The Stonewall riots were a series of spontaneous, violent demonstrations by members of the gay community against a police raid that began in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. They are considered to constitute the most important event leading to the gay liberation movement and the modern fight for LGBT rights in the United States. Gay Americans in the 1950s and 1960s faced an anti-gay legal system. Early homosexual groups in the U. S. sought to prove that gay people could be assimilated into society, they favored non-confrontational education for homosexuals and heterosexuals alike. The last years of the 1960s, were contentious, as many social/political movements were active, including the civil rights movement, the counterculture of the 1960s, the anti-Vietnam War movement; these influences, along with the liberal environment of Greenwich Village, served as catalysts for the Stonewall riots. Few establishments welcomed gay people in the 1950s and 1960s.

Those that did were bars, although bar owners and managers were gay. At the time, the Stonewall Inn was owned by the Mafia, it catered to an assortment of patrons and was known to be popular among the poorest and most marginalized people in the gay community: butch lesbians, effeminate young men, drag queens, male prostitutes, transgender people, homeless youth. Police raids on gay bars were routine in the 1960s, but officers lost control of the situation at the Stonewall Inn. Tensions between New York City police and gay residents of Greenwich Village erupted into more protests the next evening, again several nights later. Within weeks, Village residents organized into activist groups to concentrate efforts on establishing places for gay men and lesbians to be open about their sexual orientation without fear of being arrested. After the Stonewall riots, gay men and lesbians in New York City faced gender, race and generational obstacles to becoming a cohesive community. Within six months, two gay activist organizations were formed in New York, concentrating on confrontational tactics, three newspapers were established to promote rights for gay men and lesbians.

Within a few years, gay rights organizations were founded across the U. S. and the world. On June 28, 1970, the first gay pride marches took place in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, the anniversary of the riots was commemorated in Chicago. Similar marches were organized in other cities; the Stonewall National Monument was established at the site in 2016. Today, LGBT Pride events are held annually throughout the world toward the end of June to mark the Stonewall riots. Stonewall 50 – WorldPride NYC 2019 commemorated the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising with city officials estimating 5 million attendees in Manhattan, on June 6, 2019, New York City Police Commissioner James P. O'Neill rendered a formal apology on behalf of the New York Police Department for the actions of its officers at Stonewall in 1969. Following the social upheaval of World War II, many people in the United States felt a fervent desire to "restore the prewar social order and hold off the forces of change", according to historian Barry Adam.

Spurred by the national emphasis on anti-communism, Senator Joseph McCarthy conducted hearings searching for communists in the U. S. government, the U. S. Army, other government-funded agencies and institutions, leading to a national paranoia. Anarchists and other people deemed un-American and subversive were considered security risks. Gay men and lesbians were included in this list by the U. S. State Department on the theory that they were susceptible to blackmail. In 1950, a Senate investigation chaired by Clyde R. Hoey noted in a report, "It is believed that those who engage in overt acts of perversion lack the emotional stability of normal persons", said all of the government's intelligence agencies "are in complete agreement that sex perverts in Government constitute security risks". Between 1947 and 1950, 1,700 federal job applications were denied, 4,380 people were discharged from the military, 420 were fired from their government jobs for being suspected homosexuals. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, the U.

S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and police departments kept lists of known homosexuals, their favored establishments, friends. S. Post Office kept track of addresses. State and local governments followed suit: bars catering to gay men and lesbians were shut down, their customers were arrested and exposed in newspapers. Cities performed "sweeps" to rid neighborhoods, parks and beaches of gay people, they outlawed the wearing of opposite gender clothes, universities expelled instructors suspected of being homosexual. In 1952, the American Psychiatric Association listed homosexuality in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual as a mental disorder. A large-scale study of homosexuality in 1962 was used to justify inclusion of the disorder as a supposed pathological hidden fear of the opposite sex caused by traumatic parent–child relationships; this view was influential in the medical profession. In 1956, the psychologist Evelyn Hooker performed a study that compared the happiness and well-adjusted nature of self-identified homosexual men with heterosexual men and found no difference.

Her study stunned the medical community and made her a hero to many gay men and lesbians, but homosexuality remained in the DSM until 1974. In response to this trend, two organizations formed independently of each other to advance the cause of gay men and lesbians and provide social oppo

The MV Regal Lady is a steel passenger boat operating out of the port of Scarborough, North Yorkshire. She is a National Historic Ship and preserved by Scarborough Pleasure Steamers Ltd; the ship participated in Operation Dynamo at Dunkirk, was decommissioned in 1946, in 1954 was moved to Scarborough and renamed to its current name. Powered by a Gardner Marine 8L3B long stroke reciprocal diesel engine, has a cruising speed of 9 knots. One of few vessels to use a twin rudder system, she steers from her bow whilst going astern using a fore rudder, conventionally steers from a large stern rudder when steaming ahead, her steering gear is operated by chains and spliced wire driving the two large cast iron quadrants from her opposing geared ships wheel, an original feature of the vessel. The name Regal Lady came about in 1954 when she moved to Scarborough. A tradition dating back to the early 20th Century, she is the sixth and last vessel in Scarborough to bear the name'Lady'. Launched on May 1930 at Fellows and Co, Great Yarmouth by Lady Fellow.

She was built to a proven design, unique to the Oulton Broads, featuring a canoe hull, known as a'double-ender', complementing her identical bows and stern. Underneath the waterline, Regal Lady was propelled by two four bladed cast iron props, one fore and one aft, the main reason being that she was too large to turn round on the Norfolk waterways. Powered by a steam engine with direct drive to either shaft, parts of which can still be found aboard the vessel today in the form of ballast. In 1940 Regal Lady and her crew were requisitioned by the Admiralty, participated in'Operation Dynamo', the, it is known. After the epic of Dunkirk, Regal Lady relocated to the river Clyde in Scotland, where she continued to serve in the war as a tender to the great liners, RMS Queen Mary and RMS Queen Elizabeth, transporting American Troops. In 1945, she was released back to her original owners based in Great Yarmouth. In 1958 she was modernised, an extra deck was added, a wheelhouse, new funnel, but her fore propeller was removed to suit a new type of charter.

In 1962 the Lady was fitted with radar, passengers allowed to look through it for a shilling

Baker Abdel Munem was the Palestinian National Authority's official ambassador to Canada. He was born in Ramla during the British Mandate era of Palestine, but fled with his family to Jordan during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. Abdel Munem attended Cairo University in 1966, graduating with a BSc in mechanical engineering and served as head of the main electric power station in Jordan for seven years, he returned to Cairo University to continue his studies and obtained his MSc in mechanical engineering in 1975. Abdel Munem served as the vice-president of the International Union of Students from 1978 to 1983 when he obtained his PhD in mechanical engineering from Czechoslovakia. In 1979, he became a member of the Palestine National Council, an elected member the Fatah-Revolutionary Council in 1989. In 1985, he earned a PhD in economics from Germany in and a PhD in political science from the United States in 1988. Abdel Munem's first diplomatic post was the Palestine Liberation Organization's ambassador to Japan in 1983.

On July 23, 1995 he was assigned by the PLO to head the newly established Palestine General Delegation to Canada. Abdel Munem is married to Ghada Abu Laban, has two daughters and Kenana and one son, Abdel Munem. Baker Abdel Munem was born in 1942 in Palestine. Only six years when the 1948 mass deportation of Palestinians occurred with the implementation of the Balfour Declaration, he and his family took refuge in Amman, Jordan. Between the age of 10 and 15, he worked part-time during the summer as apprentice in a leather and handbags production factory, a jam and juice factory, a perfume and oils factory, a cloths materials shop, a shoe making shop. In 1966, Abdel Munem obtained a B. Sc. in mechanical engineering from Cairo University. During summer vacations in Amman, he attended trainings organized by the Water Department of the Greater Amman Municipality, the Jordan Electric Company, the Jordan Cement Company. Abdel Munem served as Head of the main electric power station in Jordan for seven years.

He returned to Cairo University in 1973 to continue his studies and obtained in 1975 an M. Sc. in Mechanical Engineering "The Effectiveness of Detergent and Dispersant Types of Oil Additive on the Piston Deposition in a Diesel Engine." In addition, Abdel Munem has: 1. A PhD in mechanical engineering "Vibrations in Circular Cylindrical Tanks Fully or Partly Filled with Liquid". A PhD in economics "The Role of Petroleum from Arab Countries in Helping Solve the Cause of Palestine". A PhD in political science: "The Petroleum Trade Between Japan and the States of the Gulf Cooperation Council, 1963-1988", he holds a General Diploma and a Special Diploma in Islamic Studies from the Higher Islamic Studies Institute, Egypt. From 1978 to 1983, he served as the Vice President of the International Union of Students, representing the General Union of Palestine Students. During this time, he attended several student and youth conferences across the world as the representative of GUPS and IUS; this included the Youth and Students Festival in Havana, Cuba, in 1978, the meetings of the preparatory committees, held in several countries, preceding the conference.

Dr. Abdel Munem became in 1979 a member of the Palestine National Council, the Palestine Parliament in exile. In 1989 he was elected to the Fateh Revolutionary Council, his first diplomatic posting began in 1983 as the PLO Representative to Japan. He served as the Head of the Permanent General Mission of Palestine in Japan. While serving in Japan, Abdel Munem lectured to post-graduate students in the Faculty of International Relations at the International University of Japan in Niigata. From his experience and knowledge of the Palestinian cause, he authored three books: 1. Palestine in My Heart; the PLO and the Gulf War. An Inside Story of the Middle East Peace Conference. Immersed in Japanese cultural life, Dr. Abdel Munem Arabized and edited two additional books: 1. Songs to Hiroshima, 2. Old Japanese Folk Tales. While serving in Japan, Abdel Munem represented Palestine at the various Japanese and international functions held annually in August in Tokyo and Nagasaki on the anniversary of the Atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

In 1995, Abdel Munem took up his second posting as the Head of the General Delegation of Palestine in Canada. With fluency in English and Arabic, being fair in French, he articulated the Palestinian quest for statehood and engaged Canadians in the building of the Palestinian State. From 1995 to 2004, he was a member of the Palestinian delegation to the annual United Nations Sessions of the General Assembly. In 2006, Abdel Munem took up his third and final diplomatic posting as the Palestine Ambassador to the Russian Federation. Throughout his professional career, he participated in several international conferences in the non-aligned countries and others as a member of the Palestinian delegation, he attended the meetings of many political parties representing Palestine or the Palestine Liberation Organization. Abdel Munem resides in Jordan, he is married to Ghada Abu Laban, has two daughters and Kenana, one son, Abdel Munem, th

Kondor was the fifth of six Type 23 torpedo boats built for the German Navy. The boat made multiple non-intervention patrols during the Spanish Civil War in the late 1930s. During World War II, she played a minor role in the attack on Oslo, the capital of Norway, during the Norwegian Campaign of 1940. Kondor spent the next several months escorting minelayers as they laid minefields and damaged heavy ships back to Germany before she was transferred to France around September, she continued to do so for the rest of the war. The boat returned to France in 1942 and helped to escort blockade runners, commerce raiders and submarines through the English Channel and the Bay of Biscay. Damaged by a mine shortly before the Allied Invasion of Normandy in June 1944, Kondor was under repair on the day of the landings. Recognizing that she could not be repaired the boat was decommissioned that month and was further damaged by British bombers so that she was declared a constructive total loss. Derived from the World War 1-era large torpedo boat SMS H145, the Type 23 torpedo boat was larger, but had a similar armament and speed.

The Type 23 was 85.7 meters long at the waterline. The ships had a beam of 8.25 meters, a mean draft of 3.65 meters. They displaced 923 long tons at 1,290 long tons at deep load; the pair of Schichau geared steam turbine sets, each driving one propeller, were designed to produce 23,000 shaft horsepower using steam from three water-tube boilers which would propel the ship at 33 knots. Kondor carried a maximum of 321 metric tons of fuel oil, intended to give a range of 3,600 nautical miles at 17 knots; the effective range proved to be only 1,800 nmi at that speed. Their crew consisted of 116 sailors; as built, the Type 23s mounted three 10.5 cm SK L/45 guns, one forward and two aft of the superstructure, numbered one through three from bow to stern. They carried six above-water 50 cm torpedo tubes in two triple mounts and could carry up to 30 mines. After 1931, the torpedo tubes were replaced by 533-millimeter tubes and a pair of 2-centimeter C/30 anti-aircraft guns were added. During the war a quadruple 2 cm was added just forward of No. 2 gun, three 2 cm guns were positioned around the aft funnel and another pair were mounted on the bridge wings, all in single mounts.

Around 1944 a FuMB 4 Sumatra radar detector was installed. Named after the Condor, the boat was laid down at the Reichsmarinewerft Wilhelmshaven on 17 November 1925 as yard number 106, launched on 22 September 1926 and commissioned on 15 July 1928; the boat was assigned to the 4th Torpedo Boat Half Flotilla. By the end of 1936 Kondor was assigned to the 4th Torpedo Boat Flotilla and the boat made several deployments to Spain during the Spanish Civil War. Now assigned to the 5th Torpedo Boat Flotilla, Kondor supported the North Sea mining operations that began on 3 September 1939. During the Norwegian Campaign, the boat was assigned to Group 5 under Konteradmiral Oskar Kummetz on the heavy cruiser Blücher, tasked to capture Oslo. Kondor transported about 100 men of the invasion force and was one of the cruiser's escorts through the Baltic and Kattegat. At 02:30 the small motor minesweepers R17 and R21 and Kondor were detached to occupy the naval base at Karljohansvern, in the town of Horten, her sister ship, had become separated from the main body while crippling the Norwegian patrol boat HNoMS Pol III earlier that night and followed Kondor's group to Horten.

The German force tasked to occupy Karljohansvern was scheduled to do so at dawn on 9 April, but Kondor's captain, Kapitänleutnant Hans Wilck, commander of the force, decided to assault the harbor directly since the Norwegians had been alerted. About 140 soldiers were transferred to R17 and R21 and the former ship was in the lead as they steamed through the harbor entrance at 04:35 at high speed followed by Albatros, while Kondor was transferring her embarked troops to another ship; the minelayer HNoMS Olav Tryggvason engaged R17 ten minutes and set her on fire, but not before she unloaded her troops. The minelayer was only able to get a few shots off at R21 before she steamed behind an island in the harbor. About this time, Albatros was approaching the harbor mouth and exchanged fire with Olav Tryggvason without effect; the torpedo boat, with only a single gun able to bear on the minelayer, withdrew behind one of the outer islands and started blindly bombarding the harbor. Albatros withdrew not long after she was hit by a shell around 06:30 and the German troops that had made it ashore bluffed the Norwegians into surrendering at 07:35, but not before Wilck had reloaded his troops and sailed to regain radio communication with the German cruisers to support the attack.

That morning and Albatros were ordered to land their troops at Son and Kondor and several minesweepers were able to pass through the Drøbak Sound after the Norwegian coastal defenses had sunk Blücher while passing through the Sound further up the Oslofjord, search for Blücher's survivors. During the search, she damaged a propeller on Blücher's wreckage; that day, Kondor supported German forces as they occupied Drøbak. The following morning and Kondor were engaged by coastal batteries on the island of Bolærne and forced to turn away. After the coast-defense guns broke down, Kondor's crew occupied the island. After the heavy c

Hans-Dietrich Genscher was a German statesman and a member of the liberal Free Democratic Party, who served as the Federal Minister of the Interior from 1969 to 1974, as the Federal Minister of Foreign Affairs and Vice Chancellor of Germany from 1974 to 1992, making him the longest-serving occupant of either post and the only person, holding one of these posts under two different Chancellors of the Federal Republic of Germany. In 1991 he was chairman of the Organization for Co-operation in Europe. A proponent of Realpolitik, Genscher has been called "a master of diplomacy." He is regarded as having been a principal "architect of German reunification." In 1991, he played a pivotal role in the breakup of Yugoslavia by pushing for international recognition of Croatia and other republics declaring independence, in an effort to halt "a trend towards a Greater Serbia." After leaving office, he worked as international consultant. He was President of the German Council on Foreign Relations and was involved with several international organisations, with former Czech President Václav Havel, he called for a Cold War museum to be built in Berlin.

Genscher was born on 21 March 1927 in Reideburg, now a part of Halle, in what became East Germany. He was the son of Kurt Genscher, his father, a lawyer, died. In 1943, he was drafted to serve as a member of the Air Force Support Personnel at the age of 16. At age 17, close to the end of the war, he and his fellow soldiers became members of the Nazi Party due to a collective application by his Wehrmacht unit, he said he was unaware of it at the time. Late in the war, Genscher was deployed as a soldier in General Walther Wenck's 12th Army, which ostensibly was directed to relieve the siege of Berlin. After the German surrender he was an American and British prisoner of war, but was released after two months. Following World War II, he studied law and economics at the universities of Halle and Leipzig and joined the East German Liberal Democratic Party in 1946. In 1952, Genscher fled to West Germany, he became a solicitor in Bremen. During these early years after the war, Genscher continuously struggled with illness.

From 1956 to 1959 he was a research assistant of the FDP parliamentary group in Bonn. From 1959 to 1965 he was the FDP group managing director, while from 1962 to 1964 he was National Secretary of the FDP. In 1965 Genscher was elected on the North Rhine-Westphalian FDP list to the West German parliament and remained a member of parliament until his retirement in 1998, he was elected deputy national chairman in 1968. From 1969 he served as minister of the interior in the SPD-FDP coalition government led by Chancellor Willy Brandt. In 1974 he became both posts he would hold for 18 years. From 1 October 1974 to 23 February 1985 he was Chairman of the FDP, it was during his tenure as party chairman that the FDP switched from being the junior member of social-liberal coalition to being the junior member of the 1982 coalition with the CDU/CSU. In 1985 he gave up the post of national chairman. After his resignation as Foreign Minister, Genscher was appointed honorary chairman of the FDP in 1992. After the federal election of 1969 Genscher was instrumental in the formation of the social-liberal coalition of chancellor Willy Brandt and was on 22 October 1969 appointed as federal minister of the interior.

In 1972, while minister for the interior, Genscher rejected Israel's offer to send an Israeli special forces unit to Germany to deal with the Munich Olympics hostage crisis. A flawed rescue attempt by German police forces at Fürstenfeldbruck air base resulted in a bloody shootout, which left all eleven hostages, five terrorists, one German policeman dead. Genscher's popularity with Israel declined further when he endorsed the release of the three captured attackers following the hijacking of a Lufthansa aircraft on 29 October 1972. In the SPD–FDP coalition, Genscher helped shape Brandt's policy of deescalation with the communist East known as Ostpolitik, continued under chancellor Helmut Schmidt after Brandt's resignation in 1974, he would be a driving factor in continuing this policy in the new conservative-liberal coalition under Helmut Kohl. In the negotiations on a coalition government of SPD and FDP following the 1976 elections, it took Genscher 73 days to reach agreement with Chancellor Helmut Schmidt.

As Foreign Minister, Genscher stood for a policy of compromise between East and West, developed strategies for an active policy of détente and the continuation of the East-West dialogue with the USSR. He was regarded a strong advocate of negotiated settlements to international problems; as a popular story on Genscher's preferred method of shuttle diplomacy has it, "two Lufthansa jets crossed over the Atlantic, Genscher was on both."Genscher was a major player in the negotiations on the text of the Helsinki Accords. In December 1976, the General Assembly of the United Nations in New York City accepted Genscher's proposal of an anti-terrorism convention in New York, set among other things, to respond to demands from hostage-takers under any circumstances. Genscher was one of the FDP's driving forces when, in 1982, the party switched sides from its coalition with the SPD to support the CDU/CSU in their Constructive vote of no confidence to have incumbent Helmut Schmidt replaced with opposition leader Helmut Kohl as Chancellor

The War in Afghanistan, code named Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Freedom's Sentinel, followed the United States invasion of Afghanistan of 7 October 2001, when the United States of America and its allies drove the Taliban from power in order to deny al-Qaeda a safe base of operations in Afghanistan. Since the initial objectives were completed, a coalition of over 40 countries formed a security mission in the country; the war has since involved US and allied Afghan government troops battling Taliban insurgents. The war in Afghanistan is the longest war in US history. Following the September 11 attacks in 2001 on the US, which President George W. Bush blamed on Osama bin Laden, living or hiding in Afghanistan and had been wanted since 1998, President Bush demanded that the Taliban, who were de facto ruling the country, hand over bin Laden; the Taliban declined to extradite him unless they were provided clear evidence of his involvement in the attacks, which the US refused to provide and dismissed as a delaying tactic and on 7 October 2001 launched Operation Enduring Freedom with the United Kingdom.

To justify the War, the Bush administration claimed that Afghanistan only had "selective sovereignty", that intervention was necessary because the Taliban threatened the sovereignty of other states. The two were joined by other forces, including the Northern Alliance – the Afghan opposition, fighting the Taliban in the ongoing civil war since 1996. By December 2001, the Taliban and their al-Qaeda allies were defeated in the country, at the Bonn Conference new Afghan interim authorities elected Hamid Karzai to head the Afghan Interim Administration; the United Nations Security Council established the International Security Assistance Force to assist the new authority with securing Kabul, which after a 2002 loya jirga became the Afghan Transitional Administration. A nationwide rebuilding effort was made following the end of the totalitarian Taliban regime. In the popular elections of 2004, Karzai was elected president of the country, now named the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. NATO became involved in ISAF in August 2003, that year assumed leadership of it.

At this stage, ISAF included troops from 43 countries with NATO members providing the majority of the force. One portion of US forces in Afghanistan operated under NATO command. Following defeat in the initial invasion, the Taliban was reorganized by its leader Mullah Omar, launched an insurgency against the Afghan government and ISAF in 2003. Though outgunned and outnumbered, insurgents from the Taliban —and to a lesser extent Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin and other groups—waged asymmetric warfare with guerrilla raids and ambushes in the countryside, suicide attacks against urban targets, turncoat killings against coalition forces; the Taliban exploited weaknesses in the Afghan government to reassert influence across rural areas of southern and eastern Afghanistan. From 2006 the Taliban made significant gains and showed an increased willingness to commit atrocities against civilians – ISAF responded by increasing troops for counter-insurgency operations to "clear and hold" villages. Violence escalated from 2007 to 2009.

Troop numbers began to surge in 2009 and continued to increase through 2011 when 140,000 foreign troops operated under ISAF and US command in Afghanistan. Of these 100,000 were from the US On 1 May 2011, United States Navy SEALs killed Osama bin Laden in Abbotabad, Pakistan. NATO leaders in 2012 commended an exit strategy for withdrawing their forces, the United States announced that its major combat operations would end in December 2014, leaving a residual force in the country. In October 2014, British forces handed over the last bases in Helmand to the Afghan military ending their combat operations in the war. On 28 December 2014, NATO formally ended ISAF combat operations in Afghanistan and transferred full security responsibility to the Afghan government; the NATO-led Operation Resolute Support was formed the same day as a successor to ISAF. At the beginning of Donald Trump's presidency in early 2017, there were fewer than 9,000 American troops in Afghanistan. By early summer 2017, troop levels increased by about 50%.

In August 2019, the Taliban planned to negotiate with the US to reduce troop levels back to where they had been when Trump took office, but Trump canceled the negotiations after a Taliban attack. The Taliban remains by far the largest single group fighting against the Afghan government and foreign troops. On 29 February 2020, the United States and the Taliban signed a conditional peace deal in Doha, which requires that U. S. troops to withdraw from Afghanistan within 14 months so long as the Taliban cooperates with the terms of the agreement. Over a hundred thousand people have been killed in the war. Over 4,000 ISAF soldiers and civilian contractors, over 62,000 Afghan national security forces were killed, as well as over 31,000 civilians and more Taliban. Afghanistan's political order began to break down with the overthrow of King Zahir Shah by his distant cousin Mohammed Daoud Khan in a bloodless 1973 Afghan coup d'état. Daoud Khan had served as prime minister since 1953 and promoted economic modernization, emancipation of women, Pashtun nationalism.

This was threatening to neighboring Pakistan, faced with its own restive Pashtun population. In the mid-1970s, Pakistani Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto began to encourage Afghan Islamist leaders such as Burhanuddin Rabbani and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar to fight against the regime