Soviet Union
The Soviet Union the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, was a socialist state in Eurasia that existed from 1922 to 1991. Nominally a union of multiple national Soviet republics, its government and economy were centralized; the country was a one-party state, governed by the Communist Party with Moscow as its capital in its largest republic, the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. Other major urban centres were Leningrad, Minsk, Alma-Ata, Novosibirsk, it spanned over 10,000 kilometres east to west across 11 time zones, over 7,200 kilometres north to south. It had five climate zones: tundra, steppes and mountains; the Soviet Union had its roots in the 1917 October Revolution, when the Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, overthrew the Russian Provisional Government which had replaced Tsar Nicholas II during World War I. In 1922, the Soviet Union was formed by a treaty which legalized the unification of the Russian, Transcaucasian and Byelorussian republics that had occurred from 1918. Following Lenin's death in 1924 and a brief power struggle, Joseph Stalin came to power in the mid-1920s.
Stalin committed the state's ideology to Marxism–Leninism and constructed a command economy which led to a period of rapid industrialization and collectivization. During his rule, political paranoia fermented and the Great Purge removed Stalin's opponents within and outside of the party via arbitrary arrests and persecutions of many people, resulting in at least 600,000 deaths. In 1933, a major famine struck the country. Before the start of World War II in 1939, the Soviets signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, agreeing to non-aggression with Nazi Germany, after which the USSR invaded Poland on 17 September 1939. In June 1941, Germany broke the pact and invaded the Soviet Union, opening the largest and bloodiest theatre of war in history. Soviet war casualties accounted for the highest proportion of the conflict in the effort of acquiring the upper hand over Axis forces at intense battles such as Stalingrad and Kursk; the territories overtaken by the Red Army became satellite states of the Soviet Union.
The post-war division of Europe into capitalist and communist halves would lead to increased tensions with the United States-led Western Bloc, known as the Cold War. Stalin died in 1953 and was succeeded by Nikita Khrushchev, who in 1956 denounced Stalin and began the de-Stalinization; the Cuban Missile Crisis occurred during Khrushchev's rule, among the many factors that led to his downfall in 1964. In the early 1970s, there was a brief détente of relations with the United States, but tensions resumed with the Soviet–Afghan War in 1979. In 1985, the last Soviet premier, Mikhail Gorbachev, sought to reform and liberalize the economy through his policies of glasnost and perestroika, which caused political instability. In 1989, Soviet satellite states in Eastern Europe overthrew their respective communist governments; as part of an attempt to prevent the country's dissolution due to rising nationalist and separatist movements, a referendum was held in March 1991, boycotted by some republics, that resulted in a majority of participating citizens voting in favor of preserving the union as a renewed federation.
Gorbachev's power was diminished after Russian President Boris Yeltsin's high-profile role in facing down a coup d'état attempted by Communist Party hardliners. In late 1991, Gorbachev resigned and the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union met and formally dissolved the Soviet Union; the remaining 12 constituent republics emerged as independent post-Soviet states, with the Russian Federation—formerly the Russian SFSR—assuming the Soviet Union's rights and obligations and being recognized as the successor state. The Soviet Union was a powerhouse of many significant technological achievements and innovations of the 20th century, including the world's first human-made satellite, the first humans in space and the first probe to land on another planet, Venus; the country had the largest standing military in the world. The Soviet Union was recognized as one of the five nuclear weapons states and possessed the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction, it was a founding permanent member of the United Nations Security Council as well as a member of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, the World Federation of Trade Unions and the leading member of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance and the Warsaw Pact.
The word "Soviet" is derived from a Russian word сове́т meaning council, advice, harmony and all deriving from the proto-Slavic verbal stem of vět-iti, related to Slavic věst, English "wise", the root in "ad-vis-or", or the Dutch weten. The word sovietnik means "councillor". A number of organizations in Russian history were called "council". For example, in the Russian Empire the State Council, which functioned from 1810 to 1917, was referred to as a Council of Ministers after the revolt of 1905. During the Georgian Affair, Vladimir Lenin envisioned an expression of Great Russian ethnic chauvinism by Joseph Stalin and his supporters, calling for these nation-states to join Russia as semi-independent parts of a greater union, which he named as the Union of Soviet Republics of Europe and Asia. Stalin resisted the proposal, but accepted it, although with Lenin's agreement changed the name of the newly proposed sta
2006 European Athletics Championships
The 19th European Athletics Championships were held in Gothenburg, between 7 August and 13 August 2006. The competition arena was the Ullevi Stadium and the official motto "Catch the Spirit". Gothenburg hosted the 1995 World Championships in Athletics, Stockholm, Sweden's capital, hosted 1958 European Athletics Championships. 1998 | 2002 | 2006 | 2010 | 2012 1998 | 2002 | 2006 | 2010 | 2012 1998 | 2002 | 2006 | 2010 | 2012 1998 | 2002 | 2006 | 2010 | 2012 The official song of the contest is Heroes by Helena Paparizou. The BBC have chosen to use Carola Häggkvist's 2006 Eurovision Song Contest entry Invincible in instrumental form as the title music for their coverage, they have used various pop songs including Lena Philipsson's "Lena Anthem" and Lev livet by Magnus Carlsson in instrumental form. Merlene Ottey, at the age of 46 and representing Slovenia, is fifth in the 100 m semifinals, failing to qualify for the finals. Official website of Gothenburg 2006 EAA Official Website
Court of Arbitration for Sport
The Court of Arbitration for Sport is an international quasi-judicial body established to settle disputes related to sport through arbitration. Its headquarters are in Lausanne and its courts are located in New York City and Lausanne. Temporary courts are established in current Olympic host cities. Speaking, a dispute may be submitted to the CAS only if there is an arbitration agreement between the parties which specifies recourse to the CAS. However, according to rule 61 of the Olympic Charter, all disputes in connection with the Olympic Games can only be submitted to CAS, all Olympic International Federations have recognised the jurisdiction of CAS for at least some disputes. Through compliance with the 2009 World Anti-Doping Code, all signatories, including all Olympic International Federations and National Olympic Committees, have recognised the jurisdiction of CAS for anti-doping rule violations. Starting in 2016, an anti-doping division of CAS judges doping cases at the Olympic Games, replacing the IOC disciplinary commission.
These decisions can be appealed to CAS's ad hoc court in the Olympic host city or, if the ad hoc court is no longer available, to the permanent CAS. The inaugural anti-doping division handled eight cases, of which seven were doping cases within its jurisdiction; as a Swiss arbitration organization, decisions of the CAS can be appealed to the Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland. Appeals of arbitration decisions are not successful, no evaluation of the merits is taking place and the evaluation is based on whether procedural requirements have been met, whether the award is incompatible with public policy; as of March 2012 there have been seven successful appeals. Six of the upheld appeals were procedural in nature, only once has the Federal Supreme Court overruled a CAS decision on the merits of the case; this was in the case of a Brazilian football player. The Federal Court of Justice of Germany ruled against the German speed-skater Claudia Pechstein, recognising a lack of jurisdiction to revisit her case.
The Federal Court ruled that CAS met the requirements of a court of arbitration according to German law, that CAS's independence from the parties was secured by the method of selecting arbitrators and the possibility to appeal to the Swiss Federal Tribunal. With the intermixing of sports and politics, the body was conceived by International Olympic Committee president Juan Antonio Samaranch to deal with disputes arising during the Olympics, it was established as part of the IOC in 1984. In 1992, the case of Gundel v. La Fédération Equestre Internationale was decided by the CAS, appealed to the Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland, challenging CAS impartiality; the Swiss court ruled that the CAS was a true court of arbitration but drew attention to the numerous links between the CAS and the IOC. In response, the CAS underwent reforms to make itself more independent of the IOC, both organizationally and financially; the biggest change resulting from this reform was the creation of an "International Council of Arbitration for Sport" to look after the running and financing of the CAS, thereby taking the place of the IOC.
As of 2004, most recent cases that were considered by the CAS dealt with transfer disputes within professional association football or with doping. The Court of Arbitration for Sport is planning to move its headquarters from the Château de Béthusy to the south part of the Palais de Beaulieu. In March 2011, the CAS decided its first case on athlete biological passports when it suspended two Italian cyclists, Franco Pellizotti and Pietro Caucchioli, for two years based on evidence from their blood profiles. Prior to that, the case of skater Claudia Pechstein had been decided on similar grounds. Writing in the 2011/2 CAS Bulletin regarding the institution of the ABP program, CAS Counsel Despina Mavromati differentiated between the two types of cases and wrote:It is noteworthy that CAS had issued an award suspending an athlete based on the longitudinal profiling of the biological markers before the adoption of the ABP by the IFs: in CAS 2009/A/1912 & 1913, the Panel suspended an Olympic athlete after the biological data showed irregular blood values.
According to CAS, those abnormal values were not caused by an error occurred in a laboratory, as the athlete asserted, but due to the banned manipulation of the athlete’s blood. The essential difference between ABP judgments and the CAS 2009/A/1912 & 1913 consists in that in the latter case the athlete’s blood data was drawn from a sample the athlete gave at the federations championships and therefore not from data gathered by an official systematic program run by the athlete’s union. In 2001, the court decided the case of Andreea International Olympic Committee; this was a controversial anti-doping case, where it was clear the athlete received cold and flu tablets from her doctor. This resulted in a positive urine test, with the court concluding: "The Panel is aware of the impact its decision will have on a fine, elite athlete, it finds, in balancing the interests of Miss Raducan with the commitment of the Olympic Movement to drugfree sport, the Anti-Doping Code must be enforced without compromise.”
The court is reluctant to overturn field of play decisions, though it may do so in cases where there is clear evidence that the officials acted in bad faith or with arbitrariness. In CAS 2010/A/2090, the CAS Panel explained that the reason for this is not a matter of jurisdiction, but of arbitral self-restraint. In October 2011, in a case affecting the 2012 Summer Olympics, the court declared that a part of the Olympic Charter vio
Belarusian Latin alphabet
The Belarusian Latin alphabet or Łacinka is the common name of the several historical alphabets to render the Belarusian text in the Latin script. It incorporates features of the Polish and Czech alphabets. Łacinka was used in the Belarusian area in the 19th century and first years of the 20th century. Belarusian was written only in the Latin script between 1941 and 1944, in the Nazi German-occupied Belarusian territories, it is used in its current form by certain authors and promoters in the Nasha Niva weekly, the ARCHE journal, some of the Belarusian diaspora press on the Internet. It is not, as such, a romanisation. For instance, the Łacinka equivalent to Cyrillic е can be e, ie or je, depending on the pronunciation of it and that the preceding sound; as there is no soft sign in Łacinka, palatalisation is instead represented by a diacritic on the preceding consonant. The official Belarusian Romanisation 2007 system is similar to Łacinka but transliterates Cyrillic л: л = ł = l, ль = l = ĺ, ля = la = lia.
In the 16th century, the first Latin known renderings of Belarusian Cyrillic text occurred, in quotes of Ruthenian in Polish and Latin texts. The renderings were not standardised, Polish orthography seems to have been used for Old Belarusian sounds. In the 17th century, Belarusian Catholics increased their use of the Latin script but still in parallel with the Cyrillic. Before the 17th century, the Belarusian Catholics had used the Cyrillic script. In the 18th century, the Latin script was used, in parallel with Cyrillic, in some literary works, like in drama for contemporary Belarusian. In the 19th century, some Polish and Belarusian writers of Polish cultural background sometimes or always used the Latin script in their works in Belarusian, notably Jan Czeczot, Paŭluk Bahrym, Vincent Dunin-Marcinkievič, Francišak Bahuševič, Adam Hurynovič; the Revolutionary Democrat Konstanty Kalinowski used only the Latin script in his newspaper Peasants’ Truth. Such introduction of the Latin script for the language broke with the long Cyrillic tradition and is sometimes explained by the unfamiliarity of the 19th century writers with the history of the language or with the language itself or by the impossibility of acquiring or using the Cyrillic type at the printers that the writers had been using.
The custom of using the Latin script for Belarusian text ceased to be common, but at the beginning of the 20th century, there were still several examples of use of the Latin script in Belarusian printing: Newspaper Nasha Dolya. Newspaper Nasha Niva — issues in both Cyrillic and Latin. Tsyotka’s Belarusian Violin, Baptism to Freedom — books of poetry. Tsyotka’s First reading for Belarusian children — an attempt at creating a Belarusian elementary reading book. Yanka Kupala’s Zither Player — book of poetry. Rev. Baliaslau Pachopka’s Belarusian Grammar — Belarusian grammar, based on Latin script, but is claimed by Belarusian linguists, however, to be prepared unscientifically and breaking the traditions of the Belarusian language. See Belarusian grammar. In the 1920s in the Belarusian SSR, like the Belarusian Academic Conference, some suggestions were made to consider a transition of the Belarusian grammar to the Latin script. However, they were rejected by the Belarusian linguists. From the 1920s to 1939, after the partition of Belarus, the use of a modified Latin script was reintroduced to Belarusian printing in Western Belarus, chiefly for political reasons.
The proposed form of the Belarusian Latin alphabet and some grammar rules were introduced for the first time in the 5th edition of Tarashkyevich's grammar. Belarusian was written in the Latin script in 1941 to 1944 in the German-occupied Belarusian territories and by the Belarusian diaspora in Prague. After the Second World War, Belarusian was written in the Latin script by the Belarusian diaspora in Western Europe and the Americas. In 1962, Yan Stankyevich proposed a new Belarusian Latin alphabet. Latynka Romanization of Belarusian Ad. Stankiewič. Biełaruskaja mowa ŭ škołach Biełarusi – Wilnia: Wydawiectwa „Biełaruskaje krynicy“. Bieł. Druk. Im. Fr. Skaryny ŭ Wilni Ludwisarskaja 1, 1928. Тарашкевіч. Беларуская граматыка для школ. – Вільня: Беларуская друкарня ім. Фр. Скарыны, 1929. – Выданьне пятае пераробленае і пашыранае. Да рэформы беларускай азбукі. // Працы акадэмічнае канферэнцыі па рэформе беларускага правапісу і азбукі. – Мн.:, 1927. Дунін-Марцінкевіч В. Творы /. – Мн.: Маст. літ. 1984. К. Калиновский: Из печатного и рукописного наследия/Ин-т истории партии при ЦК КП Белоруссии – фил.
Ин-та марксизма-ленинизма при Ц
Sydney
Sydney is the state capital of New South Wales and the most populous city in Australia and Oceania. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Port Jackson and extends about 70 km on its periphery towards the Blue Mountains to the west, Hawkesbury to the north, the Royal National Park to the south and Macarthur to the south-west. Sydney is made up of 40 local government areas and 15 contiguous regions. Residents of the city are known as "Sydneysiders"; as of June 2017, Sydney's estimated metropolitan population was 5,230,330 and is home to 65% of the state's population. Indigenous Australians have inhabited the Sydney area for at least 30,000 years, thousands of engravings remain throughout the region, making it one of the richest in Australia in terms of Aboriginal archaeological sites. During his first Pacific voyage in 1770, Lieutenant James Cook and his crew became the first Europeans to chart the eastern coast of Australia, making landfall at Botany Bay and inspiring British interest in the area.
In 1788, the First Fleet of convicts, led by Arthur Phillip, founded Sydney as a British penal colony, the first European settlement in Australia. Phillip named the city Sydney in recognition of 1st Viscount Sydney. Penal transportation to New South Wales ended soon after Sydney was incorporated as a city in 1842. A gold rush occurred in the colony in 1851, over the next century, Sydney transformed from a colonial outpost into a major global cultural and economic centre. After World War II, it experienced mass migration and became one of the most multicultural cities in the world. At the time of the 2011 census, more than 250 different languages were spoken in Sydney. In the 2016 Census, about 35.8% of residents spoke a language other than English at home. Furthermore, 45.4% of the population reported having been born overseas, making Sydney the 3rd largest foreign born population of any city in the world after London and New York City, respectively. Despite being one of the most expensive cities in the world, the 2018 Mercer Quality of Living Survey ranks Sydney tenth in the world in terms of quality of living, making it one of the most livable cities.
It is classified as an Alpha+ World City by Globalization and World Cities Research Network, indicating its influence in the region and throughout the world. Ranked eleventh in the world for economic opportunity, Sydney has an advanced market economy with strengths in finance and tourism. There is a significant concentration of foreign banks and multinational corporations in Sydney and the city is promoted as Australia's financial capital and one of Asia Pacific's leading financial hubs. Established in 1850, the University of Sydney is Australia's first university and is regarded as one of the world's leading universities. Sydney is home to the oldest library in Australia, State Library of New South Wales, opened in 1826. Sydney has hosted major international sporting events such as the 2000 Summer Olympics; the city is among the top fifteen most-visited cities in the world, with millions of tourists coming each year to see the city's landmarks. Boasting over 1,000,000 ha of nature reserves and parks, its notable natural features include Sydney Harbour, the Royal National Park, Royal Botanic Garden and Hyde Park, the oldest parkland in the country.
Built attractions such as the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the World Heritage-listed Sydney Opera House are well known to international visitors. The main passenger airport serving the metropolitan area is Kingsford-Smith Airport, one of the world's oldest continually operating airports. Established in 1906, Central station, the largest and busiest railway station in the state, is the main hub of the city's rail network; the first people to inhabit the area now known as Sydney were indigenous Australians having migrated from northern Australia and before that from southeast Asia. Radiocarbon dating suggests human activity first started to occur in the Sydney area from around 30,735 years ago. However, numerous Aboriginal stone tools were found in Western Sydney's gravel sediments that were dated from 45,000 to 50,000 years BP, which would indicate that there was human settlement in Sydney earlier than thought; the first meeting between the native people and the British occurred on 29 April 1770 when Lieutenant James Cook landed at Botany Bay on the Kurnell Peninsula and encountered the Gweagal clan.
He noted in his journal that they were somewhat hostile towards the foreign visitors. Cook was not commissioned to start a settlement, he spent a short time collecting food and conducting scientific observations before continuing further north along the east coast of Australia and claiming the new land he had discovered for Britain. Prior to the arrival of the British there were 4,000 to 8,000 native people in Sydney from as many as 29 different clans; the earliest British settlers called the natives Eora people. "Eora" is the term the indigenous population used to explain their origins upon first contact with the British. Its literal meaning is "from this place". Sydney Cove from Port Jackson to Petersham was inhabited by the Cadigal clan; the principal language groups were Darug and Dharawal. The earliest Europeans to visit the area noted that the indigenous people were conducting activities such as camping and fishing, using trees for bark and food, collecting shells, cooking fish. Britain—before that, England—and Ireland had for a long time been sending their convicts across the Atlantic to the American colonies.
That trade was ended with the Declaration of Independence by the United States in 1776. Britain decided in 1786 to found a new penal outpost in the territory discovered by Cook some 16 years ear
Athens
Athens is the capital and largest city of Greece. Athens dominates the Attica region and is one of the world's oldest cities, with its recorded history spanning over 3,400 years and its earliest human presence starting somewhere between the 11th and 7th millennium BC. Classical Athens was a powerful city-state that emerged in conjunction with the seagoing development of the port of Piraeus, a distinct city prior to its 5th century BC incorporation with Athens. A center for the arts and philosophy, home of Plato's Academy and Aristotle's Lyceum, it is referred to as the cradle of Western civilization and the birthplace of democracy because of its cultural and political impact on the European continent, in particular the Romans. In modern times, Athens is a large cosmopolitan metropolis and central to economic, industrial, maritime and cultural life in Greece. In 2012, Athens was ranked the world's 39th richest city by purchasing power and the 67th most expensive in a UBS study. Athens is a global one of the biggest economic centres in southeastern Europe.
It has a large financial sector, its port Piraeus is both the largest passenger port in Europe, the second largest in the world. While at the same time being the sixth busiest passenger port in Europe; the Municipality of Athens had a population of 664,046 within its administrative limits, a land area of 38.96 km2. The urban area of Athens extends beyond its administrative municipal city limits, with a population of 3,090,508 over an area of 412 km2. According to Eurostat in 2011, the functional urban area of Athens was the 9th most populous FUA in the European Union, with a population of 3.8 million people. Athens is the southernmost capital on the European mainland; the heritage of the classical era is still evident in the city, represented by ancient monuments and works of art, the most famous of all being the Parthenon, considered a key landmark of early Western civilization. The city retains Roman and Byzantine monuments, as well as a smaller number of Ottoman monuments. Athens is home to two UNESCO World Heritage Sites, the Acropolis of Athens and the medieval Daphni Monastery.
Landmarks of the modern era, dating back to the establishment of Athens as the capital of the independent Greek state in 1834, include the Hellenic Parliament and the so-called "architectural trilogy of Athens", consisting of the National Library of Greece, the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and the Academy of Athens. Athens is home to several museums and cultural institutions, such as the National Archeological Museum, featuring the world's largest collection of ancient Greek antiquities, the Acropolis Museum, the Museum of Cycladic Art, the Benaki Museum and the Byzantine and Christian Museum. Athens was the host city of the first modern-day Olympic Games in 1896, 108 years it welcomed home the 2004 Summer Olympics, making it one of only a handful of cities to have hosted the Olympics more than once. In Ancient Greek, the name of the city was Ἀθῆναι a plural. In earlier Greek, such as Homeric Greek, the name had been current in the singular form though, as Ἀθήνη, it was rendered in the plural on, like those of Θῆβαι and Μυκῆναι.
The root of the word is not of Greek or Indo-European origin, is a remnant of the Pre-Greek substrate of Attica. In antiquity, it was debated whether Athens took its name from its patron goddess Athena or Athena took her name from the city. Modern scholars now agree that the goddess takes her name from the city, because the ending -ene is common in names of locations, but rare for personal names. During the medieval period, the name of the city was rendered once again in the singular as Ἀθήνα. However, after the establishment of the modern Greek state, due to the conservatism of the written language, Ἀθῆναι became again the official name of the city and remained so until the abandonment of Katharevousa in the 1970s, when Ἀθήνα, Athína, became the official name. According to the ancient Athenian founding myth, the goddess of wisdom, competed against Poseidon, the god of the seas, for patronage of the yet-unnamed city. According to the account given by Pseudo-Apollodorus, Poseidon struck the ground with his trident and a salt water spring welled up.
In an alternative version of the myth from Vergil's Georgics, Poseidon instead gave the Athenians the first horse. In both versions, Athena offered the Athenians the first domesticated olive tree. Cecrops declared Athena the patron goddess of Athens. Different etymologies, now rejected, were proposed during the 19th century. Christian Lobeck proposed as the root of the name the word ἄθος or ἄνθος meaning "flower", to denote Athens as the "flowering city". Ludwig von Döderlein proposed the stem of the verb θάω, stem θη- to denote Athens as having fertile soil. In classical literature, the city was sometimes referred to as the City of the Violet Crown, first documented in Pindar's ἰοστέφανοι Ἀθᾶναι, or as τὸ κλεινὸν ἄστυ. In medieval texts, variant names include Setines and Astines, all derivations involving false splitting of p
Australia
Australia the Commonwealth of Australia, is a sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and numerous smaller islands. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area; the neighbouring countries are Papua New Guinea and East Timor to the north. The population of 25 million is urbanised and concentrated on the eastern seaboard. Australia's capital is Canberra, its largest city is Sydney; the country's other major metropolitan areas are Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide. Australia was inhabited by indigenous Australians for about 60,000 years before the first British settlement in the late 18th century, it is documented. After the European exploration of the continent by Dutch explorers in 1606, who named it New Holland, Australia's eastern half was claimed by Great Britain in 1770 and settled through penal transportation to the colony of New South Wales from 26 January 1788, a date which became Australia's national day; the population grew in subsequent decades, by the 1850s most of the continent had been explored and an additional five self-governing crown colonies established.
On 1 January 1901, the six colonies federated. Australia has since maintained a stable liberal democratic political system that functions as a federal parliamentary constitutional monarchy, comprising six states and ten territories. Being the oldest and driest inhabited continent, with the least fertile soils, Australia has a landmass of 7,617,930 square kilometres. A megadiverse country, its size gives it a wide variety of landscapes, with deserts in the centre, tropical rainforests in the north-east and mountain ranges in the south-east. A gold rush began in Australia in the early 1850s, its population density, 2.8 inhabitants per square kilometre, remains among the lowest in the world. Australia generates its income from various sources including mining-related exports, telecommunications and manufacturing. Indigenous Australian rock art is the oldest and richest in the world, dating as far back as 60,000 years and spread across hundreds of thousands of sites. Australia is a developed country, with the world's 14th-largest economy.
It has a high-income economy, with the world's tenth-highest per capita income. It is a regional power, has the world's 13th-highest military expenditure. Australia has the world's ninth-largest immigrant population, with immigrants accounting for 26% of the population. Having the third-highest human development index and the eighth-highest ranked democracy globally, the country ranks in quality of life, education, economic freedom, civil liberties and political rights, with all its major cities faring well in global comparative livability surveys. Australia is a member of the United Nations, G20, Commonwealth of Nations, ANZUS, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, World Trade Organization, Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, Pacific Islands Forum and the ASEAN Plus Six mechanism; the name Australia is derived from the Latin Terra Australis, a name used for a hypothetical continent in the Southern Hemisphere since ancient times. When Europeans first began visiting and mapping Australia in the 17th century, the name Terra Australis was applied to the new territories.
Until the early 19th century, Australia was best known as "New Holland", a name first applied by the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman in 1644 and subsequently anglicised. Terra Australis still saw occasional usage, such as in scientific texts; the name Australia was popularised by the explorer Matthew Flinders, who said it was "more agreeable to the ear, an assimilation to the names of the other great portions of the earth". The first time that Australia appears to have been used was in April 1817, when Governor Lachlan Macquarie acknowledged the receipt of Flinders' charts of Australia from Lord Bathurst. In December 1817, Macquarie recommended to the Colonial Office. In 1824, the Admiralty agreed that the continent should be known by that name; the first official published use of the new name came with the publication in 1830 of The Australia Directory by the Hydrographic Office. Colloquial names for Australia include "Oz" and "the Land Down Under". Other epithets include "the Great Southern Land", "the Lucky Country", "the Sunburnt Country", "the Wide Brown Land".
The latter two both derive from Dorothea Mackellar's 1908 poem "My Country". Human habitation of the Australian continent is estimated to have begun around 65,000 to 70,000 years ago, with the migration of people by land bridges and short sea-crossings from what is now Southeast Asia; these first inhabitants were the ancestors of modern Indigenous Australians. Aboriginal Australian culture is one of the oldest continual civilisations on earth. At the time of first European contact, most Indigenous Australians were hunter-gatherers with complex economies and societies. Recent archaeological finds suggest. Indigenous Australians have an oral culture with spiritual values based on reverence for the land and a belief in the Dreamtime; the Torres Strait Islanders, ethnically Melanesian, obtained their livelihood from seasonal horticulture and the resources of their reefs and seas. The northern coasts and waters of Australia were visited s
Belarus
