Aarushhh/wikipedia-simple-splitted huggingface dataset:
The Bundessozialgericht (German for Federal Social Court) is the German federal supreme court of appeals for social security cases.  The court was created on 11 September 1954 to hear cases about public health insurance, long-term care insurance, pension insurance and occupational accident insurance plans.  These cases usually start in the Sozialgerichte ("Social Courts"), then the Landessozialgerichte  ("Superior State Social Courts"), before the cases wind up at the Bundessozialgericht.

The Bundessozialgericht is located in the city of Kassel.

References

Other website 
 Official homepage
The Bundesverwaltungsgericht or Federal Administrative Court is one of the five federal supreme courts of Germany. It is the federal court of appeals for generally all cases of administrative law.  These cases are mainly arguments between people and the government, but sometimes are disputes between two different parts of government.

The Federal Administrative Court was set up on 8 June 1953.  It was based in Berlin, but in 2002 moved to the city of Leipzig in Saxony.

It hears appeals from the Oberverwaltungsgerichte, or Superior Administrative Courts, which, in turn, are the courts of appeals for decisions of the Verwaltungsgerichte (Administrative Courts).

Although cases about social security law and tax law are arguments between a person and the government, there are special courts for these matters. The Bundessozialgericht is federal court of appeals for social security law, cases about tax and customs law are decided by the Finanzgerichte (Finance Courts), and lastly by the Bundesfinanzhof.
The Bundesverwaltungsgericht has its headquarters at the former Reichsgericht (Reich Court of Justice) building in Leipzig.

References

Other websites
 Official homepage

Leipzig
1953 establishments in Germany
The Santa María de Iquique school Massacre was on December 21, 1907.  At that time Chile's government was led by Pedro Montt.  Hundreds of workers died in the front of the school Santa María de Iquique. 

The workers had been walking from saltpetre mines of Tarapacá, striking to get better life conditions. 

The strikers first went to San Lorenzo, and then to Iquique.  They arrived in Iquique on December 16.  They stayed peacefully in the school.  Military forces arrived, and without provocation General Silva Renard give the order to shoot the people there in front of school. Hundreds of people were killed.

20th century in Chile
1907
Grid may mean:

Meaning an array of squares or rectangles:

 Grid plan, a city plan in which streets run at right angles to form a grid
 Grid reference, a standard method for the location of a point on a map.
 Grid view or datagrid, a graphical user interface element that presents a tabular view of data
 Grid graph, in graph theory
 Grid in typography and page layout: planning a page using a grid of different-sized and -shaped rectangles on computer software
 Grid (spatial index), a method for organizing information, e.g. in a database

In science, mathematics and technology:

 Electrical grid:
 Electric power transmission, a long-distance high-voltage network for power transmission
 Off-the-grid, living without public utility
 Grid computing, computing model that provides the ability to perform higher throughput computing
 Mesh (mathematics) or a regular grid or unstructured grid .

Places:
Places:

 Grid, a village in Pârâu Commune, Braşov County, Romania
 Grid, a village in the town of Călan, Hunedoara County, Romania

In popular culture:

 The Grid, a late eighties/early nineties electronic dance group
 The Grid (arcade game), an arcade game released in 2001.
 The Grid (TV series), a television series produced in 2004
 Grid (album), the eighth original album by the Japanese band M.O.V.E

Other:

 Grid (computer manufacturer), a laptop manufacturer in the 1980s
 Grid (Jotun), a giantess in Norse mythology
Grid (metaphysics) That which binds all of the metaverses and their contents together

GRID may stand for:

 BioGRID, a database of biological interactions hosted at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto, Canada
 Gay related immune deficiency (GRID), a name for AIDS until 1982
 Global Release Identifier (GRid)
 Group for Rural India Development (GRID)
 GRID, the short-hand name for an ESRI GRID file
Skype ( /skaɪp/) is a software program that uses the Internet to make telephone calls (using a technology called Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). It was created in 2003 by the Swedish and Danish Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis. A company currently owns it in Luxembourg called Skype Technologies S.A.R.L, which since 2011 has been part of Microsoft. (From 2005 to 2011, Skype was owned by eBay.)

The Skype program works on computers with Microsoft Windows, macOS and Linux. It is available as a mobile app for different platforms, including iOS and Android. Using VoIP to make calls is very cheap to call another phone. It does not cost money to call another Skype user. Every Skype user has a unique name to which other users can find and talk. Skype also has additional features such as video calls and multiple members in a conversation. In the chat, you can also find a selection of various emojis available.
History of Skype 
 September 2002: investment from Draper Investment Company.
 April 2003: Skype.com and Skype.net domain names registered.
 August 2003: First public beta version released.
 September 2005: Skype for talking is banned in South China.
 October 2005: eBay bought Skype.
 December 2005: videotelephony introduced.
 April 2006: 100 million users.
 October 2006: Skype 2.0 for Mac is released, the first full release of Skype with video for Macintosh.
 December 2006: Skype announces a new pricing structure as of January 18, 2007, with connection fees for all SkypeOut calls* March 2007: Skype 3.1 is released, adding some new features, including Skype Find and Skype Prime. Skype also released a 3.2 beta with a new feature called Send Money which allows users to send money via PayPal from one Skype user to another.
 August 2007: Skype 3.5 for Windows released with additions such as inclusion of video content in chat, call transfer to another person or a group,
August 15, 2007: Skype 2.7.0.49 (beta) for Mac OS X released adding availability of contacts in the Mac Address Book to the Skype contact list, auto redial, contact groups, public chat creation, and an in-window volume slider to the call window.
 August 16 / August 17, 2007: Skype users unable to connect to full Skype network in many countries
 November 2007: Skype users in London who use the 020 city code lost the phone numbers that connected to their Skype accounts after December 2007.
Security 
Skype has an encryption system for security. This system cannot be turned on or off. Skype provides an uncontrolled registration system for users. People can use the system safely without revealing their real-life identity to other users of the system, but there is no way to know that the person they communicate with is the one they say they are.

Criticism 
Skype has many points of critisism, such as:

 Skype clients can become supernodes. These supernodes hold together the peer-to-peer network. It can use a big quantity of bandwidth. For this reason, some universities have banned the use of Skype.
Significant use of obfuscated code
 Keeps chatting on the network
 Blind trust in anything else speaking Skype
 Ability to build a parallel Skype network
 Lack of privacy (Skype has the keys to decrypt calls or sessions)
 Heap overflow in Skype
 Skype makes it hard to enforce a (corporate) security policy
 "No way to know if there is/will be a backdoor"
 Users of Skype on Mac OS X have poor audio quality when connecting to Mac/Mobile clients
 Bugs and delays in the Linux version

Other websites 
 Official Skype website
 Planetskype website 
 Portable Skype (Windows) 

2003 establishments
File sharing
Video chat
Telephone
Wookieepedia (the Star Wars Wiki)  is an online encyclopedia for information on the Star Wars fictional universe—including information of all eleven films, as well as Expanded Universe. It is a more specialized and useful wiki for those who wish to go farther than the basics in the Star Wars universe, and is almost entirely in-universe. The name Wookieepedia is a mix of Wookiee and encyclopedia, based on the name of Wikipedia. Wookieepedia is hosted by Fandom.

Other websites

Wikis
Star Wars
There are many types of Chianti:
 Chianti is a really famous red wine. It is put into a "fiasco", a traditional Italian straw-covered wine bottle.
 Chianti Classico a kind of Chianti. It is proteced by the Italian laws and can only be made in the provinces of Florence and Siena.
 Chianti Colli Aretini a kind of Chianti made only in the Arezzo area.
 Chianti Colli Fiorentini  a kind of Chianti made only in the Florence area.
 Chianti Colline Pisane a kind of Chianti made only in the Pisa area.
 Chianti Colli Senesi a kind of Chianti made only in the Siena area.
 Chianti Montalbanoa kind of Chianti made only in the areas of Prato, Florence and Pistoia.
 Chianti Montespertoli another kind of Chianti made near Florence
 Chianti Rùfina a kind of Chianti, first made in the area of "Rufina", near Florence
 Chianti Superiore a special Chianti, made in Arezzo, Florence, Pisa, Pistoia and Siena. This Chianti is costs more than others kinds of Chianti.
Vin Santo del Chianti a kind of sweet wine. It is made in the areas of Arezzo, Florence, Pisa, Pistoia, Prato and Siena
 Vin Santo del Chianti Classico a kind of sweet wine made only in the areas of Florence and Siena
Italian wines
Tuscany
Maxïmo Park (sometimes spelled Maximo Park) are an English indie rock band who formed in 2001.

History 
Maxïmo Park formed in 2001 (with frontman Paul Smith coming from Billingham in Teesside). To Start off with, the four founding members played only a little amount small shows, with Archis Tiku on vocals, constantly switching the instruments he played. Almost about to split up, but instead they decided to look for somebody else to sing vocals. Singer Paul Smith was discovered by the then-girlfriend of drummer Tom English in a pub while he was singing along to a Stevie Wonder song. Having found someone with a stage presence, they started to write their first songs together, all despite the fact that the frontman never imagined himself as a frontman of a band. Paul Smith had never sung on stage before.
Around March 2004, a friend of the band's paid for 300 copies of a 7" red vinyl single "Graffiti" and later released a vinyl of their tracks ("The Coast Is Always Changing"/"The Night I Lost My Head") that they’d recorded in their house in Fenham. After some time of doing shows around their home town, Steve Beckett of the dance-electronic label Warp Records found one of these records and decided to sign Maxïmo Park to his record label.

Members 
Tom English – drums
Duncan Lloyd – guitar
Paul Smith – vocals
Archis Tiku – bass
Lukas Wooller – keyboard

Discography

Albums 

A Certain Trigger

Missing Songs

Our Earthly Pleasures

References

Other websites 
Maxïmo Park official website
Maxïmo Park MySpace
An acoustic session for Vox podcast 
Karaoke Plays Review 
Maximo Park, Newcastle 15th Dec 07 Review
Interviews 
The Scenestar Maxïmo Park Interview July 2007
Interview by Alexander Laurence (The Portable Infinite 2006)
 Die Klangschau: 15 Songs chosen by Maxïmo Park  and interview 
Maximo Park video interview with stv/music, June 2007 
Video interview with Paul from Maximo Park  
SUPERSWEET interview 
Interview by Natalie Shaw for Clash Magazine 

2001 establishments in England
2000s British music groups
2010s British music groups
English rock bands
Music groups from Newcastle upon Tyne
Musical groups established in 2001
Math rock is a guitar-based style of indie rock which has complex rhythms. This genre started in the late 1980s. A closely-related genre is post-rock. Some of the same bands might be called both. Post-rock is usually characterized by a stronger jazz influence.

References 

Music genres
The Middle Kingdom is the period in the history of ancient Egypt stretching from the establishment of the Eleventh Dynasty to the end of the Fourteenth Dynasty, roughly between 2030 BC and 1640 BC.

The period had two phases, the 11th Dynasty, which ruled from Thebes and the 12th and the following dynasties which revolved around el-Lisht. These two dynasties were originally considered to be the full extent of this unified kingdom, but historians now  consider the 13th Dynasty to at least partially belong to the Middle Kingdom.

Notes & references

References

Further reading 
 W. Grajetzki, The Middle Kingdom of Ancient Egypt: History,Archaeology and Society, Duckworth, London 2006 

3rd millennium BC in Egypt
2nd millennium BC in Egypt

he:היסטוריה של מצרים העתיקה
Thebes (, Thēbai) was a city in Ancient Egypt about 800 km south of the Mediterranean Sea, on the east bank of the river Nile (). It was the capital of Waset, the fourth Upper Egyptian nome.

Sources
Sources 

 Gauthier, Henri. 1925–1931. Dictionnaire des noms géographiques contenus dans les textes hiéroglyphiques. Vol. 3 of 7 vols. Cairo: Imprimerie de l’Institut français d’archéologie orientale du Caire. (Reprinted Osnabrück: Otto Zeller Verlag, 1975). 75, 76.
 Polz, Daniel C. 2001. "Thebes". In The Oxford Encyclopedia of ancient Egypt, edited by Donald Bruce Redford. Vol. 3 of  3 vols. Oxford, New York, and Cairo: Oxford University Press and The American University in Cairo Press. 384–388.
 Redford, Donald Bruce. 1992. "Thebes". In The Anchor Bible Dictionary, edited by David Noel Freedman. Vol. 6 of 6 vols. New York: Doubleday. 442–443.  (6-volume set)
 Strudwick, Nigel C., & Strudwick, Helen, Thebes in Egypt: A Guide to the Tombs and Temples of Ancient Luxor. London: British Museum Press, 1999,  (hardcover)/ (paperback)

Other websites 
 Theban Mapping Project
 Ancient Thebes Digital Media Archive (photos, laser scans, panoramas)
Archaeological sites in Egypt
Capital of Egypt
World Heritage Sites in Egypt
Ancient Egyptian cities
Luxor Governorate
Politics of Germany are based on a federal parliamentary democratic republic. The government is elected by the people in elections where everyone has an equal vote. The constitution is called the Grundgesetz. As well as setting out the rights of the people, it describes the jobs of the President, the Cabinet, the Bundestag, Bundesrat and the Courts.

The President is the head of state. The Federal Chancellor is the head of government, and of the majority group in the legislature (law making body) which is called the Bundestag. Executive power is exercised by the government. The power to make federal law is given to the government and the two parts of parliament, the Bundestag and Bundesrat. The ministers of the government are members of the parliament, and need parliamentary support to stay in power.
From 1949 to 1990, the main political parties were the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), with its "sister party", the Christian Social Union of Bavaria (CSU). After the reunification of Germany the Green Party and Alliance '90(Bündnis 90/Die Grünen) became more important and was in government between 1999 and 2005. Other important political parties after reunification have been the PDS (Party of Democratic Socialism) which was based on East Germany's Socialist Unity Party of Germany. It joined with The Left Party (Die Linkspartei or Die Linke) of western Germany. In 2007 Die Linke and WASG joined together under the leadership of Oskar Lafontaine

As Germany is a federal country, a lot of the work of government is done by the 16 states (Länder). Power is shared between the national (or federal) government and state governments. The national government cannot abolish the state governments.

Rights and the constitution
The political system is set out in the 1949 constitution, the Grundgesetz (Basic Law), which stayed in effect after 1990's German reunification.

The constitution puts freedom and human rights first. It also splits powers both between the federal and state levels and between the legislative (law-making), executive (government), and judicial (courts) branches. The 1949 Grundgesetz was written to correct the problems with the Weimar Republic's constitution. The Weimar Republic collapsed in 1933 and was replaced by the dictatorship of the Third Reich.

The Federal Courts 
The courts of Germany are independent of the government and the lawmakers. Senior judges are appointed by the Bundestag for a fixed term.
Federal executive branch
The Bundeskanzler (Federal Chancellor) heads the Bundesregierung (Federal Cabinet) and thus the executive branch of the federal government. He or she is chosen by and must report to the Bundestag, Germany's parliament. Germany, like the United Kingdom, can thus be said to have a parliamentary system.

Konstruktives Misstrauensvotum 
The Chancellor cannot be removed from office during a 4-year term unless the Bundestag has agreed on a successor. This Constructive Vote of No Confidence () is meant to stop what happened in the Weimar Republic. There the government did not have a lot of support in the parliament. The small parties often joined together to vote against the government, but could never stay together and choose a new government.
Except in the periods 1969-72 and 1976-82, when the social democratic party of Chancellor Brandt and Schmidt came in second in the elections, the Chancellor has always been the candidate of the largest party. Usually the largest party is helped by one or smaller more parties to get a majority in the parliament. Between 1969-72 and 1976-82 the smaller parties decided not to help the largest party, but the second biggest party instead.

The Chancellor appoints a Vice-Chancellor (Vizekanzler), who is a member of his cabinet, usually the Foreign Minister. When there is a coalition government (which has, so far, always been the case, except for the period of 1957 to 1961), the Vice-Chancellor usually belongs to the smaller party of the coalition.
The Federal Cabinet
The Chancellor is responsible for policy guidelines. This means he, or she, sets the broad ideas of what the government will do. To help carry out these ideas the Chancellor can change the make-up of the federal ministries whenever they want. For example, in the middle of January 2001, the Federal Ministry of Agriculture was renamed to Ministry of Consumer Protection, Food and Agriculture. This was to help fight the "Mad Cow Disease" BSE problem. At the same time some of the jobs (competencies) of the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Economy, and the Ministry of Health were moved to the new Ministry of Consumer Protection.

Reporting to the cabinet is the Civil service of Germany.

The Federal President 
The duties of the Bundespräsident (Federal President) are mostly representative and ceremonial; The power of the executive is exercised by the Chancellor.
The President is elected every 5 years on May 23 by the Federal Assembly (Bundesversammlung). The Bundesversammlung only meets to elect the President. Its members are the entire Bundestag and an equal number of state delegates selected especially for this purpose in proportion to election results for the state parliaments.
In February 2017, Frank-Walter Steinmeier of the SPD was elected. The reason that the President is not directly elected by the people is to stop him from claiming to be more powerful than the government and the constitution, which happened in the Weimar Republic.

|President
|Frank-Walter Steinmeier
| --- 1)
|19 March 2017
|-
|Chancellor
|Olaf Scholz
|SPD
|8 December 2021
|-
|Other government parties
|
|Green, FDP
|
|}
1) Although Mr. Steinmeier has been a member of the SPD, the German Basic Law requests in Article 55 that the Federal President does not hold another office, practice a profession or hold membership of any corporation. Federal President has let his party membership rest dormant and does not belong to a political party during his term of office.

Federal parliament

Germany has a bicameral legislature, which means that the parliament has two houses. The Bundestag (Federal Diet) has at least 598 members, elected for a four-year term. Half of the members (299) are elected in single-seat constituencies according to first-past-the-post. The other 299 members are chosen from statewide party lists.

The total percentage of constituency members and regional list members a party has should equal the percentage of votes that a party gets. This is called proportional representation.
Because Voters vote once for a constituency representative, and a second time for a party Germany is said to have mixed-member proportional representation.

Sometimes a party already has more constituency seats in a land (state) than it should have to keep the percentage of votes and seats equal. The party does not lose seats. Instead, it gets no land seats. This means that the Bundestag sometimes has more than 598 members. In the current parliament, there are 16 overhang seats, giving a total of 614.

A party must get 5% of the national vote or win at least three constituency seats to be represented in the Bundestag. This rule is often called the "five percent hurdle", was made to stop lots of small parties from being in the Bundestag. Small parties were blamed for the problems of the Weimar Republic's Reichstag.
The first Bundestag elections were held in the Federal Republic of Germany ("West Germany") on August 14, 1949. Following reunification, elections for the first all-German Bundestag were held on December 2, 1990. The last election was held on September 24, 2017, the 19th Bundestag met on October 24, 2017.

The Bundesrat (Federal Council) is the representation of the state governments at the federal level. The Bundesrat has 69 members who are delegates of the 16 Bundesländer. Usually, the 16 Ministers President are members, but they do not have to be. The Länder each has from three to six votes in the Bundesrat, depending on the population. Bundesrat members must vote as their state government tell them.

Powers of the legislature
The legislature has powers of exclusive jurisdiction (it can make laws by itself) and concurrent jurisdiction with the Länder (the länder can also make laws). What laws and what type of laws are set out in the Basic Law.

The Bundestag does most lawmaking.
The Bundesrat must concur (agree) to laws about money shared by the federal and state governments and those making more work for the states. Often this means that the Bundesrat often needs to agree to a law because federal laws are often carried out by state or local agencies.

Since the political make-up of the Bundesrat is often different from that of the Bundestag, the Bundesrat is often the place for opposition parties to put their point of view, rather than for the states to look after their interests, as the constitution intended.

To limit, members of the Bundestag and the Bundesrat form a Vermittlungsauschuss which is a joint committee to try to reach an agreement when the two chambers can not agree on a certain piece of legislation.

Political parties and elections
For other political parties see List of political parties in Germany.

Bundestag 
The following parties are represented in the German Bundestag since the federal elections of 2017:
CDU/CSU: 246
 SPD: 152
 AfD: 89
 FDP: 80
 Linke: 69
Greens: 67

Total 709 seats.

The Pirate Party Germany and the National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD) got no seats.

Bundesrat 
The Federal Council is composed by representatives of the State governments.

->See also: Bundesrat - States.

Judicial branch
Germany has had a court system that was free of government control for longer than it has had democracy.

This means that the courts have traditionally been strong, and almost all state actions are subject to judicial review (being looked at by the court).

Organization 
There is the "ordinary" courts system that handles civil and criminal cases

This has four levels
 Amtsgericht - local courts
 Landesgericht - state courts
 Oberlandesgericht - state appeals courts
 Bundesgerichtshof - the federal supreme criminal and civil court
There is also a system of specialist courts, that deals with certain areas of the law. These generally have a state court and state appeals court before coming to the federal supreme court for that area of law. The other federal supreme courts are
 Bundesfinanzhof - tax affairs
 Bundesarbeitsgericht - Labour law
 Bundessozialgericht - Social security law
 Bundesverwaltungsgericht - Administrative law. This includes government regulations not covered by one of the other three specialist courts.

Unlike the United States, all courts are state courts, except for the top-level supreme courts.

Bundesverfassungsgericht
Germany also has another supreme court, the Bundesverfassungsgericht Federal Constitutional Court. The Grundgesetz says that every person may complain to the Federal Constitutional Court when his or her constitutional rights, especially human rights, have been violated by the government or one of its agencies and after he or she has gone through the ordinary court system.
The Bundesverfassungsgericht hears complaints about laws passed by the legislative branch, court decisions, or acts of the administration.

Usually, only a small percentage of these constitutional complaints, called (Verfassungsbeschwerden) are successful. Even so, the Court has often angered both the government and the lawmakers. The judges even say that they do not care about the reactions of the government, the Bundestag, or public opinion or about the cost of one of the court's decisions. All that matters is the constitution.

The Bundesverfassungsgericht is very high popular with ordinary people because it protects them from government wrongdoing.

Only the Constitutional Court can handle some types of cases, including arguments between government bodies about their constitutional powers.
Only the Constitutional Court has the power to ban political parties for being unconstitutional. However so far the Constitutional court has only used this power twice, outlawing the KPD (Communist Party of Germany) and the SRP (Socialist Reich Party, a successor to the NSDAP) because both parties ideas went against the constitution.

Recent political issues

"Red-Green" vs. Conservative-led coalitions

In the 1998 election the SPD said they wanted to reduce high unemployment rates and said new people were needed in government after 16 years of Helmut Kohl's government.

Gerhard Schröder said he was a centrist "Third Way" candidate like Britain's Tony Blair and America's Bill Clinton.

The CDU/CSU said people should look at how well off they were because of Kohl's government, and that the CDU/CSU had experience in foreign policy.
But the Kohl government was hurt at the polls by slower growth in the east in the previous two years, which meant the gap between east and west widened as the west got richer and the east did not.

The final seat count was enough to allow a "red-green" coalition of the SPD with Alliance '90/The Greens (Bündnis '90/Die Grünen), bringing the Greens into a national government for the first time.

The first months of the new government had policy disputes between the moderate and traditional left wings of the SPD, and some voters got fed up. The first state election after the federal election was held in Hesse in February 1999. The CDU increased its vote by 3.5%. The CDU became the largest party and replaced an SPD/Green coalition with a CDU/FDP coalition. The result was seen in part as a referendum on the federal government's ideas for a new citizenship law, which would have made it easier for long-time foreign residents to become German citizens, and also to keep their original citizenship as well.
In March 1999, SPD chairman and Minister of Finance Oskar Lafontaine, who represented a more traditional social democratic position, resigned from all offices after losing a party-internal power struggle against Schröder.

In state elections in 2000 and 2001, the respective SPD- or CDU-led coalition governments were re-elected into power.

The next election for the Bundestag was September 22, 2002. Gerhard Schröder led the coalition of SPD and Greens to an 11-seat victory over the CDU/CSU headed by Edmund Stoiber (CSU). Two factors are generally cited that enabled Schröder to win the elections despite poor approval ratings a few months before: good handling of the 2002 European floods and firm opposition to the USA's 2003 invasion of Iraq.

The coalition treaty for the second red-green coalition was signed on October 16, 2002. There were a lot of new ministers.
Conservative comeback
In February 2003, elections took place in the states of Hesse and Lower Saxony, was won by the conservatives. In Hesse, the CDU minister president Roland Koch was re-elected, with his party CDU gaining enough seats to govern without the former coalition partner FDP.

In Lower Saxony, the former SPD minister president Sigmar Gabriel lost the elections, leading to a CDU/FDP-government headed by new minister president Christian Wulff (CDU).
The protest against the Iraq war changed this situation a bit, favoring SPD and Greens.

The latest election in the state of Bavaria led to a landslide victory of the conservatives, gaining not just the majority (as usual), but two thirds of parliamentary seats.
Rise of the Right
In September 2004, elections were held in the states of Saarland, Brandenburg and Saxony. In the Saarland, the governing CDU was able to remain in power and gained one additional seat in the parliament and the SPD lost seven seats, while the Liberals and Greens re-entered the state parliament. The far-right National Democratic Party, which had never got more than 1 or 2% of the vote, received about 4%, although it failed to earn a seat in the state parliament (a party must obtain at least 5% of the vote to achieve state parliamentary representation).
Two weeks later, elections were held in the eastern states of Brandenburg and Saxony: once again, overall, the ruling parties lost votes and although they remained in power, the right to far-right parties made the big leaps. In Brandenburg, the Deutsche Volksunion (DVU) re-entered the state parliament after winning 6.1% of the vote. In Saxony, the NPD entered a non-competition agreement with the DVU and obtained 9.2% of the vote, thus winning seats in the state parliament. Due to their losses at the ballots, the ruling CDU of Saxony was forced to form a coalition with the SPD. The rise of the right to far-right worries the ruling political parties.

German federal election 2005
On May 22, 2005, as predicted the SPD was defeated in its former heartland, North Rhine-Westphalia. Half an hour after the election results, the SPD chairman Franz Müntefering announced that the chancellor would clear the way for premature federal elections by deliberately losing a vote of confidence.
This took everyone by surprise, especially because the SPD was below 25% in polls at the time. On the following Monday, the CDU announced Angela Merkel as a conservative candidate for chancellorship.

Whereas in May and June 2005 victory of the conservatives seemed highly likely, with some polls giving them an absolute majority, this changed shortly before the election on September 18, 2005, especially after the conservatives introduced Paul Kirchhof as potential minister of the treasury, and after a TV duel between Merkel and Schröder where many considered Schröder to have performed better.

New for the 2005 election was the alliance between the newly formed Electoral Alternative for Labour and Social Justice (WASG) and the PDS, planning to join into a common party (see Left Party.PDS). With the former SPD chairman Oskar Lafontaine for the WASG and Gregor Gysi for the PDS as prominent figures, this alliance soon found interest in the media and in the population. Polls in July saw them as high as 12%.
After success in the state election for Saxony, the alliance between the far right parties National Democratic Party and Deutsche Volksunion (DVU), which planned to leapfrog the "five-percent hurdle" on a common party ticket was another media issue.

The election results of September 18, 2005, were surprising. They were very different from the polls of the previous weeks. The conservatives lost votes compared to 2002, reaching only 35%, and failed to get a majority for a "black-yellow" government of CDU/CSU and liberal FDP. The FDP polled 10% of the votes, one of their best results ever. But the red-green coalition also failed to get a majority, with the SPD losing votes, but polling 34% and the greens staying at 8%. The left party alliance reached 8.7% and entered the German Parliament, whereas the NPD only got 1.6%.
On October 10, talks were held between Franz Müntefering, the SPD chairman, Gerhard Schröder, Angela Merkel, and Edmund Stoiber, the CSU chairman. In the afternoon it was announced that the CDU/CSU and SPD would begin formal coalition negotiations with the aim of a Grand Coalition with Angela Merkel as the next German chancellor.

Angela Merkel is the first woman, the first East German and the first scientist to be chancellor as well as the youngest German chancellor ever. On November 22, 2005, Angela Merkel was sworn in by president Horst Köhler for the office of Bundeskanzlerin.

References

Related pages
 Political culture of Germany
 German emergency legislature
 German federal election, 2017
 List of political parties in Germany

Other websites
 Official Site of the Bundesregierung
 Official source of election results 
 Official source from the German Embassy in Washington, DC

 
Government of Germany
Music notation or musical notation is a way of writing down music so that anyone can play it. Many systems have been used in the past to write music. Today most musicians in the Western world write musical notes on a stave: five parallel lines with four spaces in between them. However, there are many others, some of which are in use today in different cultures.

Writing music down makes it possible for a composer who makes up (composes) a piece of music to let other people know how the music is supposed to sound. That music can then be played or sung by anybody who can “read music”. If music is not written down, then people can only learn other people’s music by listening to it and trying to copy it. This is how folk music was traditionally learned.

Some early ways of writing music
Cuneiform 
The earliest kind of notation was written on tablets using a way of writing called cuneiform. Music from Nippur from about 2000 B.C. has been found which seems to give an approximate idea of how the music should be played. A tablet from 1250 B.C. has musical notation which shows the names of the strings of a lyre. They are the earliest records we have of written music.

Ancient Greece 

Musical notation from Ancient Greece showed the notes in more detail than the earlier cuneiform. It shows the pitch (how high or low the note is) and how long it lasts. It sometimes give an idea of the harmony. It was used from at least the 6th century BC until about the 4th century AD.

Early European musical notation
People gradually realized that it was necessary to find a system which showed the exact pitch of the note. The first stave was just one single horizontal line. Gradually this increased to four lines. Guido d’Arezzo, an Italian Benedictine monk who lived in the 11th century developed this system which soon led to the way of writing music that we know. By the 16th century everybody was using the 5 line stave. A system of bars (measures) was used everywhere by the end of the 17th century. At first the bar lines where there to show which notes should be played or sung together. Gradually the system we know today was developed in which each bar lasted the same length of time, and has a particular number of beats (counts) for each bar. By the end of the 17th century this was used by most musicians in European classical music.

The modern system of musical notation
Today we use a five-line staff. The pitch (highness or lowness of a note) is shown by where the note is put on the staff. There may also be sharps or flats in front of some of the notes. The note value (amount of time for a note) in shown by how the note looks. The music is read from left to right.

A staff of written music usually has a clef in front. This shows exactly which notes are to be played. Notes which are very high or low can be put on extra lines called ledger lines above or below the stave.

After the clef there is usually a key signature which shows the key of the piece: it shows which sharps or flats are to be used regularly.

After the key signature is the time signature. Bars (measures) divide the piece into regular groupings of beats, and the time signatures show these groupings.

Above the music there is usually a word, or words, to show the tempo (speed) At various places in the music there will be dynamic marks to show how loud or soft to play.
For vocal music, words are written underneath the notes.

When music is played by a large group of instruments such as an orchestra the music is written in a "score". This shows the music played by all the instruments, so there are many staves written underneath one another. The conductor will need to have a score, but the players will play from a “part” which has just the notes that they play. All the parts needed for a piece of music is called a “set of parts”.

Some other systems 
Instruments such as guitars often play from a chord chart or just the names of the chords (C7, Em etc.) written underneath the music or under the words of a song.

A system called solfege has been used by musicians ever since the Renaissance.  This shows the names of the notes of a scale (do, re, mi etc.).

Lute music in the Renaissance and Baroque periods used to be written in a system called tabulature. Some 20th century composers have also used tabulature.
Some modern composers such as John Cage have written music by making drawings called graphic notation.

Music can also be written in Braille for blind musicians.

Today computers are often used for making music. This has led to other forms of music notation which are used in different systems of software. The MIDI file format, stores information about the pitch, duration, speed, volume etc. of notes and can be used to control a MIDI instrument.

There are other systems in use today for some non-Western music.

Related pages
 Sheet music
 Stave (music)
 Clef (music)
 Guido d'Arezzo
 Tablature

Musical notation
Musicology means the study of music by a scholar. A scholar is an academic person, often a professor or lecturer at a university.  Someone who studies musicology is a Musicologist.

Musicologists study all kinds of music. They study the history of music and learn about all the composers and how they developed their ideas and learned from one another. They can do this by studying music scores, or by looking for historical documents which tell us about musicians from the past. Musicologists may also study the philosophy of music (thinking about what music means).  

They write articles in musical journals or books on music. This can help us to know and understand more about the music we play or listen to.

Related pages
Acoustics
Music school
Music theory

References

 
Humanities
The Armenian-Tatar massacres (also known as the Armenian Tatar War and the Armeno-Tatar War) refers to the ethnic fight between the Armenians and the Caucasian Tartars (modern Azeris) in the Caucasus in 1905—1907.

The massacres started during the Russian Revolution of 1905. Hundreds of people were killed. The most violent fights happened in 1905 in February in Baku, in May in Nakhichevan, in August in Shusha and in November in Ganja.

1905
1906
1907
20th-century crimes
Anti-Armenianism
Anti-Azerbaijanism
20th century in Armenia
20th century in Azerbaijan
Massacres in Azerbaijan
C-pop is short for Chinese popular music (). Most of today's C-pop artists are from Hong Kong, Taiwan and mainland China, as well as from other countries where Mandarin or Cantonese languages are used, such as Singapore and Malaysia. However, Taiwanese music has some origins from the Japanese enka so Taiwanese pop is sometimes said to be a different genre from C-Pop.

Cantonese pop

Cantonese pop, or colloquially known as Cantopop, is a subgenre of C-pop, sung in Cantonese language. Most Hong Kong-born singers start off as Cantonese pop singers before starting a career as a Mandarin pop singer. Cantonese pop artists include:

Aaron Kwok
Andy Lau
Candy Lo
CoCo Lee
Jacky Cheung
Leon Lai
Alan Tam
Leslie Cheung
Samuel Hui
Priscilla Chan
Joseph Koo

The Four Heavenly Kings
"The Four Heavenly Kings" of Cantonese pop are Leon Lai, Andy Lau, Aaron Kwok and Jacky Cheung.
In the early 1990s, many major Cantonese pop stars (such as Alan Tam, Leslie Cheung, Samuel Hui, Priscilla Chan and Joseph Koo) decided to retire because of the protests in China in 1989. Cantonese pop needed new talent to fill the gaps left by these retired stars, this led to the beginning of "the Four Heavenly Kings" or "四大天王" (lit. Four Great Kings of Heaven): Jacky Jeung, Andy Lau, Aaron Kwok and Leon Lai. They were dominating the media in all forms, from magazines, TV, cinema to music.

Mandarin pop

Mandarin pop () is a subgenre of C-pop. Also known as Mandopop and Mandapop, Mandarin pop songs are performed in Mandarin. Most Cantonese pop stars also expand their music career into the Mandarin pop scene.

Other websites
Chinese Music Blog  - Chinese music online community providing Chinese music discussion, album review, lyrics translation and romanization for non-Chinese speakers.
C-Pop Fantasie  - Online resource for c-pop, providing lyrics, downloads, video shows, and more.
Stefanie Sun () is a multi-award-winning C-Pop singer and songwriter. She was born on 1978. Stefanie has sold over 10 million copies in Asia.  After her release of her tenth album, she is said to be the most popular Mandarin female singer in Asia and the most successful singer from Singapore.

Early life

Stefanie Sun has an elder sister Sng Yee Kia and a younger sister Sng EeMei.

Stefanie wen to school at Saint Margaret's Secondary School, Raffles Girls' School and went on to attend Saint Andrew's Junior College.  She later attended Nanyang Technological University, where she got a degree in Marketing.  Her abilities were discovered by her music teacher at his music school.

Languages
Languages

Among Mandarin-speakers, Stefanie is known by her Mandarin name, Sun Yan Zi. She speaks the Teochew dialect, and in Teochew her name is pronounced as "Sng Ee Tze," which is her official name. Most of her songs are sung in Mandarin, with several in English. Stefanie's ability to speak many dialects is shown in the songs she sings.  

In the song Cloudy Day (called 天黑黑 in Chinese), she sings in both Mandarin and Min Nan (Taiwanese). Cloudy Day is an adaptation of a traditional Taiwanese folk song.

Her album START! contains 6 songs in English: Venus, That I Will Be Good, Sometimes Love Just Ain't Enough, Silent All These Years, and Hey Jude; and a song she wrote called Someone.

Career

Stefanie does most of her recording and performing in Taiwan, where most of her fans are. She also visits China, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore, where many of her fans are.
Her first music album was released in June 2000, the self-titled YanZi, published by Warner Music. The album sold over 330,000 copies in Taiwan.  Her next album, which was released in December of the same year was titled My Desired Happiness or 我要的幸福 in Chinese. My Desired Happiness sold over 380,000 copies in Taiwan. Both albums achieved great success – each album sold over 1,000,000 copies in mainland China.

Her third album was released in early 2001, titled Kite, which sold successfully with 300,000 copies in Taiwan and more than 950,000 in China.

In January 2002 she released START, which was titled 自選集 in China. START was a collection of songs and cover versions. START! sold over 250,000 copies in Taiwan alone in less than a month and overall 1,000,000 copies sold in mainland China.

In 2002 and 2003, Stefanie sang the official theme songs for Singapore's National Day Parade: We Will Get There (一起走到 in Chinese) and One United People (全心全意 in Chinese). One United People was included on the album Leave.
In early 2003, she released the album To Be Continued… which like her previous releases, was a success.  It sold more than 250,000 copies in Taiwan and more than 1,000,000 in China.  Only a few months later, she released her seventh album with six new songs mixed with fifteen of her old songs.  By the end of 2003, Stefanie had sold over 7,000,000 copies in Asia with just seven albums.

In late 2003, she decided to take a one-year break from making music, because she wanted to find again her direction in her career. She returned in late 2004 with a new album titled Stefanie, which was meant to reflect her debut album (self-titled as well, but in Chinese). This was to symbolise her return with a fresh attitude. This album sold more than 2,300,000 copies in Asia; making it her most successful album.  She also started her own company called Make Music.
A Perfect Day  was released on 2005, almost one year later. Reviews of this new album were mixed, but Stefanie said that all she wanted was to make quality music, instead of releases that sell well but have a lower level of artistic quality.  This album was not her highest-selling, but it had still managed to sell over 1,000,000 copies in Asia.
 
In 2006, Stefanie had 4 full-house concerts at the Hong Kong Coliseum. The performances were praised by the media as well as fans. Stefanie also returned to Singapore in a much-anticipated homecoming concert. However, at The Golden Melody Awards 2006 in Taiwan, while performing songs that were meant to be for male singers, she went off-key, due to having not enough sleep, jet lag, and not having enough time to practice. The media said she had shattered her image of a pop diva with great singing skills. Though she had been heavily criticized by the media, many think that she did not perform as bad, instead the media had over-emphasized on her singing that night.
Stefanie’s first album under the Capitol brand is entitled Against the Light or 逆光 in Chinese. It was released on 22 March 2007. Her decision to leave Warner after 9 albums was partly due to music executive Sam Chen, who now works at EMI. He had collaborated with Stefanie on 8 of her 9 albums.

On 26 February 2007, Stefanie returned from Cairo where she and her team were extorted by suspected local gangsters. Stefanie was in Egypt to shoot a PV for her new album. Two men disguised as government officials followed her and the crew and asked for money and even showing a handgun. The crew tried calling the police but the police didn’t believe them. The crew had to hand over a total of over 200,000 yuan in order to continue shooting.
Stefanie’s tenth album Against the Light, has been a major success in Asia.  In Taiwan, it sold over 60,000 copies in the first 3 days it was released. In addition, over 500,000 copies were sold within a week in China. Stefanie was also the number one spot in the Taiwanese Music Charts for 4 weeks.

In 2007, Stefanie sang the offcial theme song for ASEAN's 40th anniversary celebrations: Rise.  

Chinese musicians
Chinese singers
Singaporean musicians
Singaporean singers
C-pop singers
Pop musicians
1978 births
Living people
The election of the German Federal Diet (Bundestag) 2005 took place on 18 September 2005.

References 

2005 in Germany
2005 elections
Federal elections in Germany
German Bundestag
September 2005 events
In Indian religions, a mudra (Sanskrit, literally "seal") is a gesture made with the hand or fingers.  Along with asanas (body postures), they are used in yoga.  Each mudra has a meaning. They are a central part of Hindu iconography. Mudras are also used in Buddhism. There are  hand gestures in both Hindu and Buddhist iconography. An example would be the outward-facing open palm known as Abhay (without fear) mudra, a gesture meant to dispel fear.

References
 Originally published 1985, Routledge & Kegan Paul plc, London.

Other websites

 Mudras Photo Gallery 
 Mudras in Buddhism 

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Yoga