title: Plaza Accord

text: Following the subsequent 1987 Louvre Accord, there were few other interventions in the dollar's exchange rate such as by the first Clinton Administration in 1992-95. However, since then currency interventions have been few among the G7. The European Central Bank supported in 2000 then over-depreciated euro. The Bank of Japan intervened for the last time in 2011, with the cooperation of the US and others to dampen strong appreciation of the yen after the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami. In 2013 the G7 members agreed to refrain from foreign exchange intervention. Since then the US administration has demanded stronger international policies against currency manipulation (to be differentiated from monetary stimulus).


title: Plaza Accord

text: The signing of the Plaza Accord was significant in that it reflected Japan's emergence as a real player in managing the international monetary system. However, the rising yen may also have contributed to recessionary pressures for Japan's economy, to which the Japanese government reacted with massive expansionary monetary and fiscal policies. That stimulus in combination with other policies led to the Japanese asset price bubble of the late 1980s. Because of this some commentators blame the Plaza Accord for the bubble, which when burst led into a protracted period of deflation and low growth in Japan known as the Lost Decade, which has effects still heavily felt in modern Japan. Jeffrey Frankel disagrees on the timing, pointing out that between the 1985-86 years of appreciation of the yen and the 1990s recession, came the bubble years of 1987-89 when the exchange rate no longer pushed the yen up. The rising Deutsche Mark also didn't lead to an economic bubble or a recession in Germany. Economist Richard Werner says that external pressures such as the accord and the policy of Ministry of Finance to reduce the official discount rate are insufficient in explaining the actions taken by the Bank of Japan that led to the bubble.


title: Deana Carter

text: Deana Kay Carter (born January 4, 1966) is an American country music singer-songwriter who broke through in 1996 with the release of her debut album "Did I Shave My Legs for This?", which was certified 5× Multi-Platinum in the United States for sales of over 5 million. It was followed by 1998's "Everything's Gonna Be Alright", 2003's "I'm Just a Girl", 2005's "The Story of My Life", and 2007's "The Chain". Overall, Carter's albums have accounted for 14 singles, including three which reached Number One on the "Billboard" country charts: "Strawberry Wine", "We Danced Anyway", and "How Do I Get There".


title: Deana Carter

text: Carter was born in Nashville, Tennessee, the daughter of singer Fred Carter, Jr. Despite her famous father, she did not have a smooth path to a recording deal. After an initial lack of success at age 17, she entered the University of Tennessee, majoring in rehabilitation therapy and becoming a member of Alpha Delta Pi sorority, and a Sigma Alpha Epsilon Little Sister, also known as a "Little Sister of Minerva." During college, she sang at various campus locations, performing for the enjoyment of singing, rather than with the intent of pursuing a musical career. She was also a local bartender at the Back Door Tavern (BDT) on Kingston Pike. After she graduated, she worked with recovering stroke and head injury patients. Although she found the work rewarding and worthwhile, she eventually realized that her first love was music, and decided to pursue the music career she had left.


title: Deana Carter

text: Carter dated music video director Chris Hicky and had a son during their relationship; Gray Hayes Hicky was born in September 2004. On October 3, 2009, Carter married boyfriend Brandon Malone in Malibu. In November 2012, Carter filed for legal separation from Malone, citing irreconcilable differences. On July 6, 2018, Carter married Jim McPhail in a ceremony at the Pearl Hotel in Rosemary Beach, Fla.


title: Deana Carter

text: Carter has been a national spokeswoman for the National Kidney Foundation; her late father was a kidney transplant recipient. Carter also was the author of a book, "Songs From the Heart."


title: Deana Carter

text: Her first big break came when one of her demo tapes caught the attention of Willie Nelson, who invited her to take part in the 1994 Farm Aid VII concert as the show's only female soloist. That same tape led to a contract with Capitol Records that year.


title: Deana Carter

text: In early 1995 she released her debut album, "Did I Shave My Legs for This?," in the UK on Patriot Records. However, the label folded shortly after the album's release. In 1996, Carter released her debut country single, "Strawberry Wine," which reached No. 1 on the U.S. "Billboard" Hot Country Singles & Tracks. "Did I Shave My Legs for This?" was released in North America (keeping only three of the original tracks) to great success. The album debuted at No. 2 on the U.S. Top Country Albums chart and sold well over 5 million copies, and produced two further No. 1 hits in "We Danced Anyway" and "How Do I Get There."


title: Deana Carter

text: Carter was featured on the soundtrack to the 1997 animated movie "Anastasia" for her version of "Once Upon a December." The track was made into a music video and received rotation on CMT at the time "How Do I Get There" was charting as a radio single (since the single had no music video).


title: Deana Carter

text: Also in 1997, she was nominated for Top New Female Vocalist at the Academy of Country Music Awards, along with Mindy McCready and LeAnn Rimes, but lost to LeAnn.


title: Deana Carter

text: In September 1998, Carter released her sixth single, "Absence of the Heart," as the lead-off single to her second album, "Everything's Gonna Be Alright," which was released on October 20, 1998. The album peaked at No. 6 and sold just enough to receive a Gold certification, far less than the sales of her debut album. The album produced a Top 20 in its lead single and three further singles, two of which were minor Top 40 hits ("You Still Shake Me" and "Angels Working Overtime").


title: Deana Carter

text: After her second album failed to follow up on the success of her debut, she attempted for several years to get new material out. But after dealing with a total of four label presidents and a failed attempt to push out a third album in 2001, she chose to end her relationship with Capitol Records over differences on creative direction.


title: Deana Carter

text: After releasing her third studio album, "Father Christmas," on Rounder Records in November 2001, and a divorce from husband Chris DiCroce, she relocated to Los Angeles.


title: Deana Carter

text: In 2002, Carter signed with Arista Nashville and released her first single in three years. "There's No Limit," which became her sixth Top 20 hit with a peak of No. 14 in early 2003, served as the lead-off single to her fourth studio album, "I'm Just a Girl," which was released on March 18, 2003. The title track was released as the album's second single, and was a minor Top 40 hit. No further singles were released from the album, and Carter once again parted ways with her record label.


title: Deana Carter

text: In 2004, Carter signed with independent record label Vanguard Records. She released the song "(Bleep) Texas" in March 2005, but it failed to chart and was shortly replaced with "One Day at a Time," which served as the lead single to her fifth studio album, "The Story of My Life." It only remained on the chart for five weeks and peaked at No. 55. "The Story of My Life" peaked at No. 26 on the U.S. Country Albums chart, and all further singles ("The Girl You Left Me For," "Sunny Day," and "In a Heartbeat") failed to chart. Despite having less success, Carter had more artistic freedom with this album and was able to write (or co-write) and produce all 11 tracks.


title: Deana Carter

text: "Live in Concert," Carter's first live album, was released in early 2007 through Big Band Concert Series. The album includes one previously-unreleased song, "Angels of the Heart," as well as other concert favorites. Although released in 2007, all of the live performances on the album were recorded in 1998.


title: Deana Carter

text: Carter's sixth studio album, "The Chain," was released on October 9, 2007. "The Chain" was a cover album, that she recorded as a tribute to her father (who performed guitar on many of the original versions of the covers found on the album). Many of the tracks also featured the original artists as duet partners, such as Dolly Parton (on "Love Is Like a Butterfly") and Willie Nelson (on "On the Road Again"). The album was unsuccessful; it debuted and peaked at No. 60, and its only single (the duet version of "On the Road Again" with Nelson) failed to chart.


title: Deana Carter

text: After releasing "The Chain", Carter took some time off from recording music to spend at home with her son.


title: Deana Carter

text: In an interview with Jay Cooper of Slither Productions, Carter reported that she had been writing music for her next album, with hopes of releasing the record sometime in 2010. It was announced in March 2010 that Deana Carter had signed a record deal with Warner Bros. Nashville/Chappel Music.


title: Deana Carter

text: In 2010, Kenny Chesney covered "You and Tequila," a song co-written by Carter with Matraca Berg for the album "I'm Just a Girl", and included it on his album "Hemingway's Whiskey". Chesney's version was later released as the album's fourth single in May 2011 and features guest vocals from Grace Potter. It peaked at number 3 in September 2011, and was nominated for Song of the Year at the 2011 CMA Awards.


title: Deana Carter

text: Deana Carter's third studio and holiday album, "Father Christmas", was re-released on December 13, 2011, via Adamant Records, ten years after its initial release.


title: Deana Carter

text: In 2013, Carter formed her own record label, Little Nugget Records. "Southern Way of Life", Carter's seventh studio album, released on December 2, 2013. In 2013, Carter re-released "Father Christmas" with her own record label, Little Nugget Records.


title: Traffic congestion

text: Traffic congestion is a condition in transport that is characterized by slower speeds, longer trip times, and increased vehicular queueing. Traffic congestion on urban road networks has increased substantially since the 1950s. When traffic demand is great enough that the interaction between vehicles slows the speed of the traffic stream, this results in some congestion. While congestion is a possibility for any mode of transportation, this article will focus on automobile congestion on public roads.


title: Traffic congestion

text: As demand approaches the capacity of a road (or of the intersections along the road), extreme traffic congestion sets in. When vehicles are fully stopped for periods of time, this is known as a traffic jam or (informally) a traffic snarl-up. Traffic congestion can lead to drivers becoming frustrated and engaging in road rage.


title: Traffic congestion

text: Mathematically, traffic is modeled as a flow through a fixed point on the route, analogously to fluid dynamics.


title: Traffic congestion

text: Traffic congestion occurs when a volume of traffic or modal split generates demand for space greater than the available street capacity; this point is commonly termed saturation. There are a number of specific circumstances which cause or aggravate congestion; most of them reduce the capacity of a road at a given point or over a certain length, or increase the number of vehicles required for a given volume of people or goods. About half of U.S. traffic congestion is recurring, and is attributed to sheer weight of traffic; most of the rest is attributed to traffic incidents, road work and weather events. In terms of traffic operation, rainfall reduces traffic capacity and operating speeds, thereby resulting in greater congestion and road network productivity loss.


title: Traffic congestion

text: Traffic research still cannot fully predict under which conditions a "traffic jam" (as opposed to heavy, but smoothly flowing traffic) may suddenly occur. It has been found that individual incidents (such as crashes or even a single car braking heavily in a previously smooth flow) may cause ripple effects (a cascading failure) which then spread out and create a sustained traffic jam when, otherwise, normal flow might have continued for some time longer.


title: Traffic congestion

text: People often work and live in different parts of the city. Places of work are often located away from housing areas, resulting in the need for people to commute to work.


title: Traffic congestion

text: According to a 2011 report published by the United States Census Bureau, a total of 132.3 million people in the United States commute between their work and residential areas daily.


title: Traffic congestion

text: People may need to move about within the city to obtain goods and services, for instance to purchase goods or attend classes in a different part of the city.


title: Traffic congestion

text: Brussels, a city with a strong service economy, has one of the worst traffic congestion in the world, wasting 74 hours in traffic in 2014.


title: Traffic congestion

text: Some traffic engineers have attempted to apply the rules of fluid dynamics to traffic flow, likening it to the flow of a fluid in a pipe. Congestion simulations and real-time observations have shown that in heavy but free flowing traffic, jams can arise spontaneously, triggered by minor events ("butterfly effects"), such as an abrupt steering maneuver by a single motorist. Traffic scientists liken such a situation to the sudden freezing of supercooled fluid.


title: Traffic congestion

text: However, unlike a fluid, traffic flow is often affected by signals or other events at junctions that periodically affect the smooth flow of traffic. Alternative mathematical theories exist, such as Boris Kerner's three-phase traffic theory (see also spatiotemporal ).


title: Traffic congestion

text: Because of the poor correlation of theoretical models to actual observed traffic flows, transportation planners and highway engineers attempt to forecast traffic flow using empirical models. Their working traffic models typically use a combination of macro-, micro- and mesoscopic features, and may add matrix entropy effects, by "platooning" groups of vehicles and by randomizing the flow patterns within individual segments of the network. These models are then typically calibrated by measuring actual traffic flows on the links in the network, and the baseline flows are adjusted accordingly.


title: Traffic congestion

text: A team of MIT mathematicians has developed a model that describes the formation of "phantom jams," in which small disturbances (a driver hitting the brake too hard, or getting too close to another car) in heavy traffic can become amplified into a full-blown, self-sustaining traffic jam. Key to the study is the realization that the mathematics of such jams, which the researchers call "jamitons," are strikingly similar to the equations that describe detonation waves produced by explosions, says Aslan Kasimov, lecturer in MIT's Department of Mathematics. That discovery enabled the team to solve traffic-jam equations that were first theorized in the 1950s.


title: Traffic congestion

text: Congested roads can be seen as an example of the tragedy of the commons. Because roads in most places are free at the point of usage, there is little financial incentive for drivers not to over-use them, up to the point where traffic collapses into a jam, when demand becomes limited by opportunity cost. Privatization of highways and road pricing have both been proposed as measures that may reduce congestion through economic incentives and disincentives . Congestion can also happen due to non-recurring highway incidents, such as a crash or roadworks, which may reduce the road's capacity below normal levels.


title: Traffic congestion

text: Economist Anthony Downs argues that rush hour traffic congestion is inevitable because of the benefits of having a relatively standard work day . In a capitalist economy, goods can be allocated either by pricing (ability to pay) or by queueing (first-come first-served); congestion is an example of the latter. Instead of the traditional solution of making the "pipe" large enough to accommodate the total demand for peak-hour vehicle travel (a supply-side solution), either by widening roadways or increasing "flow pressure" via automated highway systems, Downs advocates greater use of road pricing to reduce congestion (a demand-side solution, effectively rationing demand), in turn plowing the revenues generated therefrom into public transportation projects.


title: Traffic congestion

text: A 2011 study in "The American Economic Review" indicates that there may be a "fundamental law of road congestion." The researchers, from the University of Toronto and the London School of Economics, analyzed data from the U.S. Highway Performance and Monitoring System for 1983, 1993 and 2003, as well as information on population, employment, geography, transit, and political factors. They determined that the number of vehicle-kilometers traveled (VKT) increases in direct proportion to the available lane-kilometers of roadways. The implication is that building new roads and widening existing ones only results in additional traffic that continues to rise until peak congestion returns to the previous level.


title: Traffic congestion

text: Qualitative classification of traffic is often done in the form of a six-letter A-F level of service (LOS) scale defined in the Highway Capacity Manual, a US document used (or used as a basis for national guidelines) worldwide. These levels are used by transportation engineers as a shorthand and to describe traffic levels to the lay public. While this system generally uses delay as the basis for its measurements, the particular measurements and statistical methods vary depending on the facility being described. For instance, while the percent time spent following a slower-moving vehicle figures into the LOS for a rural two-lane road, the LOS at an urban intersection incorporates such measurements as the number of drivers forced to wait through more than one signal cycle.


title: Traffic congestion

text: Traffic congestion occurs in time and space, i.e., it is a spatiotemporal process. Therefore, another classification schema of traffic congestion is associated with some found in measured traffic data. Common spatiotemporal empirical features of traffic congestion are those features, which are qualitatively the same for different highways in different countries measured during years of traffic observations. Common features of traffic congestion are independent on weather, road conditions and road infrastructure, vehicular technology, driver characteristics, day time, etc. Examples of common features of traffic congestion are the features [J] and [S] for, respectively, the "wide moving jam" and "synchronized flow" traffic phases found in Kerner's three-phase traffic theory. The common features of traffic congestion can be reconstructed in space and time with the use of the models.


title: Traffic congestion

text: Road rage is aggressive or angry behavior by a driver of an automobile or other motor vehicle. Such behavior might include rude gestures, verbal insults, deliberately driving in an unsafe or threatening manner, or making threats. Road rage can lead to altercations, assaults, and collisions which result in injuries and even deaths. It can be thought of as an extreme case of aggressive driving.The term originated in the United States in 1987–1988 (specifically, from Newscasters at KTLA, a local television station), when a rash of freeway shootings occurred on the 405, 110 and 10 freeways in Los Angeles, California. These shooting sprees even spawned a response from the AAA Motor Club to its members on how to respond to drivers with road rage or aggressive maneuvers and gestures.


title: Traffic congestion

text: Congestion has the benefit of encouraging motorists to retime their trips so that expensive road space is in full use for more hours per day.


title: Traffic congestion

text: It has been argued that traffic congestion, by reducing road speeds in cities, could reduce the frequency and severity of road crashes. More recent research suggests that a U-curve exists between the number of accidents and the flow of traffic, implying that more accidents happen not only at high congestion levels, but also when there are very few vehicles on the road.


title: Traffic congestion

text: One standard response to congestion is to expand road capacity, perhaps by widening an existing road or adding a new road, bridge or tunnel. However, increasing capacity has been shown to result in attracting more traffic, otherwise known as induced demand. The result can be greater congestion on the expanded artery itself or on auxiliary roads. In a similar vein, Braess's paradox shows that adding road capacity might make congestion worse, even if demand does not increase. In his paper, "The Law of Peak Hour Express Way Congestion," published in 1962, Anthony Downs formulated this phenomenon as a "law": “on urban commuter expressways, peak-hour traffic congestion rises to meet maximum capacity.”


title: Traffic congestion

text: City planning and urban design practices can have a huge impact on levels of future traffic congestion, though they are of limited relevance for short-term change.


title: Traffic congestion

text: Congestion can be reduced by either increasing road capacity (supply), or by reducing traffic (demand). Capacity can be increased in a number of ways, but needs to take account of latent demand otherwise it may be used more strongly than anticipated. Critics of the approach of adding capacity have compared it to "fighting obesity by letting out your belt" (inducing demand that did not exist before). For example, when new lanes are created, households with a second car that used to be parked most of the time may begin to use this second car for commuting. Reducing road capacity has in turn been attacked as removing free choice as well as increasing travel costs and times, placing an especially high burden on the low income residents who must commute to work.


title: Traffic congestion

text: Traffic during peak hours in major Australian cities, such as Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth, is usually very congested and can cause considerable delay for motorists. Australians rely mainly on radio and television to obtain current traffic information. GPS, webcams, and online resources are increasingly being used to monitor and relay traffic conditions to motorists.


title: Traffic congestion

text: Traffic jams have become intolerable in Dhaka. Some other major reasons are the total absence of a rapid transit system; the lack of an integrated urban planning scheme for over 30 years; poorly maintained road surfaces, with potholes rapidly eroded further by frequent flooding and poor or non-existent drainage; haphazard stopping and parking; poor driving standards; total lack of alternative routes, with several narrow and (nominally) one-way roads.


title: Traffic congestion

text: According to "Time" magazine, São Paulo has the world's worst daily traffic jams. Based on reports from the "Companhia de Engenharia de Tráfego", the city's traffic management agency, the historical congestion record was set on May 23, 2014, with of cumulative queues around the city during the evening rush hour. The previous record occurred on November 14, 2013, with of cumulative queues.


title: Traffic congestion

text: Despite implementation since 1997 of road space rationing by the last digit of the plate number during rush hours every weekday, traffic in this 20-million-strong city still experiences severe congestion. According to experts, this is due to the accelerated rate of motorization occurring since 2003 and the limited capacity of public transport. In São Paulo, traffic is growing at a rate of 7.5% per year, with almost 1,000 new cars bought in the city every day. The subway has only of lines, though 35 further kilometers are under construction or planned by 2010. Every day, many citizens spend between three up to four hours behind the wheel. In order to mitigate the aggravating congestion problem, since June 30, 2008 the road space rationing program was expanded to include and restrict trucks and light commercial vehicles.


title: Traffic congestion

text: According to the Toronto Board of Trade, in 2010, Toronto is ranked as the most congested city of 19 surveyed cities, with an average commute time of 80 minutes.


title: Traffic congestion

text: The Chinese city of Beijing started a license plate rationing since the 2008 Summer Olympics whereby each car is banned from the urban core one workday per week, depending on the last digit of its license plate. As of 2016, 11 major Chinese cities have implemented similar policies. Towards the end of 2010, Beijing announced a series of drastic measures to tackle the city's chronic traffic congestion, such as limiting the number of new plates issued to passenger cars to 20,000 a month, barring vehicles with non-Beijing plates from entering areas within the Fifth Ring Road during rush hours and expanding its subway system. The government aims to cap the number of locally registered cars in Beijing to below 6.3 million by the end of 2020. In addition, more than nine major Chinese cities including Shanghai, Guangzhou and Hangzhou started limiting the number of new plates issued to passenger cars in an attempt to curb the growth of car ownership. In response to the increased demand to public transit caused by these policies, aggressive programs to rapidly expand public transport systems in many Chinese cities are currently underway.


title: Traffic congestion

text: A unique Chinese phenomenon of severe traffic congestion occurs during Chunyun Period or Spring Festival travel season. It is a long-held tradition for most Chinese people to reunite with their families during Chinese New Year. People return to their hometown to have a reunion dinner with their families on Chinese New Year. It has been described as the largest annual human migration in the world. Since the economic boom and rapid urbanization of China since the late 1970s, many people work and study a considerable distance from their hometowns. Traffic flow is typically directional, with large amounts of the population working in more developed coastal provinces needing travel to their hometowns in the less developed interior. The process reverses near the end of Chunyun. With almost 3 billion trips made in 40 days of the 2016 Chunyun Period, the Chinese intercity transportation network is extremely strained during this period.


title: Traffic congestion

text: The August 2010 China National Highway 110 traffic jam in Hebei province caught media attention for its severity, stretching more than from August 14 to 26, including at least 11 days of total gridlock. The event was caused by a combination of road works and thousands of coal trucks from Inner Mongolia's coalfields that travel daily to Beijing. The New York Times has called this event the "Great Chinese Gridlock of 2010." The congestion is regarded as the worst in history by duration, and is one of the longest in length after the long Lyon-Paris traffic jam in France on February 16, 1980.


title: Traffic congestion

text: A 2021 study of subway constructions in China found that in the first year of a new subway line, road congestion declined.


title: Traffic congestion

text: The number of vehicles in India is quickly increasing as a growing middle class can now afford to buy cars. India's road conditions have not kept up with the exponential growth in number of vehicles.


title: Traffic congestion

text: According to a 2015 study by motor oil company Castrol, Jakarta is found to be the worst city in the world for traffic congestion. Relying on information from TomTom navigation devices in 78 countries, the index found that drivers are stopping and starting their cars 33,240 times per year on the road. After Jakarta, the worst cities for traffic are Istanbul, Mexico City, Surabaya, and St. Petersburg.


title: Traffic congestion

text: Daily congestion in Jakarta is not a recent problem. The expansion of commercial area without road expansion shows worsening daily congestion even in main roads such as Jalan Jenderal Sudirman, Jalan M.H. Thamrin, and Jalan Gajah Mada in the mid-1970s.


title: Traffic congestion

text: In 2016, 22 people died as a result of traffic congestion in Java. They were among those stuck in a three-day traffic jam at a toll exit in Brebes, Central Java called Brebes Exit or 'Brexit'. The traffic block stretched for 21 km here and thousands of cars clogged the highway. Many people died because of carbon monoxide poisoning, fatigue or heat.


title: Traffic congestion

text: New Zealand has followed strongly car-oriented transport policies since after World War II (especially in Auckland, where one third of the country's population lives, is New Zealand's most traffic congested city, and has been labeled worse than New York for traffic congestion with commuters sitting in traffic congestion for 95 hours per year), and currently has one of the highest car-ownership rates per capita in the world, after the United States. Traffic congestion in New Zealand is increasing with drivers on New Zealand's motorways reported to be struggling to exceed 20 km/h on an average commute, sometimes crawling along at 8 km/h for more than half an hour.


title: Traffic congestion

text: According to a survey by Waze, traffic congestion in Metro Manila is called the "worst" in the world, after Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, and Jakarta. It is worsened by violations of traffic laws, like illegal parking, loading and unloading, beating the red light, and wrong-way driving. Traffic congestion in Metro Manila is caused by the large number of registered vehicles, lack of roads, and overpopulation, especially in the cities of Manila and Caloocan, as well as the municipality of Pateros. Traffic caused losses of ₱137,500,000,000 on the economy in 2011, and unbuilt roads and railway projects also causes worsening congestion. The Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) feared that daily economic losses will reach Php 6,000,000,000 by 2030 if traffic congestion cannot be controlled.


title: Traffic congestion

text: In recent years, the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality has made huge investments on intelligent transportation systems and public transportation. Despite that, traffic is a significant problem in Istanbul.


title: Traffic congestion

text: Istanbul has chosen the second most congested and the most sudden-stopping traffic in the world. Travel times in Turkey's largest city take on average 55 percent longer than they should, even in relatively less busy hours.


title: Traffic congestion

text: In the United Kingdom the inevitability of congestion in some urban road networks has been officially recognized since the Department for Transport set down policies based on the report "Traffic in Towns" in 1963:


title: Traffic congestion

text: Even when everything that it is possibly to do by way of building new roads and expanding public transport has been done, there would still be, in the absence of deliberate limitation, more cars trying to move into, or within our cities than could possibly be accommodated.


title: Traffic congestion

text: The Department for Transport sees growing congestion as one of the most serious transport problems facing the UK. On 1 December 2006, Rod Eddington published a UK government-sponsored report into the future of Britain's transport infrastructure. The Eddington Transport Study set out the case for action to improve road and rail networks, as a "crucial enabler of sustained productivity and competitiveness". Eddington has estimated that congestion may cost the economy of England £22 bn a year in lost time by 2025. He warned that roads were in serious danger of becoming so congested that the economy would suffer. At the launch of the report Eddington told journalists and transport industry representatives introducing road pricing to encourage drivers to drive less was an "economic no-brainer". There was, he said "no attractive alternative". It would allegedly cut congestion by half by 2025, and bring benefits to the British economy totaling £28 bn a year.


title: Traffic congestion

text: A congestion charge for driving in central London was introduced in 2003. In 2013, ten years later, Transport for London reported that the scheme resulted in a 10% reduction in traffic volumes from baseline conditions, and an overall reduction of 11% in vehicle kilometers in London. Despite these gains, traffic speeds in central London became progressively slower.


title: Traffic congestion

text: The Texas Transportation Institute estimated that, in 2000, the 75 largest metropolitan areas experienced 3.6 billion vehicle-hours of delay, resulting in 5.7 billion U.S. gallons (21.6 billion liters) in wasted fuel and $67.5 billion in lost productivity, or about 0.7% of the nation's GDP. It also estimated that the annual cost of congestion for each driver was approximately $1,000 in very large cities and $200 in small cities. Traffic congestion is increasing in major cities and delays are becoming more frequent in smaller cities and rural areas.


title: Traffic congestion

text: According to traffic analysis firm INRIX in 2019, the top 31 worst US traffic congested cities (measured in average hours wasted per vehicle for the year) were:


title: Traffic congestion

text: The most congested highway in the United States, according to a 2010 study of freight congestion (truck speed and travel time), is Chicago's Interstate 290 at the Circle Interchange. The average truck speed was just .


title: Traffic congestion

text: Bianchi Alves, B., & Darido, G. (2016, February 7). Sustainable cities, two related challenges: high quality mobility on foot and efficient urban logistics (Part II). Retrieved November 2, 2019, from https://blogs.worldbank.org/transport/sustainable-cities-two-related-challenges-high-quality-mobility-foot-and-efficient-urban-logistics-1.


title: Traffic congestion

text: 2019 Top 100 Truck Bottlenecks. (2019, February 14). Retrieved November 3, 2019, from https://truckingresearch.org/2019/02/06/atri-2019-truck-bottlenecks/.


title: Traffic congestion

text: Haag, M., & Hu, W. (2019, October 27). 1.5 Million Packages a Day: The Internet Brings Chaos to N.Y. Streets. Retrieved November 1, 2019, from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/27/nyregion/nyc-amazon-delivery.html?searchResultPosition=1.


title: Traffic congestion

text: Popovich, N., & Lu, D. (2019, October 10). The Most Detailed Map of Auto Emissions in America. Retrieved November 1, 2019, from https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/10/10/climate/driving-emissions-map.html?module=inline.


title: Traffic congestion

text: Reed, S. (2018, September 21). In London, Electric Trucks Are Helping UPS Make 'Eco-Friendly' Deliveries. Retrieved November 3, 2019, from https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/21/business/energy-environment/electric-ups-trucks-in-london.html?module=inline.


title: Traffic congestion

text: Rooney, K. (2019, April 3). Online shopping overtakes a major part of retail for the first time ever. Retrieved November 2, 2019, from https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/02/online-shopping-officially-overtakes-brick-and-mortar-retail-for-the-first-time-ever.html.


title: Electronic body music

text: Electronic body music (acronymized to EBM) is a genre of electronic music that combines elements of industrial music and synth-punk with elements of disco and dance music. It developed in the early 1980s in Western Europe as an outgrowth of both punk and industrial music cultures. It combines sequenced repetitive basslines, programmed dance music rhythms, and mostly undistorted vocals and commandlike shouts with confrontational or provocative themes.


title: Electronic body music

text: The evolution of the genre reflected "a general shift towards more song-oriented structures in industrial as to a general turn towards the dancefloor by many musicians and genres in the era of post-punk." It was considered a part of the European new wave and post-punk movement and the first style that blended synthesized sounds with an ecstatic style of dancing (e.g. pogo).


title: Electronic body music

text: EBM gained a stable following in the second half of the 1980s. Around that period, a youth-cultural scene emerged from EBM whose followers describe themselves as EBM-heads or (in North America) as rivetheads.


title: Electronic body music

text: The term "electronic body music" was first used by Ralf Hütter of the German electronic band Kraftwerk in an interview with British music newspaper Sounds in November 1977. In June 1978 Hütter reused the phrase in an interview with WSKU radio (Kent, Ohio) to explain the more physical character of the Kraftwerk album "The Man-Machine". Although the term originated in the late 1970s, it was not until the 1980s when it reappeared and started to come into popular use.


title: Electronic body music

text: In 1981, DAF from Germany employed the term "Körpermusik" ("body music") to describe their danceable electronic punk sound. The term "electronic body music" was later used by Belgian band Front 242 in 1984 to describe the music of their EP of that year titled "No Comment".


title: Electronic body music

text: Described as an outgrowth of "electronically generated punk [music] intertwined with industrial sounds," EBM has been characterized as a composite of programmed drum beats, repetitive basslines, and clear or slightly distorted vocals, instructional shouts or growls complemented with reverberation and echo effects. Typical EBM rhythms rely on the 4/4 beat of disco or rock-oriented backbeats, (featuring kick drum, snare and hi-hat) and some minor syncopation.


title: Electronic body music

text: Environmental samples, e.g. hammer blow, machine and alert sounds, are often used to create a "factory ambiance". Other samples include political speeches and excerpts from science fiction movies, cf. "Front 242 – Funkahdafi".


title: Electronic body music

text: EBM evolved from a combination of post-punk, industrial and post-industrial music sources, including The Normal, Suicide, DAF, Die Krupps, Killing Joke, Cabaret Voltaire, Throbbing Gristle and Test Dept. but also krautrock and Berlin school artists such as Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream (who had used electronic bass sequences as a basic feature in their productions).


title: Electronic body music

text: Other influences include the synth-pop music of The Human League and Fad Gadget; and the krautrock-inspired dance hit “I Feel Love” by Giorgio Moroder and Donna Summer. Daniel Bressanutti (Front 242), who helped establish the term EBM, named the soundscapes of Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schulze as additional influences along Kraftwerk, Throbbing Gristle, the sequencer-based Eurodisco of Giorgio Moroder, and the punk movement.


title: Electronic body music

text: Emerging in the early 1980s in Germany and Belgium, bands such as DAF, Die Krupps, Liaisons Dangereuses, and Front 242 started to blend danceable rhythms and repetitive sequencer lines. At the time the genre arose, style-defining synthesizers included Korg MS-20, Roland SH-101, ARP Odyssey, Emulator II, along with several Oberheim and Yamaha models.


title: Electronic body music

text: Archetypical songs are "Verschwende deine Jugend", "Alle gegen alle" and "Der Mussolini" by DAF; "Wahre Arbeit, wahrer Lohn", "Goldfinger" and "Für einen Augenblick" by Die Krupps; "Etre assis ou danser", "Los niños del parque" and "Avant-après mars" by Liaisons Dangereuses, and "Body to Body", "U-Men" and "He Runs Too Fast for Us" by Front 242.


title: Electronic body music

text: Front 242 characterized their approach as somewhere between Throbbing Gristle and Kraftwerk. Nitzer Ebb and Portion Control, influenced by DAF and Cabaret Voltaire, followed soon after. Groups from this era often applied socialist realist aesthetics, with ironic intent. Other prominent artists were Pankow, Vomito Negro, Borghesia, The Neon Judgement, à;GRUMH..., A Split-Second, The Klinik, and Signal Aout 42.


title: Electronic body music

text: In the second half of the 1980s, the genre became popular in Canada (Front Line Assembly) and the U.S. (Ministry, Revolting Cocks, Schnitt Acht) as well as in Sweden (Inside Treatment, Pouppée Fabrikk, Cat Rapes Dog) and Japan (2nd Communication, DRP). North American bands started to use EBM-typical bass sequences and combined them with the roughness of (hardcore) punk and thrash metal (cf. industrial metal). Nine Inch Nails continued the cross-pollination between EBM and rock music resulting in the album "Pretty Hate Machine" (1989).


title: Electronic body music

text: Meanwhile, EBM became successful in the underground club scene, particularly in Europe. In this period the most important labels were the Belgian Play It Again Sam and Antler-Subway, the German Zoth Ommog, the North American Wax Trax! and the Swedish Energy Rekords. Notable acts at that time included And One, Armageddon Dildos, Bigod 20, Insekt, Scapa Flow, Orange Sector, Paranoid, and Electro Assassin.


title: Electronic body music

text: Between the early and mid-1990s, many EBM artists ceased activities or changed their musical direction, incorporating more elements of rock, heavy metal and electronica. The album "" by Front 242 initiated the end of the EBM era of the 1980s. Nitzer Ebb, one of the most important purveyors of the genre, turned into an alternative rock band. Without the strength of its figureheads, electronic body music as a discernable music style faded by the mid-1990s.


title: Electronic body music

text: In the late 1990s and after the millennium, Belgian, Swedish and German artists such as Ionic Vision, Tyske Ludder, and Spetsnaz had reactivated the style. Based on this revival, Sweden and East Germany then became the centre of the movement spawning a variety of newcomers such as Dupont, Proceed, and Sequenz-E. Primarily as a counteracting force against the expanding futurepop scene, these artists followed a neo-traditionalistic path, often referred to as "old school EBM".


title: Electronic body music

text: Simultaneously, a number of European techno producers started incorporating elements of EBM into their sound. This tendency grew in parallel with the emerging electroclash scene and, as that scene started to decline, artists partly associated with it, such as The Hacker, DJ Hell, Green Velvet, Black Strobe, and David Carretta, moved towards this techno/EBM crossover style.


title: Electronic body music

text: There has been increasing convergence between this scene and the old school EBM scene. Some artists have remixed each other. Most notably, Terence Fixmer joined with Nitzer Ebb's Douglas McCarthy to form Fixmer/McCarthy.


title: Electronic body music

text: EBM follows the transgressive approach of punk and industrial music (e.g. "demystification of symbols") and the use of provocative extreme imagery is common (e.g. Nazi paraphernalia; reminiscent of punk's use of the swastika). Appropriating totalitarian, Socialist and Fascist references, symbols, and signifiers has been a recurring topic of debate between fans and outsiders to the genre alike due to its stylistical ambiguity that stems from industrial music's contrarian nature. In one instance, military-themed band Laibach "ma[de] no attempt to subvert this image [so] it has the aura of authenticity" so "[m]any Laibach fans began to revel in the evils of the band and to take their stage act at face value."


title: Electronic body music

text: The military style of EBM has a "part-human part-machine" gestalt typical of transhumanist or cyberpunk movements. EBM asserts a hyper-masculine image of "triumphalism, combat postures, and paranoia," and is known for its "tough-guy" or machismo attitudes displayed by both men and women. According to Gabi Delgado-López of Deutsch Amerikanische Freundschaft, the duo who adopted an aesthetic of black leather and military paraphernalia in the early 1980s was inspired by the male homosexual sado-masochistic scene and is not meant to represent ""machismo" ideology" but part of a "role."


title: Electronic body music

text: Electro-industrial is an outgrowth of the EBM and industrial music that developed in the mid-1980s. While EBM has minimal structures and a clean production, electro-industrial draws on deep, complex and layered sounds, incorporating elements of ambient industrial. Electro-industrial was pioneered by Skinny Puppy, Numb and Mentallo & The Fixer. In the early 1990s, the style spawned the dark electro genre and, in the end of the decade, a strongly techno- and hard-trance-inspired style called "hellektro" or "aggrotech."


title: Electronic body music

text: Industrial dance is a North American umbrella term for electronic body music and electro-industrial music. Fans associated with these genres call themselves "rivetheads".


title: Electronic body music

text: In general, industrial dance is characterized by its "electronic beats, symphonic keyboard lines, pile-driver rhythms, angst-ridden or sampled vocals, and cyberpunk imagery".


title: Electronic body music

text: Since the mid-1980s, the term "industrial dance" has been used to describe the music of Cabaret Voltaire (early 1980s), early Die Krupps, Portion Control, The Neon Judgement, Clock DVA, Nitzer Ebb, KMFDM, Skinny Puppy, Front Line Assembly, Front 242, Ministry, Nine Inch Nails, Manufacture, Yeht Mae, My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult, Leæther Strip or early Spahn Ranch. In March 1989, "Spin Magazine" presented a two-paged special report about the industrial dance movement in Canada and the U.S.


The United States Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is a Cabinet-level executive branch department of the federal government charged with providing life-long healthcare services to eligible military veterans at the 170 VA medical centers and outpatient clinics located throughout the country. Non-healthcare benefits include disability compensation, vocational rehabilitation, education assistance, home loans, and life insurance. The VA also provides burial and memorial benefits to eligible veterans and family members at 135 national cemeteries.


title: United States Department of Veterans Affairs

text: While veterans' benefits have been provided by the federal government since the American Revolutionary War, a veteran-specific federal agency was not established until 1930, as the Veterans Administration. In 1982, its mission was extended to a fourth mission to provide care to non-veterans and civilians in case of national emergencies. In 1989, the Veterans Administration became a cabinet-level Department of Veterans Affairs. The agency is led by the Secretary of Veterans Affairs, who, being a cabinet member, is appointed by the President.


text: The history and evolution of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs is inextricably intertwined and dependent on the history of America's wars, as wounded soldiers is the population the VA care for. The list of wars involving the United States from the American Revolutionary War to the present totals ninety nine wars. The majority of the United States military casualties of war, however, occurred in the following eight wars: American Revolutionary War (est. 8000), American Civil War (218,222), World War I (53,402), World War II (291,567), Korean War (33,686), Vietnam War (47,424), Iraq War (3,836), War in Afghanistan (1,833). It is these wars that have primarily driven the mission and evolution of the VA. The VA maintains a detailed list of war wounded as it is the population that comprises the VA care system.


text: The Continental Congress of 1776 encouraged enlistments during the American Revolutionary War by providing pensions for soldiers who were disabled. Direct medical and hospital care given to veterans in the early days of the U.S. was provided by the individual states and communities. In 1811, the first domiciliary and medical facility for veterans was authorized by the federal government, but not opened until 1834. In the 19th century, the nation's veterans assistance program was expanded to include benefits and pensions not only for veterans, but also their widows and dependents.


text: After the end of the American Civil War in 1865, many state veterans' homes were established. Since domiciliary care was available at all state veterans homes, incidental medical and hospital treatment was provided for all injuries and diseases, whether or not of service origin. Indigent and disabled veterans of the Civil War, Indian Wars, Spanish–American War, and Mexican Border period as well as discharged regular members of the Armed Forces were cared for at these homes.


text: During this period two of the three predecessors of the Veterans Administration were established: the Bureau of Pensions in 1832, and the National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers in 1865.


text: Congress established a new system of veterans benefits when the United States entered World War I in 1917. Included were programs for disability compensation, insurance for service persons and veterans, and vocational rehabilitation for the disabled. The Veterans Bureau was established in August 1921, absorbing the War Risk Bureau and the Rehabilitation Division of the Federal Board for Vocational Education. In 1922, it gained a large number of veterans' hospital facilities from the Public Health Service, most of which had been recently established on former U.S. Army bases.


text: By the 1920s, the various benefits were administered by three different federal agencies: the Veterans Bureau, the Bureau of Pensions, and the National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers. The establishment of the Veterans Administration came in 1930 when Congress authorized the president to "consolidate and coordinate Government activities affecting war veterans". The three component agencies became bureaus within the Veterans Administration. Brigadier General Frank T. Hines, who directed the Veterans Bureau for seven years, was named as the first Administrator of Veterans Affairs, a job he held until 1945.


text: The close of World War II resulted in not only a vast increase in the veteran population, but also a large number of new benefits enacted by Congress for veterans of the war. In addition, during the late 1940s, the VA had to contend with aging World War I veterans. During that time, "the clientele of the VA increased almost five fold with an addition of nearly 16,000,000 World War II veterans and approximately 4,000,000 World War I veterans." Prior to World War II, in response to scandals at the Veterans Bureau, programs that cared for veterans were centralized in Washington, D.C. This centralization caused delays and bottlenecks as the agency tried to serve the World War II veterans. As a result, the VA went through a decentralization process, giving more authority to the field offices.


text: The World War II GI Bill was signed into law on 22 June 1944, by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. "The United States government began serious consolidated services to veterans in 1930. The GI Bill of Rights, which was passed in 1944, had more effect on the American way of life than any other legislation – with the possible exception of the Homestead Act."


text: The Department of Veterans Affairs Act of 1988 () changed the former Veterans Administration, an independent government agency established in 1930 into a Cabinet-level Department of Veterans Affairs. It was signed into law by President Ronald Reagan on 25 October 1988, however came into effect under the term of his successor, George H. W. Bush, on 15 March 1989.


text: The reform period 1995–2000 saw the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) dramatically improve care access, quality, and efficiency. This was through leveraging its national integrated electronic health information system (VistA), and in so doing implemented universal primary care, increased patients treated by 24%, had a 48% increase in ambulatory care visits, and decreased staffing by 12%. By 2000, the VHA had 10,000 fewer employees than in 1995 and a 104% increase in patients treated since 1995, and had managed to maintain the same cost per patient-day, while all other facilities' costs had risen over 30% to 40% during the same period.


text: The 2008 "New GI Bill" (Post-9/11 Veterans Educational Assistance Act of 2008) authored by Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA) doubled GI Bill college benefits while providing a 13-week extension to federal unemployment benefits. The new GI Bill more than doubled the value of the benefit to roughly $90,000 up from $40,000. In-state public universities essentially are covered to provide full scholarships for veterans under the new education package. For those veterans who served at least three years a monthly housing stipend was also added to the law. Congress and President Barack Obama extended the new GI Bill in August 2009 at the cost of roughly $70 billion over the next decade. The Department of Defense (DoD) allows individuals who, on or after 1 August 2009, have served at least six years in the Armed Forces and who agree to serve at least another four years in the U.S. Armed Forces to transfer unused entitlement to their surviving spouse. Servicemembers reaching 10-year anniversaries could choose to transfer the benefit to any dependents such as their spouse or children.


text: In May 2014, critics of the VA system reported problems with scheduling timely access to medical care. In May 2014, a retired doctor said that veterans died because of delays getting care at the Phoenix, Arizona Veterans Health Administration facilities. An investigation of delays in treatment in the Veterans Health Administration system was conducted by the Veterans Affairs Inspector General of 3,409 veteran patients found that there were 28 instances of clinically significant delays in care associated with access or scheduling. Of these 28 patients, 6 were deceased. The same OIG report stated that the Office of Investigations had opened investigations at 93 sites of care in response to allegations of wait time manipulations, and found that wait time manipulations were prevalent throughout VHA. On 30 May 2014, Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric Shinseki resigned from office due to the fallout from the scandal, saying he could not explain the lack of integrity among some leaders in VA healthcare facilities. "That breach of integrity is irresponsible, it is indefensible, and unacceptable to me. I said when this situation began weeks to months ago that I thought the problem was limited and isolated because I believed that. I no longer believe it. It is systemic. I was too trusting of some and I accepted as accurate reports that I now know to have been misleading with regard to patient wait-times," Shinseki said in a statement.


text: In September 2017, the VA declared its intent to abolish a 1960s conflict of interest rule prohibiting employees from owning stock in, performing service for, or doing any work at for-profit colleges; arguing that, for example, the 1960s rule prohibits VA doctors from teaching veterans at for-profit universities with special advantages for veterans. In 2018, the VA instead established a process for employees to seek waivers of the policy based on individual circumstances.


text: The VA's primary function is to support veterans in their time after service by providing benefits and support.


text: Providing care for non-veteran civilian or military patients in case hospitals overflow in a crisis was added as role by Congress in 1982, and became known as the VA's "fourth mission" (besides the three missions of serving veterans through care, research and training). It can provide medical services (reimbursed from other federal agencies) to the general public for major disasters and emergencies declared by the President of the United States, and when the Secretary of Health and Human Services activates the National Disaster Medical System. During disasters and health emergencies, requests for VA assistance are made by state governors to the Federal Emergency Management Agency or the Department of Health and Human Services, which then relay approved requests to the VA. The VA is also allowed to provide paid medical care on an emergency basis to non-veterans. On March 27, 2020, the VA made public its COVID-19 response plan within its medical facilities to protect veterans, their families and staff.


text: One initiative in the department is to prevent and end veterans' homelessness. The VA works with the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness to address these issues. The USICH identified ending veterans' homelessness by 2015 as a primary goal in its proposal "Opening Doors: Federal Strategic Plan to Prevent and End Homelessness", released in 2010; amendments to the 2010 version made in 2015 include a preface written by U.S. Secretary of Labor Thomas E. Perez that cites a 33% reduction in veteran homelessness since the creation of the "Opening Doors" initiative. The prominent role of the Department of Veterans Affairs and its joined up approach to veteran welfare are such that they have been deemd to distinguish the US response to veteran homelessness internationally.


text: The Department of Veterans Affairs is headed by the Secretary of Veterans Affairs, appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate.


text: The Secretary of Veterans Affairs is Denis McDonough who was selected by President Joe Biden and sworn in by Vice President Kamala Harris on 9 February 2021. The Deputy Secretary of Veterans Affairs position is currently vacant with the retirement of Thomas G. Bowman on 15 June 2018. The third listed executive on the VA's official web site is its Chief of Staff (currently Pamela J. Powers); the Chief of Staff position does not require Senate confirmation. In addition to Secretary and Deputy Secretary, the VA has ten more positions requiring presidential appointment and Senate approval.


text: The department has three main subdivisions, known as administrations, each headed by an undersecretary:


text: There are Assistant Secretaries of Veteran Affairs for: Congressional and Legislative Affairs; Policy and Planning; Human Resources and Administration; and Operations, Security and Preparedness. Other Senate-approved presidential nominees at the VA include: Chief Financial Officer; Chairman of the Board of Veterans' Appeals; General Counsel; and Inspector General.


text: The VA employs 377,805 people, of which 338,205 are nonseasonal full-time employees. The American Federation of Government Employees represents 230,000 VA employees, with VA matters addressed in detail by the "National VA Council".


text: The VA, through its Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA), provides a variety of services for veterans including disability compensation, pension, education, home loans, life insurance, vocational, rehabilitation, survivors' benefits, health care, and burial benefits.


text: The Department of Labor (DOL) provides job development and job training opportunities for disabled and other veterans through contacts with employers and local agencies.


text: In 1973, the Veterans Administration assumed another major responsibility when the National Cemetery System (NCS) (except for Arlington National Cemetery) was transferred to the Veterans Administration from the Department of the Army. Public Law 93-43, National Cemeteries Act of 1973.


text: In 1978, Congress established the State Cemetery Grants Program (Public Law 95-476). This act is administered by the National Cemetery Administration to aid States and U.S. territories in the establishment, expansion and improvement of veterans cemeteries. The VA was charged with the operation of the NCS, including the marking of graves of all persons in national and State cemeteries (and the graves of veterans in private cemeteries, upon request) as well and administering the State Cemetery Grants Program. The VA's National Cemetery Administration maintains 131 national cemeteries in 39 states (and Puerto Rico) as well as 33 soldiers' lots and monument sites.


text: The Department of the Army maintains two national cemeteries, the Arlington National Cemetery and the U.S. Soldiers' & Airmen's Home National Cemetery. Many states have established state veterans cemeteries. The American Battle Monuments Commission maintains 25 overseas military cemeteries that serve as resting places for almost 125,000 American war dead; on Tablets of the Missing that memorialize more than 94,000 U.S. servicemen and women; and through 25 memorials, monuments and markers. Fourteen national cemeteries are maintained by the National Park Service.


text: The Center for Women Veterans (CWA) was established within the Department of Veterans Affairs by Public Law 103-446 in November 1994. The Center's mission is to:


text: Center for Women Veterans activities include monitoring and coordinating delivery of benefits and services to women veterans; coordinating with Federal, state, and local agencies and organizations and non-government partners which serve women veterans; serving as a resource and referral center for women veterans, their families, and their advocates; educating VA staff on women' military contributions; ensuring that outreach materials portray and target women veterans; promoting recognition of women veterans' service with activities and special events; and coordinating meetings of the Advisory Committee on Women Veterans. CWA has held summits and forums for female veterans and created social media campaigns and exhibits to highlight women's military service. CWA offers a Women Veterans Call Center (1-855-829-6636) to assist female U.S. military veterans with VA services and resources. In 2018, the Center for Women Veterans launched the "I Am Not Invisible" photography project, featuring individual portraits, to highlight and represent the contributions, needs, and experiences of America's two million women veterans.


text: The VA categorizes veterans into eight priority groups and several additional subgroups, based on factors such as service-connected disabilities, and their income and assets (adjusted to local cost of living).


text: Veterans with a 50% or higher service-connected disability as determined by a VA regional office "rating board" (e.g., losing a limb in battle, PTSD, etc.) are provided comprehensive care and medication at no charge. Veterans with lesser qualifying factors who exceed a pre-defined income threshold have to make co-payments for care for non-service-connected ailments and prescription medication. VA dental and nursing home care benefits are more restricted.


text: Reservists and National Guard personnel who served stateside in peacetime settings or have no service-related disabilities generally do not qualify for VA health benefits.


text: The VA's budget has been pushed to the limit in recent years by the War on Terrorism. In December 2004, it was widely reported that VA's funding crisis had become so severe that it could no longer provide disability ratings to veterans in a timely fashion. This is a problem because until veterans are fully transitioned from the active-duty TRICARE healthcare system to VA, they are on their own with regard to many healthcare costs.


text: The VA's backlog of pending disability claims under review (a process known as "adjudication") peaked at 421,000 in 2001, and bottomed out at 254,000 in 2003, but crept back up to 340,000 in 2005.


text: No copayment is required for VA services for veterans with military-related medical conditions. VA-recognized service-connected disabilities include problems that started or were aggravated due to military service. Veteran service organizations such as the American Legion, Veterans of Foreign Wars, and Disabled American Veterans, as well as state-operated Veterans Affairs offices and County Veteran Service Officers (CVSO), have been known to assist veterans in the process of getting care from the VA.


text: In his budget proposal for fiscal year 2009, President George W. Bush requested $38.7 billion—or 86.5% of the total Veterans Affairs budget—for veteran medical care alone.


text: In the 2011 Costs of War report from Brown University, researchers projected that the cost of caring for veterans of the War on Terror would peak 30–40 years after the end of combat operations. They also predicted that medical and disability costs would ultimately total between $600 billion and $1 trillion for the hundreds of thousands treated by the Department of Veterans Affairs.


text: In a 2015 Center for Effective Government analysis of 15 federal agencies which receive the most Freedom of Information Act (United States) (FOIA) requests (using 2012 and 2013 data, the most recent years available), the VA earned a D by scoring 64 out of a possible 100 points, i.e. did not earn a satisfactory overall grade, for facilitating FOIA requests.


title: Morgan Gibbs-White

text: Morgan Anthony Gibbs-White (born 27 January 2000) is an English professional footballer who plays as a midfielder for Premier League club Nottingham Forest. He has represented England at under-16 through under-21 level.


title: Morgan Gibbs-White

text: Gibbs-White joined Wolverhampton Wanderers aged 8 and has played for the club's academy at all age groups. He made his first team debut, aged 16, as a 62nd-minute substitute for Joe Mason in a 2–0 win over Premier League side Stoke City in the FA Cup 3rd round on 7 January 2017. He made his first league appearance on 14 February 2017 in a 1–0 home defeat in the EFL Championship against Wigan Athletic.


title: Morgan Gibbs-White

text: In January 2018, it was announced that Gibbs-White had signed a contract that would keep him at the club until summer 2022. He made his first Premier League appearance in the opening home match of the 2018–19 season against Everton as a late substitute. He also came on as a substitute in the home match against Tottenham Hotspur on 4 November 2018; despite the team losing 3–2, his performance received particular praise.


title: Morgan Gibbs-White

text: The midfielder got his first start in the Premier League in the home game against Chelsea on 5 December 2018, in which he provided the assist for Wolves' first goal by Raúl Jiménez in a 2–1 win. On 15 August 2019 he scored his first goal for Wolves, on his 57th senior appearance for the club, in a 4–0 second leg win against the Armenian team FC Pyunik in a Europa League qualifier.


title: Morgan Gibbs-White

text: During the COVID-19 pandemic, Gibbs-White was disciplined by Wolves for having breached government rules by attending a party in London in May 2020.


title: Morgan Gibbs-White

text: On 25 August 2020 he signed a new three-year contract with Wolves before moving on loan to Championship side Swansea City for the 2020–21 season. He scored his first goal for Swansea in a 1–0 win against Preston North End on 12 September. Gibbs-White fractured his foot in Swansea's home game against Millwall on 3 October, leading to him missing three months of the season. He did not make another appearance for Swansea after the Millwall game until coming on as an 85th minute substitute in the 2–1 home win over Watford on 2 January 2021.


title: Morgan Gibbs-White

text: Gibbs-White was recalled from his loan at Swansea City by Wolves on 6 January 2021. He scored his first-ever Premier League goal (in his 41st appearance in the competition) on 9 May 2021, a late winner in a 2–1 victory over Brighton & Hove Albion at Molineux.


title: Morgan Gibbs-White

text: Gibbs-White joined Sheffield United on loan for the 2021–22 season on 31 August 2021, having made 3 appearances for Wolves in the early weeks of the season (including a goal in the EFL Cup against Nottingham Forest). He scored on his debut for Sheffield United against Peterborough United on 11 September 2021 in a 6–2 win, and again in his second Sheffield United appearance (against Preston North End) on 14 September, a game which ended as a 2–2 draw.


title: Morgan Gibbs-White

text: On 19 August 2022, Gibbs-White moved to Nottingham Forest, signing a five-year deal for a reported club record transfer fee of £25 million with another potential £17 million in add-ons. He scored his first goal for the club on 5 November 2022 in the home fixture vs. Brentford.


title: Morgan Gibbs-White

text: Gibbs-White was part of the England team that won the 2017 FIFA U-17 World Cup in India. He scored twice in the tournament, against the United States in a 4–1 win in the quarter-finals, and once in the final, which England won 5–2 against Spain. In December 2017, Rhian Brewster revealed in an interview with "The Guardian" that Gibbs-White was racially abused by a Spanish player during the final with the FA reporting the incident to FIFA.


title: Morgan Gibbs-White

text: On 27 May 2019, Gibbs-White was included in England's 23-man squad for the 2019 UEFA European Under-21 Championship in Italy. He made his debut for that age group during the 3–3 draw with Croatia at the San Marino Stadium on 24 June, playing the final 17 minutes in place of James Maddison.


title: Morgan Gibbs-White

text: Gibbs-White was born and grew up in Stafford. He attended Sir Graham Balfour School in his hometown and later Thomas Telford School in Telford, Shropshire, where he was coached by Des Lyttle.


title: New Statesman

text: The New Statesman is a British political and cultural magazine published in London. Founded as a weekly review of politics and literature on 12 April 1913, it was at first connected with Sidney and Beatrice Webb and other leading members of the socialist Fabian Society, such as George Bernard Shaw, who was a founding director.


title: New Statesman

text: Today, the magazine is a print–digital hybrid. According to its present self-description, it has a liberal and progressive political position. Jason Cowley, the magazine's editor, has described the "New Statesman" as a publication "of the left, for the left" but also as "a political and literary magazine" with "sceptical" politics.


title: New Statesman

text: The magazine was founded by members of the Fabian Society as a weekly review of politics and literature. The longest-serving editor was Kingsley Martin (1930–1960), and the current editor is Jason Cowley, who assumed the post in 2008.


title: New Statesman

text: The magazine has recognised and published new writers and critics, as well as encouraged major careers. Its contributors have included John Maynard Keynes, Bertrand Russell, Virginia Woolf, Christopher Hitchens, and Paul Johnson. Historically, the magazine was affectionately referred to as "The Staggers" because of its crises of funding, ownership, and circulation. The nickname is now used as the title of its politics blog.


title: New Statesman

text: Circulation was at its highest in the mid-1960s at 93,000. The magazine encountered substantial difficulties in the following decades as readership fell, but it was growing again by the mid-2010s. In 2020, the certified average circulation was 36,591. Traffic to the magazine's website that year reached a new high with 27 million page views and four million distinct users. Associated websites are CityMetric, Spotlight and NewStatesman Tech. In 2018, "New Statesman America" was launched.


title: New Statesman

text: The "New Statesman" was founded in 1913 by Sidney and Beatrice Webb with the support of George Bernard Shaw and other prominent members of the Fabian Society. The Fabians previously had supported "The New Age" but that journal by 1912 had moved away from supporting Fabian politics and issues such as women's suffrage. The first editor of the "New Statesman" was Clifford Sharp, who remained editor until 1928. Desmond MacCarthy joined the paper in 1913 and became literary editor, recruiting Cyril Connolly to the staff in 1928. J.C. Squire edited the magazine when Sharp was on wartime duties during the First World War.


title: New Statesman

text: In November 1914, three months after the beginning of the war, the "New Statesmen" published a lengthy anti-war supplement by Shaw, "Common Sense About The War", a scathing dissection of its causes, which castigated all nations involved but particularly savaged the British. It sold a phenomenal 75,000 copies by the end of the year and created an international sensation. "The New York Times" reprinted it as America began its lengthy debate on entering what was then called "the European War".


title: New Statesman

text: During Sharp's last two years in the post, from around 1926, he was debilitated by chronic alcoholism and the paper was actually edited by his deputy Charles Mostyn Lloyd. Although the Webbs and most Fabians were closely associated with the Labour Party, Sharp was drawn increasingly to the Asquith Liberals.


title: New Statesman

text: Lloyd stood in after Sharp's departure until the appointment of Kingsley Martin as editor in 1930 – a position Martin was to hold for 30 years.


title: New Statesman

text: In 1931 the "New Statesman" merged with the Liberal weekly "The Nation and Athenaeum" and changed its name to the "New Statesman and Nation", which it kept until 1964. The chairman of "The Nation and Athenaeum"s board was the economist John Maynard Keynes, who came to be an important influence on the newly merged paper, which started with a circulation of just under 13,000. It also absorbed "The Week-end Review" in 1934 (one element of which survives in the shape of the "New Statesman"s Weekly Competition, and the other the "This England" feature). The Competition feature, in which readers submitted jokes and often parodies and pastiches of the work of famous authors, became one of the most famous parts of the magazine. Most famously, Graham Greene won second prize in a challenge to parody his own work.


title: New Statesman

text: During the 1930s, Martin's "New Statesman" moved markedly to the left politically. It became strongly anti-fascist and pacifist, opposing British rearmament. After the 1938 "Anschluss", Martin wrote: "Today if Mr. Chamberlain would come forward and tell us that his policy was really one not only of isolation but also of Little Englandism in which the Empire was to be given up because it could not be defended and in which military defence was to be abandoned because war would totally end civilization, we for our part would wholeheartedly support him."


title: New Statesman

text: The magazine provoked further controversy with its coverage of Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union. In 1932, Keynes reviewed Martin's book on the Soviet Union, "Low's Russian Sketchbook". Keynes argued that Martin was "a little too full perhaps of good will" towards Stalin, and that any doubts about Stalin's rule had "been swallowed down if possible". Martin was irritated by Keynes's article but still allowed it to be printed. In a 17 September 1932 editorial, the magazine accused the British Conservative press of misrepresenting the Soviet Union's agricultural policy but added that "the serious nature of the food situation is no secret and no invention". The magazine defended the Soviet collectivisation policy, but also said the policy had "proceeded far too quickly and lost the cooperation of farmers". In 1934 it ran an interview with Stalin by H. G. Wells. Although sympathetic to aspects of the Soviet Union, he disagreed with Stalin on several issues. The debate resulted in several more articles in the magazine; in one of them, George Bernard Shaw accused Wells of being disrespectful to Stalin during the interview.


title: New Statesman

text: In 1938 came Martin's refusal to publish George Orwell's celebrated dispatches from Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War because they criticised the communists for suppressing the anarchists and the left-wing Workers' Party of Marxist Unification (POUM). "It is an unfortunate fact", Martin wrote to Orwell, "that any hostile criticism of the present Russian regime is liable to be taken as propaganda "against socialism"". Martin also refused to allow any of the magazine's writers to review Leon Trotsky's anti-Stalinist book "The Revolution Betrayed".


title: New Statesman

text: Martin became more critical of Stalin after the Hitler-Stalin pact, claiming Stalin was "adopting the familiar technique of the Fuhrer", and adding: "Like Hitler, he [Stalin] has a contempt for all arguments except that of superior force." The magazine also condemned the Soviet Invasion of Finland.


title: New Statesman

text: Circulation grew enormously under Martin's editorship, reaching 70,000 by the end of the Second World War. This number helped the magazine become a key player in Labour politics. The paper welcomed Labour's 1945 general election victory but took a critical line on the new government's foreign policy. The young Labour MP Richard Crossman, who had become an assistant editor of the magazine before the war, was Martin's chief lieutenant in this period, and the "Statesman" published "Keep Left", the pamphlet written by Crossman, Michael Foot and Ian Mikardo, that most succinctly laid out the Labour left's proposals for a "third force" foreign policy rather than alliance with the United States.


title: New Statesman

text: During the 1950s, the "New Statesman" remained a left critic of British foreign and defence policy and of the Labour leadership of Hugh Gaitskell, although Martin never got on personally with Aneurin Bevan, the leader of the anti-Gaitskellite Labour faction. The magazine opposed the Korean War, and an article by J. B. Priestley directly led to the founding of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.


title: New Statesman

text: There was much less focus on a single political line in the back part of the paper, which was devoted to book reviews and articles on cultural topics. Indeed, with these pages managed by Janet Adam Smith, who was literary editor from 1952 to 1960, the paper was sometimes described as a pantomime horse: its back half was required reading even for many who disagreed with the paper's politics. This tradition would continue into the 1960s with Karl Miller as Smith's replacement.


title: New Statesman

text: Martin retired in 1960 and was replaced as editor by John Freeman, a politician and journalist who had resigned from the Labour government in 1951 along with Bevan and Harold Wilson. Freeman left in 1965 and was followed in the chair by Paul Johnson, then on the left, under whose editorship the "Statesman" reached its highest ever circulation. For some, even enemies of Johnson such as Richard Ingrams, this was a strong period for the magazine editorially.


title: New Statesman

text: After Johnson's departure in 1970, the "Statesman" went into a long period of declining circulation under successive editors: Richard Crossman (1970–72), who tried to edit it at the same time as playing a major role in Labour politics; Anthony Howard (1972–78), whose recruits to the paper included Christopher Hitchens, Martin Amis and James Fenton (surprisingly, the arch anti-Socialist Auberon Waugh was writing for the "Statesman" at this time before returning to "The Spectator"); Bruce Page (1978–82), who moved the paper towards specialising in investigative journalism, sacking Arthur Marshall, who had been writing for the "Statesman" on and off since 1935, as a columnist, allegedly because of the latter's support for Margaret Thatcher; Hugh Stephenson (1982–86), under whom it took a strong position again for unilateral nuclear disarmament; John Lloyd (1986–87), who swung the paper's politics back to the centre; Stuart Weir (1987–90), under whose editorship the "Statesman" founded the Charter 88 constitutional reform pressure group; and Steve Platt (1990–96).


title: New Statesman

text: The "Statesman" acquired the weekly "New Society" in 1988 and merged with it, becoming "New Statesman and Society" for the next eight years, then reverting to the old title, having meanwhile absorbed "Marxism Today" in 1991. In 1993, the "Statesman" was sued by Prime Minister John Major after it published an article discussing rumours that Major was having an extramarital affair with a Downing Street caterer. Although the action was settled out of court for a minimal sum, the magazine's legal costs almost led to its closure.


title: New Statesman

text: In 1994, KGB defector Yuri Shvets said that the KGB utilised the "New Statesman" to spread disinformation. Shvets said that the KGB had provided disinformation, including forged documents, to the "New Statesman" journalist Claudia Wright which she used for anti-American and anti-Israel stories in line with the KGB's campaigns.


title: New Statesman

text: The "New Statesman" was rescued from near-bankruptcy by a takeover by businessman Philip Jeffrey but in 1996, after prolonged boardroom wrangling over Jeffrey's plans, it was sold to Geoffrey Robinson, the Labour MP and businessman. Following Steve Platt's resignation, Robinson appointed a former editor of "The Independent", Ian Hargreaves, on what was at the time an unprecedentedly high salary. Hargreaves fired most of the left-wingers on the staff and turned the "Statesman" into a strong supporter of Tony Blair's leadership of the Labour Party.


title: New Statesman

text: Hargreaves was succeeded by Peter Wilby, also from the "Independent" stable, who had previously been the "Statesman"s books editor, in 1998. Wilby attempted to reposition the paper back "on the left". His stewardship was not without controversy. In 2002, for example, the periodical was accused of antisemitism when it published an investigative cover story on the power of the "Zionist lobby" in Britain, under the title "A Kosher Conspiracy?" The cover was illustrated with a gold Star of David resting on a Union Jack. Wilby responded to the criticisms in a subsequent issue. During Wilby's seven-year tenure, the "New Statesman" moved from making a financial loss to having a good operating profit, though circulation only remained steady at around 23,000.


title: New Statesman

text: John Kampfner, Wilby's political editor, succeeded him as editor in May 2005 following considerable internal lobbying. Under Kampfner's editorship, a relaunch in 2006 initially saw headline circulation climb to over 30,000. However, over 5,000 of these were apparently monitored free copies, and Kampfner failed to maintain the 30,000 circulation he had pledged. In February 2008, Audit Bureau Circulation figures showed that circulation had plunged nearly 13% in 2007. Kampfner resigned on 13 February 2008, the day before the ABC figures were made public, reportedly due to conflicts with Robinson over the magazine's marketing budget (which Robinson had apparently slashed in reaction to the fall in circulation).


title: New Statesman

text: In April 2008, Geoffrey Robinson sold a 50% interest in the magazine to businessman Mike Danson, and the remainder a year later. The appointment of the new editor Jason Cowley was announced on 16 May 2008, but he did not take up the job until the end of September 2008.


title: New Statesman

text: In January 2009, the magazine refused to recognise the National Union of Journalists, the trade union to which almost of all its journalists belonged, though further discussions were promised but never materialised.


title: New Statesman

text: Cowley was named current affairs editor of the year at the British Society of Magazine Editors awards in 2009, and in 2011 he was named editor of the year in the Newspaper & Current Affairs Magazine Category at the British Society of Magazine Editors awards, while Jon Bernstein, the deputy editor, gained the award for Consumer Website Editor of the Year. Cowley had been shortlisted as Editor of the Year (consumer magazines) in the 2012 PPA (Professional Publishers Association) Awards. He was also shortlisted for the European Press Prize editing award in January 2013, when the awards committee said: "Cowley has succeeded in revitalising the New Statesman and re-establishing its position as an influential political and cultural weekly. He has given the New Statesman an edge and a relevance to current affairs it hasn’t had for years."


title: New Statesman

text: The magazine published a 186-page centenary special in April 2013, the largest single issue in its history. It also published two special editions (250 and 150 pages), showcasing 100 years of the best and boldest journalism from its archives. In the following year it expanded its web presence by establishing two new websites: May2015.com, a polling data site focused on the 2015 general election, and CityMetric, a cities magazine site under the tagline, "Urbanism for the social media age" and edited by Jonn Elledge.


title: New Statesman

text: It was announced in December 2016 that the Weekend Competition, a feature inherited from "The Week-end Review", would be discontinued, for reasons of space.


title: New Statesman

text: The "New Statesman" took a neutral position in the 2019 general election. It was the first time in the magazine's history it had explicitly chosen not to endorse Labour.


title: New Statesman

text: As of 2020, the "New Statesman" considers itself a "print-digital hybrid" with peak online traffic of over 4 million unique visitors per month, almost a four-fold increase since 2011. This compares to the magazine's overall circulation of 36,591, and paid-for circulation of 34,451 as of January 2021, the highest level for 40 years.


title: New Statesman

text: At the 2020 British Society of Magazine Editors (BSME) awards, editor Jason Cowley was named Current Affairs and Politics editor of the year for the fourth time, defeating rivals from "The Spectator", "The Big Issue" and "Prospect". "In increasingly tribal times, Jason Cowley continues to champion independence of thought and diversity of opinion, challenging his audience and producing a magazine that's imaginative, unpredictable and interesting", the BSME judges said on presenting the award.


title: New Statesman

text: The magazine's Spotlight series (which publishes specialist business content) also won the Launch of the Year award, with judges describing the supplements as a "great example of monetising a brand without losing its integrity". Following Andrew Marr's leaving the BBC in 2021, he joined the magazine as chief political commentator.


title: New Statesman

text: In March 2009, the magazine had its first guest editor, Alastair Campbell, the former head of communications for Tony Blair. Campbell chose to feature his partner Fiona Millar, Tony Blair (in an article "Why we must all do God"), football manager Alex Ferguson, and Sarah Brown, the wife of Prime Minister Gordon Brown. This editorship was condemned by Suzanne Moore, a contributor to the magazine for twenty years. She wrote in a "Mail on Sunday" article: ""New Statesman" fiercely opposed the Iraq war and yet now hands over the reins to someone key in orchestrating that conflict". Campbell responded: "I had no idea she worked for the "New Statesman". I don't read the "Mail on Sunday". But professing commitment to leftwing values in that rightwing rag lends a somewhat weakened credibility to anything she says."


title: New Statesman

text: In September 2009, the magazine was guest-edited by Labour politician Ken Livingstone, the former mayor of London.


title: New Statesman

text: In October 2010, the magazine was guest-edited by British author and broadcaster Melvyn Bragg. The issue included a previously unpublished poem by Ted Hughes, "Last letter", describing what happened during the three days leading up to the suicide of his first wife, the poet Sylvia Plath. Its first line is: "What happened that night? Your final night."—and the poem ends with the moment Hughes is informed of his wife's death.


title: New Statesman

text: In April 2011, the magazine was guest-edited by human rights activist Jemima Khan. The issue featured a series of exclusives including the actor Hugh Grant's secret recording of former "News of the World" journalist Paul McMullan, and a much-commented-on interview with Liberal Democrat leader and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, in which Clegg admitted that he "cries regularly to music" and that his nine-year-old son asked him, "'Why are the students angry with you, Papa?'"


title: New Statesman

text: In June 2011, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, created a furore as guest editor by claiming that the Coalition government had introduced "radical, long term policies for which no one had voted" and in doing so had created "anxiety and anger" among many in the country. He was accused of being highly partisan, notwithstanding his having invited Iain Duncan Smith, the Work and Pensions Secretary to write an article and having interviewed the Foreign Secretary William Hague in the same edition. He also noted that the Labour Party had failed to offer an alternative to what he called "associational socialism". The "Statesman" promoted the edition on the basis of Williams' alleged attack on the government, whereas Williams himself had ended his article by asking for "a democracy capable of real argument about shared needs and hopes and real generosity".


title: New Statesman

text: In December 2011 the magazine was guest-edited by Richard Dawkins. The issue included the writer Christopher Hitchens's final interview, conducted by Dawkins in Texas, and pieces by Bill Gates, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett and Philip Pullman.


title: New Statesman

text: In October 2012 the magazine was guest-edited by Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei and, for the first time, published simultaneously in Mandarin (in digital form) and English. To evade China's internet censors, the "New Statesman" uploaded the issue to file-sharing sites such as BitTorrent. As well as writing that week's editorial, Ai Weiwei interviewed the Chinese civil rights activist Chen Guangcheng, who fled to the United States after exposing the use of compulsory abortions and sterilisations. The issue was launched on 19 October 2012 at the Lisson Gallery in London, where speakers including artist Anish Kapoor and lawyer Mark Stephens paid tribute to Ai Weiwei.


title: New Statesman

text: In October 2013 the magazine was guest-edited by Russell Brand, with contributions from David Lynch, Noel Gallagher, Naomi Klein, Rupert Everett, Amanda Palmer, and Alec Baldwin, as well as an essay by Brand.


title: New Statesman

text: In October 2014, the magazine was guest-edited by the artist Grayson Perry, whose essay titled "Default Man" was widely discussed.


title: New Statesman

text: The former British prime minister Gordon Brown guest-edited the magazine in 2016, a special edition exploring Britain's relationship with Europe ahead of the EU referendum. Contributors to the issue included the Nobel laureate Amartya Sen and Michael Sandel.


title: Sawfish

text: Sawfish, also known as carpenter sharks, are a family of rays characterized by a long, narrow, flattened rostrum, or nose extension, lined with sharp transverse teeth, arranged in a way that resembles a saw. They are among the largest fish with some species reaching lengths of about . They are found worldwide in tropical and subtropical regions in coastal marine and brackish estuarine waters, as well as freshwater rivers and lakes. They are endangered.


title: Sawfish

text: They should not be confused with sawsharks (order Pristiophoriformes) or the extinct sclerorhynchoids (order Rajiformes) which have a similar appearance, or swordfish (family Xiphiidae) which have a similar name but a very different appearance.


title: Sawfish

text: Sawfishes are relatively slow breeders and the females give birth to live young. They feed on fish and invertebrates that are detected and captured with the use of their saw. They are generally harmless to humans, but can inflict serious injuries with the saw when captured and defending themselves.


title: Sawfish

text: Sawfish have been known and hunted for thousands of years, and play an important mythological and spiritual role in many societies around the world.


title: Sawfish

text: Once common, sawfish have experienced a drastic decline in recent decades, and the only remaining strongholds are in Northern Australia and Florida, United States. The five species are rated as Endangered or Critically Endangered by the IUCN. They are hunted for their fins (shark fin soup), use of parts as traditional medicine, their teeth and saw. They also face habitat loss. Sawfish have been listed by CITES since 2007, restricting international trade in them and their parts. They are protected in Australia, the United States and several other countries, meaning that sawfish caught by accident have to be released and violations can be punished with hefty fines.


title: Sawfish

text: The scientific names of the sawfish family Pristidae and its type genus "Pristis" are derived from the .


title: Sawfish

text: Despite their appearance, sawfish are rays (superorder Batoidea). The sawfish family has traditionally been considered the sole living member of the order Pristiformes, but recent authorities have generally subsumed it into Rhinopristiformes, an order that now includes the sawfish family, as well as families containing guitarfish, wedgefish, banjo rays and the like. Sawfish quite resemble guitarfish, except that the latter group lacks a saw, and their common ancestor likely was similar to guitarfish.


title: Sawfish

text: The species level taxonomy in the sawfish family has historically caused considerable confusion and was often described as chaotic. Only in 2013 was it firmly established that there are five living species in two genera.


title: Sawfish

text: "Anoxypristis" contains a single living species that historically was included in "Pristis", but the two genera are morphologically and genetically highly distinct. Today "Pristis" contains four living, valid species divided into two species groups. Three species are in the smalltooth group, and there is only a single in the largetooth group. Three poorly defined species were formerly recognized in the largetooth group, but in 2013 it was shown that "P. pristis", "P. microdon" and "P. perotteti" do not differ in morphology or genetics. As a consequence, recent authorities treat "P. microdon" and "P. perotteti" as junior synonyms of "P. pristis".


title: Sawfish

text: In addition to the living sawfish, there are several extinct species that only are known from fossil remains. The oldest known is the monotypic genus "Peyeria" whose remains date back 100 million years, from the Cenomanian age (Late Cretaceous), though it may represent a rhinid rather than a sawfish. Indisputable sawfish genera emerged in the Cenozoic age about 60 million years ago, relatively soon after the Cretaceous–Paleogene mass extinction. Among these are "Propristis", a monotypic genus only known from fossil remains, as well as several extinct "Pristis" species and several extinct "Anoxypristis" species (both of these genera are also represented by living species). Historically, palaeontologists have not separated "Anoxypristis" from "Pristis". In contrast, several additional extinct genera are occasionally listed, including "Dalpiazia", "Onchopristis", "Oxypristis", and "Mesopristis", but recent authorities generally include the first two in the family Sclerorhynchidae and the last two are synonyms of "Anoxypristis". Fossils of sawfish have been found around the world in all continents.


title: Sawfish

text: The extinct family Sclerorhynchidae resemble sawfish. They are known only from Cretaceous fossils, and usually reached lengths only of approximately . Some have suggested that sawfish and sclerorhynchids form a clade, the Pristiorajea, while others believe the groups are not particularly close, making the proposed clade polyphyletic.


title: Sawfish

text: Sawfish are dull brownish, greyish, greenish or yellowish above, but the shade varies and dark individuals can be almost black. The underside is pale, and typically whitish.


title: Sawfish

text: The most distinctive feature of sawfish is their saw-like rostrum with a row of whitish teeth (rostral teeth) on either side of it. The rostrum is an extension of the chondrocranium ("skull"), made of cartilage and covered in skin. The rostrum length is typically about one-quarter to one-third of the total length of the fish, but it varies depending on species, and sometimes with age and sex. The rostral teeth are not teeth in the traditional sense, but heavily modified dermal denticles. The rostral teeth grow in size throughout the life of the sawfish and a tooth is not replaced if it is lost. In "Pristis" sawfish the teeth are found along the entire length of the rostrum, but in adult "Anoxypristis" there are no teeth on the basal one-quarter of the rostrum (about one-sixth in juvenile "Anoxypristis"). The number of teeth varies depending on the species and can range from 14 to 37 on each side of the rostrum. It is common for a sawfish to have slightly different tooth counts on each side of its rostrum (difference typically does not surpass three). In some species, females on average have fewer teeth than males. Each tooth is peg-like in "Pristis" sawfish, and flattened and broadly triangular in "Anoxypristis". A combination of features, including fins and rostrum, are typically used to separate the species, but it is possible to do it by the rostrum alone.


title: Sawfish

text: Sawfish have a strong shark-like body, a flat underside and a flat head. "Pristis" sawfish have a rough sandpaper-like skin texture because of the covering of dermal denticles, but in "Anoxypristis" the skin is largely smooth. The mouth and nostrils are placed on the underside of the head. There are about 88–128 small, blunt-edged teeth in the upper jaw of the mouth and about 84–176 in the lower jaw (not to be confused with the teeth on the saw). These are arranged in 10–12 rows on each jaw, and somewhat resemble a cobblestone road. They have small eyes and behind each is a spiracle, which is used to draw water past the gills. The gill slits, five on each side, are placed on the underside of the body near the base of the pectoral fins. The position of the gill openings separates them from the superficially similar, but generally much smaller (up to long) sawsharks, where the slits are placed on the side of the neck. Unlike sawfish, sawsharks also have a pair of long barbels on the rostrum ("saw").