National Diet Library
The National Diet Library is the national library of Japan and among the largest libraries in the world. It was established in 1948 for the purpose of assisting members of the National Diet of Japan in researching matters of public policy; the library is similar in scope to the United States Library of Congress. The National Diet Library consists of two main facilities in Tōkyō and Kyōtō, several other branch libraries throughout Japan; the National Diet Library is the successor of three separate libraries: the library of the House of Peers, the library of the House of Representatives, both of which were established at the creation of Japan's Imperial Diet in 1890. The Diet's power in prewar Japan was limited, its need for information was "correspondingly small"; the original Diet libraries "never developed either the collections or the services which might have made them vital adjuncts of genuinely responsible legislative activity". Until Japan's defeat, the executive had controlled all political documents, depriving the people and the Diet of access to vital information.
The U. S. occupation forces under General Douglas MacArthur deemed reform of the Diet library system to be an important part of the democratization of Japan after its defeat in World War II. In 1946, each house of the Diet formed its own National Diet Library Standing Committee. Hani Gorō, a Marxist historian, imprisoned during the war for thought crimes and had been elected to the House of Councillors after the war, spearheaded the reform efforts. Hani envisioned the new body as "both a'citadel of popular sovereignty'", the means of realizing a "peaceful revolution"; the Occupation officers responsible for overseeing library reforms reported that, although the Occupation was a catalyst for change, local initiative pre-existed the Occupation, the successful reforms were due to dedicated Japanese like Hani. The National Diet Library opened in June 1948 in the present-day State Guest-House with an initial collection of 100,000 volumes; the first Librarian of the Diet Library was the politician Tokujirō Kanamori.
The philosopher Masakazu Nakai served as the first Vice Librarian. In 1949, the NDL became the only national library in Japan. At this time the collection gained an additional million volumes housed in the former National Library in Ueno. In 1961, the NDL opened at its present location in Nagatachō, adjacent to the National Diet. In 1986, the NDL's Annex was completed to accommodate a combined total of 12 million books and periodicals; the Kansai-kan, which opened in October 2002 in the Kansai Science City, has a collection of 6 million items. In May 2002, the NDL opened a new branch, the International Library of Children's Literature, in the former building of the Imperial Library in Ueno; this branch contains some 400,000 items of children's literature from around the world. Though the NDL's original mandate was to be a research library for the National Diet, the general public is the largest consumer of the library's services. In the fiscal year ending March 2004, for example, the library reported more than 250,000 reference inquiries.
As Japan's national library, the NDL collects copies of all publications published in Japan. Moreover, because the NDL serves as a research library for Diet members, their staffs, the general public, it maintains an extensive collection of materials published in foreign languages on a wide range of topics; the NDL has eight major specialized collections: Modern Political and Constitutional History. The Modern Political and Constitutional History Collection comprises some 300,000 items related to Japan's political and legal modernization in the 19th century, including the original document archives of important Japanese statesmen from the latter half of the 19th century and the early 20th century like Itō Hirobumi, Iwakura Tomomi, Sanjō Sanetomi, Mutsu Munemitsu, Terauchi Masatake, other influential figures from the Meiji and Taishō periods; the NDL has an extensive microform collection of some 30 million pages of documents relating to the Occupation of Japan after World War II. This collection include the documents prepared by General Headquarters and the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers, the Far Eastern Commission, the United States Strategic Bombing Survey Team.
The Laws and Preliminary Records Collection consists of some 170,000 Japanese and 200,000 foreign-language documents concerning proceedings of the National Diet and the legislatures of some 70 foreign countries, the official gazettes, judicial opinions, international treaties pertaining to some 150 foreign countries. The NDL maintains a collection of some 530,000 books and booklets and 2 million microform titles relating to the sciences; these materials include, among other things, foreign doctoral dissertations in the sciences, the proceedings and reports of academic societies, catalogues of technical standards, etc. The NDL has a collection of 440,000 maps of Japan and other countries, including the topographica
Sydney
Sydney is the state capital of New South Wales and the most populous city in Australia and Oceania. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Port Jackson and extends about 70 km on its periphery towards the Blue Mountains to the west, Hawkesbury to the north, the Royal National Park to the south and Macarthur to the south-west. Sydney is made up of 40 local government areas and 15 contiguous regions. Residents of the city are known as "Sydneysiders"; as of June 2017, Sydney's estimated metropolitan population was 5,230,330 and is home to 65% of the state's population. Indigenous Australians have inhabited the Sydney area for at least 30,000 years, thousands of engravings remain throughout the region, making it one of the richest in Australia in terms of Aboriginal archaeological sites. During his first Pacific voyage in 1770, Lieutenant James Cook and his crew became the first Europeans to chart the eastern coast of Australia, making landfall at Botany Bay and inspiring British interest in the area.
In 1788, the First Fleet of convicts, led by Arthur Phillip, founded Sydney as a British penal colony, the first European settlement in Australia. Phillip named the city Sydney in recognition of 1st Viscount Sydney. Penal transportation to New South Wales ended soon after Sydney was incorporated as a city in 1842. A gold rush occurred in the colony in 1851, over the next century, Sydney transformed from a colonial outpost into a major global cultural and economic centre. After World War II, it experienced mass migration and became one of the most multicultural cities in the world. At the time of the 2011 census, more than 250 different languages were spoken in Sydney. In the 2016 Census, about 35.8% of residents spoke a language other than English at home. Furthermore, 45.4% of the population reported having been born overseas, making Sydney the 3rd largest foreign born population of any city in the world after London and New York City, respectively. Despite being one of the most expensive cities in the world, the 2018 Mercer Quality of Living Survey ranks Sydney tenth in the world in terms of quality of living, making it one of the most livable cities.
It is classified as an Alpha+ World City by Globalization and World Cities Research Network, indicating its influence in the region and throughout the world. Ranked eleventh in the world for economic opportunity, Sydney has an advanced market economy with strengths in finance and tourism. There is a significant concentration of foreign banks and multinational corporations in Sydney and the city is promoted as Australia's financial capital and one of Asia Pacific's leading financial hubs. Established in 1850, the University of Sydney is Australia's first university and is regarded as one of the world's leading universities. Sydney is home to the oldest library in Australia, State Library of New South Wales, opened in 1826. Sydney has hosted major international sporting events such as the 2000 Summer Olympics; the city is among the top fifteen most-visited cities in the world, with millions of tourists coming each year to see the city's landmarks. Boasting over 1,000,000 ha of nature reserves and parks, its notable natural features include Sydney Harbour, the Royal National Park, Royal Botanic Garden and Hyde Park, the oldest parkland in the country.
Built attractions such as the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the World Heritage-listed Sydney Opera House are well known to international visitors. The main passenger airport serving the metropolitan area is Kingsford-Smith Airport, one of the world's oldest continually operating airports. Established in 1906, Central station, the largest and busiest railway station in the state, is the main hub of the city's rail network; the first people to inhabit the area now known as Sydney were indigenous Australians having migrated from northern Australia and before that from southeast Asia. Radiocarbon dating suggests human activity first started to occur in the Sydney area from around 30,735 years ago. However, numerous Aboriginal stone tools were found in Western Sydney's gravel sediments that were dated from 45,000 to 50,000 years BP, which would indicate that there was human settlement in Sydney earlier than thought; the first meeting between the native people and the British occurred on 29 April 1770 when Lieutenant James Cook landed at Botany Bay on the Kurnell Peninsula and encountered the Gweagal clan.
He noted in his journal that they were somewhat hostile towards the foreign visitors. Cook was not commissioned to start a settlement, he spent a short time collecting food and conducting scientific observations before continuing further north along the east coast of Australia and claiming the new land he had discovered for Britain. Prior to the arrival of the British there were 4,000 to 8,000 native people in Sydney from as many as 29 different clans; the earliest British settlers called the natives Eora people. "Eora" is the term the indigenous population used to explain their origins upon first contact with the British. Its literal meaning is "from this place". Sydney Cove from Port Jackson to Petersham was inhabited by the Cadigal clan; the principal language groups were Darug and Dharawal. The earliest Europeans to visit the area noted that the indigenous people were conducting activities such as camping and fishing, using trees for bark and food, collecting shells, cooking fish. Britain—before that, England—and Ireland had for a long time been sending their convicts across the Atlantic to the American colonies.
That trade was ended with the Declaration of Independence by the United States in 1776. Britain decided in 1786 to found a new penal outpost in the territory discovered by Cook some 16 years ear
United States Consumer Price Index
The United States Consumer Price Index is a set of consumer price indices calculated by the U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. To be precise, the BLS computes many different CPIs that are used for different purposes; each is a time series measure of the price of consumer services. The BLS publishes the CPI monthly; the BLS started the statistic in 1919. It computes thousands of consumer price indices, beginning with monthly average prices for each of 8,018 category-area combinations, they track how much of each of these category area combinations is in the "market basket" consumed by different groups of people. Different published consumer price indices differ in the weights, including the target consumer group and how the weights are updated; the weights for many indices are modified only in January of even-numbered years and are held constant for the next two years. However, weights for the chained CPI are updated each month, so they more track short term shifts in consumption patterns; the urban wage earner and clerical worker population consists of consumer units consisting of clerical workers, sales workers, craft workers, service workers, or laborers.
More than one half of the consumer unit's income has to be earned from the above occupations, at least one of the members must be employed for 37 weeks or more in an eligible occupation. The consumer price index for urban wage earners and clerical workers is a continuation of the historical index, introduced after World War I for use in wage negotiation; as new uses were developed for the CPI, the need for a broader and more representative index became apparent. The Social Security Administration uses the CPI-W as the basis for its periodic COLA; the all-urban consumer population consists of all urban households in metropolitan statistical areas and in urban places of 2,500 inhabitants or more. Non-farm consumers living in rural areas within MSAs are included, but the index excludes rural consumers and the military and institutional population; the consumer price index for all urban consumers introduced in 1978 is representative of the buying habits of 80 percent of the non-institutional population of the United States, compared with 32 percent represented in the CPI-W.
The methodology for producing the index is the same for both populations. The core CPI index excludes goods such as food and energy; this measure of core inflation systematically excludes food and energy prices because they have been volatile and non-systemic. More food and energy prices are thought to be subject to large changes that fail to persist and do not represent relative price changes. In many instances, large movements in food and energy prices arise because of supply disruptions such as drought or OPEC-led cutbacks in production; this was introduced in the early 1970s when food and oil prices were quite volatile, the Fed wanted an index, less subject to short term shocks. However, on January 25, 2012, the Fed announced they would stop using the core CPI and rely instead on the personal consumption expenditures price index; this index applies to the same target population as the CPI-U, but the weights are updated each month. This allows the weights to evolve more gracefully with people's consumption patterns.
Since at least 1982, the BLS has computed a consumer price index for the elderly to account for the fact that the consumption patterns of seniors are different from those of younger people. For the BLS, "elderly" means that a spouse is at least 62 years of age. Individuals in this group consume double the amount of medical care as all consumers in CPI-U or employees in CPI-W. In January of each year, Social Security recipients receive a cost of living adjustment "to ensure that the purchasing power of Social Security and Supplemental Security Income benefits is not eroded by inflation, it is based on the percentage increase in the consumer price index for urban wage earners and clerical workers". However, from December 1982 through December 2011, the all-items CPI-E rose at an annual average rate of 3.1 percent, compared with increases of 2.9 percent for both the CPI-U and CPI-W. This suggests that the elderly have been losing purchasing power at the rate of 0.2 percentage points per year. In 2003 Hobijn and Lagakos estimated that the social security trust fund would run out of money in 40 years using CPI-W and in 35 years using CPI-E.
As an economic indicator. As the most used measure of inflation, the CPI is an indicator of the effectiveness of government fiscal and monetary policy. For inflation targeting monetary policy by the Federal Reserve. Business executives, labor leaders, other private citizens use the CPI as a guide in making economic decisions; as a deflator of other economic series. The CPI and its components are used to adjust other economic series for price change and to translate these series into inflation-free dollars; as a means for indexation. Ove
Middle-class squeeze
The middle-class squeeze is the situation where increases in wages fail to keep up with inflation for middle-income earners leading to a relative decline in real wages, while at the same time, the phenomenon fails to have a similar effect on the top wage earners. People belonging to the middle class find that inflation in consumer goods and the housing market prevent them from maintaining a middle-class lifestyle, undermining aspirations of upward mobility. In the United States, middle-class income is declining while many goods and services are increasing in price, such as education, child care, healthcare. Former U. S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi used the term in November 2006 to provide context to the domestic agenda of the U. S. Democratic Party; the Center for American Progress issued a report of the same title in September 2014. However, variations on the theme have been used by politicians attempting to describe the financial challenges facing the middle class and to appeal to the middle class voter for much longer.
The term "squeeze" in this instance refers to rising costs of key products and services coupled with stagnant or declining real wages. The Center for American Progress defines the term "middle class" as referring to the middle three quintiles in the income distribution, or households earning between the 20th to 80th percentiles in income. CAP reported in 2014: "The reality is; as this report will show, for a married couple with two children, the costs of key elements of middle-class security—child care, higher education, health care and retirement—rose by more than $10,000 in the 12 years from 2000 to 2012, at a time when this family’s income was stagnant." Further, CAP argued that when the middle class is struggling financially, the economy struggles from a shortfall in overall demand, which reduces economic growth relative to its potential. The goal of addressing the middle class squeeze includes: "Having more workers in good jobs—who have access to good education, but today this standard of living is precarious.
The existing middle class is squeezed and many of those striving to attain the middle-class standard find it persistently out of reach." This squeeze is characterised by the fact that, since the early 1980s, when European integration got into full swing, France, Germany and the United Kingdom have experienced strong real wage growth, while real wage growth in the United States has remained sluggish for the most part. Causes include factors related to income as well as costs. For the U. S. on the income side, middle class wages have stagnated along with worsening income inequality, which has shifted more income to the top of the income distribution and away from the middle class. For example, real median household income did not regain record 1999 levels again until 2016. However, the costs of important goods and services such as healthcare, college tuition, child care, housing have increased faster than the rate of inflation. Recasting the 2012 income using the 1979 income distribution, the bottom 99% of families would have averaged about $7,100 more income.
There are many causes of middle-class income stagnation in the United States. One narrative involves the interplay of globalization, supply chain innovation and technology, which has enabled lower-wage workers in developing countries to compete with higher-wage workers in developed countries As a result, middle-class incomes have grown in developing countries like China much faster than in the U. S. measured from 1988 to 2008. Another narrative described by Paul Krugman is that a resurgence of movement conservatism since the 1970s, embodied by Reaganomics in the United States during the 1980s, resulted in a variety of policies that favored owners of capital and natural resources over laborers. Many developed countries did not have an increase in inequality similar to the United States over the 1980-2006 period though they were subjected to the same market forces via globalization; this indicates U. S. policy was a major factor in widening inequality. Either way, the shift is visible. From 1950 to 1970, improvement in real compensation per hour tracked improvement in productivity.
This was part of the implied contract between owners. However, this relationship began to diverge around 1970, when productivity began growing faster than compensation. A declining labor movement, increasing executive pay relative to the average worker, financialization of the economy, increasing diversion of corporate profits to stock buybacks and dividends are some of the contributing factors to this wage stagnation. In general, for a variety of reasons, the power of lower paid laborers relative to capitalists and landlords has declined. Recent trends indicate wages have stagnated and income inequality has worsened, reducing income available to middle-class families: U. S. median income fell from a peak of $57,000 in 1999 to $52,000 in 2013, a decline of about $5,000 or 9%. U. S. employee compensation fell relative to the size of the economy from 57% in 2000 to 53% in 201
Price index
A price index is a normalized average of price relatives for a given class of goods or services in a given region, during a given interval of time. It is a statistic designed to help to compare how these price relatives, taken as a whole, differ between time periods or geographical locations. Price indices have several potential uses. For broad indices, the index can be said to measure the economy's general price level or a cost of living. More narrow price indices can help producers with pricing. Sometimes, they can be useful in helping to guide investment; some notable price indices include: Consumer price index Producer price index Employment cost index Export price index Import price index GDP deflator No clear consensus has emerged on who created the first price index. The earliest reported research in this area came from Welshman Rice Vaughan, who examined price level change in his 1675 book A Discourse of Coin and Coinage. Vaughan wanted to separate the inflationary impact of the influx of precious metals brought by Spain from the New World from the effect due to currency debasement.
Vaughan compared labor statutes from his own time to similar statutes dating back to Edward III. These statutes provided a good record of the change in wage levels. Vaughan reasoned that the market for basic labor did not fluctuate much with time and that a basic laborer's salary would buy the same amount of goods in different time periods, so that a laborer's salary acted as a basket of goods. Vaughan's analysis indicated that price levels in England had risen six- to eight-fold over the preceding century. While Vaughan can be considered a forerunner of price index research, his analysis did not involve calculating an index. In 1707, Englishman William Fleetwood created the first true price index. An Oxford student asked Fleetwood to help show; the student stood to lose his fellowship since a 15th-century stipulation barred students with annual incomes over five pounds from receiving a fellowship. Fleetwood, who had an interest in price change, had collected a large amount of price data going back hundreds of years.
Fleetwood proposed an index consisting of averaged price relatives and used his methods to show that the value of five pounds had changed over the course of 260 years. He argued on behalf of the Oxford students and published his findings anonymously in a volume entitled Chronicon Preciosum. Given a set C of goods and services, the total market value of transactions in C in some period t would be ∑ c ∈ C where p c, t represents the prevailing price of c in period t q c, t represents the quantity of c sold in period t If, across two periods t 0 and t n, the same quantities of each good or service were sold, but under different prices q c, t n = q c = q c, t 0 ∀ c and P = ∑ ∑ would be a reasonable measure of the price of the set in one period relative to that in the other, would provide an index measuring relative prices overall, weighted by quantities sold. Of course, for any practical purpose, quantities purchased are if identical across any two periods; as such, this is not a practical index formula.
One might be tempted to modify the formula to P = ∑ ∑ This new index, does not do anything to distinguish growth or reduction in quantities sold from price changes. To see that this is so, consider what happens if all the prices double between t 0 and t n, while quantities stay the same: P
United States Forces Japan
The United States Forces Japan is an active subordinate unified command of the United States Indo-Pacific Command. It was activated at Fuchū Air Station in Tokyo, Japan on 1 July 1957 to replace the Far East Command. USFJ is commanded by the Commander, U. S. Forces, Japan commander of the Fifth Air Force. At present, USFJ is headquartered at Yokota Air Base in Tokyo. COMUSJAPAN plans and supervises the execution of missions and responsibilities assigned by the Commander, U. S. Indo-Pacific Command, they establish and implement policies to accomplish the mission of the United States Armed Forces in Japan and are responsible for developing plans for the defense of the country. COMUSJAPAN supports the Security Treaty and administers the Status of Forces Agreement between the United States and Japan, they responsible for coordinating various matters of interest with the service commanders in Japan. These include matters affecting US-Japan relationships among and between the United States Department of Defense.
S. Ambassador to Japan. Under the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between the United States and Japan, the United States is obliged to protect Japan in close cooperation with the Japan Self-Defense Forces for maritime defense, ballistic missile defense, domestic air control, communications security and disaster response operations. After the Japanese surrender at the end of World War II in Asia, the United States Armed Forces assumed administrative authority in Japan; the Japanese Imperial Army and Navy were decommissioned, the U. S. Armed Forces took control of Japanese military bases until a new government could be formed and positioned to reestablish authority. Allied forces planned to demilitarize Japan, new government adopted the Constitution of Japan with a no-armed-force clause in 1947. After the Korean War began in 1950, Douglas MacArthur, the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers in Japan and the Japanese government established the paramilitary "National Police Reserve", developed into the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force.
In 1951, the Treaty of San Francisco was signed by the allied countries and Japan, which restored its formal sovereignty. At the same time, the U. S. and Japan signed the Japan-America Security Alliance. By this treaty, USFJ is responsible for the defense of Japan; as part of this agreement, the Japanese government requested that the U. S. military bases remain in Japan, agreed to provide funds and various interests specified in the Status of Forces Agreement. At the expiration of the treaty, the United States and Japan signed the new Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between the United States and Japan; the status of the United States Forces Japan was defined in the U. S.–Japan Status of Forces Agreement. This treaty is still in effect, it forms the basis of Japan's foreign policy. During the Vietnam War, US military bases in Japan those in the Okinawa Prefecture, were used as important strategic and logistic bases. In 1970, the Koza riot occurred against the US military presence in Okinawa.
The USAF strategic bombers were deployed in the bases in Okinawa, which were still administered by the U. S. government. Before the 1972 reversion of the island to Japanese administration, it has been speculated but never confirmed that up to 1,200 nuclear weapons may have been stored at Kadena Air Base in Okinawa during the 1960s; as of 2013, there are 50,000 U. S. military personnel stationed in Japan, along with 40,000 dependents of military personnel and another 5,500 American civilians employed there by the United States Department of Defense. The United States Seventh Fleet is based in Kanagawa Prefecture; the 3rd Marine Expeditionary Force is based in Okinawa. 130 USAF fighters are stationed in Kadena Air Base. The Japanese government paid ¥217 billion in 2007 as annual host-nation support called Omoiyari Yosan; as of the 2011 budget, such payment was no longer to be referred to as omoiyari yosan or "sympathy budget". Japan compensates 75 percent of U. S. basing costs — $4.4 billion. After the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, 9,720 dependents of United States military and government civilian employees in Japan evacuated the country to the United States.
The relocation of the U. S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma to Henoko was resolved in December 2013 with the signing of a landfill agreement by the governor of Okinawa. Under the terms of the U. S.-Japan agreement, five thousand U. S. Marines were relocated to Guam and four thousand U. S. Marines to other Pacific locations such as Hawaii or Australia while around ten thousand Marines were to remain on Okinawa. No timetable for the Marines redeployment was announced, but The Washington Post reported that U. S. Marines would leave Okinawa as soon as suitable facilities on elsewhere were ready; the relocation move was expected to cost 8.6 billion US dollars, including a $3.1bn cash commitment from Japan for the move to Guam as well as for developing joint training ranges on Guam and on Tinian and Pagan in the Northern Mariana Islands. Certain parcels of land on Okinawa which were leased for use by the American military were supposed to be turned back to Japanese control via a long-term phased return process according to the agreement.
These returns have been ongoing since 1972. However, as of July 2016, the situation has not been settled. In May 2014, in a strategic shift by the United States to Asia and the Pacific, it was revealed the US was deploying two unarmed Global Hawk long-distance su
New York City
The City of New York called either New York City or New York, is the most populous city in the United States. With an estimated 2017 population of 8,622,698 distributed over a land area of about 302.6 square miles, New York is the most densely populated major city in the United States. Located at the southern tip of the state of New York, the city is the center of the New York metropolitan area, the largest metropolitan area in the world by urban landmass and one of the world's most populous megacities, with an estimated 20,320,876 people in its 2017 Metropolitan Statistical Area and 23,876,155 residents in its Combined Statistical Area. A global power city, New York City has been described as the cultural and media capital of the world, exerts a significant impact upon commerce, research, education, tourism, art and sports; the city's fast pace has inspired the term New York minute. Home to the headquarters of the United Nations, New York is an important center for international diplomacy.
Situated on one of the world's largest natural harbors, New York City consists of five boroughs, each of, a separate county of the State of New York. The five boroughs – Brooklyn, Manhattan, The Bronx, Staten Island – were consolidated into a single city in 1898; the city and its metropolitan area constitute the premier gateway for legal immigration to the United States. As many as 800 languages are spoken in New York, making it the most linguistically diverse city in the world. New York City is home to more than 3.2 million residents born outside the United States, the largest foreign-born population of any city in the world. In 2017, the New York metropolitan area produced a gross metropolitan product of US$1.73 trillion. If greater New York City were a sovereign state, it would have the 12th highest GDP in the world. New York is home to the highest number of billionaires of any city in the world. New York City traces its origins to a trading post founded by colonists from the Dutch Republic in 1624 on Lower Manhattan.
The city and its surroundings came under English control in 1664 and were renamed New York after King Charles II of England granted the lands to his brother, the Duke of York. New York served as the capital of the United States from 1785 until 1790, it has been the country's largest city since 1790. The Statue of Liberty greeted millions of immigrants as they came to the U. S. by ship in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and is an international symbol of the U. S. and its ideals of liberty and peace. In the 21st century, New York has emerged as a global node of creativity and entrepreneurship, social tolerance, environmental sustainability, as a symbol of freedom and cultural diversity. Many districts and landmarks in New York City are well known, with the city having three of the world's ten most visited tourist attractions in 2013 and receiving a record 62.8 million tourists in 2017. Several sources have ranked New York the most photographed city in the world. Times Square, iconic as the world's "heart" and its "Crossroads", is the brightly illuminated hub of the Broadway Theater District, one of the world's busiest pedestrian intersections, a major center of the world's entertainment industry.
The names of many of the city's landmarks and parks are known around the world. Manhattan's real estate market is among the most expensive in the world. New York is home to the largest ethnic Chinese population outside of Asia, with multiple signature Chinatowns developing across the city. Providing continuous 24/7 service, the New York City Subway is the largest single-operator rapid transit system worldwide, with 472 rail stations. Over 120 colleges and universities are located in New York City, including Columbia University, New York University, Rockefeller University, which have been ranked among the top universities in the world. Anchored by Wall Street in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan, New York has been called both the most economically powerful city and the leading financial center of the world, the city is home to the world's two largest stock exchanges by total market capitalization, the New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ. In 1664, the city was named in honor of the Duke of York.
James's older brother, King Charles II, had appointed the Duke proprietor of the former territory of New Netherland, including the city of New Amsterdam, which England had seized from the Dutch. During the Wisconsinan glaciation, 75,000 to 11,000 years ago, the New York City region was situated at the edge of a large ice sheet over 1,000 feet in depth; the erosive forward movement of the ice contributed to the separation of what is now Long Island and Staten Island. That action left bedrock at a shallow depth, providing a solid foundation for most of Manhattan's skyscrapers. In the precolonial era, the area of present-day New York City was inhabited by Algonquian Native Americans, including the Lenape, whose homeland, known as Lenapehoking, included Staten Island; the first documented visit into New York Harbor by a European was in 1524 by Giovanni da Verrazzano, a Florentine explorer in the service of the French crown. He named it Nouvelle Angoulême. A Spanish expedition led by captain Estêvão Gomes, a Portuguese sailing for Emperor Charles V, arrived in New York Harbor in January 1525 and charted the mouth of the Hudson River, which he named Río de San Antonio.
The Padrón Rea
