title: Ban Ki-moon

text: Ban struggled to win the approval of France. His official biography states that he speaks both English and French, the two working languages of the UN Secretariat. However, he has repeatedly struggled to answer questions in French from journalists. Ban has repeatedly acknowledged his limitations at French, but assured French diplomats that he was devoted to continuing his study. At a press conference on 11 January 2007, Ban remarked, "My French perhaps could be improved, and I am continuing to work. I have taken French lessons over the last few months. I think that, even if my French isn't perfect, I will continue to study it."


title: Ban Ki-moon

text: As the secretary-general election drew closer, there was rising criticism of the South Korean campaign on Ban's behalf. Specifically, his alleged practice of systematically visiting all member states of the Security Council in his role as the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade to secure votes in his support by signing trade deals with European countries and pledging aid to developing countries were the focus of many news articles. According to "The Washington Post", "rivals have privately grumbled that Republic of Korea, which has the world's 11th-largest economy, has wielded its economic might to generate support for his candidacy". Ban reportedly said that these insinuations were "groundless". In an interview on 17 September 2006 he stated: "As front-runner, I know that I can become a target of this very scrutinizing process", and that he was "a man of integrity".


title: Ban Ki-moon

text: In the final informal poll on 2 October, Ban received fourteen favorable votes and one abstention ("no opinion") from the fifteen members of the Security Council. The one abstention came from the Japanese delegation, who vehemently opposed the idea of a Korean taking the role of secretary-general. Due to the overwhelming support of Ban by the rest of the Security Council, Japan later voted in favor of Ban to avoid controversy. More importantly, Ban was the only one to escape a veto; each of the other candidates received at least one "no" vote from among the five permanent members. After the vote, Shashi Tharoor, who finished second, withdrew his candidacy and China's Permanent Representative to the UN told reporters that "it is quite clear from today's straw poll that Minister Ban Ki-moon is the candidate that the Security Council will recommend to the General Assembly".


title: Ban Ki-moon

text: On 9 October, the Security Council formally chose Ban as its nominee. In the public vote, he was supported by all 15 members of the council. On 13 October, the 192-member General Assembly acclaimed Ban as secretary-general.


title: Ban Ki-moon

text: When Ban became secretary-general, "The Economist" listed the major challenges facing him in 2007: "rising nuclear demons in Iran and North Korea, a haemorrhaging wound in Darfur, unending violence in the Middle East, looming environmental disaster, escalating international terrorism, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, the spread of HIV/AIDS. And then the more parochial concerns, such as the largely unfinished business of the most sweeping attempt at reform in the UN's history". Before starting, Kofi Annan shared the story that when the first Secretary-General Trygve Lie left office, he told his successor, Dag Hammarskjöld, "You are about to take over the most impossible job on earth".


title: Ban Ki-moon

text: On 23 January 2007 Ban took office as the eighth Secretary-General of the United Nations. Ban's term as Secretary-General opened with a flap. At his first encounter with the press as Secretary-General on 2 January 2007, he refused to condemn the death penalty imposed on Saddam Hussein by the Iraqi High Tribunal, remarking, "The issue of capital punishment is for each and every member State to decide". Ban's statements contradicted long-standing United Nations opposition to the death penalty as a human-rights concern. He quickly clarified his stance in the case of Barzan al-Tikriti and Awad al-Bandar, two top officials who were convicted of the deaths of 148 Shia Muslims in the Iraqi village of Dujail in the 1980s. In a statement through his spokesperson on 6 January, he "strongly urged the Government of Iraq to grant a stay of execution to those whose death sentences may be carried out in the near future". On the broader issue, he told a Washington, D.C. audience on 16 January 2007 that he recognized and encouraged the "growing trend in international society, international law and domestic policies and practices to phase out eventually the death penalty".


title: Ban Ki-moon

text: On the tenth anniversary of Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot's death, 15 April 2008, Ban Ki-moon appealed for the senior leaders of the regime to be brought to justice. The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia-tribunal, which was established by both the United Nations and Cambodia and which became operational in 2006, is responsible for prosecuting the aforementioned senior leaders.


title: Ban Ki-moon

text: Ban has received strong criticism from the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS), which stated that the secretariat under Ban's leadership was "drifting into irrelevance".


title: Ban Ki-moon

text: In early January, Ban appointed the key members of his cabinet. As his Deputy Secretary-General, he selected Tanzanian foreign minister and professor Asha-Rose Migiro, a move that pleased African diplomats who had concerns of losing power without Annan in office.


title: Ban Ki-moon

text: The top position devoted exclusively to management, Under-Secretary-General for Management, was filled by Alicia Bárcena Ibarra of Mexico. Bárcena was considered a UN insider, having previously served as Annan's chief of staff. Her appointment was seen by critics as an indication that Ban would not make dramatic changes to UN bureaucracy. Ban appointed Sir John Holmes, the British Ambassador to France, as Under-Secretary-General for humanitarian affairs and coordinator of emergency relief.


title: Ban Ki-moon

text: Ban initially said that he would delay making other appointments until his first round of reforms were approved, yet later abandoned this idea after receiving criticism. In February he continued with appointments, selecting B. Lynn Pascoe, the U.S. ambassador to Indonesia, to become Under-Secretary-General for political affairs. Jean-Marie Guéhenno, a French diplomat, who had served as Under-Secretary-General for peacekeeping operations under Annan, remained in office. Ban selected Vijay K. Nambiar as his chief of staff.


title: Ban Ki-moon

text: The appointment of many women to top jobs was seen as fulfilling a campaign promise Ban had made to increase the role of women in the United Nations. During Ban's first year as secretary-general, more top jobs were being handled by women than ever before. Though not appointed by Ban, the president of the General Assembly, Haya Rashed Al-Khalifa, is only the third woman to hold this position in United Nations history.


title: Ban Ki-moon

text: During his first month in office, Ban proposed two major reforms: to split the UN peacekeeping operation into two departments and to combine the political affairs and disarmament department. His proposals were met with stiff resistance from members of the UN General Assembly who bristled under Ban's request for rapid approval. The proposed merger of the disarmament and political affairs offices was criticized by many in the developing world, partially because of rumours that Ban hoped to place American B. Lynn Pascoe in charge of the new office. Alejandro D. Wolff, then acting American ambassador, said the United States backed his proposals.


title: Ban Ki-moon

text: After the early bout of reproach, Ban began extensive consultation with UN ambassadors, agreeing to have his peacekeeping proposal extensively vetted. After the consultations, Ban dropped his proposal to combine political affairs and disarmament. Ban nevertheless pressed ahead with reforms on job requirements at the UN requiring that all positions be considered five-year appointments, all receive strict annual performance reviews, and all financial disclosures be made public. Though unpopular in the New York office, the move was popular in other UN offices around the world and lauded by UN observers. Ban's proposal to split the peacekeeping operation into one group handling operations and another handling arms was finally adopted in mid-March 2007.


title: Ban Ki-moon

text: The Secretary-General of the United Nations has the ability to influence debate on nearly any global issue. Although unsuccessful in some areas, Ban's predecessor Annan had been successful in increasing the UN peacekeeping presence and in popularizing the Millennium Development Goals. UN observers were eager to see on which issues Ban intended to focus, in addition to his declared interest in reforming the United Nations bureaucracy.


title: Ban Ki-moon

text: On several prominent issues, such as proliferation in Iran and North Korea, Ban has deferred to the Security Council. In 2007, the Republic of Nauru raised the issue of allowing the Republic of China (Taiwan) to sign the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. Ban referenced the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 2758, and refused the motion. On 19 July 2007, Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian wrote to request admission into the UN by the name Taiwan. Ban rejected the request, stating that Resolution 2758 defined Taiwan as part of China.


title: Ban Ki-moon

text: Ban early on identified global warming as one of the key issues of his administration. In a White House meeting with U.S. President George W. Bush in January, Ban urged Bush to take steps to curb greenhouse gas emissions. On 1 March 2007 in a speech before the UN General Assembly, Ban emphasized his concerns about global warming. Ban stated, "For my generation, coming of age at the height of the Cold War, fear of nuclear winter seemed the leading existential threat on the horizon. But the danger posed by war to all humanity—and to our planet—is at least matched by climate change" (referring to Global Warming, see portal). On 3 September 2009 he further emphasized his concerns at the World Climate Conference in Geneva, when he stated, "Our foot is stuck on the accelerator and we are heading towards an abyss". In September 2014, Ban joined demonstrators in the People's Climate March in New York City, and also called together world leaders for the UN Climate Summit, in preparation for the United Nations Climate Change Conference to be held in Paris in late 2015.


title: Ban Ki-moon

text: On Thursday, 22 March 2007, while Ban was taking part in the first stop of a tour of the Middle East, a mortar attack hit just from where the Secretary-General was standing, interrupting a press conference in Baghdad's Green Zone, and visibly shaking Ban and others. No one was hurt in the incident. The United Nations had already limited its role in Iraq after its Baghdad headquarters was bombed in August 2003, killing 22 people. Ban said, however, that he still hoped to find a way for the United Nations to "do more for Iraqi social and political development".


title: Ban Ki-moon

text: On his trip, Ban visited Egypt, Israel, the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia, where Ban attended a conference with leaders of the Arab League and met for several hours with Omar Hassan al-Bashir, the Sudanese president who had resisted UN peacekeepers in Darfur. While Ban met with Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, he declined to meet with Ismail Haniya of Hamas.


title: Ban Ki-moon

text: Ban Ki-moon criticized Israel on 10 March 2008 for planning to build housing units in a West Bank settlement, saying the decision conflicts with "Israel's obligation under the road map" for Middle East peace.


title: Ban Ki-moon

text: During a meeting of the UN Security Council on Wednesday, 7 January 2009, Ban called for an immediate end to fighting in the Gaza Strip. He criticized both sides, Israel for bombarding Gaza and Hamas for firing rockets into Israel.


title: Ban Ki-moon

text: Although the 2009 Iranian presidential election was widely disputed, Ban Ki-moon sent a traditional congratulation message to the Iranian president upon his inauguration. He kept silent over the request of Shirin Ebadi to visit Iran after the crackdown on peaceful post-election protests by the Iranian police, which was perceived as a crime against humanity. More than 4,000 people were arrested and nearly 70 were killed, some while being held in prison. In another incident, several prominent intellectuals, including Akbar Ganji, Hamid Dabashi and Noam Chomsky, went on a three-day hunger strike in front of the UN. The incident was followed by an official request by more than 200 intellectuals, human rights activists and reformist politicians in Iran for the UN reaction. Ban Ki-moon however did not take any action to stop the violence in Iran.


title: Ban Ki-moon

text: The Libyan Civil War began in 2011, the last year of Ban's first term, and dominated his attention and public statements that year. Throughout the conflict, he lobbied for peaceful solutions to the crisis. He frequently spoke out against military action in Libya, believing that a diplomatic solution would be possible and preferable. However, he conceded that if then-leader Muammar Gaddafi refused to abide by a cease fire agreement, the international coalition of military forces would have no choice but to intervene to protect the human rights of Libyans. The Gaddafi government was eventually overthrown and Gaddafi killed in the conflict.


title: Ban Ki-moon

text: Ban took the first foreign trip of his term to attend the African Union summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in January 2007 as part of an effort to reach out to the Group of 77. He repeatedly identified Darfur as the top humanitarian priority of his administration. Ban played a large role, with several face-to-face meetings with Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, in convincing Sudan to allow UN peacekeepers to enter the Darfur region. On 31 July 2007 the United Nations Security Council approved sending 26,000 UN peacekeepers into the region to join 7,000 troops from the African Union. The resolution was heralded as a major breakthrough in confronting the Darfur conflict (although the United States labeled the conflict a "genocide", the United Nations has declined to do so). The first phase of the peacekeeping mission began in October 2007.


title: Ban Ki-moon

text: Ban Ki-moon flew to Myanmar on 25 May 2008 to guide a conference with international agencies aimed at boosting donations for the nation, which was struck by Cyclone Nargis on 2 May 2008. The conference was initiated after Ban had met with Than Shwe, the leading figure of Myanmar's government 23 May 2008. Ban toured the devastation—especially in the hard-hit Irrawaddy Delta—23 May 2008 and 24 May 2008. Myanmar officials agreed to allow the Yangon International Airport to be used as a logistical hub for aid distribution.


title: Ban Ki-moon

text: On 6 June 2011, Ban Ki-moon formally announced his candidacy for a second consecutive term as Secretary-General of the United Nations. He announced his candidacy at a press conference, following a meeting with the Asian group of countries at the United Nations. Ban Ki-moon's first mandate as the Secretary-General was set to end on 31 December 2011. The five permanent Security Council members supported his candidacy. There was no declared rival for the post.


title: Ban Ki-moon

text: On 17 June 2011, he received the recommendation of the Security Council by a unanimous vote, and, on 21 June, his nomination was confirmed by a unanimous acclamation vote at the United Nations General Assembly. His new five-year term as Secretary-General commenced on 1 January 2012 and ended on 31 December 2016.


title: Ban Ki-moon

text: Ban appointed Swedish diplomat Jan Eliasson as his new Deputy Secretary-General on 2 March 2012. His Chief of Staff is Edmond Mulet of Guatemala. The appointments were part of Ban's commitment to replace top positions in his group for his second term.


title: Ban Ki-moon

text: Since beginning his second term in January 2012, Ban has focused his public statements and speeches on peace and equality in the Middle East and on equality issues.


title: Ban Ki-moon

text: The aftermath of the Libyan Civil War and other events of the Arab Spring continued to command Ban's attention with the start of his second term. He focused in 2012 on what he termed "intolerance" in the Arab world. After travelling to Vienna to participate in the opening of the KAICIID Dialogue Centre to foster interreligious dialogue, Ban commented, "Many countries in the Arab world including Saudi Arabia are changing. Since the Arab Spring, the leaders have begun to listen to the voice of their people." He was however criticised in the Austrian press for associating himself with a project of Saudi King Abdullah, Saudi Arabia being a location of perceived religious intolerance.


title: Ban Ki-moon

text: Throughout 2012, Ban expressed his concern about the continuing Israeli–Palestinian conflict, in particular the condition of the Palestinian hunger strikers in Israeli prisons and the movement restrictions imposed on Gaza Strip residents. On 30 August 2012 Ban criticized the Iranian leadership due to their statements regarding Israel's destruction and denying the Holocaust. On 16 August 2013, Ban Ki-moon admitted that the UN was biased against Israel, stating in a meeting with Israeli students that there was a biased attitude towards the Israeli people and Israeli government at the UN. He described this as "an unfortunate situation." A few days later, he backtracked on the utterance. During an interview on 16 December 2016, Ban said that the UN has issued a "disproportionate volume of resolutions, reports and conferences criticizing Israel."


title: Ban Ki-moon

text: On 26 January 2016, Ban made a statement in relation to the attacks by Palestinians against Israelis. Ban Ki-moon said that "as oppressed peoples have demonstrated throughout the ages, it is human nature to react to occupation, which often serves as a potent incubator of hate and extremism". In rebuking Ban's statement, the Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu stated that "there is no justification for terror".


title: Ban Ki-moon

text: Ban has criticized Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen, saying: "Grave violations against children increased dramatically as a result of the escalating conflict". In June 2016, Ban Ki-moon removed a Saudi-led coalition from a list of children's rights violators. He later admitted that Saudi Arabia threatened to cut Palestinian aid and funds to other UN programs if coalition was not removed from blacklist for killing children in Yemen. According to one source, there was also a threat of "clerics in Riyadh meeting to issue a fatwa against the UN, declaring it anti-Muslim, which would mean no contacts of OIC members, no relations, contributions, support, to any UN projects, programs".


title: Ban Ki-moon

text: On 26 June 2016, during a speech in Saint Petersburg, Russia, Ban said Russia "has a critical role to play" in addressing global issues "from ending the conflicts in Ukraine and Syria, to safeguarding human rights and controlling the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction." His comments were condemned by Ukraine's UN envoy Volodymyr Yelchenko, saying that he doesn't understand how the UN chief "can say such things which sort of praise the role of Russia in settling the conflict in Ukraine when the Russian Federation is the main player in aggressing Ukraine and in keeping this conflict boiling." He also noted that Russia is being accused of human rights abuses in Crimea and is "building up the nuclear potential" on the peninsula.


title: Ban Ki-moon

text: On 7 March 2012 Ban delivered a speech titled "The Time Has Come" to the United Nations Human Rights Council urging the council to place greater emphasis on combating homophobia and promoting LGBT rights around the world. The speech was met by a protest by a group of delegates, who organized a walk-out protest during the speech.


title: Ban Ki-moon

text: During a speech at the UN headquarters commemorating Human Rights Day, Ban condemned countries with anti-gay laws, mentioning 76 countries that criminalize homosexuality. He said:


title: Ban Ki-moon

text: Ban has told senior managers that homophobia will not be tolerated. He pointed to countries such as Ukraine which has proposed criminalizing public discussion about homosexuality as threatening basic human rights. He further stated that government has a duty to defend vulnerable minorities. In April 2013, he described LGBT rights as one of the great neglected human rights of our time. He also said that religion, culture or tradition can never justify denial of basic rights.


title: Ban Ki-moon

text: On 25 January 2012, Ban announced that he would convene the world's first summit on humanitarian aid in order to "share knowledge and establish common best practices." Known as the World Humanitarian Summit, the event took place in the 23–24 May 2016 in Istanbul, Turkey. In preparation for the summit, Ban released a report on 9 February 2016 titled 'One Humanity, Shared Responsibility' in which he laid out an "Agenda for Humanity" based on consultations with more than 23,000 people in 153 countries. The Agenda for Humanity outlines what is needed to reform humanitarian action, including political leadership to prevent and end conflict, new forms of financing, and a shift from providing aid to ending need. The summit is scheduled to include 5,000 participants, including representatives from governments, NGOs, civil society organizations, and the private sector, as well as individuals affected by humanitarian crises.


title: Ban Ki-moon

text: According to "The Washington Post", "some UN employees and delegates" expressed resentment at Ban's perceived favoritism in the appointment of South Korean nationals in key posts. Previous UN chiefs such as Kurt Waldheim (Austria), Javier Pérez de Cuéllar (Peru), and Boutros Boutros-Ghali (Egypt) brought small teams of trusted aides or clerical workers from their country's Foreign Ministry, and South Korean nationals have been historically underrepresented at the United Nations. Nonetheless, according to "some officials" in the "Post" story, Ban had allegedly gone further, boosting South Korea's presence in UN ranks by more than 20 percent during his first year in office. In response, Ban and his aides stated that the allegations of favoritism are wrong, and that some of the harshest criticisms against him have undercurrents of racism. He said that the South Korean nationals he had appointed—including Choi Young-jin, who had already served as a high-ranking official in the United Nations' peacekeeping department—are highly qualified for their positions. Others such as Donald P. Gregg, a former U.S. ambassador to South Korea, said that the complaints were driven by envy: "I think being from South Korea, and people have growing respect for South Korea, that's a great enhancement for the secretary general. If he brings along talented people who he knows very well, I think that's also a plus." UN records show that South Korea, the organization's eleventh-largest financial contributor, had only 54 South Korean nationals assigned to its mission six months before Ban took over the top UN post. By contrast, the Philippines, a significantly poorer country, had 759 nationals in its mission.


title: Ban Ki-moon

text: Former UN Under Secretary General for Oversight Services Inga-Britt Ahlenius denounced Ban Ki-moon after resigning her post in 2010, calling him "reprehensible". Ahlenius claimed that the Secretary-General made efforts to undermine the Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) mandate and challenge its operational independence. In particular, the two disputed Ahlenius's plans to hire a former prosecutor, Robert Appleton, who had carried out investigations into corruption in UN peacekeeping missions from 2006 to 2009. Ban's staff explained that Appleton's appointment was rejected because Ahlenius had not properly considered female candidates for the appointment, and said that the final selection should have been made by Ban, not Ahlenius. Ahlenius claimed in her End of Assignment memo that "for the Secretary-General to control appointments in OIOS is an infringement of the operational independence of OIOS". Ban's chief of staff Vijay Nambiar described Ahlenius's complaints as "a deeply unbalanced account", and also stated that "many pertinent facts were overlooked or misrepresented" in Ahlenius's memo. Nambiar further noted that Ban "fully recognizes the operational independence of OIOS, [but that] does not excuse [Ahlenius] from applying the standard rules of recruitment".


title: Ban Ki-moon

text: American diplomat James Wasserstrom claimed that Ban attempted to limit the jurisdiction of the UN dispute tribunal following Wasserstrom's dismissal from his Kosovo post and lengthy appeals process. Ban had refused to hand over confidential documents relating to the case to the UN personnel tribunal, despite repeated orders by the court to do so. In relation to another case, Ban was admonished by Judge Michael Adams for "willful disobedience" for again refusing to hand over key documents in an internal promotions dispute.


title: Ban Ki-moon

text: In 2013, Ban was accused of undermining collective bargaining rights of The Staff Coordinating Council, the union representing United Nations staff. Ban unilaterally eliminated the role of the union to negotiate on behalf of the employees and terminated talks when the union protested.


title: Ban Ki-moon

text: Ban was named in a lawsuit challenging UN legal immunity on behalf of Haitians with cholera in the U.S. District Court of Manhattan. UN peacekeepers from Nepal are said to be the source of the 2010–13 Haiti cholera outbreak. Ban declared that the legal immunity of the United Nations before national courts should be upheld, but that this does not reduce the UN's moral responsibility to overcome Haiti's cholera epidemic. In January 2015, Judge J. Paul Oetken dismissed the lawsuit, affirming UN immunity. An appeal to Oetken's decision was submitted to the Court in May 2015.


title: Ban Ki-moon

text: British magazine "The Economist", in May 2016, called Ban "plodding, protocol-conscious and loth to stand up to the big powers" and "the dullest—and among the worst" secretary-generals. Japanese diplomat Kiyotaka Akasaka defended Ban's understated presence as more quietly Confucian, stating that "[Ban's] behaviour has been like that of the wise man, the sage in Oriental philosophy". One UN official claimed that while Ban would greet world leaders in their native language, he would then read directly from his talking points without small talk. The UN official opined, "Quiet diplomacy? He [Ban] displayed no skills for that." South African lawyer Nicholas Haysom also defended Ban, saying that the news media "caricatured [Ban] as invisible when he made outspoken comments that the media then failed to report".


title: Ban Ki-moon

text: Until the outbreak of the 2016 South Korean political scandal, Ban was the leading potential candidate for President of South Korea in 2017. However, recent polls showed Moon Jae-in of the main opposition Minjoo Party of Korea in the lead with a support rating of 32.8 percent, while Ban trailed in distant second with 15.4 percent. Moon was eventually elected president on 10 May.


title: Ban Ki-moon

text: Although Ban repeatedly expressed his desires for running, a UN resolution in 1946 says "a Secretary-General should refrain from accepting" any Governmental position "at any rate immediately on retirement." Exceptions to the rule have been made in history with the 1986 election of Kurt Waldheim to the post of President of Austria, although the position is ceremonial in nature.


title: Ban Ki-moon

text: Contrary to Ban's public comments hinting at any likely run, private reports indicated otherwise. Kim Jong-pil, former Prime Minister of South Korea, was reported to say that Ban Ki-moon would announce his candidacy for the presidency shortly after his term as Secretary-General ends. Ban was originally predicted to run under the conservative Saenuri Party, but President Park Geun-hye's scandal cast doubts as to which party Ban would run under.


title: Ban Ki-moon

text: Ban returned to South Korea on 13 January 2017. On 1 February 2017 he announced he would not be a candidate for president.


title: Ban Ki-moon

text: In 2017, Ban and Heinz Fischer, former president of Austria, founded, and are co-chairs of, the Ban Ki-moon Centre for Global Citizens in Vienna, Austria. The nonprofit group's mission is to support youth and women, working within the UN's Sustainable Development Goal frameworks. In June 2017, Ban joined The Elders, a human rights group composed of international statesmen that was founded by Nelson Mandela. In November 2018, he became a deputy chair of the group, serving jointly with Graça Machel.


title: Ban Ki-moon

text: In 2017, he joined French President Emmanuel Macron in calling for a Global Pact for the Environment.


title: Ban Ki-moon

text: In early 2018, Ban was elected to lead the Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI), a treaty-based intergovernmental organization. Effective 20 Feb. 2018, he is serving a 2-year term in the dual roles of president of the assembly and chair of the council.


title: Ban Ki-moon

text: In 2020, Ban Ki-Moon was appointed as the Official Ambassador of the GEMS World Academy Model United Nations.


title: Ban Ki-moon

text: Ban Ki-moon met Yoo Soon-taek in 1962 when they were both in high school. Ban was 18 years old, and Yoo Soon-taek was his secondary school's student council president. Ban Ki-moon married Yoo Soon-taek in 1971.


title: Ban Ki-moon

text: They have three adult children: two daughters and a son. His elder daughter, Seon-yong, was born in 1972 and now works for the Korea Foundation in Seoul. Her spouse is a native of India. His son Woo-hyun was born in 1974 in India. He received an MBA from Anderson School of Management at University of California, Los Angeles, and works for an investment firm in New York. His younger daughter, Hyun-hee (born 1976), is a field officer for UNICEF in Nairobi. After his election as secretary-general, Ban became an icon in his hometown, where his extended family still resides. Over 50,000 gathered in a soccer stadium in Chungju for celebration of the result. In the months following his election, thousands of practitioners of geomancy went to his village to determine how it produced such an important person. Ban himself is not a member of any church or religious group and has declined to expound his beliefs: "Now, as Secretary-General, it will not be appropriate at this time to talk about my own belief in any particular religion or god. So maybe we will have some other time to talk about personal matters." His mother is Buddhist.


title: Ban Ki-moon

text: In January 2017, Ban's brother Ban Ki-sang and nephew Bahn Joo-hyun were indicted on charges that they had engaged in a scheme to bribe a Middle Eastern official in connection with the attempted $800 million sale of a building complex in Vietnam. In September 2018, Bahn Joo-hyun was sentenced to six months in prison in Manhattan federal court.


title: Ban Ki-moon

text: During his tenure at the South Korean Foreign Ministry, Ban's nickname was "jusa" (주사), meaning "the administrative clerk". The name was used as both positive and negative: complimenting Ban's attention to detail and administrative skill while deriding what was seen as a lack of charisma and subservience to his superiors. The South Korean press corps calls him "the slippery eel" (기름장어), for his ability to dodge questions. His peers praise his understated "Confucian approach", and he is regarded by many as a "stand-up guy" and is known for his "easy smile". After he assumed a post of United Nations secretary general, he was caricatured as "invisible man", "powerless observer", or "nowhere man" for his lack of powerful personality and leadership.


title: Younger Dryas

text: The Younger Dryas (c. 12,900 to 11,700 years BP) was a return to glacial conditions which temporarily reversed the gradual climatic warming after the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM, c. 27,000 to 20,000 years BP). The Younger Dryas was the last stage of the Pleistocene epoch (c. 2,580,000 to 11,700 years BP) and it preceded the current, warmer Holocene epoch. The Younger Dryas was the most severe and long lasting of several interruptions to the warming of the Earth's climate, and it was preceded by the Late Glacial Interstadial (c. 14,670 to 12,900 BP).


title: Younger Dryas

text: The change was relatively sudden, taking place in decades, and it resulted in a decline of temperatures in Greenland by 4~10 °C (7.2~18 °F), and advances of glaciers and drier conditions over much of the temperate Northern Hemisphere. A number of theories have been put forward about the cause, and the most widely supported by scientists is that the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation, which transports warm water from the Equator towards the North Pole, was interrupted by an influx of fresh, cold water from North America into the Atlantic.


title: Younger Dryas

text: The Younger Dryas did not affect the climate worldwide. In the Southern Hemisphere and some areas of the Northern Hemisphere, such as southeastern North America, a slight warming occurred.


title: Younger Dryas

text: The Younger Dryas is named after an indicator genus, the alpine-tundra wildflower "Dryas octopetala", as its leaves are occasionally abundant in late glacial, often minerogenic-rich sediments, such as the lake sediments of Scandinavia.


title: Younger Dryas

text: The presence of a distinct cold period at the end of the LGM interval has been known for a long time. Paleobotanical and lithostratigraphic studies of Swedish and Danish bog and lake sites, as in the Allerød clay pit in Denmark, first recognized and described the Younger Dryas.


title: Younger Dryas

text: The Younger Dryas is the youngest and longest of three stadials, which resulted from typically abrupt climatic changes that took place over the last 16,000 years. Within the Blytt–Sernander classification of north European climatic phases, the prefix "Younger" refers to the recognition that this original "Dryas" period was preceded by a warmer stage, the Allerød oscillation, which, in turn, was preceded by the Older Dryas, around 14,000 calibrated years BP. That is not securely dated, and estimates vary by 400 years, but it is generally accepted to have lasted around 200 years. In northern Scotland, the glaciers were thicker and more extensive than during the Younger Dryas. The Older Dryas, in turn, was preceded by another warmer stage, the Bølling oscillation, that separated it from a third and even older stadial, often known as the Oldest Dryas. The Oldest Dryas occurred about 1,770 calibrated years before the Younger Dryas and lasted about 400 calibrated years. According to the GISP2 ice core from Greenland, the Oldest Dryas occurred between about 15,070 and 14,670 calibrated years BP.


title: Younger Dryas

text: In Ireland, the Younger Dryas has also been known as the Nahanagan Stadial, and in Great Britain it has been called the Loch Lomond Stadial. In the Greenland Summit ice core chronology, the Younger Dryas corresponds to Greenland Stadial 1 (GS-1). The preceding Allerød warm period (interstadial) is subdivided into three events: Greenland Interstadial-1c to 1a (GI-1c to GI-1a).


title: Younger Dryas

text: Since 1916 and the onset and then the refinement of pollen analytical techniques and a steadily-growing number of pollen diagrams, palynologists have concluded that the Younger Dryas was a distinct period of vegetational change in large parts of Europe during which vegetation of a warmer climate was replaced by that of a generally cold climate, a glacial plant succession that often contained "Dryas octopetala". The drastic change in vegetation is typically interpreted to be an effect of a sudden decrease in (annual) temperature, unfavorable for the forest vegetation that had been spreading northward rapidly. The cooling not only favored the expansion of cold-tolerant, light-demanding plants and associated steppe fauna, but also led to regional glacial advances in Scandinavia and a lowering of the regional snow line.


title: Younger Dryas

text: The change to glacial conditions at the onset of the Younger Dryas in the higher latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, between 12,900 and 11,500 calibrated years BP, has been argued to have been quite abrupt. It is in sharp contrast to the warming of the preceding Older Dryas interstadial. Its end has been inferred to have occurred over a period of a decade or so, but the onset may have even been faster. Thermally fractionated nitrogen and argon isotope data from Greenland ice core GISP2 indicate that its summit was around colder during the Younger Dryas than today.


title: Younger Dryas

text: In Great Britain, beetle fossil evidence suggests that the mean annual temperature dropped to , and periglacial conditions prevailed in lowland areas, and icefields and glaciers formed in upland areas. Nothing of the period's size, extent, or rapidity of abrupt climate change has been experienced since its end.


title: Younger Dryas

text: In addition to the Younger, Older, and Oldest Dryases, a century-long period of colder climate, similar to the Younger Dryas in abruptness, has occurred within both the Bølling oscillation and the Allerød oscillation interstadials. The cold period that occurred within the Bølling oscillation is known as the intra-Bølling cold period, and the cold period that occurred within the Allerød oscillation is known as the intra-Allerød cold period. Both cold periods are comparable in duration and intensity with the Older Dryas and began and ended quite abruptly. The cold periods have been recognized in sequence and relative magnitude in paleoclimatic records from Greenland ice cores, European lacustrine sediments, Atlantic Ocean sediments, and the Cariaco Basin, Venezuela.


title: Younger Dryas

text: of older glacial periods. Temperature-sensitive lipids, long chain alkenones, found in lake and marine sediments, are well-regarded as a powerful paleothermometer for the quantitative reconstruction of past continental climates. The application of alkenone paleothermometers to high-resolution paleotemperature reconstructions of older glacial terminations have found that very similar, Younger Dryas-like paleoclimatic oscillations occurred during Terminations II and IV. If so, the Younger Dryas is not the unique paleoclimatic event, in terms of size, extent, and rapidity, as it is often regarded to be. Furthermore, paleoclimatologists and Quaternary geologists reported finding what they characterized as well-expressed Younger Dryas events in the Chinese δ records of Termination III in stalagmites from high-altitude caves in Shennongjia area, Hubei Province, China. Various paleoclimatic records from ice cores, deep-sea sediments, speleothems, continental paleobotanical data, and loesses show similar abrupt climate events, which are consistent with Younger Dryas events, during the terminations of the last four glacial periods (see Dansgaard–Oeschger event). They argue that Younger Dryas events might be an intrinsic feature of deglaciations that occur at the end of glacial periods.


title: Younger Dryas

text: Analyses of stable isotopes from Greenland ice cores provide estimates for the start and end of the Younger Dryas. The analysis of Greenland Summit ice cores, as part of the Greenland Ice Sheet Project 2 and Greenland Icecore Project, estimated that the Younger Dryas started about 12,800 ice (calibrated) years BP. Depending on the specific ice core analysis consulted, the Younger Dryas is estimated to have lasted 1,150~1,300 years. Measurements of oxygen isotopes from the GISP2 ice core suggest the ending of the Younger Dryas took place over just 40~50 years in three discrete steps, each lasting five years. Other proxy data, such as dust concentration and snow accumulation, suggest an even more rapid transition, which would require about of warming in just a few years. Total warming in Greenland was .


title: Younger Dryas

text: The end of the Younger Dryas has been dated to around 11,550 years ago, occurring at 10,000 BP (uncalibrated radiocarbon year), a "radiocarbon plateau" by a variety of methods, mostly with consistent results:


title: Younger Dryas

text: The International Commission on Stratigraphy put the start of the Greenlandian stage, and implicitly the end of the Younger Dryas, at 11,700 years before 2000.


title: Younger Dryas

text: Although the start of the Younger Dryas is regarded to be synchronous across the North Atlantic region, recent research concluded that the start of the Younger Dryas might be time-transgressive even within there. After an examination of laminated varve sequences, Muschitiello and Wohlfarth found that the environmental changes that define the beginning of the Younger Dryas are diachronous in their time of occurrence according to latitude. According to the changes, the Younger Dryas occurred as early as around 12,900~13,100 calibrated years ago along latitude 56–54°N. Further north, they found that the changes occurred at roughly 12,600–12,750 calibrated years ago.


title: Younger Dryas

text: According to the analyses of varved sediments from Lake Suigetsu, Japan, and other paleoenvironmental records from Asia, a substantial delay occurred in the onset and the end of the Younger Dryas between Asia and the North Atlantic. For example, paleoenvironmental analysis of sediment cores from Lake Suigetsu in Japan found the Younger Dryas temperature decline of 2–4 °C between 12,300 and 11,250 varve (calibrated) years BP, instead of about 12,900 calibrated years BP in the North Atlantic region.


title: Younger Dryas

text: In contrast, the abrupt shift in the radiocarbon signal from apparent radiocarbon dates of 11,000 radiocarbon years to radiocarbon dates of 10,700–10,600 radiocarbon years BP in terrestrial macrofossils and tree rings in Europe over a 50-year period occurred at the same time in the varved sediments of Lake Suigetsu. However, this same shift in the radiocarbon signal antedates the start of Younger Dryas at Lake Suigetsu by a few hundred years. Interpretations of data from Chinese also confirm that the Younger Dryas East Asia lags the North Atlantic Younger Dryas cooling by at least 200~300 years. Although the interpretation of the data is more murky and ambiguous, the end of the Younger Dryas and the start of Holocene warming likely were similarly delayed in Japan and in other parts of East Asia.


title: Younger Dryas

text: Similarly, an analysis of a stalagmite growing from a cave in Puerto Princesa Subterranean River National Park, Palawan, the Philippines, found that the onset of the Younger Dryas was also delayed there. Proxy data recorded in the stalagmite indicate that more than 550 calibrated years were needed for Younger Dryas drought conditions to reach their full extent in the region and about 450 calibrated years to return to pre-Younger Dryas levels after it ended.


title: Younger Dryas

text: In Western Europe and Greenland, the Younger Dryas is a well-defined synchronous cool period. Cooling in the tropical North Atlantic may, however, have preceded it by a few hundred years; South America shows a less well-defined initiation but a sharp termination. The Antarctic Cold Reversal appears to have started a thousand years before the Younger Dryas and has no clearly defined ; Peter Huybers has argued that there is a fair confidence in the absence of the Younger Dryas in Antarctica, New Zealand and parts of Oceania. Timing of the tropical counterpart to the Younger Dryas, the Deglaciation Climate Reversal (DCR), is difficult to establish as low latitude ice core records generally lack independent dating over the interval. An example of this is the Sajama ice core (Bolivia), for which the timing of the DCR has been pinned to that of the GISP2 ice core record (central Greenland). Climatic change in the central Andes during the DCR, however, was significant and was characterized by a shift to much wetter and likely colder conditions. The magnitude and abruptness of the changes would suggest that low latitude climate did not respond passively during the YD/DCR.


title: Younger Dryas

text: Effects of the Younger Dryas were of varying intensity throughout North America. In western North America, its effects were less intense than in Europe or northeast North America; however, evidence of a glacial re-advance indicates that Younger Dryas cooling occurred in the Pacific Northwest. Speleothems from the Oregon Caves National Monument and Preserve in southern Oregon's Klamath Mountains yield evidence of climatic cooling contemporaneous to the Younger Dryas.


title: Younger Dryas

text: The Younger Dryas is a period significant to the study of the response of biota to abrupt climate change and to the study of how humans coped with such rapid changes. The effects of sudden cooling in the North Atlantic had strong regional effects in North America, with some areas experiencing more abrupt changes than others. A cooling and ice advance accompanying the transition into the Younger Dryas between 13,300 and 13,000 cal years BP has been confirmed with many radiocarbon dates from four sites in western New York State. The advance is similar in age to the Two Creeks forest bed in Wisconsin.


title: Younger Dryas

text: The effects of the Younger Dryas cooling affected the area that is now New England and parts of maritime Canada more rapidly than the rest of the present day United States at the beginning and the end of the Younger Dryas chronozone. Proxy indicators show that summer temperature conditions in Maine decreased by up to 7.5 °C. Cool summers, combined with cold winters and low precipitation, resulted in a treeless tundra up to the onset of the Holocene, when the boreal forests shifted north.


title: Younger Dryas

text: Vegetation in the central Appalachian Mountains east towards the Atlantic Ocean was dominated by spruce ("Picea" spp.) and tamarack ("Larix laricina)" boreal forests that later changed rapidly to temperate, more broad-leaf tree forest conditions at the end of the Younger Dryas period. Conversely, pollen and macrofossil evidence from near Lake Ontario indicates that cool, boreal forests persisted into the early Holocene. West of the Appalachians, in the Ohio River Valley and south to Florida rapid, no-analog vegetation responses seem to have been the result of rapid climate changes, but the area remained generally cool, with hardwood forest dominating. During the Younger Dryas, the Southeastern United States was warmer and wetter than the region had been during the Pleistocene because of trapped heat from the Caribbean within the North Atlantic Gyre caused by a weakened Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC).


title: Younger Dryas

text: Also, a gradient of changing effects occurred from the Great Lakes region south to Texas and Louisiana. Climatic forcing moved cold air into the northern portion of the American interior, much as it did the Northeast. Although there was not as abrupt a delineation as seen on the Eastern Seaboard, the Midwest was significantly colder in the northern interior than it was south, towards the warmer climatic influence of the Gulf of Mexico. In the north, the Laurentide Ice Sheet re-advanced during the Younger Dryas, depositing a moraine from west Lake Superior to southeast Quebec. Along the southern margins of the Great Lakes, spruce dropped rapidly, while pine increased, and herbaceous prairie vegetation decreased in abundance, but increased west of the region.


title: Younger Dryas

text: Effects in the Rocky Mountain region were varied. In the northern Rockies, a significant increase in pines and firs suggests warmer conditions than before and a shift to subalpine parkland in places. That is hypothesized to be the result of a northward shift in the jet stream, combined with an increase in summer insolation as well as a winter snow pack that was higher than today, with prolonged and wetter spring seasons. There were minor re-advancements of glaciers in place, particularly in the northern ranges, but several sites in the Rocky Mountain ranges show little to no changes in vegetation during the Younger Dryas. Evidence also indicates an increase in precipitation in New Mexico because of the same Gulf conditions that were influencing Texas.


title: Younger Dryas

text: The Pacific Northwest region experienced 2 to 3 °C of cooling and an increase in precipitation. Glacial re-advancement has been recorded in British Columbia as well as in the Cascade Range. An increase of pine pollen indicates cooler winters within the central Cascades. On the Olympic Peninsula, a mid-elevation site recorded a decrease in fire, though forest persisted and erosion increased during the Younger Dryas, suggesting cool and wet conditions. Speleothem records indicate an increase in precipitation in southern Oregon, the timing of which coincides with increased sizes of pluvial lakes in the northern Great Basin. Pollen record from the Siskiyou Mountains suggests a lag in timing of the Younger Dryas, indicating a greater influence of warmer Pacific conditions on that range, but the pollen record is less chronologically constrained than the aforementioned speleothem record. The Southwest appears to have seen an increase in precipitation, as well, also with an average 2 °C of cooling.


title: Younger Dryas

text: The Younger Dryas is often linked to the Neolithic Revolution, with the adoption of agriculture in the Levant. The cold and dry Younger Dryas arguably lowered the carrying capacity of the area and forced the sedentary early Natufian population into a more mobile subsistence pattern. Further climatic deterioration is thought to have brought about cereal cultivation. While relative consensus exists regarding the role of the Younger Dryas in the changing subsistence patterns during the Natufian, its connection to the beginning of agriculture at the end of the period is still being debated.


title: Younger Dryas

text: Based upon solid geological evidence, consisting largely of the analysis of numerous deep cores from coral reefs, variations in the rates of sea level rise have been reconstructed for the postglacial period. For the early part of the sea level rise that is associated with deglaciation, three major periods of accelerated sea level rise, called "meltwater pulses", occurred. They are commonly called


title: Younger Dryas

text: The Younger Dryas occurred after meltwater pulse 1A, a 13.5 m rise over about 290 years, centered at about 14,200 calibrated years ago, and before meltwater pulse 1B, a 7.5 m rise over about 160 years, centered at about 11,000 calibrated years ago. Finally, not only did the Younger Dryas postdate both all of meltwater pulse 1A and predate all of meltwater pulse 1B, it was a period of significantly-reduced rate of sea level rise relative to the periods of time immediately before and after it.


title: Younger Dryas

text: Possible evidence of short-term sea level changes has been reported for the beginning of the Younger Dryas. First, the plotting of data by Bard and others suggests a small drop, less than 6 m, in sea level near the onset of the Younger Dryas. There is a possible corresponding change in the rate of change of sea level rise seen in the data from both Barbados and Tahiti. Given that this change is "within the overall uncertainty of the approach," it was concluded that a relatively smooth sea-level rise, with no significant accelerations, occurred then. Finally, research by Lohe and others in western Norway has reported a sea-level low-stand at 13,640 calibrated years ago and a subsequent Younger Dryas transgression starting at 13,080 calibrated years ago. They concluded that the timing of the Allerød low-stand and the subsequent transgression were the result of increased regional loading of the crust, and geoid changes were caused by an expanding ice sheet, which started growing and advancing in the early Allerød about 13,600 calibrated years ago, well before the start of the Younger Dryas.


title: Younger Dryas

text: The current theory is that the Younger Dryas was caused by significant reduction or shutdown of the North Atlantic "Conveyor" – which circulates warm tropical waters northward – as the consequence of deglaciation in North America and a sudden influx of fresh water from Lake Agassiz. Geological evidence for such an event is not fully secure, but recent work has identified a pathway along the Mackenzie River that would have spilled fresh water into the Arctic and thence into the Atlantic. The global climate would then have become locked into the new state until freezing removed the fresh water "lid" from the North Atlantic. However, simulations indicated that a one-time-flood could not likely cause the new state to be locked for 1,000 years. Once the flood ceased, the AMOC would recover and the Younger Dryas would stop in less than 100 years. Therefore, continuous freshwater input was necessary to maintain a weak AMOC for more than 1,000 years. Recent study proposed that the snowfall could be a source of continuous freshwater resulting in a prolonged weakened state of the AMOC.


title: Younger Dryas

text: An alternative theory suggests instead that the jet stream shifted northward in response to the changing topographic forcing of the melting North American ice sheet, which brought more rain to the North Atlantic, which freshened the ocean surface enough to slow the thermohaline circulation. There is also some evidence that a solar flare may have been responsible for the megafaunal extinction, but that cannot explain the apparent variability in the extinction across all continents.


title: Younger Dryas

text: The controversial Younger Dryas impact hypothesis claims that a comet impact or air burst occurred in North America about 12,900 years ago as the mechanism that initiated the Younger Dryas cooling.


title: Younger Dryas

text: Among other things, findings of melt-glass material in sediments in many places in around 60 localities in the United States, and in countries as distant as Mexico and Syria have been reported. The researchers argue that the material, which dates back nearly 13,000 years, was formed at temperatures of as the result of a bolide impact. They argue that these findings support the Younger Dryas Boundary (YDB) hypothesis, that the bolide impact occurred at the onset of the Younger Dryas. The hypothesis has been questioned by some scientists as a misinterpretation of data., although other scientists still support the comet impact hypothesis while others question the colleagues that have rejected the hypothesis.


title: Younger Dryas

text: After a review of the sediments found at the sites, new research has found that the sediments claimed by hypothesis proponents to be deposits resulting from a bolide impact date from much later or much earlier times than the proposed date of the cosmic impact. The researchers examined 29 sites commonly referenced to support the impact theory to determine if they can be geologically dated to around 13,000 years ago. Crucially, only three of those sites actually date from then.


title: Younger Dryas

text: Kinzie, "et al." (2014) looked at the distribution of nanodiamonds produced during extraterrestrial collisions: 50 million km of the Northern Hemisphere at the YDB were found to have the nanodiamonds. Only two layers exist showing these nanodiamonds: The YDB 12,800 calibrated years ago and the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary, 65 million years ago, which, in addition, is marked by mass extinctions.


title: Younger Dryas

text: New support for the cosmic-impact hypothesis of the origin of the YDB was published in 2018. It postulates Earth's collision with one or more fragments from a larger (over 100 km diameter) disintegrating comet (some remnants of which have persisted within the inner solar system to the present day). Evidence is presented consistent with large-scale biomass burning (wildfires) following the putative collision. The evidence is derived from analyses of ice cores, glaciers, lake- and marine-sediment cores, and terrestrial sequences.


title: Younger Dryas

text: Evidence that adds further to the credibility of this hypothesis includes extraterrestrial platinum, which has been found in meteorites. There are multiple sites around the world with spikes in levels of platinum that can be associated with the impact hypothesis, of which at least 25 are considered significant. Although most of these sites are found in the Northern Hemisphere, a study conducted in October 2019 has found and confirmed another site with high platinum levels located in the Wonderkrater area north of Pretoria in South Africa. This coincides with the Pilauco site in southern Chile which also happens to contain high levels of platinum as well as rare metallic spherules, gold and high-temperature iron that is rarely found in nature and suspected of originating from airbursts or impacts. These Southern Hemisphere high platinum zones further support the credibility of an impact event.


title: Younger Dryas

text: The Laacher See volcano erupted at approximately the same time as the beginning of the Younger Dryas, and has historically been suggested as a possible cause. Laacher See is a maar lake, a lake within a broad low-relief volcanic crater about 2 km (1.2 mi) diameter. It is in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany, about 24 km (15 mi) northwest of Koblenz and 37 km (23 mi) south of Bonn. The maar lake is within the Eifel mountain range, and is part of the East Eifel volcanic field within the larger "Vulkaneifel". This eruption was of sufficient size, VEI 6, with over 20 km (2.4 cu mi) tephra ejected, to have caused significant temperature change in the Northern Hemisphere.


title: Younger Dryas

text: The hypothesis was dismissed based on the timing of the Laacher See Tephra relative to the clearest signs of climate change associated with the Younger Dryas Event within various Central European varved lake deposits. This set the scene for the development of the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis and the meltwater pulse hypothesis. Interest was revived in 2014 when research placed the eruption of the Laacher See volcano at 12,880 years BP, coinciding with the initiation of North Atlantic cooling into the Younger Dryas. Although the eruption was about twice the size as the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo, it contained considerably more sulfur, potentially rivalling the climatologically very significant 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora in terms of amount of sulfur introduced into the atmosphere. Evidence exists that an eruption of this magnitude and sulfur content occurring during deglaciation could trigger a long-term positive feedback involving sea ice and oceanic circulation, resulting in a cascade of climate shifts across the North Atlantic and the globe. Further support for this hypothesis appeared as a large volcanogenic sulfur spike within Greenland ice, coincident with both the date of the Laacher See eruption and the beginning of cooling into the Younger Dryas as recorded in Greenland. The mid-latitude westerly winds may have tracked sea ice growth southward across the North Atlantic as the cooling became more pronounced, resulting in time transgressive climate shifts across northern Europe and explaining the lag between the Laacher See Tephra and the clearest (wind-derived) evidence for the Younger Dryas in central European lake sediments.


title: Younger Dryas

text: However, in 2021, further research precisely dated the eruption to 200 ± 21 years before the onset of the Younger Dryas, consequently ruling out this hypothesis The same study also concluded that the onset of the Younger Dryas took place synchronously over the entire North Atlantic and Central European region.


title: Younger Dryas

text: Although the timing of the eruption appeared to coincide with the beginning of the Younger Dryas, and the amount of sulfur contained would have been enough to result in substantial Northern Hemisphere cooling, the hypothesis has not yet been tested thoroughly, and no climate model simulations are currently available. The exact nature of the positive feedback is also unknown, and questions remain regarding the sensitivity to the deglacial climate to a volcanic forcing of the size and sulfur content of the Laacher See eruption. However, evidence exists that a similar feedback following other volcanic eruptions could also have triggered similar long-term cooling events during the last glacial period, the Little Ice Age, and the Holocene in general, suggesting that the proposed feedback is poorly constrained but potentially common.


title: Younger Dryas

text: It is possible that the Laacher See eruption was triggered by lithospheric unloading related to the removal of ice during the last deglaciation, a concept that is supported by the observation that three of the largest eruptions within the East Eifel volcanic field occurred during deglaciation. Because of this potential relationship to lithospheric unloading, the Laacher See eruption hypothesis suggests that eruptions such as the 12,880 year BP Laacher See eruption are not isolated in time and space, but instead are a fundamental part of deglaciation, thereby also explaining the presence of Younger Dryas-type events during other glacial terminations.


title: HTTP 403

text: HTTP 403 is an HTTP status code meaning access to the requested resource is forbidden. The server understood the request, but will not fulfill it.


title: HTTP 403

text: HTTP 403 provides a distinct error case from HTTP 401; while HTTP 401 is returned when the client has not authenticated, and implies that a successful response may be returned following valid authentication, HTTP 403 is returned when the client is not permitted access to the resource despite providing authentication such as insufficient permissions of the authenticated account.


title: HTTP 403

text: Error 401: "The request requires user authentication. The response MUST include a WWW-Authenticate header field (section 14.47) containing a challenge applicable to the requested resource. The client MAY repeat the request with a suitable Authorization header field (section 14.8). If the request already included Authorization credentials, then the 401 response indicates that authorization has been refused for those credentials." (RFC 2616)


title: HTTP 403

text: The Apache web server returns 403 Forbidden in response to requests for URL paths that corresponded to file system directories when directory listings have been disabled in the server and there is no Directory Index directive to specify an existing file to be returned to the browser. Some administrators configure the Mod proxy extension to Apache to block such requests and this will also return 403 Forbidden. Microsoft IIS responds in the same way when directory list


title: HTTP 403

text: ings are denied in that server. In WebDAV, the 403 Forbidden response will be returned by the server if the client issued a PROPFIND request but did not also issue the required Depth header or issued a Depth header of infinity.


title: HTTP 403

text: The following nonstandard codes are returned by Microsoft's Internet Information Services, and are not officially recognized by IANA.


title: Record producer

text: A record producer is a recording project's creative and technical leader, commanding studio time and coaching artists, and in popular genres typically creates the song's very sound and structure. The record producer, or simply the producer, is likened to film director and art director. The executive producer, on the other hand, enables the recording project through entrepreneurship, and an audio engineer operates the technology.


title: Record producer

text: Varying by project, the producer may or may not choose all of the artists. If employing only synthesized or sampled instrumentation, the producer may be the sole artist. Conversely, some artists do their own production. Some producers are their own engineers, operating the technology across the project: preproduction, recording, mixing, and mastering. Record producers' precursors were "A&R men", who likewise could blend entrepreneurial, creative, and technical roles, but often exercised scant creative influence, as record production still focused, into the 1950s, on simply improving the record's sonic match to the artists' own live performance.


title: Record producer

text: Advances in recording technology, especially the 1940s advent of tape recording—which Les Paul promptly innovated further to develop multitrack recording—and the 1950s rise of electronic instruments, turned record production into a specialty. In popular music, then, producers like George Martin, Phil Spector and Brian Eno led its evolution into its present use of elaborate techniques and unrealistic sounds, creating songs impossible to originate live. After the 1980s, production's move from analog to digital further expanded possibilities. By now, DAWs, or digital audio workstations, like Logic Pro and Pro Tools, turn an ordinary computer into a production console, whereby a solitary novice can become a skilled producer in a thrifty home studio. In the 2010s, efforts began to increase the prevalence of producers and engineers who are women, heavily outnumbered by men and prominently accoladed only in classical music.


title: Record producer

text: As a broad project, the creation of a music recording may be split across three specialists: the executive producer, who oversees business partnerships and financing, the vocal producer or vocal arranger, who aids vocal performance via expert critique and coaching of vocal technique, and the record producer or music producer, who, often called simply the producer, directs the overall creative process of recording the song in its final mix.


title: Record producer

text: The record producer's roles can include gathering ideas, composing music, choosing session musicians, proposing changes to song arrangements, coaching the performers, controlling sessions, supervising the audio mixing, and, in some cases, supervising the audio mastering. A producer may give creative control to the artists themselves, taking a supervisory or advisory role instead. As to qualifying for a Grammy nomination, the Recording Academy defines a producer:The person who has overall creative and technical control of the entire recording project, and the individual recording sessions that are part of that project. He or she is present in the recording studio or at the location recording and works directly with the artist and engineer. The producer makes creative and aesthetic decisions that realize both the artist's and label's goals in the creation of musical content. Other duties include, but are not limited to; keeping budgets and schedules, adhering to deadlines, hiring musicians, singers, studios and engineers, overseeing other staffing needs and editing (Classical projects).


title: Record producer

text: The producer often selects and collaborates with a mixing engineer, who focuses on the especially technological aspects of the recording process, namely, operating the electronic equipment and blending the raw, recorded tracks of the chosen performances, whether vocal or instrumental, into a <nowiki>"mix", either stereo or surround sound. Then a mastering engineer further adjusts this recording for distribution on the chosen media. A producer may work on only one or two songs or on an artist's entire album, helping develop the album'</nowiki>s overall vision. The record producers may also take on the role of executive producer, managing the budget, schedules, contracts, and negotiations.


title: Record producer

text: In the 1880s, the record industry began by simply having the artist perform at a phonograph. In 1924, the trade journal "Talking Machine World", covering the phonography and record industry, reported that Eddie King, Victor Records' manager of the "New York artist and repertoire department", had planned a set of recordings in Los Angeles. Later, folklorist Archie Green called this perhaps the earliest printed use of "A&R man". Actually, it says neither "A&R man" nor even "A&R", an initialism perhaps coined by "Billboard" magazine in 1946, and entering wide use in the late 1940s.


title: Record producer

text: In the 1920s and 1930s, A&R executives, like Ben Selvin at Columbia Records, Nathaniel Shilkret at Victor Records, and Bob Haring at Brunswick Records became the precursors of record producers, supervising recording and often leading session orchestras. During the 1940s, major record labels increasingly opened official A&R departments, whose roles included supervision of recording. Meanwhile, independent recording studios opened, helping originate "record producer" as a specialty. But despite a tradition of some A&R men writing music, "record production" still referred to just the manufacturing of record discs.


title: Record producer

text: After World War II, pioneering A&R managers who transitioned influentially to record production as now understood, while sometimes owning independent labels, include J. Mayo Williams and John Hammond. Upon moving from Columbia Records to Mercury Records, Hammond appointed Mitch Miller to lead Mercury's popular recordings in New York. Miller then produced country-pop crossover hits by Patti Page and by Frankie Laine, moved from Mercury to Columbia, and became a leading A&R man of the 1950s.


title: Record producer

text: During the decade, A&R executives increasingly directed songs' sonic signatures, although many still simply teamed singers with musicians, while yet others exercised virtually no creative influence. The term "record producer" in its current meaning—the creative director of song production—appearing in a 1953 issue of "Billboard" magazine, became widespread in the 1960s. Still, a formal distinction was elusive for some time more. A&R managers might still be creative directors, like William "Mickey" Stevenson, hired by Berry Gordy, at the Motown record label.


title: Record producer

text: In 1947, the American market gained audio recording onto magnetic tape. At the record industry's 1880s dawn, rather, recording was done by phonograph, etching the sonic waveform vertically "into" a cylinder. By the 1930s, a gramophone etched it laterally "across" a disc. Constrained in tonal range, whether bass or treble, and in dynamic range, records made a grand, concert piano sound like a small, upright piano, and maximal duration was four and a half minutes. Selections and performance were often altered accordingly, and playing this disc—the wax master—destroyed it. The finality often caused anxiety that restrained performance to prevent error. In the 1940s, during World War II, the Germans refined audio recording onto magnetic tape—uncapping recording duration and allowing immediate playback, rerecording, and editing—a technology that premised emergence of record producers in their current roles.


title: Record producer

text: Early in the recording industry, a record was attained by simply having all of the artists perform together live in one take. In 1945, by recording a musical element while playing a previously recorded record, Les Paul developed a recording technique called "sound on sound". By this, the final recording could be built piece by piece and tailored, effecting an editing process. In one case, Paul produced a song via 500 recorded discs. But, besides the tedium of this process, it serially degraded the sound quality of previously recorded elements, rerecorded as ambient sound. Yet in 1948, Paul adopted tape recording, enabling truly multitrack recording by a new technique, "overdubbing".


title: Record producer

text: To enable overdubbing, Paul revised the tape recorder itself by adding a second playback head, and terming it the "preview head". Joining the preexisting recording head, erase head, and playback head, the preview head allows the artist to hear the extant recording over headphones playing it in synchrony, "in sync", with the present performance being recorded alone on an isolated track. This isolation of multiple tracks enables countless mixing possibilities. Producers began recording initially only the "bed tracks"—the rhythm section, including the bassline, drums, and rhythm guitar—whereas vocals and instrument solos could be added later. A horn section, for example, could record a week later, and a string section another week later. A singer could perform her own backup vocals, or a guitarist could play 15 layers.


title: Record producer

text: Across the 1960s, popular music increasingly switched from acoustic instruments, like piano, upright bass, acoustic guitar, and brass instruments, to electronic instruments, like electric guitars, keyboards, and synthesizers, employing instrument amplifiers and speakers. These could mimic acoustic instruments or create utterly new sounds. Soon, by combining the capabilities of tape, multitrack recording, and electronic instruments, producers like Phil Spector, George Martin, and Joe Meek rendered sounds unattainable live. Similarly, in jazz fusion, Teo Macero, producing Miles Davis's 1970 album "Bitches Brew", spliced sections of extensive improvisation sessions.


title: Record producer

text: In the 1960s, rock acts like the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and the Kinks produced some of their own songs, although many such songs are officially credited to specialist producers. Yet especially influential was the Beach Boys, whose band leader Brian Wilson took over from his father Murry within a couple of years after the band's commercial breakthrough. By 1964, Wilson had taken Spector's techniques to unseen sophistication. Wilson alone produced all Beach Boy recordings between 1963 and 1967. Using multiple studios and multiple attempts of instrumental and vocal tracks, Wilson selected the best combinations of performance and audio quality, and used tape editing to assemble a composite performance.


title: Record producer

text: The 1980s advent of digital processes and formats rapidly replaced analog processes and formats, namely, tape and vinyl. Although recording onto quality tape, at least half an inch wide and traveling 15 inches per second, had limited "tape hiss" to silent sections, digital's higher signal-to-noise ratio, SNR, abolished it. Digital also imparted to the music a perceived "pristine" sound quality, if also a loss of analog recordings' perceived "warm" quality and bass better rounded. Yet whereas editing tape media requires physically locating the target audio on the ribbon, cutting there, and splicing pieces, editing digital media offers inarguable advantages in ease, efficiency, and possibilities.


title: Record producer

text: In the 1990s, digital production reached affordable home computers via production software. By now, recording and mixing are often centralized in DAWs, digital audio workstations—for example, Pro Tools, Logic Pro, Ableton, Cubase, Reason, and FL Studio—for which plugins, by third parties, effect virtual studio technology. DAWs fairly standard in the industry are Logic Pro and Pro Tools. Physical devices involved include the main mixer, MIDI controllers to communicate among equipment, the recording device itself, and perhaps effects gear that is outboard. Yet literal recording is sometimes still analog, onto tape, whereupon the raw recording is converted to a digital signal for processing and editing, as some producers still find audio advantages to recording onto tape.


title: Record producer

text: Conventionally, tape is more forgiving of overmodulation, whereby dynamic peaks exceed the maximal recordable signal level: tape's limitation, a physical property, is magnetic capacity, which tapers offs, smoothing the overmodulated waveform even at a signal nearly 15 decibels too "hot", whereas a digital recording is ruined by harsh distortion of "clipping" at any overshoot. In digital recording, however, a recent advancement, 32-bit float, enables DAWs to undo clipping. Still, some criticize digital instruments and workflows for excess automation, allegedly impairing creative or sonic control. In any case, as production technology has drastically changed, so have the knowledge demands, although DAWs enables novices, even teenagers at home, to learn production independently. Some have attained professional competence before ever working with an artist.


title: Record producer

text: In the 2000s, with the advent of technology that made traditional record production accessible, especially with hip hop beatmaking and electronic music. Within these genres, the term producer is applied to a number of roles and has popularized the use of more niche terms and credits including executive producer, co-producer, assistant producer, and additional and miscellaneous production to differentiate contributions.


title: Record producer

text: Among female record producers, Sylvia Moy was the first at Motown, Gail Davies the first on Nashville's Music Row, and Ethel Gabriel, with RCA, the first at a major record label. Lillian McMurry, owning Trumpet Records, produced influential blues records. Meanwhile, Wilma Cozart Fine produced hundreds of records for Mercury Records' classical division. For classical production, three women have won Grammy awards, and Judith Sherman's 2015 win was her fifth. Yet in nonclassical, no woman has won Producer of the Year, awarded since 1975 and only one even nominated for a record not her own, Linda Perry. After Lauren Christy's 2004 nomination, Linda Perry's 2019 nomination was the next for a woman. On why no woman had ever won it, Perry commented, "I just don't think there are that many women interested."


title: Record producer

text: Across the decades, many female artists have produced their own music. For instance, artists Kate Bush, Madonna, Mariah Carey, Janet Jackson, Beyoncé, Lana Del Rey, Taylor Swift, and Lorde have produced or coproduced and Ariana Grande who produces and arranges her vocals as well as being an audio engineer. Still among specialists, despite some prominent women, including Missy Elliott in hip hop and Sylvia Massy in rock, the vast majority have been men. Early in the 2010s, asked for insights that she herself had gleaned as a woman who has specialized successfully in the industry, Wendy Page remarked, "The difficulties are usually very short-lived. Once people realize that you can do your job, sexism tends to lower its ugly head." Still, when tasked to explain her profession's sex disparity, Page partly reasoned that record labels, dominated by men, have been, she said, "mistrustful of giving a woman the reins of an immense, creative project like making a record." Ultimately, the reasons are multiple and not fully clear, although prominently proposed factors include types of sexism and scarcity of female role models in the profession.


title: Record producer

text: Women producers known for producing records not their own include Sonia Pottinger, Sylvia Robinson and Carla Olson.


title: Record producer

text: In January 2018, a research team led by Stacy L. Smith, founder and director of the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, based in the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, issued a report, estimating that in the prior several years, about 2% of popular songs' producers were female. Also that month, "Billboard" magazine queried, "Where are all the female music producers?" Upon the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative's second annual report, released in February 2019, its department at USC reported, "2018 saw an outcry from artists, executives and other music industry professionals over the lack of women in music" and "the plight of women in music", where women were allegedly being "stereotyped, sexualized, and shut out". Also in February 2019, the Recording Academy's Task Force on Diversity and Inclusion announced an initiative whereby over 200 artists and producers—ranging from Cardi B and Taylor Swift to Maroon 5 and Quincy Jones—agreed to consider at least two women for each producer or engineer position. The academy's website, "Grammy.com", announced, "This initiative is the first step in a broader effort to improve those numbers and increase diversity and inclusion for all in the music industry."


title: Sesame

text: Sesame ( or ; "Sesamum indicum") is a flowering plant in the genus "Sesamum", also called benne. Numerous wild relatives occur in Africa and a smaller number in India. It is widely naturalized in tropical regions around the world and is cultivated for its edible seeds, which grow in pods. World production in 2018 was , with Sudan, Myanmar, and India as the largest producers.


title: Sesame

text: Sesame seed is one of the oldest oilseed crops known, domesticated well over 3,000 years ago. "Sesamum" has many other species, most being wild and native to sub-Saharan Africa. "S. indicum," the cultivated type, originated in India. It tolerates drought conditions well, growing where other crops fail. Sesame has one of the highest oil contents of any seed. With a rich, nutty flavor, it is a common ingredient in cuisines around the world. Like other foods, it can trigger allergic reactions in some people.


title: Sesame

text: The word "sesame" is from Latin "sesamum" and Greek σήσαμον : "sēsamon"; which in turn are derived from ancient Semitic languages, e.g., Akkadian "šamaššamu". From these roots, words with the generalized meaning "oil, liquid fat" were derived.


title: Sesame

text: The word "benne" was first recorded to be used in English in 1769 and comes from Gullah "benne" which itself derives from Malinke "bĕne."


title: Sesame

text: Sesame seed is considered to be the oldest oilseed crop known to humanity. The genus has many species, and most are wild. Most wild species of the genus "Sesamum" are native to sub-Saharan Africa. "S. indicum," the cultivated type, originated in India.


title: Sesame

text: Archaeological remnants of charred sesame dating to about 3500-3050 BCE suggest sesame was domesticated in the Indian subcontinent at least 5500 years ago. It has been claimed that trading of sesame between Mesopotamia and the Indian subcontinent occurred by 2000 BC. It is possible that the Indus Valley civilization exported sesame oil to Mesopotamia, where it was known as "ilu" in Sumerian and "ellu" in Akkadian.


title: Sesame

text: Some reports claim sesame was cultivated in Egypt during the Ptolemaic period, while others suggest the New Kingdom. Egyptians called it "sesemt", and it is included in the list of medicinal drugs in the scrolls of the "Ebers Papyrus" dated to be over 3600 years old. Excavations of King Tutankhamen uncovered baskets of sesame among other grave goods, suggesting that sesame was present in Egypt by 1350 BC. Archeological reports indicate that sesame was grown and pressed to extract oil at least 2750 years ago in the empire of Urartu. Others believe it may have originated in Ethiopia.


title: Sesame

text: Historically, sesame was favored for its ability to grow in areas that do not support the growth of other crops. It is also a robust crop that needs little farming support—it grows in drought conditions, in high heat, with residual moisture in soil after monsoons are gone or even when rains fail or when rains are excessive. It was a crop that could be grown by subsistence farmers at the edge of deserts, where no other crops grow. Sesame has been called a survivor crop.


title: Sesame

text: Sesame is an perennial plant growing tall, with opposite leaves long with an entire margin; they are broad lanceolate, to broad, at the base of the plant, narrowing to just broad on the flowering stem. The flowers are tubular, long, with a four-lobed mouth. The flowers may vary in colour, with some being white, blue, or purple.


title: Sesame

text: Sesame seeds occur in many colours depending on the cultivar. The most traded variety of sesame is off-white coloured. Other common colours are buff, tan, gold, brown, reddish, gray, and black. The colour is the same for the hull and the fruit.


title: Sesame

text: Sesame fruit is a capsule, normally pubescent, rectangular in section, and typically grooved with a short, triangular beak. The length of the fruit capsule varies from , its width varies between , and the number of loculi varies from four to 12. The fruit naturally splits open (dehisces) to release the seeds by splitting along the septa from top to bottom or by means of two apical pores, depending on the varietal cultivar. The degree of dehiscence is of importance in breeding for mechanised harvesting, as is the insertion height of the first capsule.


title: Sesame

text: Sesame seeds are small. Their sizes vary with the thousands of varieties known. Typically, the seeds are about 3 to 4 mm long by 2 mm wide and 1 mm thick (). The seeds are ovate, slightly flattened, and somewhat thinner at the eye of the seed (hilum) than at the opposite end. The mass of 100 seeds is 0.203 g. The seed coat (testa) may be smooth or ribbed.


title: Sesame

text: Sesame varieties have adapted to many soil types. The high-yielding crops thrive best on well-drained, fertile soils of medium texture and neutral pH. However, these have a low tolerance for soils with high salt and water-logged conditions. Commercial sesame crops require 90 to 120 frost-free days. Warm conditions above favor growth and yields. While sesame crops can grow in poor soils, the best yields come from properly fertilized farms.


title: Sesame

text: Initiation of flowering is sensitive to photoperiod and sesame variety. The photoperiod also affects the oil content in sesame seed; increased photoperiod increases oil content. The oil content of the seed is inversely proportional to its protein content.


title: Sesame

text: Sesame is drought-tolerant, in part due to its extensive root system. However, it requires adequate moisture for germination and early growth. While the crop survives drought and the presence of excess water, the yields are significantly lower in either condition. Moisture levels before planting and flowering impact yield most.


title: Sesame

text: Most commercial cultivars of sesame are intolerant of water-logging. Rainfall late in the season prolongs growth and increases loss to dehiscence, when the seedpod shatters, scattering the seed. Wind can also cause shattering at harvest.


title: Sesame

text: Sesame seeds are protected by a capsule that bursts when the seeds are ripe. The time of this bursting, or "dehiscence", tends to vary, so farmers cut plants by hand and place them together in an upright position to continue ripening until all the capsules have opened. The discovery of an indehiscent mutant (analogous to nonshattering domestic grains) by Langham in 1943 began the work towards the development of a high-yielding, dehiscence-resistant variety. Although researchers have made significant progress in sesame breeding, harvest losses due to early dehiscence continue to limit domestic US production.Agronomists in Israel are working on modern cultivars of sesame that can be harvested by mechanical means.


title: Sesame

text: Since sesame is a small, flat seed, it is difficult to dry it after harvest because the small seed makes the movement of air around the seed difficult. Therefore, the seeds need to be harvested as dry as possible and stored at 6% moisture or less. If the seed is too moist, it can quickly heat up and become rancid.


title: Sesame

text: After harvesting, the seeds are usually cleaned and hulled. In some countries, once the seeds have been hulled, they are passed through an electronic color-sorting machine that rejects any discolored seeds to ensure perfect color, because sesame seeds with consistent appearance are perceived to be of better quality by consumers, and sell for a higher price.


title: Sesame

text: The white and other lighter-coloured sesame seeds are common in Europe, the Americas, West Asia, and the Indian subcontinent. The black and darker-coloured sesame seeds are mostly produced in China and Southeast Asia.


title: Sesame

text: In the United States most sesame is raised by farmers under contract to Sesaco, which also supplies proprietary seed.


title: Sesame

text: Japan is the world's largest sesame importer. Sesame oil, particularly from roasted seed, is an important component of Japanese cooking and traditionally the principal use of the seed. China is the second-largest importer of sesame, mostly oil-grade. China exports lower-priced food-grade sesame seeds, particularly to Southeast Asia. Other major importers are United States, Canada, Netherlands, Turkey, and France.


title: Sesame

text: Sesame exports sell across a wide price range. Quality perception, particularly how the seed looks, is a major pricing factor. Most importers who supply ingredient distributors and oil processors only want to purchase scientifically treated, properly cleaned, washed, dried, colour-sorted, size-graded, and impurity-free seeds with a guaranteed minimum oil content (not less than 40%) packed according to international standards. Seeds that do not meet these quality standards are considered unfit for export and are consumed locally. In 2008, by volume, premium prices, and quality, the largest exporter was India, followed by Ethiopia and Myanmar.


title: Sesame

text: In a amount, dried whole sesame seeds provide 573 calories and are composed of 5% water, 23% carbohydrates (including 12% dietary fiber), 50% fat, and 18% protein. A typical serving would be a tablespoon (9 grams), so nutrient content and % Daily Value (%DV) per serving would be approximately one-tenth of what is shown in the table.


title: Sesame

text: The byproduct that remains after oil extraction from sesame seeds, also called sesame oil meal, is rich in protein (35–50%) and is used as feed for poultry and livestock.


title: Sesame

text: As many seeds do, whole sesame seeds contain a significant amount of phytic acid, which is considered an antinutrient in that it binds to certain nutritional elements consumed at the same time, especially minerals, and prevents their absorption by carrying them along as they pass through the small intestine. Heating and cooking reduce the amount of the acid in the seeds.


title: Sesame

text: A meta-analysis showed that sesame consumption produced small reductions in both systolic and diastolic blood pressure; another demonstrated improvement in fasting blood glucose and hemoglobin A1c. Sesame oil studies reported a reduction of oxidative stress markers and lipid peroxidation.


title: Sesame

text: Sesame can trigger the same allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis, as seen with other food allergens. A cross-reactivity exists between sesame and peanuts, hazelnuts and almonds. In addition to food products derived from sesame seeds, such as "tahini" and sesame oil, persons with sesame allergies are encouraged to be aware of foods that may contain sesame, such as baked goods. In addition to food sources, individuals allergic to sesame have been warned that a variety of non-food sources may also trigger a reaction to sesame, including cosmetics and skin-care products.


title: Sesame

text: Prevalence of sesame allergy is on the order of 0.1-0.2%, but higher in countries in the Middle East and Asia where consumption is more common as part of traditional diets. In the United States, sesame allergy possibly affects 1.5 million individuals.


title: Sesame

text: Canada requires sesame labeling as an allergen. In the European Union, identifying the presence of sesame, along with 13 other foods, either as an ingredient or unintended contaminant in packaged food is compulsory. In the US, the "FASTER Act" was passed in April 2021, stipulating that labeling be mandatory, to be in effect January 1, 2023, making it the ninth required food ingredient.


title: Sesame

text: Contamination by "Salmonella", "E.coli", pesticides, or other pathogens may occur in large batches of sesame seeds, such as in September 2020 when high levels of a common industrial compound, ethylene oxide, was found in a 250-tonne shipment of sesame seeds from India. After detection in Belgium, recalls for dozens of products and stores were issued across the European Union, totaling some 50 countries. Products with an organic certification were also affected by the contamination. Regular governmental food inspection for sesame contamination, as for "Salmonella" and "E. coli" in tahini, hummus or seeds, has found that poor hygiene practices during processing are common sources and routes of contamination.


title: Sesame

text: Sesame seed is a common ingredient in various cuisines. It is used whole in cooking for its rich, nutty flavour. Sesame seeds are sometimes added to bread, including bagels and the tops of hamburger buns. They may be baked into crackers, often in the form of sticks. In Sicily and France, the seeds are eaten on bread ("ficelle sésame", sesame thread). In Greece, the seeds are also used in cakes.


title: Sesame

text: Fast-food restaurants use buns with tops sprinkled with sesame seeds. About 75% of Mexico's sesame crop is purchased by McDonald's for use in their sesame seed buns worldwide.


title: Sesame

text: Sesame seed cookies called Benne wafers, both sweet and savory, are popular in places such as Charleston, South Carolina. Sesame seeds, also called "benne", are believed to have been brought into 17th-century colonial America by West African slaves. The entirety of the sesame plant was used extensively in West African cuisine. The seeds were commonly used as a thickener in soups and puddings, or could be roasted and infused in water to produce a coffee-like drink. Sesame oil made from the seeds could be used as a substitute for butter, finding use as a shortening for making cakes. Moreover, the leaves on mature plants, which are rich in mucilage, can be used as a laxative as well as a treatment for dysentery and cholera. After arriving in North America, the plant was grown by slaves to serve as a subsistence staple as a nutritional supplement to their weekly rations. Since then, they have become part of various American cuisines.


title: Sesame

text: In Caribbean cuisine, sugar and white sesame seeds are combined into a bar resembling peanut brittle and sold in stores and street corners, like Bahamian Benny cakes.


title: Sesame

text: In Asia, sesame seeds are sprinkled onto some sushi-style foods. In Japan, whole seeds are found in many salads and baked snacks, and tan and black sesame seed varieties are roasted and used to make the flavouring "gomashio". East Asian cuisines, such as Chinese cuisine, use sesame seeds and oil in some dishes, such as "dim sum", sesame seed balls (Cantonese: "jin deui"), and the Vietnamese "bánh rán". Sesame flavour (through oil and roasted or raw seeds) is also used to marinate meat and vegetables. Chefs in tempura restaurants blend sesame and cottonseed oil for deep-frying.


title: Sesame

text: Sesame, or "simsim" as it is known in East Africa, is used in African cuisine. In Togo, the seeds are a main soup ingredient and in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and in the north of Angola, "wangila" is a dish of ground sesame, often served with smoked fish or lobster.


title: Sesame

text: Sesame seeds and oil are used extensively in India. In most parts of the country, sesame seeds mixed with heated jaggery, sugar, or palm sugar is made into balls and bars similar to peanut brittle or nut clusters and eaten as snacks. In Manipur, black sesame is used in the preparation of "chikki" and cold-pressed oil.


title: Sesame

text: Sesame seeds were commonly used as a thickener in soups and puddings, or could be roasted and infused in water to produce a coffee-like drink. Sesame oil made from the seeds could be used as a substitute for butter, finding use as a shortening for making cakes.


title: Sesame

text: Sesame is a common ingredient in many Middle Eastern cuisines. Sesame seeds are made into a paste called "tahini" (used in various ways, including "hummus bi tahini") and the Middle Eastern confection "halvah". Ground and processed, the seed is also used in sweet confections. Sesame is also a common component of the Levantine spice mixture "za'atar", popular throughout the Middle East.


title: Sesame

text: In Indian, Middle Eastern, and East Asian cuisines, popular confectionery are made from sesame mixed with honey or syrup and roasted into a sesame candy. In Japanese cuisine, "goma-dofu" is made from sesame paste and starch.


title: Sesame

text: Mexican cuisine and Salvadoran cuisine refers to sesame seeds as "ajonjolí". It is mainly used as a sauce additive, such as "mole" or "adobo". It is often also used to sprinkle over artisan breads and baked in traditional form to coat the smooth dough, especially on whole-wheat flatbreads or artisan nutrition bars, such as "alegrías".


title: Sesame

text: Sesame oil is sometimes used as a cooking oil in different parts of the world, though different forms have different characteristics for high-temperature frying. The "toasted" form of the oil (as distinguished from the "cold-pressed" form) has a distinctive pleasant aroma and taste, and is used as table condiment in some regions.


title: Sesame

text: In myths, the opening of the capsule releases the treasure of sesame seeds, as applied in the story of "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves" when the phrase "Open Sesame" magically opens a sealed cave. Upon ripening, sesame pods split, releasing a pop and possibly indicating the origin of this phrase.


title: Sesame

text: Sesame seeds are used conceptually in Hindi literature, in the proverbs ""til dharne ki jagah na hona", meaning a place so crowded that no room remains for a single seed of sesame, and ""in tilon men tel nahin", referring to a person who appears to be useful, but is selfish when the time for need comes, literally meaning 'no oil (is left) in this sesame'.


title: Controlled Substances Act

text: The Controlled Substances Act (CSA) is the statute establishing federal U.S. drug policy under which the manufacture, importation, possession, use, and distribution of certain substances is regulated. It was passed by the 91st United States Congress as Title II of the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970 and signed into law by President Richard Nixon. The Act also served as the national implementing legislation for the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs.