The Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument is a World Heritage listed U. S. National Monument encompassing 583,000 square miles of ocean waters, including ten islands and atolls of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. Created in June 2006 with 140,000 square miles, it was expanded in August 2016 by moving its border to the limit of the exclusive economic zone, making it one of the world's largest protected areas, it is internationally known for its cultural and natural values as follows: "The area has deep cosmological and traditional significance for living Native Hawaiian culture, as an ancestral environment, as an embodiment of the Hawaiian concept of kinship between people and the natural world, as the place where it is believed that life originates and to where the spirits return after death. On two of the islands and Makumanamana, there are archaeological remains relating to pre-European settlement and use. Much of the monument is made up of pelagic and deepwater habitats, with notable features such as seamounts and submerged banks, extensive coral reefs and lagoons."

The monument supports one quarter of which are endemic. Prominent species include the endangered hawksbill sea turtle, the threatened green sea turtle and the endangered Hawaiian monk seal, the Laysan and Nihoa finches, the Nihoa millerbird, Laysan duck, seabirds such as the Laysan albatross, numerous species of plants including Pritchardia palms, many species of arthropods. According to the Pew Charitable Trusts, populations of lobster have not recovered from extensive harvesting in the 1980s and 1990s, now banned; the National Marine Fisheries Service reports that many species populations have not yet recovered from a large-scale shift in the oceanic ecosystem that affected the North Pacific during the late 1980s and early 1990s. This shift reduced populations of important species such as spiny lobster and Hawaiian monk seals. Commercial fishing ended in 2011; the monument receives strict conservation protection, with exceptions for traditional Native Hawaiian uses and limited tourism. The monument covers 583,000 square miles of reefs and shallow and deep sea in the Pacific Ocean – larger than all of America's National Parks combined.

It contains 10 percent of the tropical shallow water coral reef habitat in U. S. territory. It is larger than Australia's Great Barrier Reef Marine Park the size of the country of Germany, just smaller than Montana; the islands included in the monument are all part of the State of Hawaii, except Midway Atoll, part of The United States Minor Outlying Islands insular area. Henderson Field, on Midway Atoll, provides aerial access to the monument; the monument's ocean area is administered by the National Atmospheric Administration. It contains within it a number of U. S. and Hawaiian designated refuges, sanctuaries and memorials with their own specialized administration. The Hawaiian Islands National Wildlife Refuge, with an area of 254,418.1 acres is in the monument and is administered by the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service. About 132,000 square miles of the monument were part of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Coral Reef Ecosystem Reserve, designated in 2000; the monument includes the Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge and Battle of Midway National Memorial, the Hawaii State Seabird Sanctuary at Kure Atoll, the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands State Marine Refuge.

The Northwestern Hawaiian Islands were first protected on February 3, 1909, when U. S. President Theodore Roosevelt created the Hawaiian Islands Bird Reservation through Executive Order 1019, as a response to the over-harvesting of seabirds, in recognition of the importance of the NWHI as seabird nesting sites. President Franklin D. Roosevelt converted it into the Hawaiian Islands National Wildlife Refuge in 1940. A series of incremental protections followed, leading to the establishment of Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge in 1988, Kure Atoll State Wildlife Sanctuary in 1993, the NWHI Coral Reef Ecosystem Reserve in 2000. President Bill Clinton established the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Coral Reef Ecosystem Reserve on December 4, 2000, with Executive Order 13178. Clinton's executive order initiated a process to designate the waters of the NWHI as a National Marine Sanctuary. A public comment period began in 2002. In 2005, Governor of Hawaii Linda Lingle declared parts of the monument a state marine refuge.

In April 2006, President George W. Bush and his wife viewed a screening of the documentary film Voyage to Kure at the White House along with its director, Jean-Michel Cousteau. Compelled by the film's portrayal of the flora and fauna, Bush moved to protect the area. On June 15, 2006, Bush signed Proclamation 8031, designating the waters of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands a national monument under the 1906 Antiquities Act. Using the Antiquities Act bypassed the normal year of consultations and halted the public input process and came just before the draft environmental impact statement for the proposed Northwestern Hawaiian Islands National Marine Sanctuary was to be published; this was the second use by Bush of the Antiquities Act, following the declaration of the African Burial Ground National Monument on Manhattan in February 2006. The legislated process for stakeholder involvement in the planning and management of a marine protected area had taken five years of effort, but the abrupt establishment of the NWHI as a National Monument, rather than a Sanctuary

A city is a local administrative unit in Japan. Cities are ranked on the same level as towns and villages, with the difference that they are not a component of districts. Like other contemporary administrative units, they are defined by the Local Autonomy Law of 1947. Article 8 of the Local Autonomy Law sets the following conditions for a municipality to be designated as a city: Population must be 50,000 or greater At least 60% of households must be established in a central urban area At least 60% of households must be employed in commerce, industry or other urban occupations Any other conditions set by prefectural ordinance must be satisfied The designation is approved by the prefectural governor and the Minister for Internal Affairs and Communications. A city can theoretically be demoted to a town or village when it fails to meet any of these conditions, but such a demotion has not happened to date; the least populous city, Hokkaido, has a population of three thousand, while a town in the same prefecture, Hokkaido, has over forty thousand.

Under the Act on Special Provisions concerning Merger of Municipalities, the standard of 50,000 inhabitants for the city status has been eased to 30,000 if such population is gained as a result of a merger of towns and/or villages, in order to facilitate such mergers to reduce administrative costs. Many municipalities gained city status under this eased standard. On the other hand, the municipalities gained the city status purely as a result of increase of population without expansion of area are limited to those listed in List of former towns or villages gained city status alone in Japan; the Cabinet of Japan can designate cities of at least 200,000 inhabitants to have the status of core city, or designated city. These statuses expand the scope of administrative authority delegated from the prefectural government to the city government. Tokyo, Japan’s capital, existed as a city until 1943, but is now classified as a special type of prefecture called a metropolis; the 23 special wards of Tokyo, which constitute the core of the Tokyo metropolitan area, each have an administrative status analogous to that of cities.

Tokyo has several other incorporated cities and villages within its jurisdiction. Cities were introduced under the "city code" of 1888 during the "Great Meiji mergers" of 1889; the -shi replaced the previous urban districts/"wards/cities" that had existed as primary subdivisions of prefectures besides rural districts since 1878. There were 39 cities in 1889: only one in most prefectures, two in a few, none in some – Miyazaki became the last prefecture to contain its first city in 1924. In Okinawa-ken and Hokkai-dō which were not yet equal prefectures in the Empire, major urban settlements remained organized as urban districts until the 1920s: Naha-ku and Shuri-ku, the two urban districts of Okinawa were only turned into Naha-shi and Shuri-shi in May 1921, six -ku of Hokkaidō were converted into district-independent cities in August 1922. By 1945, the number of cities countrywide had increased to 205. After WWII, their number doubled during the "great Shōwa mergers" of the 1950s and continued to grow so that it surpassed the number of towns in the early 21st century.

As of October 1 2018, there are 792 cities of Japan. Administrative division Urban area List of cities in Japan Directory of current Japanese city leaders and outline of system "Japan's Evolving Nested Municipal Hierarchy: The Race for Local Power in the 2000s," by A. J. Jacobs at Urban Studies Research, Vol. 2011.

The Department of National Development and Energy was an Australian government department that existed between December 1979 and March 1983. It replaced the Department of National Development and inherited domestic resources and energy matters from the Department of Trade and Resources. Information about the department's functions and/or government funding allocation could be found in the Administrative Arrangements Orders, the annual Portfolio Budget Statements and in the Department's annual reports. At its creation, the Department was responsible for the following: National energy policy, including planning and research into coal and gas, solar energy and other forms of energy Radioactive waste management. Minerals exploration and resource assessment. Water resources, soil conservation, electricity. Geodesy and mapping. Decentralisation and urban planning and development. Local government; the Department was a Commonwealth Public Service department, staffed by officials who were responsible to the Minister for National Development and Energy, John Carrick.

The Secretary of the Department was A. J. Woods