East Side Access is a public works project under construction by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority in New York City, which will extend the Long Island Rail Road from its Main Line in Queens into a new station under Grand Central Terminal on Manhattan's East Side. The new station and tunnels are tentatively scheduled to start service in December 2022, some 15 years behind schedule; the project's estimated construction cost has risen nearly threefold from the planned $3.5 billion to $11.1 billion as of April 2018, making it one of the world's most expensive underground rail-construction projects. East Side Access is based on transit plans from the 1950s, though a terminal on Manhattan's East Side was first proposed in 1963; the planned LIRR line was included in the 1968 Program for Action of transit improvements in the New York City area. Lack of funds prevented the construction of any part of the connection other than the 63rd Street Tunnel under the East River. Plans for the LIRR connection were revived in the late 1990s.

The project received federal funding in 2006, construction began the following year. The tunnels on the Manhattan side were dug from 2007 to 2011, the connecting tunnels on the Queens side were completed in 2012. Afterward, work began on other structures related to the line, such as the new LIRR platforms at Grand Central and ancillary buildings and utility systems, the supporting rail infrastructure in Queens; the new terminal will contain eight tracks and four platforms in a two-level station 100 feet below street level. It is being built in conjunction with several other expansion projects across the LIRR, including an additional track along parts of the LIRR's Main Line and a new Sunnyside station in Queens. Extending between Sunnyside in Queens and Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan, the East Side Access project is creating an LIRR branch from its Main Line through new track connections in Sunnyside Yard and through the lower level of the existing 63rd Street Tunnel under the East River.

A storage yard in Sunnyside is being built, connecting to the 63rd Street Tunnel via a loop. In Manhattan new tunnels begin at the western end of the 63rd Street Tunnel at Second Avenue, curving south under Park Avenue and entering a new LIRR terminal beneath Grand Central. On the Queens side, four tunnels merge into two tracks and enter the lower level of the 63rd Street Tunnel. Three of them will connect to the busy Harold Interlocking within Sunnyside Yard, splitting off the Main Line. A fourth tunnel on a lower level will connect to the Midday Storage Yard; the Midday Storage Yard, located to the northwest of the existing Sunnyside Yard, comprises 33 acres and will contain 24 storage tracks once completed. Tutor Perini is constructing the $291 million yard just south of the existing Harold Interlocking; the line would fan out into a bi-level station under Grand Central Terminal with eight tracks, four on each level. South of the station, the four tracks on each level will merge into two 1,700-foot-long storage tracks, with one in each cavern on each level.

These storage tracks, which extend under Park Avenue south to 38th Street, will be able to store one 1,020-foot-long, 12-car train. The storage tracks were not part of the original proposal, as they were added in a 2008 modification to the plans for East Side Access; the project includes the construction of several ventilation plants. One is located at 44th Street, near the Yale Club of New York City, while another is located at 50th Street east of Madison Avenue. Ventilation facilities are located on Park Avenue at 38th Street and at 55th Street, as well as on 63rd Street at York Avenue and at 2nd Avenue; the new LIRR terminal at Grand Central, located 14 stories below ground, will have 350,000 square feet with four platforms and eight tracks, plus a new retail and dining concourse with 25 retail spaces. There will be two caverns containing two tracks on each of two levels; the LIRR terminal would be accessed via stairwells, 22 elevators, 47 escalators connecting to the existing food court at the lower level of Grand Central.

The number of elevators in this terminal would exceed the 19 escalators in the remainder of the LIRR system combined. The MTA planned to build and open additional entrances at 44th, 45th, 47th, 48th Streets; the station would connect to existing entrances at Grand Central North. The new LIRR station would contain entrances at 335 Madison Avenue, near the southeast corner with 44th Street. An entrance on 46th Street between Lexington and Park Avenue was built, connecting with Grand Central North. However, the MTA announced its intent to defer construction of an entrance at 48th Street because the owner of 415 Madison Avenue wanted to undertake a major construction project on the site; the MTA would connect the new station to the existing 47th Street cross-passage. The escalators descend more than 90 feet; the escalators and elevators would be among the few operated escalators and elevators in the entire MTA system. Trains are expected to run 24 hours a day. Plans call for 24 trains per hour to run to Grand Central during peak morning hours, with an estimated 162,000 passenger trips to and from Grand Central on an average weekday.

Bilevel rail cars, such as the LIRR's C3 fleet, would not be able to serve Grand Central because of low height clearances in the 63rd Street Tunnel. The project is to increase passenger

Mbulu is a town in Tanzania and the capital of the Mbulu District. The town is inhabited by the Iraqw people; the Roman Catholic Diocese of Mbulu is in Mbulu. Mbulu is located in the Mbulu Highlands; the town known as Imboru among the Iraqw speakers, is the core of the Iraqw people, who speak a Cushitic language. Mbulu was founded by Germans in 1907. Mbulu's climate favoured Germans, the hospitality of the indigenous people favoured them. Germans were less harsh to the Iraqw people than to the rest of the Tanganyikans, thus Iraqw were used by Germans on white-collar jobs. Today most Afro-German with Tanzanian ancestry are Iraqw from Mbulu. During the British regime, Mbulu peasants were able to form trade unions the Mbulu Wheat Growers association; the main economic activities in Mbulu are trade. Mbulu area is one of the earliest wheat-growing plantations

External association was a hypothetical relationship between Ireland and the Commonwealth of Nations proposed by Éamon de Valera in 1921–22, whereby Ireland would be a sovereign state associated with, but not a member of, the Commonwealth. De Valera proposed external association as a compromise between isolationist Irish republicanism on the one hand and Dominion status on the other. Whereas a full republic could not be a member of the Commonwealth until the London Declaration of 1949, a Dominion could not be independent until the Statute of Westminster 1931. External association was never implemented as such. Troy D. Davis suggests de Valera's thinking on external association was influenced, during his tour of the United States in 1919–20, by the US Sugar Intervention in Cuba. Nicholas Mansergh traces the first reference to "external association" to 27 July 1921, preceding a proposal by de Valera on 10 August for a treaty of free association between the Irish Republic and Great Britain. De Valera told Mansergh in 1965 that the idea of external association came to him "one morning as he was tying his bootlaces", shortly after Jan Smuts' exploratory visit following the June 1921 ceasefire which ended the Anglo-Irish War.

In September 1921, David Lloyd George, the UK prime minister, proposed negotiations into "how the association of Ireland with the community of nations known as the British Empire may best be reconciled with Irish national aspirations". De Valera accepted and explained his concept of external association to the plenipotentiaries sent to London, their head, Arthur Griffith said de Valera told him the idea was to get out of the "straitjacket of the Republic" while "bringing Cathal along", referring to Cathal Brugha, the staunchest republican in the Dáil ministry. The British ministers negotiating with the Irish plenipotentiaries rejected the idea of external association, the Anglo-Irish Treaty the two sides signed on 6 December 1921 provided for an Irish Free State with the same status as Canada. De Valera opposed this, in the Second Dáil debate on the Treaty offered his alternative "Document No. 2", of which articles 2 to 6 described the "Terms of Association": That, for purposes of common concern, Ireland shall be associated with the States of the British Commonwealth, viz: the Kingdom of Great Britain, the Dominion of Canada, the Commonwealth of Australia, the Dominion of New Zealand, the Union of South Africa.

That when acting as an associate the rights and privileges of Ireland shall be in no respect less than those enjoyed by any of the component States of the British Commonwealth. That the matters of "common concern" shall include Defence and War, Political Treaties, all matters now treated as of common concern amongst the States of the British Commonwealth, that in these matters there shall be between Ireland and the States of the British Commonwealth "such concerted action founded on consultation as the several Governments may determine"; that in virtue of this association of Ireland with the States of the British Commonwealth citizens of Ireland in any of these States shall not be subject to any disabilities which a citizen of one of the component States of the British Commonwealth would not be subject to, reciprocally for citizens of these States in Ireland. That, for purposes of the Association, Ireland shall recognise His Britannic Majesty as head of the Association. De Valera, a former mathematics teacher, used Venn diagrams and other graphs to illustrate the relationships he envisaged between Ireland and the Commonwealth.

Commentators have suggested the putative virtues of his proposal were too subtle and abstract to appeal to either supporters of the Treaty or republicans opposed to it. A journalist reporting on the Dáil debate said of de Valera's presentation, "One felt, however, we were entering the region of pure casuistry, nebulous and unreal." The Dáil voted to accept the original Treaty, de Valera resigned as President of Dáil Éireann. In the Irish Civil War, he was nominal leader of the anti-Treaty side, although the military force was led by republicans who regarded external association as an unacceptable compromise. Cardinal Michael Logue, Ireland's Catholic primate, condemned the anti-Treaty side: Never before in the world's history did such a wild and destructive hurricane spring from such a thin, unsubstantial vapour; the difference between some equivocal words in an oath. Men versed in the subtleties of the schools may understand them. In June 1922, UK prime minister David Lloyd George sought clarification from the pro-Treaty Provisional Government, drafting the Constitution of the Irish Free State.

F. S. Shall be within the empire on the basis of common citizenship, or associated with it? Arthur Griffith's answer was: it is intended that the Irish Free State shall be, not associated with, but a member of and within the Community of nations known as the British Empire and on the basis of common citizenship as explicitly provided by the TreatyThe pro-Treaty Cumann na nGaedheal party formed the Executive Council of the Irish Free State until 1932 and participated in the Commonwealth's Imperial Conferences. De Valera's Fianna Fáil party, founded in 1926, came to power in the Free State after the 1932 general election and proceeded to elimina