Improvised explosive device
An improvised explosive device is a bomb constructed and deployed in ways other than in conventional military action. It may be constructed of conventional military explosives, such as an artillery shell, attached to a detonating mechanism. IEDs are used as roadside bombs. IEDs are seen in heavy terrorist actions or in asymmetric unconventional warfare by insurgent guerrillas or commando forces in a theatre of operations. In the second Iraq War, IEDs were used extensively against US-led invasion forces and by the end of 2007 they had become responsible for 63% of coalition deaths in Iraq, they are used in Afghanistan by insurgent groups, have caused over 66% of coalition casualties in the 2001–present Afghanistan War. IEDs were used extensively by cadres of the rebel Tamil Tiger organisation against military targets in Sri Lanka. An IED is a bomb fabricated in an improvised manner incorporating destructive, noxious, pyrotechnic, or incendiary chemicals and designed to destroy or incapacitate personnel or vehicles.
In some cases, IEDs are used to distract, disrupt, or delay an opposing force, facilitating another type of attack. IEDs may incorporate military or commercially sourced explosives, combine both types, or they may otherwise be made with homemade explosives. An HME lab refers to a Homemade Explosive Lab, or the physical location where the devices are crafted. An IED has five components: a switch, an initiator, charge, a power source. An IED designed for use against armoured targets such as personnel carriers or tanks will be designed for armour penetration, by using a shaped charge that creates an explosively formed penetrator. IEDs are diverse in design and may contain many types of initiators, detonators and explosive loads. Antipersonnel IEDs also contain fragmentation-generating objects such as nails, ball bearings or small rocks to cause wounds at greater distances than blast pressure alone could. In the conflicts of the 21st century, anti-personnel improvised explosive devices have replaced conventional or military landmines as the source of injury to dismounted soldiers and civilians.
These injuries were reported in BMJ Open to be far worse with IEDs than with landmines resulting in multiple limb amputations and lower body mutilation. This combination of injuries has been given the name "Dismounted Complex Blast Injury" and is thought to be the worst survivable injury seen in war. IEDs are triggered by various methods, including remote control, infrared or magnetic triggers, pressure-sensitive bars or trip wires. In some cases, multiple IEDs are wired together in a daisy chain to attack a convoy of vehicles spread out along a roadway. IEDs made by inexperienced designers or with substandard materials may fail to detonate, in some cases, they detonate on either the maker or the placer of the device; some groups, have been known to produce sophisticated devices constructed with components scavenged from conventional munitions and standard consumer electronics components, such as mobile phones, consumer-grade two-way radios, washing machine timers, pagers, or garage door openers.
The sophistication of an IED depends on the training of the designer and the tools and materials available. IEDs may use artillery shells or conventional high-explosive charges as their explosive load as well as homemade explosives. However, the threat exists that toxic chemical, biological, or radioactive material may be added to a device, thereby creating other life-threatening effects beyond the shrapnel, concussive blasts and fire associated with bombs. Chlorine liquid has been added to IEDs in producing clouds of chlorine gas. A vehicle-borne IED, or VBIED, is a military term for a car bomb or truck bomb but can be any type of transportation such as a bicycle, donkey, etc, they are employed by insurgents in particular ISIS, can carry a large payload. They can be detonated from a remote location. VBIEDs can create additional shrapnel through the destruction of the vehicle itself and use vehicle fuel as an incendiary weapon; the act of a person's detonating it is known as an SVBIED suicide.
Of increasing popularity among insurgent forces in Iraq is the house-borne IED, or HBIED from the common military practice of clearing houses. The Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms includes two definitions for improvised devices: improvised explosive devices and improvised nuclear device; these definitions address the Explosive in CBRNe. That leaves chemical and radiological undefined. Four definitions have been created to build on the structure of the JCS definition. Terms have been created to standardize the language of first responders and members of the military and to correlate the operational picture. A device placed or fabricated in an improvised manner incorporating destructive, noxious, pyrotechnic, or incendiary chemicals and designed to destroy, harass, or distract, it may incorporate military stores, but is devised from non-military components. IEDs have been deployed in the form of explosively formed projectiles, a special type of shaped charge, effective at long standoffs from the target, however they are not accurate at long distances.
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Science
Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. The earliest roots of science can be traced to Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia in around 3500 to 3000 BCE, their contributions to mathematics and medicine entered and shaped Greek natural philosophy of classical antiquity, whereby formal attempts were made to explain events of the physical world based on natural causes. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, knowledge of Greek conceptions of the world deteriorated in Western Europe during the early centuries of the Middle Ages but was preserved in the Muslim world during the Islamic Golden Age; the recovery and assimilation of Greek works and Islamic inquiries into Western Europe from the 10th to 13th century revived natural philosophy, transformed by the Scientific Revolution that began in the 16th century as new ideas and discoveries departed from previous Greek conceptions and traditions. The scientific method soon played a greater role in knowledge creation and it was not until the 19th century that many of the institutional and professional features of science began to take shape.
Modern science is divided into three major branches that consist of the natural sciences, which study nature in the broadest sense. There is disagreement, however, on whether the formal sciences constitute a science as they do not rely on empirical evidence. Disciplines that use existing scientific knowledge for practical purposes, such as engineering and medicine, are described as applied sciences. Science is based on research, conducted in academic and research institutions as well as in government agencies and companies; the practical impact of scientific research has led to the emergence of science policies that seek to influence the scientific enterprise by prioritizing the development of commercial products, health care, environmental protection. Science in a broad sense existed in many historical civilizations. Modern science is distinct in its approach and successful in its results, so it now defines what science is in the strictest sense of the term. Science in its original sense was a word for a type of knowledge, rather than a specialized word for the pursuit of such knowledge.
In particular, it was the type of knowledge which people can communicate to share. For example, knowledge about the working of natural things was gathered long before recorded history and led to the development of complex abstract thought; this is shown by the construction of complex calendars, techniques for making poisonous plants edible, public works at national scale, such as those which harnessed the floodplain of the Yangtse with reservoirs and dikes, buildings such as the Pyramids. However, no consistent conscious distinction was made between knowledge of such things, which are true in every community, other types of communal knowledge, such as mythologies and legal systems. Metallurgy was known in prehistory, the Vinča culture was the earliest known producer of bronze-like alloys, it is thought that early experimentation with heating and mixing of substances over time developed into alchemy. Neither the words nor the concepts "science" and "nature" were part of the conceptual landscape in the ancient near east.
The ancient Mesopotamians used knowledge about the properties of various natural chemicals for manufacturing pottery, glass, metals, lime plaster, waterproofing. The Mesopotamians had intense interest in medicine and the earliest medical prescriptions appear in Sumerian during the Third Dynasty of Ur. Nonetheless, the Mesopotamians seem to have had little interest in gathering information about the natural world for the mere sake of gathering information and only studied scientific subjects which had obvious practical applications or immediate relevance to their religious system. In the classical world, there is no real ancient analog of a modern scientist. Instead, well-educated upper-class, universally male individuals performed various investigations into nature whenever they could afford the time. Before the invention or discovery of the concept of "nature" by the Pre-Socratic philosophers, the same words tend to be used to describe the natural "way" in which a plant grows, the "way" in which, for example, one tribe worships a particular god.
For this reason, it is claimed these men were the first philosophers in the strict sense, the first people to distinguish "nature" and "convention." Natural philosophy, the precursor of natural science, was thereby distinguished as the knowledge of nature and things which are true for every community, the name of the specialized pursuit of such knowledge was philosophy – the realm of the first philosopher-physicists. They were speculators or theorists interested in astronomy. In contrast, trying to use knowledge of nature to imitate nature was seen by classical scientists as a more appropriate interest for lower class artisans; the early Greek philosophers of the Milesian school, founded by Thales of Miletus and continued by his successors A
Chief of Army Staff (Nigeria)
The Chief of Army Staff is the highest ranking military officer of the Nigerian Army. The position is occupied by the most senior commissioned officer appointed by the President of Nigeria. In the chain of command, the Chief of Army Staff reports to the Chief of Defence Staff, who in turn, reports to the Defence Minister, accountable to the President of Nigeria; the Statutory duty of the Officer is to formulate and execute policies towards the highest attainment of National Security and operational competence of the force. Following is a chronological list of officers holding the position of General Officer Commanding or Chief of Army Staff. Nigerian Army Day
Boko Haram
The Islamic State in West Africa or the Islamic State's West Africa Province known as Jamā'at Ahl as-Sunnah lid-Da'wah wa'l-Jihād and known as Boko Haram until March 2015, is a jihadist terrorist organization based in northeastern Nigeria active in Chad and northern Cameroon. Founded by Mohammed Yusuf in 2002, the group has been led by Abubakar Shekau since 2009; when Boko Haram first formed, their actions were nonviolent. Their main goal was to "purify Islam in northern Nigeria." From March 2015 to August 2016, the group was aligned with the Islamic State of the Levant. Since the current insurgency started in 2009, Boko Haram has killed tens of thousands and displaced 2.3 million from their homes and was ranked as the world's deadliest terror group by the Global Terrorism Index in 2015. After its founding in 2002, Boko Haram's increasing radicalisation led to the suppression operation by the Nigerian military forces and the summary execution of its leader Mohammed Yusuf in July 2009, its unexpected resurgence, following a mass prison break in September 2010, was accompanied by sophisticated attacks against soft targets, but progressing in 2011 to include suicide bombings of police buildings and the United Nations office in Abuja.
The government's establishment of a state of emergency at the beginning of 2012, extended in the following year to cover the entire northeast of Nigeria, led to an increase in both security force abuses and militant attacks. Of the 2.3 million people displaced by the conflict since May 2013, at least 250,000 have left Nigeria and fled into Cameroon, Chad or Niger. Boko Haram killed over 6,600 in 2014; the group have carried out mass abductions including the kidnapping of 276 schoolgirls from Chibok in April 2014. Corruption in the security services and human rights abuses committed by them have hampered efforts to counter the unrest. In mid-2014, the militants gained control of swathes of territory in and around their home state of Borno, estimated at 50,000 square kilometres in January 2015, but did not capture the state capital, where the group was based. On 7 March 2015, Boko Haram's leader Abubakar Shekau pledged allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, rebranding as Islamic State in West Africa.
In September 2015, the Director of Information at the Defence Headquarters of Nigeria announced that all Boko Haram camps had been destroyed. The group's name has always been Jamā'atu Ahli is-Sunnah lid-Da'wati wal-Jihād, meaning "Group of the People of Sunnah for Dawa and Jihad", it was known as Wilayat Garb Ifrqiya, meaning "West African Province", between March 2015 and August 2016 while it was a part of the Islamic State. The name "Boko Haram" is translated as "Western education is forbidden". Haram is from the Arabic حَرَام. Boko Haram has been translated as "Western influence is a sin" and "Westernization is sacrilege"; until the death of its founder Mohammed Yusuf, the group was reportedly known as Yusifiyya. Northern Nigerians have dismissed Western education as ilimin boko and secular schools as makaranta boko. Boko Haram was founded upon the principles of the Salafism advocating Sharia law, it developed into a Jihadist group in 2009. The movement is diffuse, fighters associated with it follow the Salafi doctrine.
Their beliefs tend to be centered on strict adherence to Wahhibism, an strict form of Sunni Islam that sees many other forms of Islam as idolatrous. The group has denounced the members of the Shiite sects as infidels. Boko Haram seeks the establishment of an Islamic state in Nigeria, it opposes the Westernization of Nigerian society and the concentration of the wealth of the country among members of a small political elite in the Christian south of the country. Nigeria is Africa's biggest economy, but 60% of its population of 173 million live on less than $1 a day; the sharia law imposed by local authorities, beginning with Zamfara in January 2000 and covering 12 northern states by late 2002, may have promoted links between Boko Haram and political leaders, but was considered by the group to have been corrupted. According to Borno Sufi Imam Sheik Fatahi, Yusuf was trained by Kano Salafi Izala Sheik Ja'afar Mahmud Adamu, who called him the "leader of young people", they both preached in Maiduguri's Indimi Mosque, attended by the deputy governor of Borno.
Many of the group were inspired by Mohammed Marwa, known as Maitatsine, a self-proclaimed prophet born in Northern Cameroon who condemned the reading of books other than the Quran. In a 2009 BBC interview, described by analysts as being well-educated, reaffirmed his opposition to Western education, he rejected the theory of evolution, said that rain is not "an evaporation caused by the sun", that the Earth is not a sphere. Before colonization and subsequent annexation into the British Empire in 1900 as Colonial Nigeria, the Bornu Empire ruled the territory where Boko Haram is active, it was a sovereign sultanate run according to the principles of the Constitution of Medina, with a majority Kanuri Muslim population. In 1903, both the Borno Emirate and Sokoto Caliphate came under the control of the British. Christian missionaries at this time spread the Christian messag
Reuters
Reuters is an international news organization. It has nearly 200 locations around the world; until 2008, the Reuters news agency formed part of an independent company, Reuters Group plc, a provider of financial market data. Since the acquisition of Reuters Group by the Thomson Corporation in 2008, the Reuters news agency has been a part of Thomson Reuters, making up the media division. Reuters transmits news in English, German, Spanish, Russian, Arabic, Japanese and Chinese, it was established in 1851. The Reuter agency was established in 1851 by Paul Julius Reuter in Britain at the London Royal Exchange. Paul Reuter worked at a book-publishing firm in Berlin and was involved in distributing radical pamphlets at the beginning of the Revolutions in 1848; these publications brought much attention to Reuter, who in 1850 developed a prototype news service in Aachen using homing pigeons and electric telegraphy from 1851 on in order to transmit messages between Brussels and Aachen, in what today is Aachen's Reuters House.
Upon moving to England, he founded Reuter's Telegram Company in 1851. Headquartered in London, the company covered commercial news, serving banks, brokerage houses, business firms; the first newspaper client to subscribe was the London Morning Advertiser in 1858. Afterwards more newspapers signed up, with Britannica Encyclopedia writing that "the value of Reuters to newspapers lay not only in the financial news it provided but in its ability to be the first to report on stories of international importance." Reuter's agency built a reputation in Europe and the rest of the world as the first to report news scoops from abroad. Reuters was the first to report Abraham Lincoln's assassination in Europe, for instance, in 1865. In 1872, Reuters expanded into the far east, followed by South America in 1874. Both expansions were made possible by advances in overland telegraphs and undersea cables. In 1883, Reuters began transmitting messages electrically to London newspapers. In 1923, Reuters began using radio to transmit a pioneering act.
In 1925, The Press Association of Great Britain acquired a majority interest in Reuters, full ownership some years later. During the world wars, The Guardian reported that Reuters "came under pressure from the British government to serve national interests. In 1941 Reuters deflected the pressure by restructuring itself as a private company." The new owners formed the Reuters Trust. In 1941, the PA sold half of Reuters to the Newspaper Proprietors' Association, co-ownership was expanded in 1947 to associations that represented daily newspapers in New Zealand and Australia; the Reuters Trust Principles were put in place to maintain the company's independence. At that point, Reuters had become "one of the world's major news agencies, supplying both text and images to newspapers, other news agencies, radio and television broadcasters." At that point, it directly or through national news agencies provided service "to most countries, reaching all the world's leading newspapers and many thousands of smaller ones," according to Britannica.
In 1961, Reuters scooped news of the erection of the Berlin Wall. Reuters was one of the first news agencies to transmit financial data over oceans via computers in the 1960s. In 1973, Reuters "began making computer-terminal displays of foreign-exchange rates available to clients." In 1981, Reuters began making electronic transactions on its computer network and afterwards developed a number of electronic brokerage and trading services. Reuters was floated as a public company in 1984, when Reuters Trust was listed on the stock exchanges such as the London Stock Exchange and NASDAQ. Reuters published the first story of the Berlin Wall being breached in 1989; the share price grew during the dotcom boom fell after the banking troubles in 2001. In 2002, Brittanica wrote that most news throughout the world came from three major agencies: the Associated Press and Agence France-Presse. Reuters merged with Thomson Corporation in Canada in 2008. In 2009, Thomson Reuters withdrew from the LSE and the NASDAQ, instead listing its shares on the Toronto Stock Exchange and the New York Stock Exchange.
The last surviving member of the Reuters family founders, Baroness de Reuter, died at age 96 on 25 January 2009. The parent company Thomson Reuters is headquartered in Toronto, provides financial information to clients while maintaining its traditional news-agency business. In 2012, Thomson Reuters appointed Jim Smith as CEO; every major news outlet in the world subscribed to Reuters as of 2014. Reuters operated in more than 200 cities in 94 countries in about 20 languages as of 2014. In July 2016, Thomson Reuters agreed to sell its intellectual property and science operation for $3.55 billion to private equity firms. In October 2016, Thomson Reuters announced relocations to Toronto; as part of cuts and restructuring, in November 2016, Thomson Reuters Corp. eliminated 2,000 worldwide jobs out of its around 50,000 employees. Reuters employs 600 photojournalists in about 200 locations worldwide. Reuters journalists use the Reuters Handbook of Journalism as a guide for fair presentation and disclosure of relevant interests, to maintain the values of integrity and freedom upon which their reputation for reliability, accuracy and exclusivity relies.
In May 2000, Kurt Schork, an American reporter, was killed in an ambush while on assignment in Sierra Leone. In April and August 2003, news cameramen Taras Protsyuk and Mazen Dana were killed in separate incidents by U. S. troops in Iraq. In July 2007, Namir Noor-Eldeen and Saeed Chmagh were killed when they w
Social science
Social science is a category of academic disciplines, concerned with society and the relationships among individuals within a society. Social science as a whole has many branches; these social sciences include, but are not limited to: anthropology, communication studies, history, human geography, linguistics, political science, public health, sociology. The term is sometimes used to refer to the field of sociology, the original "science of society", established in the 19th century. For a more detailed list of sub-disciplines within the social sciences see: Outline of social science. Positivist social scientists use methods resembling those of the natural sciences as tools for understanding society, so define science in its stricter modern sense. Interpretivist social scientists, by contrast, may use social critique or symbolic interpretation rather than constructing empirically falsifiable theories, thus treat science in its broader sense. In modern academic practice, researchers are eclectic, using multiple methodologies.
The term "social research" has acquired a degree of autonomy as practitioners from various disciplines share in its aims and methods. The history of the social sciences begins in the Age of Enlightenment after 1650, which saw a revolution within natural philosophy, changing the basic framework by which individuals understood what was "scientific". Social sciences came forth from the moral philosophy of the time and were influenced by the Age of Revolutions, such as the Industrial Revolution and the French Revolution; the social sciences developed from the sciences, or the systematic knowledge-bases or prescriptive practices, relating to the social improvement of a group of interacting entities. The beginnings of the social sciences in the 18th century are reflected in the grand encyclopedia of Diderot, with articles from Jean-Jacques Rousseau and other pioneers; the growth of the social sciences is reflected in other specialized encyclopedias. The modern period saw "social science" first used as a distinct conceptual field.
Social science was influenced by positivism, focusing on knowledge based on actual positive sense experience and avoiding the negative. Auguste Comte used the term "science sociale" to describe the field, taken from the ideas of Charles Fourier. Following this period, there were five paths of development that sprang forth in the social sciences, influenced by Comte on other fields. One route, taken was the rise of social research. Large statistical surveys were undertaken in various parts of the United States and Europe. Another route undertaken was initiated by Émile Durkheim, studying "social facts", Vilfredo Pareto, opening metatheoretical ideas and individual theories. A third means developed, arising from the methodological dichotomy present, in which social phenomena were identified with and understood; the fourth route taken, based in economics, was developed and furthered economic knowledge as a hard science. The last path was the correlation of knowledge and social values. In this route and prescription were non-overlapping formal discussions of a subject.
Around the start of the 20th century, Enlightenment philosophy was challenged in various quarters. After the use of classical theories since the end of the scientific revolution, various fields substituted mathematics studies for experimental studies and examining equations to build a theoretical structure; the development of social science subfields became quantitative in methodology. The interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary nature of scientific inquiry into human behaviour and environmental factors affecting it, made many of the natural sciences interested in some aspects of social science methodology. Examples of boundary blurring include emerging disciplines like social research of medicine, neuropsychology and the history and sociology of science. Quantitative research and qualitative methods are being integrated in the study of human action and its implications and consequences. In the first half of the 20th century, statistics became a free-standing discipline of applied mathematics.
Statistical methods were used confidently. In the contemporary period, Karl Popper and Talcott Parsons influenced the furtherance of the social sciences. Researchers continue to search for a unified consensus on what methodology might have the power and refinement to connect a proposed "grand theory" with the various midrange theories that, with considerable success, continue to provide usable frameworks for massive, growing data banks; the social sciences will for the foreseeable future be composed of different zones in the research of, sometime distinct in approach toward, the field. The term "social science" may refer either to the specific sciences of society established by thinkers such as Comte, Durkheim and Weber, or more to all disciplines outside of "noble science" and arts. By the late 19th century, the academic social sciences were constituted of five fields: jurisprudence and amendment of the law, health and trade, art. Around the start of the 21st century, the expanding domain of economics in the social sciences has been described as economic imperialism.
The social science disciplines are branches of knowledge taught and researched at the college or university level. Social science disciplines are defined and rec
