1.
British Indian Ocean Territory
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The British Indian Ocean Territory is an overseas territory of the United Kingdom situated in the Indian Ocean halfway between Tanzania and Indonesia. The territory comprises the seven atolls of the Chagos Archipelago with over 1,000 individual islands – many very small – amounting to a land area of 60 square kilometres. The largest and most southerly island is Diego Garcia,44 km2, the site of a joint military facility of the United Kingdom, the islands are off-limits to casual tourists, the media, and their former inhabitants. Mauritius sought to control over the Chagos Archipelago, which was split from its territory by the UK in 1965 to form the British Indian Ocean Territory. Today, the exiled Chagossians are still trying to return, claiming that the expulsion and dispossession was illegal. The British Indian Ocean Territory is one of only two British territories where traffic drives on the right, the other being Gibraltar, Maldivian mariners knew the Chagos Islands well. In Maldivian lore, they are known as Fōlhavahi or Hollhavai, according to Southern Maldivian oral tradition, traders and fishermen were occasionally lost at sea and got stranded on one of the islands of the Chagos. Eventually they were rescued and brought back home, however, these islands were judged to be too far away from the Maldives to be settled permanently by them. Thus, for centuries the Chagos were ignored by their northern neighbours. The islands of Chagos Archipelago were charted by Vasco da Gama in the sixteenth century. They were first settled in the 18th century by African slaves, in 1810, Mauritius was captured by the United Kingdom, and France ceded the territory in the Treaty of Paris. In 1965, the United Kingdom split the Chagos Archipelago from Mauritius, the purpose was to allow the construction of military facilities for the mutual benefit of the United Kingdom and the United States. The islands were established as an overseas territory of the United Kingdom on 8 November 1965. On 23 June 1976, Aldabra, Farquhar and Desroches were returned to Seychelles as a result of its attaining independence, subsequently, BIOT has consisted only of the six main island groups comprising the Chagos Archipelago. In 1990, the first BIOT flag was unfurled, in 1966, the British government purchased the privately owned copra plantations and closed them. In 1971, the United Kingdom and the United States signed a treaty, leasing the island of Diego Garcia to the US military for the purposes of building a large air and naval base on the island. The deal was important to the UK government, as the United States granted it a substantial discount on the purchase of Polaris nuclear missiles in return for the use of the islands as a base. The strategic location of the island was significant at the centre of the Indian Ocean
2.
Chagos Archipelago
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The Chagos Archipelago or Chagos Islands is a group of seven atolls comprising more than 60 individual tropical islands in the Indian Ocean about 500 kilometres south of the Maldives archipelago. This chain of islands is the southernmost archipelago of the Chagos-Laccadive Ridge, since 1971, only the atoll of Diego Garcia is inhabited, and only by military and civilian contracted personnel. The sovereignty of the Chagos Archipelago is being disputed between the UK and Mauritius, the United Kingdom excised the archipelago from Mauritian territory prior to Mauritius independence. The land area of the islands is 56.13 km2, the total area, including lagoons within atolls, is more than 15,000 km2, of which 12,642 km2 are accounted by the Great Chagos Bank, the largest acknowledged atoll structure of the world. The shelf area is 20,607 km2, and the Exclusive Economic Zone, unlike the Maldives, there is no clearly discernible pattern in the atoll arrangement, which makes the whole archipelago look somewhat chaotic. Most of the structures of the Chagos are submerged reefs. The Chagos contain the worlds largest coral atoll, The Great Chagos Bank, as a result, the ecosystems of the Chagos have so far proven resilient to climate change and environmental disruptions. The largest individual islands are Diego Garcia, Eagle, Île Pierre, Eastern Egmont, Île du Coin and Île Boddam. In addition to the seven atolls with dry land reaching at least the high-water mark, there are nine reefs and banks, features are listed in the table from north to south, The main natural resources of the area are coconuts and fish. All economic activity is concentrated on the largest island of Diego Garcia, construction projects and various services needed to support the military installations are done by military and contract employees from the UK, Mauritius, the Philippines, and the US. There are currently no industrial or agricultural activities on the islands, all the water, food and other essentials of daily life are shipped to the island. An independent feasibility study led to the conclusion that resettlement would be costly, another feasibility study, commissioned by organisations supporting resettlement, found that resettlement would be possible at a cost to the British taxpayer of £25 million. If the Chagossians return, they plan to re-establish copra production and fishing, until October 2010, Skipjack and yellowfin tuna were fished for about two months of the year as their year-long migratory route takes them through Chagos waters. While the remoteness of the Chagos offers some protection from extractive activities, there is considerable poaching of turtles and other marine life. Sharks, which play a role in balancing the food web of tropical reefs, have suffered sharp declines from illegal fishing for their fins. Sea cucumbers, which cleanse sand, are poached to feed Asian markets, the Chagos Archipelago has a tropical oceanic climate, hot and humid but moderated by trade winds. Climate is characterised by plenty of sunshine, warm temperatures, showers, December through February is considered the rainy season, typical weather conditions include light west-northwesterly winds and warmer temperatures with more rainfall. June to September is considered the season, characterised by moderate south-easterly winds, slightly cooler temperatures
3.
Diego Garcia
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Diego Garcia is an atoll just south of the equator in the central Indian Ocean, and the largest of 60 small islands comprising the Chagos Archipelago. It was settled by the French in the 1790s and was transferred to British rule after the Napoleonic Wars and it was one of the Dependencies of the British Colony of Mauritius until it was detached for inclusion in the newly created British Indian Ocean Territory in 1965. Between 1968 and 1973, the population was removed by the United Kingdom through intimidation of locals. Many were deported to Mauritius and Seychelles, following which the United States built a naval and military base on Diego Garcia. As of March 2015, Diego Garcia is the inhabited island of the BIOT. The atoll is located 3,535 km east of Tanzanias coast,1,796 km south-southwest of the tip of India and 4,723 km west-northwest of the west coast of Australia. According to Southern Maldivian oral tradition, traders and fishermen were occasionally lost at sea, eventually, they were rescued and brought back home. However, the different atolls of the Chagos have no names in the Maldivian oral tradition. Nothing is known of pre-European contact history of Diego Garcia, speculations include visits during the Austronesian diaspora around 700 AD, as some say the old Maldivian name for the islands originated from Malagasy. Arabs, who reached Lakshadweep and Maldives around 900 AD, may have visited the Chagos, another Portuguese expedition with a Spanish explorer of Andalusian origin, Diego García de Moguer, rediscovered the island in 1544 and named it after himself. Garcia de Moguer died the year on the return trip to Portugal in the Indian Ocean. The misnomer Diego could have been made unwittingly by the British ever since and it is assumed that the island was named after one of its first two discoverers—the one by the name of Garcia, the other with name Diego. Also, a cacography of the saying Deo Gracias is eligible for the attribution of the atoll, the Sebastian Cabot map shows a number of islands to the south which may be the Mascarene Islands. The first map which identifies and names Los Chagos is that of Pierre Desceliers, an island called Don Garcia appears on the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum of Abraham Ortelius, together with Dos Compagnos, slightly to the north. It may be the case that Don Garcia was named after Garcia de Noronha, the island is also labelled Don Garcia on Mercators Nova et Aucta Orbis Terrae Descriptio ad Usum Navigatium Emendate. However, on the Vera Totius Expeditionis Nauticae Description of Jodocus Hondius, Don Garcia mysteriously changes its name to I. de Dio Gratia, while the I. de Chagues appears close by. The first map to delineate the island under its present name, Diego Garcia, is the World Map of Edward Wright, possibly as a result of misreading Dio as Diego, and Gratia as Garcia. The Nova Totius Terrarum Orbis Geographica of Hendrik Hondius II repeats Wrights use of the name, which is then proliferated on all subsequent Dutch maps of the period, Diego Garcia and the rest of the Chagos islands were uninhabited until the late 18th century
4.
Telephone numbers in India
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Subscriber Trunk Dialling codes are assigned to each city/town/village, with the larger Metro cities having shorter area codes, the shortest being 2 digits. Land line numbers are at most 8 digits long, the total length of all phone numbers in India is constant at 10 digits, for example 7513200000 signifies a STD code i. e.751 Gwalior & the phone number 3200000. Due to the availability of multiple operators offering fixed line services, there is an operator-code for each telephone number, no prefix is required to call from one landline to another in the same STD area. A prefix of 0+STD code is required to dial from a phone in one STD code area to another. A prefix of 0+STD code is required to dial from a phone in India to any landline number, irrespective of STD area. g. to dial Delhi from Gurgaon. This feature was stopped with effect from 00,00 hours of 10 March 2009, a typical mobile number in India is +91-XX-XXX-XXXXX. Where the first two digits indicate a system, the next three denote the mobile switching code while the remaining five digits are unique to the subscriber. Short codes are five digits in length and have to start with the digit 5 like 58888 as of 2007, previously, they were four-digit in number and could be of any combination, like 8888 or 7827. The current five digits can be extended by three digits further representing 3 additional characters. Messages sent to these Short Codes are commonly referred to as Premium Rate SMS Messages and cost from Rs.3 to Rs.6 per message depending on the operator as well as the service and the company. Telemarketers have been issued 10-digit telephone numbers starting with 140 by the Department of Telecommunications on TRAIs request, Department of Telecommunications, Government of India Telecom Regulatory Authority of India India National Numbering Plan of 2003
5.
Telephone numbers in the Philippines
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Telephone numbers in the Philippines follow an open telephone numbering plan and an open dial plan. Both plans are regulated by the National Telecommunications Commission, an agency under the Department of Information. The Philippines is assigned an international dialling code of 63 by ITU-T, telephone numbers are fixed at seven digits, with area codes fixed at one, two, or three digits. Mobile phone numbers are always 10 digits, when making long-distance calls in the Philippines, the prefix 0 for domestic calls and 00 for international calls are used. Some smaller carriers concentrated within a geographic area may issue four- or five-digit area codes. Occasionally, an area may change area codes. For example, the City of Bacoor in Cavite has been included in the coverage area of area code 2 per the National Telecommunications Commissions Memorandum Order No. 08-09-2011, although almost all fixed-lines in the city use the old 46 area code due to the poor compliance of PLDT. Sometimes area codes are shared by a number of government entities to maximise their use. In extreme cases, area codes are shared across an island like in Leyte and Samar, or even entire regions, in order to identify the calls point of origin, the three-digit telephone exchange prefix is checked. Since the Philippines employs an open plan, telephone numbers dialled within a given area code do not require the area code. When dialling other area codes, the long distance access prefix 0 is added, but when dialling from overseas. However, the code indicates the service provider and not necessarily a geographic region. Unlike fixed-line telephones, the telephone dialling format is always observed when using a mobile phone. Therefore, mobile phone numbers always have the format +63 xxx-xxxx for international callers and 0 xxx-xxxx for domestic callers. Some of the first area codes to be assigned for mobile phones were 912 for Mobiline/Piltel,915 for Islacom,917 for Globe Telecom,918 for Smart Communications, and 973 for Express Telecom. As service began growing rapidly since the 1990s, new codes have been added to meet demand as existing codes have since been exhausted, newer codes often come immediately after the last code exhausted, but this might not be the case if the next code is already in use. 955/956 are the latest codes and are used for Globe & TM, areas codes are grouped by provider with no single contiguous block of codes for a single provider
6.
Telephone numbers in the United Kingdom
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Telephone numbers in the United Kingdom are administered by the UK governments Office of Communications. For this purpose Ofcom established a telephone numbering plan, known as the National Telephone Numbering Plan, since 28 April 2001, almost all geographic numbers and most non-geographic numbers have 9 or 10 national numbers after the 0 trunk code. All mobile telephone numbers have 10 national numbers after the 0 trunk code, regions with shorter area codes, typically large cities, permit the allocation of more telephone numbers as the local number portion has more digits. Local customer numbers are four to eight figures long, the total number of digits is ten, but in a very few areas the total may be nine digits. The area code is referred to as an STD or a dialling code in the UK. The code allocated to the largest population is for London, the code allocated to the largest area is for all of Northern Ireland. The UK Numbering Plan also applies to three British Crown dependencies—Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man—even though they are not part of the UK itself. Possible number formats for UK telephone numbers are as follows, Number ranges starting 01 can have NSN length as 10 or 9 digits, the 0800 range can have NSN length as 10,9 or 7 digits. The 0845 range can have NSN length as 10 or 7 digits, the 0500 range has NSN length as 9 digits only. There are no numbers in the UK with an NSN length of 8 digits. Geographic telephone numbers in the UK always have nine or ten digits, four-digit area codes have either six-digit subscriber numbers or a mix of five- and six-digit subscriber numbers. Xxxxxx This is the used by most areas. It has an area code and a six digit subscriber number. These area codes were changed by adding a 1 directly after the zero as a part of PhONEday in 1995. Just short of 581 areas use this format, and the area range from 01200 to 01998. A small number of areas also have a few subscriber numbers that have only five digits. That is, almost all area codes now have only six digit local numbers, six of the four-digit area codes are known as mixed areas as they share those four digits with the twelve five-digit area codes. The numbers therefore have only nine digits after the initial zero trunk code and these area codes were changed by adding a 1 directly after the initial zero as a part of PhONEday in 1995
