The modern Olympic Games or Olympics are leading international sporting events featuring summer and winter sports competitions in which thousands of athletes from around the world participate in a variety of competitions. The Olympic Games are considered the world's foremost sports competition with more than 200 nations participating; the Olympic Games are held every four years, with the Summer and Winter Games alternating by occurring every four years but two years apart. Their creation was inspired by the ancient Olympic Games, which were held in Olympia, from the 8th century BC to the 4th century AD. Baron Pierre de Coubertin founded the International Olympic Committee in 1894, leading to the first modern Games in Athens in 1896; the IOC is the governing body of the Olympic Movement, with the Olympic Charter defining its structure and authority. The evolution of the Olympic Movement during the 20th and 21st centuries has resulted in several changes to the Olympic Games; some of these adjustments include the creation of the Winter Olympic Games for snow and ice sports, the Paralympic Games for athletes with a disability, the Youth Olympic Games for athletes aged 14 to 18, the five Continental games, the World Games for sports that are not contested in the Olympic Games.

The Deaflympics and Special Olympics are endorsed by the IOC. The IOC has had to adapt to a variety of economic and technological advancements; the abuse of amateur rules by the Eastern Bloc nations prompted the IOC to shift away from pure amateurism, as envisioned by Coubertin, to allowing participation of professional athletes. The growing importance of mass media created the issue of corporate sponsorship and commercialisation of the Games. World wars led to the cancellation of the 1916, 1940, 1944 Games. Large boycotts during the Cold War limited participation in the 1980 and 1984 Games; the Olympic Movement consists of international sports federations, National Olympic Committees, organising committees for each specific Olympic Games. As the decision-making body, the IOC is responsible for choosing the host city for each Games, organises and funds the Games according to the Olympic Charter; the IOC determines the Olympic programme, consisting of the sports to be contested at the Games. There are several Olympic rituals and symbols, such as the Olympic flag and torch, as well as the opening and closing ceremonies.

Over 14,000 athletes competed at the 2016 Summer Olympics and 2018 Winter Olympics combined, in 35 different sports and over 400 events. The first and third-place finishers in each event receive Olympic medals: gold and bronze, respectively; the Games have grown so much. This growth has created numerous challenges and controversies, including boycotts, bribery, a terrorist attack in 1972; every two years the Olympics and its media exposure provide athletes with the chance to attain national and sometimes international fame. The Games constitute an opportunity for the host city and country to showcase themselves to the world; the Ancient Olympic Games were religious and athletic festivals held every four years at the sanctuary of Zeus in Olympia, Greece. Competition was among representatives of several kingdoms of Ancient Greece; these Games featured athletic but combat sports such as wrestling and the pankration and chariot racing events. It has been written that during the Games, all conflicts among the participating city-states were postponed until the Games were finished.

This cessation of hostilities was known as truce. This idea is a modern myth; the truce did allow those religious pilgrims who were travelling to Olympia to pass through warring territories unmolested because they were protected by Zeus. The origin of the Olympics is shrouded in legend. According to legend, it was Heracles who first called the Games "Olympic" and established the custom of holding them every four years; the myth continues that after Heracles completed his twelve labours, he built the Olympic Stadium as an honour to Zeus. Following its completion, he walked in a straight line for 200 steps and called this distance a "stadion", which became a unit of distance; the most accepted inception date for the Ancient Olympics is 776 BC. The Ancient Games featured running events, a pentathlon, wrestling and equestrian events. Tradition has it that a cook from the city of Elis, was the first Olympic champion; the Olympics were of fundamental religious importance, featuring sporting events alongside ritual sacrifices honouring both Zeus and Pelops, divine hero and mythical king of Olympia.

Pelops was famous for his chariot race with King Oenomaus of Pisatis. The winners of the events were immortalised in poems and statues; the Games were held every four years, this period, known as an Olympiad, was used by Greeks as one of their units of time measurement. The Games were part of a cycle known as the Panhellenic Games, which included the Pythian Games, the Nemean Games, the Isthmian Games; the Olympic Games reached their zenith in the 6th and 5th centuries BC, but gradually declined in

General elections were held in Haiti on 7 February 2006 to elect the replacements for the interim government of Gérard Latortue, put in place after the 2004 Haiti rebellion. The elections were delayed four times, having been scheduled for October and November 2005. Voters elected a president, all 99 seats in the Chamber of Deputies of Haiti and all 30 seats in the Senate of Haiti. Voter turnout was around 60%. Run-off elections for the Chamber of Deputies of Haiti were held on 21 April, with around 28% turnout. According to official statistics, René Préval of the Lespwa coalition led the count for President with 48.8% of the vote, less than the 50% needed to be declared elected on the first round. Préval spoke of fraud, voting bags and marked ballots found in a garbage dump triggered street protests by his supporters; the United Nations Mission in Haiti spoke of an "apparent grave breach of the electoral process". On 16 February, following meetings between the electoral council and the interim government, it was agreed that blank ballots would be excluded from the percentage calculations, resulting in a total vote for Preval of 51.1%.

A second round of voting for President was thus avoided. The election process saw many controversies, including threats to boycott by one of the major political parties, ongoing political violence, one candidate being declared ineligible despite a Supreme Court decision; the elections took place as Haiti was under the occupation of MINUSTAH, a multi-national U. N. force established by the Security Council which started operations in June 2004. On election day, due to many organizational problems, a shortage of election workers, missing ballots, long line-ups, the voting hours were extended by at least two hours. There are many reasons. Due to a lack of funding, election officials were not able to meet the voter registration deadline set for early August. In addition there was considerable unrest in parts of Haiti the Port-au-Prince slums where there were attacks on the new government, where the U. N. and the Haitian National Police have been accused of committing massacres and targeted killings of anti-occupation protesters and organizers.

However, the inability to register voters in the time allocated was the primary reason for the extensions. There was concern that only 800-900 voting stations would be placed throughout Haiti, in comparison to the many thousands of stations that existed during the previous election. On January 25, 2006, Haiti's election authorities announced that no voting stations would be placed in Cité Soleil, an impoverished area which holds between three and six hundred thousand residents and has been controlled by informal armies professing allegiance to Aristide. Elections in Haiti were scheduled to take place starting on October 9, 2005 with the municipal election, followed by national elections on November 13, 2005, a second round on December 18. In August the electoral council decided to move the municipal elections to an undetermined date in late December to allow for more focus to be placed on meeting the November 6 date for presidential elections. On September 7 the dates were again changed, this time for the presidential elections.

The first round of voting was moved back to November 20 and the second round on January 3, 2006. On November 18 the date for presidential and legislative elections were postponed for the third time. On November 25, the date was set again, making this the fourth time total; the election is being postponed yet again but a date has not yet been announced, although February 7, 2006 is reported to be the date for the first round. The municipal elections which were set to be held on December 11, 2005, have been postponed to March 5, 2006; when announced they will be the fifth set of election dates for a new government since July. The hand-over of power to the elected government was set for February 7, 2006, but this date has been pushed back, without an official new date being given; the first round of elections for president and parliament was held on 7 February 2006. Runoff elections for Chamber of Deputies of Haiti were held on April 21. Two opinion polls were taken in November 2005; the first to be released was the poll taken by CID Gallup, a Latin American polling group with close ties to U.

S. based Gallup. The second polling was taken by a political consulting firm, The Democracy Group, on behalf of the National Organization for the Advancement of Haitians, a group for the restoration of democracy in Haiti, of which Dumarsais Siméus is a member. CID-Gallup NOAH-TDG Thirty five presidential candidates appeared in the ballot. Among the more known figures were René Préval, a former prime minister and president, a Lavalas member. Préval is a former president of Haiti who served from 1996 to 2000, he is the second president of Haiti to leave office due to the natural expiration of his term. Préval was in exile during the latter years of the dictatorship of Jean-Claude Duvalier but returned to work in charitable organizations after Duvalier's fall, he served as Prime Minister under Aristide during his first term, until the military coup d'état that overthrew Aristide in 1991. In 1996 he was elected president under the Fanmi Lavalas party and served out his term ending in 2001. Under his previous administration Préval was a big reformer, most notably in the privatiza

Hotel Dieu Hospital is a hospital in Kingston, Canada. It is affiliated with Queen's University, is a partner within Kingston's university hospitals, delivering health care, conducting research and training the health care professionals. In 1841, the Catholic bishop of Kingston, Remigius Gaulin, asked the Religious Hospitallers of Saint Joseph of Montreal to send a group of sisters to establish a Catholic Hospital in his city to provide care for the poor Irish Catholic immigrants in the city; the RHSJs, were unable to find suitable buildings for their hospital until 1845. On September 2, 1845, Mother Amable Bourbonniere along with Sisters Huguette Claire Latour, Emilie Barbarie, Louise Davignon, accompanied by their benefactress, Miss Josephine Perras and Mr. Laframboise, a friend of the community, arrived in Kingston, they stayed with the Kingston Notre Dame Sisters for two days, moved into their hospital, located in a small limestone building, now 229 Brock Street, on September 4, 1845. The Kingston RHSJs saw their first patient on September 7.

By the end of October, they had refurbished and moved into their monastery, located at 233 Brock Street, allowing them to have a men's ward on the main floor of the Hospital and a women's ward on the second floor. The hospital was in operation when the city suffered an epidemic of typhus in 1847. In addition to ill and dying patients, Hotel Dieu cared for 100 orphaned children who had lost their parents; the disease had accompanied poor Irish immigrants fleeing the potato famine in their homeland. No one yet understood how the disease spread, poor sanitation practices compounded the epidemic. In 1892, the hospital was moved to its present location on Sydenham Street, which housed Regiopolis College. In 1846, Alexander Macdonell established Regiopolis College, which offered academic and theological training to Roman Catholic youth; the original building is now part of the Hotel Dieu Hospital. The main wing of the Hotel Dieu Hospital, the Jeanne Mance Wing, completed in 1984, is named for a woman sent by the RHSJ to New France in 1641.

Jeanne Mance, a lay woman, was given the responsibility of founding a hospital and caring for the sick in New France. In 1642, she arrived in what is now Montreal and founded the first Hotel Dieu Hospital in 1645; the hospital's Urgent Care Centre is meant for people with injuries or illnesses that are non-life threatening. All patients who are ambulatory and who are experiencing minor illness or injuries that cannot wait for a family doctor are directed to attend this clinic; the Urgent Care Centre is open from 8 a.m. – 8 p.m. 365 days/year. Outpatient pediatrics Cardiology Ophthalmology diabetes education breast assessment Day surgery Urgent care and mental health programs In 1912 the Sisters of St. Joseph established a nursing school in Kingston at Hotel Dieu Hospital; this became necessary to ease the pressures from the Sisters working at the hospital. Training was provided by nursing sisters and doctors at the hospital ending with a three year diploma, it became an official training school in 1945 and closed in 1974.

Marion Dewar, public health nurse Mayor of Ottawa and federal Member of Parliament. Kingston General Hospital Providence Continuing Care Centre University Hospitals Kingston Foundation Hotel Dieu Hospital - Official web site