Venezuela
Venezuela the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, is a country on the northern coast of South America, consisting of a continental landmass and a large number of small islands and islets in the Caribbean Sea. The capital and largest urban agglomeration is the city of Caracas, it has a territorial extension of 916,445 km2. The continental territory is bordered on the north by the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Colombia, Brazil on the south and Tobago to the north-east and on the east by Guyana. With this last country, the Venezuelan government maintains a claim for Guayana Esequiba over an area of 159,542 km2. For its maritime areas, it exercises sovereignty over 71,295 km2 of territorial waters, 22,224 km2 in its contiguous zone, 471,507 km2 of the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean under the concept of exclusive economic zone, 99,889 km2 of continental shelf; this marine area borders those of 13 states. The country has high biodiversity and is ranked seventh in the world's list of nations with the most number of species.
There are habitats ranging from the Andes Mountains in the west to the Amazon basin rain-forest in the south via extensive llanos plains, the Caribbean coast and the Orinoco River Delta in the east. The territory now known as Venezuela was colonized by Spain in 1522 amid resistance from indigenous peoples. In 1811, it became one of the first Spanish-American territories to declare independence, not securely established until 1821, when Venezuela was a department of the federal republic of Gran Colombia, it gained full independence as a country in 1830. During the 19th century, Venezuela suffered political turmoil and autocracy, remaining dominated by regional caudillos until the mid-20th century. Since 1958, the country has had a series of democratic governments. Economic shocks in the 1980s and 1990s led to several political crises, including the deadly Caracazo riots of 1989, two attempted coups in 1992, the impeachment of President Carlos Andrés Pérez for embezzlement of public funds in 1993.
A collapse in confidence in the existing parties saw the 1998 election of former coup-involved career officer Hugo Chávez and the launch of the Bolivarian Revolution. The revolution began with a 1999 Constituent Assembly, where a new Constitution of Venezuela was written; this new constitution changed the name of the country to Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. The sovereign state is a federal presidential republic consisting of 23 states, the Capital District, federal dependencies. Venezuela claims all Guyanese territory west of the Essequibo River, a 159,500-square-kilometre tract dubbed Guayana Esequiba or the Zona en Reclamación. Venezuela is among the most urbanized countries in Latin America. Oil was discovered in the early 20th century, today, Venezuela has the world's largest known oil reserves and has been one of the world's leading exporters of oil; the country was an underdeveloped exporter of agricultural commodities such as coffee and cocoa, but oil came to dominate exports and government revenues.
The 1980s oil glut led to a long-running economic crisis. Inflation peaked at 100% in 1996 and poverty rates rose to 66% in 1995 as per capita GDP fell to the same level as 1963, down a third from its 1978 peak; the recovery of oil prices in the early 2000s gave. The Venezuelan government under Hugo Chávez established populist social welfare policies that boosted the Venezuelan economy and increased social spending, temporarily reducing economic inequality and poverty in the early years of the regime. However, such populist policies became inadequate, causing the nation's collapse as their excesses—including a uniquely extreme fossil fuel subsidy—are blamed for destabilizing the nation's economy; the destabilized economy led to a crisis in Bolivarian Venezuela, resulting in hyperinflation, an economic depression, shortages of basic goods and drastic increases in unemployment, disease, child mortality and crime. These factors have precipitated the Venezuelan Migrant Crisis where more than three million people have fled the country.
By 2017, Venezuela was declared to be in default regarding debt payments by credit rating agencies. In 2018, the country's economic policies led to extreme hyperinflation, with estimates expecting an inflation rate of 1,370,000% by the end of the year. Venezuela is a charter member of the UN, OAS, UNASUR, ALBA, Mercosur, LAIA and OEI. According to the most popular and accepted version, in 1499, an expedition led by Alonso de Ojeda visited the Venezuelan coast; the stilt houses in the area of Lake Maracaibo reminded the Italian navigator, Amerigo Vespucci, of the city of Venice, Italy, so he named the region Veneziola, or "Little Venice". The Spanish version of Veneziola is Venezuela. Martín Fernández de Enciso, a member of the Vespucci and Ojeda crew, gave a different account. In his work Summa de geografía, he states that the crew found indigenous people who called themselves the Veneciuela. Thus, the name "Venezuela" may have evolved from the native word; the official name was Estado de Venezuela, República de Venezuela, Estados Unidos de Venezuela, a
Spanish and Portuguese Jews
Spanish and Portuguese Jews called Western Sephardim, are a distinctive sub-group of Iberian Jews who are descended from Jews who lived as New Christians in the Iberian Peninsula during the immediate generations following the forced expulsion of unconverted Jews from Spain in 1492 and from Portugal in 1497. Although the 1492 and 1497 expulsions of unconverted Jews from Spain and Portugal were separate events from the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions, they were linked, as the Inquisition also led to the fleeing out of Iberia of many descendants of Jewish converts to Catholicism in subsequent generations. Despite the fact that the original Edicts of Expulsion did not apply to Jewish-origin New Christian conversos —as these were now Christians— the discriminatory practices that the Inquisition placed upon them, which were lethal, put immense pressure on many of the Jewish-origin Christians to emigrate out of Spain and Portugal in the immediate generations following the expulsion of their unconverted Jewish brethren.
The Alhambra Decree was an edict issued on 31 March 1492, by the joint Catholic Monarchs of Spain ordering the expulsion of all unconverted practicing Jews from the Kingdoms of Castile and Aragon, including from all its territories and possessions, by 31 July of that year. The primary purpose of the expulsion was to eliminate the influence of unconverted Jews on Spain's by large Jewish-origin New Christian converso population, to ensure that the prior did not encourage the latter to relapse and revert to Judaism. Over half of Spain's Jewish origin population had converted to Catholicism as a result of the religious anti-Jewish persecution and pogroms which occurred in 1391; as a result of the Alhambra decree and persecution in prior years, it is estimated that of Spain's total Jewish origin population at the time, over 200,000 Jews converted to Catholicism, remained in Spain. Between 40,000 and 80,000 did not convert to Catholicism, by their steadfast commitment to remain Jewish were thus expelled.
Of those who were expelled as unconverted Jews, an indeterminate number nonetheless converted to Catholicism once outside Spain and returned to Spain in the years following the expulsion due to the hardships many experienced in their resettlement. Many of Spain's Jews who left Spain as Jews initially moved to Portugal, where they were subsequently forcibly converted to the Catholic Church in 1497. Most of the Jews who left Spain as Jews accepted the hospitality of Sultan Bayezid II and, after the Alhambra Decree, moved to the Ottoman Empire, where they founded communities practising the Jewish religion. During the centuries following the Spanish and Portuguese decrees, some of the Jewish-origin New Christian conversos started emigrating from Portugal and Spain, settling until the 1700s throughout areas of Western Europe and non-Iberian realms of the colonial Americas forming communities and formally reverting to Judaism, it is the collective of these communities and their descendants who are known as Western Sephardim, are the subject of this article.
As the early members of the Western Sephardim consisted of persons who themselves experienced an interim period as New Christians, which resulted in unceasing trials and persecutions of crypto-Judaism by the Portuguese and Spanish Inquisitions, the early community continued to be augmented by further New Christian emigration pouring out of the Iberian Peninsula in a continuous flow between the 1600s to 1700s. Jewish-origin New Christians were considered Christians due to their forced or coerced conversions; those New Christians who fled both the Iberian cultural sphere and jurisdiction of the Inquisition were able to return to Judaism and open Jewish practice once they were in their new tolerant environments of refuge. As former conversos or their descendants, Western Sephardim developed a distinctive ritual based on the remnants of the Judaism of pre-expulsion Spain, which some had practiced in secrecy during their time as New Christians, influenced by Judaism as practiced by the communities which assisted them in their readoption of normative Judaism.
A part of their distinctiveness as a Jewish group, stems from the fact that they saw themselves as forced to "redefine their Jewish identity and mark its boundaries with the intellectual tools they had acquired in their Christian socialization" during their time as New Christian conversos. The main'Western Sephardic Jewish' communities developed in Western Europe and the non-Iberian regions of the Americas. In addition to the term "Western Sephardim", this sub-group of Sephardic Jews is sometimes referred to as "Spanish and Portuguese Jews," "Spanish Jews," "Portuguese Jews," or "Jews of the Portuguese Nation." The term "Western Sephardim" is used in modern research literature to refer to "Spanish and Portuguese Je
Ozzie Albies
Ozhaino Jurdy Jiandro "Ozzie" Albies is a Curaçaoan professional baseball second baseman for the Atlanta Braves of Major League Baseball. Albies was born in Curaçao, to parents Osgarry and Judari, his father died in 2013 of a heart attack, aged 40. Albies has a younger brother and sister, Jeanalyn. Albies started playing baseball at the age of six, began switch hitting in 2013. Discovered by the Curaçao-based scout Dargello Lodowica, Albies was signed by the Atlanta Braves for $350,000 as an international free agent on July 2, 2013. Influencing his decision to sign was the Braves' connection to Andruw Jones and Andrelton Simmons, like Albies, natives of Curaçao, he made his professional debut in 2014 with the Gulf Coast Braves and joined the Danville Braves in July. In 57 games, Albies hit.364/.446/.444 with a home run. After the season, he was ranked among the top 100 prospects in baseball by Keith Law, fifth-best in Braves farm system by Baseball America. Albies began the 2015 season with the Rome Braves.
In July, he was named to the All Star Futures Game. He was the only Braves prospect to appear in the game that year, as well as the youngest player on the field. Albies went 1-2 in the game, which the World Team lost to the U. S. 10–1. He missed the remainder of the season. In 98 games, Albies stole 29 bases. MLB.com placed him third on the list of top Braves prospects at the end of 2015, 30th overall throughout the minors. Albies was invited to spring training in 2016, opened the season with the Double A Mississippi Braves. After 22 appearances with Mississippi, he hit.369/.442/.512 and was promoted to the Triple A Gwinnett Braves on April 30. In two months with Gwinnett, Albies hit.248/.307/.351. On June 30, he returned to Mississippi. Upon Swanson's promotion to the major leagues, Albies remained in Mississippi, having hit for a.292 batting average and a.778 OPS between the Double A and Triple A levels. Mississippi made the Southern League playoffs, but Albies injured his right elbow in the first postseason game and sat out the remainder of the season.
Albies was again invited to spring training at the start of the 2017 season. He was called up that year on August 1, made his major league debut against the Los Angeles Dodgers. On August 3, 2017, against the Dodgers, Albies hit his first career home run for his first Major League hit. Albies was part of the Braves' Opening Day starting lineup to open the 2018 season. On June 12, 2018, Albies hit a grand slam against the New York Mets en route to an 8–2 win. Albies became the youngest player to have two grand slams. On June 25, 2018, Albies hit his first career walk-off home run against the Cincinnati Reds. On July 8, 2018, while owning a.281 batting average with 18 home runs and 50 RBIs, Albies was named an All-Star after winning a spot from the player vote in his first full year in the major leagues. On July 11, against the Toronto Blue Jays, he had his first career multi-home run game. On April 11, 2019, Albies signed a seven-year, $35 million extension to remain with the Braves; the deal includes options for the 2027 seasons.
Both years are worth $7 million with a $4 million buyout. Career statistics and player information from MLB, or ESPN, or Baseball-Reference, or Fangraphs, or The Baseball Cube, or Baseball-Reference Ozzie Albies on Twitter
Little League World Series
The Little League Baseball World Series is an annual baseball tournament in the eastern United States for children aged 10 to 12 years old. Called the National Little League Tournament, it was renamed for the World Series in Major League Baseball; the Series was first held 72 years ago in 1947 and is held every August in South Williamsport, Pennsylvania. Only teams from the United States competed in the Series, but it has since become a worldwide tournament; the tournament has gained popular renown in the United States, where games from the Series and from regional tournaments are broadcast on ESPN. The United States collectively as a country has won a plurality of the series, although from 1969 to 1991 teams from Taiwan dominated the series, winning in 15 out of those 23 years. Taiwan's dominance during those years has been attributed to a national effort to combat its perceived diplomatic isolation around the world. From 2010 to the present, teams from Tokyo, have dominated the series, winning five of the last nine matchups.
While the Little League Baseball World Series is referred to as just the Little League World Series, it is one of twelve tournaments sponsored by Little League International, in twelve different locations. Each of them brings community teams from different Little League International regions around the world together in baseball, girls' softball, boys' softball; the tournament structure described here is. The structure used for the other World Series with different regions. In the summer months leading up to the Little League World Series, held each year in August, Little Leagues around the world select and an All-Star team made up of players from its league, it is these All-Star teams that compete in district, sectional and/or divisional, regional tournaments, hoping to advance to Williamsport for the Little League World Series. How many games a team has to play varies from region to region. In the United States, the tournaments at the lowest level lack nationwide standardization; some use pool double elimination, while others use single elimination.
In the United States, the fate of district winners varies from state to state. In some larger states such as Pennsylvania, New York, California, the district winners advance to one of many sectional tournaments; the winners of each sectional tournament advance to a state or divisional tournament, the latter only being held in Texas and California and are similar to the state tournaments held in less populous states. Most smaller states lack competition at the sectional level and go straight from district to state tournaments. A handful of states are composed of only one district, the district champion is the automatic state champion. With 4 exceptions, every state as well as the District of Columbia crowns a state champion, sends that team to represent it to one of eight regional tournaments; the exceptions involve California, North Dakota, South Dakota. Because of their large geographic and population sizes and Texas send two representatives to their regional tournament. Conversely, North Dakota has only one city.
The state champions compete in one of eight different regional tournaments. Each regional tournament winner advances to the Little League World Series. See for a comprehensive breakdown of current and historical US regional tournament locations and results. Other countries and regions pick their own way of crowning a champion. Little League Canada holds tournaments at the provincial and divisional level to field six champions at the national tournament: Alberta, Quebec, British Columbia and the Atlantic Provinces; the host site of the national tournament varies from year to year, the host team gets an automatic berth as the seventh team. The tournament uses the page playoff format; the winner of the national tournament earns the right to represent Canada at the Little League World Series. The eight regional tournament winners which compete in the United States Bracket of the Little League World Series, as well as the states those regional champions could hail from are as follows: New England Mid-Atlantic Midwest Great Lakes Southeast Southwest *Known as Gulf States during 2001 LLWS Northwest West The eight divisions which compete in the International Bracket are as follows: Asia-Pacific and Middle East Australia Canada Caribbean Europe and Africa Japan Latin America MexicoThe eight divisions which compete in the United States bracket represent 96% of the players in Little Le
Pontoon bridge
A pontoon bridge known as a floating bridge, uses floats or shallow-draft boats to support a continuous deck for pedestrian and vehicle travel. The buoyancy of the supports limits the maximum load. Most pontoon bridges are temporary, used in civil emergencies. Permanent floating bridges are useful for sheltered water-crossings where it is not considered economically feasible to suspend a bridge from anchored piers; such bridges can require a section, elevated, or can be raised or removed, to allow waterborne traffic to pass. Pontoon bridges have been in use since ancient times and have been used to great advantage in many battles throughout history, among them the Battle of Garigliano, the Battle of Oudenarde, the crossing of the Rhine during World War II, during the Iran–Iraq War Operation Dawn 8. A pontoon bridge is a collection of specialized, shallow draft boats or floats, connected together to cross a river or canal, with a track or deck attached on top; the water buoyancy supports the boats, limiting the maximum load to the total and point buoyancy of the pontoons or boats.
The supporting boats or floats can be open or closed, temporary or permanent in installation, made of rubber, wood, or concrete. The decking may be temporary or permanent, constructed out of wood, modular metal, or asphalt or concrete over a metal frame; the spelling "ponton" in English dates from at least 1870. The use continued in references found in U. S. patents during the 1890s. It continued to be spelled in that fashion through World War II, when temporary floating bridges were used extensively throughout the European theatre. U. S. combat engineers pronounced the word "ponton" rather than "pontoon" and U. S. military manuals spelled it using a single'o'. The U. S. military differentiated between the bridge the floats used to provide buoyancy. The original word was derived from Latin ponto, from pons; when designing a pontoon bridge, the civil engineer must take into consideration the Archimedes' principle: Each pontoon can support a load equal to the mass of the water that it displaces. This load includes the mass of the pontoon itself.
If the maximum load of a bridge section is exceeded, one or more pontoons become submerged. Flexible connections have to allow for one section of the bridge to be weighted down more than the other parts; the roadway across the pontoons should be light, so as not to limit the carrying capacity of the pontoons. The connection of the bridge to shore requires the design of approaches that are not too steep, protect the bank from erosion and provide for movements of the bridge during changes of the water level. Floating bridges were constructed using wood. Pontoons were formed by lashing several barrels together, by rafts of timbers, or by using boats; each bridge section consisted of one or more pontoons, which were maneuvered into position and anchored underwater or on land. The pontoons were linked together using wooden stringers called balks; the balks were covered by a series of cross planks called chesses to form the road surface, the chesses were secured with side guard rails. A floating bridge can be built in a series of sections, starting from an anchored point on the shore.
Modern pontoon bridges use pre-fabricated floating structures. Most pontoon bridges are designed for temporary use, but bridges across water bodies with a constant water level can remain in place much longer. Hobart Bridge, a long pontoon bridge built 1943 in Hobart, was only replaced after 21 years; the fourth Galata Bridge that spans the Golden Horn in Istanbul, Turkey was built in 1912 and operated for 80 years. Provisional and lightweight pontoon bridge are damaged; the bridge can be inundated when the load limit of the bridge is exceeded. The bridge can be induced to sway or oscillate in a hazardous manner from the swell, from a storm, a flood or a fast moving load. Ice or floating objects can accumulate on the pontoons, increasing the drag from river current and damaging the bridge. See below for floating pontoon failures and disasters. In ancient China, the Zhou Dynasty Chinese text of the Shi Jing records that King Wen of Zhou was the first to create a pontoon bridge in the 11th century BC.
However, the historian Joseph Needham has pointed out that in all scenarios, the temporary pontoon bridge was invented during the 9th or 8th century BC in China, as this part was a addition to the book. Although earlier temporary pontoon bridges had been made in China, the first secure and permanent ones in China came first during the Qin Dynasty; the Song Dynasty Chinese statesman Cao Cheng once wrote of early pontoon bridges in China: The Chhun Chhiu Hou Chuan says that in the 58th year of the Zhou King Nan, there was invented in the Qin State the floating bridge with which to cross rivers. But the Ta Ming ode in the Shih Ching says that he'joined boats and made of them a bridge' over the River Wei. Sun Yen comments that this shows that the boats were arranged in a row, like the beams with boards laid across them, just the same as the pontoon bridge of today. Tu Yu thought this.... Cheng Khang Chheng says that the Zhou people invented it and used it whenever they had occasion to do so, but the Qin people, to whom they handed it down, were the first to fasten it securely together.
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UNESCO
The United Nations Educational and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations based in Paris. Its declared purpose is to contribute to peace and security by promoting international collaboration through educational and cultural reforms in order to increase universal respect for justice, the rule of law, human rights along with fundamental freedom proclaimed in the United Nations Charter, it is the successor of the League of Nations' International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation. UNESCO has 11 associate members. Most of its field offices are "cluster" offices covering three or more countries. UNESCO pursues its objectives through five major programs: education, natural sciences, social/human sciences and communication/information. Projects sponsored by UNESCO include literacy and teacher-training programs, international science programs, the promotion of independent media and freedom of the press and cultural history projects, the promotion of cultural diversity, translations of world literature, international cooperation agreements to secure the world's cultural and natural heritage and to preserve human rights, attempts to bridge the worldwide digital divide.
It is a member of the United Nations Development Group. UNESCO's aim is "to contribute to the building of peace, the eradication of poverty, sustainable development and intercultural dialogue through education, the sciences, culture and information". Other priorities of the organization include attaining quality Education For All and lifelong learning, addressing emerging social and ethical challenges, fostering cultural diversity, a culture of peace and building inclusive knowledge societies through information and communication; the broad goals and objectives of the international community—as set out in the internationally agreed development goals, including the Millennium Development Goals —underpin all UNESCO strategies and activities. UNESCO and its mandate for international cooperation can be traced back to a League of Nations resolution on 21 September 1921, to elect a Commission to study feasibility; this new body, the International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation was indeed created in 1922.
On 18 December 1925, the International Bureau of Education began work as a non-governmental organization in the service of international educational development. However, the onset of World War II interrupted the work of these predecessor organizations. After the signing of the Atlantic Charter and the Declaration of the United Nations, the Conference of Allied Ministers of Education began meetings in London which continued from 16 November 1942 to 5 December 1945. On 30 October 1943, the necessity for an international organization was expressed in the Moscow Declaration, agreed upon by China, the United Kingdom, the United States and the USSR; this was followed by the Dumbarton Oaks Conference proposals of 9 October 1944. Upon the proposal of CAME and in accordance with the recommendations of the United Nations Conference on International Organization, held in San Francisco in April–June 1945, a United Nations Conference for the establishment of an educational and cultural organization was convened in London 1–16 November 1945 with 44 governments represented.
The idea of UNESCO was developed by Rab Butler, the Minister of Education for the United Kingdom, who had a great deal of influence in its development. At the ECO/CONF, the Constitution of UNESCO was introduced and signed by 37 countries, a Preparatory Commission was established; the Preparatory Commission operated between 16 November 1945, 4 November 1946—the date when UNESCO's Constitution came into force with the deposit of the twentieth ratification by a member state. The first General Conference took place from 19 November to 10 December 1946, elected Dr. Julian Huxley to Director-General; the Constitution was amended in November 1954 when the General Conference resolved that members of the Executive Board would be representatives of the governments of the States of which they are nationals and would not, as before, act in their personal capacity. This change in governance distinguished UNESCO from its predecessor, the ICIC, in how member states would work together in the organization's fields of competence.
As member states worked together over time to realize UNESCO's mandate and historical factors have shaped the organization's operations in particular during the Cold War, the decolonization process, the dissolution of the USSR. Among the major achievements of the organization is its work against racism, for example through influential statements on race starting with a declaration of anthropologists and other scientists in 1950 and concluding with the 1978 Declaration on Race and Racial Prejudice. In 1956, the Republic of South Africa withdrew from UNESCO saying that some of the organization's publications amounted to "interference" in the country's "racial problems." South Africa rejoined the organization in 1994 under the leadership of Nelson Mandela. UNESCO's early work in the field of education included the pilot project on fundamental education in the Marbial Valley, started in 1947; this project was followed by expert missions to other countries, for example, a mission to Afghanistan in 1949.
In 1948, UNESCO recommended that Member States should make free primary education compulsory and universal. In 1990, the World Conference on Education for All, in Jomtien, launched a global movement to provide basic education for a
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