1.
Geographic coordinate system
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A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation
2.
Portuguese language
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Portuguese is a Romance language and the sole official language of Portugal, Brazil, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Angola, and São Tomé and Príncipe. It also has co-official language status in East Timor, Equatorial Guinea, Portuguese is part of the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several dialects of Vulgar Latin in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, and has kept some Celtic phonology. Portuguese is also termed the language of Camões, after Luís Vaz de Camões, one of the greatest literary figures in the Portuguese language and author of the Portuguese epic poem, the museum is the first of its kind in the world. In 2015 the museum was destroyed in a fire, but there are plans to reconstruct it, when the Romans arrived in the Iberian Peninsula in 216 BCE, they brought the Latin language with them, from which all Romance languages descend. Between 409 CE and 711 CE, as the Roman Empire collapsed in Western Europe, Portuguese evolved from the medieval language, known today by linguists as Galician-Portuguese, Old Portuguese or Old Galician, of the northwestern medieval Kingdom of Galicia. It is in Latin administrative documents of the 9th century that written Galician-Portuguese words and this phase is known as Proto-Portuguese, which lasted from the 9th century until the 12th-century independence of the County of Portugal from the Kingdom of León, by then reigning over Galicia. In the first part of the Galician-Portuguese period, the language was used for documents. For some time, it was the language of preference for poetry in Christian Hispania. Portugal became an independent kingdom in 1139, under King Afonso I of Portugal, in the second period of Old Portuguese, in the 15th and 16th centuries, with the Portuguese discoveries, the language was taken to many regions of Africa, Asia and the Americas. The language continued to be popular in parts of Asia until the 19th century, some Portuguese-speaking Christian communities in India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, and Indonesia preserved their language even after they were isolated from Portugal. The end of the Old Portuguese period was marked by the publication of the Cancioneiro Geral by Garcia de Resende, Most literate Portuguese speakers were also literate in Latin, and thus they easily adopted Latin words into their writing—and eventually speech—in Portuguese. Portuguese is the language of the majority of people in Brazil and Portugal, perhaps 75% of the population of Angola speaks Portuguese natively, and 85% are fluent. Just over 40% of the population of Mozambique are native speakers of Portuguese, Portuguese is also spoken natively by 30% of the population in Guinea-Bissau, and a Portuguese-based creole is understood by all. No data is available for Cape Verde, but almost all the population is bilingual, there are also significant Portuguese speaking immigrant communities in many countries including Andorra, Bermuda, Canada, France, Japan, Jersey, Namibia, Paraguay, Macau, Switzerland, Venezuela. In some parts of former Portuguese India, namely Goa and Daman and Diu, in 2014, an estimated 1,500 students were learning Portuguese in Goa. Equatorial Guinea made an application for full membership to the CPLP in June 2010. In 2011, Portuguese became its official language and, in July 2014. Portuguese is a subject in The school curriculum in Uruguay
3.
Africa
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Africa is the worlds second-largest and second-most-populous continent. At about 30.3 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earths total surface area and 20.4 % of its land area. With 1.2 billion people as of 2016, it accounts for about 16% of the human population. The continent includes Madagascar and various archipelagos and it contains 54 fully recognized sovereign states, nine territories and two de facto independent states with limited or no recognition. Africas population is the youngest amongst all the continents, the age in 2012 was 19.7. Algeria is Africas largest country by area, and Nigeria by population, afarensis, Homo erectus, H. habilis and H. ergaster – with the earliest Homo sapiens found in Ethiopia being dated to circa 200,000 years ago. Africa straddles the equator and encompasses numerous climate areas, it is the continent to stretch from the northern temperate to southern temperate zones. Africa hosts a diversity of ethnicities, cultures and languages. In the late 19th century European countries colonized most of Africa, Africa also varies greatly with regard to environments, economics, historical ties and government systems. However, most present states in Africa originate from a process of decolonization in the 20th century, afri was a Latin name used to refer to the inhabitants of Africa, which in its widest sense referred to all lands south of the Mediterranean. This name seems to have referred to a native Libyan tribe. The name is connected with Hebrew or Phoenician ʿafar dust. The same word may be found in the name of the Banu Ifran from Algeria and Tripolitania, under Roman rule, Carthage became the capital of the province of Africa Proconsularis, which also included the coastal part of modern Libya. The Latin suffix -ica can sometimes be used to denote a land, the later Muslim kingdom of Ifriqiya, modern-day Tunisia, also preserved a form of the name. According to the Romans, Africa lay to the west of Egypt, while Asia was used to refer to Anatolia, as Europeans came to understand the real extent of the continent, the idea of Africa expanded with their knowledge. 25,4, whose descendants, he claimed, had invaded Libya, isidore of Seville in Etymologiae XIV.5.2. Suggests Africa comes from the Latin aprica, meaning sunny, massey, in 1881, stated that Africa is derived from the Egyptian af-rui-ka, meaning to turn toward the opening of the Ka. The Ka is the double of every person and the opening of the Ka refers to a womb or birthplace
4.
African Union
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The African Union is a continental union consisting of all 55 countries on the African continent. It was established on 26 May 2001 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the most important decisions of the AU are made by the Assembly of the African Union, a semi-annual meeting of the heads of state and government of its member states. The AUs secretariat, the African Union Commission, is based in Addis Ababa, the objectives of the AU are, To achieve greater unity and solidarity between the African countries and Africans. To defend the sovereignty, territorial integrity and independence of its Member States, to accelerate the political and social-economic integration of the continent. To promote and defend African common positions on issues of interest to the continent, to encourage international cooperation, taking due account of the Charter of the United Nations and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. To promote peace, security, and stability on the continent, to promote democratic principles and institutions, popular participation and good governance. To promote and protect human and peoples rights in accordance with the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights, to establish the necessary conditions which enable the continent to play its rightful role in the global economy and in international negotiations. To promote sustainable development at the economic, social and cultural levels as well as the integration of African economies, to promote co-operation in all fields of human activity to raise the living standards of African peoples. To coordinate and harmonize the policies between the existing and future Regional Economic Communities for the attainment of the objectives of the Union. To advance the development of the continent by promoting research in all fields, in particular in science, to work with relevant international partners in the eradication of preventable diseases and the promotion of good health on the continent. The African Union is made up of political and administrative bodies. The highest decision-making organ is the Assembly of the African Union, the Assembly is chaired by Idriss Déby, President of Chad. The AU also has a body, the Pan African Parliament. Its president is Bethel Nnaemeka Amadi, the AU Commission, the secretariat to the political structures, is chaired by Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma of South Africa. On 15 July 2012, Ms. Dlamini-Zuma won a contested vote to become the first female head of the African Union Commission. The main administrative capital of the African Union is in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, a new headquarters complex, the AU Conference Center and Office Complex, was inaugurated on 28 January 2012, during the 18th AU summit. The tower is 99.9 meters high to signify the date 9 September 1999, the AU covers the entire continent except for several territories held by Spain, France, Portugal and the United Kingdom. AU troops were deployed in Sudan for peacekeeping during Darfur conflict
5.
Demonym
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A demonym is a word that identifies residents or natives of a particular place, which is derived from the name of that particular place. It is a neologism, previously gentilic was recorded in English dictionaries, e. g. the Oxford English Dictionary, thus a Thai may be any resident or citizen of Thailand, of any ethnic group, or more narrowly a member of the Thai people. Conversely, some groups of people may be associated with multiple demonyms, for example, a native of the United Kingdom may be called a British person, a Brit, or a Briton. In some languages, when a parallel demonym does not exist, in English, demonyms are capitalized and are often the same as the adjectival form of the place, e. g. Egyptian, Japanese, or Greek. Significant exceptions exist, for instance the adjectival form of Spain is Spanish, English widely includes country-level demonyms such as Ethiopian or Guatemalan and more local demonyms such as Seoulite, Wisconsinite, Chicagoan, Michigander, Fluminense, and Paulista. Some places lack a commonly used and accepted demonym and this poses a particular challenge to those toponymists who research demonyms. The word gentilic comes from the Latin gentilis and the English suffix -ic, the word demonym was derived from the Greek word meaning populace with the suffix for name. National Geographic attributes the term demonym to Merriam-Webster editor Paul Dickson in a recent work from 1990 and it was subsequently popularized in this sense in 1997 by Dickson in his book Labels for Locals. However, in What Do You Call a Person From, a Dictionary of Resident Names attributed the term to George H. Scheetz, in his Names Names, A Descriptive and Prescriptive Onymicon, which is apparently where the term first appears. Several linguistic elements are used to create demonyms in the English language, the most common is to add a suffix to the end of the location name, slightly modified in some instances. Cairo → Cairene Cyrenaica → Cyrene Damascus → Damascene Greece → Greek Nazareth → Nazarene Slovenia → Slovene Often used for Middle Eastern locations and European locations. Kingston-upon-Hull → Hullensian Leeds → Leodensian Spain → Spaniard Savoy → Savoyard -ese is usually considered proper only as an adjective, thus, a Chinese person is used rather than a Chinese. Monaco → Monégasque Menton → Mentonasque Basque Country → Basque Often used for French locations, mostly they are from Africa and the Pacific, and are not generally known or used outside the country concerned. In much of East Africa, a person of an ethnic group will be denoted by a prefix. For example, a person of the Luba people would be a Muluba, the plural form Baluba, similar patterns with minor variations in the prefixes exist throughout on a tribal level. And Fijians who are indigenous Fijians are known as Kaiviti and these demonyms are usually more informal and colloquial. In the United States such informal demonyms frequently become associated with mascots of the sports teams of the state university system. In other countries the origins are often disputed and these will typically be formed using the standard models above
6.
Unitary state
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The majority of states in the world have a unitary system of government. Of the 193 UN member states,165 of them are governed as unitary states, unitary states are contrasted with federal states. In a unitary state, sub-national units are created and abolished, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is an example of a unitary state. Many unitary states have no areas possessing a degree of autonomy, in such countries, sub-national regions cannot decide their own laws. Examples are the Republic of Ireland and the Kingdom of Norway, in federal states, the sub-national governments share powers with the central government as equal actors through a written constitution, to which the consent of both is required to make amendments. This means that the units have a right of existence. The United States of America is an example of a federal state, under the U. S. Constitution, powers are shared between the federal government and the states
7.
Semi-presidential system
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A semi-presidential system is a system of government in which a president exists alongside a prime minister and a cabinet, with the latter two being responsible to the legislature of a state. There are two subtypes of semi-presidentialism, premier-presidentialism and president-parliamentarism. Under the premier-presidential system, the minister and cabinet are exclusively accountable to parliament. The president chooses the prime minister and cabinet, but only the parliament may remove them from office with a vote of no confidence, the president does not have the right to dismiss the prime minister or the cabinet. However, in cases, the president can circumvent this limitation by exercising the discretionary power of dissolving the assembly. This subtype is used in Burkina Faso, France, Georgia, Lithuania, Madagascar, Mali, Mongolia, Niger, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Senegal, Sri Lanka and Ukraine. Under the president-parliamentary system, the minister and cabinet are dually accountable to the president. The president chooses the prime minister and the cabinet but must have the support of the parliament majority for his choice. In order to remove a prime minister or the cabinet from power. This form of semi-presidentialism is much closer to pure presidentialism and it is used in Armenia, Georgia between 2004 and 2013, Mozambique, Namibia, Russia, Taiwan and Ukraine between 1996 and 2005, and again from 2010 to 2014. It was used in Germany during the Weimarer Republik, as the regime between 1919 and 1933 is called unofficially. The powers that are divided between president and prime minister can vary greatly between countries and it is up to the president to decide, how much autonomy he leaves to his prime minister to act on his own. Semi-presidential systems may experience periods in which the President and the Prime Minister are from differing political parties. This is called cohabitation, a term originated in France when the situation first arose in the 1980s. In most cases, cohabitation results from a system in which the two executives are not elected at the time or for the same term. For example, in 1981, France elected both a Socialist president and legislature, which yielded a Socialist premier, but whereas the presidents term of office was for seven years, the National Assembly only served for five. When, in the 1986 legislative election, the French people elected a right-of-centre Assembly, however, in 2000, amendments to the French Constitution reduced the length of the French Presidents term from seven to five years. This has significantly lowered the chances of occurring, as parliamentary
8.
Republic
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It is a government where the head of state is not a monarch. Both modern and ancient republics vary widely in their ideology, composition, in the classical and medieval period of Europe, many states were fashioned on the Roman Republic, which referred to the governance of the city of Rome, between it having kings and emperors. The Italian medieval and Renaissance political tradition, today referred to as humanism, is sometimes considered to derive directly from Roman republicans such as Sallust. Republics were not equated with classical democracies such as Athens, but had a democratic aspect, Republics became more common in the Western world starting in the late 18th century, eventually displacing absolute monarchy as the most common form of government in Europe. In modern republics, the executive is legitimized both by a constitution and by popular suffrage, for instance, Article IV of the United States Constitution guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican form of Government. The term originates as the Latin translation of Greek word politeia, cicero, among other Latin writers, translated politeia as res publica and it was in turn translated by Renaissance scholars as republic. The term politeia can be translated as form of government, polity, or regime, and is therefore not always a word for a specific type of regime as the modern word republic is. And also amongst classical Latin, the term republic can be used in a way to refer to any regime. In medieval Northern Italy, a number of city states had commune or signoria based governments, in the late Middle Ages, writers, such as Giovanni Villani, began writing about the nature of these states and the differences from other types of regime. They used terms such as libertas populi, a free people, the terminology changed in the 15th century as the renewed interest in the writings of Ancient Rome caused writers to prefer using classical terminology. To describe non-monarchical states writers, most importantly Leonardo Bruni, adopted the Latin phrase res publica. While Bruni and Machiavelli used the term to describe the states of Northern Italy, which were not monarchies, the term can quite literally be translated as public matter. It was most often used by Roman writers to refer to the state and government, in subsequent centuries, the English word commonwealth came to be used as a translation of res publica, and its use in English was comparable to how the Romans used the term res publica. Notably, during The Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell the word commonwealth was the most common term to call the new monarchless state, likewise, in Polish, the term was translated as rzeczpospolita, although the translation is now only used with respect to Poland. Presently, the term republic commonly means a system of government which derives its power from the rather than from another basis. After the classical period, during the Middle Ages, many cities developed again. The modern type of itself is different from any type of state found in the classical world. Nevertheless, there are a number of states of the era that are today still called republics
9.
Patrice Trovoada
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Patrice Emery Trovoada is a São Toméan politician who has served as Prime Minister of São Tomé and Príncipe since November 2014. He previously served as Prime Minister from February 2008 to June 2008, Trovoada was born in Libreville, Gabon. He is the son of Miguel Trovoada, who was President of São Tomé and Príncipe from 1991 to 2001, and was named after Patrice Lumumba and he served as the Minister of Foreign Affairs from September 2001 to 4 February 2002. He was also oil adviser to President Fradique de Menezes until Menezes fired him in May 2005, Trovoada is Secretary-General of Independent Democratic Action, a political party. He ran for President in the July 2006 presidential election, but was defeated by Menezes, Trovoada was the only major opposition candidate and he received 38. 82% of the vote. On February 14,2008, Trovoada became Prime Minister, he was appointed by Menezes following the resignation of Tomé Vera Cruz, on March 4,2008, he made a brief official visit to Gabon. Trovoadas government was defeated in a motion in the National Assembly on May 20,2008 after three months in office. The motion, introduced by the opposition Movement for the Liberation of São Tomé and Príncipe/Social Democratic Party, received 30 votes in favor,23 opposed, and two abstaining. In June, Menezes asked the MLSTP/PSD to form a government, after the 2010 parliamentary election, Trovoada returned as Prime Minister on August 14,2010, but left office on December 13,2012, after his government had lost its majority in parliament
10.
Independence
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Independence is a condition of a nation, country, or state in which its residents and population, or some portion thereof, exercise self-government, and usually sovereignty, over the territory. The opposite of independence is a dependent territory, Independence does not necessarily mean freedom. Whether the attainment of independence is different from revolution has long been contested, nation-states have been granted independence without any revolutionary acts. The Russian October Revolution, for example, was not intended to seek national independence, however, the American Revolutionary War was intended to achieve independence from the beginning. Causes for a country or province wishing to seek independence are many, the means can extend from peaceful demonstrations, like in the case of the Indian independence movement, to a violent civil war. Autonomy refers to a kind of independence which has been granted by an authority that itself still retains ultimate authority over that territory. A protectorate refers to a region that depends upon a larger government for its protection as an autonomous region. Declaring independence and attaining it however, are quite different, a well-known successful example is the U. S. Declaration of Independence issued in 1776, the dates of established independence, are typically celebrated as a national holiday known as an independence day
11.
Portugal
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Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic, is a country on the Iberian Peninsula in Southwestern Europe. It is the westernmost country of mainland Europe, to the west and south it is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean and to the east and north by Spain. The Portugal–Spain border is 1,214 kilometres long and considered the longest uninterrupted border within the European Union, the republic also includes the Atlantic archipelagos of the Azores and Madeira, both autonomous regions with their own regional governments. The territory of modern Portugal has been settled, invaded. The Pre-Celts, Celts, Carthaginians and the Romans were followed by the invasions of the Visigothic, in 711 the Iberian Peninsula was invaded by the Moors, making Portugal part of Muslim Al Andalus. Portugal was born as result of the Christian Reconquista, and in 1139, Afonso Henriques was proclaimed King of Portugal, in the 15th and 16th centuries, Portugal established the first global empire, becoming one of the worlds major economic, political and military powers. Portugal monopolized the trade during this time, and the Portuguese Empire expanded with military campaigns led in Asia. After the 1910 revolution deposed the monarchy, the democratic but unstable Portuguese First Republic was established, democracy was restored after the Portuguese Colonial War and the Carnation Revolution in 1974. Shortly after, independence was granted to almost all its overseas territories, Portugal has left a profound cultural and architectural influence across the globe and a legacy of over 250 million Portuguese speakers today. Portugal is a country with a high-income advanced economy and a high living standard. It is the 5th most peaceful country in the world, maintaining a unitary semi-presidential republican form of government and it has the 18th highest Social Progress in the world, putting it ahead of other Western European countries like France, Spain and Italy. Portugal is a pioneer when it comes to drug decriminalization, as the nation decriminalized the possession of all drugs for use in 2001. The early history of Portugal is shared with the rest of the Iberian Peninsula located in South Western Europe, the name of Portugal derives from the joined Romano-Celtic name Portus Cale. Other influences include some 5th-century vestiges of Alan settlements, which were found in Alenquer, Coimbra, the region of present-day Portugal was inhabited by Neanderthals and then by Homo sapiens, who roamed the border-less region of the northern Iberian peninsula. These were subsistence societies that, although they did not establish prosperous settlements, neolithic Portugal experimented with domestication of herding animals, the raising of some cereal crops and fluvial or marine fishing. Chief among these tribes were the Calaicians or Gallaeci of Northern Portugal, the Lusitanians of central Portugal, the Celtici of Alentejo, a few small, semi-permanent, commercial coastal settlements were also founded in the Algarve region by Phoenicians-Carthaginians. Romans first invaded the Iberian Peninsula in 219 BC, during the last days of Julius Caesar, almost the entire peninsula had been annexed to the Roman Republic. The Carthaginians, Romes adversary in the Punic Wars, were expelled from their coastal colonies and it suffered a severe setback in 150 BC, when a rebellion began in the north
12.
Gross domestic product
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Gross Domestic Product is a monetary measure of the market value of all final goods and services produced in a period. Nominal GDP estimates are used to determine the economic performance of a whole country or region. The OECD defines GDP as a measure of production equal to the sum of the gross values added of all resident and institutional units engaged in production. ”An IMF publication states that GDP measures the monetary value of final goods and services - that is. Total GDP can also be broken down into the contribution of industry or sector of the economy. The ratio of GDP to the population of the region is the per capita GDP. William Petty came up with a concept of GDP to defend landlords against unfair taxation during warfare between the Dutch and the English between 1652 and 1674. Charles Davenant developed the method further in 1695, the modern concept of GDP was first developed by Simon Kuznets for a US Congress report in 1934. In this report, Kuznets warned against its use as a measure of welfare, after the Bretton Woods conference in 1944, GDP became the main tool for measuring a countrys economy. The switch from GNP to GDP in the US was in 1991, the history of the concept of GDP should be distinguished from the history of changes in ways of estimating it. The value added by firms is relatively easy to calculate from their accounts, but the value added by the sector, by financial industries. GDP can be determined in three ways, all of which should, in principle, give the same result and they are the production approach, the income approach, or the expenditure approach. The most direct of the three is the approach, which sums the outputs of every class of enterprise to arrive at the total. The income approach works on the principle that the incomes of the factors must be equal to the value of their product. This approach mirrors the OECD definition given above, deduct intermediate consumption from gross value to obtain the gross value added. Gross value added = gross value of output – value of intermediate consumption, value of output = value of the total sales of goods and services plus value of changes in the inventories. The sum of the value added in the various economic activities is known as GDP at factor cost. GDP at factor cost plus indirect taxes less subsidies on products = GDP at producer price, for measuring output of domestic product, economic activities are classified into various sectors. Subtracting each sectors intermediate consumption from gross output gives the GDP at factor cost, adding indirect tax minus subsidies in GDP at factor cost gives the GDP at producer prices
13.
Purchasing power parity
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Observed deviations of the exchange rate from purchasing power parity are measured by deviations of the real exchange rate from its PPP value of 1. PPP exchange rates help to minimize misleading international comparisons that can arise with the use of exchange rates. For example, suppose that two countries produce the same amounts of goods as each other in each of two different years. But if one countrys GDP is converted into the countrys currency using PPP exchange rates instead of observed market exchange rates. The idea originated with the School of Salamanca in the 16th century, the best-known purchasing power adjustment is the Geary–Khamis dollar. The real exchange rate is equal to the nominal exchange rate. If purchasing power parity held exactly, then the exchange rate would always equal one. However, in practice the exchange rates exhibit both short run and long run deviations from this value, for example due to reasons illuminated in the Balassa–Samuelson theorem. There can be marked differences between purchasing power adjusted incomes and those converted via market exchange rates. This discrepancy has large implications, for instance, when converted via the exchange rates GDP per capita in India is about US$1,965 while on a PPP basis it is about US$7,197. At the other extreme, Denmarks nominal GDP per capita is around US$62,100, the purchasing power parity exchange rate serves two main functions. PPP exchange rates can be useful for making comparisons between countries because they stay fairly constant from day to day or week to week and only change modestly, if at all, from year to year. The PPP exchange-rate calculation is controversial because of the difficulties of finding comparable baskets of goods to compare purchasing power across countries, people in different countries typically consume different baskets of goods. It is necessary to compare the cost of baskets of goods and this is a difficult task because purchasing patterns and even the goods available to purchase differ across countries. Thus, it is necessary to make adjustments for differences in the quality of goods, furthermore, the basket of goods representative of one economy will vary from that of another, Americans eat more bread, Chinese more rice. Hence a PPP calculated using the US consumption as a base will differ from that calculated using China as a base, additional statistical difficulties arise with multilateral comparisons when more than two countries are to be compared. Various ways of averaging bilateral PPPs can provide a stable multilateral comparison. These are all issues of indexing, as with other price indices there is no way to reduce complexity to a single number that is equally satisfying for all purposes
14.
Gini coefficient
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The Gini coefficient is a measure of statistical dispersion intended to represent the income or wealth distribution of a nations residents, and is the most commonly used measure of inequality. It was developed by the Italian statistician and sociologist Corrado Gini, the Gini coefficient measures the inequality among values of a frequency distribution. A Gini coefficient of zero expresses perfect equality, where all values are the same, a Gini coefficient of 1 expresses maximal inequality among values. However, a greater than one may occur if some persons represent negative contribution to the total. For larger groups, values close to or above 1 are very unlikely in practice, the exception to this is in the redistribution of wealth resulting in a minimum income for all people. When the population is sorted, if their distribution were to approximate a well known function. The Gini coefficient was proposed by Gini as a measure of inequality of income or wealth, the global income Gini coefficient in 2005 has been estimated to be between 0.61 and 0.68 by various sources. There are some issues in interpreting a Gini coefficient, the same value may result from many different distribution curves. The demographic structure should be taken into account, Countries with an aging population, or with a baby boom, experience an increasing pre-tax Gini coefficient even if real income distribution for working adults remains constant. Scholars have devised over a dozen variants of the Gini coefficient, the line at 45 degrees thus represents perfect equality of incomes. The Gini coefficient can then be thought of as the ratio of the area lies between the line of equality and the Lorenz curve over the total area under the line of equality. It is also equal to 2A and to 1 - 2B due to the fact that A + B =0.5. If all people have non-negative income, the Gini coefficient can theoretically range from 0 to 1, in practice, both extreme values are not quite reached. If negative values are possible, then the Gini coefficient could theoretically be more than 1, normally the mean is assumed positive, which rules out a Gini coefficient less than zero. An alternative approach would be to consider the Gini coefficient as half of the mean absolute difference. The effects of income policy due to redistribution can be seen in the linear relationships. An informative simplified case just distinguishes two levels of income, low and high, if the high income group is u % of the population and earns a fraction f % of all income, then the Gini coefficient is f − u. An actual more graded distribution with these same values u and f will always have a higher Gini coefficient than f − u, the proverbial case where the richest 20% have 80% of all income would lead to an income Gini coefficient of at least 60%
15.
Human Development Index
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The Human Development Index is a composite statistic of life expectancy, education, and per capita income indicators, which are used to rank countries into four tiers of human development. A country scores higher HDI when the lifespan is higher, the level is higher. The 2010 Human Development Report introduced an Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index, while the simple HDI remains useful, it stated that the IHDI is the actual level of human development, and the HDI can be viewed as an index of potential human development. The origins of the HDI are found in the annual Human Development Reports produced by the Human Development Reports Office of the United Nations Development Programme, nobel laureate Amartya Sen, utilized Haqs work in his own work on human capabilities. The following three indices are used,1, Life Expectancy Index = LE −2085 −20 LEI is 1 when Life expectancy at birth is 85 and 0 when Life expectancy at birth is 20. Education Index = MYSI + EYSI22.1 Mean Years of Schooling Index = MYS15 Fifteen is the maximum of this indicator for 2025. 2.2 Expected Years of Schooling Index = EYS18 Eighteen is equivalent to achieving a degree in most countries. Income Index = ln − ln ln − ln II is 1 when GNI per capita is $75,000 and 0 when GNI per capita is $100. Finally, the HDI is the mean of the previous three normalized indices, HDI = LEI ⋅ EI ⋅ II3. Standard of living, as indicated by the logarithm of gross domestic product per capita at purchasing power parity. This methodology was used by the UNDP until their 2011 report, the formula defining the HDI is promulgated by the United Nations Development Programme. The 2016 Human Development Report by the United Nations Development Programme was released on March 21,2017, below is the list of the very high human development countries, = increase. The number in brackets represents the number of ranks the country has climbed relative to the ranking in the 2015 report, the Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index is a measure of the average level of human development of people in a society once inequality is taken into account. The rankings are not relative to the HDI list above due to the exclusion of countries which are missing IHDI data. Countries in the top quartile of HDI with a missing IHDI, New Zealand, Singapore, Hong Kong, Liechtenstein, Brunei, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Andorra, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Kuwait. The 2015 Human Development Report by the United Nations Development Programme was released on December 14,2015, below is the list of the very high human development countries, = increase. The number in brackets represents the number of ranks the country has climbed relative to the ranking in the 2014 report, the Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index is a measure of the average level of human development of people in a society once inequality is taken into account. Note, The green arrows, red arrows, and blue dashes represent changes in rank, the rankings are not relative to the HDI list above due to the exclusion of countries which are missing IHDI data
16.
ISO 4217
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The ISO4217 code list is used in banking and business globally. ISO4217 codes are used on tickets and international train tickets to remove any ambiguity about the price. The first two letters of the code are the two letters of the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country codes and the third is usually the initial of the currency itself, so Japans currency code is JPY—JP for Japan and Y for yen. This eliminates the problem caused by the dollar, franc, peso and pound being used in dozens of different countries. Also, if a currency is revalued, the currency codes last letter is changed to distinguish it from the old currency. Other changes can be seen, however, the Russian ruble, for example, changed from RUR to RUB and these currency units are denominated as one troy ounce of the specified metal as opposed to USD1 or EUR1. The code XTS is reserved for use in testing, the code XXX is used to denote a transaction involving no currency. There are also codes specifying certain monetary instruments used in international finance, the codes for most supranational currencies, such as the East Caribbean dollar, the CFP franc, the CFA franc BEAC and the CFA franc BCEAO. The predecessor to the euro, the European Currency Unit, had the code XEU, the use of an initial letter X for these purposes is facilitated by the ISO3166 rule that no official country code beginning with X will ever be assigned. Because of this rule ISO4217 can use X codes without risk of clashing with a country code. ISO3166 country codes beginning with X are used for private custom use, consequently, ISO4217 can use X codes for non-country-specific currencies without risk of clashing with future country codes. The inclusion of EU in the ISO 3166-1 reserved codes list, the ISO4217 standard includes a crude mechanism for expressing the relationship between a major currency unit and its corresponding minor currency unit. This mechanism is called the exponent and assumes a base of 10. For example, USD is equal to 100 of its currency unit the cent. So the USD has exponent 2, the code JPY is given the exponent 0, because its minor unit, the sen, although nominally valued at 1/100 of a yen, is of such negligible value that it is no longer used. Usually, as with the USD, the currency unit has a value that is 1/100 of the major unit, but in some cases 1/1000 is used. Mauritania does not use a decimal division of units, setting 1 ouguiya equal to 5 khoums, some currencies do not have any minor currency unit at all and these are given an exponent of 0, as with currencies whose minor units are unused due to negligible value. There is also a code number assigned to each currency
17.
Coordinated Universal Time
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Coordinated Universal Time, abbreviated to UTC, is the primary time standard by which the world regulates clocks and time. It is within about 1 second of mean time at 0° longitude. It is one of closely related successors to Greenwich Mean Time. For most purposes, UTC is considered interchangeable with GMT, the first Coordinated Universal Time was informally adopted on 1 January 1960. This change also adopted leap seconds to simplify future adjustments, a number of proposals have been made to replace UTC with a new system that would eliminate leap seconds, but no consensus has yet been reached. Leap seconds are inserted as necessary to keep UTC within 0.9 seconds of universal time, see the Current number of leap seconds section for the number of leap seconds inserted to date. The official abbreviation for Coordinated Universal Time is UTC and this abbreviation arose from a desire by the International Telecommunication Union and the International Astronomical Union to use the same abbreviation in all languages. English speakers originally proposed CUT, while French speakers proposed TUC, the compromise that emerged was UTC, which conforms to the pattern for the abbreviations of the variants of Universal Time. Time zones around the world are expressed using positive or negative offsets from UTC, the westernmost time zone uses UTC−12, being twelve hours behind UTC, the easternmost time zone, theoretically, uses UTC+12, being twelve hours ahead of UTC. In 1995, the nation of Kiribati moved those of its atolls in the Line Islands from UTC-10 to UTC+14 so that the country would all be on the same day. UTC is used in internet and World Wide Web standards. The Network Time Protocol, designed to synchronise the clocks of computers over the internet, computer servers, online services and other entities that rely on having a universally accepted time use UTC as it is more specific than GMT. If only limited precision is needed, clients can obtain the current UTC from a number of official internet UTC servers, for sub-microsecond precision, clients can obtain the time from satellite signals. UTC is also the standard used in aviation, e. g. for flight plans. Weather forecasts and maps all use UTC to avoid confusion about time zones, the International Space Station also uses UTC as a time standard. Amateur radio operators often schedule their radio contacts in UTC, because transmissions on some frequencies can be picked up by many time zones, UTC is also used in digital tachographs used on large goods vehicles under EU and AETR rules. UTC divides time into days, hours, minutes and seconds, days are conventionally identified using the Gregorian calendar, but Julian day numbers can also be used. Each day contains 24 hours and each hour contains 60 minutes, the number of seconds in a minute is usually 60, but with an occasional leap second, it may be 61 or 59 instead
18.
Left- and right-hand traffic
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This is so fundamental to traffic flow that it is sometimes referred to as the rule of the road. About two-thirds of the population use RHT, with the remaining 76 countries and territories using LHT. Countries that use LHT account for about a sixth of the worlds area, in the early 1900s some countries including Canada, Spain, and Brazil had different rules in different parts of the country. During the 1900s many countries standardised within their jurisdictions, and changed from LHT to RHT, in 1919,104 of the worlds territories were LHT and an equal number were RHT. From 1919 to 1986,34 of the LHT territories switched to RHT, many of the countries with LHT are former British colonies in the Caribbean, Southern Africa, Southeast Asia, Australia, and New Zealand. Japan, Thailand, Nepal, Bhutan, Mozambique, Suriname, East Timor, in Europe, only four countries still drive on the left, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Malta, and Cyprus, all of which are islands. Nearly all countries use one side or the other throughout their entire territory, most exceptions are due to historical considerations and involve islands with no road connection to the main part of a country. China is RHT except the Special Administrative Regions of China of Hong Kong, the United States is RHT except the United States Virgin Islands. The United Kingdom is LHT, but its overseas territories of Gibraltar, according to the International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea, water traffic is RHT. For aircraft the US Federal Aviation Regulations provide for passing on the right, light rail vehicles generally operate on the same side as other road traffic in the country. Many countries use RHT for automobiles but LHT for trains, often because of the influence of the British on early railway systems, in some countries rail traffic remained LHT after automobile traffic switched to RHT, for example in China, Brazil, and Argentina. However, France, Belgium, and Switzerland have used RHT for automobiles since their introduction, there is no technical reason to prefer one side over the other. Ancient Greek, Egyptian, and Roman troops kept to the left when marching, in 1998, archaeologists found a well-preserved double track leading to a Roman quarry near Swindon. The first reference in English law to an order for LHT was in 1756, northcote Parkinson, believed that ancient travellers on horseback or on foot generally kept to the left, since most people were right handed. If two men riding on horseback were to start a fight, each would edge toward the left, in the year 1300, Pope Boniface VIII directed pilgrims to keep left. In the late 1700s, traffic in the United States was RHT based on use of large freight wagons pulled by several pairs of horses. The wagons had no seat, so a postilion sat on the left rear horse. Seated on the left, the driver preferred that other wagons pass him on the left so that he could be sure to keep clear of the wheels of oncoming wagons, in France, traditionally foot traffic had kept right, while carriage traffic kept left
19.
Island country
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An island country is a country whose primary territory consists of one or more islands or parts of islands. As of 2011,46 of the 193 UN member states are island countries, the percentage of island countries that are democratic is higher than that of continental countries. Historically they have been prone to political stability than their continental counterparts. Island countries have often been the basis of maritime conquest and historical rivalry between other countries, Island countries are more susceptible to attack by large, continental countries due to their size and dependence on sea and air lines of communication. Many island countries are vulnerable to predation by mercenaries and other foreign invaders. Many island countries rely heavily on fish for their supply of food. Some are turning to renewable energy—such as wind power, hydropower, geothermal power, some island countries are more affected than other countries by climate change, which produces problems such as reduced land use, water scarcity and sometimes even resettlement issues. Some low-lying island countries are slowly being submerged by the water levels of the Pacific Ocean. Climate change also impacts island countries by causing natural disasters such as cyclones, hurricanes, flash floods. In 2011, the Center for Climate Change Law held a conference attended by 272 registrants from 39 island nations titled Legal Issues for Threatened Island Nations, many island countries rely heavily on imports and are greatly affected by changes in the global economy. The dominant industry for many countries is tourism. Island countries are small with low populations, although some, like Indonesia. Some island countries are centred on one or two islands, such as the United Kingdom, Trinidad and Tobago, New Zealand, Cuba, Bahrain, Singapore, Malta. Others are spread out over hundreds or thousands of islands, such as Indonesia, the Philippines, Seychelles. Geographically, the country of Australia is considered a continental landmass rather than an island, in the past, however, it was considered an island country for tourism purposes and is still often referred to as such
20.
Gulf of Guinea
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The Gulf of Guinea is the northeasternmost part of the tropical Atlantic Ocean between Cape Lopez in Gabon, north and west to Cape Palmas in Liberia. The intersection of the Equator and Prime Meridian is in the gulf, among the many rivers that drain into the Gulf of Guinea are the Niger and the Volta. The coastline on the gulf includes the Bight of Benin and the Bight of Bonny, the Niger River in particular deposited organic sediments out to sea over millions of years which became crude oil. The origin of the name Guinea is thought to be an area in the region, bovill gives a thorough description, The name Guinea is usually said to have been a corrupt form of the name Ghana, picked up by the Portuguese in the Maghrib. The present writer finds this unacceptable, the name Guinea has been in use both in the Maghrib and in Europe long before Prince Henrys time. A passage in Leo points to Guinea having been a form of Jenne, less famous than Ghana but nevertheless for many centuries famed in the Maghrib as a great market. The relevant passage reads, The Kingdom of Ghinea. called by the merchants of our nation Gheneoa, by the inhabitants thereof Genni and by the Portugals. But it seems probable that Guinea derives from aguinaou, the Berber for Negro. Marrakech has a gate, built in the century, called the Bab Aguinaou. The modern application of the name Guinea to the coast dates only from 1481, the name Guinea is still attached to the names of three countries in Africa, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, and Equatorial Guinea, as well as New Guinea in Melanesia. The main river shedding its waters in the gulf is the Niger River, the Gulf of Guinea contains a number of islands, the largest of which are in a southwest-northeast chain, forming part of the Cameroon line of volcanoes. Annobón, also known as Pagalu or Pigalu, is an island that is part of Equatorial Guinea, bobowasi Island is an island off the west coast of Africa in the Gulf of Guinea that is part of Western region Ghana. Bioko is an island off the west coast of Africa in the Gulf of Guinea that is part of Equatorial Guinea, corisco is an island belonging to Equatorial Guinea. Elobey Grande and Elobey Chico are two small islands belonging to Equatorial Guinea, São Tomé and Príncipe is a Portuguese-speaking island nation in the Gulf of Guinea that became independent from Portugal in 1975. It is located off the western equatorial coast of Africa and consists of two islands, São Tomé and Príncipe and they are located about 140 kilometres apart and about 250 and 225 kilometres, respectively, off the northwestern coast of Gabon. Both islands are part of a volcanic mountain range. São Tomé, the southern island, is situated just north of the Equator. Media related to Gulf of Guinea at Wikimedia Commons The Gulf of Guinea Commission - CGG - GGC
21.
Central Africa
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Central Africa is the core region of the African continent which includes Burundi, the Central African Republic, Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Rwanda. All of the states in the UN subregion of Middle Africa, plus those otherwise commonly reckoned in Central Africa, since its independence in 2011, South Sudan has also been commonly included in the region. The Central African Federation, also called the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, was made up of what are now the nations of Malawi, Zambia and these states are now typically considered part of Southern Africa. Archeological finds in Central Africa have been discovered dating back over 100,000 years, according to Zangato and Holl, there is evidence of iron-smelting in the Central African Republic and Cameroon that may date back to 3000 to 2500 BCE. Extensive walled settlements have recently found in Northeast Nigeria, approximately 60 km southwest of Lake Chad dating to the first millennium BCE. Trade and improved agricultural techniques supported more sophisticated societies, leading to the civilizations of Sao, Kanem, Bornu, Shilluk, Baguirmi. Around 1000 BCE, Bantu migrants had reached the Great Lakes Region in Central Africa, halfway through the first millennium BCE, the Bantu had also settled as far south as what is now Angola. The Sao civilization flourished from ca. the sixth century BCE to as late as the sixteenth century CE in northern Central Africa, the Sao lived by the Chari River south of Lake Chad in territory that later became part of Cameroon and Chad. They are the earliest people to have clear traces of their presence in the territory of modern Cameroon. Today, several groups of northern Cameroon and southern Chad. Sao artifacts show that they were skilled workers in bronze, copper, finds include bronze sculptures and terra cotta statues of human and animal figures, coins, funerary urns, household utensils, jewelry, highly decorated pottery, and spears. The largest Sao archaeological finds have been south of Lake Chad. The Kanem-Bornu Empire was centered in the Chad Basin and it was known as the Kanem Empire from the 9th century CE onward and lasted as the independent kingdom of Bornu until 1900. The history of the Empire is mainly known from the Royal Chronicle or Girgam discovered in 1851 by the German traveller Heinrich Barth, Kanem rose in the 8th century in the region to the north and east of Lake Chad. The Kanem empire went into decline, shrank, and in the 14th century was defeated by Bilala invaders from the Lake Fitri region, the Kanuri people led by the Sayfuwa migrated to the west and south of the lake, where they established the Bornu Empire. By the late 16th century the Bornu empire had expanded and recaptured the parts of Kanem that had been conquered by the Bulala, satellite states of Bornu included the Damagaram in the west and Baguirmi to the southeast of Lake Chad. The Shilluk Kingdom was centered in South Sudan from the 15th century from along a strip of land along the bank of White Nile. The capital and royal residence was in the town of Fashoda, the kingdom was founded during the mid-fifteenth century CE by its first ruler, Nyikang
22.
Archipelago
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An archipelago, sometimes called an island group or island chain, is a chain, cluster or collection of islands. The word archipelago is derived from the Greek ἄρχι- – arkhi-, in Italian, possibly following a tradition of antiquity, the Archipelago was the proper name for the Aegean Sea and, later, usage shifted to refer to the Aegean Islands. It is now used to refer to any group or, sometimes. Archipelagos may be isolated in large amounts of water or neighbouring a large land mass. For example, Scotland has more than 700 islands surrounding its mainland which form an archipelago, archipelagos are often volcanic, forming along island arcs generated by subduction zones or hotspots, but may also be the result of erosion, deposition, and land elevation. Depending on their origin, islands forming archipelagos can be referred to as oceanic islands, continental fragments. Oceanic islands are mainly of volcanic origin, continental fragments correspond to land masses that have separated from a continental mass due to tectonic displacement. Indonesia, Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines, New Zealand, Maldives, the Bahamas, Greece, Hawaii, the largest archipelagic state in the world by area and population is Indonesia. Island arc List of landforms List of archipelagos by number of islands List of archipelagos List of islands Chisholm, Hugh, ed. Archipelago
23.
Gabon
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Gabon, officially the Gabonese Republic, is a sovereign state on the west coast of Central Africa. Located on the equator, Gabon is bordered by Equatorial Guinea to the northwest, Cameroon to the north, the Republic of the Congo on the east and south, and the Gulf of Guinea to the west. It has an area of nearly 270,000 square kilometres and its capital and largest city is Libreville. Since its independence from France in 1960, Gabon has had three presidents, in the early 1990s, Gabon introduced a multi-party system and a new democratic constitution that allowed for a more transparent electoral process and reformed many governmental institutions. Gabon was also a member of the United Nations Security Council for the 2010–2011 term. GDP grew by more than 6% per year from 2010 to 2012, however, because of inequality in income distribution, a significant proportion of the population remains poor. Gabons name originates from gabão, Portuguese for cloak, which is roughly the shape of the estuary of the Komo River by Libreville, the earliest inhabitants of the area were Pygmy peoples. They were largely replaced and absorbed by Bantu tribes as they migrated, in the 15th century, the first Europeans arrived. By the 18th century, a Myeni speaking kingdom known as Orungu formed in Gabon, on February 10,1722, Bartholomew Roberts, a Welsh pirate known as Black Bart, died at sea off Cape Lopez. He raided ships off the Americas and West Africa from 1719 to 1722, French explorer Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza led his first mission to the Gabon-Congo area in 1875. He founded the town of Franceville, and was later colonial governor, several Bantu groups lived in the area that is now Gabon when France officially occupied it in 1885. In 1910, Gabon became one of the four territories of French Equatorial Africa, in World War II, the Allies invaded Gabon in order to overthrow the pro-Vichy France colonial administration. The territories of French Equatorial Africa became independent on August 17,1960, the first president of Gabon, elected in 1961, was Léon Mba, with Omar Bongo Ondimba as his vice president. However, when Mba dissolved the National Assembly in January 1964 to institute one-party rule, French paratroopers flew in within 24 hours to restore Mba to power. After a few days of fighting, the coup ended and the opposition was imprisoned, French soldiers still remain in the Camp de Gaulle on the outskirts of Gabons capital to this day. When MBa died in 1967, Bongo replaced him as president, in March 1968, Bongo declared Gabon a one-party state by dissolving the BDG and establishing a new party—the Parti Democratique Gabonais. He invited all Gabonese, regardless of political affiliation, to participate. Bongo was elected President in February 1975, in April 1975, the position of president was abolished and replaced by the position of prime minister
24.
Island
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An island or isle is any piece of sub-continental land that is surrounded by water. Very small islands such as emergent land features on atolls can be called islets, skerries, an island in a river or a lake island may be called an eyot or ait, and a small island off the coast may be called a holm. A grouping of geographically or geologically related islands is called an archipelago, an island may be described as such, despite the presence of an artificial land bridge. Example, Singapore and its causeway, or the various Dutch delta islands, there are two main types of islands in the sea, continental and oceanic. The word island derives from Middle English iland, from Old English igland, Old English ieg is actually a cognate of Swedish ö and German Aue, and related to Latin aqua. There is a difference between islands and continents in terms of geology, continents sit on continental lithosphere which is part of tectonic plates floating high on Earths mantle. Oceanic crust is also part of tectonic plates, but it is denser than continental lithosphere, Islands are either extensions of the oceanic crust or geologically they are part of some continent sitting on continental lithosphere. This holds true for Australia, which sits on its own continental lithosphere, continental islands are bodies of land that lie on the continental shelf of a continent. A special type of island is the microcontinental island, which is created when a continent is rifted. Examples are Madagascar and Socotra off Africa, the Kerguelen Islands, New Caledonia, New Zealand, another subtype is an island or bar formed by deposition of tiny rocks where water current loses some of its carrying capacity. While some are transitory and may disappear if the volume or speed of the current changes, others are stable, oceanic islands are islands that do not sit on continental shelves. The vast majority are volcanic in origin, such as Saint Helena in the South Atlantic Ocean, the few oceanic islands that are not volcanic are tectonic in origin and arise where plate movements have lifted up the ocean floor above the surface. Examples are Saint Peter and Paul Rocks in the Atlantic Ocean, one type of volcanic oceanic island is found in a volcanic island arc. These islands arise from volcanoes where the subduction of one plate under another is occurring, examples are the Aleutian Islands, the Mariana Islands, and most of Tonga in the Pacific Ocean. The only examples in the Atlantic Ocean are some of the Lesser Antilles, another type of volcanic oceanic island occurs where an oceanic rift reaches the surface. There are two examples, Iceland, which is the second largest volcanic island, and Jan Mayen. A third type of oceanic island is formed over volcanic hotspots. A hotspot is more or less stationary relative to the tectonic plate above it
25.
Atlantic slave trade
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The Atlantic slave trade or transatlantic slave trade took place across the Atlantic Ocean from the 15th through the 19th centuries. This was crucial to those western European countries which, in the late 17th and 18th centuries, were vying with each other to create overseas empires, the Portuguese were the first to engage in the New World slave trade in the 16th century. In 1526, the Portuguese completed the first transatlantic voyage from Africa to the Americas. The first Africans imported to the English colonies were classified as indentured servants, like coming from England. By the middle of the 17th century, slavery had hardened as a caste, they and their offspring were legally the property of their owners. As property, the people were considered merchandise or units of labour, the major Atlantic slave trading nations, ordered by trade volume, were, the Portuguese, the British, the French, the Spanish, and the Dutch Empire. Several had established outposts on the African coast where they purchased slaves from local African leaders and these slaves were managed by a factor who was established on or near the coast to expedite the shipping of slaves to the New World. Slaves were kept in a factory while awaiting shipment, current estimates are that about 12 million Africans were shipped across the Atlantic, although the number purchased by the traders is considerably higher, as the passage had a high death rate. Near the beginning of the century, various governments acted to ban the trade. In the early twenty-first century, several governments issued apologies for the slave trade. The Atlantic slave trade arose after trade contacts were first made between the continents of the Old World and those of the New World, between 1600 and 1800, approximately 300,000 sailors engaged in the slave trade visited West Africa. In doing so, they came into contact with societies living along the west African coast, historian John Thornton noted, A number of technical and geographical factors combined to make Europeans the most likely people to explore the Atlantic and develop its commerce. That leadership later gave rise to the myth that the Iberians were the leaders of the exploration. Slavery was practiced in parts of Africa, Europe, Asia. There is evidence that people from some African states were exported to other states in Africa, Europe. The African slave trade provided a number of slaves to Europeans. The Atlantic slave trade was not the slave trade from Africa, although it was the largest in volume. As Elikia M’bokolo wrote in Le Monde diplomatique, The African continent was bled of its resources via all possible routes
26.
Sugar
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Sugar is the generic name for sweet, soluble carbohydrates, many of which are used in food. There are various types of derived from different sources. Simple sugars are called monosaccharides and include glucose, fructose, the table sugar or granulated sugar most customarily used as food is sucrose, a disaccharide of glucose and fructose. Sugar is used in prepared foods and it is added to some foods, in the body, sucrose is hydrolysed into the simple sugars fructose and glucose. Other disaccharides include maltose from malted grain, and lactose from milk, longer chains of sugars are called oligosaccharides or polysaccharides. Some other chemical substances, such as glycerol may also have a sweet taste, low-calorie food substitutes for sugar, described as artificial sweeteners, include aspartame and sucralose, a chlorinated derivative of sucrose. Sugars are found in the tissues of most plants and are present in sufficient concentrations for efficient commercial extraction in sugarcane, the world production of sugar in 2011 was about 168 million tonnes. The average person consumes about 24 kilograms of sugar each year, equivalent to over 260 food calories per person, since the latter part of the twentieth century, it has been questioned whether a diet high in sugars, especially refined sugars, is good for human health. Sugar has been linked to obesity, and suspected of, or fully implicated as a cause in the occurrence of diabetes, cardiovascular disease, dementia, macular degeneration, the etymology reflects the spread of the commodity. The English word sugar ultimately originates from the Sanskrit शर्करा, via Arabic سكر as granular or candied sugar, the contemporary Italian word is zucchero, whereas the Spanish and Portuguese words, azúcar and açúcar, respectively, have kept a trace of the Arabic definite article. The Old French word is zuchre and the contemporary French, sucre, the earliest Greek word attested is σάκχαρις. The English word jaggery, a brown sugar made from date palm sap or sugarcane juice, has a similar etymological origin – Portuguese jagara from the Sanskrit शर्करा. Sugar has been produced in the Indian subcontinent since ancient times and it was not plentiful or cheap in early times and honey was more often used for sweetening in most parts of the world. Originally, people chewed raw sugarcane to extract its sweetness, sugarcane was a native of tropical South Asia and Southeast Asia. Different species seem to have originated from different locations with Saccharum barberi originating in India and S. edule, one of the earliest historical references to sugarcane is in Chinese manuscripts dating back to 8th century BC that state that the use of sugarcane originated in India. Sugar was found in Europe by the 1st century AD, but only as an imported medicine and it is a kind of honey found in cane, white as gum, and it crunches between the teeth. It comes in lumps the size of a hazelnut, sugar is used only for medical purposes. Sugar remained relatively unimportant until the Indians discovered methods of turning sugarcane juice into granulated crystals that were easier to store, crystallized sugar was discovered by the time of the Imperial Guptas, around the 5th century AD
27.
Coffee
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Coffee is a brewed drink prepared from roasted coffee beans, which are the seeds of berries from the Coffea plant. The genus Coffea is native to tropical Africa, and Madagascar, the two most commonly grown are the highly regarded arabica, and the less sophisticated but stronger and more hardy robusta. Once ripe, coffee berries are picked, processed, and dried, dried coffee seeds are roasted to varying degrees, depending on the desired flavor. Roasted beans are ground and brewed with boiling water to produce coffee as a beverage. Coffee is slightly acidic and can have an effect on humans because of its caffeine content. Coffee is one of the most popular drinks in the world and it can be prepared and presented in a variety of ways. It is usually served hot, although iced coffee is also served, the earliest credible evidence of coffee-drinking appears in the middle of the 15th century in the Sufi shrines of Yemen. It was here in Arabia that coffee seeds were first roasted and brewed in a way to how it is now prepared. Coffee seeds were first exported from East Africa to Yemen, as the coffea arabica plant is thought to have been indigenous to the former, yemeni traders took coffee back to their homeland and began to cultivate the seed. By the 16th century, it had reached Persia, Turkey, from there, it spread to Europe and the rest of the world. Coffee is an export commodity, it is the top agricultural export for numerous countries and is among the worlds largest legal agricultural exports. It is one of the most valuable commodities exported by developing countries, green coffee is one of the most traded agricultural commodities in the world. Consequently, the markets for fair trade coffee and organic coffee are expanding. The first reference to coffee in the English language is in the form chaona, dated to 1598 and understood to be a misprint of chaoua, equivalent, in the orthography of the time, to chaova. This term and coffee both derive from the Ottoman Turkish kahve, by way of the Italian caffè and it has also been proposed that the source may be the Proto-Central Semitic root q-h-h meaning dark. Alternatively, the word Khat, a plant widely used as stimulant in Yemen and Ethiopia before being supplanted by coffee has been suggested as a possible origin, the expression coffee break was first attested in 1952. The term coffee pot dates from 1705, other accounts attribute the discovery of coffee to Sheikh Omar. According to the ancient chronicle, Omar, who was known for his ability to cure the sick through prayer, was exiled from Mocha in Yemen to a desert cave near Ousab
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Wikimedia Atlas of São Tomé and Príncipe
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