title: Electronic cigarette

text: In February 2014 the European Parliament passed regulations requiring standardization and quality control for liquids and vaporizers, disclosure of ingredients in liquids, and child-proofing and tamper-proofing for liquid packaging. In April 2014 the US FDA published proposed regulations for e-cigarettes. In the US some states tax e-cigarettes as tobacco products, and some state and regional governments have broadened their indoor smoking bans to include e-cigarettes. , 12 US states and 615 localities had prohibited the use of e-cigarettes in venues in which traditional cigarette smoking was prohibited. In 2015, at least 48 states and 2 territories had banned e-cigarette sales to minors.


title: Electronic cigarette

text: In November 2020, the New Zealand government passed a vaping regulation that requires vape stores to register as specialist vape retailers before they can sell e-cigarettes, the wider range of flavoured e-liquids, and other related vaping products. Vaping products are required to be notified by the government before they can be sold to ensure that the products are following safety requirements and ingredients in liquids do not contain prohibited substances.


title: Electronic cigarette

text: E-cigarettes containing nicotine have been listed as drug delivery devices in a number of countries, and the marketing of such products has been restricted or put on hold until safety and efficacy clinical trials are conclusive. Since they do not contain tobacco, television advertising in the US is not restricted. Some countries have regulated e-cigarettes as a medical product even though they have not approved them as a smoking cessation aid. A 2014 review stated the emerging phenomenon of e-cigarettes has raised concerns in the health community, governments, and the general public and recommended that e-cigarettes should be regulated to protect consumers. It added, "heavy regulation by restricting access to e-cigarettes would just encourage continuing use of much unhealthier tobacco smoking." A 2014 review said regulation of the e-cigarette should be considered on the basis of reported adverse health effects.


title: Electronic cigarette

text: Critics of vaping bans state that vaping is a much safer alternative to smoking tobacco products and that vaping bans incentivize people to return to smoking cigarettes. For example, critics cite the British Journal of Family Medicine in August 2015 which stated, "E-cigarettes are 95% safer than traditional smoking." Additionally, San Francisco's chief economist, Ted Egan, when discussing the San Francisco vaping ban stated the city's ban on e-cigarette sales will increase smoking as vapers switch to combustible cigarettes. Critics of smoking bans stress the absurdity of criminalizing the sale of a safer alternative to tobacco while tobacco continues to be legal. Prominent proponents of smoking bans are not in favor of criminalizing tobacco either, but rather allowing consumers to have the choice to choose whatever products they desire.


title: Electronic cigarette

text: In 2022, after two years of review, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) denied Juul's application to keep its tobacco and menthol flavored vaping products on the market. Critics of this denial note that research published in Nicotine and Tobacco Research found that smokers who transitioned to Juuls in North America were significantly more likely to switch to vaping than those in the United Kingdom who only had access to lower-strength nicotine products. This happens as the Biden Administration seeks to mandate low-nicotine cigarettes which, critics note, is not what makes cigarettes dangerous. They also note that vaping does not contain many of the components that make smoking dangerous such as the combustion process and certain chemicals that are present in cigarettes that are not present in vape products.


title: Electronic cigarette

text: Multiple reports from the U.S. Fire Administration conclude that electronic cigarettes have been combusting and injuring people and surrounding areas. The composition of a cigarette is the cause of this, as the cartridges that are meant to contain the liquid mixture are in such close proximity to the battery. A research report by the U.S. Fire Administration supports this, stating that, "Unlike mobile phones, some e-cigarette lithium-ion batteries within e-cigarettes offer no protection to stop the coil overheating" . In 2015 the U.S. Fire Administration noted in their report that electronic cigarettes are not created by Big Tobacco or other tobacco companies, but by independent factories that have little quality control. Because of this low quality control when made, electronic cigarettes have led to incidents in which people are hurt, or in which the surrounding area is damaged.


title: Electronic cigarette

text: They are marketed to men, women, and children as being safer than traditional cigarettes. They are also marketed to non-smokers. E-cigarette marketing is common. There are growing concerns that e-cigarette advertising campaigns unjustifiably focus on young adults, adolescents, and women. Large tobacco companies have greatly increased their marketing efforts. This marketing trend may expand the use of e-cigarettes and contribute to re-glamorizing smoking. Some companies may use e-cigarette advertising to advocate smoking, deliberately, or inadvertently, is an area of concern. A 2014 review said, "the e-cigarette companies have been rapidly expanding using aggressive marketing messages similar to those used to promote cigarettes in the 1950s and 1960s." E-cigarette companies are using methods that were once used by the tobacco industry to persuade young people to start using cigarettes. E-cigarettes are promoted to a certain extent to forge a vaping culture that entices non-smokers. Themes in e-cigarette marketing, including sexual content and customer satisfaction, are parallel to themes and techniques that are appealing to youth and young adults in traditional cigarette advertising and promotion. A 2017 review found "The tobacco industry sees a future where ENDS accompany and perpetuate, rather than supplant, tobacco use, especially targeting the youth." E-cigarettes and nicotine are regularly promoted as safe and even healthy in the media and on brand websites, which is an area of concern.


title: Electronic cigarette

text: While advertising of tobacco products is banned in most countries, television and radio e-cigarette advertising in several countries may be indirectly encouraging traditional cigarette use. E-cigarette advertisements are also in magazines, newspapers, online, and in retail stores. Between 2010 and 2014, e-cigarettes were second only to cigarettes as the top advertised product in magazines. As cigarette companies have acquired the largest e-cigarette brands, they currently benefit from a dual market of smokers and e-cigarette users while simultaneously presenting themselves as agents of harm reduction. This raises concerns about the appropriateness of endorsing a product that directly profits the tobacco industry. There is no evidence that the cigarette brands are selling e-cigarettes as part of a plan to phase out traditional cigarettes, despite some stating to want to cooperate in "harm reduction". E-cigarette advertising for using e-cigarettes as a quitting tool have been seen in the US, UK, and China, which have not been supported by regulatory bodies. In the US, six large e-cigarette businesses spent $59.3 million on promoting e-cigarettes in 2013. In the US and Canada, over $2 million is spent yearly on promoting e-cigarettes online. E-cigarette websites often made unscientific health statements in 2012. The ease to get past the age verification system at e-cigarette company websites allows underage individuals to access and be exposed to marketing. Around half of e-cigarette company websites have a minimum age notice that prohibited underage individuals from entering.


title: Electronic cigarette

text: Celebrity endorsements are used to encourage e-cigarette use. A 2012 national US television advertising campaign for e-cigarettes starred Stephen Dorff exhaling a "thick flume" of what the advertisement describes as "vapor, not tobacco smoke", exhorting smokers with the message "We are all adults here, it's time to take our freedom back." Opponents of the tobacco industry state that the Blu advertisement, in a context of longstanding prohibition of tobacco advertising on television, seems to have resorted to advertising tactics that got former generations of people in the US addicted to traditional cigarettes. Cynthia Hallett of Americans for Non-Smokers' Rights described the US advertising campaign as attempting to "re-establish a norm that smoking is okay, that smoking is glamorous and acceptable". University of Pennsylvania communications professor Joseph Cappella stated that the setting of the advertisement near an ocean was meant to suggest an association of clean air with the nicotine product. In 2012 and 2013, e-cigarette companies advertised to a large television audience in the US which included 24 million youth. The channels to which e-cigarette advertising reached the largest numbers of youth (ages 12–17) were AMC, Country Music Television, Comedy Central, WGN America, TV Land, and VH1.


title: Electronic cigarette

text: Since at least 2007, e-cigarettes have been heavily promoted across media outlets globally. They are vigorously advertised, mostly through the Internet, as a safe substitute to traditional cigarettes, among other things. E-cigarette companies promote their e-cigarette products on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter. They are promoted on YouTube by movies with sexual material and music icons, who encourage minors to "take their freedom back." They have partnered with a number of sports and music icons to promote their products. Tobacco companies intensely market e-cigarettes to youth, with industry strategies including cartoon characters and candy flavors. Fruit flavored e-liquid is the most commonly marketed e-liquid flavor on social media. E-cigarette companies commonly promote that their products contain only water, nicotine, glycerin, propylene glycol, and flavoring but this assertion is misleading as researchers have found differing amounts of heavy metals in the vapor, including chromium, nickel, tin, silver, cadmium, mercury, and aluminum. The widespread assertion that e-cigarettes emit "only water vapor" is not true because the evidence demonstrates e-cigarette vapor contains possibly harmful chemicals such as nicotine, carbonyls, metals, and volatile organic compounds, in addition to particulate matter. Massive advertising included the assertion that they would present little risk to non-users. However, "disadvantages and side effects have been reported in many articles, and the unfavorable effects of its secondhand vapor have been demonstrated in many studies", and evidence indicates that use of e-cigarettes degrades indoor air quality. Many e-cigarette companies market their products as a smoking cessation aid without evidence of effectiveness. E-cigarette marketing has been found to make unsubstantiated health statements (e.g., that they help one quit smoking) including statements about improving psychiatric symptoms, which may be particularly appealing to smokers with mental illness. E-cigarette marketing advocate weight control and emphasize use of nicotine with many flavors. These marketing angles could particularly entice overweight people, youth, and vulnerable groups. Some e-cigarette companies state that their products are green without supporting evidence which may be purely to increase their sales.


title: Electronic cigarette

text: The number of e-cigarettes sold increased every year from 2003 to 2014. In 2015 a slowdown in the growth in usage occurred in the US. As of January 2018, the growth in usage in the UK has slowed down since 2013. there were at least 466 e-cigarette brands. Worldwide e-cigarette sales in 2014 were around US$7 billion. Worldwide e-cigarette sales in 2019 were about $19.3 billion. E-cigarette sales could exceed traditional cigarette sales by 2023. Approximately 30–50% of total e-cigarettes sales are handled on the internet. Established tobacco companies have a significant share of the e-cigarette market.


title: Electronic cigarette

text: , 95% of e-cigarette devices were made in China, mainly in Shenzhen. Chinese companies' market share of e-liquid is low. In 2014, online and offline sales starting increases. Since combustible cigarettes are relatively inexpensive in China a lower price may not be large factor in marketing vaping products over there.


title: Electronic cigarette

text: In 2015, 80% of all e-cigarette sales in convenience stores in the US were products made by tobacco companies. According to Nielsen Holdings, convenience store e-cigarette sales in the US went down for the first time during the four-week period ending on 10 May 2014. Wells Fargo analyst Bonnie Herzog attributes this decline to a shift in consumers' behavior, buying more specialized devices or what she calls "vapors-tanks-mods (VTMs)" that are not tracked by Nielsen. Wells Fargo estimated that VTMs accounted for 57% of the 3.5 billion dollar market in the US for vapor products in 2015. In 2014, dollar sales of customizable e-cigarettes and e-liquid surpassed sales of cigalikes in the US, even though, overall, customizables are a less expensive vaping option. In 2014, the Smoke-Free Alternatives Trade Association estimated that there were 35,000 vape shops in the US, more than triple the number a year earlier. However the 2015 slowdown in market growth affected VTMs as well. Large tobacco retailers are leading the cigalike market. "We saw the market's sudden recognition that the cigarette industry seems to be in serious trouble, disrupted by the rise of vaping," "Mad Money"'s Jim Cramer stated April 2018. "Over the course of three short days, the tobacco stocks were bent, they were spindled and they were mutilated by the realization that electronic cigarettes have become a serious threat to the old-school cigarette makers," he added. In 2019, a vaping industry organization released a report stating that a possible US ban on e-cigarettes flavors can potentially effect greater than 150,000 jobs around the US.


title: Electronic cigarette

text: The leading seller in the e-cigarette market in the US is the Juul e-cigarette, which was introduced in June 2015. , Juul accounts for over 72% of the US e-cigarette market monitored by Nielsen, and its closest competitor—RJ Reynolds' Vuse—makes up less than 10% of the market. Juul rose to popularity quickly, growing by 700% in 2016 alone. On 17 July 2018 Reynolds announced it will debut in August 2018 a pod mod type device similar Juul. The popularity of the Juul pod system has led to a flood of other pod devices hitting the market.


title: Electronic cigarette

text: In Canada, e-cigarettes had an estimated value of 140 million CAD in 2015. There are numerous e-cigarette retail shops in Canada. A 2014 audit of retailers in four Canadian cities found that 94% of grocery stores, convenience stores, and tobacconist shops which sold e-cigarettes sold nicotine-free varieties only, while all vape shops stocked at least one nicotine-containing product.


title: Electronic cigarette

text: By 2015 the e-cigarette market had only reached a twentieth of the size of the tobacco market in the UK. In the UK in 2015 the "most prominent brands of cigalikes" were owned by tobacco companies, however, with the exception of one model, all the tank types came from "non-tobacco industry companies". Yet some tobacco industry products, while using prefilled cartridges, resemble tank models.


title: Electronic cigarette

text: France's e-cigarette market was estimated by Groupe Xerfi to be €130 million in 2015. Additionally, France's e-liquid market was estimated at €265 million. In December 2015, there were 2,400 vape shops in France, 400 fewer than in March of the same year. Industry organization Fivape said the reduction was due to consolidation, not to reduced demand.


title: Electronic cigarette

text: Compared to traditional cigarettes, reusable e-cigarettes do not create waste and potential litter from every use in the form of discarded cigarette butts. Traditional cigarettes tend to end up in the ocean where they cause pollution,


title: Electronic cigarette

text: though once discarded they undergo biodegradation and photodegradation. Although some brands have begun recycling services for their e-cigarette cartridges and batteries, the prevalence of recycling is unknown.


title: Electronic cigarette

text: E-cigarettes that are not reusable contribute to the problem of electronic waste, which can create a hazard for people and other organisms. If improperly disposed of, they can release heavy metals, nicotine, and other chemicals from batteries and unused e-liquid.


title: Electronic cigarette

text: A July 2018–April 2019 garbology study found e-cigarette products composed 19% of the waste from all traditional and electronic tobacco and cannabis products collected at 12 public high schools in Northern California.


title: Electronic cigarette

text: Other devices to deliver inhaled nicotine have been developed. They aim to mimic the ritual and behavioral aspects of traditional cigarettes.


title: Electronic cigarette

text: British American Tobacco, through their subsidiary Nicoventures, licensed a nicotine delivery system based on existing asthma inhaler technology from UK-based healthcare company Kind Consumer. In September 2014 a product based on this named Voke obtained approval from the United Kingdom's Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency.


title: Electronic cigarette

text: In 2011 Philip Morris International bought the rights to a nicotine pyruvate technology developed by Jed Rose at Duke University. The technology is based on the chemical reaction between pyruvic acid and nicotine, which produces an inhalable nicotine pyruvate vapor. Philip Morris Products S.A. created a different kind e-cigarette named P3L. The device is supplied with a cartridge that contains nicotine and lactic acid in different cavities. When turned on and heated, the nicotine salt called nicotine lactate forms an aerosol.


title: Electronic cigarette

text: The IQOS is a heated tobacco product marketed by Philip Morris International. It heats tobacco at a lower temperature than traditional cigarettes. The tobacco sticks reach a temperature up to 350 °C. It sold first in Japan since November 2014. On 2 December 2016, the United Tobacco Vapor Group's (UTVG) stated that they have been given a patent for their vaporizing component system. qmos from UTVG does not contain a wick or sponge and the number of components is 5 compared to 20 for traditional e-cigarettes. Pax Labs has developed vaporizers that heats the leaves of tobacco to deliver nicotine in a vapor. On 1 June 2015, they introduced Juul a type of e-cigarette which delivers 10 times as much nicotine as other e-cigarettes, equivalent to an actual cigarette puff. Juul was spun off from Pax Labs in June 2017 and is now available by the independent company Juul Labs. The eTron 3T from Vapor Tobacco Manufacturing, launched in December 2014, employs a patented, aqueous system whereby the tobacco is extracted into water. The e-liquid contains organic tobacco, organic glycerin, and water.


title: Electronic cigarette

text: In December 2013 Japan Tobacco launched Ploom in Japan. In January 2016 they launched Ploom TECH that produces a vapor from a heated liquid that moves through a capsule of granulated tobacco leaves. In 2016 British American Tobacco (BAT) released its own version of the heat but not burn technology called glo in Japan and Switzerland. It uses tobacco sticks rather than nicotine liquid, and does not directly heat or burn tobacco. Heated tobacco products were first introduced in 1988, but were not a commercial success.


title: Electronic cigarette

text: BLOW started selling e-hookahs, an electronic version of the hookah, in 2014. The handle of each hose for the e-hookah contains a heating element and a liquid, which produces vapor. Gopal Bhatnagar, based in Toronto, Canada, invented a 3D printed adapter to turn a traditional hookah into an e-hookah. It is used instead of the ceramic bowl that contains shisha tobacco. Rather than the tobacco, users can insert e-cigarettes. KanaVape is an e-cigarette containing cannabidiol (CBD) and no THC. Several companies including Canada's Eagle Energy Vapor are selling caffeine-based e-cigarettes instead of containing nicotine.


title: Human resource management

text: Human resource management (HRM or HR) is the strategic and coherent approach to the effective and efficient management of people in a company or organization such that they help their business gain a competitive advantage. It is designed to maximize employee performance in service of an employer's strategic objectives. Human resource management is primarily concerned with the management of people within organizations, focusing on policies and systems. HR departments are responsible for overseeing employee-benefits design, employee recruitment, training and development, performance appraisal, and reward management, such as managing pay and employee-benefits systems. HR also concerns itself with organizational change and industrial relations, or the balancing of organizational practices with requirements arising from collective bargaining and governmental laws.


title: Human resource management

text: The overall purpose of human resources (HR) is to ensure that the organization is able to achieve success through people. HR professionals manage the human capital of an organization and focus on implementing policies and processes. They can specialize in finding, recruiting, selecting, training, and developing employees, as well as maintaining employee relations or benefits. Training and development professionals ensure that employees are trained and have continuous development. This is done through training programs, performance evaluations, and reward programs. Employee relations deals with the concerns of employees when policies are broken, such as cases involving harassment or discrimination. Managing employee benefits includes developing compensation structures, parental leave programs, discounts, and other benefits for employees. On the other side of the field are HR generalists or business partners. These HR professionals could work in all areas or be labour relations representatives working with unionized employees.


title: Human resource management

text: HR is a product of the human relations movement of the early 20th century, when researchers began documenting ways of creating business value through the strategic management of the workforce. It was initially dominated by transactional work, such as payroll and benefits administration, but due to globalization, company consolidation, technological advances, and further research, HR focuses on strategic initiatives like mergers and acquisitions, talent management, succession planning, industrial and labor relations, and diversity and inclusion. In the global work environment, most companies focus on lowering employee turnover and on retaining the talent and knowledge held by their workforce. New hiring not only entails a high cost but also increases the risk of a new employee not being able to adequately replace the position of the previous employee. HR departments strive to offer benefits that will appeal to workers, thus reducing the risk of losing employee commitment and psychological ownership.


title: Human resource management

text: The human resources field began to take shape in 19th century Europe. It built on a simple idea by Robert Owen (1771-1858) and Charles Babbage (1791-1871) during the industrial revolution. These men concluded that people were crucial to the success of an organization. They expressed the thought that the well-being of employees led to perfect work; without healthy workers, the organization would not survive.


title: Human resource management

text: HR emerged as a specific field in the early 20th century, influenced by Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856–1915). Taylor explored what he termed "scientific management" (sometimes referred to as "Taylorism"), striving to improve economic efficiency in manufacturing jobs. He eventually focused on one of the principal inputs into the manufacturing process—labor—sparking inquiry into workforce productivity.


title: Human resource management

text: Meanwhile, in England, C S Myers, inspired by unexpected problems among soldiers which had alarmed generals and politicians in the First World War of 1914–1918, co-founded the National Institute of Industrial Psychology (NIIP) in 1921. In doing so, he set seeds for the human relations movement. This movement, on both sides of the Atlantic, built on the research of Elton Mayo (1880-1949) and others to document through the Hawthorne studies (1924–1932) and other studies how stimuli, unrelated to financial compensation and working conditions, could yield more productive workers.


title: Human resource management

text: Work by Abraham Maslow (1908–1970), Kurt Lewin (1890–1947), Max Weber (1864–1920), Frederick Herzberg (1923–2000), and David McClelland (1917–1998), forming the basis for studies in industrial and organizational psychology, organizational behavior and organizational theory, was interpreted in such a way as to further claims of legitimacy for an applied discipline.


title: Human resource management

text: By the time enough theoretical evidence existed to make a business case for strategic workforce management, changes in the business landscape - à la Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919), John Rockefeller (1839-1937) - and in public policy - à la Sidney (1859-1947) and Beatrice Webb (1858-1943), Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal of 1933 to 1939 - had transformed employer-employee relationships, and the HRM discipline became formalized as "industrial and labor relations". In 1913 one of the oldest known professional HR associations—the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD)—started in England as the Welfare Workers' Association; it changed its name a decade later to the Institute of Industrial Welfare Workers, and again the next decade to Institute of Labour Management before settling upon its current name in 2000. From 1918 the early Soviet state institutions began to implement a distinct ideological HRM focus


title: Human resource management

text: alongside technical management - first in the Red Army (through political commissars alongside military officers), later (from 1933) in work sites more generally (through partorg posts alongside conventional managers).


title: Human resource management

text: In 1920, James R. Angell delivered an address to a conference on personnel research in Washington detailing the need for personnel research. This preceded and led to the organization of the Personnel Research Federation. In 1922 the first volume of "The Journal of Personnel Research" was published, a joint initiative between the National Research Council and the Engineering Foundation. Likewise in the United States, the world's first institution of higher education dedicated to workplace studies—the School of Industrial and Labor Relations—formed at Cornell University in 1945. In 1948 what would later become the largest professional HR association—the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM)—formed as the American Society for Personnel Administration (ASPA).


title: Human resource management

text: In the Soviet Union, meanwhile, Stalin's use of patronage exercised through the "HR Department" equivalent in the Bolshevik Party, its Orgburo, demonstrated the effectiveness and influence of human-resource policies and practices,


title: Human resource management

text: while workforce-management specialists continued to expand their influence within organizations. In the US, the phrase "industrial and labor relations" came into use to refer specifically to issues concerning collective representation, and many companies began referring to the proto-HR profession as "personnel administration".


title: Human resource management

text: Many current HR practices originated with the needs of companies in the 1950s to develop and retain talent.


title: Human resource management

text: In the late 20th century, advances in transportation and communications greatly facilitated workforce mobility and collaboration. Corporations began viewing employees as assets. "Human resources management" consequently, became the dominant term for the function—the ASPA even changing its name to the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) in 1998.


title: Human resource management

text: is sometimes used synonymously with "HR", although "human capital" typically refers to a more narrow view of human resources; i.e., the knowledge the individuals embody and can contribute to an organization. Other terms sometimes used to describe the HRM field include "organizational management", "manpower management", "talent management", "personnel management", "workforce management", and simply "people management".


title: Human resource management

text: Several popular media productions have depicted human resource management in operation. On the U.S. television series of "The Office", HR representative Toby Flenderson is sometimes portrayed as a nag because he constantly reminds coworkers of company policies and government regulations.


title: Human resource management

text: Long-running American comic strip "Dilbert" frequently portrays sadistic HR policies through the character Catbert, the "evil director of human resources".


title: Human resource management

text: An HR manager is the title character in the 2010 Israeli film "The Human Resources Manager", while an HR intern is the protagonist in 1999 French film "Ressources humaines". The main character in the BBC sitcom "dinnerladies", Philippa, is an HR manager. The protagonist of the Mexican telenovela "Mañana es para siempre" is a director of human resources. "Up In the Air" is centered on corporate "downsizer" Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) and his travels. As the film progresses, HR is portrayed as a data-driven function that deals with people as metrics, which can lead to absurd outcomes for real people.


title: Human resource management

text: At the macro-level, HR is in charge of overseeing organizational leadership and culture. HR also ensures compliance with employment and labor laws, which differ by geography, and often oversees health, safety, and security. Based on the geographic location, various laws may apply. In federal jurisdictions, there may be several federal laws that are crucial for HR managers to be familiar with in order to protect both their company and its employees. In the United States of America, important federal laws and regulations include the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, which includes establishing a minimum wage and protecting the right for certain workers to earn overtime. The 1964 Federal Civil Rights Law protects against discrimination and prohibits making any hiring or firing decision based on race, age, sex, and gender. The Family and Medical Leave Act gives eligible employees up to twelve weeks of unpaid leave for family and medical reasons. Ensuring the company is compliant with all laws and regulations is an important aspect of HR and will protect the company from any sort of 'legal liability'. In circumstances where employees desire and are legally authorized to hold a collective bargaining agreement, HR will typically also serve as the company's primary liaison with the employee's representatives (usually a labor union). Consequently, HR, usually through representatives, engages in lobbying efforts with governmental agencies (e.g., in the United States, the United States Department of Labor and the National Labor Relations Board) to further its priorities.


title: Human resource management

text: Human resource management has four basic functions: staffing, training and development, motivation, and maintenance. Staffing is the recruitment and selection of potential employees done through interviewing, applications, networking, etc. There are two main factors to staffing: attracting talented recruits that meet the organization's requirements and hiring resources. HR Managers must create detailed recruitment strategies and have a plan of action to put forward when recruiting. Next, managers can put strategies into place through hiring resources, by extending out to find the best possible recruits for the team. Recruiting is very competitive since every company wants the best candidates. Using tactics such as mass media can grab the attention of prospective recruits. Training and development is the next step and involves a continuous process of training and developing competent and adapted employees. Here, motivation is seen as key to keeping employees highly productive. This includes employee benefits, performance appraisals, and rewards. Employee benefits, appraisals, and rewards are all encouragements to bring forward the best employees. The last function, maintenance, involves keeping the employees' commitment and loyalty to the organization. Managing for employee retention involves strategic actions to keep employees motivated and focused so they elect to remain employed and fully productive for the benefit of the organization. Some businesses globalize and form more diverse teams. HR departments have the role of making sure that these teams can function and that people can communicate across cultures and across borders. The discipline may also engage in mobility management, especially for expatriates; and it is frequently involved in the merger and acquisition process. HR is generally viewed as a support function to the business, helping to minimize costs and reduce risk.


title: Human resource management

text: In startup companies, trained professionals may perform HR duties. In larger companies, an entire functional group is typically dedicated to the discipline, with staff specializing in various HR tasks and functional leadership engaging in strategic decision-making across the business. To train practitioners for the profession, institutions of higher education, professional associations, and companies have established programs of study dedicated explicitly to the duties of the function. Academic and practitioner organizations may produce field-specific publications. HR is also a field of research study that is popular within the fields of management and industrial/organizational psychology, with research articles appearing in a number of academic journals, including those mentioned later in this article.


title: Human resource management

text: One of the frequent challenges of HRM is dealing with the notion of "unitarism" (seeing a company as a cohesive whole, in which both employers and employees should work together for a common good) and securing a long-term partnership of employees and employers with common interests.


title: Human resource management

text: There are half a million HR practitioners in the United States and millions more worldwide. The Chief HR Officer or HR Director is the highest ranking HR executive in most companies. He or she typically reports directly to the chief executive officer and works with the Board of Directors on CEO succession.


title: Human resource management

text: Within companies, HR positions generally fall into one of two categories: generalist and specialist. Generalists support employees directly with their questions, grievances, and work on a range of projects within the organization. They "may handle all aspects of human resources work, and thus require an extensive range of knowledge. The responsibilities of human resources generalists can vary widely, depending on their employer's needs." Specialists, conversely, work in a specific HR function. Some practitioners will spend an entire career as either a generalist or a specialist while others will obtain experiences from each and choose a path later. The position of HR manager has been chosen as one of the best jobs in the US, with a #4 ranking by "CNN Money" in 2006 and a #20 ranking by the same organization in 2009, due to its pay, personal satisfaction, job security, future growth, and benefit to society.


title: Human resource management

text: Human resource consulting is a related career path where individuals may work as advisers to companies and complete tasks outsourced from companies. In 2007, there were 950 HR consultancies globally, constituting a US$18.4 billion market. The top five revenue generating firms were Mercer, Ernst & Young, Deloitte, Watson Wyatt (now part of Towers Watson), Aon (now merged with Hewitt), and PwC consulting. For 2010, HR consulting was ranked the #43 best job in America by "CNN Money".


title: Human resource management

text: Some individuals with PhDs in HR and related fields, such as industrial and organizational psychology and management, are professors who teach HR principles at colleges and universities. They are most often found in Colleges of Business in departments of HR or Management. Many professors conduct research on topics that fall within the HR domain, such as financial compensation, recruitment, and training.


title: Human resource management

text: Technology has a significant impact on HR practices. Utilizing technology makes information more accessible within organizations, eliminates time doing administrative tasks, allows businesses to function globally, and cuts costs. Information technology has improved HR practices in the following areas:


title: Human resource management

text: Recruiting has mostly been influenced by information technology. In the past, recruiters relied on printing in publications and word of mouth to fill open positions. HR professionals were not able to post a job in more than one location and did not have access to millions of people, causing the lead time of new hires to be drawn out and tiresome. With the use of e-recruiting tools, HR professionals can post jobs and track applicants for thousands of jobs in various locations all in one place. Interview feedback, background checks and drug tests, and onboarding can all be viewed online. This helps HR professionals keep track of all of their open jobs and applicants in a way that is faster and easier than before. E-recruiting also helps eliminate limitations of geographic location.


title: Human resource management

text: HR professionals generally handle large amounts of paperwork on a daily basis, ranging from department transfer requests to confidential employee tax forms. Forms must be on file for a considerable period of time. The use of human resources information systems (HRIS) has made it possible for companies to store and retrieve files in an electronic format for people within the organization to access when needed, thereby eliminating the need for physical files and freeing up space within the office. HRIS also allows for information to be accessed in a timelier manner; files can be accessible within seconds. Having all of the information in one place also allows for professionals to analyze data quickly and across multiple locations because the information is in a centralized location.


title: Human resource management

text: Technology allows HR professionals to train new staff members in a more efficient manner. This gives employees the ability to access onboarding and training programs from virtually anywhere. This eliminates the need for trainers to meet new hires face-to-face when completing necessary paperwork for new employees. Training in virtual classrooms makes it possible for HR professionals to train a large number of employees quickly and to assess their progress through computerized testing programs. Some employers choose to incorporate an instructor with virtual training so that new hires are receiving training considered vital to the role. Employees have greater control over their own learning and development; they can engage in training at a time and place of their choosing, which can help them manage their work–life balance. Managers are able to track the training through the internet, which can help to reduce redundancy in training and training costs.


title: Human resource management

text: Some universities offer programs of study for human resources and related fields. The School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University was the world's first school for college-level study in HR. It currently offers education at the undergraduate, graduate, and professional levels, and it operates a joint degree program with the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management.


title: Human resource management

text: Many colleges and universities house departments and institutes related to the field, either within a business school or in another college. Most business schools offer courses in HR, often in their departments of management. In general, schools of human resources management offer education and research in the HRM field from diplomas to doctorate-level opportunities. The master's-level courses include MBA (HR), MM (HR), MHRM, MIR, etc. (See Master of Science in Human Resource Development for curriculum.) Various universities all over the world have taken up the responsibility of training human-resource managers and equipping them with interpersonal and intrapersonal skills so as to relate better at their places of work. As Human resource management field is continuously evolving due to technology advances of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, it is essential for universities and colleges to offer courses which are future oriented.


title: Human resource management

text: There are a number of professional associations, some of which offer training and certification. The Society for Human Resource Management, which is based in the United States, is the largest professional association dedicated to HR, with over 285,000 members in 165 countries. It offers a suite of Professional in Human Resources (PHR) certifications through its HR Certification Institute. The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, based in England, is the oldest professional HR association, with its predecessor institution being founded in 1918.


title: Human resource management

text: Several associations also serve niches within HR. The Institute of Recruiters (IOR) is a recruitment professional association, offering members education, support and training. WorldatWork focuses on "total rewards" (i.e., compensation, benefits, work life, performance, recognition, and career development), offering several certifications and training programs dealing with remuneration and work–life balance. Other niche associations include the American Society for Training & Development and Recognition Professionals International.


title: Human resource management

text: A largely academic organization that is relevant to HR is the Academy of Management that has an HR division. This division is concerned with finding ways to improve the effectiveness of HR. The academy publishes several journals devoted in part to research on HR, including Academy of Management Journal and Academy of Management Review, and it hosts an annual meeting.


title: Irvine, California

text: Irvine () is a master-planned city in South Orange County, California, United States, in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. The Irvine Company started developing the area in the 1960s and the city was formally incorporated on December 28, 1971. The city had a population of 307,670 at the 2020 census.


title: Irvine, California

text: A number of corporations, particularly in the technology and semiconductor sectors, have their national or international headquarters in Irvine. Irvine is also home to several higher education institutions including the University of California, Irvine (UCI), Concordia University, Irvine Valley College, the Orange County Center of the University of Southern California (USC), and campuses of California State University Fullerton (CSUF), University of La Verne, and Pepperdine University.


title: Irvine, California

text: The Gabrieleño indigenous group inhabited Irvine about 2,000 years ago. Gaspar de Portolà, a Spanish explorer, came to the area in 1769, which led to the establishment of forts, missions and cattle herds. The King of Spain parceled out land for missions and private use.


title: Irvine, California

text: After Mexico's independence from Spain in 1821, the Mexican government secularized the missions and assumed control of the lands. It began distributing the land to Mexican citizens who applied for grants. Three large Spanish/Mexican grants made up the land that later became the Irvine Ranch: Rancho Santiago de Santa Ana, Rancho San Joaquin and Rancho Lomas de Santiago.


title: Irvine, California

text: In 1864, Jose Andres Sepulveda, owner of Rancho San Joaquin, sold to Benjamin and Thomas Flint, Llewellyn Bixby and James Irvine for $18,000 to resolve debts due to the Great Drought. In 1866, Irvine, Flint and Bixby acquired Rancho Lomas de Santiago for $7,000. After the Mexican-American war the land of Rancho Santiago de Santa Ana fell prey to tangled titles. In 1868, the ranch was divided among three claimants as part of a lawsuit: Flint, Bixby and Irvine. The ranches were devoted to sheep grazing. However, in 1870, tenant farming was permitted.


title: Irvine, California

text: In 1878, James Irvine acquired his partners' interests for $150,000 ($ in dollars ). His stretched from the Pacific Ocean to the Santa Ana River. James Irvine died in 1886. The ranch was inherited by his son, James Irvine II, who incorporated it into the Irvine Company. James Irvine II shifted the ranch operations to field crops, olive and citrus crops.


title: Irvine, California

text: In 1888, the Santa Fe Railroad extended its line to Fallbrook Junction, north of San Diego, and named a station along the way after James Irvine. The town that formed around this station was named Myford, after Irvine's son, because a post office in Calaveras County already bore the family name. The town was renamed Irvine in 1914.


title: Irvine, California

text: By 1918, of lima beans were grown on the Irvine Ranch. Two Marine Corps facilities, MCAS El Toro and MCAS Tustin, were built during World War II on ranch land sold to the government.


title: Irvine, California

text: James Irvine II died in 1947 at the age of 80. His son, Myford, assumed the presidency of the Irvine Company. He began opening small sections of the Irvine Ranch to urban development.


title: Irvine, California

text: The Irvine Ranch played host to the Boy Scouts of America's 1953 National Scout Jamboree. Jamboree Road, a major street which now stretches from Newport Beach to the city of Orange, was named in honor of this event. David Sills, then a young Boy Scout from Peoria, Illinois, was among the attendees at the 1953 Jamboree. Sills came back to Irvine as an adult and went on to serve four terms as the city's mayor.


title: Irvine, California

text: Myford Irvine died in 1959. The same year, the University of California asked the Irvine Company for for a new university campus. The Irvine Company sold the requested land for $1 and later the state purchased an additional .


title: Irvine, California

text: William Pereira, the university's consulting architect, and the Irvine Company planners drew up master plans for a city of 50,000 people surrounding the new university. The plan called for industrial, residential and recreational areas, commercial centers and greenbelts. The new community was to be named Irvine; the old agricultural town of Irvine, where the railroad station and post office were located, was renamed East Irvine. The first phases of the villages of Turtle Rock, University Park, Westpark (then called Culverdale), El Camino Real, and Walnut were completed by 1970.


title: Irvine, California

text: On December 28, 1971, the residents of these communities voted to incorporate a substantially larger city than the one envisioned by the Pereira plan. By January 1999, Irvine had a population of 134,000 and a total area of .


title: Irvine, California

text: After the Fall of Saigon in 1975, a large influx of Vietnamese refugees settled in nearby Fountain Valley, especially in the late 1970s and throughout the 80s, forming a large percentage of Asian Americans in the city.


title: Irvine, California

text: In late 2003, after a ten-year-long legal battle, Irvine annexed the former El Toro Marine Corps Air Station. This added of land to the city and blocked an initiative championed by Newport Beach residents to replace John Wayne Airport with a new airport at El Toro. Most of this land has become part of the Orange County Great Park.


title: Irvine, California

text: Irvine borders Tustin to the north, Santa Ana to the northwest, Lake Forest to the east and southeast, Laguna Hills and Laguna Woods to the south, Costa Mesa to the west, and Newport Beach to the southwest. Irvine also shares a small border with Orange to the north on open lands by the SR 261.


title: Irvine, California

text: San Diego Creek, which flows northwest into Upper Newport Bay, is the primary watercourse draining the city. Its largest tributary is Peters Canyon Wash. Most of Irvine is in a broad, flat valley between Loma Ridge in the north and San Joaquin Hills in the south. In the extreme northern and southern areas, however, are several hills, plateaus and canyons.


title: Irvine, California

text: Los Angeles architect William Pereira and Irvine Company employee Raymond Watson designed Irvine's layout beginning in the late 1950s, which is nominally divided into townships called "villages", separated by six-lane streets. Each township contains houses of similar design, along with commercial centers, religious institutions, and schools. Commercial districts are checker-boarded in a periphery around the central townships.


title: Irvine, California

text: Pereira originally envisioned a circular plan with numerous artificial lakes and the university in the center. When the Irvine Company refused to relinquish valuable farmland in the flat central region of the ranch for this plan, the university site was moved to the base of the southern coastal hills. The design that ended up being used was based on the shape of a necklace (with the villages strung along two parallel main streets, which terminate at University of California, Irvine (UCI), the "pendant"). Residential areas are now bordered by two commercial districts, the Irvine Business Complex to the west (part of the South Coast Plaza–John Wayne Airport edge city) and Irvine Spectrum to the east. Traces of the original circular design are still visible in the layout of the UCI campus and the two artificial lakes at the center of Woodbridge, one of the central villages.


title: Irvine, California

text: All streets have landscaping allowances. Rights-of-way for powerlines also serve as bicycle corridors, parks, and greenbelts to tie together ecological preserves. The city irrigates the greenery with reclaimed water.


title: Irvine, California

text: The homeowners' associations which govern some village neighborhoods exercise varying degrees of control on the appearances of homes. In more restrictive areas, houses' roofing, paint colors, and landscaping are regulated. Older parts of the Village of Northwood that were developed beginning in the early 1970s independently of the Irvine Company, have the distinction of being a larger village that is not under the purview of a homeowners' association. As a result, homeowners in the older Northwood areas do not pay a monthly village association fee; its neighborhoods are generally not as uniform in appearance as those in other villages, such as Westpark and Woodbridge. However, the more tightly regulated villages generally offer more amenities, such as members-only swimming pools, tennis courts, and parks.


title: Irvine, California

text: In addition to association dues, homeowners in villages developed in the 1980s and later may be levied a Mello-Roos special tax, which came about in the post-Proposition 13 era. For homeowners in these areas, the association dues coupled with the Mello-Roos special tax may add significantly to the cost of living in the city.


title: Irvine, California

text: Late spring and early summer in Irvine is subject to the June Gloom phenomenon widespread in southern California, with overcast mornings and occasional drizzle.


title: Irvine, California

text: Late summer and autumn are warm and mostly dry, with occasional bouts of humid weather extending from Pacific hurricanes off the west coast of Mexico.


title: Irvine, California

text: Winters are mild, with most winters having no frost, and can be hot and dry when the Santa Ana winds blow. Irvine has a Mediterranean climate wherein precipitation occurs predominantly during the winter months. Because Irvine is close to the coast, different parts of Irvine have different microclimates; for instance, the June Gloom effect is stronger in the southern parts of Irvine, closer to the Pacific Ocean.


title: Irvine, California

text: It can occasionally snow in the Santa Ana Mountains to the northeast of Irvine. Snow within the lower-lying parts of Irvine is very rare, but the area received three inches of snow in January 1949. A tornado touched down in Irvine in 1991, an event that happens in Orange County more generally approximately once every five years.


title: Irvine, California

text: In 2016, Irvine became the largest city in the continental United States with an Asian American plurality, constituting around 45% of the city's population.


title: Irvine, California

text: The 2010 United States Census reported that Irvine had a population of 212,375. The population density was . The racial makeup of Irvine was 107,215 (50.5%) White, 3,718 (1.8%) African American, 355 (0.2%) Native American, 83,176 (39.2%) Asian, 334 (0.2%) Pacific Islander, 5,867 (2.8%) from other races, and 11,710 (5.5%) from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 19,621 persons (9.2%). Non-Hispanic Whites were 45.1% of the population.


title: Irvine, California

text: The census reported that 205,819 people (96.9% of the population) lived in households, 5,968 (2.8%) lived in non-institutionalized group quarters, and 588 (0.3%) were institutionalized.


title: Irvine, California

text: There were 78,978 households, out of which 26,693 (33.8%) had children under the age of 18 living in them, 40,930 (51.8%) were opposite-sex married couples living together, 7,545 (9.6%) had a female householder with no husband present, 2,978 (3.8%) had a male householder with no wife present. There were 3,218 (4.1%) unmarried opposite-sex partnerships, and 463 (0.6%) same-sex married couples or partnerships. 18,475 households (23.4%) were made up of individuals, and 4,146 (5.2%) had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.61. There were 51,453 families (65.1% of all households); the average family size was 3.13.


title: Irvine, California

text: The age distribution of the population was as follows: 45,675 people (21.5%) under the age of 18, 30,384 people (14.3%) aged 18 to 24, 66,670 people (31.4%) aged 25 to 44, 51,185 people (24.1%) aged 45 to 64, and 18,461 people (8.7%) who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 33.9 years. For every 100 females, there were 94.9 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 92.4 males.


title: Irvine, California

text: There were 83,899 housing units at an average density of , of which 39,646 (50.2%) were owner-occupied, and 39,332 (49.8%) were occupied by renters. The homeowner vacancy rate was 2.2%; the rental vacancy rate was 6.2%. 109,846 people (51.7% of the population) lived in owner-occupied housing units and 95,973 people (45.2%) lived in rental housing units.


title: Irvine, California

text: During 2009–2013, Irvine had a median household income of $90,585, with 12.2% of the population living below the federal poverty line.


title: Irvine, California

text: The census of 2000 found there were 143,072 people, 51,199 households, and 34,354 families in the city. The population density was 3,098.0 inhabitants per square mile (1,196.2/km), as of the census. There were 53,711 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the city was 61.1% White, 7.4% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race, 1.5% Black or African American, 0.2% Native American, 29.8% Asian, 1.1% Pacific Islander, 2.5% from other races, and 4.8% from two or more races.


title: Irvine, California

text: There were 51,199 households, out of which 36.0% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 53.8% were married couples living together, 9.8% had a female householder with no husband present, and 32.9% were non-families. 22.8% of all households were made up of individuals, and 5.0% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.70 persons and the average family size was 3.17.


title: Irvine, California

text: In the city, the population was spread out, with 23.5% under the age of 18, 14.4% from 18 to 24, 32.3% from 25 to 44, 22.6% from 45 to 64, and 7.2% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 33 years. For every 100 females, there were 93.8 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 90.0 males.


title: Irvine, California

text: According to 2007 Census Bureau estimates, the median income for a household in the city was $98,923, and the median income for a family was $111,455; these numbers make Irvine the seventh richest city in the US, among cities with population 65,000 or higher. 9.1% of the population and 5.0% of families were below the poverty line. Of the total population, 6.1% of those under the age of 18 and 5.6% of those 65 and older were living below the poverty line.


title: Irvine, California

text: In 2006, the median gross rent paid for housing was $1,660 a month. This was the highest of any place in the United States of more than 100,000 people.


title: Irvine, California

text: The skyrocketing high cost of housing is a major issue in Irvine and Orange County, as the city council faces pressure to approve future income-subsidized housing projects to meet the demands of working-class citizens.


title: Irvine, California

text: Irvine was chosen in 2008 by CNNMoney.com as the fourth-best place to live in the United States. In 2012, it was ranked sixth nationally. In September 2011, "Businessweek" listed Irvine as the fifth-best city in the United States. Irvine consistently ranks as the safest city in America with a population over 100,000. In 2014, Irvine was named the best-run city in the U.S. by "24/7 Wall Street". In March 2017, WalletHub listed Irvine as the third happiest place to live in the United States. In June 2017, Irvine was named tenth best City in America by Niche.com.


title: Irvine, California

text: In 2019, Irvine was named the 2nd happiest city in America by BusinessInsider, and #18 best place to live by "Money" magazine.


title: Irvine, California

text: In the 21st century, Irvine developed a reputation as a haven for affluent professionals. In 2016, Irvine became the largest city in the continental United States with an Asian American plurality, constituting around 45% of the city's population.


title: Irvine, California

text: Irvine's tourism information is coordinated through the "Destination Irvine" program run by the Chamber of Commerce. The program provides information on Irvine as a place to vacation and as a destination for meetings, events and other business initiatives. Irvine has been rated one of the top cities for start-up businesses and its strong, fast-growing economy helped place Orange County as one of the top ten fastest growing job markets.


title: Irvine, California

text: Irvine is also used as a location for film projects. The city government grants free or low-cost filming permits and offers location information to prospective productions.


title: Irvine, California

text: Every October, Irvine hosts the Irvine Global Village Festival to celebrate the diversity among the citizens of Irvine and Orange County. The festival consists of exhibits from local merchants, entertainment from diverse cultures, and sampling of foods from various regions of the world. The event used to be held at Colonel Bill Barber Marine Corps Memorial Park but has since then been moved to the Orange County Great Park.


title: Irvine, California

text: The Irvine Community Television (ICTV) produces and broadcasts television programs on news, sports, arts, culture, safety for the Irvine community. The motto of ICTV is "For You, About You". ICTV airs on Cox Communications channel 30 and online.


title: Irvine, California

text: According to the Internet Movie Database (IMDb), the following productions were partially or entirely filmed in Irvine:


title: Irvine, California

text: Irvine has three public libraries: Heritage Park Regional Library, University Park Library, and Katie Wheeler Library. The Heritage Library serves as the regional reference library for Central Orange County and has a strong business and art focus while the University Park Library has 95,745 books, including a substantial Chinese collection. Katie Wheeler was the granddaughter of James Irvine, and the library is a replica of the house owned by Irvine in which she grew up. Additionally, most UCI Libraries are open to the public.


title: Irvine, California

text: Irvine has community parks and neighborhood parks. The community parks have public facilities located on each site. Neighborhood parks provide open space and some recreational amenities within the various villages of Irvine. Northwood Community Park in particular has recently made a unique addition: The Northwood Gratitude and Honor Memorial is the first memorial in the US ever built before the wars were over. It lists the U.S. military dead from Iraq and Afghanistan, and when dedicated on November 14, 2010, listed over 5,700 names (among the 8,000 available spaces). Also uncommon in the history of war monuments, it will be updated yearly.


title: Irvine, California

text: Other public spaces within Irvine, not part of the city parks department, include William R. Mason Regional Park, Aldrich Park in the UC Irvine campus, and the San Joaquin Wildlife Sanctuary.


title: Irvine, California

text: The City Council consists of the Mayor and four City Council members. The Mayor serves a two-year term and Council members serve four-year terms. The city has a two-term limit for elected officials. Elections are held every two years, on even-numbered years. During each election, two Council members and the Mayor's seat is up for consideration. The City Council appoints the City Manager, who functions as the chief administrator of the city. The City Council sets the policies for the city, and the City Manager is responsible for implementing the policies. The City Council appoints volunteers that serve on various advisory boards, commissions and committees.


title: Irvine, California

text: According to the city's Comprehensive Annual Financial Report for FY2014–2015, as of June 30, 2015, the city has net assets of $2.59 billion. FY2014–15 revenues totaled $395.2 million, with property tax accounting for $50.7 million and sales tax accounting for $58.8 million. As of June 30, 2015, the city's governmental funds reported combined ending fund balances of $960.9 million.


title: Irvine, California

text: The city of Irvine is served by eight departments. These departments are responsible for managing and performing all of the business of the City Hall and its services:


title: Irvine, California

text: Support services are provided through other agencies including: Irvine Unified School District, Tustin Unified School District, Southern California Edison, Irvine Ranch Water District, and Orange County Fire Authority.


title: Irvine, California

text: In the California State Senate, Irvine is in . In the California State Assembly, it is split between , and .


title: Irvine, California

text: During the 2011 redistricting, Irvine became part of California's 45th congressional district. The 45th District is represented by .


title: Irvine, California

text: According to the Orange County Registrar of Voters, as of March 8, 2021, Irvine has 150,014 registered voters. Of those, 60,212 (40.14%) were registered Democrats, 37,510 (25.00%) were registered Republicans, and 45,913 (30.61%) have declined to state a political party/are independents.


title: Irvine, California

text: Irvine voted for the Republican presidential candidate in every election from 1976 to 2004. However, starting in 2008, Irvine has voted for the Democratic candidate by a comfortable margin in each presidential election. In 2020, Democratic candidate Joe Biden won 64.3% of the vote in Irvine to Republican Donald Trump's 33.6%.


title: Irvine, California

text: Irvine contracts with the County of Orange for fire and medical services. Fire protection in Irvine is provided by the Orange County Fire Authority with ambulance service by Falk Ambulance. Law enforcement is provided by the Irvine Police Department (IPD). The IPD operates in a suburban city rated as having one of the lowest violent crime rates among cities with over 100,000 inhabitants by the FBI every year since 2005. The University of California Police Department also has jurisdiction – including arrest power – in areas of the city near the UC Irvine campus, while the California State University Police Department has similar jurisdiction in areas of the city near the CSU Fullerton Irvine campus. Irvine Valley College also maintains its own on campus police department.


title: Irvine, California

text: Most of Irvine is located in the Irvine Unified School District (IUSD). The five high schools in IUSD are University High School, Irvine High School, Northwood High School, Woodbridge High School, and Portola High School. Arnold O. Beckman High School is located in Irvine but is administered by Tustin Unified School District. The five high schools in IUSD, as well as Beckman High School, have consistently placed in the upper range of Newsweek's list of the Top 1,300 U.S. Public High Schools. Tarbut V' Torah, a Jewish day school, is also located in Irvine.


title: Irvine, California

text: Irvine is also home to elementary and middle schools, including two alternative, year round, open enrollment K-8 schools, Plaza Vista and Vista Verde. Parts of the north and west of the city are within the Tustin Unified School District. A very small portion of the city, near Orange County Great Park, is located within the Saddleback Valley Unified School District.


title: Irvine, California

text: Irvine is home to the University of California, Irvine, which is the second-newest campus (established 1965) in the UC system after University of California, Merced. Other higher education institutions in Irvine include California Southern University, Concordia University, Westcliff University, Irvine Valley College, Fuller Theological Seminary, FIDM, The Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising, Orange County Campus, Stanbridge University, and a satellite campus of California State University, Fullerton. Chapman University and Soka University of America are in adjacent cities.


title: Irvine, California

text: According to the 2000 United States Census, Irvine is ranked 7th nationwide, among cities with populations of at least 100,000, for having the highest percentage of people who are at least 25 years old with doctoral degrees, with 3,589 residents reporting such educational attainment.


title: Irvine, California

text: Streets and intersections owned by the city have trademark mahogany signage and are fiber optically linked to the city's "Irvine Traffic Research and Control Center" (ITRAC). Traffic cameras and ground sensors monitor the flow of traffic throughout the city and automatically adjust signal timing to line up traffic, allowing more vehicles to avoid red lights. Several major highways pass through Irvine (Interstate 5, and Interstate 405, California State Route 73, California State Route 133, California State Route 241, and California State Route 261). Major arteries through Irvine are built out widely and run in a northeasterly direction with speed limits higher than . As a result of the signal timing, wide streets, and road layout, Irvine's side streets are capable of handling a higher volume of traffic than other cities in Orange County.


title: Irvine, California

text: In 2015, 5.0 percent of Irvine households lacked a car; this percentage decreased to 4.0 percent in 2016. The national average was 8.7 percent in 2016. Irvine averaged 1.83 cars per household in 2016, compared to a national average of 1.8.


title: Irvine, California

text: The city of Irvine has operated its own mass-transit bus service called the iShuttle since 2008. Four weekday commuter shuttles serve major employers, residential areas, shopping centers, and transportation facilities. Two lines, Route A and Route B, connect the Tustin Metrolink Station to the Irvine Business Complex area. Route A provides service between the Tustin Metrolink Station and John Wayne Airport with stops along Von Karman Avenue. Route B heads along Jamboree Road before continuing through Main Street and Michelson Drive. The remaining two lines, Route C and Route D, offer connections between the Irvine Station and the Irvine Spectrum Area, which includes major employers, the Irvine Spectrum Center, and residential communities The Park and The Village. Route C follows Irvine Center Drive and ends at the Capital Group campus, while Route D serves the Irvine Spectrum Center, Kaiser Permanente – Irvine Medical Center, and Hoag Hospital Irvine.


title: Irvine, California

text: Irvine is served by commuter rail to Los Angeles, San Diego, Riverside, and San Bernardino counties at both the Irvine and Tustin stations of the Metrolink Orange County Line and the Inland Empire–Orange County Line. OCTA is currently implementing a major service increase on the Orange County line, with trains approximately every 30 minutes during weekday commuting hours. Amtrak trains run approximately every 60 to 90 minutes all days of the week along the Pacific Surfliner route between San Diego and Los Angeles. Amtrak trains stop only at Irvine station, unlike Metrolink, which stops at both Irvine and Tustin station. Rail2Rail monthly passes allow commuters to use both Metrolink and Amtrak services, standard tickets are specific to a single operator. A four-story parking structure was recently completed at the Irvine station as part of a station renovation.


title: Irvine, California

text: At one time Irvine intended to build a tram / guideway, but in February 2009 the city of Irvine canceled the project. Initially plans were underway to connect the Orange County Great Park to the Irvine Spectrum Center and surrounding businesses with a fixed-route transit system, also stopping at the Irvine Transportation Center (Irvine Station). In 2008, two possible routes were selected, but neither will be developed now. The entire $128 million in funding will be returned to the Measure M fund, and be available for other cities in Orange County.


title: Irvine, California

text: A major contributing factor to the growth of Irvine was by freight rail provided by ATSF (now BNSF) Transportation. The Venta Spur was Irvine's first spur. Built in the 1920s, it moved citrus from three processing plants in what is now Northwood to the rest of the country. The processing plants were essentially Irvine's first and biggest employers of the time.


title: Irvine, California

text: The plants started to go out of business in the 1970s and the spur was abandoned in 1985. In 1999, following its donation to the city of Irvine, it was turned into the Venta Spur bike trail.


title: Irvine, California

text: The Irvine Industrial Spur is the second railroad spur in Irvine. It serves various industries in Irvine's Business Complex. It currently sees little to no movement and the Irvine planning department is considering turning it into a bike path.


title: Irvine, California

text: Irvine offers a system of bicycle lanes and trails to encourage the use of bikes as a means of transportation. There are of off-road bicycle trails and of on-road bicycle lanes in Irvine.


title: Rhodes

text: Rhodes (; ) is the largest and the historical capital of the Dodecanese islands of Greece. Administratively, the island forms a separate municipality within the Rhodes regional unit, which is part of the South Aegean administrative region. The principal town of the island and seat of the municipality is Rhodes. The city of Rhodes had 50,636 inhabitants in 2011. In 2022 the island has population of 124,851 people. It is located northeast of Crete, southeast of Athens. Rhodes has several nicknames, such as "Island of the Sun" due to its patron sun god Helios, "The Pearl Island", and "The Island of the Knights", named after the Knights of Saint John of Jerusalem, who ruled the island from 1310 to 1522.


title: Rhodes

text: Historically, Rhodes was famous for the Colossus of Rhodes, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. The Medieval Old Town of the City of Rhodes has been declared a World Heritage Site. Today, it is one of the most popular tourist destinations in Europe.


title: Rhodes

text: The island has been known as (Ródos) in Greek throughout its history. It was also called Lindos (). In addition, the island has been called in Italian, in Turkish, and or in Ladino.


title: Rhodes

text: "The Travels of Sir John Mandeville" incorrectly reports that Rhodes was formerly called "Collosus", through a conflation of the Colossus of Rhodes and Paul's "Epistle to the Colossians", which refers to Colossae.


title: Rhodes

text: The island's name might be derived from "erod", Phoenician for snake, since the island was home to many snakes in antiquity.


title: Rhodes

text: The island of Rhodes is shaped like a spearhead, long and wide, with a total area of approximately and a coastline of approximately . Limestone is the main bedrock. The city of Rhodes is located at the northern tip of the island, as well as the site of the ancient and modern commercial harbours. The main airport is the Diagoras International Airport (IATA code: RHO), located to the southwest of the city in Paradisi. The road network radiates from the city along the east and west coasts.


title: Rhodes

text: Outside the city of Rhodes, the island is dotted with small villages of whitewashed homes and spa resorts, among them Faliraki, Lindos, Kremasti, Haraki, Pefkos, Archangelos, Afantou, Koskinou, Embona (Attavyros), Paradisi, and Trianta (Ialysos).


title: Rhodes

text: Rhodes is situated east-southeast from the Greek mainland, and from the southern shore of Turkey. Mount Attavyros, at , is the island's highest point of elevation.


title: Rhodes

text: The interior of the island is mountainous, sparsely inhabited and covered with forests of pine ("Pinus brutia") and cypress ("Cupressus sempervirens"). While the shores are rocky, the island has arable strips of land where citrus fruit, wine grapes, vegetables, olives and other crops are grown. Many flowering plants for which the island is named are abundant.


title: Rhodes

text: The Rhodian population of fallow deer was found to be genetically distinct in 2005, and to be of urgent conservation concern. In Petaloudes Valley (Greek for "Valley of the Butterflies"), large numbers of tiger moths gather during the summer months.


title: Rhodes

text: Earthquakes include the 226 BC earthquake that destroyed the Colossus of Rhodes; one on 3 May 1481 which destroyed much of the city of Rhodes; and one on 26 June 1926.


title: Rhodes

text: On 15 July 2008, Rhodes was struck by a 6.3 magnitude earthquake causing minor damage to a few old buildings and one death.


title: Rhodes

text: Rhodes has a hot-summer Mediterranean climate ("Csa" in the Köppen climate classification) with mild winters and hot summers. The South East of the island experiences a significantly warmer climate with Lindos registering for the period 2010-2019 a mean annual temperature of , making it the warmest area in Greece. Moreover, according to the Hellenic National Meteorological Service, South East Rhodes records the highest mean annual sunshine in Greece with over 3,100 hours.


title: Rhodes

text: In the 16th century BC, the Minoans came to Rhodes. Later Greek mythology recalled a Rhodian race called the Telchines and associated the island of Rhodes with Danaus; it was sometimes nicknamed "Telchinis".


title: Rhodes

text: In the 15th century BCE, Mycenaean Greeks invaded. After the Bronze Age collapse, the first renewed outside contacts were with Cyprus.


title: Rhodes

text: In the "Digesta seu Pandectae" (533), the second volume of the codification of laws ordered by Justinian I (527–565) of the Eastern Roman Empire, a legal opinion written by the Roman jurist Paulus at the beginning of the Crisis of the Third Century in 235 AD was included about the "Lex Rhodia" ("Rhodian law") that articulates the general average principle of marine insurance established on the island of Rhodes in approximately 1000 to 800 BC as a member of the Doric Hexapolis, plausibly by the Phoenicians during the proposed Dorian invasion and emergence of the purported Sea Peoples during the Greek Dark Ages (c. 1100–c. 750) that led to the proliferation of the Doric Greek dialect. The law of general average constitutes the fundamental principle that underlies all insurance.


title: Rhodes

text: In the 8th century BC, the island's settlements started to form, with the coming of the Dorians, who built the three important cities of Lindos, Ialyssos and Kameiros, which together with Kos, Cnidus and Halicarnassus (on the mainland) made up the so-called Dorian Hexapolis (Greek for six cities).


title: Rhodes

text: In Pindar's ode, the island was said to be born of the union of Helios the sun god and the nymph Rhodos, and the cities were named for their three sons. The "rhoda" is a pink hibiscus, native to the island. Diodorus Siculus added that Actis, one of the sons of Helios and Rhode, travelled to Egypt. He built the city of Heliopolis and taught the Egyptians astrology.


title: Rhodes

text: In the second half of the 8th century BC, the sanctuary of Athena received votive gifts that are markers for cultural contacts: small ivories from the Near East and bronze objects from Syria. At Kameiros on the northwest coast, a former Bronze Age site, where the temple was founded in the 8th century BC, there is another notable contemporaneous sequence of carved ivory figurines. The cemeteries of Kameiros and Ialyssos yielded several exquisite exemplars of the Orientalizing Rhodian jewelry, dated in the 7th and early 6th centuries BC.


title: Rhodes

text: The Persians invaded and overran the island, but they were in turn defeated by forces from Athens in 478 BC. The Rhodian cities joined the Athenian League. When the Peloponnesian War broke out in 431 BC, Rhodes remained largely neutral, although it remained a member of the League. The war lasted until 404 BC, but by this time Rhodes had withdrawn entirely from the conflict and decided to go her own way.


title: Rhodes

text: In 408 BC, the cities united to form one territory. They built the city of Rhodes, a new capital on the northern end of the island. Its regular plan was, according to Strabo, superintended by the Athenian architect Hippodamus.


title: Rhodes

text: In 357 BC, the island was conquered by the king Mausolus of Caria; then it fell again to the Persians in 340 BC. Their rule was also short.


title: Rhodes

text: Rhodes then became a part of the growing empire of Alexander the Great in 332 BC, after he defeated the Persians.


title: Rhodes

text: Following the death of Alexander, his generals (Diadochi) vied for control of the kingdom. Three — Ptolemy, Seleucus, and Antigonus — succeeded in dividing the kingdom among themselves. Rhodes formed strong commercial and cultural ties with the Ptolemies in Alexandria, and together formed the Rhodo-Egyptian alliance that controlled trade throughout the Aegean in the 3rd century BC.


title: Rhodes

text: The city developed into a maritime, commercial and cultural center; its coins circulated nearly everywhere in the Mediterranean. Its famous schools of philosophy, science, literature and rhetoric shared masters with Alexandria: the Athenian rhetorician Aeschines, who formed a school at Rhodes; Apollonius of Rhodes, who wrote about Jason and Medea in the "Argonautica"; the observations and works of the astronomers Hipparchus and Geminus; and the rhetorician Dionysius Thrax. Its school of sculptors developed, under Pergamese influence, a rich, dramatic style that can be characterized as "Hellenistic Baroque". Agesander of Rhodes, with two other Rhodian sculptors, carved the famous "Laocoön group", now in the Vatican Museums, and the large sculptures rediscovered at Sperlonga in the villa of Tiberius, probably in the early Imperial period.


title: Rhodes

text: In 305 BC, Antigonus directed his son, Demetrius, to besiege Rhodes in an attempt to break its alliance with Egypt. Demetrius created huge siege engines, including a battering ram and a siege tower called Helepolis that weighed . Despite this engagement, in 304 BC after only one year, he relented and signed a peace agreement, leaving behind a huge store of military equipment. The Rhodians sold the equipment and used the money to erect a statue of their sun god, Helios, the statue since called the Colossus of Rhodes. The Rhodians celebrated in honour of Helios a grand festival, the Halieia.


title: Rhodes

text: Throughout the 3rd century BC, Rhodes attempted to secure her independence and her commerce, most especially her virtual control over the grain trade in the eastern Mediterranean. Both of these goals were dependent upon no one of the three great Hellenistic states achieving dominance, and consequently the Rhodians pursued a policy of maintaining a balance of power among the Antigonids, Seleucids and Ptolemies, even if that meant going to war with her traditional ally, Egypt. To this end they employed as leverage their economy and their excellent navy, which was manned by proverbially the finest sailors in the Mediterranean world: "If we have ten Rhodians, we have ten ships."


title: Rhodes

text: The Rhodians also established their dominance on the shores of Caria across from their island, which became known as the "Rhodian Peraia". It extended roughly from the modern city of Muğla (ancient "Mobolla") in the north and Kaunos bordering Lycia in the south, near the present-day Dalyan, Turkey.


title: Rhodes

text: Rhodes successfully carried on this policy through the course of the third century BC, an impressive achievement for what was essentially a democratic state. By the end of that period, however, the balance of power was crumbling, as declining Ptolemaic power made Egypt an attractive target for Seleucid ambitions. In 203/2 BC the young and dynamic kings of Antigonid Macedon and Seleucid Asia, Philip V and Antiochus III, agreed to accept—at least temporarily—their respective military ambitions: Philip's campaign in the Aegean and western Anatolia and Antiochus' plan for Egypt. Heading a coalition of small states, the Rhodians checked Philip's navy, but not his superior army. Without a third power to which to turn, the Rhodians (along with ambassadors from Pergamum, Egypt, and Athens) appealed in 201 BC to the Roman Republic.


title: Rhodes

text: Despite being exhausted by the Second Punic War against Hannibal (218–201 BC) the Romans agreed to intervene, still angry over the Macedonian alliance with Carthage that had led to the First Macedonian War from 214–205 BC. The Senate saw the appeal from Rhodes and her allies as the opportunity to pressure Philip. The result was the Second Macedonian War (200–196 BC), which Rome won and greatly reduced Macedon's power, prestige, and territory. Rhodian independence was preserved. Rhodian influence in the Aegean was cemented through the organization of the Cyclades into the Second Nesiotic League under Rhodian leadership.


title: Rhodes

text: The Romans withdrew from Greece after the end of the conflict, but the resulting power vacuum quickly drew in Antiochus III and subsequently the Romans. The Roman–Seleucid War lasted from 192–188 BC with Rome, Rhodes, Pergamon, and other Roman-allied Greek states defeated the Seleucids and their allies, the last Mediterranean power that might even vaguely threaten Roman dominance. Having provided Rome with valuable naval help in her first foray into Asia, the Rhodians were rewarded with territory and enhanced status by the Treaty of Apamea (188 BC). The Romans once again evacuated the east – the Senate preferred clients to provinces – but it was clear that Rome now ruled the Mediterranean and Rhodian autonomy was ultimately dependent upon good relations with them.


title: Rhodes

text: Those good graces soon evaporated in the wake of the Third Macedonian War (171–168 BC). In 169 BC, during the war against Perseus, Rhodes sent Agepolis as ambassador to the consul Quintus Marcius Philippus, and then to Rome in the following year, hoping to turn the Senate against the war.


title: Rhodes

text: Rhodes remained scrupulously neutral during the war, but in the view of hostile elements in the Senate she had been a bit too friendly with the defeated King Perseus. Some actually proposed declaring war on the island republic, but this was averted. In 164 BC, Rhodes became a "permanent ally" of Rome, which was essentially a reduction to client state of nominal but meaningless independence. It was said that the Romans ultimately turned against the Rhodians because the islanders were the only people they had encountered who were more arrogant than themselves.


title: Rhodes

text: After surrendering its independence, Rhodes became a cultural and educational center for Roman noble families. It was especially noted for its teachers of rhetoric, such as Hermagoras and the unknown author of "Rhetorica ad Herennium". At first, the state was an important ally of Rome and enjoyed numerous privileges, but these were later lost in various machinations of Roman politics. Cassius eventually invaded the island and sacked the city. In the early Imperial period Rhodes became a favorite place for political exiles.


title: Rhodes

text: In the 1st century AD, the Emperor Tiberius spent a brief term of exile on Rhodes. By tradition, Paul the Apostle evangelized and helped establish an early Christian church on the island during the first century.


title: Rhodes

text: In ancient times there was a Roman saying: "!"—"Here is Rhodes, jump here!" (as translated from Ancient Greek "Αὐτοῦ γὰρ καὶ Ῥόδος καὶ πήδημα"), an admonition to prove one's idle boasts by deed, rather than boastful talk. It comes from an Aesop's fable called "The Boastful Athlete" and was cited by Hegel, Marx, and Kierkegaard.


title: Rhodes

text: In 395 with the division of the Roman Empire, the long Byzantine period began for Rhodes. In Late Antiquity, the island was the capital of the Roman province of the Islands, headed by a "praeses" ("hegemon" in Greek), and encompassing most of the Aegean islands, with twenty cities. Correspondingly, the island was also the metropolis of the ecclesiastical province of Cyclades, with eleven suffragan sees.


title: Rhodes

text: Beginning from ca. 600 AD, its influence in maritime issues was manifested in the collection of maritime laws known as "Rhodian Sea Law" ("Nomos Rhodion Nautikos"), accepted throughout the Mediterranean and in use throughout Byzantine times (and influencing the development of admiralty law up to the present). In 622/3, during the climactic Byzantine–Sasanian War of 602–628, Rhodes was captured by the Sasanian navy.


title: Rhodes

text: Rhodes was occupied by the Islamic Umayyad forces of Caliph Muawiyah I in 654, who carried off the remains of the Colossus of Rhodes. The island was again captured by the Arabs in 673 as part of their first attack on Constantinople. When their fleet was destroyed by Greek fire before Constantinople and by storms on its return trip, however, the Umayyads evacuated their troops in 679/80 as part of the Byzantine–Umayyad peace treaty. In 715 the Byzantine fleet dispatched against the Arabs launched a rebellion at Rhodes, which led to the installation of Theodosios III on the Byzantine throne.


title: Rhodes

text: From the early 8th to the 12th centuries, Rhodes belonged to the Cibyrrhaeot Theme of the Byzantine Empire, and was a centre for shipbuilding and commerce. In 1090, it was occupied by the forces of the Seljuk Turks, after the long period of chaos resulting from the Battle of Manzikert. Rhodes was recaptured by the Emperor Alexios I Komnenos during the First Crusade.


title: Rhodes

text: As Byzantine central power weakened under the Angeloi emperors (1185–1204), in the first half of the 13th century, Rhodes became the centre of an independent domain under Leo Gabalas and his brother John, until it was occupied by the Genoese in 1248–1250. The Genoese were evicted by the Empire of Nicaea, after which the island became a regular province of the Nicaean state (and after 1261 of the restored Byzantine Empire). In 1305, the island was given as a fief to Andrea Morisco, a Genoese adventurer who had entered Byzantine service.


title: Rhodes

text: In 1306–1310, the Byzantine era of the island's history came to an end when the island was occupied by the Knights Hospitaller. Under the rule of the newly named "Knights of Rhodes", the city was rebuilt into a model of the European medieval ideal. Many of the city's famous monuments, including the Palace of the Grand Master, were built during this period.


title: Rhodes

text: The strong walls which the knights had built withstood the attacks of the Sultan of Egypt in 1444, and a siege by the Ottomans under Mehmed II in 1480. Eventually, however, Rhodes fell to the large army of Suleiman the Magnificent in December 1522. The Sultan deployed 400 ships delivering 100,000 men to the island (200,000 in other sources). Against this force the Knights, under Grand Master Philippe Villiers de L'Isle-Adam, had about 7,000 men-at-arms and their fortifications. The siege lasted six months, at the end of which the surviving defeated Hospitallers were allowed to withdraw to the Kingdom of Sicily. Despite the defeat, both Christians and Muslims seem to have regarded the conduct of Villiers de L'Isle-Adam as extremely valiant, and the Grand Master was proclaimed a Defender of the Faith by Pope Adrian VI (see Knights of Cyprus and Rhodes). The knights would later move their base of operations to Malta.


title: Rhodes

text: Rhodes was thereafter a possession of the Ottoman Empire (see Sanjak of Rhodes) for nearly four centuries.


title: Rhodes

text: In the 19th century the island was populated by ethnic groups from the surrounding nations, including Jews, whose presence goes back 2,300 years. Under Ottoman rule, they generally did fairly well, but discrimination and bigotry occasionally arose. In February 1840, the Jews of Rhodes were falsely accused by the Greek Orthodox community of ritually murdering a Christian boy. This became known as the Rhodes blood libel.


title: Rhodes

text: Austria opened a post-office at "RHODUS" (Venetian name) before 1864, as witnessed by stamps with Franz Joseph's head.


title: Rhodes

text: In 1912, Italy seized Rhodes from the Ottomans during the Italo-Turkish War. The island's population was spared the "exchange of the minorities" between Greece and Turkey. Rhodes and the rest of the Dodecanese Islands were assigned to Italy in the Treaty of Ouchy. Turkey ceded them officially to Italy with the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne. It then became the core of their possession of the "Isole Italiane dell'Egeo". The island was greatly improved (mainly the capital, called "Rodi" in Italian) under the more than thirty years of the Kingdom of Italy's rule.


title: Rhodes

text: Thousands of Italian colonists settled in the island, mainly in the capital "Rodi", while some of them founded farm villages (like "Peveragno Rodio" (1929), "Campochiaro" (1935), "San Marco" (1936) and "Savona" (1938): in the Dodecanese islands was officially proposed the creation in 1940 of the "Provincia italiana di Rodi". In the late 1930s, Mussolini embarked on a program of Italianization, attempting to make the island of Rhodes a transportation hub that would facilitate the spread of Italian culture in Greece and the Levant. The Fascist program coincided with improvements to infrastructure.


title: Rhodes

text: Following the Italian Armistice of 8 September 1943, the British attempted to get the Italian garrison on Rhodes to change sides. This was anticipated by the German Army, which succeeded in occupying the island with the Battle of Rhodes. In great measure, the German occupation caused the British failure in the subsequent Dodecanese Campaign.


title: Rhodes

text: After September 1943, the Jews, who had been protected by the Italian government, were persecuted by the Nazi Germans and sent to concentration camps. However, the Turkish Consul Selahattin Ülkümen succeeded, at considerable risk to himself and his family, in saving 42 Jewish families, about 200 persons in total, who had Turkish citizenship or were members of Turkish citizens' families.


title: Rhodes

text: On 8 May 1945, the Germans under Otto Wagener surrendered Rhodes as well as the Dodecanese as a whole to the British, who soon after then occupied the islands as a military protectorate.


title: Rhodes

text: At the Paris Peace Treaties, Rhodes, together with the other islands of the Dodecanese, was united with Greece in February 1947. 6,000 Italian colonists were forced to abandon the island and returned to Italy.


title: Rhodes

text: In 1949, Rhodes was the venue for negotiations between Israel and Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria, concluding with the 1949 Armistice Agreements.


title: Rhodes

text: The Colossus of Rhodes was considered to be one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. This giant bronze statue was documented as once standing at the harbour. It was completed in 280 BC and destroyed in an earthquake in 224 BC. No trace of the statue remains today.


title: Rhodes

text: Historical sites on the island of Rhodes include the Acropolis of Lindos, the Acropolis of Rhodes with the Temple of Pythian Apollo and an ancient theatre and stadium, ancient Ialysos, ancient Kamiros, the Governor's Palace, Rhodes Old Town (walled medieval city), the Palace of the Grand Masters, Kahal Shalom Synagogue in the Jewish Quarter, the Archaeological Museum, the ruins of the castle of Monolithos, the castle of Kritinia, St. Catherine Hospice and Rhodes Footbridge.


title: Rhodes

text: There is a Latin Catholic minority on the island of 2,000, many of whom are descendants of Italians who remained after the end of the Italian occupation, pastorally served by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Rhodes.


title: Rhodes

text: Rhodes has a Turkish Muslim minority, which includes Greek Muslims whose ancestors from Crete and the Dodecanese converted to Islam in the Ottoman period. Although a remnant from Ottoman Turkish times they were not required in the population exchange of 1923–24 to resettle in Turkey like the Turkish, Greek, and other Muslim communities living mainly in Macedonia and other parts of Northern Greece because unlike these areas the Dodecanese Islands were under Italian administration at the time. They are organized around the Turkish Association of Rhodes (), which gives the figure 3,500 for the population they bring together and represent for the island. The number of the Turks in Rhodes could be as many as 4,000.


title: Rhodes

text: The Jewish community of Rhodes goes back 2,300 years. "Kahal Shalom Synagogue", established in 1557, during the Ottoman era, is the oldest synagogue in Greece and still stands in the Jewish quarter ("La Juderia") of the old town of Rhodes. At its peak in the 1920s, the Jewish community was one-third of the town's total population. In the 1940s, there were about 2000 Jews of various ethnic backgrounds. The Nazis deported and killed most of the community during the Holocaust. "Kahal Shalom" has been renovated with the help of foreign donors but few Jews live year-round in Rhodes today, so services are not held on a regular basis.


title: Rhodes

text: The Jewish Museum of Rhodes was established in 1997 to preserve the Jewish history and culture of the Jews of Rhodes. It is adjacent to the Kahal Shalom Synagogue.


title: Rhodes

text: The present municipality Rhodes was formed at the 2011 local government reform by the merger of the following 10 former municipalities, that became municipal units (constituent communities in parentheses):


title: Rhodes

text: The municipality has an area of 1400.681 km. It covers the island of Rhodes and a few uninhabited offshore islets. Rhodes city was the capital of the former Dodecanese Prefecture. Rhodes is the most populated island of the South Aegean Region.


title: Rhodes

text: The economy is tourist-oriented, and the most developed sector is service. Tourism has elevated Rhodes economically, compared to the rest of Greece.


title: Rhodes

text: Small industries process imported raw materials for local retail, though other industry includes agricultural goods production, stockbreeding, fishery and winery.


title: Rhodes

text: Rhodes has two airports, but only one is public. Diagoras Airport, southwest of Rhodes City, is the fourth biggest by passenger volume in Greece, and the main entrance/exit point to the island for both locals and tourists. The island is well connected with other major Greek cities and islands as well as with major European capitals and cities via charter flights. Until 1977, Rhodes Maritsa Airport, built in 1938, was a public airport; it is now used by the Hellenic Air Force and occasionally for car races.


title: Rhodes

text: There are also two inoperative airfields. Kalathos Airfield, north of Lindos, and Kattavia Airstrip, to the south of the island, were built by the Italians during the Second World War. Neither remain operational.


title: Rhodes

text: Rhodes has five ports, three of them in Rhodes City, one in the west coast near Kamiros and one in east coast near Lardos.


title: Rhodes

text: The road network of the island is mostly paved and consists of 3 national roads plus one planned, 40 provincial and numerous local. These are the four major island arteries: