title: Chicago Union Station

text: In 2010, Amtrak (the current owners of the Chicago Union Station Company) announced plans to air-condition the Great Hall for the first time since the 1960s. That year a "Chicago Tribune" investigation revealed high levels of diesel soot on the underground platforms of Union Station. Metra established an "Emissions Task Force" to study this problem and recommend solutions to improve air quality in the underground areas. In 2011, its lighting system was replaced with more energy-efficient light bulbs and motion sensors, reducing the station's annual carbon emissions by 4 million tons. Custom steel lighting covers were added to top these safety/light towers, helping them blend in with the overall neoclassical style of the station.


title: Chicago Union Station

text: In 2011, the city held a public meeting to discuss goals for the station, aiming to accommodate the expected 40 percent growth in passengers by 2040. In the following year, city agencies joined together to publish a master plan for renovating and improving Union Station. Short-term goals were to improve station entrances and expand waiting rooms, as well as enhance bus lanes on Clinton and Canal Streets and create a bus terminal (completed in 2016). Goals for the next five to ten years included widening commuter platforms, using unutilized mail platforms (including an extra-long through platform) for intercity passenger trains, adding more through tracks and platforms, reorganizing facilities for better capacity and flow, increasing height clearances of the tracks, and improving street access to and from the station. Long-term, proposals include increasing capacity and improving the ambiance of the station by significantly expanding or replacing station facilities in the 200 or 300 blocks of South Canal Street. Adding track and platform capacity along Clinton Street or Canal Street was also analyzed.


title: Chicago Union Station

text: In June 2015, Amtrak announced that it would renovate the station, including opening up long-closed spaces and replacing the worn staircases with marble from the original quarry near Rome. In 2016, the women's lounge was restored, renamed the Burlington Room, and opened for use as an events space. The space was initially a women's lounge, and later became an Amtrak warehouse. It then suffered years of neglect and water damage, and was eventually closed off. In November 2016, the room was renovated and reopened. An architecture firm removed wooden decking that divided the space into two floors, and took out a drop ceiling that defaced the original ornate ceiling. The work restored the room's columns and chandeliers, including creating several replica chandeliers. The room also has four French block murals of landscape scenery; three of the four were cleaned and preserved, while the fourth was reproduced. An original mirror and banister were added to the room's north end. The space was improved for events with color-changing lights and an audiovisual system.


title: Chicago Union Station

text: In 2016, Amtrak held a competition for renovations and development of Union Station. The winner, Riverside Investment & Development Co., proposed multiple changes, including new retail, a food hall, and two 12-story towers. The plans followed an unrealized 2007 plan for a tower addition above Union Station.


title: Chicago Union Station

text: From 2018 to 2019, a $22 million restoration of the Great Hall, including restoring original detailing and rebuilding the large skylight, was completed, increasing natural light by 50 to 60 percent. The skylight, originally built in the 1920s, suffered from decades of harsh weather, leading to countless patchwork repairs, many of which blocked light from entering the Great Hall. The 2018–19 renovation restored the historic skylight to its original appearance, and added another glass skylight atop it. The new skylight is better-designed to prevent water and snow damage, and increases light entering the Great Hall.


title: Chicago Union Station

text: In 2018, Riverside Investment & Development Co. released a revised plan that included a seven-story addition above Union Station, adding 404 apartments to the building. The planned design was created by Solomon Cordwell Buenz, resembling Burnham's earlier proposed tower above the station, designed to handle the weight. The addition was to be clad in glass and light bronze, differentiated from the station's design as recommended in its landmark designation. The developers also planned to renovate the existing upper levels of Union Station's headhouse, adding 330 hotel rooms. The proposal was met with mixed reactions by preservationists and architectural critics, with Blair Kamin, the "Chicago Tribune"s critic, calling it "banal" and "top-heavy". Several months later, the developers announced they were cancelling the plan for the seven-story addition, instead constructing only a single additional penthouse floor, set back to not be visible from the street. The revised plan kept hotel rooms in the station's upper floors, and added a proposed 50-story office tower replacing the station's underutilized parking garage.


title: Chicago Union Station

text: In 2018, Amtrak announced plans to redevelop the former Fred Harvey restaurant space into a multi-level food hall, using funds from the sale of its parking garage. A new entrance and canopy would be installed on Clinton Street, and new windows would replace the bricked-up windows. The food hall is planned to open in the summer of 2020.


title: Chicago Union Station

text: In September 2019, Union Station's 700-car parking garage permanently closed in order to be demolished. Its replacement is to be a , , building named Union Station Tower, planned to open in 2022. The skyscraper will include a park above 400 parking spaces. The construction will not affect the pedway from the terminal to its adjacent Union Station Transit Center.


title: Chicago Union Station

text: In March 2020, U.S. Representative for Illinois Dan Lipinski filed a bill to shift operational control of the terminal from Amtrak to Metra. Lipinski noted that Metra utilizes the station much more than Amtrak does, and operates its other large stations more effectively than Amtrak operates Union Station. Amtrak officials threatened to stop service to Union Station if the change is to be made, stating it would be impossible to operate and would serve as a blockade to regional and national Amtrak service. Congress was out of session during the COVID-19 pandemic, and aimed to discuss Lipinski's bill once sessions resumed.


title: Chicago Union Station

text: Union Station is used as a filming location in television and movies. Films in which the station appears include "The Sting" (1973), "Silver Streak" (1976), "On the Right Track" (1981), "Doctor Detroit" (1983), "The Untouchables" (1987), "My Best Friend's Wedding" (1997), "Flags of Our Fathers" (2006), "Public Enemies" (2009), and "Man of Steel" (2013). It was also featured in Season 4, Episode 8 of the TV series "Fargo" (2020), although it was depicted as "Kansas City Union Station." A 2016 exhibit in Union Station showcased the station and Chicago's use as a filming location in American cinema.


title: Chicago Union Station

text: In 2019, Amtrak handled 3,379,760 arrivals and departures at the station. 3,161,204 of these were coach and business class tickets, and 218,556 were first class and sleeper class tickets. 2,365,259 trips were taken on state supported Amtrak services (Blue Water, Hiawawatha, Hoosier State, Illinois Zephyr/Carl Sandurg, Illini/Saluki, Lincoln Service, Pere Marquette, and Wolverine), and 1,007,508 trips were taken on long distance Amtrak services (California Zephyr, Capitol Limited, Cardinal, City of New Orleans, Empire Builder, Lake Shore Limited, Southwest Chief, and Texas Eagle).


title: Chicago Union Station

text: In 2019, the average trip to/from the station was in distance. Among coach and business class passengers, the average trip was in distance, while the average trip among first and sleeper class trip was in distance.


title: Chicago Union Station

text: Between the fiscal years 2002 and 2008, Amtrak ridership more than doubled at the station, surpassing 3.1 million in the 2008 fiscal year.


title: Chicago Union Station

text: The following is the top-ten stations which receive the most ridership to/from Chicago Union Station out of the 265 that Amtrak rail services that directly connected with Chicago Union Station as of 2019:


title: Arye Gross

text: Arye Gross (; born March 17, 1960) is an American actor, who has appeared on a variety of television shows in numerous roles, most notably Adam Greene in ABC Sitcom "Ellen".


title: Arye Gross

text: Gross was born on March 17, 1960, in Los Angeles, California, the son of Sheri and Joseph Gross, who was an aerospace engineer and later worked in business.


title: Arye Gross

text: Gross attended public school and in 1977 was accepted to the University of California Irvine to study theater. Robert Cohen, then head of UCI's Drama Department later said, "I remember him as an undergrad student actor and knew he was quite good." The following summer he was accepted in the Professional Conservatory program at South Coast Repertory (SCR) in neighboring Costa Mesa, where Lee Shallat-Chemel was then the program director. She remembered how he handled Edgar's "nonsensical" passages in "King Lear" during scene study. "Arye found a visceral reality and the scene became filled with pathos and meaning. And it just blew me away. I had never seen, really, any actor do that."


title: Arye Gross

text: Gross was part of SCR's acting company for three years, which culminated in his role in the world premiere of L.J. Schneiderman's "Screwball". Director Frank Condon invited Gross to work with Teatro Campesino under the direction of Luis Valdez, which he did for a year.


title: Arye Gross

text: Gross appeared in a number of stage productions with a variety of companies in the Los Angeles area, including LATC, Pasadena Playhouse, Odyssey Theater Ensemble, MET Theater and Stages Theater Center. Gross' stage credits include "La Bete" for the Stages Theatre Center, "Room Service" for the Pasadena Playhouse, "Three Sisters" for the Los Angeles Theatre Center, "Taming of the Shrew" and "Much Ado About Nothing" for the Grove Shakespeare Festival, "Troillus and Cressida" for the Globe Playhouse. He performed in Georges Feydeau's "Sleep, I Want You to Sleep" at the Stages Theatre Company, where he served as Managing Director.


title: Arye Gross

text: He is a member of the Antaeus Theatre Company, where he appeared in "Mrs. Warren's Profession" and as the title character in "Uncle Vanya". His South Coast Repertory credits also include the world premieres of Richard Greenberg's "Our Mother's Brief Affair", and Donald Margulies' "Brooklyn Boy", which marked Gross' Broadway debut when it moved to New York. He also was in the 2016 world premiere of Eliza Clark's "Future Thinking".


title: Arye Gross

text: Gross's best-known television role was on the ABC series "Ellen" as Adam Green for the program's first three seasons. Gross also starred in the short-lived series "Citizen Baines" with James Cromwell. Arye has made numerous guest appearances on a wide variety of television series, such as "Diff'rent Strokes", "Knight Rider", "The Outer Limits", "Six Feet Under", ", , Friends" and "". He also had a recurring role as Dr. Sidney Perlmutter on "Castle".


title: Arye Gross

text: Gross also played the adult voice of Kevin Arnold on the pilot episode of "The Wonder Years" when it first aired after Super Bowl XXII. However, the narration was re-recorded using Daniel Stern's voice for the pilot when it subsequently re-aired, and Stern remained the narrator through the entire run of the series.


title: Arye Gross

text: In 1999, Gross acted in and directed "The Prince and the Surfer"; this was his film directorial debut.


title: Tivoli Gardens

text: Tivoli Gardens, also known simply as Tivoli, is an amusement park and pleasure garden in Copenhagen, Denmark. The park opened on 15 August 1843 and is the third-oldest operating amusement park in the world, after Dyrehavsbakken in nearby Klampenborg, also in Denmark, and Wurstelprater in Vienna, Austria.


title: Tivoli Gardens

text: With 4.6 million visitors in 2017, Tivoli is the most visited amusement park in Scandinavia and second-most popular seasonal amusement park in the world after Europa-Park. Tivoli is also the fifth-most visited amusement park in Europe, behind Disneyland Park, Europa-Park, Walt Disney Studios Park and Efteling. It is located in downtown Copenhagen, next to the Central rail station.


title: Tivoli Gardens

text: The amusement park was first called "Tivoli & Vauxhall"; "Tivoli" alluding to the Jardin de Tivoli in Paris (which in its turn had been named after Tivoli near Rome, Italy), and "Vauxhall" alluding to Vauxhall Gardens in London. It is mentioned in various books, such as "Number the Stars" by Lois Lowry, and was also used prominently in the 1961 science fiction film "Reptilicus".


title: Tivoli Gardens

text: Tivoli's founder, Georg Carstensen (b. 1812 – d. 1857), obtained a five-year charter to create Tivoli by telling King Christian VIII that ""when the people are amusing themselves, they do not think about politics"". The monarch granted Carstensen use of roughly 15 acres (61,000 m) of the fortified glacis outside Vesterport (the West Gate) for an annual rent. Until the 1850s Tivoli was outside the city, accessible from the city only through the Vesterport.


title: Tivoli Gardens

text: From its beginning Tivoli included a variety of attractions: buildings in the exotic style of an imaginary Orient: a theatre, band stands, restaurants and cafés, flower gardens, and mechanical amusement rides such as a merry-go-round and a primitive scenic railway. After dark, colored lamps illuminated the gardens. On certain evenings, specially designed fireworks could be seen reflected in Tivoli's lake, a remnant of the moat surrounding the city fortifications.


title: Tivoli Gardens

text: Composer Hans Christian Lumbye (b. 1810 – d. 1874) was Tivoli's musical director from 1843 to 1872. Lumbye was inspired by Viennese waltz composers such as the Strauss family (Johann Strauss I and his sons), and became known as the "Strauss of the North". Many of his compositions are specifically inspired by the gardens, including "Salute to the Ticket Holders of Tivoli", "Carnival Joys" and "A Festive Night at Tivoli". The Tivoli Symphony Orchestra still performs many of his works.


title: Tivoli Gardens

text: In 1874, a Chinese-style "Pantomimeteatret" (pantomime theatre) took the place of an older smaller theatre. The audience stands in the open, the stage being inside the building. The theatre's "curtain" is a mechanical peacock's tail. From the very beginning, the theatre was the home of Italian pantomimes, introduced in Denmark by the Italian Giuseppe Casorti. This tradition, dependent on the Italian Commedia dell'Arte, has been kept alive; it portrays the characters Cassander (the old father), Columbine (his beautiful daughter), Harlequin (her lover), and, especially popular with the youngest spectators, the stupid servant Pierrot. The absence of spoken dialogue is an advantage, for Tivoli is now an international tourist attraction.


title: Tivoli Gardens

text: In 1943, Nazi sympathisers burnt many of Tivoli's buildings, including the concert hall, to the ground. Temporary buildings were constructed in their place and the park was back in operation after a few weeks.


title: Tivoli Gardens

text: Tivoli is always evolving without abandoning its original charm or traditions. Georg Carstensen said in 1844: "Tivoli will never, so to speak, be finished", a sentiment echoed just over a century later when Walt Disney said of his own Tivoli-inspired theme park, "Disneyland will never be completed. It will continue to grow as long as there is imagination left in the world".


title: Tivoli Gardens

text: In Icelandic, Danish, Norwegian and Swedish, the word "tivoli" has become synonymous with any amusement park.


title: Tivoli Gardens

text: The park is best known for its wooden roller coaster, Rutschebanen, or as some people call it, Bjergbanen ("The Mountain Coaster"), built in 1914. It is one of the world's oldest wooden roller coasters that is still operating today. An operator controls the ride by braking so that it does not gain too much speed during descent of the hills. It is an ACE Coaster Classic.


title: Tivoli Gardens

text: Another roller coaster, The Demon ("Dæmonen"), features an Immelmann loop, a vertical loop, and a zero-G roll all during the ride time of just one minute and forty six seconds. An old roller coaster, The Snake ("Slangen"), was removed to have enough space for The Demon. In 2017, Tivoli Gardens added an optional virtual reality experience to the ride, simulating a flight through ancient China, along with encounters with dragons and demons. The Demon is situated next to the concert hall.


title: Tivoli Gardens

text: A well-known swing ride, The Star Flyer, opened in Tivoli in 2006. high and built by the Austria based Australian company Funtime, it offers panoramic views of the city.


title: Tivoli Gardens

text: On 1 May 2009, Tivoli Gardens opened the new ride Vertigo, a looping plane ride where the rider pilots the ride, able to control the plane. This ride had extremely low capacity and suffered significant downtime. The ride was removed in 2021.


title: Tivoli Gardens

text: A Zamperla Air Race ride, Aquila, opened on 11 April 2013. It is a giant swing and spinner with centrifugal powers up to 4 g, named after the constellation of the Eagle.


title: Tivoli Gardens

text: The newest attractions include Fatamorgana and Tik Tak. Fatamorgana opened in 2016. This is the world's first Condor 2GH, which offers two separate seating arrangements, one milder version with two-seater gondolas, and a thrilling version in which riders are slung around at high speed while seated in a ring and facing away from the center.


title: Tivoli Gardens

text: Tik Tak opened in 2018 and is the first permanent installation of a Mondial (amusement ride manufacturer) Shake R5. This model is slightly less aggressive than the traveling model and is spectacularly themed.


title: Tivoli Gardens

text: In addition, there is a Halloween Fest in October and Christmas Holidays in December. During the summer the park has fireworks shows each Saturday. In 2022 the firework season runs from June 4th to September 24th, and the firework will take place on the roof of The Concert Hall to the tones of The Barber of Seville by Gioachino Rossini.


title: Tivoli Gardens

text: There is one on-site hotel at the park: Hotel Nimb. The Tivoli Hotel & Congress Centre is affiliated with Tivoli Gardens only by name, but close cooperation does take place.


title: Tivoli Gardens

text: Besides the rides, Tivoli Gardens also serve as a venue for various performing arts & as an active part of the cultural scene in Copenhagen.


title: Tivoli Gardens

text: Tivoli Concert Hall is a classical concert hall featuring concerts with some of the largest names in international classical music.


title: Tivoli Gardens

text: The Pantomime Theatre is an open-air theatre designed by Vilhelm Dahlerup, also known for the design of the Royal Danish Theatre. It is a toy-like historicist built in Chinese style and noted for its mechanical front curtain that takes five men to operate and unfolds like a peacock's tail. As indicated by the name, it is primarily a scene for pantomime theatre in the classical Italian commedia dell'arte tradition, which is performed daily with a live pit orchestra. Besides this original function, the theatre leads a second life as a venue for ballet and modern dance, performing works by choreographers such as August Bournonville, Dinna Bjørn, Louise Midjord and Paul James Rooney.


title: Tivoli Gardens

text: The Tivoli Youth Guard is a formation of boys and girls aged 8–16 dressed in uniforms reminiscent of those of the Royal Danish Guard complete with bearskins. It was founded in 1844 and gives concerts, makes parades, stands guard at the garden's buildings and monuments at special occasions and represents the gardens at various events. It is composed of a Corps of drums, a military-styled marching band and an honor guard platoon.


title: Tivoli Gardens

text: During the warmer summer months, Tivoli also features a live music series dubbed "Fredagsrock" ("Friday Rock"), which in the past has featured Roxette, the Smashing Pumpkins, Sting, the Beach Boys, Pet Shop Boys, Kanye West and 5 Seconds of Summer, and also popular Danish acts such as TV-2, Nephew, Hanne Boel, Raveonettes and Thomas Helmig.


title: Tivoli Gardens

text: During the Copenhagen Jazz Festival, Tivoli Gardens is one of the many Copenhagen localities that serve as venues for concerts.


title: Member states of the League of Nations

text: The Covenant forming the League of Nations was included in the Treaty of Versailles and came into force on 10 January 1920, with the League of Nations being dissolved on 18 April 1946; its assets and responsibilities were transferred to the United Nations.


title: Member states of the League of Nations

text: The League's greatest extent was from 28 September 1934 (when Ecuador joined) to 23 February 1935 (when Paraguay withdrew) with 58 members. At this time, only Costa Rica (22 January 1925), Brazil (14 June 1926), Japan (27 March 1933) and Germany (19 October 1933) had withdrawn, and only Egypt was later joined (on 26 May 1937).


title: Member states of the League of Nations

text: The members (listed from thir earliest joining and alphabetically if they joined on the same day) at that time were Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Bolivia, the British Empire, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, El Salvador, France, Greece, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, India, Italy, Liberia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Norway, Panama, Paraguay, Persia/Iran, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Siam, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Uruguay, Venezuela, Yugoslavia, Austria, Bulgaria, Finland, Luxembourg, Albania, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, the Irish Free State, Ethiopia, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Turkey, Iraq, the Soviet Union, Afghanistan, and Ecuador.


title: Member states of the League of Nations

text: Of the 42 founding members, 23 (or 24, counting the Free France) were members when the League of Nations was dissolved in 1946. A further 21 countries joined between 1920 and 1937, but seven had withdrawn, left, or been expelled before 1946.


title: Member states of the League of Nations

text: Countries are listed under the year in which they joined. The word "withdrew" indicates that a country left of its own choice. The word "left" indicates a country that ceased to exist after annexation by Germany, Italy, or the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union was expelled from the League in 1939, after its invasion of Finland, and was the only country to face that measure.


title: Member states of the League of Nations

text: Despite formulating the concept and signing the Covenant, the United States never joined the League of Nations, and some relatively-isolated sovereign states in Asia also did not join, including Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Mongolia, Nepal, and Bhutan.


title: Member states of the League of Nations

text: Likewise, none of the European microstates of Andorra, Liechtenstein, Monaco, San Marino, and Vatican City ever sought membership in the organization.


title: Member states of the League of Nations

text: At the IX Congress of European Nationalities, an organization of the League of Nations, held in Bern, Galicia, Basque Country and Catalonia, the first three autonomies of Spain, were recognized as a nation. In any case, they were not independent but were represented by the Spanish government.


title: Controversies surrounding Yasukuni Shrine

text: The controversies surrounding Yasukuni Shrine are related to the choice of Japanese people who are honoured at this nationally significant Shinto shrine and war museum in central Tokyo. Most of the venerated dead served the Emperors of Japan during wars from 1867 to 1951 but they also include civilians in service and government officials. It is the belief of Shintoism that Yasukuni enshrines the actual souls of the dead, known as "kami" in Japanese. The kami are honoured through liturgical texts and ritual incantations known as Norito.


text: However, of the 2,466,532 people named in the shrine's "Book of Souls", 1,068 are war criminals who were convicted of war crimes, including 14 people who were tried by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, following World War II. Because of the decision to honour individuals who were found responsible for serious breaches of humanitarian law, China, Russia, South Korea and North Korea have called the Yasukuni Shrine an exemplar of the nationalist, revisionist and unapologetic approach Japan has taken towards its conduct during World War II. This has made visits to the shrine by Japanese Prime Ministers, cabinet members or politicians extremely controversial. Former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi made annual personal (non-governmental) visits from 2001 to 2006. Since 1985, China, North Korea, and South Korea have protested such visits.


text: The decision as to who is enshrined at Yasukuni is solely a religious activity due to the legal separation of State Shintoism and the Government of Japan. The Yasukuni priesthood have complete religious autonomy over deciding whom they bestow enshrinement. It is thought that enshrinement is permanent and irreversible by the current Kannushi.


text: On March 29, 2007, a book of documents was released by Japan's National Diet Library called "A New Compilation of Materials on the Yasukuni Shrine Problems" including declassified documents from the Occupational Government, the Japanese Health and Welfare Ministry and Yasukuni Shrine. The documents purportedly draw a connection between the Japanese Government and the war criminal enshrinement. According to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe the government had no say in who is enshrined. In addition, Vice Minister of Health, Labor, and Welfare Tsuji Tetsuo told reporters that the former ministry was "in charge of keeping the personal records of soldiers and civilian employees of the military, and with presenting records as the need arose."


text: "A New Compilation of Materials on the Yasukuni Shrine Problems" has been entered into the Library of Congress.


text: The shrine enshrines and, according to Shinto beliefs, provides a permanent residence for the spirits of those who have fought on behalf of the emperor, regardless of whether they died in combat. 1,068 of the enshrined kami were POWs convicted of some level of war crime after World War II. Enshrinement typically carries absolution of earthly deeds.


text: One of the criteria for enshrinement at Yasukuni is that a person be listed as having died of any cause while on duty in the war dead registry of the Japanese government. According to documents released on March 28, 2007, by the National Diet Library of Japan, Health and Welfare Ministry officials and Yasukuni representatives agreed during a meeting, on January 31, 1969, that Class-A war criminals judged at the Tokyo Trial were "able to be honored" as decided by the Shrine Priests and decided not to make this decision public.


text: On October 17, 1978, these 14 Class A war criminals were enshrined as because they were on the war dead registry:


text: All imprisoned war criminals either had their sentences commuted or were released by 1958. The enshrinement was revealed to the media on April 19, 1979, and a still-ongoing controversy started in 1985.


text: Yasukuni Shrine operates a war museum of the history of Japan (the Yūshūkan), which some observers have criticized as presenting a revisionist interpretation. A documentary-style propaganda video shown to museum visitors portrays Japan's conquest of East Asia during the pre-World War II period as an effort to save the region from the imperial advances of colonial Western powers. Displays portray Japan as a victim of foreign influence, especially Western undermining of trade. The museum has no mention of any of the atrocities committed by the Japanese Imperial Army, including the Nanking massacre.


text: The political overtones of Yasukuni Shrine are attributed to two factors. One is the ideology of State Shinto, which regarded any wars waged in the name of the emperor as just and anyone who died fighting for the emperor as an . But another more immediate factor is the influence of various support organizations, especially the Japan War-Bereaved Families Association (), the largest organization representing the families of war dead from World War II.


text: Yasukuni Shrine considers the Izokukai as its "de facto" lay organization. The Izokukai was formerly known as the , established in 1947. The original purpose of the Izoku Kōsei Renmei was "pursuing the end of warfare, establishing global peace and world prosperity and contributing to the welfare of the humanity." They sought "to provide relief and assistance to the families of those who died in the (Asia Pacific) war ". The organization provided assistance to the widows, orphans and aging parents of deceased veterans as well as lobbying the government on behalf of those families' interests. However, in 1953 the organization became a trust foundation and changed its name to Izokukai. The organization changed its main purpose to pursue "the establishment of a peaceful Japan, the cultivation of character, and the promotion of morality" and to "seek to praise "eirei", to promote the welfare of the families of the war dead, and to seek recognition and compensation for civilian auxiliary units." The change, which removed the mention of international pacifism and inserted a reference to "eirei", is regarded as giving a nationalist slant to the character of the organization. Chairmen of the organization have usually been members of the governing Liberal Democratic party and the organization is regarded as the informal pipeline between the LDP and the Shrine. In 1962, Okinori Kaya, a militant member of the LDP and a convicted class A war criminal, was appointed chairman.


text: This issue first surfaced when Emperor Hirohito refused to visit the shrine from 1978 until his death in 1989. According to a memorandum released in 2006 kept by Imperial Household Agency Grand Steward Tomohiko Tomita, Hirohito stated that the reason he stopped visiting the shrine was because of the decision to enshrine class A war criminals.


text: Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi was one of the most outspoken and controversial visitors. On October 17, 2005, Koizumi visited the shrine for the fifth time since taking office. Although he claimed that his visit was a private affair, it came only days before Japanese Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura was scheduled to visit Chinese officials in Beijing to strengthen Sino-Japanese relations. The People's Republic of China responded by canceling the scheduled visit as they consider the shrine a glorification of Japan's past military aggression.


text: Koizumi's annual visits continued to draw criticism from around the world. During the 2005 APEC summit in Busan, South Korea, Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing blasted Koizumi's visits, asking, "What would European people think if German leaders were to visit (memorials) related to Hitler and Nazis?" In 2006, Henry Hyde, chairman of the United States House Committee on Foreign Affairs, stated that Koizumi would embarrass the United States Congress and offend American veterans of World War II if he were to give a Congressional speech after making another visit to Yasukuni.


text: Koizumi's expected successor, Shinzo Abe, visited the shrine in April 2006 before he took office. Although this visit concerned both Chinese and South Korean governments, Abe remained vague as to whether he had visited or would visit the shrine in the future. Subsequent events have led some to suggest that a compromise on the issue was reached with China. Abe publicly supported his predecessor's visits to the shrine, and he made at least one visit to the shrine during his term as prime minister.


text: On June 7, 2007, former President of the Republic of China Lee Teng-hui visited the Shrine to pay tribute to his older brother who died in the Japanese Imperial Navy; he too volunteered as a Japanese Imperial Army officer.


text: Former Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda has vowed never to visit the shrine. Fukuda's open political opposition to the shrine has helped improve relations with China, and North and South Korea.


text: A group of 62 Diet members from the Liberal Democratic Party and the People's New Party, including former Minister of Agriculture Yoshinobu Shimamura and Fukuda's special adviser Eriko Yamatani, visited the shrine on April 22, 2008.


text: General opinions in Japan of the politicians' visits have varied significantly, with the percentages of those who approve ranging from as low as 38% in telephone surveys to as high as 71% on the internet. In a 2015 self-administered survey by Genron NPO, 66% of the respondents did not see a problem with the visits while 15.7% opposed them completely. A 2006 public opinion poll taken by "Nihon Keizai Shimbun" also found that half of the respondents supported Koizumi's visit to the shrine while 37% opposed it.


text: The controversial nature of the shrine has figured largely in both domestic Japanese politics and relations with other Asian countries. The controversy has been reignited nearly every year since 1975, when prime minister Takeo Miki visited the shrine as a private individual on August 15, the day that Japan commemorates the end of World War II. The next year, his successor Fukuda Takeo visited as a private individual yet signed the visitors' book as prime minister. Several other Japanese prime ministers have visited the shrine since 1979: Masayoshi Ohira in 1979; Zenko Suzuki in 1980, 1981 and 1982; Yasuhiro Nakasone in 1983 and 1985 (on the latter occasion, he offered flowers which had been paid for with government money); Kiichi Miyazawa in 1992, which visit was kept secret until 1996 (he had paid a visit in 1980 before becoming Prime Minister); Ryutaro Hashimoto in 1996; and Junichiro Koizumi, who visited six times (2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, and 2006). Visits by Japanese prime ministers to the shrine have resulted in official condemnation by neighbouring countries since 1985, as they see it as an attempt to legitimize Japan's past militarism.


text: Visits to the shrine are also controversial in the domestic debate over the proper role of religion in Japanese government. Some Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) politicians insist that visits are protected by the constitutional right to freedom of religion and that it is appropriate for legislators to pay their respects to those fallen in war. However, proposals for the construction of a secular memorial, so that those wishing to honor Japan's military dead do not have to visit Yasukuni, have thus far failed, ostensibly for technical details rather than the rejection of a secular memorial. The Japanese government conducts yearly memorial services to commemorate the War in Budokan ("Martial Arts Hall", a secular building) which is near Yasukuni shrine, so that the attendees can later visit Yasukuni Shrine privately if they so wish. The shrine itself objects to any proposal that a non-religious memorial be built, stating that "Yasukuni Shrine must be the one and only memorial for Japan's military dead." Koizumi has claimed that his visits are to ensure that there will be no further wars involving Japan, causing some to interpret them as an act of remembrance rather than reverence.


text: On his first visit to Japan since leaving office in February 2003, former South Korean President Kim Dae Jung openly criticised Japanese politicians' visits to the shrine, and proposed that the 14 Class A war criminals be moved to a different location. He said, "If that option is realized, I will not express opposition to visits to Yasukuni Shrine (by Koizumi or other Japanese leaders)". Kim noted that Koizumi promised at a meeting in Shanghai in 2001 to consider building a new memorial facility that could replace Yasukuni Shrine and enable anyone to worship there without hesitation.


text: The government of the People's Republic of China has been the most vocal critic of the shrine and some Japanese observers have suggested that the issue of Yasukuni Shrine is just as heavily tied to China's internal politics as it is to the historical conduct of Japan's military and the perceived degree of its remorse for its actions. They state that tolerance on the part of Chinese Communist Party authorities for large-scale public protests in mainland China against the shrine contrasts strongly with the authority exercised against any kind of domestic political dissent.


text: Yasukuni Shrine is a privately owned Shinto shrine located in the heart of Tokyo, Japan. The Meiji Emperor built the shrine in 1886 to house the remains and souls of those who died in civil conflicts. The shrine is now the memorial site for over 2.5 million people who have died in conflict, mainly in World War II.


text: The inclusion of 14 convicted Class-A war criminals in the shrine has resulted in controversy, particularly after the visits of Japanese prime ministers. China and at times South Korea have also objected to the shrine, as prior to World War II, Japan controlled the Korean Peninsula and parts of the Manchurian region in China and committed the Massacre of Nanjing. "Class-A" war criminals are those who are charged with "crimes against peace" while Class-C criminals are charged with crimes against humanity.


text: Numerous requests have been made by groups in other countries to remove the remains of the 14 war criminals or their own family members from the shrine, but as the shrine is owned by a private religious institution rather than the government, and the removal of remains would violate Shinto beliefs, the requests were denied. In Shinto, a body cannot be removed once it is placed into a shrine to be worshipped as a "kami". It has also been suggested that the Chinese government has its own political agenda in protesting against Yasukuni shrine.


text: One controversy of political visits to the shrine is the constitutionality of visits by the Prime Minister. In the Constitution of Japan, the separation of state and religion is explicit. Because the clause was written for the express purpose of preventing the return of State Shintoism, many question the constitutionality of the Prime Minister visiting Yasukuni Shrine. Often the first question Japanese Prime Ministers are asked by journalists after a visit is, "Are you here as a private person or as Prime Minister?" In addition, whether the Prime Minister has signed the visitors' book indicating the position of signatory as or is diligently reported. All Prime Ministers have so far stated that their visit was private. However, although some leave the signature section blank or sign it as "shijin", others sign it as "shushō". The issue is somewhat different than that of visits by the German Chancellor to the Holocaust Memorial, which are explicitly made in the context of a state visit. Prime Minister Koizumi recently gave a somewhat cryptic answer, stating that he visited the shrine as Junichiro Koizumi, the Prime Minister of Japan. Some consider such statement as a move towards making visits somewhat official; others consider that it is pointing out that the whole issue of "shijin" vs "shushō" is somewhat meaningless. Some journals and news reports, such as one made by Kyodo News Agency on August 15, 2006, question whether in the case of Koizumi's visits, which are consistently claimed by Koizumi to be private, can be considered individual in nature when they are part of a campaign pledge, which in nature is political. Currently, most of the Japanese public and most jurists have agreed that there have been no constitutional violations yet.


text: Shinzo Abe, 15 of the 18 members of his cabinet, and 289 of 480 Diet members are affiliated to the openly revisionist lobby Nippon Kaigi, which advocates the restoration of monarchy and State Shinto, negates Japanese war crimes, and recommends the revision of the Constitution and school textbooks as well as visits by Prime Ministers to the Shrine. The chief priest of the shrine, Yasuhisa Tokugawa (also the great-grandson of Tokugawa Yoshinobu, the last shōgun), is a member of Nippon Kaigi's representative committee.


text: The views expressed by Yasukuni Shrine through its museum and website are also controversial. Both sites make it clear that Yasukuni Shrine does not regard the conduct of Japan during World War II as an act of aggression but rather a matter of self-defence and a heroic effort to repel European imperialism. Defenders of (private) visits by the Prime Minister point out that, regardless, there is no other venue to pay respect to the fallen in Japan, so that the Prime Minister as well as the large number of Japanese who visit the shrine have no choice. Moreover, most people (including the Prime Minister) who visit Yasukuni deliberately avoid entering the museum so that the visit remains religious rather than political.


text: A number of proposals have been made to alleviate controversy. One is to somehow "remove" the controversial spirits and place them in a different location so that visits to Yasukuni Shrine would not be as politically charged. This proposal has been strongly pushed by China and Korea. The Japanese government cannot force Yasukuni Shrine to do so (owing to the separation of church and state). Moreover, the shrine is adamant that once a kami has been housed at the shrine, it cannot be separated. The one method which is suggested as theologically valid is to abolish the entire enshrinement, then repeat the entire enshrinement rite of kami since the Boshin War without including the A class war criminals. Some argue that selective abolishment of enshrinement is technically possible, as there are several precedents of selective de-enshrinement in the Tokugawa era. The Shinto processes of "bunrei" and "kanjō" exist specifically to remove a kami from its shrine and re-enshrine it elsewhere, but typically leave the kami at the originating shrine intact and unchanged.


text: Another proposal is to create a separate secular memorial where the prime minister can make official state visits for memorial purposes. Critics point out that groups representing families of the war dead express no interest in such a memorial, preferring Yasukuni Shrine. Furthermore, the Japanese government already conducts yearly secular commemoration services at the Budokan for the families of soldiers killed in World War II. Afterwards, these families usually make private visits to Yasukuni Shrine, which is located within walking distance. Since the proposed memorial site is geographically distant, were the ceremony to be relocated to the proposed memorial site such visits would be made more difficult. A number of families of the names listed at the shrine have indicated that the controversy is disturbing the peaceful rest of their dead family members and that they wish to pay homage to them without controversy and media attention.


text: There is in fact a memorial to the Japanese (unidentified) war dead within walking distance of Yasukuni, called , which has been suggested could be used as an alternative by Japanese politicians to pay their respects to those who died during the war.


text: In May 2005, in the aftermath of anti-Japanese protests over the Japanese history textbooks controversy, Chinese Vice-Premier Wu Yi cut short her visit to Japan and flew home before a planned meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. This was widely interpreted as a reaction to a statement by Koizumi the day before Wu's arrival that foreign countries should not interfere in Japan's domestic affairs, including the Yasukuni issue. Wu's visit was meant to improve strained relations between the two countries following the textbook controversy, and she had planned to ask Koizumi to stop his visits to the shrine.


text: In June 2005, a senior LDP member proposed moving the 14 Class A war criminals to a separate site. Shinto priests refused this proposal, quoting Japan's freedom of religion laws under the Japanese Constitution.


text: Also in the same month, a group claiming to represent Taiwanese aborigines led by politician Kao Chin Su-mei attempted to visit Yasukuni Shrine with the sponsorship of the Japan Catholic Council for Justice and Peace. Their intention was to peacefully request the removal of their relatives from the shrine, and to pray for the return of their ancestors' souls. Request to perform religious rites within the Yasukuni property were refused and they were blocked from entering Yasukuni by Japanese protesters and police. A demonstration was organized by a group of more than one hundred Japanese nationalists to block them from the shrine and prevent them from performing spirit-calling religious rituals within the property the Shrine objected. Japanese police allowed the protesters to remain on the grounds because their entrance to the shrine was not objected by the shrine; however they blocked the Taiwanese from leaving their buses, citing measures to prevent clashes between the two groups. After about an hour and a half, the Taiwanese group gave up their attempt. Kao Chin Su-mei and her group reportedly received death threats related to their visit, prompting the Taiwanese government to request Japanese authorities ensure her safety while in Japan.


text: Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi made widely publicized annual visits to the shrine while in office. The official position of the Japanese government was that he visited as an individual citizen "to express respect and gratitude to the many people who lost their lives in the war," and not for the sake of gratifying war criminals or to dispute the results of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East. Koizumi made his final visit as prime minister on August 15, 2006, shortly before his retirement.


text: Officials in the People's Republic of China responded to Koizumi's 2005 visit by canceling a scheduled visit to China by Japanese Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura in protest.


text: Koizumi's visits also provoked negative reactions in the United States. Henry Hyde, a World War II veteran serving as the Republican chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on International Relations, wrote a letter to House Speaker Dennis Hastert in May 2006 urging that Koizumi only be allowed to speak at the U.S. Capitol if he agreed not to visit Yasukuni on the following anniversary of Japan's surrender. Hyde's Democratic counterpart Tom Lantos also pressed for an end to the visits, stating that "paying one's respect to war criminals is morally bankrupt and unworthy of a great nation such as Japan."


text: Koizumi's successor Shinzo Abe visited the shrine several times before and after his first stint as prime minister, but did not visit at all during his first term as prime minister from September 2006 to September 2007. Abe not visiting the shrine prompted a Japanese nationalist named Yoshihiro Tanjo to cut off his own little finger in protest and mail it to the LDP.


text: In April 2007, he made a ceremonial offering to the shrine, but did not actually visit himself. According to official reports the offering was made by Abe as a private citizen rather than in an official capacity, although it was reported that the card attached to the floral offering was signed Prime Minister Shinzo Abe . Although Abe publicly supported his predecessor's visits to the shrine he did not visit the shrine himself during his term in office.


text: In August 2007, the 16 members of Abe's cabinet all declared they had no intention of visiting the shrine on the anniversary of the Japanese surrender. Abe, who at this point had not disclosed whether he himself intended to go, commented "Paying homage at the Yasukuni temple, or not, is up to the individual, even for a Cabinet member. I expect people to use their own discretion."¨ Sanae Takaichi, minister in charge of gender equality and Okinawa-related issues, ultimately visited the shrine in an apparent effort to avoid a rare absence of all Cabinet members at Yasukuni on the anniversary of Japan's official World War II surrender.


text: While campaigning for the presidency of the LDP in 2012, Abe said that he regretted not visiting the shrine while Prime Minister. He again refrained from visiting the shrine during the first year of his second stint as Prime Minister in consideration for improving relations with China and Korea, whose leaders refused to meet with Abe during this time. He said on December 9, 2013, that "it is natural that we should express our feelings of respect to the war dead who sacrificed their lives for the nation... but it is my thinking that we should avoid making [Yasukuni visits] political and diplomatic issues." In lieu of visiting, Abe sent ritual offerings to the shrine for festivals in April and October 2013, as well as the anniversary of the end of World War II in August 2013.


text: Abe's first visit to the shrine and Chinreisha as Prime Minister took place on December 26, 2013, the first anniversary of his second term in office. It was the first visit to the shrine by a sitting prime minister since Junichiro Koizumi visited in August 2006. Abe said that he "prayed to pay respect for the war dead who sacrificed their precious lives and hoped that they rest in peace," and said he had "no intention to neglect the feelings of the people in China and South Korea." The Chinese government published a protest that day, calling government visits to the shrine "an effort to glorify the Japanese militaristic history of external invasion and colonial rule and to challenge the outcome of World War II." Chinese Ambassador to Japan, Cheng Yonghua, stated in an article published in the Mainichi Shimbun that "Japanese leaders visiting the Yasukuni Shrine concerns their understandings of the aggressive war’s nature and responsibility, which absolutely can not be accepted by the Chinese side." The "Mainichi Shimbun" argued in an editorial that the visit could "cast a dark shadow" on relations with the United States and other countries in addition to China and Korea.


text: As Prime Minister Shinzo Abe visited the shrine, China's UN Ambassador Liu Jieyi said in taking the issue to the UN: "It all boils down to whether the leader of a country should stand on the side of maintaining the principles and purposes of the charter of the UN or to side with war criminals. The question inevitably arises as to what Abe is up to, where does he intend to take his country? The international community should remain vigilant and issue a warning ... that Abe must correct his erroneous outlook of history, he must correct his mistakes and he must not slip further down the wrong path." In response, Japan's UN Ambassador Motohide Yoshikawa said: "Abe visited Yasukuni Shrine to pay his respects and pray for the souls of the war dead and renew the pledge that Japan shall never again wage war. It was nothing more and nothing less."


text: In the wake of Abe's first term, his successor Yasuo Fukuda vowed never to visit the shrine, a commitment applauded by Japan's Asian neighbors. Fukuda's open political opposition to the shrine led to improved relations with China, North and South Korea . However, a group of 62 Diet members from the Liberal Democratic Party and the People's New Party, including former farm minister Yoshinobu Shimamura and Eriko Yamatani, a special adviser to Fukuda, visited the shrine on April 22, 2008.


text: The Democratic Party of Japan governments between 2009 and 2012 also avoided the shrine. Yukio Hatoyama pledged not to visit so long as war criminals are enshrined there. Naoto Kan ordered the entire cabinet not to visit the shrine on the anniversary of Japan's surrender, and said he had no plans to visit personally. Yoshihiko Noda stated in his first press conference that his cabinet would continue the policy of not making official visits.


text: In June 2007, former Taiwanese president Lee Teng-hui visited the shrine to pay his respects to his elder brother Lee Teng-ching (, or Lí Teng-khim in Taiwanese POJ), also known as Takenori Iwasato in Japanese, who is among the 27,863 Taiwanese honored there.


text: Emperor Hirohito did not visit Yasukuni from 1978 until his death. His son, Emperor Akihito, has not visited the shrine since becoming emperor (and has since continued after his abdication in 2019), instead choosing to send a lesser member of the royal household. It is unknown if Emperor Naruhito (Shōwa's grandson) will visit the shrine or not or as an alternative, would continue to send a lesser member in the household as his predecessor did. On July 20, 2006, "Nihon Keizai Shimbun" front-paged an article about the discovery of a memorandum detailing the reason Emperor Hirohito stopped visiting Yasukuni. The memorandum, kept by former chief of Imperial Household Agency Tomohiko Tomita, confirms for the first time the enshrinement of Class A War Criminals such as Yosuke Matsuoka and Toshio Shiratori was the reason. Tomita wrote down the contents of his conversations with the emperor in his diaries and notebooks in detail. He left 12 diaries (1975–1986) and some 20 notebooks (1986–1997).


text: According to the memorandum, the emperor Hirohito expressed his anger and strong displeasure in 1988 at the decision made by Yasukuni Shrine to include Class A war criminals in the list of war dead honored there by saying, "At some point, Class-A criminals became enshrined, including Matsuoka and Shiratori. I heard Tsukuba acted cautiously", Tsukuba is believed to refer to Fujimaro Tsukuba, the former chief Yasukuni priest at the time, who decided not to enshrine the war criminals despite receiving, in 1966, the list of war dead compiled by the government containing their names. "What's on the mind of Matsudaira's son, who is the current head priest?". "Matsudaira had a strong wish for peace, but the child didn't know the parent's heart. That's why I have not visited the shrine since. This is my heart", Matsudaira is believed to refer to Yoshitami Matsudaira, who was the grand steward of Imperial Household immediately after the end of World War II. His son, Nagayoshi, succeeded Fujimaro Tsukuba as the chief priest of Yasukuni and he decided to enshrine the war criminals in 1978. had died the previous year (July 10, 2005), which is speculated as a reason for the release of the memo.


text: For journalist Masanori Yamaguchi, who analyzed the "memo" and comments made by the emperor in his first-ever press conference in 1975, his evasive and opaque attitude about his own responsibility for the war and the fact that he said that the bombing of Hiroshima "could not be helped", could mean that he was afraid that the enshrinement would reignite the debate over his own responsibility for the war.


text: Another commentator stated that there are three immediate impacts of the memo. Firstly, the explanation of the suspension of the imperial visit offered by the right is no longer sustainable. Those on the right of Japanese politics had attributed the reason for the emperor's suspension of visits to the emergence of controversy over constitutional validity of the visit by the prime minister or the emperor in regard to the separation of state and religion. This claim is no longer valid in the light of the revelation. Secondly, Yasukuni and its lay organisation Izokukai probably have to make alterations to their stance somewhat. Both organisations have clearly expressed their wish for a visit by the current emperor. Recent rulings by the Supreme Court have also indicated that visits by the prime minister or the emperor are constitutional. However, it is now clear that the controversy over the enshrinement of class A war criminals has to be resolved. Moreover, though the emperor is the highest authority of Shinto, he does not exercise direct control of any Shinto shrine including Yasukuni. However, Yasukuni ideology is clearly in favour of the pre-war arrangement in which the emperor was the official head of Shinto. Thirdly, the revelation clearly shifts the focus of the controversy to the enshrinement of class A war criminals, meaning that the issue of the separation between the state and the church is no longer the main focus. The public opinion is split between those on the left who advocate for the removal and those on the right who nonetheless object to the removal.


text: On October 28, 2005, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) agreed to set up a cross-party "group for pushing forward the establishment of a national memorial facility" to bring about the foundation of a secular war memorial dedicated only to "ordinary" soldiers. This would replace Yasukuni Shrine as the home of Japan's war dead. The group was set to meet for the first time on November 9, 2005.


text: In March 2008, a group of lawmakers from the Liberal Democratic Party, featuring Tomomi Inada, called for boycott of a documentary made on Yasukuni by Chinese-born director Ying Li about the links between the shrine and right-wing movements such as the Uyoku dantai. Those lawmakers had asked for a preview on the ground that the movie could be "anti-Japanese". The Directors Guild of Japan expressed apprehension about the possible infringement of freedom of expression and as a result of the politicians' protests, only about 10 theaters would screen the movie, and none in Tokyo.


text: Beginning with Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's annual visits to the shrine, the shrine experienced regular cyber attacks in the early 2000s. These attacks have been found to originate from Chinese servers in China and involve Chinese-language spam with viruses. These attacks serve two functions. They spam the Yasukuni shrine webpage to overwhelm them and basically prevent them from being accessible. Some of these attacks reached as high as 15,000 pings per second. Cyber attacks against the shrine have also included sending mass emails that appear to have originated from the shrine with viruses to third parties.


text: On December 26, 2011, a man attempted to burn down a 13 meter high gate column at Yasukuni. The incident was captured on video and the fire quickly put out by security staff. Japanese police gained an arrest warrant for a 37-year-old Chinese man, who had been arrested earlier the same month for throwing Molotov cocktails at the Japanese embassy in Seoul. The man, Liu Qiang, served a 10-month sentence in South Korea for the embassy attack. Japan formally asked South Korea to extradite him, and China informally requested repatriation of their citizen. Liu stated that he was motivated by "antihumanitarian acts by militaristic Japan," and said that his (South Korean) maternal grandmother had been a sex slave for Japanese soldiers during the war and his great-grandfather had been tortured to death for protesting.


text: On January 3, 2013, the Seoul High Court declined Japan's extradition request, and on the following day Liu returned to China.


text: On November 23, 2015, at around 10 am, a restroom near the shrine's southern entrance was damaged by a bomb explosion. Chon Chang-han, a South Korean man, was arrested on December 9.


text: On 11 February 2021, Japanese voice actress Ai Kayano claimed that she had taken a trip to visit Yasukuni Shrine, and commented "it makes for a pleasant mood," which upset many citizens of nations that Japan had victimized during its imperialistic era. A few months after her comment, amid significant pressure from Chinese fans, some Chinese video games such as "Azur Lane" and "Arknights" had removed her voice work from their games in the CN server.


title: Italian Mediterranean buffalo

text: The Italian Mediterranean Buffalo or is an Italian breed of water buffalo. It is of the River sub-type of water buffalo and is similar to the buffalo breeds of Hungary, Romania and the Balkan countries. It is the only indigenous water buffalo breed in Italy. A herd-book was opened in 1980, and the breed was officially recognised in 2000.


title: Italian Mediterranean buffalo

text: There are conflicting hypotheses concerning the origins of the European water buffalo: one, based on fossil bones found in the valleys of the Elbe and the Rhine, is that it descends from the extinct European wild species "Bubalus murrensis"; others believe that water buffalo were brought to Europe in the sixth and seventh centuries by invading peoples such as the Pannonian Avars, or later, by crusaders returning from Mesopotamia. Detailed studies of the DNA of European buffalo have not been made.


title: Italian Mediterranean buffalo

text: The buffalo may have been introduced into Italy in Roman times, or during the Barbarian invasions of the Italian peninsula.


title: Italian Mediterranean buffalo

text: In 1979 a national association of buffalo breeders, the , was formed, and a genealogical herd-book for the buffalo was opened in the following year. The breed was officially recognised in 2000.


title: Italian Mediterranean buffalo

text: In 1953 the total number of buffalo in Italy was estimated at head. The numbers of buffalo reported by the Istituto Nazionale di Statistica in 2012 and 2013 were, by region:


title: Italian Mediterranean buffalo

text: The Mediterranea Italiana is black, with dark slate-grey skin and black hooves. White markings may be present on the head, on the lower legs or on the switch of the tail. Total albinism may occur, but is much less common than in the buffaloes of Asia, where the incidence of albinism is in the range .


title: Italian Mediterranean buffalo

text: Bulls commonly stand about at the withers, with a weight of some ; they may reach weights of up to . Sexual dimorphism is less marked in domestic buffalo than in cattle; cows stand about , with weights in the range .


title: Italian Mediterranean buffalo

text: In the past the buffalo was widely used as a draught animal. Buffalo also kept waterways and drainage channels clear of weed, swimming in the deeper parts and wading in the shallows.


title: Italian Mediterranean buffalo

text: The Mediterranea Italiana is now raised and selectively bred principally for the production of the buffalo milk used to make buffalo mozzarella, notably the Mozzarella di Bufala Campana of Campania, which has Denominazione di origine protetta (DOP) status. Other dairy products including burrata, caciotta di bufala, ricotta di bufala, scamorza di bufala, stracchino di bufala, stracciatella di bufala and yoghurt are also made from the milk. Lactation lasts on average 277 days, and usually yields of milk; yields of per lactation are not uncommon. In 2012 a total of of buffalo milk was produced in Italy, about 1.7% of total milk production in that year; the fat content was an average of 7.92%.


title: Italian Mediterranean buffalo

text: Buffalo are butchered both for fresh meat and for preserved meat products such as bresaola di bufalo. In 2012 a total of buffalo were slaughtered in Italy, for a total live weight of , approximately 2.7% of the total weight of bovines slaughtered that year. The average carcass yield was 50.6%.


title: Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference

text: The Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference (MEAC) is a collegiate athletic conference whose full members are historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) in the Southeastern and the Mid-Atlantic United States. It participates in the National Collegiate Athletic Association's (NCAA) Division I, and in football, in the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS).


title: Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference

text: Currently, the MEAC has automatic qualifying bids for NCAA postseason play in baseball (since 1994), men's basketball (since 1981), women's basketball (since 1982), softball (since 1995), men's and women's tennis (since 1998), and volleyball (since 1994). Bowling was officially sanctioned as a MEAC governed sport in 1999. Before that season, the MEAC was the first conference to secure NCAA sanctioning for women's bowling by adopting the club sport prior to the 1996–97 school year.


title: Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference

text: In 1969, a group whose members were long associated with interscholastic athletics met in Durham, North Carolina for the purpose of discussing the organization of a new conference. After the formulation of a committee, and their research reported, seven institutions, Delaware State University, Howard University, University of Maryland Eastern Shore, Morgan State University, North Carolina A&T State University, North Carolina Central University and South Carolina State College, agreed to become the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference. South Carolina State had been a longtime member of the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference, while the other charter members had been longtime members of the Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association.


title: Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference

text: The conference's main goals were to establish and supervise an intercollegiate athletic program among a group of educational institutions that shared the same academic standards and philosophy of co-curricular activities and seek status as a Division I conference for all of its sports.


title: Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference

text: The conference was confirmed in 1970, and had its first season of competition in football in 1971. To date, the MEAC has had three full-time commissioners. In 1978, the MEAC selected its first full-time commissioner, Kenneth A. Free, who served as commissioner until he resigned in 1995. He was succeeded by Charles S. Harris, who served at the position until 2002. On September 1, 2002, Dennis E. Thomas became the conference's commissioner. He retired on December 31, 2021. Sonja O. Stills became the first female commissioner of the MEAC on January 1, 2022. She is also the only female commissioner of a Division I HBCU athletic conference.


title: Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference

text: The MEAC experienced its first expansion in 1979 when Bethune–Cookman College (now Bethune–Cookman University) and Florida A&M University were admitted as new members. That same year, founding members Morgan State University, North Carolina Central University and University of Maryland Eastern Shore withdrew from the conference. All three schools eventually returned to the conference; Maryland Eastern Shore rejoined in 1981, Morgan State in 1984, and North Carolina Central in 2010.


title: Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference

text: On June 8, 1978, the MEAC was classified as a Division I conference by the NCAA. Prior to that year, the league operated as a Division II conference. The following month the MEAC received an automatic qualification to the NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Championship.


title: Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference

text: In 1984, membership in the MEAC again changed, as Florida A&M chose to leave. The university returned to the conference two years later. Coppin State College, now Coppin State University, joined the conference in 1985. The MEAC found some stability in membership with the addition of two HBCUs in Virginia, Hampton University and Norfolk State University in 1995 and 1997, respectively. For the next ten years, the MEAC remained an 11-member conference. In 2007, former CIAA member Winston-Salem State University was granted membership, but announced on September 11, 2009, that it would return to Division II at the end of 2009–10 and apply to return to the CIAA before ever becoming a full member of the MEAC.


title: Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference

text: North Carolina Central University rejoined the conference effective July 1, 2010. NCCU was one of seven founding member institutions of the MEAC, but withdrew from the conference in 1979, opting to remain a Division II member when the conference reclassified to Division I.


title: Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference

text: Savannah State University was announced as the newest member of the MEAC on March 10, 2010. Savannah State originally applied for membership into the MEAC in 2006 but faced an NCAA probationary period soon after. Membership was then deferred until the completion of the imposed probation period, which ended in May 2009. Savannah State then resubmitted their application for membership again in 2009 and was finally granted probationary membership status. On September 8, 2011, the university was confirmed as a full MEAC member.


title: Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference

text: While the MEAC has had no new full members since then, the conference added an associate member in 2014 when Augusta University, then known as Georgia Regents University, a Division II institution with Division I programs in men's and women's golf, joined for men's golf. Augusta became the MEAC's first associate member and first non-HBCU with any type of membership. The conference has since added two more non-HBCU associate members, with Monmouth University and the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) joining for bowling in 2018.


title: Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference

text: In April 2017, Savannah State announced that it would drop to Division II effective with the 2019–20 school year. In November 2017, Hampton announced they would leave the MEAC to join the Big South Conference beginning with the 2018–19 season.


title: Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference

text: In February 2020 North Carolina A&T announced departing MEAC to join Big South Conference effective July 2021. Within few months, in June 2020, Florida A&M and Bethune-Cookman also announced that they will leave the MEAC and join the SWAC starting in July 2021. As a result, the MEAC will have eight members remaining for 2021, with only six of its members sponsoring football. The MEAC has hired a consulting firm to help assess its current schools and to help it identify potential institutions for addition to the conference. The conference plans to operate with eight current members, starting 2021 until further expansion, in a compact geographical footprint removing North and South divisions.


title: Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference

text: In May 2021, multiple websites that report on HBCU sports indicated that the MEAC had reached out to two Division II HBCUs about their interest in transitioning to D-I and joining the MEAC. Kentucky State University and Virginia State University, respectively members of the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference and Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association, confirmed that they had discussed possible membership with the MEAC and had commissioned feasibility studies on moving to Division I. Officials at both schools stated that they were considering the move, but would not commit to any change. One report also indicated that Chicago State University, a predominantly African-American school but not an HBCU, had lobbied the MEAC regarding membership. CSU is scheduled to leave the Western Athletic Conference, a league in which it is a major geographic outlier, in July 2022. According to this report, the MEAC had offered CSU associate membership in one sport, but was lukewarm to CSU becoming a full member because it does not sponsor football and is well outside the MEAC's geographic footprint.


title: Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference

text: In July 2022, the Northeast Conference (NEC) announced a partnership with the MEAC in which MEAC schools sponsoring baseball and men's and women's golf would become NEC affiliate members in their respective sports beginning in the 2022-23 season.


title: Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference

text: The Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference (MEAC) sponsors championship competition in six men's and eight women's NCAA-sanctioned sports.


title: Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference

text: Men's varsity sports not sponsored by the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference which are played by MEAC schools:


title: Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference

text: Women's varsity sports not sponsored by the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference which are played by MEAC schools:


title: Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference

text: The MEAC, along with the Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC), are the only two Division I conferences whose members are mostly Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). In 2015, the MEAC joined the SWAC and Ivy leagues in abstaining from sending their conference champions to the FCS Playoffs. While the conference champion faces off in the Celebration Bowl against the SWAC Champion, the remaining conference members remain eligible for at-large bids for the playoffs.


title: Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference

text: "This is a partial list of the last 10 champions. For the full history, see List of Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference football champions."


title: Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference

text: On June 8, 1980, the MEAC earned the classification as a Division I conference by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). Since 1981, the MEAC has received a qualifying bid to NCAA post season play in the sport of basketball. In three cases, MEAC schools seeded 15th (Coppin State in 1997, Hampton in 2001, Norfolk State in 2012) defeated second-seeded teams South Carolina, Iowa State and Missouri, respectively, in the NCAA tournament.


title: Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference

text: Coppin State again made history, as it qualified for the tournament as the first 20-loss team to play in the NCAA Tournament.


title: Sergio Marchionne

text: Sergio Marchionne (; 17 June 1952 – 25 July 2018) was an Italian-Canadian businessman, widely known for his turnarounds of the automakers Fiat and Chrysler, his business acumen and his outspoken and often frank approach, especially when dealing with unpalatable issues related to his companies and the automotive industry.


title: Sergio Marchionne

text: Marchionne was the chairman of CNH Industrial, the chief executive officer (CEO) of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, the chairman and CEO of FCA US LLC, the chairman and CEO of Ferrari, and the chairman of Maserati. He was the chairman of Swiss-based SGS and vice chairman of UBS from 2008 to 2010, as well as the chairman of the European Automobile Manufacturers Association for 2012 (first elected in January 2006). He was a member of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, and the chairman of the Italian branch of the Council for the United States and Italy.


title: Sergio Marchionne

text: Noted for his keen observations of the automotive industry, Marchionne's insights ranged from frank criticism of his company's own products to a highly regarded 2015 presentation titled "Confessions of a Capital Junkie", extolling the benefits of industry consolidation.


title: Sergio Marchionne

text: Marchionne was widely recognized for turning around Fiat Group to become one of the fastest-growing companies in the auto industry, in less than two years. In 2009, he was instrumental in Fiat Group forming a strategic alliance with the ailing US automaker Chrysler, with the support of the U.S. and Canadian governments and trade unions. Less than two years later, following its emergence from Chapter 11, Chrysler returned to profitability, repaying some of its government loans. In 2014, Fiat and Chrysler merged into a new holding company, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, now the seventh-largest automobile manufacturer in the world.


title: Sergio Marchionne

text: Following complications from surgery, Marchionne resigned from all of his positions in July 2018 and died a few days later. The American business channel CNBC described Marchionne as a "legend" of the automotive industry, while the British newspaper "Financial Times" considered him as having been "one of the boldest business leaders of his generation".


title: Sergio Marchionne

text: Marchionne was born in Chieti, Abruzzo, Italy, the son of Concezio Marchionne, from Cugnoli (Abruzzo), and Maria Zuccon from Carnizza (today Krnica, Croatia) near Pula in Istria. His father served as a "Carabiniere" in Istria, where he met his future wife. Marchionne's grandfather, Giacomo Zuccon, was killed in September 1943 by Yugoslav Partisans near Barban in Istria, while his uncle Giuseppe Zuccon was killed by German troops the same year. In 1945, when the region was occupied by the Yugoslav army, Marchionne's parents moved to Chieti in Abruzzo, where Sergio was born.


title: Sergio Marchionne

text: At 13, Marchionne emigrated with his family to Toronto, Ontario, Canada, where they had relatives. Carrying dual Canadian and Italian citizenship, he spoke fluent English, French and Italian. Marchionne was a Canadian certified general accountant (FCGA), barrister, and a fellow of the Certified General Accountants of Ontario.


title: Sergio Marchionne

text: Marchionne attended St. Michael's College School, before completing his undergraduate studies in philosophy at the University of Toronto and earning a bachelor of commerce degree (1979) and an MBA (1985) from the University of Windsor as well as a law degree from Osgoode Hall Law School of York University (1983). He received an honorary doctorate from Walsh College (2013).


title: Sergio Marchionne

text: From 1983 to 1985, he worked as an accountant and tax specialist for Deloitte & Touche in Canada. From 1985 to 1988, he was Group Controller and then Director of Corporate Development at the Lawson Mardon Group in Toronto. In 1989, he moved to Glenex Industries where he worked for two years as Executive Vice President.


title: Sergio Marchionne

text: From 1990 to 1992, he was Vice President of Finance and Chief Financial Officer at Acklands Ltd. Between 1992 and 1994, he served as Vice President of Legal and Corporate Development and Chief Financial Officer of the Lawson Group, which was acquired by Alusuisse Lonza (Algroup) in 1994.


title: Sergio Marchionne

text: From 1994 to 2000, he worked at Algroup (Alusuisse Lonza Group Limited) based in Zürich, where he became Chief Executive Officer in 1997. He then took the helm of the Lonza Group in Basel, after its spin-off from Algroup, serving first as Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director (2000–2001) and then as Chairman (2002).


title: Sergio Marchionne

text: In February 2002, he became Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director of SGS S.A. of Geneva where, in March 2006, he was appointed Chairman. Marchionne was elected as an independent member of the Board of Directors of Fiat S.p.A. in May 2003, until being appointed CEO in 2004.


title: Sergio Marchionne

text: In June 2009, when Chrysler emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, Fiat Group received a 20% stake in Chrysler Group LLC and Marchionne was appointed CEO, replacing Robert Nardelli.


title: Sergio Marchionne

text: In February 2011 Marchionne sparked widespread controversy in the US when he remarked at the J.D. Power & Associates International Automotive Roundtable that Chrysler's bail-out loans from the U.S. government carried "shyster rates". Marchionne immediately issued a public apology, stating "I regret the remark and consider it inappropriate" and going on to explain that "As the only parties willing to underwrite the risk associated with Chrysler's recovery plan, the two governments [U.S. and Canadian] levied interest rates that, although appropriate at the time, are above current market conditions." In July 2011, following the purchase of the ownership interests held by Canada and the US Treasury, Fiat's stake in Chrysler increased to 53.5% and in September 2011, Marchionne was also elected Chairman of Chrysler. Fiat and Chrysler officially merged on 1 August 2014.


title: Sergio Marchionne

text: Following the 2015 Volkswagen emissions scandal, in January 2017, the EPA also accused Fiat Chrysler of installing software that allowed excess diesel emissions to go undetected in their EcoDiesel engines. Marchionne denied any wrongdoing. He was critical of the EPA and rejected comparisons between Fiat Chrysler and Volkswagen.


title: Sergio Marchionne

text: Marchionne last appeared in public on 26 June 2018 in Rome, when he presented a Jeep to the Carabinieri, Italy's military police. FCA subsequently announced Marchionne had taken medical leave for shoulder surgery at the University Hospital of Zürich in Switzerland — adding on the day of surgery that he would not return due to post-surgical complications. After further serious complications, on 21 July 2018, Marchionne resigned from all his positions and was replaced at FCA, Ferrari, SGS and CNH.


title: Sergio Marchionne

text: He died on 25 July 2018 at age 66, most likely from complications related to underlying cancer. Some reports claimed he had suffered from an invasive shoulder cancer. According to the University Hospital of Zürich, Marchionne had been treated for a "serious illness" for over a year before his death, which was also noted by his partner's father Pier Luigi Battezzato. He had also quit smoking since his treatment started. FCA did not have knowledge of his health condition until just weeks before his death.


title: Sergio Marchionne

text: He was survived by his partner Manuela Battezzato, his two adult sons, Alessio and Tyler, and his former wife Orlandina.


title: Sergio Marchionne

text: Marchionne earned a reputation for an outspoken and often blunt approach. In a 2009 "Forbes" interview, Massimo Vecchio, an analyst with Mediobanca, commented on the contrast and Marchionne's controversial management style:


title: Sergio Marchionne

text: Despite the buttoned-down business world in which he worked, Marchionne disliked having to think about his wardrobe, and became known for wearing black sweaters and jeans — keeping a supply of both in each of his residences. On 1 June 2018, Marchionne wore a necktie to celebrate the FCA debt repayment. Reporters noted that he had not been seen wearing a tie since 2007.


title: Sergio Marchionne

text: The "Istituto Sergio Marchionne" high school was opened in Amatrice on 6 November 2019 by John Elkann, CEO of Ferrari. It was rebuilt after the August 2016 Central Italy earthquake, financed largely by the sale of the 500th La Ferrari.


title: April Stewart

text: Stewart is best known for providing the voices of several female characters in the animated comedy series "South Park" alongside fellow voice actress Mona Marshall. She is the voice of Wendy Testaburger, Liane Cartman, Sharon Marsh, Carol McCormick, Shelley Marsh, Mayor McDaniels, Principal Victoria and others. She is also the voice of Maria Rivera on Nickelodeon's "" and the voice of Raava and Fire Lord Izumi in "The Legend of Korra". She also voiced Bloody Mary, the main antagonist of the video game "". She also voiced Prisoner X from Minecraft Story Mode.


title: April Stewart

text: Born and raised in Truckee, California on April 1, 1969, Stewart started acting at the age of 12. Her father, Freddie Stewart, was a singer with the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra. She gave birth to her first child, a daughter, in 2008.


title: James Taylor discography

text: The discography of James Taylor, an American singer-songwriter, consists of 20 studio albums, six compilation albums, at least five live albums, one tribute album, nine video albums, one extended play, and 40 singles.


title: James Taylor discography

text: Taylor signed his first recording contract with Apple Records, where he released his self-titled debut album in 1969. Prior to signing with Apple, Taylor released the single "Night Owl" with the group The Flying Machine. An album of their recordings, "James Taylor and the Original Flying Machine" was released in 1971 and reached No. 74 on the US pop charts. Taylor released his second studio album "Sweet Baby James" on Warner Bros. Records in 1970. Its lead single "Fire and Rain" became a significant international hit and gained Taylor his first major exposure as an artist. In April 1971, Taylor released his third studio album "Mud Slide Slim and the Blue Horizon", which became his second album to certify multi-platinum in sales by the Recording Industry Association of America and featured his first number one single "You've Got a Friend". In 1972 and 1973, he released his fourth studio album, "One Man Dog" and his fifth, "Walking Man"; both peaked within the Top 20 on the "Billboard" 200 albums list.


title: James Taylor discography

text: After releasing more albums between 1974 and 1976, Taylor signed with Columbia Records and issued "JT" in 1977, which peaked in the Top 5 and sold over two million copies in the United States, certifying two times multi-platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America. In 1979 and 1981, Taylor released "Flag" and "Dad Loves His Work", respectively, which both certified platinum in the United States and produced Top 40 singles. Nearly four years later, Taylor's next studio album "That's Why I'm Here" was released and spawned a cover of Buddy Holly's "Everyday", which became a minor hit in the United States. This was followed by "Never Die Young" three years later and then by "New Moon Shine" in 1991, both of which sold over one million copies. After recording a two-disc live album in 1993, Taylor returned in 1997 with a fourteenth studio album titled "Hourglass". The album not only peaked at No. 9 on the "Billboard" 200, but also received a Grammy Award for Best Pop Album the following year. His fifteenth studio release "October Road" was issued on August 13, 2002, on Sony BMG and certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America. After recording a limited release in 2004, Taylor released his first major-release holiday album, "James Taylor at Christmas" on October 10, 2006.


title: James Taylor discography

text: "One Man Band" was released in 2007 and certified gold in the United States. This was followed by Taylor's first cover album in 2008 on the Hear Music label. There was also an extended play sequel, "Other Covers" in 2009. In 2015, Taylor released another live album, "Georgia on My Mind: Live in Atlanta, 1981", and another studio album, "Before This World", which became the first Taylor's album to peak at No.1 in the United States.


title: San Pedro Sula

text: San Pedro Sula () is the capital of Cortés Department, Honduras. It is located in the northwest corner of the country in the Sula Valley, about 50 kilometers (31 miles) south of Puerto Cortés on the Caribbean Sea. With a population of 671,460 in the central urban area (2020 calculation) and a population of 1,445,598 in its metropolitan area in 2020, it is the nation's primary industrial center and second largest city after the capital Tegucigalpa, and the largest city in Central America that isn't a capital city.


title: San Pedro Sula

text: Before the arrival of the Spanish, the Sula Valley was home to approximately 50,000 native inhabitants. The area that is home to the modern city served as a local trade hub for the Mayan and Aztec civilizations. The Spanish conquest brought about a demographic collapse from which the native population would never recover.


title: San Pedro Sula

text: On 27 June 1536, Don Pedro de Alvarado founded a Spanish town beside the Indian settlement of Choloma, with the name of Villa de Señor San Pedro de Puerto Caballos (modern San Pedro Sula). The new town had 35 Spanish citizens, and Alvarado allocated 200 of his slaves to help build the new town and work the surrounding fields. He sent out expeditions into outlying regions to secure the new town, extend the area of Spanish domination, and commandeer supplies. Alvarado annulled all encomienda rights established in the area under Andres de Cerezeda, and reassigned the villages to the citizens of San Pedro.


title: San Pedro Sula

text: The new settlement barely survived the colonial period. In 1601, the Spanish government declared Santo Tomás as the official port for the Central American colonies; this move diverted exports from Puerto Cortés and resulted in an economic decline that would last through the 17th century. Additionally, San Pedro Sula was left exposed to raids by pirates and French, Dutch, and English mercenaries. By the mid-18th century, the Spanish government decided to build a number of coastal fortresses to curb English attacks. One of these fortresses, the Fortaleza de San Fernando, was built in Omoa, less than 50 miles from San Pedro Sula. The subsequent increase in trade supported an increase in population from 70 inhabitants in 1714 to 357 in 1789.


title: San Pedro Sula

text: Post-independence San Pedro Sula remained an impoverished village, dependent on trade between Omoa and the country's interior. In 1875, Frank Frye, the American consul in the Bay Islands, reported a population of 1200. The city benefitted from the growth of the banana trade in the 1870s and 1880s and formed a close relationship with US-based shipper and railroad entrepreneur Samuel Zemurray's Cuyamel Fruit Company, and the construction of the Interoceanic Railroad between 1869 and 1874 which connected the city to the coast at Puerto Cortés. Zemurray worked closely with local elites who invested in subsidiary enterprises and thus shaped the way politically for Cuyamel to establish itself and pay very few taxes.


title: San Pedro Sula

text: In 2013, fifteen years after the effects of Hurricane Mitch, Honduras is one of the poorest countries in Latin America; around San Pedro Sula, banana production has not fully recovered, and "manufacturing has all but dried up." The problems are exacerbated by organized gangs, whose rules prevent residents from safely leaving gang-controlled neighborhoods such as Chamelecón for jobs in other parts of town.


title: San Pedro Sula

text: In 2000, then-Mayor Roberto Larios Silva said "San Pedro Sula is where the economic development of the country is concentrated via the city's industrial, commercial, and financial development." The then-manager of Hotel Copantl attributed its growth in business-related tourism ...[to] the maquila (apparel


title: San Pedro Sula

text: San Pedro Sula was the "murder capital of the world" until early 2016 when Caracas, Venezuela, surpassed its homicide rate. Since the 2009 Honduran military coup "unemployment and underemployment rates have doubled while the number of people living in extreme poverty has skyrocketed." In 2013, the city had 187 homicides per 100,000 residents. This surpassed Ciudad Juarez, Mexico's rate of 148 killings per 100,000, or an average of about three homicides per day; Ciudad Juarez had previously topped the list for three consecutive years. Both cities are major operational and strategic distribution points in the illegal drug trade, particularly to the United States, and have significant gang activity. In response, authorities launched Operation Lightning, saturating violence hotspots with police and soldiers. Meanwhile, arms trafficking has flooded the country, with just under 70% of all firearms being illegal. 83% of homicides in the city involve firearms.


title: San Pedro Sula

text: According to the "Los Angeles Times", "the homicide rate is stoked by the rivalry of the brutal street gangs, mostly descendants of gangs formed in Los Angeles and deported to Central America in the 1990s, including Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and the 18th Street gang. Their ranks are fed by the disastrous economy of Honduras, and emboldened more recently by alliances with Mexican drug traffickers moving cocaine through the country."


title: San Pedro Sula

text: Crime and economic stress have led to the migration of large numbers of unaccompanied minors to the US border. The latest data from the CBP shows San Pedro Sula as the major source for Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) migrating from Honduras.


title: San Pedro Sula

text: San Pedro Sula features has a tropical wet and dry climate ("Aw") under the Köppen climate classification, with a dry season spanning from January through May and a wet season covering the remaining months. The city experiences relatively high temperatures year-round and some rainfall. However, it does not quite fall under the tropical monsoon climate category. San Pedro Sula has experienced hurricanes and tropical storms and is prone to them during the hurricane season usually when the storms form in the southern part of the Caribbean or Western Africa.


title: San Pedro Sula

text: Avenues in the city run from north to south and streets run from east to west. First Street and First Avenue mark the "center of the city" and effectively divide it into four major quadrants NW, NE, SW and SE.


title: San Pedro Sula

text: Barrio El Benque, the business district, is just to the west and south of the center, and other neighborhoods in the suroeste include Barrio Paz Barahona, Barrio La Guardia, Colonia Altamira, Colonia Mesetas, Barrio Río de Piedras, Barrio Suyapa (from 12 Avenida S out to Avenida Circunvalación, from 7 Calle S to 10 Calles S), Colonia Hernandez, Barrio Prado Alto, and Colonia El Chamelecón. The latter includes area from 23 Avenida S west to 27 Avenida S, from 1 Calle (named Bulevar Los Próceres there) south to 5 Calle S0. To the south of Colonia El Chamelecón are Colonia Dubón, Colonia Figueroa, Colonia Trejo (from 10 Calle S to 12 Calle S, from about Avenida Circunvalación to 25 Avenida S, including the Consulate of Nicaragua), Colonia Altamira, and Colonia Altiplano. Colonia Las Mesetas runs from 12 Calle S to 14 Calle S, from 21 Avenida A (S) to past 24 Avenida S.


title: San Pedro Sula

text: Barrio Guamilito is just to the west and north of the center. Noroeste neighborhoods include Colonia Moderna (from 1 Calle to 5 Calle NO, from Avendia Circunvalación to the river beyond 24 Avenida), Colonia La Mora (from 5 Calle NO to 7 Calle NO, from Avendia Circunvalación to the río beyond 24 Avenida), Colonia Zeron, the Colonia Columbia by the Universidad de San Pedro Sula, Barrio La Cervecería and Barrio Guadalupe. Across the river along which 24 Avenida runs is Colonia Juan Lindo and Colonia Jardines Del Valle.


title: San Pedro Sula

text: From the river past 24 Avenida, north to 25 Calle and west to 12 Avenida, is Colonia Universidad. Universidad de San Pedro Sula is to its south, across the river. West of Colonia Universidad is Colonia Country, a small neighborhood including the Academia Americana, and Colonia Villas del Sol, which runs from Boulevard Mackey west to include Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Honduras en el Valle de Sula, and goes north to Río Bermejo but does not cross it.


title: San Pedro Sula

text: Just past the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Honduras en el Valle de Sula, and spanning the Río Bermejo, is Colonia El Pedregal, which has residential high-rises.


title: San Pedro Sula

text: Further out, north across the Río Bermejo, running to the edge of the city, and with calles (streets) renumbering from 1 up, are Colonia Los Alpes and Rancho El Coco and Residencial Los Cedros and Colonia La Tara.


title: San Pedro Sula

text: Barrio Las Acacias is just to the north of center. Nor-Este neighborhoods include Barrio San Cristobal, Villa Florencia, Colonia Ideal, Barrio Morazán, Colonia Modelo, and further out Colonia Bográn, Colonia El Carmen, and Colonia Los Laureles.


title: San Pedro Sula

text: Includes the road to the airport, Aeropuerto Internacional Ramon Villeda Morales and to the city of La Lima. Southeast neighborhoods include Barrio Medina (11 Calle SE to Avenida Juan Pablo II, 4 Avenida SO to 10 Avenida SE), Colonia La Aurora (defined by 7 Calle SE to 10 Calle SE, and 14 Avenida SE to Segundo Anilo (approximately where 18 Avenida would be), Barrio Cabañas, Barrio La Navidad, San Pedro, Barrio Las Palmas, Barrio San Luís, Colonia La Unión, Barrio La Paz. Farther out: Colonia Rivera Hernández, San Cristobal.


title: San Pedro Sula

text: With dateline giving San Pedro Sula as the location, the New York Times in 2014 described the Chamelecón district as a "warren of modest cement-block houses painted in now chipped and fading pastels", subject to pressure of street gangs. This is not the Colonia El Chamelecón neighborhood within San Pedro Sula, but rather it is the Chamelecón that lies outside to the south of San Pedro Sula, on the Chamelecón River.


title: San Pedro Sula

text: The Villa Olímpica is a multi-sporting complex that has facilities for most Olympic style games including football, boxing, swimming, baseball, cycling, and multipurpose gymnasiums.


title: San Pedro Sula

text: San Pedro Sula is the only city in the country that houses to two football stadiums. The Estadio Olímpico Metropolitano is located in the Villa Olímpica and is the largest in the country with a capacity of 42,000. The Estadio Francisco Morazán is located in the center of the city and holds 23,000 people. The stadiums are home to San Pedro Sula's most popular professional football teams Marathón and Real CD España.


title: San Pedro Sula

text: It has a Roman Catholic Cathedral that was built in 1949. as well as a Greek Orthodox cathedral, Iglesia Ortodoxa de Antioquía San Juan Bautista, built in 1963.


title: San Pedro Sula

text: This archeological site is two kilometers along the street that goes to Lake Jucutuma. Expeditions from 2006 found multiple pre-Columbian pieces, and ruins of an unknown civilization. The ruins are currently abandoned since 2009, it was reported that during Rodolfo Sunseri administration in 2006–2009 that he pretended to rescue the park with 4 million Lempiras, but the project never started.


title: Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree

text: "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" is a Christmas song written by Johnny Marks and recorded by Brenda Lee in 1958; it has since been recorded by numerous other music artists. By the song's 50th anniversary in 2008, Lee's original version had sold over 25 million copies around the world with the 4th most digital downloads sold of any Christmas single.


title: Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree

text: "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" was written by Johnny Marks, who had previously penned "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" and "A Holly Jolly Christmas". In spite of her adult voice, Lee recorded the song when she was only 13 years old. In a 2019 interview with "The Tennessean", Lee recalled that she had no knowledge as to why Marks wanted her specifically to sing it: "I was only 12 [sic], and I had not had a lot of success in records, but for some reason he heard me and wanted me to do it. And I did."


title: Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree

text: "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" is a rockabilly song. The recording features Hank Garland and Harold Bradley on guitar, Floyd Cramer on piano, Boots Randolph on sax, Bob Moore on bass, and veteran session player Buddy Harman on drums. The song is written in the key of A-flat major.