A cedilla known as cedilha or cédille, is a hook or tail added under certain letters as a diacritical mark to modify their pronunciation. In Catalan and Portuguese, it is used only under the c, the entire letter is called c trencada, c cédille, snaked c, c cedilhado, it is used to mark vowel nasalization in many languages of sub-Saharan Africa, including Vute from Cameroon. The tail originated in Spain as the bottom half of a miniature cursive z; the word "cedilla" is the diminutive of the Old Spanish name for ceda. Modern Spanish and Galician no longer use this diacritic, although it is used in Portuguese, Catalan and French, which gives English the alternative spellings of cedille, from French "cédille", the Portuguese form cedilha. An obsolete spelling of cedilla is cerilla; the earliest use in English cited by the Oxford English Dictionary is a 1599 Spanish-English dictionary and grammar. Chambers’ Cyclopædia is cited for the printer-trade variant ceceril in use in 1738; the main use in English is not universal and applies to loan words from French and Portuguese such as "façade", "limaçon" and "cachaça".

With the advent of modernism, the calligraphic nature of the cedilla was thought somewhat jarring on sans-serif typefaces, so some designers instead substituted a comma design, which could be made bolder and more compatible with the style of the text. This can add to confusion as the use of commas; the most frequent character with cedilla is "ç". It was first used for the sound of the voiceless alveolar affricate /ts/ in old Spanish and stems from the Visigothic form of the letter "z", whose upper loop was lengthened and reinterpreted as a "c", whereas its lower loop became the diminished appendage, the cedilla, it represents the "soft" sound /s/, the voiceless alveolar sibilant, where a "c" would represent the "hard" sound /k/ in English and in certain Romance languages such as Catalan, French, Ligurian and Portuguese. In Occitan and Catalan ç can be found at the beginning of a word or at the end, it represents the voiceless postalveolar affricate /tʃ/ in Albanian, Crimean Tatar, Kurdish, Tatar and Turkmen.

It is sometimes used this way in Manx, to distinguish it from the velar fricative. In the International Phonetic Alphabet, ⟨ç⟩ represents the voiceless palatal fricative; the character "ş" represents the voiceless postalveolar fricative /ʃ/ in several languages, including many belonging to the Turkic languages, included as a separate letter in their alphabets: Turkish For example, it is used in Turkish words and names like Eskişehir, Şımarık, Hasan Şaş, Rüştü Reçber etc. Azerbaijani Crimean Tatar Gagauz Tatar Turkmen Romanian Kurdish In HTML character entity references &#350. Comparatively, some consider the diacritics on the palatalized Latvian consonants "ģ", "ķ", "ļ", "ņ", "ŗ" to be cedillas. Although their Adobe glyph names are commas, their names in the Unicode Standard are "g", "k", "l", "n", "r" with a cedilla; the letters were introduced to the Unicode standard before 1992, their names cannot be altered. The uppercase equivalent "Ģ" sometimes has a regular cedilla. Four letters in Marshallese have cedillas: <ļ m̧ ņ o̧>.

In standard printed text they are always cedillas, their omission or the substitution of comma below and dot below diacritics are nonstandard. As of 2011, many font rendering engines do not display any of these properly, for two reasons: "ļ" and "ņ" do not display properly at all, because of the use of the cedilla in Latvian. Unicode has precombined glyphs for these letters, but most quality fonts display them with comma below diacritics to accommodate the expectations of Latvian orthography; this is considered nonstandard in Marshallese. The use of a zero-width non-joiner between the letter and the diacritic can alleviate this problem: "l‌̧" and "n‌̧" may display properly, but may not. "m̧" and "o̧" do not exist in Unicode as precombined glyphs, must be encoded as the plain Latin letters "m" and "o" with the combining cedilla diacritic. Most Unicode fonts issued with Windows do not display combining diacritics properly, showing them too far to the right of the letter, as with Tahoma and Times New Roman.

This affects "m̧", may or may not affect "o̧". But some common Unicode fonts like Arial Unicode MS, Cambria and Lucida Sans Unicode do not have this problem; when "m̧" is properly displayed, the cedilla is either underneath the center of the letter, or is underneath the right-most leg of the letter, but is always directly underneath the letter wherever it is positioned. Because of these font display issues, it is not uncommon to find nonstandard ad hoc substitutes for these letters; the online version of the Marshallese-English Dictionary displays the letters with dot below diacritics, all of which do exist as precombined glyphs in Unicode: "ḷ", "ṃ", "ṇ" and "ọ". The first three exist in the International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration, "ọ

The 2009 World Men's Handball Championship took place in Croatia from 16 January to 1 February, in the cities of Split, Osijek, Varaždin, Poreč, Zagreb and Pula. Croatia was selected from a group of four potential hosts which included the Czech Republic and Romania; the opening game and ceremony were held in Split, the final game was played in Zagreb. France won the tournament after defeating Croatia in the final. Poland took the third place after winning over Denmark. Tickets for the tournament went on sale from 15 to 20 November. For the finals, ticket prices started at 700 kuna. To promote the tournament, the Croatian National Tourist Board launched a series of presentations in the capitals of 13 participating countries. During the championship internal criticism arose against Hassan Moustafa, President of the IHF; the secretary general of the IHF, Peter Mühlematter, criticized Moustafa and asked for his demission. Moustafa asked to exclude Mühlematter after his criticism. Seven Croatian cities were selected as hosts for the 2009 Championship: Split, Osijek, Varaždin, Poreč, Zagreb and Pula.

The sites included the new Spaladium Arena in Arena Zagreb, where the final took place. Qualification occurred through the previous years' continental championships or qualifying tournaments: Host World Champion 2008 African Men's Handball Championship 2008 American Handball Championship 2008 Asian Handball Championship 2008 European Men's Handball Championship 2008 European qualifiers play-off 2008 Oceania qualifying tournament The draw for the groups of the preliminary round was held on 21 June 2008, in Zagreb; the draw took place at Zagreb's central Ban Jelačić Square and was hosted by Filip Brkić and Kristina Krepela. In the following tables: Pld = total games played W = total games won D = total games drawn L = total games lost GF = total goals scored GA = total goals conceded GD = goal difference Pts = total points accumulatedThe teams placed first and third qualified to the main round. Venue: Gradski vrt Hall, Osijek All times are Central European Time Venue: Spaladium Arena, Split All times are Central European Time Venue: Varaždin Arena, Varaždin All times are Central European Time Venue: Žatika Sport Centre, Poreč All times are Central European Time Venue: Arena Zagreb, Zagreb All times are Central European Time Venue: Krešimir Ćosić Hall, Zadar All times are Central European Time Bracket Venue: Mate Parlov Sport Centre, Pula All times are Central European Time Venue: Žatika Sport Centre, Poreč All times are Central European Time Source: ihf.info On 12 October 2008, the match officials for the tournament were confirmed.

But due to injury, the Swedish referee team Rickard Canbro and Mikael Claesson had to withdraw from the championship, was replaced by Danish duo Per Olesen and Lars Ejby Pedersen. Croatia: RTL Bosnia and Herzegovina: BHRT Brazil: ESPN Brasil Denmark: TV 2, TV 2 Sport Egypt: Nile Sport France: Sport+ Germany: RTL, DSF Hungary: Sport TV Kuwait: Kuwait Sport Channel 3 and Kuwait Sport + North Macedonia: Sitel Norway: TV 2, TV 2 Zebra and TV 2 Sport Poland: TVP Romania: TVR, Sport 1 Russia: NTV Plus Qatar: Al Jazeera Sports Serbia: RTS Slovenia: RTV Slovenija Spain: TVE Sweden: TV 4 Tunisia: Tunis 7High Definition Denmark: TV2 Sport HD Poland: TVP Russia: NTV Plus HD Qatar: Al Jazeera Sports HD Sweden: TV4 HD

Black Data Processing Associates is a non-profit organization that serves the professional well-being of its stakeholders. BDPA provides resources that support the professional growth and technical development of minority individuals in the information technology industry. Through education and leadership, BDPA promotes innovation, business skills, professional development; the organization has over 50 chapters throughout the United States. BDPA National headquarters is located in Maryland. BDPA was founded in 1975 by Earl A. Pace, Jr. and David Wimberly after the two met in Philadelphia to discuss their concerns about ethnic minorities in the data processing field. The founders cited a lack of minorities in middle and upper management, low recruitment and poor preparation of minorities for these positions, an overall lack of career mobility; the founders built an organization of 35 members, hosted presentations to improve data processing skills and launched a job opportunities announcement service.

This nucleus has grown to thousands of members. The organization is a catalyst for professional growth and technical development for those in the IT industry; the National High School Computer Competition was founded in 1986. The competition started as a two-team event between Washington, DC and Atlanta, GA, now has over 20 teams from chapters throughout the nation. BDPA BDPA Education and Technology Foundations

Rolf Disch is a German architect, solar energy pioneer and environmental activist. Born in Freiburg im Breisgau, Disch has dedicated particular focus to regional renewable and sustainable energy; as head of his own architecture firm, Rolf Disch Solar Architecture, Disch is committed to advance Germany's usage of solar energy in respect to residential and commercial building and design. In 1994, Rolf Disch built the Heliotrope in Freiburg, the world’s first home to create more energy than it uses, as it physically rotates with the sun to maximize its solar intake. Disch developed the concept PlusEnergy making it a permanent goal for his buildings to produce more energy than they consume in order to sell the surplus solar energy back into the grid for profit. Rolf Disch’s biggest venture was completed in 2004 with the 59 PlusEnergy home Solar Settlement and the 60,000 sq ft. PlusEnergy Sun Ship. In June 2009, Disch launched the 100% GmbH organization, with the aim to make Freiburg and its surrounding district the first 100% sustainable renewable energy region in the world.

Rolf Disch was born in Freiburg im Breisgau, Baden-Württemberg, Germany in 1944. Disch first studied cabinetmaking in 1958 until switching to masonry in 1961. In 1962 he enrolled at the Structural Engineering School in Freiburg as a structural engineer. Disch knew he was passionate about building, although he found his true heart lied in architecture and after only one year, in 1963, he transferred as an architect to the University of Applied Sciences in Konstanz, Germany. After his graduation in 1967 Disch worked as an architect for two years and established his own firm in 1969, Rolf Disch Solar Architecture. Rolf Disch became an environmental activist during the protest against the construction of a nuclear power plant in Wyhl, Germany; as an educated environmentalist Disch saw this form of energy as destructive, seeking renewable energy as an alternative to achieve sustainable development. The protesters in Wyhl succeeded and the nuclear power plant was never built which fueled the anti-nuclear movement.

This success in mind, Disch applied his architectural knowledge to the advancement of renewable and sustainable energy systems in building. The “Disch Design” was a concept he worked on from 1985 to 1988 building solar powered vessels of all sorts. During this period, in 1987, Disch raced a self-designed solar powered automobile in the World Solar Challenge, a race using only solar powered vehicles from Darwin, Australia to Adelaide, Australia. Disch cofounded three organizations promoting the use of renewable energy: Energie in Bürgerhand, 100% GmbH and FESA – Förderverein Energie- und Solaragentur Regio Freiburg. Disch is an active member of the associations Eurosolar, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Sonnenenergie, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Nachhaltiges Bauen e. V.. With a focus on solar power use in his designs, in 1993 Disch started an initiative to make Sport-Club Freiburg the first solar soccer team in Germany with photovoltaic panels to power their stadium. Together with Coach Volker Finke, the Dreisam stadium in Freiburg was the first soccer stadium in Germany to install solar power.

In 1995 Disch designed the Heliotrope building, a house that physically rotates with the sun to maximize sunlight and natural heat use. The Heliotrope was the first building worldwide to have a positive energy balance, meaning it generates more energy than it consumes. Different types of renewable and sustainable energy concepts in addition to solar power are used in the original Heliotrope, built in Freiburg’s Vauban quarter, it was the first of three such structures to be built in Germany. After the design of the Heliotrope Disch has been promoting the use of Energy-plus-houses, his office Rolf Disch Solar Architecture is using the brand name PlusEnergy to describe these structures which produce more energy from renewable energy sources, over the course of a year, than they import from external sources. It has designed several such buildings since, including the residential project Solar Settlement. 2008 German Sustainability Award2007-08 Japanese PEN-Magazine Creativity Award2006 Germany's most beautiful housing community2005 Wuppertal Energy and Environment Prize2003 Global Energy Award2002 European Solar Prize2001 Photovoltaic Architecture Prize Baden-Württemberg1997 Eco-manager of the Year Heliotrope, Vauban Quarter Freiburg, 1994 Heliotrope, Offenburg, 1994 Heliotrope, Hilpoltstein, 1995 Solar Settlement, Vauban Quarter Freiburg, 2002 Sun Ship, Vauban Quarter Freiburg, 2004 Rolf Disch Solar Architecture

Liam McBean is a former professional Australian rules footballer who played for the Richmond Football Club in the Australian Football League, the same club he grew up barracking for. He was drafted by the Richmond Football Club with pick 33 in the 2012 National Draft from the Calder Cannons in the TAC Cup, he attended St. Bernard's College in the Melbourne suburb of Essendon.. He attended the school alongside fellow 2012 draftee Joe Daniher. After playing for Richmond's Victorian Football League team for the entirety of the 2013 and 2014 seasons, he made his AFL debut in round seven of the 2015 AFL season against the Collingwood Football Club. While senior listed at Richmond in 2015, McBean was awarded the Jim'Frosty' Miller Medal as the VFL Leading Goal Kicker in matches played for the club's reserve side, he tied with two others for the award. At the conclusion of the 2016 season, he was delisted by Richmond. In 2017, McBean played for Glenelg in the SANFL, he stepped away from the club in 2018 to travel overseas.

He started with a bang against the Adelaide reserves. He kicked a game high 9 goals. Liam McBean's profile on the official website of the Richmond Football Club Liam McBean's playing statistics from AFL Tables

The Gilgel Gibe II Power Station is a hydroelectric power station on the Omo River in Ethiopia. It is located about 80 km east of Jimma in Wolaita/Dawro Region; the power station receives water from a tunnel entrance 7°55′27″N 37°23′16″E on the Gilgel Gibe River. It has an installed capacity of 420 MW and was inaugurated on January 14, 2010. Two weeks after inauguration, a portion of the head race tunnel collapsed causing the station to shut down. Repairs were completed on December 26, 2010; the Gilgel Gibe II consists of a power station on the Omo River, fed with water from a headrace tunnel and sluice gate on the Gilgel Gibe River. The headrace tunnel runs 26 km under the Fofa Mountain and at its end, it converts into a penstock with a 500 m drop; when the water reaches the power station, it powers four Pelton turbines that operate four 107 MW generators. Each turbine is 3.5 m in diameter. Construction on the power plant began on March 19, 2005, with Salini Costruttori as the main contractor; the power station was slated to be complete in late 2007 but was delayed because engineering problems encountered during construction.

In March 2005, the contract to excavate the tunnel was awarded to SELI and in October 2006, a tunnel boring machine hit a fault, delaying the project. On June 9, 2009, both TBMs met each other and the tunnel was ready for hydraulic testing that September; the tunnel is "considered one of the most difficult tunnel projects undertaken, due to the critical, in some reaches, exceptionally adverse, ground conditions." The power station was inaugurated on January 14, 2010. About ten days after the project was completed, about 15 m of the 26 km headrace tunnel collapsed; the collapse may have been attributed it to structural failure caused by expedited construction and a lack of proper studies. The official statement of the construction firm Salini Costruttori, released two weeks after the official inauguration was that "an unforeseen geological event provoked a'cave in' and a huge rock fall involving about 15m of the 26km headrace tunnel." The tunnel was repaired and the station operational again on December 26, 2010.

In 2004, the Government of Ethiopia secured €220 million from the Government of Italy for construction. The total cost of construction is €373 million with €50 million provided by the European Investment Bank, the remaining €103 million from the Ethiopian Government; the financing of the power plant was controversial within the Italian government. It was granted despite objections raised by the Directorate General for Development Cooperation of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Economy and Finance, they argued against the loan because the contract was awarded without competitive bidding in breach of Italian law, because its unusually large size meant that less funding was available for other development projects, no costs for environmental impact assessment of monitoring were included, the project was not commercially viable due to low electricity tariffs in Ethiopia and because it was inappropriate to burden such a poor country with more debt at a time when it had just received debt relief from Italy.

There were parliamentary questions concerning the project which were left unanswered by the Undersecretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Luigi Mantica. In March 2006 the Prosecutors’ Office in Rome instigated criminal proceedings concerning the Gilgel Gibe II hydroelectric project. Energy in Ethiopia