1.
Sweden
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Sweden, officially the Kingdom of Sweden, is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. It borders Norway to the west and Finland to the east, at 450,295 square kilometres, Sweden is the third-largest country in the European Union by area, with a total population of 10.0 million. Sweden consequently has a low density of 22 inhabitants per square kilometre. Approximately 85% of the lives in urban areas. Germanic peoples have inhabited Sweden since prehistoric times, emerging into history as the Geats/Götar and Swedes/Svear, Southern Sweden is predominantly agricultural, while the north is heavily forested. Sweden is part of the area of Fennoscandia. The climate is in very mild for its northerly latitude due to significant maritime influence. Today, Sweden is a monarchy and parliamentary democracy, with a monarch as head of state. The capital city is Stockholm, which is also the most populous city in the country, legislative power is vested in the 349-member unicameral Riksdag. Executive power is exercised by the government chaired by the prime minister, Sweden is a unitary state, currently divided into 21 counties and 290 municipalities. Sweden emerged as an independent and unified country during the Middle Ages, in the 17th century, it expanded its territories to form the Swedish Empire, which became one of the great powers of Europe until the early 18th century. Swedish territories outside the Scandinavian Peninsula were gradually lost during the 18th and 19th centuries, the last war in which Sweden was directly involved was in 1814, when Norway was militarily forced into personal union. Since then, Sweden has been at peace, maintaining a policy of neutrality in foreign affairs. The union with Norway was peacefully dissolved in 1905, leading to Swedens current borders, though Sweden was formally neutral through both world wars, Sweden engaged in humanitarian efforts, such as taking in refugees from German-occupied Europe. After the end of the Cold War, Sweden joined the European Union on 1 January 1995 and it is also a member of the United Nations, the Nordic Council, Council of Europe, the World Trade Organization and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Sweden maintains a Nordic social welfare system that provides health care. The modern name Sweden is derived through back-formation from Old English Swēoþēod and this word is derived from Sweon/Sweonas. The Swedish name Sverige literally means Realm of the Swedes, excluding the Geats in Götaland, the etymology of Swedes, and thus Sweden, is generally not agreed upon but may derive from Proto-Germanic Swihoniz meaning ones own, referring to ones own Germanic tribe
2.
Parliament House, Stockholm
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The Parliament House, is the seat of the parliament of Sweden, the Riksdag. It is located on half of Helgeandsholmen, in the Gamla stan district of central Stockholm. The building complex was designed by Aron Johansson in the Neoclassical style, Parliament House was constructed between 1897 and 1905. In 1889, a competition had been held to select a design for the new Parliament building, upon opening, it replaced the Old Riksdag Building on Riddarholmen. The two buildings of the complex were constructed to house the Riksdag in one, and the Sveriges Riksbank in the second. Assembly Hall expansion After the bicameral Riksdag was replaced by a legislature in 1971, and the bank relocated. During the construction, the Parliament moved into premises in the newly erected Kulturhuset south of Sergels Torg. The Right Livelihood Award, awarded by the Swedish Parliament annually, is presented to recipients at a ceremony in Parliament House annually, the award was established in 1980 to honour and support those offering practical and exemplary answers to the most urgent challenges facing us today. There presently 149 Laureates from 62 countries
3.
David Suzuki
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David Takayoshi Suzuki, CC OBC is a Canadian academic, science broadcaster and environmental activist. Suzuki earned a Ph. D. in zoology from the University of Chicago in 1961, since the mid-1970s, Suzuki has been known for his television and radio series, documentaries and books about nature and the environment. He is best known as host of the popular and long-running CBC Television science program The Nature of Things and he is also well known for criticizing governments for their lack of action to protect the environment. The Foundations priorities are, oceans and sustainable fishing, climate change and clean energy, sustainability, the Foundation also works on ways to help protect the oceans from large oil spills such as the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Suzuki has also served as a director of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association from 1982 to 1987, Suzuki was awarded the Right Livelihood Award in 2009. His 2011 book, The Legacy, won the Nautilus Book Award and he is a Companion of the Order of Canada. In 2004, David Suzuki ranked fifth on the list of nominees in a CBC Television series that asked viewers to select The Greatest Canadian of all time. Suzuki was the top finalist still alive, Suzuki has a twin sister named Marcia, as well as two other siblings, Geraldine and Dawn. He was born in 1936 to Setsu Nakamura and Kaoru Carr Suzuki in Vancouver, British Columbia, Suzukis maternal and paternal grandparents had emigrated to Canada at the beginning of the 20th century from Hiroshima and Aichi Prefecture respectively. A third-generation Japanese-Canadian, Suzukis family suffered internment in British Columbia from early during the Second World War until after the war ended in 1945. In June 1942, the government sold the Suzuki familys dry-cleaning business, then interned Suzuki, his mother and his father had been sent to a labour camp in Solsqua two months earlier. Suzukis sister Dawn was born in the internment camp, after the war, Suzukis family, like other Japanese Canadian families, were forced to move east of the Rockies. The Suzukis moved to Islington, Leamington, and London, Ontario, Suzuki, in interviews, has many times credited his father for having interested him in and sensitized him to nature. Suzuki received his B. A. in Biology in 1958 from Amherst College in Massachusetts where he first discovered genetics study, from 1961 to 1962, Suzuki worked at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. From 1962 to 1963, he was an assistant professor at the University of Alberta, early in his research career he studied genetics using the popular model organism Drosophila melanogaster. To be able to use his initials in naming any new genes he found, Suzuki began in television in 1970 with the weekly childrens show Suzuki on Science. In 1974, he founded the radio program Quirks and Quarks, throughout the 1970s, he also hosted Science Magazine, a weekly program geared towards an adult audience. Since 1979, Suzuki has hosted The Nature of Things, a CBC television series that has aired in nearly fifty countries worldwide, Suzuki has been a prominent proponent of renewable energy sources and the soft energy path
4.
Jakob von Uexkull
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Carl Wolmar Jakob Baron von Uexküll is a writer, lecturer, philanthropist, activist and former politician. He served as a Member of the European Parliament 1987–1989, representing the German Green Party, in 1980, Uexkull founded the Right Livelihood Award, and in 2006, he co-founded the World Future Council. Born in Sweden, he holds both Swedish and German citizenship, and is a resident of the United Kingdom. The son of Gustav Adolf Gösta Baron von Uexküll and Ewa Lewerentz, Jakob von Uexküll was born in Uppsala, after studying in Sweden and Germany, he won a scholarship to Christ Church, Oxford, graduating in Philosophy, Politics and Economics. His grandfather Jakob von Uexküll was a biologist and the founder of the study of biosemiotics, Uexküll is married and has three children. He lives with his family in London, the Right Livelihood Award evolved from von Uexkülls opinion that the Nobel Prizes were relatively narrow in scope and usually recognised the work of citizens in industrialised countries. Uexküll first approached the Nobel Foundation with the suggestion that it establish two new awards, one for ecology and one relevant to the lives of the majority of the worlds population. He offered to contribute financially but his proposal was turned down.000 euro, in 1980, the first Right Livelihood Awards were bestowed in a rented hall. Five years later, the invitation to present them in the Swedish parliament in Stockholm followed, since 2005 his nephew Ole von Uexküll has taken over the management of the Right Livelihood Award. The German Green Party has several times nominated Jakob von Uexküll in elections to the European Parliament, as a Member of the European Parliament, he served on the Political Affairs Committee and the Science and Technology Committee. He was also a member of the Delegation for Relations with the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, Uexküll is co-founder of The Other Economic Summit, and founder of the Estonian Renaissance Award. He is a patron of Friends of the Earth International, member of the Council of Governance of Transparency International and he served on the Board of Greenpeace, Germany, and the New Economics Foundation, London. He was also a member of the UNESCO Commission on Human Duties and Responsibilities, Uexkull lectures on environment, justice and peace issues. He is also a philatelist with publications including The Early Postal History of Saudi Arabia, in 2007, Uexküll founded the World Future Council. Petersburg Patron, International Student Week in Ilmenau 2015 Right Livelihood Award, The Founder – Jakob von Uexküll Got his eyes on the prize, by Ulla Plon, Time,2 October 2005
5.
Germans
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Germans are a Germanic ethnic group native to Central Europe, who share a common German ancestry, culture and history. German is the mother tongue of a substantial majority of ethnic Germans. The English term Germans has historically referred to the German-speaking population of the Holy Roman Empire since the Late Middle Ages, before the collapse of communism and the reunification of Germany in 1990, Germans constituted the largest divided nation in Europe by far. Ever since the outbreak of the Protestant Reformation within the Holy Roman Empire, of approximately 100 million native speakers of German in the world, roughly 80 million consider themselves Germans. Thus, the number of Germans lies somewhere between 100 and more than 150 million, depending on the criteria applied. Today, people from countries with German-speaking majorities most often subscribe to their own national identities, the German term Deutsche originates from the Old High German word diutisc, referring to the Germanic language of the people. It is not clear how commonly, if at all, the word was used as an ethnonym in Old High German, used as a noun, ein diutscher in the sense of a German emerges in Middle High German, attested from the second half of the 12th century. The Old French term alemans is taken from the name of the Alamanni and it was loaned into Middle English as almains in the early 14th century. The word Dutch is attested in English from the 14th century, denoting continental West Germanic dialects, while in most Romance languages the Germans have been named from the Alamanni, the Old Norse, Finnish and Estonian names for the Germans were taken from that of the Saxons. In Slavic languages, the Germans were given the name of němьci, originally with a meaning foreigner, the English term Germans is only attested from the mid-16th century, based on the classical Latin term Germani used by Julius Caesar and later Tacitus. It gradually replaced Dutch and Almains, the latter becoming mostly obsolete by the early 18th century, the Germans are a Germanic people, who as an ethnicity emerged during the Middle Ages. Originally part of the Holy Roman Empire, around 300 independent German states emerged during its decline after the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 ending the Thirty Years War and these states eventually formed into modern Germany in the 19th century. The concept of a German ethnicity is linked to Germanic tribes of antiquity in central Europe, the early Germans originated on the North German Plain as well as southern Scandinavia. By the 2nd century BC, the number of Germans was significantly increasing and they began expanding into eastern Europe, during antiquity these Germanic tribes remained separate from each other and did not have writing systems at that time. In the European Iron Age the area that is now Germany was divided into the La Tène horizon in Southern Germany and the Jastorf culture in Northern Germany. By 55 BC, the Germans had reached the Danube river and had either assimilated or otherwise driven out the Celts who had lived there, and had spread west into what is now Belgium and France. Conflict between the Germanic tribes and the forces of Rome under Julius Caesar forced major Germanic tribes to retreat to the east bank of the Rhine, in Roman-held territories with Germanic populations, the Germanic and Roman peoples intermarried, and Roman, Germanic, and Christian traditions intermingled. The adoption of Christianity would later become an influence in the development of a common German identity
6.
Philanthropy
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Philanthropy means etymologically, the love of humanity, in the sense of caring, nourishing, developing, and enhancing what it means to be human. In this meaning, it both the benefactor in their identifying and exercising their values, and the beneficiary in their receipt. A person who practices philanthropy is called a philanthropist, Philanthropy has distinguishing features from charity, not all charity is philanthropy, or vice versa, though there is a recognized degree of overlap in practice. The literal, classical definitions and understandings of the term philanthropy derive from its origins in the Greek φιλανθρωπία, the most conventional modern definition is private initiatives, for public good, focusing on quality of life. This combines the social scientific aspect developed in the century with the humanistic tradition. These distinctions have been analyzed by Olivier Zunz, and others, instances of philanthropy commonly overlap with instances of charity, though not all charity is philanthropy, or vice versa. The difference commonly cited is that charity relieves the pains of social problems, the first use of the noun form philanthrôpía came shortly thereafter, in the early Platonic dialogue Euthyphro. Socrates is reported to have said that his out of his thoughts freely to his listeners was his philanthrôpía. In the second century CE, Plutarch used the concept of philanthrôpía to describe superior human beings and this Classically synonymous troika, of philanthropy, the humanities, and liberal education, declined with the replacement of the classical world by Christianity. During the Middle Ages, philanthrôpía was superseded by Caritas charity, selfless love, Philanthropy was modernized by Sir Francis Bacon in the 1600s, who is largely credited with preventing the word from being owned by horticulture. Bacon considered philanthrôpía to be synonymous with goodness, which correlated with the Aristotelian conception of virtue, then in the 1700s, an influential lexical figurehead by the name of Samuel Johnson simply defined philanthropy as love of mankind, good nature. This definition still survives today and is cited more gender-neutrally as the love of humanity. However, it was Noah Webster who would more accurately reflect the usage in American English. The precise meaning of philanthropy is still a matter of some contention, nevertheless, there are some working definitions to which the community associated with the field of philanthropic studies most commonly subscribes. The Greeks adopted the love of humanity as an ideal, whose goal was excellence —the fullest self-development, of a body, mind, and spirit. The Platonic Academys philosophical dictionary defined Philanthropy as a state of well-educated habits stemming from love of humanity, just as Prometheus human-empowering gifts rebelled against the tyranny of Zeus, philanthropic was also associated with freedom and democracy. Both Socrates and the laws of Athens were described as philanthropic and democratic, gradually there emerged a non-religious agricultural infrastructure based on peasant farming organized into manors, which were, in turn, organized for law and order by feudalism. Francis Bacon in 1592 wrote in a letter that his vast contemplative ends expressed his philanthropic, Henry Cockeram, in his English dictionary, cited philanthropy as a synonym for humanity—thus reaffirming the Classical formulation
7.
Environmentalism
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While environmentalism focuses more on the environmental and nature-related aspects of green ideology and politics, ecologism combines the ideology of social ecology and environmentalism. ‘Ecologism’ is more used in continental European languages while ‘environmentalism’ is more commonly used in English. For this reason, concepts such as an ethic, environmental ethics, biodiversity, ecology. The exact measures and outcomes of this balance is controversial and there are different ways for environmental concerns to be expressed in practice. Environmentalism and environmental concerns are represented by the color green. Environmentalism denotes a movement that seeks to influence the political process by lobbying, activism. The word was first coined in 1922, an environmentalist is a person who may speak out about our natural environment and the sustainable management of its resources through changes in public policy or individual behavior. In various ways, environmentalists and environmental organizations seek to give the world a stronger voice in human affairs. In general terms, environmentalists advocate the sustainable management of resources, in its recognition of humanity as a participant in ecosystems, the movement is centered around ecology, health, and human rights. A concern for environmental protection has recurred in diverse forms, in different parts of the world, for example, in Europe, King Edward I of England banned the burning of sea-coal by proclamation in London in 1272, after its smoke had become a problem. The fuel was so common in England that this earliest of names for it was acquired because it could be carted away from some shores by the wheelbarrow. Earlier in the Middle East, the Caliph Abu Bakr in the 630s commanded his army to Bring no harm to the trees, nor burn them with fire, at the advent of steam and electricity the muse of history holds her nose and shuts her eyes. The origins of the movement lay in the response to increasing levels of smoke pollution in the atmosphere during the Industrial Revolution. An Alkali inspector and four sub-inspectors were appointed to curb this pollution, typically the highest priority went to water and air pollution. The Coal Smoke Abatement Society was formed in 1898 making it one of the oldest environmental NGOs and it was founded by artist Sir William Blake Richmond, frustrated with the pall cast by coal smoke. Although there were pieces of legislation, the Public Health Act 1875 required all furnaces and fireplaces to consume their own smoke. It also provided for sanctions against factories that emitted large amounts of black smoke, financial incentives were offered to householders to replace open coal fires with alternatives, or for those who preferred, to burn coke instead which produces minimal smoke. Smoke control areas were introduced in some towns and cities in which only smokeless fuels could be burnt, the act formed an important impetus to modern environmentalism, and caused a rethinking of the dangers of environmental degradation to peoples quality of life
8.
Human rights
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Human rights are moral principles or norms, which describe certain standards of human behaviour, and are regularly protected as legal rights in municipal and international law. They are applicable everywhere and at time in the sense of being universal. They require empathy and the rule of law and impose an obligation on persons to respect the rights of others. They should not be taken away except as a result of due process based on circumstances, for example, human rights may include freedom from unlawful imprisonment, torture. The doctrine of human rights has been influential within international law. Actions by states and non-governmental organizations form a basis of public policy worldwide, the idea of human rights suggests that if the public discourse of peacetime global society can be said to have a common moral language, it is that of human rights. The strong claims made by the doctrine of human rights continue to provoke considerable skepticism and debates about the content, nature, ancient peoples did not have the same modern-day conception of universal human rights. Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the family is the foundation of freedom. All human beings are free and equal in dignity and rights. According to Jack Donnelly, in the ancient world, traditional societies typically have had elaborate systems of duties, conceptions of justice, political legitimacy, and human flourishing that sought to realize human dignity, flourishing, or well-being entirely independent of human rights. These institutions and practices are alternative to, rather than different formulations of, one theory is that human rights were developed during the early Modern period, alongside the European secularization of Judeo-Christian ethics. The most commonly held view is that the concept of human rights evolved in the West, for example, McIntyre argues there is no word for right in any language before 1400. One of the oldest records of rights is the statute of Kalisz, giving privileges to the Jewish minority in the Kingdom of Poland such as protection from discrimination. Samuel Moyn suggests that the concept of rights is intertwined with the modern sense of citizenship. The earliest conceptualization of human rights is credited to ideas about natural rights emanating from natural law, in particular, the issue of universal rights was introduced by the examination of extending rights to indigenous peoples by Spanish clerics, such as Francisco de Vitoria and Bartolomé de Las Casas. In Britain in 1689, the English Bill of Rights and the Scottish Claim of Right each made illegal a range of oppressive governmental actions, additionally, the Virginia Declaration of Rights of 1776 encoded into law a number of fundamental civil rights and civil freedoms. These were followed by developments in philosophy of human rights by philosophers such as Thomas Paine, John Stuart Mill, hegel during the 18th and 19th centuries. Although the term had been used by at least one author as early as 1742, in the 19th century, human rights became a central concern over the issue of slavery
9.
Sustainable development
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The desirable end result is a state of society where living conditions and resource use continue to meet human needs without undermining the integrity and stability of the natural systems. As the concept developed, it has shifted to more on economic development, social development. The concept of development has been — and still is — subject to criticism. What, exactly, is to be sustained in sustainable development, Sustainable development ties together concern for the carrying capacity of natural systems with the social, political, and economic challenges faced by humanity. Sustainability science is the study of the concepts of sustainable development, there is an additional focus on the present generations responsibility to regenerate, maintain and improve planetary resources for use by future generations. Sustainable development has its roots in ideas about sustainable forest management which were developed in Europe during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In 1713 Hans Carl von Carlowitz, a mining administrator in the service of Elector Frederick Augustus I of Saxony published Sylvicultura oeconomica. Building upon the ideas of Evelyn and French minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert and his work influenced others, including Alexander von Humboldt and Georg Ludwig Hartig, eventually leading to the development of a science of forestry. Two years later, the United Nations World Charter for Nature raised five principles of conservation by which human conduct affecting nature is to be guided and judged. In 1987 the United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development released the report Our Common Future, the report included what is now one of the most widely recognised definitions of sustainable development. In 1992, the UN Conference on Environment and Development published the Earth Charter, which outlines the building of a just, sustainable and it emphasises that in sustainable development everyone is a user and provider of information. Furthermore, Agenda 21 emphasises that broad public participation in making is a fundamental prerequisite for achieving sustainable development. Broadly defined, sustainable development is an approach to growth and development and to manage natural, produced. A2013 study concluded that sustainability reporting should be reframed through the lens of four interconnected domains, ecology, economics, politics, the goals are to be implemented and achieved in every country from the year 2016 to 2030. Sustainable development, or sustainability, has described in terms of three spheres, dimensions, domains or pillars, i. e. the environment, the economy. The three-sphere framework was proposed by the economist René Passet in 1979. It has also been worded as economic, environmental and social or ecology, economy and this has been expanded by some authors to include a fourth pillar of culture, institutions or governance. The ecological stability of human settlements is part of the relationship between humans and their natural, social and built environments, also termed human ecology, this broadens the focus of sustainable development to include the domain of human health
10.
Health
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Health is the level of functional and metabolic efficiency of a living organism. In humans it is the ability of individuals or communities to adapt, other definitions have been proposed, among which a recent definition that correlates health and personal satisfaction. The definition of health has evolved over time, although this definition was welcomed by some as being innovative, it was also criticized as being vague, excessively broad, and was not construed as measurable. For a long time it was set aside as an impractical ideal, just as there was a shift from viewing disease as a state to thinking of it as a process, the same shift happened in definitions of health. Again, the WHO played a role when it fostered the development of the health promotion movement in the 1980s. This brought in a new conception of health, not as a state, the 1984 WHO revised definition of health defined it as the extent to which an individual or group is able to realize aspirations and satisfy needs, and to change or cope with the environment. Health is a resource for everyday life, not the objective of living, it is a concept, emphasizing social and personal resources. Thus, health referred to the ability to maintain homeostasis and recover from insults, since the late 1970s, the federal Healthy People Initiative has been a visible component of the United States’ approach to improving population health. Progress has been limited for many objectives, leading to concerns about the effectiveness of Healthy People in shaping outcomes in the context of a decentralized and uncoordinated US health system. Healthy People 2020 gives more prominence to health promotion and preventive approaches, a new expanded digital interface facilitates use and dissemination rather than bulky printed books as produced in the past. The impact of changes to Healthy People will be determined in the coming years. Systematic activities to prevent or cure health problems and promote health in humans are undertaken by health care providers. Applications with regard to animal health are covered by the veterinary sciences, studies have shown that high levels of stress can affect human health. Generally, the context in which an individual lives is of importance for both his health status and quality of their life. The concept of the field, as distinct from medical care. The report identified three interdependent fields as key determinants of an individuals health, the maintenance and promotion of health is achieved through different combination of physical, mental, and social well-being, together sometimes referred to as the health triangle. The WHOs 1986 Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion further stated that health is not just a state, Health is a positive concept emphasizing social and personal resources, as well as physical capacities. Health and illness can co-exist, as people with multiple chronic diseases or terminal illnesses can consider themselves healthy
11.
Education
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Education is the process of facilitating learning, or the acquisition of knowledge, skills, values, beliefs, and habits. Educational methods include storytelling, discussion, teaching, training, Education frequently takes place under the guidance of educators, but learners may also educate themselves. Education can take place in formal or informal settings and any experience that has an effect on the way one thinks, feels. The methodology of teaching is called pedagogy, in most regions education is compulsory up to a certain age. Etymologically, the education is derived from the Latin ēducātiō from ēducō which is related to the homonym ēdūcō from ē-. Education began in prehistory, as trained the young in the knowledge. In pre-literate societies this was achieved orally and through imitation, story-telling passed knowledge, values, and skills from one generation to the next. As cultures began to extend their knowledge beyond skills that could be learned through imitation. Schools existed in Egypt at the time of the Middle Kingdom, plato founded the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in Europe. The city of Alexandria in Egypt, established in 330 BCE, there, the great Library of Alexandria was built in the 3rd century BCE. European civilizations suffered a collapse of literacy and organization following the fall of Rome in CE476, after the Fall of Rome, the Catholic Church became the sole preserver of literate scholarship in Western Europe. The church established cathedral schools in the Early Middle Ages as centres of advanced education, some of these establishments ultimately evolved into medieval universities and forebears of many of Europes modern universities. During the High Middle Ages, Chartres Cathedral operated the famous, founded in 1088, the University of Bologne is considered the first, and the oldest continually operating university. The Renaissance in Europe ushered in a new age of scientific and intellectual inquiry and appreciation of ancient Greek, around 1450, Johannes Gutenberg developed a printing press, which allowed works of literature to spread more quickly. The European Age of Empires saw European ideas of education in philosophy, religion, arts, the Enlightenment saw the emergence of a more secular educational outlook in Europe. In most countries today, full-time education, whether at school or otherwise, is compulsory for all children up to a certain age, formal education occurs in a structured environment whose explicit purpose is teaching students. Usually, formal education takes place in a environment with classrooms of multiple students learning together with a trained, certified teacher of the subject. Most school systems are designed around a set of values or ideals that govern all educational choices in that system, such choices include curriculum, organizational models, design of the physical learning spaces, student-teacher interactions, methods of assessment, class size, educational activities, and more
12.
Peace
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Peace is a lack of conflict and freedom from fear of violence between heterogeneous social groups. Commonly understood as the absence of hostility, peace often involves compromise, Peace can be defined in a positive direction and in a negative sense. Positively, peace is a state of tranquility and stillness, however, in a negative sense, the term peace originates most recently from the Anglo-French pes, and the Old French pais, meaning peace, reconciliation, silence, agreement. But, Pes itself comes from the Latin pax, meaning peace, compact, agreement, treaty of peace, tranquility, absence of hostility, harmony. At a personal level, peaceful behaviors are kind, considerate, respectful, just, and tolerant of others beliefs and behaviors — tending to manifest goodwill. This latter understanding of peace can also pertain to an individuals introspective sense or concept of her/himself, as in being at peace in ones own mind, as found in European references from c.1200. In many languages, the word for peace is used as a greeting or a farewell, for example the Hawaiian word aloha. In English the word peace is used as a farewell, especially for the dead. Religious beliefs often seek to identify and address the problems of human life. Among pagan faiths, worship of personified Peace was organized in antiquity under the name Eirene in Greek-speaking areas and as Pax in Latin-speaking ones and her idols depicted a full-grown woman, usually with a horn of plenty and scepter and sometimes with a torch or olive leaves. Christians, who believe Jesus of Nazareth to be the Jewish Messiah called Christ, numerous pontifical documents on the Holy Rosary document a continuity of views of the Popes to have confidence in the Holy Rosary as a means to foster peace. Islam derived from the root word salam which literally means peace, muslims are called followers of Islam. Quran clearly stated Those who have believed and whose hearts are assured by the remembrance of Allah. Unquestionably, by the remembrance of Allah, hearts are assured and stated O you who have believed, and when you are told, Arise, then arise, Allah will raise those who have believed among you and those who were given knowledge, by degrees. And Allah is Acquainted with what you do, buddhists believe that peace can be attained once all suffering ends. They regard all suffering as stemming from cravings, aversions, or delusions, to eliminate such suffering and achieve personal peace, followers in the path of the Buddha adhere to a set of teachings called the Four Noble Truths — a central tenet in Buddhist philosophy. Hindu texts contain the following passages, May there be peace in the heavens, peace in the atmosphere, let there be coolness in the water, healing in the herbs and peace radiating from the trees. Let there be harmony in the planets and in the stars, may everything in the universe be at peace
13.
Euro
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Outside of Europe, a number of overseas territories of EU members also use the euro as their currency. Additionally,210 million people worldwide as of 2013 use currencies pegged to the euro, the euro is the second largest reserve currency as well as the second most traded currency in the world after the United States dollar. The name euro was adopted on 16 December 1995 in Madrid. The euro was introduced to world markets as an accounting currency on 1 January 1999. While the euro dropped subsequently to US$0.8252 within two years, it has traded above the U. S. dollar since the end of 2002, peaking at US$1.6038 on 18 July 2008. In July 2012, the euro fell below US$1.21 for the first time in two years, following concerns raised over Greek debt and Spains troubled banking sector, as of 26 March 2017, the euro–dollar exchange rate stands at ~ US$1.07. The euro is managed and administered by the Frankfurt-based European Central Bank, as an independent central bank, the ECB has sole authority to set monetary policy. The Eurosystem participates in the printing, minting and distribution of notes and coins in all states. The 1992 Maastricht Treaty obliges most EU member states to adopt the euro upon meeting certain monetary and budgetary convergence criteria, all nations that have joined the EU since 1993 have pledged to adopt the euro in due course. Since 5 January 2002, the central banks and the ECB have issued euro banknotes on a joint basis. Euro banknotes do not show which central bank issued them, Eurosystem NCBs are required to accept euro banknotes put into circulation by other Eurosystem members and these banknotes are not repatriated. The ECB issues 8% of the value of banknotes issued by the Eurosystem. In practice, the ECBs banknotes are put into circulation by the NCBs and these liabilities carry interest at the main refinancing rate of the ECB. The euro is divided into 100 cents, in Community legislative acts the plural forms of euro and cent are spelled without the s, notwithstanding normal English usage. Otherwise, normal English plurals are used, with many local variations such as centime in France. All circulating coins have a side showing the denomination or value. Due to the plurality in the European Union, the Latin alphabet version of euro is used. For the denominations except the 1-, 2- and 5-cent coins, beginning in 2007 or 2008 the old map is being replaced by a map of Europe also showing countries outside the Union like Norway
14.
Nobel Prize
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The Nobel Prize is a set of annual international awards bestowed in a number of categories by Swedish and Norwegian institutions in recognition of academic, cultural, or scientific advances. The will of the Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel established the prizes in 1895, the prizes in Chemistry, Literature, Peace, Physics, and Physiology or Medicine were first awarded in 1901. Medals made before 1980 were struck in 23 carat gold, between 1901 and 2016, the Nobel Prizes and the Prize in Economic Sciences were awarded 579 times to 911 people and organisations. With some receiving the Nobel Prize more than once, this makes a total of 23 organisations, the prize ceremonies take place annually in Stockholm, Sweden. Each recipient, or laureate, receives a medal, a diploma. The Nobel Prize is widely regarded as the most prestigious award available in the fields of literature, medicine, physics, chemistry, peace, and economics. The prize is not awarded posthumously, however, if a person is awarded a prize and dies before receiving it, though the average number of laureates per prize increased substantially during the 20th century, a prize may not be shared among more than three people. Alfred Nobel was born on 21 October 1833 in Stockholm, Sweden and he was a chemist, engineer, and inventor. In 1894, Nobel purchased the Bofors iron and steel mill and this invention was a precursor to many smokeless military explosives, especially the British smokeless powder cordite. As a consequence of his patent claims, Nobel was eventually involved in a patent infringement lawsuit over cordite, Nobel amassed a fortune during his lifetime, with most of his wealth from his 355 inventions, of which dynamite is the most famous. In 1888, Nobel was astonished to read his own obituary, titled The merchant of death is dead, as it was Alfreds brother Ludvig who had died, the obituary was eight years premature. The article disconcerted Nobel and made him apprehensive about how he would be remembered and this inspired him to change his will. On 10 December 1896, Alfred Nobel died in his villa in San Remo, Italy, Nobel wrote several wills during his lifetime. He composed the last over a year before he died, signing it at the Swedish–Norwegian Club in Paris on 27 November 1895, Nobel bequeathed 94% of his total assets,31 million SEK, to establish the five Nobel Prizes. Because of skepticism surrounding the will, it was not until 26 April 1897 that it was approved by the Storting in Norway. The executors of Nobels will, Ragnar Sohlman and Rudolf Lilljequist, formed the Nobel Foundation to take care of Nobels fortune, Nobels instructions named a Norwegian Nobel Committee to award the Peace Prize, the members of whom were appointed shortly after the will was approved in April 1897. Soon thereafter, the other prize-awarding organisations were designated or established and these were Karolinska Institutet on 7 June, the Swedish Academy on 9 June, and the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences on 11 June. The Nobel Foundation reached an agreement on guidelines for how the prizes should be awarded, and, in 1900, in 1905, the personal union between Sweden and Norway was dissolved
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Alfred Nobel
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Alfred Bernhard Nobel was a Swedish chemist, engineer, inventor, businessman, and philanthropist. Known for inventing dynamite, Nobel also owned Bofors, which he had redirected from its previous role as primarily an iron and steel producer to a manufacturer of cannon. Nobel held 355 different patents, dynamite being the most famous, after reading a premature obituary which condemned him for profiting from the sales of arms, he bequeathed his fortune to institute the Nobel Prizes. The synthetic element nobelium was named after him and his name also survives in modern-day companies such as Dynamit Nobel and AkzoNobel, which are descendants of mergers with companies Nobel himself established. Born in Stockholm, Alfred Nobel was the son of Immanuel Nobel, an inventor and engineer. The couple married in 1827 and had eight children, the family was impoverished, and only Alfred and his three brothers survived past childhood. Alfred Nobels interest in technology was inherited from his father, an alumnus of Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, following various business failures, Nobels father moved to Saint Petersburg in 1837 and grew successful there as a manufacturer of machine tools and explosives. He invented modern plywood and started work on the torpedo, in 1842, the family joined him in the city. For 18 months, from 1841 to 1842, Nobel went to the school he ever attended as a child. As a young man, Nobel studied with chemist Nikolai Zinin, then, in 1850, there he met Ascanio Sobrero, who had invented nitroglycerin three years before. Sobrero strongly opposed the use of nitroglycerin, as it was unpredictable, but Nobel became interested in finding a way to control and use nitroglycerin as a commercially usable explosive, as it had much more power than gunpowder. At age 18, he went to the United States for one year to study chemistry, working for a period under inventor John Ericsson. Nobel filed his first patent, an English patent for a gas meter, in 1857, while his first Swedish patent, the family factory produced armaments for the Crimean War, but had difficulty switching back to regular domestic production when the fighting ended and they filed for bankruptcy. In 1859, Nobels father left his factory in the care of the son, Ludvig Nobel. Nobel and his parents returned to Sweden from Russia and Nobel devoted himself to the study of explosives, Nobel invented a detonator in 1863, and in 1865 designed the blasting cap. On 3 September 1864, a used for preparation of nitroglycerin exploded at the factory in Heleneborg, Stockholm, killing five people. Dogged and unfazed by more minor accidents, Nobel went on to build further factories, Nobel invented dynamite in 1867, a substance easier and safer to handle than the more unstable nitroglycerin. Dynamite was patented in the US and the UK and was used extensively in mining, in 1875 Nobel invented gelignite, more stable and powerful than dynamite, and in 1887 patented ballistite, a predecessor of cordite
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Stockholm
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The city is spread across 14 islands on the coast in the southeast of Sweden at the mouth of Lake Mälaren, by the Stockholm archipelago and the Baltic Sea. The area has settled since the Stone Age, in the 6th millennium BC. It is also the capital of Stockholm County, Stockholm is the cultural, media, political, and economic centre of Sweden. The Stockholm region alone accounts for over a third of the countrys GDP and it is an important global city, and the main centre for corporate headquarters in the Nordic region. The city is home to some of Europes top ranking universities, such as the Stockholm School of Economics, Karolinska Institute and it hosts the annual Nobel Prize ceremonies and banquet at the Stockholm Concert Hall and Stockholm City Hall. One of the citys most prized museums, the Vasa Museum, is the most visited museum in Scandinavia. The Stockholm metro, opened in 1950, is known for its decoration of the stations. Swedens national football arena is located north of the city centre, Ericsson Globe, the national indoor arena, is in the southern part of the city. The city was the host of the 1912 Summer Olympics, and hosted the equestrian portion of the 1956 Summer Olympics otherwise held in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Stockholm is the seat of the Swedish government and most of its agencies, including the highest courts in the judiciary, and the official residencies of the Swedish monarch and the Prime Minister. The government has its seat in the Rosenbad building, the Riksdag is seated in the Parliament House, and the Prime Ministers residence is adjacent at the Sager House. After the Ice Age, around 8,000 BCE, there were already a number of people living in the present-day Stockholm area. Thousands of years later, as the ground thawed, the climate became tolerable, at the intersection of the Baltic Sea and lake Mälaren is an archipelago site where the Old Town of Stockholm was first built from about 1000 CE by Vikings. They had a positive impact on the area because of the trade routes they created. Stockholms location appears in Norse sagas as Agnafit, and in Heimskringla in connection with the legendary king Agne, the earliest written mention of the name Stockholm dates from 1252, by which time the mines in Bergslagen made it an important site in the iron trade. The first part of the name means log in Swedish, although it may also be connected to an old German word meaning fortification, the second part of the name means islet, and is thought to refer to the islet Helgeandsholmen in central Stockholm. Stockholms core, the present Old Town was built on the island next to Helgeandsholmen from the mid 13th century onward. The city originally rose to prominence as a result of the Baltic trade of the Hanseatic League, Stockholm developed strong economic and cultural linkages with Lübeck, Hamburg, Gdańsk, Visby, Reval, and Riga during this time
17.
Wangari Maathai
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Wangari Muta Maathai was an internationally renowned Kenyan environmental political activist and Nobel laureate. She was educated in the United States at Mount St. Scholastica, in 1977, Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement, an environmental non-governmental organization focused on the planting of trees, environmental conservation, and womens rights. Maathai was an member of Parliament and served as assistant minister for Environment. She was an Honorary Councillor of the World Future Council, in 2011, Maathai died of complications from ovarian cancer. On 1 April 1940, Maathai was born in the village of Ihithe, Nyeri District and her family was Kikuyu, the most populous ethnic group in Kenya, and had lived in the area for several generations. Around 1943, Maathais family relocated to a White-owned farm in the Rift Valley, near the town of Nakuru, where her father had found work. Late in 1947, she returned to Ihithe with her mother and her father remained at the farm. Shortly afterward, at the age of eight, she joined her brothers at Ihithe Primary School, at age eleven, Maathai moved to St. Cecilias Intermediate Primary School, a boarding school at the Mathari Catholic Mission in Nyeri. Maathai studied at St. Cecilias for four years, during this time, she became fluent in English and converted to Catholicism. She was involved with the Legion of Mary, whose members attempted to serve God by serving fellow human beings. Studying at St. Cecilias, she was sheltered from the ongoing Mau Mau Uprising, which forced her mother to move from their homestead to an emergency village in Ihithe. When she completed her studies there in 1956, she was rated first in her class, as the end of East African colonialism approached, Kenyan politicians, such as Tom Mboya, were proposing ways to make education in Western nations available to promising students. John F. Kennedy, then a United States Senator, agreed to such a program through the Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Foundation. Maathai became one of some 300 Kenyans selected to study in the United States in September 1960 and she received a scholarship to study at Mount St. Scholastica College, in Atchison, Kansas, where she majored in biology, with minors in chemistry and German. After receiving her bachelor of degree in 1964, she studied at the University of Pittsburgh for a masters degree in biology. In January 1966, Maathai received her M. Sc in biological sciences, upon returning to Kenya, Maathai dropped her forename, preferring to be known by her birth name, Wangari Muta. When she arrived at the university to start her new job, Maathai believed this was because of gender and tribal bias. In April 1966, she met Mwangi Mathai, another Kenyan who had studied in America and she also rented a small shop in the city, and established a general store, at which her sisters worked
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Astrid Lindgren
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Astrid Anna Emilia Lindgren was a Swedish writer of fiction and screenplays. As of January 2017, she is the worlds 18th most translated author, Lindgren has sold roughly 144 million books worldwide. Astrid Lindgren grew up in Näs, near Vimmerby, Småland, Sweden, Lindgren was the daughter of Samuel August Ericsson and Hanna Jonsson. She had two sisters, Stina and Ingegerd, and a brother, Gunnar Ericsson, who became a member of the Swedish parliament. Upon finishing school, Lindgren took a job with a newspaper in Vimmerby. She had a relationship with the editor, who was married. She declined and moved to the city of Stockholm, learning to become a typist. In due time, she gave birth to her son, Lars, in Copenhagen and left him in the care of a foster family. Although poorly paid, she saved whatever she could and travelled as often as possible to Copenhagen to be with Lars, often just over a weekend, spending most of her time on the train back and forth. Eventually, she managed to bring Lars home, leaving him in the care of her parents until she could afford to raise him in Stockholm, in 1931 she married her employer, Sture Lindgren, who left his wife for her. Three years later, in 1934, Lindgren gave birth to her child, Karin. The character Pippi Longstocking was invented for her daughter to amuse her while she was ill in bed, Lindgren later related that Karin had suddenly said to her, Tell me a story about Pippi Longstocking, and the tale was created in response to that request. The family moved in 1941 to an apartment on Dalagatan, with a view over Vasaparken, Astrid Lindgren died in her home in central Stockholm. Her funeral took place in the Storkyrkan in Gamla stan, among those attending were King Carl XVI Gustaf with Queen Silvia and others of the royal family, and Prime Minister Göran Persson. The ceremony was described as the closest you can get to a state funeral, Lindgren worked as a journalist and secretary before becoming a full-time author. She served as a secretary for the 1933 Swedish Summer Grand Prix, in 1944 Lindgren won second prize in a competition held by Rabén & Sjögren, a new publishing house, with the novel Britt-Marie lättar sitt hjärta. A year later she won first prize in the competition with the chapter book Pippi Långstrump. Since then it has one of the most beloved childrens books in the world and has been translated into 60 languages
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Bianca Jagger
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Bianca Jagger is a Nicaraguan social and human rights advocate and a former actress. She was married to Mick Jagger, lead singer of The Rolling Stones, Jagger was born in Managua, Nicaragua. Her father was a successful merchant and her mother a housewife. They divorced when Bianca was ten and she stayed with her mother and she received a scholarship to study political science in France at the Paris Institute of Political Studies. She has also influenced by Gandhis non-violent success and the eastern philosophy at large. Bianca met Mick Jagger at a party after a Rolling Stones concert in France in September 1970, on 12 May 1971, while she was four months pregnant, the couple married in a Roman Catholic ceremony in Saint-Tropez, France, and she became his first wife. The couples only child, a daughter named Jade, was born on 21 October 1971, in Paris, in May 1978, she filed for divorce on the grounds of his adultery with model Jerry Hall. Bianca later said My marriage ended on my wedding day and she also became known particularly as a friend of pop artist Andy Warhol. Jagger has dual nationality, as a naturalised British citizen and citizen of Nicaragua, Jagger has two granddaughters from her daughter Jade, Assisi Lola and Amba Isis and a grandson born in 2014. She became a great-grandmother in 2014 through her granddaughter Assisi, Jagger caused a minor controversy in May 2012 when she took flash photographs during a performance of Philip Glass Einstein on the Beach at the Barbican in London. In 1981, Jagger was part of a US congressional delegation stationed at a UN refugee camp in Honduras, at one point during her official visit, the entire staff saw about 40 captured refugees marched away at gunpoint towards El Salvador by a death squad. Armed with nothing but cameras to document the raid, Jagger, when both groups were within auditory range of each other, Jagger and the staff shouted at the M16 rifle equipped raiders, You will have to kill us all. The squad considered the situation, approached the group, relieved them of their cameras, a transformation had thus begun for Jagger. In subsequent interviews, Jagger has recounted this incident as a point in my life. Bianca Jagger founded the Bianca Jagger Human Rights Foundation, which she chairs and she returned to Nicaragua to look for her parents after the 1972 Nicaragua earthquake, which destroyed Managua, the capital, leaving a toll of more than 10,000 deaths and tens of thousands homeless. In early 1979, Jagger visited Nicaragua with an International Red Cross delegation and was shocked by the brutality and this persuaded her to commit herself to the issues of justice and human rights. In the 1980s, she worked to oppose US government intervention in Nicaragua after the Sandinista revolution and she has also opposed the death penalty and defended the rights of women and of indigenous peoples in Latin America, notably the Yanomami tribe in Brazil against the invasion of gold miners. She spoke up for victims of the conflicts in Bosnia and Serbia and her writings were published in several newspapers
20.
Mordechai Vanunu
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He was subsequently lured to Italy by a Mossad agent, where he was drugged and abducted by Israeli intelligence agents. He was transported to Israel and ultimately convicted in a trial that was held behind closed doors, Vanunu spent 18 years in prison, including more than 11 in solitary confinement. Released from prison in 2004, he became subject to an array of restrictions on his speech. Since then he has arrested several times for violations of those restrictions, including giving various interviews to foreign journalists. In 2007, Vanunu was sentenced to six months in prison for violating terms of his parole, the sentence was considered unusual even by the prosecution who expected a suspended sentence. In May 2010, Vanunu was arrested and sentenced to three months in jail on a charge that he met foreigners in violation of conditions of his 2004 release from jail, Vanunu has been characterized internationally as a whistleblower and by Israel as a traitor. Daniel Ellsberg has referred to him as the preeminent hero of the nuclear era, Vanunu was born in Marrakesh, Morocco, to an Orthodox Jewish family. The family lived in the citys Mellah, or Jewish quarter and his father, Shlomo, ran a grocery store, and his mother, Mazal, was a housewife. Vanunu studied in an Alliance française school, and a Jewish religious elementary school, in 1963, following a rise in anti-Semitic sentiment in Morocco, Vanunus father sold his business, and the family emigrated to Israel. Vanunu was eight years old at the time and had four brothers and sisters, upon arrival in Israel, the family was sent by the Jewish Agency to Beersheba, which at that time was an impoverished desert town. During their first year in Israel, the family lived in a wooden hut without electricity. Vanunus father purchased a small store in the towns market area. Vanunus father devoted his time to religious studies. He came to be regarded as a rabbi, and became well-respected in the market, Vanunu was sent to Yeshiva Techonit, a religious elementary school on the outskirts of town, which mixed religious and conventional studies. When he completed 8th grade, his parents sent him to a yeshiva, for high school, Vanunu attended Yeshivat Ohel Shlomo high school, a Bnei Akiva-run school, where he was an honor student. According to Vanunu, whilst in school, he had a personal crisis which led to him deciding to leave Judaism. He finished high school with a partial matriculation, Vanunus parents wanted him to attend a higher yeshiva, he agreed but left after a week. He then found a job in the court archives
21.
Leopold Kohr
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For almost twenty years, he was Professor of Economics and Public Administration at the University of Puerto Rico. He described himself as a philosophical anarchist and his most influential work was The Breakdown of Nations. Kohr grew up in the town of Oberndorf near Salzburg. He often commented on the fact that the Christmas carol Silent Night was written and he earned doctorate degrees in law, at the University of Innsbruck, Austria, and political science, at the University of Vienna. He also studied economics and political theory at the London School of Economics and he became a close friend of journalist George Orwell and shared offices with correspondents Ernest Hemingway and André Malraux. Kohr fled Austria in 1938 after it was annexed by Nazi Germany and he later became an American citizen. Kohr taught economics and political philosophy at Rutgers University, in the U. S. state of New Jersey and he also advised the independence movement of the nearby island of Anguilla. After many rejections by American and British publishers, Kohrs first book, in 1973, Kohr moved from Puerto Rico to Wales, where he taught political philosophy at the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth. The project of Welsh independence, founded on the ideal of cymdeithas was dear to him, and Kohr became a mentor to Plaid Cymru, after retiring from teaching, Kohr divided his time between Gloucester, England, and Hellbrunn, outside Salzburg. In 1983, in Stockholm, Sweden, Kohr received the Right Livelihood Award, in 1984, Salzburg created the Leopold Kohr Academy and Cultural Association Tauriska to put his theories of regional autonomy into practice. Kohr was planning to return to his hometown of Oberndorf to live when he died in 1994 and his ashes were buried in Oberndorf. Salzburg journalist Gerald Lehner completed a biography of Kohr, based in part on long audiotaped interviews, Kohr was a charming conversationalist and a witty, elegant debunker of popular assumptions. Author Ivan Illich describes him as a funny bird—meek, fey, droll, Kohr described himself as a philosophical anarchist. Kohr protested the cult of bigness and economic growth and promoted the concept of human scale and he argued that massive external aid to poorer nations stifled local initiatives and participation. His vision called for a dissolution of centralized political and economic structures in favor of local control and he called for the breakup of Europe into hundreds of city states. Kohr developed his ideas in a series of books, including The Breakdown of Nations, Development without Aid, from Leopold Kohrs most popular work The Breakdown of Nations, there seems to be only one cause behind all forms of social misery, bigness. Oversimplified as this may seem, we find the idea more easily acceptable if we consider that bigness. It appears to be the one and only problem permeating all creation, whenever something is wrong, something is too big
22.
Petra Kelly
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Petra Karin Kelly was a German Green politician and activist. She was instrumental in founding the German Green Party, the first Green party to rise to prominence both nationally in Germany and worldwide, Kelly was born in Günzburg, Bavaria, in 1947, as Petra Karin Lehmann. She changed her name to Kelly after her mother married John E. Kelly and she was educated in a Roman Catholic convent in Günzburg and later attended school in Georgia and Virginia after her family relocated to the United States in 1959. She lived and studied in the United States until her return to West Germany in 1970 and she retained her German citizenship throughout her life. An admirer of Martin Luther King, Jr. she campaigned for Robert F. Kennedy and she studied political science at the School of International Service at American University, from which she graduated in 1970. She graduated from the European Institute at the University of Amsterdam in 1971, while working at the European Commission, she participated in numerous peace and environmental campaigns in Germany and other countries. After working for two years at the European Commission, she moved to an administrative post at the Economic and Social Committee, Petra Kelly was one of the founders of Die Grünen, the German Green Party in 1979. In 1983 she was elected to the Bundestag via the landesliste as a Member of Parliament representing Bavaria and she was subsequently re-elected in 1987 with a higher vote share. In 1981 Petra Kelly was involved in a protest of 400,000 people in Bonn against nuclear weapons. In 1982, Gerhard Schröder wrote a contribution in Die Zeit for the book Prinzip Leben, edited by Kelly and Jo Leinen, which discussed ecological problems and a possible nuclear war. In the same year, Kelly received the Right Livelihood Award. for forging and implementing a new vision uniting ecological concerns with disarmament, social justice, and human rights. On 12 May 1983 Kelly, Gert Bastian and three other Green Bundestag members unfurled a banner on Alexanderplatz in East Berlin, which said The Greens – Swords to Ploughshares, after being briefly arrested, they met with East German opposition parties. The East German authorities tolerated this since the West German Greens repudiated the NATO Double-Track Decision, in October 1983, Erich Honecker, the leader of the German Democratic Republic, met Petra Kelly, Gert Bastian and other Greens. Kelly wore a pullover with the words Swords to Ploughshares on it and she demanded the release of all prisoners of the East German peace movement and asked Honecker why he repressed something in the GDR which he supported in the West. Kelly wrote the book Fighting for Hope in 1984, published by South End Press, the book is an urgent call for a world free from violence between North and South, men and women, ourselves and our environment. The police determined that Kelly was shot dead while sleeping by Bastian, the last time anyone heard from the couple was on 30 September 1992 when Kelly sent a parcel to her grandmother. Kelly was buried in the Waldfriedhof in Würzburg, near the village of Heidingsfeld in Lower Franconia, Bavaria, Kelly was positioned between the tropical ecologist Mike Hands and the national parks visionary John Dower. Essays on Environmentalism, Feminism, and Nonviolence, Parallax Press, Berkeley, California,1994 Kelly, Petra K. Nonviolence Speaks to Power, online book, almost complete text Wilsford, David, political leaders of contemporary Western Europe, a biographical dictionary pp. 230–236
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Survival International
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Survival International is a human rights organisation formed in 1969 that campaigns for the rights of indigenous tribal peoples and uncontacted peoples. The organisations campaigns generally focus on tribal peoples desires to keep their ancestral lands, Survival International calls these peoples some of the most vulnerable on earth, and aims to eradicate what it calls misconceptions used to justify violations of human rights. It also aims to publicize the perceived risks that tribes face from the actions of corporations, Survival International states that it aims to help foster tribal peoples self-determination. Survival International is in association with the Department of Public Information at the United Nations and in status with the United Nations Economic. To ensure freedom of action, Survival accepts no government funding and it is a founding member and a signatory organization of the International NGO Accountability Charter. Survival has offices in Amsterdam, Berlin, London, Madrid, Milan, Paris, Survival International was founded in 1969 after an article by Norman Lewis in The Sunday Times Magazine highlighted the massacres, land thefts and genocide taking place in Brazilian Amazonia. In 1971, the organisation, known as the Primitive Peoples Fund. Survival International incorporated as an English company in 1972, and registered as a charity in 1974, thus the concept of Survival International was born. It was the first in this field to use mass letter-writing, having orchestrated several campaigns in different places throughout the world, such as Siberia, Canada. Several campaigns were able to bring change to government policies regarding the rights of indigenous people. Shortly before that, the governor of western Siberia imposed a ban on in the territory of the Yugan Khanty within weeks of Survival issuing a bulletin. Survival was also the first organisation to draw attention to the effects of World Bank projects – now recognised as a major cause of suffering in many poor countries. Survival International works for tribal rights on three complementary levels, education, advocacy and campaigns. The educational programs are aimed at people in the Western world, aiming at demolishing the myth that people are relics. Survival seeks to respect for their cultures and explain their relevance today in preserving their way of life. If we want to help societies our first job is to listen, rather than to dictate what we think they need, Survival has supporters in 82 countries. Its materials are published in many languages throughout the world and it is a registered charity in the United Kingdom and the equivalent in Germany, France, Italy, Spain and the United States, and can receive tax-free donations in the Netherlands. Survival refuses government funding, depending exclusively on public support, in order to ensure freedom of action, all the people sent into the field belong to Survival International staff, none are sponsored volunteers or visitors of any kind
24.
Amy Goodman
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Amy Goodman is an American broadcast journalist, syndicated columnist, investigative reporter, and author. Goodmans investigative journalism career includes coverage of the East Timor independence movement, since 1996, Goodman has hosted Democracy Now. An independent global news program broadcast daily on radio, television and she is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Thomas Merton Award in 2004, a Right Livelihood Award in 2008, and an Izzy Award in 2009 for special achievement in independent media. In 2012, Goodman received the Gandhi Peace Award for a significant contribution to the promotion of an international peace. Goodman is the author of six books, including the 2012 The Silenced Majority, Stories of Uprisings, Occupations, Resistance, and Hope, twenty Years Covering the Movements Changing America. In 2016, she was charged in connection with her coverage of protests of the Bakken pipeline. The charges, which were condemned by the Committee to Protect Journalists, were dismissed on October 17,2016, Amy Goodman was born on April 13,1957, in Washington, D. C. Her father, George Goodman, was an ophthalmologist, and her mother, Dorothy, Goodman is from an Orthodox Jewish family, her maternal grandfather was an Orthodox Rabbi. Raised in Bay Shore, New York, she graduated from Bay Shore High School in 1975, Goodman spent a year studying at the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine. Two villagers were shot and killed during the standoff, soon after landing, the Nigerian military shot and killed two of the protesters, Jola Ogungbeje and Aroleka Irowaninu, and wounded 11 others. Chevron spokesperson Sola Omole acknowledged that the company transported the troops, the documentary, Drilling and Killing, Chevron and Nigerias Oil Dictatorship, won the George Polk Award in 1998. Michael Delli Carpini, dean of the Annenberg School for Communication, said and she provides points of view that make you think, and she comes at it by saying, Who are we not hearing from in the traditional media. Goodman had been director of Pacifica Radio station WBAI in New York City for over a decade when she co-founded Democracy Now. The War and Peace Report in 1996, since then, Democracy Now. has been called probably the most significant progressive news institution that has come around in some time by professor and media critic Robert McChesney. In 2001, the show was pulled off the air, as a result of a conflict with a group of Pacifica Radio board members. During that time, it moved to a converted firehouse from which it broadcast until November 13,2009, subsequently moved to a studio located in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan. Goodman credits the success to the mainstream media organizations who leave a huge niche for Democracy Now. During the 2008 Republican National Convention, several of Goodmans colleagues from Democracy Now, were arrested and detained by police while reporting on an anti-war protest outside the RNC. producers including reporter Sharif Abdel Kouddous were held on charges of probable cause for riot
25.
Memorial (society)
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Memorial is a Russian historical and civil rights society that operates in a number of post-Soviet states. It focuses on recording and publicising the Soviet Unions totalitarian past, memorials full name is MEMORIAL, An International Historical, Educational, Human Rights And Charitable Society. This is done, in particular, by keeping a database of the victims of political terror in the USSR. Memorial organizes assistance, both legal and financial, for the victims of the Gulag and it also conducts research into the history of political repression and publicizes the findings in books, articles, exhibitions, museums, and websites of its member organizations. For nine months the memorial sat beside the statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky, known as Iron Felix, the efforts of Memorial were behind the Law on Rehabilitation of Victims of Political Repression, which was passed in 1991. In 1991 Memorial also contributed to the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR officially making October 30 a Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Political Repression, Memorial also helps individuals to find documents, graves, etc. of politically persecuted relatives. As of 2005, Memorial had a database of over 1,300,000 names of such people, the archives were used by British historian Orlando Figes when he was researching his 2008 book The Whisperers, Private Lives in Stalins Russia. Memorial funds or helps to produce publications and films. The 25 minute film was produced in collaboration with WITNESS, Memorial are trying to build a National Memorial Museum Complex in Kovalevsky Forest to commemorate 4,500 victims of the Red Terror. Memorial discovered the bodies in 2002, the idea suggested creating a monument, a museum, an archive, a library. This led to an informal movement which expanded the original goals. It organized a petition to the 19th Conference of the CPSU, the petition resulted in the conference decreeing the creation of the monument to victims of repressions. A decision of the 22nd Congress of the CPSU was earlier ignored, the Memorial as the historical and educational society was founded at the conference held in the Moscow Aviation Institute January 26–28,1989. In 1991 a Civil Rights Defense Center MEMORIAL was founded, a poll was carried out in Moscow streets of the names of the candidates to the Public Council of the society. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union the society became international, with organizations in post-Soviet states, Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Latvia, and Georgia, as well as in Italy. In 2004, Memorial was among the four recipients of the Right Livelihood Award, for its work in documenting violations of rights in Russia. In 2008, Memorial won the Hermann Kesten Prize, in 2009, Memorial won the Sakharov Prize, in memory of the murdered Memorial activist Natalya Estemirova. A cash reward, which comes with the prize, of €50,000 is to be awarded to Memorial in December 2009, Memorial was awarded the Victor Gollancz Prize by the Society for Threatened Peoples in 2009
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Edward Snowden
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In 2013, Snowden was hired by an NSA contractor, Booz Allen Hamilton, after previous employment with Dell and the CIA. Snowden came to attention after stories based on the material appeared in The Guardian. Further disclosures were made by publications including Der Spiegel and The New York Times. On June 21,2013, the U. S. Department of Justice unsealed charges against Snowden of two counts of violating the Espionage Act of 1917 and theft of government property. Two days later, he flew into Moscows Sheremetyevo Airport, but Russian authorities noted that his U. S. passport had been cancelled, Russia ultimately granted him right of asylum for one year, and repeated extensions have permitted him to stay at least until 2020. He reportedly lives in a location in Moscow, and continues to seek asylum elsewhere in the world. A subject of controversy, Snowden has been called a hero, a whistleblower, a dissident, a traitor. His disclosures have fueled debates over mass surveillance, government secrecy, Edward Joseph Snowden was born on June 21,1983, in Elizabeth City, North Carolina. His maternal grandfather, Edward J. Barrett, was an admiral in the U. S. Coast Guard who became a senior official with the FBI and was at the Pentagon in 2001 during the September 11 attacks. Snowdens father, Lonnie Snowden, was also an officer in the Coast Guard, Snowden, is chief deputy at the U. S. District Court for the District of Maryland. His older sister, Jessica, was a lawyer at the Federal Judicial Center in Washington, Snowden said that in one way or another, his entire family has been employed by the federal government, and that he expected to pursue the same path. His parents divorced in 2001, and his father remarried, Snowden scored above 145 on two separate IQ tests. In the early 1990s, while still in school, Snowden moved with his family to the area of Fort Meade. Mononucleosis caused him to high school for almost nine months. Rather than returning to school, he passed the GED test, Although Snowden had no undergraduate college degree, he worked online toward a masters degree at the University of Liverpool, England, in 2011. He was reportedly interested in Japanese popular culture, had studied the Japanese language and he also said he had a basic understanding of Mandarin Chinese and was deeply interested in martial arts. At age 20, he listed Buddhism as his religion on a military recruitment form, Snowden has said that in the 2008 presidential election, he voted for a third-party candidate. He has stated that he had been planning to comment on NSA surveillance programs at the time and he was later disappointed with President Barack Obama, saying that his policies were a continuation of those espoused by George W. Bush
27.
Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences
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The prize was established in 1968 by a donation from Swedens central bank, the Swedish National Bank, on the banks 300th anniversary. Although it is not one of the prizes that Alfred Nobel established in his will in 1895, laureates are announced with the other Nobel Prize laureates, and receive the award at the same ceremony. Laureates in the Memorial Prize in Economics are selected by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and it was first awarded in 1969 to the Dutch and Norwegian economists Jan Tinbergen and Ragnar Frisch, for having developed and applied dynamic models for the analysis of economic processes. An endowment in perpetuity from Sveriges Riksbank pays the Nobel Foundations administrative expenses associated with the prize, since 2012, the monetary portion of the Prize in Economics has totalled 8 million Swedish kronor. This is equivalent to the amount given for the original Nobel Prizes, the Prize in Economics is not one of the original Nobel Prizes created by Alfred Nobels will. However, the process, selection criteria, and awards presentation of the Prize in Economic Sciences are performed in a manner similar to that of the Nobel Prizes. Laureates are announced with the Nobel Prize laureates, and receive the award at the same ceremony, shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind. According to its website, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences administers a researcher exchange with academies in other countries and publishes six scientific journals. Members of the Academy and former laureates are also authorised to nominate candidates, all proposals and their supporting evidence must be received before February 1. The proposals are reviewed by the Prize Committee and specially appointed experts, before the end of September, the committee chooses potential laureates. If there is a tie, the chairman of the committee casts the deciding vote, next, the potential laureates must be approved by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Members of the Ninth Class of the Academy vote in mid-October to determine the next laureate or laureates of the Prize in Economics. The first prize in economics was awarded in 1969 to Ragnar Frisch, in 2009, Elinor Ostrom became the first woman awarded the prize. This makes it available to researchers in such topics as political science, psychology, moreover, the composition of the Economics Prize Committee changed to include two non-economists. This has not been confirmed by the Economics Prize Committee, the members of the 2007 Economics Prize Committee are still dominated by economists, as the secretary and four of the five members are professors of economics. Some critics argue that the prestige of the Prize in Economics derives in part from its association with the Nobel Prizes, among them is the Swedish human rights lawyer Peter Nobel, a great-grandson of Ludvig Nobel. Nobel criticizes the institution of misusing his familys name. He explaiend that Nobel despised people who cared more about profits than societys well-being and this does not matter in the natural sciences
28.
Sveriges Riksbank
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Sveriges Riksbank, or simply Riksbanken, is the central bank of Sweden. It is the worlds oldest central bank and the 3rd oldest bank still in operation and it is sometimes called the Swedish National Bank or the Bank of Sweden. The Riksbank began operations in 1668, previously, Sweden was served by the Stockholms Banco, which was founded by Johan Palmstruch in 1656. Although the bank was private, it was the king who chose its management, in a letter to Palmstruch, but Stockholms Banco collapsed as a result of the issuing of too many notes without the necessary collateral. Palmstruch, who was considered responsible for the losses, was condemned to death. On 17 September 1668, the privilege of Palmstruch to operate a bank was transferred to the Riksens Ständers Bank and was run under the auspices of the parliament of the day. Due to the failure of Stockholm Banco, the new bank was managed under the control of the Riksdag of the Estates to prevent the interference from the king. When a new Riksdag was instituted in 1866, the name of the bank was changed to Sveriges Riksbank, having learnt the lesson of the Stockholms Banco experience, the Riksbank was not permitted to issue bank-notes. Nevertheless, in 1701, permission was granted to issue so called credit-notes, some time in the middle of the 18th century, counterfeit notes began appearing, which caused serious problems. To prevent forgeries, it was decided that the Riksbank should produce its own paper for bank-notes, a few years later, the first commercial banks were founded and these were also allowed to issue bank-notes. The bank-notes represented a claim to the bank without interest paid, nonetheless, security in the form of a deposit at the Riksbank was required to cover the value of all notes issued. During the 19th century, the Riksbank maintained a dominant position as a credit institution, the bank also managed national trade transactions as well as continuing to provide credit to the general public. The first branch-office was opened in 1824, later followed with branches opening in each county. The present operational activities as a central bank differ from those during the 19th century, for example, no interest-rate-related activities were conducted. The position of the Riksbank as a central bank dates back to 1897, behind the decision were repeated demands that the private banks should cease to issue notes as it was considered that the ensuing profits should befall the general public. The Swedish currency was backed by gold and the paper-certificates could be exchanged for gold coins until 1931 and this law was renewed every year until the new constitution was ratified in 1975 which split the bank from the government into a stand-alone organization not obligated to exchange notes for gold. In November 1992, the exchange rate regime of the Swedish Krona collapsed. A few months later, in January 1993, the Governing Board of the Riksbank developed a new policy regime based on a floating exchange rate
29.
Hanumappa Sudarshan
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Dr. Hanumappa Sudarshan is an Indian social worker and tribal rights activist. He is well known for his contributions to the upliftment of the forest dwelling tribes in the Chamarajanagar district of Karnataka and he is also a recipient of the Right Livelihood Award and the Padma Shri. Sudarshan was born in Yemalur on the outskirts of Bangalore and he graduated from Bangalore Medical College and became a medical doctor in the year 1973. He is also an Adjunct Professor at IGNOU and he is also the founder and Honorary Secretary of the Karuna Trust, which is dedicated to rural development in the states of Karnataka and Arunachal Pradesh. He claims inspiration from the man-making and nation-building ideals of Swami Vivekananda and he advocates Gandhian ideals for rural development. VGKK is an organisation with a mission of Sustainable development of people through rights-based approaches to health, education. Founded in October 1981 by Dr, the organisation has always had a tribal youth as its President. Jadeya Gowda, one of the first few children who was taught by Dr. Sudarshan, is the President and he did a graduation and post-graduation in agriculture and is doing his PhD at the University of Agricultural Sciences, Bangalore. VGKK runs a 450 pupil school for the tribes of B R Hills where the students are provided education equivalent to that provided in the urban areas, subjects related to the tribal welfare such as environmental issues, tribal values and culture are also a part of the curriculum. VGKK also has a training institute where 16 crafts are taught. As a result of the efforts of VGKK, about 60% of the Soliga tribe now get a minimum of 300 days of employment per year from the Forest Department of Karnataka, VGKK is an established voluntary agency recognised by the Ministry of Tribal Affairs, Government of India. Started in the year 1986 by Dr. Sudarshan, Karuna Trust is an organisation involved with integrated rural development and is affiliated to VGKK, the prevalence of leprosy in Yelandur Taluk of Chamarajanagar district was the motivation to start this trust. Another focus area for this trust is education and livelihood improvement, Karuna Trust runs 72 Primary Health Care Centres in all the districts of the state of Karnataka and Arunachal Pradesh. The organisation promotes Public Private Partnership with NGOs on a basis to achieve primary health care. He has also been the Vigilance Director for the Karnataka Lokayukta, during his tenure, he adopted a method of regular visits and raids to several Government departments and earned critical acclaim for this. Right Livelihood Award, for showing how tribal culture can contribute to a process that secures the rights and fundamental needs of indigenous people. Padma Shri Award Rajyotsava State Award for social work – Government of Karnataka, mother Teresa Awards for Social Justice in 2014. To eliminate disease you have to remove poverty, the only way to do that, I have realised, is to organise the people for their rights
30.
Biligiriranga Hills
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The Biligirirangana Hills, commonly called B R Hills, is a hill range situated in south-eastern Karnataka, at its border with Tamil Nadu in South India. The area is called Biligiriranganatha Swamy Temple Wildlife Sanctuary or simply BRT Wildlife Sanctuary and it is a protected reserve under the Wildlife Protection Act of 1972. Being at the confluence of the Western Ghats and the Eastern Ghats, the site was declared a tiger reserve in January 2011 by the Karnataka government, a few months after approval from Indias National Tiger Conservation Authority. The hills are located at the easternmost edge of the Western Ghats and support diverse flora, a wildlife sanctuary of 322.4 square kilometres was created around the temple on 27 June 1974, and enlarged to 539.52 square kilometres on 14 January 1987. The hills are in the Yelandur, Kollegal and Chamarajanagar talukas of Chamarajanagar District of Karnataka and they are contiguous with hills in Sathyamangalam Wildlife Sanctuary in Erode District of Tamil Nadu to the south. By road, they are about 90 kilometres from Mysore and 160 kilometres from Bangalore, the road leading to the village on top of the hills may be approached either from Yelandur or Chamarajanagar. The temple of Ranganatha is situated at the edge of a cliff overlooking the northern parts of the sanctuary. The bare rock-cliff looks white in colour, giving the hill its name, the deity is often referred to as Biligiriranga and is depicted in a unique standing position. This may have happened to attract patronage of the Sultan as he was supposed be a patron of Ranganatha, other deities in the temple include those of Ranganayaki and several Alvars. An annual car festival is held during Vaishakha in the month of April, every two years, the local Soliga tribe present a large pair of slippers measuring 1-foot and 9 inches, to Ranganatha. A large Michelia champaka known as Doddasampige is one of several sacred groves of India of the Soliga people, the tree is believed to be several hundred years old and its large canopy provides shelter to a number of lingas worshipped by local communities, including the Soligas. The tree is on the banks of a river, Bhargavi, on the occasion of Mahashivaratri, several festivities including dance and prayers are traditionally performed around a fire by the Soligas. The BR hills links the Eastern Ghats and the Western Ghats allowing animals to move them and facilitating gene flow between populations of species in these areas. Thus, this serves as an important biological bridge for the biota of the entire Deccan plateau. The BR hills along with the Male Mahadeshwara Hills range forms a distinctly unusual ridge running north-south amidst the plains of Bangalore, Mysore, the peaks of these lofty range rise as high as 1800 m. The highest hill is Kattari Betta, at 1800 MSL, various observations point to a possible biogeographic link between BR hills and Nilgiri ranges. It is located between 11° and 12° N and the ridges of the run in the north-south direction. It is a projection of the Western Ghats in a north-easterly direction and this unique extension of Western Ghats constitutes a live bridge between the Eastern and Western Ghats with the sanctuary located almost in the middle of this bridge
31.
Nobel Foundation
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The Nobel Foundation is a private institution founded on 29 June 1900 to manage the finances and administration of the Nobel Prizes. The Foundation is based on the last will of Alfred Nobel and it also holds Nobel Symposia on important breakthroughs in science and topics of cultural or social significance. Alfred Bernhard Nobel, born on 21 October 1833 in Stockholm Sweden, was a chemist, engineer, innovator, armaments manufacturer and he owned Bofors, a major armaments manufacturer, which he had redirected from its original business as an iron and steel mill. Nobel held 355 different patents, dynamite being the most famous, Nobel amassed a sizeable personal fortune during his lifetime, thanks mostly to this invention. In 1896 Nobel died of a stroke in his villa in San Remo, Nobels will expressed a request, to the surprise of many, that his money be used for prizes in physics, chemistry, peace, physiology or medicine and literature. Though Nobel wrote several wills during his lifetime, the last was written a little over a year before he died, Nobel bequeathed 94% of his total assets,31 million Swedish kronor, to establish and endow the five Nobel Prizes. The executors of his will were Ragnar Sohlman and Rudolf Lilljequist who formed the Nobel Foundation to take care of Nobels fortune, as of December 31,2015, the assets controlled by the Nobel Foundation amounted to 4.065 billion Swedish kronor. The Nobel Foundation was founded as an organisation on 29 June 1900 specifically to manage the finances. It is based on Nobels last will and testament, at the time Nobels will led to much specticism and criticism and thus it was not until April 26,1897 that his will was approved by the Storting. Soon thereafter they appointed the members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee that was to award the Peace Prize, shortly after, the other prize-awarding organizations followed, Karolinska Institutet on June 7, the Swedish Academy on June 9 and the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences on June 11. The next thing the Nobel Foundation did was to try to agree on guidelines for how the Nobel Prize should be awarded, in 1900 the Nobel Foundations newly created statutes were promulgated by King Oscar II. In 1905 the Union between Sweden and Norway was dissolved which meant the responsibility for awarding Nobel Prizes was split between the two countries, norways Nobel Committee became the awarder of the Peace Prize while Sweden became the awarder of the other prizes. In accordance with Nobels will, the task of the Nobel Foundation is to manage the fortune Nobel left after him in a fund. Another important task of the Nobel Foundation is to represent the Nobel Prize to the outside world, the Nobel Foundation is not involved in any way in the process of selecting the Nobel laureates. In many ways the Nobel Foundation is similar to an investment company in that it invests money in ways to create a solid funding base for the prize. The Nobel Foundation is exempt from all taxes in Sweden and from investment taxes in the United States, since the 1980s the Foundations investments began to earn more money than previously. At the beginning of the 1980s the award money was 1 million SEK, according to the statutes the Foundation should consist of a Board with its seat in Stockholm. It should consist of five men, the Chairman of the board should be appointed by the King in Council
32.
Hassan Fathy
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Fathy was recognized with the Aga Khan Chairmans Award for Architecture in 1980. In 2017, Google celebrated Fathy with a Google Doodle for pioneering new methods, respecting tradition, Hassan Fathy was born in Alexandria in 1900. He trained as an architect in Egypt, graduating in 1926 from the King Fuad University, Hassan Fathy was a cosmopolitan trilingual professor-engineer-architect, amateur musician, dramatist, and inventor. These communities included many buildings such as laundry facilities, ovens. He utilized ancient design methods and materials, as well as knowledge of the rural Egyptian economic situation with a knowledge of ancient architectural. He trained local inhabitants to make their own materials and build their own buildings and he began teaching at the College of Fine Arts in 1930 and designed his first adobe buildings in the late 1930s. This project was applauded in a popular British weekly in 1947 and soon after in a British professional journal, further articles were published in Spanish, French, in 1953 he returned to Cairo, heading the Architectural Section of the Faculty of Fine Arts in 1954. Fathys next major engagement was designing and supervising school construction for Egypts Ministry of Education, returning to Cairo in 1963, he moved to Darb al-Labbana, near the Cairo Citadel, where he lived and worked for the rest of his life. He also did public speaking and private consulting and he was a man with a riveting message in an era searching for alternatives in fuel, personal interactions, and economic supports. His authoritative book on Gourna, published in an edition in 1969, became even more influential in 1973 when it gained a new English title. His participation in the first U. N, habitat conference in 1976 in Vancouver which was followed shortly by two events that significantly shaped the rest of his activities. He began to serve on the committee for the nascent Aga Khan Award for Architecture and he founded. In 1980, he was awarded the Balzan Prize for Architecture and Urban Planning and he held several government positions and died in Cairo in 1989. Fathy has been called Egypts best-known architect since Imhotep, an appreciation of the importance of Fathys contribution to world architecture became clear only as the twentieth century waned. Climatic conditions, public health considerations, and ancient craft skills also affected his design decisions, based on the structural massing of ancient buildings, Fathy incorporated dense brick walls and traditional courtyard forms to provide passive cooling. Fathy is also renowned for having revived the traditional Nubian vault, the windcatchers are known in traditional architecture invented by Persian designers. In the Neoislamic architec they are recognized as the works of Hassan Fathy, in Egypt the windcatchers are known as Malqaf. Fathy married once, to Aziza Hassanein, sister of Ahmed Hassanein and he designed a villa for her along the Nile in Maadi, which was destroyed to make way for the corniche
33.
Egypt
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Egypt, officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia by a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. Egypt is a Mediterranean country bordered by the Gaza Strip and Israel to the northeast, the Gulf of Aqaba to the east, the Red Sea to the east and south, Sudan to the south, and Libya to the west. Across the Gulf of Aqaba lies Jordan, and across from the Sinai Peninsula lies Saudi Arabia, although Jordan and it is the worlds only contiguous Afrasian nation. Egypt has among the longest histories of any country, emerging as one of the worlds first nation states in the tenth millennium BC. Considered a cradle of civilisation, Ancient Egypt experienced some of the earliest developments of writing, agriculture, urbanisation, organised religion and central government. One of the earliest centres of Christianity, Egypt was Islamised in the century and remains a predominantly Muslim country. With over 92 million inhabitants, Egypt is the most populous country in North Africa and the Arab world, the third-most populous in Africa, and the fifteenth-most populous in the world. The great majority of its people live near the banks of the Nile River, an area of about 40,000 square kilometres, the large regions of the Sahara desert, which constitute most of Egypts territory, are sparsely inhabited. About half of Egypts residents live in areas, with most spread across the densely populated centres of greater Cairo, Alexandria. Modern Egypt is considered to be a regional and middle power, with significant cultural, political, and military influence in North Africa, the Middle East and the Muslim world. Egypts economy is one of the largest and most diversified in the Middle East, Egypt is a member of the United Nations, Non-Aligned Movement, Arab League, African Union, and Organisation of Islamic Cooperation. Miṣr is the Classical Quranic Arabic and modern name of Egypt. The name is of Semitic origin, directly cognate with other Semitic words for Egypt such as the Hebrew מִצְרַיִם, the oldest attestation of this name for Egypt is the Akkadian
34.
Plenty International
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Plenty International is an environmental, humanitarian aid and human rights organization based in Summertown, Tennessee, United States. In 1974, Stephen Gaskin and The Farm, an intentional community, in response to the devastating 1976 Guatemala earthquake, Plenty sent carpenters who built schools, houses and clinics in remote Mayan villages and a clinic for Mother Teresa. It provided disaster relief in the Developing World and free service to the South Bronx which helped to train emergency personnel what then became New York Citys EMS. It went to sea with Greenpeace and gave the Rainbow Warrior its ham radio, slo-scan TV, Plenty put Native American FM stations on the air, and pioneered amateur-band television and radio to keep its remote outposts of volunteers connected. Plenty is active in the Central American Food Security Initiative, including programs with ADIBE in Guatemala, Soynica in Nicaragua, plentys Soyarias now operated by ADIBE in Sololá and San Bartolo, Guatemala, introduced soy dairy and soy ice cream microcredit enterprise in the 1980s. In 1978, Plenty formed a research team, Ethos Research Group, and a litigation project to work on environmental issues and human rights. It later sponsored the Environmental Resource Center in Portland, Oregon, Plenty worked with Veterans for Peace, Camp Casey, and others to place volunteers where they were most needed. Plenty also brought displaced and disadvantaged children from the Gulf Coast back to The Farm to participate in its Kids To The Country summer nature school in 2006, Plenty was awarded the Right Livelihood Award in 1980
35.
United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
36.
Guatemala
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With an estimated population of around 15.8 million, it is the most populated state in Central America. Guatemala is a democracy, its capital and largest city is Nueva Guatemala de la Asunción. The territory of modern Guatemala once formed the core of the Maya civilization, most of the country was conquered by the Spanish in the 16th century, becoming part of the viceroyalty of New Spain. Guatemala attained independence in 1821 as part of the Federal Republic of Central America, from the mid to late 19th century, Guatemala experienced chronic instability and civil strife. Beginning in the early 20th century, it was ruled by a series of dictators backed by the United Fruit Company, in 1944, authoritarian leader Jorge Ubico was overthrown by a pro-democratic military coup, initiating a decade-long revolution that led to sweeping social and economic reforms. A U. S. -backed military coup in 1954 ended the revolution, from 1960 to 1996, Guatemala endured a bloody civil war fought between the US-backed government and leftist rebels, including genocidal massacres of the Maya population perpetrated by the military. As of 2014, Guatemala ranks 31st of 33 Latin American and Caribbean countries in terms of the Human Development Index, Guatemalas abundance of biologically significant and unique ecosystems includes a large number of endemic species and contributes to Mesoamericas designation as a biodiversity hotspot. The country is known for its rich and distinct culture. The name Guatemala comes from the Nahuatl word Cuauhtēmallān, or place of many trees and this was the name the Tlaxcaltecan soldiers who accompanied Pedro de Alvarado during the Spanish Conquest gave to this territory. The first evidence of habitation in Guatemala dates back to 12,000 BC. Evidence, such as obsidian arrowheads found in parts of the country. There is archaeological proof that early Guatemalan settlers were hunters and gatherers, pollen samples from Petén and the Pacific coast indicate that maize cultivation had been developed by 3500 BC. Sites dating back to 6500 BC have been found in the Quiché region in the Highlands, archaeologists divide the pre-Columbian history of Mesoamerica into the Preclassic period, the Classic period, and the Postclassic period. Until recently, the Preclassic was regarded as a period, with small villages of farmers who lived in huts. This period is characterized by urbanisation, the emergence of independent city-states and this lasted until approximately 900 AD, when the Classic Maya civilization collapsed. The Maya abandoned many of the cities of the lowlands or were killed off by a drought-induced famine. The cause of the collapse is debated, but the Drought Theory is gaining currency, supported by such as lakebeds, ancient pollen. A series of prolonged droughts, among other such as overpopulation, in what is otherwise a seasonal desert is thought to have decimated the Maya
37.
Lesotho
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Lesotho, officially the Kingdom of Lesotho, is an enclaved, landlocked country in southern Africa completely surrounded by South Africa. It is just over 30,000 km2 in size and has a slightly over two million. Its capital and largest city is Maseru, previously known as Basutoland, Lesotho declared independence from the United Kingdom on 4 October 1966. It is a member of the United Nations, the Commonwealth of Nations, the name Lesotho translates roughly into the land of the people who speak Sesotho. About 40% of the population lives below the poverty line of US$1.25 a day. The original inhabitants of the now known as Lesotho were the San people. Examples of their art can be found in the mountains throughout the area. The present Lesotho, then called Basutoland, emerged as a single polity under King Moshoeshoe I in 1822, Moshoeshoe, a son of Mokhachane, a minor chief of the Bakoteli lineage, formed his own clan and became a chief around 1804. Casalis, acting as translator and providing advice on foreign affairs, helped to set up diplomatic channels and acquire guns for use against the encroaching Europeans and the Griqua people. Trekboers from the Cape Colony showed up on the borders of Basutoland and claimed land rights, beginning with Jan de Winnaar. As more Boers were moving into the area tried to colonise the land between the two rivers, even north of the Caledon, claiming that it had been abandoned by the Sotho people. Moshoeshoe subsequently signed a treaty with the British Governor of the Cape Colony, Sir George Thomas Napier and these outraged Boers were suppressed in a brief skirmish in 1848. In 1851 a British force was defeated by the Basotho army at Kolonyama, after repelling another British attack in 1852, Moshoeshoe sent an appeal to the British commander that settled the dispute diplomatically, then defeated the Batlokoa in 1853. In 1854 the British pulled out of the region, and in 1858 Moshoeshoe fought a series of wars with the Boers in the Free State–Basotho War, the last war in 1867 ended when Moshoeshoe appealed to Queen Victoria, who agreed to make Basutoland a British protectorate in 1868. Moshoeshoe died on 11 March 1870, marking the end of the traditional era and he was buried at Thaba Bosiu. In the early years of British rule between 1871 and 1884, Basutoland was treated similarly to territories that had been forcefully annexed. This led to the Gun War in 1881, Basutoland gained its independence from Britain and became the Kingdom of Lesotho in 1966. In January 1970, the ruling Basotho National Party lost the first post-independence general elections, Prime Minister Leabua Jonathan refused to cede power to the Basotho Congress Party, declared himself Tona Kholo, and imprisoned the BCP leadership
38.
United Kingdom
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The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom or Britain, is a sovereign country in western Europe. Lying off the north-western coast of the European mainland, the United Kingdom includes the island of Great Britain, Northern Ireland is the only part of the United Kingdom that shares a land border with another sovereign state—the Republic of Ireland. The Irish Sea lies between Great Britain and Ireland, with an area of 242,500 square kilometres, the United Kingdom is the 78th-largest sovereign state in the world and the 11th-largest in Europe. It is also the 21st-most populous country, with an estimated 65.1 million inhabitants, together, this makes it the fourth-most densely populated country in the European Union. The United Kingdom is a monarchy with a parliamentary system of governance. The monarch is Queen Elizabeth II, who has reigned since 6 February 1952, other major urban areas in the United Kingdom include the regions of Birmingham, Leeds, Glasgow, Liverpool and Manchester. The United Kingdom consists of four countries—England, Scotland, Wales, the last three have devolved administrations, each with varying powers, based in their capitals, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast, respectively. The relationships among the countries of the UK have changed over time, Wales was annexed by the Kingdom of England under the Laws in Wales Acts 1535 and 1542. A treaty between England and Scotland resulted in 1707 in a unified Kingdom of Great Britain, which merged in 1801 with the Kingdom of Ireland to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Five-sixths of Ireland seceded from the UK in 1922, leaving the present formulation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, there are fourteen British Overseas Territories. These are the remnants of the British Empire which, at its height in the 1920s, British influence can be observed in the language, culture and legal systems of many of its former colonies. The United Kingdom is a country and has the worlds fifth-largest economy by nominal GDP. The UK is considered to have an economy and is categorised as very high in the Human Development Index. It was the worlds first industrialised country and the worlds foremost power during the 19th, the UK remains a great power with considerable economic, cultural, military, scientific and political influence internationally. It is a nuclear weapons state and its military expenditure ranks fourth or fifth in the world. The UK has been a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council since its first session in 1946 and it has been a leading member state of the EU and its predecessor, the European Economic Community, since 1973. However, on 23 June 2016, a referendum on the UKs membership of the EU resulted in a decision to leave. The Acts of Union 1800 united the Kingdom of Great Britain, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have devolved self-government
39.
Bill Mollison
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Bruce Charles Bill Mollison was an Australian researcher, author, scientist, teacher and biologist. He is referred to as the father of permaculture, in 1974, Mollison began his collaboration with Holmgren, and in 1978 they published their book Permaculture One, which introduced this design system to the general public. Mollison founded The Permaculture Institute in Tasmania, and created the system to train others under the umbrella of permaculture. Bruce Charles Bill Mollison was born in 1928, in the Bass Strait fishing village of Stanley located on the north-west part of Tasmania, Australia and he left school at age 15 to help run the family bakery. But what followed was a decade working at numerous jobs to support himself, some of these included work as a shark fisherman, seaman, forester, mill worker, trapper, snarer, tractor-driver and naturalist. In 1954, at the age of 26, Mollison joined and worked for the Wildlife Survey Section of the Commonwealth Scientific and it was this experience, primarily spent in the rain forests of Tasmania, that laid the foundation for his life-long passion, Permaculture. In the 1960s, Mollison went on to work at the Tasmanian Museum where he was a curator and he also worked with the Inland Fisheries Commission, where he was able to resume his field work once again. In 1966, he entered the University of Tasmania, after he received his degree in Bio-geography, he stayed on at the university to lecture and teach, and where he developed the unit of Environmental Psychology. By the late 1960s, Mollison started developing ideas about stable agricultural systems on the southern Australian island state of Tasmania and this resulted from his own personal observations of the growth and use of the industrial-agricultural methods that he believed had rapidly degraded the soil of his native state. But I soon decided that it was no good persisting with opposition that in the end achieved nothing, I withdrew from society for two years, I did not want to oppose anything ever again and waste time. I wanted to come only with something very positive, something that would allow us all to exist without the wholesale collapse of biological systems. However, permaculture has come to more than just food-sufficiency in the household. Self-reliance in food is meaningless unless people have access to land, information, so in recent years it has come to encompass appropriate legal and financial strategies, including strategies for land access, business structures, and regional self-financing. This way it is a human system. In 1979, Mollison resigned from his university teaching position. Thereafter, past the age of 50, he traveled around Australia and he helped found the first Permaculture Institute, which was established in 1979 to teach the practical design of sustainable soil, water, plant, and legal and economic systems to students worldwide. In 1981, the first graduates of the permaculture design course that he had helped to initiate, in this way, the philosophy of permaculture had begun to move beyond its original context in land management to cover most, if not all, aspects of human life. At that moment, Mollison jotted down the words in his diary
40.
Australia
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Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and numerous smaller islands. It is the worlds sixth-largest country by total area, the neighbouring countries are Papua New Guinea, Indonesia and East Timor to the north, the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu to the north-east, and New Zealand to the south-east. Australias capital is Canberra, and its largest urban area is Sydney, for about 50,000 years before the first British settlement in the late 18th century, Australia was inhabited by indigenous Australians, who spoke languages classifiable into roughly 250 groups. The population grew steadily in subsequent decades, and by the 1850s most of the continent had been explored, on 1 January 1901, the six colonies federated, forming the Commonwealth of Australia. Australia has since maintained a liberal democratic political system that functions as a federal parliamentary constitutional monarchy comprising six states. The population of 24 million is highly urbanised and heavily concentrated on the eastern seaboard, Australia has the worlds 13th-largest economy and ninth-highest per capita income. With the second-highest human development index globally, the country highly in quality of life, health, education, economic freedom. The name Australia is derived from the Latin Terra Australis a name used for putative lands in the southern hemisphere since ancient times, the Dutch adjectival form Australische was used in a Dutch book in Batavia in 1638, to refer to the newly discovered lands to the south. On 12 December 1817, Macquarie recommended to the Colonial Office that it be formally adopted, in 1824, the Admiralty agreed that the continent should be known officially as Australia. The first official published use of the term Australia came with the 1830 publication of The Australia Directory and these first inhabitants may have been ancestors of modern Indigenous Australians. The Torres Strait Islanders, ethnically Melanesian, were originally horticulturists, the northern coasts and waters of Australia were visited sporadically by fishermen from Maritime Southeast Asia. The first recorded European sighting of the Australian mainland, and the first recorded European landfall on the Australian continent, are attributed to the Dutch. The first ship and crew to chart the Australian coast and meet with Aboriginal people was the Duyfken captained by Dutch navigator, Willem Janszoon. He sighted the coast of Cape York Peninsula in early 1606, the Dutch charted the whole of the western and northern coastlines and named the island continent New Holland during the 17th century, but made no attempt at settlement. William Dampier, an English explorer and privateer, landed on the north-west coast of New Holland in 1688, in 1770, James Cook sailed along and mapped the east coast, which he named New South Wales and claimed for Great Britain. The first settlement led to the foundation of Sydney, and the exploration, a British settlement was established in Van Diemens Land, now known as Tasmania, in 1803, and it became a separate colony in 1825. The United Kingdom formally claimed the part of Western Australia in 1828. Separate colonies were carved from parts of New South Wales, South Australia in 1836, Victoria in 1851, the Northern Territory was founded in 1911 when it was excised from South Australia
41.
Patrick van Rensburg
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Patrick van Rensburg is a South African educationalist and former anti-apartheid activist. He founded the Brigades Movement in Botswana, and the Foundation for Education with Production which is active in South Africa, Botswana, van Rensburg was born in Durban, South Africa. His parents separated when he was young, and he was raised by his Afrikaner grandmother and her French Mauritian husband, the family spoke English at home and were Roman Catholic, a big difference from the traditional Afrikaner upbringing. Van Rensburg attended St. Henrys Marist Brothers College and Glenwood High School and he has three children, sons Mothusi and Thomas van Rensburg and daughter Joanna Forbes. Van Rensburg was South African Vice-Consul in the Belgian Congo from February 1956 till May 1957 and he joined the Liberal Party of South Africa, becoming the partys organising secretary for the Transvaal province in September 1958. In 1959 he moved to the UK, where he almost immediately began helping organise the 1960 campaign to boycott South African goods in the UK, other organisers and supporters of the campaign included Julius Nyerere, Trevor Huddleston, Canon John Collins and Tennyson Makiwane. The Boycott Movement soon grew into the British Anti-Apartheid Movement, van Rensburg was vilified by Afrikaners for his part in the campaign, and when he returned to South Africa in 1960, his passport was confiscated and he fled over the border to Swaziland. In 1962 he moved to Bechuanaland, where he undertook many educational and social initiatives, in the 1980s he founded the Foundation for Education with Production. He is now one of Botswanas elder statesmen, having written a column for years for Mmegi. ISBN B0000CL9AT Report from Swaneng Hill, ISBN 91-85214-01-9 The Serowe brigades, Alternative education in Botswana. Macmillan for the Bernard van Leer Foundation,1978, van Rensburg has written a number of titles for the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation. 1981 Right Livelihood Award, with Bill Mollison and Mike Cooley Patrick van Rensburg in Botswana, contact Vol 5, No 13,28 June 1962. Right Livelihood Award, Roll of honour
42.
Botswana
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Botswana, officially the Republic of Botswana, is a landlocked country located in Southern Africa. The citizens refer to themselves as Batswana, formerly the British protectorate of Bechuanaland, Botswana adopted its new name after becoming independent within the Commonwealth on 30 September 1966. Since then, it has maintained a tradition of stable representative democracy. Botswana is topographically flat, with up to 70 percent of its territory being the Kalahari Desert and it is bordered by South Africa to the south and southeast, Namibia to the west and north, and Zimbabwe to the northeast. Its border with Zambia to the north near Kazungula is poorly defined, a mid-sized country of just over 2 million people, Botswana is one of the most sparsely populated nations in the world. Around 10 percent of the lives in the capital and largest city. The economy is dominated by mining, cattle, and tourism, Botswana boasts a GDP per capita of about $18,825 per year as of 2015, which is one of the highest in Africa. Its high gross national income gives the country a modest standard of living, Botswana is a member of the African Union, the Southern African Development Community, the Commonwealth of Nations, and the United Nations. The country has been among the hardest hit by the HIV/AIDS epidemic, the death rate due to AIDS or AIDS-related causes has fallen sharply from 2005 to 2013, and the number of new infections in children has also fallen. As of 2014, Botswana has the third-highest prevalence rate for HIV/AIDS, the history of Botswana starts more than 100,000 years ago, when the first humans inhabited the region. The original inhabitants of southern Africa were the Bushmen and Khoi peoples, both speak Khoisan languages and lived as hunter-gatherers. About a thousand years ago, large chiefdoms emerged that were later eclipsed by the Great Zimbabwe empire, around 1300 CE, peoples in present-day Transvaal began to coalesce into three main linguistic and political groups, including the Batswana. The Batswana, a term used also to all citizens of Botswana. Prior to European contact, the Batswana lived as herders and farmers under tribal rule, as groups broke off and moved to new land, new tribes were created. Some human development occurred before the colonial period, during the 1700s, the slave and ivory trades were expanding. To resist these pressures, Shaka, the king of the Zulu Empire, conquered tribes began to move northwest into Botswana, destroying everything in their path. In their efforts to re-establish themselves at the end of period, tribes began to exchange ivory and skins for guns with European traders. Christian missionaries sent from Europe also spread to the interior, often at the invitation of tribal chiefs who wanted guns, by 1880 every major village had a resident missionary, and their influence became permanent
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South Africa
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South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa, is the southernmost country in Africa. South Africa is the 25th-largest country in the world by land area and it is the southernmost country on the mainland of the Old World or the Eastern Hemisphere. About 80 percent of South Africans are of Sub-Saharan African ancestry, divided among a variety of ethnic groups speaking different Bantu languages, the remaining population consists of Africas largest communities of European, Asian, and multiracial ancestry. South Africa is a multiethnic society encompassing a variety of cultures, languages. Its pluralistic makeup is reflected in the recognition of 11 official languages. The country is one of the few in Africa never to have had a coup détat, however, the vast majority of black South Africans were not enfranchised until 1994. During the 20th century, the black majority sought to recover its rights from the dominant white minority, with this struggle playing a role in the countrys recent history. The National Party imposed apartheid in 1948, institutionalising previous racial segregation, since 1994, all ethnic and linguistic groups have held political representation in the countrys democracy, which comprises a parliamentary republic and nine provinces. South Africa is often referred to as the Rainbow Nation to describe the multicultural diversity. The World Bank classifies South Africa as an economy. Its economy is the second-largest in Africa, and the 34th-largest in the world, in terms of purchasing power parity, South Africa has the seventh-highest per capita income in Africa. However, poverty and inequality remain widespread, with about a quarter of the population unemployed, nevertheless, South Africa has been identified as a middle power in international affairs, and maintains significant regional influence. The name South Africa is derived from the geographic location at the southern tip of Africa. Upon formation the country was named the Union of South Africa in English, since 1961 the long form name in English has been the Republic of South Africa. In Dutch the country was named Republiek van Zuid-Afrika, replaced in 1983 by the Afrikaans Republiek van Suid-Afrika, since 1994 the Republic has had an official name in each of its 11 official languages. Mzansi, derived from the Xhosa noun umzantsi meaning south, is a name for South Africa. South Africa contains some of the oldest archaeological and human fossil sites in the world, extensive fossil remains have been recovered from a series of caves in Gauteng Province. The area is a UNESCO World Heritage site and has termed the Cradle of Humankind
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Norway
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The Antarctic Peter I Island and the sub-Antarctic Bouvet Island are dependent territories and thus not considered part of the Kingdom. Norway also lays claim to a section of Antarctica known as Queen Maud Land, until 1814, the kingdom included the Faroe Islands, Greenland, and Iceland. It also included Isle of Man until 1266, Shetland and Orkney until 1468, Norway has a total area of 385,252 square kilometres and a population of 5,258,317. The country shares a long border with Sweden. Norway is bordered by Finland and Russia to the north-east, Norway has an extensive coastline, facing the North Atlantic Ocean and the Barents Sea. King Harald V of the Dano-German House of Glücksburg is the current King of Norway, erna Solberg became Prime Minister in 2013, replacing Jens Stoltenberg. A constitutional monarchy, Norway divides state power between the Parliament, the Cabinet and the Supreme Court, as determined by the 1814 Constitution, the kingdom is established as a merger of several petty kingdoms. By the traditional count from the year 872, the kingdom has existed continuously for 1,144 years, Norway has both administrative and political subdivisions on two levels, counties and municipalities. The Sámi people have an amount of self-determination and influence over traditional territories through the Sámi Parliament. Norway maintains close ties with the European Union and the United States, the country maintains a combination of market economy and a Nordic welfare model with universal health care and a comprehensive social security system. Norway has extensive reserves of petroleum, natural gas, minerals, lumber, seafood, the petroleum industry accounts for around a quarter of the countrys gross domestic product. On a per-capita basis, Norway is the worlds largest producer of oil, the country has the fourth-highest per capita income in the world on the World Bank and IMF lists. On the CIAs GDP per capita list which includes territories and some regions, from 2001 to 2006, and then again from 2009 to 2017, Norway had the highest Human Development Index ranking in the world. It also has the highest inequality-adjusted ranking, Norway ranks first on the World Happiness Report, the OECD Better Life Index, the Index of Public Integrity and the Democracy Index. Norway has two names, Noreg in Nynorsk and Norge in Bokmål. The name Norway comes from the Old English word Norðrveg mentioned in 880, meaning way or way leading to the north. In contrasting with suðrvegar southern way for Germany, and austrvegr eastern way for the Baltic, the Anglo-Saxon of Britain also referred to the kingdom of Norway in 880 as Norðmanna land. This was the area of Harald Fairhair, the first king of Norway, and because of him
