title: High-speed rail in the United Kingdom

text: The completion and successful operation of HS1 Sections 1 and 2 spurred much discussion and several proposals for new lines in the UK and many interested parties are hoping to capitalise on the momentum given to these ideas by the completion of the complete HS1. These proposals are discussed below.


title: High-speed rail in the United Kingdom

text: The construction of HS1 also permitted the introduction of a new domestic high-speed service when in 2009 Southeastern launched its high-speed route between London St Pancras and . Operated with a fleet of Class 395 trains, the service reaches a top speed of . Southeastern High-Speed is currently the only British domestic high-speed service allowed to run above .


title: High-speed rail in the United Kingdom

text: High Speed 2 (HS2) is a high-speed railway originally designed to serve London, Birmingham, Sheffield and Leeds, or alternatively London, Manchester, Liverpool, Preston, Glasgow and Edinburgh and Sheffield. The UK Government launched a formal high-speed rail project in January 2009, and high-speed rail has the support of all three main political parties. Subject to consultation, the London terminus for the high-speed line would be Euston, a new Birmingham city-centre station would be built at Curzon Street, and there would be interchange stations with the Elizabeth line at Old Oak Common and with the existing intercity rail network near Birmingham Airport.


title: High-speed rail in the United Kingdom

text: HS2's original proposal was for a Y-shaped network between London and England's major regional cities, serving Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, East Midlands and Newcastle, with connections on to the West Coast and East Coast main lines to allow through services to Scotland. The Greengauge 21 study states that the total route length, including the connections to the existing network and High Speed One, would be .


title: High-speed rail in the United Kingdom

text: The first phase of High Speed 2 is currently under construction. However, the Integrated Rail Plan for the North and Midlands (IRP) was published on 18 November 2021 and impacted the High Speed 2 plan.


title: High-speed rail in the United Kingdom

text: In 2001, two privately sponsored proposals were put forward to build high-speed lines in the UK. The first, from Virgin Rail Group, was part of its tender for the InterCity East Coast franchise. The second, from FirstGroup, was independent of the Department for Transport / Strategic Rail Authority rail franchising process. Neither was welcomed by the government, which in the wake of the Hatfield rail crash was focused on - as it saw it - getting the rail network back to reliable operations.


title: High-speed rail in the United Kingdom

text: When the InterCity East Coast franchise (then operated by GNER) came up for its first renewal, Virgin Rail Group raised the idea in 2000 of constructing new track and purchasing a new fleet of trains for the line. These so-called VGVs (Virgins à Grande Vitesse, after the French TGV) would have been capable of and would have used a mixture of new track and existing track. The new track would be from Peterborough to Yorkshire and on from Newcastle to the Scottish border. This first line would have opened in 2009 and was chosen for ease of construction in the south and elimination of severe curves in Northumberland. Later, if successful, further stretches would have been upgraded. Publicity material featuring Virgin branded TGV and ICE trains appeared, and it was stated that the stock would be built in Birmingham. Virgin's bid was rejected, and GNER's franchise was renewed.


title: High-speed rail in the United Kingdom

text: Around the same time, First Great Western, operator of lines west of London, announced a study into a line from London to South West England and South Wales. First sponsored the study and input was given by other stakeholders in the regions to be served.


title: High-speed rail in the United Kingdom

text: Although First stated that this report would be published and given to the SRA and government, little has been heard of the plan since the initial press release. In 2010 Cardiff city council again lobbied central government for a high-speed rail line to London via Bristol, then estimated to contribute £2.2 billion to the Welsh economy. The Department for Transport responded to this bid by stating that "the Government's vision is of a truly national high-speed rail network for the whole of Britain. However, given financial constraints, we will have to achieve this in phases. Ministers are currently considering HS2 Ltd's proposals in respect of the potential first phase of such a network. We are aware of the proposals for a high speed line to Wales and these will feed into our thinking as we seek to develop a wider high speed rail network."


title: High-speed rail in the United Kingdom

text: Since the completion of Section 1 of the HS1, government departments and ministers have commissioned reports into the viability of high-speed rail. This is in part due to the success of the HS1 project, part due to realisation that upgrades to existing infrastructure offer poor value for money and cannot hope to meet future capacity needs, and part due to increasing environmental concerns over the expansion of the short-haul airline industry.


title: High-speed rail in the United Kingdom

text: In 2001, the SRA commissioned Atkins to perform a feasibility study into the transport and business case for high-speed rail. The study, published on 29 October 2004, looked at combinations of 11 routing options to accommodate forecast traffic flows and concluded:


title: High-speed rail in the United Kingdom

text: Furthermore, additional work was done to look at the impact of road pricing, downgrading the enhancements to the ECML, and changes to the Treasury's green book method of assessing project finance. All three areas were found to improve the case for high-speed rail.


title: High-speed rail in the United Kingdom

text: The Atkins study proposed a line between London and Stoke-on-Trent, broadly following the existing WCML and using the WCML for onward connection, as its baseline scenario.


title: High-speed rail in the United Kingdom

text: The study concluded that new lines should be built each side of the Pennines, with the eastern line continuing to Edinburgh and Glasgow. A branch also serves Heathrow Airport. This is the £33bn "end game" scenario.


title: High-speed rail in the United Kingdom

text: In 2004 the Commission for Integrated Transport commissioned Steer Davies Gleave to produce a report on high-speed rail. The report focused on the reasons why the costs being quoted for British HSR routes (particularly in Atkins) were high in comparison to other countries, in addition to investigating the business case and transport case for such a network.


title: High-speed rail in the United Kingdom

text: In 2006 British Airways' former chief executive Sir Rod Eddington produced a report on future transport strategy.


title: High-speed rail in the United Kingdom

text: The report covered all transport modes and had initially been expected to strongly recommend investment in high-speed rail. However, on 29 August 2006 "The Times" reported that Sir Rod would state that given a limited transport budget, a high-speed rail link is not the most cost-effective option to obtain higher capacity on the rail network and therefore should not be built. Most of the press continued to take this line when the report was finally published, drawing scorn from both opposition parties, Labour back-benchers and transport pressure groups alike. The report seemed to confirm this:


title: High-speed rail in the United Kingdom

text: However, Sir Rod later claimed both to the press and to a parliamentary select committee that he was quoted out of context in reports at the time, had aimed his comments specifically at speculative MagLev options, and in fact was in favour of using conventional high-speed rail to relieve congestion once existing main lines reached capacity. Indeed the quotation refers specifically to "very high speed lines". Nevertheless, enthusiasm for such projects seemed to wane after the report's publication, at least in Westminster. The topic remained much on the political agenda in the North East of England and Scotland.


title: High-speed rail in the United Kingdom

text: In June 2007, the campaign group Greengauge 21 published a proposal for High Speed Two. It evaluated options for high-speed rail in the UK and recommended an £11bn route from London St Pancras and Heathrow to Birmingham and the North West, which they dubbed HS2. The report recommended the new line be built in the M40/Chiltern Main Line corridor, and used it as the basis for its findings. This route has the greatest strategic advantage, as the Chiltern Main Line is a popular alternative to the WCML from Birmingham to London, and also lends the opportunity to build a branch line to Heathrow Airport, giving the passengers served by the WCML a direct service to one of the world's premier international airports. The WCML is also the corridor which would be under the most pressure in the next 15 – 20 years. A connection to High Speed 1 would allow Eurostar terminals to open in Birmingham and Manchester.


title: High-speed rail in the United Kingdom

text: Branching off HS1, it would briefly follow the WCML and GWML, branching off at the connection with the Central line, going to Northolt Junction, where it will follow the Chiltern Main Line and have a triangular junction serving a branch to Heathrow. The line will be tunnelled at Chiltern stations, up till Princes Risborough, where it will incorporate itself with the intercity line, up to Banbury, where it will branch off and hug the M40 and M42, before joining the Birmingham Loop, at Birmingham International/NEC. Links to Milton Keynes and Oxford via the Varsity Line, and Banbury in the middle of the Line, would experience a growth in services. Local services on Chiltern, WCML south of Rugby, and Banbury–Coventry–Birmingham could be intensified.


title: High-speed rail in the United Kingdom

text: On 3 July 2007 reports appeared in several British newspapers about the UK government's forthcoming 30-year strategy (see below). It was stated that "Britain may need High Speed 2", but that "the strategy will stop short of promising to pay for the line".


title: High-speed rail in the United Kingdom

text: In September 2009, Greengauge 21 published a new study into High Speed Rail. This was far more extensive than Network Rail's proposal, calling for a full, integrated high-speed network totalling around 1500 km. Greengauge's plan calls for two north/south corridors from London, which would broadly parallel the ECML and WCML, together with three east/west corridors between London-Bristol, Sheffield-Manchester and Edinburgh-Glasgow. Both the north/south lines would consist of new-built high-speed lines, while the east/west corridors would run on existing lines upgraded to allow 200 km/h running. One of the central parts of the Greengauge 21 proposal is to have it linked directly with High Speed 1, to allow through running to the Channel Tunnel, thus enabling trains to run direct from regional cities to Europe. The draft timetable produced as part of the plan estimates that trains could run between Birmingham and Paris in approximately 3 hours.


title: High-speed rail in the United Kingdom

text: In July 2007, the new Transport Secretary, Ruth Kelly, delivered a white paper on the future of the railways. The report outlined the government's strategic plan for the railways until 2037 which recommended "further study" and stated that dedicated magnetic levitation system and freight lines were "too expensive". Amongst the support documentation for the white paper was a report by transport professors Roderick Smith and Roger Kemp which reviewed the options for a MagLev trunk line, particularly those proposed by UK Ultraspeed, and concluded that it was a high-risk option, with a high impact on transport energy use and therefore carbon dioxide emissions.


title: High-speed rail in the United Kingdom

text: In March 2008, "The Observer" and "The Sunday Times" both reported that a second report for the Department of Transport by Atkins entitled "Because Transport Matters" showed that the original Option 8 (a high-speed network on both west and east coasts) would give a benefit of £63bn, well in excess of the predicted costs of £31bn. The report suggested building two lines on the East and West coasts. The West coast line would run to Manchester, and the East coast line would run to Edinburgh and Glasgow. Travel times of 71 minutes to Manchester and 74 minutes to Sheffield were mentioned in the report.


title: High-speed rail in the United Kingdom

text: In August 2009, Network Rail published a study outlining its proposals for the expansion of the railway network. The headline proposal was its plan for a new high-speed rail line between London and Glasgow/Edinburgh, following a route through the West Midlands and the North-West of England. This plan, whereby the new line would follow a similar but not totally parallel route to the West Coast Main Line, would involve trains running from both London and Birmingham as southern termini to Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow and Edinburgh. Included in the report are draft timings which put Birmingham less than an hour from London, Manchester just over an hour, Liverpool just under 90 minutes, and just over two hours to Glasgow and Edinburgh, with sixteen trains per hour estimated from London, and four trains per hour between the regional cities. The report also looked into the question of services to Heathrow Airport, and came to the conclusion that running all trains from London via Heathrow reduced the benefit of the line by as much as £3 billion. Instead, Network Rail's proposal would entail a short spur from the main line terminating at Heathrow, reducing the road and air traffic to the airport from the cities that the line would serve. Network Rail also outlined the case for not including such areas as Leeds and the North-East of England in the proposal, with two main points:


title: High-speed rail in the United Kingdom

text: In May 2018, Greengauge 21 released a report entitled 'Beyond HS2' which looked at how the rail network could develop by 2050. It proposed several projects:


title: High-speed rail in the United Kingdom

text: In June 2014, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne proposed a high speed rail link High Speed 3 (HS3) between Liverpool and Newcastle/Sheffield/Hull. The line would utilise the existing route between Liverpool and Newcastle/Hull, and a new route from to Sheffield will follow the same route to Manchester Victoria, and then a new line from Victoria to Sheffield, with additional tunnels and other infrastructure.


title: High-speed rail in the United Kingdom

text: Osborne suggested the line should be considered as part of a review of the second phase of High Speed 2. Initial estimates suggested a rail line with a line speed, and Leeds-Manchester journey times reduced to 30 minutes, Osborne estimated the cost to be less per mile than that of HS2, giving a cost of under £6 billion. Initial responses to the proposal were mixed: Jeremy Acklam of the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) suggested that plans should look at connecting other northern cities; such as Liverpool, and potentially north-east England via York; commentators noted that the proposal could be viewed as an attempt to gain political support in the north of England in the run-up to the 2015 general election: The Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) characterised the proposal as a ""headline grabbing vanity project designed to attract votes"". However the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC), Confederation of British Industry (CBI), and others were cautiously positive about the proposal, but emphasised the need to deliver on existing smaller-scale schemes.


title: High-speed rail in the United Kingdom

text: In 2011, the Department for Transport confirmed that ministers were studying a proposal for a 180 mph line between London Heathrow and Gatwick Airports. The journey would take 15 minutes and provide the first direct rail link between the two airports. The plan could virtually make Heathrow and Gatwick into a single hub. In 2018 a proposal was put forward by a British engineering consultancy, Expedition Engineering, for HS4Air, a high-speed railway line that would run to the south of Greater London, creating a 140 km link between HS2 and HS1 via Heathrow and Gatwick Airports.


title: High-speed rail in the United Kingdom

text: A lot of money and resources were put into fundamental research into vehicle dynamics which, among other advances, led to the development of the APT. The APT achieved high speeds around curves by tilting. Although the prototype was deemed successful and production units were built, they never entered regular service.


title: High-speed rail in the United Kingdom

text: The InterCity 125 was planned as a stop-gap. Research had begun for the tilting APT but it was uncertain when it could enter service. The HST applied what had been learned so far to traditional technology - a project parallel to the APT but based on conventional principles while incorporating the newly discovered knowledge of wheel/rail interaction and suspension design. The APT never achieved all its design objectives but the InterCity 125 was a success.


title: High-speed rail in the United Kingdom

text: The InterCity 125 was introduced by British Rail between 1976 and 1982, when the maximum speed had previously been 100 mph (160 km/h). The increased top speed and its acceleration and deceleration allowed for shortened journey times. The prototype class 252 (power cars 43000 and 43001) took the world record for diesel traction, achieving 143.2 mph (230 km/h) on 12 June 1973 on the East Coast Main Line between Northallerton and Thirsk. On 1 November 1987 the record was raised to 148.4 mph (238 km/h) by a shortened class 254 set running speed trials between Darlington and York. On 27 September 1985 a shortened class 254 set carrying passengers ran non-stop from Newcastle to London King's Cross, averaging 115.4 mph. HSTs were originally identified as Class 253 (seven trailer cars) used on the GWML and Class 254 (eight trailer cars) used on the ECML.


title: High-speed rail in the United Kingdom

text: The InterCity 125 is used on numerous intercity services today while the tilting trains it was supposed to complement and ultimately be replaced by only began to appear on British railways in the early 2000s.


title: High-speed rail in the United Kingdom

text: However, the aim for the Advanced Passenger Train was to achieve 155 mph (250 km/h) running. Although this was achieved during trials, it was not possible in normal service in the UK due to the shortness of British signal spacing, apart from the dedicated CTRL.


title: High-speed rail in the United Kingdom

text: The earliest replacement of InterCity 125s started with the introduction of the InterCity 225, between 1988 and 1991 in conjunction with electrification of the East Coast Main Line.


title: High-speed rail in the United Kingdom

text: After units such as the Intercity 125 were retired, GWR replaced them with Class 800 and Class 802 Hitachi units. LNER replaced their units with Class 800 and Class 802 units. East Midlands Railway replaced theirs with Class 180 units, as an interim solution until Class 810 units are built.


title: High-speed rail in the United Kingdom

text: Avanti West Coast are replacing their Class 220 and Class 221 Bombardier Voyagers with new Hitachi Class 805 and Class 807 units.


title: High-speed rail in the United Kingdom

text: TransPennine Express decided to move from operating commuter trains to high speed trains, with Class 802 and Class 397 units coming in. These units allowed TransPennine to begin services up the East Coast Main Line to Edinburgh from Manchester Piccadilly.


title: High-speed rail in the United Kingdom

text: Lumo is a new operator that will commence in October 2021. It will operate Class 803s built by Hitachi up the East Coast Main Line from London Kings Cross to Edinburgh Waverley.


title: High-speed rail in the United Kingdom

text: High Speed 2 will have some new trains. The bidding process included Alstom, CAF, Hitachi, Siemens and Talgo. In December 2021, the contract for HS2 rolling stock was awarded to a joint venture between Hitachi Rail and Alstom, for a development of the Zefiro 300.


title: High-speed rail in the United Kingdom

text: On 8 March 2007, the Department for Transport invited bidders to participate in the Intercity Express Programme or IEP. This is a project to replace the ageing InterCity 125 and subsequently InterCity 225 fleets with a new high-speed train designed to operate on the ECML, GWML and Cross Country routes. The project grew out of discussions between FirstGroup and Siemens in the early years of the decade, later being taken over by the SRA and DfT.


title: High-speed rail in the United Kingdom

text: On 12 February 2009, the DfT announced that Agility Trains, a consortium led by Hitachi, was the preferred bidder, with a train named the Hitachi Super Express. In February 2010 it was announced the programme was suspended pending an independent report, with a decision on its viability to be given after the 2010 General Election.


title: High-speed rail in the United Kingdom

text: The recent interest in high-speed rail generated by the success of the CTRL has led to the formation of several companies and non-profit groups aiming to further the construction of domestic high-speed lines in Britain. The principal groups are:


title: High-speed rail in the United Kingdom

text: Greengauge 21 is a non-profit group aiming to establish conventional high-speed wheel-on-rail technology as the mode of choice for new lines. The group has performed studies on routeing, environmental issues and the use of high-speed rail as an alternative to short-haul airlines.


title: High-speed rail in the United Kingdom

text: Currently it is proposing a new high-speed line between, at first, London and Birmingham. This is tentatively called High Speed Two.


title: High-speed rail in the United Kingdom

text: Eleven big cities announced a joint campaign for a high-speed rail network serving the entire of Great Britain on 9 September 2009. Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Nottingham and Sheffield stated as their goal that "The campaign will be deliberately focused on the importance of building a whole network to link all our major economic centres together, not simply a sterile debate about where a first route should go."


title: High-speed rail in the United Kingdom

text: Two railway engineers have proposed an alternative network to HS2, which they claim would provide higher connectivity and 25% lower cost than HS2.


title: High-speed rail in the United Kingdom

text: On 2 August 2007, the BBC reported that the Liberal Democrats proposed the building of a high-speed rail network in Great Britain, connecting London with Birmingham, Leeds, Manchester, Tyneside and Scotland in the north and Bristol, Cardiff and Exeter in the west. Funding for the investment would come from an extra £10 tax per ticket on internal flights in Britain and tolls on road freight, mirroring similar toll schemes in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and the Czech Republic.


title: High-speed rail in the United Kingdom

text: On 22 August 2007, a Scottish Liberal Democrat MSP tabled a motion to the Scottish Parliament calling for a high-speed rail link between Edinburgh, Glasgow and London.


title: High-speed rail in the United Kingdom

text: On 28 August 2007, "The Times" reported that the Conservative Party has found that 20% of all flights from Heathrow are to destinations that can be - or soon will be able to be - reached in a competitive time by high-speed rail (the top ten short haul destinations are: Paris, Amsterdam, Edinburgh, Manchester, Brussels, Glasgow, Newcastle, Leeds/Bradford, Rotterdam and Durham/Tees Valley). They plan to impose a moratorium on airport expansion and force this traffic on to the railways, freeing up slots for long-haul flights and removing the need for a third runway at Heathrow and a second runway at Stansted.


title: High-speed rail in the United Kingdom

text: On 2 December 2007, The Sunday Times reported that engineering group Arup, a member of the consortium behind High Speed One, was to put forward a plan for a second British high-speed line to the North of England and Lowland Scotland via Heathrow Airport. This would enable direct transfers between flights and trains to Continental Europe and British regions. The plan, closely resembling that of Greengauge21, was to be formally announced later in week commencing 3 December 2007.


title: Halime Sultan

text: Halime Sultan (, ""the gentle one"" or ""the patient one"") was a consort of Sultan Mehmed III, and the mother of Sultan Mustafa I. The first woman to be Valide Sultan twice and the only to be Valide twice of a same son. She had at least four children with Mehmed: two sons Şehzade Mahmud and Mustafa I, and two daughters Hatice Sultan and Şah Sultan. She was "de facto" co-ruler as Valide Sultan from 22 November 1617 to 26 February 1618 and from 19 May 1622 to 10 September 1623, because her son was mentally instable. Halime was also one of the prominent figures during the era known as the Sultanate of Women.


title: Halime Sultan

text: Halime lived in the Ottoman empire as a courtier during the reign of six Sultans: Murad III, Mehmed III, Ahmed I, Mustafa I, Osman II, Murad IV.


title: Halime Sultan

text: Of Georgian origin, Halime Sultan married Mehmed, when he was still a prince and the governor of Saruhan (Manisa) Sanjak. After Sultan Murad III's death in 1595, she came to Istanbul along with Mehmed. In Istanbul, her son Mahmud was very popular with the janissaries. However, Halime never was Haseki Sultan and was not favored by her mother-in-law Safiye Sultan, who favorited Handan Hatun.


title: Halime Sultan

text: She sent a message to a religious seer for she was superstitious, and anxious to know if her son would become the next Sultan, and how much longer her husband would reign. The seer responded, but the message was intercepted by Abdürrezzak Agha, the chief black enuch of the imperial harem, and who later gave it to Mehmed and Safiye, instead of her. The message said that Mehmed would die within six months without showing whether by death or deposition, and her son will become the next Sultan. Safiye incensed Mehmed, and he had Mahmud executed, who indeed knew nothing of his mother's action.


title: Halime Sultan

text: Mahmud's followers who were supposed to be involved in the matter were thrown into the sea. It was also rumored that she was also executed. However, she was sent to the Eski (old) Palace located at the Beyazıt Square by the end of June. Mehmed died just six months after Mahmud's death. On Friday January 9, Safiye Sultan, along with Şehzade Mustafa were also send to the Eski Palace. Between Mehmed's death and Mustafa's enthronement her stipend consisted of 100 aspers a day.


title: Halime Sultan

text: When Mustafa ascended the throne in 1617 she became the Valide Sultan and wielded a great power. While she, as a consort of Mehmed, had suffered the same obscurity as Handan Sultan, she was clearly able to command greater status as Valide Sultan than her fellow consort had. This was probably in large measure because she exercised power more directly, acting as regent for her mentally incompetent son as his mental condition unimproved . No one had expected that Mustafa, who suffered from severe emotional problems, would become sultan, and so she had not enjoyed a position of much status within the imperial harem. She received 3,000 aspers although her mother-in-law Safiye Sultan was still alive. Her fellow consort Handan Sultan received only 1,000 aspers as Valide Sultan. Kösem Sultan the Haseki Sultan to Ahmed I his favorite consort and legal wife lost her position in Topkapi Palace and she retired in the Old palace after Mustafa I ascended.


title: Halime Sultan

text: She had a potential ally in Kara Davud Pasha, but during Mustafa's first reign which lasted for only three months, she was unable to exploit her relationship by appointing Davud Pasha vizier. One of the few political alliances the "valide" was able to forge with her son's sword-bearer, Mustafa Agha, a high ranking inner palace officer, who was brought out of the palace and awarded the prestigious and strategically vital post of governor of Egypt on condition that he would marry the Sultan's wet nurse. Within a few months the pasha was brought back to Istanbul as grand vizier.


title: Halime Sultan

text: Later, Mustafa was dethroned and his nephew Osman II ascended the throne due to Mustafa's mental condition. Mustafa was sent back to the kafes. She and her daughter Şah were sent to the Eski Palace. However, she received only 2,000 aspers during her retirement to the Old Palace between her son's two reigns; during the first months of her retirement Safiye was still alive, perhaps a neighbour in the Old Palace, receiving 3,000 aspers a day. Also Kösem Sultan the Haseki Sultan to Ahmed I his favorite consort and his legal wife received 1,000 aspers a day during her retirement in the Old Palace. From her location in the Old Palace, she was a key figure in the deposition and assassination of Osman II and showed that she was no stranger to the art of "damat" politic. The basic and exceptional weakness from which Osman II suffered was the conspicuous absence of a female power basis in the harem. From 1620 until Osman's death, a governess (daye hatun, lit. wet-nurse) was appointed as a stand-in valide, and she could not counterbalance the contriving of Halime Sultan in the Old Palace.


title: Halime Sultan

text: Seeking a counterweight to Janissary influence, Osman II closed their coffee shops and started planning to create a new and more loyal army consisting of Anatolian sekbans. The result was a palace uprising by the Janissaries which was supported by Halime Sultan as she wanted to free her son from his confinement and become the Valide Sultan once again . Later on 18 May 1622 Osman was again dethroned and the rebels, meanwhile, broke into the imperial palace and freed Mustafa from his confinement and acclaimed him as their master. She once again returned from the Old Palace and became the Valide Sultan. Some of the janissaries consulted with her about the appointments to be made and it was in fact her son-in-law, Kara Davud Pasha, who became the grand vizier. The faction committed to the cause of Mustafa and she could not feel secure while Osman II was alive. Their uneasiness was well grounded, since some of the rebels wished to spare Osman, hoping no doubt to make no use of him for their own ends at some future date. Kara Davud Pasha had recourse, therefore to the last extreme measure on 20 May 1622, Osman II was strangled in the prison of Yedikule in Istanbul.


title: Halime Sultan

text: After Osman's death, the governor general of Erzurum, Abaza Mehmed Pasha, decided to advance to Istanbul to settle the score with the murderers of Osman II. Kara Davud Pasha was chosen as a scapegoat and was executed in an attempt to modify the discontent and preempt the rebellions that were building up in the empire, but to no avail: Mehmed Pasha, despite the offers made by the emissaries from the capital, continued his advance. Faced with an ever-deepening crises, clerics and the new Grand Vizier Kemankeş Kara Ali Pasha petitioned her to agree to the deposition of her son in favour of eleven year old Şehzade Murad, the oldest surviving son of Ahmed I. She concurred, only pleading that her son's life be spared. Accordingly, Mustafa was dethroned and incarcerated again.


title: OfferUp

text: OfferUp is an online mobile-first C2C marketplace with an emphasis on in-person transactions. It was founded as a competitor to Craigslist, differentiating itself with mobile-friendly apps and user profiles with ratings.


title: OfferUp

text: OfferUp was created in 2011 by Nick Huzar, former co-founder and CTO of Konnects, Inc., and Arean van Veelen. OfferUp is a mobile-driven local marketplace that competes with companies such as eBay, Craigslist, and Facebook Marketplace.


title: OfferUp

text: In 2015, OfferUp was named one of the Hottest Startups by Forbes, citing the company's explosive growth between funding rounds throughout the year, and was speculated to take over Craigslist's share of the C2C marketplace. Since then, the company has become a large marketplace for buyers and sellers and was named one of "The 7 Most Innovative Startups in Seattle" by Inc. OfferUp was in the Top 50 most downloaded free apps on Apple Appstore and Google Play and has been praised for being more user-friendly to list products on than sites like eBay.


title: OfferUp

text: OfferUp is based out of Bellevue, Washington and is currently used in several major cities across the United States, with plans to expand internationally. The company moved into a new office space in 2017 which was furnished only with items found on the platform.


title: OfferUp

text: According to Mary Meeker, a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers, during her 2016 “Internet Trends” report, OfferUp saw the average daily time spent per user in the United States growing from 12 minutes per day in November 2014 to 25 minutes in June 2015, on par with Instagram and Snapchat, and more than Twitter and Pinterest. She also noted that the company's gross merchandise volume has grown at a faster pace than eBay at the same stage as the respective companies.


title: OfferUp

text: As of October 2017, the company is said to have 33 million users and saw an increase in transactions from $2.9 billion in 2015 to more than $14 billion in 2016. Overall, the company grew 166% between 2015 and 2017, according to Comscore, and generated more peer-to-peer transactions in the first five years than


title: OfferUp

text: eBay North America in its first ten years. The top categories on the marketplace include toys, furniture, and cars.


title: OfferUp

text: OfferUp's employee numbers have also experienced rapid growth, starting at 11 employees in 2015, growing to 67 in 2015, and 218 employees in January 2018.


title: OfferUp

text: On March 25, 2020, OfferUp announced they were acquiring rival Letgo. led by Letgo owner OLX Group. The Letgo app in the United States was merged into the OfferUp app on August 31, 2020.


title: OfferUp

text: As of June 2021, OfferUp has been downloaded around 90 million times. As of September 2021, the company is said to have 20 million monthly active users and 260 employees.


title: OfferUp

text: In 2016 the company raised $130 million in funding, bringing the company's total funding to date to more than $221 million. Many investors include Andreessen Horowitz, Warburg Pincus, GGV Capital, Altimeter Capital, Jackson Square Ventures, Allen & Company, Tiger Global Management, T. Rowe Price, Quixotic Ventures, Alliance of Angels, Third Kind Venture Capital, Vy Capital, Coatue Management, and Max Levchin; angel investors including Serena Glover, Andrew Wright, and Rudy Gadre.


title: OfferUp

text: The OfferUp platform, offered for iOS, Android, and the web, facilitates buying and selling of used goods. The marketplace, which is primarily optimized for smartphones, features large photos of products for sale via an infinite scroll interface. For buyers, products are featured based on the geo-location closest to the buyer to help encourage face-to-face user interactions, but can also be filtered by category, price, and distance. On the seller side, products are listed immediately by uploading a photo from a user's smartphone or computer; the platform makes it easy to sort inbound inquiries by the highest bid before contacting prospective buyers to agree upon a price and meeting place.


title: OfferUp

text: OfferUp currently offers a “bump” feature, which allows users to move their item to the top of the queue for increased visibility at a fee. Transactions are completed using cash or through OfferUp's in-app payment platform.


title: OfferUp

text: OfferUp conducted surveys about marketplace opportunities and saw that women, in particular, were hesitant because of safety concerns. Profile features for customization include verification badges, positive review attributes, average response time, trusted connections, and personalized background images.


title: OfferUp

text: The app includes messaging features for buyers and sellers to connect directly, without giving up personal information like an email address or phone number


title: OfferUp

text: OfferUp has been used to list stolen goods. Some attempts to complete transactions on OfferUp items have resulted in the seller or buyer being robbed.


title: OfferUp

text: In 2017, a man named Zeandre Kirlew from Palm Beach, Florida, met up with a seller to purchase a pair of Nike sneakers, pulled a handgun on the seller, took the shoes, and fled the scene. He was later identified and arrested by authorities for robbery with a firearm.


title: OfferUp

text: A woman in Columbus, Ohio, was robbed at gunpoint in 2018 when she attempted to sell a camera and lens to a buyer who saw her listing on LetGo, which at the time was independent from OfferUp. In 2019, KIRO-TV reported that a woman in Tacoma, Washington found her stolen weed wacker on OfferUp and arranged to meet the seller in person. The original owner recovered her item and reported the theft to the police. Also in 2019, a robber in Cleveland listed an iPhone XS Max for sale on OfferUp; he then stole passports, cash, a wallet, a watch, and other items from two victims who intended to buy it.


title: OfferUp

text: Shoplifted items have been listed for sale on OfferUp. In February 2021, a local news station in Charlotte, North Carolina found a listing on OfferUp for power tools that had been stolen from a Home Depot store.


title: OfferUp

text: In response to concerns about crime affecting OfferUp buyers and sellers, the company developed guidelines and worked with local police departments to create safe places to complete transactions. OfferUp has established community meetup spots at police stations and some California Ralph's supermarkets. Donated placards and information are available to police departments that request them through the OfferUp website. The OfferUp app displays a list of community meetup spots. In addition to in-person protections, OfferUp says its anti-fraud technology guards users by detecting signs of possible scams based on keyword usage.


title: Baritone guitar

text: The baritone guitar is a guitar with a longer scale length, typically a larger body, and heavier internal bracing, so it can be tuned to a lower pitch. Gretsch, Fender, Gibson, Ibanez, ESP Guitars, PRS Guitars, Music Man, Danelectro, Schecter, Jerry Jones Guitars, Burns London and many other companies have produced electric baritone guitars since the 1960s, although always in small numbers due to low popularity. Tacoma, Santa Cruz, Taylor, Martin, Alvarez Guitars and others have made acoustic baritone guitars.


title: Baritone guitar

text: The baritone-tuned guitar was uncommon until the Danelectro Company introduced an electric baritone guitar in the late 1950s. The electric baritone found some popularity in surf music and film scores, particularly "spaghetti Westerns." "Tic-tac bass" is a method of playing, in which a muted baritone guitar doubles the part played by the bass guitar or double bass. The method is commonly used in country music.


title: Baritone guitar

text: A standard guitar's standard tuning (from lowest–pitched string to highest) is E2–A2–D3–G3–B3–E4. While no standard tuning has been established for baritone guitars, popular tunings for the instrument are: a perfect fourth lower than a standard guitar (B1–E2–A2–D3–F3–B3), a perfect fifth lower (A1–D2–G2–C3–E3–A3), or a major third lower (C2–F2–B2–E3–G3–C4). Typically strung with 13 gauge (.013–.062), or 14 gauge (.014–.068) baritone guitar strings. 12 gauge (.012–.060) guitar strings can also be used.


title: Baritone guitar

text: Baritone acoustic guitars typically have larger bodies than standard guitars, and have longer scale lengths so the strings can be tuned lower while remaining at normal tension. On a standard guitar, the scale length (the distance from the nut to the saddle on the bridge) is typically . The most common scale lengths on a baritone range from .


title: Baritone guitar

text: In the 1960s, it was often tuned an octave down from standard guitar tuning; therefore, these recordings used a retuned baritone guitar as a six-string bass.


title: Baritone guitar

text: The Danelectro baritone was used by guitarist Duane Eddy in numerous recordings, including "Bonnie Came Back", "Because They're Young", "Kommotion", "My Blue Heaven", "Deep in the Heart of Texas", and "The Son of Rebel Rouser". The instrument was used almost exclusively on his best-selling 1960 album "The Twang's the Thang" and appears regularly on singles and albums throughout his career. The "twangy" sound of his guitars (which include Duane Eddy custom-builts by Guild, Gretsch and Gibson) augmented the even deeper twangy sound made by the Danelectro baritone. Eddy used the familiar black model and an unusual gray "Longhorn" model.


title: Baritone guitar

text: Brian Wilson often included baritone guitars in his arrangements for The Beach Boys records, such as in "Dance, Dance, Dance" (1964) or "Caroline, No" (1966).


title: Baritone guitar

text: Singer Jimmie Rodgers also favored the baritone guitar, which can be heard in the opening bars of his recording of "Woman from Liberia" (1960).


title: Baritone guitar

text: Singer Glen Campbell used a baritone electric guitar on several of his big hit songs, most notably "Wichita Lineman" and "Galveston", where he played a distinctive baritone solo following the melody in both songs.


title: Baritone guitar

text: Baritone guitars became popular in heavy metal music during the late 1980s, as it became increasingly popular to employ lower guitar tunings and dropped tunings. Early examples include Carcass (using B standard) and Bolt Thrower (using A standard on "Realm of Chaos").


title: Baritone guitar

text: Rock guitarists also use down-tuned guitars. Benjamin Burnley, the guitarist/singer from Breaking Benjamin, uses custom-built PRS and ESP baritone guitars for their songs in Drop A tuning. Ko Melina of The Dirtbombs plays a Fender Jaguar Baritone Custom. Teppei Teranishi of Thrice plays a baritone on the "Fire" disc of "The Alchemy Index" and "Major/Minor". Ian Mackaye plays a baritone guitar when playing with his band The Evens. Aerosmith's Joe Perry plays a six-string Fender VI bass tuned in G (which was later stolen) on "Back in the Saddle" on the 1976 "Rocks" album, and currently uses a Music Man Silo Baritone.


title: Baritone guitar

text: Eddie Van Halen used a baritone guitar on the songs "Spanked" And "Runaround" from Van Halen's 1991 album "For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge". His specific guitar was a double-necked Ernie Ball EVH Music Man (the top neck being the baritone), which can be seen in music videos and live performances.


title: Baritone guitar

text: Pete Loeffler, the guitarist/singer from Chevelle, uses a custom built PRS baritone and Fender Sub-Sonic baritone guitar for their songs in drop B tuning.


title: Baritone guitar

text: Mike Mushok of the band Staind has a signature model baritone guitar manufactured by PRS Guitars. Prior to his PRS signature model, Mushok had a signature baritone guitar produced by Ibanez called the MMM1, and had a custom built fanned-fret baritone made by Novax called the Expression.


title: Baritone guitar

text: Dave Matthews plays a baritone on certain songs such as "The Space Between" and "Some Devil". Parker Lauzon of Evans Blue uses an Ibanez.


title: Baritone guitar

text: Irish blues rock artist Hozier utilizes a baritone guitar in the song 'Jackie and Wilson' and on the hit single 'Take Me To Church'


title: Baritone guitar

text: Robert Smith of The Cure has made The Fender Bass VI (which is actually a 30″ short-scale six-string bass) a major component of his dark and atmospheric tone since 1989's Disintegration, using a 1962 model. Schecter guitars have since produced a Robert Smith signature model bass VI guitar; the Ultracure VI. While many mistake these for Baritone guitars they are not. The tuning on a bass VI is one octave lower than standard guitar tuning whereas a baritone tuning varies and is often an A, B or similar alternative tuning.


title: Baritone guitar

text: English musician Alex Turner of the band Arctic Monkeys has played the baritone guitar on their song "If You Were There, Beware", most songs from their sixth album, "Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino", and a number of songs in concert with The Last Shadow Puppets.


title: Baritone guitar

text: Pat Smear has played baritone guitar since 2011 with the Foo Fighters. Andy Moor and Terrie Hessels of The Ex have traded off between baritone guitar and guitar since 2005, when the last bass player left their band.


title: Baritone guitar

text: Jesse Hughes of Eagles of Death Metal opted for a baritone guitar on many of the songs on their 2015 album "Zipper Down".


title: Baritone guitar

text: Jazz guitarist Pat Metheny used baritone guitars made by Linda Manzer on his 2003 solo album "One Quiet Night" and his 2011 solo album "What's It All About". Ani DiFranco often plays a baritone guitar, including those by Alvarez, frequently employing alternate tunings. Clifton Hyde has had his acoustic baritone guitar featured in the music of Sigur Rós, Gato Loco, and Pape Armond Boye. Bob Lanzetti, guitarist for the modern fusion band Snarky Puppy, frequently employs an electric baritone guitar as well. Allan Holdsworth used baritone guitars built by luthier Bill DeLap.


title: Baritone guitar

text: Mark Lettieri, solo artist and guitarist with Snarky Puppy, released two funk/fusion albums centered around the baritone guitar: "Deep: The Baritone Sessions" and "Deep: The Baritone Sessions, Vol. 2" in 2019 and 2021, respectively, the latter of which also received a Grammy nomination for Best Contemporary Instrumental Album at the 2022 Grammy Awards. Lettieri also utilizes a baritone guitar with Vulfpeck side project, The Fearless Flyers.


title: Baritone guitar

text: Numerous fingerstyle guitarists use baritone guitars, including Andy McKee, Don Ross, Martin Simpson, Sergio Altamura, Iain Micah Weigert, and Dave Amato. Don Ross plays a baritone by Canadian Luthier Marc Beneteau, and Simpson has played baritones made by English luthier Ralph Bown. Andy McKee plays a baritone guitar made by another Canadian Luthier Michael Greenfield. Brian Setzer played the Gretsch/TV Jones Spectra-Sonic baritone on the song "Mystery Train" during the Brian Setzer Orchestra tour.


title: Baritone guitar

text: Australian musician Stu Thomas plays a Barracuda baritone guitar by Burns London, tuned an octave lower than a regular guitar. He uses it as a bass when playing with Dave Graney & The mistLY, and as a "regular" guitar when he accompanies himself solo as The Stu Thomas Paradox.


title: Baritone guitar

text: Dave Gonzalez started playing a baritone with The Hacienda Brothers, consisting of a Fender Bass VI neck on a Fender Jazzmaster.


title: Baritone guitar

text: YouTube guitarist Sungha Jung plays original and cover instrumentals on Lakewood Acoustic Baritone Guitars.


title: Water pollution in India

text: Water pollution is a major environmental issue in India. The largest source of water pollution in India is untreated


title: Water pollution in India

text: sewage. Other sources of pollution include agricultural runoff and unregulated small-scale industry. Most rivers, lakes and surface water in India are polluted due to industries, untreated sewage and solid wastes. Although the average annual precipitation in India is about 4000 billion cubic metres, only about 1122 billion cubic metres of water resources are available for utilization due to lack of infrastructure. Much of this water is unsafe, because pollution degrades water quality. Water pollution severely limits the amount of water available to Indian consumers, its industry and its agriculture.


title: Water pollution in India

text: There is a large gap between generation and treatment of domestic waste water in India. The problem is not only that India lacks sufficient treatment capacity but also that the sewage treatment plants that exist do not operate and are not maintained.


title: Water pollution in India

text: The majority of the government-owned sewage treatment plants remain closed most of the time due to improper design or poor maintenance or lack of reliable electricity supply to operate the plants, together with absentee employees and poor management. The waste water generated in these areas normally percolates into the soil or evaporates. The uncollected waste accumulates in the urban areas causing unhygienic conditions and releasing pollutants that leach into surface and groundwater.


title: Water pollution in India

text: Sewage discharged from cities, towns and some villages is the predominant cause of water pollution in India. Investment is needed to bridge the gap between the sewage India generates and its treatment capacity of sewage per day. Major cities of India produce 38,354 million litres per day (MLD) of sewage, but the urban sewage treatment capacity is only 11,786 MLD. A large number of Indian rivers are severely polluted as a result of discharge of domestic sewage.


title: Water pollution in India

text: The scientific analysis of water samples from 1995 to 2008 indicates that the organic and bacterial contamination is severe in water bodies of India. This is mainly due to discharge of domestic waste water in untreated form, mostly from the urban centres of India.


title: Water pollution in India

text: Pesticides are a major contaminant of water bodies in developing countries. Many pesticides have been banned all over the world due to their environmental damage such as Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT), Aldrin and Hexachlorocyclohexane (HCH), but are still commonly used as a cheap and easily available alternative to other pesticides in India. India has used over 350,000 million tonnes of DDT since 1985, even though DDT was banned in 1989. The introduction of agrochemicals like HCH and DDT into water bodies can cause bioaccumulation, since these chemicals are resistant to degradation. These chemicals are a part of Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs), which are potential carcinogens and mutagens. The levels of POPs found in several Indian rivers are well above the WHO permissible limit.


title: Water pollution in India

text: The wastewater from many industries in India is discarded in rivers. From 2016 to 2017, it is estimated that 7.17 million tonnes of hazardous waste was produced by industrial plants. The Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) reported that as of 2016, there were 746 industries directly depositing wastewater into the Ganga, which is the largest river in India. This wastewater contains heavy metals such as lead, cadmium, copper, chromium, zinc, and arsenic, which negatively affect both aquatic life as well as human health. Bioaccumulation of these metals can cause several adverse effects on health such as impaired cognitive function, gastrointestinal damage, or renal damage.


title: Water pollution in India

text: A joint study by PRIMER and the Punjab Pollution Control Board in 2008, revealed that in villages along the Nullah, fluoride, mercury, beta-endosulphan and heptachlor pesticide were more than permissible limit (MPL) in ground and tap water. Plus the water had high concentration of COD and BOD (chemical and biochemical oxygen demand), ammonia, phosphate, chloride, chromium, arsenic and chlorpyrifos pesticide. The ground water also contains nickel and selenium, while the tap water has high concentration of lead, nickel and cadmium.


title: Water pollution in India

text: Flooding during monsoons worsens India's water pollution problem, as it washes and moves solid waste and contaminated soils into its rivers and wetlands.


title: Water pollution in India

text: The Central Pollution Control Board, a Ministry of Environment & Forests Government of India entity, has established a National Water Quality Monitoring Network comprising 1,429 monitoring stations in 28 states and 6 in Union Territories on various rivers and water bodies across the country. This effort monitors water quality year round. The monitoring network covers 293 rivers, 94 lakes, 9 tanks, 41 ponds, 8 creeks, 23 canals, 18 drains and 411 wells distributed across India. Water samples are routinely analysed for 28 parameters including dissolved oxygen, bacteriological and other internationally established parameters for water quality. Additionally 9 trace metals parameters and 28 pesticide residues are analysed. Biomonitoring is also carried out on specific locations.


title: Water pollution in India

text: In 2010 the water quality monitoring found almost all rivers with high levels of BOD (a measure of pollution with organic matter). The worst pollution, in decreasing order, were found in river Markanda (490 mg/L BOD), followed by river Kali (364), river Amlakhadi (353), Yamuna canal (247), river Yamuna at Delhi (70) and river Betwa (58). For context, a water sample with a 5-day BOD between 1 and 2 mg O/L indicates a very clean water, 3 to 8 mg O/L indicates a moderately clean water, 8 to 20 indicates borderline water, and greater than 20 mg O/L indicates ecologically unsafe, polluted water.


title: Water pollution in India

text: The levels of BOD are severe near the cities and major towns. In rural parts of India, the river BOD levels were sufficient to support aquatic life.


title: Water pollution in India

text: Rivers Yamuna, Ganga, Gomti, Ghaghara, Chambal, Mahi, Vardha and Godavari, are amongst the other most coliform polluted water bodies in India. For context, coliform must be below 104 MPN/100 mL, preferably absent from water for it to be considered safe for general human use, and for irrigation where coliform may cause disease outbreak from contaminated-water in agriculture.


title: Water pollution in India

text: In 2006, 47 percent of water quality monitoring reported coliform concentrations above 500 MPN/100 mL. During 2008, 33 percent of all water quality monitoring stations reported a total coliform levels exceeding those levels, suggesting recent effort to add pollution control infrastructure and upgrade treatment plants in India, may be reversing the water pollution trend.


title: Water pollution in India

text: Treatment of domestic sewage and subsequent utilization of treated sewage for irrigation can prevent pollution of water bodies, reduce the demand for fresh water in the irrigation sector and become a resource for irrigation. Since 2005, Indian wastewater treatment plant market has been growing annually at the rate of 10 to 12 percent. The United States is the largest supplier of treatment equipment and supplies to India, with 40 percent market share of new installation. At that rate of expansion, and assuming the government of India continues on its path of reform, major investments in sewage treatment plants and electricity infrastructure development, it was estimated India will nearly triple its water treatment capacity by 2015, and treatment capacity supply will match India's daily sewage water treatment requirements by about 2020.


title: Water pollution in India

text: Water conservation in India is gaining pace. The Ganga rejuvenation efforts by the union government, the Yamuna clean-up are some of the government initiated efforts. The Chennai River Restoration trust's efforts to clean the Cooum, Adyar rivers in Chennai and civil society efforts spearheaded by organizations like Environmentalist Foundation of India (E.F.I) to clean lakes and ponds in the country are seen as significant development towards water conservation.


title: Water pollution in India

text: There is a huge gap between the sewage generated in India and the sewage treatment capacity of the country. The central government has largely left it up to the state governments to manage wastewater treatments, which has led to huge disparity in the management of wastewater amongst the several states. However, approximately 815 sewage treatment plants (STPs) are under development or have been planned in the last six years. This has increased the percentage of urban sewage treated from 37% in 2015 to 50% in 2021. There has also been an effort to encourage the reuse or recycling of treated wastewater in agriculture or industrial purposes to reduce the strain on groundwater resources.


title: Water pollution in India

text: Other technologies to treat municipal wastewater have also been explored. Natural wetlands have shown to be a good alternative to STPs to remove 76-78% of organic waste, 77-97% of nutrients, and 99.5-99.9% of microbes from wastewater. Decentralised Wastewater Treatment Systems (DEWATS) have been adopted in some parts of India and have also shown to be an economically feasible alternative to STPs, considering the cost of installing and maintaining an STP is high. The quality of the effluent discharged by the plants was found to be within the permissible limits of the CPCB.


title: Water pollution in India

text: Industrial wastewater is highly unregulated in India. However, several initiatives have been taken by the government to prevent industrial pollution of water resources. Zero liquid discharge (ZLD) is a water treatment process to eliminate liquid waste from industries that release very polluted wastewater, such as the fertiliser sector and distilleries. ZLD has been encouraged by the government and since implemented at some large industrial plants like Unilever and P&G, but installation costs and failure to process large amounts of dissolved solids in wastewater are a huge deterrent for industrial plants to adopt this technology.


title: Water pollution in India

text: More than 500 million people live along the [Ganges] River. An estimated 2,000,000 persons ritually bath daily in the river, which is considered holy by Hindus. Ganges river pollution is a major health risk.


title: Water pollution in India

text: NRGBA was established by the Central Government of India, on 20 February 2009 under Section 3(3) of the Environment Protection Act, 1986. It also declared Ganges as the "National River" of India. The chair includes the Prime Minister of India and Chief ministers of states through which the Ganges flows.


title: Water pollution in India

text: By an estimate by 2012, Delhi's sacred Yamuna river contained 7,500 coliform bacteria per 100cc of water. A number of NGOs, pressure groups, eco-clubs, as well as citizens' movements, have been active in their task to clean the river.


title: Water pollution in India

text: Even though India revised its National Water Policy in 2002 to encourage community participation and decentralize water management, the country's complex bureaucracy ensures that it remains a "mere statement of intent." Responsibility for managing water issues is fragmented among a dozen different ministries and departments without any coordination. The government bureaucracy and state-run project department has failed to solve the problem, despite having spent many years and $140 million on this project.


title: Sapphire (author)

text: Ramona Lofton (born August 4, 1950), better known by her pen name Sapphire, is an American author and performance poet.


title: Sapphire (author)

text: Ramona Lofton was born in Fort Ord, California, one of four children of an Army couple who relocated within the United States and abroad. After a disagreement concerning where the family would settle, her parents separated, with Lofton's mother "kind of abandoning them". Lofton dropped out of high school and moved to San Francisco, where she attained a GED and enrolled at the City College of San Francisco before dropping out to become a "hippie". In the mid-1970s Lofton attended the City College of New York and obtained an MFA degree at Brooklyn College. Lofton held various jobs before starting her writing career, working as a performance artist as well as a teacher of reading and writing.


title: Sapphire (author)

text: Lofton moved to New York City in 1977 and became heavily involved with poetry. She also became a member of a gay organization named United Lesbians of Color for Change Inc. She wrote, performed and eventually published her poetry during the height of the Slam Poetry movement in New York. Lofton took the name "Sapphire" because of its one-time cultural association with the image of a "belligerent black woman," and also because she said she could more easily picture that name on a book cover than her birth name.


title: Sapphire (author)

text: Sapphire self-published the collection of poems "Meditations on the Rainbow" in 1987. As Cheryl Clarke notes, Sapphire's 1994 book of poems, "American Dreams" is often erroneously referred to as her first book. One critic referred to it as "one of the strongest debut collections of the 1990s".


title: Sapphire (author)

text: Her first novel, "Push", was unpublished before being discovered by literary agent Charlotte Sheedy, whose interest created demand and eventually led to a bidding war. Sapphire submitted the first 100 pages of "Push" to a publisher auction in 1995 and the highest bidder offered her $500,000 to finish the novel. The book was published in 1996 by Vintage Publishing and has since sold hundreds of thousands of copies. Sapphire noted in an interview with William Powers that "she noticed "Push" for sale in one of the Penn Station bookstores, and that moment it struck her she was no longer a creature of the tiny world of art magazines and homeless shelters from which she came". The novel brought Sapphire praise and much controversy for its graphic account of a young woman growing up in a cycle of incest and abuse.


title: Sapphire (author)

text: A film based on her novel premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2009. It was renamed "Precious" to avoid confusion with the 2009 action film "Push". The cast included Gabourey Sidibe, Mo'Nique, who won the Academy Award for her portrayal of Precious' mother Mary, Mariah Carey, and Lenny Kravitz. Sapphire herself appears briefly in the film as a daycare worker.


title: Sapphire (author)

text: In 2011, she released "The Kid", a sequel to "Push" about Sapphire's son, Abdul. Sapphire admitted that part of the reason she decided to continue the story was because of the encouragement and interest "Push" received in scholarly conversations.


title: Sapphire (author)

text: Sapphire's writing was the subject of an academic symposium at Arizona State University in 2007. In 2009 she was the recipient of a Fellow Award in Literature from United States Artists.


title: Sapphire (author)

text: Sapphire has focused on bringing to light the parts of life that do not receive attention. In her words:


title: Sapphire (author)

text: Sapphire's work is included in the 2019 anthology "New Daughters of Africa", edited by Margaret Busby.


title: Global financial system

text: The global financial system is the worldwide framework of legal agreements, institutions, and both formal and informal economic actors that together facilitate international flows of financial capital for purposes of investment and trade financing. Since emerging in the late 19th century during the first modern wave of economic globalization, its evolution is marked by the establishment of central banks, multilateral treaties, and intergovernmental organizations aimed at improving the transparency, regulation, and effectiveness of international markets. In the late 1800s, world migration and communication technology facilitated unprecedented growth in international trade and investment. At the onset of World War I, trade contracted as foreign exchange markets became paralyzed by money market illiquidity. Countries sought to defend against external shocks with protectionist policies and trade virtually halted by 1933, worsening the effects of the global Great Depression until a series of reciprocal trade agreements slowly reduced tariffs worldwide. Efforts to revamp the international monetary system after World War II improved exchange rate stability, fostering record growth in global finance.


title: Global financial system

text: A series of currency devaluations and oil crises in the 1970s led most countries to float their currencies. The world economy became increasingly financially integrated in the 1980s and 1990s due to capital account liberalization and financial deregulation. A series of financial crises in Europe, Asia, and Latin America followed with contagious effects due to greater exposure to volatile capital flows. The global financial crisis, which originated in the United States in 2007, quickly propagated among other nations and is recognized as the catalyst for the worldwide Great Recession. A market adjustment to Greece's noncompliance with its monetary union in 2009 ignited a sovereign debt crisis among European nations known as the Eurozone crisis. The history of international finance shows a U-shaped pattern in international capital flows: high prior to 1914 and after 1989, but lower in between. The volatility of capital flows has been greater since the 1970s than in previous periods.


title: Global financial system

text: A country's decision to operate an open economy and globalize its financial capital carries monetary implications captured by the balance of payments. It also renders exposure to risks in international finance, such as political deterioration, regulatory changes, foreign exchange controls, and legal uncertainties for property rights and investments. Both individuals and groups may participate in the global financial system. Consumers and international businesses undertake consumption, production, and investment. Governments and intergovernmental bodies act as purveyors of international trade, economic development, and crisis management. Regulatory bodies establish financial regulations and legal procedures, while independent bodies facilitate industry supervision. Research institutes and other associations analyze data, publish reports and policy briefs, and host public discourse on global financial affairs.


title: Global financial system

text: While the global financial system is edging toward greater stability, governments must deal with differing regional or national needs. Some nations are trying to systematically discontinue unconventional monetary policies installed to cultivate recovery, while others are expanding their scope and scale. Emerging market policymakers face a challenge of precision as they must carefully institute sustainable macroeconomic policies during extraordinary market sensitivity without provoking investors to retreat their capital to stronger markets. Nations' inability to align interests and achieve international consensus on matters such as banking regulation has perpetuated the risk of future global financial catastrophes. Initiatives like the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 10 are aimed at improving regulation and monitoring of global financial systems.


title: Global financial system

text: The world experienced substantial changes in the late 19th century which created an environment favorable to an increase in and development of international financial centers. Principal among such changes were unprecedented growth in capital flows and the resulting rapid financial center integration, as well as faster communication. Before 1870, London and Paris existed as the world's only prominent financial centers. Soon after, Berlin and New York grew to become major centres providing financial services for their national economies. An array of smaller international financial centers became important as they found market niches, such as Amsterdam, Brussels, Zurich, and Geneva. London remained the leading international financial center in the four decades leading up to World War I.


title: Global financial system

text: The first modern wave of economic globalization began during the period of 1870–1914, marked by transportation expansion, record levels of migration, enhanced communications, trade expansion, and growth in capital transfers. During the mid-nineteenth century, the passport system in Europe dissolved as rail transport expanded rapidly. Most countries issuing passports did not require they be carried, and so people could travel freely without them. The standardization of international passports would not arise until 1980 under the guidance of the United Nations' International Civil Aviation Organization. From 1870 to 1915, 36 million Europeans migrated away from Europe. Approximately 25 million (or 70%) of these travelers migrated to the United States, while most of the rest reached Canada, Australia and Brazil. Europe itself experienced an influx of foreigners from 1860 to 1910, growing from 0.7% of the population to 1.8%. While the absence of meaningful passport requirements allowed for free travel, migration on such an enormous scale would have been prohibitively difficult if not for technological advances in transportation, particularly the expansion of railway travel and the dominance of steam-powered boats over traditional sailing ships. World railway mileage grew from 205,000 kilometers in 1870 to 925,000 kilometers in 1906, while steamboat cargo tonnage surpassed that of sailboats in the 1890s. Advancements such as the telephone and wireless telegraphy (the precursor to radio) revolutionized telecommunication by providing instantaneous communication. In 1866, the first transatlantic cable was laid beneath the ocean to connect London and New York, while Europe and Asia became connected through new landlines.


title: Global financial system

text: Economic globalization grew under free trade, starting in 1860 when the United Kingdom entered into a free trade agreement with France known as the Cobden–Chevalier Treaty. However, the golden age of this wave of globalization endured a return to protectionism between 1880 and 1914. In 1879, German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck introduced protective tariffs on agricultural and manufacturing goods, making Germany the first nation to institute new protective trade policies. In 1892, France introduced the Méline tariff, greatly raising customs duties on both agricultural and manufacturing goods. The United States maintained strong protectionism during most of the nineteenth century, imposing customs duties between 40 and 50% on imported goods. Despite these measures, international trade continued to grow without slowing. Paradoxically, foreign trade grew at a much faster rate during the protectionist phase of the first wave of globalization than during the free trade phase sparked by the United Kingdom.


title: Global financial system

text: Unprecedented growth in foreign investment from the 1880s to the 1900s served as the core driver of financial globalization. The worldwide total of capital invested abroad amounted to US$44 billion in 1913 ($1.02 trillion in 2012 dollars), with the greatest share of foreign assets held by the United Kingdom (42%), France (20%), Germany (13%), and the United States (8%). The Netherlands, Belgium, and Switzerland together held foreign investments on par with Germany at around 12%.


title: Global financial system

text: In October 1907, the United States experienced a bank run on the Knickerbocker Trust Company, forcing the trust to close on October 23, 1907, provoking further reactions. The panic was alleviated when U.S. Secretary of the Treasury George B. Cortelyou and John Pierpont "J.P." Morgan deposited $25 million and $35 million, respectively, into the reserve banks of New York City, enabling withdrawals to be fully covered. The bank run in New York led to a money market crunch which occurred simultaneously as demands for credit heightened from cereal and grain exporters. Since these demands could only be serviced through the purchase of substantial quantities of gold in London, the international markets became exposed to the crisis. The Bank of England had to sustain an artificially high discount lending rate until 1908. To service the flow of gold to the United States, the Bank of England organized a pool from among twenty-four nations, for which the Banque de France temporarily lent £3 million (GBP, 305.6 million in 2012 GBP) in gold.


title: Global financial system

text: The United States Congress passed the Federal Reserve Act in 1913, giving rise to the Federal Reserve System. Its inception drew influence from the Panic of 1907, underpinning legislators' hesitance in trusting individual investors, such as John Pierpont Morgan, to serve again as a lender of last resort. The system's design also considered the findings of the Pujo Committee's investigation of the possibility of a money trust in which Wall Street's concentration of influence over national financial matters was questioned and in which investment bankers were suspected of unusually deep involvement in the directorates of manufacturing corporations. Although the committee's findings were inconclusive, the very possibility was enough to motivate support for the long-resisted notion of establishing a central bank. The Federal Reserve's overarching aim was to become the sole lender of last resort and to resolve the inelasticity of the United States' money supply during significant shifts in money demand. In addition to addressing the underlying issues that precipitated the international ramifications of the 1907 money market crunch, New York's banks were liberated from the need to maintain their own reserves and began undertaking greater risks. New access to rediscount facilities enabled them to launch foreign branches, bolstering New York's rivalry with London's competitive discount market.


title: Global financial system

text: Economists have referred to the onset of World War I as the end of an age of innocence for foreign exchange markets, as it was the first geopolitical conflict to have a destabilizing and paralyzing impact. The United Kingdom declared war on Germany on August 4, 1914 following Germany's invasion of France and Belgium. In the weeks prior, the foreign exchange market in London was the first to exhibit distress. European tensions and increasing political uncertainty motivated investors to chase liquidity, prompting commercial banks to borrow heavily from London's discount market. As the money market tightened, discount lenders began rediscounting their reserves at the Bank of England rather than discounting new pounds sterling. The Bank of England was forced to raise discount rates daily for three days from 3% on July 30 to 10% by August 1. As foreign investors resorted to buying pounds for remittance to London just to pay off their newly maturing securities, the sudden demand for pounds led the pound to appreciate beyond its gold value against most major currencies, yet sharply depreciate against the French franc after French banks began liquidating their London accounts. Remittance to London became increasingly difficult and culminated in a record exchange rate of US$6.50/GBP. Emergency measures were introduced in the form of moratoria and extended bank holidays, but to no effect as financial contracts became informally unable to be negotiated and export embargoes thwarted gold shipments. A week later, the Bank of England began to address the deadlock in the foreign exchange markets by establishing a new channel for transatlantic payments whereby participants could make remittance payments to the U.K. by depositing gold designated for a Bank of England account with Canada's Minister of Finance, and in exchange receive pounds sterling at an exchange rate of $4.90. Approximately US$104 million in remittances flowed through this channel in the next two months. However, pound sterling liquidity ultimately did not improve due to inadequate relief for merchant banks receiving sterling bills. As the pound sterling was the world's reserve currency and leading vehicle currency, market illiquidity and merchant banks' hesitance to accept sterling bills left currency markets paralyzed.


title: Global financial system

text: The U.K. government attempted several measures to revive the London foreign exchange market, the most notable of which were implemented on September 5 to extend the previous moratorium through October and allow the Bank of England to temporarily loan funds to be paid back upon the end of the war in an effort to settle outstanding or unpaid acceptances for currency transactions. By mid-October, the London market began functioning properly as a result of the September measures. The war continued to present unfavorable circumstances for the foreign exchange market, such as the London Stock Exchange's prolonged closure, the redirection of economic resources to support a transition from producing exports to producing military armaments, and myriad disruptions of freight and mail. The pound sterling enjoyed general stability throughout World War I, in large part due to various steps taken by the U.K. government to influence the pound's value in ways that yet provided individuals with the freedom to continue trading currencies. Such measures included open market interventions on foreign exchange, borrowing in foreign currencies rather than in pounds sterling to finance war activities, outbound capital controls, and limited import restrictions.


title: Global financial system

text: In 1930, the Allied powers established the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). The principal purposes of the BIS were to manage the scheduled payment of Germany's reparations imposed by the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, and to function as a bank for central banks around the world. Nations may hold a portion of their reserves as deposits with the institution. It also serves as a forum for central bank cooperation and research on international monetary and financial matters. The BIS also operates as a general trustee and facilitator of financial settlements between nations.


title: Global financial system

text: U.S. President Herbert Hoover signed the Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act into law on June 17, 1930. The tariff's aim was to protect agriculture in the United States, but congressional representatives ultimately raised tariffs on a host of manufactured goods resulting in average duties as high as 53% on over a thousand various goods. Twenty-five trading partners responded in kind by introducing new tariffs on a wide range of U.S. goods. Hoover was pressured and compelled to adhere to the Republican Party's 1928 platform, which sought protective tariffs to alleviate market pressures on the nation's struggling agribusinesses and reduce the domestic unemployment rate. The culmination of the Stock Market Crash of 1929 and the onset of the Great Depression heightened fears, further pressuring Hoover to act on protective policies against the advice of Henry Ford and over 1,000 economists who protested by calling for a veto of the act. Exports from the United States plummeted 60% from 1930 to 1933. Worldwide international trade virtually ground to a halt. The international ramifications of the Smoot-Hawley tariff, comprising protectionist and discriminatory trade policies and bouts of economic nationalism, are credited by economists with prolongment and worldwide propagation of the Great Depression.


title: Global financial system

text: The classical gold standard was established in 1821 by the United Kingdom as the Bank of England enabled redemption of its banknotes for gold bullion. France, Germany, the United States, Russia, and Japan each embraced the standard one by one from 1878 to 1897, marking its international acceptance. The first departure from the standard occurred in August 1914 when these nations erected trade embargoes on gold exports and suspended redemption of gold for banknotes. Following the end of World War I on November 11, 1918, Austria, Hungary, Germany, Russia, and Poland began experiencing hyperinflation. Having informally departed from the standard, most currencies were freed from exchange rate fixing and allowed to float. Most countries throughout this period sought to gain national advantages and bolster exports by depreciating their currency values to predatory levels. A number of countries, including the United States, made unenthusiastic and uncoordinated attempts to restore the former gold standard. The early years of the Great Depression brought about bank runs in the United States, Austria, and Germany, which placed pressures on gold reserves in the United Kingdom to such a degree that the gold standard became unsustainable. Germany became the first nation to formally abandon the post-World War I gold standard when the Dresdner Bank implemented foreign exchange controls and announced bankruptcy on July 15, 1931. In September 1931, the United Kingdom allowed the pound sterling to float freely. By the end of 1931, a host of countries including Austria, Canada, Japan, and Sweden abandoned gold. Following widespread bank failures and a hemorrhaging of gold reserves, the United States broke free of the gold standard in April 1933. France would not follow suit until 1936 as investors fled from the franc due to political concerns over Prime Minister Léon Blum's government.


title: Global financial system

text: The disastrous effects of the Smoot–Hawley tariff proved difficult for Herbert Hoover's 1932 re-election campaign. Franklin D. Roosevelt became the 32nd U.S. president and the Democratic Party worked to reverse trade protectionism in favor of trade liberalization. As an alternative to cutting tariffs across all imports, Democrats advocated for trade reciprocity. The U.S. Congress passed the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act in 1934, aimed at restoring global trade and reducing unemployment. The legislation expressly authorized President Roosevelt to negotiate bilateral trade agreements and reduce tariffs considerably. If a country agreed to cut tariffs on certain commodities, the U.S. would institute corresponding cuts to promote trade between the two nations. Between 1934 and 1947, the U.S. negotiated 29 such agreements and the average tariff rate decreased by approximately one third during this same period. The legislation contained an important most-favored-nation clause, through which tariffs were equalized to all countries, such that trade agreements would not result in preferential or discriminatory tariff rates with certain countries on any particular import, due to the difficulties and inefficiencies associated with differential tariff rates. The clause effectively generalized tariff reductions from bilateral trade agreements, ultimately reducing worldwide tariff rates.


title: Global financial system

text: As the inception of the United Nations as an intergovernmental entity slowly began formalizing in 1944, delegates from 44 of its early member states met at a hotel in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire for the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference, now commonly referred to as the Bretton Woods conference. Delegates remained cognizant of the effects of the Great Depression, struggles to sustain the international gold standard during the 1930s, and related market instabilities. Whereas previous discourse on the international monetary system focused on fixed versus floating exchange rates, Bretton Woods delegates favored pegged exchange rates for their flexibility. Under this system, nations would peg their exchange rates to the U.S. dollar, which would be convertible to gold at US$35 per ounce. This arrangement is commonly referred to as the Bretton Woods system. Rather than maintaining fixed rates, nations would peg their currencies to the U.S. dollar and allow their exchange rates to fluctuate within a 1% band of the agreed-upon parity. To meet this requirement, central banks would intervene via sales or purchases of their currencies against the dollar.


title: Global financial system

text: Members could adjust their pegs in response to long-run fundamental disequilibria in the balance of payments, but were responsible for correcting imbalances via fiscal and monetary policy tools before resorting to repegging strategies. The adjustable pegging enabled greater exchange rate stability for commercial and financial transactions which fostered unprecedented growth in international trade and foreign investment. This feature grew from delegates' experiences in the 1930s when excessively volatile exchange rates and the reactive protectionist exchange controls that followed proved destructive to trade and prolonged the deflationary effects of the Great Depression. Capital mobility faced de facto limits under the system as governments instituted restrictions on capital flows and aligned their monetary policy to support their pegs.


title: Global financial system

text: An important component of the Bretton Woods agreements was the creation of two new international financial institutions, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD). Collectively referred to as the Bretton Woods institutions, they became operational in 1947 and 1946 respectively. The IMF was established to support the monetary system by facilitating cooperation on international monetary issues, providing advisory and technical assistance to members, and offering emergency lending to nations experiencing repeated difficulties restoring the balance of payments equilibrium. Members would contribute funds to a pool according to their share of gross world product, from which emergency loans could be issued.


title: Global financial system

text: Member states were authorized and encouraged to employ capital controls as necessary to manage payments imbalances and meet pegging targets, but prohibited from relying on IMF financing to cover particularly short-term capital hemorrhages. While the IMF was instituted to guide members and provide a short-term financing window for recurrent balance of payments deficits, the IBRD was established to serve as a type of financial intermediary for channeling global capital toward long-term investment opportunities and postwar reconstruction projects. The creation of these organizations was a crucial milestone in the evolution of the international financial architecture, and some economists consider it the most significant achievement of multilateral cooperation following World War II. Since the establishment of the International Development Association (IDA) in 1960, the IBRD and IDA are together known as the World Bank. While the IBRD lends to middle-income developing countries, the IDA extends the Bank's lending program by offering concessional loans and grants to the world's poorest nations.


title: Global financial system

text: In 1947, 23 countries concluded the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) at a UN conference in Geneva. Delegates intended the agreement to suffice while member states would negotiate creation of a UN body to be known as the International Trade Organization (ITO). As the ITO never became ratified, GATT became the "de facto" framework for later multilateral trade negotiations. Members emphasized trade reprocity as an approach to lowering barriers in pursuit of mutual gains. The agreement's structure enabled its signatories to codify and enforce regulations for trading of goods and services. GATT was centered on two precepts: trade relations needed to be equitable and nondiscriminatory, and subsidizing non-agricultural exports needed to be prohibited. As such, the agreement's most favored nation clause prohibited members from offering preferential tariff rates to any nation that it would not otherwise offer to fellow GATT members. In the event of any discovery of non-agricultural subsidies, members were authorized to offset such policies by enacting countervailing tariffs. The agreement provided governments with a transparent structure for managing trade relations and avoiding protectionist pressures. However, GATT's principles did not extend to financial activity, consistent with the era's rigid discouragement of capital movements. The agreement's initial round achieved only limited success in reducing tariffs. While the U.S. reduced its tariffs by one third, other signatories offered much smaller trade concessions.


title: Global financial system

text: Although the exchange rate stability sustained by the Bretton Woods system facilitated expanding international trade, this early success masked its underlying design flaw, wherein there existed no mechanism for increasing the supply of international reserves to support continued growth in trade. The system began experiencing insurmountable market pressures and deteriorating cohesion among its key participants in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Central banks needed more U.S. dollars to hold as reserves, but were unable to expand their money supplies if doing so meant exceeding their dollar reserves and threatening their exchange rate pegs. To accommodate these needs, the Bretton Woods system depended on the United States to run dollar deficits. As a consequence, the dollar's value began exceeding its gold backing. During the early 1960s, investors could sell gold for a greater dollar exchange rate in London than in the United States, signaling to market participants that the dollar was overvalued. Belgian-American economist Robert Triffin defined this problem now known as the Triffin dilemma, in which a country's national economic interests conflict with its international objectives as the custodian of the world's reserve currency.


title: Global financial system

text: France voiced concerns over the artificially low price of gold in 1968 and called for returns to the former gold standard. Meanwhile, excess dollars flowed into international markets as the United States expanded its money supply to accommodate the costs of its military campaign in the Vietnam War. Its gold reserves were assaulted by speculative investors following its first current account deficit since the 19th century. In August 1971, President Richard Nixon suspended the exchange of U.S. dollars for gold as part of the Nixon Shock. The closure of the gold window effectively shifted the adjustment burdens of a devalued dollar to other nations. Speculative traders chased other currencies and began selling dollars in anticipation of these currencies being revalued against the dollar. These influxes of capital presented difficulties to foreign central banks, which then faced choosing among inflationary money supplies, largely ineffective capital controls, or floating exchange rates. Following these woes surrounding the U.S. dollar, the dollar price of gold was raised to US$38 per ounce and the Bretton Woods system was modified to allow fluctuations within an augmented band of 2.25% as part of the Smithsonian Agreement signed by the G-10 members in December 1971. The agreement delayed the system's demise for a further two years. The system's erosion was expedited not only by the dollar devaluations that occurred, but also by the oil crises of the 1970s which emphasized the importance of international financial markets in petrodollar recycling and balance of payments financing. Once the world's reserve currency began to float, other nations began adopting floating exchange rate regimes.


title: Global financial system

text: As part of the first amendment to its articles of agreement in 1969, the IMF developed a new reserve instrument called special drawing rights (SDRs), which could be held by central banks and exchanged among themselves and the Fund as an alternative to gold. SDRs entered service in 1970 originally as units of a market basket of sixteen major vehicle currencies of countries whose share of total world exports exceeded 1%. The basket's composition changed over time and presently consists of the U.S. dollar, euro, Japanese yen, Chinese yuan, and British pound. Beyond holding them as reserves, nations can denominate transactions among themselves and the Fund in SDRs, although the instrument is not a vehicle for trade. In international transactions, the currency basket's portfolio characteristic affords greater stability against the uncertainties inherent with free floating exchange rates. Special drawing rights were originally equivalent to a specified amount of gold, but were not directly redeemable for gold and instead served as a surrogate in obtaining other currencies that could be exchanged for gold. The Fund initially issued 9.5 billion XDR from 1970 to 1972.


title: Global financial system

text: IMF members signed the Jamaica Agreement in January 1976, which ratified the end of the Bretton Woods system and reoriented the Fund's role in supporting the international monetary system. The agreement officially embraced the flexible exchange rate regimes that emerged after the failure of the Smithsonian Agreement measures. In tandem with floating exchange rates, the agreement endorsed central bank interventions aimed at clearing excessive volatility. The agreement retroactively formalized the abandonment of gold as a reserve instrument and the Fund subsequently demonetized its gold reserves, returning gold to members or selling it to provide poorer nations with relief funding. Developing countries and countries not endowed with oil export resources enjoyed greater access to IMF lending programs as a result. The Fund continued assisting nations experiencing balance of payments deficits and currency crises, but began imposing conditionality on its funding that required countries to adopt policies aimed at reducing deficits through spending cuts and tax increases, reducing protective trade barriers, and contractionary monetary policy.


title: Global financial system

text: The second amendment to the articles of agreement was signed in 1978. It legally formalized the free-floating acceptance and gold demonetization achieved by the Jamaica Agreement, and required members to support stable exchange rates through macroeconomic policy. The post-Bretton Woods system was decentralized in that member states retained autonomy in selecting an exchange rate regime. The amendment also expanded the institution's capacity for oversight and charged members with supporting monetary sustainability by cooperating with the Fund on regime implementation. This role is called IMF surveillance and is recognized as a pivotal point in the evolution of the Fund's mandate, which was extended beyond balance of payments issues to broader concern with internal and external stresses on countries' overall economic policies.


title: Global financial system

text: Under the dominance of flexible exchange rate regimes, the foreign exchange markets became significantly more volatile. In 1980, newly elected U.S. President Ronald Reagan's administration brought about increasing balance of payments deficits and budget deficits. To finance these deficits, the United States offered artificially high real interest rates to attract large inflows of foreign capital. As foreign investors' demand for U.S. dollars grew, the dollar's value appreciated substantially until reaching its peak in February 1985. The U.S. trade deficit grew to $160 billion in 1985 ($341 billion in 2012 dollars) as a result of the dollar's strong appreciation. The G5 met in September 1985 at the Plaza Hotel in New York City and agreed that the dollar should depreciate against the major currencies to resolve the United States' trade deficit and pledged to support this goal with concerted foreign exchange market interventions, in what became known as the Plaza Accord. The U.S. dollar continued to depreciate, but industrialized nations became increasingly concerned that it would decline too heavily and that exchange rate volatility would increase. To address these concerns, the G7 (now G8) held a summit in Paris in 1987, where they agreed to pursue improved exchange rate stability and better coordinate their macroeconomic policies, in what became known as the Louvre Accord. This accord became the provenance of the managed float regime by which central banks jointly intervene to resolve under- and overvaluations in the foreign exchange market to stabilize otherwise freely floating currencies. Exchange rates stabilized following the embrace of managed floating during the 1990s, with a strong U.S. economic performance from 1997 to 2000 during the Dot-com bubble. After the 2000 stock market correction of the Dot-com bubble the country's trade deficit grew, the September 11 attacks increased political uncertainties, and the dollar began to depreciate in 2001.


title: Global financial system

text: Following the Smithsonian Agreement, member states of the European Economic Community adopted a narrower currency band of 1.125% for exchange rates among their own currencies, creating a smaller scale fixed exchange rate system known as the "snake in the tunnel". The snake proved unsustainable as it did not compel EEC countries to coordinate macroeconomic policies. In 1979, the European Monetary System (EMS) phased out the currency snake. The EMS featured two key components: the European Currency Unit (ECU), an artificial weighted average market basket of European Union members' currencies, and the Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM), a procedure for managing exchange rate fluctuations in keeping with a calculated parity grid of currencies' par values.