1.
Senate (France)
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The Senate is the upper house of the Parliament of France, presided over by a president. Indirectly elected by elected officials, it represents territorial collectivities of the Republic, the Senate enjoys less prominence than the lower house, the directly elected National Assembly, debates in the Senate tend to be less tense and generally receive less media coverage. Frances first experience with a house was under the Directory from 1795 to 1799. With the Restoration in 1814, a new Chamber of Peers was created, at first it contained hereditary peers, but following the July Revolution of 1830, it became a body to which one was appointed for life. The Second Republic returned to a system after 1848, but soon after the establishment of the Second French Empire in 1852. In the Fourth Republic, the Senate was replaced by the Council of the Republic, with the new constitution of the Fifth Republic enforced on 4 October 1958, the older name of Senate was restored. In 2011, the Socialist Party won control of the French Senate for the first time since the foundation of the French Fifth Republic, in 2014, the centre-right Gaullists and its allies won back the control of the Senate. Until September 2004, the Senate had 321 senators, each elected to a nine-year term and that month, the term was reduced to six years, while the number of senators progressively increased to 348 in 2011, in order to reflect the countrys population growth. Senators were elected in every three years, this was also changed to one-half of their number every three years. Senators are elected indirectly by approximately 150,000 officials, including regional councilors, department councilors, mayors, city councilors in large towns, however, 90% of the electors are delegates appointed by councilors. This system introduces a bias in the composition of the Senate favoring rural areas, the Senate has also been accused of being a refuge for politicians that have lost their seats in the National Assembly. The senators elect a President from among their members, the current incumbent is Gérard Larcher. This happened twice for Alain Poher—once at the resignation of Charles de Gaulle, under the Constitution, the Senate has nearly the same powers as the National Assembly. Bills may be submitted by the administration or by either house of Parliament, because both houses may amend the bill, it may take several readings to reach an agreement between the National Assembly and the Senate. This does not happen frequently, usually the two eventually agree on the bill, or the administration decides to withdraw it. The power to pass a vote of censure, or vote of no confidence, is limited, as was the case in the Fourth Republics constitution, new cabinets do not have to receive a vote of confidence. Also, a vote of censure can occur only after 10 percent of the sign a petition, if rejected. If the petition gets the support, a vote of censure must gain an absolute majority of all members
2.
Essonne
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Essonne is a French department in the region of Île-de-France. It is named after the Essonne River and it was formed on 1 January 1968 when Seine-et-Oise was split into smaller departments. The Essonne department was created on 1 January 1968, from the portion of the former department of Seine-et-Oise. In June 1963 Carrefour S. A. opened the first hypermarket in the Paris region at Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois, in 1969, the communes of Châteaufort and Toussus-le-Noble were separated from Essonne and added to the department of Yvelines. Essonne belongs to the region of Île-de-France and it has borders with the departments of, Hauts-de-Seine and Val-de-Marne to the north, Seine-et-Marne to the east, Loiret to the south, Eure-et-Loir and Yvelines to the west. All of northern Essonne department belongs to the Parisian agglomeration and is very urbanized, milly-la-Forêt is an example of its more rural communes. Founded in 1794, LEcole Polytechnique is one of the most prestigious engineering universities in France and this university was ranked 10th in the world by the Times Higher Education Supplement in 2005. Its campus is in the town of Palaiseau, one of the best public schools in France, it is ranked 52nd by Academic Ranking of World Universities. It is best known for its physics department, located in Orsay, Essonne, about 26,000 students are enrolled. The Headquarters of the Arianespace Company, a major commercial aerospace launcher, originally having been an ancient fort during Roman times, the first feudal lords began to inhabit the castle around 1000 AD. One major battle was fought in the castle during its lifetime, in 1465, Charles the Rash and French King Louis XI fought in the plains in front of the castle. In 1842, the reconstruction of the castle was started, covering 3,500 hectares in area, this forest is very important to the local population. The local government has kept roads and agricultural companies from cutting down parts of this forest, the forest receives between two and three million visitors annually, and the government spends 1.2 million euros a year maintaining it. Situated in Évry, this is a grande ecole for engineers The departments most high-profile political representative has been Manuel Valls and he visited its main town Évry to deliver remarks following the Charlie Hebdo massacre of January 2015
3.
Paris
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Paris is the capital and most populous city of France. It has an area of 105 square kilometres and a population of 2,229,621 in 2013 within its administrative limits, the agglomeration has grown well beyond the citys administrative limits. By the 17th century, Paris was one of Europes major centres of finance, commerce, fashion, science, and the arts, and it retains that position still today. The aire urbaine de Paris, a measure of area, spans most of the Île-de-France region and has a population of 12,405,426. It is therefore the second largest metropolitan area in the European Union after London, the Metropole of Grand Paris was created in 2016, combining the commune and its nearest suburbs into a single area for economic and environmental co-operation. Grand Paris covers 814 square kilometres and has a population of 7 million persons, the Paris Region had a GDP of €624 billion in 2012, accounting for 30.0 percent of the GDP of France and ranking it as one of the wealthiest regions in Europe. The city is also a rail, highway, and air-transport hub served by two international airports, Paris-Charles de Gaulle and Paris-Orly. Opened in 1900, the subway system, the Paris Métro. It is the second busiest metro system in Europe after Moscow Metro, notably, Paris Gare du Nord is the busiest railway station in the world outside of Japan, with 262 millions passengers in 2015. In 2015, Paris received 22.2 million visitors, making it one of the top tourist destinations. The association football club Paris Saint-Germain and the rugby union club Stade Français are based in Paris, the 80, 000-seat Stade de France, built for the 1998 FIFA World Cup, is located just north of Paris in the neighbouring commune of Saint-Denis. Paris hosts the annual French Open Grand Slam tennis tournament on the red clay of Roland Garros, Paris hosted the 1900 and 1924 Summer Olympics and is bidding to host the 2024 Summer Olympics. The name Paris is derived from its inhabitants, the Celtic Parisii tribe. Thus, though written the same, the name is not related to the Paris of Greek mythology. In the 1860s, the boulevards and streets of Paris were illuminated by 56,000 gas lamps, since the late 19th century, Paris has also been known as Panam in French slang. Inhabitants are known in English as Parisians and in French as Parisiens and they are also pejoratively called Parigots. The Parisii, a sub-tribe of the Celtic Senones, inhabited the Paris area from around the middle of the 3rd century BC. One of the areas major north-south trade routes crossed the Seine on the île de la Cité, this place of land and water trade routes gradually became a town
4.
France
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France, officially the French Republic, is a country with territory in western Europe and several overseas regions and territories. The European, or metropolitan, area of France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, Overseas France include French Guiana on the South American continent and several island territories in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans. France spans 643,801 square kilometres and had a population of almost 67 million people as of January 2017. It is a unitary republic with the capital in Paris. Other major urban centres include Marseille, Lyon, Lille, Nice, Toulouse, during the Iron Age, what is now metropolitan France was inhabited by the Gauls, a Celtic people. The area was annexed in 51 BC by Rome, which held Gaul until 486, France emerged as a major European power in the Late Middle Ages, with its victory in the Hundred Years War strengthening state-building and political centralisation. During the Renaissance, French culture flourished and a colonial empire was established. The 16th century was dominated by civil wars between Catholics and Protestants. France became Europes dominant cultural, political, and military power under Louis XIV, in the 19th century Napoleon took power and established the First French Empire, whose subsequent Napoleonic Wars shaped the course of continental Europe. Following the collapse of the Empire, France endured a succession of governments culminating with the establishment of the French Third Republic in 1870. Following liberation in 1944, a Fourth Republic was established and later dissolved in the course of the Algerian War, the Fifth Republic, led by Charles de Gaulle, was formed in 1958 and remains to this day. Algeria and nearly all the colonies became independent in the 1960s with minimal controversy and typically retained close economic. France has long been a centre of art, science. It hosts Europes fourth-largest number of cultural UNESCO World Heritage Sites and receives around 83 million foreign tourists annually, France is a developed country with the worlds sixth-largest economy by nominal GDP and ninth-largest by purchasing power parity. In terms of household wealth, it ranks fourth in the world. France performs well in international rankings of education, health care, life expectancy, France remains a great power in the world, being one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council with the power to veto and an official nuclear-weapon state. It is a member state of the European Union and the Eurozone. It is also a member of the Group of 7, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the World Trade Organization, originally applied to the whole Frankish Empire, the name France comes from the Latin Francia, or country of the Franks
5.
Olivier Dassault
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Olivier Dassault is a French politician, currently serving as a deputy in the French National Assembly. He is the son of Nicole and Serge Dassault, and the grandson of Marcel Dassault and he was elected 16 June 2002 as deputy for the first circonscription of Oise, running on the Union for a Popular Movement ticket. A child of the family of the Dassault Group, he has taken. He is a 1974 graduate of the École de lAir Air Force academy and has a degree in mathematics as well a doctorate in business management computing. He is also passionate for photography and has published books of his photos. Dassault is also a composer and musician and contributed scores for movies in the late 70s
6.
Marcel Dassault
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Marcel Dassault born Marcel Bloch,22 January 1892 –17 April 1986, was a French aircraft industrialist. Bloch was born on 22 January 1892 in Paris, both of his parents were Jewish. He was educated at the Lycée Condorcet in Paris, after studies in Electrical Engineering he graduated from the Breguet School and Supaéro. At the latter school Bloch was classmates with a Russian student named Mikhail Gurevich who would later be instrumental in the creating of the MiG aircraft series. Bloch worked at the French Aeronautics Research Laboratory during World War I, in 1928 Bloch founded the Société des Avions Marcel Bloch aircraft company which produced its first aircraft in 1930. In 1935 Bloch and Henry Potez entered into an agreement to buy Société Aérienne Bordelaise, in 1936 the company was nationalized as the Société Nationale de Constructions Aéronautiques du Sud Ouest. Bloch agreed to become the administrator of the Minister for Air. During Nazi Germanys occupation of France, the aviation industry was virtually disbanded, other than the compulsory manufacturing, assembly. In October 1940, Bloch refused to collaborate with the Germans occupiers at Bordeaux-Aéronautique and was imprisoned by the Vichy government, in 1944 the Nazis deported Bloch to the Buchenwald concentration camp, while his wife was interned near Paris. Bloch was detained at Buchenwald until it was liberated on 11 April 1945 and he changed his name from Bloch to Bloch-Dassault and, in 1949, to simply Dassault. Dassault was the used by his brother, General Darius Paul Bloch, when he served in the French resistance. In 1971 Dassault acquired Breguet, forming Avions Marcel Dassault-Breguet Aviation, in 1919, Bloch married Madeleine Minckes, the daughter of a wealthy Jewish family of furniture dealers. They had two sons, Claude and Serge, as Dassault, he converted to Roman Catholicism in 1950. Now, the building at no.7 has been occupied from 2002 by auction house Artcurial, while no.7 has been sold, no.9 continues to be occupied by the Groupe Industriel Marcel Dassault. Marcel Dassault died in Neuilly-sur-Seine, in 1986 and was buried in the Passy Cemetery in the 16th arrondissement of Paris, Serge Dassault, Marcels son, became CEO of Avions Marcel Dassault, which was restructured as Groupe Industriel Marcel Dassault, reflecting its broader interests. In 1990, the division was renamed Dassault Aviation. In 1991, the rond-point des Champs-Elysées was renamed the rond-point des Champs-Elysées-Marcel Dassault in his honor, societé des Avions Marcel Bloch Dassault Group Dassault Aviation The Talisman, the Autobiography of Marcel Dassault, Creator of the Mirage jet, translated by Patricia High Painton. Arlington House,1971 ISBN 0-87000-149-3 Marcel Dassault - Dassault Aviation site
7.
Alma mater
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Alma mater is an allegorical Latin phrase for a university or college. In modern usage, it is a school or university which an individual has attended, the phrase is variously translated as nourishing mother, nursing mother, or fostering mother, suggesting that a school provides intellectual nourishment to its students. Before its modern usage, Alma mater was a title in Latin for various mother goddesses, especially Ceres or Cybele. The source of its current use is the motto, Alma Mater Studiorum, of the oldest university in continuous operation in the Western world and it is related to the term alumnus, denoting a university graduate, which literally means a nursling or one who is nourished. The phrase can also denote a song or hymn associated with a school, although alma was a common epithet for Ceres, Cybele, Venus, and other mother goddesses, it was not frequently used in conjunction with mater in classical Latin. Alma Redemptoris Mater is a well-known 11th century antiphon devoted to Mary, the earliest documented English use of the term to refer to a university is in 1600, when University of Cambridge printer John Legate began using an emblem for the universitys press. In English etymological reference works, the first university-related usage is often cited in 1710, many historic European universities have adopted Alma Mater as part of the Latin translation of their official name. The University of Bologna Latin name, Alma Mater Studiorum, refers to its status as the oldest continuously operating university in the world. At least one, the Alma Mater Europaea in Salzburg, Austria, the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, has been called the Alma Mater of the Nation because of its ties to the founding of the United States. At Queens University in Kingston, Ontario, and the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, British Columbia, the ancient Roman world had many statues of the Alma Mater, some still extant. Modern sculptures are found in prominent locations on several American university campuses, outside the United States, there is an Alma Mater sculpture on the steps of the monumental entrance to the Universidad de La Habana, in Havana, Cuba. Media related to Alma mater at Wikimedia Commons The dictionary definition of alma mater at Wiktionary Alma Mater Europaea website
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