title: WWE Network

text: In October 2014, it was reported Mattel, Kmart, and Pepsi would begin advertising on the network starting the week of October 13. Wilson stated that although no commercial breaks will occur during scheduled programming, 30 second adverts would run in between shows, and that one 15 or 30-second advert would be shown prior to every fourth stream of on-demand content.


title: Sung Dong-il

text: Sung Dong-il (born April 27, 1967) is a South Korean actor. Sung made his acting debut in theater in 1987, then was recruited at the 1991 SBS open talent auditions. He rose to fame as the comic, Jeolla dialect-speaking character "Red Socks" in the television drama "Eun-shil", though he later tried to fight typecasting by playing the son of a chaebol tycoon in "Love in 3 Colors" and a university professor in "March". Following years of supporting roles in TV, Sung's film career was jumpstarted by hit romantic comedy "200 Pounds Beauty" in 2006. Subsequently, he became one of Korean cinema's most reliable supporting actors, displaying his comic skills and easy charm in films such as "Take Off", "Foxy Festival", "Children...", "The Suicide Forecast", and "The Client". He also had major roles in "The Suck Up Project: Mr. XXX-Kisser", 3D blockbuster "Mr. Go", and mystery-comedy "The Accidental Detective". On the small screen, Sung garnered praise as a villain in "The Slave Hunters", and a gruff but caring father in "Reply 1997" and its spin-offs "Reply 1994" and "Reply 1988".


title: Sung Dong-il

text: Sung gained a new surge of popularity in 2013 when he and his son Joon starred in "Dad! Where Are We Going?", a reality/variety show featuring five male celebrities and their children on camping missions; his daughter Bin also joined him for the show's second season.


title: Crystal Pepsi

text: Crystal Pepsi is a clear cola soft drink made by PepsiCo. It was initially released in the United States and Canada from 1992 to 1994. Online grassroots revival efforts prompted brief re-releases throughout the mid-2010s. It was briefly sold in the United Kingdom and Australia.


title: Crystal Pepsi

text: Its flavor resembles standard Pepsi, without caramel color, reportedly making it taste less "acidic".


title: Crystal Pepsi

text: A global marketing fad in the 1980s and 1990s called the Clear Craze equated clarity with purity, reaching basic retail markets with the reintroduction of Ivory soap with a marketing slogan of "99 and 44/100 percent pure". Meanwhile, soft drink sales boomed in the 1980s with popularization of diet drinks, but in 1991 slowed to a 1.8% growth rate. Pepsi-Cola North America CEO Craig Weatherup was ambitiously internally restructuring the company while launching a multi-faceted development and marketing plan to expand as a "total beverage company". This included the fast-growing and expandable New Age beverage market, with established competition from Clearly Canadian (reportedly having "built a new market in two years"), Nordic Mist, Snapple, and the waning Original New York Seltzer. PepsiCo was reportedly "a lot more free-thinking and willing to make errors ... [already having] made some very good errors".


title: Crystal Pepsi

text: PepsiCo's internal research already had "1,000 different product concepts", but its consumer research demanded a healthier variety of cola, which was the number one soft-drink segment at 60% and yet slowing. Food technologists knew that food color strongly affects flavor perceptions, associating light flavors with light colors. Pepsi's traditional caramel coloring adds body and flavor, and was replaced with "modified food starch" for body with a clear look. PepsiCo devised 3,000 formulations of a new clear drink, under consumer testing. A 12 ounce serving of Crystal Pepsi has 134 calories versus Pepsi's 154 calories20 fewer.


title: Crystal Pepsi

text: On April 13, 1992, Crystal Pepsi was launched in test markets of Dallas, Providence, Salt Lake City, and Colorado to a positive response. One month in test markets showed an unusually and unexpectedly strong launch due to product uniqueness and unprecedented consumer awareness. In Colorado, interviews of 100,000 customers further revealed demand for Diet Crystal Pepsi, which was launched there in October.


title: Crystal Pepsi

text: Crystal Pepsi was launched nationwide in the US on December 14, 1992. In its first year, it captured one full percentage point of U.S. soft drink sales, or approximately (equivalent to $ in ). Coca-Cola followed by launching Tab Clear on December 14, 1992. The Coca-Cola Company had produced a clear cola in the past, produced as a secret one-off made as a particular political favor between President Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Soviet Union in the 1940s. Clear Coca-Cola, named White Coke, was produced in order to disguise the beverage as vodka.


title: Crystal Pepsi

text: By late 1993, Crystal Pepsi was discontinued, and the final batches were delivered to retailers during the first few months of 1994. Several months later, a reformulated citrus-cola hybrid called Crystal From Pepsi was briefly released.


title: Crystal Pepsi

text: In 2005, Pepsi Clear was sold in Mexico for a limited time. On August 22, 2008, PepsiCo filed for trademarks on the product names "Pepsi Clear" and "Diet Pepsi Clear".


title: Crystal Pepsi

text: Crystal Pepsi was marketed as a caffeine-free "clear alternative" to normal colas. Its official slogan was "You've never seen a taste like this".


title: Crystal Pepsi

text: Gary Hemphill, public relations manager for Pepsico Inc, said "The basic philosophy behind Crystal Pepsi is this: Crystal Pepsi is not Pepsi with the color stripped out. It's a totally new product. It tastes differently than Pepsi [... which we married] to some of the attributes of the so-called New Age type products: lighter and less sweet tasting, clear, caffeine-free, all natural flavors, and no preservatives." A senior vice president relayed expectation of forging "an entirely new category that really transcends New Age". Test marketing suggested that 80% of sales would come from non-Pepsi consumers. The goal was to capture 2% of the retail soft drink market by the end of 1993, or about , but without harming the flagship Pepsi product.


title: Crystal Pepsi

text: The marketing campaign included a teaser ad during the television coverage of the inauguration of the US President and of Super Bowl advertisements. The company invented the world's first photo-realistic, computer-generated bus wrap printing. A series of television advertisements featuring Van Halen's hit song "Right Now" premiered on national television on January 31, 1993, during Super Bowl XXVII. This advertisement was parodied by "Saturday Night Live" as Crystal Gravy. Full-sized sample bottles were distributed with the Sunday paper deliveries such as the "Boston Globe" in Massachusetts.


title: Crystal Pepsi

text: According to Coca-Cola's chief marketing officer, Sergio Zyman, Tab Clear was released at the same time, as an intentional "kamikaze" effort to create an unpopular beverage that was positioned as an analogue of Crystal Pepsi in order to "kill both in the process". The "born to die" strategy included using the poor-performing Tab brand rather than Coke, labeling the product as a "sugar free" diet drink to confuse consumers into thinking Crystal Pepsi had no sugar, and marketing the product as if it were "medicinal". Zyman said "Pepsi spent an enormous amount of money on the brand and, regardless, we killed it. Both of them were dead within six months."


title: Crystal Pepsi

text: Yum! Brands chairman David C. Novak is credited with introducing the Crystal Pepsi concept. In a December 2007 interview, he reminisced:


title: Crystal Pepsi

text: In its first year, Crystal Pepsi captured 1% of U.S. soft drink sales, or approximately . "Beverage Digest" said "This is another instance where Pepsi has really shown leadership to strike out in a new direction." Crystal Pepsi was named Best New Product of the Year for 1992 by Richard Saunders International, based on consumer preference polls among 16,000 new grocery products, scoring higher than any other beverage in the poll's history. Robert McMath, editor of "Brand Week", said that "new sells [and] clarity equals purity" but he doubted the strategy of positioning such a new and different product directly alongside the old flagship product.


title: Crystal Pepsi

text: In September 2014, following a Facebook campaign by consumers, The Coca-Cola Company reintroduced the soft drink Surge, leading to speculation in the public and media about the return of Crystal Pepsi. In March 2015, an online grassroots campaign to bring back Crystal Pepsi began. The following month, a second, separate petition was led by an online competitive eating personality, Kevin Strahle, also known as The L.A. Beast, who had made a 2013 viral video of himself drinking a 1990s vintage bottle of Crystal Pepsi. This generated enough interest for a telephone and email campaign, garnering around 37,000 Change.org petition signatures, tens of thousands of Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram tagged comments, 15 billboards erected around the Los Angeles area, and a commitment to ride a mobile billboard truck at Pepsi's headquarters in Purchase, New York with a gathering of supporters at a park nearby on June 15 and 16, 2015.


title: Crystal Pepsi

text: The interest from this campaign led to an official response to Strahle by PepsiCo on June 8, 2015: "We've had customers ask us to bring back their favorite products before, but never with your level of enthusiasm and humor. We're lucky to have a Pepsi superfan like you on our side. We definitely hear you and your followers and we think you'll all be happy with what's in store. Stay tuned." In mid-2016, Crystal Pepsi was released across the United States and Canada, promoted with a retro styled website and marketing video, including "The Crystal Pepsi Trail" browser game as an officially licensed parody of the classic "The Oregon Trail".


title: Democracy in China

text: The debate over democracy in China has been a major ideological battleground in Chinese politics since the 19th century. China is not a Western-style liberal democracy. The Chinese government and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) state that China is democratic nonetheless. Many foreign and some domestic observers categorize China as an authoritarian one-party state. Some characterize it as a dictatorship.


title: Democracy in China

text: The Constitution of the People's Republic of China (PRC) states that its form of government is "people's democratic dictatorship". The Constitution also holds that China is a one-party state that is governed by the CCP. This gives the CCP a total monopoly of political power which it frequently exercises. All political opposition is illegal. Currently there are eight political parties in China other than the CCP that are legal, but all have to accept CCP primacy to exist. The CCP says that China is a "socialist democracy", in which the CCP is the central authority and acts in the interest of the people.


title: Democracy in China

text: China is internationally considered to be amongst the least democratic countries in the world. Freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and freedom of religion are all severely restricted by the government. The general Chinese public has virtually no say on how the top leaders of the country are elected. Censorship is widespread and dissent is harshly punished in the country.


title: Democracy in China

text: During a visit to Europe in 2014, CCP general secretary Xi Jinping said that a multi-party system would not work for China. He said China had experimented in the past with various political systems, including multi-party democracy, warning that copying foreign political or development models could be catastrophic because of its unique historical and social conditions. Currently, Xi has strengthened the CCP's control over the government and in 2018 amended the party and state constitutions to include Xi Jinping Thought, described as the next stage of socialism with Chinese characteristics. In that same year, the Chinese government has also abolished term limits for the presidency, allowing Xi to rule for life.


title: Democracy in China

text: The first introduction of the concept of modern democracy into China is credited to exiled Chinese writer Liang Qichao. In 1895, he participated in protests in Beijing for increased popular participation during the late Qing dynasty, the last ruling dynasty of China. It was the first of its kind in modern Chinese history. After escaping to Japan following the government's clampdown on anti-Qing protesters, Liang Qichao translated and commented on the works of Hobbes, Rousseau, Locke, Hume, Bentham and many other western political philosophers. He published his essays in a series of journals that easily found an audience among Chinese intelligentsia hungering for an explanation of why China, once a formidable empire of its own, was now on the verge of being dismembered by foreign powers. In interpreting Western democracy through the prism of his strongly Confucian background, Liang shaped the ideas of democracy that would be used throughout the next century. Liang favored gradual reform to turn China into a constitutional monarchy with democracy. The goal of the Hundred Days' Reform was to reform China into such as system, but it was rapidly reversed in the Wuxu Coup.


title: Democracy in China

text: Liang's great rival among progressive intellectuals was Dr. Sun Yat-sen, a republican revolutionary. Sun felt that democracy would be impossible as long as the Qing monarchy still existed. Democracy was part of his platform, the Three Principles of the People (三民主義) – the principle of the people under 1 nation (nationalism), the principle of the people's rights (democracy), and the principle of the people's livelihood and well-being (civility, decency and respect). Like Liang, Sun agreed that democracy, or at least universal suffrage, could not happen overnight in a country with high illiteracy rates and a lack of political consciousness. Sun's Three Stages of Revolution called for a period of "political tutelage" where people would be educated before elections can occur.


title: Democracy in China

text: Responding to civil failures and discontent, the Qing Imperial Court responded by organizing elections. China's first modern elections were organized by Yuan Shikai for Tianjin's county council in 1907. In 1909, 21 of 22 provinces, with the exception being Xinjiang, held elections for provincial assemblies and municipal councils. Requirements were strict; only those that passed the imperial exams, worked in government or military, or owned 5000 yuan of property may vote or run for office. This essentially limited the electorate to the gentry class. Hundreds of thousands voted and the winners were overwhelmingly constitutional monarchists, followers of Liang Qichao. The provincial assemblies elected half of the 200 member national assembly, the other half was selected by regent Prince Chun. All of these assemblies became hotbeds of dissent against the Qing as they were protected by freedom of speech. In 1909, the Qing government held parliamentary elections.


title: Democracy in China

text: When the 1911 Revolution began, it was the provincial assemblies that provided legitimacy to the rebels by declaring their independence from the Qing Empire. The national assembly also issued an ultimatum to the Qing court. Delegates from the provincial assemblies were sent to Nanjing to publicly legitimize the authority of the provisional government of the Republic of China founded on 1 January 1912. They later also formed the provisional senate. The limited acts passed by this government included the formal abdication of the Qing dynasty and some economic initiatives.


title: Democracy in China

text: In late 1912, national elections were held with an enlarged electorate, albeit still small proportionally to the national population. Sun's Nationalist Party dominated both houses of the National Assembly. Song Jiaoren, the incoming Nationalist prime minister, was assassinated in March 1913 before the assembly's first session. A police investigation implicated sitting prime minister Zhao Bingjun while popular belief was that provisional president Yuan Shikai was behind it. This led to the failed Second Revolution against Yuan. Victorious, Yuan forced the National Assembly to elect him president for a five-year term then purged it of Nationalists. Without a quorum, the assembly was dissolved.


title: Democracy in China

text: After Yuan's death in 1916, the National Assembly reconvened until it was dissolved again the following year by Zhang Xun's coup attempt to restore the Qing. Prime Minister Duan Qirui refused to reconvene the National Assembly, opting instead to hold elections for a new assembly more favorable to him. As a result, a rump of the old assembly moved to Guangzhou to start a rival government in southern China. In northern China, 17 provinces elected a new assembly dominated by Duan's Anfu Club in 1918. This new assembly was dissolved following Duan's defeat in the Zhili–Anhui War of 1920.


title: Democracy in China

text: President Xu Shichang organized elections for a third assembly in 1921, but with only 11 provinces voting it never had a quorum and thus never convened. That was the last attempt to hold national elections until 1947. All assemblies were dissolved after the Nationalists' Northern Expedition.


title: Democracy in China

text: The formation of the Nationalist one-party state in 1927 implemented the late Sun's "political tutelage" program, which forbade elections until the people were considered properly educated. All other parties were kept out of government until 1937 when the impending Second Sino-Japanese War led to the United Front and the formation of the People's Political Council which included the smaller parties. In 1940, partly in response to tensions in the United Front, Mao Zedong offered the new CCP doctrine, New Democracy. New Democracy was an intermediary stage unlike western parliamentary, electoral democracy but not yet communism. After the war, the Nationalist's "political tutelage" ended with the promulgation of the Constitution of the Republic of China. The 1947 National Assembly and 1948 legislative elections were boycotted by the Communists which held most of northern China. As a result, the Nationalists and their junior coalition partners, the Chinese Youth Party and China Democratic Socialist Party, won.


title: Democracy in China

text: In 1945, after the Surrender of Japan, governance of Taiwan was transferred to the Republic of China. The ceding of Taiwan was formalized under the Treaty of Taipei in 1952. After the governmental exodus from mainland China to the island of Taiwan in 1949, martial law was imposed following the February 28 Incident in 1947. The period of martial law lasted for 38 years and 57 days from 19 May 1949 to 15 July 1987. During this period, The Republic of China was governed as a "de facto" one-party state under the Kuomintang although it maintained its status as a "de jure" parliamentary republic.


title: Democracy in China

text: On 28 September 1986, the Democratic Progressive Party was founded as an alternate party to the Kuomintang. Since the lifting of martial law in 1987, the ROC has had two major political parties, the Kuomintang and the Democratic Progressive Party. Since then, smaller parties have split from the two main parties and formed as new groups, largely within the Pan-Blue Coalition and Pan-Green Coalition. Until 1996, the President of the Republic of China was elected by the National Assembly. In 1996, the Republic of China electoral code was amended to allow for direct election of the President via plurality voting.


title: Democracy in China

text: The "Pan-Blue Coalition" consists of the Kuomintang, the People First Party (PFP), New Party (CNP), and Minkuotang (MKT). The Pan-Blue parties traditionally favor Chinese unification under a democratic China, with some moving towards a position supporting the present status quo with eventual unification with China.


title: Democracy in China

text: The "Pan-Green Coalition" consists of the Democratic Progressive Party, Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU), Taiwan Independence Party (TAIP), and Taiwan Constitution Association (TCA). The Pan-Green traditionally favor Taiwanese independence.


title: Democracy in China

text: China continuously elucidates socialist democracy with Chinese characteristics, working against reactionary and anti-democracy movements within and without, but explicitly distinguishing itself from the liberal democratic system, which has been concluded as unfit to China's unique conditions. In PRC definition, democracy has meant the Marxist–Leninist concepts of people's democratic dictatorship and democratic centralism. In this viewpoint, CCP acts as the representative of the Chinese public. CCP general secretary Xi Jinping has additionally coined the term "whole-process people's democracy" (), also called "whole-process democracy" (, ) which he said "put the people as masters" and that in it "all major legislative decisions are made only after democratic deliberations and thorough procedures to ensure sound and democratic decision-making". He said that "whole-process democracy" had four pillars:


title: Democracy in China

text: At the key to claims that China is democratic is the claim the CCP itself is inherently democratic. In this viewpoint, decisions by the central CCP leadership are discussed at all levels in "democratic life meetings" under the principle of democratic centralism. Additionally, CCP claims that it considers other shareholders and interests through "consultative democracy" (), as long as they do not challenge the democratically chosen priorities of the CCP, with the main channel for this being the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC). The CPPCC is an institutional component of the CCP's "people's democracy" and united front strategy, which provides a "seat" for the eight small legally-permitted parties and independent nonparty "friends."


title: Democracy in China

text: Another claim is that the CCP practices intra-party democracy, which has been repeatedly emphasized and expounded by the CCP as an alternative to liberal democratic ideals characterized by multiparty elections and competition.


title: Democracy in China

text: China practices electoral democracy with regard to its people's congresses, a practice that began in the communist areas during the Chinese Civil War. The operation of people's congresses were set out in the Electoral Law of 1953 and have been subsequently revised. Currently there are five levels of people's congresses. From more to less local, they are: (1) people's congresses in villages, minority nationality townships, and towns; (2) people's congresses of cities that are not sub-divided, municipal districts, counties, and autonomous counties; (3) people's congresses in sub-districts of larger cities and in autonomous prefectures; (4) people's congresses in provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities directly administered by China's central government; and (5) the National People's Congress. Direct elections occur at the two most local levels, while the members at the higher levels are indirectly elected, i.e., elected by those elected in the lower levels. The National People's Congress is officially China's highest organ of state power. However, nominations at all levels are controlled by the CCP, and CCP's leading position is enshrined in the state constitution, meaning that the elections have little way of influencing politics. Additionally, elections are not pluralistic as no opposition is allowed.


title: Democracy in China

text: The People's Republic of China (PRC) was initially based on Mao's concept of "New Democracy", not the immediate "dictatorship of the proletariat". New Democracy incorporates a coalition of classes subsumed under the leadership of the Communist Party and the working class. This coalition of classes is symbolized by the four smaller stars on the flag of China: workers, peasants, intellectuals, and the national bourgeoisie. Soon, however, Mao called for establishing the "people's democratic dictatorship", and it has since been reflected in the Chinese constitution.


title: Democracy in China

text: In the Democracy Wall movement of 1978 to 1979, movement participants argued that "democracy" was the means to resolve conflict between the bureaucratic class and the people, although the nature of the proposed democratic institutions was a major source of disagreement among participants. A majority viewed the movement as part of a struggle between correct and incorrect notions of Marxism. Many participants advocated classical Marxist views that drew on the Paris Commune for inspiration. The Democracy Wall movement also included non-Marxists and anti-Marxists, although these participants were a minority.


title: Democracy in China

text: Starting in the 1980s, in the period of Opening and Reform, the government organized village elections in which several candidates would run. However, each candidate was chosen or approved by the Party. As the party was the only formal political organization existing at the time, the country's industrial development was still ongoing, and foreign vilification was at an all-time high, elections were organized by the party as a matter of national security.


title: Democracy in China

text: Leaders of the post-Mao reforms in the 1980s argued that the Party's record under Mao was bad, but that the Party reformed without being forced. The American political scientist Andrew Nathan concluded that "the reforms aimed to change China from a terror-based, totalitarian dictatorship to a 'mature,' administered dictatorship of the Post-Stalinist Soviet or Eastern European type." "Democracy" would not involve elections or participation in decision making but "the rule of law", which was based on procedural regularity in the exercise of power.


title: Democracy in China

text: In the spring of 1989, student leaders of the Chinese Democracy Movement, with western support, expressed demands for democracy in terms which deliberately recalled the demands of the May Fourth Movement, which led to the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre. Fringe leaders such as Liu Xiaobo and Fang Lizhi supported their calls for participation in government and procedures to fight corruption.


title: Democracy in China

text: In December 2008, more than 350 intellectual and cultural leaders, including Liu Xiaobo, issued Charter 08.


title: Democracy in China

text: Chinese premier Wen Jiabao called for more democracy in 2011, having generally been regarded as a political reformer during his career. However, Wu Bangguo, chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, said in 2011 that "we have made a solemn declaration that we will not employ a system of multiple parties holding office in rotation", having said similar remarks during his career. This was reported by BBC News of showing a split in China's leadership, although the general leadership is said to weigh closer to Wu's comment.


title: Democracy in China

text: After Xi Jinping became CCP general secretary in 2012, Amnesty International said that human rights in China have become worse. In 2013, a CCP memo called "Document Number 9" was leaked, which warned against "Western constitutional liberal democracy" along with other Western ideas. Human rights abuses are rejected by the government, which insists the country is run according to law. In 2021, in response to the Summit for Democracy held by US president Joe Biden, the State Council of China released a white paper called "" which praised China's whole-process democracy, said that there are many ways to achieve democracy and disparaged American "pseudo-performative-democracy". The white paper describes China's position that "There is no single road to democracy. The true barrier to democracy lies not in different models of democracy, but in arrogance, prejudice and hostility towards other countries’ attempts to explore their own paths to democracy, and in assumed superiority and the determination to impose one’s own model of democracy on others."


title: Democracy in China

text: China has consistently been ranked amongst the lowest as an "authoritarian regime" by the Economist Intelligence Unit's Democracy Index, ranking at 148th out of 167 countries in 2021.


title: Democracy in China

text: As European colonies, Hong Kong and Macau were denied democratic governments until very late in the colonial period. Official memos from CCP leaders, threatening the British government if they were to hold elections in Hong Kong, were repeatedly sent from the 1950s onwards. Hong Kong got its first elections in the 1980s, and Macau in the 1990s.


title: Democracy in China

text: Both Hong Kong and Macau have legislatures; 35 of Hong Kong's 70 legislators are directly elected, as are 14 of Macau's 33. Also, like grassroots elections in China, Hong Kong does hold elections for the district councils, which act as consultants to the government. Following electoral reforms implemented by the Mainland government, the legislature of Hong Kong following the 2021 general election will only have 20 out of 90 members directly elected.


title: Democracy in China

text: The first Chief Executive election saw the Chief Executive elected by a 400-member Selection Committee in 1996, then by 800-member Election Committee in 2002, 2005, 2007, and then 1200-member Election Committee in 2012 and 2017.


title: Democracy in China

text: The Legislative Council of Hong Kong from 1997 to 2004 had 60 seats with 24 were directly elected, six elected from an 800-member electoral college known as the Election Committee of Hong Kong, and 30 elected from FCs. Elections in 2004 and 2008, had 30 members were directly elected by universal suffrage from geographical constituencies (GCs) and 30 were elected from functional constituencies (FCs). From 2012 onwards, The Legislative Council consists of 70 elected members, 35 members were directly elected by universal suffrage from geographical constituencies and 35 were elected from functional constituencies.


title: Democracy in China

text: There have been many attempts with many different ideas to introduce universal suffrage since the handover. Electoral reform in Hong Kong was seen as an avenue for political liberalization in China; the universal suffrage reform package which would allow Hongkongers to vote for the chief executive but the chief executive first needed to be approved by a committee. The law failed to pass Hong Kong's legislative council when pan-democrats voted against the package and most of the pro-Beijing members walked out.


title: Democracy in China

text: In 2014, Hong Kong experienced massive protests against the Chinese government's universal suffrage reform package, as the candidates would have to "love the country, and love Hong Kong" and would "protect the broad stability of Hong Kong now and in the future" to be able to stand for election. The universal suffrage reform package failed to pass Hong Kong's legislative council when the majority voted against the package.


title: Democracy in China

text: The first Macao Legislative Council in 1996 had 23 members: eight of whom were directly elected (GC), eight indirectly (FC), and seven nominated by the Chief Executive. Its second Legislative Council (2001) had four more members: two more directly elected and two more indirectly. Its third and fourth (2005 and 2009) legislative councils had 29 members, and the fifth (2013) and sixth (2017) have 33.


title: Democracy in China

text: The first Chief Executive of Macau was elected by the 200-member Chief Executive Selection Committee in 1999, 2004 and 2009 saw the Chief Executive elected by 300-member Election Committee, and 400-member Election Committee in 2014 and 2019.


title: Democracy in China

text: Very few comprehensive surveys have been done to understand the popular support for or against democracy. A 1990 survey from Andrew Nathan and Tianjian Shi reported that 55% of people surveyed agree that "China needs more democracy now", but 76% agreed that Chinese democracy depends on the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party. They also reported that a sizeable proportion feared the negative aspects of democracy, 36% agreed that too many parties would "cause political chaos."


title: Democracy in China

text: Surveys done with the World Values Survey and the East Asia Barometer in 2001 and 2002 shows high explicit support for democracy.


title: Democracy in China

text: In the survey, 96% answered either "fairly good" or "very good" to the question "Do you think having a democratic political system is...". Moreover, 81% of respondents agreed with the statement "democracy may have problems but it is better than any form government." When asked to compare authoritarianism or democracy, only 5% of respondents said that an authoritarian government can be preferable, with 20% saying it doesn't matter. When chosen to rate out of 10 how suitable democracy is for China, only 2% gave a rating lower than 5, 96% gave a 6 or higher, 76% giving an 8, 9 or 10. Nevertheless, 60 to 70% of respondents feared some democratic practices may cause negative effects. 26% agreed or strongly agreed with the statements "in democracy the economic systems runs badly." 35% agreed with that statement "democracies are indecisive and have too much quibbling." 18% agreed with the statement "democracies aren't good at maintaining order."


title: Democracy in China

text: An Asian Barometer survey from 2014 to 2016 had 76% of Chinese respondents agreeing that democracy was capable of solving the problems in their society. However, when asked to rate the level of democracy in their own government on a 10-point scale, they gave an overall rating of 6.5 (the 7th highest percentage out of 14 different regions surveyed).


title: Democracy in China

text: Zhengxu Wang of Fudan University in Shanghai wrote in a report in 2007: "It is clear that public support for democracy is high in China. Public opinion surveys show that more than 90% of Chinese citizens believe that having a democracy is good. But the majority is not yet ready for a major effort towards democratization because they still see economic growth and social stability as more important than freedom of speech, political participation, and other democratic rights."


title: Democracy in China

text: A report of two Stanford professors, Jennifer Pan and Yiqing Xu, done between 2018 and 2019 showed that a majority of Chinese people believed that the government had no right to interfere in how many children people had, and that the government should allow public expression of negative views of government policies. The poll also showed that Chinese people with higher income or Chinese students studying in the US being more politically and economically liberal.


title: Democracy in China

text: A 2020 Harvard University study conducted yearly since 2003 found that Chinese citizens' trust in their government has increased each year, "virtually across the board." The 2022 Edelman Trust Barometer found that 91% of Chinese citizens trust their government.


title: Democracy in China

text: In 2022, a poll by the Alliance of Democracies Foundation found that 91% of Chinese say democracy is important to them, with a 81% saying that China is a democracy.


title: Cambion

text: In European mythology and literature since at least the 19th century, a cambion is the offspring of an incubus, succubus, or other demon with a human. In its earliest known uses, it was related to the word for change and was cognate with changeling.


title: Cambion

text: Cambion comes from the Late Latin cambiare 'to exchange,' and ultimately from the Celtic root "kamb", meaning crooked or exchange. In its earliest known uses, the word is used for a changeling, the child of fairies or demons who has been substituted for a human baby. William of Auvergne, in his 13th-century work "De Universo", wrote of ""cambiones", from "cambiti", that is 'having been exchanged'" - the "sons of incubi demons." These false infants constantly wail for milk and cannot be satisfied even by four nurses. Richard Firth Green notes that this "was to become the standard scholastic explanation for changelings throughout the Middle Ages."


title: Cambion

text: The earliest evidenced appearance of the word "cambion" in the sense of an offspring of two demons is in the 1818 French-Language "Dictionnaire Infernal". The 1825 edition of that book has the following entry:


title: Cambion

text: In the "Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology" the cambion is again said to be the direct offspring of the incubus and the succubus, foregoing any need for human involvement. This same incarnation retained the absence of breath or a pulse until seven years of age, but was said to also have been incredibly heavy (even too heavy for a horse to carry) and to have cried upon being touched.


title: Cambion

text: Since at least the 19th century, "cambion" has taken on a further definition: the child of an incubus "or" a succubus with a human parent. In 1874, Victor Hugo's "Toilers of the Sea" defined a cambion as the son of a woman and the devil. It also appeared as a hybrid of human and demon in Dungeons and Dragon's 1983 "Monster Manual II."


title: Cambion

text: The concept of offspring born to humans and demons was a subject of debate in the Middle Ages, but did not have a widely accepted name. The influential "Malleus Maleficarum", which has been described as the major compendium of literature in demonology of the fifteenth century, states that demons, including the incubus and the succubus, are incapable of reproduction:


title: Cambion

text: Because of this inability to create or nurture life, the method of the creation of a cambion is necessarily protracted. A succubus will have sexual relations with a human male and so acquire a sample of his sperm. This she will then pass on to an incubus, who then corrupts and strengthens the seed. The incubus will, in his turn, transfer this sperm to a human female and thus impregnate her.


title: Cambion

text: The text goes on to discuss at great length the arguments for and against this process being possible, citing a number of Biblical quotations and noted scholars in support of its arguments, and finally concludes that this is indeed the method used by such demons. The "Malleus Maleficarum" refers to the children of incubi as "campsores" or "Wechselkind" (a German term for changelings).


title: CONCACAF Nations League

text: The CONCACAF Nations League (, ) is an international association football competition contested by the senior men's national teams of the member associations of CONCACAF, the regional governing body of North America. The tournament takes place on dates allocated for international friendlies on the FIFA International Match Calendar. A one-time qualifying tournament took place from September 2018 to March 2019 and the inaugural tournament began in September 2019.


title: CONCACAF Nations League

text: The tournament was announced in November 2017. It is divided into three tiered leagues, A, B, and C, of four groups each, with promotion and relegation between the leagues based on finishing position within groups. The group winners of League A enter a four-team knockout competition to be crowned champion, while the group-winners of Leagues B and C are promoted to the next tier. In Leagues A and B, the four teams at the bottom of the groups are relegated to the next-lower tier. The tournament also determines which national teams qualify for the next edition of the CONCACAF Gold Cup.


title: CONCACAF Nations League

text: The format proposals were first formally investigated at the XXXII CONCACAF Ordinary Congress in Oranjestad, Aruba on 8 April 2017 and confirmed by CONCACAF on 16 November 2017. CONCACAF president Victor Montagliani stated that the purpose of the competition is to have a regular schedule of international fixtures for CONCACAF's national teams, noting that some teams play fewer than 10 games in a four-year period and needed more competitive games to assist the sport's development in those nations.


title: CONCACAF Nations League

text: The CONCACAF Nations League trophy was unveiled eight days before the inaugural Nations League Finals. The trophy represents all 41 CONCACAF national associations and is made of silver-plated brass metal and raw stone. The trophy weighs 8 kg and is 52 cm tall.


title: CONCACAF Nations League

text: The official anthem of the CONCACAF Nations League is 3 minutes and 54 seconds long, and is played when the players are entering the field of play, in television sequences and for ceremonial purposes.


title: CONCACAF Nations League

text: Each season of the CONCACAF Nations League is typically played from September to November of an odd-numbered year (league phase), and June of the following even-numbered year (Nations League Finals of League A), meaning a CONCACAF Nations League champion is crowned every two years. An exception will be made in the 2022–23 season when the league phase will be played in May to September 2022, due to the 2022 FIFA World Cup played in Qatar at the end of the year.


title: Seniority in the United States House of Representatives

text: This is a complete list of current members of the United States House of Representatives based on seniority. For the most part, representatives are ranked by the beginning of their terms in office. Representatives whose terms begin the same day are ranked alphabetically by last name.


text: Members of the House are arranged by the number of terms they have served, before being arranged by the beginning date of their most recent continuous service. Where members have served the same number of terms and have the same date of service, they are arranged alphabetically by last name.


text: Representatives who return to the House after having previously served in the House may be credited with service equal to one less than the number of terms they served. For example, Rep. Steve Chabot had previously served seven terms, from 1995 to 2009, when he was once again elected in 2010. Instead of holding seniority with others whose terms began January 3, 2011, he was credited with six terms, and holds seniority above all representatives whose terms began on or after January 3, 1999. When a representative has served a prior tenure of fewer than two terms (i.e., elected in a special election to fill a vacancy, so their prior tenure length measured in terms, minus one, equals less than one), they are ranked above all others whose service begins on the same day.


text: Committee leadership in the House is often associated with seniority, especially in the Democratic Caucus. The Republican leadership, in comparison with the Democratic Party, prioritizes voting records and campaign fundraising over seniority for committee leadership. Party leadership in the House is not strictly associated with seniority.


text: The more senior a representative is, the more likely the representative is to receive desirable committee assignments or leadership posts. Seniority also affects access to more desirable office space in the House Office Buildings.


title: HMS Terror (1813)

text: HMS "Terror" was a specialised warship and a newly developed bomb vessel constructed for the Royal Navy in 1813. She participated in several battles of the War of 1812, including the Battle of Baltimore with the bombardment of Fort McHenry. She was converted into a polar exploration ship two decades later, and participated in George Back's Arctic expedition of 1836–1837, the successful Ross expedition to the Antarctic of 1839 to 1843, and Sir John Franklin's ill-fated attempt to force the Northwest Passage in 1845, during which she was lost with all hands along with .


title: HMS Terror (1813)

text: On 12 September 2016, the Arctic Research Foundation announced that the wreck of "Terror" had been found in Nunavut's Terror Bay, off the southwest coast of King William Island. The wreck was discovered south of the location where the ship was reported abandoned, and some from the wreck of HMS "Erebus", discovered in 2014.


title: HMS Terror (1813)

text: HMS "Terror" was a bomb ship built over two years at the Davy shipyard in Topsham in south Devon, for the Royal Navy. Her deck was long, and the ship measured 325 tons burthen. The vessel was armed with two heavy mortars and ten cannon, and was launched in June 1813.


title: HMS Terror (1813)

text: "Terror" saw service in the War of 1812 against the United States, during which the ships of the North America and West Indies Station of the Royal Navy blockaded the Atlantic ports of the United States and launched amphibious raids from its base in Bermuda, leading up to the 1814 Chesapeake campaign, a punitive expedition that included the Raid on Alexandria, the Battle of Bladensburg, and the Burning of Washington. Under the command of John Sheridan, she took part in the bombardment of Stonington, Connecticut, on 9–12 August 1814. She also fought in the Battle of Baltimore in September 1814 and participated in the bombardment of Fort McHenry; the latter attack inspired Francis Scott Key to write the poem that eventually became known as "The Star-Spangled Banner". In January 1815, still under Sheridan's command, "Terror" was involved in the Battle of Fort Peter and the attack on St. Marys, Georgia.


title: HMS Terror (1813)

text: After the war, "Terror" was laid up until March 1828, when she was recommissioned for service in the Mediterranean Sea. She was removed from active service when she underwent repairs for damage suffered near Lisbon, Portugal.


title: HMS Terror (1813)

text: In the mid-1830s, "Terror" was refitted as a polar exploration vessel. Her design as a bomb ship meant she had an unusually strong framework to resist the recoil of her heavy mortars; thus it was presumed she could withstand the pressure of polar sea ice, as well.


title: HMS Terror (1813)

text: In 1836, command of "Terror" was given to Captain George Back for an Arctic expedition to Hudson Bay. The expedition aimed to enter Repulse Bay, where it would send out landing parties to ascertain whether the Boothia Peninsula was an island or a peninsula. "Terror" was trapped by ice near Southampton Island, and did not reach Repulse Bay. At one point, the ice forced her up the face of a cliff. She was trapped in the ice for ten months. In the spring of 1837, an encounter with an iceberg further damaged the ship. She nearly sank on her return journey across the Atlantic, and was in a sinking condition by the time Back sailed her into Lough Swilly, before beaching her at Rathmullan, Co. Donegal, Ireland on 21 September.


title: HMS Terror (1813)

text: The admiralty dispatched the shipwright, William McPherson Rice, to refloat and repair "Terror" sufficiently to enable her sail to the naval shipyard at Chatham in Kent, where full repairs were carried out. Correspondence describing the repairs and the crew's sojourn in Rathmullan are held in the Royal Museums Greenwich collection. Back subsequently published a complete account of this voyage right up to the decommissioning of "Terror" in Chatham.


title: HMS Terror (1813)

text: In 1839 "Terror" was assigned to a voyage to the Antarctic along with "Erebus" under the overall command of James Clark Ross. Francis Crozier was commander of "Terror" on this expedition, as well as second-in-command to Ross. The expedition spanned three seasons from 1840 to 1843 during which "Terror" and "Erebus" made three forays into Antarctic waters, traversing the Ross Sea twice, and sailing through the Weddell Sea southeast of the Falkland Islands. The dormant volcano Mount Terror on Ross Island was named after the ship by the expedition commander.


title: HMS Terror (1813)

text: Before leaving on the Franklin expedition, both "Erebus" and "Terror" underwent heavy modifications for the journey. They were both outfitted with steam engines, taken from former London and Greenwich Railway steam locomotives. Rated at , each could propel its ship at . The pair of ships became the first Royal Navy ships to have steam-powered engines and screw propellers. Twelve days' supply of coal was carried. Iron plating was added fore and aft on the ships' hulls to make them more resistant to pack ice, and their decks were cross-planked to distribute impact forces. Along with "Erebus", "Terror" was stocked with supplies for their expedition, which included among other items: two tons of tobacco, 8,000 tins of preserves, and of liquor. "Terror"s library had 1,200 books, and the ship's berths were heated via ducts that connected them to the stove.


title: HMS Terror (1813)

text: Their voyage to the Arctic was with Sir John Franklin in overall command of the expedition in "Erebus", and "Terror" again under the command of Captain Francis Crozier. The expedition was ordered to gather magnetic data in the Canadian Arctic and complete a crossing of the Northwest Passage, which had already been charted from both the east and west, but never entirely navigated. It was planned to last three years.


title: HMS Terror (1813)

text: The expedition sailed from Greenhithe, Kent, on 19 May 1845, and the ships were last seen entering Baffin Bay in August 1845. The disappearance of the Franklin expedition set off a massive search effort in the Arctic and the broad circumstances of the expedition's fate were revealed during a series of expeditions between 1848 and 1866. Both ships had become icebound and were abandoned by their crews, all of whom died of exposure and starvation while trying to trek overland to Fort Resolution, a Hudson's Bay Company outpost to the southwest. Subsequent expeditions up until the late 1980s, including autopsies of crew members, revealed that their canned rations may have been tainted by both lead and botulism. Oral reports by local Inuit that some of the crew members resorted to cannibalism were at least somewhat supported by forensic evidence of cut marks on the skeletal remains of crew members found on King William Island during the late 20th century.


title: HMS Terror (1813)

text: On 15 August 2008, Parks Canada, an agency of the Government of Canada, announced a CAD$75,000 six-week search, deploying the icebreaker with the goal of finding the two ships. The search was also intended to strengthen Canada's claims of sovereignty over large portions of the Arctic. Further attempts to locate the ships were undertaken in 2010, 2011, and 2012, all of which failed to locate the ships' remains.


title: HMS Terror (1813)

text: On 8 September 2014, it was announced that the wreckage of one of Franklin's ships was found on 7 September using a remotely operated underwater vehicle recently acquired by Parks Canada. On 1 October 2014, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced that the remains were that of "Erebus".


title: HMS Terror (1813)

text: On 12 September 2016, a team from the Arctic Research Foundation announced that a wreck close to "Terror"s description had been located on the southern coast of King William Island in the middle of Terror Bay (), at a depth of . The remains of the ships are designated a National Historic Site of Canada with the exact location withheld to preserve the wrecks and prevent looting.


title: HMS Terror (1813)

text: Sammy Kogvik, an Inuit hunter and member of the Canadian Rangers who joined the crew of the Arctic Research Foundation's "Martin Bergmann", recalled an incident from seven years earlier in which he encountered what appeared to be a mast jutting from the ice. With this information, the ship's destination was changed from Cambridge Bay to Terror Bay, where researchers located the wreck in just 2.5 hours. According to Louie Kamookak, a resident of nearby Gjoa Haven and a historian on the Franklin expedition, Parks Canada had ignored the stories of locals that suggested that the wreck of "Terror" was in her namesake bay, despite many modern stories of sightings by hunters and from airplanes.


title: HMS Terror (1813)

text: The wreck was found in excellent condition, her decks and interior spaces largely intact. A wide exhaust pipe that rose from the outer deck was pivotal in identifying the ship; it was located in the same location where the smokestack from "Terror"s locomotive engine had been installed. The wreck was nearly south of where historians thought her final resting place was, calling into question the previously accepted account of the fate of the sailors, that they died while trying to walk out of the Arctic to the nearest Hudson's Bay Company trading post.


title: HMS Terror (1813)

text: The location of the wreckage, and evidence in the wreckage of anchor usage, indicates continued use, raising the possibility that some of the sailors had attempted to re-man the ship and sail her home (or elsewhere), possibly on orders from Crozier.


title: HMS Terror (1813)

text: On 23 October 2017 it was announced by British Defence Minister Sir Michael Fallon that the British government would be giving "Terror" and "Erebus" to Canada, retaining only a few relics and any gold, along with the right to repatriate any human remains.


title: HMS Terror (1813)

text: In 2018, "Terror" and "Erebus" were gifted to Canada and the Inuit, in care of the Inuit Heritage Trust, by the government of the United Kingdom. This includes all the remaining artifacts.


title: HMS Terror (1813)

text: Although the exact location has not been released, Nancy Anilniliak, the Field Unit Superintendent of the Nunavut Field Unit, has restricted access to an approximately rectangular area in Terror Bay. The area runs from Point E () to Point F () to Point G () to Point H ().


title: HMS Terror (1813)

text: In August 2019, taking advantage of "exceptionally co-operative" weather conditions, Parks Canada conducted 48 dives over the course of seven days to "Terror", 3D-mapping the wreck and searching the interior with ROVs. The team was able to map out ninety percent of "Terror"s lower deck, but were unable to access Crozier's cabin due to the buildup of sediment. Despite this, Crozier's cabin was considered the best preserved space in the lower deck, and Parks Canada has expressed the hope that written materials may be found there. The planned exploration of the wreck sites in 2020 was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Parks Canada's Underwater Archaeology Team returned to the wrecks in May 2022, after a two-year postponement caused by the pandemic.


title: HMS Terror (1813)

text: HMS "Terror" is featured, often alongside HMS "Erebus", in fictional works that involve or allude to the Franklin expedition, such as:


title: Urdu alphabet

text: The Urdu alphabet (), is the right-to-left alphabet used for Urdu. It is a modification of the Persian script, which is itself a derivative of the Arabic script. The Urdu alphabet has up to 39 or 40 distinct letters with no distinct letter cases and is typically written in the calligraphic Nastaʿlīq script, whereas Arabic is more commonly written in the Naskh style.


title: Urdu alphabet

text: Usually, bare transliterations of Urdu into the Latin alphabet (called Roman Urdu) omit many phonemic elements that have no equivalent in English or other languages commonly written in the Latin script.


title: Urdu alphabet

text: The standard Urdu script is a modified version of the Perso-Arabic script and has its origins in 13th century Iran. It is closely related to the development of the Nastaliq style of Perso-Arabic script.


title: Urdu alphabet

text: Despite the invention of the Urdu typewriter in 1911, Urdu newspapers continued to publish prints of handwritten scripts by calligraphers known as "katibs" or "khush-navees" until the late 1980s. The Pakistani national newspaper "Daily Jang" was the first Urdu newspaper to use "Nastaʿlīq" computer-based composition. There are efforts under way to develop more sophisticated and user-friendly Urdu support on computers and the internet. Nowadays, nearly all Urdu newspapers, magazines, journals, and periodicals are composed on computers with Urdu software programs.


title: Urdu alphabet

text: Other than the Indian subcontinent, the Urdu script is also used by Pakistan's large diaspora, including in the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, the United States, Canada, Saudi Arabia and other places.


title: Urdu alphabet

text: Urdu is written in the Nastaliq style ( Nastaʿlīq). The Nastaliq calligraphic writing style began as a Persian mixture of the Naskh and Ta'liq scripts. After the Mughal conquest, Nastaliq became the preferred writing style for Urdu. It is the dominant style in Pakistan and many Urdu writers elsewhere in the world use it. Nastaʿlīq is more cursive and flowing than its Naskh counterpart.


title: Urdu alphabet

text: In the Arabic alphabet, and many others derived from it, letters are regarded as having two or three general forms each, based on their position in the word (though Arabic calligraphy can add a great deal of complexity). But the Nastaliq style in which Urdu is written uses more than three general forms for many letters, even in simple non-decorative documents.


title: Urdu alphabet

text: The Urdu script is an abjad script derived from the modern Persian script, which is itself a derivative of the Arabic script. As an abjad, the Urdu script only shows consonants and long vowels; short vowels can only be inferred by the consonants' relation to each other. While this type of script is convenient in Semitic languages like Arabic and Hebrew, whose consonant roots are the key of the sentence, Urdu is an Indo-European language, which requires more precision in vowel sound pronunciation, hence necessitating more memorisation. The number of letters in the Urdu alphabet is somewhat ambiguous and debated.


title: Urdu alphabet

text: Tāʼ marbūṭah is also sometimes considered the 40th letter of the Urdu alphabet, though it is rarely used except for in certain loan words from Arabic. Tāʼ marbūṭah is regarded as a form of tā, the Arabic version of Urdu tē, But it is not pronounced as such, and when replaced with an Urdu letter in naturalised loan words it is usually replaced with Gol hē.


title: Urdu alphabet

text: Hamza can be difficult to recognise in Urdu handwriting and fonts designed to replicate it, closely resembling two dots above as featured in Té and Qaf, whereas in Arabic and Geometric fonts it is more distinct and closely resembles the western form of the numeral 2 (two).


title: Urdu alphabet

text: Urdu has more letters added to the Perso-Arabic base to represent sounds not present in Persian, which already has additional letters added to the Arabic base itself to represent sounds not present in Arabic. The letters added are shown in the table below:


title: Urdu alphabet

text: A separate do-chashmi-he letter, , exists to denote a /ʰ/ or a /ʱ/. This letter is mainly used as part of the multitude of digraphs, detailed in above sub-section. In addition to these letters, Shahmukhi adds 2 consonants on top of Urdu alphabet to write Punjabi, and Saraiki further adds 4 more consonants.


title: Urdu alphabet

text: Old Hindustani used four dots over three Arabic letters to represent retroflex consonants. In handwriting those dots were often written as a small vertical line attached to a small triangle. Subsequently, this shape became identical to a small letter "t̤oʼē". It is commonly and erroneously assumed that "ṭāʾ" itself was used to indicate retroflex consonants because of it being an emphatic alveolar consonant that Arabic scribes thought approximated the Hindustani retroflexes. In modern Urdu , called "to'e" is always pronounced as a dental, not a retroflex.


title: Urdu alphabet

text: The Urdu language has ten vowels and ten nasalized vowels. Each vowel has four forms depending on its position: initial, middle, final and isolated. Like in its parent Arabic alphabet, Urdu vowels are represented using a combination of digraphs and diacritics. Alif, Waw, Ye, He and their variants are used to represent vowels.


title: Urdu alphabet

text: Urdu does not have standalone vowel letters. Short vowels ("a", "i", "u") are represented by optional diacritics ("zabar", "zer", "pesh") upon the preceding consonant or a placeholder consonant ("alif", "ain", or "hamzah") if the syllable begins with the vowel, and long vowels by consonants "alif", "ain", "ye", and "wa'o" as matres lectionis, with disambiguating diacritics, some of which are optional ("zabar", "zer", "pesh"), whereas some are not ("madd", "hamzah"). Urdu does not have short vowels at the end of words. This is a table of Urdu vowels:


title: Urdu alphabet

text: "Alif" is the first letter of the Urdu alphabet, and it is used exclusively as a vowel. At the beginning of a word, "alif" can be used to represent any of the short vowels: "ab", "ism", "Urdū". For long "ā" at the beginning of words alif-mad is used: "āp", but a plain alif in the middle and at the end: "bhāgnā".


title: Urdu alphabet

text: "Wāʾo" is used to render the vowels "ū", "o", "u" and "au" ([uː], [oː], [ʊ] and [ɔː] respectively), and it is also used to render the labiodental approximant, [ʋ]. Only when preceded by the consonant "k͟hē ("), can "wāʾo" render the "u" ([ʊ]) sound (such as in , ""k͟hud"" - "myself"), or not pronounced at all (such as in "", ""k͟haab"" - "dream"). This is known as the silent "wāʾo", and is only present in words loaned from Persian.


title: Urdu alphabet

text: "Choṭī ye" () is written in all forms exactly as in Persian. It is used for the long vowel "ī" and the consonant "y".


title: Urdu alphabet

text: "Baṛī ye" () is used to render the vowels "e" and "ai" ( and respectively). "Baṛī ye" is distinguishable in writing from "choṭī ye" only when it comes at the end of a word/ligature. Additionally, "Baṛī ye" is never used to begin a word/ligature, unlike "choṭī ye".


title: Urdu alphabet

text: "Gol he" () is written round and zigzagged, and can impart the "h" () sound anywhere in a word. Additionally, at the end of a word, it can be used to render the long "a" or the "e" vowels ( or ), which also alters its form slightly (it is worth noting that on modern digital writing systems, this final form is achieved by writing two "he's" consecutively).


title: Urdu alphabet

text: "Do-cašmi he" () is written as in Arabic Naskh style (as a loop), in order to create the aspirate consonants and write Arabic words.


title: Urdu alphabet

text: "Ayn" in its initial and final position is silent in pronunciation and is replaced by the sound of its preceding or succeeding vowel.


title: Urdu alphabet

text: Vowel nasalization is represented by "nun ghunna" written after their non-nasalized versions, for example: ' when nasalized would become '. In middle form "nun ghunna" is written just like "nun" and is differentiated by a diacritic called or "ulta jazm" which is a superscript V symbol above the .


title: Urdu alphabet

text: Urdu uses the same subset of diacritics used in Arabic based on Persian conventions. Urdu also uses Persian names of the diacritics instead of Arabic names. Commonly used diacritics are "zabar" (Arabic "fatḥah"), "zer" (Arabic "kasrah"), "pesh" (Arabic "dammah") which are used to clarify the pronunciation of vowels, as shown above. "Jazam" ( , Arabic "sukun") is used to indicate a consonant cluster and "tashdid" (, Arabic "shaddah") is used to indicate a gemination, although it is never used for verbs, which require double consonants to be spelled out separately. Other diacritics include "khari zabar" (Arabic "dagger alif"), "do zabar" (Arabic "fathatan") which are found in some common Arabic loan words. Other Arabic diacritics are also sometimes used though very rarely in loan words from Arabic. "Zer-e-izafat" and "hamzah-e-izafat" are described in the next section.


title: Urdu alphabet

text: Other than common diacritics, Urdu also has special diacritics, which are often found only in dictionaries for the clarification of irregular pronunciation. These diacritics include "kasrah-e-majhool", "fathah-e-majhool", "dammah-e-majhool", , "ulta jazam", "alif-e-wavi" and some other very rare diacritics. Among these, only is used commonly in dictionaries and has a Unicode representation at U+0658. Other diacritics are only rarely written in printed form, mainly in some advanced dictionaries.


title: Urdu alphabet

text: "Iẓāfat" is a syntactical construction of two nouns, where the first component is a determined noun, and the second is a determiner. This construction was borrowed from Persian. A short vowel "i" is used to connect these two words, and when pronouncing the newly formed word the short vowel is connected to the first word. If the first word ends in a consonant or an "ʿain" (), it may be written as "zer" () at the end of the first word, but usually is not written at all. If the first word ends in "choṭī he" () or "ye" ( or ) then "hamzā" () is used above the last letter ( or or ). If the first word ends in a long vowel ( or ), then a different variation of "baṛī ye" () with "hamzā" on top (, obtained by adding to ) is added at the end of the first word.


title: Urdu alphabet

text: In the early days of computers, Urdu was not properly represented on any code page. One of the earliest code pages to represent Urdu was IBM Code Page 868 which dates back to 1990. Other early code pages which represented Urdu alphabets were Windows-1256 and MacArabic encoding both of which date back to the mid-1990s. In Unicode, Urdu is represented inside the Arabic block. Another code page for Urdu, which is used in India, is Perso-Arabic Script Code for Information Interchange. In Pakistan, the 8-bit code page which is developed by National Language Authority is called Urdu Zabta Takhti () (UZT) which represents Urdu in its most complete form including some of its specialized diacritics, though UZT is not designed to coexist with the Latin alphabet.


title: Urdu alphabet

text: Like other writing systems derived from the Arabic script, Urdu uses the 0600–06FF Unicode range. Certain glyphs in this range appear visually similar (or identical when presented using particular fonts) even though the underlying encoding is different. This presents problems for information storage and retrieval. For example, the University of Chicago's electronic copy of John Shakespear's "A Dictionary, Hindustani, and English" includes the word " ("bhārat" "India"). Searching for the string "" returns no results, whereas querying with the (identical-looking in many fonts) string "" returns the correct entry. This is because the medial form of the Urdu letter "do chashmi he" (U+06BE)—used to form aspirate digraphs in Urdu—is visually identical in its medial form to the Arabic letter hāʾ (U+0647; phonetic value ). In Urdu, the phoneme is represented by the character U+06C1, called "gol he" (round "he"), or "chhoti he" (small "he").


title: Urdu alphabet

text: In 2003, the Center for Research in Urdu Language Processing (CRULP)—a research organisation affiliated with Pakistan's National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences—produced a proposal for mapping from the 1-byte UZT encoding of Urdu characters to the Unicode standard. This proposal suggests a preferred Unicode glyph for each character in the Urdu alphabet.


title: Urdu alphabet

text: The "Daily Jang" was the first Urdu newspaper to be typeset digitally in "Nastaliq" by computer. There are efforts underway to develop more sophisticated and user-friendly Urdu support on computers and on the Internet. Nowadays, nearly all Urdu newspapers, magazines, journals and periodicals are composed on computers via various Urdu software programmes, the most widespread of which is InPage Desktop Publishing package. Microsoft has included Urdu language support in all new versions of Windows and both Windows Vista and Microsoft Office 2007 are available in Urdu through Language Interface Pack support. Most Linux Desktop distributions allow the easy installation of Urdu support and translations as well. Apple implemented the Urdu language keyboard across Mobile devices in its iOS 8 update in September 2014.


title: Urdu alphabet

text: There are several romanization standards for writing Urdu with the Latin alphabet, though they are not very popular because most fall short of representing the Urdu language properly. Instead of standard romanization schemes, people on Internet, mobile phones and media often use a non-standard form of romanization which tries to mimic English orthography. The problem with this kind of romanization is that it can only be read by native speakers, and even for them with great difficulty. Among standardized romanization schemes, the most accurate is ALA-LC romanization, which is also supported by National Language Authority. Other romanization schemes are often rejected because either they are unable to represent sounds in Urdu properly, or they often do not take regard of Urdu orthography, and favor pronunciation over orthography.


title: Urdu alphabet

text: The National Language Authority of Pakistan has developed a number of systems with specific notations to signify non-English sounds, but these can only be properly read by someone already familiar with the loan letters.


title: Urdu alphabet

text: Roman Urdu also holds significance among the Christians of Pakistan and North India. Urdu was the dominant native language among Christians of Karachi and Lahore in present-day Pakistan and Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh Rajasthan in India, during the early part of the 19th and 20th century, and is still used by Christians in these places. Pakistani and Indian Christians often used the Roman script for writing Urdu. Thus Roman Urdu was a common way of writing among Pakistani and Indian Christians in these areas up to the 1960s. The Bible Society of India publishes Roman Urdū Bibles that enjoyed sale late into the 1960s (though they are still published today). Church songbooks are also common in Roman Urdu. However, the usage of Roman Urdu is declining with the wider use of Hindi and English in these states.


title: Bodrum

text: Bodrum () is a port city in Muğla Province, southwestern Turkey, at the entrance to the Gulf of Gökova. Its population was 35,795 at the 2012 census, with a total of 136,317 inhabitants residing within the district's borders. Known in ancient times as Halicarnassus, the city was once home to the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, also known as the tomb of Mausolus, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.


title: Bodrum

text: The city was founded by Dorian Greeks. It later fell under Achaemenid Persian rule and became the capital city of the satrapy of Caria. Mausolus ruled Caria from here, and after his death in 353 BC, his wife Artemisia built a tomb, called the Mausoleum, for him. Macedonian forces laid siege to the city and captured it in 334 BCE. After Alexander's death, the city passed to successive Hellenistic rulers and was briefly an independent kingdom until 129 BCE, when it came under Roman rule. A series of natural disasters and repeated pirate attacks wreaked havoc on the area, and the city lost its importance by the time of the Byzantine era. The Knights Hospitaller arrived in 1402 and used the remains of the Mausoleum as a quarry to build Bodrum Castle. The castle and its town became known as Petronium, whence the modern name Bodrum. After the conquest of Rhodes by Suleiman the Magnificent in 1522, the town fell under Ottoman control as the Knights Hospitaller relocated to Europe.


title: Bodrum

text: By the 20th century, the city's economy was mainly based on fishing and sponge diving, but tourism has become the main industry in Bodrum since the late 20th century. The abundance of visitors has also contributed to Bodrum's retail and service industry. Milas–Bodrum Airport and Kos International Airport are the main airports that serve the city. The port has ferries to other nearby Turkish and Greek ports and islands, Kos being the most important. Most of the public transportation in the city is based on local share taxis and buses.


title: Bodrum

text: The modern name "Bodrum" derives from the town's medieval name "Petronium", which has its roots in the Hospitaller Castle of St. Peter (see history).


title: Bodrum

text: In classical antiquity, Bodrum was known as Halicarnassus (Ancient Greek: Ἁλικαρνασσός, ), a major city in ancient Caria. The suffix -ᾱσσός (-assos) of Greek Ἁλικαρνᾱσσός is indicative of a substrate toponym, meaning that an original non-Greek name influenced or established the place's name. It has been proposed that the -καρνᾱσσός (-carnassos) part is cognate with Luwian word "ha+ra/i-na-sà", which means fortress. If so, the city's ancient name was probably borrowed from Carian, a Luwic language native to pre-Greek Western Anatolia. The Carian name for Halicarnassus has been tentatively identified with 𐊠𐊣𐊫𐊰 𐊴𐊠𐊥𐊵𐊫𐊰 ("alos k̂arnos)" in inscriptions.


title: Bodrum

text: Halicarnassus (, or "Alikarnassós"; ), was an ancient Greek city at the site of modern Bodrum in Turkey. Halicarnassus was founded by Dorian Greeks, and the figures on its coins, such as the head of Medusa, Athena, Poseidon, and the trident, support the statement that the mother cities were Troezen and Argos. The inhabitants appear to have accepted Anthes, a son of Poseidon, as their legendary founder, as mentioned by Strabo, and were proud of the title "Antheadae". The Carian name for Halicarnassus has been tentatively identified with Alosδkarnosδ in inscriptions.


title: Bodrum

text: In an early period, Halicarnassus was a member of the Doric Hexapolis, which included Kos, Cnidus, Lindos, Kameiros, and Ialysus; but it was expelled from the league when one of its citizens, Agasicles, took home the prize tripod that he had won in the Triopian games instead of dedicating it according to custom to the Triopian Apollo. In the early 5th century, Halicarnassus was under the sway of Artemisia I of Caria (also known as Artemesia of Halicarnassus), who made herself famous as a naval commander at the battle of Salamis. Little is known of Pisindalis, her son and successor; but Lygdamis, the tyrant of Halicarnassus, who next attained power, is notorious for having the poet Panyasis put to death and forcing Herodotus, possibly the most well-known Halicarnassian, to leave his native city (c. 457 BC).


title: Bodrum

text: The city later fell under Persian rule. Under the Persians, it was the capital city of the satrapy of Caria, the region that long afterward constituted its hinterland and of which it was the principal port. Its strategic location ensured that the city enjoyed considerable autonomy. Archaeological evidence from the period, such as the recently discovered Salmakis ("Kaplankalesi") Inscription, now in Bodrum Museum of Underwater Archaeology, attests to the particular pride its inhabitants had developed.


title: Bodrum

text: Mausolus ruled Caria from here, nominally on behalf of the Persians but practically independently, for much of his reign from 377 to 353 BC. When he died in 353 BC, Artemisia II of Caria, who was both his sister and his widow, employed the ancient Greek architects Satyros, Pythis, and the sculptors Bryaxis, Scopas, Leochares, and Timotheus to build a monument and a tomb for him. The word "mausoleum" derives from the structure of this tomb. It was a temple-like structure decorated with reliefs and statuary on a massive base. Today only the foundations and a few pieces of sculpture remain.


title: Bodrum

text: Alexander the Great laid siege to the city after his arrival in the Carian lands and, together with his ally, Queen Ada of Caria, captured it after fighting in 334 BC. After Alexander's death, the rule of the city passed to Antigonus I (311 BC), Lysimachus (after 301 BC), and the Ptolemies (281–197 BC) and was briefly an independent kingdom until 129 BC, when it came under Roman rule. A series of earthquakes destroyed much of the city, as well as the great Mausoleum, while repeated pirate attacks from the Mediterranean wreaked further havoc on the area. By the time of the early Christian Byzantine era, when Halicarnassus was an important bishopric, there was little left of the shining city of Mausoluos.


title: Bodrum

text: Crusader Knights arrived in 1402 and used the remains of the Mausoleum as a quarry to build the still impressively standing Bodrum Castle ("Castle of Saint Peter"), a well-preserved example of late Crusader architecture in the eastern Mediterranean. The Knights Hospitaller ("Knights of St. John") were given permission to build it by the Ottoman sultan Mehmed I after Tamerlane destroyed their previous fortress in İzmir's inner bay. The castle and its town became known as Petronium, whence the modern name Bodrum.


title: Bodrum

text: In 1522, Suleiman the Magnificent conquered the base of the Crusader knights on the island of Rhodes, who then relocated first briefly to Sicily and later permanently to Malta, leaving the Castle of Saint Peter and Bodrum to the Ottoman Empire.


title: Bodrum

text: Bodrum was a quiet town of fishermen and sponge divers until the early 20th century. In her book "Bodrum", Fatma Mansur points out that the presence of a large community of bilingual Cretan Turks, coupled with the conditions of free trade and access to the southern Dodecanese islands until 1935, made the town less provincial. The fact that traditional agriculture was not a very rewarding activity in the rather dry peninsula also prevented the formation of a class of large landowners. Bodrum has no notable history of political or religious extremism. A first nucleus of intellectuals started to form after the 1950s around the writer Cevat Şakir Kabaağaçlı, who first came here in exile two decades previously and was charmed by the town to the point of adopting the pen name "Halikarnas Balıkçısı" ('The Fisherman of Halicarnassus').


title: Bodrum

text: Bodrum has a hot summer Mediterranean climate ("Csa" in the Köppen climate classification). The average temperature is around in winter and in summer, with many sunny spells. Summers are hot and mostly sunny, and winters are mild and humid.


title: Bodrum

text: The Castle of St. Peter, also known as Bodrum Castle, is one of the main attractions of the peninsula. The castle was built by the Knights Hospitaller during the 15th century, and the walls of the fortification contain pieces of the ruins of the Mausoleum, which was used as a source of construction materials. The Castle of Bodrum retains its original design and character of the Knights' period and reflects Gothic architecture. It also contains the Bodrum Museum of Underwater Archaeology, a museum established by the Turkish government in 1962 to host the underwater discoveries of ancient shipwrecks in the Aegean Sea. In 2016, the castle was included in the Tentative list of World Heritage Sites in Turkey. The castle has been under renovation since 2017, and only some parts of it are accessible to visitors.


title: Bodrum

text: Built in the fourth century BC, the ruins of the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus are also among the main sights in Bodrum. The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus was a tomb designed by Greek architects and built for Mausolus, a satrap of the Persian Empire, and his sister-wife Artemisia II of Caria. The structure was considered one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. By the 12th century CE, the structure had largely been destroyed. Today, the ruins of the tomb continue to attract both domestic and international tourists. It is planned to turn the ruins into an open-air museum.


title: Bodrum

text: Besides the Bodrum Museum of Underwater Archaeology, other museums are also located on the peninsula. Zeki Müren Art Museum is dedicated to Turkish classical musician Zeki Müren. After his death, the house in Bodrum where he lived during the later years of his life was transformed into the Zeki Müren Art Museum by order of the Ministry of Culture and was opened to the public on June 8, 2000. Bodrum Maritime Museum is another museum dedicated to the classification, exhibition, restoration, conservation, storage, and safekeeping of historical documents, works, and objects that are important to the city's maritime history. Bodrum City Museum is a minor museum in the city center that presents the general history of the Bodrum peninsula.


title: Bodrum

text: The population of the town center of Bodrum was 35,795 in the 2012 census. The surrounding towns and villages had an additional population of 100,522, with a cumulative total of 136,317 inhabitants residing within the district's borders.


title: Bodrum

text: The district of Bodrum is one of 957 in Turkey. It is in Muğla Province, which is part of the Aydin Subregion, which, in turn, is part of the Aegean Region. Bodrum became a sub-district of the Ottoman Empire in 1871 and a district of Muğla Province in 1872. Bodrum Municipality operates with its 18 directorates and subsidiary units in the entire Bodrum Peninsula, which covers an area of 689 km and a coastline of 215 km. The organizational structure of Bodrum Municipality is composed of the mayor, four deputy mayors, and 18 directorates.


title: Bodrum

text: Bodrum Municipality served as the sole district municipality in the Bodrum region for many years. With the increase in the population of the peninsula, a town municipality called Karatoprak (Turgutreis) was established in 1967. The increase in the population also led to the establishment of the Mumcular (1972), Yalıkavak (1989), and Gündoğan Municipalities (1992).


title: Bodrum

text: Following the new municipality law of 1999, many villages in Bodrum were turned into towns: Ortakent-Yahşi with the integration of Ortakent and Yahşi villages, Göltürkbükü with the integration of Gölköy, and Türkbükü and Yalı with the integration of Yalı and Kızılağaç villages. The same year, the municipalities of Gümüşlük, Konacık, and Bitez were also founded, raising the number of municipalities in the Bodrum Peninsula to 11.


title: Bodrum

text: After Muğla Province received metropolitan municipality status, these town municipalities were abolished, and all towns across the province were integrated into the city of Bodrum. Since March 30, 2014, the peninsula has been governed as a sole municipality.


title: Bodrum

text: During the 20th century, the city's economy was mainly based on fishing and sponge diving. Even though naked sponge diving in the Aegean region can be traced back at least 3,000 years, modern sponge diving became prevalent in Bodrum after Koan and Cretan immigrants settled in the city in the early 1920s, after the population exchange between Greece and Turkey. During its golden age between 1945 and 1965, about 150 boats engaged in sponge diving activities in Bodrum. However, sponge diseases, artificial sponge production, and a ban on sponge diving eventually ended this lucrative industry.


title: Bodrum

text: Over the years, tourism became a major activity and income source for local communities. The abundance of visitors has also enlivened Bodrum's retail and service industries. Leather goods, particularly for traditional woven sandals, are well-known products. Other traditional goods, such as tangerine-flavored Turkish delight, nazar amulets, and handicrafts are popular souvenirs.


title: Bodrum

text: Apart from small shopping facilities, the city hosts a few shopping malls, such as Midtown and Oasis. There are also marinas for yachts and small ships, such as Milta Bodrum Marina, D-Marin Turgutreis, and the award-winning Yalıkavak Marina.


title: Bodrum

text: The Carian Trail, which passes by Bodrum and the surrounding Kızılağaç and Pedasa ruins, attracts hikers from both inside and outside Turkey.


title: Bodrum

text: Traditional Bodrum houses are characterized by their prismatic shapes, simple designs and locally sourced building materials like stone, wood, clay and cane. They also tend to have white dominated exterior walls with some blue parts (doors, windows). The tradition of white-washed walls is associated with the bug and scorpion repellent properties of lime, which is found in white paint. It is also traditionally applied in most hot regions for heat-reflecting properties of white color. Blue is also believed by locals to protect against the malicious effects of envy (similar to the Anatolian belief Nazar, originated in Mesopotamia).


title: Bodrum

text: According to Muğla Municipality, in order to acquire a building permit one has to agree to paint the walls of the new building white. Use of any paint other than white on the exterior walls of a building was officially banned by Muğla Governor Temel Koçaklar in 2006. This was implemented to protect the historical fabric and cultural identity of the city.


title: Bodrum

text: Bodrum International Ballet Festival has been held in Bodrum every summer since 2002. Bodrum has also hosted the Bodrum International Biennial since 2014. Bodrum Baroque Music Festival is another, annual, music event held in the city.


title: Bodrum

text: There are no civilian airports located in the district's borders and Milas–Bodrum Airport and Kos Island International Airport are the main airports that serve the city. Milas–Bodrum Airport is located northeast of Bodrum, with both domestic and international flights. Kos Island International Airport, to the SW, located in Andimachia, Greece, accessible by boats from Bodrum across a stretch of the Aegean Sea. Aside from year-round flights to Greek destinations, Kos airport's traffic is seasonal.


title: Bodrum

text: Built in 1987, Bodrum-Imsik Airport once served the city before its closure to commercial flights in the late 90's. Due to financial and legal problems caused by a landownership dispute, the airport was sold to Presidency of Defense Industries in 1997. It is currently being operated as an air base.


title: Bodrum

text: The main bus station of Bodrum district used to be located in the city center, but this has changed in 2021 when it was moved to a newly-built facility in Torba, around 6 km away from the town to ease traffic jams in the city center during the high season. The old bus station still has the interdistict buses, but intercity bus services to other locations in Turkey were redirected to the new station. The new station is powered by solar power, and contains 6 electric car charging units, which was described to be a first for a bus terminal in Turkey by the Muğla Mayor Osman Gürün.


title: Bodrum

text: Most of the public transportation in the city is based on local shared taxis called "dolmuş". Each of these privately owned minibuses displays their particular route on signboards behind the windscreens. The word derives from the Turkish for "full" or "stuffed", as these shared taxis depart from the terminal only when a sufficient number of passengers have boarded. Apart from these minibuses Muğla Municipality also has a scheduled bus service program between towns on the Bodrum peninsula. Public transportation between major towns such as Gümbet, Bitez, Turgutreis and the main bus station is non-stop.


title: Bodrum

text: The port has ferries to other nearby Turkish and Greek ports and islands. Bodrum has three large marinas and cruise berths. The first marina, Milta, is located in the center of Bodrum. The second marina is located in Turgutreis, and the third, Palmarina, in Yalikavak.


title: Bodrum

text: Maquis shrubland biome, which is the typical vegetation of the Mediterranean climate, is widespread in Bodrum, especially near the coast. Forests cover 61.3% of the district. Conifers such as pines, larches, stone pines, cedars and junipers are the dominant trees in the region. Forested areas are prone to fires and wildfires are common in the district's history. 95% of forest fires in Turkey are believed to be caused by human activities and there are concerns that forests are deliberately being set on fire to enlarge the city. The ruling party AKP has been criticized in the media for giving building permits to construct new hotels on burnt and deforested areas.


title: Bodrum

text: Wild boars and foxes are prevalent in the area, as are other animals such as pygmy cormorants, Dalmatian pelicans and lesser kestrels. The region is also home to the endangered and internationally protected Mediterranean monk seal.


title: Kite

text: A kite is a tethered heavier-than-air or lighter-than-air craft with wing surfaces that react against the air to create lift and drag forces. A kite consists of wings, tethers and anchors. Kites often have a bridle and tail to guide the face of the kite so the wind can lift it. Some kite designs don’t need a bridle; box kites can have a single attachment point. A kite may have fixed or moving anchors that can balance the kite. The name is derived from kite, the hovering bird of prey.


title: Kite

text: The lift that sustains the kite in flight is generated when air moves around the kite's surface, producing low pressure above and high pressure below the wings. The interaction with the wind also generates horizontal drag along the direction of the wind. The resultant force vector from the lift and drag force components is opposed by the tension of one or more of the lines or tethers to which the kite is attached. The anchor point of the kite line may be static or moving (e.g., the towing of a kite by a running person, boat, free-falling anchors as in paragliders and fugitive parakites or vehicle).


title: Kite

text: The same principles of fluid flow apply in liquids, so kites can be used in underwater currents. Paravanes and otter boards operate underwater on an analogous principle.


title: Kite

text: Man-lifting kites were made for reconnaissance, entertainment and during development of the first practical aircraft, the biplane.


title: Kite

text: Kites have a long and varied history and many different types are flown individually and at festivals worldwide. Kites may be flown for recreation, art or other practical uses. Sport kites can be flown in aerial ballet, sometimes as part of a competition. Power kites are multi-line steerable kites designed to generate large forces which can be used to power activities such as kite surfing, kite landboarding, kite buggying and snow kiting.


title: Kite

text: Kites were invented in Asia, though their exact origin can only be speculated. The oldest depiction of a kite is from a mesolithic period cave painting in Muna island, southeast Sulawesi, Indonesia, which has been dated from 9500–9000 years B.C. It depicts a type of kite called "", which are still used by modern Muna people. The kite is made from "kolope" (forest tuber) leaf for the mainsail, bamboo skin as the frame, and twisted forest pineapple fiber as rope, though modern kites use string.


title: Kite

text: In China, the kite has been claimed as the invention of the 5th-century BC Chinese philosophers Mozi (also Mo Di, or Mo Ti) and Lu Ban (also Gongshu Ban, or Kungshu Phan). Materials ideal for kite building were readily available including silk fabric for sail material; fine, high-tensile-strength silk for flying line; and resilient bamboo for a strong, lightweight framework. By 549 AD paper kites were certainly being flown, as it was recorded that in that year a paper kite was used as a message for a rescue mission. Ancient and medieval Chinese sources describe kites being used for measuring distances, testing the wind, lifting men, signaling, and communication for military operations. The earliest known Chinese kites were flat (not bowed) and often rectangular. Later, tailless kites incorporated a stabilizing bowline. Kites were decorated with mythological motifs and legendary figures; some were fitted with strings and whistles to make musical sounds while flying.


title: Kite

text: After its introduction into India, the kite further evolved into the fighter kite, known as the patang in India, where thousands are flown every year on festivals such as Makar Sankranti.


title: Kite

text: Kites were known throughout Polynesia, as far as New Zealand, with the assumption being that the knowledge diffused from China along with the people. Anthropomorphic kites made from cloth and wood were used in religious ceremonies to send prayers to the gods. Polynesian kite traditions are used by anthropologists to get an idea of early "primitive" Asian traditions that are believed to have at one time existed in Asia.


title: Kite

text: Kites were late to arrive in Europe, although windsock-like banners were known and used by the Romans. Stories of kites were first brought to Europe by Marco Polo towards the end of the 13th century, and kites were brought back by sailors from Japan and Malaysia in the 16th and 17th centuries. Konrad Kyeser described dragon kites in "Bellifortis" about 1400 AD. Although kites were initially regarded as mere curiosities, by the 18th and 19th centuries they were being used as vehicles for scientific research.


title: Kite

text: In 1752, Benjamin Franklin published an account of a kite experiment to prove that lightning was caused by electricity.


title: Kite

text: Kites were also instrumental in the research of the Wright brothers, and others, as they developed the first airplane in the late 1800s. Several different designs of man-lifting kites were developed. The period from 1860 to about 1910 became the European "golden age of kiting".


title: Kite

text: In the 20th century, many new kite designs are developed. These included Eddy's tailless diamond, the tetrahedral kite, the Rogallo wing, the sled kite, the parafoil, and power kites. Kites were used for scientific purposes, especially in meteorology, aeronautics, wireless communications and photography. The Rogallo wing was adapted for stunt kites and hang gliding and the parafoil was adapted for parachuting and paragliding.


title: Kite

text: The rapid development of mechanically powered aircraft diminished interest in kites. World War II saw a limited use of kites for military purposes (survival radio, Focke Achgelis Fa 330, military radio antenna kites).


title: Kite

text: Kites are now mostly used for recreation. Lightweight synthetic materials (ripstop nylon, plastic film, carbon fiber tube and rod) are used for kite making. Synthetic rope and cord (nylon, polyethylene, kevlar and dyneema) are used as bridle and kite line.


title: Kite

text: Designs often emulate flying insects, birds, and other beasts, both real and mythical. The finest Chinese kites are made from split bamboo (usually golden bamboo), covered with silk, and hand painted. On larger kites, clever hinges and latches allow the kite to be disassembled and compactly folded for storage or transport. Cheaper mass-produced kites are often made from printed polyester rather than silk.


title: Kite

text: Tails are used for some single-line kite designs to keep the kite's nose pointing into the wind. Spinners and spinsocks can be attached to the flying line for visual effect. There are rotating wind socks which spin like a turbine. On large display kites these tails, spinners and spinsocks can be long or more.


title: Kite

text: Modern aerobatic kites use two or four lines to allow fine control of the kite's angle to the wind. Traction kites may have an additional line to de-power the kite and quick-release mechanisms to disengage flyer and kite in an emergency.


title: Kite

text: Kites have been used for human flight, military applications, science and meteorology, photography, lifting radio antennas, generating power, aerodynamics experiments, and much more.


title: Kite

text: Kites have been used for military purposes in the past, such as signaling, delivery of ammunition, and for observation, both by lifting an observer above the field of battle and by using kite aerial photography.


title: Kite

text: Kites were first used in warfare by the Chinese. During the Song dynasty the "Fire Crow", a kite carrying incendiary powder, a fuse, and a burning stick of incense was developed as a weapon.


title: Kite

text: According to "Samguk Sagi", in 647 Kim Yu-sin, a Korean general of Silla rallied his troops to defeat rebels by using flaming kites which also scared the enemy.


title: Kite

text: Russian chronicles mention Prince Oleg of Novgorod use of kites during the siege of Constantinople in 906: "and he crafted horses and men of paper, armed and gilded, and lifted them into the air over the city; the Greeks saw them and feared them".


title: Kite

text: Walter de Milemete's 1326 "De nobilitatibus, sapientiis, et prudentiis regum" treatise depicts a group of knights flying kite laden with a black-powder filled firebomb over the wall of city.


title: Kite

text: Kites were also used by Admiral Yi of the Joseon Dynasty (13921910) of Korea. During the Japanese invasions of Korea (1592–1598), Admiral Yi commanded his navy using kites. His kites had specific markings directing his fleet to perform various orders.


title: Kite

text: In the modern era the British Army used kites to haul human lookouts into the air for observation purposes, using the kites developed by Samuel Franklin Cody. Barrage kites were used to protect shipping during the Second World War. Kites were also used for anti-aircraft target practice.


title: Kite

text: Kites and kytoons were used for lofting communications antenna. Submarines lofted observers in rotary kites.


title: Kite

text: Palestinians from the Gaza Strip have flown firebomb kites over the Israel–Gaza barrier, setting fires on the Israeli side of the border, hundreds of dunams of Israeli crop fields were burned by firebomb kites launched from Gaza, with an estimated economic loss of several millions of shekels.


title: Kite

text: Kites have been used for scientific purposes, such as Benjamin Franklin's famous experiment proving that lightning is electricity. Kites were the precursors to the traditional aircraft, and were instrumental in the development of early flying craft. Alexander Graham Bell experimented with very large man-lifting kites, as did the Wright brothers and Lawrence Hargrave. Kites had a historical role in lifting scientific instruments to measure atmospheric conditions for weather forecasting. Francis Ronalds and William Radcliffe Birt described a very stable kite at Kew Observatory as early as 1847 that was trialled for the purpose of supporting self-registering meteorological instruments at height.