1.
French language
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French is a Romance language of the Indo-European family. It descended from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire, as did all Romance languages, French has evolved from Gallo-Romance, the spoken Latin in Gaul, and more specifically in Northern Gaul. Its closest relatives are the other langues doïl—languages historically spoken in northern France and in southern Belgium, French was also influenced by native Celtic languages of Northern Roman Gaul like Gallia Belgica and by the Frankish language of the post-Roman Frankish invaders. Today, owing to Frances past overseas expansion, there are numerous French-based creole languages, a French-speaking person or nation may be referred to as Francophone in both English and French. French is a language in 29 countries, most of which are members of la francophonie. As of 2015, 40% of the population is in Europe, 35% in sub-Saharan Africa, 15% in North Africa and the Middle East, 8% in the Americas. French is the fourth-most widely spoken mother tongue in the European Union, 1/5 of Europeans who do not have French as a mother tongue speak French as a second language. As a result of French and Belgian colonialism from the 17th and 18th century onward, French was introduced to new territories in the Americas, Africa, most second-language speakers reside in Francophone Africa, in particular Gabon, Algeria, Mauritius, Senegal and Ivory Coast. In 2015, French was estimated to have 77 to 110 million native speakers, approximately 274 million people are able to speak the language. The Organisation internationale de la Francophonie estimates 700 million by 2050, in 2011, Bloomberg Businessweek ranked French the third most useful language for business, after English and Standard Mandarin Chinese. Under the Constitution of France, French has been the language of the Republic since 1992. France mandates the use of French in official government publications, public education except in specific cases, French is one of the four official languages of Switzerland and is spoken in the western part of Switzerland called Romandie, of which Geneva is the largest city. French is the language of about 23% of the Swiss population. French is also a language of Luxembourg, Monaco, and Aosta Valley, while French dialects remain spoken by minorities on the Channel Islands. A plurality of the worlds French-speaking population lives in Africa and this number does not include the people living in non-Francophone African countries who have learned French as a foreign language. Due to the rise of French in Africa, the total French-speaking population worldwide is expected to reach 700 million people in 2050, French is the fastest growing language on the continent. French is mostly a language in Africa, but it has become a first language in some urban areas, such as the region of Abidjan, Ivory Coast and in Libreville. There is not a single African French, but multiple forms that diverged through contact with various indigenous African languages, sub-Saharan Africa is the region where the French language is most likely to expand, because of the expansion of education and rapid population growth
2.
Russian language
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Russian is an East Slavic language and an official language in Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and many minor or unrecognised territories. Russian belongs to the family of Indo-European languages and is one of the four living members of the East Slavic languages, written examples of Old East Slavonic are attested from the 10th century and beyond. It is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia and the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages and it is also the largest native language in Europe, with 144 million native speakers in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Russian is the eighth most spoken language in the world by number of native speakers, the language is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Russian is also the second most widespread language on the Internet after English, Russian distinguishes between consonant phonemes with palatal secondary articulation and those without, the so-called soft and hard sounds. This distinction is found between pairs of almost all consonants and is one of the most distinguishing features of the language, another important aspect is the reduction of unstressed vowels. Russian is a Slavic language of the Indo-European family and it is a lineal descendant of the language used in Kievan Rus. From the point of view of the language, its closest relatives are Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Rusyn. An East Slavic Old Novgorod dialect, although vanished during the 15th or 16th century, is considered to have played a significant role in the formation of modern Russian. In the 19th century, the language was often called Great Russian to distinguish it from Belarusian, then called White Russian and Ukrainian, however, the East Slavic forms have tended to be used exclusively in the various dialects that are experiencing a rapid decline. In some cases, both the East Slavic and the Church Slavonic forms are in use, with different meanings. For details, see Russian phonology and History of the Russian language and it is also regarded by the United States Intelligence Community as a hard target language, due to both its difficulty to master for English speakers and its critical role in American world policy. The standard form of Russian is generally regarded as the modern Russian literary language, mikhail Lomonosov first compiled a normalizing grammar book in 1755, in 1783 the Russian Academys first explanatory Russian dictionary appeared. By the mid-20th century, such dialects were forced out with the introduction of the education system that was established by the Soviet government. Despite the formalization of Standard Russian, some nonstandard dialectal features are observed in colloquial speech. Thus, the Russian language is the 6th largest in the world by number of speakers, after English, Mandarin, Hindi/Urdu, Spanish, Russian is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Education in Russian is still a choice for both Russian as a second language and native speakers in Russia as well as many of the former Soviet republics. Russian is still seen as an important language for children to learn in most of the former Soviet republics, samuel P. Huntington wrote in the Clash of Civilizations, During the heyday of the Soviet Union, Russian was the lingua franca from Prague to Hanoi
3.
Spanish language
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Spanish —also called Castilian —is a Romance language that originated in the Castile region of Spain, with hundreds of millions of native speakers around the world. It is usually considered the worlds second-most spoken native language after Mandarin Chinese and it is one of the few languages to use inverted question and exclamation marks. Spanish is a part of the Ibero-Romance group of languages, which evolved from several dialects of Vulgar Latin in Iberia after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century. Beginning in the early 16th century, Spanish was taken to the colonies of the Spanish Empire, most notably to the Americas, as well as territories in Africa, Oceania, around 75% of modern Spanish is derived from Latin. Greek has also contributed substantially to Spanish vocabulary, especially through Latin, Spanish vocabulary has been in contact from an early date with Arabic, having developed during the Al-Andalus era in the Iberian Peninsula. With around 8% of its vocabulary being Arabic in origin, this language is the second most important influence after Latin and it has also been influenced by Basque as well as by neighboring Ibero-Romance languages. It also adopted words from languages such as Gothic language from the Visigoths in which many Spanish names and surnames have a Visigothic origin. Spanish is one of the six languages of the United Nations. It is the language in the world by the number of people who speak it as a mother tongue, after Mandarin Chinese. It is estimated more than 437 million people speak Spanish as a native language. Spanish is the official or national language in Spain, Equatorial Guinea, speakers in the Americas total some 418 million. In the European Union, Spanish is the tongue of 8% of the population. Spanish is the most popular second language learned in the United States, in 2011 it was estimated by the American Community Survey that of the 55 million Hispanic United States residents who are five years of age and over,38 million speak Spanish at home. The Spanish Constitution of 1978 uses the term castellano to define the language of the whole Spanish State in contrast to las demás lenguas españolas. Article III reads as follows, El castellano es la lengua española oficial del Estado, las demás lenguas españolas serán también oficiales en las respectivas Comunidades Autónomas. Castilian is the official Spanish language of the State, the other Spanish languages as well shall be official in their respective Autonomous Communities. The Spanish Royal Academy, on the hand, currently uses the term español in its publications. Two etymologies for español have been suggested, the Spanish Royal Academy Dictionary derives the term from the Provençal word espaignol, and that in turn from the Medieval Latin word Hispaniolus, from—or pertaining to—Hispania
4.
Flags of Antarctica
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Prior to 2002 Antarctica had no official flag as the condominium that governs the continent had not yet formally selected one even though a particular design was in widespread use. The consultative members of the Antarctic Treaty System officially adopted a flag and emblem in 2002, several unofficial designs have also been proposed. Several sources have suggested various designs, including one by Graham Bartram, the Graham Bartram design uses the flag of the United Nations as its model. A plain white map of the continent on a blue background symbolizes neutrality and this flag was actually flown on the Antarctic continent for the first time in 2002, when Ted Kaye took several full-size flags in the Bartram design on an Antarctic cruise. The bases of Brazil, Ukraine, and the UK all flew it from their flagpoles and he presented a paper which described the first flying of the Bartram design over Antarctica in Stockholm in 2003, at the 20th International Congress of Vexillology. It is perhaps the most popular flag for Antarctica, as seen by its prevalence on the Internet, the Whitney Smith design uses the high-visibility color orange as its background. The emblem consists of several components, the bottom segment of the globe represents Antarcticas position on Earth, while the two hands holding up the globe segment represent peaceful human use. However, there is no record of it ever being fabricated or used, the nations of the Antarctic Treaty use their own national flags at their respective Antarctic research bases. Some nations however have their own flags for their Antarctic possessions, the flag of the British Antarctic Territory is a plain White Ensign defaced by the Coat of Arms of the Territory. Other British territories in the Antarctic region are the Falkland Islands and South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, the flag of the Administrator of the French Southern and Antarctic Territories, which includes Adélie Land, has the French tricolor in the canton together with the Commissioners arms. The coat of arms consists of five stars and the letters TAAF in a monogram, the flag was adopted in 2007. The Argentine province of Tierra del Fuego includes Argentine Antarctica, the flag was adopted in 1999 as the result of a competition. It is a bicolor of sky blue and orange with an albatross in the center. The Antártica Chilena Province in the Magallanes Region includes the Chilean claim on the continent, puerto Williams is the capital of this province, which also includes the islands south of Tierra del Fuego and Cape Horn. The Magallanes Regions flag also has the Southern Cross appearing over a mountain range, currently, only the New Zealand national flag serves in an official capacity in the Ross Dependency. The only other official flag seen in photographs was the New Zealand Post flag to denote Scott Bases post office, Ross Dependency uses the New Zealand flag, but vexillologist James Dignans design concept was seen flying there at one time. The New Zealand flag is the basis for his design, though with an Ice Blue background representing the Ross Sea, and the white horizontal bar at the bottom of the flag representing the Ross Ice Shelf
5.
Condominium (international law)
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Although a condominium has always been recognized as a theoretical possibility, condominia have been rare in practice. A major problem, and the reason so few have existed, is the difficulty of ensuring co-operation between the powers, once the understanding fails, the status is likely to become untenable. The word is recorded in English since c,1714, from Modern Latin, apparently coined in Germany c.1700 from Latin com- together + dominium right of ownership. A condominium of three sovereign powers is sometimes called a condominium or tridominium. Antarctica is a de facto condominium, governed by parties to the Antarctic Treaty that have consulting status, the condominium was established by treaty in 1816. Pheasant Island in the River Bidassoa between France and Spain and it was established by the Treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659. El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua exercise a tridominium over parts of the Gulf of Fonseca, Austria and Germany consider themselves, together with Switzerland, to hold a tripartite condominium over the main part of Lake Constance. On the other hand, Switzerland holds the view that the runs through the middle of the lake. Hence no international treaty establishes where the borders of Switzerland, Germany, the part of the Paraná River between the Salto Grande de Sete Quedas and the mouth of the Iguassu River is shared in condominium by Brazil and Paraguay. Jamaica and Colombia share a maritime condominium by mutual agreement as an alternative to delimiting their sea boundary, the outer portion of the EEZ of each country otherwise would overlap in this area. Unlike other joint development zones, this appears not to have been purposed simply as a way to divide oil. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Brčko District forms a condominium between the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Republika Srpska, the arrangement lasted for some 300 years, even though in the same time there was nearly constant warfare between the two parties on the mainland. The Condominium of Bosnia and Herzegovina was jointly ruled by Cisleithanian Austria, an islet in the border river Brömsebäck was considered to belong to neither Denmark and Sweden. The Independent State of Croatia during World War II from 1941 to 1943 was a condominium of Nazi Germany, egypt from 1876–1882 was under France and the United Kingdom. A small area on the Arabian Peninsula, a part of Oman, the agreement defining the Hadf zone was signed in Salalah on 26 April 1960 by Sultan Said bin Taimur and in Ajman on 30 April 1960 by Shaikh Rashid bin Humaid Al Nuaimi, ruler of Ajman. This provided for some joint supervision in the zone by the ruler of Ajman and it allowed the Ajman ruler to continue collecting zakat. The ruler of Ajman was, however, not to interfere in the affairs of the people, the Bani Kaab. The Free City of Kraków was a protectorate of Prussia, Austria and Russia from 1815 until 1846, the Spanish Netherlands became an Anglo-Dutch condominium in 1706 during the War of the Spanish Succession, until the peace treaties of Utrecht and Rastatt in 1713/14 ending the war
6.
Washington, D.C.
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Washington, D. C. formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, the District, or simply D. C. is the capital of the United States. The signing of the Residence Act on July 16,1790, Constitution provided for a federal district under the exclusive jurisdiction of the Congress and the District is therefore not a part of any state. The states of Maryland and Virginia each donated land to form the federal district, named in honor of President George Washington, the City of Washington was founded in 1791 to serve as the new national capital. In 1846, Congress returned the land ceded by Virginia, in 1871. Washington had an population of 681,170 as of July 2016. Commuters from the surrounding Maryland and Virginia suburbs raise the population to more than one million during the workweek. The Washington metropolitan area, of which the District is a part, has a population of over 6 million, the centers of all three branches of the federal government of the United States are in the District, including the Congress, President, and Supreme Court. Washington is home to national monuments and museums, which are primarily situated on or around the National Mall. The city hosts 176 foreign embassies as well as the headquarters of international organizations, trade unions, non-profit organizations, lobbying groups. A locally elected mayor and a 13‑member council have governed the District since 1973, However, the Congress maintains supreme authority over the city and may overturn local laws. D. C. residents elect a non-voting, at-large congressional delegate to the House of Representatives, the District receives three electoral votes in presidential elections as permitted by the Twenty-third Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified in 1961. Various tribes of the Algonquian-speaking Piscataway people inhabited the lands around the Potomac River when Europeans first visited the area in the early 17th century, One group known as the Nacotchtank maintained settlements around the Anacostia River within the present-day District of Columbia. Conflicts with European colonists and neighboring tribes forced the relocation of the Piscataway people, some of whom established a new settlement in 1699 near Point of Rocks, Maryland. 43, published January 23,1788, James Madison argued that the new government would need authority over a national capital to provide for its own maintenance. Five years earlier, a band of unpaid soldiers besieged Congress while its members were meeting in Philadelphia, known as the Pennsylvania Mutiny of 1783, the event emphasized the need for the national government not to rely on any state for its own security. However, the Constitution does not specify a location for the capital, on July 9,1790, Congress passed the Residence Act, which approved the creation of a national capital on the Potomac River. The exact location was to be selected by President George Washington, formed from land donated by the states of Maryland and Virginia, the initial shape of the federal district was a square measuring 10 miles on each side, totaling 100 square miles. Two pre-existing settlements were included in the territory, the port of Georgetown, Maryland, founded in 1751, many of the stones are still standing
7.
United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
8.
Federal government of the United States
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The Federal Government of the United States is the national government of the United States, a republic in North America, composed of 50 states, one district, Washington, D. C. and several territories. The federal government is composed of three branches, legislative, executive, and judicial, whose powers are vested by the U. S. Constitution in the Congress, the President, and the courts, including the Supreme Court. The powers and duties of these branches are defined by acts of Congress. The full name of the republic is United States of America, no other name appears in the Constitution, and this is the name that appears on money, in treaties, and in legal cases to which it is a party. The terms Government of the United States of America or United States Government are often used in documents to represent the federal government as distinct from the states collectively. In casual conversation or writing, the term Federal Government is often used, the terms Federal and National in government agency or program names generally indicate affiliation with the federal government. Because the seat of government is in Washington, D. C, Washington is commonly used as a metonym for the federal government. The outline of the government of the United States is laid out in the Constitution, the government was formed in 1789, making the United States one of the worlds first, if not the first, modern national constitutional republics. The United States government is based on the principles of federalism and republicanism, some make the case for expansive federal powers while others argue for a more limited role for the central government in relation to individuals, the states or other recognized entities. For example, while the legislative has the power to create law, the President nominates judges to the nations highest judiciary authority, but those nominees must be approved by Congress. The Supreme Court, in its turn, has the power to invalidate as unconstitutional any law passed by the Congress and these and other examples are examined in more detail in the text below. The United States Congress is the branch of the federal government. It is bicameral, comprising the House of Representatives and the Senate, the House currently consists of 435 voting members, each of whom represents a congressional district. The number of each state has in the House is based on each states population as determined in the most recent United States Census. All 435 representatives serve a two-year term, each state receives a minimum of one representative in the House. There is no limit on the number of terms a representative may serve, in addition to the 435 voting members, there are six non-voting members, consisting of five delegates and one resident commissioner. In contrast, the Senate is made up of two senators from each state, regardless of population, there are currently 100 senators, who each serve six-year terms
9.
Wikisource
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Wikisource is an online digital library of free content textual sources on a wiki, operated by the Wikimedia Foundation. Wikisource is the name of the project as a whole and the name for each instance of that project, the projects aims are to host all forms of free text, in many languages, and translations. Originally conceived as an archive to store useful or important historical texts, the project officially began in November 24,2003 under the name Project Sourceberg. The name Wikisource was adopted later that year and it received its own domain name seven months later, the project has come under criticism for lack of reliability but it is also cited by organisations such as the National Archives and Records Administration. The project holds works that are either in the domain or freely licensed, professionally published works or historical source documents, not vanity products. Verification was initially made offline, or by trusting the reliability of digital libraries. Now works are supported by online scans via the ProofreadPage extension, some individual Wikisources, each representing a specific language, now only allow works backed up with scans. While the bulk of its collection are texts, Wikisource as a whole hosts other media, some Wikisources allow user-generated annotations, subject to the specific policies of the Wikisource in question. Wikisources early history included several changes of name and location, the original concept for Wikisource was as storage for useful or important historical texts. These texts were intended to support Wikipedia articles, by providing evidence and original source texts. The collection was focused on important historical and cultural material. The project was originally called Project Sourceberg during its planning stages, in 2001, there was a dispute on Wikipedia regarding the addition of primary source material, leading to edit wars over their inclusion or deletion. Project Sourceberg was suggested as a solution to this, perhaps Project Sourceberg can mainly work as an interface for easily linking from Wikipedia to a Project Gutenberg file, and as an interface for people to easily submit new work to PG. Wed want to complement Project Gutenberg--how, exactly, and Jimmy Wales adding like Larry, Im interested that we think it over to see what we can add to Project Gutenberg. It seems unlikely that primary sources should in general be editable by anyone -- I mean, Shakespeare is Shakespeare, unlike our commentary on his work, the project began its activity at ps. wikipedia. org. The contributors understood the PS subdomain to mean either primary sources or Project Sourceberg, however, this resulted in Project Sourceberg occupying the subdomain of the Pashto Wikipedia. A vote on the name changed it to Wikisource on December 6,2003. Despite the change in name, the project did not move to its permanent URL until July 23,2004, since Wikisource was initially called Project Sourceberg, its first logo was a picture of an iceberg
10.
Antarctica
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It contains the geographic South Pole and is situated in the Antarctic region of the Southern Hemisphere, almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle, and is surrounded by the Southern Ocean. At 14,000,000 square kilometres, it is the fifth-largest continent, for comparison, Antarctica is nearly twice the size of Australia. About 98% of Antarctica is covered by ice that averages 1.9 km in thickness, Antarctica, on average, is the coldest, driest, and windiest continent, and has the highest average elevation of all the continents. Antarctica is a desert, with precipitation of only 200 mm along the coast. The temperature in Antarctica has reached −89.2 °C, though the average for the quarter is −63 °C. Anywhere from 1,000 to 5,000 people reside throughout the year at the research stations scattered across the continent. Organisms native to Antarctica include many types of algae, bacteria, fungi, plants, protista, vegetation, where it occurs, is tundra. The continent, however, remained neglected for the rest of the 19th century because of its hostile environment, lack of easily accessible resources. In 1895, the first confirmed landing was conducted by a team of Norwegians, Antarctica is a de facto condominium, governed by parties to the Antarctic Treaty System that have consulting status. Twelve countries signed the Antarctic Treaty in 1959, and thirty-eight have signed it since then, the treaty prohibits military activities and mineral mining, prohibits nuclear explosions and nuclear waste disposal, supports scientific research, and protects the continents ecozone. Ongoing experiments are conducted by more than 4,000 scientists from many nations, the name Antarctica is the romanised version of the Greek compound word ἀνταρκτική, feminine of ἀνταρκτικός, meaning opposite to the Arctic, opposite to the north. Aristotle wrote in his book Meteorology about an Antarctic region in c.350 B. C, marinus of Tyre reportedly used the name in his unpreserved world map from the 2nd century A. D. Before acquiring its present geographical connotations, the term was used for locations that could be defined as opposite to the north. For example, the short-lived French colony established in Brazil in the 16th century was called France Antarctique, the first formal use of the name Antarctica as a continental name in the 1890s is attributed to the Scottish cartographer John George Bartholomew. Antarctica has no population and there is no evidence that it was seen by humans until the 19th century. Explorer Matthew Flinders, in particular, has credited with popularising the transfer of the name Terra Australis to Australia. Cook came within about 120 km of the Antarctic coast before retreating in the face of ice in January 1773. The first confirmed sighting of Antarctica can be narrowed down to the crews of ships captained by three individuals, according to various organisations, ships captained by three men sighted Antarctica or its ice shelf in 1820, von Bellingshausen, Edward Bransfield, and Nathaniel Palmer
11.
International relations
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International relations is an academic and a public policy field, and so can be positive and normative, because it analyzes and formulates the foreign policy of a given State. As political activity, international relations dates from the time of the Greek historian Thucydides, in practice International Relations and International Affairs forms a separate academic program or field from Political Science, and the courses taught therein are highly interdisciplinary. The history of international relations based on sovereign states is often traced back to the Peace of Westphalia of 1648, prior to this the European medieval organization of political authority was based on a vaguely hierarchical religious order. Contrary to popular belief, Westphalia still embodied layered systems of sovereignty, the centuries of roughly 1500 to 1789 saw the rise of the independent, sovereign states, the institutionalization of diplomacy and armies. The French Revolution added to this the new idea that not princes or an oligarchy, such a state in which the nation is sovereign would thence be termed a nation-state. The term republic increasingly became its synonym, the same claim to sovereignty was made for both forms of nation-state. The particular European system supposing the sovereign equality of states was exported to the Americas, Africa, and Asia via colonialism, the contemporary international system was finally established through decolonization during the Cold War. While the nation-state system is considered modern, many states have not incorporated the system and are termed pre-modern, further, a handful of states have moved beyond insistence on full sovereignty, and can be considered post-modern. The ability of contemporary IR discourse to explain the relations of different types of states is disputed. What is explicitly recognized as international relations theory was not developed until after World War I, IR theory, however, has a long tradition of drawing on the work of other social sciences. The use of capitalizations of the I and R in international relations aims to distinguish the academic discipline of international relations from the phenomena of international relations. Similarly, liberalism draws upon the work of Kant and Rousseau, in the 20th century, in addition to contemporary theories of liberal internationalism, Marxism has been a foundation of international relations. International relations as a field of study began in Britain. IR emerged as an academic discipline in 1919 with the founding of the first IR professorship. Georgetown Universitys Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service is the oldest international relations faculty in the United States and this was rapidly followed by establishment of IR at universities in the US and in Geneva, Switzerland. The creation of the posts of Montague Burton Professor of International Relations at LSE, furthermore, the International History department at LSE developed a focus on the history of IR in the early modern, colonial and Cold War periods. The first university dedicated to the study of IR was the Graduate Institute of International Studies. The Committee on International Relations at the University of Chicago was the first to offer a graduate degree, in 2012, Ramon Llull University initiated the first International Relations degree in Barcelona, fully in English
12.
Ice shelf
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An ice shelf is a thick floating platform of ice that forms where a glacier or ice sheet flows down to a coastline and onto the ocean surface. Ice shelves are only found in Antarctica, Greenland, Canada, the boundary between the floating ice shelf and the grounded ice that feeds it is called the grounding line. The thickness of ice shelves ranges from about 100 to 1000 meters, in contrast, sea ice is formed on water, is much thinner, and forms throughout the Arctic Ocean. It also is found in the Southern Ocean around the continent of Antarctica, Ice shelves are principally driven by gravity-driven pressure from the grounded ice. That flow continually moves ice from the line to the seaward front of the shelf. The primary mechanism of mass loss from ice shelves was thought to have been iceberg calving, typically, a shelf front will extend forward for years or decades between major calving events. Snow accumulation on the surface and melting from the lower surface are also important to the mass balance of an ice shelf. Ice may also accrete onto the underside of the shelf, the density contrast between glacial ice, which is denser than normal ice, and liquid water means that only about 1/9 of the floating ice is above the ocean surface. The worlds largest ice shelves are the Ross Ice Shelf and the Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf in Antarctica, the term captured ice shelf has been used for the ice over a subglacial lake, such as Lake Vostok. All Canadian ice shelves are attached to Ellesmere Island and lie north of 82°N, Ice shelves that are still in existence are the Alfred Ernest Ice Shelf, Milne Ice Shelf, Ward Hunt Ice Shelf and Smith Ice Shelf. The MClintock Ice Shelf broke up from 1963 to 1966, the Ayles Ice Shelf broke up in 2005, a total of 74 percent of the Antarctic coastline has ice shelves attached. Their aggregate area is over 1,550,000 km2, in the last several decades, glaciologists have observed consistent decreases in ice shelf extent through melt, calving, and complete disintegration of some shelves. The Ellesmere ice shelf reduced by 90 percent in the century, leaving the separate Alfred Ernest, Ayles, Milne, Ward Hunt. A1986 survey of Canadian ice shelves found that 48 km². of ice calved from the Milne, the Ayles Ice Shelf calved entirely on August 13,2005. The Ward Hunt Ice Shelf, the largest remaining section of thick landfast sea ice along the coastline of Ellesmere Island. It further decreased by 27% in thickness between 1967 and 1999, in summer 2002, the Ward Ice Shelf experienced another major breakup. Two sections of Antarcticas Larsen Ice Shelf broke apart into hundreds of small fragments in 1995 and 2002. The breakup events may be linked to the dramatic polar warming trends that are part of global warming, the leading ideas involve enhanced ice fracturing due to surface meltwater and enhanced bottom melting due to warmer ocean water circulating under the floating ice
13.
Military activity in the Antarctic
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As Antarctica has never been permanently settled by humans, there has historically been little military activity in the Antarctic. The Antarctic Treaty specifically prohibits military activity on land or ice shelves below 60°S, while the use of nuclear weapons is absolutely prohibited, the Treaty does not apply to naval activity within these bounds so long as it takes place on the high seas. Military forces from many countries have provided support to scientific expeditions, RNZAF P-3Ks have regularly conducted flights to and from Antarctica since this successful trial. John Keegan and Andrew Wheatcroft, in their 1986 book Zones of Conflict, An Atlas of Future Wars, Antarctica has great potential economic value, in terms of mineral and oil resources. The Falkland Islands, Keegan and Wheatcroft go on to say, dominate the Drake Passage and this was a less publicised factor during the Falklands War
14.
Cold War
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The Cold War was a state of geopolitical tension after World War II between powers in the Eastern Bloc and powers in the Western Bloc. Historians do not fully agree on the dates, but a common timeframe is the period between 1947, the year the Truman Doctrine was announced, and 1991, the year the Soviet Union collapsed. The term cold is used there was no large-scale fighting directly between the two sides, although there were major regional wars, known as proxy wars, supported by the two sides. The Cold War split the temporary alliance against Nazi Germany, leaving the Soviet Union. The USSR was a Marxist–Leninist state ruled by its Communist Party and secret police, the Party controlled the press, the military, the economy and all organizations. In opposition stood the West, dominantly democratic and capitalist with a free press, a small neutral bloc arose with the Non-Aligned Movement, it sought good relations with both sides. The two superpowers never engaged directly in full-scale armed combat, but they were armed in preparation for a possible all-out nuclear world war. The first phase of the Cold War began in the first two years after the end of the Second World War in 1945, the Berlin Blockade was the first major crisis of the Cold War. With the victory of the communist side in the Chinese Civil War and the outbreak of the Korean War, the USSR and USA competed for influence in Latin America, and the decolonizing states of Africa and Asia. Meanwhile, the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 was stopped by the Soviets, the expansion and escalation sparked more crises, such as the Suez Crisis, the Berlin Crisis of 1961, and the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. The USSR crushed the 1968 Prague Spring liberalization program in Czechoslovakia, détente collapsed at the end of the decade with the beginning of the Soviet–Afghan War in 1979. The early 1980s were another period of elevated tension, with the Soviet downing of Korean Air Lines Flight 007, the United States increased diplomatic, military, and economic pressures on the Soviet Union, at a time when the communist state was already suffering from economic stagnation. In the mid-1980s, the new Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev introduced the reforms of perestroika and glasnost. Pressures for national independence grew stronger in Eastern Europe, especially Poland, Gorbachev meanwhile refused to use Soviet troops to bolster the faltering Warsaw Pact regimes as had occurred in the past. The result in 1989 was a wave of revolutions that peacefully overthrew all of the communist regimes of Central, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union itself lost control and was banned following an abortive coup attempt in August 1991. This in turn led to the dissolution of the USSR in December 1991. The United States remained as the only superpower. The Cold War and its events have left a significant legacy and it is often referred to in popular culture, especially in media featuring themes of espionage and the threat of nuclear warfare
15.
Antarctic Treaty Secretariat
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The Secretariat was created through Measure 1, adopted by the XXVI Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting held in Madrid. Apart from establishing the Secretariat, Measure 1 also sets up the Secretariats functions, the organizations first Executive Secretary was Mr. Jan Huber, from the Netherlands. Mr. Huber occupied this position for 5 years until 31 August 2009 and he was succeeded on 1 September 2009 by Mr. Manfred Reinke who was elected in April 2009 by the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting in Baltimore. The Secretariat Headquarters are established in Buenos Aires, Argentina, the Antarctic Treaty operated without any permanent institution until 1 September 2004, when the Antarctic Treaty Secretariat started operations in Buenos Aires
16.
Buenos Aires
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Buenos Aires is the capital and most populous city of Argentina. The city is located on the shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata. The city of Buenos Aires is neither part of Buenos Aires Province nor the Provinces capital, rather, in 1880, after decades of political infighting, Buenos Aires was federalized and removed from Buenos Aires Province. The city limits were enlarged to include the towns of Belgrano and Flores, the 1994 constitutional amendment granted the city autonomy, hence its formal name, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires. Its citizens first elected a chief of government in 1996, previously, Buenos Aires is considered an alpha city by the study GaWC5. Buenos Aires quality of life was ranked 81st in the world and one of the best in Latin America in 2012 and it is the most visited city in South America, and the second-most visited city of Latin America. Buenos Aires is a top tourist destination, and is known for its preserved Spanish/European-style architecture, Buenos Aires held the 1st Pan American Games in 1951 as well as hosting two venues in the 1978 FIFA World Cup. Buenos Aires will host the 2018 Summer Youth Olympics and the 2018 G20 summit, Buenos Aires is a multicultural city, being home to multiple ethnic and religious groups. Several languages are spoken in the city in addition to Spanish, contributing to its culture, the hill was known to them as Buen Ayre, as it was free of the foul smell prevalent in the old city, which is adjacent to swampland. During the siege of Cagliari, the Aragonese built a sanctuary to the Virgin Mary on top of the hill, in 1335, King Alfonso the Gentle donated the church to the Mercedarians, who built an abbey that stands to this day. In the years after that, a story circulated, claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary was retrieved from the sea after it miraculously helped to calm a storm in the Mediterranean Sea, the statue was placed in the abbey. Spanish sailors, especially Andalusians, venerated this image and frequently invoked the Fair Winds to aid them in their navigation, a sanctuary to the Virgin of Buen Ayre would be later erected in Seville. Pedro de Mendoza called the city Holy Mary of the Fair Winds, mendoza’s settlement soon came under attack by indigenous people, and was abandoned in 1541. For many years, the name was attributed to a Sancho del Campo, a second settlement was established in 1580 by Juan de Garay, who sailed down the Paraná River from Asunción. Garay preserved the name chosen by Mendoza, calling the city Ciudad de la Santísima Trinidad y Puerto de Santa María del Buen Aire. The short form Buenos Aires became the common usage during the 17th century, the usual abbreviation for Buenos Aires in Spanish is Bs. As. It is common as well to refer to it as B. A. or BA /ˌbiːˈeɪ/ bee-AY), while BA is used more by expats residing in the city, the locals more often use the abbreviation Baires, in one word. Seaman Juan Díaz de Solís, navigating in the name of Spain, was the first European to reach the Río de la Plata in 1516 and his expedition was cut short when he was killed during an attack by the native Charrúa tribe in what is now Uruguay
17.
Argentina
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Argentina, officially the Argentine Republic, is a federal republic in the southern half of South America. With a mainland area of 2,780,400 km2, Argentina is the eighth-largest country in the world, the second largest in Latin America, and the largest Spanish-speaking one. The country is subdivided into provinces and one autonomous city, Buenos Aires. The provinces and the capital have their own constitutions, but exist under a federal system, Argentina claims sovereignty over part of Antarctica, the Falkland Islands, and South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands. The earliest recorded presence in the area of modern-day Argentina dates back to the Paleolithic period. The country has its roots in Spanish colonization of the region during the 16th century, Argentina rose as the successor state of the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata, a Spanish overseas viceroyalty founded in 1776. The country thereafter enjoyed relative peace and stability, with waves of European immigration radically reshaping its cultural. The almost-unparalleled increase in prosperity led to Argentina becoming the seventh wealthiest developed nation in the world by the early 20th century, Argentina retains its historic status as a middle power in international affairs, and is a prominent regional power in the Southern Cone and Latin America. Argentina has the second largest economy in South America, the third-largest in Latin America and is a member of the G-15 and it is the country with the second highest Human Development Index in Latin America with a rating of very high. Because of its stability, market size and growing high-tech sector, the description of the country by the word Argentina has to be found on a Venice map in 1536. In English the name Argentina probably comes from the Spanish language, however the naming itself is not Spanish, Argentina means in Italian of silver, silver coloured, probably borrowed from the Old French adjective argentine of silver > silver coloured already mentioned in the 12th century. The French word argentine is the form of argentin and derives of argent silver with the suffix -in. The Italian naming Argentina for the country implies Argentina Terra land of silver or Argentina costa coast of silver, in Italian, the adjective or the proper noun is often used in an autonomous way as a substantive and replaces it and it is said lArgentina. The name Argentina was probably first given by the Venitian and Genoese navigators, in Spanish and Portuguese, the words for silver are respectively plata and prata and of silver is said plateado and prateado. Argentina was first associated with the silver mountains legend, widespread among the first European explorers of the La Plata Basin. The first written use of the name in Spanish can be traced to La Argentina, a 1602 poem by Martín del Barco Centenera describing the region, the 1826 constitution included the first use of the name Argentine Republic in legal documents. The name Argentine Confederation was also used and was formalized in the Argentine Constitution of 1853. In 1860 a presidential decree settled the name as Argentine Republic
18.
United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea
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The Convention, concluded in 1982, replaced four 1958 treaties. UNCLOS came into force in 1994, a year after Guyana became the 60th nation to ratify the treaty, as of June 2016,167 countries and the European Union have joined in the Convention. It is uncertain as to what extent the Convention codifies customary international law, there is, however, a role played by organizations such as the International Maritime Organization, the International Whaling Commission, and the International Seabed Authority. All waters beyond national boundaries were considered international waters, free to all nations, in the early 20th century, some nations expressed their desire to extend national claims, to include mineral resources, to protect fish stocks, and to provide the means to enforce pollution controls. Other nations were quick to follow suit, between 1946 and 1950, Chile, Peru, and Ecuador extended their rights to a distance of 200 nautical miles to cover their Humboldt Current fishing grounds. Other nations extended their territorial seas to 12 nautical miles, by 1967, only 25 nations still used the old 3-mile limit, while 66 nations had set a 12-nautical-mile territorial limit and eight had set a 200-nautical-mile limit. As of 28 May 2008, only two countries use the 3-mile limit, Jordan and Palau. That limit is used in certain Australian islands, an area of Belize, some Japanese straits, certain areas of Papua New Guinea. In 1956, the United Nations held its first Conference on the Law of the Sea at Geneva, in 1960, the United Nations held the second Conference on the Law of the Sea, however, the six-week Geneva conference did not result in any new agreements. Generally speaking, developing nations and third world countries participated only as clients, allies, or dependents of the United States or the Soviet Union, with no significant voice of their own. The issue of varying claims of territorial waters was raised in the UN in 1967 by Arvid Pardo of Malta, in an attempt to reduce the possibility of groups of nation-states dominating the negotiations, the conference used a consensus process rather than majority vote. With more than 160 nations participating, the conference lasted until 1982, the resulting convention came into force on 16 November 1994, one year after the 60th state, Guyana, ratified the treaty. The convention introduced a number of provisions, the convention set the limit of various areas, measured from a carefully defined baseline. The areas are as follows, Internal waters Covers all water, the coastal state is free to set laws, regulate use, and use any resource. Foreign vessels have no right of passage within internal waters, territorial waters Out to 12 nautical miles from the baseline, the coastal state is free to set laws, regulate use, and use any resource. Fishing, polluting, weapons practice, and spying are not innocent, Nations can also temporarily suspend innocent passage in specific areas of their territorial seas, if doing so is essential for the protection of its security. Archipelagic waters The convention set the definition of Archipelagic States in Part IV, a baseline is drawn between the outermost points of the outermost islands, subject to these points being sufficiently close to one another. All waters inside this baseline are designated Archipelagic Waters, the state has sovereignty over these waters, but subject to existing rights including traditional fishing rights of immediately adjacent states
19.
Outer Space Treaty
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The treaty was opened for signature in the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union on 27 January 1967, and entered into force on 10 October 1967. As of January 2017,105 countries are parties to the treaty, the Outer Space Treaty represents the basic legal framework of international space law. However, the Treaty does not prohibit the placement of weapons in orbit. The treaty also states that the exploration of outer space shall be done to all countries. The treaty explicitly forbids any government from claiming a celestial resource such as the Moon or a planet, however, the State that launches a space object retains jurisdiction and control over that object. The State is also liable for damages caused by their space object, the Space Liability Convention of 1972. The Moon Treaty of 1979 was meant to be the follow-up to the Outer Space Treaty, the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space oversees these treaties and other questions of space jurisdiction. The Outer Space Treaty was opened for signature in the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union on 27 January 1967, as of January 2017,105 countries are parties to the treaty, while another 24 have signed the treaty but have not completed ratification. Multiple dates indicate the different days in which states submitted their signature or deposition and this location is noted by, for London, for Moscow, and for Washington, DC. When the PRC subsequently ratified the treaty, they described the Republic of Chinas ratification as illegal, the ROC has committed itself to continue to adhere to the requirements of the treaty, and the United States has declared that they still consider them to be bound by its obligations
20.
Moon Treaty
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Thus, all activities must conform to international law, including the United Nations Charter. As of November 2016, it has been ratified by 17 states, the treaty would apply to the Moon and to other celestial bodies within the Solar System, other than Earth, including orbits around or other trajectories to or around them. The treaty makes a declaration that the Moon should be used for the benefit of all states and it also expresses a desire to prevent the Moon from becoming a source of international conflict. To those ends the treaty does the following, Bans any military use of celestial bodies, Bans all exploration and uses of celestial bodies without the approval or benefit of other states under the common heritage of mankind principle. Requires that the Secretary-General must be notified of all celestial activities, declares all states have an equal right to conduct research on celestial bodies. Declares that for any samples obtained during research activities, the state that obtained them must consider making part of it available to all countries/scientific communities for research, Bans altering the environment of celestial bodies and requires that states must take measures to prevent accidental contamination. Bans any state from claiming sovereignty over any territory of celestial bodies, Bans any ownership of any extraterrestrial property by any organization or person, unless that organization is international and governmental. Requires an international regime be set up to ensure safe and orderly development and management of the resources, the treaty was finalized in 1979 and entered into force for the ratifying parties in 1984. As of November 2016,17 states are parties to the treaty, seven of which ratified the agreement, four additional states have signed but not ratified the treaty. The L5 Society and others successfully opposed ratification of the treaty by the United States Senate, the objection to the treaty by the spacefaring nations is held to be the requirement that extracted resources must be shared with other nations. The similar regime in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea is believed to impede the development of industries on the seabed
21.
International waters
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International waters have no sovereignty, ergo is Terra nullius as no state controls it. All states have the freedom of, fishing, navigation, overflight, laying cables and pipelines, oceans, seas, and waters outside of national jurisdiction are also referred to as the high seas or, in Latin, mare liberum. International waters can be contrasted with internal waters, territorial waters, several international treaties have established freedom of navigation on semi-enclosed seas. The Copenhagen Convention of 1857 opened access to the Baltic by abolishing the Sound Dues and making the Danish Straits an international waterway free to all commercial, several conventions have opened the Bosphorus and Dardanelles to shipping. The latest, the Montreux Convention Regarding the Regime of the Turkish Straits, Other international treaties have opened up rivers, which are not traditionally international waterways. The Danube River is a waterway so that landlocked Austria, Hungary, Moldova, Serbia. The Southern Ocean, Australia claims an economic zone around its Antarctic territorial claim. Since this claim is recognised by four other countries, the EEZ claim is also disputed. Area around Okinotorishima, Japan claim Okinotorishima is an islet and thus they should have an EEZ around it, South China Sea, See Territorial disputes in the South China Sea. Some countries consider the South China Sea as international waters, in addition to formal disputes, the government of Somalia exercises little control de facto over Somali territorial waters. Consequently, much piracy, illegal dumping of waste and fishing without permit has occurred, although water is often seen as a source of conflict, recent research suggests that water management can be a source for cooperation between countries. Such cooperation will benefit participating countries by being the catalyst for larger socio-economic development, the Yearbook of International Cooperation on Environment and Development profiles agreements regarding the Marine Environment, Marine Living Resources and Freshwater Resources. 1972 London Convention on the Prevention of Marine Pollution by Dumping of Wastes,1973 London International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships,1973 MARPOL1982 United Nations Convention on Law of the Sea. 1997 United Nations Convention on the Law of Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourses - not ratified, transboundary Groundwater Treaty, Bellagio Draft - proposed, but not signed. Other global conventions and treaties with implications for International Waters,1971 Ramsar Convention on Wetlands
22.
International Geophysical Year
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The International Geophysical Year was an international scientific project that lasted from July 1,1957, to December 31,1958. It marked the end of a period during the Cold War when scientific interchange between East and West had been seriously interrupted. Joseph Stalins death in 1953 opened the way for this new era of collaboration, sixty-seven countries participated in IGY projects, although one notable exception was the mainland Peoples Republic of China, which was protesting against the participation of the Republic of China. East and West agreed to nominate the Belgian Marcel Nicolet as secretary general of the international organization. The timing of IGY was particularly suited to some of these phenomena, both the Soviet Union and the U. S. launched artificial satellites for this event, the Soviet Unions Sputnik 1, launched on October 4,1957, was the first successful artificial satellite. Also detected was the occurrence of hard solar corpuscular radiation that could be highly dangerous for manned space flight. The International Geophysical Year traces its origins to the International Polar Years, on 29 July 1955, James C. Four days later, at the Sixth Congress of International Astronautical Federation in Copenhagen, sedov spoke to international reporters at the Soviet embassy, and announced his countrys intention to launch a satellite as well, in the near future. To the surprise of many, the USSR launched Sputnik 1 as the first artificial Earth satellite on October 4,1957. After several failed Vanguard launches, Wernher von Braun and his team convinced President Dwight D. Eisenhower to use one of their US Army missiles for the Explorer program. On November 8,1957, the US Secretary of Defense instructed the US Army to use a modified Jupiter-C rocket to launch a satellite. The US achieved this goal only four months later with Explorer 1, on February 1,1958, Vanguard 1 became the fourth, launched on March 17,1958. The Soviet victory in the Space Race would be followed by considerable political consequences, the British-American survey of the Atlantic, carried out between September 1954 and July 1959, that discovered full length of the mid-Atlantic ridges, was a major discovery during the IGY. Although the 1932 Polar Year accomplished many of its goals, it short on others because of the advance of World War II. In fact, because of the war, much of the data collected, the potential loss of data to war and politics was particularly troubling to the IGY organizing committee. The committee resolved that all observational data shall be available to scientists and they felt that without the free exchange of data across international borders, there would be no point in having an IGY. In April 1957, just three months before the IGY began, scientists representing the various disciplines of the IGY established the World Data Center system, the United States hosted World Data Center A and the Soviet Union hosted World Data Center B. World Data Center C was subdivided among countries in Western Europe, Australia, today, NOAA hosts seven of the fifteen World Data Centers in the United States
23.
Australia
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Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and numerous smaller islands. It is the worlds sixth-largest country by total area, the neighbouring countries are Papua New Guinea, Indonesia and East Timor to the north, the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu to the north-east, and New Zealand to the south-east. Australias capital is Canberra, and its largest urban area is Sydney, for about 50,000 years before the first British settlement in the late 18th century, Australia was inhabited by indigenous Australians, who spoke languages classifiable into roughly 250 groups. The population grew steadily in subsequent decades, and by the 1850s most of the continent had been explored, on 1 January 1901, the six colonies federated, forming the Commonwealth of Australia. Australia has since maintained a liberal democratic political system that functions as a federal parliamentary constitutional monarchy comprising six states. The population of 24 million is highly urbanised and heavily concentrated on the eastern seaboard, Australia has the worlds 13th-largest economy and ninth-highest per capita income. With the second-highest human development index globally, the country highly in quality of life, health, education, economic freedom. The name Australia is derived from the Latin Terra Australis a name used for putative lands in the southern hemisphere since ancient times, the Dutch adjectival form Australische was used in a Dutch book in Batavia in 1638, to refer to the newly discovered lands to the south. On 12 December 1817, Macquarie recommended to the Colonial Office that it be formally adopted, in 1824, the Admiralty agreed that the continent should be known officially as Australia. The first official published use of the term Australia came with the 1830 publication of The Australia Directory and these first inhabitants may have been ancestors of modern Indigenous Australians. The Torres Strait Islanders, ethnically Melanesian, were originally horticulturists, the northern coasts and waters of Australia were visited sporadically by fishermen from Maritime Southeast Asia. The first recorded European sighting of the Australian mainland, and the first recorded European landfall on the Australian continent, are attributed to the Dutch. The first ship and crew to chart the Australian coast and meet with Aboriginal people was the Duyfken captained by Dutch navigator, Willem Janszoon. He sighted the coast of Cape York Peninsula in early 1606, the Dutch charted the whole of the western and northern coastlines and named the island continent New Holland during the 17th century, but made no attempt at settlement. William Dampier, an English explorer and privateer, landed on the north-west coast of New Holland in 1688, in 1770, James Cook sailed along and mapped the east coast, which he named New South Wales and claimed for Great Britain. The first settlement led to the foundation of Sydney, and the exploration, a British settlement was established in Van Diemens Land, now known as Tasmania, in 1803, and it became a separate colony in 1825. The United Kingdom formally claimed the part of Western Australia in 1828. Separate colonies were carved from parts of New South Wales, South Australia in 1836, Victoria in 1851, the Northern Territory was founded in 1911 when it was excised from South Australia
24.
Belgium
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Belgium, officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a sovereign state in Western Europe bordered by France, the Netherlands, Germany, Luxembourg, and the North Sea. It is a small, densely populated country which covers an area of 30,528 square kilometres and has a population of about 11 million people. Additionally, there is a group of German-speakers who live in the East Cantons located around the High Fens area. Historically, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg were known as the Low Countries, the region was called Belgica in Latin, after the Roman province of Gallia Belgica. From the end of the Middle Ages until the 17th century, today, Belgium is a federal constitutional monarchy with a parliamentary system of governance. It is divided into three regions and three communities, that exist next to each other and its two largest regions are the Dutch-speaking region of Flanders in the north and the French-speaking southern region of Wallonia. The Brussels-Capital Region is a bilingual enclave within the Flemish Region. A German-speaking Community exists in eastern Wallonia, Belgiums linguistic diversity and related political conflicts are reflected in its political history and complex system of governance, made up of six different governments. Upon its independence, declared in 1830, Belgium participated in the Industrial Revolution and, during the course of the 20th century, possessed a number of colonies in Africa. This continuing antagonism has led to several far-reaching reforms, resulting in a transition from a unitary to a federal arrangement during the period from 1970 to 1993. Belgium is also a member of the Eurozone, NATO, OECD and WTO. Its capital, Brussels, hosts several of the EUs official seats as well as the headquarters of major international organizations such as NATO. Belgium is also a part of the Schengen Area, Belgium is a developed country, with an advanced high-income economy and is categorized as very high in the Human Development Index. A gradual immigration by Germanic Frankish tribes during the 5th century brought the area under the rule of the Merovingian kings, a gradual shift of power during the 8th century led the kingdom of the Franks to evolve into the Carolingian Empire. Many of these fiefdoms were united in the Burgundian Netherlands of the 14th and 15th centuries, the Eighty Years War divided the Low Countries into the northern United Provinces and the Southern Netherlands. The latter were ruled successively by the Spanish and the Austrian Habsburgs and this was the theatre of most Franco-Spanish and Franco-Austrian wars during the 17th and 18th centuries. The reunification of the Low Countries as the United Kingdom of the Netherlands occurred at the dissolution of the First French Empire in 1815, although the franchise was initially restricted, universal suffrage for men was introduced after the general strike of 1893 and for women in 1949. The main political parties of the 19th century were the Catholic Party, French was originally the single official language adopted by the nobility and the bourgeoisie
25.
Chile
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Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a South American country occupying a long, narrow strip of land between the Andes to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, Chilean territory includes the Pacific islands of Juan Fernández, Salas y Gómez, Desventuradas, and Easter Island in Oceania. Chile also claims about 1,250,000 square kilometres of Antarctica, the arid Atacama Desert in northern Chile contains great mineral wealth, principally copper. Southern Chile is rich in forests and grazing lands, and features a string of volcanoes and lakes, the southern coast is a labyrinth of fjords, inlets, canals, twisting peninsulas, and islands. Spain conquered and colonized Chile in the century, replacing Inca rule in northern and central Chile. After declaring its independence from Spain in 1818, Chile emerged in the 1830s as a relatively stable authoritarian republic, in the 1960s and 1970s the country experienced severe left-right political polarization and turmoil. The regime, headed by Augusto Pinochet, ended in 1990 after it lost a referendum in 1988 and was succeeded by a coalition which ruled through four presidencies until 2010. Chile is today one of South Americas most stable and prosperous nations and it leads Latin American nations in rankings of human development, competitiveness, income per capita, globalization, state of peace, economic freedom, and low perception of corruption. It also ranks high regionally in sustainability of the state, Chile is a founding member of the United Nations, the Union of South American Nations and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States. There are various theories about the origin of the word Chile, another theory points to the similarity of the valley of the Aconcagua with that of the Casma Valley in Peru, where there was a town and valley named Chili. Another origin attributed to chilli is the onomatopoeic cheele-cheele—the Mapuche imitation of the warble of a locally known as trile. The Spanish conquistadors heard about this name from the Incas, ultimately, Almagro is credited with the universalization of the name Chile, after naming the Mapocho valley as such. The older spelling Chili was in use in English until at least 1900 before switching over to Chile, stone tool evidence indicates humans sporadically frequented the Monte Verde valley area as long as 18,500 years ago. About 10,000 years ago, migrating Native Americans settled in fertile valleys, settlement sites from very early human habitation include Monte Verde, Cueva del Milodon and the Pali Aike Craters lava tube. They fought against the Sapa Inca Tupac Yupanqui and his army, the result of the bloody three-day confrontation known as the Battle of the Maule was that the Inca conquest of the territories of Chile ended at the Maule river. The next Europeans to reach Chile were Diego de Almagro and his band of Spanish conquistadors, the Spanish encountered various cultures that supported themselves principally through slash-and-burn agriculture and hunting. The conquest of Chile began in earnest in 1540 and was carried out by Pedro de Valdivia, one of Francisco Pizarros lieutenants, who founded the city of Santiago on 12 February 1541. Although the Spanish did not find the gold and silver they sought, they recognized the agricultural potential of Chiles central valley
26.
France
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France, officially the French Republic, is a country with territory in western Europe and several overseas regions and territories. The European, or metropolitan, area of France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, Overseas France include French Guiana on the South American continent and several island territories in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans. France spans 643,801 square kilometres and had a population of almost 67 million people as of January 2017. It is a unitary republic with the capital in Paris. Other major urban centres include Marseille, Lyon, Lille, Nice, Toulouse, during the Iron Age, what is now metropolitan France was inhabited by the Gauls, a Celtic people. The area was annexed in 51 BC by Rome, which held Gaul until 486, France emerged as a major European power in the Late Middle Ages, with its victory in the Hundred Years War strengthening state-building and political centralisation. During the Renaissance, French culture flourished and a colonial empire was established. The 16th century was dominated by civil wars between Catholics and Protestants. France became Europes dominant cultural, political, and military power under Louis XIV, in the 19th century Napoleon took power and established the First French Empire, whose subsequent Napoleonic Wars shaped the course of continental Europe. Following the collapse of the Empire, France endured a succession of governments culminating with the establishment of the French Third Republic in 1870. Following liberation in 1944, a Fourth Republic was established and later dissolved in the course of the Algerian War, the Fifth Republic, led by Charles de Gaulle, was formed in 1958 and remains to this day. Algeria and nearly all the colonies became independent in the 1960s with minimal controversy and typically retained close economic. France has long been a centre of art, science. It hosts Europes fourth-largest number of cultural UNESCO World Heritage Sites and receives around 83 million foreign tourists annually, France is a developed country with the worlds sixth-largest economy by nominal GDP and ninth-largest by purchasing power parity. In terms of household wealth, it ranks fourth in the world. France performs well in international rankings of education, health care, life expectancy, France remains a great power in the world, being one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council with the power to veto and an official nuclear-weapon state. It is a member state of the European Union and the Eurozone. It is also a member of the Group of 7, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the World Trade Organization, originally applied to the whole Frankish Empire, the name France comes from the Latin Francia, or country of the Franks
27.
Japan
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Japan is a sovereign island nation in Eastern Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies off the eastern coast of the Asia Mainland and stretches from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea, the kanji that make up Japans name mean sun origin. 日 can be read as ni and means sun while 本 can be read as hon, or pon, Japan is often referred to by the famous epithet Land of the Rising Sun in reference to its Japanese name. Japan is an archipelago consisting of about 6,852 islands. The four largest are Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu and Shikoku, the country is divided into 47 prefectures in eight regions. Hokkaido being the northernmost prefecture and Okinawa being the southernmost one, the population of 127 million is the worlds tenth largest. Japanese people make up 98. 5% of Japans total population, approximately 9.1 million people live in the city of Tokyo, the capital of Japan. Archaeological research indicates that Japan was inhabited as early as the Upper Paleolithic period, the first written mention of Japan is in Chinese history texts from the 1st century AD. Influence from other regions, mainly China, followed by periods of isolation, from the 12th century until 1868, Japan was ruled by successive feudal military shoguns who ruled in the name of the Emperor. Japan entered into a period of isolation in the early 17th century. The Second Sino-Japanese War of 1937 expanded into part of World War II in 1941, which came to an end in 1945 following the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japan is a member of the UN, the OECD, the G7, the G8, the country has the worlds third-largest economy by nominal GDP and the worlds fourth-largest economy by purchasing power parity. It is also the worlds fourth-largest exporter and fourth-largest importer, although Japan has officially renounced its right to declare war, it maintains a modern military with the worlds eighth-largest military budget, used for self-defense and peacekeeping roles. Japan is a country with a very high standard of living. Its population enjoys the highest life expectancy and the third lowest infant mortality rate in the world, in ancient China, Japan was called Wo 倭. It was mentioned in the third century Chinese historical text Records of the Three Kingdoms in the section for the Wei kingdom, Wa became disliked because it has the connotation of the character 矮, meaning dwarf. The 倭 kanji has been replaced with the homophone Wa, meaning harmony, the Japanese word for Japan is 日本, which is pronounced Nippon or Nihon and literally means the origin of the sun. The earliest record of the name Nihon appears in the Chinese historical records of the Tang dynasty, at the start of the seventh century, a delegation from Japan introduced their country as Nihon
28.
New Zealand
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New Zealand /njuːˈziːlənd/ is an island nation in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. The country geographically comprises two main landmasses—the North Island, or Te Ika-a-Māui, and the South Island, or Te Waipounamu—and around 600 smaller islands. New Zealand is situated some 1,500 kilometres east of Australia across the Tasman Sea and roughly 1,000 kilometres south of the Pacific island areas of New Caledonia, Fiji, because of its remoteness, it was one of the last lands to be settled by humans. During its long period of isolation, New Zealand developed a distinct biodiversity of animal, fungal, the countrys varied topography and its sharp mountain peaks, such as the Southern Alps, owe much to the tectonic uplift of land and volcanic eruptions. New Zealands capital city is Wellington, while its most populous city is Auckland, sometime between 1250 and 1300 CE, Polynesians settled in the islands that later were named New Zealand and developed a distinctive Māori culture. In 1642, Dutch explorer Abel Tasman became the first European to sight New Zealand, in 1840, representatives of Britain and Māori chiefs signed the Treaty of Waitangi, which declared British sovereignty over the islands. In 1841, New Zealand became a colony within the British Empire, today, the majority of New Zealands population of 4.7 million is of European descent, the indigenous Māori are the largest minority, followed by Asians and Pacific Islanders. Reflecting this, New Zealands culture is derived from Māori and early British settlers. The official languages are English, Māori and New Zealand Sign Language, New Zealand is a developed country and ranks highly in international comparisons of national performance, such as health, education, economic freedom and quality of life. Since the 1980s, New Zealand has transformed from an agrarian, Queen Elizabeth II is the countrys head of state and is represented by a governor-general. In addition, New Zealand is organised into 11 regional councils and 67 territorial authorities for local government purposes, the Realm of New Zealand also includes Tokelau, the Cook Islands and Niue, and the Ross Dependency, which is New Zealands territorial claim in Antarctica. New Zealand is a member of the United Nations, Commonwealth of Nations, ANZUS, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Pacific Islands Forum, and Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation. Dutch explorer Abel Tasman sighted New Zealand in 1642 and called it Staten Landt, in 1645, Dutch cartographers renamed the land Nova Zeelandia after the Dutch province of Zeeland. British explorer James Cook subsequently anglicised the name to New Zealand, Aotearoa is the current Māori name for New Zealand. It is unknown whether Māori had a name for the country before the arrival of Europeans. Māori had several names for the two main islands, including Te Ika-a-Māui for the North Island and Te Waipounamu or Te Waka o Aoraki for the South Island. Early European maps labelled the islands North, Middle and South, in 1830, maps began to use North and South to distinguish the two largest islands and by 1907, this was the accepted norm. The New Zealand Geographic Board discovered in 2009 that the names of the North Island and South Island had never been formalised and this set the names as North Island or Te Ika-a-Māui, and South Island or Te Waipounamu
29.
Norway
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The Antarctic Peter I Island and the sub-Antarctic Bouvet Island are dependent territories and thus not considered part of the Kingdom. Norway also lays claim to a section of Antarctica known as Queen Maud Land, until 1814, the kingdom included the Faroe Islands, Greenland, and Iceland. It also included Isle of Man until 1266, Shetland and Orkney until 1468, Norway has a total area of 385,252 square kilometres and a population of 5,258,317. The country shares a long border with Sweden. Norway is bordered by Finland and Russia to the north-east, Norway has an extensive coastline, facing the North Atlantic Ocean and the Barents Sea. King Harald V of the Dano-German House of Glücksburg is the current King of Norway, erna Solberg became Prime Minister in 2013, replacing Jens Stoltenberg. A constitutional monarchy, Norway divides state power between the Parliament, the Cabinet and the Supreme Court, as determined by the 1814 Constitution, the kingdom is established as a merger of several petty kingdoms. By the traditional count from the year 872, the kingdom has existed continuously for 1,144 years, Norway has both administrative and political subdivisions on two levels, counties and municipalities. The Sámi people have an amount of self-determination and influence over traditional territories through the Sámi Parliament. Norway maintains close ties with the European Union and the United States, the country maintains a combination of market economy and a Nordic welfare model with universal health care and a comprehensive social security system. Norway has extensive reserves of petroleum, natural gas, minerals, lumber, seafood, the petroleum industry accounts for around a quarter of the countrys gross domestic product. On a per-capita basis, Norway is the worlds largest producer of oil, the country has the fourth-highest per capita income in the world on the World Bank and IMF lists. On the CIAs GDP per capita list which includes territories and some regions, from 2001 to 2006, and then again from 2009 to 2017, Norway had the highest Human Development Index ranking in the world. It also has the highest inequality-adjusted ranking, Norway ranks first on the World Happiness Report, the OECD Better Life Index, the Index of Public Integrity and the Democracy Index. Norway has two names, Noreg in Nynorsk and Norge in Bokmål. The name Norway comes from the Old English word Norðrveg mentioned in 880, meaning way or way leading to the north. In contrasting with suðrvegar southern way for Germany, and austrvegr eastern way for the Baltic, the Anglo-Saxon of Britain also referred to the kingdom of Norway in 880 as Norðmanna land. This was the area of Harald Fairhair, the first king of Norway, and because of him
30.
South Africa
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South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa, is the southernmost country in Africa. South Africa is the 25th-largest country in the world by land area and it is the southernmost country on the mainland of the Old World or the Eastern Hemisphere. About 80 percent of South Africans are of Sub-Saharan African ancestry, divided among a variety of ethnic groups speaking different Bantu languages, the remaining population consists of Africas largest communities of European, Asian, and multiracial ancestry. South Africa is a multiethnic society encompassing a variety of cultures, languages. Its pluralistic makeup is reflected in the recognition of 11 official languages. The country is one of the few in Africa never to have had a coup détat, however, the vast majority of black South Africans were not enfranchised until 1994. During the 20th century, the black majority sought to recover its rights from the dominant white minority, with this struggle playing a role in the countrys recent history. The National Party imposed apartheid in 1948, institutionalising previous racial segregation, since 1994, all ethnic and linguistic groups have held political representation in the countrys democracy, which comprises a parliamentary republic and nine provinces. South Africa is often referred to as the Rainbow Nation to describe the multicultural diversity. The World Bank classifies South Africa as an economy. Its economy is the second-largest in Africa, and the 34th-largest in the world, in terms of purchasing power parity, South Africa has the seventh-highest per capita income in Africa. However, poverty and inequality remain widespread, with about a quarter of the population unemployed, nevertheless, South Africa has been identified as a middle power in international affairs, and maintains significant regional influence. The name South Africa is derived from the geographic location at the southern tip of Africa. Upon formation the country was named the Union of South Africa in English, since 1961 the long form name in English has been the Republic of South Africa. In Dutch the country was named Republiek van Zuid-Afrika, replaced in 1983 by the Afrikaans Republiek van Suid-Afrika, since 1994 the Republic has had an official name in each of its 11 official languages. Mzansi, derived from the Xhosa noun umzantsi meaning south, is a name for South Africa. South Africa contains some of the oldest archaeological and human fossil sites in the world, extensive fossil remains have been recovered from a series of caves in Gauteng Province. The area is a UNESCO World Heritage site and has termed the Cradle of Humankind
31.
Soviet Union
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The Soviet Union, officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a socialist state in Eurasia that existed from 1922 to 1991. It was nominally a union of national republics, but its government. The Soviet Union had its roots in the October Revolution of 1917 and this established the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic and started the Russian Civil War between the revolutionary Reds and the counter-revolutionary Whites. In 1922, the communists were victorious, forming the Soviet Union with the unification of the Russian, Transcaucasian, Ukrainian, following Lenins death in 1924, a collective leadership and a brief power struggle, Joseph Stalin came to power in the mid-1920s. Stalin suppressed all opposition to his rule, committed the state ideology to Marxism–Leninism. As a result, the country underwent a period of rapid industrialization and collectivization which laid the foundation for its victory in World War II and postwar dominance of Eastern Europe. Shortly before World War II, Stalin signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact agreeing to non-aggression with Nazi Germany, in June 1941, the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, opening the largest and bloodiest theater of war in history. Soviet war casualties accounted for the highest proportion of the conflict in the effort of acquiring the upper hand over Axis forces at battles such as Stalingrad. Soviet forces eventually captured Berlin in 1945, the territory overtaken by the Red Army became satellite states of the Eastern Bloc. The Cold War emerged by 1947 as the Soviet bloc confronted the Western states that united in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1949. Following Stalins death in 1953, a period of political and economic liberalization, known as de-Stalinization and Khrushchevs Thaw, the country developed rapidly, as millions of peasants were moved into industrialized cities. The USSR took a lead in the Space Race with Sputnik 1, the first ever satellite, and Vostok 1. In the 1970s, there was a brief détente of relations with the United States, the war drained economic resources and was matched by an escalation of American military aid to Mujahideen fighters. In the mid-1980s, the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, sought to reform and liberalize the economy through his policies of glasnost. The goal was to preserve the Communist Party while reversing the economic stagnation, the Cold War ended during his tenure, and in 1989 Soviet satellite countries in Eastern Europe overthrew their respective communist regimes. This led to the rise of strong nationalist and separatist movements inside the USSR as well, in August 1991, a coup détat was attempted by Communist Party hardliners. It failed, with Russian President Boris Yeltsin playing a role in facing down the coup. On 25 December 1991, Gorbachev resigned and the twelve constituent republics emerged from the dissolution of the Soviet Union as independent post-Soviet states
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United Kingdom
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The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom or Britain, is a sovereign country in western Europe. Lying off the north-western coast of the European mainland, the United Kingdom includes the island of Great Britain, Northern Ireland is the only part of the United Kingdom that shares a land border with another sovereign state—the Republic of Ireland. The Irish Sea lies between Great Britain and Ireland, with an area of 242,500 square kilometres, the United Kingdom is the 78th-largest sovereign state in the world and the 11th-largest in Europe. It is also the 21st-most populous country, with an estimated 65.1 million inhabitants, together, this makes it the fourth-most densely populated country in the European Union. The United Kingdom is a monarchy with a parliamentary system of governance. The monarch is Queen Elizabeth II, who has reigned since 6 February 1952, other major urban areas in the United Kingdom include the regions of Birmingham, Leeds, Glasgow, Liverpool and Manchester. The United Kingdom consists of four countries—England, Scotland, Wales, the last three have devolved administrations, each with varying powers, based in their capitals, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast, respectively. The relationships among the countries of the UK have changed over time, Wales was annexed by the Kingdom of England under the Laws in Wales Acts 1535 and 1542. A treaty between England and Scotland resulted in 1707 in a unified Kingdom of Great Britain, which merged in 1801 with the Kingdom of Ireland to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Five-sixths of Ireland seceded from the UK in 1922, leaving the present formulation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, there are fourteen British Overseas Territories. These are the remnants of the British Empire which, at its height in the 1920s, British influence can be observed in the language, culture and legal systems of many of its former colonies. The United Kingdom is a country and has the worlds fifth-largest economy by nominal GDP. The UK is considered to have an economy and is categorised as very high in the Human Development Index. It was the worlds first industrialised country and the worlds foremost power during the 19th, the UK remains a great power with considerable economic, cultural, military, scientific and political influence internationally. It is a nuclear weapons state and its military expenditure ranks fourth or fifth in the world. The UK has been a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council since its first session in 1946 and it has been a leading member state of the EU and its predecessor, the European Economic Community, since 1973. However, on 23 June 2016, a referendum on the UKs membership of the EU resulted in a decision to leave. The Acts of Union 1800 united the Kingdom of Great Britain, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have devolved self-government
33.
Research stations in Antarctica
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A number of governments maintain permanent research stations in Antarctica and these bases are widely distributed. Unlike the bases set up in the Arctic, the stations of the Antarctic are constructed either on rock or on ice that is fixed in place. Many of the stations are staffed around the year, a total of 30 countries, all signatories to the Antarctic Treaty, operate seasonal and year-round research stations on the continent. The population of people performing and supporting research on the continent. In addition to permanent stations, approximately 30 field camps are established each summer to support specific projects. During the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration in the early 20th century, in 1903, Dr William S. Bruces Scottish National Antarctic Expedition set off to Antarctica, with one of its aims to establish a meteorological station in the area. After the expedition failed to land, Bruce decided to head back to the South Orkneys. The islands were well-situated as a site for a meteorological station, Bruce instituted a comprehensive programme of work, involving meteorological readings, trawling for marine samples, botanical excursions, and the collection of biological and geological specimens. The major task completed during this time was the construction of a stone building and this was to act as living accommodation for the parties that would remain on Laurie Island to operate the proposed meteorological laboratory. The building was constructed from local materials using the dry method, with a roof improvised from wood. The completed house was 20 feet by 20 feet square, with two windows, fitted as quarters for six people, rudmose Brown wrote, Considering that we had no mortar and no masons tools it is a wonderfully fine house and very lasting. I should think it will be standing a century hence, Bruce later offered to Argentina the transfer of the station and instruments on the condition that the government committed itself to the continuation of the scientific mission. Bruce informed the British officer William Haggard of his intentions in December 1903, in 1906, Argentina communicated to the international community the establishment of a permanent base on South Orkney Islands. Little happened for the forty years until the Second World War. The chief reason was to establish solid British claims to various uninhabited islands and parts of Antarctica, prior to the start of the war, German aircraft had dropped markers with swastikas across Queen Maud Land in an attempt to create a territorial claim, see New Swabia. Led by Lieutenant James Marr, the 14-strong team left the Falkland Islands in two ships, HMS William Scoresby and Fitzroy, on Saturday January 29,1944, Marr had accompanied the British explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton on his final Antarctic expedition in 1921 -1922. A further base was founded at Hope Bay on February 13,1945 and these bases were the first ever to be constructed on the mainland Antarctica. The Operation provoked a massive expansion in international activity after the war, chile organized its First Chilean Antarctic Expedition in 1947–48
34.
International Court of Justice
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The International Court of Justice is the primary judicial branch of the United Nations. Established in 1945 by the UN Charter, the Court began work in 1946 as the successor to the Permanent Court of International Justice, the Statute of the International Court of Justice, similar to that of its predecessor, is the main constitutional document constituting and regulating the Court. The Courts workload covers a range of judicial activity. Chapter XIV of the United Nations Charter authorizes the UN Security Council to enforce Court rulings, however, such enforcement is subject to the veto power of the five permanent members of the Council, which the United States used in the Nicaragua case. The election process is set out in Articles 4–19 of the ICJ statute, elections are staggered, with five judges elected every three years to ensure continuity within the court. Should a judge die in office, the practice has generally been to elect a judge in an election to complete the term. No two judges may be nationals of the same country, according to Article 9, the membership of the Court is supposed to represent the main forms of civilization and of the principal legal systems of the world. Essentially, that has meant common law, civil law and socialist law, the exception was China, which did not have a judge on the Court from 1967 to 1985 because it did not put forward a candidate. Judicial independence is dealt with specifically in Articles 16–18, judges of the ICJ are not able to hold any other post or act as counsel. A judge can be dismissed only by a vote of the other members of the Court. Despite these provisions, the independence of ICJ judges has been questioned, judges may deliver joint judgments or give their own separate opinions. Judges may also deliver separate dissenting opinions, Article 31 of the statute sets out a procedure whereby ad hoc judges sit on contentious cases before the Court. The system allows any party to a case if it otherwise does not have one of that partys nationals sitting on the Court to select one additional person to sit as a judge on that case only. It is thus possible that as many as seventeen judges may sit on one case, the system may seem strange when compared with domestic court processes, but its purpose is to encourage states to submit cases. Although this system does not sit well with the nature of the body. Ad hoc judges usually vote in favor of the state that appointed them, generally, the Court sits as full bench, but in the last fifteen years, it has on occasion sat as a chamber. Articles 26–29 of the statute allow the Court to form smaller chambers, usually 3 or 5 judges, Two types of chambers are contemplated by Article 26, firstly, chambers for special categories of cases, and second, the formation of ad hoc chambers to hear particular disputes. In 1993, a chamber was established, under Article 26 of the ICJ statute
35.
Bellingshausen Station
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Bellingshausen Station is a Russian Antarctic station at Collins Harbour, on King George Island of the South Shetland Islands. It was one of the first research stations founded by the Soviet Antarctic Expedition in 1968 and it is also the location of Trinity Church, the only permanently staffed Eastern Orthodox church in Antarctica. The station is named for the 19th-century Russian explorer of the Antarctic Fabian von Bellingshausen, the station is connected by unimproved roads to the nearby stations, Chilean Base Presidente Eduardo Frei Montalva, Chinese Great Wall Station, and Uruguayan Artigas Base. It is antipodal to a location in Russian Siberia, the Antarctic Peninsula and its nearby islands are considered to have the mildest living conditions in Antarctica. Bellingshausen Stations climate is influenced by the surrounding ocean. Under the Köppen system, it is classified as a tundra climate, variation in temperatures are small with the coldest month, July averaging −6.5 °C and 1.5 °C in the warmest month. With only 591.3 hours of sunshine per year, the weather is unsettled and cloudy throughout the year with precipitation in the form of snow, rain. On average,729 mm of precipitation falls per year, anna Felicity Friedman, making him the first person to tattoo on all 7 continents. United States Antarctic Inspection Team 2006, Report of Inspections under Article VII of the Antarctic Treaty, march 21,2007 Official website Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute AARI Bellingshausen Station COMNAP Antarctic Facilities COMNAP Antarctic Facilities Map Bellingshausen Station Photos
36.
King George Island (South Shetland Islands)
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King George Island is the largest of the South Shetland Islands, lying 120 km off the coast of Antarctica in the Southern Ocean. The island was named after King George III, King George island has three major bays, Maxwell Bay, Admiralty Bay, and King George Bay. Admiralty Bay contains three fjords, and is protected as a Antarctic Specially Managed Area under the Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty, the Island was claimed by Chile in 1940, as part of the Chilean Antarctic Territory. It was claimed also by Argentina in 1943, now as part of Argentine Antarctica, the US and Russia do not recognize these claims, and have formally reserved their right to claim Antarctic territories. The island was discovered and named by the British explorer William Smith in 1819 and it is approximately 95 km long and 25 km wide with a land area of 1,150 square kilometres. Over 90% of the surface is permanently glaciated. There are several other seabirds, including skuas and southern giant petrel, human habitation of King George Island is limited to research stations belonging to Argentina, Brazil, Chile, China, Ecuador, South Korea, Peru, Poland, Russia, Uruguay, and The United States. Most of these stations are staffed, carrying out research into areas as diverse as biology, ecology, geology. The Chinese Great Wall base features a multipurpose room which serves as a full-size basketball court. In 2004, a Russian Orthodox church, Trinity Church, was opened on the island near Russias Bellingshausen Station, the church, one of the southernmost in the world and one of the few permanent structures in Antarctica, is permanently manned by a priest. In October 2013, American heavy metal band Metallica announced that it would perform a concert sponsored by The Coca-Cola Company at Carlini Station heliport, the concert took place on December 8,2013. A small amount of specialised tourist activity also takes place during summer, including an annual marathon, the Fildes Peninsula 7 kilometres long, forms the SW extremity of the island. It was named from association with nearby Fildes Strait by the UK-APC in 1960, Arctowski lighthouse at Arctowski Station is the most southerly lighthouse of the world. NOAA runs a research base for penguin studies on Admiralty Bay. This small station, dubbed Copacabana, operates in the Antarctic summer only, jones, Captain William Smith and the Discovery of New South Shetland, Geographical Journal, Vol.141, No. 3, pp. Biodiversity at Ardley Island Small place near King George Island, report From Antarctica, Countries Maneuver for Potential Future Land Grab
37.
Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Seals
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The Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Seals is part of the Antarctic Treaty System. It was signed at the conclusion of a conference in London on February 11,1972. It was opened for ratification on June 1,1972 and entered force on March 11,1978. New Zealand has signed, but not ratified the convention, CIA World Factbook, as of 2003 edition Full text of document
38.
Marine pollution
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Eighty percent of marine pollution comes from land. Air pollution is also a factor by carrying off pesticides or dirt into the ocean. Land and air pollution have proven to be harmful to marine life, the pollution often comes from non point sources such as agricultural runoff, wind-blown debris and dust. Nutrient pollution, a form of pollution, refers to contamination by excessive inputs of nutrients. It is a cause of eutrophication of surface waters, in which excess nutrients, usually nitrogen or phosphorus. Many potentially toxic chemicals adhere to tiny particles which are taken up by plankton and benthos animals. In this way, the toxins are concentrated upward within ocean food chains, many particles combine chemically in a manner highly depletive of oxygen, causing estuaries to become anoxic. When pesticides are incorporated into the ecosystem, they quickly become absorbed into marine food webs. Once in the webs, these pesticides can cause mutations, as well as diseases. Toxic metals can also be introduced into marine food webs and these can cause a change to tissue matter, biochemistry, behaviour, reproduction, and suppress growth in marine life. Also, many animal feeds have a fish meal or fish hydrolysate content. In this way, marine toxins can be transferred to land animals, although marine pollution has a long history, significant international laws to counter it were only enacted in the twentieth century. Marine pollution was a concern during several United Nations Conferences on the Law of the Sea beginning in the 1950s, most scientists believed that the oceans were so vast that they had unlimited ability to dilute, and thus render pollution harmless. After the Mediterranean Sea controversy, for example, Jacques Cousteau became a figure in the campaign to stop marine pollution. Marine pollution made further international headlines after the 1967 crash of the oil tanker Torrey Canyon, Marine pollution was a major area of discussion during the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, held in Stockholm. That year also saw the signing of the Convention on the Prevention of Marine Pollution by Dumping of Wastes and Other Matter, the London Convention did not ban marine pollution, but it established black and gray lists for substances to be banned or regulated by national authorities. Cyanide and high-level radioactive waste, for example, were put on the black list, the London Convention applied only to waste dumped from ships, and thus did nothing to regulate waste discharged as liquids from pipelines. There are many different ways to categorize, and examine the inputs of pollution into our marine ecosystems, one common path of entry by contaminants to the sea are rivers
39.
Environmental impact assessment
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Environmental assessment is the assessment of the environmental consequences of a plan, policy, program, or concrete projects prior to the decision to move forward with the proposed action. Environmental assessments may be governed by rules of administrative procedure regarding public participation and documentation of decision making, the purpose of the assessment is to ensure that decision makers consider the environmental impacts when deciding whether or not to proceed with a project. Environmental impact assessments commenced in the 1960s, as part of increasing environmental awareness, EIAs involved a technical evaluation intended to contribute to more objective decision making. In the United States, environmental impact assessments obtained formal status in 1969, EIAs have been used increasingly around the world. The number of Environmental Assessments filed every year has vastly overtaken the number of more rigorous Environmental Impact Statements, an Environmental Assessment is a mini-EIS designed to provide sufficient information to allow the agency to decide whether the preparation of a full-blown Environmental Impact Statement is necessary. EIA is an activity that is done to find out the impact that would be done before development will occur and these EIAs consider activities related to extraction of raw materials, ancillary materials, equipment, production, use, disposal and ancillary equipment. Genetically modified plants - Specific methods available to perform EIAs of genetically modified organisms include GMP-RAM, fuzzy logic - EIA methods need measurement data to estimate values of impact indicators. However, many of the environment impacts cannot be quantified, e. g. landscape quality, lifestyle quality, instead information from similar EIAs, expert judgment and community sentiment are employed. Approximate reasoning methods known as fuzzy logic can be used, a fuzzy arithmetic approach has also been proposed and implemented using a software tool. At the end of the project, an audit evaluates the accuracy of the EIA by comparing actual to predicted impacts, the objective is to make future EIAs more valid and effective. The Hydropower Sustainability Assessment Protocol is a specific method for checking the quality of Environmental and Social assessments. The history of EIA in Australia could be linked to the enactment of the U. S. National Environment Policy Act in 1970, which made the preparation of environmental impact statements a requirement. In Australia, one might say that the EIA procedures were introduced at a State Level prior to that of the Commonwealth, with a majority of the states having divergent views to the Commonwealth. One of the states was New South Wales, whose State Pollution Control Commission issued EIA guidelines in 1974. At a Commonwealth level, this was followed by passing of the Environment Protection Act in 1974, the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 superseded the Environment Protection Act 1974 and is the current central piece for EIA in Australia on a Commonwealth level. Overlap between federal and state requirements is addressed via bilateral agreements or one off accreditation of state processes, in addition to this, the EPBC Act aims at providing a streamlined national assessment and approval process for activities. The Department of Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts assess the process and this is primarily due to the division of powers between the States and the Federal government and due to which the Australian Government environment minister cannot overturn a state decision. There are strict civil and criminal penalties for the breach of EPBC Act, EIA provisions within Ministerial Authorities in the ACT are found in the Chapters 7 and 8 of the Planning and Development Act 2007
40.
Waste management
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Waste management or Waste disposal is all the activities and actions required to manage waste from its inception to its final disposal. This includes amongst other things, collection, transport, treatment and disposal of waste together with monitoring and it also encompasses the legal and regulatory framework that relates to waste management encompassing guidance on recycling etc. Waste management is intended to reduce effects of waste on health. Waste management practices are not uniform among countries, regions, there are a number of concepts about waste management which vary in their usage between countries or regions. The waste hierarchy remains the cornerstone of most waste minimisation strategies, the aim of the waste hierarchy is to extract the maximum practical benefits from products and to generate the minimum amount of waste, see, resource recovery. The waste hierarchy is represented as a pyramid because the premise is for policy to take action first. The next step or preferred action is to reduce the generation of waste i. e. by re-use, the next is recycling which would include composting. Following this step is material recovery and waste-to-energy, energy can be recovered from processes i. e. landfill and combustion, at this level of the hierarchy. The final action is disposal, in landfills or through incineration without energy recovery and this last step is the final resort for waste which has not been prevented, diverted or recovered. The waste hierarchy represents the progression of a product or material through the stages of the pyramid of waste management. The hierarchy represents the latter parts of the life-cycle for each product, the life-cycle begins with design, then proceeds through manufacture, distribution, use and then follows through the waste hierarchys stages of reduce, reuse and recycle. Each of the stages of the life-cycle offers opportunities for policy intervention, to rethink the need for the product, to redesign to minimize waste potential. The key behind the life-cycle of a product is to optimize the use of the limited resources by avoiding the unnecessary generation of waste. Resource efficiency reflects the understanding that current, global, economic growth, globally, we are extracting more resources to produce goods than the planet can replenish. Resource efficiency is the reduction of the impact from the production and consumption of these goods, from final raw material extraction to last use. This process of resource efficiency can address sustainability, the Polluter pays principle is a principle where the polluting party pays for the impact caused to the environment. With respect to management, this generally refers to the requirement for a waste generator to pay for appropriate disposal of the unrecoverable material. Throughout most of history, the amount of waste generated by humans was insignificant due to low population density, common waste produced during pre-modern times was mainly ashes and human biodegradable waste, and these were released back into the ground locally, with minimum environmental impact
41.
Territorial claims in Antarctica
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Seven states maintain a territorial claim on eight territories in Antarctica. These countries have tended to site their scientific observation and study facilities in Antarctica within the claimed territory, according to Argentina and Chile, the Spanish Empire had claims on Antarctica. The capitulación granted to the conquistador Pedro Sánchez de la Hoz explicitly included the south of the Straits of Magellan. This grant established, according to Argentina and Chile, that an animus occupandi existed on the part of Spain in Antarctica. Spains sovereignty claim over parts of Antarctica was, according to Chile and Argentina, internationally recognized with the Inter caetera bull of 1493, Argentina and Chile treat these treaties as legal international treaties mediated by the Catholic Church that was at that time a recognized arbiter in such matters. The United Kingdom reasserted sovereignty over the Falkland Islands in the far South Atlantic in 1833, all these territories were administered as Falkland Islands Dependencies from Stanley by the Governor of the Falkland Islands. The motivation for this lay in the need to regulate. Commercial operators would hunt whales in areas outside the boundaries of the Falkland Islands and its dependencies. In 1917, the wording of the claim was modified, so as to include all the territory in the sector stretching to the South Pole. It was the ambition of Leopold Amery, then Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies, in a memorandum to the governor-generals for Australia and New Zealand, he wrote that with the exception of Chile and Argentina and some barren islands belonging to France. It is desirable that the whole of the Antarctic should ultimately be included in the British Empire, the Order in Council then went on to appoint the Governor-General and Commander-in Chief of New Zealand as the Governor of the territory. In 1930, the United Kingdom claimed Enderby Land, in 1933, a British imperial order transferred territory south of 60° S and between meridians 160° E and 45° E to Australia as the Australian Antarctic Territory. Following the passing of the Statute of Westminster in 1931, the government of the United Kingdom relinquished all control over the government of New Zealand and this however had no bearing on the obligations of the Governors-General of both countries in their capacity as Governors of the Antarctic territories. Meanwhile, alarmed by these unilateral declarations, the French government laid claim to a strip of the continent in 1924. The basis for their claim to Adélie Land lay on the discovery of the coastline in 1840 by the French explorer Jules Dumont dUrville, the British eventually decided to recognize this claim and the border between Adélie Land and Australian Antarctic Territory was fixed definitively in 1938. The whale-ship owner Lars Christensen financed several expeditions to the Antarctic with the view to land for Norway. The first expedition, led by Nils Larsen and Ola Olstad, landed on Peter I Island in 1929, on 6 March 1931, a Norwegian royal proclamation declared the island under Norwegian sovereignty and on 23 March 1933 the island was declared a dependency. The 1929 expedition led by Hjalmar Riiser-Larsen and Finn Lützow-Holm named the land mass near the island as Queen Maud Land
Antarctic Treaty at Wikisource
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Argentina (claim)*
Australia (claim)
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Belarus
Belgium
Brazil
Bulgaria
Canada
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China
Colombia
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Czech Republic
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Germany (claim) (rests since 1945)
Greece
Guatemala
Hungary
Iceland
India
Italy
Japan
Kazakhstan
Malaysia
Monaco
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New Zealand (claim)
North Korea
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Pakistan
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Soviet Union.[16]
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