korea and South Korea became members of the United Nations in 1991.
International organizations have assessed that human rights violations in North Korea have no parallel in the contemporary world.
North Korea operates re-education and prison camps, akin to the gulag prisons of the Soviet Union.
The concentration camps are used to segregate those seen as enemies of the state and punish them for alleged political misdemeanours, or alleged misdemeanours of relatives as part of the "3 generations of punishment" policy instigated by state founder Kim Il-sung.
Prisoners are frequently subject to slave labour, malnutrition, torture, human experimentation, rape, and arbitrary executions.
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India (IAST: Bhārat), also called the Republic of India (IAST: Bhārat Gaṇarājya), is a country in South Asia.
It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country (with over 1.2 billion people), and the most populous democracy in the world.
It is bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the southwest, and the Bay of Bengal on the southeast.
It shares land borders with Pakistan to the west; China, Nepal, and Bhutan to the northeast; and Bangladesh and Myanmar to the east.
In the Indian Ocean, India is in the vicinity of Sri Lanka and the Maldives.
India's Andaman and Nicobar Islands share a maritime border with Thailand and Indonesia.
The Indian subcontinent was home to the urban Indus Valley Civilisation of the 3rd millennium BCE.
In the following millennium, the oldest scriptures associated with Hinduism began to be composed.
Social stratification, based on caste, emerged in the first millennium BCE, and Buddhism and Jainism arose.
Early political consolidations took place under the Maurya and Gupta empires; the later peninsular Middle Kingdoms influenced cultures as far as southeast Asia.
In the medieval era, Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Christianity, and Islam arrived, and Sikhism emerged, all adding to the region's diverse culture.
Much of the north fell to the Delhi Sultanate; the south was united under the Vijayanagara Empire.
The economy expanded in the 17th century in the Mughal Empire.
In the mid-18th century, the subcontinent came under British East India Company rule, and in the mid-19th under British crown rule.
A nationalist movement emerged in the late 19th century, which later, under Mahatma Gandhi, was noted for nonviolent resistance and led to India's independence in 1947.
In 2017, the Indian economy was the world's sixth largest by nominal GDP and third largest by purchasing power parity.
Following market-based economic reforms in 1991, India became one of the fastest-growing major economies and is considered a newly industrialised country.
However, it continues to face the challenges of poverty, corruption, malnutrition, and inadequate public healthcare.
A nuclear weapons state and regional power, it has the second largest standing army in the world and ranks fifth in military expenditure among nations.
India is a federal republic governed under a parliamentary system and consists of 29 states and 7 union territories.
It is a pluralistic, multilingual and multi-ethnic society and is also home to a diversity of wildlife in a variety of protected habitats.
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The United States Secret Service (USSS) is a federal law enforcement agency under the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
Until 2003, the Service was part of the U.S. Department of the Treasury because the organization's first mission was to fight counterfeiting of U.S. currency.
The U.S. Secret Service has two distinct areas of responsibility:
1.) Financial Crimes, covering missions such as prevention and investigation of counterfeit U.S. currency, U.S. treasury securities, and investigation of major fraud.
2.) Protection, which entails ensuring the safety of current and former national leaders and their families, such as the President, past Presidents, Vice Presidents, presidential candidates, visiting heads of state, and foreign embassies.
The Secret Service's initial responsibility was to investigate counterfeiting of U.S. currency, which was rampant following the U.S. Civil War.
The agency then evolved into the United States' first domestic intelligence and counterintelligence agency.
Many of the agency's missions were later taken over by subsequent agencies such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), and IRS Criminal Investigation Division (IRS).
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Magna Carta Libertatum (Medieval Latin for "the Great Charter of the Liberties"), commonly called Magna Carta (also Magna Charta; "Great Charter"), is a charter of rights agreed to by King John of England at Runnymede, near Windsor, on 15 June 1215.
First drafted by the Archbishop of Canterbury to make peace between the unpopular King and a group of rebel barons, it promised the protection of church rights, protection for the barons from illegal imprisonment, access to swift justice, and limitations on feudal payments to the Crown, to be implemented through a council of 25 barons.
Neither side stood behind their commitments, and the charter was annulled by Pope Innocent III, leading to the First Barons' War.
After John's death, the regency government of his young son, Henry III, reissued the document in 1216, stripped of some of its more radical content, in an unsuccessful bid to build political support for their cause.
At the end of the war in 1217, it formed part of the peace treaty agreed at Lambeth, where the document acquired the name Magna Carta, to distinguish it from the smaller Charter of the Forest which was issued at the same time.
Short of funds, Henry reissued the charter again in 1225 in exchange for a grant of new taxes.
His son, Edward I, repeated the exercise in 1297, this time confirming it as part of England's statute law.
The charter became part of English political life and was typically renewed by each monarch in turn, although as time went by and the fledgling English Parliament passed new laws, it lost some of its practical significance.
At the end of the 16th century there was an upsurge in interest in Magna Carta.
Lawyers and historians at the time believed that there was an ancient English constitution, going back to the days of the Anglo-Saxons, that protected individual English freedoms.
They argued that the Norman invasion of 1066 had overthrown these rights, and that Magna Carta had been a popular attempt to restore them, making the charter an essential foundation for the contemporary powers of Parliament and legal principles such as habeas corpus.
Although this historical account was badly flawed, jurists such as Sir Edward Coke used Magna Carta extensively in the early 17th century, arguing against the divine right of kings propounded by the Stuart monarchs.
Both James I and his son Charles I attempted to suppress the discussion of Magna Carta, until the issue was curtailed by the English Civil War of the 1640s and the execution of Charles.
The political myth of Magna Carta and its protection of ancient personal liberties persisted after the Glorious Revolution of 1688 until well into the 19th century.
It influenced the early American colonists in the Thirteen Colonies and the formation of the American Constitution in 1787, which became the supreme law of the land in the new republic of the United States.
Research by Victorian historians showed that the original 1215 charter had concerned the medieval relationship between the monarch and the barons, rather than the rights of ordinary people, but the charter remained a powerful, iconic document, even after almost all of its content was repealed from the statute books in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Magna Carta still forms an important symbol of liberty today, often cited by politicians and campaigners, and is held in great respect by the British and American legal communities, Lord Denning describing it as "the greatest constitutional document of all times – the foundation of the freedom of the individual against the arbitrary authority of the despot".
In the 21st century, four exemplifications of the original 1215 charter remain in existence, two at the British Library, one at Lincoln Cathedral and one at Salisbury Cathedral.
There are also a handful of the subsequent charters in public and private ownership, including copies of the 1297 charter in both the United States and Australia.
The original charters were written on parchment sheets using quill pens, in heavily abbreviated medieval Latin, which was the convention for legal documents at that time.
Each was sealed with the royal great seal (made of beeswax and resin sealing wax): very few of the seals have survived.
Although scholars refer to the 63 numbered "clauses" of Magna Carta, this is a modern system of numbering, introduced by Sir William Blackstone in 1759; the original charter formed a single, long unbroken text.
The four original 1215 charters were displayed together at the British Library for one day, 3 February 2015, to mark the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta.
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Ellen Lee DeGeneres (born January 26, 1958) is an American comedian, television host, actress, writer, and producer.
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She starred in the sitcom Ellen from 1994 to 1998 and has hosted her syndicated TV talk show, The Ellen DeGeneres Show, since 2003.
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Her stand-up career started in the early 1980s and included a 1986 appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.
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As a film actress, DeGeneres starred in Mr. Wrong (1996), EDtv (1999), and The Love Letter (1999), and provided the voice of Dory in the Pixar animated films Finding Nemo (2003) and Finding Dory (2016); for Nemo, she was awarded the Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actress, the first time an actress won a Saturn Award for a voice performance.
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In 2010, she was a judge on American Idol for its ninth season.
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She starred in two television sitcoms, Ellen from 1994 to 1998 and The Ellen Show from 2001 to 2002.
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During the fourth season of Ellen in 1997, she came out as a lesbian in an appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show.
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Her character, Ellen Morgan, also came out to a therapist played by Winfrey, and the series went on to explore various LGBT issues, including the coming-out process.
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In 2008, she married her longtime girlfriend Portia de Rossi.
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DeGeneres has hosted the Academy Awards, Grammy Awards, and the Primetime Emmys.
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She has authored four books and started her own record company, Eleveneleven, as well as a production company, A Very Good Production.
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She also launched a lifestyle brand, ED Ellen DeGeneres, which comprises a collection of apparel, accessories, home, baby, and pet items.
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She has won 30 Emmys, 20 People's Choice Awards (more than any other person), and numerous other awards for her work and charitable efforts.
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In 2016, she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
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On January 5, 2020, DeGeneres won the Golden Globes Carol Burnett Lifetime Achievement Award.
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Saudi Arabia–United States relations refers to the bilateral relations between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the United States of America.
It is a Special Relationship, which began in 1933 when full diplomatic relations were established.
Despite the differences between the two countries—an ultraconservative Islamic absolute monarchy, and a secular, constitutional republic—the two countries have been allies.
Former Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama have close and strong relations with senior members of the Saudi Royal Family.
Ever since the modern US–Saudi relationship began in 1945, the United States has been willing to overlook many of the kingdom's more controversial aspects as long as it kept the oil flowing and supported U.S. national security policies.
Since World War II, the two countries have been allied in opposition to Communism, in support of stable oil prices, stability in the oil fields and oil shipping of the Persian Gulf, and stability in the economies of Western countries where Saudis have invested.
In particular, the two countries were allies against the Soviets in Afghanistan, and in the expulsion of Iraq from Kuwait in 1991.
The two countries have been in disagreement with regard to the State of Israel, as well as the embargo of the U.S. and its allies by Saudi Arabia and other Middle East oil exporters during the 1973 oil crisis (which raised oil prices considerably), the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq (which Saudi Arabia opposed), aspects of the "War on Terror", and what many in the U.S. see as the pernicious influence of Saudi Arabia after the September 11 attacks.
In recent years, particularly the Barack Obama administration, the relationship between the two countries became strained and witnessed major decline.
However, the relationship was strengthened by President Donald Trump's trip to Saudi Arabia in May 2017, which was his first overseas trip since becoming President of the United States.
Despite the strong relationship between the two countries, opinion polls between the two nations show negative feelings between the American people and Saudi people in recent years, particularly American feelings towards the desert kingdom.
A poll of Saudis by Zogby International (2002) and BBC (between October 2005 and January 2006) found 51% of Saudis had hostile feelings towards the American people in 2002; in 2005/2006, Saudi public opinion was sharply divided with 38% viewing U.S. influence positively and 38% viewing U.S. influence negatively.
As of 2012, Saudi Arabian students form the 4th largest group of international students studying in the United States, representing 3.5% of all foreigners pursuing higher education in the US.
A December 2013 poll found 57% of Americans polled had an unfavorable view of Saudi Arabia and 27% favorable.
United States President Donald Trump met with the Saudi Government as a display of diplomacy and a political move for open trade on his visit to Ridyah on March 2018.
Reuters reports a 40 billion dollar commitment from the Saudi Government mediated through Black Stone Defense Company and the Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF) for President Donald Trump's ambitious infrastructure plan.
In October 2018, the Jamal Khashoggi case put the US into a difficult situation, as Trump and his son-in-law (Jared Kushner) share a strong personal and official bond with Mohammad bin Salman.
During an interview, Trump vowed to get to the bottom of the case and that there would be "severe punishment" if the Saudi kingdom is found to be involved in the disappearance or assassination of the journalist.
A vexed reply came from the Saudi Foreign Ministry, saying if Saudi Arabia “receives any action, it will respond with greater action,” citing the oil-rich kingdom's “influential and vital role in the global economy.”
According to Turki Aldakhil, Saudi-owned news Channel, Al-Arabiya’s general manager, this clash between the two countries would have a direct effect on the world economy.
"If US sanctions are imposed on Saudi Arabia, we will be facing an economic disaster that would rock the entire world," Aldakhil said.
After weeks of denial, Saudi Arabia accepted that Khashoggi died at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul during a “fistfight.”
Adel al-Jubeir described the journalist's death as a "murder" and a "tremendous mistake."
But he denied the knowledge of whereabouts of the body.
Following the case, the US promised to revoke the visas of Saudi nationals responsible for Khashoggi's death.
In November 2018, Trump defended Saudi Arabia, despite the country’s involvement in the killing of Khashoggi.
Experts in the Middle East believe that Congress could still put sanctions on some Saudi officials and the crown prince.
However, even without the sanctions imposed, it is impossible for Mohammad bin Salman to visit Washington or have a direct relationship with the Trump administration.
However, in November 2018 relations between the United States and Saudi Arabia re-strengthened when Trump nominated John Abizaid, a retired US army general who spoke Arabic, respectively, as US ambassador to the country.
Saudi Arabia is listed as the world's 27th largest export economy.
Saudi Arabia has historically proven to be a successful harbor of trade, exemplified through statistics displaying a positive trade balance of nearly 32 billion dollars in 2016 ("Foreign Trade: Data").
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The chancellor, the late chancellor, was only partly correct.
He was obsolete.
But so is the State, the entity he worshiped.
Any state, entity, or ideology becomes obsolete when it stockpiles the wrong weapons: when it captures territories, but not minds; when it enslaves millions, but convinces nobody.
When it is naked, yet puts on armor and calls it faith, while in the Eyes of God it has no faith at all.
Any state, any entity, any ideology which fails to recognize the worth, the dignity, the rights of Man... that state is obsolete.
A case to be filed under "M" for "Mankind" - in The Twilight Zone.
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Beijing, formerly romanized as Peking, is the capital of the People's Republic of China, the world's third most populous city proper, and most populous capital city.
The city, located in northern China, is governed as a municipality under the direct administration of the central government, with 16 urban, suburban, and rural districts.
Beijing Municipality is surrounded by Hebei Province, with the exception of neighboring Tianjin Municipality to the southeast; together, the three divisions form the Jingjinji metropolitan region and the national capital region of China.
Beijing is an important world capital and global power city, and one of the world's leading centers for politics, economy and business, finance, education, culture, innovation and technology, architecture, language, and diplomacy.
A megacity, Beijing is the second largest Chinese city by urban population after Shanghai and is the nation's political, cultural, and educational center.
It is home to the headquarters of most of China's largest state-owned companies and houses the largest number of Fortune Global 500 companies in the world, as well as the world's four biggest financial institutions.
It is also a major hub for the national highway, expressway, railway, and high-speed rail networks.
The Beijing Capital International Airport has been the second busiest in the world by passenger traffic since 2010, and, as of 2016, the city's subway network is the busiest and second longest in the world.
Combining both modern and traditional architecture, Beijing is one of the oldest cities in the world, with a rich history dating back three millennia.
As the last of the Four Great Ancient Capitals of China, Beijing has been the political center of the country for most of the past eight centuries, and was the largest city in the world by population for much of the second millennium A.D.
Encyclopædia Britannica notes that "few cities in the world have served for so long as the political headquarters and cultural center of an area as immense as China."
With mountains surrounding the inland city on three sides, in addition to the old inner and outer city walls, Beijing was strategically poised and developed to be the residence of the emperor and thus was the perfect location for the imperial capital.
The city is renowned for its opulent palaces, temples, parks, gardens, tombs, walls and gates.
It has seven UNESCO World Heritage Sites — the Forbidden City, Temple of Heaven, Summer Palace, Ming Tombs, Zhoukoudian, and parts of the Great Wall and the Grand Canal — all popular locations for tourism.
Siheyuans, the city's traditional housing style, and hutongs, the narrow alleys between siheyuans, are major tourist attractions and are common in urban Beijing.
Many of Beijing's 91 universities consistently rank among the best in China, among which Peking University and Tsinghua University are ranked in the top 60 universities of the world.
Beijing CBD is a center for Beijing's economic expansion, with the ongoing or recently completed construction of multiple skyscrapers.
Beijing's Zhongguancun area is known as China's Silicon Valley and a center of innovation and technology entrepreneurship.
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Venezuela, officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela (Spanish: República Bolivariana de Venezuela), is a country on the northern coast of South America, consisting of a continental landmass and a large number of small islands and islets in the Caribbean Sea.
The capital and largest urban agglomeration is the city of Caracas.
It has a territorial extension of 916,445 km2 (353,841 sq mi).
The continental territory is bordered on the north by the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Colombia, Brazil on the south, Trinidad and Tobago to the north-east and on the east by Guyana.
With this last country, the Venezuelan government maintains a claim for Guayana Esequiba over an area of 159,542 km2 (61,600 sq mi).
For its maritime areas, it exercises sovereignty over 71,295 km2 (27,527 sq mi) of territorial waters, 22,224 km2 (8,581 sq mi) in its contiguous zone, 471,507 km2 (182,050 sq mi) of the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean under the concept of exclusive economic zone, and 99,889 km2 (38,567 sq mi) of continental shelf.
This marine area borders those of 13 states.
The country has extremely high biodiversity and is ranked seventh in the world's list of nations with the most number of species.
There are habitats ranging from the Andes Mountains in the west to the Amazon basin rain-forest in the south via extensive llanos plains, the Caribbean coast and the Orinoco River Delta in the east.
The territory now known as Venezuela was colonized by Spain in 1522 amid resistance from indigenous peoples.
In 1811, it became one of the first Spanish-American territories to declare independence, which was not securely established until 1821, when Venezuela was a department of the federal republic of Gran Colombia.
It gained full independence as a country in 1830.
During the 19th century, Venezuela suffered political turmoil and autocracy, remaining dominated by regional caudillos (military strongmen) until the mid-20th century.
Since 1958, the country has had a series of democratic governments.
Economic shocks in the 1980s and 1990s led to several political crises, including the deadly Caracazo riots of 1989, two attempted coups in 1992, and the impeachment of President Carlos Andrés Pérez for embezzlement of public funds in 1993.
A collapse in confidence in the existing parties saw the 1998 election of former coup-involved career officer Hugo Chávez and the launch of the Bolivarian Revolution.
The revolution began with a 1999 Constituent Assembly, where a new Constitution of Venezuela was written.
This new constitution officially changed the name of the country to Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela (Spanish: República Bolivariana de Venezuela).
The sovereign state is a federal presidential republic consisting of 23 states, the Capital District (covering Caracas), and federal dependencies (covering Venezuela's offshore islands).
Venezuela also claims all Guyanese territory west of the Essequibo River, a 159,500-square-kilometre (61,583 sq mi) tract dubbed Guayana Esequiba or the Zona en Reclamación (the "zone under dispute").
Venezuela is among the most urbanized countries in Latin America; the vast majority of Venezuelans live in the cities of the north, especially in the capital (Caracas) which is also the largest city in Venezuela.
Oil was discovered in the early 20th century, and today, Venezuela has the world's largest known oil reserves and has been one of the world's leading exporters of oil.
Previously, the country was an underdeveloped exporter of agricultural commodities such as coffee and cocoa, but oil quickly came to dominate exports and government revenues.
The 1980s oil glut led to an external debt crisis and a long-running economic crisis.
Inflation peaked at 100% in 1996 and poverty rates rose to 66% in 1995 as (by 1998) per capita GDP fell to the same level as 1963, down a third from its 1978 peak.
The recovery of oil prices in the early 2000s gave Venezuela oil funds not seen since the 1980s.
The Venezuelan government then established populist social welfare policies that initially boosted the Venezuelan economy and increased social spending, temporarily reducing economic inequality and poverty.
However, such populist policies later became inadequate, causing the nation's collapse as their excesses—including a uniquely extreme fossil fuel subsidy—are widely blamed for destabilizing the nation's economy.
The destabilized economy led to a crisis in Bolivarian Venezuela, resulting in hyperinflation, an economic depression, shortages of basic goods and drastic increases in unemployment, poverty, disease, child mortality, malnutrition and crime.
By 2017, Venezuela was declared to be in default regarding debt payments by credit rating agencies.
In 2018, the country's crisis was exacerbated by extreme hyperinflation, with estimates suggesting an inflation rate of 1,000,000% by the end of the year.
Venezuela is a charter member of the UN, OAS, UNASUR, ALBA, Mercosur, LAIA and OEI.
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Venezuela, officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela (Spanish: República Bolivariana de Venezuela), is a country on the northern coast of South America, consisting of a continental landmass and a large number of small islands and islets in the Caribbean Sea.
The capital and largest urban agglomeration is the city of Caracas.
It has a territorial extension of 916,445 km2 (353,841 sq mi).
The continental territory is bordered on the north by the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Colombia, Brazil on the south, Trinidad and Tobago to the north-east and on the east by Guyana.
With this last country, the Venezuelan government maintains a claim for Guayana Esequiba over an area of 159,542 km2 (61,600 sq mi).
For its maritime areas, it exercises sovereignty over 71,295 km2 (27,527 sq mi) of territorial waters, 22,224 km2 (8,581 sq mi) in its contiguous zone, 471,507 km2 (182,050 sq mi) of the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean under the concept of exclusive economic zone, and 99,889 km2 (38,567 sq mi) of continental shelf.
This marine area borders those of 13 states.
The country has extremely high biodiversity and is ranked seventh in the world's list of nations with the most number of species.
There are habitats ranging from the Andes Mountains in the west to the Amazon basin rain-forest in the south via extensive llanos plains, the Caribbean coast and the Orinoco River Delta in the east.
The territory now known as Venezuela was colonized by Spain in 1522 amid resistance from indigenous peoples.
In 1811, it became one of the first Spanish-American territories to declare independence, which was not securely established until 1821, when Venezuela was a department of the federal republic of Gran Colombia.
It gained full independence as a country in 1830.
During the 19th century, Venezuela suffered political turmoil and autocracy, remaining dominated by regional caudillos (military strongmen) until the mid-20th century.
Since 1958, the country has had a series of democratic governments.
Economic shocks in the 1980s and 1990s led to several political crises, including the deadly Caracazo riots of 1989, two attempted coups in 1992, and the impeachment of President Carlos Andrés Pérez for embezzlement of public funds in 1993.
A collapse in confidence in the existing parties saw the 1998 election of former coup-involved career officer Hugo Chávez and the launch of the Bolivarian Revolution.
The revolution began with a 1999 Constituent Assembly, where a new Constitution of Venezuela was written.
This new constitution officially changed the name of the country to Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela (Spanish: República Bolivariana de Venezuela).
The sovereign state is a federal presidential republic consisting of 23 states, the Capital District (covering Caracas), and federal dependencies (covering Venezuela's offshore islands).
Venezuela also claims all Guyanese territory west of the Essequibo River, a 159,500-square-kilometre (61,583 sq mi) tract dubbed Guayana Esequiba or the Zona en Reclamación (the "zone under dispute").
Venezuela is among the most urbanized countries in Latin America; the vast majority of Venezuelans live in the cities of the north, especially in the capital (Caracas) which is also the largest city in Venezuela.
Oil was discovered in the early 20th century, and today, Venezuela has the world's largest known oil reserves and has been one of the world's leading exporters of oil.
Previously, the country was an underdeveloped exporter of agricultural commodities such as coffee and cocoa, but oil quickly came to dominate exports and government revenues.
The 1980s oil glut led to an external debt crisis and a long-running economic crisis.
Inflation peaked at 100% in 1996 and poverty rates rose to 66% in 1995 as (by 1998) per capita GDP fell to the same level as 1963, down a third from its 1978 peak.
The recovery of oil prices in the early 2000s gave Venezuela oil funds not seen since the 1980s.
The Venezuelan government then established populist social welfare policies that initially boosted the Venezuelan economy and increased social spending, temporarily reducing economic inequality and poverty.
However, such populist policies later became inadequate, causing the nation's collapse as their excesses—including a uniquely extreme fossil fuel subsidy—are widely blamed for destabilizing the nation's economy.
The destabilized economy led to a crisis in Bolivarian Venezuela, resulting in hyperinflation, an economic depression, shortages of basic goods and drastic increases in unemployment, poverty, disease, child mortality, malnutrition and crime.
By 2017, Venezuela was declared to be in default regarding debt payments by credit rating agencies.
In 2018, the country's crisis was exacerbated by extreme hyperinflation, with estimates suggesting an inflation rate of 1,000,000% by the end of the year.
Venezuela is a charter member of the UN, OAS, UNASUR, ALBA, Mercosur, LAIA and OEI.
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Queensland is a state situated in northeastern Australia, and is the second-largest and third-most populous of the Australian states.
It is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Australia and New South Wales to the west, southwest and south, respectively.
To the east, Queensland is bordered by the Coral Sea and the Pacific Ocean; to its north is the Torres Strait, separating the Australian mainland from Papua New Guinea.
With an area of 1,852,642 square kilometres (715,309 sq mi), Queensland is the world's sixth-largest sub-national entity; it is larger than all but 15 countries.
Due to its size, Queensland's geographical features and climates are diverse, including tropical rainforests, rivers, coral reefs, mountain ranges and sandy beaches in its tropical and sub-tropical coastal regions, as well as deserts and savanna in the semi-arid and desert climatic regions of its interior.
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Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), also known as Doctors Without Borders, is a charity that provides humanitarian medical care.
It is a non-governmental organisation (NGO) of French origin known for its projects in conflict zones and in countries affected by endemic diseases.
The organisation provides care for diabetes, drug-resistant infections, HIV/AIDS, hepatitis C, tropical and neglected diseases, tuberculosis, vaccines and COVID-19.
In 2019, the charity was active in 70 countries with over 35,000 personnel; mostly local doctors, nurses and other medical professionals, logistical experts, water and sanitation engineers, and administrators.
Private donors provide about 90% of the organisation's funding, while corporate donations provide the rest, giving MSF an annual budget of approximately US$1.63 billion.
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Mali - officially the Republic of Mali - is a landlocked country in West Africa.
Mali is the eighth-largest country in Africa, with an area of over 1,241,238 square kilometres (479,245 sq mi).
The country is bordered on the north by Algeria, on the east by Niger, on the northwest by Mauritania, on the south by Burkina Faso and Côte d'Ivoire, and on the west by Guinea and Senegal.
The population of Mali is 21.9 million.
67% of its population was estimated to be under the age of 25 in 2017.
Its capital and largest city is Bamako.
The sovereign state of Mali consists of nineteen regions and its borders on the north reach deep into the middle of the Sahara Desert.
The country's southern part is in the Sudanian savanna, where the majority of inhabitants live, and both the Niger and Senegal rivers pass through.
The country's economy centres on agriculture and mining.
One of Mali's most prominent natural resources is gold, and the country is the third largest producer of gold on the continent of Africa.
Mali was home to the man reputed to be the richest man who has ever lived, known as Mansa Musa.
The country is also known for its exports of salt.
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Enrique Peña Nieto, GCB, GCIH, RE (born 20 July 1966) is the 62nd President of Mexico.
Educated as a lawyer, Peña Nieto had served as Secretary of Administration for the State of Mexico from 2000-2002, as Representative of the 13th District of the State of Mexico from 2003-2004, and as Governor of the state from 2005-2011 prior to becoming President.
He was elected President on July 1, 2012, winning 39% of the vote and returning the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) to power after a twelve-year hiatus.
The PRI had governed Mexico uninterrupted for 71 years until it was defeated by the National Action Party (PAN) in 2000.
Peña Nieto took office on December 1, 2012, succeeding Felipe Calderón.
Protests against the election of Peña Nieto drew tens of thousands of people across Mexico, particularly from the #YoSoy132 student movement, who protested alleged voting irregularities and media bias.
Peña Nieto began his term as President with an approval rating of approximately 50%, but the falling value of the Mexican Peso and sluggish economic growth had caused this figure to drop to 35% by 2015.
Prone to gaffes, Nieto has also faced several major controversies as President, including the escape of famed drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman from Altiplano prison in 2015, and accusations that he had plagiarized his law school thesis.
He has also faced criticism for his handling of the abduction and murder of 43 teachers' college students in the State of Guerrero in 2014.
According to the Newspaper Reforma, Peña Nieto's approval ratings had dropped to 23% by August 2016 - the lowest for any president since Ernesto Zedillo in 1995 (who was also from the PRI).
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Journalism is the production and distribution of reports on the interaction of events, facts, ideas, and people that are the "news of the day" and that informs society to at least some degree of accuracy.
The word, a noun, applies to the occupation (professional or not), the methods of gathering information, and the organizing literary styles.
The appropriate role for journalism varies from countries to country, as do perceptions of the profession, and the resulting status.
In some nations, the news media are controlled by government and are not independent.
In others, news media are independent of the government and operate as private industry.
In addition, countries may have differing implementations of laws handling the freedom of speech, freedom of the press - as well as slander and libel cases.
The proliferation of the Internet and smartphones has brought significant changes to the media landscape since the turn of the 21st century.
This has created a shift in the consumption of print media channels, as people increasingly consume news through e-readers, smartphones, and other personal electronic devices, as opposed to the more traditional formats of newspapers, magazines, or television news channels.
News organizations are challenged to fully monetize their digital wing, as well as improvise on the context in which they publish in print.
Newspapers have seen print revenues sink at a faster pace than the rate of growth for digital revenues.
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Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland have evolved dramatically over time.
Before and during the formation of the United Kingdom, Christianity and homosexuality clashed.
Same-sex sexual activity was characterised as "sinful" and, under the Buggery Act 1533, was outlawed and punishable by death.
LGBT rights first came to prominence following the decriminalisation of sexual activity between men, in 1967 in England and Wales, and later in Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Sexual activity between women was never subject to the same legal restriction.
Since the turn of the 21st century, LGBT rights have increasingly strengthened in support.
Some discrimination protections had existed for LGBT people since 1999, but were extended to all areas under the Equality Act 2010.
In 2000, Her Majesty's Armed Forces removed its ban on LGBT individuals serving openly.
The age of consent was equalised, regardless of sexual orientation, in 2001 at 16 in England, Scotland and Wales.
The age of consent was lowered to 16 in Northern Ireland in 2009, previously it was 17, regardless of sexual orientation.
Transgender people have had the right to change their legal gender since 2005.
The same year, same-sex couples were granted the right to enter into a civil partnership, a similar legal structure to marriage, and also to adopt in England and Wales.
Scotland later followed on adoption rights for same-sex couples in 2009, and Northern Ireland in 2013.
Same-sex marriage was legalised in England, Wales and Scotland in 2014, but remains unavailable in Northern Ireland where it is recognised solely as a civil partnership.
Today, LGBT citizens have most of the same legal rights as non-LGBT citizens and the UK provides one of the highest degrees of liberty in the world for its LGBT communities.
In ILGA-Europe's 2015 review of LGBTI rights, the UK received the highest score in Europe, with 86% progress toward "respect of human rights and full equality" for LGBT people, and 92% in Scotland alone.
Recent polls have indicated that a majority of British people support same-sex marriage, and 76% of the UK agreed that homosexuality should be accepted by society, according to a 2013 Pew Research Center poll.
Additionally, the UK currently holds the world record for having the most out LGBTI people in Parliament, with 45 out LGBTI MPs elected at the 2017 election.
A 2010 Integrated Household Survey estimated 1.5% of people in the UK identify themselves as gay, lesbian or bisexual – far lower than previous estimates of 5–7%.
Interpreting the statistics, an Office for National Statistics (ONS) spokesperson said, "Someone may engage in sexual behaviour with someone of the same sex but still not perceive themselves as gay."
According to YouGov, however, studies such as that of the Integrated Household Survey underestimate the true proportion of the population that is LGBT as they use a face-to-face methodology, and non-heterosexual people are less willing to disclose their sexual orientation to an interviewer.
YouGov itself estimates, based on its panel, which was inquired via an online questionnaire, that the proportion of LGBT people in the UK is 7%.
It is also estimated that the trans population of the UK is between 300,000 and 500,000 people, but Stonewall concludes that it is hard to define the LGBT population of the UK because some LGBT people are not out.
LGBT rights organisations and very large LGBT communities have been built across the UK, most notably in Brighton, which is widely regarded as the UK's unofficial "gay capital", with other large communities in London, Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol, Leeds, Liverpool, Newcastle upon Tyne and Edinburgh, which all have gay villages and host annual pride festivals.
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A deep state or a state within a state is a political situation in a country when an internal organ, such as the armed forces or public authorities (intelligence agencies, police, secret police, administrative agencies, and branches of government bureaucracy), does not respond to the civilian political leadership.
Although the state within a state can be conspiratorial in nature, the deep state can also take the form of entrenched unelected career civil servants acting in a non-conspiratorial manner, to further their own interests (e.g. continuity of the state as distinct from the administration, job security, enhanced power and authority, pursuit of ideological goals and objectives, and the general growth of their agency) and in opposition to the policies of elected officials, by obstructing, resisting, and subverting the policies, conditions and directives of elected officials.
The term, like many in politics, derives from the Greek language (κράτος εν κράτει, kratos en kratei, later adopted into Latin as imperium in imperio or status in statu).
Sometimes the term refers to state companies that, though formally under the command of the government, act 'de facto' like private corporations.
Sometimes the term refers to companies that, though formally private, act de facto like "states within a state".
Political debate surrounding the separation of church and state previously revolved around the perception that if left unchecked the Church might turn into a kind of State within a State, an illegitimate outgrowth of the State's natural civil power.
In the field of political science, this pop culture concept is studied within the literature on the state.
Current literature on the state generally traces a lineage to Bringing the State Back In (1985) and remains an active body of scholarly research to this day.
Within this literature, the state is understood as both venue (a set of rules under which others act and interact) as well as actor (with its own agenda).
An example of a non-conspiratorial version of the 'state as actor' from the empirical scholarly literature would be "doing truth to power" (as a play on speaking truth to power, which is what journalists often aspire to do) as studied by Todd La Porte.
Under this dual understanding, the conspiratorial version of the deep state concept would be one version of the 'state as actor' while the non-conspiratorial version would be another version of the 'state as venue.'
The fundamental takeaway from the scholarly literature on the dual nature of the state is that the 'state as actor' (deep state) is a characteristic of all states which can have both good and bad effects and should not be seen as bad by default.
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West Virginia is a state in the Appalachian, Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States.
It is bordered by Pennsylvania to the north and east, Maryland to the east and northeast, Virginia to the southeast, Kentucky to the southwest, and Ohio to the northwest.
West Virginia is the 10th-smallest state by area and ranks as the 12th-least populous state, with a population of 1,793,716 residents.
The capital and largest city is Charleston.
West Virginia was admitted to the Union on June 20, 1863, and was a key border state during the American Civil War.
It was the only state to form by separating from a Confederate state, one of two states (along with Nevada) admitted to the Union during the Civil War, and the second state to separate from another state, after Maine separated from Massachusetts in 1820.
Some of its residents held slaves, but most were yeoman farmers, and the delegates provided for the gradual abolition of slavery in the new state constitution.
The state legislature abolished slavery in the state, and at the same time ratified the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery nationally on February 3, 1865.
West Virginia's Northern Panhandle extends adjacent to Pennsylvania and Ohio to form a tristate area, with Wheeling and Weirton just across the border from the Pittsburgh metropolitan area.
Huntington in the southwest is close to Ohio and Kentucky, while Martinsburg and Harpers Ferry in the Eastern Panhandle region are considered part of the Washington metropolitan area, between Maryland and Virginia.
West Virginia is often included in several U.S. geographical regions, including the Mid-Atlantic, the Upland South, and the Southeastern United States.
It is the only state entirely within the area served by the Appalachian Regional Commission; the area is commonly defined as "Appalachia".
The state is noted for its mountains and rolling hills, its historically significant coal mining and logging industries, and its political and labor history.
It is also known for a wide range of outdoor recreational opportunities, including skiing, whitewater rafting, fishing, hiking, backpacking, mountain biking, rock climbing, and hunting.
From the Great Depression to the 1990s, the state voted heavily for the Democratic Party due to its tradition of union-based politics.
Since then, the state has become heavily Republican, and is considered a "deep red" state at the federal level.
Other nominated names for the state included Vandalia, Kanawha, Appalachia, and Western Virginia.
The capital was originally Wheeling, before switching to Charleston, moving back to Wheeling, and finally back to Charleston.
The first governor was Arthur Boreman.
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Members of the Catholic Church have been active in the elections of the United States since (at least) the mid-19th century.
Indeed, the Irish came to dominate the Democratic Party in many cities.
The U.S. has never had religious parties (unlike much of the world).
There has never been an American Catholic religious party, either local, state or national.
In 1776, Catholics comprised less than 1% of the population of the new nation, but their presence grew rapidly after 1840 with immigration from Germany, Ireland, and later from Italy, Poland and elsewhere in Catholic Europe from 1840 to 1914, and also from Latin America in the 20th and 21st centuries.
Catholics now comprise 25% to 27% of the national vote, with over 68 million members today.
85% of today's Catholics report their faith to be "somewhat" to "very important" to them.
From the mid-19th century down to 1964, Catholics were solidly Democratic, sometimes at the 80–90% level.
From the 1930s to the 1950s, Catholics formed a core part of the New Deal Coalition, with overlapping memberships in the church, labor unions, big city machines, and the working class, all of which promoted liberal policy positions in domestic affairs and anti-communism during the Cold War.
Since the election of a Catholic President in 1960, Catholics have split about 50–50 between the two major parties in national elections.
With the decline of unions and big city machines, and with upward mobility into the middle classes, Catholics have drifted away from liberalism and toward conservatism on economic issues (such as taxes).
Since the end of the Cold War, their strong anti-Communism has faded in importance.
On social issues, the Catholic Church takes strong positions against abortion and same-sex marriage, and has formed coalitions with Protestant evangelicals.
In 2015, Pope Francis declared that man-made climate change is caused by burning fossil fuels.
The Pope stated that the warming of the planet is rooted in a throwaway culture, and the developed world's indifference to the destruction of the planet as it pursues short-term economic gains.
However, the Pope's statements on climate change were generally met with indifference among Catholics, while Catholic commentaries ranged from praise to dismissal, with some stating that it was not binding or magisterial due to its scientific nature.
The Pope's statements on these issues were most prominently laid out in the encyclical Laudato si'.
The publication by Francis had put pressure on Catholics seeking the Republican Party nomination for president of the United States in 2016, including Jeb Bush and Rick Santorum, who "have questioned or denied the established science of human-caused climate change, and have harshly criticized policies designed to tax or regulate the burning of fossil fuels."
Religious tensions were major issues in the presidential elections of 1928, when the Democrats nominated Al Smith, a Catholic who was defeated, and in 1960, when the Democrats nominated John F. Kennedy, a Catholic who was elected.
For the next three elections, a Catholic would be nominated for the vice presidency by one of the two major parties (Bill Miller in 1964, Ed Muskie in 1968, Tom Eagleton and then Sarge Shriver in 1972), but the ticket would lose.
Geraldine Ferraro would continue the tradition in 1984, until it was broken in 2008.
A Catholic, John Kerry, lost the 2004 election to incumbent George W. Bush, a Methodist, who may have won the Catholic vote.
2012 was the first election where both major party vice presidential candidates were Catholic, Joe Biden and Paul Ryan.
Currently, there are 25 Catholics in the United States Senate, 16 Democrats, 9 Republicans, and 134 (out of 435) Catholics in the United States House of Representatives, including the current House Speaker Paul Ryan.
In 2008, Joe Biden became the first Catholic to be elected Vice President of the United States.
His successor Mike Pence has described himself as being Catholic as well.
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Murder is the unlawful killing of another human without justification or valid excuse, especially the unlawful killing of another human being with malice aforethought.
This state of mind may, depending upon the jurisdiction, distinguish murder from other forms of unlawful homicide, such as manslaughter.
Manslaughter is a killing committed in the absence of malice, brought about by reasonable provocation, or diminished capacity.
Involuntary manslaughter, where it is recognized, is a killing that lacks all but the most attenuated guilty intent, recklessness.
Most societies consider murder to be an extremely serious crime, and thus believe that the person charged should receive harsh punishments for the purposes of retribution, deterrence, rehabilitation, or incapacitation.
In most countries, a person convicted of murder generally faces a long-term prison sentence, possibly a life sentence; and in a few, the death penalty may be imposed.
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Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is a government-sanctioned practice whereby a person is killed by the state as a punishment for a crime.
The sentence that someone be punished in such a manner is referred to as a death sentence, whereas the act of carrying out the sentence is known as an execution.
Crimes that are punishable by death are known as capital crimes or capital offences, and they commonly include offences such as murder, treason, espionage, war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.
Etymologically, the term capital (lit. "of the head", derived via the Latin capitalis from caput, "head") in this context alluded to execution by beheading.
Fifty-six countries retain capital punishment, 103 countries have completely abolished it de jure for all crimes, six have abolished it for ordinary crimes (while maintaining it for special circumstances such as war crimes), and 30 are abolitionist in practice.
Capital punishment is a matter of active controversy in several countries and states, and positions can vary within a single political ideology or cultural region.
In the European Union, Article 2 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union prohibits the use of capital punishment.
The Council of Europe, which has 47 member states, has sought to abolish the use of the death penalty by its members absolutely, through Protocol 13 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
However, this only affects those member states which have signed and ratified it, and they do not include Armenia, Russia, and Azerbaijan.
The United Nations General Assembly has adopted, in 2007, 2008, 2010, 2012 and 2014, non-binding resolutions calling for a global moratorium on executions, with a view to eventual abolition.
Although most nations have abolished capital punishment, over 60% of the world's population live in countries where the death penalty is retained, such as China, India, the United States, Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Japan and Sri Lanka.
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Emmanuel Jean-Michel Frédéric Macron (born 21 December 1977) is a French politician serving as President of France and ex officio Co-Prince of Andorra since 14 May 2017.
Before entering politics, he was a senior civil servant and investment banker.
Macron studied philosophy at Paris Nanterre University, completed a Master’s of Public Affairs at Sciences Po, and graduated from the École nationale d'administration (ÉNA) in 2004.
He worked at the Inspectorate General of Finances, and later became an investment banker at Rothschild & Cie Banque.
Macron was appointed Deputy Secretary General in François Hollande's first government in May 2012, having been a member of the Socialist Party from 2006 to 2009.
He was appointed Minister of Economy, Industry and Digital Affairs in 2014 under the Second Valls government, where he pushed through business-friendly reforms.
He resigned in August 2016 to launch a bid in the 2017 presidential election.
In November 2016, Macron declared that he would run in the election under the banner of En Marche!, a centrist political movement he founded in April 2016, and won the election on 7 May 2017.
Macron, at the age of 39, became the youngest President in the history of France.
Upon his inauguration, Macron appointed Le Havre Mayor Édouard Philippe to be Prime Minister.
In the June 2017 legislative elections, Macron's party, renamed "La République En Marche!", together with its ally the Democratic Movement (MoDem), secured a comfortable majority in the National Assembly, winning 350 seats out of 577, with his party alone winning an outright majority of 308 seats.
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The Bank of England, formally the Governor and Company of the Bank of England, is the central bank of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the model on which most modern central banks have been based.
Established in 1694, it is the second oldest central bank in operation today, after the Sveriges Riksbank.
The Bank of England is the world's 8th oldest bank.
It was established to act as the English Government's banker and is still one of the bankers for the Government of the United Kingdom.
The Bank was privately owned by stockholders from its foundation in 1694 until it was nationalised in 1946.
In 1998, it became an independent public organization, wholly owned by the Treasury Solicitor on behalf of the government, with independence in setting monetary policy.
The Bank is one of eight banks authorised to issue banknotes in the United Kingdom, but it has a monopoly on the issue of banknotes in England and Wales, and regulates the issue of banknotes by commercial banks in Scotland and Northern Ireland.
The Bank's Monetary Policy Committee has a devolved responsibility for managing monetary policy.
The Treasury has reserve powers to give orders to the committee "if they are required in the public interest and by extreme economic circumstances", but such orders must be endorsed by Parliament within 28 days.
The Bank's Financial Policy Committee held its first meeting in June 2011 as a macro prudential regulator to oversee regulation of the UK's financial sector.
The Bank's headquarters have been in London's main financial district, the City of London, on Threadneedle Street, since 1734.
It is sometimes known by the metonym The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street or The Old Lady, a name taken from the satirical cartoon by James Gillray in 1797.
The busy road junction outside is known as Bank junction.
As a regulator and central bank, the Bank of England has not offered consumer banking services for many years, but it still does manage some public-facing services such as exchanging superseded bank notes.
Until 2016, the bank provided personal banking services as a popular privilege for employees.
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Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) - also known as Doctors Without Borders - is a charity that provides humanitarian medical care.
It is a non-governmental organisation (NGO) of French origin known for its projects in conflict zones and in countries affected by endemic diseases.
The organisation provides care for diabetes, drug-resistant infections, HIV/AIDS, hepatitis C, tropical and neglected diseases, tuberculosis, vaccines and COVID-19.
In 2019, the charity was active in 70 countries with over 35,000 personnel; mostly local doctors, nurses and other medical professionals, logistical experts, water and sanitation engineers, and administrators.
Private donors provide about 90% of the organisation's funding, while corporate donations provide the rest, giving MSF an annual budget of approximately US$1.63 billion.
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The history of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people (LGBT) in Russia and its historical antecedents (i.e., the Soviet Union, the Russian Empire) has largely been influenced by the political leanings and levels of liberalism or tolerance of the rulers.
It has also been influenced by the historically prohibitive nature of Russian Orthodox religiosity regarding sexuality.
Homosexuality has been documented in Russia for centuries.
The earliest documented bans on homosexuality date to the early-mid 17th century.
Gregory Karpovich Kotoshikhin recorded during the reign of Czar Alexis Mikhailovich that male homosexuals were put to death, and also states that female homosexuals were also put to death by burning.
Government attempts at preventing homosexual practices began in the 18th century, with Tsar Peter the Great banning homosexual relations in the armed forces in 1716, as a part of his attempt to modernise the country.
In 1832 further laws were enacted criminalising certain sexual acts between two males; however, an LGBT subculture developed in Russia during that century, with many significant Russians being openly homosexual or bisexual.
In 1917, the Russian Revolution saw the overthrow of the Tsarist government, and the subsequent foundation of the Russian SFSR, the world's first socialist state, followed by the founding of the Soviet Union after the end of the civil war in 1922.
The new Communist Party government eradicated the old laws regarding sexual relations, effectively legalising homosexual activity within Russia, although it remained illegal in other former territories of the Russian Empire.
Under Lenin's leadership, openly gay people were allowed to serve in government.
In 1933, the Soviet government, under the leadership of Joseph Stalin, recriminalised homosexual activity with punishments of up to five years' hard labor.
Following Stalin's death, there was a liberalisation of attitudes toward sexual issues in the Soviet Union, but homosexual acts remained illegal.
Nonetheless, homosexual culture became increasingly visible, particularly following the glasnost policy of Mikhail Gorbachev's government in the late 1980s.
Following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the foundation of the Russian Federation in 1991, the Council of Europe pressured the new administration to legalize homosexuality, leading President Boris Yeltsin to do so in 1993.
However, there are several restrictions on activities related to homosexuality.
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The United States Navy Sea, Air, and Land (SEAL) Teams, commonly known as Navy SEALs, are the U.S. Navy's primary special operations force and a component of the Naval Special Warfare Command.
Among the SEALs' main functions are conducting small-unit special operation missions in maritime, jungle, urban, arctic, mountainous, and desert environments.
SEALs are typically ordered to capture or kill high level targets, or to gather intelligence behind enemy lines.
SEAL team personnel are hand selected, highly trained, and possess a high degree of proficiency in direct action (DA), and special reconnaissance (SR), among other tasks like sabotage, demolition, intelligence gathering, and hydro-graphic reconnaissance, training, and advising friendly militaries or other forces.
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Saul David Alinsky (January 30, 1909 – June 12, 1972) was an American community organizer and writer.
He is generally considered to be the founder of modern community organizing.
He is often noted for his book Rules for Radicals (1971).
In the course of nearly four decades of political organizing, Alinsky received much criticism, but he also gained praise from many public figures.
His organizing skills were focused on improving the living conditions of poor communities across the United States.
In the 1950s, he began turning his attention to improving conditions in the black ghettos, beginning with Chicago's and later traveling to ghettos in California, Michigan, New York City, and a dozen other "trouble spots".
In the 1960s, his ideas were adapted by some U.S. college students and other young counterculture-era organizers, who used them as part of their strategies for organizing on campus and beyond.
In 1970, Time magazine wrote that "It is not too much to argue that American democracy is being altered by Alinsky's ideas."
Conservative author William F. Buckley Jr. said in 1966 that Alinsky was "very close to being an organizational genius".
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The knife plays a significant role in some cultures through ritual and superstition, as the knife was an essential tool for survival since early man.
Knife symbols can be found in various cultures to symbolize all stages of life; for example, a knife placed under the bed while giving birth is said to ease the pain, or, stuck into the headboard of a cradle, to protect the baby; knives were included in some Anglo-Saxon burial rites, so the dead would not be defenseless in the next world.
The knife plays an important role in some initiation rites, and many cultures perform rituals with a variety of knives, including the ceremonial sacrifices of animals.
Samurai warriors, as part of bushido, could perform ritual suicide, or seppuku, with a tantō, a common Japanese knife.
An athame, a ceremonial knife, is used in Wicca and derived forms of neopagan witchcraft.
In Greece, a black-handled knife placed under the pillow is used to keep away nightmares.
As early as 1646, reference is made to a superstition of laying a knife across another piece of cutlery being a sign of witchcraft.
A common belief is that if a knife is given as a gift, the relationship of the giver and recipient will be severed.
Something such as a small coin, ring, or a valuable item is exchanged for the gift, rendering "payment."
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The Islamic State (IS), also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and by its Arabic acronym Daesh, is a transnational Salafi jihadist group and former unrecognised quasi-state.
Its origins were in the Jai'sh al-Taifa al-Mansurah organization founded by Abu Omar al-Baghdadi in 2004, which fought alongside al-Qaeda during the Iraqi insurgency.
The group gained global prominence in 2014, when its militants conquered large territories in northwestern Iraq and eastern Syria, aided by the Syrian civil war.
By the end of 2015, it ruled an area with an estimated population of twelve million people, where it enforced its interpretation of Islamic law, administered an annual budget of more than US$1 billion, and had more than 30,000 fighters under its command.
After years of intense and grinding combat with American, Iraqi, and Kurdish forces, by 2019 it had lost all its Middle Eastern territories and returned to insurgency tactics in the regions it once controlled, operating from remote hideouts and continuing its propaganda efforts, which have gained it a strong following in northern and Sahelian Africa.
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There is an answer to the doctor's question.
All the Dachaus must remain standing.
The Dachaus, the Belsens, the Buchenwalds, the Auschwitzes; all of them.
They must remain standing because they are a monument to a moment in time when some men decided to turn the Earth into a graveyard.
Into it they shoveled all of their reason, their logic, their knowledge, but worst of all, their conscience.
And the moment we forget this, the moment we cease to be haunted by its remembrance, then we become the gravediggers.
Something to dwell on and to remember, not only in the Twilight Zone but wherever men walk God's Earth.
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Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death.
Depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, personality disorders, and substance abuse — including alcoholism and the use of benzodiazepines — are risk factors.
Some suicides are impulsive acts due to stress such as from financial difficulties, troubles with relationships, or bullying.
Those who have previously attempted suicide are at a higher risk for future attempts.
Suicide prevention efforts include limiting access to methods of suicide — such as firearms, drugs, and poisons; treating mental disorders and substance misuse; proper media reporting of suicide; and improving economic conditions.
Even though crisis hotlines are common, there is little evidence for their effectiveness.
The most commonly used method of suicide varies between countries, and is partly related to the availability of effective means.
Common methods of suicide include hanging, pesticide poisoning, and firearms.
Suicides resulted in 828,000 global deaths in 2015, an increase from 712,000 deaths in 1990.
This makes suicide the 10th leading cause of death worldwide.
Approximately 0.5-1.4% of people die by suicide, roughly 12 per 100,000 individuals per year.
Three quarters of suicides globally occur in the low and middle income countries.
Rates of completed suicides are generally higher among men than among women, ranging from 1.5 times as much in the developing world to 3.5 times in the developed world.
Suicide is generally most common among those over the age of 70; however, in certain countries, those aged between 15 and 30 are at the highest risk.
Europe had the highest rates of suicide by region in 2015.
There are an estimated 10 to 20 million non-fatal attempted suicides every year.
Non-fatal suicide attempts may lead to injury and long-term disabilities.
In the Western world, attempts are more common among young people and among females.
Views on suicide have been influenced by broad existential themes such as religion, honor, and the meaning of life.
The Abrahamic religions traditionally consider suicide as an offense towards God, due to the belief in the sanctity of life.
During the samurai era in Japan, a form of suicide known as seppuku (harakiri) was respected as a means of making up for failure or as a form of protest.
Sati, a practice outlawed by the British Raj, expected the Indian widow to kill herself on her husband's funeral fire, either willingly or under pressure from her family and society.
Suicide and attempted suicide, while previously illegal, are no longer so in most Western countries.
It remains a criminal offense in many countries.
In the 20th and 21st centuries, suicide has been used on rare occasions as a form of protest, and kamikaze and suicide bombings have been used as a military or terrorist tactic.
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Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, established in 1636, whose history, influence, and wealth have made it one of the world's most prestigious universities.
Established originally by the Massachusetts legislature and soon thereafter named for John Harvard (its first benefactor), Harvard is the United States' oldest institution of higher learning, and the Harvard Corporation (formally, the President and Fellows of Harvard College) is its first chartered corporation.
Although never formally affiliated with any denomination, the early College primarily trained Congregationalist and Unitarian clergy.
Its curriculum and student body were gradually secularized during the 18th century, and by the 19th century Harvard had emerged as the central cultural establishment among Boston elites.
Following the American Civil War, President Charles W. Eliot's long tenure (1869–1909) transformed the college and affiliated professional schools into a modern research university; Harvard was a founding member of the Association of American Universities in 1900.
James Bryant Conant led the university through the Great Depression and World War II and began to reform the curriculum and liberalize admissions after the war.
The undergraduate college became coeducational after its 1977 merger with Radcliffe College.
The University is organized into eleven separate academic units—ten faculties and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study—with campuses throughout the Boston metropolitan area: its 209-acre (85 ha) main campus is centered on Harvard Yard in Cambridge, approximately 3 miles (5 km) northwest of Boston; the business school and athletics facilities, including Harvard Stadium, are located across the Charles River in the Allston neighborhood of Boston and the medical, dental, and public health schools are in the Longwood Medical Area.
Harvard's $34.5 billion financial endowment is the largest of any academic institution.
Harvard is a large, highly residential research university.
The nominal cost of attendance is high, but the University's large endowment allows it to offer generous financial aid packages.
It operates several arts, cultural, and scientific museums, alongside the Harvard Library, which is the world's largest academic and private library system, comprising 79 individual libraries with over 18 million volumes.
Harvard's alumni include eight U.S. presidents, several foreign heads of state, 62 living billionaires, 359 Rhodes Scholars, and 242 Marshall Scholars.
To date, some 130 Nobel laureates, 18 Fields Medalists, and 13 Turing Award winners have been affiliated as students, faculty, or staff.
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A police force is a constituted body of persons empowered by a state to enforce the law, to protect people and property, and to prevent crime and civil disorder.
Their powers include the power of arrest and the legitimized use of force.
The term is most commonly associated with police services of a sovereign state that are authorized to exercise the police power of that state within a defined legal or territorial area of responsibility.
Police forces are often defined as being separate from military or other organizations involved in the defense of the state against foreign aggressors; however, gendarmerie are military units charged with civil policing.
The police force is usually a public sector service, funded through taxes.
Law enforcement is only part of policing activity.
Policing has included an array of activities in different situations, but the predominant ones are concerned with the preservation of order.
In some societies, in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, these developed within the context of maintaining the class system and the protection of private property.
Police forces have become ubiquitous in modern societies.
Some are involved to varying degrees in corruption, police brutality and the enforcement of authoritarian rule.
Alternative names for a police force include constabulary, gendarmerie, police department, police service, crime prevention, protective services, law enforcement agency, civil guard or civic guard.
Members may be referred to as police officers, troopers, sheriffs, constables, rangers, peace officers or civic/civil guards.
The word police is most universal and can be seen in many non-English speaking countries.
As police are often interacting with individuals, slang terms are numerous.
Many slang terms for police officers are decades or centuries old with lost etymology.
One of the oldest, "cop", has largely lost its slang connotations and become a common colloquial term used both by the public and police officers to refer to their profession.
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John Richard Kasich Jr. (born May 13, 1952) is an American politician, author, and television news host who served as the 69th Governor of Ohio from 2011 to 2019.
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Kasich is a Republican.
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A native of McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania, Kasich has lived much of his adulthood in Ohio, specifically the state capital of Columbus.
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Kasich served nine terms as a member of the United States House of Representatives, representing Ohio's 12th congressional district from 1983 to 2001.
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His tenure in the House included 18 years on the House Armed Services Committee and six years as chairman of the House Budget Committee.
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He was a key figure in the passage of both 1996 welfare reform legislation and the Balanced Budget Act of 1997.
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Kasich decided not to run for re-election in 2000.
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After leaving Congress, Kasich hosted Heartland with John Kasich on Fox News from 2001 to 2007 and was a fill-in host for The O'Reilly Factor.
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He also worked as an investment banker, serving as managing director of the Lehman Brothers office in Columbus, Ohio.
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In the 2010 Ohio gubernatorial election, Kasich defeated Democratic incumbent Ted Strickland.
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He was reelected in 2014, defeating Democratic challenger Ed FitzGerald by 30 percentage points.
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Kasich unsuccessfully sought the Republican nomination for President in 2000 and 2016, receiving one electoral vote from a faithless elector in Texas in 2016.
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Kasich declined to support the Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and did not attend the 2016 Republican National Convention, which was held in the state that he represented at the time.
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He reported that he wrote-in the name of U.S. Senator and former 2008 Republican presidential nominee John McCain.
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Kasich was term-limited and could not seek a third term in 2018.
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He was succeeded by Ohio Attorney General and former U.S. Senator Mike DeWine.
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In 2019, Kasich joined CNN as a contributor.
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The 2020 Republican Party presidential primaries and caucuses are a series of ongoing elections taking place in many U.S. states, the District of Columbia, and five U.S. territories.
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These events will elect most of the 2,550 delegates to send to the Republican National Convention.
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Delegates to the national convention may otherwise be elected by the respective state party organizations.
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The delegates to the national convention will vote, by ballot, to select the Republican Party's nominee for president of the United States in the 2020 election, where the majority will be bound by the results of their respective state contests on the first ballot.
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The delegates also approve the party platform and vice-presidential nominee.
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Incumbent president Donald Trump informally launched his bid for re-election on February 18, 2017.
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He launched his reelection campaign earlier in his presidency than any of his predecessors did.
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He was followed by former governor of Massachusetts Bill Weld, who announced his campaign on April 15, 2019, and former Illinois congressman Joe Walsh, who declared his candidacy on August 25, 2019.
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Former governor of South Carolina and U.S. representative Mark Sanford launched a primary challenge on September 8, 2019.
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In addition, businessman Rocky De La Fuente entered the race on May 16, 2019, but was not widely recognized as a major candidate.
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In February 2019, the Republican National Committee voted to provide undivided support to Trump.
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Several states have decided to cancel their primaries and caucuses.
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Other states were encouraged to use "winner-takes-all" or "winner-takes-most" systems to award delegates instead of using proportional allocation.
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There is no scholarly consensus over what precisely constitutes a religion.
It may be defined as a cultural system of designated behaviors and practices, world views, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that claims to relate humanity to supernatural, transcendental, or spiritual elements.
Different religions may (or may not) contain various elements, ranging from the divine, sacred things, faith, a supernatural being (or supernatural beings), or "some sort of ultimacy and transcendence that will provide norms and power for the rest of life".
Religious practices may include rituals, sermons, commemoration or veneration (of deities), sacrifices, festivals, feasts, trances, initiations, funerary services, matrimonial services, meditation, prayer, music, art, dance, public service, or other aspects of human culture.
Religions have sacred histories and narratives (which may be preserved in sacred scriptures), and symbols and holy places, that aim (mostly) to give a meaning to life.
Religions may contain symbolic stories, which are sometimes said by followers to be true, that have the side purpose of explaining the origin of life, the universe, and other things.
Traditionally, faith, in addition to reason, has been considered a source of religious beliefs.
There are an estimated 10,000 distinct religions worldwide, but about 84% of the world's population is affiliated with one of the five largest religions, namely Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, or forms of folk religion.
The religiously unaffiliated demographic includes those who do not identify with any particular religion, atheists and agnostics.
While the religiously unaffiliated have grown globally, many of the religiously unaffiliated still have various religious beliefs.
The study of religion encompasses a wide variety of academic disciplines, including theology, comparative religion and social scientific studies.
Theories of religion offer various explanations for the origins and workings of religion.
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A lawsuit is a proceeding by a party (or parties) against another in the civil court of law.
The archaic term "suit in law" is found in only a small number of laws still in effect today.
The term "lawsuit" is used in reference to a civil action brought in a court of law in which a plaintiff,
a party who claims to have incurred loss as a result of a defendant's actions,
demands a legal or equitable remedy.
The defendant is required to respond to the plaintiff's complaint.
If the plaintiff is successful, judgment is in the plaintiff's favor,
and a variety of court orders may be issued to enforce a right, award damages,
or impose a temporary or permanent injunction to prevent an act or compel an act.
A declaratory judgment may be issued to prevent future legal disputes.
A lawsuit may involve dispute resolution of private law issues between individuals,
business entities or non-profit organizations.
A lawsuit may also enable the state to be treated as if it were a private party in a civil case,
as plaintiff, or defendant regarding an injury,
or may provide the state with a civil cause of action to enforce certain laws.
The conduct of a lawsuit is called litigation.
The plaintiffs and defendants are called litigants
and the attorneys representing them are called litigators.
The term litigation may also refer to a criminal procedure.
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The central government of the People's Republic of China is divided among several state organs:
1.) the legislative branch, the National People's Congress and its Standing Committee
2.) the presidency, including the President and the Vice-President
3.) the executive branch, the State Council (constitutionally synonymous with the "Central People's Government"), whose Premier is the head of government
4.) the military branch, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) and the People's Armed Police (PAP), via the Central Military Commission, whose Chairman is the Commander-in-chief
5.) the supervisory branch, the National Supervisory Commission
6.) the judicial branch, the Supreme People's Court and the Supreme People's Procuratorate
The legal power of the Communist Party is guaranteed by the PRC Constitution and its position as the supreme political authority in the PRC is realised through its comprehensive control of the state, military, and media.
According to a prominent government spokesman:
"We will never simply copy the system of Western countries or introduce a system of multiple parties holding office in rotation; although China’s state organs have different responsibilities, they all adhere to the line, principles and policies of the party."
The primary organs of state power are the National People's Congress (NPC), the President, and the State Council.
Members of the State Council include the Premier, a variable number of Vice Premiers (now four), five State Councilors (protocol equal of vice premiers but with narrower portfolios), and 29 ministers and heads of State Council commissions.
During the 1980s, there was an attempt made to separate party and state functions, with the party deciding general policy and the state carrying it out.
The attempt was abandoned in the 1990s, with the result that the political leadership within the state are also the leaders of the party.
This dual structure thereby creates a single centralized focus of power.
At the same time, there has been a move to separate party and state offices at levels other than the central government.
It is not unheard of for a sub-national executive to also be party secretary.
This frequently causes conflict between the chief executive and the party secretary, and this conflict is widely seen as intentional to prevent either from becoming too powerful.
Some special cases are the Special Administrative Regions of Hong Kong and Macau, where the Mainland Chinese national laws do not apply at all, and the autonomous regions where, following Soviet practice, the chief executive is typically a member of the local ethnic group, while the party general secretary is non-local and usually Han Chinese.
Under the Constitution of China, the NPC is the highest organ of state power in China.
It meets annually for about two weeks to review and approve major new policy directions, laws, the budget, and major personnel changes.
Most national legislation in the PRC is adopted by the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress.
Most initiatives are presented to the NPCSC for consideration by the State Council after previous endorsement by the Communist Party's Politburo Standing Committee.
Although the NPC generally approves State Council policy and personnel recommendations, the NPC and its standing committee has increasingly asserted its role as the national legislature and has been able to force revisions in some laws.
For example, the State Council and the Party have been unable to secure passage of a fuel tax to finance the construction of expressways.
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Mohammad bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud (Arabic: محمد بن سلمان بن عبدالعزيز آل سعود Muhammad bin Salmān bin ‘Abd al-‘Azīz Āl Sa‘ūd; born 31 August 1985), known colloquially as MbS, is the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, also serving as Deputy Prime Minister, President of the Council for Economic and Development Affairs, and Minister of Defense – the world's youngest at the time of his appointment.
He has been described as the power behind the throne of his father, King Salman.
He was appointed Crown Prince in June 2017 following King Salman’s decision to remove Muhammad bin Nayef from all positions, making Mohammad bin Salman heir apparent to the throne.
He has led several successful reforms, which include regulations restricting the powers of the religious police, and the removal of the ban on female drivers.
Further cultural developments under his reign include the first Saudi public concerts by a female singer, the first Saudi sports stadium to admit women, and an increased presence of women in the workforce.
His Vision 2030 program aims to diversify the Saudi economy through investment in non-oil sectors, including technology and tourism.
In 2016, he announced plans to list the shares of the state oil company Saudi Aramco.
Despite international praise for his strides towards the social and economic liberalisation of Saudi Arabia, commentators and human rights groups have been vocally critical of Mohammad bin Salman's leadership and the shortfalls of his reform program, citing a rising number of detentions of human rights activists, his intervention in Yemen, the escalation of the Qatar diplomatic crisis, the start of the Lebanon–Saudi Arabia dispute, and the arrest of members of the Saudi royal family in November 2017.
NGOs (including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch) continue to criticize the Saudi government for its violations of human rights.
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Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin (born 7 October 1952) is a Russian politician and former intelligence officer serving as the current president of Russia.
Putin has served continuously as president or prime minister since 1999: as prime minister from 1999 to 2000 and from 2008 to 2012, and as president from 2000 to 2008 and since 2012.
Putin worked as a KGB foreign intelligence officer for 16 years, rising to the rank of lieutenant colonel before resigning in 1991 to begin a political career in Saint Petersburg.
He moved to Moscow in 1996 to join the administration of President Boris Yeltsin.
He briefly served as director of the Federal Security Service (FSB) and secretary of the Security Council of Russia, before being appointed prime minister in August 1999.
After the resignation of Yeltsin, Putin became acting president and, less than four months later, was elected outright to his first term as president.
He was reelected in 2004.
Because he was constitutionally limited to two consecutive terms as president, Putin served as prime minister again from 2008 to 2012 under Dmitry Medvedev.
He returned to the presidency in 2012, in an election marred by allegations of fraud and protests, and was reelected in 2018.
In April 2021, after a referendum, he signed into law constitutional amendments - including one that would allow him to run for reelection twice more, potentially extending his presidency to 2036.
During Putin's first tenure as president, the Russian economy grew on average by seven percent per year, after economic reforms and a fivefold increase in the price of oil and gas.
Putin also led Russia during a war against Chechen separatists, reestablishing federal control of the region.
As prime minister under Medvedev, he oversaw a war against Georgia and military and police reform.
During his third term as president, Russia annexed Crimea and sponsored a war in eastern Ukraine with several military incursions made, resulting in international sanctions and a financial crisis in Russia.
He also ordered a military intervention in Syria to support Russian ally Bashar al-Assad in the Syrian civil war, eventually securing a deal that granted permanent naval bases in the Eastern Mediterranean.
During his fourth term as president, he launched a large invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, provoking international condemnation and significantly expanded sanctions.
In September 2022, he announced a partial mobilisation and forcibly annexed four Ukrainian oblasts into Russia.
In March 2023, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Putin for war crimes in connection to his alleged criminal responsibility for illegal child abductions during the war.
Under Putin's leadership, Russia has undergone democratic backsliding and a shift to authoritarianism.
His rule has been characterised by endemic corruption and widespread human rights violations, including the imprisonment and repression of political opponents, the intimidation and suppression of independent media in Russia, and a lack of free and fair elections.
Putin's Russia has scored poorly on Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index, the Economist Intelligence Unit's Democracy Index, Freedom House's Freedom in the World index, and the Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Index.
Putin is the longest-serving Russian president and the second-longest currently serving European president, after Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus.
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Standard Croatian is based on the most widespread dialect of Serbo-Croatian, Shtokavian, more specifically on Eastern Herzegovinian, which is also the basis of Standard Serbian, Bosnian, and Montenegrin. The other Serbo-Croatian dialects spoken by Croats are Chakavian, Kajkavian, and Torlakian (by the Krashovani). These four dialects, and the four national standards, are usually subsumed under the term "Serbo-Croatian" in English, though this term is controversial for native speakers, and paraphrases such as "Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian" are therefore sometimes used instead, especially in diplomatic circles.
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Bernard Francis Law (November 4, 1931 – December 20, 2017) was an American cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church.
He was Archbishop emeritus of Boston, former archpriest of the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore, and Cardinal Priest of Santa Susanna, which was the American Catholic church in Rome (until summer 2017, when the American community was relocated to another parish).
Law was the Archbishop of Boston from 1984 until his resignation on December 13, 2002, in response to the Roman Catholic Church sex abuse scandal, after church documents showed he had extensive knowledge of sexual abuse committed by dozens of Catholic priests within his archdiocese, and had failed to remove them from the ministry.
One priest alone was alleged to have raped or molested 130 children over several decades, while Law and other local officials moved him among churches rather than going to the authorities.
Two years after Law resigned from his position in Boston, which the Church called "an important step in the healing process", Pope John Paul II appointed him as Archpriest of the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome in 2004.
He resigned from this position upon reaching the age of 80 in November 2011, and died in Rome on December 20, 2017, at the age of 86.
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The British Armed Forces, also known as Her Majesty's Armed Forces and the Armed Forces of the Crown, are the military services which are tasked with the defence of the United Kingdom, its overseas territories, and the Crown dependencies.
They also promote Britain's wider interests, support international peacekeeping efforts, and provide humanitarian aid.
Since the formation of a Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707 (later succeeded by the United Kingdom), the armed forces have seen action in a number of major wars involving the world's great powers, including the Seven Years' War, the Napoleonic Wars, the Crimean War, the First World War, and the Second World War.
Repeatedly emerging victorious from conflicts has allowed Britain to establish itself as one of the world's leading military and economic powers.
Today, the British Armed Forces consist of: the Royal Navy, a blue-water navy with a fleet of 77 commissioned ships; the Royal Marines, a highly specialised amphibious light infantry force; the British Army, the UK's principal land warfare branch; and the Royal Air Force, a technologically sophisticated air force with a diverse operational fleet consisting of both fixed-wing and rotary aircraft.
The Commander-in-chief of the British Armed Forces is the British monarch, Queen Elizabeth II, to whom members of the forces swear allegiance.
The UK Parliament approves the continued existence of the armed forces by passing an Armed Forces Act at least once every five years, as required by the Bill of Rights 1689.
The armed forces are managed by the Defence Council of the Ministry of Defence, headed by the Secretary of State for Defence.
The United Kingdom is one of five recognised nuclear powers, is a permanent member on the United Nations Security Council, is a founding and leading member of the NATO military alliance, and is party to the Five Power Defence Arrangements.
Overseas garrisons and facilities are maintained at Ascension Island, Bahrain, Belize, Bermuda, British Indian Ocean Territory, Brunei, Canada, Cyprus, the Falkland Islands, Germany, Gibraltar, Kenya, Montserrat, Nepal, Qatar, and Singapore.
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Nursing is a profession within the health care sector focused on the care of individuals, families, and communities so they may attain, maintain, or recover optimal health and quality of life.
Nurses may be differentiated from other health care providers by their approach to patient care, training, and scope of practice.
Nurses practice in many specialties with differing levels of prescription authority.
Many nurses provide care within the ordering scope of physicians, and this traditional role has shaped the public image of nurses as care providers.
However, nurse practitioners are permitted by most jurisdictions to practice independently in a variety of settings.
In the postwar period, nurse education has undergone a process of diversification towards advanced and specialized credentials, and many of the traditional regulations and provider roles are changing.
Nurses develop a plan of care, working collaboratively with physicians, therapists, the patient, the patient's family and other team members, that focuses on treating illness to improve quality of life.
In the United States and the United Kingdom, advanced practice nurses, such as clinical nurse specialists and nurse practitioners, diagnose health problems and prescribe medications and other therapies, depending on individual state regulations.
Nurses may help coordinate the patient care performed by other members of a multidisciplinary health care team, such as therapists, medical practitioners and dietitians.
Nurses provide care both interdependently, for example, with physicians, and independently as nursing professionals.
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Rape is a type of sexual assault involving sexual intercourse - or other forms of sexual penetration - carried out against a person without their consent.
The act may be carried out by physical force, coercion, abuse of authority, or against a person who is incapable of giving valid consent, such as one who is unconscious, incapacitated, has an intellectual disability, or is below the legal age of consent.
The term rape is sometimes used interchangeably with the term sexual assault.
The rate of reporting, prosecuting, and convicting for rape varies between jurisdictions.
Internationally, the incidence of rapes recorded by the police during 2008 ranged, per 100,000 people, from 0.2 in Azerbaijan to 92.9 in Botswana - with 6.3 in Lithuania as the median.
Worldwide, sexual violence, including rape, is primarily committed by males against females.
Rape by strangers is usually less common than rape by people the victim knows, and male-on-male and female-on-female prison rapes are common and may be the least reported forms of rape.
Widespread and systematic rape (e.g., war rape) and sexual slavery can occur during international conflict.
These practices are crimes against humanity and war crimes.
Rape is also recognized as an element of the crime of genocide when committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a targeted ethnic group.
People who have been raped can be traumatized and develop post-traumatic stress disorder.
Serious injuries can result, along with the risk of pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections.
A person may face violence or threats from the rapist, and, sometimes, from the victim's family and relatives.
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Democracy (Greek: δημοκρατία, dēmokratía literally "rule of the people"), in modern usage, is a system of government in which the citizens exercise power directly or elect representatives from among themselves to form a governing body, such as a parliament.
Democracy is sometimes referred to as "rule of the majority".
Democracy is a system of processing conflicts in which outcomes depend on what participants do but no single force controls what occurs and its outcomes.
The uncertainty of outcomes is inherent in democracy, which makes all forces struggle repeatedly for the realization of their interests, being the devolution of power from a group of people to a set of rules.
Western democracy, as distinct from that which existed in pre-modern societies, is generally considered to have originated in city states such as Classical Athens and the Roman Republic, where various schemes and degrees of enfranchisement of the free male population were observed before the form disappeared in the West at the beginning of late antiquity.
The English word dates to the 16th century, from the older Middle French and Middle Latin equivalents.
According to political scientist Larry Diamond, democracy consists of four key elements: (a) A political system for choosing and replacing the government through free and fair elections; (b) The active participation of the people, as citizens, in politics and civic life; (c) Protection of the human rights of all citizens, and (d) A rule of law, in which the laws and procedures apply equally to all citizens.
In the 5th century BC, to denote the political systems then existing in Greek city-states, notably Athens, the term is an antonym to aristocracy (ἀριστοκρατία, aristokratía), meaning "rule of an elite".
While theoretically these definitions are in opposition, in practice the distinction has been blurred historically.
The political system of Classical Athens, for example, granted democratic citizenship to free men and excluded slaves and women from political participation.
In 1906, Finland became the first government to herald a more inclusive democracy at the national level.
In virtually all democratic governments throughout ancient and modern history, democratic citizenship consisted of an elite class until full enfranchisement was won for all adult citizens in most modern democracies through the suffrage movements of the 19th and 20th centuries.
Democracy contrasts with forms of government where power is either held by an individual, as in an absolute monarchy, or where power is held by a small number of individuals, as in an oligarchy.
Nevertheless, these oppositions, inherited from Greek philosophy, are now ambiguous because contemporary governments have mixed democratic, oligarchic, and monarchic elements.
Karl Popper defined democracy in contrast to dictatorship or tyranny, thus focusing on opportunities for the people to control their leaders and to oust them without the need for a revolution.
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Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu (born 21 October 1949) is an Israeli politician serving as the 9th and current Prime Minister of Israel since 2009, previously holding the position from 1996 to 1999.
Netanyahu is also currently a member of the Knesset and the Chairman of the Likud party.
He is the first Israeli Prime Minister born in Israel after the establishment of the state.
Born in Tel Aviv to secular Jewish parents, Netanyahu joined the Israel Defense Forces shortly after the Six-Day War in 1967, and became a team leader in the Sayeret Matkal special forces unit.
Netanyahu took part in many missions, including Operation Inferno (1968), Operation Gift (1968) and Operation Isotope (1972), during which he was shot in the shoulder.
Netanyahu fought on the front lines in the War of Attrition and the Yom Kippur War in 1973, taking part in special forces raids along the Suez Canal, and then leading a commando assault deep into Syrian territory.
Netanyahu achieved the rank of captain before being discharged.
After graduating from MIT with Bachelor of Science (SB) and Master of Science (SM) degrees, Netanyahu was recruited as an economic consultant for the Boston Consulting Group.
Netanyahu returned to Israel in 1978 to found the Yonatan Netanyahu Anti-Terror Institute, named after his brother Yonatan Netanyahu, who died leading Operation Entebbe.
Netanyahu served as the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations from 1984 to 1988.
He became the leader of Likud in 1993 and won the 1996 elections, becoming Israel's youngest-ever Prime Minister, serving his first term from June 1996 to July 1999.
Netanyahu moved from the political arena to the private sector after being defeated in the 1999 election for prime minister by Ehud Barak.
Netanyahu returned to politics in 2002 as Foreign Affairs Minister (2002–2003) and Finance Minister (2003–2005) in Ariel Sharon's governments, but he departed the government over disagreements regarding the Gaza disengagement plan.
As Minister of Finance, Netanyahu engaged in a major reform of the Israeli economy, which was credited by commentators as having significantly improved Israel's subsequent economic performance.
Netanyahu retook the Likud leadership in December 2005, after Sharon left to form a new party, Kadima.
In December 2006, Netanyahu became the official Leader of the Opposition in the Knesset and Chairman of Likud.
Following the 2009 parliamentary election, in which Likud placed second and right-wing parties won a majority, Netanyahu formed a coalition government.
After the victory in the 2013 elections, he became the second person to be elected to the position of Prime Minister for a third term, after Israel's founder David Ben-Gurion.
In March 2015, Netanyahu was elected to his fourth term as prime minister.
Netanyahu has been elected Prime Minister of Israel four times, matching David Ben-Gurion's record.
Netanyahu is the only prime minister in Israel's history to have been elected three times in a row.
Netanyahu is currently the second longest-serving Prime Minister in Israel's history after David Ben-Gurion.
If Netanyahu wins a snap election in 2019 he is set to become the longest-serving Prime Minister in Israeli history.
On 28 February 2019, the Israeli attorney general announced that he would be seeking indictments against Netanyahu on bribe and fraud charges in three different cases.
Netanyahu would become the first sitting prime minister in Israeli history to be charged with a crime.
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Homelessness is defined as living in housing that is below the minimum standard or lacks secure tenure.
People can be categorized as homeless if they are: living on the streets (primary homelessness); moving between temporary shelters, including houses of friends, family and emergency accommodation (secondary homelessness); living in private boarding houses without a private bathroom and/or security of tenure (tertiary homelessness).
The legal definition of homeless varies from country to country, or among different jurisdictions in the same country or region.
According to the UK homelessness charity Crisis, a home is not just a physical space: it also provides roots, identity, security, a sense of belonging and a place of emotional wellbeing.
United States government homeless enumeration studies also include people who sleep in a public or private place not designed for use as a regular sleeping accommodation for human beings.
People who are homeless are most often unable to acquire and maintain regular, safe, secure and adequate housing due to a lack of (or an unsteady) income.
Homelessness and poverty are interrelated.
In 2005, an estimated 100 million (1 in 65 at the time) people worldwide were homeless, and as many as 1 billion people live as squatters, refugees, or in temporary shelter, all lacking adequate housing.
Historically, in the Western countries, the majority of homeless have been men (50–80%), with single males particularly over-represented.
In 2015, the United States reported that there were 564,708 homeless people within its borders, one of the higher reported figures worldwide.
These figures are likely underestimates, as surveillance for the homeless population is challenging.
When compared to the general population, people who are homeless experience higher rates of adverse physical and mental health outcomes, which renders them vulnerable to health conditions associated with changes in climate.
Chronic disease severity, respiratory conditions, rates of mental health illnesses and substance use (and abuse) are all (often) greater in homeless populations than in the general population.
Homelessness is also associated with a high risk of suicide attempts.
People experiencing homelessness have limited access to resources and are often disengaged from health services, making them that much more susceptible to extreme weather events (e.g., extreme cold or heat) and ozone levels.
These disparities often result in increased morbidity and mortality in the homeless population.
There are a number of organizations who provide help for the homeless.
Most countries provide a variety of services to assist homeless people.
These services often provide food, shelter (beds) and clothing, and may be organized and run by community organizations (often with the help of volunteers) or by government departments or agencies.
These programs may be supported by the government, charities, churches and individual donors.
Many cities also have street newspapers, which are publications designed to provide employment opportunity to homeless people.
While some homeless have jobs, some must seek other methods to make a living.
Begging or panhandling is one option, but is becoming increasingly illegal in many cities.
People who are homeless may have additional conditions, such as physical or mental health issues, or substance addiction; these issues make resolving homelessness a challenging policy issue.
Homeless people, and homeless organizations, are sometimes accused or convicted of fraudulent behaviour.
Criminals are also known to exploit homeless people, ranging from identity theft to tax and welfare scams.
These incidents often lead to negative connotations on the homeless as a group.
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A police force is a constituted body of persons empowered by a state to enforce the law, to protect people and property, and to prevent crime and civil disorder.
Their powers include the power of arrest and the legitimized use of force.
The term is most commonly associated with police services of a sovereign state that are authorized to exercise the police power of that state within a defined legal or territorial area of responsibility.
Police forces are often defined as being separate from military or other organizations involved in the defense of the state against foreign aggressors; however, gendarmerie are military units charged with civil policing.
The police force is usually a public sector service, funded through taxes.
Law enforcement is only part of policing activity.
Policing has included an array of activities in different situations, but the predominant ones are concerned with the preservation of order.
In some societies, in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, these developed within the context of maintaining the class system and the protection of private property.
Police forces have become ubiquitous in modern societies.
Some are involved to varying degrees in corruption, police brutality and the enforcement of authoritarian rule.
Alternative names for a police force include constabulary, gendarmerie, police department, police service, crime prevention, protective services, law enforcement agency, civil guard or civic guard.
Members may be referred to as police officers, troopers, sheriffs, constables, rangers, peace officers or civic/civil guards.
The word police is most universal and can be seen in many non-English speaking countries.
As police are often interacting with individuals, slang terms are numerous.
Many slang terms for police officers are decades or centuries old with lost etymology.
One of the oldest, "cop", has largely lost its slang connotations and become a common colloquial term used both by the public and police officers to refer to their profession.
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Higher education in the United States is an optional final stage of formal learning following secondary education.
Higher education (also referred to as post-secondary education, third stage, third level, or tertiary education) occurs most commonly at one of the 4,360 Title IV degree-granting institutions (either colleges or universities) in the country.
These may be public universities, private universities, liberal arts colleges, community colleges, or for-profit colleges.
Higher education in the United States is loosely regulated by a number of third-party organizations that vary in quality.
High visibility issues include rising tuition and increasing student loan debt, unfair admissions, greater use of online education, competency-based education, free speech and hate speech, fraternity hazing, campus sexual assault, cutbacks in state and local spending, the adjunctification of academic labor, and student poverty and hunger.
According to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) and National Student Clearinghouse, US college enrollment has declined since a peak in 2010-11 and is projected to continue declining (or be stagnant) for the next two decades.
This decline, partially attributable to falling birth rates and fewer foreign students, amounts to 2.9 million fewer students than in 2010–11.
Strong research and funding helped American universities dominate global rankings in the early 21st century, making them attractive to international students, professors and researchers.
Other countries, however, are now offering incentives to take away researchers, as funding is threatened.
As a result, the US dominance of international tables has lessened.
The United States higher education system has also been blighted by fly-by-night schools, diploma mills, visa mills, and predatory for-profit colleges.
According to Pew Research Center and Gallup poll surveys conducted in 2017, public opinion about US colleges has been declining, especially, but not exclusively, to Republicans and the white working class.
The higher education industry has been criticized for being unnecessarily expensive, providing a difficult-to-measure service which is seen as vital but in which providers are paid for inputs instead of outputs, and which is beset with federal regulations which drive up costs, and with payments not coming from users but from third parties.
In 2018, a Pew survey found that 61 percent of those polled said that US higher education was headed in the wrong direction.
For generations, US education was unique in its emphasis on Liberal Arts education in its higher education curriculum, but this emphasis has been waning for more than five decades, and there is growing skepticism about its utility.
The US is unique in its investment in highly competitive NCAA sports, particularly in American football and basketball, with large sports stadiums and arenas.
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The Communist Party of China (CPC), also referred to as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), is the founding and ruling political party of the People's Republic of China.
The Communist Party is the sole governing party within mainland China, permitting only eight other, subordinated parties to co-exist, those making up the United Front.
It was founded in 1921, chiefly by Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao.
The party grew quickly, and by 1949 it had driven the nationalist Kuomintang (KMT) government from mainland China after the Chinese Civil War, leading to the establishment of the People's Republic of China.
It also controls the world's largest armed forces, the People's Liberation Army.
The CPC is officially organised on the basis of democratic centralism, a principle conceived by Russian Marxist theoretician Vladimir Lenin which entails democratic and open discussion on policy on the condition of unity in upholding the agreed upon policies.
The highest body of the CPC is the National Congress, convened every fifth year.
When the National Congress is not in session, the Central Committee is the highest body, but since the body meets normally only once a year most duties and responsibilities are vested in the Politburo and its Standing Committee.
The party's leader holds the offices of General Secretary (responsible for civilian party duties), Chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC) (responsible for military affairs) and State President (a largely ceremonial position).
Through these posts, the party leader is the country's paramount leader.
The current paramount leader is Xi Jinping, elected at the 18th National Congress held in October 2012.
The CPC is committed to communism and continues to participate in the International Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties each year.
According to the party constitution, the CPC adheres to Marxism–Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought, socialism with Chinese characteristics, Deng Xiaoping Theory, the Three Represents, the Scientific Outlook on Development and Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese characteristics for a New Era.
The official explanation for China's economic reforms is that the country is in the primary stage of socialism, a developmental stage similar to the capitalist mode of production.
The command economy established under Mao Zedong was replaced by the socialist market economy, the current economic system, on the basis that "Practice is the Sole Criterion for the Truth".
Since the collapse of Eastern European communist governments in 1989–1990 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the CPC has emphasised its party-to-party relations with the ruling parties of the remaining socialist states.
While the CPC still maintains party-to-party relations with non-ruling communist parties around the world, since the 1980s it has established relations with several non-communist parties, most notably with ruling parties of one-party states (whatever their ideology), dominant parties in democracies (whatever their ideology) and social democratic parties.
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Thomas Jefferson (April 13 [O.S. April 2] 1743 – July 4, 1826) was an American Founding Father who was the principal author of the Declaration of Independence (1776).
He was elected the second Vice President of the United States (1797–1801), serving under John Adams and in 1800 was elected the third President (1801–09).
Jefferson was a proponent of democracy, republicanism, and individual rights, which motivated American colonists to break from Great Britain and form a new nation.
He produced formative documents and decisions at both the state and national level.
Primarily of English ancestry, Jefferson was born and educated in Virginia.
He graduated from the College of William & Mary and practiced law.
During the American Revolution, he represented Virginia in the Continental Congress that adopted the Declaration, drafted the law for religious freedom as a Virginia legislator, and served as a wartime governor (1779–1781).
He became the United States Minister to France in May 1785, and subsequently the nation's first Secretary of State in 1790–1793 under President George Washington.
Jefferson and James Madison organized the Democratic-Republican Party to oppose the Federalist Party during the formation of the First Party System.
With Madison, he anonymously wrote the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions in 1798–1799, which sought to embolden states' rights in opposition to the national government by nullifying the Alien and Sedition Acts.
While President, Jefferson pursued the nation's shipping and trade interests against Barbary pirates and aggressive British trade policies, respectively.
He also organized the Louisiana Purchase, almost doubling the country's territory.
As a result of peace negotiations with France, his administration reduced military forces.
He was re-elected in 1804.
Jefferson's second term was beset with difficulties at home, including the trial of former Vice President Aaron Burr.
American foreign trade was diminished when Jefferson implemented the Embargo Act of 1807, responding to British threats to U.S. shipping.
In 1803, Jefferson began a controversial process of Indian tribe removal to the newly organized Louisiana Territory, and, in 1807, signed the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves.
Jefferson mastered many disciplines which ranged from surveying and mathematics to horticulture and mechanics.
He was a proven architect in the classical tradition.
Jefferson's keen interest in religion and philosophy earned him the presidency of the American Philosophical Society.
He shunned organized religion, but was influenced by both Christianity and deism.
He was well versed in languages.
He founded the University of Virginia after retiring from public office.
He was a prolific writer and correspondent.
His only full-length book, Notes on the State of Virginia (1785), is considered the most important American book published before 1800.
He owned several plantations with hundreds of slaves.
Most historians now believe that after the death of his wife in 1782, he had a relationship with his slave Sally Hemings and fathered at least some of her children.
Historical opinion of Jefferson has generally been exalted, but in recent years while he has been criticized for owning slaves, presidential scholars continue to rank Jefferson among the greatest presidents.
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China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia and the world's most populous country, with a population of around 1.404 billion.
Covering approximately 9,600,000 square kilometers (3,700,000 sq mi), it is the third- or fourth-largest country by total area.
Governed by the Communist Party of China, the state exercises jurisdiction over 22 provinces, five autonomous regions, four direct-controlled municipalities (Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, and Chongqing), and the special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macau.
China emerged as one of the world's earliest civilizations, in the fertile basin of the Yellow River in the North China Plain.
For millennia, China's political system was based on hereditary monarchies, or dynasties, beginning with the semi-legendary Xia dynasty in the 21st century BCE.
Since then, China has expanded, fractured, and re-unified numerous times.
In the 3rd century BCE, the Qin reunited the core of China and established the first Chinese empire.
The succeeding Han dynasty, which ruled from 206 BC until 220 AD, saw some of the most advanced technology at that time, including papermaking and the compass, along with agricultural and medical improvements.
The invention of gunpowder and movable type in the Tang dynasty (618–907) and Northern Song (960–1127) completed the Four Great Inventions.
Tang culture spread widely in Asia, as the new Silk Route brought traders to (as far away as) Mesopotamia and the Horn of Africa.
Dynastic rule ended in 1912 with the Xinhai Revolution, when a republic replaced the Qing dynasty.
The Chinese Civil War resulted in a division of territory in 1949, when the Communist Party of China established the People's Republic of China, a unitary one-party sovereign state on Mainland China, while the Kuomintang-led government retreated to the island of Taiwan.
The political status of Taiwan remains disputed.
Since the introduction of economic reforms in 1978, China's economy has been one of the world's fastest-growing, with annual growth rates consistently above 6 percent.
According to the World Bank, China's GDP grew from $150 billion in 1978 to $12.24 trillion by 2017.
Since 2010, China has been the world's second-largest economy by nominal GDP, and since 2014, the largest economy in the world by purchasing power parity (PPP).
China is also the world's largest exporter and second-largest importer of goods.
China is a recognized nuclear weapons state and has the world's largest standing army and second-largest defense budget.
The PRC is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, as it replaced the ROC in 1971, as well as an active global partner of ASEAN Plus mechanism.
China is also a leading member of numerous formal and informal multilateral organizations, including the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), WTO, APEC, BRICS, the BCIM, and the G20.
In recent times, scholars have argued that it will soon be a world superpower, rivaling the United States.
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Pakistan, officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, is a country in South Asia.
It is the world's fifth-most populous country, with a population of over 249 million people, and has the world's second-largest Muslim population, just behind Indonesia.
Islamabad is the nation's capital, while Karachi is its largest city and financial centre, followed by Lahore and Faisalabad.
Pakistan is the 33rd-largest country in the world by area and the second-largest in South Asia, spanning 881,913 square kilometres (340,509 square miles).
It has a 1,046-kilometre (650-mile) coastline along the Arabian Sea and Gulf of Oman in the south, and is bordered by India to the east, Afghanistan to the west, Iran to the southwest, and China to the northeast.
It is separated narrowly from Tajikistan by Afghanistan's Wakhan Corridor in the north, and also shares a maritime border with Oman.
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Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu (born 21 October 1949) is an Israeli politician serving as the 9th and current Prime Minister of Israel since 2009, previously holding the position from 1996 to 1999.
Netanyahu is also currently a member of the Knesset and the Chairman of the Likud party.
He is the first Israeli Prime Minister born in Israel after the establishment of the state.
Born in Tel Aviv to secular Jewish parents, Netanyahu joined the Israel Defense Forces shortly after the Six-Day War in 1967, and became a team leader in the Sayeret Matkal special forces unit.
Netanyahu took part in many missions, including Operation Inferno (1968), Operation Gift (1968) and Operation Isotope (1972), during which he was shot in the shoulder.
Netanyahu fought on the front lines in the War of Attrition and the Yom Kippur War in 1973, taking part in special forces raids along the Suez Canal, and then leading a commando assault deep into Syrian territory.
Netanyahu achieved the rank of captain before being discharged.
After graduating from MIT with Bachelor of Science (SB) and Master of Science (SM) degrees, Netanyahu was recruited as an economic consultant for the Boston Consulting Group.
Netanyahu returned to Israel in 1978 to found the Yonatan Netanyahu Anti-Terror Institute, named after his brother Yonatan Netanyahu, who died leading Operation Entebbe.
Netanyahu served as the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations from 1984 to 1988.
He became the leader of Likud in 1993 and won the 1996 elections, becoming Israel's youngest-ever Prime Minister, serving his first term from June 1996 to July 1999.
Netanyahu moved from the political arena to the private sector after being defeated in the 1999 election for prime minister by Ehud Barak.
Netanyahu returned to politics in 2002 as Foreign Affairs Minister (2002–2003) and Finance Minister (2003–2005) in Ariel Sharon's governments, but he departed the government over disagreements regarding the Gaza disengagement plan.
As Minister of Finance, Netanyahu engaged in a major reform of the Israeli economy, which was credited by commentators as having significantly improved Israel's subsequent economic performance.
Netanyahu retook the Likud leadership in December 2005, after Sharon left to form a new party, Kadima.
In December 2006, Netanyahu became the official Leader of the Opposition in the Knesset and Chairman of Likud.
Following the 2009 parliamentary election, in which Likud placed second and right-wing parties won a majority, Netanyahu formed a coalition government.
After the victory in the 2013 elections, he became the second person to be elected to the position of Prime Minister for a third term, after Israel's founder David Ben-Gurion.
In March 2015, Netanyahu was elected to his fourth term as prime minister.
Netanyahu has been elected Prime Minister of Israel four times, matching David Ben-Gurion's record.
Netanyahu is the only prime minister in Israel's history to have been elected three times in a row.
Netanyahu is currently the second longest-serving Prime Minister in Israel's history after David Ben-Gurion.
If Netanyahu wins a snap election in 2019 he is set to become the longest-serving Prime Minister in Israeli history.
On 28 February 2019, the Israeli attorney general announced that he would be seeking indictments against Netanyahu on bribe and fraud charges in three different cases.
Netanyahu would become the first sitting prime minister in Israeli history to be charged with a crime.
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China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia and the world's most populous country, with a population of around 1.404 billion.
Covering approximately 9,600,000 square kilometers (3,700,000 sq mi), it is the third- or fourth-largest country by total area.
Governed by the Communist Party of China, the state exercises jurisdiction over 22 provinces, five autonomous regions, four direct-controlled municipalities (Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, and Chongqing), and the special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macau.
China emerged as one of the world's earliest civilizations, in the fertile basin of the Yellow River in the North China Plain.
For millennia, China's political system was based on hereditary monarchies, or dynasties, beginning with the semi-legendary Xia dynasty in the 21st century BCE.
Since then, China has expanded, fractured, and re-unified numerous times.
In the 3rd century BCE, the Qin reunited the core of China and established the first Chinese empire.
The succeeding Han dynasty, which ruled from 206 BC until 220 AD, saw some of the most advanced technology at that time, including papermaking and the compass, along with agricultural and medical improvements.
The invention of gunpowder and movable type in the Tang dynasty (618–907) and Northern Song (960–1127) completed the Four Great Inventions.
Tang culture spread widely in Asia, as the new Silk Route brought traders to (as far away as) Mesopotamia and the Horn of Africa.
Dynastic rule ended in 1912 with the Xinhai Revolution, when a republic replaced the Qing dynasty.
The Chinese Civil War resulted in a division of territory in 1949, when the Communist Party of China established the People's Republic of China, a unitary one-party sovereign state on Mainland China, while the Kuomintang-led government retreated to the island of Taiwan.
The political status of Taiwan remains disputed.
Since the introduction of economic reforms in 1978, China's economy has been one of the world's fastest-growing, with annual growth rates consistently above 6 percent.
According to the World Bank, China's GDP grew from $150 billion in 1978 to $12.24 trillion by 2017.
Since 2010, China has been the world's second-largest economy by nominal GDP, and since 2014, the largest economy in the world by purchasing power parity (PPP).
China is also the world's largest exporter and second-largest importer of goods.
China is a recognized nuclear weapons state and has the world's largest standing army and second-largest defense budget.
The PRC is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, as it replaced the ROC in 1971, as well as an active global partner of ASEAN Plus mechanism.
China is also a leading member of numerous formal and informal multilateral organizations, including the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), WTO, APEC, BRICS, the BCIM, and the G20.
In recent times, scholars have argued that it will soon be a world superpower, rivaling the United States.
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The Republican Party, commonly referred to as the GOP (abbreviation for Grand Old Party), is one of the two major political parties in the United States, the other being its historic rival, the Democratic Party.
The party is named after republicanism, the dominant value during the American Revolution.
Founded by anti-slavery activists, economic modernizers, ex Whigs and ex Free Soilers in 1854, the Republicans dominated politics nationally (and in the majority of northern states) for most of the period between 1860 and 1932.
The Republican Party originally championed classical liberal ideas, including anti-slavery and economic reforms.
The party was usually dominant over the Democrats during the Third Party System and Fourth Party System.
In 1912, Theodore Roosevelt formed the Progressive ("Bull Moose") Party after being rejected by the GOP and ran as a candidate.
He called for many social reforms, some of which were later championed by New Deal Democrats in the 1930s.
He lost the election, and when most of his supporters returned to the GOP, they were at odds with the new conservative economic stance, leading to them leaving for the Democratic Party, and an ideological shift to the right in the Republican Party.
The liberal New Deal Democrats dominated the Fifth Party System at the national level.
The weak liberal Republican element was overwhelmed by a conservative surge begun by Barry Goldwater in 1964 and fulfilled during the Reagan Era.
Currently, their ideology is American conservatism, which contrasts with the Democrats' more progressive platform (also called modern liberalism).
The GOP's political platform supports lower taxes (primarily on multinational corporations and higher earners), free market capitalism, free enterprise, a strong national defense, more gun rights, deregulation, and restrictions on labor unions.
In addition to advocating for conservative economic policies, the Republican Party is socially conservative and seeks to uphold traditional values based largely on Judeo-Christian ethics.
The GOP was strongly committed to protectionism and tariffs from its founding until the 1930s, when it was based in the industrial Northeast and Midwest.
Since 1952, there has been a reversal against protectionism, and the party's core support since the 1990s comes chiefly from the South, the Great Plains, the Mountain States, and rural areas in the North, as well as from conservative Catholics, Mormons and Evangelicals nationwide.
The party has won 24 of the last 40 presidential elections and there have been a total of 19 Republican Presidents, the most from any one party.
The first was 16th President Abraham Lincoln, who served from 1861 until his assassination in 1865; and the most recent being 45th and current president Donald Trump, who took office on January 20, 2017.
The Republican Party is currently the primary party in power in the United States, holding the presidency (Donald Trump), majorities in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, a majority of governorships and state legislatures (full control of 32/50, split control of five others).
Furthermore, the GOP presently hold "trifectas" (the executive branch and both chambers of the legislative branch) in a majority of states (26/50) and a "trifecta plus" (executive, legislative and judicial branches) at the federal level (as five of the nine Supreme Court justices were appointed by Republican Presidents).
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Russia (Russian: Росси́я, tr. Rossiya), officially the Russian Federation (Russian: Росси́йская Федера́ция, tr. Rossiyskaya Federatsiya), is a country in Eurasia.
At 17,125,200 square kilometres (6,612,100 sq mi), Russia is the largest country in the world by area, covering more than one-eighth of the Earth's inhabited land area, and the ninth most populous, with over 144 million people as of December 2017, excluding Crimea.
About 77% of the population live in the western, European part of the country.
Russia's capital, Moscow, is one of the largest cities in the world; other major cities include Saint Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg and Nizhny Novgorod.
Extending across the entirety of Northern Asia and much of Eastern Europe, Russia spans eleven time zones and incorporates a wide range of environments and landforms.
From northwest to southeast, Russia shares land borders with Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland (both with Kaliningrad Oblast), Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, China, Mongolia and North Korea.
It shares maritime borders with Japan by the Sea of Okhotsk and the U.S. state of Alaska across the Bering Strait.
The East Slavs emerged as a recognizable group in Europe between the 3rd and 8th centuries AD.
Founded and ruled by a Varangian warrior elite and their descendants, the medieval state of Rus arose in the 9th century.
In 988, it adopted Orthodox Christianity from the Byzantine Empire, beginning the synthesis of Byzantine and Slavic cultures that defined Russian culture for the next millennium.
Rus ultimately disintegrated into a number of smaller states; most of the Rus' lands were overrun by the Mongol invasion and became tributaries of the nomadic Golden Horde in the 13th century.
The Grand Duchy of Moscow gradually reunified the surrounding Russian principalities, and achieved independence from the Golden Horde.
By the 18th century, the nation had greatly expanded through conquest, annexation, and exploration to become the Russian Empire, which was the third largest empire in history, stretching from Poland on the west to Alaska on the east.
Following the Russian Revolution, the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic became the largest and leading constituent of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the world's first constitutionally socialist state.
The Soviet Union played a decisive role in the Allied victory in World War II, and emerged as a recognized superpower and rival to the United States during the Cold War.
The Soviet era saw some of the most significant technological achievements of the 20th century, including the world's first human-made satellite and the launching of the first humans in space.
By the end of 1990, the Soviet Union had the world's second largest economy, the largest standing military in the world, and the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction.
Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, twelve independent republics emerged from the USSR: Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan; and the Baltic states regained independence: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania; the Russian SFSR reconstituted itself as the Russian Federation and is recognized as the continuing legal personality and a successor of the Soviet Union.
It is governed as a federal semi-presidential republic.
The Russian economy ranks as the twelfth largest by nominal GDP and sixth largest by purchasing power parity in 2015.
Russia's extensive mineral and energy resources are the largest such reserves in the world, making it one of the leading producers of oil and natural gas globally.
The country is one of the five recognized nuclear weapons states and possesses the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction.
Russia is a great power as well as a regional power and has been characterised as a potential superpower.
It is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council and an active global partner of ASEAN, as well as a member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), the G20, the Council of Europe, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), and the World Trade Organization (WTO), as well as being the leading member of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) and one of the five members of the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU), along with Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.
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The Republican Party, commonly referred to as the GOP (abbreviation for Grand Old Party), is one of the two major political parties in the United States, the other being its historic rival, the Democratic Party.
The party is named after republicanism, the dominant value during the American Revolution.
Founded by anti-slavery activists, economic modernizers, ex Whigs and ex Free Soilers in 1854, the Republicans dominated politics nationally (and in the majority of northern states) for most of the period between 1860 and 1932.
The Republican Party originally championed classical liberal ideas, including anti-slavery and economic reforms.
The party was usually dominant over the Democrats during the Third Party System and Fourth Party System.
In 1912, Theodore Roosevelt formed the Progressive ("Bull Moose") Party after being rejected by the GOP and ran as a candidate.
He called for many social reforms, some of which were later championed by New Deal Democrats in the 1930s.
He lost the election, and when most of his supporters returned to the GOP, they were at odds with the new conservative economic stance, leading to them leaving for the Democratic Party, and an ideological shift to the right in the Republican Party.
The liberal New Deal Democrats dominated the Fifth Party System at the national level.
The weak liberal Republican element was overwhelmed by a conservative surge begun by Barry Goldwater in 1964 and fulfilled during the Reagan Era.
Currently, their ideology is American conservatism, which contrasts with the Democrats' more progressive platform (also called modern liberalism).
The GOP's political platform supports lower taxes (primarily on multinational corporations and higher earners), free market capitalism, free enterprise, a strong national defense, more gun rights, deregulation, and restrictions on labor unions.
In addition to advocating for conservative economic policies, the Republican Party is socially conservative and seeks to uphold traditional values based largely on Judeo-Christian ethics.
The GOP was strongly committed to protectionism and tariffs from its founding until the 1930s, when it was based in the industrial Northeast and Midwest.
Since 1952, there has been a reversal against protectionism, and the party's core support since the 1990s comes chiefly from the South, the Great Plains, the Mountain States, and rural areas in the North, as well as from conservative Catholics, Mormons and Evangelicals nationwide.
The party has won 24 of the last 40 presidential elections and there have been a total of 19 Republican Presidents, the most from any one party.
The first was 16th President Abraham Lincoln, who served from 1861 until his assassination in 1865; and the most recent being 45th and current president Donald Trump, who took office on January 20, 2017.
The Republican Party is currently the primary party in power in the United States, holding the presidency (Donald Trump), majorities in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, a majority of governorships and state legislatures (full control of 32/50, split control of five others).
Furthermore, the GOP presently hold "trifectas" (the executive branch and both chambers of the legislative branch) in a majority of states (26/50) and a "trifecta plus" (executive, legislative and judicial branches) at the federal level (as five of the nine Supreme Court justices were appointed by Republican Presidents).
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California is a U.S. state in the Pacific Region of the United States.
With 39.5 million residents, California is the most populous state in the United States and the third largest by area.
The state capital is Sacramento.
The Greater Los Angeles Area and the San Francisco Bay Area are the nation's second- and fifth-most populous urban regions, with 18.7 million and 8.8 million residents respectively.
Los Angeles is California's most populous city, and the country's second-most populous, after New York City.
California also has the nation's most populous county, Los Angeles County; its largest county by area, San Bernardino County; and its fifth most densely populated county, San Francisco.
California's $2.8 trillion economy is larger than that of any other state.
If it were a country, California would be the 5th largest economy in the world (larger than the U.K. or France), and the 36th most populous as of 2017.
The Greater Los Angeles Area and the San Francisco Bay Area are the nation's second- and third-largest urban economies ($1.253 trillion and $878 billion respectively as of 2017), after the New York City metropolitan area.
The San Francisco Bay Area PSA had the nation's highest GDP per capita in 2017 (~$99,000), and is home to four of the world's ten largest companies by market capitalization and four of the world's ten richest people.
California is considered a global trendsetter in popular culture, innovation, and politics.
It is considered the origin of the American film industry, the hippie counterculture, the Internet, and the personal computer, among others.
The San Francisco Bay Area and the Greater Los Angeles Area are widely seen as the centers of the global technology and entertainment industries, respectively.
California has a very diverse economy: 58% of the state's economy is centered on finance, government, real estate services, technology, and professional, scientific and technical business services.
Although it accounts for only 1.5% of the state's economy, California's agriculture industry has the highest output of any U.S. state.
California is bordered by Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and the Mexican state of Baja California to the south.
The state's diverse geography ranges from the Pacific Coast in the west to the Sierra Nevada mountain range in the east, and from the redwood–Douglas fir forests in the northwest to the Mojave Desert in the southeast.
The Central Valley, a major agricultural area, dominates the state's center.
Although California is well-known for its warm Mediterranean climate, the large size of the state results in climates that vary from moist temperate rainforest in the north to arid desert in the interior, as well as snowy alpine in the mountains.
What is now California was first settled by various Native Californian tribes before being explored by a number of European expeditions during the 16th and 17th centuries.
The Spanish Empire then claimed it as part of Alta California in their New Spain colony.
The area became a part of Mexico in 1821 following its successful war for independence but was ceded to the United States in 1848 after the Mexican–American War.
The western portion of Alta California then was organized and admitted as the 31st state on September 9, 1850.
The California Gold Rush starting in 1848 led to dramatic social and demographic changes, with large-scale emigration from the east and abroad with an accompanying economic boom.
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Roy Stewart Moore (born February 11, 1947) is an American politician and jurist who served as the 27th and 31st Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Alabama.
He was the Republican nominee in the 2017 United States Senate special election in Alabama to fill the seat vacated by Jeff Sessions.
Moore lost to Democratic candidate Doug Jones.
Moore attended West Point and served as a company commander in the Military Police Corps during the Vietnam War.
After graduating from the University of Alabama Law School, he joined the Etowah County district attorney's office, serving as an assistant district attorney from 1977 to 1982.
In 1992, he was appointed as a circuit judge by Governor Guy Hunt to fill a vacancy, and elected to the position at the end of the term.
In 2001, Moore was elected to the position of Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Alabama.
He was removed from his position in November 2003 by the Alabama Court of the Judiciary for refusing a federal court's order to remove a marble monument of the Ten Commandments.
Moore sought the Republican nomination for the governorship of Alabama in 2006 and 2010, but lost in the primaries.
Moore was again elected Chief Justice in 2013, but was suspended in May 2016, for defying a U.S. Supreme Court decision about same-sex marriage.
Moore resigned in April 2017, and in September 2017 was nominated for the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Jeff Sessions.
During this special election campaign for U.S. Senate, informal allegations of sexual misconduct were made against him.
Three women stated that he had sexually assaulted them when they were at the respective ages of 14, 16 and 28.
Moore acknowledged that he may have approached and dated teenagers while he was in his 30s, but denied that any of the girls were underage or that he had sexually assaulted anyone.
President Donald Trump endorsed Moore a week before the election, after which some Republicans withdrew their opposition to Moore.
Democrat Doug Jones won the election, becoming the first Democrat since 1992 to win a US senate seat in Alabama.
Moore is considered an advocate of far-right politics.
He attracted national media attention and controversy over what have been called racist, homophobic, transphobic, and Islamophobic views, his belief that Christianity should order public policy, and his past ties to neo-Confederates and white nationalist groups.
Moore was a leading voice in the birther movement, which promoted the false claim that former President Barack Obama was not born in the United States.
He founded the Foundation for Moral Law, a non-profit legal organization from which he collected more than $1 million over five years, though a far smaller amount was indicated on its tax filings.
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Golf is a club-and-ball sport in which players use various clubs to hit balls into a series of holes on a course in as few strokes as possible.
Golf, unlike most ball games, cannot and does not utilize a standardized playing area, and coping with the varied terrains encountered on different courses is a key part of the game.
The game at the highest level is played on a course with an arranged progression of 18 holes, though recreational courses can be smaller, usually 9 holes.
Each hole on the course must contain a tee box to start from, and a putting green containing the actual hole or cup (4.25 inches in diameter).
There are other standard forms of terrain in between, such as the fairway, rough (long grass), sand traps (or "bunkers"), and various hazards (water, rocks, fescue) but each hole on a course is unique in its specific layout and arrangement.
Golf is played for the lowest number of strokes by an individual, known as stroke play, or the lowest score on the most individual holes in a complete round by an individual or team, known as match play.
Stroke play is the most commonly seen format at all levels, but most especially at the elite level.
The modern game of golf originated in 15th century Scotland.
The 18-hole round was created at the Old Course at St Andrews in 1764.
Golf's first major, and the world's oldest tournament in existence, is The Open Championship, also known as the British Open, which was first played in 1860 in Ayrshire, Scotland.
This is one of the four major championships in men's professional golf, the other three being played in the United States: The Masters, the U.S. Open, and the PGA Championship.
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Any man who calls a poison "a woman's weapon" is a traitor to his fellow men.
A dagger, arrow, ax – these are the arms of passion.
But poison is cold, calculating.
Poison is the thought that wakes you in the morning and lulls you to sleep at night.
You watch your victim die a thousand times before you ever offer him that fateful taste.
Is a man's hate so inferior to a woman's that we are to be denied such a weapon?
When I was a boy of sixteen, a great lord caught me with his mistress.
He should have been honored.
Instead, the fat old fool challenged me to a duel.
Thanks to my age and status, only to first blood.
But his mistress, and his wife, warned me which of my parts he intended to draw first blood from.
He was strong and fierce, but slow.
I cut him quickly, and the duel ended with honor satisfied.
Then, his wounds festered, and he died.
Ever since, men have called me "the Red Viper," a name that never fails to draw a laugh from me.
As if a single serpent was all I knew of venom.
Essence of nightshade is the gentlest of poisons. A drop dissolved into wine will slow a pounding heart and stop a hand from shaking. Three drops will grant a night of deep and dreamless sleep. Ten drops, and you will have a sleep that does not end.
Basilisk blood. It will give cooked meat a savory smell, but if eaten, it produces violent madness, in beasts as well as men. A mouse will attack a lion after a taste of basilisk's blood. But to a man who loves his art, is not passion a form of madness?
Widow's blood forces a man's bladder and bowels to fail. He drowns in his own poisons – a slow and painful death. It has earned its name many times, I am sure.
The Tears of Lys, a rare and costly poison. Clear, tasteless, and odorless. Dissolved in wine or water, it eats at a man's bowels. He dies in agony, which will not appear unusual if the victim is old or sickly — the favorite tool of impatient heirs.
Across the world, on certain islands of the Jade Sea, grows a certain plant. The leaves must be aged and soaked in a wash of limes, sugar water, and certain rare spices from the Summer Isles.
Afterward, the potion must be thickened with ash and allowed to crystallize. The process is slow and difficult, the necessaries costly and hard to acquire.
The Alchemists of Lys know the way of it, and the Faceless Men of Braavos and the maesters. Dissolved in wine, it makes the muscles of a man's throat clench tighter than any fist. The victim's face turns as purple as the little crystal seed from which his death was grown, and so we call it "the strangler."
Which of these vials would I take from its shelf, you may ask? None.
To kill a man at his table or in his bed bores me. To toil for hours over a boiling pot, measuring and stirring, bores me. How life begins is always entertaining, and my kind must make sure its end is worth our wait.
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The heart is a muscular organ in most animals, which pumps blood through the blood vessels of the circulatory system.
Blood provides the body with oxygen and nutrients, as well as assisting in the removal of metabolic wastes.
In humans, the heart is located between the lungs, in the middle compartment of the chest.
In humans, other mammals, and birds, the heart is divided into four chambers: upper left and right atria; and lower left and right ventricles.
Commonly, the right atrium and ventricle are referred to together as the right heart, and their left counterparts as the left heart.
Fish, in contrast, have two chambers, an atrium and a ventricle, while reptiles have three chambers.
In a healthy heart, blood flows one way through the heart (due to heart valves, which prevent backflow).
The heart is enclosed in a protective sac, the pericardium, which also contains a small amount of fluid.
The wall of the heart is made up of three layers: epicardium, myocardium, and endocardium.
The heart pumps blood with a rhythm determined by a group of pacemaking cells in the sinoatrial node.
These generate a current that causes contraction of the heart, traveling through the atrioventricular node and along the conduction system of the heart.
The heart receives blood low in oxygen from the systemic circulation, which enters the right atrium from the superior and inferior venae cavae, and passes to the right ventricle.
From here, it is pumped into the pulmonary circulation, through the lungs (where it receives oxygen and gives off carbon dioxide).
Oxygenated blood then returns to the left atrium, passes through the left ventricle, and is pumped out through the aorta to the systemic circulation − where the oxygen is used and metabolized to carbon dioxide.
The heart beats at a resting rate close to 72 beats per minute.
Exercise temporarily increases the rate, but lowers resting heart rate in the long term, and is good for heart health.
Cardiovascular diseases (CVD) are the most common cause of death globally (as of 2008), accounting for 30% of all deaths.
Of these, more than three quarters are a result of coronary artery disease and stroke.
Risk factors include: smoking, being overweight, little exercise, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and poorly controlled diabetes, among others.
Cardiovascular diseases frequently do not have symptoms, or may cause chest pain or shortness of breath.
Diagnosis of heart disease is often done by the taking of a medical history, listening to the heart-sounds with a stethoscope, ECG, and ultrasound.
Specialists who focus on diseases of the heart are called cardiologists, although many specialties of medicine may be involved in treatment.
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Beijing, formerly romanized as Peking, is the capital of the People's Republic of China, the world's third most populous city proper, and most populous capital city.
The city, located in northern China, is governed as a municipality under the direct administration of the central government, with 16 urban, suburban, and rural districts.
Beijing Municipality is surrounded by Hebei Province, with the exception of neighboring Tianjin Municipality to the southeast; together, the three divisions form the Jingjinji metropolitan region and the national capital region of China.
Beijing is an important world capital and global power city, and one of the world's leading centers for politics, economy and business, finance, education, culture, innovation and technology, architecture, language, and diplomacy.
A megacity, Beijing is the second largest Chinese city by urban population after Shanghai and is the nation's political, cultural, and educational center.
It is home to the headquarters of most of China's largest state-owned companies and houses the largest number of Fortune Global 500 companies in the world, as well as the world's four biggest financial institutions.
It is also a major hub for the national highway, expressway, railway, and high-speed rail networks.
The Beijing Capital International Airport has been the second busiest in the world by passenger traffic since 2010, and, as of 2016, the city's subway network is the busiest and second longest in the world.
Combining both modern and traditional architecture, Beijing is one of the oldest cities in the world, with a rich history dating back three millennia.
As the last of the Four Great Ancient Capitals of China, Beijing has been the political center of the country for most of the past eight centuries, and was the largest city in the world by population for much of the second millennium A.D.
Encyclopædia Britannica notes that "few cities in the world have served for so long as the political headquarters and cultural center of an area as immense as China."
With mountains surrounding the inland city on three sides, in addition to the old inner and outer city walls, Beijing was strategically poised and developed to be the residence of the emperor and thus was the perfect location for the imperial capital.
The city is renowned for its opulent palaces, temples, parks, gardens, tombs, walls and gates.
It has seven UNESCO World Heritage Sites — the Forbidden City, Temple of Heaven, Summer Palace, Ming Tombs, Zhoukoudian, and parts of the Great Wall and the Grand Canal — all popular locations for tourism.
Siheyuans, the city's traditional housing style, and hutongs, the narrow alleys between siheyuans, are major tourist attractions and are common in urban Beijing.
Many of Beijing's 91 universities consistently rank among the best in China, among which Peking University and Tsinghua University are ranked in the top 60 universities of the world.
Beijing CBD is a center for Beijing's economic expansion, with the ongoing or recently completed construction of multiple skyscrapers.
Beijing's Zhongguancun area is known as China's Silicon Valley and a center of innovation and technology entrepreneurship.
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The Republican Party, commonly referred to as the GOP (abbreviation for Grand Old Party), is one of the two major political parties in the United States, the other being its historic rival, the Democratic Party.
The party is named after republicanism, the dominant value during the American Revolution.
Founded by anti-slavery activists, economic modernizers, ex Whigs and ex Free Soilers in 1854, the Republicans dominated politics nationally (and in the majority of northern states) for most of the period between 1860 and 1932.
The Republican Party originally championed classical liberal ideas, including anti-slavery and economic reforms.
The party was usually dominant over the Democrats during the Third Party System and Fourth Party System.
In 1912, Theodore Roosevelt formed the Progressive ("Bull Moose") Party after being rejected by the GOP and ran as a candidate.
He called for many social reforms, some of which were later championed by New Deal Democrats in the 1930s.
He lost the election, and when most of his supporters returned to the GOP, they were at odds with the new conservative economic stance, leading to them leaving for the Democratic Party, and an ideological shift to the right in the Republican Party.
The liberal New Deal Democrats dominated the Fifth Party System at the national level.
The weak liberal Republican element was overwhelmed by a conservative surge begun by Barry Goldwater in 1964 and fulfilled during the Reagan Era.
Currently, their ideology is American conservatism, which contrasts with the Democrats' more progressive platform (also called modern liberalism).
The GOP's political platform supports lower taxes (primarily on multinational corporations and higher earners), free market capitalism, free enterprise, a strong national defense, more gun rights, deregulation, and restrictions on labor unions.
In addition to advocating for conservative economic policies, the Republican Party is socially conservative and seeks to uphold traditional values based largely on Judeo-Christian ethics.
The GOP was strongly committed to protectionism and tariffs from its founding until the 1930s, when it was based in the industrial Northeast and Midwest.
Since 1952, there has been a reversal against protectionism, and the party's core support since the 1990s comes chiefly from the South, the Great Plains, the Mountain States, and rural areas in the North, as well as from conservative Catholics, Mormons and Evangelicals nationwide.
The party has won 24 of the last 40 presidential elections and there have been a total of 19 Republican Presidents, the most from any one party.
The first was 16th President Abraham Lincoln, who served from 1861 until his assassination in 1865; and the most recent being 45th and current president Donald Trump, who took office on January 20, 2017.
The Republican Party is currently the primary party in power in the United States, holding the presidency (Donald Trump), majorities in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, a majority of governorships and state legislatures (full control of 32/50, split control of five others).
Furthermore, the GOP presently hold "trifectas" (the executive branch and both chambers of the legislative branch) in a majority of states (26/50) and a "trifecta plus" (executive, legislative and judicial branches) at the federal level (as five of the nine Supreme Court justices were appointed by Republican Presidents).
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Marines, also known as a marine corps or naval infantry, are typically an infantry force that specializes in the support of naval and army operations at sea and on land, as well as the execution of their own operations.
In the majority of countries, the marine force is an integral part of the navy, but it can also be under the army, like the Troupes de marine (French Marines) and Givati Brigade (Israeli Marines), or form an independent service branch, like the United States Marine Corps and the Royal Marines (although, the United States Marine Corps is under the United States Department of the Navy, and the Royal Marines come under Her Majesty's Naval Service).
Historically, tasks undertaken by marines have included: helping maintain discipline and order aboard the ship (reflecting the pressed nature of the ships' company and the risk of mutiny), the boarding of vessels during combat or capture of prize ships, and providing manpower for raiding ashore in support of the naval objectives.
With the industrialization of warfare in the 20th century, the scale of landing operations increased; this brought with it an increased likelihood of opposition, and a need for co-ordination of various military elements.
Marine forces evolved to specialize in the skills and capabilities required for amphibious warfare.
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A police officer, also known as an officer, policeman, policewoman, cop, police agent, or a police employee, is a warranted law employee of a police force.
In most countries, "police officer" is a generic term not specifying a particular rank.
In some, the use of the rank "officer" is legally reserved for military personnel.
Police officers are generally charged with the apprehension of criminals and the prevention and detection of crime, protection and assistance of the general public, and the maintenance of public order.
Police officers may be sworn to an oath, and have the power to arrest people and detain them for a limited time, along with other duties and powers.
Some officers are trained in special duties, such as counter-terrorism, surveillance, child protection, VIP protection, civil law enforcement, and investigation techniques into major crime including fraud, rape, murder, and drug trafficking.
Although many police officers wear a corresponding uniform, some police officers are plain-clothed in order to dissimulate as ordinary citizens.
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Patton epitomized the fighting soldier in World War II.
He exercised unique leadership by his ability to obtain the utmost — some would say more than the maximum — response from American combat troops.
Through his charisma, exemplified by a flamboyant and well-publicized image, he stimulated, better than any other high-ranking U.S. army commander, American troops to an aggressive desire to close with and destroy the enemy.
He personified the offensive spirit, the ruthless drive, and the will for victory in battle...
As the outstanding exponent of combat effectiveness, particularly with respect to the employment of armored forces — that is, the combined use of tanks, motorized infantry, and self-propelled artillery, closely supported by tactical aircraft — Patton brought the blitzkrieg concept to perfection.
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Theresa Mary May (née Brasier; born 1 October 1956) is the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and the Leader of the Conservative Party.
She has also been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Maidenhead since 1997.
May identifies as a one-nation conservative and is characterised as a liberal conservative.
She is the second woman to hold the post of UK Prime Minister.
The daughter of a vicar, May grew up in Oxfordshire.
From 1977 until 1983, she worked for the Bank of England, and from 1985 until 1997 at the Association for Payment Clearing Services, also serving as a councillor for Durnsford in Merton.
After unsuccessful attempts to be elected to the House of Commons in 1992 and 1994, she was elected as the MP for Maidenhead in the 1997 general election.
From 1999 to 2010, May served in a number of roles in the Shadow Cabinets of William Hague, Iain Duncan Smith, Michael Howard, and David Cameron, including Shadow Transport Secretary and Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary.
She was also Chairman of the Conservative Party from 2002 to 2003.
After the formation of a coalition government following the 2010 general election, May was appointed Home Secretary and Minister for Women and Equalities, giving up the latter role in 2012.
Reappointed after the Conservative victory in the 2015 general election, she went on to become the longest-serving Home Secretary since James Chuter Ede over 60 years previously.
During her tenure she pursued reform of the Police Federation, implemented a harder line on drugs policy including the banning of khat, oversaw the introduction of elected Police and Crime Commissioners, the deportation of Abu Qatada, the creation of the National Crime Agency and brought in additional restrictions on immigration.
Following the resignation of David Cameron on 24 June 2016, May announced her candidacy for the leadership of the Conservative Party and quickly emerged as the front-runner.
She won the first ballot of Conservative MPs on 5 July by a significant margin, and two days later won the votes of 199 MPs, going forward to face a vote of Conservative Party members in a contest with Andrea Leadsom.
Leadsom's withdrawal from the election on 11 July led to May's appointment as leader the same day.
She was appointed Prime Minister two days later, the second woman to hold both offices.
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George Soros, Hon FBA (born Schwartz György; August 12, 1930) is a Hungarian-American investor and philanthropist.
As of February 2018, he had a net worth of $8 billion, having donated more than $32 billion to his philanthropic agency, Open Society Foundations.
Born in Budapest, Soros survived Nazi Germany-occupied Hungary and emigrated to the United Kingdom in 1947.
He attended the London School of Economics, graduating with a bachelor's and eventually a master's degree in philosophy.
Soros began his business career by taking various jobs at merchant banks in the United Kingdom and then the United States, before starting his first hedge fund, Double Eagle, in 1969.
Profits from his first fund furnished the seed money to start Soros Fund Management, his second hedge fund, in 1970.
Double Eagle was renamed to Quantum Fund and was the principal firm Soros advised.
At its founding, Quantum Fund had $12 million in assets under management, and as of 2011 it had $25 billion, the majority of Soros's overall net worth.
Soros is known as "The Man Who Broke the Bank of England" because of his short sale of US$10 billion worth of pounds sterling, which made him a profit of $1 billion during the 1992 Black Wednesday UK currency crisis.
Based on his early studies of philosophy, Soros formulated an application of Karl Popper's General Theory of Reflexivity to capital markets, which he claims renders him a clear picture of asset bubbles and fundamental/market value of securities, as well as value discrepancies used for shorting and swapping stocks.
Soros is a well-known supporter of progressive and liberal political causes, to which he dispenses donations through his foundation, the Open Society Foundations.
Between 1979 and 2011, he donated more than $11 billion to various philanthropic causes; by 2017, his donations "on civil initiatives to reduce poverty and increase transparency, and on scholarships and universities around the world" totaled $12 billion.
He influenced the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and provided one of Europe's largest higher education endowments to the Central European University in his Hungarian hometown.
His extensive funding of political causes has made him a "bugaboo of European nationalists".
Numerous American conservatives have promoted false claims that characterize Soros as a singularly dangerous "puppetmaster" behind a variety of alleged global plots, with The New York Times reporting that by 2018 these claims had "moved from the fringes to the mainstream" of Republican politics.
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"Yes, Aslan," said both the children.
But Polly added, “But we’re not quite as bad as that world, are we, Aslan?”
“Not yet, Daughter of Eve,” he said.
"Not yet. But you are growing more like it. It is not certain that some wicked one of your race will not find out a secret as evil as the Deplorable Word and use it to destroy all living things. And soon, very soon, before you are an old man and an old woman, great nations in your world will be ruled by tyrants who care no more for joy and justice and mercy than the Empress Jadis. Let your world beware. That is the warning."
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Pink money describes the purchasing power of the gay community, often especially with respect to political donations.
With the rise of the gay rights movement, pink money has gone from being a fringe or marginalized market to a thriving industry in many parts of the Western world, such as the United States and United Kingdom.
Many businesses now specifically cater to gay customers, including nightclubs, shops, restaurants, and even taxicabs; the demand for these services stems from common discrimination by traditional businesses.
In 2015, LGBT adults in the United States held a combined buying power of approximately $917 billion.
This figure exceeded that held by Asian Americans while nearing that of both black and Hispanic Americans.
The economic power of pink money has been seen as a positive force for the gay community, creating a kind of "financial self-identification" which helps gay and lesbian individuals feel like part of a community which values them.
Indeed, upwards of 90% of gay people support businesses which target pink money, while actively boycotting anti-gay companies.
However, criticism has been leveled at businesses which target pink money from gay groups, arguing that this segregates the gay and lesbian community from society, and holds back gay rights.
It's been considered more often than not a market exclusive for USA, UK and some places in Europe, but its extension covers a large amount of Latin America and part of Asia, making its actual earns larger by year and giving marketing options some impulse and variety.
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China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a unitary sovereign state in East Asia and the world's most populous country, with a population of around 1.404 billion.
Covering approximately 9,600,000 square kilometers (3,700,000 sq mi), it is the third- or fourth-largest country by total area, depending on the source consulted.
China also has the most neighbor countries in the world.
Governed by the Communist Party of China, it exercises jurisdiction over 22 provinces, five autonomous regions, four direct-controlled municipalities (Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, and Chongqing), and the special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macau.
China emerged as one of the world's earliest civilizations, in the fertile basin of the Yellow River in the North China Plain.
For millennia, China's political system was based on hereditary monarchies, or dynasties, beginning with the semi-legendary Xia dynasty in the 21st century BCE.
Since then, China has expanded, fractured, and re-unified numerous times.
In the 3rd century BCE, the Qin unified the core of China and established the first Chinese empire.
The succeeding Han dynasty saw some of the most advanced technology at that time, including papermaking and the compass, along with agricultural and medical improvements.
The invention of gunpowder and printing in the Tang dynasty completed the Four Great Inventions.
Tang culture spread widely in Asia, as the new maritime Silk Route brought traders to as far as Mesopotamia and Somalia.
Dynastic rule ended in 1912 with the Xinhai Revolution, as a republic replaced the Qing dynasty.
The Chinese Civil War led to the break up of the country in 1949, with the victorious Communist Party of China founding the People’s Republic of China on the mainland while the losing Kuomintang retreated to Taiwan, a dispute which is still unresolved.
Since the introduction of economic reforms in 1978, China's economy has been one of the world's fastest-growing.
As of 2016, it is the world's second-largest economy by nominal GDP and largest by purchasing power parity (PPP).
China is also the world's largest exporter and second-largest importer of goods.
China is a recognized nuclear weapons state and has the world's largest standing army and second-largest defense budget.
The PRC is a member of the United Nations, as it replaced the ROC as a permanent member of the UN Security Council in 1971.
China is also a member of numerous formal and informal multilateral organizations, including the WTO, APEC, BRICS, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), the BCIM and the G20.
China is a great power and a major regional power within Asia, and has been characterized as a potential superpower.
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No war is just.
War is Chaos.
Brute force mustered against brute force.
Until one side is destroyed.
Utterly.
I have read of your Italian battles.
Hired mercenaries, on feathered horseback, prancing like peacocks, one against the other, until one side retires, with something called honour?
But there is no honour in war.
The French learned that against the English.
There is blood, death, armour against armour - until one side surrenders, in death or domination.
Be careful what you pray for, Cardinal, if you pray for war.
You will find yourself in a place... beyond prayer itself...
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Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin (Russian: Влади́мир Влади́мирович Пу́тин; born 7 October 1952) is a Russian politician serving as the current President of the Russian Federation since 7 May 2012, previously holding the position from 2000 until 2008.
He was Prime Minister of the Russian Federation from 1999 until 2000, and again from 2008 until 2012.
During his second term as Prime Minister, he was the chairman of the ruling United Russia party.
Putin was born in Leningrad in the Soviet Union.
He studied law at Leningrad State University, graduating in 1975.
Putin was a KGB foreign intelligence officer for 16 years, rising to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel before retiring in 1991 to enter politics in Saint Petersburg.
He moved to Moscow in 1996 and joined President Boris Yeltsin's administration, rising quickly through the ranks and becoming Acting President on 31 December 1999, when Yeltsin resigned.
Putin won the 2000 presidential election by a 53% to 30% margin, thus avoiding a runoff with his Communist Party of the Russian Federation opponent, Gennady Zyuganov.
He was reelected President in 2004 with 72% of the vote.
During his first presidency, the Russian economy grew for eight straight years, and GDP measured in purchasing power increased by 72%.
The growth was a result of the 2000s commodities boom, high oil prices, and prudent economic and fiscal policies.
Because of constitutionally mandated term limits, Putin was ineligible to run for a third consecutive presidential term in 2008.
The 2008 presidential election was won by Dmitry Medvedev, who appointed Putin as Prime Minister, the beginning of what some opponents considered to be a period of "tandemocracy".
In September 2011, after presidential terms were extended from four to six years, Putin announced he would seek a third term as president.
He won the March 2012 presidential election with 64% of the vote, a result which aligned with pre-election polling.
Falling oil prices coupled with international sanctions imposed at the beginning of 2014 after Russia's annexation of Crimea and military intervention in Eastern Ukraine led to GDP shrinking by 3.7% in 2015, though the Russian economy rebounded in 2016 with 0.3% GDP growth and is officially out of the recession.
Putin gained 76% of the March 2018 presidential vote, and was re-elected for a six-year term that will end in 2024.
Constitutional term limits prevent him from seeking the presidency again at that time.
Under Putin's leadership, Russia has scored poorly in Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index and experienced democratic backsliding according to both the Economist Intelligence Unit's Democracy Index and Freedom House's Freedom in the World index (including a record low 20/100 rating in the 2017 Freedom in the World report, a rating not given since the time of the Soviet Union).
Western analysts no longer consider Russia to be a democracy.
Human rights organizations and activists have accused him of human rights violations and crackdowns on civil dissent or opposition as well as ordering assassinations of his critics and opponents; he has denied accusations of authoritarianism and human rights abuses.
Officials of the United States government have accused him of leading an interference program against Hillary Clinton in support of Donald Trump during the U.S. presidential election in 2016, which Putin has frequently denied and criticized.
Putin has enjoyed high domestic approval ratings during his career (mostly higher than 70%) and received extensive international attention as one of the world's most powerful leaders.
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Where will he go next, this phantom from another time, this resurrected ghost of a previous nightmare –
Chicago?
Los Angeles?
Miami, Florida?
Vincennes, Indiana?
Syracuse, New York?
Anyplace, everyplace, where there's hate, where there's prejudice, where there's bigotry.
He's alive.
He's alive so long as these evils exist.
Remember that when he comes to your town.
Remember it when you hear his voice speaking out through others.
Remember it when you hear a name called, a minority attacked, any blind, unreasoning assault on a people or any human being.
He's alive because through these things we keep him alive.
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Gloria Laura Vanderbilt (February 20, 1924 – June 17, 2019) was an American artist, author, actress, fashion designer, heiress, and socialite. She was a member of the Vanderbilt family of New York and the mother of CNN television anchor Anderson Cooper. During the 1930s, she was the subject of a high-profile child custody trial in which her mother, Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt, and her paternal aunt, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, each sought custody of her and control over her trust fund. Called the "trial of the century" by the press, the court proceedings were the subject of wide and sensational press coverage due to the wealth and prominence of the involved parties, and the scandalous evidence presented to support Whitney's claim that Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt was an unfit parent. As an adult in the 1970s, Vanderbilt launched a line of fashions, perfumes, and household goods bearing her name. She was particularly noted as an early developer of designer blue jeans.
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Mexico (Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States (Spanish: Estados Unidos Mexicanos), is a federal republic in the southern half of North America.
It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and to the east by the Gulf of Mexico.
Covering almost two million square kilometers (over 760,000 sq mi), Mexico is the sixth largest country in the Americas by total area and the 13th largest independent nation in the world.
With an estimated population of over 120 million, it is the eleventh most populous country and the most populous Spanish-speaking country in the world, while being the second most populous country in Latin America.
Mexico is a federation comprising 31 states and a federal district (that is also its capital and most populous city).
Other metropolises include Guadalajara, Monterrey, Puebla, Toluca, Tijuana and León.
Pre-Columbian Mexico was home to many advanced Mesoamerican civilizations, such as the Olmec, Toltec, Teotihuacan, Zapotec, Maya and Aztec before first contact with Europeans.
In 1521, the Spanish Empire conquered and colonized the territory from its base in Mexico-Tenochtitlan, which was administered as the viceroyalty of New Spain.
Three centuries later, this territory became Mexico following recognition in 1821 after the colony's Mexican War of Independence.
The tumultuous post-independence period was characterized by economic instability and many political changes.
The Mexican–American War (1846–48) led to the territorial cession of the extensive northern borderlands, one-third of its territory, to the United States.
The Pastry War, the Franco-Mexican War, a civil war, two empires and a domestic dictatorship occurred through the 19th century.
The dictatorship was overthrown in the Mexican Revolution of 1910, which culminated with the promulgation of the 1917 Constitution and the emergence of the country's current political system.
Mexico has the fifteenth largest nominal GDP and the eleventh largest by purchasing power parity.
The Mexican economy is strongly linked to those of its North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) partners, especially the United States.
Mexico was the first Latin American member of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), joining in 1994.
It is classified as an upper-middle income country by the World Bank, and a newly industrialized country by several analysts.
By 2050, Mexico could become the world's fifth or seventh largest economy.
The country is considered both a regional power and middle power, and is often identified as an emerging global power.
Due to its rich culture and history, Mexico ranks first in the Americas and seventh in the world by number of UNESCO World Heritage Sites.
Mexico is a megadiverse country, ranking fourth in the world by biodiversity.
In 2015 it was the 9th most visited country in the world, with 32.1 million international arrivals.
Mexico is a member of the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, the G8+5, the G20, the Uniting for Consensus and the Pacific Alliance.
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Richard John Santorum (born May 10, 1958) is an American attorney, author, politician, and political commentator.
A member of the Republican Party, he served as a United States Senator from Pennsylvania from 1995 to 2007 and was the Senate's third-ranking Republican from 2001 to 2007.
He ran as a candidate for the 2012 Republican Party presidential nomination, finishing second to Mitt Romney.
Santorum was elected as a United States Senator from Pennsylvania in 1994.
He served two terms until losing his reelection bid in 2006.
A Catholic, Santorum is a social conservative who opposes same-sex marriage and artificial birth control.
While serving as a senator, Santorum was the author of what came to be known as the Santorum Amendment, which promoted the teaching of intelligent design.
In 2005, Santorum introduced the Workplace Religious Freedom Act along with Senator John Kerry.
In the years following his departure from the Senate, Santorum worked as a consultant, private-practice lawyer, and news contributor.
On June 6, 2011, Santorum announced his run for the Republican nomination in the 2012 U.S. presidential election.
Upon announcing his campaign suspension on April 10, 2012, he had won 11 primaries and caucuses and received nearly 4 million votes, making him the runner-up to eventual nominee Mitt Romney.
Santorum officially endorsed Romney on May 7, 2012.
On May 27, 2015, Santorum announced his candidacy for the 2016 presidential election.
He ended his campaign on February 3, 2016.
In January 2017, he became a CNN senior political commentator.
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Xi Jinping (born 15 June 1953) is a Chinese politician currently serving as General Secretary of the Communist Party of China, President of the People's Republic of China, and Chairman of the Central Military Commission.
As Xi holds the top offices of the party, the state, and the military, he is sometimes referred to as China's "paramount leader"; in 2016, the party officially gave him the title of "core" leader.
As General Secretary, Xi holds an ex-officio seat on the Politburo Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China, China's top decision-making body.
Xi Jinping is the first General Secretary to have been born after the Second World War.
The son of Chinese Communist veteran Xi Zhongxun, Xi rose through the ranks politically in China's coastal provinces.
Xi was governor of Fujian from 1999 to 2002, and governor, then party secretary of neighboring Zhejiang province from 2002 to 2007.
Following the dismissal of Chen Liangyu, Xi was transferred to Shanghai as party secretary for a brief period in 2007.
Xi joined the Politburo Standing Committee and central secretariat in October 2007, spending the next five years as Hu Jintao's presumed successor.
Xi was vice president from 2008 to 2013 and Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission from 2010 to 2012.
Since assuming power, Xi has introduced far-ranging measures to enforce party discipline and to ensure internal unity.
His signature anti-corruption campaign led to the downfall of prominent incumbent and retired officials.
Xi has tightened restrictions over civil society and ideological discourse, advocating internet censorship in China as the concept of "internet sovereignty".
Xi has called for further market economic reforms, for governing according to the law and for strengthening legal institutions, with an emphasis on individual and national aspirations under the slogan "Chinese Dream".
Xi has also championed a more assertive foreign policy, particularly with regard to China–Japan relations, China's claims in the South China Sea, and its role as a leading advocate of free trade and globalization.
He has also sought to expand China's Eurasian influence through the One Belt One Road Initiative.
Considered the central figure of the People's Republic's fifth generation of leadership, Xi has significantly centralized institutional power by taking on a wide range of leadership positions, including chairing the newly formed National Security Commission, as well as new steering committees on economic and social reforms, military restructuring, and the Internet.
Xi’s political thoughts have been written into the party constitution, and the state constitution was amended to abolish term limits for the presidency.
Xi has had a cult of personality constructed around himself "with books, cartoons, pop songs and even dance routines".
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North Korea, officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (abbreviated as DPRK or DPR Korea), is a sovereign state in East Asia constituting the northern part of the Korean Peninsula.
Officially, its territory consists of the whole Korean Peninsula and its adjacent islands.
Pyongyang is the nation's capital and largest city.
To the north and northwest, the country is bordered by China and by Russia along the Amnok (known as the Yalu in China) and Tumen rivers; it is bordered to the south by South Korea, with the heavily fortified Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) separating the two.
Nevertheless, North Korea, like its southern counterpart, claims to be the legitimate government of the entire peninsula.
In 1910, Korea was annexed by Japan.
After the Japanese surrender at the end of World War II in 1945, Korea was divided into two zones, with the north occupied by the Soviets and the south occupied by the Americans.
Negotiations on reunification failed, and in 1948, separate governments were formed: the socialist Democratic People's Republic of Korea in the north, and the capitalist Republic of Korea in the south.
An invasion initiated by North Korea led to the Korean War (1950–1953).
The Korean Armistice Agreement brought about a ceasefire, but no peace treaty was signed.
North Korea officially describes itself as a self-reliant, socialist state and formally holds elections.
Various media outlets have called it Stalinist, particularly noting the elaborate cult of personality around Kim Il-sung and his family.
The Workers' Party of Korea (WPK), led by a member of the ruling family, holds power in the state and leads the Democratic Front for the Reunification of the Fatherland of which all political officers are required to be members.
Juche, an ideology of national self-reliance, was introduced into the constitution in 1972.
The means of production are owned by the state through state-run enterprises and collectivized farms.
Most services such as healthcare, education, housing and food production are subsidized or state-funded.
From 1994 to 1998, North Korea suffered a famine that resulted in the deaths of between 240,000 and 420,000 people, and the country continues to struggle with food production.
A sizeable amount of the population is thought to suffer from malnutrition, parasite infestations and food and waterborne diseases.
North Korea follows Songun, or "military-first" policy.
It is the country with the highest number of military and paramilitary personnel, with a total of 9,495,000 active, reserve and paramilitary personnel.
Its active duty army of 1.21 million is the fourth largest in the world, after China, the United States and India.
It possesses nuclear weapons.
North Korea is an atheist state with no official religion, and public religion is discouraged or persecuted.
Both North Korea and South Korea became members of the United Nations in 1991.
International organizations have assessed that human rights violations in North Korea have no parallel in the contemporary world.
North Korea operates re-education and prison camps, akin to the gulag prisons of the Soviet Union.
The concentration camps are used to segregate those seen as enemies of the state and punish them for alleged political misdemeanours, or alleged misdemeanours of relatives as part of the "3 generations of punishment" policy instigated by state founder Kim Il-sung.
Prisoners are frequently subject to slave labour, malnutrition, torture, human experimentation, rape, and arbitrary executions.
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George Soros, Hon FBA (born Schwartz György; August 12, 1930) is a Hungarian-American investor and philanthropist.
As of February 2018, he had a net worth of $8 billion, having donated more than $32 billion to his philanthropic agency, Open Society Foundations.
Born in Budapest, Soros survived Nazi Germany-occupied Hungary and emigrated to the United Kingdom in 1947.
He attended the London School of Economics, graduating with a bachelor's and eventually a master's degree in philosophy.
Soros began his business career by taking various jobs at merchant banks in the United Kingdom and then the United States, before starting his first hedge fund, Double Eagle, in 1969.
Profits from his first fund furnished the seed money to start Soros Fund Management, his second hedge fund, in 1970.
Double Eagle was renamed to Quantum Fund and was the principal firm Soros advised.
At its founding, Quantum Fund had $12 million in assets under management, and as of 2011 it had $25 billion, the majority of Soros's overall net worth.
Soros is known as "The Man Who Broke the Bank of England" because of his short sale of US$10 billion worth of pounds sterling, which made him a profit of $1 billion during the 1992 Black Wednesday UK currency crisis.
Based on his early studies of philosophy, Soros formulated an application of Karl Popper's General Theory of Reflexivity to capital markets, which he claims renders him a clear picture of asset bubbles and fundamental/market value of securities, as well as value discrepancies used for shorting and swapping stocks.
Soros is a well-known supporter of progressive and liberal political causes, to which he dispenses donations through his foundation, the Open Society Foundations.
Between 1979 and 2011, he donated more than $11 billion to various philanthropic causes; by 2017, his donations "on civil initiatives to reduce poverty and increase transparency, and on scholarships and universities around the world" totaled $12 billion.
He influenced the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and provided one of Europe's largest higher education endowments to the Central European University in his Hungarian hometown.
His extensive funding of political causes has made him a "bugaboo of European nationalists".
Numerous American conservatives have promoted false claims that characterize Soros as a singularly dangerous "puppetmaster" behind a variety of alleged global plots, with The New York Times reporting that by 2018 these claims had "moved from the fringes to the mainstream" of Republican politics.
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The Cabinet of the United States is part of the executive branch of the U.S. government that normally acts as an advisory body to the President of the United States.
It is composed of the most senior appointed officers of the executive branch of the U.S. government serving under the President.
Among those are the Vice President and the heads of the federal executive departments, all of whom are by federal law (3 U.S.C. § 19) in the line of succession to the President and have duties under the 25th Amendment to the Constitution.
Members of the Cabinet (except for the Vice President) serve at the pleasure of the President, who can dismiss them at will for no cause.
All federal public officials, including Cabinet members, are also subject to impeachment by the House of Representatives and trial in the Senate for "treason, bribery, and other high crimes and misdemeanors".
The President can also unilaterally designate senior White House staffers, heads of other federal agencies and the Ambassador to the United Nations as members of the Cabinet, although this is a symbolic status marker and does not, apart from attending Cabinet meetings, confer any additional powers.
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Christianity is a universalising Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the life, teachings, and miracles of Jesus of Nazareth, known by Christians as the Christ, or "Messiah", who is the focal point of the Christian faiths.
It is the world's largest religion, with over 2.4 billion followers, or 33% of the global population, known as Christians.
Christians make up a majority of the population in 158 countries and territories.
They believe that Jesus is the Son of God and the savior of humanity whose coming as the Messiah (the Christ) was prophesied in the Old Testament.
Christianity has played a prominent role in the shaping of Western civilization.
Christianity grew out of Judaism and began as a Second Temple Judaic sect in the mid-1st century.
Originating in the Roman province of Judea, it quickly spread to Europe, Syria, Mesopotamia, Anatolia, Transcaucasia, Egypt, Ethiopia and the Indian subcontinent, and by the end of the 4th century had become the official state church of the Roman Empire.
Following the Age of Discovery, Christianity spread to the Americas, Oceania, sub-Saharan Africa and the rest of the world through missionary work and colonization.
Christian theology is summarized in creeds such as the Apostles' Creed and the Nicene Creed.
These professions of faith state that Jesus suffered, died, was buried, descended into hell, and rose from the dead, in order to grant eternal life to those who believe in him and trust in him for the remission of their sins.
The creeds further maintain that Jesus physically ascended into heaven, where he reigns with God the Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit, and that he will return to judge the living and the dead and grant eternal life to his followers.
His incarnation, earthly ministry, crucifixion and resurrection are often referred to as "the gospel", meaning "good news".
The term gospel also refers to written accounts of Jesus' life and teaching, four of which—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—are considered canonical and included in the Christian Bible, as established by the 5th century for the ancient undivided Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions before the East–West Schism.
Throughout its history, Christianity has weathered schisms and theological disputes that have resulted in many distinct churches and denominations.
Worldwide, the three largest branches of Christianity are the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church and the various denominations of Protestantism.
The Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches broke communion with each other in the East–West Schism of 1054.
Protestantism came into existence in the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century, splitting from the Catholic Church.
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Andrew M. Yang (born January 13, 1975) is an American entrepreneur, political candidate, philanthropist, author, lawyer, and political commentator. Originally a corporate lawyer, Yang began working in various startups and early stage growth companies as a founder or executive from 2000 to 2009. In 2011, he founded Venture for America (VFA), a nonprofit organization focused on creating jobs in cities struggling to recover from the Great Recession. The son of immigrants from Taiwan, Yang grew up in New York. He attended Brown University and then Columbia Law School. Dissatisfied with his work as an attorney, Yang began working for various startups during the dot-com bubble before spending a decade as an executive at test preparation company Manhattan Prep, which was acquired in 2009. In 2011, Yang founded VFA, which recruits top college graduates into a two-year fellowship program at startups in developing cities across the United States. The Obama administration selected him in 2011 as a "Champion of Change" and in 2015 as a "Presidential Ambassador for Global Entrepreneurship". Yang left VFA in 2017 to focus on his presidential campaign. In 2018, he authored The War on Normal People, which outlines several of his campaign's central ideas. On November 6, 2017, Yang filed with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) to run for President in the 2020 election. Yang's campaign largely focused on responding to the rapid development of automation, which is increasingly leading to workforce challenges and economic instability in the United States. His signature policy is the "Freedom Dividend," a universal basic income of $1,000 a month to every American adult, a response to job displacement by automation, one of the primary factors that he claims led to Donald Trump's election in 2016. Considered a dark horse candidate throughout much of the primary, Yang received unanticipated national attention, as well as significant popularity online, with The New York Times calling him "The Internet's Favorite Candidate". Yang qualified for and participated in seven of the first eight Democratic debates, and has been credited with elevating discussions on UBI, automation, and autism to the national level, as well as for engaging Asian-Americans in presidential politics. Yang's supporters, informally known as the "Yang Gang", included several high-profile celebrity endorsements and were noted for their ideological and political diversity. Yang suspended his campaign on February 11, 2020, shortly after the New Hampshire primary, pledging that he and his movement are "just getting started". On February 19, Yang joined CNN as a political commentator.
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A firearm is a portable gun - a barreled weapon that launches one or more projectiles, often driven by the action of an explosive force.
The first primitive firearms originated in 13th-century China when the one-person-portable fire lance was combined with projectiles.
The technology gradually spread through the rest of East Asia, South Asia, the Middle East and then into Europe.
Older firearms typically used black powder as a propellant, but modern firearms use smokeless powder or other propellants.
Most modern firearms (with the notable exception of smoothbore shotguns) have rifled barrels to impart spin to the projectile for improved flight stability.
Modern firearms can be described by their caliber (i.e. their bore diameter; this is given in millimeters or inches e.g. 7.5mm, .357) or in the case of shotguns their gauge (e.g. 12 ga.); by the type of action employed (muzzle, breech, lever, bolt, pump, revolver, semi-automatic, automatic etc.) together with the usual means of deportment (hand-held or mechanical mounting).
Further classification may make reference to the type of barrel used (rifled) and to the barrel length (19 inch), to the firing mechanism (e.g. matchlock, wheellock, flintlock, percussion lock), to the design's primary intended use (e.g. hunting rifle), or to the commonly accepted name for a particular variation (e.g. Gatling gun).
The word firearms usually is used in a sense restricted to small arms (weapons that can be carried by a single person), whereas the word artillery covers larger gunpowder-fired weapons.
Shooters aim firearms at their targets with hand-eye co-ordination, using either iron sights or optical sights.
The accurate range of pistols generally does not exceed 100 yards (91 m), while most rifles are accurate to 550 yards (500 m) using iron sights, or to longer ranges using optical sights (firearm rounds may be dangerous or lethal well beyond their accurate range; the minimum distance for safety is much greater than specified range).
Some purpose-built sniper rifles are accurate to ranges of more than 2,200 yards (2,000 m).
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Theresa Mary May (née Brasier; born 1 October 1956) is a British politician who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Conservative Party from 2016 to 2019.
May served as Home Secretary from 2010 to 2016 and has been Member of Parliament (MP) for Maidenhead since 1997.
Ideologically, she identifies herself as a one-nation conservative.
May grew up in Oxfordshire and attended St Hugh's College, Oxford.
After graduating in 1977, she worked at the Bank of England and the Association for Payment Clearing Services.
She also served as a councillor for Durnsford in Merton.
After two unsuccessful attempts to be elected to the House of Commons, she was elected as the MP for Maidenhead in 1997.
From 1999 to 2010, May held a number of roles in Shadow Cabinets.
She was also Chairwoman of the Conservative Party from 2002 to 2003.
When the coalition government was formed after the 2010 general election, May was appointed Home Secretary and Minister for Women and Equalities, but gave up the latter role in 2012.
Reappointed after the Conservative success in the 2015 general election, she became the longest-serving home secretary in over 60 years.
During her tenure, she pursued reform of the Police Federation, implemented a harder line on drugs policy (including the banning of khat), oversaw the introduction of elected Police and Crime Commissioners, the deportation of Abu Qatada, the creation of the National Crime Agency, and brought in additional restrictions on immigration.
After David Cameron resigned, May was elected Conservative Party leader and became the UK's second female Prime Minister.
She began the process of withdrawing the UK from the European Union, triggering Article 50 in March 2017.
The following month, she announced a snap general election, with the aims of strengthening her hand in Brexit negotiations and highlighting her "strong and stable" leadership.
This resulted in a hung parliament, in which the number of Conservative seats fell from 330 to 317, despite the party winning its highest vote share since 1983.
The loss of an overall majority prompted her to enter a confidence and supply arrangement with the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) to support a minority government.
May survived a vote of no confidence from Conservative MPs in December 2018 and a Parliamentary vote of no confidence in January 2019.
She carried out the Brexit negotiations with the European Union, adhering to the Chequers Agreement, which resulted in the Brexit withdrawal agreement.
Versions of this agreement were rejected by Parliament three times.
Unable to get this passed, she resigned and was succeeded by Boris Johnson, although remained in the House of Commons as a backbencher.
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Nebraska is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States.
It is bordered by South Dakota to the north; Iowa to the east and Missouri to the southeast, both across the Missouri River; Kansas to the south; Colorado to the southwest; and Wyoming to the west.
Indigenous peoples, including Omaha, Missouria, Ponca, Pawnee, Otoe, and various branches of the Lakota (Sioux) tribes, lived in the region for thousands of years before European exploration.
The state is crossed by many historic trails, including that of the Lewis and Clark Expedition.
Nebraska's area is just over 77,220 square miles (200,000 km2) with a population of over 1.9 million.
Its capital is Lincoln, and its largest city is Omaha, which is on the Missouri River.
Nebraska was admitted into the United States in 1867, two years after the end of the American Civil War.
The Nebraska Legislature is unlike any other American legislature in that it is unicameral, and its members are elected without any official reference to political party affiliation.
Nebraska is composed of two major land regions: the Dissected Till Plains and the Great Plains.
The Dissected Till Plains region consists of gently rolling hills and contains the state's largest cities, Omaha and Lincoln.
The Great Plains region, occupying most of western Nebraska, is characterized by treeless prairie.
Nebraska has two major climatic zones.
The eastern two-thirds of the state has a humid continental climate (Köppen climate classification Dfa); a unique warmer subtype considered "warm-temperate" exists near the southern plains, which is analogous to that in Kansas and Oklahoma, which have a predominantly humid subtropical climate.
The Panhandle and adjacent areas bordering Colorado have a primarily semi-arid climate (Köppen BSk).
The state has wide variations between winter and summer temperatures, variations that decrease moving south within the state.
Violent thunderstorms and tornadoes occur primarily during spring and summer and sometimes in autumn.
Chinook wind tends to warm the state significantly in the winter and early spring.
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Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria (1 December 1949 – 2 December 1993) was a Colombian drug lord and narcoterrorist.
His cartel supplied an estimated 80% of the cocaine smuggled into the United States at the height of his career, turning over US$21.9 billion a year in personal income.
He was often called "The King of Cocaine" and was the wealthiest criminal in history, with an estimated known net worth of between US$25 and US$30 billion by the early 1990s (equivalent to between about $48.5 and $58 billion as of 2018), making him one of the richest men in the world in his prime.
Escobar was born in Rionegro, Colombia, and grew up in nearby Medellín, studying briefly at Universidad Autónoma Latinoamericana of Medellin (but left without a degree).
He began to engage in criminal activity involving the sale of contraband cigarettes and fake lottery tickets, and also participated in motor vehicle theft.
In the 1970s, he began to work for various contraband smugglers, often kidnapping and holding people for ransom before beginning to distribute powder cocaine himself, as well as establishing the first smuggling routes into the United States in 1975.
His infiltration to the drug market of the U.S. expanded exponentially due to the rising demand for cocaine; and, by the 1980s, it was estimated that 70 to 80 tons of cocaine were being shipped from Colombia to the U.S. monthly.
His drug network was commonly known as the Medellín Cartel, which often competed with rival cartels domestically and abroad, resulting in massacres and the murders of police officers, judges, locals, and prominent politicians.
In the 1982 parliamentary election, Escobar was elected as an alternative member of the Chamber of Representatives of Colombia, as part of the Liberal Alternative movement.
Through this, he was responsible for the construction of houses and football fields in western Colombia, which gained him popularity among the locals of the towns that he frequented.
However, Colombia became the "murder capital of the world", and Escobar was vilified by the Colombian and American governments.
In 1993, Escobar was shot and killed in his hometown by Colombian National Police, one day after his 44th birthday.
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James Daniel Bishop (born July 1, 1964) is an American attorney and politician serving as the U.S. representative for North Carolina's 8th congressional district since 2019, when the district was numbered as the 9th.
A Republican, his district includes south-central Mecklenburg, Union, Anson, Richmond, Scotland, Robeson, Hoke, and southern Moore Counties.
He served in the North Carolina House of Representatives from 2015 to 2017 and the Mecklenburg County Commission from 2005 to 2009.
He served in the North Carolina State Senate from 2017 to 2019.
Bishop was the lead author of North Carolina's Public Facilities Privacy & Security Act, commonly called the bathroom bill, which prohibited transgender people from using public restrooms other than those of their biological sex as defined on their birth certificates.
As a result of backlash, North Carolina lost a significant amount of revenue from companies and other organizations who chose to withdraw their investments in the state.
On September 10, 2019, Bishop won the special election to the U.S. House of Representatives with 50.7% of the vote to Dan McCready's 48.7%.
Bishop ran for reelection in 2022 in North Carolina's 8th congressional district, following the 2020 census and subsequent litigation contesting the maps drawn by the General Assembly.
In the 2022 U.S. Congressional election, Bishop won reelection to his seat with 69.9% of the vote.
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Medicare is a government national health insurance program in the United States, begun in 1965 under the Social Security Administration (SSA) and now administered by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).
It primarily provides health insurance for Americans aged 65 and older, but also for some younger people with disability status as determined by the SSA, including people with end stage renal disease and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease).
In 2018, according to the 2019 Medicare Trustees Report, Medicare provided health insurance for over 59.9 million individuals—more than 52 million people aged 65 and older and about 8 million younger people.
According to annual Medicare Trustees reports and research by the government's MedPAC group, Medicare covers about half of healthcare expenses of those enrolled.
Enrollees almost always cover most of the remaining costs by taking additional private insurance and/or by joining a public Part C or Part D Medicare health plan.
In 2020, US federal government spending on Medicare was $776.2 billion.
No matter which of those two options the beneficiaries choose—or if they choose to do nothing, beneficiaries also have other healthcare-related costs.
These additional costs can include deductibles and co-pays; the costs of uncovered services—such as for long-term custodial, dental, hearing, and vision care; the cost of annual physical exams (for those not on Part C health plans that include physicals); and the costs related to basic Medicare's lifetime and per-incident limits.
Medicare is funded by a combination of a specific payroll tax, beneficiary premiums, surtaxes from beneficiaries, co-pays and deductibles, and general U.S. Treasury revenue.
Medicare is divided into four Parts: A, B, C and D.
Part A covers hospital, skilled nursing, and hospice services.
Part B covers outpatient services.
Part D covers self-administered prescription drugs.
Additionally, Part C is an alternative that allows patients to choose their own plans that provide the same services as Parts A and B, but with additional benefits.
The specific details on these four plans are as follows:
Part A covers hospital (inpatient, formally admitted only), skilled nursing (only after being formally admitted to a hospital for three days and not for custodial care), home health care, and hospice services.
Part B covers outpatient services (including some providers' services while inpatient at a hospital), outpatient hospital charges, most provider office visits (even if the office is "in a hospital"), durable medical equipment, and most professionally administered prescription drugs.
Part C is an alternative called Managed Medicare or Medicare Advantage, which allows patients to choose health plans with at least the same service coverage as Parts A and B (and most often more), often the benefits of Part D, and always an annual out-of-pocket expense limit which A and B lack. A beneficiary must enroll in Parts A and B first before signing up for Part C.
Part D covers mostly self-administered prescription drugs.
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Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu (born 21 October 1949) is an Israeli politician serving as the 9th and current Prime Minister of Israel since 2009, previously holding the position from 1996 to 1999.
Netanyahu is also currently a member of the Knesset and the Chairman of the Likud party.
He is the first Israeli Prime Minister born in Israel after the establishment of the state.
Born in Tel Aviv to secular Jewish parents, Netanyahu joined the Israel Defense Forces shortly after the Six-Day War in 1967, and became a team leader in the Sayeret Matkal special forces unit.
Netanyahu took part in many missions, including Operation Inferno (1968), Operation Gift (1968) and Operation Isotope (1972), during which he was shot in the shoulder.
Netanyahu fought on the front lines in the War of Attrition and the Yom Kippur War in 1973, taking part in special forces raids along the Suez Canal, and then leading a commando assault deep into Syrian territory.
Netanyahu achieved the rank of captain before being discharged.
After graduating from MIT with Bachelor of Science (SB) and Master of Science (SM) degrees, Netanyahu was recruited as an economic consultant for the Boston Consulting Group.
Netanyahu returned to Israel in 1978 to found the Yonatan Netanyahu Anti-Terror Institute, named after his brother Yonatan Netanyahu, who died leading Operation Entebbe.
Netanyahu served as the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations from 1984 to 1988.
He became the leader of Likud in 1993 and won the 1996 elections, becoming Israel's youngest-ever Prime Minister, serving his first term from June 1996 to July 1999.
Netanyahu moved from the political arena to the private sector after being defeated in the 1999 election for prime minister by Ehud Barak.
Netanyahu returned to politics in 2002 as Foreign Affairs Minister (2002–2003) and Finance Minister (2003–2005) in Ariel Sharon's governments, but he departed the government over disagreements regarding the Gaza disengagement plan.
As Minister of Finance, Netanyahu engaged in a major reform of the Israeli economy, which was credited by commentators as having significantly improved Israel's subsequent economic performance.
Netanyahu retook the Likud leadership in December 2005, after Sharon left to form a new party, Kadima.
In December 2006, Netanyahu became the official Leader of the Opposition in the Knesset and Chairman of Likud.
Following the 2009 parliamentary election, in which Likud placed second and right-wing parties won a majority, Netanyahu formed a coalition government.
After the victory in the 2013 elections, he became the second person to be elected to the position of Prime Minister for a third term, after Israel's founder David Ben-Gurion.
In March 2015, Netanyahu was elected to his fourth term as prime minister.
Netanyahu has been elected Prime Minister of Israel four times, matching David Ben-Gurion's record.
Netanyahu is the only prime minister in Israel's history to have been elected three times in a row.
Netanyahu is currently the second longest-serving Prime Minister in Israel's history after David Ben-Gurion.
If Netanyahu wins a snap election in 2019 he is set to become the longest-serving Prime Minister in Israeli history.
On 28 February 2019, the Israeli attorney general announced that he would be seeking indictments against Netanyahu on bribe and fraud charges in three different cases.
Netanyahu would become the first sitting prime minister in Israeli history to be charged with a crime.
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Mental health is a level of psychological well-being or an absence of mental illness - the state of someone who is "functioning at a satisfactory level of emotional and behavioral adjustment".
From the perspectives of positive psychology or of holism, mental health may include an individual's ability to enjoy life, and to create a balance between life activities and efforts to achieve psychological resilience.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), mental health includes "subjective well-being, perceived self-efficacy, autonomy, competence, inter-generational dependence, and self-actualization of one's intellectual and emotional potential, among others."
The WHO further states that the well-being of an individual is encompassed in the realization of their abilities, coping with normal stresses of life, productive work and contribution to their community.
Cultural differences, subjective assessments, and competing professional theories all affect how one defines "mental health".
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The chancellor, the late chancellor, was only partly correct.
He was obsolete.
But so is the State, the entity he worshipped.
Any state, entity, or ideology becomes obsolete when it stockpiles the wrong weapons: when it captures territories, but not minds; when it enslaves millions, but convinces nobody.
When it is naked, yet puts on armor and calls it faith, while in the Eyes of God it has no faith at all.
Any state, any entity, any ideology that fails to recognize the worth, the dignity, the rights of Man... that state is obsolete.
A case to be filed under "M" for "Mankind" - in The Twilight Zone.
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A drug is any substance (other than food that provides nutritional support) that, when inhaled, injected, smoked, consumed, absorbed via a patch on the skin, or dissolved under the tongue causes a temporary physiological (and often psychological) change in the body.
In pharmacology, a pharmaceutical drug, also called a medication or medicine, is a chemical substance used to treat, cure, prevent, or diagnose a disease or to promote well-being.
Traditionally, drugs were obtained through extraction from medicinal plants, but more recently also by organic synthesis.
Pharmaceutical drugs may be used for a limited duration, or on a regular basis for chronic disorders.
Pharmaceutical drugs are often classified into drug classes—groups of related drugs that have similar chemical structures, the same mechanism of action (binding to the same biological target), a related mode of action, and that are used to treat the same disease.
The Anatomical Therapeutic Chemical Classification System (ATC), the most widely used drug classification system, assigns drugs a unique ATC code, which is an alphanumeric code that assigns it to specific drug classes within the ATC system.
Another major classification system is the Biopharmaceutics Classification System.
This classifies drugs according to their solubility and permeability or absorption properties.
Psychoactive drugs are chemical substances that affect the function of the central nervous system, altering perception, mood or consciousness.
They include alcohol, a depressant (and a stimulant in small quantities), and the stimulants nicotine and caffeine.
These three are the most widely consumed psychoactive drugs worldwide, and are also considered recreational drugs since they are used for pleasure rather than medicinal purposes.
Other recreational drugs include hallucinogens, opiates and amphetamines, and some of these are also used in spiritual or religious settings.
Some drugs can cause addiction, and all drugs can have side effects.
Excessive use of stimulants can promote stimulant psychosis.
Many recreational drugs are illicit and international treaties such as the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs exist for the purpose of their prohibition.
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The Chancellor, the late Chancellor, was only partly correct.
He was obsolete.
But so is the State, the entity he worshipped.
Any state, entity, or ideology becomes obsolete when it stockpiles the wrong weapons: when it captures territories, but not minds; when it enslaves millions, but convinces nobody.
When it is naked, yet puts on armor and calls it faith, while in the Eyes of God it has no faith at all.
Any state, any entity, any ideology that fails to recognize the worth, the dignity, the rights of Man... that state is obsolete.
A case to be filed under "M" for "Mankind" - in The Twilight Zone.
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When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: the people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous and surly.
They are like this because they can't tell good from evil.
But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own - not of the same blood and birth, but the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine.
And so none of them can hurt me.
No one can implicate me in ugliness.
Nor can I feel angry at my relative, or hate him.
We were born to work together like feet, hands and eyes, like the two rows of teeth, upper and lower.
To obstruct each other is unnatural.
To feel anger at someone, to turn your back on him: these are unnatural.
Marcus Aurelius
Meditations
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A police force is a constituted body of persons empowered by a state to enforce the law, to protect people and property, and to prevent crime and civil disorder.
Their powers include the power of arrest and the legitimized use of force.
The term is most commonly associated with police services of a sovereign state that are authorized to exercise the police power of that state within a defined legal or territorial area of responsibility.
Police forces are often defined as being separate from military or other organizations involved in the defense of the state against foreign aggressors; however, gendarmerie are military units charged with civil policing.
The police force is usually a public sector service, funded through taxes.
Law enforcement is only part of policing activity.
Policing has included an array of activities in different situations, but the predominant ones are concerned with the preservation of order.
In some societies, in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, these developed within the context of maintaining the class system and the protection of private property.
Police forces have become ubiquitous in modern societies.
Some are involved to varying degrees in corruption, police brutality and the enforcement of authoritarian rule.
Alternative names for a police force include constabulary, gendarmerie, police department, police service, crime prevention, protective services, law enforcement agency, civil guard or civic guard.
Members may be referred to as police officers, troopers, sheriffs, constables, rangers, peace officers or civic/civil guards.
The word police is most universal and can be seen in many non-English speaking countries.
As police are often interacting with individuals, slang terms are numerous.
Many slang terms for police officers are decades or centuries old with lost etymology.
One of the oldest, "cop", has largely lost its slang connotations and become a common colloquial term used both by the public and police officers to refer to their profession.
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The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA or US FDA) is a federal agency of the Department of Health and Human Services.
The FDA is responsible for protecting and promoting public health through the control and supervision of food safety, tobacco products, caffeine products, dietary supplements, prescription and over-the-counter pharmaceutical drugs (medications), vaccines, biopharmaceuticals, blood transfusions, medical devices, electromagnetic radiation emitting devices (ERED), cosmetics, animal foods & feed, and veterinary products.
The FDA's primary focus is enforcement of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FD&C), but the agency also enforces other laws, notably Section 361 of the Public Health Service Act, as well as associated regulations.
Much of this regulatory-enforcement work is not directly related to food or drugs, but involves such things as regulating lasers, cellular phones, and condoms, as well as control of disease in contexts varying from household pets to human sperm donated for use in assisted reproduction.
The FDA is led by the Commissioner of Food and Drugs, appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate.
The Commissioner reports to the Secretary of Health and Human Services.
Robert Califf is the current commissioner, as of 17 February 2022.
The FDA has its headquarters in unincorporated White Oak, Maryland.
The agency also has 223 field offices and 13 laboratories located throughout the 50 states, the United States Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico.
In 2008, the FDA began to post employees to foreign countries, including China, India, Costa Rica, Chile, Belgium, and the United Kingdom.
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Karl Marx (5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, political theorist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist.
Born in Trier to a middle-class family, Marx studied law and Hegelian philosophy.
Due to his political publications, Marx became stateless and lived in exile in London, where he continued to develop his thought in collaboration with German thinker Friedrich Engels, and publish his writings.
His best-known titles are the 1848 pamphlet, The Communist Manifesto, and the three-volume Das Kapital.
His political and philosophical thought had enormous influence on subsequent intellectual, economic and political history.
Marx's theories about society, economics and politics—collectively understood as Marxism—hold that human societies develop through class struggle.
In capitalism, this manifests itself in the conflict between the ruling classes (known as the bourgeoisie) that control the means of production, and working classes (known as the proletariat) that enable these means by selling their labour power in return for wages.
Employing a critical approach known as historical materialism, Marx predicted that, like previous socioeconomic systems, capitalism produced internal tensions which would lead to its self-destruction and replacement by a new system: socialism.
For Marx, class antagonisms under capitalism, owing in part to its instability and crisis-prone nature, would eventuate the working class' development of class consciousness, leading to their conquest of political power and eventually the establishment of a classless, communist society constituted by a free association of producers.
Marx actively pressed for its implementation, arguing that the working class should carry out organised revolutionary action to topple capitalism and bring about socio-economic emancipation.
Marx has been described as one of the most influential figures in human history and his work has been both lauded and criticised.
His work in economics laid the basis for much of the current understanding of labour and its relation to capital, and subsequent economic thought.
Many intellectuals, labour unions, artists and political parties worldwide have been influenced by Marx's work, with many modifying or adapting his ideas.
Marx is typically cited as one of the principal architects of modern social science.
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Richard Michael DeWine (born January 5, 1947) is an American politician and former attorney serving as the 70th governor of Ohio.
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A member of the Republican Party, DeWine is a former United States Senator, elected in 1994 and re-elected in 2000.
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In 2006, DeWine ran for re-election to a third term but lost to the Democratic nominee, U.S. Representative Sherrod Brown.
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DeWine had served as Lieutenant Governor of Ohio under George Voinovich from 1991 until 1994.
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In 2010, DeWine was elected Ohio Attorney General, defeating Democratic incumbent Richard Cordray, and was re-elected for a second term in 2014.
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In the 2018 gubernatorial election, DeWine was elected Governor of Ohio, defeating Cordray in a rematch of their 2010 race.
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Prior to his being nominated as Voinovich's running mate in the 1990 election, DeWine served as a four-term U.S. Representative for Ohio's 7th congressional district beginning in 1983.
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He also served a term as an Ohio State Senator.
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Water is a transparent fluid which forms the world's streams, lakes, oceans and rain, and is the major constituent of the fluids of living things. As a chemical compound, a water molecule contains one oxygen and two hydrogen atoms that are connected by covalent bonds. Water is a liquid at standard ambient temperature and pressure, but it often co-exists on Earth with its solid state, ice; and gaseous state, steam (water vapor).
Water covers 71% of the Earth's surface. It is vital for all known forms of life. On Earth, 96.5% of the planet's water is found in seas and oceans, 1.7% in groundwater, 1.7% in glaciers and the ice caps of Antarctica and Greenland, a small fraction in other large water bodies, and 0.001% in the air as vapor, clouds (formed of solid and liquid water particles suspended in air), and precipitation. Only 2.5% of the Earth's water is freshwater, and 98.8% of that water is in ice and groundwater. Less than 0.3% of all freshwater is in rivers, lakes, and the atmosphere, and an even smaller amount of the Earth's freshwater (0.003%) is contained within biological bodies and manufactured products.
Water on Earth moves continually through the water cycle of evaporation and transpiration (evapotranspiration), condensation, precipitation, and runoff, usually reaching the sea. Evaporation and transpiration contribute to the precipitation over land. Water used in the production of a good or service is known as virtual water.
Safe drinking water is essential to humans and other lifeforms even though it provides no calories or organic nutrients. Access to safe drinking water has improved over the last decades in almost every part of the world, but approximately one billion people still lack access to safe water and over 2.5 billion lack access to adequate sanitation. There is a clear correlation between access to safe water and gross domestic product per capita. However, some observers have estimated that by 2025 more than half of the world population will be facing water-based vulnerability. A report, issued in November 2009, suggests that by 2030, in some developing regions of the world, water demand will exceed supply by 50%. Water plays an important role in the world economy, as it functions as a solvent for a wide variety of chemical substances and facilitates industrial cooling and transportation. Approximately 70% of the fresh water used by humans goes to agriculture.
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The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying THIS IS MINE, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society.
From how many crimes, wars and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows, "Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody."
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Discourse on the Origin of Inequality
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Different varieties of grapes and strains of yeasts are major factors in different styles of wine.
These differences result from the complex interactions between the biochemical development of the grape, the reactions involved in fermentation, the grape's growing environment (terroir), and the wine production process.
Many countries enact legal appellations intended to define styles and qualities of wine.
These typically restrict the geographical origin and permitted varieties of grapes, as well as other aspects of wine production.
Wine has been produced for thousands of years.
The earliest evidence of wine is from the present-day Georgia (6000 BCE), Persia (5000 BCE), Italy and Armenia (4000 BCE).
New World wine has some connection to alcoholic beverages made by the indigenous peoples of the Americas, but is mainly connected to later Spanish traditions in New Spain.
Later, as Old World wine further developed viticulture techniques, Europe would encompass three of the largest wine-producing regions.
Today, based on statistics gathered by the International Organisation of Vine and Wine (OIV) - in 2022, the top five wine producing countries are Italy, France, Spain, the United States and Australia.
Wine has long played an important role in religion.
Red wine was associated with blood by the ancient Egyptians, and was used by both the Greek cult of Dionysus and the Romans in their Bacchanalia; Judaism also incorporates it in the Kiddush, and Christianity in the Eucharist.
Egyptian, Greek, Roman, and Israeli wine cultures are still connected to these ancient roots.
Similarly the largest wine regions in Italy, Spain, and France have heritages in connection to sacramental wine; likewise, viticulture traditions in the Southwestern United States started within New Spain as Catholic friars and monks first produced wines in New Mexico and California.
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