title: Impact crater

text: Impact craters are the dominant geographic features on many solid Solar System objects including the Moon, Mercury, Callisto, Ganymede and most small moons and asteroids. On other planets and moons that experience more active surface geological processes, such as Earth, Venus, Europa, Io and Titan, visible impact craters are less common because they become eroded, buried or transformed by tectonics over time. Where such processes have destroyed most of the original crater topography, the terms impact structure or astrobleme are more commonly used. In early literature, before the significance of impact cratering was widely recognised, the terms cryptoexplosion or cryptovolcanic structure were often used to describe what are now recognised as impact-related features on Earth.


title: Impact crater

text: The cratering records of very old surfaces, such as Mercury, the Moon, and the southern highlands of Mars, record a period of intense early bombardment in the inner Solar System around 3.9 billion years ago. The rate of crater production on Earth has since been considerably lower, but it is appreciable nonetheless. Earth experiences, on average, from one to three impacts large enough to produce a crater every million years. This indicates that there should be far more relatively young craters on the planet than have been discovered so far. The cratering rate in the inner solar system fluctuates as a consequence of collisions in the asteroid belt that create a family of fragments that are often sent cascading into the inner solar system. Formed in a collision 80 million years ago, the Baptistina family of asteroids is thought to have caused a large spike in the impact rate. Note that the rate of impact cratering in the outer Solar System could be different from the inner Solar System.


title: Impact crater

text: Although Earth's active surface processes quickly destroy the impact record, about 190 terrestrial impact craters have been identified. These range in diameter from a few tens of meters up to about , and they range in age from recent times (e.g. the Sikhote-Alin craters in Russia whose creation was witnessed in 1947) to more than two billion years, though most are less than 500 million years old because geological processes tend to obliterate older craters. They are also selectively found in the stable interior regions of continents. Few undersea craters have been discovered because of the difficulty of surveying the sea floor, the rapid rate of change of the ocean bottom, and the subduction of the ocean floor into Earth's interior by processes of plate tectonics.


title: Impact crater

text: Impact craters are not to be confused with landforms that may appear similar, including calderas, sinkholes, glacial cirques, ring dikes, salt domes, and others.


title: Impact crater

text: Daniel M. Barringer, a mining engineer, was convinced already in 1903 that the crater he owned, Meteor Crater, was of cosmic origin. Yet most geologists at the time assumed it formed as the result of a volcanic steam eruption.


title: Impact crater

text: In the 1920s, the American geologist Walter H. Bucher studied a number of sites now recognized as impact craters in the United States. He concluded they had been created by some great explosive event, but believed that this force was probably volcanic in origin. However, in 1936, the geologists John D. Boon and Claude C. Albritton Jr. revisited Bucher's studies and concluded that the craters that he studied were probably formed by impacts.


title: Impact crater

text: Grove Karl Gilbert suggested in 1893 that the Moon's craters were formed by large asteroid impacts. Ralph Baldwin in 1949 wrote that the Moon's craters were mostly of impact origin. Around 1960, Gene Shoemaker revived the idea. According to David H. Levy, Gene "saw the craters on the Moon as logical impact sites that were formed not gradually, in eons, but explosively, in seconds." For his Ph.D. degree at Princeton (1960), under the guidance of Harry Hammond Hess, Shoemaker studied the impact dynamics of Barringer Meteor Crater. Shoemaker noted Meteor Crater had the same form and structure as two explosion craters created from atomic bomb tests at the Nevada Test Site, notably Jangle U in 1951 and Teapot Ess in 1955. In 1960, Edward C. T. Chao and Shoemaker identified coesite (a form of silicon dioxide) at Meteor Crater, proving the crater was formed from an impact generating extremely high temperatures and pressures. They followed this discovery with the identification of coesite within suevite at Nördlinger Ries, proving its impact origin.


title: Impact crater

text: Armed with the knowledge of shock-metamorphic features, Carlyle S. Beals and colleagues at the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada and Wolf von Engelhardt of the University of Tübingen in Germany began a methodical search for impact craters. By 1970, they had tentatively identified more than 50. Although their work was controversial, the American Apollo Moon landings, which were in progress at the time, provided supportive evidence by recognizing the rate of impact cratering on the Moon. Because the processes of erosion on the Moon are minimal, craters persist. Since the Earth could be expected to have roughly the same cratering rate as the Moon, it became clear that the Earth had suffered far more impacts than could be seen by counting evident craters.


title: Impact crater

text: Impact cratering involves high velocity collisions between solid objects, typically much greater than the speed of sound in those objects. Such hyper-velocity impacts produce physical effects such as melting and vaporization that do not occur in familiar sub-sonic collisions. On Earth, ignoring the slowing effects of travel through the atmosphere, the lowest impact velocity with an object from space is equal to the gravitational escape velocity of about 11 km/s. The fastest impacts occur at about 72 km/s in the "worst case" scenario in which an object in a retrograde near-parabolic orbit hits Earth. The median impact velocity on Earth is about 20 km/s.


title: Impact crater

text: However, the slowing effects of travel through the atmosphere rapidly decelerate any potential impactor, especially in the lowest 12 kilometres where 90% of the earth's atmospheric mass lies. Meteorites of up to 7,000 kg lose all their cosmic velocity due to atmospheric drag at a certain altitude (retardation point), and start to accelerate again due to Earth's gravity until the body reaches its terminal velocity of 0.09 to 0.16 km/s. The larger the meteoroid (i.e. asteroids and comets) the more of its initial cosmic velocity it preserves. While an object of 9,000 kg maintains about 6% of its original velocity, one of 900,000 kg already preserves about 70%. Extremely large bodies (about 100,000 tonnes) are not slowed by the atmosphere at all, and impact with their initial cosmic velocity if no prior disintegration occurs.


title: Impact crater

text: Impacts at these high speeds produce shock waves in solid materials, and both impactor and the material impacted are rapidly compressed to high density. Following initial compression, the high-density, over-compressed region rapidly depressurizes, exploding violently, to set in train the sequence of events that produces the impact crater. Impact-crater formation is therefore more closely analogous to cratering by high explosives than by mechanical displacement. Indeed, the energy density of some material involved in the formation of impact craters is many times higher than that generated by high explosives. Since craters are caused by explosions, they are nearly always circular – only very low-angle impacts cause significantly elliptical craters.


title: Impact crater

text: This describes impacts on solid surfaces. Impacts on porous surfaces, such as that of Hyperion, may produce internal compression without ejecta, punching a hole in the surface without filling in nearby craters. This may explain the 'sponge-like' appearance of that moon.


title: Impact crater

text: It is convenient to divide the impact process conceptually into three distinct stages: (1) initial contact and compression, (2) excavation, (3) modification and collapse. In practice, there is overlap between the three processes with, for example, the excavation of the crater continuing in some regions while modification and collapse is already underway in others.


title: Impact crater

text: In the absence of atmosphere, the impact process begins when the impactor first touches the target surface. This contact accelerates the target and decelerates the impactor. Because the impactor is moving so rapidly, the rear of the object moves a significant distance during the short-but-finite time taken for the deceleration to propagate across the impactor. As a result, the impactor is compressed, its density rises, and the pressure within it increases dramatically. Peak pressures in large impacts exceed 1 TPa to reach values more usually found deep in the interiors of planets, or generated artificially in nuclear explosions.


title: Impact crater

text: In physical terms, a shock wave originates from the point of contact. As this shock wave expands, it decelerates and compresses the impactor, and it accelerates and compresses the target. Stress levels within the shock wave far exceed the strength of solid materials; consequently, both the impactor and the target close to the impact site are irreversibly damaged. Many crystalline minerals can be transformed into higher-density phases by shock waves; for example, the common mineral quartz can be transformed into the higher-pressure forms coesite and stishovite. Many other shock-related changes take place within both impactor and target as the shock wave passes through, and some of these changes can be used as diagnostic tools to determine whether particular geological features were produced by impact cratering.


title: Impact crater

text: As the shock wave decays, the shocked region decompresses towards more usual pressures and densities. The damage produced by the shock wave raises the temperature of the material. In all but the smallest impacts this increase in temperature is sufficient to melt the impactor, and in larger impacts to vaporize most of it and to melt large volumes of the target. As well as being heated, the target near the impact is accelerated by the shock wave, and it continues moving away from the impact behind the decaying shock wave.


title: Impact crater

text: Contact, compression, decompression, and the passage of the shock wave all occur within a few tenths of a second for a large impact. The subsequent excavation of the crater occurs more slowly, and during this stage the flow of material is largely subsonic. During excavation, the crater grows as the accelerated target material moves away from the point of impact. The target's motion is initially downwards and outwards, but it becomes outwards and upwards. The flow initially produces an approximately hemispherical cavity that continues to grow, eventually producing a paraboloid (bowl-shaped) crater in which the centre has been pushed down, a significant volume of material has been ejected, and a topographically elevated crater rim has been pushed up. When this cavity has reached its maximum size, it is called the transient cavity.


title: Impact crater

text: The depth of the transient cavity is typically a quarter to a third of its diameter. Ejecta thrown out of the crater do not include material excavated from the full depth of the transient cavity; typically the depth of maximum excavation is only about a third of the total depth. As a result, about one third of the volume of the transient crater is formed by the ejection of material, and the remaining two thirds is formed by the displacement of material downwards, outwards and upwards, to form the elevated rim. For impacts into highly porous materials, a significant crater volume may also be formed by the permanent compaction of the pore space. Such compaction craters may be important on many asteroids, comets and small moons.


title: Impact crater

text: In large impacts, as well as material displaced and ejected to form the crater, significant volumes of target material may be melted and vaporized together with the original impactor. Some of this impact melt rock may be ejected, but most of it remains within the transient crater, initially forming a layer of impact melt coating the interior of the transient cavity. In contrast, the hot dense vaporized material expands rapidly out of the growing cavity, carrying some solid and molten material within it as it does so. As this hot vapor cloud expands, it rises and cools much like the archetypal mushroom cloud generated by large nuclear explosions. In large impacts, the expanding vapor cloud may rise to many times the scale height of the atmosphere, effectively expanding into free space.


title: Impact crater

text: Most material ejected from the crater is deposited within a few crater radii, but a small fraction may travel large distances at high velocity, and in large impacts it may exceed escape velocity and leave the impacted planet or moon entirely. The majority of the fastest material is ejected from close to the center of impact, and the slowest material is ejected close to the rim at low velocities to form an overturned coherent flap of ejecta immediately outside the rim. As ejecta escapes from the growing crater, it forms an expanding curtain in the shape of an inverted cone. The trajectory of individual particles within the curtain is thought to be largely ballistic.


title: Impact crater

text: Small volumes of un-melted and relatively un-shocked material may be spalled at very high relative velocities from the surface of the target and from the rear of the impactor. Spalling provides a potential mechanism whereby material may be ejected into inter-planetary space largely undamaged, and whereby small volumes of the impactor may be preserved undamaged even in large impacts. Small volumes of high-speed material may also be generated early in the impact by jetting. This occurs when two surfaces converge rapidly and obliquely at a small angle, and high-temperature highly shocked material is expelled from the convergence zone with velocities that may be several times larger than the impact velocity.


title: Impact crater

text: In most circumstances, the transient cavity is not stable and collapses under gravity. In small craters, less than about 4 km diameter on Earth, there is some limited collapse of the crater rim coupled with debris sliding down the crater walls and drainage of impact melts into the deeper cavity. The resultant structure is called a simple crater, and it remains bowl-shaped and superficially similar to the transient crater. In simple craters, the original excavation cavity is overlain by a lens of collapse breccia, ejecta and melt rock, and a portion of the central crater floor may sometimes be flat.


title: Impact crater

text: Above a certain threshold size, which varies with planetary gravity, the collapse and modification of the transient cavity is much more extensive, and the resulting structure is called a complex crater. The collapse of the transient cavity is driven by gravity, and involves both the uplift of the central region and the inward collapse of the rim. The central uplift is not the result of "elastic rebound", which is a process in which a material with elastic strength attempts to return to its original geometry; rather the collapse is a process in which a material with little or no strength attempts to return to a state of gravitational equilibrium.


title: Impact crater

text: Complex craters have uplifted centers, and they have typically broad flat shallow crater floors, and terraced walls. At the largest sizes, one or more exterior or interior rings may appear, and the structure may be labeled an "impact basin" rather than an impact crater. Complex-crater morphology on rocky planets appears to follow a regular sequence with increasing size: small complex craters with a central topographic peak are called "central peak craters", for example Tycho; intermediate-sized craters, in which the central peak is replaced by a ring of peaks, are called "peak-ring craters", for example Schrödinger; and the largest craters contain multiple concentric topographic rings, and are called "multi-ringed basins", for example Orientale. On icy (as opposed to rocky) bodies, other morphological forms appear that may have central pits rather than central peaks, and at the largest sizes may contain many concentric rings. Valhalla on Callisto is an example of this type.


title: Impact crater

text: Non-explosive volcanic craters can usually be distinguished from impact craters by their irregular shape and the association of volcanic flows and other volcanic materials. Impact craters produce melted rocks as well, but usually in smaller volumes with different characteristics.


title: Impact crater

text: The distinctive mark of an impact crater is the presence of rock that has undergone shock-metamorphic effects, such as shatter cones, melted rocks, and crystal deformations. The problem is that these materials tend to be deeply buried, at least for simple craters. They tend to be revealed in the uplifted center of a complex crater, however.


title: Impact crater

text: Impacts produce distinctive shock-metamorphic effects that allow impact sites to be distinctively identified. Such shock-metamorphic effects can include:


title: Impact crater

text: On Earth impact craters have resulted in useful minerals. Some of the ores produced from impact related effects on Earth include ores of iron, uranium, gold, copper, and nickel. It is estimated that the value of materials mined from impact structures is five billion dollars/year just for North America. The eventual usefulness of impact craters depends on several factors especially the nature of the materials that were impacted and when the materials were affected. In some cases the deposits were already in place and the impact brought them to the surface. These are called “progenetic economic deposits.” Others were created during the actual impact. The great energy involved caused melting. Useful minerals formed as a result of this energy are classified as “syngenetic deposits.” The third type, called “epigenetic deposits,” is caused by the creation of a basin from the impact. Many of the minerals that our modern lives depend on are associated with impacts in the past. The Vredeford Dome in the center of the Witwatersrand Basin is the largest goldfield in the world which has supplied about 40% of all the gold ever mined in an impact structure (though the gold did not come from the bolide). The asteroid that struck the region was wide. The Sudbury Basin was caused by an impacting body over in diameter. This basin is famous for its deposits of nickel, copper, and Platinum Group Elements. An impact was involved in making the Carswell structure in Saskatchewan, Canada; it contains uranium deposits.


title: Impact crater

text: Hydrocarbons are common around impact structures. Fifty percent of impact structures in North America in hydrocarbon-bearing sedimentary basins contain oil/gas fields.


title: Impact crater

text: Because of the many missions studying Mars since the 1960s, there is good coverage of its surface which contains large numbers of craters. Many of the craters on Mars differ from those on the Moon and other moons since Mars contains ice under the ground, especially in the higher latitudes. Some of the types of craters that have special shapes due to impact into ice-rich ground are pedestal craters, rampart craters, expanded craters, and LARLE craters.


title: Impact crater

text: On Earth, the recognition of impact craters is a branch of geology, and is related to planetary geology in the study of other worlds. Out of many proposed craters, relatively few are confirmed. The following twenty are a sample of articles of confirmed and well-documented impact sites.


title: Impact crater

text: See the Earth Impact Database, a website concerned with 190 () scientifically-confirmed impact craters on Earth.


title: Impact crater

text: There are approximately twelve more impact craters/basins larger than 300 km on the Moon, five on Mercury, and four on Mars. Large basins, some unnamed but mostly smaller than 300 km, can also be found on Saturn's moons Dione, Rhea and Iapetus.


title: Twelve Days of Christmas

text: The Twelve Days of Christmas, also known as Twelvetide, is a festive Christian season celebrating the Nativity of Jesus. In some Western ecclesiastical traditions, "Christmas Day" is considered the "First Day of Christmas" and the Twelve Days are 25 December to 5 January, inclusive, with 6 January being a "thirteenth day" in some traditions and languages. However, 6 January is sometimes considered Twelfth Day/Twelfth Night with the Twelve Days "of" Christmas actually "after" Christmas Day from 26 December to 6 January. For many Christian denominations—for example, the Anglican Communion and Lutheran Church—the Twelve Days are identical to Christmastide, but for others, e.g. the Roman Catholic Church, Christmastide lasts longer than the Twelve Days of Christmas.


title: Twelve Days of Christmas

text: In 567, the Council of Tours "proclaimed the twelve days from Christmas to Epiphany (traditionally 6 January) as a sacred and festive season, and established the duty of Advent fasting in preparation for the feast." Christopher Hill, as well as William J. Federer, states that this was done in order to solve the "administrative problem for the Roman Empire as it tried to coordinate the solar Julian calendar with the lunar calendars of its provinces in the east."


title: Twelve Days of Christmas

text: The Armenian Apostolic Church and Armenian Catholic Church celebrate the Birth and Baptism of Christ on the same day, so that there is no distinction between a feast of Christmas and a feast of Epiphany.


title: Twelve Days of Christmas

text: The Oriental Orthodox (other than the Armenians), the Eastern Orthodox, and the Eastern Catholics who follow the same traditions have a twelve-day interval between the two feasts. Christmas and Epiphany are celebrated by these churches on 25 December and 6 January using the Julian calendar, which correspond to 7 and 19 January using the Gregorian calendar. The Twelve Days, using the Gregorian calendar, end at sunset on 18 January.


title: Twelve Days of Christmas

text: For the Eastern Orthodox, both Christmas and Epiphany are among the Twelve Great Feasts that are only second to Easter in importance.


title: Twelve Days of Christmas

text: The period between Christmas and Epiphany is fast-free. During this period one celebration leads into another. The Nativity of Christ is a three-day celebration: the formal title of the first day (i. e. Christmas Eve) is "The Nativity According to the Flesh of our Lord, God and Saviour Jesus Christ", and celebrates not only the Nativity of Jesus, but also the Adoration of the Shepherds of Bethlehem and the arrival of the Magi; the second day is referred to as the "Synaxis of the Theotokos", and commemorates the role of the Virgin Mary in the Incarnation; the third day is known as the "Third Day of the Nativity", and is also the feast day of the Protodeacon and Protomartyr Saint Stephen. 29 December is the Orthodox Feast of the Holy Innocents. The Afterfeast of the Nativity (similar to the Western octave) continues until 31 December (that day is known as the Apodosis or "leave-taking" of the Nativity).


title: Twelve Days of Christmas

text: The Saturday following the Nativity is commemorated by special readings from the Epistle () and Gospel () during the Divine Liturgy. The Sunday after the Nativity has its own liturgical commemoration in honour of "The Righteous Ones: Joseph the Betrothed, David the King and James the Brother of the Lord".


title: Twelve Days of Christmas

text: Another of the more prominent festivals that are included among the Twelve Great Feasts is that of the Circumcision of Christ on 1 January. On this same day is the feast day of Saint Basil the Great, and so the service celebrated on that day is the Divine Liturgy of Saint Basil.


title: Twelve Days of Christmas

text: On 2 January begins the Forefeast of the Theophany. The Eve of the Theophany on 5 January is a day of strict fasting, on which the devout will not eat anything until the first star is seen at night. This day is known as Paramony (Greek Παραμονή "Eve"), and follows the same general outline as Christmas Eve. That morning is the celebration of the Royal Hours and then the Divine Liturgy of Saint Basil combined with Vespers, at the conclusion of which is celebrated the Great Blessing of Waters, in commemoration of the Baptism of Jesus in the Jordan River. There are certain parallels between the hymns chanted on Paramony and those of Good Friday, to show that, according to Orthodox theology, the steps that Jesus took into the Jordan River were the first steps on the way to the Cross. That night the All-Night Vigil is served for the Feast of the Theophany.


title: Twelve Days of Christmas

text: Christmas Day, if it is considered to be part of the Twelve Days of Christmas and not as the day preceding the Twelve Days, is celebrated by Christians as the liturgical feast of the Nativity of the Lord. It is a public holiday in many nations, including some where the majority of the population is not Christian. On this see the articles on "Christmas" and "Christmas traditions".


title: Twelve Days of Christmas

text: 26 December is "St. Stephen's Day", a feast day in the Western Church. In the United Kingdom and its former colonies, it is also the secular holiday of Boxing Day. In some parts of Ireland it is denominated "Wren Day".


title: Twelve Days of Christmas

text: New Year's Eve on 31 December is the feast of Pope St. Sylvester I and is known also as "Silvester". The transition that evening to the new year is an occasion for secular festivities in many nations, and in several languages is known as "St. Sylvester Night" ("Notte di San Silvestro" in Italian, "Silvesternacht" in German, "Réveillon de la Saint-Sylvestre" in French, and "סילבסטר" in Hebrew).


title: Twelve Days of Christmas

text: New Year's Day on 1 January is an occasion for further secular festivities or for rest from the celebrations of the night before. In the Roman Rite of the Roman Catholic Church, it is the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God, liturgically celebrated on the Octave Day of Christmas. It has also been celebrated, and still is in some denominations, as the Feast of the Circumcision of Christ, because according to Jewish tradition He would have been circumcised on the eighth day after His Birth, inclusively counting the first day and last day. This day, or some day proximate to it, is also celebrated by the Roman Catholics as World Day of Peace.


title: Twelve Days of Christmas

text: In many nations, e. g., the United States, the Solemnity of Epiphany is transferred to the first Sunday after 1 January, which can occur as early as 2 January. That solemnity, then, together with customary observances associated with it, usually occur within the Twelve Days of Christmas, even if these are considered to end on 5 January rather than 6 January.


title: Twelve Days of Christmas

text: Other Roman Catholic liturgical feasts on the General Roman Calendar that occur within the Octave of Christmas and therefore also within the Twelve Days of Christmas are the Feast of St. John, Apostle and Evangelist on 27 December; the Feast of the Holy Innocents on 28 December; Memorial of St. Thomas Becket, Bishop and Martyr on 29 December; and the Feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph on the Sunday within the Octave of Christmas or, if there is no such Sunday, on 30 December. Outside the Octave, but within the Twelve Days of Christmas, there are the feast of Sts. Basil the Great and Gregory of Nazianzus on 2 January and the Memorial of the Holy Name of Jesus on 3 January.


title: Twelve Days of Christmas

text: The Second Council of Tours of 567 noted that, in the area for which its bishops were responsible, the days between Christmas and Epiphany were, like the month of August, taken up entirely with saints' days. Monks were therefore in principle not bound to fast on those days. However, the first three days of the year were to be days of prayer and penance so that faithful Christians would refrain from participating in the idolatrous practices and debauchery associated with the new year celebrations. The Fourth Council of Toledo (633) ordered a strict fast on those days, on the model of the Lenten fast.


title: Twelve Days of Christmas

text: In England in the Middle Ages, this period was one of continuous feasting and merrymaking, which climaxed on Twelfth Night, the traditional end of the Christmas season on 6 January. William Shakespeare used it as the setting for one of his most famous stage plays, "Twelfth Night". Often a Lord of Misrule was chosen to lead the Christmas revels.


title: Twelve Days of Christmas

text: Some of these traditions were adapted from the older pagan customs, including the Roman Saturnalia and the Germanic Yuletide. Some also have an echo in modern-day pantomime where traditionally authority is mocked and the principal male lead is played by a woman, while the leading older female character, or 'Dame', is played by a man.


title: Twelve Days of Christmas

text: The early North American colonists brought their version of the Twelve Days over from England, and adapted them to their new country, adding their own variations over the years. For example, the modern-day Christmas wreath may have originated with these colonials. A homemade wreath would be fashioned from local greenery and fruits, if available, were added. Making the wreaths was one of the traditions of Christmas Eve; they would remain hung on each home's front door beginning on Christmas Night (first night of Christmas) through Twelfth Night or Epiphany morning. As was already the tradition in their native England, all decorations would be taken down by Epiphany morning and the remainder of the edibles would be consumed. A special cake, the king cake, was also baked then for Epiphany.


title: Twelve Days of Christmas

text: Many in the UK and other Commonwealth nations still celebrate some aspects of the Twelve Days of Christmas. Boxing Day, 26 December, is a national holiday in many Commonwealth nations. Victorian era stories by Charles Dickens, and others, particularly "A Christmas Carol", hold key elements of the celebrations such as the consumption of plum pudding, roasted goose and wassail. These foods are consumed more at the beginning of the Twelve Days in the UK.


title: Twelve Days of Christmas

text: Twelfth Night is the last day for decorations to be taken down, and it is held to be bad luck to leave decorations up after this. This is in contrast to the custom in Elizabethan England, when decorations were left up until Candlemas; this is still done in some other Western European countries such as Germany.


title: Twelve Days of Christmas

text: In the United States, Christmas Day is a federal holiday which holds additional religious significance for Christians.


title: Twelve Days of Christmas

text: The traditions of the Twelve Days of Christmas have been nearly forgotten in the United States. Contributing factors include the popularity of the stories of Charles Dickens in nineteenth-century America, with their emphasis on generous giving; introduction of secular traditions in the 19th and 20th centuries, e. g., the American Santa Claus; and increase in the popularity of secular New Year's Eve parties. Presently, the commercial practice treats the Solemnity of Christmas, 25 December, the first day of Christmas, as the last day of the "Christmas" marketing season, as the numerous "after-Christmas sales" that commence on 26 December demonstrate. The commercial calendar has encouraged an erroneous assumption that the Twelve Days "end" on Christmas Day and must therefore begin on 14 December.


title: Twelve Days of Christmas

text: Many American Christians still celebrate the traditional liturgical seasons of Advent and Christmas, especially Amish, Anglo-Catholics, Episcopalians, Lutherans, Mennonites, Methodists, Moravians, Nazarenes, Orthodox Christians, Presbyterians, and Roman Catholics. In Anglicanism, the designation of the "Twelve Days of Christmas" is used liturgically in the Episcopal Church in the US, having its own invitatory antiphon in the "Book of Common Prayer" for Matins.


title: Twelve Days of Christmas

text: Christians who celebrate the Twelve Days may give gifts on each of them, with each of the Twelve Days representing a wish for a corresponding month of the new year. They may feast on traditional foods and otherwise celebrate the entire time through the morning of the Solemnity of Epiphany. Contemporary traditions include lighting a candle for each day, singing the verse of the corresponding day from the famous "The Twelve Days of Christmas", and lighting a yule log on Christmas Eve and letting it burn some more on each of the twelve nights. For some, the Twelfth Night remains the night of the most festive parties and exchanges of gifts. Some households exchange gifts on the first (25 December) and last (5 January) days of the Twelve Days. As in former times, the Twelfth Night to the morning of Epiphany is the traditional time during which Christmas trees and decorations are removed.


title: Salade niçoise

text: Salade niçoise (), salada nissarda in the Niçard dialect of the Occitan language, insalata nizzarda in Italian, is a salad that originated in the French city of Nice. It is traditionally made of tomatoes, hard-boiled eggs, Niçoise olives and anchovies or tuna, dressed with olive oil, or in some historical versions, a vinaigrette. It has been popular worldwide since the early 20th century, and has been prepared and discussed by many chefs. Delia Smith called it "one of the best combinations of salad ingredients ever invented" and Gordon Ramsay said that "it must be the finest summer salad of all".


title: Salade niçoise

text: Salade niçoise can be served either as a composed salad or as a tossed salad. Freshly cooked or canned tuna may be added. For decades, traditionalists and innovators have disagreed over which ingredients should be included; traditionalists exclude cooked vegetables. The salad may include raw red peppers, shallots, artichoke hearts and other seasonal raw vegetables. Raw green beans harvested in the spring, when they are still young and crisp, may be included. However, cooked green beans and potatoes are commonly served in variations of salade niçoise that are popular around the world.


title: Salade niçoise

text: The version known in Nice in the late 19th century was a basic combination of tomatoes, anchovies and olive oil, described as "simple food for poor people". Over time, other fresh and mostly raw ingredients were added to the salad as served in Nice. A 1903 recipe by Henri Heyraud in a book called "La Cuisine à Nice" included tomatoes, anchovies, artichokes, olive oil, red peppers and black olives, but excluded tuna and lettuce. The dressing included olive oil, vinegar, mustard and fines herbes.


title: Salade niçoise

text: Former Nice mayor and cookbook author Jacques Médecin was a strict salad traditionalist. His 1972 cookbook "Cuisine Nicoise: Recipes from a Mediterranean Kitchen" called for the salad to be served in a wooden bowl rubbed with garlic, and excluded boiled vegetables: "never, never, I beg you, include boiled potato or any other boiled vegetable in your salade niçoise." Médecin wrote that the salad should be made "predominantly of tomatoes" which should be "salted three times and moistened with olive oil". Hard-boiled eggs were added, and either anchovies or canned tuna, but not both. He incorporated raw vegetables such as cucumbers, purple artichokes, green peppers, fava beans, spring onions, black olives, basil and garlic, but no lettuce or vinegar. According to Rowley Leigh, Médecin believed that salade niçoise "was a product of the sun and had to be vibrant with the crisp, sweet flavours of the vegetables of the Midi." Médecin advocated presenting the dish as a composed salad, commenting, "As the various ingredients that go into "salade niçoise" are of bright and contrasting colours, they can be arranged most decoratively in the salad bowl."


title: Salade niçoise

text: An organization called "Cercle de la Capelina d’Or", led for many years by Renée Graglia until her death in 2013, continues to protest against deviation from traditional local recipes. The group, which certifies restaurants in Nice, sticks with Médecin's standards. They reject commonly included ingredients such as green beans and potatoes, as well as innovations such as including sweet corn, mayonnaise, shallots and lemon.


title: Salade niçoise

text: In 2016, French Michelin-starred chef Hélène Darroze posted a salade niçoise recipe on Facebook that included cooked potatoes and green beans. According to journalist Mathilde Frénois, the reaction on Facebook was quick and hostile from the "purists". Darroze's version was called "a massacre of the recipe", a "sacrilege", and a violation of the "ancestral traditions" of the salad. She was warned that it is "dangerous to innovate".


title: Salade niçoise

text: The question of the proper ingredients appropriate for a salade niçoise has long been the subject of debate and even controversy. The British cook Nigella Lawson observed "Everyone seems to have a very strong opinion as to what should or should not go into a Salade Niçoise". Chef and cookbook author Auguste Escoffier (1846–1935), born in Villeneuve-Loubet near Nice, added potatoes and green beans, an innovation that remains controversial as a "questionable idea" a century later.


title: Salade niçoise

text: Salade niçoise has been known in the United States since at least the 1920s, when a cookbook for hotel chefs included two variations. The first was vegetarian, was dressed with mayonnaise, and included lettuce, tomatoes, potatoes, stringless beans and pimento-stuffed olives, while the second version was a composed salad, including the same ingredients, plus anchovies.


title: Salade niçoise

text: The dish was included in the 1936 cookbook "L'Art culinaire moderne" by Henri-Paul Pellaprat, which was first translated for American cooks in 1966 as "Modern French Culinary Art". His version included cold cooked potatoes and cold cooked green beans.


title: Salade niçoise

text: A 1941 U.S. version by chef Louis Diat of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel included the anchovies, was dressed with vinaigrette, and added capers.


title: Salade niçoise

text: The highly influential 1961 American cookbook, "Mastering the Art of French Cooking", included a recipe that incorporated a potato salad, green beans, both tuna and anchovies and a vinaigrette dressing. Co-author Julia Child later demonstrated the recipe on her television show, "The French Chef", in 1970.


title: Salade niçoise

text: A recipe was included in Prosper Montagné's "Larousse Gastronomique" in 1938. It called for "equal parts diced potatoes and French beans. Season with oil, vinegar, salt and pepper. Mix with anchovy fillets, olives and capers. Garnish with quartered tomatoes."


title: Salade niçoise

text: French chef Paul Bocuse included a vegetarian version of the salad, garnished with chopped onion and chervil, in the 1977 English translation of his cookbook.


title: Salade niçoise

text: A 1979 variation by Pierre Franey is called "Salade Niçoise aux Poires d'Avocat". Franey wrote, "I am convinced that had avocados been native to Provence they would have been an inevitable ingredient in the celebrated salad of that region, the salad niçoise." This version also included mushrooms and both black and green olives.


title: Salade niçoise

text: Claudia Roden is an advocate of innovation, and observed in 1984 that "There are not one or two or three versions of salade Nicoise — but dozens, depending on what is available."


title: Salade niçoise

text: In 1991, Jacques Pépin wrote an article that called the inclusion of canned tuna the "conventional choice", and recommended sauteed fresh tuna instead as "more elegant". Mimi Sheraton disagrees, commenting, "Salade Nicoise with fresh tuna is a travesty . . . if you like it, you are wrong!" In 1999, Pépin joined with Julia Child in a TV series, "Julia and Jacques: Cooking at Home". Each prepared a salad they called "Near Nicoise". Child's version was a composed salad including tuna and anchovies canned in olive oil, and blanched green beans. Pépin's was a tossed salad including sauteed fresh tuna and potatoes.


title: Salade niçoise

text: Many chefs have developed variations using seafood other than anchovies or tuna. Ina Garten, Jamie Oliver and Rachael Ray have published variations using salmon as the fish component. Bobby Flay has published variations incorporating shrimp and swordfish both of which he describes as "Nicoise" in quotation marks. Sara Moulton also has a recipe incorporating shrimp. Instead of a conventional salad dressing, she uses an Italian tuna sauce. A wide variety of seafoods can be used in non-traditional variations, with San Francisco chef Jay Harlow commenting, "Mackerel, and even milder fish like rockfish, cod or halibut are also delicious served this way, as are good canned sardines."


title: Salade niçoise

text: Emeril Lagasse has a recipe that uses a mayonnaise based creamy Parmesan dressing, and incorporates grilled Yellowfin tuna loin along with Picholine olives in addition to the traditional black olives.


title: Salade niçoise

text: Many other chefs and food writers have written recipes for the salad. Among them are Daniel Boulud, Anthony Bourdain, Melissa d'Arabian, Hélène Darroze, Tyler Florence, Simon Hopkinson, Robert Irvine, Gordon Ramsay, Nigel Slater, Delia Smith, Martha Stewart, Michael Symon and Alice Waters.


title: Burhanuddin Rabbani

text: Burhānuddīn Rabbānī (Persian: ; 20 September 1940 – 20 September 2011) was an Afghan politician and teacher who served as President of Afghanistan from 1992 to 1996 (in exile from 1996 to 2001).


title: Burhanuddin Rabbani

text: Born in the Badakhshan Province, Rabbani studied at Kabul University and worked there as a professor of Islamic theology. He formed the Jamiat-e Islami ("Islamic Society") at the university which attracted then-students Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Ahmad Shah Massoud, both of whom would eventually become the two leading commanders of the Afghan mujahideen in the Soviet–Afghan War from 1979. Rabbani was chosen to be the President of Afghanistan after the end of the former communist regime in 1992. Rabbani and his Islamic State of Afghanistan government was later forced into exile by the Taliban, and he then served as the political head of the Northern Alliance, an alliance of various political groups who fought against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. During his time in the office, there were a lot of internal clashes between different fighting groups. His party was responsible for destroying much of Kabul as well as killing 80,000 Kabulis and displacing more than 2 million.


title: Burhanuddin Rabbani

text: After the Taliban government was toppled during Operation Enduring Freedom, Rabbani returned to Kabul and served briefly as President from 13 November to 22 December 2001, when Hamid Karzai was chosen as his succeeding interim leader at the Bonn International Conference. In later years he became head of Afghanistan National Front (known in the media as United National Front), the largest political opposition to Karzai's government.


title: Burhanuddin Rabbani

text: On 20 September 2011, Rabbani was assassinated by a suicide bomber entering his home in Kabul. As suggested by the Afghan parliament, Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai gave him the title of "Martyr of Peace". His son Salahuddin Rabbani was chosen in April 2012 to lead efforts to forge peace in Afghanistan with the Taliban.


title: Burhanuddin Rabbani

text: Rabbani, son of Muhammed Yousuf, was born in the northern province of Badakhshan. He was a Persian-speaking ethnic Tajik. After finishing school in his native province, he went to Darul-uloom-e-Sharia (Abu-Hanifa), a religious school in Kabul. When he graduated from Abu-Hanifa, he attended Kabul University to study Islamic Law and Theology, graduating in 1963.


title: Burhanuddin Rabbani

text: Soon after his graduation in 1963, he was hired as a professor at Kabul University. In order to enhance himself, Rabbani went to Egypt in 1966, and he entered the Al-Azhar University in Cairo where he developed close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood leadership. In two years, he received his master's degree in Islamic Philosophy. He resumed his position at the university and became closely associated with his fellow professor, Gholam Mohammad Niazi, whom he served as secretary in 1969 and 1970. Rabbani was one of the first Afghans to translate the works of Sayyid Qutb into Persian. Later he returned to Egypt to complete his PhD in Islamic philosophy and his thesis was titled "The Philosophy and Teachings of Abd al-Rahman Muhammad Jami." In 2004 he received Afghanistan's highest academic and scientific title "Academician" from the Academy of Sciences of Afghanistan.


title: Burhanuddin Rabbani

text: Rabbani returned to Afghanistan in 1968, where the High Council of Jamiat-e Islami gave him the duty of organizing the University students. Due to his knowledge, reputation, and active support for the cause of Islam, in 1972, a 15-member council selected him as head of Jamiat-e Islami of Afghanistan; the founder of Jamiat-e Islami of Afghanistan, Gholam Mohammad Niazi was also present. Jamiat-e Islami was primarily composed of Tajiks.


title: Burhanuddin Rabbani

text: In the spring of 1974, the police came to Kabul University to arrest Rabbani for his pro-Islamic stance, but with the help of his students the police were unable to capture him, and he managed to escape to the countryside. In Pakistan, Rabbani gathered important people and established the party. Sayed Noorullah Emad, who was then a young Muslim in the University of Kabul, became the General Secretary of the party and, later, its deputy chief. Rabbani alongside Ahmad Shah Massoud and others planned to take action either against the Daoud government or people who they deemed communist in 1975, but failed.


title: Burhanuddin Rabbani

text: When the Soviets intervened in 1979, Rabbani helped lead Jamiat-e Islami in resistance to the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan regime. Rabbani's forces were the first Mujahideen elements to enter Kabul in 1992 when the PDPA government fell from power. He took over as President from 1992 in accordance to the Peshawar Accords. Rabbani was the third ethnic Tajik leader of modern Afghanistan after Habibullah Kalakani in 1929 and Abdul Qadir in 1978 (and possibly including Babrak Karmal, whose ethnicity was disputed). His rule was limited since the country was fractured by civil war between different sides. Rabbani was forced to flee following the Taliban's conquest of Kabul in 1996. Rabbani operated his government in exile, following the establishment of the Taliban rule of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. In this period between 1996 and 2001, the Rabbani government of the Islamic State of Afghanistan remained the internationally recognized government, despite only controlling about 10% of Afghan territory. For the next five years, he and the Northern Alliance, commanded by Ahmad Shah Massoud and others, were fighting the Taliban until the 2001 US-led Operation Enduring Freedom in which the Taliban government was toppled. Rabbani was head of Afghanistan's High Peace Council, which had been formed in 2010 to initiate peace talks with the Taliban and other groups in the insurgency, until his death.


title: Burhanuddin Rabbani

text: Rabbani was killed in a suicide bombing at his home in Kabul on 20 September 2011, his 71st birthday. Two men posing as Taliban representatives approached him to offer a hug and detonated their explosives. At least one of them had hidden the explosives in his turban. The suicide bomber claimed to be a Taliban commander, said he bore a "very important and positive message" from Taliban leaders in Pakistan, and said he wanted to "discuss peace" with Rabbani. Four other members of Afghanistan's High Peace Council were also killed in the blast. Rabbani was buried in the Wazir Akbar Khan cemetery.


title: Burhanuddin Rabbani

text: Afghan officials blamed the Quetta Shura, which is the leadership of the Afghan Taliban hiding in the affluent Satellite Town of Quetta in Pakistan. The Pakistani government confirmed that Rabbani's assassination was linked to Afghan refugees in Pakistan. A senior Pakistani official stated that over 90% of terrorist attacks in Pakistan are traced back to Afghan elements and that their presence in the country was "an important issue for Pakistan" and "a problem for Afghanistan". Pakistani foreign minister Hina Rabbani Khar said that "We are not responsible if Afghan refugees crossed the border and entered Kabul, stayed in a guest house and attacked Professor Rabbani".


title: Burhanuddin Rabbani

text: In 2011, just days before he died, Rabbani was trying to persuade Islamic scholars to issue a religious edict banning suicide bombings. The former president's 29-year-old daughter said in an interview that her father died shortly after he spoke at a conference on "Islamic Awakening" in Tehran. "Right before he was assassinated, he talked about the suicide bombing issue," Fatima Rabbani told Reuters. "He called on all Islamic scholars in the conference to release a fatwa" against the tactic.


title: Burhanuddin Rabbani

text: Government minister Nematullah Shahrani said Rabbani is irreplaceable because "he had relations with all these tribes."


title: Burhanuddin Rabbani

text: United States President Barack Obama and several NATO military leaders condemned the assassination. Japan also offered its condolences at the Sixty-sixth session of the United Nations General Assembly. Afghan President Hamid Karzai cut short his trip for the General debate of the sixty-sixth session of the United Nations General Assembly following his assassination. Rabbani's son Salahuddin then took over chairmanship of the High Peace Council from his father.


title: LGA 2011

text: LGA 2011, also called "Socket R", is a CPU socket by Intel released on November 14, 2011. It launched along with LGA 1356 to replace its predecessor, LGA 1366 (Socket B) and LGA 1567. While LGA 1356 was designed for dual-processor or low-end servers, LGA 2011 was designed for high-end desktops and high-performance servers. The socket has 2011 protruding pins that touch contact points on the underside of the processor.


title: LGA 2011

text: The LGA 2011 socket uses QPI to connect the CPU to additional CPUs. DMI 2.0 is used to connect the processor to the PCH. The memory controller and 40 PCI Express (PCIe) lanes are integrated on the CPU. On a secondary processor an extra ×4 PCIe interface replaces the DMI interface. As with its predecessor LGA 1366, there is no provisioning for integrated graphics. This socket supports four DDR3 or DDR4 SDRAM memory channels with up to three unbuffered or registered DIMMs per channel, as well as up to 40 PCI Express 2.0 or 3.0 lanes. LGA 2011 also has to ensure platform scalability beyond eight cores and 20 MB of cache.


title: LGA 2011

text: The LGA 2011 socket is used by Sandy Bridge-E/EP and Ivy Bridge-E/EP processors with the corresponding X79 (E enthusiast class) and C600-series (EP Xeon class) chipsets. It and LGA 1155 are the two last Intel sockets to support Windows XP and Windows Server 2003.


title: LGA 2011

text: LGA 2011-1 (Socket R2), an updated generation of the socket and the successor of LGA 1567, is used for Ivy Bridge-EX (Xeon E7 v2), Haswell-EX (Xeon E7 v3) and Broadwell-EX (Xeon E7 v4) CPUs, which were released in February 2014, May 2015 and July 2016, respectively.


title: LGA 2011

text: LGA 2011-v3 (Socket R3, also referred to as LGA 2011-3) is another updated generation of the socket, used for Haswell-E and Haswell-EP CPUs and Broadwell-E, which were released in August and September 2014, respectively. Updated socket generations are physically similar to LGA 2011, but different electrical signals, ILM keying and integration of DDR4 memory controller rather than DDR3 prevent backward compatibility with older CPUs.


title: LGA 2011

text: In the server market, it was succeeded by LGA 3647, when in high-end desktop and workstation markets its successor is LGA 2066. Xeon E3 family of processors, later renamed Xeon E, uses consumer-grade sockets.


title: LGA 2011

text: Intel CPU sockets use the so-called "Independent Loading Mechanism" (ILM) retention device to apply the specific amount of uniform pressure required to correctly hold the CPU against the socket interface. As part of their design, ILMs have differently placed protrusions which are intended to mate with cutouts in CPU packagings. These protrusions, also known as "ILM keying", have the purpose of preventing installation of incompatible CPUs into otherwise physically compatible sockets, and preventing ILMs to be mounted with a 180-degree rotation relative to the CPU socket.


title: LGA 2011

text: Different variants (or generations) of the LGA 2011 socket and associated CPUs come with different ILM keying, which makes it possible to install CPUs only into generation-matching sockets. CPUs that are intended to be mounted into "LGA 2011-0" (R), "LGA 2011-1" (R2) or "LGA 2011-v3" (R3) sockets are all mechanically compatible regarding their dimensions and ball pattern pitches, but the designations of contacts are different between generations of the LGA 2011 socket and CPUs, which makes them electrically and logically incompatible. Original LGA 2011 socket is used for Sandy Bridge-E/EP and Ivy Bridge-E/EP processors, while LGA 2011-1 is used for Ivy Bridge-EX (Xeon E7 v2) and Haswell-EX (Xeon E7 V3) CPUs, which were released in February 2014 and May 2015, respectively. LGA 2011-v3 socket is used for Haswell-E and Haswell-EP CPUs, which were released in August and September 2014, respectively.


title: LGA 2011

text: Two types of ILM exist, with different shapes and heatsink mounting hole patterns, both with M4 x 0.7 threads: "square ILM" (80×80 mm mounting pattern), and "narrow ILM" (56×94 mm mounting pattern). Square ILM is the standard type, while the narrow one is alternatively available for space-constrained applications. A matching heatsink is required for each ILM type.


title: LGA 2011

text: Information for the Intel X79 (for desktop) and C600 series (for workstations and servers, codenamed Romley) chipsets is in the table below. The Romley (EP) platform was delayed approximately one quarter, allegedly due to a SAS controller bug.


title: LGA 2011

text: The X79 appears to contain the same silicon as the C600 series, with ECS having enabled the SAS controller for one of their boards, even though SAS is not officially supported by Intel for X79.


title: LGA 2011

text: Desktop processors compatible with LGA 2011, 2011–3 socket are Sandy Bridge-E, Ivy Bridge-E, Haswell-E and Broadwell-E.


title: LGA 2011

text: The X79 chipset allows for increasing the base clock (BCLK), Intel calls it CPU Strap, by 1.00×, 1.25×, 1.66× or 2.50×. The CPU frequency is derived by the BCLK times the CPU multiplier.


title: LGA 2011

text: Server processors compatible with LGA 2011 socket are Sandy Bridge-EP, Ivy Bridge-E, Haswell-E and Broadwell-E.


title: LGA 2011

text: Server processors for the LGA 2011-v3 socket are listed in the tables below. As one of the significant changes from the previous generation, they support DDR4 memory. All processors are released in September 8, 2014, unless noted otherwise.


title: LGA 2011

text: Socket LGA 2011-1 is used for Ivy Bridge-EX (Xeon E7 v2) and Haswell-EX (Xeon E7 V3) CPUs, which were released in February 2014 and May 2015, respectively. All processors are released in May 6, 2015, unless noted otherwise.


title: LGA 2011

text: Server processors for the LGA 2011-v3 socket are listed in the tables below. These processors are built on Broadwell-E architecture, 14nM lithography, 4-channel DDR4 ECC with up to 1.5TB and 40-lanes of PCI Express 3.0. E5-16xx v4 do not have QPI links. E5-26xx v4 and E5-46xx 4 processors have 2 QPI links.


title: Request for proposal

text: A request for proposal (RFP) is a document that solicits proposal, often made through a bidding process, by an agency or company interested in procurement of a commodity, service, or valuable asset, to potential suppliers to submit business proposals. It is submitted early in the procurement cycle, either at the preliminary study, or procurement stage.


title: Request for proposal

text: An RFP is used where the request requires technical expertise, specialized capability, or where the product or service being requested does not yet exist, and the proposal may require research and development to create whatever is being requested.


title: Request for proposal

text: The RFP presents preliminary requirements for the commodity or service, and may dictate to varying degrees the exact structure and format of the supplier's response. Effective RFPs typically reflect the strategy and short/long-term business objectives, providing detailed insight upon which suppliers will be able to offer a matching perspective.


title: Request for proposal

text: Similar requests include a request for quotation (RFQ), whereby the customer may simply be looking for a price quote, and a request for information (RFI), where the customer needs more information from vendors before submitting an RFP. An RFI is typically followed by an RFP or RFQ.


title: Request for proposal

text: An RFP typically involves more than a request for the price. Examples of such are: Choosing requirements, the timetable for the project, the RFP Package format, and Obtain clearance for the RFI Package format. Other requested information may include basic corporate information and history, financial information (can the company deliver without risk of bankruptcy), technical capability (used on major procurements of services, where the item has not previously been made or where the requirement could be met by varying technical means), product information such as stock availability and estimated completion period, and customer references that can be checked to determine a company's suitability (including educational and military background of its employees on the project --- college graduates and those with advanced college degrees may add "value" from the bidder).


title: Request for proposal

text: The ubiquitous availability of the Internet has made many government agencies turn either to state-run or vendor operated websites which provide listings of RFPs as well as RFIs and RFQs. Many allow vendors to sign up at no charge to receive e-mails of requests either generally or for specific categories of product or service for which there is an interest. In some cases, the entire process is done on-line with responses as scanned documents or PDF files uploaded to the server; in other cases, or for legal reasons, a response must be sent in hard copy form and/or on CD/DVD disc or flash drive by mail or delivery service.


title: Request for proposal

text: In the militaries of many countries, an RFP is often raised to fulfill an Operational Requirement (OR), after which the military procurement authority will normally issue a detailed technical specification against which tenders (i.e., bids) will be made by potential contractors. In the civilian use, an RFP is usually part of a complex sales process, also known as enterprise sales.


title: Request for proposal

text: RFPs often include specifications of the item, project or service for which a proposal is requested. The more detailed the specifications, the better the chances that the proposal provided will be accurate. Generally RFPs are sent to an approved supplier or vendor list.


title: Request for proposal

text: The bidders return a proposal by a set date and time. Late proposals may or may not be considered, depending on the terms of the initial RFP. The proposals are used to evaluate the suitability as a supplier, vendor, or institutional partner. Typically organizations follow a detailed vendor screening process to short list the vendors who should be invited for further rounds of negotiation. This screening process could either be vendor scoring models or internal discussions within the buyer organization. Discussions may be held on the proposals (often to clarify technical capabilities or to note errors in a proposal or in many cases to negotiate on the price). In most instances, only selected bidders may be invited to participate in subsequent bids, or may be asked to submit their best technical and financial proposal, commonly referred to as a Best and Final Offer (BAFO). Subsequent changes can be referred to as the Best and Revised Final Offer (BARFO).


title: Request for proposal

text: Once both the parties, i.e. a buyer organization and seller organization, agree on the technical and commercial terms and conditions of the proposal, they could move on to next steps like contract signing, statement of work which would formalize the purchase transactions.


title: Request for proposal

text: Today, many organizations are becoming more collaborative in the development of RFPs; this is especially true for universities and other major public entities making major technology purchases. RFP-issuing groups ask for specific use cases, rather than providing a list of features, and ensure they have the opportunity to include demonstrations, webinars and meetings as part of the RFP process to ensure they have a strong understanding of all competing products before making a purchase.


title: Request for proposal

text: An RFP template is a document that is used to create a formal request for proposal. It is usually created by the person who will be issuing the RFP. The template can be used as a guide for those who are responding to the RFP.


title: Request for proposal

text: The purpose of an RFP template is to provide all of the necessary information and instructions in order for someone to respond with a proposal that meets all of the requirements set out in the document.


title: Zealots

text: The Zealots were a political movement in 1st-century Second Temple Judaism which sought to incite the people of Judea Province to rebel against the Roman Empire and expel it from the Holy Land by force of arms, most notably during the First Jewish–Roman War (66–70). "Zealotry" was the term used by Josephus for a "fourth sect" or "fourth Jewish philosophy" during this period.


title: Zealots

text: The term "zealot", the common translation of the Hebrew "kanai" (, frequently used in plural form, , "kana'im"), means one who is zealous on behalf of God. The term derives from Greek ("zelotes"), "emulator, zealous admirer or follower".


title: Zealots

text: Josephus' "Jewish Antiquities" states that there were three main Jewish sects at this time, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Essenes. The Zealots were a "fourth sect", founded by Judas of Galilee (also called Judas of Gamala) in the year 6 CE against the Census of Quirinius, shortly after the Roman Empire declared what had most recently been the tetrarchy of Herod Archelaus to be a Roman province. According to Josephus, they "agree in all other things with the Pharisaic notions; but they have an inviolable attachment to liberty, and say that God is to be their only Ruler and Lord." (18.1.6)


title: Zealots

text: Others have also argued that the group was not so clearly marked out (before the first war of 66–70/3) as some have thought.


title: Zealots

text: Simon the Zealot was listed among the apostles selected by Jesus in the Gospel of Luke and in the Acts of the Apostles. He is called Cananaean in Mark and Matthew (, )


title: Zealots

text: Two of Judas of Galilee's sons, Jacob and Simon, were involved in a revolt and were executed by Tiberius Alexander, the procurator of Iudaea province from 46 to 48.


title: Zealots

text: The Zealots had the leading role in the First Jewish–Roman War (66–73 CE). The Zealots objected to Roman rule and violently sought to eradicate it by generally targeting Romans and Greeks. Another group, likely related, were the Sicarii, who raided Jewish habitations and killed Jews they considered apostate and collaborators, while also urging Jews to fight Romans and other Jews for the cause. Josephus paints a very bleak picture of their activities as they instituted what he characterized as a murderous "reign of terror" prior to the Jewish Temple's destruction. According to Josephus, the Zealots followed John of Gischala, who had fought the Romans in Galilee, escaped, came to Jerusalem, and then inspired the locals to a fanatical position that led to the Temple's destruction. They succeeded in taking over Jerusalem, and held it until 70, when the son of Roman Emperor Vespasian, Titus, retook the city and destroyed Herod's Temple during the destruction of Jerusalem.


title: Zealots

text: In the Talmud, the Zealots are the non-religious (not following the religious leaders), and are also called the "Biryonim" (בריונים) meaning "boorish", "wild", or "ruffians", and are condemned for their aggression, their unwillingness to compromise to save the survivors of besieged Jerusalem, and their blind militarism against the rabbis' opinion to seek treaties for peace. However, according to one body of tradition, the rabbis initially supported the revolt up until the Zealots initiated a civil war, at which point all hope of resisting the Romans was deemed impossible. The Zealots are further blamed for having contributed to the demise of Jerusalem and the Second Temple, and of ensuring Rome's retributions and stranglehold on Judea. According to the Babylonian Talmud, Gittin:56b, the Biryonim destroyed decades' worth of food and firewood in besieged Jerusalem to force the Jews to fight the Romans out of desperation. This event directly led to the escape of Johanan ben Zakai out of Jerusalem, who met Vespasian, a meeting which led to the foundation of the Academy of Jamnia which produced the Mishnah which led to the survival of rabbinical Judaism. The Zealots advocated violence against the Romans, their Jewish collaborators, and the Sadducees, by raiding for provisions and other activities to aid their cause.


title: Zealots

text: The Sicarii were a splinter group of the Jewish Zealots who, in the decades preceding Jerusalem's destruction in 70 CE, strongly opposed the Roman occupation of Judea and attempted to expel them and their sympathizers from the area. The Sicarii carried "sicae", or small daggers, concealed in their cloaks. At public gatherings, they pulled out these daggers to attack Romans and alleged Roman sympathizers alike, blending into the crowd after the deed to escape detection.


title: Zealots

text: According to historian Hayim Hillel Ben-Sasson, the Sicarii, originally based in Galilee, "were fighting for a social revolution, while the Jerusalem Zealots placed less stress on the social aspect" and the Sicarii "never attached themselves to one particular family and never proclaimed any of their leaders king". Both groups objected to the way the priestly families were running the Temple.


title: Zealots

text: While most English translations of the Bible render the Greek word "zelotes" in Acts 22:3 and Galatians 1:14 of the New Testament as the adjective "zealous", an article by Mark R. Fairchild takes it to mean a Zealot and suggests that Paul the Apostle may have been a Zealot, which might have been the driving force behind his persecution of the Christians (see the stoning of Saint Stephen) before his conversion to Christianity, and the incident at Antioch, even after his conversion. In the two cited verses Paul literally declares himself as one who is "loyal" to God, or an "ardent" observer of the Law, but the relationship of Paul the Apostle and Jewish Christianity is still debated. This does not necessarily prove Paul was revealing himself as a Zealot. The "Modern King James Version" of Jay P. Green) renders it as 'a zealous one'. Two modern translations (the Jewish New Testament and Alternate Literal Translation) render it as 'a zealot'. The Unvarnished New Testament (1991) renders Galatians 1:14 as "being an absolute zealot for the traditions". These translations may not be inaccurate, but it is disputed by those who claim it gives the wrong association with the "Zealots".


title: 2022 Winter Paralympics

text: The 2022 Winter Paralympics (), commonly known as Beijing 2022 (), was an international winter multi-sport parasports event held in Beijing, China from 4 to 13 March 2022. This was the 13th Winter Paralympic Games, as administered by the International Paralympic Committee (IPC).


title: 2022 Winter Paralympics

text: Beijing was selected as the host city for the 2022 Winter Olympics and Paralympics in 2015 at the 128th IOC Session in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; taking into account its hosting of the 2008 Summer Paralympics, Beijing is the first city to have hosted both the Summer and Winter Olympics as well as the Summer and Winter Paralympics. This was the overall second Paralympics in China. It was the last of three consecutive Paralympics hosted in East Asia.


title: 2022 Winter Paralympics

text: These Games featured 564 athletes representing 46 National Paralympic Committees (NPCs), competing in 78 medal events across six sports. Participation in the Games was impacted by the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine; the International Olympic Committee (IOC) condemned Russia for violating the Olympic Truce, and called for both Russia and its supporter Belarus to be excluded from international sporting events. While the IPC initially announced that the countries' athletes would be allowed to compete independently under the Paralympic flag, it backtracked on 3 March 2022 – the eve of the opening ceremonies – following threats of a boycott by multiple NPCs, and announced that Belarusian and Russian athletes would be prohibited from competing. The Belarusian and Russian delegations competed at a replacement event from 17 to 21 March in Khanty-Mansiysk, Russia. Armenia, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan also competed at the replacement event.


title: 2022 Winter Paralympics

text: Host nation China finished at the top of the medal table, winning a total of 61 medals, of which 18 were gold, setting a new record as the most successful Asian country at a single Winter Paralympics with the most total medals, gold, silver, and bronze. Ukraine also made their best historical performance and finished in second place with 29 medals, of which 11 were gold, and Canada retained the third place achieved in 2010, 2014 and 2018 with a total of 25 medals, of which eight were gold again.


title: 2022 Winter Paralympics

text: As part of a formal agreement between the International Paralympic Committee and the International Olympic Committee first established in 2001, the winner of the bid for the 2022 Winter Olympics was also to host the 2022 Winter Paralympics.


title: 2022 Winter Paralympics

text: Beijing was selected as the host city of the 2022 Winter Olympics after beating Almaty by four votes on 31 July 2015 at the 128th IOC Session in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.


title: 2022 Winter Paralympics

text: The opening ceremony was held on 4 March 2022 at the Beijing National Stadium; it was directed by Zhang Yimou, with the theme "Blossoming of Life".


title: 2022 Winter Paralympics

text: During his opening remarks, IPC president Andrew Parsons condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the circumvention of the Olympic Truce by Russia, emphasising that Paralympic athletes compete with, and not "against", each other, and that "the 21st century is a time for dialogue and diplomacy, not war and hate". The final torchbearer was four-time Chinese para-athletics gold medalist Li Duan, who mounted the torch at the centre of a large snowflake sculpture.


title: 2022 Winter Paralympics

text: The closing ceremony was held on 13 March 2022. The ceremony closed after nine days of competition and 78 events at the Beijing National Stadium in Beijing, China.


title: 2022 Winter Paralympics

text: Seventy-eight events in five sports were held during the 2022 Winter Paralympics, two lower than 2018. In June 2019, the IPC dropped four of the six proposed disciplines for women's snowboarding (leaving only LL2 banked slalom and snowboard cross), as they did not meet the required viability benchmarks during the 2019 World Para Snowboard Championships.


title: 2022 Winter Paralympics

text: In total, 46 National Paralympic Committees have qualified athletes. Azerbaijan, Israel and Puerto Rico made their Winter Paralympic debut, while Liechtenstein, Estonia, and Latvia returned for the first time since Lillehammer 1994, Salt Lake 2002, and Turin 2006, respectively. Seven National Paralympic Committees that participated in PyeongChang 2018 did not send their delegations to Beijing: Armenia, Bulgaria, North Korea, Serbia, Tajikistan, Turkey and Uzbekistan. Additionally, Russia and Belarus were barred from entering. A new record of 138 female athletes were scheduled to compete, which was five more than the 133 female athletes in 2018.


title: 2022 Winter Paralympics

text: On 24 February 2022, the first day of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the International Olympic Committee condemned the breach of the Olympic Truce (which lasts from the beginning of the Olympics through the end of the Paralympics) by Russia. President of the IPC Andrew Parsons stated that getting the Ukrainian team to Beijing would be a "mammoth challenge". The IOC called for the flags of both Russia and Belarus not to be displayed at any international sporting event, the latter due to the country's support of Russia's aggression, and officials of the Belarus Olympic Committee having been accused of political discrimination against Belarusian athletes. The Russian flag has already been prohibited from international sporting events through December 2021 due to sanctions by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), and its athletes would have originally participated under the name "RPC" (Russian Paralympic Committee).


title: 2022 Winter Paralympics

text: On 28 February 2022, the IOC Executive Board further called for Russian and Belarusian athletes not to be allowed to participate in any international sporting event. On 2 March 2022, the IPC declared that Russian and Belarusian athletes would be allowed to participate independently under the Paralympic flag, with their results not counting in the medal standings. As a result of criticism by several National Paralympic Committees, who threatened to boycott the Games, the IPC announced on 3 March 2022 that they would reverse their earlier decision, banning Russian and Belarusian athletes from competing at the 2022 Winter Paralympics. In response, Vladimir Putin's press secretary Dmitry Peskov condemned the IPC for the decision. In response, Russia hosted a replacement event named "We are together, Sport" that was attended by Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Armenia.


title: 2022 Winter Paralympics

text: Azerbaijan was scheduled to make its debut, but its only athlete was seriously injured at the last training session on the eve of the start and did not compete in his event. However, the country participated in the Parade of Nations in both the opening and closing ceremonies.


title: 2022 Winter Paralympics

text: During the medals ceremony, the Ukrainians' men's 6 kilometres vision impaired biathlon silver and bronze medal teams were mistakenly placed in each other's podium positions.


title: 2022 Winter Paralympics

text: The emblem for the 2022 Winter Paralympics, "Flying High" (""), was unveiled alongside its Olympic counterpart on 15 December 2017 at the Beijing National Aquatics Center. Designed by Lin Cunzhen, it is a multi-coloured ribbon resembling the Chinese character for "fly" (飞"), and is designed to symbolize "an athlete in a wheelchair rushing towards the finish line and victory". They are the first Paralympics to use an updated version of the "agitos" emblem in an official capacity.


title: 2022 Winter Paralympics

text: The mascot "Shuey Rhon Rhon" () was unveiled on 17 September 2019 at the Shougang Ice Hockey Arena and was designed by Jiang Yufan. The mascot is designed with lanterns as the prototype. Lanterns represent harvest, celebration, warmth and light. The wishful shape at the top symbolizes auspicious happiness; the continuous pattern of the dove of peace and the Temple of Heaven symbolizes the peaceful friendship and highlights the characteristics of the place where the place is held; the decorative pattern incorporates the traditional Chinese paper-cut art; the snow on the face represents the meaning of "a fall of seasonable snow gives promise of a fruitful year"


title: Celosia

text: Celosia ( ) is a small genus of edible and ornamental plants in the amaranth family, Amaranthaceae. The generic name is derived from the Ancient Greek word (), meaning "burning", and refers to the flame-like flower heads. Species are commonly known as woolflowers, or, if the flower heads are crested by fasciation, cockscombs. The plants are well known in East Africa's highlands and are used under their Swahili name, mfungu.


title: Celosia

text: The plant is an annual. Seed production in these species can be very high, 200–700 kg per hectare. One ounce of seed may contain up to 43,000 seeds. One thousand seeds can weigh 1.0–1.2 grams. Depending upon the location and fertility of the soil, blossoms can last 8–10 weeks.


title: Celosia

text: "Celosia argentea" var. "argentea" or Lagos spinach (a.k.a. quail grass, soko, celosia, feather cockscomb) is a broadleaf annual leaf vegetable. It grows widespread across Mexico, where it is known as ""velvet flower"", northern South America, tropical Africa, the West Indies, South, East and Southeast Asia where it is grown as a native or naturalized wildflower, and is cultivated as a nutritious leafy green vegetable. It is traditional fare in the countries of Central and West Africa, and is one of the leading leafy green vegetables in Nigeria, where it is known as ‘soko yokoto’, meaning ""make husbands fat and happy"". In Spain it is known as ""Rooster comb"" because of its appearance.


title: Celosia

text: These leaves, young stems and young inflorescences are used for stew, as they soften up readily in cooking. The leaves also have a soft texture and a mild spinach-like taste.


title: Celosia

text: Despite its African origin (a claim that is not without dispute), "Celosia" is known as a foodstuff in Indonesia and India. Moreover, in the future it might become more widely eaten, especially in the hot and malnourished regions of the equatorial zone. In that regard, it has already been hailed as the often-wished-for vegetable that "grows like a weed without demanding all the tender loving care that other vegetables seem to need" says Martin Price of Florida. He continues "Every place I have tried it, it grows with no work. We have had no disease problems and very little insect damage. It reseeds itself abundantly and new plants have come up in the immediate vicinity."


title: Celosia

text: Works well in humid areas and is the most-used leafy plant in Nigeria. It grows in the wet season and grows well while other plants succumb to mold and other diseases like mildew. Though a very simple plant, "Celosia" does need moderate soil moisture.


title: Volkswagen Passat (B5)

text: The B5 version of the Volkswagen Passat, based on the Volkswagen Group B5 platform, was launched in 1997 in North America and Europe as well as during March 1998 in Australia.


title: Volkswagen Passat (B5)

text: The Passat introduced a new design language, first seen on the Concept 1 concept car, for the latest generation of Volkswagens such as the Mk4 Golf, Bora, and Polo Mk4. The design with raked windscreens and smooth underpinnings helped give the B5 Passat sedan a 0.27 coefficient of drag. The B5 Passat included higher-quality interior trim and the availability of luxury options to differentiate it in the marketplace.


title: Volkswagen Passat (B5)

text: The car featured fully independent four-link front suspension; and a semi-independent torsion beam for front-wheel-drive models or a fully independent suspension on the 4motion 4WD models. The 4WD version was introduced in 1997 as an option for the 1.8, 2.8 V6, 1.9 TDI, and 2.5 V6 TDI engines, using a second-generation Torsen T-2 based 4WD system to minimise loss of traction. The 1.8 L petrol engine in the Passat and Audi A4 has a lower oil capacity than transverse applications of the same engine ( in transverse, longitudinal). Three transmission options were available: a 5-speed manual, a 6-speed manual (codename 01E), and a 5-speed automatic transmission with tiptronic. There was also a 4-speed automatic transmission, available only in 66kW and 81kW 1.9 L TDI, as well as some gasoline models.


title: Volkswagen Passat (B5)

text: The B5 generation does not have individual fog lights. They are built into the headlight itself. There is a model with two rear and two front fog lights (from 1998), and there is a model with two rear fog lights and one in the front. The facelifted model included individual fog lights.


title: Volkswagen Passat (B5)

text: B5 Passat models built after late 2000, also known as B5.5 models, received minor styling and mechanical revisions including revised projector-optic headlights, bumpers, taillights, and chrome trim.


title: Volkswagen Passat (B5)

text: A 4.0 L W8 engine producing was introduced with a luxury version that included standard 4motion all-wheel drive. This engine was intended to be a test bed for Volkswagen Group's new W engine technology, which would later make an appearance on the W12 in the Phaeton and Audi A8, and the W16 engine in the Bugatti Veyron.


title: Volkswagen Passat (B5)

text: In 2003, a 2.0 L Turbocharged Direct Injection (TDI) diesel engine producing was added (making the Passat the only mid-sized diesel-powered car sold in the U.S.). This variant was available from 2003 until 2005.


title: Volkswagen Passat (B5)

text: A lengthened platform went on to underpin the 'Passat' that was introduced in China in December 1999 by Shanghai-Volkswagen. This long-wheelbase version was rebadged and launched in Europe as the Škoda Superb in 2001. Both have a longer wheelbase and length than the standard B5 Passat. An updated version called the Passat Lingyu was released in late November 2005, which has the 1.8-litre turbocharged "EA113", the 2.0 L "EA113", and the 2.8 L "BBG" V6 petrol engines.


title: Volkswagen Passat (B5)

text: In the United Kingdom, trim levels were E, S, Sport, SE, V5, V6, and Highline. The E trim level had a 1.6 L engine only. The S trim level was considered well-equipped by the motoring press at the time, and What Car? magazine recommended the 1.8 S as the best version in 1999. SE models had the same engines as the S version, but were better equipped. The V5 models had a 2.3 V5 engine, the V6 was available with a 2.8 V6, or 2.5 TDI.


title: Volkswagen Passat (B5)

text: Models sold in Europe and the Republic of Ireland were similar apart from the trim level naming schemes; the trim levels were Volkswagen's "lifestyle" naming scheme: "Comfortline", "Trendline", and "Highline". A base model was also available.


title: Volkswagen Passat (B5)

text: Models sold in the U.S. had the 1.8 L 20-valve turbo four-cylinder engine, 2.0 TDI, the 2.8 V6, or 4.0 W8; trim levels were GL (2003 onward), GLS, GLX, and W8 (2002–2004). The W8 was only available with the 4motion four-wheel-drive system and a slightly higher trim than the GLX models. The V6 engine had 4motion as an option, as did the 1.8 T starting in the 2004 model year. The GLX trim was only sold with the V6.


title: Quasi-state

text: A quasi-state (some times referred to as state-like entity or proto-state) is a political entity that does not represent a fully institutionalised or autonomous sovereign state.


title: Quasi-state

text: The precise definition of "quasi-state" in political literature fluctuates depending on the context in which it is used. It has been used by some modern scholars to describe the self-governing British colonies and dependencies that exercised a form of home rule but remained crucial parts of the British Empire and subject firstly to the metropole's administration. Similarly, the Republics of the Soviet Union, which represented administrative units with their own respective national distinctions, have also been described as quasi-states.


title: Quasi-state

text: In the 21st century usage, the term "quasi-state" has most often been evoked in reference to militant secessionist groups who claim, and exercise some form of territorial control over, a specific region, but which lack institutional cohesion. Such quasi-states include the Republika Srpska and Herzeg-Bosnia during the Bosnian War and Azawad during the 2012 Tuareg rebellion. The Islamic State is also widely held to be an example of a modern quasi-state or proto-state.


title: Quasi-state

text: The term "proto-state" has been used in reference to contexts as far back as Ancient Greece, to refer to the phenomenon that the formation of a large and cohesive nation would often be preceded by very small and loose forms of statehood. For instance, historical sociologist Gary Runciman describes the evolution of social organisation in the Greek Dark Ages from statelessness, to what he calls "semistates" based on patriarchal domination but lacking inherent potential to achieve the requirements for statehood, sometimes transitioning into "protostates" with governmental roles able to maintain themselves generationally, which could evolve into larger and more centralised entities fulfilling the requirements of statehood by 700 BC in the archaic period.


title: Quasi-state

text: Most ancient proto-states were the product of tribal societies, consisting of relatively short-lived confederations of communities that united under a single warlord or chieftain endowed with symbolic authority and military rank. These were not considered sovereign states since they rarely achieved any degree of institutional permanence and authority was often exercised over a mobile people rather than measurable territory. Loose confederacies of this nature were the primary means of embracing a common statehood by people in many regions, such as the Central Asian steppes, throughout ancient history.


title: Quasi-state

text: Proto-states proliferated in Western Europe during the Middle Ages, likely as a result of a trend towards political decentralisation following the collapse of the Western Roman Empire and the adoption of feudalism. While theoretically owing allegiance to a single monarch under the feudal system, many lesser nobles administered their own fiefs as miniature "states within states" that were independent of each other. This practice was especially notable with regards to large, decentralised political entities such as the Holy Roman Empire, that incorporated many autonomous and semi-autonomous proto-states.


title: Quasi-state

text: Following the Age of Discovery, the emergence of European colonialism resulted in the formation of colonial proto-states in Asia, Africa, and the Americas. A few colonies were given the unique status of protectorates, which were effectively controlled by the metropole but retained limited ability to administer themselves, self-governing colonies, dominions, and dependencies. These were distinct administrative units that each fulfilled many of the functions of a state without actually exercising full sovereignty or independence. Colonies without a sub-national home rule status, on the other hand, were considered administrative extensions of the colonising power rather than true proto-states. Colonial proto-states later served as the basis for a number of modern nation states, particularly on the Asian and African continents.


title: Quasi-state

text: During the twentieth century, some proto-states existed as not only distinct administrative units, but their own theoretically self-governing republics joined to each other in a political union such as the socialist federal systems observed in Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, and the Soviet Union.


title: Quasi-state

text: Another form of proto-state that has become especially common since the end of World War II is established through the unconstitutional seizure of territory by an insurgent or militant group that proceeds to assume the role of a "de facto" government. Although denied recognition and bereft of civil institutions, insurgent proto-states may engage in external trade, provide social services, and even undertake limited diplomatic activity. These proto-states are usually formed by movements drawn from geographically concentrated ethnic or religious minorities, and are thus a common feature of inter-ethnic civil conflicts. This is often due to the inclinations of an internal cultural identity group seeking to reject the legitimacy of a sovereign state's political order, and create its own enclave where it is free to live under its own sphere of laws, social mores, and ordering. Since the 1980s a special kind of insurgent statehood has emerged in form of the "Jihadi proto-state", as the Islamist concept of statehood is extremely flexible. For instance, a Jihadi emirate can be simply understood as a territory or group ruled by an emir; accordingly, it might rule a significant area or just a neighborhood. Regardless of its extent, the assumption of statehood provides Jihadi militants with important internal legitimacy and cementes their self-identification as frontline society opposed to certain enemies.


title: Quasi-state

text: The accumulation of territory by an insurgent force to form a sub-national geopolitical system and eventually, a proto-state, was a calculated process in China during the Chinese Civil War that set a precedent for many similar attempts throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Proto-states established as a result of civil conflict typically exist in a perpetual state of warfare and their wealth and populations may be limited accordingly. One of the most prominent examples of a wartime proto-state in the twenty-first century is the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, that maintained its own administrative bureaucracy and imposed taxes.


title: Quasi-state

text: The definition of a proto-state is not concise, and has been confused by the interchangeable use of the terms "state", "country", and "nation" to describe a given territory. The term proto-state is preferred to "proto-nation" in an academic context, however, since some authorities also use "nation" to denote a social, ethnic, or cultural group capable of forming its own state.


title: Quasi-state

text: A proto-state does not meet the four essential criteria for statehood as elaborated upon in the declarative theory of statehood of the 1933 Montevideo Convention: a permanent population, a defined territory, a government with its own institutions, and the capacity to enter into relations with other states. A proto-state is not necessarily synonymous with a state with limited recognition that otherwise has all the hallmarks of a fully functioning sovereign state, such as Rhodesia or the Republic of China, also known as Taiwan. However, proto-states frequently go unrecognised since a state actor that recognises a proto-state does so in violation of another state actor's external sovereignty. If full diplomatic recognition is extended to a proto-state and embassies exchanged, it is defined as a sovereign state in its own right and may no longer be classified as a proto-state.


title: Quasi-state

text: Throughout modern history, partially autonomous regions of larger recognised states, especially those based on a historical precedent or ethnic and cultural distinctiveness that places them apart from those who dominate the state as a whole, have been considered proto-states. Home rule generates a sub-national institutional structure that may justifiably be defined as a proto-state. When a rebellion or insurrection seizes control and begins to establish some semblance of administration in regions within national territories under its effective rule, it has also metamorphosed into a proto-state. These wartime proto-states, sometimes known as "insurgent states", may eventually transform the structure of a state altogether, or demarcate their own autonomous political spaces. While not a new phenomenon, the modern formation of a proto-states in territory held by a militant non-state entity was popularised by Mao Zedong during the Chinese Civil War, and the national liberation movements worldwide that adopted his military philosophies. The rise of an insurgent proto-state was sometimes also an indirect consequence of a movement adopting Che Guevara's "foco" theory of guerrilla warfare.


title: Quasi-state

text: Secessionist proto-states are likeliest to form in preexisting states that lack secure boundaries, a concise and well-defined body of citizens, or a single sovereign power with a monopoly on the legitimate use of military force. They may be created as a result of putsches, insurrections, separatist political campaigns, foreign intervention, sectarian violence, civil war, and even the bloodless dissolution or division of the state.


title: Quasi-state

text: Proto-states can be important regional players, as their existence impacts the options available to state actors, either as potential allies or as impediments to their political or economic policy articulations.


title: Good Party

text: The Good Party (Turkish: "İyi Parti") is a nationalist, national conservative, Kemalist, and liberal democrat political party in Turkey, established on 25 October 2017 by its current leader Meral Akşener. Their fraternal party is the liberal-conservative Democrat Party. The party's name and flag is a reference to the emblem of the Kayı tribe.


title: Good Party

text: The party was formed as a result in a split by prominent former members of Turkey's Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) and later joined by some former members of the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP). The party's founder and chairperson, Meral Akşener, and its deputy chairperson, Koray Aydın, are both former members of the MHP before establishing the party. Plans to form a new party emerged amongst prominent MHP defectors after the MHP's support for a 'Yes' vote in the controversial 2017 constitutional referendum, as well as a failed attempt to unseat the party's governing leader. In addition to endorsing a more moderate civic nationalism as opposed to the ardent ethnic nationalism of the MHP, the party runs on an anti-establishment platform criticising both the governing and opposition parties in Turkey for their ineffectiveness. The party describes itself as being in the centre of political spectrum and advocating for a positive agenda which will bring the European Union and Turkey closer again, and highlights that Turkey must continue being a part of the Western Bloc. Third-party sources have described the party as being centre-right or on the right-wing of the political spectrum.


title: Good Party

text: It puts a particular emphasis on the restoration of the parliamentary system and the integrity of the judiciary and other institutions. The party has been widely described as an anti-Erdoğanist alternative for right-leaning voters disillusioned with both the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) and the governing Justice and Development Party (AKP).


title: Good Party

text: İYİ participated in the Nation Alliance (Millet İttifakı) with the CHP, Felicity Party, and Democrat Party in the 2018 parliamentary elections winning 43 seats for themselves in the Grand National Assembly. Meral Akşener was the party's presidential candidate.


title: Good Party

text: Meral Akşener, a former Minister of the Interior who served from 1996 to 1997, was a prominent member of parliament from the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) from 2007 to November 2015, having been a member of the centre-right True Path Party (DYP) during her ministerial career. Her relation with MHP leader Devlet Bahçeli became noticeably strained after Bahçeli refused to nominate her for another term as Deputy Speaker of the Grand National Assembly after the June 2015 general election, a post she had held since 2007. Bahçeli eventually withdrew her parliamentary nomination before the November 2015 snap election, resulting in her losing her parliamentary seat.


title: Good Party

text: The MHP, having won 16.29% of the vote and 80 seats in June 2015, suffered a heavy defeat in the November snap election with just 11.90% of the vote and 40 seats. The loss was widely blamed on Bahçeli's refusal to consider any coalition agreement after the June 2015 election resulted in a hung parliament. The significant loss resulted in MHP dissidents including Akşener launching a drive to unseat Bahçeli from the party's leadership, a process made difficult by the party's strict bylaws. Other prominent MHP dissidents who declared their candidacy for the leadership included Ümit Özdağ, Koray Aydın and Sinan Oğan. Özdağ and Aydın would eventually join Akşener in forming the İYİ Party, as did prominent MHP dissident MPs Yusuf Halaçoğlu, and .