RAI – Radiotelevisione italiana is the national public broadcasting company of Italy, owned by the Ministry of Economy and Finance. RAI operates many terrestrial and subscription television channels and radio stations, it is one of the biggest television broadcaster in Italy and competes with Mediaset, other minor television and radio networks. RAI has a high television audience share of 35.9%. RAI broadcasts are received in neighbouring countries, including Albania, Croatia, Monaco, San Marino, Vatican City and Tunisia, elsewhere on pay television. Half of the RAI's revenues come from broadcast receiving licence fees, the rest from the sale of advertising time. In 1950, the RAI became one of the 23 founding broadcasting organizations of the European Broadcasting Union; the Unione Radiofonica Italiana was formed in 1924 with the backing of the Marconi Company following a model adopted in other European countries. URI made its inaugural broadcast — a speech by Benito Mussolini at Teatro Costanzi — on 5 October.

Regular programming began the following evening, with a quartet performing Haydn's Quartet No. 7 in A major from the Palazzo Corradi. At 21.00 CET, Ines Donarelli Viviani announced for the first time: "URI—Unione Radiofonica Italiana Rome station 1RO 425 meters wavelength. To all those who are listening our greetings, good evening". Guglielmo Marconi's S. A. Radiofono—Società Italiana per le Radiocomunicazioni Circolari held 85% of URI shares and Western Electric's Società Italiana Radio Audizioni Circolari held the remaining 15%. Under the provisions of Royal Decree No. 1067 of 8 February 1923, wireless broadcasting became a state monopoly under the control of the Ministry of Posts and Telegraphs. However, when URI's contract expired in 1927, it was succeeded under Royal Decree Law No. 2207 of 17 November 1927 by the nationalised Ente Italiano per le Audizioni Radiofoniche, which became Radio Audizioni Italiane S.p. A. with investment from Società Idroelettrica Piemontese in 1944. During the reconstruction following World War II, much of RAI's early programming was influenced by the "Reithian" style of the BBC.

The emphasis was on educational content. Programs like Non è mai troppo tardi and Un viaggio al Po introduced people to what life was like in other parts of the country, at a time when most people could not afford to travel. Over the following years the RAI made various changes to its services, it reorganized its radio stations in November 1946 into two national networks, Rete Rossa and Rete Azzurra. It added the culture-based Terzo Programma in October 1950. On 1 January 1952 the Rete Rossa became the Programma Nazionale and the Rete Azzurra became the Secondo Programma; the three radio channels became today's Rai Radio 1, Rai Radio 2, Rai Radio 3. In 1954 the state-owned holding company Istituto per la Ricostruzione Industriale became the sole shareholder and IRI – now renamed RAI—Radiotelevisione italiana to reflect its extended responsibilities – began a regular television service. On 3 January at 11.00 CET, the first RAI television announcer presented the day's schedule, broadcast from the service's Milan headquarters and relay stations in Turin and Rome.

At 14.30, the first regular programme in Italian television history was broadcast: Arrivi e partenze, hosted by Armando Pizzo and Mike Bongiorno. The evening's entertainment was a theatre performance, L'osteria della posta, written by Carlo Goldoni. 23.15 saw the start of the day's concluding programme, La Domenica Sportiva – the first edition of a weekly series which continues to this day. RAI was the subsidiary of RAI Holding S.p. A. RAI Holding was absorbed into RAI as of 1 December 2004, per Article 21 of Law 112/04; the RAI is governed by a nine-member Administrative Council. Seven of members are elected by a committee of the Italian Parliament; the other two are nominated by the largest shareholder: the Ministry of Economic Development. The Council appoints the Director-General; the Director-General and the members of the Administrative Council are appointed for a renewable three-year term. In 2005, the government of Silvio Berlusconi proposed partial privatization of RAI by selling 20% ownership.

This proposal was controversial, in part because Berlusconi was the head of the leading private broadcaster Mediaset. Some critics claimed that Mediaset could thus increase its dominant position. However, after the revelation that RAI would lose €80m in 2006, the privatization plan was suspended in October 2005. On 18 May 2010, Raisat received a major re-branded with a new logo and a new name, it and all of the sister channels dropped the sat part from the name and became Rai YoYo, Rai 5, Rai Premium, Rai Movie. On 11 June 2013, the RAI was one of the few known European broadcasters to condemn and criticize the closure of Greece's state broadcaster ERT. RAI company has been criticized because as of 2015 it had 46 directors and 262 head offices and they are considered too many. RAI

Vaccinium crassifolium, the creeping blueberry, is a species of Vaccinium in the heath family. It is native to the four southeastern U. S. states of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia. It is an evergreen shrub with shiny dark green to bronze leaves. Vaccinium crassifolium is native to the coastal plain of Georgia, the Carolinas, southeastern Virginia in pine barrens but in disturbed settings like roadsides and other open areas. Vaccinium crassifolium is the only species in Vaccinium sect. Herpothamnus; some sources have recognized a second species, V. sempervirens, but recent authors combine the two into a single species. Creeping blueberries, although they are native to North America, do not seem to be most related to North American blueberries, but instead to South American Vaccinium species; the leaves resemble bearberry, may be used in herbalism in its place. Vaccinium crassifolium has been cultivated since at least about 1787, several cultivars are available for planting as a ground cover in landscaping gardens.

United States Department of Agriculture plants profile— Vaccinium crassifolium

The Kinyeti River flows northward from the Imatong Mountains in the Imatong State state of South Sudan dispersing into the Badigeru swamp. The Imatongs reach out from their highest central block around Mount Kinyeti into a northwestern and southwestern chain; the western chain, with peaks rising up to 2,500 metres high, is known as the Acholi Mountains. The Kinyeti valley lies between the west ranges; the Kinyeti river, others that drain the northern slopes of the mountains, feed the Badigeru swamps. These swamps, running in a SSW-NNE direction for 100 kilometres, are discontinuous, they may be average 5 kilometres in width. The swamps in turn may drain westward into the Bahr el Jebel section of the White Nile or eastward into the Veveno River; the British colonial administration began a forestry project in the Kinyeti basin in the 1940s, clearing the natural forest and planting fast-growing softwoods and Pine. In 1950 the mountains above 1,500 metres were made a forest reserve with no further settlement permitted, but the ban was not enforced during the civil wars.

Forestry brought laborers into the mountains, they started hillside farming in a wide area around the forest plantations. In 1949 fingerling trout supplied by the Kenya Game Department were put out in the upper Kinyeti River. By 1952 they had become established, the forestry department was planning to stock other streams using trout from the Kinyeti. Shortly before independence, the government announced that the Army's Equatoria Corps was to be transferred to the North, sparking a mutiny on 18 August 1955. 336 northerners died and 75 southerners, of whom 55 drowned in the Kinyeti after they fled in panic from Torit. Forestry was neglected during the First Sudanese Civil War. After 1972 an effort was made to rehabilitate the plantations, with a new road built from Torit, a hydro-electric scheme developed to power sawmills and other changes; as of 1984 only the steepest slopes had natural forest and there were plans to clear-cut most of the Kinyeti basin. A 1981 feasibility study assessed hydroelectric power potential in the Kinyeti River and the local power demand, but there was no follow-up.

The most promising site seemed to be at Katire